Keir Royale

I’m amazed at how quickly children forget things – things we used to do every day.

The other day Hannah asked me what my full name was. I told her.
And then I thought of something.

“Don’t you remember the song I used to sing you, with all of our names in it?
You used to ask me every day – sing all of us Mummy.”

A blank stare.
A shrug.

“No.”

“Don’t you remember it at all?”

“No-o,” she repeated, this time with Attitude.

So I sang it again, at the tea table.
Ben grinned, open-mouthed and slightly incredulous.
Mike looked a little uncomfortable.

“Oh,” said Hannah, “I don’t think I remember it.”

“But you asked for it. Every day. And you both loved it.” I am amazed and a little sad.

“I remember it Mummy,” Ben tries out the rarely attempted role of peace-maker.

“And I used to sing Daisy Daisy, in the car when Hannah was a baby to stop her from crying.”

“Yeah, her ears probably hurt too much for her to cry,” quips Ben.

It’s pushing the limits of cognitive ability to expect a baby and a two-year old to remember a song that was last popular in the music hall youth of their great grandmother.
But there’s another one they’ve forgotten. A more recent little moment that was repeated ad nauseam.

“What about all the times, every single tea-time, when Ben asked for ketchup and Hannah would say, I don’t like sauce, do I Mummy?
Every day, without fail.”

More blank stares.

Sometimes I wonder why we didn’t just sit in the kitchen for the first four years of their lives.
It would have been a lot easier. They don’t seem to remember any of the fantastic, fun, exciting, mundane, everyday stuff that made up their little lives back then.

Was there any point taking them to castles, National Trust gardens, beaches, museums, parks, moors, rivers, relatives’ houses, holidays, gymtots, swimming pools, NCT come-round-and-moan-about-their-sleeping-habits-while-spilling-coffee mornings?
(Well in the last case, it was more for me than for them, but they did get to sit next to other babies, stare thoughtfully into space and try to poke each other’s eyes.)

Would they be different people now if they hadn’t been to Cornwall, Wales, London, Brighton, Lincolnshire, Kent, Gloucestershire, Surrey, three of the five Channel Islands, Spain, France, Lapland…

Not all these trips were in one year, and many were thanks to relatives or the NCT House Swap Register.

But there was a time, probably every summer up to the ages of 4 and 6, when I wondered why we made all that effort to get the four of us into a car and away to another place that didn’t have all the comforts of home, just to try to re-live those glorious pre-child holidays we remembered and still thought we could enjoy.

And now, it seems I was right to question the effort involved. They don’t even remember most of it.

There is one little leitmotif they do both remember, although I think it may be due to repeated post-event story telling by me rather than their own memories.

When Hannah was 2 and Ben was 4, he went through a stage of continually saying,

“Mummy?”

“Yes,” I replied dutifully. Every time.

“Nothing,” he would chortle.

Hannah would try her best to copy this hilarious exchange, and we’d end up with a grinning toddler giggling and yelling,

“Mummy nuffin! Mummy nuffin!”

To me it feels like just last week, but it was more than half a lifetime ago for them.

No wonder they don’t remember.
Their minds are too cluttered with today’s obsessions: nintendos and ballet and football and Cubs and friends and school and sleepovers and Easter eggs and puppies and presents…

In which Formerly Blog Fodder gets very cross, following attempts to cross the Channel in high winds and rough seas, eager to reach the welcoming arms of his family.

Do you remember those TV ads featuring “That Condor Moment”?

The first whiff of tobacco transported the deluded smoker into a state of blissful serenity.

These days any mention of That Condor Moment re-awakens in me the sickening sound of yet another tannoy announcement along the lines of…

“Condor Ferries regret to announce… “ either an interminable delay or the cancellation of yet another service to France.

Last weekend I was trying to get to St Malo, a mere 40 mile hop from Jersey, for the Easter break.
My journey started on Thursday, but I didn’t arrive until late on Saturday night.

In between there were e-mails, news stories, last minute swaps from one ferry company to another, followed by delays aplenty, variously blamed on the weather and “operational reasons”.

To be fair, the weather was foul - high tides, rough seas and unseasonably low temperatures.

But that doesn’t stop my main memory of the Easter break featuring St Helier’s ferry terminal – a vast and draughty tin shed filled with an anxious throng of bewildered would-be travellers, going nowhere fast.

Heathrow’s Terminal One doesn’t seem such a bad place after all. At least there are shops there.

And it wasn’t just Condor that gave me a headache.
My woes started with a booking made by Beta Mum with the (cheaper) rival ferry company, HD Ferries.

After months of careful preparation for the new season, they had to cancel their inaugural crossing last Thursday because of the non-arrival of a key engine part.

To me, “lost in the post” has a similar ring to “the dog ate my homework”. But perhaps I’ve just been around the block a few too many times.

Friday’s crossing was also abandoned – stormy weather having prevented vital safety checks as well as the journey from Southampton.

