28 April 2009
Its been a while since I’ve blogged . This is largely due to the fact that I have entered the weird and strange world of …work. No I am not referring to the playground, although now I think about it perhaps the analogy works well both ways, but I really have gone back to work.
Friends keep asking me what I like most about being at work and I can honestly say that up there at the top is getting dressed in the morning. I love dressing up! I have spent the last 7 years watching the kids become superman, spiderman, builders and the occasional princess (that’s a secret I swore I wouldn’t let on) but the tables have turned and it’s my time to have a go. Of course there are the trips to the shops first of all, such a chore but someone has to do it.
Years and three children later a whole new approach is needed - wardrobe strategy commences. Whereas previously I spent everyday at work desperate to shed the constraining clothes, tights, high heeled shoes and couldn’t wait to get into jeans and slob out. I now decided I wanted glamour and lots of it. I had it with my uniform of jeans and jumper, I wanted sophistication, I wanted dresses, I wanted to feel cool. Somehow life had turned itself upside down and I spent my formative years of my career as a corporate wife, and my new lease of life as a trendy teenager on fashion.
I took my mission very seriously, much to my husband and his bank balance distress. Things got so serious that even when I popped out to buy a loaf of bread in our local bakery I managed to come back with 2 pairs of Italian designer boots!! (Yes one pair was hidden for a while, to emerge innocuously at some later point). Just imagine what would have happened if I had gone to the posh organic delicatessen - somewhere between the olives and the artichokes I’m sure I could have found a Jimmy Choo!
Wardrobe complete, hair cut I was ready to face the workplace. As I walked to the tube station I felt fantastic. As I sauntered from the tube station to my work I felt empowered. I was wearing a killer dress, I was a grown up, I felt ready, I was… overdressed. I took stock of my fellow colleagues cool, funky, trendy, young and in jeans.
I sat at my desk, enjoying the space, the order, the peace and quiet. But something was bothering me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Eventually it came to me….I was old in a sea of youth. My coloured hair and turned up jeans could not hide the fact that I was no longer in my twenties. I thought to myself what lovely young gals, and I’m a oldie mum, no I’m a MUMGREL.
A mumgrel is a new type of person. It’s a cross breed between mother and other, between play manager and project manager and not in a good way. It’s a strange world when you can no longer define yourself clearly. You are no longer simply devoted to your children, you are no longer a carefree twenty something career minded and off to the pub most evenings after work and so -I found myself between two stools – a strange combination of everything and nothing.
I still haven’t quite accepted the fact that I am no longer in my twenties. The last time I was working properly in an office environment, part of a team, part of office gossip, always happy to pop to the pub after work. And now I have returned. I sit there soaking up now culture, life that I have missed out on for 7 years, The Killers, The Tings Tings – the who? I tune in to Radio 1, I start watching gossip girl, I think about watching Skins (but can’t quite face it) but however up I am on culture (that’s culture with a small c if you know what I mean) I still remain at least 10 years older with 3 children and there is nowhere for me to hide.
So mumgrel it is .. I will never make crufts, but I will sure have more fun on way…