Keir Royale

It was nearly a year ago that Ben (now ten) had his first brush with childhood romance.
Her name was Sandra and she’s in his class.

It lasted a few weeks, the summer holidays intervened and on their return to school it was all over.

“She can’t play football,” was Ben’s verdict.

Well she must have been practising her ball skills in the meantime, as he’s come over all Charlotte Harvey-faced again and every night at bedtime I get to hear how they sat next to each in Art class and drew the same grapefruit.

Or how they played on Club Penguin and kept popping hearts up to each other while sitting, Emperor-like, together on a sofa in the coffee bar.

He brushes his hair carefully each morning and is easily persuaded to wash.
With soap.

He is even being realistic about the whole relationship thing.

“She’ll probably dump me soon,” he says, smiling. “Last time I dumped her before she could dump me. But she might be first this time.”

I now have to listen to tales of giggly chats over the watercolours, while insisting he continues with Cycling Proficiency training and piano lessons when he’d rather be playing footie with Sandra after school.

And he’s starting to ask me awkward questions. Not of the much-missed “What’s behind the sky?” variety.
But more like the “When did you first snog a boy?” and “Have you ever been drunk?” type.

In case you’re interested my answers were “I was older than you are now” (with a bit of a harumph in my voice) and “Ye-es but not very”.

If I were being brutally honest I could have said “12″ and just plain “Yes.”

But all the experts say we should answer their questions honestly, with just enough information for their age. And I think that just about does it.
For now.

I thought it was time to check how savvy my children are about staying safe online.

They don’t really use the computer to talk to their friends yet, but they do play on Club Penguin, which has moderated chat rooms and is probably a good introduction to the 21st century world of digital connections.

For months after Ben had started chattering about this great new game he’d found, I didn’t even realise there were other, real people involved.
I was vaguely aware that there were a lot of strangely dressed little penguins scuttling about on-screen with brightly coloured, hairy bobbles following behind them.
But that was as far as it went.

Then one day Hannah mentioned that all the penguins in the room she was in suddenly disappeared when the moderator turned up to tell someone off.

Moderator?
I discovered that there were, in fact, other children operating other penguins, and that they could all select pre-determined messages to send to each other.

Things like “Hi” and “Wanna be friends?”

I discovered that Hannah has 80 buddies - far more than I have on Facebook.

She has some advice for me -
“I just go around asking people, Do you want to be my buddy? Do you want to be my buddy? And they do.”

Simple, when you’re 8.

So today, after Ben tells me he and some school friends have arranged to meet up on-line at 6.30pm in a pre-determined cafe on a particular Club Penguin server, I casually say -

“You do know not to give out your real name and address and phone number on line don’t you?”
“Why?” asks Hannah.

“Don’t they talk to you about things like that at school?”
“No,” says Ben.

“Well, when you’re on-line the people you’re talking to might not really be who they say they are. They might be…” I struggle to find a way to describe the terrifying possibilities they don’t yet know exist… “bad people, bullies.”

“Well I don’t see how they can bully me if they’re not even in the same room as me,” says sensible Hannah.

On one of my many trips in and out of the room containing the computer, I find Ben typing a message.

“What’s that about?” I ask.
“It’s a question for Aunt Arctic,” he replies.

He’s trying to get a letter published in the Club Penguin Times, and has drafted something along the lines of -
“Dear Aunt Arctic, I’m really worried that my friend keeps giving out his name and password. I’ve told him not to, but he says not to fuss. I’m really worried and I don’t know what to do.”

When I show concern that one of his friends is doing this, he says,
“I’m not really worried, I just thought it would be a good way of getting a question printed in the paper.”

When they’re in bed, and Hannah has reassured me that she hasn’t met any burglars online, I can’t resist sneaking onto the site to have a look around.

It’s late, and Town seems to have been taken over by eco-warriers and disco-divas, all inviting each other to parties in their igloos and to “Turn green if you support Earth”.

I’m masquerading as Ben (who foolishly told me his name and password) and am trying my best not to lose him any cash. This means I can’t accept invitations to play games with anyone, as my ineptitude would surely mean losing some of the coins he has amassed in previous contests.

My constant refusals may give him a reputation for rudeness, but at least he will be able to buy food for his puffles (the brightly-coloured hairy bobbles that follow the penguins about) tomorrow after school.

I end up inadvertently interacting with someone, by inviting them for a coffee.
I follow them inside the cafe, but once there I can’t recognise which penguin I’ve invited.
I spend a few minutes whirling around, wondering who I’m supposed to be sitting next to.

