Page 1 of The F*cking Fabulous Forties Club

1

A DOG’S DINNER

Rebecca

November 2023

‘I’ll call round in the morning,’ I blurt down the phone to my mother. ‘I’m just in the door and Daniel has had a good go at the chicken I’d been defrosting for dinner and it obviously didn’t agree with him because he’s been sick all over the living room rug and the smell would?—’

‘The smell isn’t something I need to know about. Not when I’m just about to have my own dinner. It’s chicken though and after that lovely picture you’ve painted, I’m not sure I’m quite in the mood for it any more,’ my mother says, her voice intoned with the flourish of martyrdom she does so well. Of course, I know my mother does not like any talk of a delicate nature, and nor, for that matter, does she like Daniel, our oddly named but very adorable cocker spaniel, but as she phoned just as I’d come upon the gruesome tableau in partially digested raw chicken he had left me, I spoke without thinking.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I tell her, as Daniel looks up at me with sorrowful eyes that immediately make me feel guilty for calling him ‘a disgusting ratbag’ just minutes earlier. I give his fur a gentle stroke and hope that suffices as an apology for my anger as I continue to try to appease my mother. ‘I hope it hasn’t ruined your dinner. But I do need to get on and clean this up if I’ve half a chance of saving this rug.’

‘Rebecca! Please! You know I’ve a sensitive stomach,’ my mother laments. Of course I apologise again while mentally strategising the best course of action for the great clean-up. Kitchen paper, poo bags, that odour-killing spray and maybe even the carpet cleaning machine…

‘Mum, I’ll call over in the morning. I’m working from home so I’ll nip round. Send me a text if you need anything over from the shops and I’ll pick it up on the way,’ I tell her.

‘I will not send a text. I’ll call you. All these people obsessed with their phones and no one knows what anyone’s voice sounds like any more,’ she says. The chance of anyone in my mother’s acquaintance not knowing what her voice sounds like is somewhere between slim and none, but I am not going to poke that particular bruise right now.

‘Okay, yes. Call me. Before half eight if you want to use the landline, or you can get me on the mobile after. I’ll be taking Daniel out for his walk.’

‘But you won’t bring that dog here, will you?’ she asks, in a tone that makes me realise once again that she sees Daniel as some sort of vicious beast and not just the slightly dopey dog he is – more likely to lick you to death than sink his teeth into your flesh. Unless your flesh is partially defrosted chicken that was supposed to be chopped up and cooked into a curry for dinner.

‘No, Mum. I’ll leave him home again before I call to yours.’ Daniel gives me the wounded-pup eyes again and I swear he can understand what I’m saying word for word.

‘Well so, I’ll leave you a message on your landline and you can get it when you get home with that dog.’

I’m about to snap at her that she well knows that dog has a name and I’d prefer she use it. After all, it’s been almost a decade since my then nine-year-old twin sons decided to give him a name that rhymes with his breed – and yet Mum’s still campaigning to have him renamed Rover, Rocky or anything more ‘dog-like’.

I don’t think I have the energy to battle any more with her today, and that’s with barely a five-minute phone call, so I just sigh. ‘Okay, Mum. That’s grand. Look, I’ll see you then,’ I say as I head to the utility room to gather the necessary supplies for the clean-up. My poor massacred chicken, or what’s left of it, mocks me from the floor.

‘Oh, before you go,’ she says, and I feel my spirit leave my body. ‘Did you hear who died?’

My mother lives for her at least once a weekly round of ‘Did you hear who died?’ She says once you get to her age (‘seventy-six, not that I’m counting,’ she tells everyone), finding out who has most recently departed this world becomes something of a highlight. Sadly, I have the same reaction to it as she does to tales of regurgitated chicken. Death makes me feel vaguely nauseous and panicky and this morbid game of Guess Who? my mother insists on playing regularly is the bane of my life.

‘Mum, I really need to clean up after the dog,’ I say in the hope that my words might will her into letting me go without too much of a fuss.

There’s a deep sigh. ‘Ah so, there will come a day Rebecca Burnside, when I won’t be here to talk to on the phone and then you’ll feel bad for rushing these chats,’ she says.

‘Mum!’ I say and can’t hide the exasperation in my voice. ‘I love you, and I’ll give you all the time you need tomorrow to tell me all the latest news on who is dead, and who is getting married and who is riding someone they shouldn’t be?—’

‘Re-bec-ca!’ she scolds and I’m sixteen again and my face is blazing because she’s caught me singing ‘Like a Virgin’ while dancing provocatively in my bra pretending I’m Madonna on the Blond Ambition tour.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ I say, tears pricking at my eyes now. I’m tired. I ache. I have the period from hell and I’m so hungry I could eat the partially masticated chicken off the kitchen floor. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. Love you. I’m sorry. Bye!’

I hang up before the guilt trip ratchets up another notch and turn around to see Daniel squatting on the kitchen floor and emptying his bowels of whatever he hadn’t managed to throw up in the living room. I contemplate just closing the door, lifting my car keys and going for a long drive off a short precipice, but I don’t even think I have the energy for that right now.

So instead, I just scream… but not so loudly that it will upset Daniel and his watery bowels even more. The last thing I need is for him to take the zoomies through his own mess.

2

ME? A SWAN?

The person staring back at me in the rear-view mirror is not someone I recognise. Well, that’s not exactly true of course. I know it’s me. I haven’t had some sort of catastrophic brain incident on the drive over here. It’s just not the me I used to be or want to be, or the me I’d thought I’d be when I was finally all grown up.

The woman looking back at me is clearly old, tired, dehydrated and existing at the tail end of her very last nerve. She needs her greying roots done and could probably benefit from some Botox. She definitely could do with an eyebrow wax and maybe a personal shopper. A facial wouldn’t go amiss either. What sick-minded creator of all that is human decided to throw adult acne into the menopausal mixing pot? I thought my days of applying seventeen layers of concealer over a spot that seems to emit its own radioactive glow were long gone. But no. I thought a time would come in my life where I emerged a beautiful swan after leaving aside the ugly duckling years, but it turns out there was no swan hidden inside of me, just waiting to glide majestically across life’s pond. I have jumped from ugly duckling to dumpy old bird.

There is nothing chic or MILF-esque about the rather haggard figure in her well-worn slogan hoodie (‘Tired & Needy’) staring back at me. I look past my sell-by date. And if this is how I’m feeling now, before my mother gifts me with her opinion on how I’m looking and what I’m wearing, I have a feeling it’s going to be a rough morning.

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