What Fridays should be, and what they shouldn’t

It’s Friday. Let out your breath. We’re done. We’re done. It’s Friday.

I do not go out on Friday nights. Friday night is the bit at the end of the marathon where you hug your fellow runners and leave sweaty salt trails on each other’s cheeks. You wouldn’t then put on something in which the safe coverage of your boobs was in question and go make sparkling conversation over a mocktail, would you? No, you hug, you wobble out of the arena, you go find yourself twelve Mars Bars and neck them all in under five minutes. That’s Friday night.

This Friday has been an especially gruelling kind of 25th mile, thanks to that dumb horror of an election result, and two boys who seem, at the moment, to have been possessed by a minor devil. What a weird day, when three party leaders fall on their swords in the same hour, and the one chap who doesn’t care about any of the things you do now has carte blanche to do whatever he wants. The result today has made me want to be more vocal, more informed, more committed to defending the rights of those whose voices don’t seem to count for much.

I also kind of wish I’d joined the Milifandom while I had the chance. This Careless Whisper/Ed Miliband vine was about the best thing I saw during the whole campaign.

And then boys. Oh gosh, boys, if you’re reading this later: you went through a simultaneous phase when you were almost four and almost two, where you just screamed a lot. Don’t want to do this: scream. Do want to do this and can’t: scream. Brother has toy I want (EVERY MINUTE): scream. Offended by this jumper: scream. My face hurts. My brain hurts, from anticipating seismic mood shifts and keeping that kind, brisk Mary Poppins tone in my voice even while I’m holding down kicking legs.

All in all, the only thing to do is change into fuzzy pyjamas and knock some brownie into the oven and watch some House. House! We are only eight or so years late, because we like to be right in the middle of things. I love medical procedurals because they’re so beautifully predictable, unlike threenagers and election results. Someone collapses in the opening two minutes, so we guess who it’s going to be. Then the team diagnose him, wrongly, and the treatment makes him worse. At this point he either goes into a seizure (‘SEI-ZURE! SEI-ZURE!’ we chant, pumping our brownie spoons in the air) or his lungs collapse and someone gets out the old scalpel (‘IN-TU-BATE! IN-TU-BATE!’ *brownie wave*). At the end Hugh Laurie is talking to someone who says something innocuous, and he gets an epiphany face that looks like he’s smelling a serious fart, and solves the puzzle. And all the while he’s being a totally hilarious, sarcastic jerk and maintaining the best amount of stubble, always, and it’s perfection.

Just so, so much better than marathons.