Keir Royale

Back in the nineteen-eighties the buzz word among social action broadcasters was Women Returners.

These were the women who’d taken time out to raise their families, and were now trying to worm their way back into a workforce reluctant to have them.

I was just starting out in radio, and was a bit stumped by the whole concept.

Why had all these women stopped working just because they’d had children?
Why did they need help to get back to work, just because they’d been at home for a while?
What was their problem?

I was a good nineteen-eighties feminist.
I didn’t shave, wear high heels, or simper.
I did sometimes wear make-up, but hey, I was young.

But I didn’t get the women returner thing.
I dutifully interviewed people about it and felt sympathy as they were obviously struggling.

But I was detached. It wasn’t going to affect me because I wasn’t going to give up my career just for a couple of snot-nosed bratlings.

These days the struggle has changed.
It’s more about balancing work and children simultaneously, rather than working, then stopping work to raise children, then getting back to work, albeit at a much lower level.

I’ve only taken a break from regular, turn up and do it on half-a-brain, paid employment for a mere three years, but now that I’ve decided to get back out there, I find I’m empathising with those nineteen-eighties women returners.

CVs?
Job interviews?
Powerpoint bloody presentations?

Things move on pretty damn fast in the 21st century.

And thanks be to mid-lifer for my Awesome Dude award.
I’ve even conquered my previous inability to put images onto my sidebar.
I had to really, as my brother seems to have gone to ground.

I always said benign neglect was good for children’s independence - perhaps the same applies to grown-ups too.

So - just one day after the old boiler is serviced, it stops working.

Mike runs a bath for the children.
We’ve given up checking the temperature for them. They can do that themselves. And they do, with their feet.

“Aarrgh, it’s cold!”

“I’m not getting in that.”

It’s a short bath, and when I return home from my weekly attempt to dancerella my way back into an approximation of my lithe and flexible youth, I am accused of “doing something to the boiler.”

Yeah - like booking some Corgi registered outfit to come and service it, after it had worked perfectly well (except for its reluctance to warm the top floor rooms) for the previous five years with no interference from any plumbers.

So today I had a cold shower.

And to all you Corgi people I say - can this be a coincidence? Should I insist the same people come back and look at it - for free?

It’s like when you take your car in for a service, they fix the battery and the next week the alternator turns up its feet and floats off into the blue yonder.

It smacks of those long-forgotten government-funded job creation initiatives - the Youth Opportunites Programme or the Youth Training Scheme - which kept people busy without actually achieving anything.

I may have to nip into the showers with the children this evening after their swimming lesson.
On the other hand, remaining dirty could help Ben learn what living in Victorian times was really like.

I seem to have forgotten how to swear.

I used to work in a newsroom, where four-letter words are what you use when your log-in won’t work, when the kettle’s broken, when an interview falls down, or when there’s a silence of more than two minutes.

We once had a 15-year old with us for a week’s work experience, who was obviously shocked by the language she witnessed on a particularly fraught day. I felt momentarily guilty as I was in charge, but then reasoned that work experience meant just that.

She experienced the workplace as it was, not some watered down version of it.
And she probably heard far worse at school anyway.

Fast forward a few years and we notice our almost-two year old son saying something that sounds a little like something he shouldn’t.

“What did you say?” we ask, not allowing our horror to show.

“Fock-in-hell!” he pronounces again, loudly and clearly.

We look at each other. We did hear right.

Shit.

We have to do something, and that something is to stop swearing in front of him. And to stop doing it in front of him, we have to stop it entirely, otherwise words slip out without clearance from our brains.

Even more years later, with two primary school children and without the daily dose of a blue newsroom, I can only just about manage a “bloody”.
And that seems to have stopped being considered a swearword. It was in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, twice.

On its first outing, in the mouth of Ron Weasley, Hannah looked at me with her hand over her mouth, but the second time it passed her by.
Ben didn’t even react the first time.

And me? I take my cue from Captain Haddock.
I’ve appropriated Ben’s made up exclamation “Gnasher!” and I supplement it with lame excuses for swearing like -

“Blinkingheck!”
“Blimey!”
“Gosh!”

I even feel slightly guilty when I say fart, but that’s been on Newsround in a story about cows and their effect on the ozone layer.

If John Craven were dead, he’d be turning in his grave.

But as he’s alive and well, I hope we’ll soon see him on a “Damn TV is Dumbing Down” type programme, produced by the Mary Whitehouse Appreciation Society, muttering “wind” and “fluff” and “bottom burp” to himself in disgust.

We finally got around to calling a Corgi man to service the boiler, in an effort to tempt hot water all the way up to the radiators on the top floor - obviously only from November when all right-thinking people are allowed to turn on their central heating.

