Boo!

Well, it's here, my son's first step into the world of fear, phantasms and things that go bump in the night. He has heard his first ghost stories at school. He did not cope well with this. We have had sleepless nights, weeping and frustratingly vague reports of what has actually happened in the playground. I must admit seeing my son genuinely terrified lit fires of pure transcendental rage inside me. I did initially wish to annihilate the child that had caused my son such fear, to leave nothing more than a smear of ectoplasm on the classroom wall. But I realise It's a rite of passage. Fear is part of childhood experience. 

It's impossible to predict what will trigger this creeping Lovecraftian sensation of horror for the first time. For me it was an episode of Fraggle Rock - The Terrible Tunnel. I know, it's preposterous. I place the evidence before you now.

Terrifying.

I swear I am not making this up or overstating it. That video terrified me. I remember the throat closing fear whenever I heard that song in my mind, my utter conviction that somewhere out there the terrible tunnel was waiting full of malevolent intent. If I had known the word 'eldritch' I would have used it to describe that tunnel.  I remember that fear with horrible clarity and, thanks to You Tube, I can relive it all over again. I think it's the wafting cobwebs, the purple lights, the terrible stony jaws closing on their victim, on me... I may not sleep tonight. 

But, back to my son's experience. Apparently there are three ghosts in the school. Bloody Mary, Candyman and Charlie. In order to deal with this I have tried a blend of rationalism and chipper, Enid Blyton style blunt-faced fearlessness.  I'm going for "Look, ghosts aren't real... but if they were this is how we'd handle it." My parenting technique for this rite of passage is very much channelling Susan Sto-Helit.

““The children refused to disbelieve in monsters because, frankly, they knew damn well the things were there.

But she’d found that they could, very firmly, also believe in the poker.

”

— The Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

So these are the ghosts my son has encountered:

Bloody Mary is a vampire with long finger nails who will slit your throat -  I went for fact checking to deal with this. Hopefully my interminably long and detailed exposition about Mary I and her short reign should explain the origin of this one and make her sufficiently dull as to no longer be a threat. Also, an honourable mention to the permanently excellent Horrible Histories team for their song about Mary I which certainly helped lighten the mood.

The Candyman - I can't believe this has permeated down to a primary school playground but there you go. I think it's the ritualism of this one that makes it so thrilling. You have to look in a mirror at midnight and say his name three times. (I saw this film in 1992 and I still won't say his name 3 times, regardless of the where I am or what time it is.) This was dealt with with this simple exchange:

“G: You have to look in a mirror at midnight and say his name three times
Me: Are you going to do that?
G: No
Me: Do you think anyone you know is going to do that?
G: No
Me: So I think we’re ok aren’t we?
G: Yup”

Charlie - This one is more of a mystery. I'm not clear on who Charlie is, and I don't think my son is either. This is the one that my son thinks has touched him, so he's harder to exorcise than the other two. I'm going to kill this ghost with kindness. If my son is scared I will spend that extra time with him, I will lie on his bed and tell him a story with Shelley the Crab and his other magical friends - like I did when he was 3. I make sure he has every cuddly toy that has ever meant anything to him piled on the bed, like a fuzzy force-field. Charlie's power appears to be fading, but like in every good ghost story I am waiting for him to rear up and terrify us again. And I will be there to knock him back down. 

The thing that struck me about the ghosts my son has encountered are how familiar they are. When discussing this situation at work my husband discovered that all of his workmates has thought their school was haunted.  Three of them had a ghost called Bloody Mary in the school. That's the power of branding.The name just sounds right. It is part of our shared experience to tell ghost stories and feel the thrill of it and learn to cope with that fear.

These stories are part of our oral tradition. They are handed down from one generation to the next.  The playground is the last bastion of our oral history, the space where the unwritten is preserved through play, speech and actions. The kids play the same games in the playground now that I did as a child. I watch them playing Pom Pom (or 40 40 if you're from one of those weird schools), What's the Time Mr Wolf?, Stuck-in-the Mud.  I hear them reciting the same counting rhymes I used with my friends and that my mother used with hers. I am sure that if the Parental Eye of Sauron is ever turned from them they will be gloriously injuring each other playing British Bulldog too. It is in this free, safe space with limited adult supervision where they learn to negotiate, where they learn the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, where they learn how to be human. It's on the playground that our kids learn the light and dark of life and how to handle it. 

