Keir Royale

After all that effort -

- the mince pie munched, leaving just a few crumbs on the plate in front of the fireplace to show it had been appreciated by The Man in the Red Suit

- the carrot artfully crunched with just a morsel left (”Oh look!” says Hannah, “Rudolf left some of his carrot!”)

- the sherry womanfully guzzled after the stockings had been filled and all the presents stacked in sacks

And what do we hear at tea-time today?

“I’m not sure I believe in Father Christmas, lots of my friends at school don’t.”

This from Ben, who’s been umming and ah-ing about Santa for a few months now, and who’s probably, at nearly nine, reaching the end of this lovely period of fantasy.

But he says all this IN FRONT OF HANNAH, who’s only 6 and well within the bounds of belief.

I don’t give him the “stone look” - like I do when he disses the tooth fairy in front of her, but I try to change the usbject.

He persists.

“Why did Father Christmas give me a remote control helicopter, which is what I wanted, but it was you who gave Hannah a NIntendo DS?
How come you didn’t give me a helicopter as well as Father Christmas? How did you know he was going to give it to me?”

Bugger the logical mind of a nearly-nine year old.

Our replies, full of flannel about Nintendos being too expensive for Santa to dole out willy-nilly fall on deaf ears.

“I have some other questions,” he says.

“What are they?” enquires Hannah.

And finally my heroic efforts to change the subject make their mark - and we move on to pudding.

But what should we do?

I fear he really has reached the point of no return, and while I’ve been trying to ignore him up to now, as I wasn’t convinced he’d really given up on Santa, I think this is it.

And if we’re to save Hannah for another year, we probably need to “have a talk” with Ben.

It’s so sad though….

School is a wonderful thing.

Not only does it occupy many hours of the children’s time, it also means I can stop worrying so much about swearing in front of them.

They know it all now, and most of it not from me.

In fact - from gazing in open-mouthed horror when our first-born toddler uttered the word -

“Fock-in-hell” in a voice as clear as cut glass (well what would you expect from the spawn of two broadcasters) - we can now sit back and curse, safe in the knowledge that their school friends would laugh out loud if they heard the mild-mannered expletives which occasionally spill from our mouths.

I left the bath running for too long tonight, and when I dashed in to find water dribbling down the overflow, lapping just an inch from the rim, I heard a loud -

“Shit!” spill from my lips before I had time to button it.

“Mummy stop swearing,” rebuked by nearly nine year old son, valiantly trying to get to sleep in his room, inconveniently situated next to the bathroom.

“Sorry, but I nearly flooded the kitchen,” I replied, contrite but also amused.

Give it ten years and I can slowly work back up to my full selection of curses - and maybe nick a few of their up-to-date teenaged ones too.

Perhaps there are some compensations for the increasingly mind-melding and nit-picking arguments we have to suffer as they grow older and more articulate.

I’m getting better at piecing together small snippets of information, and turning them into a sensible and almost comprehensible picture of how life continues without me.

I’ve learned that TVs R Us and Daddy likes being on the computer.

And I’ve discovered a few other disparate bits of information which almost make sense.

“Olive cried today. She was scared when she saw all the people in the audience.
She’s not the kind of child who cries normally, is she Mummy?”

“I’ve got a toy that has 24 games.”

“When the little ones came on they had to sing “Away in a Manger” so fast they couldn’t keep up with the music.”

“I’m going to put you on the table so you can hear me play Jingle Bells.”

“Have you got us a good present this time?”

“I picked up a baby. It cried.”

“We’re making Christmas cards, but you can’t see them until Christmas Day.”

“It was certificate day but we both failed. Everyone in my group failed.”

“Hannah’s light’s still on and Daddy’s not doing anything about it.”

“I was so scared I was shaking and I was hoping no-one would notice.”

“It was my turn to have the advent calendar chocolate at school. It was Turkish Delight and I didn’t like it, but I ate it because Miss was watching.”

And then there was the conversation Ben had with the friend I’m staying with.
He chatted to her happily, and when she mentioned her two cats, he replied, with his usual tact -

“Mummy says they’re really annoying in the night.”

I like cats, honest.
I just don’t appreciate being woken in the night by anything other than my children - and even they only have special dispensation when they’re ill.

So after two weeks of part-time parenting, how are the children coping?

Well, they still yell “Mu-um!” all the time when I’m there.
And it’s still me who insists on hair-brushing, preventative nit-combing and carrot-eating.

Bu-ut… there is a subtle difference in our four-way relationship.

- Daddy has instigated tickle-time, to be incorporated into any unwelcome routine that’s not going too well. I think he learned this from one of his brothers, who excels at tickling sleepover cousins into fits of hysteria just before lights-out.

- Daddy has relaxed the “pony tail or bunches or plaits otherwise you’ll catch nits” rule, to such an extent that when I ask Hannah what it’s like with Daddy instead of Mummy she replies -

“It’s better. I can go to school with my hair down.”

