Keir Royale

In which Blog Fodder leaves the comfort of his own home and gets very cross…

It’s gratifying to know that the stable doors at Exeter Airport are still firmly bolted.

It’s more than two years now since they were closed with a resounding clang after British authorities arrested 24 people in an alleged plot to blow up US-bound planes using explosives disguised as common liquids.

The Jihad against lotions and potions remains as vigilant as ever at Exeter, as I discover while waiting to board a flight to Jersey.

The super-smart X-ray machine discovers a small cool-box in my hand luggage. The tiny freezer block inside is quickly confiscated because it poses a potential terrorist threat.

The tub of margarine represents another suspect device and it, too, is whipped away.

I am permitted to keep the bangers… calm down, it’s only a packet of chipolata sausages.

Blimey, I’m thinking, whatever next?

It doesn’t take much of a rise in temperature before a bar of chocolate becomes a gooey mess and therefore a potentially lethal device.

Still, at least I have the consolation of knowing that the hi-tech snooper apparatus isn’t really up to the job.

The other cool-box in my bag remains undetected.
Inside is the terrorist twin of my former freezer block, a half-pound of Sainsbury’s deadly unsalted butter and a fiendish packet of Frubes.

Despite the arsenal in my hand-luggage you’ll be relieved to know that the plane landed safely, although by then the sausages were looking a bit iffy.

Blog Fodder

We’re back to the pocket money question.

It’s been more than a year since we first experimented with the concept, but we gave it up because Ben said he didn’t want pocket money any more, and Hannah was too young to care.

He claimed he no longer wanted it because “Daddy already spends too much on me”.

I suspect it was so we couldn’t dock it for bad behaviour.

But now, he wants it again.

He goes to a junior youth club on a friday evening and wants more of the readies to spend on Haribo horrors.

So I decide to come over all American, and demand chores in return for cash.

I know they should do the chores anyway, but we haven’t managed to insist on it yet and I think this is a good opportunity to move things in the right direction.

And I always find bribery much easier than the more time-consuming methods of persuasion.

So we discuss which chores are up for grabs and they agree which ones they’ll take on.

Hannah - laying the table for breakfast and washing up (meal unspecified)

Ben - clearing the table and sweeping under it (after tea)

Day 1
I come down to breakfast to find a grinning Hannah, standing next to a table replete with bowls, cereal, a pot of tea for Daddy and a cup of white frothy stuff which looks like milk.
For me.

I don’t much like milk. I drink coffee for breakfast, and I have shown her how to make it.

I enquire further and discover that the cup contains half cold milk and half hot water, carefully frothed up.
No coffee.

“I forgot about that,” she explains.

I show her again, and take Mike’s tea up to him before it goes cold. It is, apparently, delicious.

At teatime, Ben gulps down his food, removes his plate and then stands by the table, hovering over the rest of us enquiring - “Have you finished yet?” every time we swallow.

A minor eruption occurs when I make it clear he doesn’t get to claim the cash immediately after the first day’s chore is accomplished.

Day 2
Breakfast is ready again, this time with frothy milk and coffee.
I wonder how long this will continue, as it’s a step beyond our agreement.

Tea-time goes more smoothly, with Ben claiming he hasn’t fogotten to sweep under the table. He’s just waiting until we’ve all finished, otherwise he’d have to sweep up all over again.

My regular lectures about time management are obviously beginning to hit home; if not in relation to homework/getting dressed/undressed/ready to go out - at least in relation to something.

We’re onto Day 3 tomorrow, and by Friday they will feel they’ve earned enough sweets to rot not only their own teeth, but also those of every other child in the school.

Whether or not sweets will make up for many minutes wasted on tasks they’d rather sit and watch Mike and me do - we will doubtless discover.

I don’t suppose many people have spotted any similarities between Brixton (South London, not Devon) and Jersey (Channel Islands, not USA).

I’ve lived in both places (and quite close to the alternatives in Devon and USA too) and I can tell you there is at least one.

It’s not that Jersey’s beaches are replicated in Brixton market; it’s not the striking similarity between the Barrier Block (where I lived for a few months) and the Waterfront.

