We’ve started going to B and Q at the weekends out of
choice.
I feel like a little bit of me has died.
And if that’s not bad enough, I picked up brochures for
their kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms, and perused them over a glass of wine
on a Saturday night.
That's right.
When other people are in the pub, having sex or
dancing the night away, I’M FLICKING THROUGH B AND Q CATALOGUES.
I think the early on-set middle-aged moment really sunk in
when I saw my daughter desperately trying to entertain herself in what is
pretty much an aircraft hangar full of bathroom fittings and men in paint-splattered
trousers.
She was looking through all the cupboards in the display
kitchen in the hope that there may be something interesting in them or, better
still, a snack.
I had been in the very same position at a similar age with
my dad. I remember thinking; this can’t be it, can it? Shops can’t really be
this massively boring, can they?
As Ben and I were discussing the pros and cons of toilets
with handles versus those with buttons (handles all the way btw) I realised I
hadn’t seen my daughter for a little while.
I half-heartedly called her name a couple of times whilst
picking up paint colour charts.
By the forth shout-out with no response, I started to get a
bit worried.
As I looked down the empty aisles, my pulse started to beat
a little bit too loudly in my ears.
Unnecessary adrenaline is one of the most unproductive
things a body can produce.
Your rational mind is telling you, ‘calm down, she will just have wandered off,’ where as the
adrenaline-fuelled panic is screaming, ‘the
guy with the beard who was carrying the big tin of emulsion on aisle 3 looked
like a total child-snatching weirdo!’
I started to mum-run around the store, where you go the same
speed as walking but your legs are doing twice as much work, Fred Flintstone
style.
I couldn’t find her anywhere.
And at the point where I was about to get a member of staff to do a call out for a lost little girl, I heard a muffled, ‘I’m here mummy!’
A familiar shape was hiding under the covers in the display
bed.
Panic over. It was just an elaborate game of hide and seek.
Turns out, lack of sleep, an over-active imagination and an
inbuilt maternal-instinct to panic your face off about your children on a
minute-by-minute basis, can transform a face-punchingly sedate B and Q into a
pretty fucking dangerous place after all.
I’d go so far as to say I deserved a sit off and a gander at
their bathroom magazine after all that.