Dear Dave

  Bright future

Dear Dave,

I saw my nephew Ned for the first time in a while yesterday. He normally turns up regularly after school but he's been taking his Standard Grade exams the last couple weeks and I think he might actually have been staying home doing revision. After much discussion with his mum and dad, he acquired some last minute motivation to knuckle down. Provided he achieves results which aren't entirely disastrous in his 'proper' subjects, he's going to be allowed to drop them next year and concentrate on art and design, which are where his real talents lie.

Bearing this in mind, I was surprised to find him at my door rather than away somewhere practicing simultaneous equations.

"Done," he said in answer to my unspoken question and slouched in. He dumped his bag on the floor and pulled off his shoes without unlacing them.

"All your exams?"

"Yeah."

Before I could reply, Fraser bounded down the stairs to the bottom step. "Did you bring me a birthday present?" he said excitedly to Ned.

"No."

"Why not? It's my birthday tomorrow."

"Um..."

I intervened. "Did you get Ned a birthday present on his last birthday?"

"No," said Fraser, taken aback by this barmy suggestion. "That's your job. I thought you got him one."

"I did... and he still didn't give me a present on my birthday. Quite why you're expecting one, I don't know."

Fraser clung onto the banister and leaned over, bringing his face close to mine. He spoke in a low, drawn-out voice, like an audio tape that had been stretched. "Because it's MYYYY BIIIIRTH-day TOOOO-mor-ROOOOOOW."

I got a good view down his throat. "Is it? Drat. I should have bought you a present."

"Ha, ha. Very funny, Daddy," he said and then hurried back upstairs before his wiimote got cold.

I shook my head and waited until he was out of earshot. "I can't believe he's going to be nine."

"I thought he was nine already," said Ned, shrugging, and he started to slouch away in the direction of the cupboard I use as an office.

"Don't you understand what that means?" I said, unwilling to let him shut himself away with my Xbox before I'd got a little more of a response from him. "I'm halfway to getting him out of the house! It seems like only a few weeks ago I was sitting in an operating theatre, holding a startled bundle in my arms. After nine months of waiting, he was finally out and we both stared at each other, wondering what to do next. Now he's playing Pokémon cards and being carefully to refer to me as 'Dad' rather than 'Daddy' when talking to his friends. Another nine years and I can wave a tearful goodbye as he heads off to university, then shove his stuff in the loft and put a pool table in his room."

"A pool table!?"

"Er, yeah, but don't tell him that. Or your Aunt Sarah for that matter..."

Ned's eyes lit up. "You going to have a mini-fridge in there too, with beer and stuff?"

"Of course. Come and look at the plans. I've got them hidden where no one will find them."

I took him through to the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink where I keep all my cleaning supplies. A big sheet of graph paper with a scale drawing of Fraser's room on it was stuck to the back of the door. Card cut-outs of pieces of furniture were pinned in position. "It's a bit of a squeeze but if the telly goes on the side wall at one end, the gaming chair with built in surround-sound can go next to the bookshelves when the table's not in use. That should be about perfect distance for a forty inch screen."

"You'd have to get up to get to the fridge."

"That is a point." I swiftly moved some of the cut-outs and pinned them back into place. "How's that?"

"Dunno. S'not much room round the arcade cabinet."

I chewed my lip. "Yeah, that seems to happen whatever I do. It may have to wait until Lewis leaves home. Then it can go in his room next to the jacuzzi."

"Uh-huh."

I gave the problem one more wistful ponder, shook my head and closed the cupboard with a sigh.

It's not a plan I think about often. It's perhaps rather too far in the future still. I've got a great deal of parenting to do before it's even worth measuring windows to decide which one's going to have to come out to get the pool table in. There's plenty to look forward to in the meantime, nonetheless. Getting my youngest off to school will signal the end of another phase of my housedad years. It won't bring space for gadgets, and it's already brought me angst and insecurity, but there will be many fresh opportunities. Just imagine - six hours a day without being pestered, argued with, complained at or forced to wear pink, plastic jewellery. Who knows what I could achieve?

I decided not to share any of this with Ned. I figured he'd just look blank and grunt.

"How did the exams go?" I asked.

"All right."

"Good enough?"

"Think so," he said, half a smile fighting its way through his usual teenage frown.

I grinned back. "Excellent."

There was a pause.

Then he shrugged and sloped off to play Tomb Raider...

All the best to you and the family,

Yours in a changing world,

Ed.

Labels: Ned

 
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9:15 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Teenager tension

Dear Dave,

We finally made it round to Chris and Catriona's for dinner at the weekend. It's been months since they came here but trying to get everyone's schedules to match up for a reciprocal gathering has been tricky. They've been out at galas and posh functions, mingling with the rich and influential; we've been staying in, mingling with the winter viruses brought home to us by our loving, yet somewhat slimy, offspring. Nevertheless, they managed to squeeze us in last Saturday and we were all healthy enough to make it out the door. We caught the bus round to their house in the late afternoon, eager for a taste of my niece Lisa's cooking.

At least me and Sarah were keen - the boys complained about feeling travel sick before we'd left the house and Marie took a huff because we weren't going to visit Gran instead. Once we arrived, however, and my teenage nephew Ned let us in, the kids were all delighted to see him. Fraser challenged him to a computer game, Lewis demanded to watch him play a completely different computer game and Marie grabbed a couple of expensive-looking china ornaments and suggested a round of catch. I grinned at him and sloped off to help in the enormous and magnificent kitchen.

I found Catriona unpacking containers from an Indian take-away.

"Lisa's too busy revising for her exams to do any cooking, I'm afraid," she said, noticing my disappointment.

"But it's a Saturday night." I went to put some cartons in the bin, only to discover it was already entirely full of similar cartons. It appeared that Lisa had been too busy for a while.

"Goodness knows I've tried to talk to her," Catriona replied, bustling about, setting out the table. "You know what children are like." She was still smiling but there was an edge of tension in her voice. Then a thought struck her and she frowned at the dish of curry she was holding. "Will your lot eat this?"

"Not really," I said. "The kids won't touch spicy food, aren't keen on rice and generally don't like anything with sauce."

That wasn't exactly what Catriona wanted to hear but there was no point lying - the truth was going to become obvious as soon as my children entered the room and started complaining that everything looked disgusting. The chances of them eating anything much of the take-away were slim. Given a choice between what was laid out on the table and their own snot, they might find it tricky to make a decision.

I felt it best to keep this information to myself and attempted to rescue the situation instead. "They can have some poppadoms and naan bread. If you've got some fresh fruit or vegetables, I can chop that up for them as well."

Catriona was past caring. "Fine. Fine. You do that. I'll go and get Chris to find some wine."

I hurriedly set about chopping some apple and carrot and cucumber. A few minutes later, Chris wandered in, holding a bottle.

"Good to see Catriona's got you working hard in the kitchen already," he said jovially. "Might as well let an expert at it, eh? You won't know what to do with yourself once all your kids are at school. Better keep looking busy or Sarah will make you get a proper job."

"Ignore him, Ed," said Catriona, following behind.

"Uh-huh," I muttered.

"He knows I'm only joking," said Chris, slapping me on the back and fishing a corkscrew out of the drawer beside me. "I thought we might try this Merlot tonight. It's from Chile. It came highly recommended by one of my colleagues. Not too heavy and very fruity, apparently. It's not what I would normally..."

I interrupted. "Red, right?"

"Yes."

"Just checking," I said, hunting through the fridge for some cheese. Chris went on but I ignored him as instructed and concentrated on filling the kids' plates with stuff they'd eat. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get the plates to the table before Catriona rounded everyone up and ushered them through. Fraser and Lewis started complaining loudly about how horrible the food looked and how they didn't like rice.

Marie hid her face in her hands, threw herself to the floor and whined. "It's all yucky!"

"Be nice," I said. "Your food is over here, guys."

"Why isn't it on the table?" asked Lewis.

"Yes, how were we supposed to know it was over there?" said Fraser.

"I don't want that either," said Marie. "I want toast."

"Tough," I said, bringing their plates over. "Sit on your seats and stop being so rude or you'll all be on bread and water next week."

"Grrr," said Lewis. "Don't be silly."

"I'm being serious. We're visitors here. Stop being rude or you'll be eating bread and water for a week."

"But you don't eat water," said Marie, "you drink it."

Sarah spoke before I could reply. "Why don't you sit down and try some wine, dear? Chris was telling me all about it before we came through."

"Hmmm..." I said, taking a deep breath. "Maybe that's a good plan."

"Yes," said Catriona, "and do start helping yourself to the food. It's self-service tonight. Sorry we're all crowded round this table. I've got work spread out in the dining room and I didn't have time to clear it away."

"Don't worry about it - this is nice and cosy," said Sarah. "Where's Lisa?"

Chris gave Catriona a look. Catriona returned a quick shake of the head in warning and said, "She must be in the middle of something. I'll take her up some food in a minute."

"Tell her to take a break," I said. "I thought she had another three weeks before her exams started."

"She's got herself quite concerned she's not going to get the grades she needs for Cambridge, poor thing. She's working very hard."

"Well," said Chris, "if she hadn't put so much time into that show..."

"The show was good for her, dear. It helped take her mind off her school work. You could see just from the look on her face that she was enjoying performing."

Chris snorted. "And being surrounded by boys."

"Better she gets used to that now..." I said, half to myself.

"Better than what?" asked Chris pointedly.

"Well, er... She's very..." I tried to find a delicate way of pointing out to my niece's parents that she is, in fact, smoking hot and bound to be surrounded by drooling teenage boys the second she arrives at any university. "Er..." I wished I'd sipped at my wine rather than gulping. A thousand inappropriate conversational gambits opened up before me all at once.

Sarah came to my rescue. "I think Ed's trying to say that after so many years at an all-girl school, the chance to interact with a large number of hormonally-challenged males in the controlled environment of Malton House was probably useful preparation for Freshers Week, wherever she happens to end up in a few months time."

I remembered why she's in PR but I felt it was best to hurriedly change the subject anyway. "Yes and she played the piano very well. I thought Ned's scenery was excellent, though."

"I didn't know you saw the show, Ed," said Catriona.

"I caught some of the dress rehearsal while I was reconfiguring a bunch of laptops."

Chris and Catriona both frowned at me like I'd suddenly started speaking Dutch.

