Keir Royale

I’m not one to iron if I don’t have to. The children’s school uniforms are never sullied by steam. It’s as much as I can do to get them out of the house without breakfast all down them, and since I just slob around the house no-one cares what I look like.

Cue - the arrival of one of Hannah’s birthday presents.
Beads.
How cute, I think, and I smile with gratitude for the giver when I see how long these beads keep her happy and engaged with making patterns on a small white square of plastic with spikes sticking up out of it.

Not so cute and not such a wide smile when she presents me with her first completed design and says,

“It needs ironing Mummy.”
“What? It’s plastic,” I say, “it’ll melt.”

But that, apparently, is the idea.

They’re called Hama beads, you make your design on a white plastic square whose spikes hold the beads in place, then you “get a grown-up” (ie me) to place a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top of them and iron them.

There are even different temperatures you’re supposed to use for different sized beads.

Are the ones that Hannah has small, medium or large?
Who knows. I use the highest temperature and go for it, thinking hotter will at least be quicker.

The first time I try it, steam pours out of the holes in the bottom of the iron. The greaseproof paper, beads and worksurface are swimming in water.

I look at the controls to see how to turn off the steam function, but these days my eyes are starting to focus better on the middle distance than close up, so I can’t read the instructions.

I open the lid and pour out the water into a bowl and try again.

Da daa, no water means no steam. My Chemistry O Level has stood me in good stead.

I iron and iron, and iron and iron, and the little beads splay out into fat, blobby doughnut shapes. This is the effect I’m after, and it does work, eventually.

I burn my fingers trying to get the melded beads off the plastic holder, then I’m advised by the instructions that “it works best if you leave it to cool under a book”.

So I put it onto the work surface and bung a teapot on top.

Hey Presto, five minutes later a happy daughter who’s displaying her artwork to her brother (grunt) and her father (lovely darling).

Another ten minutes and she’s done another bloody design.

I’ve started leaving the iron out, on the worktop, ready for its next excursion. I even left it on overnight: by mistake, not so I could get up and iron small plastic beads in the early hours.

And now her brother has got in on the act, saying,

“If you want to cuddle my guinea pigs, you’ve got to let me have a go too.”

Perhaps I should impose some conditions on my ironing time.

I’ll only iron these beads if you promise to –

a) go to bed without a fuss
b) brush your hair without being asked
c) leave hair in nit-preventing scraped back style all day and not take out the pony tail at break time
d) (and most importantly) promise to make no more than one of these things per day

Yesterday Ben came home from school with a list.

“It’s all the things a boy should have,” he told me, “Mark found it in a book about boys.”
“The Dangerous Book for Boys?” I enquire.
“Yes, that’s it!” he says, surprised I’ve heard of it.

In case you can’t read his note (above) here’s what it says…

1 - knife (he already has a pen knife, but apparently it’s not as big as the one his friend has)

2 - compass (he has at least three of these)

3 - needle and thread (it’s only me that uses them in our house, for name tapes, hems and patching up school trousers)

4 - matches (not even sure we have any now it’s spring and we’re not using the open fire)

5 - handkerchief (I don’t think he’d recognise one if he saw one, he prefers his sleeve)

6 - magnifying glass (found one under the kitchen table)

7 - binoculars (he’s appropriated the ones I bought Mike in the days when we went on long coastal path walks)

8 - plasters (plenty of those around)

9 - rope (put to good use in his bedroom to make booby traps)

10 - stick (many abandoned in the back garden, now used to hold up sweet peas)

11 - map (his father’s a big fan of maps, perhaps he can provide this, like he provides all the guns, swords, bows, arrows and darts boards)

So Ben already has seven of the eleven items on his list.

Of the remaining four, I feel a handkerchief would be surplus to requirements, he’s still too daft and excitable to use matches without adult supervision, I’d have to teach him how to use a needle and thread, (I’ve explained how difficult he is to teach) and he can have a map once he knows what he wants a map of.

He also told me there was a section in the book about girls, which boys aren’t allowed to read until they’re sixteen.

By then, I fear the dangerous boys will be entering a new and much more terrifying phase.

So now I find we may soon be breaking the law by allowing our daughter to have a thimble full of wine with dinner once in a while.

The argument on the Today programme this morning was about 11-15 years olds, and our daughter is six, so does this make us especially irresponsible parents?

I’ve often thought it’s ironic that I’m more concerned about her drinking Coca Cola (which she loves) than I am about her having a few sips of wine (which she quite likes - rose being her favourite).

