Keir Royale

We’re driving home from a trip to Totnes, when Ben asks me -

“Mummy, why do you like sleeping with Daddy?”

I look at Mike, and he looks at me, briefly. He has to look back at the road as he’s driving.

“I don’t sometimes,” I reply, “when he snores.”

I assume Ben is referring to the bed-sharing aspect of our night-time arrangements, as he’s still at the stage of thinking we’ve had sex twice, once to beget him and once for his sister.

“So where do you sleep when he snores?” asks Ben, eager to misinterpret any statement whenever possible.

“I don’t mean I don’t sleep with him when he snores, I mean I don’t like sleeping with him when he snores.”

“You both snore,” pipes up Hannah. “When I was sleeping in your room in France I heard both of you.”

“So why don’t you have your own rooms?” persists Ben.

I wonder if they’ve been discussing this, as in the process of tidying Hannah’s room, I found a list of presents for me and Mike.

On both our lists she’d written “own bedroom”. They obviously feel sorry for us.

How do I explain why we choose to share a room, when I sometimes harbour delicious fantasies of inhabiting my own minimalist bedroom unsullied by paperback thrillers, abandoned socks and half-completed paper-cataloguing tasks.

It reminds me of a friend I used to share a flat with.

Her boyfriend wanted to move in with us when a room became vacant. We agreed, but she stipulated that he could only enter her room when naked, carrying nothing, thereby avoiding the detritus that followed him around wherever he lay his hat.

Perhaps we could reach that kind of compromise in our house.

“We share because we want to, but Daddy’s only allowed into our room between eleven at night and eight in the morning.”

“We share so we can rent out rooms to lodgers and keep you in playmobil.”

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

What I actually said was more prosaic.
“It’s what couples do.”

An expedition is never the same without losing someone.
In this case, we lost an adult and four children - temporarily.

We hoped the adult was with the four children, but as it transpired, he was with the three younger ones.

It was a Hash Walk, commonly known as Whingers’ Walk, as whenever one is organised someone always complains about the way it’s organised, the weather, the location or the food.

As there were some four, five and six year olds in the party, it was inevitable that one of them would moan about the concept of putting one foot in front of the other for longer than it takes to get to the car.

And I guess the lone lost child could have offered a small whinge. As it was, once found, he put a brave face on it and stuck his nose a little deeper into his Harry Potter book.

But there could be no complaints about the weather (glorious) the location (the stunningly beautiful Tamar Valley) or the food (I can recommend lunch at The Plough in Bere Ferrers).

It was the walk from Bere Alston train station to the Calstock ferry that was our undoing.

With children ranging in age from four to twelve, there’s a big difference in pace.
There are the loiterers at the back who have to stop to peer at every fallen twig, and the advance party who run on ahead, waving sticks and hollering.

Ben was one of the loiterers (unusually for him) so I waited to check he was within sight.
As I stood, he and his friend sped past me and joined the advance party. I knew Mike was at the front, so I carried on walking with Hannah.

When we reached the ferry, which docks at a derelict-looking wooden pontoon with not a sign in sight, we discovered the advance party had not arrived.

We searched, we shouted, we checked our mobiles.
No service. Of course not, it’s a deep valley in the middle of the countryside.
All the mobile phone companies have deemed it commercially unviable to provide a mobile phone service to a few sheep.

What to do.
I was with Hannah, and I was hoping Mike was with Ben.
A friend had one son, but not the other.
Another had her daughter, but not her two sons.

As the ferry couldn’t take all of us together, we left three adults to search for the missing five, and the rest of us headed for Cotehele quay. where we ate ice cream and hoped for the best.

45 minutes later the next ferry yielded the rest of the party - searchers and searchees all accounted for. But my concern, that Mike may not have realised he was the only adult with four children, had been well-founded.

He’d been rushing to keep up with the younger three, who were running ahead with sticks, while the lone Harry Potter fan was left between the two parties. The lad, older and more sensible than the rest, stayed put and was easily found.
But, already a reluctant participant in outdoor pursuits, he now has an effective counter-argument next time his parents suggest a walk in the country.

It transpired that Mike and the three younger ones walked straight past the pile of wooden planks propping each other up at the edge of the river, not recognising them as a ferry terminal.
Easily done, given the absence of signs saying “FERRY“.
They ended up walking half way to Cotehele before realising their error and turning back.

So - extra exercise for the ones who don’t stay with the group… a useful lesson?
No.

On the next leg of the walk - from Cotehele to Calstock - Mr I-Don’t-Wait-for-Anyone-Mike was again way ahead of the rest of the party, fortunately without any children this time.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but when my son received a paint-by-numbers set as a present, I thought he might enjoy seeing a picture emerge without worrying about how to do it, like I used to.
But he is not a mini-me.

A few minutes into this new project -

“Why do I have to do it that colour?”
“Why has this bit got two numbers on it?”
“How do I mix up these two to get that colour?”

We finally came down to the nub of it.

“But I don’t want to paint it that colour. Why should I? It’s my picture.”

I ought to know better than to expect a reaction from my son that in any way mirrors my own at the same age.

I was a girl, an only child, a perfectionist who always tried my best, ever eager to please the adults I lived with.

Ben is a boy, one of two, he’s slapdash and devil-may-care when it comes to anything involving paper and pencil, and rarely bothers about pleasing anyone other than himself.