Mr Corgi’s first task – to check for leaks.

Mr Corgi’s first discovery – a leak.

So now we have the same old unserviced boiler which can’t be bothered to send water to the extremities of the house, with the added delights of no gas supply and therefore no hot water. He said it was dangerous and proceeded to cap the meter.

Now we have the prospect of his return with reinforcements to take up the kitchen floor and seek out the leak.

All I can see are pound signs and cross lodgers.

Perhaps our little leak accounts for the crew of gas men patrolling up and down our road last week, hammering at the pavement and poking spikey prongs of metal down the holes between the paving stones.

They said they’d had reports of a smell of gas.

“Really?” we said, “we haven’t smelt anything.”

No, because we’re living with it and are probably half dead by now.

Mike’s trying to use “the leak” as an excuse for falling asleep on the settee every night by 9pm. He seems to forget that all his brothers, some of his sisters and his mother all do the same thing, without the aid of natural gas.

So I fully expect his Rip Van Winkle performance to continue even after our entire house has been taken apart in an attempt to locate and stem the flood of gas.

And the moral of this story is – don’t get your boiler serviced, just put on an extra jumper and fingerless gloves.
It’s cheaper in the long run.

Lots of working mothers apparently feel they need to lie, if they’re late for work because of childcare problems.

A survey of 1,500 working mothers by The Family Care Company found that half would prefer to blame traffic or a broken alarm clock, fearing that otherwise their employers would doubt their commitment.

Luisa Dillner
G2 - The Guardian

Having heard quite a few excuses for lateness in my time, childcare problems would be one of the least irritating. But perhaps that’s because I’m a mother and more understanding when carefully constructed arrangements clatter to the ground with a resounding crash.

In my experience any excuse given habitually will cause eyes to roll, whether it be childcare problems, traffic, exploding boilers or malfunctioning alarm clocks.

I was once late for an early shift because I’d set my alarm for 5pm instead of 5am. The extra hour in bed didn’t make up for the near heart attack I suffered when I got to work and had fifteen minutes to get everything ready.
It was a lesson well-learned, and it only happened once.

It was a lesson unfortunately not learned by a colleague, who didn’t turn up for an early presenting shift, didn’t wake up when I called him every two minutes for half an hour, and whose heavy sleeping meant I, a new and inexperienced reporter, had to call another presenter in, while the broadcast assistant read the news and I presented (very badly) the programme.

And his excuse was, the alarm didn’t wake him up.

Since those early days I’ve had to grit my teeth and express sympathy over -

- colds masquerading as flu
- pets with splinters
- “I’m not on shift today” “yes you are” you’ve changed the rota” “no I haven’t” “yes you have” type conversations.

And all of these homework-eating-dog offerings are far less credible than a child with chicken pox or a school which has had to close for the day because of central heating failure/snow on the road/conkers on the trees.

Children exist, and they have parents who go to work. If employers can’t get used to that idea, then perhaps we have to come up with a raft of irrefutable excuses which relate to neither children, traffic accidents nor clocks.

We don’t have a dog, but we could blame the guinea pigs…

I thought we were almost through the impossible questions stage.

I’ve spent many years answering things like -

“Why is air see-though?”

“Do flies have ears?”

“Can God fly?”

And I thought they were getting old enough to realise I don’t know everything.

But no, they still look to me as the fount of all knowledge.
And this one’s a real poser.

“How many numbers are there in a number?” asks Hannah, as she diddles about with her slices of ham.

“Numbers in a number?” I repeat, hoping I’ve misheard the question.
What do they think I am? Some kind of Further Maths geek with a special interest in Physics and Philosophy?

“Yes,” says she, “like 6. There must be lots of numbers in 6. It’s even.”

“Oh,” I say, relieved that a glimmer of understanding has come my way and that I can still attempt a reply that won’t reveal my ineptitude to my children.

“How many numbers go into a number? Like dividing?”

“Ye-es,” she says, in the same tone Ben uses when he says “du-uh.”

“Well, that depends on the number,” I say, playing for time.

“It’s infinite,” says Ben, “You can make the fractions smaller and smaller.”

“Yes,” I say, glad someone knows what they’re talking about.

“What’s infinite?” demands Hannah. And after that’s dealt with, we’re back to square one. Or a number between one and ten.

“So what about 6?” she asks.

And we list the whole numbers that can go into six, as I don’t think she’s up to fractions yet, not without the aid of a cake, and it’s nearly bedtime and I don’t have time to buy or make one.

It’s all my fault. Ben’s learning about sound, so I asked him and his friend the one about the tree falling in the forest when there’s no-one around to hear it.