When I was a child my family didn’t drink wine with meals, so it wasn’t an issue, but I do remember being allowed to have a Creme de Menthe frappe after eating in restaurants. This felt like the height of sophistication to me then, and the very thought of it now makes me gag.

My grandparents both used to smoke. They ran a B&B and my gran had a Gladstone perpetually perched in the corner of her mouth as she served the guests their plates of Full English. When I went to bingo with them occasionally on a Friday night, I came home with my eyes stinging from the accumulated smoke of hundreds of Housey Housey fans.

Now I don’t smoke, and I drink no more than average.

So perhaps we should be force-feeding our kids Creme de Menthe and Capstan full strength with their Shreddies. It might put them off more than an outright veto, which in my experience leads to subterfuge for the sake of forbidden pleasures.

When your son starts learning to play the guitar, the last thing you expect him to come home practising is something from a time before he was born, before even some of his friends’ parents were born - not us though I’m afraid. We were well born by then.

The very first riff Ben learned was something I could barely remember, let alone a seven year old.

“It’s called Smoke on the Water,” he told me, “and it goes like this.”

And I listened to him stagger his way through the unmistakable, if rather mangled, opening bars of Deep Purple’s big hit.

Since then he’s branched out into christmas carols, Tales of the Riverbank (taught to him by me) and Snow Patrol.
Once he got to Snow Patrol I thought he’d be working his way towards The Passenger and Stairway to Heaven, but no.

This term we’ve taken a step back in time.

He came out of guitar class yesterday clutching a new piece of paper.
I looked at it.
It was headed In the Jungle.

No, I think, it can’t be. But I have to ask,

“Does it go like this?” And I proceed to turn him into a squirming, puce picture of embarrassment as I belt out “In the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight…” in the car park.

“Shut up!” he hisses at me.
I can’t even be bothered to reply with my usual, “Don’t say shut up please, it’s rude.” And anyway, he does have a point.

So we get into the car, close the doors so he’s safe from the stares of people keen to hear me continue with my rendition of The Tokens‘ big hit.
And he says, with the best “You are so sad Mummy you don’t know anything” expression that he can muster…

“No, it’s not that. It’s a-wim-a-way.”

Oh, My, God. I was right.
What will it be next? The Wombles? Bay City Rollers? Leo Sayer?

It’s all very well encouraging them to learn an instrument, but really, there are limits.

Like the guinea pigs, I’m thoroughly institutionalised.

They prefer the limitations of their enclosure to the frighteningly wide open spaces of the outside world, and I suddenly find I’m relieved to be sent home from a rare night out at the theatre, welcoming the resonating call of CSI with the resignation of a substance abuser.

The guineas have been living outside in their pre-loved hutch since we came home from France, with daily forays onto the encrusted square of mud that used to be a patch of grass before we left it to dry up for two weeks over Easter.

Today though, it rained and I felt sorry for them in their little wooden prison. So I went across the road to the park to get them some long, juicy grass, and brought them indoors to romp in their old corner of the kitchen, where they’d spent their babyhood.

I didn’t bother to surround them with the planks of wood I’d used to define their territory when they were living indoors, as it was only going to be for the afternoon. And they didn’t bother to leave the confines of the sheets of newspaper I put down to absorb any accidents.

Fast forward a few hours, and I’m off to the theatre, frantically scrabbling about for a few coins to pay for parking.

As I leave the house, I sprinkle instructions behind me, trying to ignore the sound of them thumping onto ground as stony as the hard patch of mud in the back garden.

I go the back way, I find somewhere to park, I find enough cash to feed the evil machine, I run to the box office to pick up my ticket.

“Oh, I think you may be too late. It’s a minute after quarter to,” says the box office woman as she hands me my ticket.

She’s right. At the door to the auditorium I’m told,
“Sorry, you’re too late, and there’s no interval.”
“Oh well,” I reply, “that’s a quid wasted on parking.” And I walk away.

No stamping feet, no arguments about one minute being just one minute. Just a warm feeling flooding up from my feet that at least I won’t miss CSI.

I mean, what kind of reaction is that?

It’s the reaction of someone with a tortoise-like shell that’s been slowly growing around her since leaving work to “be there for the children”.

Or perhaps that’s just another excuse.
Perhaps the “miserable antisocial old bat” persona was always lurking in the background, just waiting for the chance to encase me in excuses.

… dance first at the kids’ disco.

Well I had to, otherwise they wouldn’t have found the courage to dance and they’d have missed out on fun and frolics with Mc Fly.