Tut

Dear man on the train who tutted as I started applying my make up, 

I am not sorry. That day I had to go into London for a meeting. Normally I do not wear make up. I do not feel I have to draw a face on my face to make me acceptable to the general population.  I wear make up as a mark of respect for meeting new people, attending a special event or to give me a little boost of confidence in an unfamiliar situation. You do not fall into any of these categories.  I was not putting on make up for you, but for an upcoming situation that I felt I needed a little bit of a boost to deal with. Masks are good for this kind of thing. Your tutting was not.

I had walked out of the house that morning with 2 lunch boxes, a water bottle, a book bag, a ju jitsu kit and my hand bag in one hand and dragging an obstinate and surprisingly heavy 3 year old with the other. It was like pushing both donkey and cart up a hill myself. Prior to this I had packed the aforementioned lunches, made 4 beds, cleaned 3 sets of teeth, thanked my husband making for the kids' breakfasts and my soul sustaining coffee, emptied and loaded the dishwasher, put together a load of washing and wrangled two children into clothes they categorically did not want to wear. (It is my son's life goal to wear a onesie to school every day - I may start a petition to make it so.) I did this with a minimum of emotional blackmail, one bribe and one minor temper tantrum (mine). I also had to answer the question 'why does the earth go round the sun?' to the satisfaction of a pedantic six year old. God bless Google.

Oh yes, I then had to find an outfit that would minimise the size of my stomach, mask any weetabix smears that came my way from my kids and their wretched affection for me, and generally made me look smart and insouciant and exactly the kind of person you want in your workforce. Suffice it to say, my freshly made bed was groaning under the piles of rejected clothing options and my lower lip was wobbling just a bit as I squeezed into a pencil skirt for the first time in over a year. (This was what caused the temper tantrum.) Now I'm sure if I wore make up and smart clothes every day, I would find a way to squeeze this irksome chore in around the all the others that have to get done if i am not to be judged as a bad mother/partner/human, but I don't have to and I don't want to.

So you sat there opposite me in your t-shirt and trim little beard and you tutted at me as I carved out a few minutes on the train to give myself this little gift of confidence. I am at a loss to understand why this offended you so. I'm conscientious enough that I'm not billowing powder all over the shop, I don't think a single mote of Benefit Dandelion blusher touched you and I use the rather excellent Laura Mercer eyeshadow sticks so there was no risk of contamination there. 

Were you concerned that when I came to do my mascara I might run amok and mascara your beard into new and interesting shapes?  It was tempting, especially after the tut, but I am a civilised human being, not prone to acts of wanton decoration.

Do you think I am somehow breaching some sort of personal privacy barrier, that I am doing something that should only take place behind closed doors? Why? Make up is not hygienic - it is not part of a cleansing routine, no intimate body parts are on show.  All I am doing is colouring in my face. Do you get upset when children use colouring in books in public?

Or did I shatter the illusion that all women have eyes like gazelles, cheeks like razor blades and lips that glisten without any cosmetic assistance? Did I pull back the curtain and reveal to you how women draw on themselves? By making this explicit to you, by not maintaining the facade of artfully natural beauty, I may have unintentionally diminished the value of your assessment of women.  Does it offend you because when I put on make up in public it shows i do not care about your opinion of me? I was a woman who did not care about your gaze, your approbation. I do not need you to like me with or without make up. You do not matter.

So tut away, good sir.  I have said my piece and I will continue to put on make up when and where I damn well please.

Bare facedly yours

Fin 

A Grand Day Out

I remember going on outings to manor houses as a child.  I remember enjoying messing about with my friends, being generally bored by my surroundings and the occasional, surprising eruptions of volcanic rage from whatever parent was shepherding us around that day. I remember being casually unaware as to why they were getting so wound up. Everything seemed fine to me. I would very much like to slap the smug right out of that child. I simply had no idea how much shit had to get done just for me to have a moderately pleasant day with my friends. 

Trying to fill the February half term with fun activities is a genuinely thankless task. It's too cold for the kids to take genuine pleasure in outdoor activities and everything inside costs a bloody fortune.  Remind me, why am I not allowed to whack on Netflix for the entire week? But if don't we go out to expand our horizons and explore new places then I feel like I am not doing my job. So now I am now the parent, pack laden, hyper-organised and prone to anger of such searing intensity it has been known to parch my throat.

