Keir Royale

It’s coming up for that time of year when all slack parents - beta mums, delta dads et al - cut holes in sheets for heads and arms, and stick a bit of tinsel onto a wire coat hanger.

“There you go darling, a real little angel,” we mutter, trying not to laugh.

But at my children’s school, this is not de rigeur.
The Christmas Show (not the Nativity Play, you’ll notice) necessitates a street urchin costume for Ben, so his own clothes will do fine.

The juniors are doing a version of Scrooge, which seems to involve a song about sausages and pizzas - not something I remember featuring in Dickens’ original.

When Ben told me about their show I suggested, helpfully I thought, that I should read the story to him at bedtime.

His response was scathing…

“I don’t need you to read it to me, We watched the DVD at school.”

The infants are going off at quite a tangent. They’re doing something about Dr Who.

I was hoping a dalek suit wouldn’t be called for, as I feel just about up to an alien blob of some kind, or even Sarah Jane at a stretch.

But no. Yesterday Hannah informed me she’d had the choice of being a Cyberman or a Dalek, and she chose to appear as a dalek.

Great.

Not something I can run up on my ancient hand-operated sewing machine using an old sheet and a coat hanger.

I’m awaiting construction instructions from her teacher - which I can then pass on to their Dad as I’m working away for a few weeks.

I fear we have a New Puritan in our midst.

I went out last night - well it was either that or suffer hours of Euro-whatever-bloody-year-it-is-now fever.

I returned home after lights out, so saw nothing of the evening’s aftermath, receiving only a few incoherent attempts at pleasantries from Mike, as he drooped over his book.

I knew he’d had a few friends round to watch the match, and I gathered Ben had been allowed to stay up for the first half of it.

This morning, my son informed me that one of said friends, let’s call him Archibald -

“.. swore ten times. And Mummy, he drank three glasses of beer.”

“Oh,” I said, “he managed to pour the beer into a glass? Impressive.”

“But I knew the swear words already.”

“That’s all right then.”

I had to explain that football does strange things to a man, and Archibald was probably temporarily insane when he uttered these profanities.

“Why?” was his response, as I should have anticipated.

Not being a football fan myself, I found this one hard to answer. So I said, unusually for me,

“Ask your father.”

But what worries me is the shocked, self-righteous expression on his face when he told me -

“And Mummy, he drank three glasses of beer.”

He’s already berated Mike for drinking too much wine, and I fear I’m next.

School has indoctrinated them into the perils of Global Warming (or Global Warning as Hannah calls it) to the extent that I’m not allowed to leave the TV on standby even for a few minutes.

They conveniently forget their worries about carbon emissions if it’s raining when we leave the house. The merest suggestion of drizzle has them bleating to drive to school.

But a whiff of alcohol has them tut-tutting like a couple of humourless temperance campaigners from the early nineteenth century.

What would this pious pair of goody-goodies say if I told them how many empties there actually were in the recycling bag? It was a lot more than three.

There were also two forgotten bottles of frozen Peroni in the freezer, and the hot water had been switched off - presumably by Mike fumbling in semi-darkness to turn off the central heating before he staggered up to bed.

I half-expected to find a pile of puke in the corner of the sitting room - but no. Just a scattering of crisps crushed into the rug.

Hannah told our lodger she had “a delicious bottom” the other day.

How odd, I thought, as the owner of the bottom guffawed.

Then later she said something that made me realise where she’d got the idea for the bottom description.

“There are two women who are saving all the women, making them thin.”

“What?”

“I saw them on the telly.”

And then I understood.

She saw a trailer for Trinny and Susannah’s latest TV outing when we were watching You’ve Been Framed, and has completely misunderstood its concept.

At least I hope she has, I wasn’t really paying much attention.
I remember seeing them grab at women’s bodies in the over-familiar way which should have got them punched years ago, but I don’t remember the thrust of the programme.

Normally they bang on about making the best of yourself, and I can’t imagine they’ve stepped sideways into the “Lose some weight you fat cow” territory that others have already colonised so comprehensively.

But I worry that Hannah assumes that’s what they’re talking about.

She’s 6, and she already associates being thin with being saved, and it’s not through any habits/discussions/mindgames we play at home.

