On Saturday at approximately 10.55am, standing under the departures board at Euston station with a small suitcase, waiting to meet someone I had never met before but who knows more about me than even my closest real-life friends, I had a ‘What the heck am I doing here?’ moment.
How did I get there? (tube – Northern Line - since you asked) One word: Babycentre.
I was off to Birmingham for a meet-up with eleven other twin mums. We all (with one exception, that being our Guru, who had her twins in 2005) had our twins in 2007 or early 2008. We’ve seen each other through pregnancies, the early difficult days with newborns, the thrill of reaching the one year mark and the rapid comedown that the thirteenth month of our children’s lives brought (many of us hit a wall at that point) and the brave new world of fully-fledged toddlerdom.
We all met on the Babycentre twins forums. There are actually about twenty of us in total, but not everyone was able to come to Birmingham last weekend. We’ve stuck together through arguments, fall-outs, flounces and the proliferation of twin forums on the site that could have sent us scurrying off in different directions to other parts of the web for advice and support. Heck, sometimes we don’t even agree with each other but generally we’re pretty grown-up and sort things out.
At 11am my travelling companion and roomie for the weekend (we had all booked ‘twin’ rooms in the hotel so that we could share) arrived and my momentary wobbler came to an abrupt end. M was exactly as I expected (in a very good way) and from Euston to Birmingham, a 1.5 hour journey, we barely paused to draw breath as we chatted away, our magazines and books untouched on the table in front of us. It was a good start to the weekend.
Once we arrived in Birmingham, we met up with a couple of the other early arrivals for lunch. M and I decided to go for a girlie make-up session and ended up in Selfridges getting our faces ‘done’ for our big night out. It was great fun and an excellent way to bond. Throughout the afternoon we collected more of our gang and went to our hotel where we met up with the others, had early drinks and got ready for our big night. M and I bopped around our room as we got changed to a selection of cheesy tunes. Suddenly I was a student again.
One of our number (our Squadron Leader) had organised food in a nearby restaurant and had also made a rather amazing massive chocolate cake, decorated with chocolate balls. I revealed how much of a child I actually am by bursting into giggles every time someone said the word ‘balls’. I’m such a grown-up. One of the other girls (who I shall refer to as Valley Girl, as she was one of the Welsh contingent, very lovely and very glamorous) had made us all survival kits for the morning after, containing tissues, paracetamol, chewing gum and plasters, among other things – a brilliant idea and one that only a twin mum could possibly have thought of.
As for the rest of the night, all I can say is ‘What goes on tour stays on tour’ but there were jugs of cocktails and dancing and two members of the group – revealing no names but I’ll call them Dancing Queen and Jade Green – formed a splinter group, went to a very cheesy nightclub and rolled into bed well after 2am...
In all, it was a brilliant weekend. Everyone was exactly as I expected them to be although it was weird hearing everyone speak for the first time. Accents don’t come across too well on message forums and MSN so I can now imagine them speaking when I read their posts!
We’re already talking about what we’re going to do next year. Jade Gr..ahem..M and I have already agreed to be roomies again and do the make-over thing beforehand and once we sort out a date and venue, I’ll be counting down the days.
So – M, S (Guru), R (Valley Girl), G, T, A, C, N, J, D (a.k.a. Catherine Tate) and D (Squadron Leader) – see you in 2010!