They disagreed.

Ben thinks you can hear it and his friend thinks you can’t.
Next time Hannah deals me a tough query, I’ll hit her with the silent tree.
It may keep her quietly pondering for long enough to forget her original question.

Still six weeks to go and it’s already cold.

Six weeks to go until we can switch on the central heating.

At least that’s what Mike reckons.

“We can’t turn it on until November,” he says, “that would be admitting defeat.”

No, it would be keeping warm.

Sitting at the computer today, my fingers have gone all December on me. My uncle has Raynaud’s syndrome, my grandfather had it, and I think I’m developing it now.

I’ve already tried a cup of Horlicks and some vigorous hand-washing under the hot tap. Next will be a warm bath.

So what we save on heating the house, we’ll spend on heating water.

I’m looking forward to his considered reply when one of the lodgers asks, in all innocence,

“Any chance of some heating up in our icy garret?”

Option 1 - “Certainly not. Put on another jumper if you’re cold. We didn’t get where we are today without enduring and surviving.”

Option 2 - “Sorry, it doesn’t work that high up.” (not too far from the truth actually, hence I’ve booked a boiler service before it’s too late)

Option 3 - “Of course, here’s a hot water bottle.”

When I was a child my grandparents ran a bed and breakfast, and there was a notice on the bathroom wall, just above the loo.

It said -

“Bath - 5p”

I guess we could go down that road?

Is there any more dispiriting sound than the theme tune to Bella Dancerella?

The nodding numpty with the saccharine smile, whose entreaties to join in with Bella Ballet (with the accent on the final syllable, I ask you) is enough to send me back out into the doghouse.

But doesn’t Hannah love it.

She and a friend spent the entire 30 minutes of pearly-white torture concentrating on Bella’s instructions as if a bucket if Haribo sweets depended on it.

Bella Dancerella we can learn ballet…

practice all the moves and you can be a star, twirl little girl place your hands on the barre…

Bend your knees it’s called plie, up on your toes for a releve…

tummy tucked in and don’t stick it out…

pretty and graceful it’s Bella Ballet

Graceful it wasn’t, but they jumped, twirled, stuck out their tushes and generally giggled their way through it.

And then I noticed the warning on the DVD…

“Not for use without adult supervision”

Eh?

Apparently untrained children could hurt themselves trying to do plies and releves unless a concerned adult is watching nearby, ready to jump in with a warning or two.

“Careful you don’t tear your cruciate ligament with all that jumping and bending, dear.”

“Remember, twirling can be dangerous, keep you heels in contact with the carpet at all times.”

I mean, does it look dangerous to you?

Here’s a dog box…

It’s currently got a dog in it, but imagine me sitting in there.

That’s my metaphorical position in our household.

Apparently when Mike went hashing this week, it transpired that one or more of the hashers have learned to read, as there was a general cry in the pub along the lines of…

“Why does she sleep with you then Mike?”

He says it was embarrassing.

So I think I will have to officially go with following answer next time anyone (children included) ask me why I share a room with Mike.

We share because we love each other and can’t bear to be parted at night.

So that’s that dealt with.

Hannah is happy as she got a distinction for her first ballet exam.

I did have to explain that this was a good result, as at first she was confused by her grade.

“But Mummy, I thought that was when animals died out.”

When do you become too old?
I guess it depends what you’re talking about.
Too old to be a catwalk model is a little different from too old to be a high court judge.

But what about taking up a new career? Having a baby? Going to the beach?

My ears rang yesterday morning with the reproach -
“The beach? You’re too old to go to the beach!”

And who was thoughtlessly writing me off as too aged and infirm to totter down the winding cliff path to the sea?

Mike. My dearly beloved.

I think, in fairness, he was appalled at the decadence of going without the children.

It was my friend’s idea - honest. She rang and said -
“Fancy a swim?”

“What, now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“What, without the kids?”

“Yes,” she said.

It only took a second. “Why not? I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

So we went, just the two of us, on a weekday when all of our children were at school, to Whitsand Bay for a swim.
Then we sat in the sun.
Then we went to a clifftop cafe for a coffee and cream tea - each.

It felt very self-indulgent, a guilty pleasure, an illicit trip for no other reason than fun.

We didn’t have to -
- build sandcastles
- admire sandcastles
- dig holes
- admire depth of dug holes
- play frisbee, boules or ball
- yell “keep the sand off my towel” at frequent intervals

It was bliss.
It reminded me of what going to the beach used to be about - sitting, chatting, reading, swimming far, far out to sea until all the beach bums are specks of sand beyond the breaking waves.

And what did we talk about?

Our children.