When I notice a penguin sitting on its own, its face to the wall with a sulky-faced emoticon hovering overhead, I waddle across to face the music.

But as I haven’t yet found a way to say anything other than the pre-set “Hi” “Howdy” and “Hey There” options, I’m a bit stuck for conversation.
So my new friend gets bored and wanders away.

Time I did the same, before Ben is ostracised by all right-thinking penguins.

I had to take Ben to work a few weeks ago. It was just for an hour in between clashing delivery timetables - delivery of children to after-school activities, not babies into the world.

I know 9 isn’t 2, and his tantrum, plate-throwing days are (mostly) over. But he can be unpredictable, and he is always persistent. So I wasn’t sure how disruptive he’d be for the 4 colleagues with whom I share an office.

Reader, I was stunned.
I think I will take him to work with me every time I want a bit of peace.

He sat at the table next to me, reading his comic, looking up through his over-long surfer-dude fringe, too intimidated to say more than “Hello” “Yes” and “No”.

It was only afterwards that I realised he’d been earwigging intently the whole time.

“Do you chat all day at work?”
“You swore.”
“You’re so bossy.”

I stand, justly accused of all three offences.
But at least he’s got some idea of what I do. I chat, swear and am a bit (only a bit, mind) bossy.

I’ve been in this job for more than a year now, and my mother’s still asking me - “What is it you do, actually?”

My daughter doesn’t need to ask. Apparently I sit at a computer all day, playing games.

She used to be much more au fait with my world of work.
As a toddler she made regular appearances at the BBC, whenever her father’s work commitments stopped him from fetching her from nursery on his appointed days.

She’d sit next to me, enjoying the delights of a swivel chair, munching whatever chocolate-based substance I could buy from the shop next door, imperiously demanding attention, drinks and access to every knob within reach.

“Don’t touch that,” was my main response to her incessant chatter, as I tried to update the headlines, dial up the next interviewee and generally produce a live, drivetime, radio programme.

She’s older and wiser now, but she’s still not sure what my boss does.

“Does he sit at his desk eating sandwiches?” she asks.

“Does he put his feet up on the desk and have his feet shaved and his legs waxed?” she continues, somewhat bizarrely.

“He makes decisions,” I say.

“That’s easy,” she replies, with the confidence of a just-8-year old who recently told me her friend lives on an estatement.
“I can do that. I’ve decided not to go to school tomorrow.”

She’s got a lot to learn.

What do Man of the Match, Hundred Club and Limited Edition have in common?

They’re the only answer I ever get these days to questions like -

“How was school today?”
“What did you do for lunch play today?”
“What did you choose for Golden Time this afternoon?”

Match Attax cards seemed quite innocuous when Ben first mentioned them. Blog Fodder reassured my nagging misgivings with persuasive arguments like -

“They have to swap cards, so they learn to negotiate; they talk to each other about the players, so they’re communicating; the cards are sport-related, so they might one day do the thing they’re talking about…”

I have spent time trying to learn my John Terrys from my Joe Coles, and I was beginning to have limited success. But then I had to move on to names like Fabregas and Anelka.

Not only do I have to remember them, I’m cruelly mocked if I don’t know which one is Limited Edition and which is Man of the Match.

“And is a Man of the Match a Hundred Club as well, or not?” I ask, keen to show an interest in my son’s new hobby.

“Mu-um, if he’s as good as (insert one of many names I never quite get) then of course he’s going to be a Hundred Club.”
And this explanation is generally followed by a silent but withering look, before Ben turns to his father - now basking in the glow of an admiring son who likes football.

I suppose it was inevitable that at some point my little boy would abandon his Mum in favour of his football-cricket-rugby-anything-with-a-ball-crazy Dad. But did it have to be while he was still living in the same house as me?

When I was growing up Grandstand was sacrosanct on Saturday afternoons. Ever since, I have always associated the theme tune with having to sit quietly “or go and play outside, Grandstand’s on.”
I was determined not to live with a sports nut, and for many years I managed it. In fact I achieved this one small ambition with all my boyfriends - except the one I decided to settle down and have children with.

This may add weight to the theories of those who claim we all seek out the familiarity of childhood relationships when picking a life partner.
But what it means for me is that Saturday afternoons are again a no-go area.

Grandstand may have sprinted to a happy commentary box in the sky, but sport still colonises our low-tech, 4-TV-channel house. And I have to be out, or in another room if I am to avoid two people - one large and one small - yelling at the telly and comparing notes on the progress of their favourite teams.