No - it’s the drivers.

If you were to take a short trip down Brixton Road, past the tube station and then along Stockwell Road, you may opt to indicate your intention to turn left.

Well if you did you’d be on your own.

Indicating in SW9 is a sure sign of a lack in the cojones department.
A sign that you’re a namby-pamby, lackey of the Peelers, who feels it necessary to signal your intentions.

It is not the Brixton Way.

No, the Brixton way is to lurch dramatically across the road in front of mere law-abiders, to pursue your innate right to swerve about all over the place in your BMW until everyone else gets out of the way.

The Jersey Way is not dissimilar.

There’s less lurching perhaps, and markedly fewer BMWs (the island’s drivers seem to prefer Porsches and Mercs) but there’s a comparable lack of indicating.

There is, on the other hand, a lot of pulling up short to veer onto the nearest pavement to pop into a shop, as walking more than five steps from car to retail outlet is anathema to your true Bean.
I know this, as it’s an impulse I have to fight myself.

There are, however, differences in driving attitudes - the main one being the average approach to a T-junction.

Pull up at a main road on any street in central London, and you sit there whistling until you decide to risk your bumpers.
You just have to grit your teeth and stick your car out into the oncoming traffic until someone is intimidated into letting you out.

It may seem foolhardy, but it’s the only way you’re going to get out of the minor road before midnight.

Drive like this in Jersey, especially with English number plates, and abuse is all you’ll get.

In Jersey, commuters motoring down main roads at a top speed of 40mph with 3 or 4 cars pootling along behind them, will happily stop to let out a motorist waiting at a T-junction.

Had the main-street commuter not stopped, the waiting motorist would have had to sit a mere 5 seconds longer before being able to exit the minor road without disrupting the journeys of 4 or 5 other people.

But this is another example of the Jersey Way.

It may not be logical, but it’s quite sweet - as long as you’re not one of the 3 or 4 motorists stuck in the queue, who are forced into politeness when you’d far rather bully your way to work.

And don’t get me started on parking.
I think the photo above speaks for itself.

I’ve blanked out the number plate to spare any red faces… although I’m not sure that Range Rover drivers have the capacity to feel embarrassed.

What a great weekend activity, I think, still labouring under the delusion that my children are happy to go along with my idea of a good, family day out.

So I suggest it, without thinking carefully how to lead them into it gradually, but by bit, until they’re hooked.

“What’s Beachwatch?” asks Ben, suspicious already.

“We’d be helping look after the beaches, by walking around…”

“Walking?” demands Hannah, always on the lookout for the “W” word, and not in a canine way.

“.. and picking up all the litter that gets left there. Then we’d list what we’d found so…”

I don’t get to finish my lame explanation.

“What, you mean we’d be walking about picking up rubbish and then writing about it?” says Ben, the scorn spilling from his lips.

He has a point. So I laugh.

“Yes, I thought it’d be educational and ecological all at the same time. A good, family day out.”

“I don’t think so.”

I know when I’m beaten.
So we went to the zoo, ate our picnic on the grass and bothered the orangutans and gorillas instead.

By the by, I’ve been awarded a lovely picture by the even lovelier Cartside.

I now pass it on to …

Potty Diaries

Not Wrong, Just Different

From Dawn Till Rusk

Enjoy.

Of course we limit their screen time, and of course they do everything they can to get around the rules.

“Dad, Mum says I can watch telly,” they whine, when I’ve said they can’t but am still at work so unavailable to lay down the law.

“Mum, Dad hasn’t let me on the computer for three days,” they squeal, a desperate look in their eyes that I am unable to ratify until Blog Fodder returns from hashing. By which time they’ve had twice their daily limit.

So I have a look to see what they’ve been doing.
I know what games they play - miniclip mostly, as I won’t pay for anything.

But Hannah’s learned to create folders, and has made worlds within worlds in a virtual construct which exhibits far too developed a sense of organisation for one of such tender years.

I spot a folder called “secruts!“.

Should I? Is it a betrayal of my child’s autonomy?