When the children accuse me of having a fat tummy, which in their books is any tummy with more adipose tissue than a six-pack, I smile and say -

“All the more of me for you to hug”

We don’t talk about weight, except in terms of how they’ll get heavier as they grow.
But everywhere out there are unhealthy attitudes which will need to be constantly challenged…

… perhaps starting with Trinny and Susannah’s brand of body-awareness switching to post-watershed programming, along with burgers, sex and violence.

I’ve just spent the weekend at home with Hannah, while Mike and Ben went gallivanting on the train for football-related reasons.

Being at home proved almost as expensive as their return trip to London.

I thought Hannah needed some winter boots, “need” being a comparative term, when she already has her school shoes to wear out before she grows out of them.

But I was feeling kind.
So Saturday afternoon found us in town.

In the shop, I point out three pairs of girly, flowery, pink-type boots I think she may like.
But she turns up her nose up at all of them.

“They’re not my kind of thing,” she says.

“So what is your kind of thing?”

“These,” she says. And without hesitation she points to a pair of purple, suede, slouchy boots with daisies on them.

“Suede?” I gasp, remembering my beautiful red suede jacket which was ruined after one rainy excursion and which cost more to have cleaned than it cost to buy.

“Or these,” and now she’s indicating a pair of what can only be described as miniature S&M riding boots with shiny turquoise detail.

I’ve already resigned myself to having little or no influence over what she wears, but I do insist on certain parameters for footwear…

- must be free of heels
- must allow wearer to walk and run unhindered
- must last until wearer grows out of them

So I choose three pairs for her to try on, including two of her choice and one of mine.

Luck is on her side.
Her feet are too narrow for my choice, and also for one of hers, which leaves the purple suede slouchers.

She is jubilant, especially when she notices they have dolls secreted inside them.
She jumps and leaps her way back to the car.
She has no patience with me when I want to try on some jackets.

“I want to go home, now, and I want to go out tomorrow, with a friend, so I can wear my new boots.”

So what did we do today?

Invited one of her friends round and went out, each wearing their very new (Hannah) and almost new (friend) boots.

I did manage to buy a jacket though.
So I can make a reasonable attempt to cut a dash in my new life, and avoid turning up draped in a saggy old fleece, a sensible waterproof cagoule, or a ten-year old coat which may have been good in its day, but whose day, like Brigadoon, is lost in the mists of time.

Reading is becoming a breakfast issue.

Over the remnants of her cereal and toast, we’re hearing comments like this, from Hannah.

“Will you all sssshhh, I can’t read with all this racket!”

Now that she can do it well enough to enjoy it, and can get through proper books (albeit ones with sparkly kittens and fairies on the covers) she won’t stop.

Instructions like - “time to brush your teeth and get your shoes on,” fall on deaf ears.
And while I’m used to setting off for school without Ben, leaving him to catch up before we reach the busy road, I’m not used to having to harangue Hannah into compliance.

“I haven’t finished!” she yells at me, as if it’s my fault time won’t wait for her to reach the end of a chapter.

“The clock doesn’t stand still while you do what you want to do,” I point out.

“Stop saying that!” she retorts, her nose still in the book, where the Magic Kitten or the Indigo Fairy or Mandy from Animal Ark are facing some all-important crisis.

I’m pleased she enjoys reading, and I’m glad she enjoys it enough to want to do it anywhere and everywhere, but it’s made us late for school two days running now and I think I’m going to have to ban it at the breakfast table.

Which seems a little unfair, as Mike and I read the papers, and she’ll be the first to point out this anomaly if I ask her to save reading for later in the day.

And then there’s the issue of quality.
All I can say on that is - thank god she’s reading them herself now and I never have to grit my teeth through another Rainbow Fairy/Weather Fairy/Pet Fairy book at bedtime.

One of Hannah’s friends has been dispersing little nuggets of wisdom which I thought I would share with you.

But do bear in mind that these words of advice have been filtered by the brains and mouths of two six-year olds, so there’s double the room for error.
First, from the original information.
Second, from Hannah’s Chinese Whispers reporting style.

