I had the shock of my life when I heard Margot was having a party and saw her guest list with 60 names. SIXTY. Immediate nightmares of sixty boys and girls running round the house, eating the entire kitchen, half-making food and leaving it all for me to wash up, unbearably loud music including The Ting Tings on repeat, and generally the entire house turning into a bombsite plummeted into my head. Aftermath of a nuclear time-bomb. The entire nation of French strikers rioting through the house.
Fortunately, it's happening at some other poor person's setting. Now I understand why public venues never hire out to parties for youngsters. I don't care how old or 'kill-joy' I sound, I'd rather jump down a well and swim my way to Iran than clear up after a party, or even sit there whilst wannabe-teens get wild and raucous on coca cola and orange oasis. The down side, is that George-Clooney-lookalike (AKA, William) has asked me to make cakes. Err, sorry but what? I have as much interest in making cakes and cookies for sixty 12 year olds than watching Gladiators.
Anyway, head-explosion of the day was the shopping. Because I had to buy hundreds of coke bottles, juice, squash and crisps for Margot's party, hardly anything else fit into the ridiculously small trolleys at the hardly-a-supermarket, so by the time I got to the tills, I was carrying and sliding along the floor with my foot pretty much the same amount of items already in the trolley. Surprisingly I survived that, got it all in the car, and this time I did not drop any eggs over my beloved suede Fitflop boots (or anywhere else for that matter). I made it home, and managed to get it all into the kitchen after several trips because NO ONE would help me. No one said au-pairing was going to be easy, and if anyone thinks/says other wise can come and try out my job for a week. Sorry - I'm being harsh. I'll give you two days. And a paper bag to take slow breaths into when the going gets tough.
But then Margot and Marie seemed to think it would be quite amusing to use the kitchen as a hide-and-seek/ obstacle course, and I couldn't think of any vocabulary to get them to GET. OUT. Then they wanted biscuits (still with most of the shopping on the floor), and so just to get them to go somewhere else, I turned to grab the box of biscuits. (N.B. An entire packet of chocolate biscuits.) As I turned, the most stomach-twisting heart-sinking thing happened, and when I looked round again I'd accidentally kicked over an entire jar of olive oil which just spread over the entire kitchen floor. With a cry of frustration through gritted teeth I thrust the biscuits at Margot and turned to face the pee-coloured mess. I spent the next 20 minutes cleaning up oil in my beloved suede boots and Topshop Angora jumper, just hoping I wouldn't get ANYTHING on them. How on earth do you mop up oil? IT'S WATER RESISTANT!
I got through best part of a new roll of kitchen towel to stop it spreading, and then got the mop on the go. It's a relief to see the floor looking cream-coloured again, though I'm sure if someone were to pull out the cupboards round the sink even in a hundred years time, they'd still find globs of oil spreading like some poisonous quick-sand or man-swallowing marsh. Just so long as it holds off it's reappearance until June next year, I should survive!
On the plus side, the floor is now water resistant.
Oh, and the biscuits? Yep you guessed it - they finished the whole lot. Just.Keep.Breathing. Do you think I'd make it through airmail if I just stuck a postal stamp on my forehead?
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