Sod that, she’s only 7. Her secruts! are fair game for her mother.
So I open the folder.

Inside I find 3 more folders and 2 Word documents. One of the folders is called “persnl stuff“.

I hesitate for, ooh, a second? And then I remember a coach who, when I realised I was late home from a swimming club event counselled -

“May as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.”

I looked at him blankly, and when he explained what it meant I stayed an extra few minutes to show I wasn’t a sap. I was too scared of the welcome I would receive at home if I stayed any longer.

But I’m a grown-up now. So I open the persnl folder. And inside are 3 Word documents and yet another folder.

The folder is called “Bbeenn!“

What better way to find out what she really thinks of her brother.
So I open it, expecting a tirade of fury or a list of crimes perpetrated by him against his little sister.

But again, there are more sub-classifications. I wonder if my second-born is heading for a career as a librarian.

I remember an interview I once did with a man who started off as a librarian and ended up as a purveyer of fine rubber bondage gear for the slightly kinky masses. So her career path may be anything but straight.

Inside Bbeenn! are 2 folders and 3 Word documents.
I begin to feel like Indiana Jones on a quest to pick the correct folder - the one that gives up its information without making me feel like a devious, diary-reading snoop of the lowest order.

I wonder if that is where I will end up - as a secrut! reader of my children’s teenaged diaries. I will have to advise them never to start writing one, for fear I won’t be able to resist.

The folder entitled “sroundins being good or not” intrigues me. What does she think of her surroundings? Does she mean her new, tiny bedroom with no space to lay out her playmobil? Or does she have more cerebral aspects of her life in mind?

I click. And I begin to fear I will never get to the bottom of this child’s ever-decreasing gyroscope of a mind.

Yet more folders and Word documents.

Eventually I find a document called Maths.
She doesn’t even like Maths - or so she says.

In it I discover -

Martha has 2 bananas she eats 3 how many does she have left - m1
my cat has 4 chooeys she eats 9 how many does she have left - m5
sooky my dog has had an operashon and I don’t know how much it costs
it was 20p more then the current people
there operashon costed 50p
how much did it cost
70p

So not only a closet librarian, but a secrut setter of spoof examination questions.

Which reminds me of a Maths teacher I had who set us a simultaneous equation.
He then spent the lesson wandering about trying to decide which of us to chuck the blackboard rubber at.

By the end of the lesson none of us had solved it. He smiled, rubbed a bit more chalk into his jacket, and chuckled.

“It’s impossible,” he said, “there is no answer!”

Hilarious. 40 minutes of our young lives - wasted.

Mind you, I’ve probably spent the odd 40 minutes on even more fruitless endeavours in subsequent years.

Science kits - don’t you just hate them.

Ben was given one for Christmas/Birthday at least 8 months ago, and I thought I’d managed to hide it somewhere he’d never find it.

But I’d forgotten that this is the child who can smell a confiscated Nintendo DS at 20 paces.

Se he found it, carefully buried beneath toys I thought he’d given up years ago.
It’s amazing how appealing a few toy hamsters can be when it’s raining and your weekend TV limit has been decisively breached.

So he found the big box filled with dangerous chemicals, evil-looking implements and unintelligible instructions.
And I was the only adult at home - Blog Fodder having slunk off in shorts for his weekly hash with the Crapauds.

I did my best.
Chemistry was never my favourite subject, and just distinguishing the Iron Sulphate from the Sodium Sulphate sends me back in time to the days of Miss Mason and her infernal Bunsen burners.

Ben is keen to get started with the explosions, but first I have to find some old yoghurt pots to use as petrie dishes, and a ruler to measure stuff.

It doesn’t take long before I get cross.

Ben spills iron sulphate all over his pyjamas, leaving 2 large yellow stains.
And he’s wearing the bottoms from one set and the top from another - so that’s two pyjama sets with no re-sale value.

Then he moves on to the next experiment before finishing the first, which, as a main-lining Completer-Finisher, sends me into a sharp decline.

And this second experiment requires the mixing of sodium hydrochloride solution before we can even start.

