MRS TREFUSIS' DIARY: ANOTHER YEAR OVER, A NEW ONE JUST BEGUN.

31st

The Infant Trefusii are of great good cheer at the news they may stay up to see the New Year in. The TT puts a lot of time into choosing a suitable New Year's Eve outfit - at six she has more costume changes than Marie Antoinette, the clothes she is dressed in at her Levée are, it seems, rarely suitable for a whole day in her demanding social life. Trefusis Minor's party preparation involves cramming a few more Minecraft videos on Youtube. 

I'm in the bathroom struggling to attach false eyelashes when I hear the TT chirruping to herself, dancing around the landing, & singing 'Moves like Jagger'.

'Do you even know who Jagger is?' Calls Trefusis Minor to her from the laptop, in a most superior tone.

The TT is forced to admit she does not.

'Oh, you know nothing, do you,' says Trefusis Minor, dismissively, 'Nick [sic] Jagger was in a boy band in the olden days.'

2nd

New Year passed in a civilised blur of dinner and lunch parties, and the children were predictably vile to each other, having had no sleep at all. I escape to work where the vast pile of Things To Do has not evaporated as hoped, but has sat glowering on my desk over the holidays like an angry cat. I am in the kitchen making another cup of procrastination when the iphone buzzes with a text from Mr Trefusis. He is home alone with the Infant Trefusii and greatly amused by the TT's take on the Facts of Life:  'it's very hard to have a baby because you have to hold your breath while you squeeze it out of your bottom.'

3rd

Trefusis Minor is given to pontificating whilst in the bath - on cats being the living proof of the non-existence of reincarnation, on the weather in heaven (probably not too bad),  on the pointlessness of buying diamond jewellery, and so on. This evening's pensées are about wealth, career and class. 

He doesn't think he will be rich, because the only way to get rich is to own property (where does he get this stuff from?) and he will have to earn his own living. Perhaps as a doctor - do they earn proper money? On learning that doctors can take a decent salary, he decides medicine might be a possible career, but you have to try to get someone to stand in for you in the holidays and would that be a problem He'd rather be an inventor, but success would depend on a company wanting his invention, so there's a risk. The wealth creation business seems fraught with difficulty.

'But what would you do if you were rich?' I ask.

'I wouldn't buy a Ferarri, probably a Range Rover. We're not rich, are we, Mummy? If we're not rich, what class are we? Are we Second Class?'