Never again

It has taken me longer to recover from the Beautiful Baby Daughters birthday sleepover than it did to recover from the 4 glass Friday escapade of Jo's birthday !!

I met one of my students the day after and she was extremely puzzled as to why I looked so different - this is what a night of no sleep and 5 little girls intermittently fighting and crying does for you. Touche eclat and Beauty Flash Balm don't even make a feckin dent in it.

We had the full gamut of emotions, missing mummies, so and so doesn't like me, I want my own way itis, scary storytelling followed by a severe dose of the frights, 2 headaches needing calpol and a nose bleed !!! helped along by fizzy pop, truckloads of e numbers disguised as sweeties and a slight sprinkling of mischief as they weren't in their own houses.

Eldest Beautiful Daughter disappeared at the crack of sparrows in case she was asked to help in any way, shape or form, The Beautiful Son hightailed it to his mates to watch the Rugby Cup Final where he endeared himself to the parents by cheering on the Springboks (you can take the boy out of Scotland but you can't take Scotland out of the boy) and this left me...ALL ON MY OWN

Pre pubescent girls can be feral like creatures and this lot weren't too far off the spitting and snarling at each other. There's always 1 wee scone who is liked less than the others and there's nothing like a group of girls to find your achilles heel and put the boot in.

As a mummy who has already had birthday sleepovers for her other daughter I knew this would happen and I kept telling BBD that these sleepovers were better in the planning and the anticipation than in the actuality, that they would all fall out and somebody would want their mum and it really would be a disappointment. She was having none of it, her friends were different, they were all really nice to each other and way more mature the EBD s mates were at that age. As I've blogged before the BBD is always right, top barristers have to practice their debating skills with her, it's an integral part of their training. So the damn thing was arranged for the night of her birthday or Black Saturday as it's now known.

It really was hellish, and I'm an old hand at this and it was still hellish. I had to take 5 little girls out in their pyjamas and dressing gowns to collect TBS after the rugby as they were too scared to be left alone for 5 mins, I had to phone 3 separate mummies for permission for calpol, a reassuring chat with their daughter and to tell them of the fairly spectacular nose bleed repectively. 1 girl was sick and we had another who locked themselves in the loo. All this in between eating, drinking fizzy pop, singing very loudly to that feckin awful umberella song which has wedged itself into my addled brain. At no point was there much of the sleeping.

The next day when they's all gone home I asked BBD if she'd really enjoyed it and as she can never ever be wrong, she was very enthusiaistic about how it had been great. As I can be the bigger person, at no point did I let dab about the text she'd sent to The Beautiful Man which he then forwarded to me

Sleepover not going 2 well but i an co ping