Harumph.
Guess who will be wielding Mr Nitty Gritty if this new, relaxed regime falls at the first hurdle.

But the most noticeable change is that they’re all taking more notice of each other.

When the children get into bed in the morning for a cuddle, Daddy gets one too.
When I come down to breakfast their bowls are already on the table.

In short, even though he does things differently - THEY STILL GET DONE.

Of course I knew they would, but seeing it happen has somehow relaxed the nagging control freak in me enough to stop me fretting.

And he’s had Ben on his case. Never a pleasant experience.

He had to drag them away from their school Christmas Fair early, as he had to go back to work and he’d arranged for one of our marvellous lodgers to look after them until my return.

Ben was exploding with fury, as he was just about to disappear into the bushes with some friends and their newly acquired blow-up swords.

And he yelled at Mike -

“What’s more important to you? Your children or your work?”

What connects the following?
And here’s a clue. They are all monikers…

Dog Catcher
Can’t Remember
Scrotum
Cannonfodder
Ramraider
Pervey

If you are someone who runs merely to get to the pub, you may know the answer.

If, however, you are not one of a select but international group of people who follows blobs of flour from pillar to post, from tree to bush and ultimately to the nearest bar, you may struggle to come up with a common theme.

I’ll give you a few more clues.

They like to run through streams, preferably streams which are deep enough to soak their armpits. Saves on washing, you see.

They like to go camping in the rain, I mean what normal organisation would select Glastonbury weekend for an annual campout?

And they never, repeat never, refer to each other by the names their mothers lovingly gave them. They prefer to come up with something a little more unusual, a little more descriptive, and hopefully, just a little bit offensive.

They are, in fact, hashers, and this weekend was the first ever TVH3 Murder Mystery Party.
And these were the monikers of some of the people who watched the action unfolding before them, asked pertinent questions of the cast, and then diligently filled out the “Whodunnit” forms.

Or not.

Dirty Oar filled in four forms, each with a different guess at the perpetrator. She knew there was chocolate on offer for the super sleuth who guessed the correct murderer.

Ramraider invented an unintelligible alternative to his Hash name, while one respondent who simply signed her form “Sue Smith” was ridiculed for revealing herself as the possessor of such a stupid name.

And the chalk outline that remained after the dead body removed himself from the kitchen floor has led me to wonder if it’s not perhaps our children who are the most adult among us.

Ben was standing over my shoulder the other day, watching me as I caught up with all the postings from fellow bloggers.

He asked why I would want to have anything to do with someone called Potty Mummy, potties being a part of his long-forgotten past, and not a word which can mean two things. No-one says “potty” to mean slightly crazed, not around here anyhow.

So I explained that people use nick-names or made up names when they blog on the internet.
And in the course of explaining this, I mentioned my own blogging handle.

He was silent for a moment, in a deeply confused way.

And then he said,

“I thought you were called Better Mum!”

Sometimes he hits the nail right on the head.

Sometimes, but not always.
Not, for instance, when I turn up to fetch him from school wearing a skirt and jacket, topped off with carefully blow-dried hair, and then have to watch as he walks straight past without recognising me.

When I yell “Ben!” he turns round, stares in disbelief and says,

“I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was one of the other mothers who tries to look nice.”

That’s an example of him saying just the wrong thing.

But sometimes when I’ve just had my hair cut and ask,

“How does it look?”

He says,

“You always look beautiful Mummy.”

And I try to gloss over the fact that he’s been pestering me for a remote control helicopter, and probably sees this comment as a way to take one small step towards his goal.

I push that knowledge to the back of my mind and grab the compliment before it’s snatched away.

“Better Mum” is one of those moments.

Ben has become fixated on the possiblity that his father and I may, one day, in the future or perhaps tomorrow, split up.

He cheerfully says things like -

“If you two split up, who would Hannah and I live with? Would I go with Daddy and Hannah go with Mummy?”

I reply, just as happily -

“No, we’d cut you both in half and keep a bit each.”

And he asks -

“Mummy, if I just lived with you, would you have bought me things like pen-knives?”

“No,” I say, smugly, “because I don’t want you to cut all your fingers off, one by one, and end up sitting in a congealed pool of blood soaked demi-digits.”

“Nor does Daddy,” he retorts, in a way that reveals how tiresome he thinks me.

It may be he’s reaching an age where he’s noticing that some of his friends live with one parent rather than two, or it may be that Mike’s looking after them a lot at the moment - which is throwing our divergent parenting styles into relief.

Perhaps he’s thinking,
“If she weren’t around I’d get to stay up later, eat my favourite sausages every night and saw branches off trees with my uber-sharp penknife on a regular basis.”

But when I got home the other night they were both on the doorstep, in their pyjamas, waiting in the rain.
After the excited squeals of “Mummy!” the first thing Ben said was -

“I haven’t been crying in the night Mummy.”