It’s like getting half way through a recipe and finding that before you can cook the cake you have to make your own chocolate. It’s just too much.

Before my brain explodes, Blog Fodder arrives home. Sweaty, yes - but up for a bit of chemical mixing.

So I pass on the baton and retreat to the Archers.

Five minutes later I decide to pop back into the kitchen to check all is going well and spillage is not on the horizon.

As soon as I show my face, Ben makes it clear I’ve had my chance and blown it.

“Mum, it’s my job to think. It’s your job to screech and complain.”

“And isn’t she good at it,” Blog Fodder adds, helpfully.

The Archers win the day. They don’t answer back.

My little boy - well, he’s 9 now - asked me a question at bedtime tonight.

“Mu-um.”

“Ye-es.”

“Can you change your job?”

Uncertain silence from me. Then the question to which I do not want to hear the answer.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t see you enough.”

And with that his voice wobbles and breaks and he starts to cry.
Not for effect or from anger or because he’s really hurt himself.
But for real.

“I ’specially miss you at bedtime.”

Now this is odd, because it’s almost always me that puts them to bed.
I point this out, and he sobs,

“When you went out with your friend the other night Daddy didn’t even bother to come up and close my curtains. I had to go down and get him.”

I refrain from starting a rant along the lines of -

“Curtains? He didn’t pull your curtains? He wouldn’t notice a curtain if you wrapped him up in it and rolled him down a mountain. He’s the same with unmade beds, empty loo rolls and dirty socks scattered across the floor. They do not reach his cerebellum. They stop somewhere around the level of - its only a duvet, it’s not that hard to chuck it on a bed, can’t you do it? - with a note of injured fury in his voice.”

Instead, I climb up into Ben’s very high bed for which there is no ladder, and lie next to him for a cuddle.

We talk for 20 minutes or so, about working, school, Mums and Dads and bedtimes, until he’s feeling happier.
Then I have to climb down again, without the aid of a ladder, to communicate our conversation to the Father Who Does Not Notice Curtains or Other Minor Irritations Because he has his Mind Fixed Firmly on the Bigger Picture.

He’s in the middle of his crossword, but when I tell him of my conversation with our son he shows a modicum of remorse and leaps up to pull the curtains closed against the gathering darkness.

From Dawn Till Rusk has tagged me with a nightmare task that has taxed my memory, my sense of decorum and my rusty editorial skills.

I have been asked to summarise the last 15 years of my life in 10 bullet points.

I’d never heard of bullet points until 1991, when the manager of the radio station where I worked initiated us into the joys of flag poles and things you should fly up them, bullet points and making a mental note at the top of the page.

In honour of Mr B, I will give it a go.

15 Years in a Nutshell:
My task is to think back on the last 15 years of my life.
What would I tell someone I hadn’t seen or talked to for 15 years?
I have 10 bullet points to summarise me
At the end of my list, I have to tag 5 more people and share the torture.

So, setting aside the fact that if I saw someone I hadn’t seen for 15 years I wouldn’t bother to update them on anything much at all, here are some random facts I’m willing to reveal.

1 - 1993 - I was a sensible-sounding BBC radio journalist, but still near enough to my previous life to dangle from the occasional fast-spinning rope in my spare time.

2 - One year I co-produced the local pantomime with the long-term boyfriend I was in the process of splitting up with - not a relaxing Christmas.

3 - I was helping my Gran live in her own home after my Grandfather died - she had Alzheimer’s and was finding it more and more difficult to cope. We had many conversations about missing plates, imaginary visitors and non-existent cats. It was funnier than it sounds.

4 - I missed out on a trip to New York on Concord after picking the wrong straw. I did get a free flight to London - not quite the same.

5 - I spent my birthday evening in 1996 with a friend of a friend among the cacophony of ten pin bowling and the swearing of spotty youths at Plymouth Superbowl.
I agreed to go because I didn’t want to upset the friend of a friend who was being kind. I’d rather have stayed Home Alone.

