My nearly night out

Last week my husband and I attempted to go out for the evening. Incredibly, it’s been seven months since we had a night out together. For the past 20 years in the UAE, there are few weeks I can remember where I stayed in for a run of seven days.

And while expat friends will be shocked at my social demise, my new-found English friends don’t bat a naked eyelid. They don’t go out either. In fact, according to a 2010 survey by ReadyBed in the UK, British parents go out just 15 times during the first five years of their child’s life; that’s just three times a year.

So what’s my excuse, you may ask? After all, my kids are 16, 14 and eight. Why, when once so eager to paint the town red, have I swapped nights spent in swanky restaurants and plush cinema seats for a sofa and a book?

Well, the biggest reason for not going out – according to 42 per cent of parents surveyed – is that we simply can’t afford it. But it’s not the overpriced West End theatre tickets or the purse-crippling Michelin-starred restaurant prices pushing parents over the financial frontier. It’s the childcare.

That’s because in the UK, we don’t have just babysitters. Oh no. We have ‘super-sitters’ – overqualified, over-articulate, overpaid people who, as it turns out, have more qualifications than I’ve had, well, nights out in five-star swanky restaurants.

My chosen super-sitter’s CV was so long and her book of certificates so fat, I half expected to return home after my three-hour night out (three hours it turns out is all I can afford) and find my son removing a perfectly risen soufflé from the oven, while conversing with said super-sitter in fluent Mandarin. At interview, the super-sitter rattled off her certificates in child management, child engagement, child psychology and after scanning her PhD in Playdough Practices in the 21st Century and hiring her within three minutes, she informed me rather snottily that she was used to at least three pre-hire interviews, the last of which normally entailed a series of childcare competency tests.

She then handed me her criminal background check. Yes, we don’t need to worry about the safety of our children because the police have already sniffed around the woman’s private life to make sure she’s decent. The fact they do that in the first place, or even consider it, almost had me staying home for the night.

Which brings me to the next complication: safety. Having lived in the cosy, crime-free cocoon that is Dubai, it took me four months of being back in Britain before I braved going out even in daylight, anxious about being either abused or attacked. Why would I then venture out at night and put myself at the mercy of some murderous maniac, who according to both the British media and British mums in the school playground, are prolific, prowling the pavements in pursuance of prey.

But if there’s one thing worse than stepping into the path of a psychopath, it’s stepping out into hair-flattening, make-up-running rain. There is no point in putting on a frock and heels, as it’s likely you will find yourself running, if not for public transport (getting a taxi requires a further mortgage) to get home in time for the super-sitter, then from some, well, murderous maniac. But it’s not just the cash, childcare and the climate-curbing parental partying. It’s the parents themselves, with their Helicopter Parenting Practices and Middle Class Guilt. Yes, it seems here in the UK, or at least in my neck of the woods, that a night not spent hovering over the beds of your offspring, even though they’re fast asleep, is no night at all. In fact, if you haven’t checked their temperature during every The X Factor commercial break, you are seen as an incompetent parent.

So despite my husband’s desperate pleas and the super-sitter’s obvious anger, I changed out of my party gear – wellingtons, waterproofs and a flak jacket intended to fight both climate and the criminals – handed my very disappointed husband his ready meal and settled down to a night of The X Factor, temperature-taking torment.

Next year. Maybe.