"You know, as part of my job..." This didn't seem to help their comprehension. "...doing IT support..." For some reason, they still weren't getting it. "...at Malton House..." Still nothing and I'd run out of sensible clarifications. I pressed on regardless. "...the wacky school full of hormonally-challenged males you send your son to."

"What?" said Chris

I turned to Ned who'd been keeping a low profile while shovelling all the food he could reach into his mouth. "Didn't you tell them I was working at your school?"

"I forgot," he said, nearly spraying me with rice.

"Did you forget to tell them you were good at art as well?"

"What?" His eyes widened in fear over where I was going with this but he couldn't really say much else without choking. We'd had a conversation about his future the previous week and I'd promised to talk to his parents on the subject. I think he'd kind of assumed I'd do it when he wasn't there, however.

"He's really good at art," I said to Chris and Catriona.

"Oh, yes, he always has been," said Catriona. "He gets it from me. Chris couldn't paint a fence, could you, dear?"

"The front gate needs painted," chuckled Chris. "Maybe Ned could make himself useful doing that."

I took another deep breath, restrained myself from slapping him and tentatively got to the point. "I was thinking more that, rather than sending him away to boarding school in the hope of improving his science grades, it might be worth letting him stay here and concentrate on art and design."

Chris dismissed the notion with further laughter. "A few hours with you and his marks have already got better. Get him away from distractions, give him some exercise and a bit of discipline, and he's bound to knuckle down."

"It's been more than a few hours - he's had months of one-on-one tuition and he's tried hard. At this stage, I don't feel that being shouted at to go on cross-country runs is suddenly going to unlock some previously undiscovered talent for maths. He doesn't have one."

"Heh!" said Ned, finally managing to swallow.

"Am I wrong?" I said, shrugging. "Do you want me to order you out for a jog and then force you to do trigonometry badly in order to prove the point?"

He thought about this for a surprisingly long time before making the sensible decision. "Nah."

"But..." Chris was beginning to realise I was being serious. "Art?"

I could see the mental calculations going on behind his eyes. He was figuring out how much it would cost to support his very own struggling Damien Hurst for an indefinite number of decades. I pressed on quickly before he was blinded by a large string of zeroes. "I'm not suggesting he goes and locks himself in a garret to work on some unappreciated masterpiece while living on nothing but own-brand Corn Flakes and absinthe. There are plenty of career opportunities. For instance, these days computer games need more artists to make them than they do programmers. Probably quite a few more. And, believe me, he'd make a better artist than a programmer. There are lots of other possibilities as well, aren't there, Ned?"

"Yeah."

For some reason, I'd been hoping for a bit more back up than that but it was clear Ned was more than happy to let me do the talking. I felt it might be worth giving him an opportunity to fight his own battle, however, and if I could be out of the fallout zone, so much the better. It was time to run away. "Why don't you tell your parents what's out there then?" I said, picking up a spare plate of food and some cutlery. "Is this for Lisa? I'll take it up." I paused only to glug a little more wine and then made my escape.

"Er... ... ..." I heard Ned mumble as I went out the door. "S'pose there's website stuff..."

Feeling only mildly guilty, I headed upstairs and hunted out Lisa's room. It had a flowery nameplate on the door which looked like it had been there since she was seven. I couldn't hear any noise from inside but the light was on and so I knocked. This caused a gasp, two small thuds and some frantic rustling.

"Who is it?"

"Uncle Ed."

"Oh... OK. Come in."

The room was very white and scarily tidy - tidy in a way that suggested the occupant had taken to meticulous cleaning in an effort to avoid doing something else. Lisa was sitting at her desk, a couple of chemistry books and some notes spread out before her.

"I brought you your tea," I said.

"Thanks."

I walked over and put the meal on the desk. "What are you studying?"

"Organic reactions."

"Oh, lovely."

"Not really."

I pointed to a sign she'd stuck on the wall behind her desk. It was level with her eyes as she sat studying and it read 'CONCENTRATE!'.

"Does that work?"

"No."

The limited communication was beginning to get to me. "Have you been taking conversational tips from Ned?"

She smiled for the first time since I'd enter the room but it didn't last. "Sorry. I'm just, you know, thinking about chemistry and stuff. I should be doing English but I fell asleep yesterday evening and lost two hours so I had to rewrite my revision timetable and now I'm doing chemistry. I might be more talkative if I was doing English."

"You haven't been doing any work, though, have you?"

She reacted like the revision police had arrived and they could read her mind. "How...?"

"Woh! Relax. I heard you get your books out when I knocked, that's all."

She didn't relax much. "Oh."

"So," I said, "what've you been doing instead? Staring into space or panicking on Facebook?"

"Staring into space," she replied glumly.

"Ho well." I tried cheering her up. "You might as well come downstairs and take the evening off then. I obviously can't guarantee boundless fun but Marie would be delighted to see you and there's a good chance you'd get a glass of wine and an opportunity to make me look foolish playing Wii Tennis."

"I can't," she said, dutifully turning back to her books. "I need to do some work. I'll be OK once I get going."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Well... OK..." I reluctantly started to leave but then turned and watched her for a moment as she tried to eat while reading. Neither activity seemed to go particularly smoothly.

"I got a place at Oxford," I said.

She looked up with a mixture of interest and confusion. "I thought you went to St Andrews."

"I did. I just found the whole place much more pleasant when I went to visit, so I decided to go there instead."

"Didn't your parents freak? Mum and dad have told everyone I'm going to Cambridge. They'll go mad if I don't get in."

"Don't worry about them. My school was pretty annoyed when they heard I'd messed up their statistics by turning down an Oxbridge place but when speech day came around they spun it into an example of how they produced pupils with courage, conviction and self-confidence. I'm sure your parents will manage to make whatever you end up doing sound impressive to their friends."

"I don't want them to have to lie."

"Who said anything about lying? They think you're great and that's just naturally going to colour everything they say."

Lisa perked up. "Really?"

"Uh-huh," I sighed. "Within minutes of the first time I met them, they were showing me a video of your nursery Nativity play. You were a snowflake and only came on for thirty seconds but they were talking up your talents even then."

She blushed. "Sometimes I wish they'd stop."

"Yeah," I grinned, "you're not the only one. A little less perfection from you might give us all a break."

"Hey!" she said, a proper smile finally shining through, even as she pretended to be offended.

"What? You want me to lie now? Come on, why don't you close the books again and join the rest of us. I'm sure taking an evening off won't make much difference. Besides, you might want to come down and put some of that talent to use sticking up for your not-so-perfect brother."

"What's he done now?" she said, grabbing her plate and following me towards the door.

"Nothing. I just forced him into a situation where he might have to talk to your dad."

"That was mean."

"It was for their own good."

"That's all right then," she said as we started down the stairs. "What did you bring for dessert?"

"Cake."

"What kind of cake?"

"Can't remember. It came in a box. Does it matter?"

"Not much. Cake is good."

"Excellent."

We braced ourselves and entered the kitchen. Everyone was shouting at each other, Marie was wearing the wine and the boys had carrot sticks in their ears.

Boy, did we need that cake by the end of the meal...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: Ned

 
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here.


7:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  The cellar

Dear Dave,

My twinges of illness the other week never amounted to very much. I ended up being so busy preparing for Lewis' party that I didn't have time for the plague. This week, though, I feel like my limbs and eyelids have lead weights attached and I'm just stumbling along in the direction of the school holidays. Last year at this time, with Easter being early, we were already away on our infamous trip to Bruges. This year's spring term seems dragged out in comparison. We could all do with a break to recuperate. Everything is an effort and I'm so tired I can barely rub two words together in a straight line.

This is strange because I've recently had more sleep and less to do than at most other points in the last nine years. I think my body has realised there's under six months until Marie starts full-time education and it has already begun to shut down higher brain functions in preparation for being able to lie on the sofa groaning for six hours a day. (I don't have huge expectations for what I'm initially going to achieve with my extra freedom...)

This lethargy is reminiscent of the way nothing much gets done in school during the final days of term because everyone's exhausted and can't see the use in starting anything anyway. Far better to wait and begin fresh after the holiday. In the meantime, the teachers get to tidy the cupboards while the kids watch The Lion King on DVD.

I'm not at the stage of playing Marie looped Disney yet but that point may not be far off. Getting all my children through their pre-school years has been a lengthy process - who knows how long the wind down will be?

Malton House (my nephew Ned's school where I do IT support) finishes on Friday and there's not much work being done. The boys have been sitting around playing their PSPs most of the week and the cupboards are looking pristine. I've taken the chance to pull members of the computer club out of class so they can learn important employment-related skills such as problem solving, customer interaction and task management. Essentially, I've been ordering them about, getting them to do my job for me. We're making great progress. I reckon almost three-quarters of the computers at the school are now vaguely doing what they're supposed to. Result!

I was there yesterday, patrolling the corridors in search of malfunctioning technology, when howls of annoyance erupted from a nearby classroom. I peeked through the glass in the door and saw a load of teenage boys waving handheld consoles around above their heads in a frustrated fashion.

I sighed and drew my walkie-talkie out of its holster in preparation for what was to come.

Almost at once, the voice of the school secretary crackled out. "Computer Guy, this is Dispatch. We have a 5-27. The headmaster's internet connection is down. I repeat, internet connection down! Respond immediately."

"Dispatch, this is Computer Guy. I am en route. Estimated response time is three minutes. Priority one."

I started jogging along to the photocopying room. Technically, running in the corridors is against school rules but there was no telling what the headmaster might get up to without the distraction of the web. The previous time he'd lost access to live chat about embalming badgers, he'd organised a lengthy staff meeting to stress the importance of keeping the pupils supervised at all times. With the teachers out of the picture, it was left to me and the secretary to keep things under control. The boys ran riot. The only way to regain control was to set the dinner ladies loose on them. In the ensuing chaos, there were several breakages and a number of minor injuries. One of the greenhouses went missing. (It was subsequently discovered on the rugby pitch with the head of biology's car parked inside. We had to delay the search, though, while we waited for someone to own up for summoning a rather irate mountain rescue team.)

Unwilling to repeat that incident, I hurried to reach the main router, my backpack of spare parts, manuals and Duck tape jingling as I went.

I knew exactly what the problem was.

Sure enough, when I reached my destination and picked my way past boxes of toner and some large pot plants, I found the router just as I'd left it, apart from one small difference:

The cable was back in.

