When conversations need to be about more than just children

I'm beginning to feel a bit nauseus. And before you ask, NO I am NOT pregnant. You need to have done certain things in order to have achieved that. Don't you?

She asks, moving swiftly on.

No, the real reason why I'm feeling slightly sick is because I'm going out this evening...and just the thought of it is making me want to find the nearest hole, bury my head deep inside and not come out until the morning, during which time I would have thought up any number of believable excuses as to why I couldn't make it.

Now don't get me wrong. I am no wallflower. In fact, if my fragments of memory serve me correctly, there was once the time (ahem...first night of my honeymoon) when I danced on the bar, served drinks to whoever wanted them and had to be carried off as the sun came up, minus one pair of trousers, one shoe and one earring (later discovered in the undergrowth) only to wake up later that day with a black eye and a slightly dismayed husband. Needless to say, I have never touched cheap Filippino rum since.

But look at me. During my nostalgia trip, I have digressed somewhat. What I'm trying to say here is that social situations don't often send me into a dither. Take the Mummy Bloggers Get-Together, for instance. Surely walking into a room full of people who you've never actually met, at least not in the physical sense, is slightly more harrowing than sitting down chatting to people who you already know and have previously managed to string a sentence together with?

Well, this is the thing. Being a Mummy is what I do. As much as I subtley fight against it and pretend I'm still young and hip and have absolutely no stretch marks whatsoever, it's who I am...and it's who I've been for the past five years, so when I was planning to meet up with a whole host of other Mothers and Fathers, at least I knew I would have something to talk to them about. And I wasn't disappointed. There was not one moment where I felt out of place or bewildered. I mean, I even managed to work poo into the conversation. So why am I feeling so sick at the thought of this evening?

Well, the difference between that get-together and the get-together I'm off out to this evening is that tonight I'm meeting up with people I knew pre-children. Doesn't that have a strange ring to it? I shall say it again. Pre-children. Crikey, I'd almost forgotten those days even existed. And not only that, but most of these people still work in the same, scary industry that I left all those years ago. Television. Now apologies, if you work, or have ever worked in Television, but having served eight long years in such an industry I feel I have the right to say what I want about it. So here goes...people who work in Television think that it is the most important thing on this planet. Strangely enough, I'm not of the same opinion. And I never was. Which is why I'm sitting here, feeling slightly sick.

And please don't ask me why I'm going. I don't have much of an answer - only that it seemed like a good idea when I replied to the invitation a few weeks ago. So that's that. Wish me luck. It has been five years. Maybe I'll find that I'm not the only one who's had children in the interim years. And if not, then maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to find something to talk about other than children. Here's hoping.