a good day's work

So the other day one of my best friends decided to take two of our four children (my son was at his father's and one of her daughter's was away) out for the day to a nearby adventure playground /country park.

And what did I do within an hour of arrival? I got into a fight.

Now you might be thinking I'm fairly stressed, depressed and strung out at the moment, and you could be right, but there was no excuse for the attitude ('swagger', is it called? well, I have 'swagger' too you fuckers, so there) of these two huge, uncouth 'ladies' and their assorted children bulldozing their way through the soft play centre, destroying other, smaller children as if they were sharks disposing of shoals of cute little yellow tang fish in a large, dirty tank in some inner city aquarium.

I came back from a toilet trip to find my daughter in floods of tears, my lovely friend comforting her. Pre-Pubescent Beauty point blank refused to tell me what was the matter. 'Because you'll kick off, Mum, I know you will'. Now how to take this from my ten year old? I paused, then told her she needed to tell me right now who had hurt her. She pointed to the two aforementioned creatures and said 'their teenage children pushed me down the slide'.

I turned to Shark number One. She looked as if she'd spent the past 5 years in a women's prison and had only just lived to tell the tale, but the prison food must have been plentiful. Her eyes were cold; angry even before there was any provocation. My friend later told me that there was no way in hell she would ever have taken on these 'ladies', and she seemed to view my subsequent actions with a mixture of admiration and total bewilderment. And my friend is quite tough herself, to be honest.

'Did your child hurt my child?', I began.
The evil eyes looked at me blankly.
'You talking to me?'
'Yep, there's nobody else listening', I say, as my friend is too embarrassed to join in at first and her friend is dealing with one of their scraggy children.
'Well it wasn't my daughter, I been watching them. Where you been anyway , you weren't even here?'
Hmmmm. I'd been on the toilet, but wasn't about to tell her that.

I looked straight at her.
'Look. It's a soft play centre. Kids get hurt. My daughter has sprained her ankle and I've just gone to get an ice pack for it. If your kid pushed her, just get her to apologise and that's the end of it.'
Sharky looked over at my daughter, who was holding her ice pack pitifully and sobbing a bit too dramatically even for my liking.
'Babby ass,' Sharky said.
'What did you say?' I said.
'You heard me. You've raised a Babby ass. Can't even slide down a slide without whimpering about it. Little prissy drama queen.'

'Now that's out of line,' said my friend, and if we'd been out in a club or pub instead of a soft play centre, it would have been then that it would have kicked off. But then again, they don't usually have giant slides in our local nightspots.

My blood was boiling but before I could reply we were interrupted by two large girls running over; they looked about 14. One was black, and had a white T shirt on. The other was white, and had a red T shirt on. The black girl immediately started shouting abuse at me, saying 'what's she accusing me of? I never touched her stupid daughter. It was them bullying us. It was never me I didn't do nothing, what's this silly cow been saying', and so on.
I turned to Sharky. 'Are you seriously going to let your daughter speak to me like that?' I said
'You a racist?' she asked.

My friend started to look distinctly worried at this point. She knows that I don't give a flying fig if your skin is purple , orange or green as long as you behave nicely towards your fellow human beings.

'No, lady. I'm not a racist. Is your daughter as rude as this all the time?'
'You're just accusing her because she's black. You don't even know her'.

This was getting ridiculous. Just then PPB piped up : 'Mum, it wasn't actually her. It was her friend, in the red top'.
I really wished she'd said this 5 minutes previously.
'You gonna apologise to my kid then?' said Sharky.
But it was impossible. I kind of tried, but was too angry that my daughter had been hurt at all. Like an amateur detective on the trail of a really obvious murderer, I said 'ok, so if it wasn't your daughter, it was her friend'.
'I ain't saying nothing about that. You better ask her mum'.