This cable has been giving me gyp for a while. It's an unassuming black wire which sneaks stealthily out of a hole in the carpet in the corner of the room and hides behind furniture on its journey to an almost out of reach port at the back of the router. It would be easy to ignore.

Well, that's to say, it would be easy to ignore if it didn't occasionally suck the school's entire bandwidth dry and cause everything to crash. Whenever I unplug it, however, it's mysteriously reconnected by the next time I check.

Wise to this, I've rigged up a secret camera.

After disconnecting the cable and rebooting the system, I opened a drawer, pulled out the laptop that was recording images and had a look at the footage. Most of it was of an empty room; much of the rest was photocopying. A couple of minutes was of a pot plant edging in from the side to block the shot while someone I couldn't quite identify plugged the cable back in. There was a pause. Then the pot plant wobbled shiftily out of the way again.

I considered moving the camera to a different location but I figured it wouldn't do any good. My prey was apparently smarter than that. My only option was to try to determine where the cable went. Lifting the carpet slightly, I discovered the wire disappeared into a small cast-iron grating in the floor. I took my torch out of my backpack and shone it down. There was a vent below which descended into the depths.

I was going to have to investigate the cellar.

I sighed but I was resigned to my fate - I'd known for a while I'd have to go there sometime. I'd noticed a number of pupils wandering in that direction go quiet and take a sharp turn on seeing me. Equipment in the vicinity of the door had a tendency to disappear. I'd even spotted Mr McIntyre sneaking down there with heavy packages a couple of times. Something was clearly going on... but I'd thought it safer not to ask. I'd also put off checking for myself because, quite frankly, it's dark down there and there are some pretty huge spiders.

Still, it had begun to impact on my job, so I couldn't put it off any longer. Reluctantly, I headed towards the kitchens. I passed through the old ballroom of the vast Georgian building as I went. It now serves as an assembly room and it was the only part of the school showing any signs of industry. Preparations were in full swing for a production of My Fair Lady in conjunction with the girls' school down the road. Lights and props were being arranged and the final adjustments were being made to the sound system as the band practised. I waved to my niece, Lisa, who was playing the piano. She smiled back. A fourth year boy had the misfortune to be walking between us and tripped over his own feet as a pretty girl beamed in his direction. The pile of books he was carrying rained down around him. I helped him up, waved to Lisa again and hurried on.

The side corridor leading to the cellar was empty as I approached but the door was slightly ajar and a naked bulb somewhere below cast a dim light onto the stone steps.

I hesitated before proceeding. There could have been anything down there. Images of crocodiles, giant serpents, aliens and excitable barbers flashed through my head. It was probably best to let someone know where I was going.

"Dispatch," I whispered into my walkie-talkie, "I'm entering the cellar. If I don't check in within half an hour, please send back up. Over."

"Copy that, Computer Guy. Be careful down there."

"I intend to be. Computer Guy out."

I prodded the door open cautiously and crept down the steps. It wasn't as dark as I'd imagined, nor dank and full of chained skeletons. The first chamber was piled high with old-fashioned desks and some very uncomfortable looking chairs. Three tunnels led out of the room but one was going entirely the wrong way and another was pitch black and the light switch didn't do anything. I took the third option, even though I could hear hammering from that direction. It didn't sound particularly frenzied or extra-terrestrial in nature but I picked up a leg from a broken table and hefted it like a baseball bat, just in case.

An absolutely enormous arachnid winked at me from its dusty web in a corner of the ceiling.

After a couple of twists, the tunnel ended in a wooden door. The hammering emanated from within. I wasn't very sure I was below the photocopying room and I contemplated turning back. I didn't much fancy venturing into the darkness of the alternative route, however. I dithered and then opened the door...

I found myself face-to-face with a life-size plywood cut-out of a horse.

While I was still blinking in confusion, my nephew Ned popped up from behind it with a hammer in his hand. "Oh, s'you," he mumbled and went back to nailing a support into place.

"Er..." I replied.

Ned finished hammering and came round to my side of the horse to add some details with a small pot of black paint.

"Don't you have some revision to do?" I said weakly, putting down my makeshift club.

Ned shrugged. "Shouldn't you be fixing some computers?"

"Yeah, very funny, I am actually working, thank you very much - I'm trying to track some cable. You, meanwhile, have only a few weeks until some exams, the failure of which will result in you being sent to a boarding school so far north it might as well be the dark side of the moon with added heather. Why have you snuck off to paint a horse?"

"S'for the show," he said.

"Oh, OK..." I couldn't shout at him for doing something he was supposed to be doing. I was confused, though. If he really was supposed to be doing it, then... "Why are you hiding in the cellar?"

Ned continued to paint. "Only place I get left alone."

"Are you being picked on again?" I said, keen to find out what was going on but becoming conscious I was asking a teenager lots of questions. If I pressed too hard, he was simply going to shrug me off.

"I wish. Everyone's my friend now."

This seemed unlikely but I waited and he didn't elaborate. I was forced to continue interrogating him. "How come?"

"Lisa's in the band this year."

I began to glimpse the problem. "Oh..." Lisa was a pretty girl dropped into a school full of boys who thought the easiest way to her phone number was through her brother. The teachers had no doubt also pointed out on several occasions what a talented musician she is. Ned doesn't like school much but at least it's the one place he's normally free from being outshone by his popular and overachieving sister.

There was another pause as I wondered what to say. In the end, I was distracted by the horse. "This is really good. Did you do it all yourself?"

He grunted in a positive sort of fashion.

"I didn't know you were good at art."

This didn't go down well. Despite having his back to me, there was something in the manner he tensed up that meant I could tell he was scowling. "Yeah, doesn't seem anyone does."

"Sorry," I said without much conviction. Given his normal reluctance to communicate, how was I supposed to know he could paint? Nonetheless, I'd obviously touched on a sore point. "Want to talk about it?"

He shrugged. "Not really."

There was silence...

...and then a bit more...

I decided to cut my losses and abandon the subject until another occasion. "Right, I'd better go find out who's stealing the broadband."

"It'll be Mr McIntyre."

"I guessed that. Where is he?"

"Left at the bottom of the stairs."

It figured. That was the tunnel with no light. "What's he doing down here?"

"Dunno," said Ned. "Can I come look?"

"I suppose so," I said and we headed off

The spider was nowhere to be seen when we reached the room of abandoned furniture. This made me nervous. I tried the light switch for the tunnel a couple more times but nothing happened. Taking out my torch, the beam felt tiny and weak as I shone it along our path, illuminating only a short stretch of flagstones before being eaten by the gloom.

"Why've you got a torch?" asked Ned.

"I spend half this job under desks fiddling with wires. I get fewer electric shocks when I can see what I'm doing... Want to go first?"

"Nah."

"Fair enough..." I started forward slowly, keeping an eye out for trouble. The aliens and crocodiles in my head had been replaced by pit traps and giant, rolling boulders...

"Don't move!" said Ned sharply.

I nearly leapt out of my skin. "What?"

"Spider."

"Where?" I said, swinging the torch around in a panic.

"On your back."

That finally got me to stop moving. "How big is it?"

"Flippin' enormous," said Ned, scooping it up in his hands and shoving it close to my face so I could take a look. "There. I think it winked at me."

"I have a phobia of spiders," I said, backing away.

"I know." He grinned and put the spider in amongst the pile of chairs.

I muttered various things under my breath. Then, once I'd regained my composure, we pressed on. The tunnel snaked along past cupboards and storerooms for some distance before ending in a door. Bright light and the hum of electronics seeped out from underneath.

"This must be it," I said, lifting the latch and letting us in.

I was expecting to find Mr McIntyre reclining with a beer in front of a huge telly. (That's what I'd be doing if I had a secret lair in a dingy cellar.)

I really wasn't counting on discovering a classroom.

Far from being dingy, it was well-lit and nicely carpeted. The walls were lined with bookshelves and cabinets, there was a vending machine and an overhead projector was displaying a spreadsheet. The place was kitted out better than most of the rooms upstairs, in fact - it had everything apart from windows. There was no sign of Mr McIntyre but around thirty boys were sitting in rows, their eyes fixed on the computer screens in front of them as they moved mice around frantically.

"What's going on here?" I said loudly.

Barely anyone stirred. Only the boy nearest me looked up briefly. "Business studies, sir."

"In the cellar?" I stepped round behind him to see what he was working at. "Hang on, you're playing World of Warcraft."

"Nah," said another boy from the back of the room, "that's Age of Conan, sir. This row is World of Warcraft."

He was right. I checked the screens and the pupils were playing everything from EverQuest to Second Life.

It was turning into one of those days where I was getting used to being confused. "OK, let's try this again. What exactly is going on here?"

"Practical session," said the first boy. "We're running a company providing goods and services to players of massively multiplayer online games."

It took me a moment to work out what he was talking about. "Oh! You're playing the games and then eBaying the virtual loot for real cash."

"The marketing department doesn't like it put like that, sir, but that's the idea."

"Cool," said Ned, slouching over to an empty workstation. "Can I have a go?"

I dragged him away. "Don't even think about it. You've got a horse to paint and exams to revise for. The last thing you need is an online addiction." I pointed him in the direction of the door. "Off you go."

Ned turned and almost walked into Mr McIntyre - a short, wiry man with a bald head and a grey goatee. He always gives the impression of having had a previous career as a stage magician. I suspect it has something to do with the way he flourishes his black teaching gown and projects his voice in a melodramatic fashion.

"I see you've found my little sweatshop at last," he said, entering the room.

"I guess now I know what's been straining the school's internet connection," I sighed. "I take it you've been upstairs plugging the cable back in."

"But of course."

"I also presume you realise you're not going to get away with running a gold farming operation down here any longer."

Mr McIntyre chuckled theatrically. "Don't be so foolish - this scheme helps keep the school solvent and us all in employment. Diversification! That's the watch word in these troubled times. And what resources do we have? Copious computer equipment bought by the PTA that we don't really have a use for and a whole load of teenage boys. Putting them together is a simple act of fiscal common sense."

"Are you saying the headmaster knows about this already?"

Mr McIntyre squirmed a little and lowered his voice. "He knows there's money being made but I told him I hooked up generators to the boiler and we're selling the electricity to the National Grid."

"You convinced him you're making a profit from heating the building?"

"It seemed easier than explaining about creating pretend gold to sell for hard currency."

I considered this. "You're maybe right... But you can't keep using the pupils as slave labour and claim it's work experience! It's not... I... Er..."