We were on our way back from France on the ferry. We’d sat through the magician. Hannah loved him and joined in the competitive shouting with the other kids.
Ben sat next to me stony-faced, muttering -
“I know how he did that.”
“I’ve seen that before.”
“He’s rubbish.”

What it is to have seen so many magicians by the age of eight that you can judge a good one from a bad one. At that age I was still impressed by an uncle who made coins disappear in a box with a false sliding bottom. The stuff of Christmas crackers in the fast-moving 21st century.

Once I was up on the dance floor, Hannah quickly joined me, wanting to be swung about like a whirling dervish.
Ben sidled up close enough to hiss -
“You’re embarrassing” then he high-tailed it to the other side of the room.

Once he saw how much fun Hannah was having though, he started to slink back to the dance floor, looking the opposite way of course, but still getting closer and closer, until he as good as admitted I was his mother by asking to be swung around -
“like Hannah”.

He soon found the courage to do his own peculiar brand of disco-dancing, which involved skidding on his knees then throwing himself across the parquet floor as if in training for his second-choice career of stuntman (first choice - spy).

As I edged to the periphery of the dance floor, leaving them to it, I felt happy with my work. I’d set them a fine example which would stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives, just like my mother did for me - (see her, as above, with friends just last year).

And the lesson today is - it’s OK to look a complete idiot and not care.

In fact I had a pretty grown-up conversation with Ben about this very subject on the way back to our seats. It went something along the lines of –

“How could you dance on your own and not care what people think?!”
“Lots of practice,” I said “and I’ve always liked dancing. When I was your age I used to dance on stage in competitions, so I was used to people looking at me.”

I think I spotted a new and grudging admiration in his sideways glance at me… or was it wind from all the knee-skidding?

Time will tell.

One of the least welcome developments in child rearing has left us numbed by physical exhaustion and mental trauma.

I’m not talking Contented Little Baby, Toddler Taming or Raising Boys, but The Sleepover Party, aka Lord of the Flies without the ritual slaughter, although we did consider it at about one thirty am.

When I was a child we used to call it “staying the night” and we didn’t get to do it until we were at secondary school. Now they start pestering for sleepovers from the moment they spot all the accessories you can buy.

To read the rest of this article, see The Bad Mothers Club.

My morning so far (it’s now 09.16)

1 - Alarm goes off at 07.20, listen to Radio 4 until sports news, then crawl out of bed
2 - On the way to the bathroom check Hannah is awake, and venture a few inches into Ben’s room to give him his first wake up call, taking care not to tread on anything sharp or disturb any of his string and sellotape boobytraps
3 - On my way out of the bathroom I give Ben his second wake up call and check Hannah is getting dressed
4 - I get dressed and go downstairs with Hannah, stopping near Ben’s room to yell that it’s time to get moving if he wants enough time to eat all the helpings of cereal he normally gets through. I start sneezing. Early hay fever seems to be another symptom of global warming.
5 - Downstairs I get their breakfast ready, start washing up last night’s dishes, get the coffee machine going, fill the kids’ water bottles, take the rubbish out, check the guinea pigs haven’t been eaten by invisible urban foxes, chat to the kids as they tell me all sorts of disconnected pieces of information about yesterday at school/last term at football club/two weeks ago in France
6 - Sit down to eat my own breakfast as Mike ambles into the kitchen
7 - Start hurrying them up as they dawdle over (Hannah) making a dolphin out of beads that you stick into a kind of plastic square with holes in it (Ben) reading out how many calories there are in a bowl of cereal with milk, without milk, a whole box of cereal with packaging, without packaging…
8 - Finish my breakfast and hassle them up the stairs to brush their teeth, their hair, and  to scrape Hannah’s tangled barnet into a nit-prevention style of her choosing. Today,  thankfully, it’s a labour-saving pony tail and not the dreaded “one plait in the middle, two at the side and then all of them meeting up in the middle to turn into up-and-hanging, please Mummy”
9 - Wait in the hall while they argue over whose calculator it is, and while Ben asks why when you add 99999999 to 99999999 it comes out as 19999999. God knows, but I make up a credible reply and tell them to try to talk AND put on their shoes at the same time.
10 - A five minute fight over sun cream. Just noses and cheeks, but still obviously a traumatic imposition for Ben that infringes his basic human right not to do anything he doesn’t want to do
11 - Finally we leave for school at 8.40am, with me yellling over my shoulder, “When are YOU going to take them to school?” Mike looks up from his tea and toast, surprised that someone is addressing him directly, and says “Monday?”
12 - Deliver them to school, return home just after 09.00 to find Mike in same position I left him.
13 - I let gunea pigs out of their cage, do a bit of washing up, sniff loudly and leave the kitchen in silent resentment

