I have some very clever friends! 
(Can I say it takes one to know one? Or is that just terribly smug? Hey, it’s my blog so I’m going to throw that in, smug or not…)
Two of my clever bloggy friends have written a book, and it is brilliant, smart and funny…and that kinda scares me. You see, I’m writing a book. I want it to be funny, and real and droll and clever. Just like Emma Kaufman and Gillian Martin’s book – Cocktails at Naptime.
Why does it scare me?
Because being a naturally competitive girl, I want to ‘make the grade’ and man these girls have set the bar high! I have a theory that comedians tend to be of high intelligence because it is so very difficult to pull off ‘funny’.
So I think it’s evident that my pals Emma and Gillian are clever. Bloody clever!
There are lots of things about Cocktails at Naptime that make it funny. The back story for one. You see Emma and Gillian have actually never met. Oh sure they’re met virtually through their very witty blogs – MissyM Missives and Mommy Has a Headache. They’ve ‘met’ via emails despite one author living in Scotland and the other in the US, but neither of them have actually met their publisher, who hails from Down Under.
If that isn’t the plot for a brilliant movie, I wonder what is! Two authors meet virtually from different sides of the Atlantic and together publish a book with a publishing house based in Australia…. you can see the potential for great mirth can’t you!
Yet it seems as if they’ve pulled it off, and how! Not only is the back story amusing but I the stories funny in that they are true to life and there is nothing that is funnier than stories that are real, keenly observed, and faithfully retold with tongue planted firmly in cheek!
I loved Cocktails at Naptime.
The writing’s conversational and wry, in fact it’s just as I like my chardonnay. Aged, full bodied, and mellow on the palate. The chatty writing brings to mind the kind of chats I may possibly have had not long after giving birth, with my friends over a bottle or five of chardonnay. I may have had, but of course I don’t remember.
Wry mouthfuls of substance infused with a black humour spice and topped with a cocktail umbrella coloured in ‘bawdy’.
In one of the cocktail sized extracts entitled ‘Riding the hormonal wave in a size 18 swimsuit’ the Colditz environment of the hospital captured perfectly…
A typical day at the hospital
6.30 a.m. Finally fall asleep after listening to three babies who aren’t yours cry throughout the
night.
7 a.m. Wake up with a jolt as the breakfast trolley comes crashing through the ward doors like
a medieval battering ram with a small army behind it. There is not a small army behind it, there is just
one large lady called Bev, who is apparently made from corned beef and who shouts, “Right Ladies,
that’s yer breakfast. Up ya get!” with a voice so shrill it would make faraway dogs yelp in pain.
Bev is the same woman who casually criticised your choice of name for your new child by saying,
“You young ones, with your crazy ideas! I don’t know!”
7.15 a.m. Have a debate with the other mums on the ward as to whether the breakfast is
porridge or a mistaken delivery of medical waste to the hospital kitchens.
8 a.m. Feed Junior and fall asleep with one breast pointing skyward and the other still in Junior’s
sleeping mouth.
8.05 a.m. Get woken by the cutting machine-gun sound of Nurse Dragon Lady’s voice and the sharp popping sound of your baby’s mouth being removed from your breast. Dragon Lady has caught you,
again, sleeping with Junior in the bed. Next time she catches you, shes putting in a catheter. She doesn’t explain the medical reasons for this, but you know she means it and you are too frightened to argue.
You do, however, consider starting a tunnel out of the hospital, if you can get the fake passports
organised in time…
It reminded me of my keen desire to get out of hospital immediately after birth and the pact that I made with my specialist that I could leave when I could walk to the toilet. I got out of bed the same afternoon after Son was born. Sure I had to hold a stomach to my csection incision to stop my innards from falling out and making a mess on the hospital lino, but nothing was keeping me from escaping Colditz, the Mother and Baby ward!
No subject is off limits! Perineum bruising, post-natal coitus (as in immediately post-natal!), as well as some of the more difficult subjects that have divided women across the globe. Here’s Cocktails at Naptime’s take on the work vs stay at home mum, debate…..
The phrase “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” will apply as soon as you make
any decision with regard to your work after having your baby. You can’t win.
As soon as a woman decides to go back to work she is also open season for everyone’s opinion, whether that decision was made the day she found out she was pregnant, the
day she got her credit card bill, or the day she saw her non-working mum friend pour
herself a glass of wine at twelve noon and down a couple of breath mints before doing
the school run. Whatever time that decision may have happened, as soon as it’s been
made a new mum will elicit an array of responses from just about everyone she
knows.
Here is a delicious selection of the rather more tart remarks you may experience when
you make the announcement that you are to return to work:
Remark no. 1
“Oh, but you surely don’t have to. Your dad and I ate sawdust for five years and lived on fresh air, but I
wouldn’t have missed one single second of your childhood to go back to work.”
Translation: I can’t really remember much but I’m damned if that’ll stop me from airbrushing the scene with
that rose-tinted varnish I have here in my handbag.
Actuality: I binned work as soon as I got an engagement ring welded onto my finger and so did all my mates.
You got away with that kind of thing then.
Your actual response: Why thanks, Mum!
Your fantasy response: Mum, you’re here so often you’re in danger of not missing a second of my
adulthood either.
All in all I found it a rollicking fun read. Just the sort of thing that might have cheered me up after giving birth, after examining the collateral damage to the figure, or wistfully reminiscing about breasts that were hot and sexy rather than hot and milky…
I have only one criticism. Why, oh why did they have to set the bar so bloody high? Damn you, clever women. Damn you!
You can purchase your very own copy of Cocktails at Naptime, or gift one to your friend who’s recently had a baby, by visiting the website here -
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