Mr McIntyre pressed a key on the laptop on his desk and the overhead projector started showing a live feed from the security camera in a maths classroom. Several members of the computer club were busily upgrading Windows on a clutch of PCs there.

"Drat," I muttered. "I was hoping they'd have finished there by now and moved on to the chemistry labs... Er... What was I talking about?"

"You were saying something about not exploiting the pupils."

"Oh, yeah..." I couldn't help feeling I'd not so much lost the moral high ground as fallen off it. I started to show myself out. "Never mind. I'll go read a book on networking and figure out how to stop the system from going down all the time, shall I?"

Mr McIntyre nodded. "That would be most appreciated."

"And how about a light bulb for this corridor?" I added, peering into the gloom once more.

"The darkness helps keep prying eyes away and illumination is unnecessary - there is never anything here." He went into the tunnel and felt his way forward with his arms stretched out to either side. He was quickly lost from sight. "It's perfectly possible to navigate one's way without... Argh!" There was a crash and a thud.

I flipped out my torch and shined it in his direction. He was sprawled over a lawnmower that hadn't been there earlier.

Mr McIntyre picked himself up and brushed himself down. He was unhurt. "What is it with this school and wandering gardening equipment?" he grumbled and then strode off again.

Ned and I looked at each other.

"Can't wait for the holidays," said Ned.

"Tell me about it," I agreed and we followed the teacher back to fresh air and daylight.

The spider winked as we passed...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: Ned

 
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10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Computer Guy

Dear Dave,

Thanks for asking how my new job at Malton House School is going.

I suppose the answer depends on how you want to look at it. As a low stress return to the world of work, it's been pretty good. I potter about tinkering with gadgets, I get to choose my hours, and a whole load of shifty teenagers have to call me 'sir'. On the other hand, I have to wear a tie and in the three weeks since I took on IT support duties, I've managed to get precisely two computers working properly. This is partly because I'm only managing ten hours a week but mainly because computers are infuriating and temperamental at the best of times, let alone when they've been left at the mercy of a whole load of shifty teenagers. At my current rate of achievement, stuff is going wrong faster than I can fix it, and that's on top of the huge backlog of malfunctioning technology that already exists. Employing any objective scale, things aren't proceeding well.

Happily, however, the two computers I've tuned up are the ones used by the headmaster and the school secretary, so objectivity doesn't come into it. Mr Fitzroy has done nothing but beam at me since I brought the internet and the joys of online taxidermy chatrooms to his office. Mrs Cavendish, meanwhile, is delighted that it no longer takes her machine fifteen minutes to boot up in the morning. She even makes me cups of tea. As long as I'm polite and look reasonably smart, it doesn't matter if I fix anything else, my position should remain secure.

Still, it's best to look busy...

The other day I ran a basic diagnostic test on the computers in the language lab. This consisted of turning them on and seeing what happened. Of the twenty present, seventeen started up, two did nothing and one laughed evilly before challenging me to a game of Pac-Man for my soul. A little fiddling with wires brought one of the dead machines back to life and the other responded well to being hit very hard while no one was looking. I removed the final one (which referred to itself as 'The Grim Bleeper') and swapped it with a more cooperative machine in the English department. (They're less likely to notice anything's wrong.)

While I was finishing off this task, I got an emergency call.

As I'm always wandering about, if any teacher has a technical issue that needs urgent attention, they use the internal phones to contact the school secretary, who then alerts me by walkie-talkie. This happens so rarely, she'd be as well calling me on my mobile but where would be the fun in that?

Fortunately, Mrs Cavendish is a big fan of crime drama and is getting scarily into the concept. "Computer Guy this is Dispatch. We have a 3-10 in progress in room 14. Please respond."

"10-4, Dispatch. I'm on my way."

The walkie-talkie is less secure than the phones. Anyone could be listening in - pupils, neighbours, parents, aliens or, heaven help us, education inspectors. To overcome this problem, I've devised a set of codes to deal with most eventualities:

1-01 - Computer acting strangely.
1-02 - Computer barely working.
1-03 - Computer dead.
1-04 - Computer dead. Foul play suspected.
1-05 - Computer dropped out of window. Bring dustpan and brush.
2-11 - Cup of tea available. Bring biscuits.
2-21 - Cup of tea spilt on a computer. Bring straw.
3-10 - Teacher embarrassing themselves with poor grasp of technology. Assistance required.
4-15 - School secretary bored and wanting to play with walkie-talkies.
666 - Terminator robots in the building.
999 - Headmaster about to touch something electronic.

A 3-10 is a high priority, so I hurried along to room 14 to discover Mr Blakelock and his biology class with the blinds drawn, watching a documentary about the mating habits of baboons on a large TV/DVD combi that had been wheeled to the front.

"You got it working then?" I said, speaking over the sounds of excited primates.

Mr Blakelock shook his head. "No, I can't make the disc play. None of the buttons do anything."

"Where's the remote?"

"Can't find it. It's not in the usual place."

I started poking at the telly. "OK, some joker has turned the panel lock on." I rooted around in my backpack for a universal control and some codes. "Give me a minute." After a couple of attempts, I managed to get the TV to respond and show me a menu. A little more faffing and we were in business. I tried the DVD but, confusingly, Jeremy Kyle came on, complete with participants screaming about DNA results and a small fight. "Oh, sorry, I thought I had it there." I made to press some more buttons.

"Stop! That's it," said Mr Blakelock. "That's where we got to yesterday."

"Er... Really?"

"Yes, thanks. You've been a great help."

I shrugged. "Oh, OK, I'll leave you to it then. You should be able to use the buttons on the TV now until the remote turns up..."

I was barely out the door before I had an unprecedented second emergency call of the day. It was a 999. I scurried to the headmaster's office as fast as I could.

* * *

"You have some experience with programming, I believe?" said Mr Fitzroy. He didn't look up from his screen but the stuffed animals arrayed around the room stared hard at me in his stead.

"Yee-es..." I said cautiously. Technically he was correct, but my programming skills are very rusty. I was also nervous why he was asking.

"Good. Good. Perhaps you can help me with this then?" He waved a packet of biscuits at me.

"Perhaps..." I was pretty certain I could help him with those, although I couldn't entirely see their relevance.

"Excellent." He pushed his chair back from his desk and motioned me to the computer. "Mr Everett was unable to procure Custard Creams for the refreshment table in the staff room this week and opted to buy HobNobs as an alternative. The difference in price needs to be taken into account when calculating the amount each member of staff owes to the kitty. Mrs Reynolds has also brought it to my attention that she doesn't like HobNobs and Mr Jacobs has made it known that he will be drinking tea rather than coffee until such time as the Custard Creams are reinstated. If you could make the necessary amendments to the programme to reflect these changes, that would be most helpful."

I sighed. This was why I'd negotiated my own private supply of biscuits as part of my pay deal. "OK, I'll take a look," I said.

"Mr McIntyre is normally responsible but he's not answering his phone. It's possible he may be in the cellar again."

"Ah, yes, about the cellar..." I began but then got immediately distracted by the grid of numbers and words on the screen. "This isn't a programme."

"No?"

"No. It's a spreadsheet."

The headmaster's brow furrowed. "Does that present any problems?"

"Well... I guess you can embed formulae and bits of code into the fields so that the entries are dependent on each other, making it like..." I trailed off as I realised the headmaster was already staring out of the window. "Er, never mind... This appears to be where the price of the biscuits goes. I'll just alter it, change what people are having, click on re-calculate and... Oh..."

The computer suddenly started to hum loudly, as if in deep concentration, and whole columns of words and numbers flickered and changed and then flickered some more. This process went on for some time. I began to suspect that the screen I was looking at was only one small part of something much more complex.

"Does this spreadsheet do anything else besides work out what the staff need to pay for their elevenses?" I asked.

The headmaster broke away from warily eyeing a lawnmower that was standing unattended in the middle of the lawns. "Oh, it has many uses. The accounts, the procurement schedule for consumables, that sort of thing."

I scrolled around a little. There were entries for almost everything - school attendance, gross income, parking space allocation, what colour of socks to wear, when to listen to Radio 4 and which pupil to blame in the event of a fire. One box was titled 'First to be sacked when the money runs outs'. I watched as my name flickered up briefly and was then replaced by 'The entire chemistry faculty'.

I stepped away from the computer, deeply afraid to touch it any further. "I think that's sorted it," I said, trying to sound convincing. "You might want to get Mr McIntyre to check over it anyway. I've, er... just remembered I promised to help Mr Gardner with his printer." This was stretching the truth slightly, since I hadn't actually made a firm commitment to any time-frame on the promise, but I was keen to get away and forget everything I'd seen.

"I wasn't aware there were any printers in room 7."

"I thought he was in room 10."

"Ah, perhaps that's the case," said the headmaster. "Let me consult the timetable."

I was expecting him to pull out a dog-eared weekly planner from a drawer. To my horror, he scrolled to another part of the spreadsheet.

"My mistake," he said. "He is in room 10. You'd best hurry along and I..." He peered in consternation at the screen. "I suppose I shall have to inform the second year that they no longer have woodwork at this time on a Tuesday and should change immediately for hockey practice..."

* * *

It was lunch-time before I figured out that Mr Gardner's printer needed to be switched off and on again three times and then have a random sequence of buttons pressed on its control panel in order to make it function properly. Luckily, since Marie had gone to visit a friend after nursery, I didn't have to rush home. I collected my coat and took a leisurely stroll through the building on my way to the main doors. It had been a relatively successful morning but I was starting to fret how I was possibly going to get the school's countless machines working without a horde of conscripts to help me.

Just then, I passed a classroom full of pupils with laptops. Every single one of them was concentrating hard, despite no teacher being present. This, in itself, was deeply suspicious.

I stuck my head round the door. "What's going on in here?"

"Computer club, sir," muttered one of the shifty teenagers.

All at once, I began to grin...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: IT, Ned

 
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10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Joining the Dark Side

Dear Dave,

Mr Fitzroy appeared to have entirely forgotten our previous encounter.

This was good.