My one consolation is the fast-approaching end of the football season. This will see off the Saturday night version of Blog Fodder when his team has lost (make that most Saturday nights), and it will also see the end of this season’s Match Attax.

You’d think this would also mean the end of my football education.
But no.
Ben the football fan has now given way to Ben the entrepreneur.

He is insisting that I help him to sell each card, one at a time, on e-bay.

So I now spend my evenings typing names like Fabregas and Anelka, together with detailed descriptions of their match status, rarity and mint condition.

There must be a reward waiting somewhere - even for a non-believer.

What links Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin and Blog Fodder?

It’s not another lateral thinking puzzle, it is a real question with a truthful answer.

They were all born on the 12th of February - exactly 200 years ago in the case of two of them. The one that wasn’t born quite so long ago has been ruminating on Darwin’s legacy…

I think I’ve found the fundamental flaw at the heart of evolutionism. It’s not rocket science. Well, obviously.

No, I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to work out where Darwin got it so completely and utterly wrong.

In the introduction to On the Origin of Species he maintains that “any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected”.

If this is true, then surely the reverse is also true - and anyone born with the incredibly debilitating stupid gene, which so adversely affects creationists, would naturally be at a huge disadvantage.

So if Darwin’s theory were correct, then over the course of time the stupid gene would be bred out and those that believe in the literal truth of the Bible would not survive.

But they do, and worse, they seem to be flourishing.

Clearly Darwin was barking up the wrong evolutionary tree.

Footnote from Beta Mum -
Or, the stupid gene, far from being a disadvantage, actually helps those affected by it live their allotted span in a contented bovine state, oblivious to the brutal world around them - and thus they thrive.

Where do I start?
I haven’t even mentioned the rats yet, and I can only blame the children for them if I use the guinea pigs as an intermediary.

First - the nits.
I noticed them when we got back from Christmas holidays, and I immediately set to work on Hannah’s head with my trusty Nitty Gritty comb.

I don’t normally recommend products, but this is by far the best nit comb I’ve used, and I’ve tried a few.
a) It doesn’t hurt as much as the plastic ones (I could tell by a drop in the volume of whimpering)
b) It picks up the eggs as well as the crawlers
c) It’s got a great name

So as the basin of water filled with little specks of itchiness, Ben hovered in the background awaiting his turn and taunting his sister -
“Look, there’s another one, you’ve got loads, you’re infested.”

That was at the beginning of January.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that it is now the beginning of February, and we are still not free of the little critters.

At least, we have been free of them a couple of times, but they keep returning.

It makes me want to march into school with a bag of Nitty Gritty combs shouting -

“Will you comb your kids’ hair. Here, take one of these, they work. It involves a minimum of effort. Just once a week and you can save your offspring and mine from scratching - forever.”

But of course I can’t do that. And neither can the teachers. We just have to carry on combing and plaiting and groaning and scratching.

Ben has escaped the latest thrice weekly programme of scraping, presumably because he is always a kick’s length away from his nearest playmate, and his break-time involves no head-to-head exchange of secrets and whispers.

Poor Hannah has born the brunt of it, and she’s fed up of having her hair in plaits every day.

And then there are the worms.

At least we’re not on holiday in France. I once had to mime the condition to a bemused pharmacist in front of a queue of immaculately dressed French people.

Here, the lady in Boots could at least understand the terminology. So that should be sorted - for now.

The verruca was due to be zapped at bedtime - until I read the packaging.

“The freezing procedure will cause a painful, aching or stinging sensation that can take a few hours to fade”
Not an auspicious addition to the bedtime routine.
So that’s been delayed until the morning, if there’s time for an extra task in our daily parade of breakfast duties.

And what of the rats?
I saw one in the garden the other day. I thought I may have imagined it, but then I spotted a nest of holes next to the heating oil tank. They look like rabbit holes, but smaller. The size of rats.

I’ve delegated the problem to Blog Fodder.
He has been to the garden centre in record time and returned triumphant with something called Rat Killer, which “targets and kills rodents humanely” and is “free from poisonous chemicals”.

Presumably it’s not free from chemicals that are poisonous to rats, but perhaps it means we can rest easy when the children go out to dig in the mud.

And how can we possibly blame the children for these uninvited new pets?
Well apparently rats like to set up home near a source of rodent food, and our back garden contains a plentiful supply of abandoned guinea pig chowder, carelessly strewn ‘twixt shed and cage on its way to sustain Phoebe and Sandy.

