Mummified

Joanie: My kinda muvver

Look, I've got to admit something, OK? And if you're a Mothercare catalogue kinda kraken-lover you'd better gird yourself. Here you go: I can't stand talking to other mothers. No really, I can't fucking bear it. Now I don't mean my mates who are mums and I don't mean the few mates I have made through Kraken Junior. I mean the whole school gate brigade. I just want them to leave me the frig alone.
I felt it this morning when I took KJ to her new school for a link-up sesh and I feel it every day when I pick her up from her current venue of enforced labour. Seriously, when there are 30 mums queuing up for the 3pm bell, all nattering about the cost of kids shoes or their vaginal sagginess, I'm the one deliberately standing on my own with anything from a good book to a lengthy nose-pick. It's infinitely more interesting.
Now, I know this makes me look like a standoffish kind of kraken but that's the way I like it. I have no fucking interest whatsoever in any child except my own and those of my dear mates. I really don't give a shit all the others. And the thing is, until their mothers start talking about something of interest, I really don't give a shit about them either. See, I told you to gird yourself, didn't I?
Thing is, expecting women get on just because they are mothers is like expecting all brown-haired people to be mates or all disabled people to forge lifelong friendships. The only thing we have in common is that we've shouted obscenities at a random midwife and that does not a friendship make. 
Anyway, talking about kids over and over again is not what I want from my chumships. Who in the fuck wants an entire afternoon's discussion about the firmness of Little Johnny's turds? I want to talk about politics, careers, music, art, sex and cake and any other subject that actively doesn't get out of bed at 4am just to ask me when Santa's coming back.
Y'know, I recall being coerced into attending a mother and baby group when Kraken Junior had just emerged from her festering shell. It was one of the most hideous moments of my existence. After weeks of fuck all but leaky tits, soaring bewilderment and clambering exhaustion I thought it would be a chance for intelligent conversation with other wimmin. Fuckadoodledo, was I wrong. It was a room bereft of intelligent anything. It was, however, a void into which a collection of females all pitched their random thoughts about feeding, sleeping, nappies, feeding, sleeping, nappies. And as I watched I had the most horrific thought: "Is this it? Is this what I should talk about now that I have spawned?" needless to say, I wrestled the live mouse out of KJ's mouth and took off, never, ever returning to that lair of the damned.
So, yeah, I sound like a kraken hag but spare me, will you? More importantly, spare me the endless kid chat. I don't care now and I never will. Really, readers, you have been warned.