It’s fair to say that 600 months of lockdown melting almost seamlessly into 400 further months of summer holidays can leave even the most enthusiastic parent holding up their hands to heaven on a midweek grey August afternoon beseeching the Powers of the Universe with a howling refrain: “What ELSE can I possibly do to keep three young children entertained?”
It’s a grey midweek afternoon in the middle of an interminable August. It’s 2020. The Year of the Pandemic. We’re having a staycation, a homeliday.
I am with my three young children in a back garden in London NW4.
We are rabbit-sitting a cute rabbit called Beyoncé and unfortunately have smashed Beyoncé’s water bottle. So I hunker down on my phone and discover on Google Maps that there’s a pet superstore just down the road in West Hendon.
HALLELUJAH! Just when I’m wondering hopelessly about where to take the children after we leave our bunny friend, a plan has miraculously manifested itself.
We have a mission! We have an outing! Never have I felt so grateful to a smashed bunny bottle before. We’re off to the pet superstore!
We bomb it over to pet superstore. One beady-eyed child eyes up a Tesco Metro that we pass and starts hammering about stopping for a treat. “No, pet superstore is shutting VERY SOON,” I reply mendaciously, “so we can’t stop.”
We arrive at pet superstore and glide into parent-with-children parking spot right in front of entrance. It’s clearly meant to be.
Horrible disappointment number one: After promises to three excited children aged 3, 5 and 7 about what adorable little puppies and kittens and bunnies and guinea pigs we’ll find – for whom we will obviously have unlimited stroking privileges (Covid-19 notwithstanding) – in pet superstore, we discover there are zero animals on-site. All cages, runs, hutches are deafeningly empty.
Oh.
Try in vain to interest children in cute shaped hutches and interesting rabbit treats.
I efficiently locate new bunny water bottle with great ease in record time and head off to check-out.
Overly optimistic prediction of how much time pet superstore outing will use up of this endless afternoon prior to arrival: 1 to 1.5 hours.
Actual time spent in store: 3-5 minutes.
Come on children, let’s go back to Beyoncé to give her her new bottle and we’ll stop to buy a treat on the way, I say.
There’s no other way to get back to Hendon from West Hendon other than through Hendon Central.
There’s no avoiding it. I’m going to have to take the children out in Hendon Central. Possibly the grimmest traffic junction in the whole entire world? Hendon Central is this: Three-lane traffic roaring up the Hendon Way, people marching in and out of tube station, traffic lights flashing, seedy shops spilling out in all directions, a boarded-up Jews for Jesus store (Jews – and everyone else – are for one thing alone in Hendon Central: getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible and heading home), a youth hostel, more seedy shops, umpteen fried chicken joints, a Mama Africa restaurant with darkened windows, a hair regrowth clinic, and lots of greasy cafes should you need to take three children out for an apple juice and a bite to eat.
We park the car. I go buy children snacks in Tesco and some magazines with plastic tat freebies on the front to keep them entertained in whatever eatery we end up in.
Can’t face walking through the grim underpass to the Other Side of Hendon Way where there’s a Costa café. So I look around hopefully near where we’ve parked. I spot a little Italian restaurant and pile the children in there. There are no other mums with children; just a few groups of men from different European nations sitting around quietly at various tables munching and chatting.
The waitress is smiley and lovely to the children. I want to hug her.
We order our: apple juice, orange juice, hot chocolate and a Mocha for Mum. I get out the new magazines, our ever-present bag of felt pens and colouring books so the children can busy themselves while I sit back and take a sip of my drink.
Mummy can you open my magazine?
Don’t knock over your orange juice!
Mummy I need a straw!
What’s the magic word?
Mummy can you open my slime?
Mummy my hot chocolate is not sweet enough.
Mummy can I have a sip of your mocha.
Mummy what’s a mocha?
Mummy I don’t like my orange juice.
Mummy what are you meant to do on this page?
I NEED that green pen!
S/he snatched my new toy from my magazine!
Children, how about being a bit quieter?
Eventually things quieten down.
There’s even some actual colouring happening.
I take another sip. Bliss?
But only momentarily.
One child needs the toilet. And not just an innocuous Number One.
Oh no, it’s the dreaded Number Two. And I didn’t bring any wet wipes with.
Shudder.
Child needs me in the toilet urgently. There’s been a bit of an accident and underwear is, well, soiled.
Child cannot stay in soiled underwear so we take it off, soiling my hands and their other clothing as we go. The horror of it all. Why does no one talk about how much poo you’ll get on your hands for years to come when you first announce you’re having a baby?
I wash out soiled underwear as best I can and wring it out. I blitz my hands with half a bottle of hand soap and hope for the best.
Distracted by another child’s howls of protest wafting through to the toilet from the restaurant. I rush back and see they’re being bullied by the other child at the table who keeps grabbing their stuff from the new magazine and not giving it back.
It’s MINE! Child keeps screeching so so loudly. I hush them urgently.
Felt pens are strewn all over the floor.
Everyone in the restaurant, including Nicest Waitress in the World, is still smiling and being nice to me and not one bit disapproving and tight-lipped like they would be if they were English (I’m English myself so I’m just being self-hating not racist, in case you’re wondering).
I give the waitress a generous tip and she tells us, you won’t actually believe it, to COME BACK AGAIN. We love children, she says!
I almost forget I’m in Hendon Central and imagine I’m in Sicily for a second.
I bundle the children, felt pens, plastic toys, hoodies, magazines, mobile phone and me out of restaurant and back to the car.
As we’re driving back to Beyoncé, I suddenly remember with horror: I left the balled-up wet, soiled underwear sitting in the sink in the toilet at the restaurant! I forgot to throw it away / take it with us!!! And the waitress was SO nice! How could I have left that vile object behind?????
So just to apologise in advance – in case you ever – inexplicably – wanted to meet me in Hendon Central for a drink, I’m terribly sorry but I simply can never show my face there ever ever EVER again.
rebeccainspace 
I think I found it