Published: 8th Aug 08
Author: Sylvia Roger
Sharing a cottage with old university pals is an encore to relish for actress Anna Maxwell Martin
My perfect weekend involves meeting up with a group of friends from Liverpool university. There are nine of us, four couples and me. The other four girls all met their husbands at Liverpool. Zoe found Neil, Kate found Jono, Jenny found Shaggy and Vicky found Martin. I've been a bridesmaid to three of them. In fact Kate had all four of us dressed in big bright frocks trooping down the aisle behind her.
Sometimes my partner, Roger [Michell, the director], joins us and everyone adores him, but mostly I do these weekends on my own, because they are a huge part of my life and it's fun playing the gooseberry.
We've all stayed really close for 10 years, there's a great bond between us and we've continued to meet four or five times a year since we joined the real world.
Usually we rent a cottage somewhere. In fact the nine has now swelled to 13. In the last two years each of the couples has produced a baby. Number four arrived in July. All four babies are girls. It has added a whole new dimension to our weekends. It reflects our relationship of "all girls together" and we wonder whether the children will form a new gang or whether, as they grow older, they will rebel and dislike each other.
The idea is that we all pile up on Friday evening, act sensibly and save ourselves for our big day on Saturday, but that doesn't quite happen. There is so much history between us that inevitably we stay up late chatting and drinking, just as we did at university.
Saturday morning always involves a long walk in the countryside or a big park. Although babies in backpacks have joined the group, it's otherwise exactly the same - lots of fun and laughter, because we are tuned into each other.
In the afternoon, the men stretch out in front of the television to watch football or another sporting event, but some changes have gradually evolved. Nowadays, the dads will bathe the babies and put them to bed. This leaves us girls free to prepare for the big night out -and, just as it was in our Liverpool days, it's a lengthy process.
I come from Beverley in East Yorkshire and no one there would step outside their front door, or even their back door, on a Saturday night - or any other time, for that matter - unless they were dressed to the nines. It was the same when we were in Liverpool. We dressed to court attention. My skirt was so short it was more like a bikini. I don't know how I managed to stand for hours in queues to get into the clubs and not freeze to death.
Now that I live in London, it's all much more casual. I have a few nice clothes, but I also love to poke around in the "nearly new" and charity shops.
Armed with a bottle of bubbly we help each other with hair and make-up until we are ready to emerge - four yummy-mummies and me. The baby-sitter arrives and we are off. It's more civilised these days, usually a nice restaurant for dinner, but fuelled by alcohol we soon become overexcited. I'm a loud person and before long we are provoking reproving looks.
We stagger home and Neil regales us with his stories - which I wouldn't like to repeat, especially to his mother - and Vicky, who is a white witch, reads the tarot cards. We girls believe her implicitly. Before she got married, her name was Potter and the boys mockingly call her Harry to try to undermine her skills. Eventually someone will start crying, with laughter or grief, and everyone shouts: "Chestnuts!" It's just something that has developed.
There's even the obligatory dressing-up box that comes out, and the boys put on ridiculous garments, often disguising themselves as women.
On Sunday, we'll have a big fry-up before we go our separate ways. We will continue to meet all our lives. Nothing will change that, although more babies are in gestation even as I speak.
I'm not only the gooseberry in the group, I'm the honorary aunt, the godmother and, who knows, one day, if the time is right…
SOURCE
- Interview by Sylvia Roger
- Anna Maxwell Martin stars in The Female of the Species at the Vaudeville Theatre, London (box office 0870 040 0084 ) until October 4
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