I sat in his study at Malton House, my teenage nephew Ned's rather odd private school, and tried not to feel uncomfortable. It was a struggle, however - the chair was too hard, the room was too hot, I was wearing a suit, and a large number of stuffed animals were staring at me from high shelves. I couldn't help noticing that the baby crocodile on top of one of the bookcases still had sandwich crumbs glued to its teeth. Someone appeared to have tried to disguise the problem by posing the creature with its claws wrapped round one end of a bright pink toothbrush and with the other end near its mouth. The overall effect was to make it look like a novelty toy. I had a strange desire to put sunglasses on it and, as I squirmed on my seat waiting for the headmaster to speak, I sincerely hoped the little reptile wouldn't detect my movement and start waggling about singing Don't Worry, Be Happy. I ran my finger round my collar nervously.

"So..." said Mr Fitzroy eventually, drawing my attention back to him.

I jumped at the sight of his single enormous eye and spilt my tea.

* * *

It was all Ned's fault (in some passing, tangential fashion). As you'll recall, I'm tutoring him with his science and maths in an effort to improve his grades and avoid his parents sending him to an even odder educational establishment where early morning cross-country running is a compulsory part of the curriculum and that is situated just down the road from Brigadoon.

A couple of days before my trip to Malton House, Ned had done his practice maths exam and I'd been quite interested to hear how it had gone:

"Hi!" I said, letting him in for his usual mooch at our house after school.

"Ngh," he grunted in reply and made as if to go and play my Xbox.

I blocked his path. "How'd it go?" I was eager to know if all our hard work had paid off.

He shrugged and tried to get past. I stopped him. "You're going to have to try a little harder than that. How'd it go?"

"I dunno. All the computers crashed. We're going to have to do it again next week."

I was so surprised, I let him by. "What computers?"

* * *

"Do you require a cloth?" asked Mr Fitzroy.

"No, no," I said, wiping myself down with a hanky. It was black tea on a dark suit, so I was OK.

"Very well." He put down his tools and pulled at the enormous magnifying glass in front of him, swivelling it on its stand and moving it out of the way. When I'd first entered the room and spotted him working on something tiny with a fine-tipped brush, I'd imagined he was painting miniature soldiers. I could have related to that. But no, he was polishing a collection of beetles.

"So..." he said again and carefully took their case back over to hang on the wall. "You think you may be able to help us with our information technology arrangements?"

"Yes, my nephew tells me you don't have any IT support staff."

"Mr Harris, the computing teacher, is in charge of procurement, installation and maintenance."

"As well as teaching? He has to keep all the computers running in his lunch hour?"

"Not all of them," chuckled the headmaster. "The lab technician keeps an eye on the machines in the science block."

I wasn't convinced this improved matters much. "How many computers does Malton House have exactly?"

"Exactly?" The headmaster sat down again, poured me some more tea and turned his attention to stirring his own cup. "That would require some investigation. As with pupil numbers and lawnmowers, it's hard to keep track of such things. Nonetheless, we pride ourselves in embracing the modern age. I imagine we have several hundred personal computing devices around the school."

"You've got two people looking after hundreds of computers?"

The headmaster nodded, seemingly pleased that I'd noticed the high level of resources he'd devoted to the issue. "Then there's the Megatron 5000 in the cellar, of course."

"Of... course..."

"Yes, that's Mr McIntyre's pet project. Couldn't run the boilers without it..."

* * *

"You didn't mention anything about computers," I said as I followed Ned through to the glorified cupboard I use as a place to work and hide.

"We had to do the exam on laptops," he said, switching on the Xbox and settling down in the only chair.

I loitered by the door. "That doesn't sound like a good idea."

"Would have been OK if we'd got to type the answers."

"You had to do the exam on a computer but you weren't allowed to type?"

Ned stared at the screen intently as the game loaded up and he started to shoot things. "Uh-huh."

"Was it multiple choice?"

"Nah."

"Right. I don't understand. You're going to have to explain this in sentences of more than one grunt."

Ned let out a long sigh as if I'd asked him to do something as onerous as tidy his room or help with the washing up. Nonetheless, after a brief pause while he blasted some particularly resilient aliens, he did enlighten me further. "Head of maths signed up for some new course that's being tested out. We all had to do the exam on laptops. The questions were on the screen with a picture of a keyboard underneath and we had to click on that to write the answers."

"That must have been fun for putting in formulae and fractions."

Ned shook his head. "Not really."

"What about working?" I said. I couldn't believe anyone had come up with a system quite so daft. "Did you have to put in all the working like that as well?"

"They didn't want working. We had to do it in our heads until someone asked for some paper halfway through."

I banged my head off the wall. "That's crazy."

"At least the batteries in the laptop I had didn't run out."

"I'm not sure I want to hear the rest of this..."

"Then five minutes from the end, the computers started beeping to let us know that time was running out."

"Oh for goodness sake." I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. "How many of you were there in the room?"

"'Bout a hundred. And all the computers started the beeping at different times. It was loud, what with the people fighting over the four power sockets as well. Then time was up, we all pressed the button to send our answers and the server crashed. Everything got wiped."

"But... But..." It wasn't the worst designed computer system I'd ever heard of but, considering it hadn't actually killed anyone, it was running remarkably close. "Why? Why would anyone think that was a sensible way to do things?"

"Dunno. Mr Castleford said it was a test of our computer literacy. We've got to do it again next week."

I went back to banging my head off the wall - a little harder than before. "Let's hope they get someone who's computer literate to organise things this time."

Ned finally looked up from the game. "I thought you said you used to do stuff with computers..."

* * *

I'm not too sure how I went from phoning up with an offer of assistance in re-running Ned's exam to sitting an interview for a part-time technical support position (although I think it may have all started going wrong when I began talking about network redundancy to a man who refers to laptops as portable computing devices). One misunderstanding led to another and then there I was, sweating in a suit, talking up my suitability for a job I didn't even want.

"Does the Megatron run MVS?" I asked, bluffing. As far as I was concerned, a Megatron 5000 was a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner.

Fortunately, as far as the headmaster was concerned, it might as well have been. "I'd, well..." he began uncertainly, then recovered quickly, not wishing to look ignorant. "I'd have to look into that... but it's quite possible. Yes. Mr McIntyre regularly requests funds for the latest..." He fished for the correct term.

"Attachments?" I suggested.

"Quite. Xpods and such like."

I made a mental note to investigate whatever Mr McIntyre was really up to in the cellar but outwardly I smiled sagely. "Excellent. I have plenty of experience with MVS."

The headmaster nodded and perused my CV. As I'd hoped, he completely blanked my years of being a housedad. The concept was clearly beyond the natural order of existence as he understood it. Instead, he focused on my previous life in IT. "Yes, you seem very qualified. Very qualified indeed. But could you explain to me why we need someone to look after the computers? It's not as if it's necessary to task anyone with regular oversight of the televisions and microscopes. They simply work."

I stifled a giggle at the idea of computers simply working and tried to come up with an example of the regular attention they require that the headmaster would understand. "Erm... Who installs the anti-virus software on the school's machines?"

"Do we require such software?"

I couldn't help pulling a face. "Let me put it this way, does your computer do anything strange?" I sipped at my tea, trying to hide my expression.

The headmaster leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers against his cup in thought. "It used to make clucking noises whenever I touched a key..."

He trailed off as I choked on my tea. "That is strange," I muttered weakly, when I'd recovered.

"Ah, no, the odd thing is that it stopped doing it a few days ago without so much as a by your leave."

"It wasn't supposed to make those noises," I said, breathing deeply to retain my composure. "It probably had a virus."

"Really? Now it just makes a nasty juddering sound every so often and I can't seem to find any of the letters I wrote before last week."

I stoically drank more tea and toyed with the idea of asking if he'd made backups. In the end, I decided against it...

* * *

"Are you really going to do this?" asked Sarah earlier that morning as I stood in front of the mirror, trying to remember how to tie a tie.

"I'm not sure," I conceded. Working at Malton House wasn't exactly a dream of mine. Still, it was something to try and it was unlikely to be high stress. More than that, it was liable to make anywhere else I applied seem sane and desirable.

"You said you were going to spend some time planning your future." She handed me a different tie, one without teddy bears on it.

I shrugged. "This way I can get paid to do it while sitting around mindlessly installing software updates."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Anything to do with computers always takes twice as long as you expect. Is it going to be worth it?"

"Nope," I sighed, finally perfecting the knot, "but I should probably give it a shot to get back into the swing of things."

"Well, it's up to you," she said sceptically and then kissed me. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

I went to wake the kids. They all laughed at the sight of me in a suit.

* * *

Then headmaster offered me money.

Not good money exactly but money nonetheless. Earning anything after so many years of unpaid housedadhood was very enticing. Then I estimated how many hours I could feasibly work while Marie was in nursery (not many), how much I'd have to pay in national insurance and travel expenses (more than a bit), the amount of tax credits I'd lose (a lot) and the scale of work I was liable to be landed with (vast). A few quick mental calculations delivered a reward/effort ratio that was so small it fell out of my ear and disappeared through a crack in the floor.

Nevertheless, I needed to take the job at least long enough to get Ned through his exam. It was worth angling for some extra incentives.

"Beyond my wages and normal benefits, I'll require a bus pass, a personal supply of biscuits and permission to take equipment home with me to work on it."

Mr Fitzroy took a chocolate finger from a plate on his desk. "I'm sure that could be arranged."

"Excellent. For instance, does the school have a video projector?"

"I believe we have several. I don't think they're used very often - many of the teachers find them rather complicated." He snapped the chocolate finger in two and popped one half in his mouth.

"Ideal... I mean, I could take one away and experiment on the simplest ways to hook it up and operate it. Oh, and I'll need my own computer to use, something with a Blu-ray player and high-end graphics card. You know, just to make sure I can test whatever, erm... attachments the school might need."

"Very well. I will get Mr Harris to put you in touch with our supplier." He offered the plate to me. "Chocolate finger?"

* * *

Ned was slouching around by the main door as I found my way out.

"Did you get it?" he asked, hunched over, his hands in his pockets.

"Provided my references and security check are fine. I said I'd come in on Saturday and set up things for your exam. Want to help?"

"Nah."

"Tough. You got me into this. You might as well suffer too."

He perked up as a thought struck him. "Do I get paid?"

"As if... but I'll bring my Xbox along. If we get done in time, we can project the picture onto the end wall of the examination hall and play Call of Duty in huge. It'll be like our own personal IMAX."

This sold the idea to him but I couldn't stick around - I had to rush to get back in time to collect Marie from nursery. We made arrangements to meet up on Saturday and then I jogged off down the school's long driveway, waving goodbye over my shoulder.

