Keir Royale

This is all getting very self-referential.

First, I mention that someone searching for Alan’s Keir’s salary found my blog.
Next I find someone else has ended up here while also looking for old Alan.

He must be a popular chap, or perhaps not. Maybe a couple of assassins are trying to find out what his regular habits are in order to do him in…

I have to look though, don’t I? This Alan Keir chappie must be big somewhere, and I have to know who he is.

So I google his name, and what do I come up with?

First, something about a bloke who works for HSBC - no wonder they wanted to know what his salary was. He’s probably one of those guys who pays less tax than his cleaner.
I did say probably, and if Carlsberg can get away with it then so should I.

But anyhow, second in google’s search is, yes, you guessed it, this blog!

Because I mentioned that someone was searching for him, the next search someone did for him found my mention of him.

It’s enough to send you off into la-la-land, with your red handbag, scooter, large orange ball and big blotchy hat.

Now I wonder what would happen if I mentioned Paris and Hilton - all in one sentence - while referring to my recent luxury weekend break in the capital city of France?

I guess you’d know I was making it up, so I won’t bother.

One of Hannah’s friends ran into our house the other day, clutching her mouth with a bloody tissue. It was drop off time after ballet class, not normally an activity closely allied to facial injuries.

“Oh dear,” I said, “what happened?”

I thought maybe she’d lost a baby tooth on the way home.
But as I took her into the kitchen to find another tissue, her mother followed close behind, explaining what had happened in the car.

“She had a tantrum,” she explained, “her first.”

What? Her first tantrum? At six years old?
What has the child been doing for the last four years? Falling behind pretty damn seriously, that’s what.

I’ve suffered tantrums for six years now, and that’s just from the kids.

It started with chubby little star-shaped bodies lying prostrate on the floor, with fat, furious legs kicking for England.

Since then we’ve had chairs turned over in fury after a simple “no” to some request for more chocolate or no vegetables today please Mummy.

I’ve had a metal toy lobbed at me with pinpoint accuracy from across the sitting room by a two year old suffering from the traumatic Arrival of New Baby Sister Syndrome.
That one drew blood.

I’ve endured whining, shouting and crying all around Sainsbury’s because I said “no” to some piece of over-priced plastic.
He was loud, he was determined, and yet I still achieved text book tantrum-management, not something I manage on every occasion.
So I felt especially proud when another mother congratulated me on my quiet, repetitive method of continuing to say “no” while ignoring the thrashing and shrieking.

It was nice to get the praise, but he was lucky I didn’t have one of these on me.

In recent years the children have been working hard on more verbal displays of disgust, with tone of voice, attitude and eyeball rolling prompting me to impose (not all at once) telly bans, no pudding, early bath and bedtime.

I can’t imagine where we’ll go to next, as Tracy Beaker has already infiltrated their vocabulary, and playground talk is never far beneath Ben’s more furious under-the-breath mutterings.

“I didn’t say it TO you Mummy,” being his best attempt at an excuse for mouthing “Shut it” in response to any request that’s repeated more than once.

“If you’d just do it the first time I ask…” I say, but the ears are closed and there’s no-one at home.

Perhaps being inured to life with toddler tantrums makes it easier to progress to Attitude as they get older, but imagine how peaceful life would have been for those six calm, tantrum-free years…

… imagine and weep.

I don’t know if it’s advancing age, changing interests or pressure of time, but I’m finding the Sunday papers aren’t as readable as they used to be.

Time was I’d actually read the news pages, rather than scanning the headlines and then giving up on individual articles after the first couple of paragraphs.

I’d scour the Travel sections for new ideas, even cutting out the most interesting for our next discussion about what to do this summer.

I’d read the Finance pages, checking out the best ISAs and TESSAs, keeping an eye out for which mortgage we should move onto when it’s time to renegotiate our existing one.

I’d read a few of the celebrity stories, marvelling at their extravagant lifestyles and wondering if I could get used to that kind of existence.

But now -

There’s no point reading the Finance pages - no spare cash.

It’s too depressing to read the Travel pages, as there’s no way I’m paying to go trekking in Toubkal with two children who complain if we suggest a stroll on Dartmoor on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Hannah certainly won’t countenance ever going to Dartmeet again.

The news is too repetitive to be either “new” or interesting, and my eyes are continually drawn to scare stories about what I should/shouldn’t have done during pregnancy, when it’s far too late for me to rewrite history.

