My Mum's a Twat

Anoushka Warden

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786824073
• eBook ISBN: 9781786824080
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Have you ever tried to sustain a relationship with a twat? It's hard work and you need to be completely not a twat yourself if you want any success in this. Which is really hard when you've just started being a teenager. (As if growing up wasn't hard enough already…) I remember thinking if you were 'the chosen' one, why does that mean your dress sense has to be so shit? A celebration of teenage rebellion and resilience. Anoushka Warden's debut play was directed by Royal Court Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone and Jude Christian.

The character is brave.

My mum wasn’t always a twat. In the memories I had of her before I was 10 she was a good mum.

She woke me with a hot drink every morning

She would make me poached eggs on toast whenever I asked

She took me shopping ALL the time

She kissed me goodnight every night

She had a good stash of bags and jewellery and makeup

She would buy all the presents on my birthday and Christmas lists

She drove fast cars

She had a sassy job

She could sail and horse ride and play tennis

She was really slim

She even created the half birthday.

She was a super cool mum.

Look-wise, she apparently looked exactly like me now when she was my age. Apart from the two big scars on my face. So blonde hair, blue eyes, big gap in her front teeth, an average five foot four inches with strong calves and normal looking feet.

Sometime after I was 10 everything changed and she stopped being such a good Mum.

She lost her sassy job

She stopped taking me shopping

She got a weird pregnant belly even though she wasn’t pregnant

She had bad taste in boyfriends

She withdrew the goodnight kisses

She stopped waking me up with hot drinks

She regularly forgot my birthday

She gave all her money away

And she got brainwashed by a cult.

In regards to her bad taste in boyfriends this is quite important in the story of why my mum is a twat.

The man she married after my dad was a total tool. He pushed me around whenever he was frustrated and loved a good yell.

Normally this happened at home. Mum would excuse his behaviour with reasons of him never having been around children, which was silly coz I’d never been around Eskimos but I know that they prefer snow.

One day he took it to my school gate.

I was in year seven. We all used to get picked up in front of the big Tesco’s.

I did a car share with my best mate Libboo – her ride was old and slow but the chat was good and her mum was kind. My ride was flash and fast but the driver was a total moron.

On this day of my school pick up Moron said I had got in the car and not been happy or polite enough to see him, so he dragged me out of the front seat, by my rucksack, threw me on the ground and shouted at me. IN FRONT OF ALL MY PALS.

Now, I was considered pretty cool at school. This was NOT cool.

Libboo asked him to stop. I had hit my head on the pavement and it was bleeding quite a lot so I was crying although I wasn’t crying coz I was scared and sad, I was crying coz I was angry, really crazy mad. I can handle physical pain. It comes, then it goes. Bruises fade, cuts seal. Most of the time physical pain makes me act braver not scared.

The embarrassment however, that was too much.

Mum then started this weird kind of emotional warfare with me at bedtime. It went like this:

ME: (To Mum.) Night love you, kiss.

MUM: Night love you, kiss for Moron?

ME: I don’t want to kiss Moron (coz he’s a gross moron.)

MUM: No kiss from me then darling.

ME: Fine, bye, don’t want kisses anyway (cry cry cry.)

This went on for a while. I was and am still very good at being stubborn. Obviously I wanted the goodnight kiss from Mum, it was my ritual at bedtime but I was determined not to let Moron win. I’d heard somewhere that sometimes when little children sucked their thumb their parents would give them a rag to distract them from doing it. I needed a distraction, so I cut the corner off one of our bathroom hand towels and every night the last thing I did after I had got into bed was rub the rag on my lips, a bit like kisses. It felt weird at first, but it gave me a new ritual and I soon came to depend on it to help send me off to sleep. It meant I never needed another human being at bedtime and I never cracked in the battle of Moron and the goodnight kiss. Strangely I named this rag sucky, although no sucking took place, it was more of a tap or rub situation, I should of called it rubby, but sucky stuck, and when I got older it became the subject of A LOT of jokes.

I should point out that Moron is Canadian which really puzzles me as most Canadians are so polite and nice. Although he didn’t have a Canadian accent, he actually sounded just like Frank Spencer in Some Mother’s Do ’Ave ’Em. He dressed like a total plonker – with all tops tucked in to very high waisted trousers (normally thick cords.) He had been known to even tuck a thick knitted jumper into them. He had fingernails that were much too long for a man who doesn’t play the guitar and they made a terrible noise when he scratched his face. Even though he wasn’t that old he had those gross thick and out of control rogue eyebrow hairs and a hairy inside nose that old men get. There wasn’t anything I could tolerate about him. He was a complete tool. Mum didn’t seem to notice.

I hated that he lived in my house. And it wasn’t ‘I hate my mum’s with a man that’s not my dad,’ as a) my dad hadn’t been that great to her and b) she was a total babe and therefore had had shitloads of other boyfriends and I’d never had any problems with the rest of them. I was thankful that one of my older sisters Tilda lived with us also, as Moron had another person to have a go at other than just me.

I’m the youngest of seven.

I wasn’t going to bring my siblings into this as they have their own stories to tell but it would be weird without mentioning them, plus they were very crucial in how I survived Mum being a twat.

It turns out people really need to understand the officialities of whether someone is half, step, full blood – this really pisses me off but for the sake of clarity I’ll explain our make-up.

Before my mum and dad got together my mum married a guy called Gary and they had my oldest sister Danielle. Around the same time my dad married his school sweetheart Sally and they had my oldest brother Ted and then my middle sister Katie. Then Dad cheated on Sally with my mum and they married and had Tilda and then me. At the same time as having me, Dad cheated (again) on my mum with Kris, he married her and she already had my brothers Jared and Jeremy.

So, there were seven of us.

Despite our messed up comings together my brothers and sisters and I were a tight unit – The Gang. I came along and had these brilliant older brothers and sisters so to me that’s just who they were. I knew who to go to for various things.

Tilda was great if I was generally upset, for advice on boys and my body, for whenever I had Mum-related tears, she introduced me to Immac hair removal cream, and she had loads of clothes for nicking on the sly. Jared taught me sports stuff like how to kick a football with the side of my foot, how to hold my thumb when punching properly, he taught me how to get drunk and on the sly he had great hoodies to nick. Jeremy taught me ways to buy drink and cover my tracks, and on the sly he always had fags to nick. Katie helped me to understand that boys are shit and that’s fine coz we don’t need them anyway. Ted was the big dog and I only pulled him...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1