As I departed the grounds, I encountered a small band of boys coming the other way. They nearly jumped out of their skins on seeing me but then relaxed when they didn't recognise me as a member of staff. In itself, this was enough to convince me they weren't supposed to have left the school. The feeling was reinforced, however, by their guilty looks and the large, heavy object under a black tarpaulin that they were carrying between them. I couldn't tell what it was but I hazarded a guess...

"Nice lawnmower," I said and hurried on past.

"Thanks," one of them called after me. Then his friends all slapped him round the head and told him to shut up.

I decided it was best not to look back and I ran for the bus instead.

That place is so weird. What have I got myself into now?

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: IT, jobs, Ned

 
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10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 6 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Learning to cook (again)

Dear Dave,

Yeah, you should probably eat something for lunch other than coffee, Krispie cake and whatever you happen to find down the back of Daisy's high chair while you're cleaning it. I'm not one to talk, though. If I have a cheese toastie and the limp remains at the bottom of a bag of salad, I consider that a balanced meal. I'm kind of hoping that eating the cores of the apples I chop up for the boys' packed lunches counts as one of my 5-a-day helpings of fruit and veg...

I go out of my way to make sure the kids have a healthy diet but by the time it comes to me, I'm usually out of motivation and energy. Also, chocolate bars taste good.

I can cook. That isn't a problem. I taught myself when I was a student and I've come a long way since I first arrived at my grotty accommodation armed only with a packet of cheese sauce, a cauliflower and a copy of Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. Quite why I thought cauliflower was a good place to start, I have no idea, but that night I learnt an important culinary lesson:

Almost everything tastes good when coated in warm cheese.

Dubious fish, soggy chips, wilting salad, dodgy burgers, stale bread, burnt Krispie cakes, anything (even over-cooked cauliflower) can be made edible with liberal coatings of melted cheddar.

This lesson helped me survive the initial few weeks as I experimented with recipes and techniques and generally got the hang of things. Since I took it in turns to cook evening meals with my flatmates and I didn't have to cook all the time, I could afford to go to town when it was my night. I made everything from lasagne to stilton soup to some strange vegetarian concoction involving lentils and a vast supply of aubergines. As the year wore on, I even learnt to cut corners. Three different kinds of meat in lasagne isn't essential, for instance. Neither is sieving the white sauce. Any recipe which asks you to sieve beetroot isn't worth starting.

Then I got married, got a job, began a family, became a housedad and lost several years somewhere. More corners were cut. It began with buying jars of sauce rather than making my own. Then it moved on to bags of frozen vegetables. In the end, I discovered ready-made frozen lasagne was cheaper than making my own and tasted almost as good. It also took a heck of a lot less time to prepare and didn't create anywhere near as much washing up.

It's been a while since I made anything from scratch other than birthday cakes and omelettes.

The other day I realised, however, that once again, life is moving on. I went to put the remote for the DVD recorder away on top of the TV unit with the other controls and suddenly wondered why I was bothering. The kids are now old enough that I can leave all the remotes on the table by the sofa without fear of them mucking about and accidentally over-writing the entire contents of the TiVo with forty hours of celebrities bickering at each other in a jungle. This has probably been the case for a year. It just never occurred to me before.

Similarly, I can keep eggs easily accessible in the special rack for them in the fridge door for the first time since Fraser was eighteen months and he decided to see if they bounce. (Hint: They don't.) I can also think about being a little more adventurous with food.

At the moment, the kids live on raw fruit and vegetables, various bread products, cheese, sausages, fish fingers, pasta, pizza and crackers. They've done so since they were small because Fraser hates sauces of every kind. Preparing anything complicated for him is a waste of time and ingredients. I don't have much incentive to persuade him otherwise either, since the kids need fed before Sarah gets home - I have to make one meal for them and one for us anyway, so I might as well make them simple stuff I know they'll all eat.

Lewis and Marie can often be convinced to eat normal, 'adult' meals, though, so some proper cooking at the weekend seems almost worthwhile. More than that, the children are now old enough to entertain themselves while I'm busy in the kitchen. There's no reason for me to feel I'm neglecting them by slaving over a hot stove to provide them with a tasty, nutritious masterpiece.

I can't quite be bothered yet but maybe sometime soon.

Another sign that life is moving on is that it's much more feasible for us to invite guests round for food. Getting the kids to bed is no longer a two hour operation which swallows the evening. Fraser can even get himself to bed without any physical intervention whatsoever. (Constant verbal goading is still mandatory but it's a step forward all the same.) Having friends over for dinner is possible once more without constantly having the conversation interrupted by crying babies, stroppy toddlers and pressing childcare issues.

In theory, anyway. Finding the energy is another matter...

Nonetheless, Sarah's sister Catriona and her husband Chris came over to visit with their teenagers Lisa and Ned the other Saturday. It was a while since we'd seen any of them other than Ned and it was definitely our turn to host. I met them at the door. The 2 Cs were dressed just far enough to the smart side of smart-casual to make me look shabby and Lisa had really pushed the boat out with a sequined blouse and plenty of make-up. Ned shuffled in, wearing his hoodie.

"We picked this up in Peru," said Chris, handing over a bottle wrapped in tissue paper. "The owner of the bodega recommended it himself. It's got rather an interesting taste; not like the normal stuff from Waitrose. It was made using traditional methods..."

"Child labour," grunted Ned, kicking off his shoes.

"For the last time," replied Chris, exasperated, "getting the children of the village to stomp the grapes during a festival is not child labour."

"Sounds like it."

"Listen, young man..."

Catriona interrupted them. "Ned, please don't wind your father up before we've even got our coats off."

I took the wine politely and resisted the urge to point out to Chris that the only thing I really cared about was what colour it was. I'd made that mistake on a previous occasion while he'd been telling me about his latest car.

"Do you have a whisk?" asked Lisa.

"Er..."

She waved a heavy shopping bag at me. "You wanted us to bring dessert. I'm going to make pavlova. I need a whisk."

"Pavlova? That's rather ambitious..." I'd been expecting them to pop into the supermarket on the way and buy a trifle or something.

"Don't worry. She makes it all the time," said Catriona. "She does most of the cooking in our house. I'm always having to travel to fundraisers, Chris gets home late and Ned can't work a tin-opener, so Lisa's had plenty of practice. Haven't you, dear?"

Lisa blushed and Ned sloped off to my study to play Tomb Raider. Chris and Catriona went upstairs to find the others in the lounge. I hunted around and found a whisk. Lisa eyed it up suspiciously, tested its weight, wiggled the loops a little and then frowned. "Do you have a different whisk?"

As it happened, we did. The kitchen cupboards are full of obscure utensils and unlikely implements which I haven't touched in years. I hunted around amongst the fondue sets, baking dishes and cake tins and eventually produced a heavy-duty egg murdering device which was to Lisa's satisfaction. She set to work and I put together the ingredients I'd prepared for the lasagne I'd been making.

It shouldn't have taken me long but I'm out of practice. Somehow, Lisa finished first and made far less mess. She carefully put the pavlova on the bottom shelf of the oven and then asked, "Is there anything else I can do to help?"

"You could lay the table," I said, wiping white sauce off the toaster. I pointed to the drawers. "Cutlery is in there."

"What about napkins?"

"We don't use napkins."

Lisa looked at me like I was slightly strange. "Where do you keep the place mats, then?"

"Er... We don't use place mats either. We used to but Fraser kept trying to eat them when he was a toddler. Doesn't seem to be any point going back now. The table has survived fine and it would just mean more stuff to clean."

"Tablecloth?"

I didn't reply. I merely put the lasagne in to cook and left the room, chuckling to myself.

I went to check on the others. The boys had found Ned and dragged him off to play Nintendo. Marie was showing Catriona her collection of pink jewellery. Sarah was trying to appear interested as Chris told her about Peruvian wine. I sneaked away again.

I swear I was only gone ten minutes. Lisa had searched through the cupboards and found all manner of stuff I'd forgotten about - coasters, crystal wine glasses, some paper serviettes left over from a party, the good place mats (i.e. the ones without bite marks) and a flowery tablecloth. She'd set everything out immaculately. The serviettes had been folded into swans. I was amazed... and a tiny bit scared. I began to grasp why Ned has given up trying to compete.

The meal itself was chaos. Our kitchen is a reasonable size but getting nine people round a table which is only designed for six is pretty cosy. Fraser told Knock, Knock jokes he'd heard at school, Marie sang songs about the alphabet she'd learnt at nursery and Lewis felt left out and made up a story about a chicken that went through a door to cross the road and then exploded into a pile of 'M's.

Near the start, Ned tried some of the wine his mum offered him and his dad jokingly had a go at him for enjoying the output of an underage workforce. The lad didn't say anything after that. Chris and Catriona pretended not to notice and filled us in on all the wonderful things they'd been up to. Somewhere during dessert, Lisa was forced to tell us about her latest successes in the school orchestra and how well she thought the admissions test for Cambridge had gone.

Everyone was polite about the lasagne but it was the pavlova they had second helpings of. Then the kids vanished. All the boys disappeared to play computer games some more and Marie insisted Lisa help her get ready for bed. There was space and peace again. I made some coffee.

"How was Peru?" I asked over my shoulder as I filled the kettle.

"It was so encouraging watching the charity's work in action," said Catriona. "It will really help me focus appeals in the future."

"How did Chris get to go?"

"He joined me for a holiday at the end of the trip. Don't worry - it's all above board. He paid his own way."

"I didn't mean that, I, er... Was the weather good?"

"Very pleasant," said Chris. "Not so sure about the food."

Catriona nodded. "The scenery was spectacular."

"Yes," said Chris. "We brought the photos."

"Oh, good..." I couldn't think what else to say. Time was, that bringing photos meant handing round a couple of packets of prints, half of which were duplicates or out of focus. Everyone could dutifully shuffle through them in a couple of minutes each and those who were really interested could go huddle up a corner with the photographer and discuss the geographical features of the Andes to their heart's content. These days, bringing photos means a dozen memory cards crammed full of the bewildered faces of everyone encountered on the trip, the meals eaten, a million scenic views and at least two blurry videos - one of street theatre and another of an amusing squirrel. Everyone gets to watch a slideshow on the telly for an hour.

Sarah slyly made some excuse about checking on the children and slipped away. I couldn't blame her - she'd probably heard all the details of Peru while I was making dinner. The topic unexpectedly changed, though.