Mike’s morning so far -

1 - Lie in bed ignoring all activity until other 3 family members are safely downstairs
2 - Get out of bed at 8am, lock self in bathroom for 20 minutes of meticulous shaving operation
3 - Go downstairs, pick up newspaper from mat (why is it always me who has to do this, for god’s sake?) say a cheery “morning” to my two delightful children who are just finishing their breakfast. Notice there is someone else in the room who seems to have a cold and is irritatingly sniffing and sneezing all over the kitchen.
4 -  Put kettle on (yes, it does suit me) and sit at table with newspaper, vaguely aware that sniffing person is also shouting and one of the two delightful children is still eating when presumably they should be doing something else
5 - Shout “Bye, have a nice day, don’t work too hard” as three other family members disappear through front door. Ah! Time to eat my toast, drink my tea, and read the paper in peace.
6 - Have hardly started the crossword when front door opens again and in comes sniffing person. Realise answer to three across is thorn in the flesh.
7 - Lots of banging about in the sink interferes with my concentration and I’m still stuck on four down when an extra loud sniff signals other person’s exit from kitchen. Ah! Got it! Waste of space!

Just look at him - those clothes, that hair, those Freeman Hardy and Willis shoes - just £5.99 and they saw him across Nepal and the rest of the Hippy Trail, or so he tells me.

And now, those flowing locks have vanished. Those flared trousers are never to be seen again. Even Freeman Hardy and Willis has long gone.

But what is it with men of a certain age, that convinces them that scraping individual hairs across their bald pate will fool people into thinking they have a full head of hair?

Even with all the available advice on best cuts for baldies – crop it, texture it, make the most of the locks you’ve got left without aping Rab C Nesbitt – there are still men out there who seem to be using a specially designed mirror with “see what you want to see, not what’s actually there “ built into it. A bit like the Wicked Queen in Snow White.

Just take a look at combover.com and you can find many fans of the age old technique, still strutting confidently in determined denial.

Now, I’m not in any way suggesting that my beloved has washed up on these sad shores, but… he’s certainly floundering in the shallows, ready meat for the combover shark and the “thickens your hair in days for just half your annual salary per week” charlatans.

Why can’t he shout it out, loud and proud, tell the world he’s no longer a callow youth but a mature, testosterone-fuelled man of the moment?

Just look at the Mitchell brothers. They don’t let the lack of a mullet or two stop them from pulling the birds, and just thinking about stretching the last few stray tentacles across your expanding forehead tells the world you’re from the lost generation of pre-baby boomers whose company pensions have collapsed and who wish they’d squandered their cash on holiday homes and fast cars.

I would blame myself for not giving him the confidence to just be himself in all his post-hursute glory, if I weren’t allergic to blaming myself for other people’s problems.

How to convince him that a quick number 2 would be so much more preferable?

The young shave it all off and don’t care.

But then, they’re young, so they would wouldn’t they.

He left with three days’ worth of sandwiches in his backpack, lovingly prepared by his mother.
“There’s ham, cheese, and some of your favourite…”
“Marmite” they said it together, their eyes meeting as the crowds pushed past them to get a good seat on the ferry.
“Thanks Mum.”

He turned to stare past her through the window, across the harbour, towards the shipyard, the place he’d enjoyed toiling ever since he left school. His eyes were the colour of stormy sea, greenish blue with a lacy edge of white breakers.

“Hurry up Nick,” his friends were waiting. It was now or never, the journey of a lifetime.
“Bye Mum.” They hugged, kissed, held hands, then he pulled back, his fingertips brushing hers before he turned to stride after his three best mates, arms swinging, backpack bumping against the wallet full of cash stuffed into the pocket of his favourite jeans.

The four lads stood on deck, their hair blowing wild in the wind, and watched as their own small world slid slowly out of view. First the harbour walls. They faded from bold blocks of pink granite to distant smudges of pale grey with a hint of a rosy tint. Then the castle, which had always floated in the bay, reminding them of their place in history, hovered above the wispy mist before slowly sinking into the horizon. And their ship sailed out into the endless ocean.

They laughed when they saw they were surrounded by nothing but the familiar, blue-green sea, the sea which had entertained them, frightened them, tossed them and caressed them ever since babyhood. They looked for dolphins; they saw who could spit the furthest over the railings from the top deck; they were on their way.