6 - On Christmas Day in 1996 one of my presents was a dead duck. It was wrapped up in Christmas paper, in a box. We ate it later.
I am still friends with the person who thought this was a good joke. I’ve always got on well with dysfunctional people.

7 - I hooked up with Blog Fodder at work - so prosaic - in 1997.
By January 1999 Ben was born and life changed. I became familiar with the night-time hours in ways I’d never considered before - ways that didn’t involve dancing, drinking or that other popular night-time activity of the non-new-parent.

8 - Hannah joined the mix in 2001 and just about survived the brutal programme of initiation designed for her by two-year old Ben.
They are now great friends and it’s lovely to see their developing relationship - except when a minor disagreement escalates into slammed doors and sulks.

9 - Since moving to Jersey, Ben has given us a taste of what life might be like as parents of a teenager.
Peer pressure has kicked in. He now recognises brand names and wants a mobile phone. And, of course, there’s the lovely Sandra.

10 - Now, it’s 2008 and I no longer twirl at the top of spinning ropes, which saves me from the little pinpricks of blood which used to speckle my hands with the centrifugal force. But I am much more familiar with bullet points than I was.
I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

In the spirit of sharing, I pass this task on to man about the house, Devon Life, and My New Notebook.

So what did I do - in those pre-child days - when time after work was mine for the taking?

When tea-time was spent in the gym and bed-time was a vague concept adhered to only on the eve of exams, early shifts or Big Days of one kind or another.
And it was only my bed-time I had to consider.

Was the telly really this bad in those days, or did I have better things to do?

Didn’t I go to the theatre, to the cinema (art house stuff, not Mr Bean on Holiday), to other people’s smart houses for stimulating conversation and delicious meals unaccompanied by plaintive cries for ketchup?

Surely that was my life?
If only I could bring to mind exactly how I filled the hours in those days.

Did I not realise how precious they were, those long hours filled with… with what?

I do remember in the early days of babies and nappies that I longed to get those hours back again.
But, like an addict immersed for too long in her drug of choice, I can no longer remember what it was I was yearning for.

What was it that I wanted to do?
I could do it, right now, if I could only recall what it was.

I have just returned from a weekend in France.
I’m alone, having left the rest of the family to enjoy watching time trickling slowly by in the garden, on the beach, on bum-sore bike rides.

I, however, am back at work.
I’m a glass half full kind of person though, so I’m looking around for ways to make the most of my few days as a singleton.

I’m getting in touch with friends I don’t see enough of.
I may go jogging.
I’m going to get my hair cut.

But what then?

If you can remember what it was that filled the hours of the day pre-children, please tell me before my time is up.

But do bear in mind, late nights and over-indulgence are no longer an option. And art-house cinemas are fairly thin on the ground over here.

Ben has a new career path in mind.

He’s been through policeman, spy and footballer already. But now he has another plan.

It was prompted by some news I told him today. One of his friends has landed a lead role in a TV drama.

“A big part?” asks Ben.

“Yes, one of the main parts.” I reply, and watch his mind whirring.

“I want to be a model,” he announces, “My face is beautiful and I’ve got lovely big eyes. It’s just my hair I’m worried about.”

Well, what does a mother say?

Of course I think he’s beautiful, but I would, wouldn’t I?
And normally it’s me saying he looks lovely while he scowls at me and moans -
“You’re my Mum, you’re going to say that aren’t you. It doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Perhaps the lovely Sandra has been complimenting him on his looks.
He’d believe her over me any day.

I point out to him the difficulty of working as a model when we live on an island, a flight away from what I assume to be the centre of the modelling world.

I stop short of scuppering his ambition by listing the many ways in which his temperament militates against any kind of work which involves patience, stillness and - most importantly - trying on clothes.

I fear this last issue is the main sticking point.

He will sit still when he’s reading, and he can be patient with small children and guinea pigs.
But he will not try on clothes.

I think he imagines modelling to be one, big, happy Boden catalogue kind of life - with lots of jumping on beaches and striding across sand dunes.

I’m hoping this modelling idea will go the way of fencing, tennis and French Club - to be replaced by the career equivalent of his current passions - football, cricket and Sandra.