So I switched to Condor, the allegedly more reliable but definitely more expensive alternative.

Despite the outlay of extra cash, the frustrations continued unabated.
Their late Friday crossing was also jettisoned because of the weather. I was switched to an early Saturday boat requiring me to be back at the terminal at 7.30am.

I arrived, spent four hours reading the paper and loitering without intent, only to leave the terminal on foot after a string of Condor moments.

The wrong kind of weather was cited again, although the word on the street was that the ferry had been holed while negotiating St Malo harbour - a rumour later confirmed by local media.

Dragged back to the ferry terminal at 6.30 on Saturday evening a ferry finally left Jersey one and a half hours later.

This was a replacement vessel that made very slow headway. A traditional ferry rather than a high speed catamaran, which took more than twice as long as the advertised service - just to add to my terminal frustration.

It was enough to drive a man to drink.
So once on board and safely at sea, I went to the bar:

“A pint of lager please.”

“Sorry, sir, we’re out of draught lager”.

I sighed.

“How about a coffee?”

“Err, the machine’s not working.”

How I needed a Condor moment.

Do those cars look safe to you?

We’re booked onto this ferry, for an Easter weekend en France.
We booked for Thursday evening, straight from work.

But I got a call yesterday - from HD Ferries.

Having been out of service since November last year, and having advertised their summer timetable as starting on Thursday, they called to tell me the sailing has been cancelled.

This is the company whose ferry became a laughing stock last summer.

It just couldn’t seem to negotiate a harbour, particularly one with other boats in it, without scraping the odd hull on its way out.

But the company has had 4 months to sort itself out.
There have been training programmes, engine repairs, licence agreements, cheap offers…

And yes, we were lulled into a “how bad can it be this time? Surely they’ve got their act together now” sense of security.

So now, instead of a four day break, we’re down to a three day one.
We do get a free trip later in the year, but should I risk booking time off work on specific dates which may, or may not, coincide with a working ferry?

By Thursday, we may get another call informing us that we’re off to France for a night, or even a day.

I did enquire as to whether we could get to France on Thursday evening using another company.

“Yes,” they said, “but there’s space for passengers only. Your car would have to go the next day. On HD Ferries.”

We may end up staying here for the weekend at this rate.

In which Formerly Blog Fodder gets lost…

Father Christmas was very kind to me last year. He brought me the boys’ toy par excellence – a sat-nav.

The little box of tricks guides you on your way with unerring accuracy, with a posh lady keeping you on the straight and narrow at every twist and turn - unless, of course, you’re driving one of those juggernauts sent down a one-way track to nowhere.

I don’t know the posh lady’s real name but I call her Charlotte.

She can get a bit insistent when you ignore her best advice, issuing repeated instructions to turn around… provided it’s safe to do so, of course.
I do sometimes remonstrate with her when she gets it spectacularly wrong, but she never loses her cool.

I figured Charlotte and I would get on famously once I’d moved to Jersey. The island may be small but its road network is remarkably intricate. When eventually you do reach a coast, the knack is knowing which one.

I was a bit worried about the sat-nav Santa had brought me. A UK only version would not include Jersey, but the little elves obviously did their homework. It features the whole of Western Europe.

So now I can drive all the way to the Steppes and back without wrestling with a single fold-a-way map.

I’m all set as I drive off the ferry, though rather bafflingly Charlotte immediately advises me to drive on the right.
Worse still I seem to be ploughing through a Jersey knee-deep in snow… the screen is showing an island entirely in white, apart from a black dot labelled St Helier.

Now I know Jersey’s not in the EU, that’s why you can still buy duty-free goods on a trip here. Even saying it’s in Great Britain doesn’t quite tell the whole story, but surely it is in Western Europe.
Even the Canary Islands are in Western Europe and they’re miles out into the Atlantic.

No such luck.
According to Tom-Tom, it’s off-limits.

Bets Mum got cross and e-mailed them, asking where the Channel Islands were, if not somewhere between England and France.

In response to your question, working closely with our map providers, TomTom aims to provide the most accurate and up-to-date maps to its customers.

There is currently no digital mapping available for the Channel Islands that meets TomTom’s high quality standards, and therefore we do not offer maps of the Channel Islands on any of our products at the moment.

However, TomTom is always working to improve the products, and we will keep you updated as mapping information improves going forward.

Maybe there are other reasons for this absent island.
Conspirary theorists, lean a little closer…

Perhaps they’re trying to confuse the media hordes who invaded the Island a few weeks ago.
Maybe it’s a 21st century version of defacing road signs to confuse the occupying forces?
Or is Jersey simply off the radar?

They do, at least, drive on the left - well, they do on the few main roads. Mostly they drive in the middle because otherwise they lose the paint off their wing mirrors.

Very few of the lanes have pavements, which makes navigating round pedestrians quite tricky, not to mention the tractors and horses which dawdle down les ruettes.