And I go to the cinema so rarely (apart from Mr Bean’s Holiday and the like) and avoid most reality TV shows so assiduously (except for Britain’s Got Talent, isn’t Connie adorable?) that I haven’t heard of most of the celebrities who form the backbone of the weekend magazine features.

So it’s over to the Archers for my Sunday morning entertainment - that and blogging of course.

I’ve just installed - well my brother did it actually - a blog stats thingummy onto my site, and it’s weird what you can find out from it.

I’m probably talking to people who’ve been doing this from Day One, but it’s all new and shiny to me, and it’s opened up a whole new obsession…

How many people have looked at my site today?
How did they find me?
Where did they come from?
What colour is their hair?

I’ve discovered that people have ended up at my blog when what they really wanted was, and I’m quoting here from blog stats central…

- beta mating season (what does that mean anyway?)
- alan keir salary (they must have been mighty disappointed not to find out how much Mr Keir is banking every month, and instead to discover the minor concerns of a South West maid)
- royale windbreaks (what are they? And what did this poor seeker after strange windbreaks think when s/he turned up here?)
- dulwich mum (sorry DM - I’m sure they found you through me, if you see what I mean)

One of the sites I’ve visited recently uses something called Extreme Tracking, and it’s scary.
It lets you find out loads about your visitors, like -

- geo tracking (eh?)
- system tracking (why would you want to know what systems people are using?)
- referrer tracking
- last 20 referrers
- last 20 search engine queries
- last 20 hard drive referrers

My god, it must be a full time job keeping track of extreme tracking.

Do you do it? And if you do, are you willing to admit to such heavy duty online stalking of your blog visitors?

Or is all this blogging about the mechanics of blogging too metafictional to contemplate?

At the risk of coming over all Woman’s Own on you, as in “Don’t they say the cutest things” I thought I’d pass this on.

It’s not cute, it’s not even funny, it’s just weirdly philosophical.

While waiting for Ben to learn another retro riff from the seventies at his guitar class, Hannah is drawing and we are chatting as she colours something in pink felt pen.

She takes the conversation and gives it a good shaking…

Hannah - Mummy, when I die I’m going to come alive again after ten seconds.

Me - That’s nice.

Hannah – And it’ll be a happy life. This is my horrid life. Next time I’ll be a princess, and I’ll live in a mansion, and I’ll have twenty dogs and five horses.

Me - (a touch outraged) What’s horrid about your life now?

Hannah - (ignoring my interjection) Then I’ll come alive again after I die the next time, and I’ll have a happy life, then a sad life, than a happy life, sad life, happy life, sad life…

Me – Do you know what that’s called, when people die and then come alive again?

Hannah – No

Me – Reincarnation, and the people who believe in it think that sometimes they come back to life as an animal, like a beetle or a tiger.

Hannah – Ugh! I won’t, I’ll be a girl every time.

Well at least her life isn’t so horrid that she wants to return as a different species. I suppose I should take some comfort from that.

I’m in the wrong job.

Not just a little bit, as in
“I should have toiled a little harder and a little earlier so I could have climbed the slippery management slope a little further before chucking it all in, thereby giving me a proper pension to sustain me when my brain deteriorates even further.”

But as in
“I should have bloody studied dentistry.”

No shilly-shallying about with personal fullfilment or creativity - just good, solid cash, cash and more cash; all in my bank gathering interest and funding long foreign holidays and big mansion houses in the country.

In case you haven’t already guessed, we went to the dentist the other day. Me and the kids, for a check-up.

We were in there for, ooh, ten minutes?

Me first.
“Hm, looks OK. One filling a bit ragged but we can leave it for now. Might need replacing at some point.”

Then Ben.
“All fine, no decay. Well done. Would you like a sticker?”
“Yes please.”

Then Hannah’s turn, during which Ben surreptitiously swaps the Incredibles sticker given to him by the dental nurse, for the Spongebob Squarepants one he wanted.
“All fine, no decay, lots of teeth for a six-year old. Well done. Would you like a …”
“Yes please.”

And that’s it.
No scale and polish, I have to book another appointment with the hygienist for that.

And how much did we have to pay for this short diversion from the humdrum reality of everyday life?

£43.

Yes, £43.

At £43 for ten minutes it’s no wonder he’s taking two hour lunchbreaks.
Or maybe he’s French. He doesn’t sound it, but with that kind of salary he could afford two hours a day of language lessons to improve his English, should he need to.

In Plymouth there are rarely any NHS dentists taking on new patients. When a new NHS dentist opens up in Devon or Cornwall there are queues around the block to get onto the list.
People take drastic measures to find a dentist without bankrupting themselves.