Even before you leave the house there is so much shit to sort out.  To go on a grand day out in England, regardless of what month it is you will need a drink, a few snacks, wet wipes, wellies, waterproof trousers, a raincoat, hat, scarf, gloves, sunglasses, suncream and a towel (always carry a towel). If you have 2 kids double it.  Scour the internet to find a bag big enough to carry this shit and still give you the option of carrying a three year old across muddy fields if necessary. If you even think about leaving some of this shit behind you are guaranteed a hurricane force tantrum at some point in the next six hours. 

When deciding where to go always ensure that the activity is suitable for kids, not families. Suitable for families means an activity that caters for adults, offering over-priced 'artisanal' food that the kids won't eat and some manky jugglers that will perfunctorily 'entertain' the kids whilst you participate in the great British tradition of queuing. All events we attend must specifically acknowledge that kids will be present and that their terrible all-encompassing needs will be catered for in a variety of ways.  

When you get there the logistics of carrying all of the things, marshalling children who are so giddy from their release from the confines of the car that they are spinning in circles endlessly gravitating towards any moving car in the vicinity and then actually locating the thing you have come to see is enough to make a grown woman weep. It usually involves a muddy trudge across a meadow to actually find what you're looking for and you can guarantee the chorus of the damned 'I'm bored' will start five steps in.  I have actually heard myself howl 'Good, it's character building.' and can see the children thinking 'Well, if it built your character I don't want it.' They are not wrong. 

If you have hit traffic on the way (which is almost guaranteed) then your plan of an hours play/exploring followed by a chilled out lunch is shot to pieces.  One of the little cherubs will be determined to balance on tip-toe atop a fallen tree, offering the group the heady thrill of a possible trip to A&E. Another one is whinging like a Sean Nos singer because their feet hurt having had to walk all of twenty steps to get here. A third little sweetheart erupts in hot angry tears because they're soooooo hungry. The fourth one has clocked the gift shop and will not shut up about it. It is hard enough to manage their desires when they mesh, when they are disparate like this I tend to flap and hiss like a befuddled cockatrice. 

When in doubt go where the coffee is, even if it means eating lunch at 11:30. Actually eating lunch at 11:30 is no bad thing as you will avoid the crowds that turn every national trust tea room into a Hieronymus Bosch vision of hell by about 12:45.  I know there are people out there who are capable of preparing a packed lunch with all five food groups represented and a haiku for each child delineating the unique qualities that make them so loveable, but I am already carrying so much stuff that I look like the Junk Lady from Labyrinth and I can't be arsed. So I pay the eye-wateringly high prices for food and tell the kids that sitting outside on a damp picnic bench in a gale force wind is terribly good fun and aids digestion. Well, it's either that or take the kids inside and get tutted at by pensioners and that group of evil mums who seem to have followed me here from soft play. 

Me, on every day out ever.

Usually, I find that once the kids have had food* things smooth out a bit. If you can cut a deal with the gift shop obsessed child that it's 45 minutes at the playground/bird of prey display/dinosaur reconstruction/whatever and then they can all have a treat, there is a brief window of actual pleasant time.  The reason why we came. The bit that you can take photos of to put on Facebook to cement the false impression of your life for all the people who don't really know you. It's lovely.  It's the reason we keep doing this. Three hours of disgruntled faff is worth every minute of this fun. When they are still talking about it six months later it's like getting a good parenting award.

We are really lucky that there is so much on offer for kids these days - all over Britain there is a fantastic range of activities encompassing sports, arts, outdoorsy skills and science that is accessible to an ever increasing range of ages and abilities. When I was young I was expected to actually engage with the architecture and appreciate a Capability Brown garden without being allowed to even climb on any of it.  And I bet the coffee was shit back then as well. My mother's volcanic eruptions were much more justified than mine are.  

I will probably start an ad hoc personal review of the attractions we go to from now on in the new Days Out section I have just created. I will be as honest as I dare. Promise. 

* who am I kidding, it's once I've had my coffee

The Little Things

When you've been with someone for a long time, love isn't about dramatic grand gestures and single special days.  It's about ongoing care and consideration and kindness. It is about endurance. I've been thinking about the small things we do all year that help us to show we love each other.