And here my car - which in Merrie England stood proud as the solid, comfortable family estate it always believed itself to be - now languishes, sad and slightly embarrassed, behind queues of Porsches, Ferraris and Hummer lookalikes, all revving ready to roar off at the island’s top speed limit of 40mph.

It’s probably just as well the sat-nav doesn’t work here.
I don’t know how Charlotte would cope with some of the tongue-twisters that pass for street names in these parts… like La Rue de la Pouclee et des Quatre Chemins or La Petite Rue des Mielles des Quennevais.

You’d have have missed the turning by the time she managed to spit that little lot out.

So the poor girl’s back in her box.
Barely two months old and already on the shelf.

Another housebound ramble from Formerly Blog Fodder…

I don’t know what the Latin for ironing board is, but the Romans must have had them, because whenever you see Charlton Heston in a toga, he’s immaculately turned out.

Presumably they never had to iron their own clothes though, because there were always plenty of slaves around and the minimum wage hadn’t been invented.

The point is, my education is severely lacking.
I can conjugate Latin verbs like a good’un but bellum bellum bellum, belli bello bello, doesn’t get the ironing done.

My Mum didn’t teach me either – not because of my ‘Y’ chromosome, she didn’t teach my sisters either.
She just did it all herself.

Now though, it’s become a problem.
This morning I couldn’t find a single t-shirt to wear. The drawer was bare.
I found them all cowering in a cupboard in the bathroom, presumably awaiting a smooth operator.

Beta Mum is at work.
I can’t simply call for her to come home because she was never really inducted in the arcane art.
She doesn’t do ironing.

Maureen, our former two-hours-a-week lady who did, is hors de combat. Flying across the Channel to tackle a mound of ironing could be considered excessive.

That leaves me. Time to remove the brand new iron from its box and climb the mountain.
If it had just been t-shirts I think I’d have coped, but the trouble was the kids’ clothes also need ironing, not to mention some of BM’s more exotic garments.

Do tights need ironing in the first place?
Can you iron silk?
What temperature setting should I use?
Why does the iron constantly dribble water?
Why is that no matter how hard I attack the clothes there seem to be more creases at the end of my labours than when I started?
Why does the flex contort itself into intricate knots?

Which leads me to a bigger question…
Why do we bother at all?

Ne fronti crede, as the Romans might have said, while smugly donning their crease-free garments.

Note from Beta Mum -

1) No point ironing kids’ clothes when they’re covered in grime, snot & sludge within seconds of being put on
2) Buy stuff that doesn’t need ironing. Bri-nylon is very fetching on a man.
3) I caught you ironing your pants. What is your problem?

In which Formerly Blog Fodder goes misty-eyed at the thought of all those camp-burnt baked beans and random badges.

Ben’s on his way to the moon!

Well, it seems he’s improved his chances of getting there because he’s just joined the Cub Scouts. And, did you know that eleven of the twelve men who’ve walked on the moon were Scouts at one time in their lives?

Even if he doesn’t make it to the moon he’s guaranteed a few adventures, and according to research into what became of kids born in 1958 and 1970, he’s more likely to be happy in later life, in a good relationship, have good qualifications and be earning a decent income, than children who didn’t join the Scouts.

Watching him being presented with his scarf and woggle at his investiture brought back happy memories.

British Bulldog was just a brilliant game.

The happiest memory of all though, was the threepenny bag of chips we used to buy at the chippie across the road at the end of each session. They were properly wrapped in newspaper, and no doubt absorbing some of the ink was one of the reasons they tasted so delicious.

But doubtless they wouldn’t have met modern-day health and safety standards and I guess that’s one of the reasons why Scouting is such a welcome throw-back.

It’s a world apart from TV, computer games and couch potatoes.

Ben’s proud of the uniform, even though Beta Mum, with her throwback “he’ll grow into them” parsimony, bought trousers at least seven inches too long for him and had to take up half the leg.

He likes the discipline but he also enjoys the occasional rowdiness and roughness. He can’t wait to go on a summer camp, sleep under canvas, bake potatoes on an open fire and whittle bits of wood with a sharp knife… or is that me?

I can’t help thinking they ought to invent an adult version of the scouting movement.
Perhaps that’s what the Territorial Army is for?

I couldn’t help noticing Scouting has changed since my day and probably for the better.
Flower arranging used to be the exclusive reserve of Guides and Brownies but Ben came home with a beautiful floral composition to give to Beta Mum for Mother’s Day.

I did get my badge for domestic skills though, despite going to the house of some hapless volunteer and peeling her potatoes to the size of peas.

Ben delivered his promise to do his duty to God and the Queen with more earnestness than understanding, but because the Scouts now define themselves as a “multi-faith, co-educational youth movement” there are variations for people of other faiths.
Nothing for atheists though.

Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the movement founded by Lord Baden-Powell.
It also saw the first increase in recruitment for 13 years, of which Ben is now among their number - soon to be joined by his sister who signs the pledge with Beavers this week.

Long may they continue to do their best.

Otherwise, where would all the astronauts come from?