Saturday Night

Good grief I hate it with a vengeance.

The teenage years were spent worrying that we didn't have an exciting enough plan and might get caught not going out at all - a heinous crime. The opening music to MOTD still strikes a chord of fear in my heart - that would mean we were either stood up ( or down ) for a night's raving and had to spend the evening in our bedroom listening to sad love songs on Radio Caroline assuming that the rest of our tribe were out furiously partying somewhere whilst Dad was downstairs watching the footy and Mum would be checking her pools coupon. For those of you under 50, none of the above will make sense.

Then there were the early married years where, being married to someone in the TV business, I'd usually end up on my own whilst new husband would be out filming or recording some show or other.

After that there were the early baby years when you'd be knackered and asleep on the sofa by 8pm. The promise of a night in with a bottle of red wine thwarted by the fact that you'd be legless after half a glass, and longing for an hour of sleep in the certain knowledge that you'd be up at 2am , 4am and 5am with a crying infant.

I'm not sure what came next, I think it was the skint years when if your mortgage hadn't emptied your bank account, then unpaid maternity leave would have created a sizeable hole in finances. The mere thought of squandering a small fortune on a night out was unthinkable when it was toss up between getting the car serviced or having the boiler fixed.

Next came the fat years when the thought of jostling alongside stick-thin size zeros at a night club in a pair of extra stretchy black leggings and an over sized T shirt ( the fat person's sorry uniform ) were filled with dread and desperation.

So here I am in the pre- retirement years with a grumpy husband and a pair of youngsters, for whom every night is potentially party night , still penniless and fat with no desire whatsoever to muster enough energy for an evening on the town, let alone the company of the 'happily -marrieds' , or the 'just back from a holiday of a lifetimes' or worse still the perenially skinnies with an appetite like a horse and the metabolsim of a gazelle, complaining that a size 8 is too baggy on them.

Our Saturday night bust-up last night revolved around my asking husband for some help with what seems like my never-ending mission to de-clutter the house. This ultimately involved my piling a lifetime's photographs and scrapbboks into a crate and dumping it by the back door ready for the binmen next week. If nobody in the house can ever be bothered to look at or even acknowledge them, then why shoudl I ? I've been carfeully recording and archiving our collective memories for the last decade in the beleagured hope that someone someday might actually show an interest. Fat chance.

Let's face it, scrapbooking is just an excuse to hang on to the past and indulge in obscene levels of expenditure in the hope that it might fill a void or render our memories meaningful. So it was that I found myself last night leaving the house - YES - on a Saturday night - and driving round aimlessly looking for some form of solace or refuge. It struck me that unless you want to sit in the corner of an anonymous pub nursing a warm pint with a bunch of sorry solitary drunks, there aren't a lot of options for the lonely.

I ended up at a 24 hour Tescos - the saddest place on earth on a Saturday night where sales of meals for one and hard liquor probably peak at around 9pm. The coffee shop was closed so I resorted to a saunter round the magazine aisle wondering who on earth buys Practical Sheep Rearing or worse - Esquire ( Get the lowdown on popular culture as well as great advice on women, sex and gadgets and more ! )  - yes that's what it actually says on the cover complete with exclamation mark.  I resisted a dozen Krispy Kremes and left with a clutch of 'back to school' stationery although I have 2 boys who've both finished their school eduaction. You never know when you might need a 10 pack of file dividers though.

Streets are empty by 9pm and car parks are no-go areas unless you want to be mistaken for looking for something else other than a quiet place to park up and reflect. Enough said. Restaurants are full of groups or couples and you never know what sort of a weirdo might come and sit next to you if you end up at the cinema.

And so it was that another Saturday came to a sorry end and I returned home, parked up and went to bed. My only victory was that I'd managed to survive it without resorting to food or booze. A victory in itself.