"Thanks for dealing with the trouble Ned had at school while we were away," said Catriona. "It was very good of you to speak with the headmaster about his behaviour. It must have been a trial fitting it in amongst all the school runs."

Chris laughed. "He was probably glad of the chance to get out and about. I know I'd go mad sitting around the house all day."

"Just ignore him, Ed," said Catriona.

"Uh-huh," I muttered, counting under my breath. I concentrated on making the coffee. "Do you take milk?"

Chris shook his head and took his mug from me. "Ned won't be any trouble again. I've had a few words with him. One more slip up and he'll been on his way to Lochinver Academy. They'll teach him what's what."

"I'm not sure a military-style boarding school in the Highlands is really the best idea. As I said on the phone, the fight wasn't entirely his fault. Besides, I thought the deal was that he could stay at Malton House if his science grades improved. They've picked up quite a lot."

"Because you're doing his homework for him."

"I'm tutoring him. I'm helping him understand and clarifying concepts. I'm not telling him what to write..." I thought back to the previous week and some difficulties with the combined gas law. "Er, much. Look, I know Malton House isn't that great but..."

Chris interrupted me. "It's a fantastic place - good academic results and large playing fields. They've turned out several rugby internationals and I work with a couple of old boys."

"The headmaster has a real vision for developing children," chipped in Catriona.

"It's not as good as Lisa's school, I'll admit," said Chris, "but it's not like Ned would have got in there even if he was a girl. Still, it is a good school. Whether it's the best school for Ned right now is another question. I don't think they're giving him what he needs."

I couldn't help agreeing with that. "Have you tried asking him what he needs?"

"He's a teenager. He doesn't know he's born, let alone what's good for him."

"Maybe..." I said but I thought loudly that it might be worth at least investigating before packing him off to boot camp. Telling other people how to raise their children is a tetchy subject, however. I wasn't up for a fight - certainly not without consulting with Ned first. I let the matter drop for the time being and brought out a box of After Eights.

Chris changed the subject again. "So, I hear you got to register Marie for school. What are you going to do with yourself once she starts? Have you learnt to knit yet?"

Catriona elbowed him in the ribs. "As I said, Ed, ignore him."

"What?" said Chris, smirking.

I gave them my usual spiel about having a lie down for a few weeks and then catching up on nine years worth of chores and Oprah. Sarah returned to claim her fruit tea and minty chocolates and let us know that the boys were in their pyjamas and Marie was in bed. We drank our hot drinks, chatted about this and that and then it was time to go upstairs to watch the squirrel. I grabbed another bottle of wine on the way. It was very cheap but, to be honest, by that point I didn't even care what colour it was.

Next time we'll have Rob and Kate round, play Wii Sports and order in a curry. It will be so much more relaxing.

Can't really see Rob making pavlova, though, which is a shame. That was tasty...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Remember to eat some vegetables this week.

Labels: Ned

 
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11:00 AM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Back to school

Dear Dave,

"This is Geoffrey Fitzroy, headmaster of Malton House," said a plummy, English voice. "I'm calling about your nephew, Ned."

I was caught by surprise. I'd been expecting it to be someone conducting a market research survey or a recorded voice promising me a holiday in Florida. I put down the cup of milk I'd been carrying and transferred the phone to my other hand so I could listen more carefully. "Is he OK?"

"Physically, yes - apart from something of a black eye - but I'm sorry to say I've had to suspend him from school for a couple of days. Could you possibly come in to collect him? I'd like to have a chat about his behaviour."

"Er..." I glanced across the kitchen at Marie. She was busy eating her lunch. She grinned at me and waved, a green bean protruding downwards from either side of her mouth as she pretended to be a walrus. I didn't fancy my chances of getting her through town in a hurry. "Wouldn't you be better talking to his parents?"

"I've just learned from Ned that they're currently in Peru."

"What!?" This was news to me. I immediately suspected that Ned was making it up to avoid his dad being called in. Then again, there was a possibility I'd been told about it and forgotten. (Chris and Catriona are always gallivanting about with their jobs and I've long since given up paying attention.) I decided it was safest to play stupid. "Oh... Really?"

"I'm afraid so. Yours is the emergency contact number."

I did remember agreeing to that. Admittedly it had been more than a decade previously, back when Ned was in nursery, but what could I do? "Fine," I said. "I'll be there in three-quarters of an hour."

* * *

I'd say that Malton House is an unusual place but I've yet to encounter a private school that isn't at least a tiny bit wacky. In this context, Malton House is pretty normal.

The original building is a crumbling Georgian mansion covered in ivy that's imposing but not awfully attractive. It's a stone box with a grand, pillared entrance and a shallow dome on top. It does, however, draw attention away from the profusion of portacabins and concrete science buildings which have sprung up around it over the years.

The grounds are fronted by a high wall and I headed through the main gateway with some trepidation. My memories of school are not good - I was afraid the iron gates would clang shut behind me and I'd suddenly find myself forced to endure Double German and then play rugby.

Oblivious to my nerves, Marie whizzed off down the tree-lined driveway on her little pink scooter and I was forced to jog after her. A sports field stretched away to our left and a lawn to our right. Across the lawn was a very dense clump of bushes and some thickly packed firs. Through the trees, I caught the occasional glimpse of a truly hideous architectural monstrosity lurking in the shadows beyond, hiding itself from scornful looks amongst the dank foliage while squinting longingly at the light.

My heart sank. The physics block had been banished. I really wasn't going to blend in during my visit to the school. I hadn't had time for a haircut but I began to wish I'd changed out of my baggy pullover and put on a shirt and tie.

As we reached the main building, a discrete sign labelled 'Administration' directed us to a side entrance. I knocked on the door and there was a muffled, "Come in," so I opened it tentatively and went into the cramped and cluttered office beyond. It was more a cubby-hole off the side of a corridor than anything else and it had been filled with a desk and filing cabinets. An older woman eyed me suspiciously from behind her computer monitor, peering at me over the top of her half-moon glasses as if I was about to waste her time. "Can I help you?"

"Er..." I began.

Then Marie piped up with, "I'm Marie. This is my daddy. We're here to get Ned. He's been bad."

The woman didn't even smile. "Quite," she said. "The headmaster is expecting you. Go on through."

"Thanks," I said and hurried down the corridor, carrying Marie's scooter in one hand and dragging her along with the other, hoping to get away before she could divulge any information which I might regret.

Marie kept a steady stream of witter aimed at the school secretary as we went. "We came here on a bus but we're in a hurry because we have to get back to collect my brothers from their school. One of my brothers is called Lewis and he's six. My other brother is called Fraser; he's eight. They don't have to pay for their school but it's just as goo..."

And we were round the corner.

The secretary must have buzzed ahead because the headmaster appeared to meet us. He was a cordial man with slicked-back white hair and a firm handshake who welcomed me into his study as if I was an important benefactor.

The room was less cramped than the secretary's office but just as cluttered. The walls were lined with bookshelves and glass-fronted cabinets. Along with a vast collection of leather-bound books, a strange assortment of museum pieces was on display. There was everything from a flintlock pistol to mounted butterflies to a full-size totem pole which filled one corner of the room. It was like being backstage at The Antiques Roadshow. Up near the high ceiling, a selection of stuffed animals scrutinised us from the top of the cabinets. I was strangely disturbed by an guitar-playing owl and a pussy cat in a pea-green boat. They had some honey, plenty of money and very surprised expressions.

I averted Marie's gaze as best I could.

Ned was already there, sitting hunched over on a chair in front of the headmaster's desk, his hands in his pockets. He grunted a hello and I sat beside him. The upholstery on the chair was threadbare, as was the carpet, and the whole place had a faint odour of decaying fabric and furniture polish.

The headmaster poured me some tea in a china cup and then returned his attention to the work on his desk which had obviously been occupying him before I arrived. I politely drank my tea as he finished gluing teeth back into the manky remains of a baby crocodile.

Marie ran over to Ned and gave him a hug and started telling him all about her day in nursery. "I played in the water tray with Amy but she made splashes and got us wet. She didn't put her apron on, though, and so she was wetter than me and Miss Nolan told her off for making splashes and not putting her apron on. Then I had a snack. It was pizza! I didn't drink all my milk, though. I only drank nearly all my milk and..."

Ned's good with her. He nodded and smiled in the right places even when she continued on for several minutes.

After a while, I began to get restless. I put my tea down and checked my watch. We didn't have long before we needed to catch the bus back. Fortunately, the headmaster took this as some form of cue and looked up from his repairs. "So?" he said, waving some tweezers at Ned. "What do you have to say for yourself, young man?"

I grabbed Marie and handed her a plastic tub with the remains of her lunch to keep her quiet.

"Collins started it," said Ned.

"Mr Jacobs quite clearly observed you throw the first punch."

"Collins was calling me names."

The headmaster dismissed Ned's words with a chuckle and a patronising smile. "Well, a little name-calling hardly seems like a reason to hit someone in the stomach."

Ned didn't reply.

I guessed there was more to it than he was letting on. "How long has he been calling you names?" I asked.

"How long have I been at this school?" Ned said bitterly. "I can't do anything without him and his mates laughing at me."

I pressed further. "Has he ever started a fight with you?"

Ned shrugged. "A few times."

I turned to the headmaster. Having been in Ned's shoes as a teenager, I had a fairly clear idea where this was going. "Is this other kid getting suspended as well or has he been put on the rugby team?" I asked.

"Collins does have an important match this afternoon," said the headmaster, confirming my suspicions, "but I fail to see the relevance." He put down his tweezers and leant back in his leather chair. "Did you report these incidents?" he asked Ned.

Ned shook his head.

The headmaster locked his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. "We cannot act on events we know nothing about. If you don't report such things, we cannot deal with them."

"Erm," I said. "He's reporting them now."

I got the full force of the patronising smile. "It's a little late in the day, don't you think? I require dates and witnesses and..."

He trailed off as we all suddenly spotted that Marie was trying to feed the crocodile a cheese sandwich. "I'm a walrus," she said with a grin full of green beans.

The headmaster simply stared at her.

We were onto a lost cause and I used the distraction to beat a retreat. "We have to go. Two days suspension, was it?"

Mr Fitzroy managed a nod as he poked at the sandwich with his tweezers. It wasn't going to come out of the crocodile's mouth without a fight.

"OK," I said. "I'll tell his parents exactly what happened. Let's go, Ned."