And why do we have guinea pigs in the garden? Because we have children.

Ergo - the rats are here because of the children.

I rest my case.

I’m a fan of lateral thinking puzzles, and now my children like them too.
You know the kind of thing - a man, a puddle of water and a measuring tape.

The children were reading them out to each other, when Ben was offered this little gem…

A man and his son are in a car crash. The father is killed and the child is taken to hospital gravely injured.
When he gets there, the surgeon says, ‘I can’t operate on this boy - for he is my son!!!’
How can this possibly be?

If you don’t know the answer, stop and think.

If you do…

I remember a time when I found this a tough one to answer.
But Ben (who’s ten) said -

“The dad’s dead, so the surgeon must be his mum. What’s so hard about that?”

What a star, unsullied by the preconceptions of a previous generation.

It seems my hard work and indoctrination has had some impact since the day he said on the way to school -
“But a woman can’t be prime minister.”

Some people arrive at work feeling fresh and ready to face their e-mails with humour and enthusiasm, after a restorative evening of relaxation.

I imagine those people are not parents.
Not of my children, anyhow.

I arrive at work feeling I’ve done a day’s hard graft, ready only to sit, numb and glum, in front of a screen - with just enough conscious thought to be glad it doesn’t crowd me with complaints, arguments and unreasonable demands.

This morning, by the time I left the house at 8.15am I had: -

- showered, dressed etc
- made 2 packed lunches
- finished laying breakfast table after half-hearted attempt by Hannah
- practiced 10 spellings each with 2 children
- gone through 8 times table with Hannah
- found out that Ben had not brought his homework home - again
- checked contents of 2 PE kits and 1 football kit
- plaited Hannah’s hair (fruitless nit prevention tactic)
- supervised 5 minutes of violin practice (Hannah)
- supervised 5 minutes of piano practice (Ben)
- searched for lost glove (still lost, probably forever)
- grabbed pile of bills in the hope I would remember to deal with them at work

After that, driving to work on my scooter in drizzle and gale force winds was a welcome 20 minute hiatus.

Just me, a whining 50cc engine and a howling wind.

Bliss.

Back to work for me.
Another day off for the children.
And that means back to sole supervision of the children for Blog Fodder - without the handy intervention of school to take the strain.

You may have heard of Slack Dad.
I think Blog Fodder has taken his parenting methods to heart. And I have evidence…

Today, having enjoyed 10 uninterrupted days with the children, and now feeling slightly guilty that I found them irritating on many occasions, I arrange to meet the 3 of them in town for a late lunch (me) and a final beady-eyed trawl through Woolworths (them).

The first thing I notice is that their hair has not been brushed. I try to let this slip, as it’s not the end of the world.

But then Blog Fodder slips away to spend five uninterrupted minutes circling Woolies’ denuded shelves in search of unwanted items at knock-down prices.
He leaves me to take the children for a milkshake. I glare at Hannah’s knotted spaghetti-string hair.
I can’t help myself.

“Did you brush your teeth this morning?” I ask.

“No,” they are unfailingly honest about teeth, “Daddy didn’t tell us to.”

Even they are becoming experts at blaming their father for their own failings.
I press on, unable to hold back.

“And what did you have for lunch?”

They look at each other, they look at the floor, they glance at me until they can bear it no longer and then they give in.

“We haven’t had any yet.”
“Daddy didn’t have time.”
“He only gave us ten minutes to get dressed, brush our teeth and get into the car.”
“So we couldn’t brush our teeth.”
“He said he’d take us to McDonalds.”
“He said not to tell you.”

I look at the menu. It’s just a cake shop - no broccoli, no carrots.
I look at them.

“And we watched 2 films on telly this morning,” adds Ben, trying to feign outrage.

I think about all the children whose school holidays are filled with improving activities, and I sigh.

“You must be hungry, do you want to choose some cake?”

Having recently metamorphosed into a civil servant, it’s sometimes hard to remember that this is what I now am.

Or, at least, that it’s what I spend my working hours doing. I do try to maintain some kind of out-of-hours life.

And now my daughter has shone a piercing beam of light onto my new life.

She was explaining to me the functions of her latest creation… multiple space vehicles made from carefully folded coloured paper, which all interlink and fire off rockets at Baddies.

“This is where they fire their rockets from,” she told me, “and this is how they fly as fast as light.”

And as she zoomed them around the kitchen, she explained why they needed to fight: -

“They’re working for the Civil Service War.”

An interesting take on my new life.