Why Mummy Drinks: The Sunday Times Number One Bestselling Author

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The pressure involved in try to drag the children out the door to school…the arguments you just cannot win (your child does not care about the threat of scurvy)…and the bliss of relaxing at the end of what may well feel like a very long day indeed, only to reflect that it is, in fact, only Monday – Monday! Gill Sims is an extremely successful “mummy blogger” who maintains a Facebook page which presents the trials and tribulations of her family life to the world.

Hell, I thought, why not go wild and crazy and get the whole bloody lot pre-prepared from Marksies, to save me spending Christmas Eve peeling pounds of spuds while cursing Sir Walter Bloody Raleigh for having the bright idea to introduce the bastarding things to England, and thinking jolly well done to Good Queen Bess for having the fucker’s head chopped off , before flinging my potato peeler in the sink and declaring I could not do this anymore, and bolting outside to collapse on the bench at the back door and suck down the sweet sweet kiss of a Marlboro Gold while blessing the name of Sir Walter Raleigh for also bringing me fags, and perhaps he was in fact just very misunderstood.Gills Sims has written this in a really true to life format where you empathise with the main character throughout, at no point did I feel she was in the wrong! For Jane, that she had found a super-loaded boyfriend, I mean, a lovely person to possibly spend the rest of her life with, although I had not yet been deemed fit to meet Rich Rafferty. Despite the surface simplicity of constant distraction, resentment, giggles and gossip, there’s a heart to this story and, just like Bridget Jones, whose short written style Sims echoes, Ellen eventually has a success and learns a lesson or two. Lacking the cruise excuse to wriggle out of Christmas, she instead insisted that she would be delighted to have everyone, but it would rather get in the way of the church flower rota, and of course Geoffrey and the cats had very sensitive dispositions and coped badly with change. It wouldn’t be the same, all hot and sandy and foreign and no turkey or crackers or really expensive dates with bits of almonds in to break your teeth on.

Quite often, everyone came to us, as Simon’s parents had cunningly moved to France and so ‘Christmas is such a good opportunity to pop back home and see all our chums, you don’t mind us staying, do you? I can't tell you how excited I was to find out that the woman behind the Peter and Jane Facebook page was publishing a novel. If there was a problem with the book, it was the bad language and too much information about her Sisters children's Toilet habits. So when I learned she had written a book, I was excited and delighted to receive not one but two copies of ‘Why Mummy Drinks’ for Christmas.There are several areas if this book that I feel could have been lifted straight out of my life, although I don't have a sister in law with 6 kids who thinks nothing gif turning up unannounced or with little warning.

And so every December I’d once again be belting out ‘Hark the Herald Angels’ and sobbing over ‘Silent Night’ while trying to cope with everyone else’s agendas, ideas, expectations, traditions, issues, anxieties, allergies or intolerances (unfortunately both food- and race related in the case of my ghastly stepfather Geoffrey), and flinging mistletoe and holly around with wild abandon. And I’m being a good and kind and loving husband by trying to make Christmas magical, so you can’t be angry with me. This never boded well, because Jane is of the generation that regards actually talking on the electric telephone as a deeply unnatural and suspicious practice, and she can therefore only be induced to venture into such uncharted waters under great duress or in emergency situations. But, just like all Mummy’s best-laid plans, this year’s Festive Vision is in danger of being totally derailed by her chaotic family. My widowed stepmother Natalia, whom Dad had married just before he died, was going home to her own relations in Russia (a pity, as Natalia was by far the sanest member of my family).What if he’s a people trafficker, what if there is no ski chalet and he’s just luring you onto a plane and he’ll take your passport and sell you into white slavery?