Before long this country will contain thousands of people like my grandmother, whose teeth were all removed and replaced with dentures when she was still a young woman.
Less trouble and less expense.

I don’t want to be around if my children decide to take that step - at £1 per tooth, mummy tooth fairy would be well out of pocket.

Our kids don’t get any pocket money.

We used to give them 50p per week each, but we stopped.

a) Because we kept forgetting to give it to them, and when they remembered Ben would make up how many weeks worth we owed him, and I’m sure we ended up out of pocket.

b) Because Hannah always left hers lying around, not being very clued up on the uses of cash, and it would all end up in Ben’s clutches.

c) Because Ben would set up a shop in his room whenever we remembered to give them their back pay, in order to sell off unwanted toys to Hannah, thereby relieving her of any pennies she hadn’t left lying around the house.
Such is the lot of the youngest child.

d) Because Ben asked us to stop giving him any, saying “You spend too much on me already.”
My suspicion is that he wanted to put an end to the bargaining power it gave us, as in “If you don’t stop doing that you won’t get any pocket money this week.”

Yesterday he came home full of enthusiasm for a miniature remote control helicopter which his friend had been given for his birthday.

“It’s brilliant, I want to find it on the computer,” he said, elbowing me off my chair.

He found it. In fact he found a few versions of it, but plumped for the cheapest with which to begin a campaign of attrition against us.

“It’s brilliant. Where’s Dad?”
He knows his father is a sucker for gadgets, and a big fan of online shopping.

“At work,” I replied, hoping I’d have time to warn him before Ben got to him first.

Later in the evening, Ben had made his first pitch to his father and was playing in his room. He asked me to come and look at his shop.

I was suspicious.

“Hm,” I said, “are you going to try to fleece Hannah out of enough money to buy the helicopter?”

He looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head.

“How did you know that?”

“I know you,” I said, and then when I saw a familiar fossil with a 10p label stuck to it, I added, “and it’s not very nice to sell the present I just brought you back from my weekend away.”

“It’s all I had,” he said, an injured look on his face, as if his room weren’t filled with the toys he’d amassed over the previous eight years and four months.

And today came the reckoning. Before they’d even come down to breakfast, there was a loud wailing from above.

“What’s wrong?” I yelled, unwilling to trudge upstairs if no blood had been spilled.

But Mike was there first. I could hear the weary “I haven’t even had a cup of tea yet” tone in his voice,
“What’s happened now?”

He brought Hannah downstairs, tears cascading down her face, purse clutched in her hand, unconsolable and unable to speak. For five, long, loud minutes.

Ben appeared, unrepentant and aggrieved that he’d been blamed just because Hannah decided to cry.

“She’s just doing it for attention,” he said, sitting at the table like a miniature Nanny 911, pouring out cereal and giving me That Look.

It transpired that Hannah had been invited to visit Ben’s shop on her way downstairs, and there she saw a little teddy for sale. A little teddy that, just the day before, had been her little teddy. But now it was for sale.
At 6p it was affordable, even for her, but she was cross that she was being sold her own property before she’d even had a bowl of Weetabix Minis to fortify her.

Mike went to the rescue, provided the 6p and hoped that would be an end to it.

But no. Ben would not accept the 6p, as it hadn’t come from Hannah’s own stash of cash.

Not only does he want to amass enough to buy a mini helicopter, he wants to do it at his sister’s personal expense.

Alan Sugar beware…

A weekend away:

Friday evening in a pub listening to The Fallen Apples, chatting to two old friends about bands, people and pubs we have known. Of which there have been many.

Saturday morning walking along the coastal path to Portland Bill, which disappeared behind swirling fog just as we reached the crest of the nearest hill. We saw the base of its red and white stripes, and perused postcards to find out what it really looked like.

Saturday afternoon wandering around art galleries in Abbotsbury, then giving up because of the enormous expense. Do people really pay £30-odd for a bread board?

Walking across fields and skirting marshland to reach Chesil Beach. We heard people saying things like “on a clear day you can see Lyme Regis from here.”
We could see the sea, the shingle, and an infinite stretch of fishermen staring at the spots where their lines disappeared into the water.
We paddled at the edge and lay dozing on the pebbles, like a trio of tired pensioners.

Sunday morning visiting Portland Castle, a fascinating Tudor construction that looks like it was built in the 1930s.
That’s how resilient Portland stone is.

Sunday lunch at the Crab House Cafe, where we sat under rustling pink umbrellas in the breezy sunshine, swilling oysters and white wine.