• Buying the kind of bread the other one likes - granary loaf or giraffe bread, that 50/50 stuff is only suitable for the under 10's.

• Warming up their* side of the bed - this is the purest form of self-sacrifice

• Changing the head on the electric toothbrush so they don't have to - especially important when they're pissed and malcoordinated. 

• Washing their lucky pants before a big event; championship match, job interview, that kind of thing - we've been married for 10 years, the wedding day lucky pants should probably be sent to the big laundromat in the sky, shouldn't they?

• Sending them a link to an article they'll find interesting and not being upset when you discover they haven't found the time to read it - easier said than done

• Accepting skimmed milk into your fridge even though you think it is an abomination unto God 

• Listening to a song you detest because you like the way they dance to it

• Taking the kids to the park so the other one can have some alone time and not being annoyed that they still haven't found time to read that article - well not showing that you're annoyed at any rate.

• Bringing them a cup of coffee in bed every morning (I'm pretty certain I'm the only married person who gets this but I can't resist the opportunity to brag about how awesome my husband is.)

Happy Valentines Day and all the other days too.

*I am delighted to be using the gender neutral 'they' throughout this article.  Thanks for validating me OED. 

Stormy Weather

It has reached that time of year where I am angry at the blossom on the trees - with its false promise of Spring. Spring is not here.  We are at the fag end of a shitty wet winter, my home is more mud than brick now and my children have the pallor of Victorian consumptives. We are all itching to get outdoors, to run and be free to clamber and climb over logs and under tussocks.* Then we open the door and a squall of moist air smears itself against our faces and we sigh resignedly, shut the door and go back to watching A New Hope for the millionth time. I wish I was in a galaxy far far away. Tatooine looks pretty temping at this time of year. 

I fucking hate rainy days. Today I have been cooped up in the house with a three year old who has spent the last five hours zipping from room to room like a blue bottle; never stopping, ever changing direction and spreading shit wherever she goes (metaphorical shit, luckily there is no d&v virus to tip us over from bored to traumatised). I have been following in her wake trying to maintain some sort of order.  In the last two hours I have rescued a barbie from a watery grave, caught a china dragon inches from shattering on a laminate floor, dressed undressed and redressed 5 baby dolls, done the same puzzle 15 times, banged my head against the wall 20 times and thrown at least 100 longing glances at the bottle of wine in the kitchen. 

I have even resorted to craft activities. My husband and son now have beautiful valentines cards that contain the last shreds of my sanity as well as an abundance of glitter. Glitter. What was I thinking?  Never, under any circumstances, allow glitter into your home.  Even if it means the slaughter of your firstborn to avoid it, do not let it in.  That shit is like herpes. You think you've gotten rid of it but a little patch will pop up out of nowhere and contaminate the whole house once again. Even Canestan can't combat it. 

Mind you, at least it's not play-doh.  Play-doh comes out of the pack in a such a lovely range of colours. Then you put it through what ever themed variation of mangle it has come with; be it a truck, a hamburger factory, a hair-dressing set, you just know that by the end of one session everything will be a uniform brown colour and the children will have lost all interest in playing with it ever again. It's almost like it's some sort of cynical ploy to make you buy more play-doh. I know there are mothers who trill 'Well, you can always make your own' but honestly I've tried - when I make it, it either stays that uniform brown, or I get over ambitious, put too much colour in and end up having to explain why my children have hands of blue** for the better part of a month. I'm not really a do-it-yourself kind of mum.

We have found one activity that has kept us relatively sane on a wet and windy day.  After the 6th episode of Topsy and Tim I had reached my limit, I was feeling very strongly that neither child was 'twintastic' and I was developing deep-seated suspicions about their mother's valium intake. No one is that calm. But in the final episode we watched the twins were decorating cardboard effigies of themselves. So I thought 'Screw it, let's try that.' Now I must admit it was a massive ball-ache to set up - sellotaping the uncooperative paper was nothing compared to getting an over-excited three year old to lie still. I know she wanted to see what I was drawing but as I was drawing her it did up the difficulty level somewhat.  But, with some mild growling and one short sharp 'Lie still!' it was done.  All told it took about 10 minutes effort from me and she then spent a good half an hour decorating herself (see above). Never underestimate the power of a small child's narcissism. I even got to finish a whole chapter of my book.  