That’s not to say he doesn’t care about other people.
He can be very thoughtful, but his aim in life is not to garner praise and admiration from significant adults.
It’s to perfect his spying techniques, climb a mountain, and smother everything in ketchup before allowing it near his mouth.

He likes to draw, but he hates colouring-in and his painting style is more Jackson Pollock than John Constable.

So it was inevitable he’d see painting-by-numbers as a restrictive force for evil, rather than an undemanding way of turning out a picture that looks more realistic than he could have done on his own.

I’ve kept the set though. I may spend a happy half hour on it myself.
It’s the only way I’ll ever produce a picture that’s halfway recognisable.

So we’re told again that food additives are bad for our children.
This we knew.
If not from previous studies, then from our own experience.

When my son was 2, my mother gave him an entire tube of Smarties to eat.
Within ten minutes of scoffing the lot as quickly as he could, he was like a demented puppy, leaping onto walls, running about in front of other shoppers, and completely uncontrollable.

This lasted for about an hour.

He’d never had that many sweets all at once before, and this was before Smarties took out the particularly obnoxious blue ones.

And then, to put the tin lid on it, my mother tutted about his behaviour, muttering darkly about the need for “a good hiding”.

I haven’t noticed such a dramatic response to Horrible Haribo (compulsory fodder at school discos) in my daughter, but there are differences in how both adults and children react to substances.

Surely in the face of so much evidence from so many studies over so many years, these additives should be outlawed, like many of them are in other countries.

And just the other day we were told, rock stars die young.

As my son would say,
“Well du-uh!”

Mind you, neither of these stories lives up to the following piece of fictitious but delicious research, courtesy of Deadbrain -

4 Sep 2001

There was disturbing news for opinion pollsters today as the results of a new survey were published.

The research, conducted by market research agency MORI-OR-LESSI, found that only 23% of people questioned would participate in surveys.

This is a huge reduction from last year’s result of 43%.

Sounds so plausible, doesn’t it?

A conversation with Ben…

B - Mummy, have two cousins ever got married?

Me - Yes, a cousin is the closest family member you can legally marry.

B - Why can’t brothers and sisters get married?

Me - Because if they had children there’s a strong possibility their children would be very disabled. The fact that their parents’ genes are so similar would mean any problem genes would be multiplied in the children.

B - That’s only if they have sex though. Married people don’t have sex do they?

Me - (stunned silence) Well yes, how do you think they have children?

B - Well I wouldn’t want to marry my sister anyway (sticks out tongue at sister across the table)

I think it might be time for a little chat about the relationship aspect of procreation.

But that would probably involve more discussion about why anybody would want do anything “so disgusting” and how you make the sperm come out - two issues I’m not sure he’s ready to understand just yet.

They’ve multiplied.

We go away for a few weeks, leaving the lodgers (they’ve multiplied as well, we now have two ) to look after them, and when we return there isn’t just one sad creature - but at least ten probably much happier little prehistoric monsters.

I was hoping our guests would accidentally knock the container off the window sill, or overfeed them, or flush them down the loo - things which I can’t bring myself to do on purpose.

But no.

They diligently fed, aerated and probably sang to the little larvae, while simultaneouly cleaning, taking out the rubbish and generally looking after the house better than we do.

And now we’re back, we’ve messed up the hallway with sandy bags and damp camping equipment, we’ve re-claimed the sitting room with our downmarket choice of tired old TV programmes, and we’ve shoved our Marmite, peanut butter and marmalade into the cupboards in front of their truffle oil, pear vinegar and pine nuts.

They even cooked for us at the weekend - a delightful steak and beetroot starter followed by cod in a delicate lemon and lime sauce wrapped in a thin layer of pastry, rounded off with delicious Cornish organic ice cream garnished with sprigs of mint.

And then today as I was slopping great globs of spag bol onto our plates, Ben said -

“Why aren’t you cooking for them too?” (obviously the two lodgers were in the room at the time, for maximum embarrassment).

“Er, well we eat much earlier with you two, and er, well they’ve had spag bol this week already, and er…”

And if truth be told, I wouldn’t dare.

Remember this?

Now feast your eyes on this.

A mere three hours of chucking out broken stuff, re-stashing unbroken stuff, wiping, vacuuming and wondering how the hell he accumulated so much junk. And here we are, a clean, tidy, immaculate bedroom.

I’m a naturally organised person.
I like things in their proper place.
I like things categorised.

So I start off putting lego in one place, ammunition in another, animals in the animal tray and people in the people tray.
Easy peasey.

But what about a nose that, when you squeeze it, oozes a snot-like substance out of its nostrils?
Not too much thought needed - people tray. People have noses don’t they?

But the small piece of plastic that obviously does something but I’m not sure what?
Create a “miscellaneous - may fit something later on” pile.

After half an bour or so of this kind of time-consuming piddling about, I move into fifth gear.

Unidentifiable piece of plastic? Bin.
Sticky embryo-type creature that comes out of a plastic egg? Bin. (I’ve been looking forward to doing that since he got it)
In fact anything I think he may have forgotten he ever had - bin.

In the end I’m chucking out pennies and vacuuming up lego. Much quicker.

But now it’s done, he’s promised to keep it tidy and there’s that pig flying past the window again.

When I go in to say goodnight to him, it feels like I’ve stepped through the wardrobe into a fiercely minimalist hotel.
Well almost.
The smeary fingerprints on the wall would smash that fantasy if I put my glasses on.

And tomorrow I’ve got this to look forward to.

Bye-bye playmobil-land. Hello carpet.