But here goes anyway.

tomatoes stop you getting cancer

An obvious ploy by the parents to get their child to eat them.
Hannah was having none of it.
Mind you, I say the same thing about broccoli.

bullies don’t have to be fat, they can be thin too

How true.
In my experience, the fatter the child the more likely s/he is to be on the other end of the bullying spectrum.

chocolate makes you fat

Also true, but I perfer to bang on about healthy eating rather than fat -v- thin, for fear of possible future teenaged body-shape traumas

she says when I’m older I’m going to be this fat

Hm, it seems to me that this friend is over-concerned about body-size.
I resolve to focus even more strongly on health and not shape.

she says my new glasses don’t suit me

Frantic denial and pooh-poohing ensues here, with enforced back-up from big brother Ben, who later demands a reward for his efforts.

metres are bigger than miles

I have some sympathy with this misconception, as how on earth are today’s children going to know how long a mile is when they’re taught only the metric system, and know nothing of yards, which are the building blocks of miles?

Mike and I do our best to confuse our two by talking to them in inches, yards and furlongs, while simultaneously going cross-eyed when they ask us to estimate distances in metres.

In case you’re young, I may need to tell you that 1760 yards = 1 mile.

I’ve been thinking about what I might have written if I’d started this blog when my children were much younger - say Ben at 2 and Hannah at 0-6 months.

Perhaps I may have scribbled down something along these lines, while wiping away the tears of exhaustion so I could focus on grammar and syntax…

Ben made eight attempts on his baby sister today, getting close to injury-time with five of them.

1 - A wooden train to her head from the other side of the sitting room.
He’s a good thrower, a skill his father was encouraging until now.

2 - A slap across her head at feeding time. I slap him back in a hand-jerk response that’s a long way from my preferred parenting methods. Tiredness is my excuse.
I’m left with both of them shrieking.

I try to change the baby’s nappy on the floor, as advised in baby manuals, but it’s not so safe with an angry toddler around.
3 - A kick to her side.
4 - A leap onto her stomach.

5 - An unpremeditated slap on her head with one hand, while simultaneously wolfing down fish fingers with the other.
Feeling too worn out to do more than glare at him, I check there’s no red mark and move her out of his reach.

Where has my sweet little boy gone?

I know he’s having trouble adjusting after two years as the sole light of his parents’ life.

All the professional advice is to ignore the bad behaviour and encourage the good, but sometimes I don’t manage to rise to this.

Playground talk reveals other parents’ ingenious coping strategies.

- One mother I met told me she turned her settee round to face the wall and kept the baby in it and away from her eighteen month old for six months.

- Another bought her older daughter a dolls’ house “from the baby” when he was born; and then a bike “from the baby” for her third birthday.

We only bought him a Barney video. Perhaps that’s where we went wrong, trying to bribe him on the cheap.

To give him credit, he does say “I love my baby sister” when he’s not tired, hungry or cross.
But his precarious sleeping pattern was shattered on the day of her arrival.
He hasn’t slept properly since, and neither have we.

It’s especially tiring now they’ve got the night-shift sussed.

One of them sleeps through, while the other wakes intermittently throughout the night.
Then they reverse this the following day.
Whichever one slept through, stays awake all day and grizzles, while the one who was on night duty sleeps all day, waking only to top up on food.

But there are signs of a cease-fire as Ben approaches 3.
Entire days pass without violence being wreaked on his seven-month old sister, and I learn to spot the signs of an impending blow and deflect it with a toy car or a passing ambulance.

I start to notice that having two children, even at this early stage, shifts the balance of power, forcing the grown-ups to cede control and giving the children a more powerful say in family life.

I suppose it will mean more theme parks and fewer cutting edge art galleries, but I can look at unmade beds at home, without having to pay for tickets.

Ben’s questions have gone beyond the “Why is the sky blue?” stage. Those were hard enough, but these days every query prompts a ten minute debate.

Question number one.

“Why isn’t it illegal to give children homework? When we get home we’re supposed to get a break from school work, not have to do even more.”

My first and most reasonable reply…

“It’s a chance for you to consolidate the work you’ve done at school, to make sure you’ve understood it; and it’s an opportunity for your parents to see what you’re doing in class and to help you with it.”

“Can’t they just send a note home to tell you what we’re doing in class?”

My next reply is influenced by two days of being incarcerated with sickness, two sick children for one day and one not-so-sick and increasingly demanding child for a second day.
It reveals that my patience has flown the way of my taut skin and boundless energy… it’s buggered off for good.