Craft activities are usually a nightmare because the level of effort you put in to set them up is not worth the three and a half minutes a toddler will actually attend to it for. See below for evidence.

This is maths people. This is a fact (that I may have made up using a meme generator).

In comparison, my six year old has decided he's spending half term writing the Great British Novel.  It will be AT LEAST THREE PAGES long. I love this with all my soul. Self-directed and no mess - this is the greatest present a mother could wish for... check back in a week so you can read about just how wrong I was. 

*I'm not entirely sure what a tussock is or how you would navigate one. 
** Yes, that's a Firefly reference should any of you care

No Pain, No Gain

I have been doing exercise for three weeks now and, astonishingly, I am not yet a svelte size 8. I would like to say that I'm doing it because it's important to stay healthy. But I'm not.  I'm doing it because I am going on holiday to California soon and I don't want to be shot by a wealthy dentist who thinks I am one of the larger mammals he saw whilst on safari. I really wish it wasn't about appearance but it is. I want to be able to walk up to the bar in a pub without consciously holding my stomach in.  I would like to look in the mirror and be satisfied with what I see.  Not happy, I'm not going to aim that high, but satisfied that I won't scare small children with my terrible paunch. 

To be truthful, I am also doing exercise for health reasons - it might not be my primary reason but it is a factor. I am pushing forty now and I have to accept exercise into my life if I don't want to be a spongy mass in my twilight years, unable to leave a chair without the assistance of two disinterested care workers on minimum wage. I know I need to start walking down the right path if I want to avoid visiting the heart disease hotel. Who knows what state the NHS will be in by the time I really need it? Hell, it might be gone by next year if Hunt keeps going the way he is, so I'd like to minimise my need for long term medical intervention through boring things like eating well and moving more now, rather than not doing anything for twenty years and then having to pay huge amounts to Serco or Virgin Care and whoever else has carved up its carcass.  

I am, to my amazement, actually enjoying exercise.  I do get that weird adrenalin buzz that I've been reading so much about.* I love stepping out into the fresh air and feeling that self-generated heat radiating from my body. I enjoy the feel of my tingly red cheeks, if not so much the look of them in the unnecessarily massive mirrors in the gym. If I could design a gym there would be mood lighting, gauze curtains to diffuse any natural light.  There could be a separate room with one mirror, lit only by the glow of logs burning in a fireplace. (It could double as a Bikram Yoga studio.) If I could choose the music that is pumped out I would go for ambient techno - a good beat but not as shouty as the dance pop I am currently being subjected to - but at least I know what Rhianna sounds like now.  One thing gyms these days do very well is changing rooms.  I am used to scummy municipal swimming pool unisex changing rooms where you can hear the bacteria growing; these palaces of dry floors, wood panelling and separate showers are idyllic. Honestly if the kids get too much I may move in - unsalted nuts in the vending machine and all the chilled water I can drink. Heaven. 

It is twenty years since I last went to the gym and I like the tech upgrades the have happened in that time. Admittedly some of the machines look like the Terminator's sex toys but I try to steer clear of those. The running machine I use has pre-programmes video routes, including San Francisco.  This is marvellous, the marina looks lovely and I have spotted a few child friendly looking restaurants we can try on our upcoming holiday. In the interests of full honesty I should admit that I was walking briskly on the machine after shouting, 'I can't do running, it hurts too much!' at my lovely trainer.  That is the only thing I have baulked at though.  I have given every other thing as good a go as I can. There are so many new weird and wonderful new toys to try.  I keep comparing the weights I'm using to the weights of my  children.  This was fine until I had to smash a sand bag into the floor repeatedly and it was the exact birth weight of my son.  This was not a good visualisation strategy. 

It hurts far more that I was expecting but my daughter is learning resilience and independence now I am unable to pick her up between Thursday and Sunday when the feeling finally returns to my arms.  The family is getting used to my agonised shrieks as I reach all of four inches to pick up my iPhone. Mind you, having spent the better part of two decades fending off hangovers on a regular basis I am pretty used to pain and at least this pain feels like it's actually worth it. This is pain with a progression plan. This pain will stop me going to hospital rather than possibly causing it. I like this pain. 

*Yes, I read articles about going to the gym for about six months before I actually got up and went. Small steps, people, small steps. 