Sharky 2 was even bigger and more evil than Sharky 1. She was about a size 26 (no, I'm not fattist, either, but she was a little bit scary).
Her back was turned and when I said 'excuse me', in a loud voice, she turned around as if she wanted to hit me in the face then and there.
'Your daughter pushed mine and now her ankle is hurt; look. Are you going to ask her to apologise?'
There was a long pause.
Perhaps this lady was deaf; or mute. Or too stupid to understand English spoken fairly rapidly and without a strong Bristolian accent.
But no, an answer came eventually.
'Nope. Have a nice life, bitch. We're going outside to have some fun'.

And that would have been that.

Except, well. This is me.

I ran out in front of them, leaving my daughter, my friend and her daughter, my handbag, our picnic, everything.

'I'm getting the manager of this place NOW; you can run but you can't hide', I think I said. Maybe not the last bit, but it was what I was thinking. Head for the miniature pigs, you swines; I will track you down and have you rolling in the mud.

So off I marched to the office. The manager was a small, unassuming man in his sixties. He really did not want any kind of confrontation. He agreed the behaviour was really out of line, but 'what can you do, madam?'
I told him he could come with me, around the site, until we found these ladies and their violent offspring. He reluctantly agreed. After about ten minutes of me ranting and him following 2 paces behind, sighing and trying to look as if he wasn't with me, I spotted them. I pointed like a mad woman. 'There!!'

So over we went. And he told them, in a very quiet, polite voice, that violence and swearing are unacceptable in his establishment. They tried to tell him I was the problem, but soon lost their tempers when I reminded them they'd called my daughter a Babby Ass and accused me of being a racist. 'Well you are an effing racist,' said Sharky 1.

I looked into her dead eyes. 'You don't know me,' I said, really upset now. 'You don't know the first thing about me, and yet you're judging me'. 'And you're judging me, Miss Snooty,' she said. ' Just because I don't talk like you and my kids are black you think you're better than me'.

And the irony here was that we were both judging each other. This is what is wrong with Britain; this subtle but divisive class hierarchy. Here we were, both single mums, both struggling with rowdy children (hers more rowdy, but still), both with a string of abusive relationships behind us..... And yet we were enemies. No sisterhood, only a total inability to understand the other one's point of view.

I turned to the manager. He looked at his feet. A calm, blonde woman with a low voice appeared who claimed to be 'in charge of the outing'. 'Now Kirsty,' she began. 'That's enough. We're all really upset here. We need to think of the children'.

And we did need to think of them. My PPB and my friend and her sweet daughter were watching as if this was a bad scene from Eastenders; Sharky 1 and 2 continued to circle while their children swarmed around like the wasps that were everywhere.

But what outing were they talkinga bout?? Womens prison?? Crazy people (and I don't use that term lightly, having had a breakdown myself in the past!) in charge of their kids for the day to see if they can manage to return home without going via A&E?? No, apparently a 'nursery'. Of 160 people. So the manager and the calm blonde lady agreed that the whole party couldn't possibly leave.

(We didn't think the nursery story likely. Still think the open prison day release most likely. My friend said evenly 'you'd last a week in prison, if that'.)

So back to us all facing each other with the manager standing by. At this point, we were all exhausted. I was about to start crying, but not in front of these 'ladies'. So I called it a day. I was happy with a draw. I told them they'd ruined our day and we were leaving and I hoped it made them all very pleased with themselves. Have a nice life, bitch.

I marched off, followed by children, friend and the poor manager, who was offering me all manner of 'voucher' refunds. 'Call yourself a manager? You can't even manage to speak straight to bullies,' I said. 'Cash, please,' I said. 'Two adults, two children'. No problem.

Which was great, as one of our kids had got in free, so we'd actually earned £8.

A good day's work.

We ended up in the local park, sipping tea; recovering. The children were fine, half amused, half confused; my friend was very supportive.

But Sharky 1 is haunting me. What happened to her, I wonder, to make her like that? What will happen to her children? Did I judge her as much as she judged me, and if so, what does that mean?