They were neither at home, safe among family, friends and familiar cliff-top fields, nor at large, buffeted by strangers and foreign vistas. They were held in a limbo of cheap beer, Black Jack and slot machines.

They’d eaten Nick’s three days worth of sandwiches before they reached France.

His mother was at home preparing lunch, her first whisky of the day nestling on the worktop next to her. She took a gulp and placed the tumbler precisely back where she’d picked it up. It was twelve-fifteen. They’d still be on the boat. Would they be feeling sick? Laughing? Arguing? Was he wishing he was at home again, sitting in the kitchen with her, telling her it’s too early to be drinking spirits but joining her for just a small one? She’d never know. She couldn’t keep hold of him, not now he was almost a man.

She heard the car rattle over the cobble stones in the yard, listened for the door to slam shut, took another quick slug of whisky and then hid the empty glass in the cupboard under the sink. She popped a Tic Tac into her mouth and got back to the potatoes just in time for George to traipse his muddy shoes across the black and white tiled floor.

“Has he gone then? Or did he chicken out at the last minute?” He was grinning as he dumped his jacket on the kitchen table, knocking over the breakfast cereal which hadn’t been put away. Coco Pops spilled onto the floor and the dog scampered through the freshly deposited mud to lick them up before she had time to think about getting the dustpan and brush out. She stared at the Coco Pops packet, still on its side, leaking cereal out onto the table.
“He’s gone,” she said.

It was on a train, deep in the Normandy countryside, bound for Germany, then Switzerland, then who knew where, that Nick felt the first whisper of unease. He was staring out of the window at miles and miles of green, of brown, of foreign crops pushing up through unfamiliar soil, of roads leading nowhere and everywhere. There were infinite rows of Poplar trees, stretching straight as masts into the wide beyond. It was beautiful; it seemed to go on forever. It was where the land nourished the soul, but it was never-ending. It unsettled him, this land that reached out as far as he could see.

Every time they reached the top of a hill, he expected to see it there, shimmering blue and cold, glittering its inviting glare of reflected sunshine. His eyes were losing their stormy glint as he strained to focus on the place where the sea meets the sky, on a horizon that wasn’t there.

She had to get out, had to be close to him. She walked along the sand, climbed up the steps worn smooth by generations of footsteps and sat on the granite wall in front of their favourite beach cafe. It was the end for her now, it was just a matter of time. She put her hand in her pocket, but remembered the hip flask was empty. She pulled her coat tight across her chest and stared at the two young mothers playing with their children and chuckling beneath her on the beach. She felt barren. It wasn’t cold, but she was chilled, so chilled she thought she’d never be warm again.

She’d done what she had to back at the house; made the lunch, served it, eaten it, even held up her end of the conversation.
“You haven’t heard from him yet then? He has actually got on the boat?”
“No. Yes.”
“Just us now then, we can do what the hell we like.”
“Yes, I suppose we can.”

Even when she’d been talking to him, dishing out extra potatoes, holding out her glass to be re-filled with a celebratory glass of chilled Sauvignon, she wasn’t there, at home with her future. She was out here, in the sea breeze, feeling her hair whipping across her face as sharp as pampas grass. She’d sit here until he came back to her; safe, different perhaps, but still her boy.

At first Nick didn’t realise what was making him jittery, upsetting his tummy and sending him on frequent trips to the hole in the floor loo. He could see when he looked in the mirror, even with the juddering motion of the train, that his skin was losing its familiar bronze sheen, his eyes were clouding over, losing focus. And every time he went back to his seat and stared out of the window, refusing to play Pontoon because it might make him sick, he felt worse.
“Got a touch of the jimmy riddles?”
“Delhi belly and we haven’t even left France yet. What a lightweight.”

Where would it end? When would they get there? He got off at the next station, his legs shaking and his belly heaving. He didn’t want to lose it on the train, he told them he was coming down with something and would join them in Switzerland, or maybe the place after that. The last thing he heard from his three best mates in the world was a thin echo of them yelling “Mummy’s Boy” out of the train window.

But it wasn’t his Mum he wanted. He got the next train back to St Malo, feeling his body growing calmer with every kilometre that passed. The fields were still green, the earth still a rich ruddy brown, the trees lined up stiffly into the endless distance. But the fields full of unidentifiable crops were getting smaller, the patchwork of green and brown felt more human in scale, the rocks in the distance had a granite-pink sheen.

And then he saw it, shimmering in the farthest corner of his view from the window; glittering like a mirror ball, ceaselessly changing but always the same.

The sea.

This short story appeared in Jersey Now in April 2007.