Do Your Homework

If I was running Guantanamo Bay* and, believe me, some mornings it definitely feels like I do, I think my main torture strategy would be making inmates help a six year old do their homework. I get lockjaw from the gritted teeth and whiplash from constantly throwing my eyes to heaven.  Nothing is more likely to trigger spit-flecked invective in me than a child who is meant to be doing their maths randomly bursting into Uptown Funk with accompanying dance moves.

We are very lucky that the homework set in my son's school is done sensibly - we are given a block of activities at the start of each half term to be completed within the six weeks.  Some of these will be things you could conceivably do in the back of a car on the way to something far more interesting.  According to some parents, it is even possible to get more than one out of the way at a time. There is not enough cocaine in the world to give me enough confidence to attempt two pieces of homework in one week but I tip my hat to those that can. There is one problem with this system though - there will always be at least one bit of homework that sends me spiralling right back to school myself, where I am the child who DOES NOT WANT TO DO IT. Sometimes it might be, say, geography, where I genuinely don't know the answers.  Other times it may be identifying the words with split digraphs in a paragraph. Ugh, split digraphs. Honestly - what the hell is wrong with calling it a 'Magic E'? I was utterly baffled when I first encountered this phrase. Let me reiterate, my kid is six and I already can't do some of his homework without the help of the internet. Honestly, I have no idea how anyone helped their kid to do their homework before the advent of Google. But sometimes the homework is (shudder with me) a crafts project...

It's the fact that this chore is so clearly more about testing the parents than educating the child that makes it so dispiriting.  Do you make the grade?  Do you pass the good parenting test? Can you create a functioning solar panel from household objects? Can you depict the socio-economic impact of the black death using play-doh? Can you assemble a robot capable of independent movement from egg boxes and whimsy? There are of course short cuts. Pinterest is your friend people. I am very happy to outsource all my craft projects to an overly competitive mother of 8 in Tennessee. Let her have the ideas, I will follow her instructions slavishly until my farmyard scene made from root vegetables looks like I actually give a shit.

But that's what it's all about really isn't it.  How much of a shit do you give? Not your kid. You. If my son wanted to spend the better part of his Saturday constructing a race car from a shoe box I'd probably be down with that.  But he doesn't.  He wants to watch the iPad until his eyes bleed. Just persuading him that fresh air isn't toxic and that a nice walk might be fun is a superhuman effort; to try and get him to focus on a task he does not value or care about is simply miserable. It would be possible to just phone it in, to do most of the task myself or to let him hand in something a bit rubbish, but I can't.  I do give a shit. Therefore, in order to get these tasks completed, I have used bribery, praise, threats, I have stalked out of the room, I have loomed over him, I have even, once, held his pen with him.  One memorable Sunday my husband and I, for a good (bad) three hours, took turns to stand in the well of misery that was once our kitchen occasionally barking instructions and correct spellings at the angriest child in the world. Wine was drunk, we even offered some to the child - but he's better than us and refused it. 

But I have found an answer. Colouring in. I know, I know, it sounds ridiculously twee but I promise you it has completely changed the tenor of homework time in our house. I am definitely wiping less rage-infused spittle from the walls. As I'm sitting next to him doing my own thing, I can now gently remind him of what he should be doing without it becoming a battle of wills. I'm right there so I can help out with a minor problem before it becomes a crisis, rather than stomping in, harassed and distracted, from another room to bark an answer at an already stressed out child. Instead of pouncing on my son every time he gets distracted, I'm just sitting there, calm and focussed, actually providing some sort of role model for him. I am enjoying what I'm doing and this seems to be rubbing off on him.  Give it a try, you might hate it but it might work for you too.  And just to prove that it's not about the quality of the work, just the doing of it, here's one I made earlier. 

This masterpiece is from a range of adults' colouring books published by Michael O'Meara Books.  Many thanks to my friend Gabriella Nemeth who works there for directing me to this lovely activity.  I also recommend Moose Alain's  books for a slightly different style - his downloadable colour-me-in advent calendars are an integral part of our Christmas. 

I'd better get a fucking housepoint for this essay. 

* I know this feels like a dated reference but according to Wikipedia "as of January 2016, 93 detainees remain at Guantanamo" so it's still topical even if we're not talking about it anymore.