“For God’s sake, all you have to do is learn a poem. When I was your age (yes, I did say that) I had to learn poems off by heart and then write them down the next day at school, WITH ALL THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION!”
(That’s true, I went to a very old-fashioned school.)

He grunted and asked me to test him on his poem.
He knew it, pretty much, so there was an end to our discussion.

Question number two, during a discussion about Jersey being a small island.

“What ISN’T an island? Everything’s surrounded by sea.”

Hm. I had to think about that one.

“You’re right, all the land is surrounded by sea, but a lot of countries are part of a huge mass of land and aren’t islands.
For example, France. There’s sea around some of it, but not all the way around it, so France isn’t an island.”

That isn’t much help to him as he’s still grappling with what a country is, as in -

“Is Scotland a country? What about Wales? Or Jersey?”

The answers to these geographical queries are so politically loaded I can’t betray my journalistic background, so my replies are peppered with qualifications -

“Well some people say rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb, while others think blah-di-blah-di=blah.”

That’s not much use to a child who wants proper right or wrong answers.

And it’s not just questions.

It seems there’s the New Puritan living among us, one who Calvin would be proud of.

The other day he said to Mike -

“Daddy, you know that wine you drink? You shouldn’t drink it every day.”

Where is Drunk Mummy when we need her?

One day he’s a tree-monkey…

The next, he’s joined his sister on her sick bed, determined to record a higher fever than hers.

I’m not used to broken nights these days, so after being woken three times in one night - twice by Hannah when doses of Nurofen expired their six-hour working life, and once by Ben clamiing to have a headache - I wasn’t fit for much this morning.

It amazes me to think I functioned like this, only worse, for two years on and off, holding down a job, managing the odd conversation with Mike and keeping the children alive, all on half a brain.

Now, I take a full night’s sleep for granted, barring illness.

Hannah’s temperature went up to 40 celsius (104 degrees F) at one point, while Ben’s only just tipped 38.9 (102 degrees F).

While at the doctor’s with her (she was complaining of a sore neck and wouldn’t put her chin on her chest) I had to bribe her to remove her teeth from the little stick the doctor was using to keep her tongue down while he checked her throat.

Then he wanted to look at her back and chest for rashes.

“I haven’t got a rash,” she yelled, “I’m not itching.”

The bribery stakes were raised, he found no rash and diagnosed tonsilitis.

So now she’s perusing I Love Ponies to choose a reward for her bad behaviour.

Meanwhile Ben, who insists he’s iller than his temperature suggests, is angling for a present “just for being poorly”.

I’m not good with any illness that lasts more than a day.

Nurse Cathy starts to mutate into a twisted harpy whose life-force is being sapped by repeated requests for drinks/frubes/DVDs and Attention.

So the next decision is how soon I can pack them back off to school.

Tomorrow?
The day after?

I shall have to make it clear there’s no telly for sick kids on a Tuesday and see if either of them cracks and opts for school instead of a dull day at home without CBBC to entertain them.

You may think this picture shows some kind of make-up removal kit or kitchen surface cleaner, but it’s neither.

It’s a gas leak detector.

If only it were that easy.

I called the Old Boiler cowboys out again, as I could smell gas.

“Yup,” he tells me, pointing a big blood pressure type gauge at me, “it’s leaking.”

“Is it the same leak you fixed last time?” I ask, hoping for a quick and cheap solution to the problem.

But, after two floorboards are again untimely ripped from their rightful place, he sucks his teeth and says,

“Nope, that cap’s fine. Must be somewhere else.”

And with that, he looks vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, and its hardwood floor: a feature we hoped would prove attractive to potential buyers.

It wasn’t laid by us, so I have no idea what’s underneath it.

Could be a layer of chip board, could be the original floorboads, could be concrete.
But it seems we’re about to find out.

If only we could just spray that stuff about a bit, and then use the little plunger thingy to identify the exact location of the leak, instead of wrenching up every piece of lovingly laid wooden flooring between the meter, the oven and the boiler.

He’s coming back tomorrow, with more tools.

He may get to meet one of the removal firms who’ve taken to sending out laughable estimates, and who’ve prompted us to list every friend without a dodgy back, a full time job or a cluster of kids.

So far we’ve come up with two…