The Saturday Night Sauvignon Sisterhood by Gill Sims

Author:Gill Sims
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-04-01T21:59:15+00:00

16

The campfire proved controversial. First there was Lolly’s impassioned plea to the other parents to please not furnish their darlings with marshmallows, Haribos and other foul sugar-laden horrors, which fell on deaf ears. Caroline Northfield was ripping open the Fangtastics even as Lolly wailed, ‘It’s really not fair to Gertrude and Ophelia, though’ and ‘Will no one think of the children?’

Then there was the matter of the singsong. Lolly rejected ‘Kumbaya’ as ‘too representative of Abrahamic religion’ and ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ as ‘problematic’ on account of its mentions of ‘gangs and well, you know, slang words for genitals. It’s absolutely not appropriate.’ The Girl Guiding classic ‘Black Socks’ was deemed ‘possibly racist’.

‘But it’s about socks,’ protested Claire. ‘How can a song about socks be racist?’

‘We can’t take any chances,’ insisted Lolly. ‘These are impressionable young minds here.’

‘Five Little Speckled Frogs?’ someone suggested.

‘Mmm, the use of “frogs” is also a little unfortunate. It could be seen as a song about wanting to be rid of French people.’

‘Alice the Camel?’

‘Fat-shaming. It’s suggesting Alice is trying to lose humps in order to change her own body image to make herself into a more acceptable version of herself for society.’

‘What the fuck?’

‘Lucy! Language!’

‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt?’

‘Glorifies hunting, and thus our colonialist imperialist past.’

‘She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain?’

It took Lolly a moment to think of an objection to this, before declaring that ‘I feel it might have pronouning issues. What if some people here prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns? We must be inclusive.’

‘Well, what CAN we sing then?’

‘Ah.’ Lolly flashed that smile again. The glare of the campfire off her brilliant white teeth was starting to give Claire a headache. ‘I anticipated the problems with the traditional campfire canon, so, ahem, I’ve actually written a politically correct singsong song for the twenty-first century.’

‘Oh fuck.’

‘Sally! I must ask you all to moderate your language in front of the children.’

After one round of Lolly’s unspeakably dreary song about a brave little boat sailing down a big river, everyone abandoned the ‘singalong’ and fell to gossiping instead, once all the children abandoned their parents to sit together on the opposite side of the campfire, since, even at the age of eight or nine, to be seen willingly associating with your parents was Social Death.

Poor Mary had suffered the bad luck to end up sitting between Lolly and Claire, and Lucy had vanished on a mission for a wee, and now Lolly was clearly determined to show generosity even to the less fortunate around the fire, and therefore engaged Mary in conversation.

‘So, Mary,’ she cooed. ‘We’ve all been wondering – you look so very young. Just how old are you?’

Mary tensed. ‘Twenty-six,’ she admitted.

‘TWENTY-SIX,’ shrieked Lolly loudly. ‘Oh my GOD. But that means you must have been –’

‘Eighteen,’ snapped Mary. ‘I was eighteen when I had Amy, OK? And I don’t regret it, before you ask.’

‘Of course not,’ said Lolly in her best Sympathetic Voice. ‘Why would you regret it? I expect it was to get

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