Days spent without the children seem to bend and expand, giving you space to sit and stare, time to do nothing, and still leaving you with half a day to read a book and explore the area.

Two days without the lunches, snacks, teas and bedtimes which form the building blocks of family life, and I could almost remember what I used to do with myself nine years ago.

The children spent the weekend with Daddy - probably didn’t eat a vegetable between them and may well have turned comatose in front of the telly.

They deny this, and were full of stories of their day on the beach and their afternoon in the park.

But that could be down to a pact of secrecy sworn by the three of them and signed in guinea pig blood.

Time for the NCT House Swap Register - a marvellous service which allows you to swap homes with people who have similar aged children, and whose houses won’t feature knee-high, hand-blown, antique glass family heirlooms.

We’ve done seven so far - three times to London (where staying in a hotel would be too expensive and too inflexible with young kids), once to North Wales (where it rained), once to Buckinghamshire (where we have friends and family) and twice to Bath and its environs.

Each time we’ve enjoyed the luxury of staying in a fully equipped house, and the children have enjoyed getting to know other kids’ toys.
So even if it rains, you’re sorted.

The highlights

Looking after a rabbit for a week without having made the commitment to owning one. Ben loved playing with Rolo in North Wales… until the animal weed on him, twice.
After that he showed his adoration from a distance.

Cycling along the canal in Bath, one child pedalling furiously a few miles ahead, the other sitting happily behind me in her seat. We saw lots of wildlife, a Rosie and Jim barge, houseboats with people actually living on them, quaint canal-side pubs, and we even rode all the way into town one day. Ben’s first ever go at riding on a road.

Getting to know an Aga

Finding a “secret bathroom” in a house in London, which you got to via a door which looked like a cupboard under the stairs. Great fun for the kids.

Coming home to find the people in our house had also broken something (a stool), so we were quits.

Riding on a steam train, on a barge pulled by a horse, and on a furnicular railway.

The lowlights

Being woken by an elderly cat scratching at the door of the bedroom at 5am. We’d got past the stage of being woken by babies and weren’t prepared to submit to this treatment from a cat. Neither did we want it on our bed. It found itself shut in the kitchen overnight - with access to the cat flap should it need to relieve itself.

Cleaning the house in preparation for the swap, even skirting boards and windowsills. This is a real pain, but as a once or twice a year catalyst for proper cleaning, it’s probably just as well to have a reason for doing it, otherwise the beds would be rising up on a layer of their own carpet fluff.

Trying to make toast, boil a kettle and heat up some milk, all at the same time, using only an Aga.

Discovering a mouse in the kitchen in a house in London. Mike set an elaborate trap for it, involving an assault course ending in a box laden with cereal. It laughed in his face.

Worrying every time Ben waved his arms about that he would break something. Then scouring the shops to replace the things he did break, which included a vase, a decorated plant pot and a glass.

Having to clean the inside of the shower door every time we used it, with one of those window cleaning squeedgie things. This made me feel like a real slob for not doing the same thing at home.

Arriving at one house, having mutually agreed arrival times that would suit both families, to find they hadn’t left yet. They were at least three hours late.
Meeting each other isn’t part of the deal, as you can’t take over a house when its owners are still in it.

The verdict

If you haven’t done it before, it’s well worth trying, as long as you don’t mind people being in your house when you’re not there.

We’ve stayed in parts of the UK we wouldn’t have bothered to visit if we’d had to pay for a hotel, and it’s really useful if you have family or friends you’d like to spend time with - but not stay with, if you get my drift.

It’s almost like trying out someone else’s life, which I think would be a great way of buying houses.
Live in it for a week, then you’d really know if you wanted to move from the city to the country, or from the south to the north - perhaps Wifey and Rilly should have house-swapped before heading for the hills?

Scary huh?

One of my prizes was a meal for 4 at a local restaurant called The Moorings. It was very smart, and I took my three best friends from school, not my boyfriend who’d been there cheering me on from the sidelines.

I think he was a bit miffed.

I had Lobster Thermidor as I knew it was expensive and I’d never had it before.
I was a bit surprised when it turned out to be hot.

I think my friends had Steak au Poivre - also very exotic and not the kind of thing we’d have had at home.

This was the beginning and end of my career as a beauty queen, but I still have the sash, and the friends, if not the boyfriend.

He’s the one I later saw snogging someone else at the Weighbridge after we’d broken up.
Perhaps he was still sore about missing out on the luxury meal.