I bundled everyone out of the room without looking back. We weren't in that much of a rush but I was mildly worried in case the school had dogs and they were about to be set on us.

The secretary glared at us as we left.

Marie gave her two slightly-chewed green beans to cheer her up.

* * *

"Why didn't you say something?" I said as we sat down on the lower deck of the bus. "You've been round our house every other day for six months."

I was next to Marie; Ned was on the seat behind. I turned to face him as best I could but he was looking at his knees. "Were you bullied at school?" he muttered.

"Yeah."

"Did you tell anyone?"

He had me there. "Guess not," I said. Somehow he'd managed to answer my question in full without actually telling me anything. As Marie befriended an old lady across the aisle and told her all about the crocodile, I tried a different tack. "OK, so why'd you decide to hit that boy today? I'm not too happy at having to cover for you, by the way. Why'd you tell Mr Fitzroy that your parents are in Peru?"

"'Cos they're in Peru."

"What!?"

He shrugged. "They'll be back on Monday. Lisa's eighteen - they left her in charge."

Understanding began to dawn. "Of you?" I said.

"Yeah." He finally became animated as the injustice of being ordered about by his sister welled up inside him. "I have to clean my room and everything. She's got me arranging the food in the fridge by sell-by date and taking a shower every day. It's like living in Stepford."

It's true that my niece, Lisa, is something of an over-achieving control freak who scares normal people with her inhuman levels of enthusiasm and politeness... but she does mean well. I didn't want to be critical of her when she wasn't even present to defend herself. Also, having spent plenty of time around Ned of late, I was on her side about the showers. I tried to stay neutral. "Come on, she can't force you to smell nice."

"Mum and dad left her the cash. I can't do anything if she won't let me. I'm skint - I spent out on Big Macs last week." He saw my confused look and explained. "She got a home delivery and it was all salad and yogurt."

"Oh," I said. "I take it that this explains where my stash of crisps and chocolate biscuits has disappeared to recently."

"Sorry," he said. "Needed food." He opened his school bag to reveal a familiar looking pile of snacks. "Couldn't leave it in my room - she'd have found it and turned it into cat treats or, you know, given it to homeless people or something."

I sighed. Technically he should have asked before taking but I was simply glad to see the stuff. I'd been fretting over where I'd put it. I was certain I'd bought it and brought it home, so its absence from the kitchen cupboards had been worrying - either the mice had got hugely brazen or I'd got distracted and made a serious unpacking error with the shopping. After the washing machine and the bathroom cabinet had proved to be full of nothing but dirty clothes and toiletries respectively, I'd spent a couple of days checking my shoes for Mars bars before putting them on.

In my relief that I wasn't going barmy, I took pity on Ned. "You could always stay at ours for two or three nights."

"Yeah, please!" he said, delighted at the prospect (and at not getting another telling off).

"You'll have to sleep on an air bed in Fraser's room," I said, attempting to quell his excitement slightly, "and you'll definitely have to shower at least once during the visit."

"No problem."

"Right then." I was rather thrown that I'd suddenly got an overnight guest I hadn't been expecting. There was a bed to make and food to buy and goodness knows what else to do. Then I looked out of the bus and noticed we were passing near Ned's house. "You can get off at the next stop and pop home to collect your stuff."

"S'OK. I've got my iPod and I can play your Xbox."

"I was thinking of clean underwear and a toothbrush," I said. "Maybe some deodorant. That kind of thing."

Ned didn't look like he could be bothered.

I pressed the STOP button and jerked my head in the direction of the door. "Seriously. Go and get them or I'll feed you yogurt."

Reluctantly, he mooched off.

I relieved him of his school bag as he went past. "I can take that," I said helpfully. "Save you carrying it everywhere." He shrugged and gave it to me.

I think he was on the pavement before he realised that this meant I had all the biscuits.

I opened a packet of chocolate fingers and gave two to Marie. "Can I be a walrus again?" she asked.

"Of course you can," I replied and inserted a couple in the corners of my own mouth.

We banged on the window as the bus pulled away, just to make sure Ned saw us grinning and waving and impersonating aquatic mammals.

For some reason, he pretended not to know us...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: Ned, school

 
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10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Maths & Maturity

Dear Dave,

I've forgotten more maths than most people ever learn.

Once upon a time, I could utilise vector calculus, execute Fourier transforms and do all kinds of wizardry armed only with a pencil, paper and a selection of Greek letters. Using the four years of knowledge I accumulated studying for my physics degree, I could prove any number of theorems involving everything from electro-magnetism to the motion of stars. Some of these calculations involved assuming that the Earth is flat, others that it's a perfect sphere and a select few required both assumptions, a steady hand and a touch of dark magic.

Happily, my physics skillz were such that I didn't get confused and accidentally make time run backwards or anything unfortunate like that. (That happened down the corridor once. Three of my mates lost a minus sign somewhere, found themselves in 1985, nearly erased their own existences by convincing their younger selves to get trendy haircuts and unwittingly ended up inventing Back to the Future. It was messy.)

That was a long time ago. Now my maths is a little rusty. Basic trigonometry is a struggle.

"That's a right angle," I said, pointing to one corner of a tangle of straight lines in my nephew Ned's homework book. He was sitting at our kitchen table, his head in his hands, trying to solve the problem by sheer force of squinting at it.

Somewhere else in the house, there was a shriek and a thud.

"Everyone OK?" I called up the stairs to the lounge.

"Yes!" called back Lewis, as if surprised I was asking. "Yes," sighed Fraser, seemingly bored by having to give even that much of an answer.

There was a pause. "No," whimpered Marie. "The sofa was bad. It made me fall over."

"Er..." I said, contemplating going to check on them. "Are you all right, though?"

"Yes," she groaned. "I'll put the stool back now."

"Good," I said, deciding it was best not to know what she was talking about. "Be careful. I'll be up in a few minutes."

"OK," muttered Lewis and Marie in unison. Fraser didn't reply. Since this was a better response rate than normal, I left them to it and went back to the kitchen.

"I don't get it," said Ned, now squinting so hard it had to be making his forehead hurt. "How's it a right angle?"

I picked up a pencil and added a couple more lines to the tangle. "Does that help?"

He leant in close to the page, staring at the diagram, his nose almost touching the paper. "No," he said.

"Ah," I said, resisting the urge to yell, "It's totally obviously a right angle. Are you blind?" I felt that might not be too helpful. Besides, if he concentrated any harder, his eyes would clamp shut and his brain would shoot out his ears. I pointed elsewhere on the diagram. "It's a right angle because this is a right angle."

"How's that?" he said, one eye closing as he peered where I'd indicated.

I stood behind him with a couple of mugs, ready to catch any grey matter that tried to abandon ship. "It says so in the question. Those lines are perpendicular."

"What's that mean?"

"That it's a right angle."

"Oh..."

It was slow going but we persevered. Ned has rather strong motivation in that his dad's going to pack him off to a remote, military-style boarding school if his science grades don't improve. They'll make him take a cold shower and then force him to do algebra while being chased over the moors by a pack of Alsatians. Having me tutor him might be painful but it has to be better than that. He's not stupid. He simply can't seem to get to grips with equations.

We finished the question and took a break while I checked on the kids. The boys were playing computer games; the girl was filling a Little Mermaid sleeping bag with balloons while wearing two dozen items of pink, sparkly jewellery. I made a mental note to talk to them about gender stereotypes later and then sneaked back downstairs before they noticed I was there.

"What's the point of maths?" said Ned when I returned. He'd found the biscuit tin and was busy emptying it.

I grabbed a chocolate digestive while there was still time and considered the question. At a certain level, maths is vital to understanding the working of the universe. I couldn't really see Ned ever reaching that level, however. At another level, it's the basis of engineering, construction and making Lara Croft wobble in a pleasing fashion. I felt Ned could appreciate these applications but, again, they were likely to always be beyond him. He wasn't so much asking about the uses of maths, he was wondering what any of them had to do with him.

A practical demonstration was in order.

I reached into the pile of our recent mail and pulled out a credit card bill, intending to hand it over and ask, "Why do we pay this off in full each month rather than making the minimum payment?" Then I realised that:

• (a) It had my credit card number on it.
• (b) It listed a large purchase from HMV which he was bound to query.

The former was too much temptation to put in the way of a fifteen-year-old boy. There was a chance he'd make for Mexico and I'd never see him again. The latter might lead him to discover I was hiding ten series of Stargate SG-1 in the cleaning cupboard. If he found those, I might never be able to get him to leave. Neither of these scenarios was ideal (nor easy to explain to my wife).

I played it safe and gave him a mortgage statement instead. "Why are we paying this over fifteen years rather than twenty-five, even though the monthly payments are much larger that way?" I asked.

Ned screwed up his face. "'Cos it's done quicker?"

"Yeah... and?"

"Dunno."

"That's the point of maths," I said, circling some relevant numbers. "Try and figure out how much it costs in total interest over the different lengths of time."

Glumly, Ned set to work.

I suddenly felt horribly mature. I was forcing him to learn about mortgages. Normally we talk about computer games or films or I listen to him complain about his parents. We're close to being equals in those conversations. I'm nearly twenty years older than him but I'm more than ten years younger than his dad, Chris. I can often relate to Ned more easily than my sister-in-law's husband. Frankly, I usually choose too. I like to think of myself as the not-totally-uncool uncle.

Discussing compound interest didn't sit well with this image. I may wear the same style of clothes I wore in 1997 and they may, in a few instances, even be the same clothes, but it's becoming harder to disguise the fact I'm getting old.

I wonder how Ned actually sees me?

In first year at university, I did a theology course out of a mix of interest and a need to fill a gap in my timetable. It was full of mature students - middle-aged people who'd gone back to university to expand their minds and change the direction of their lives. (This was in contrast to the rest of us who were there to have a good time for four years while putting off giving our lives direction.) As such, they did all kinds of annoying things like read books, prepare for seminars and complain that the word limit for essays was too small.

The physics department didn't have many mature students. Maths is enlightening, beautiful and important. Unfortunately, it's also hard to follow and full of Greek letters. It's not ideal for discussing while drinking coffee in street cafés. (When mathematicians try it, waiters berate them about the diagrams sketched on the table with marker pen and natives of Bohemia laugh at their poor dress sense and ignorance of social conventions.) Few people get to a certain age, decide they don't like the way they're headed and think to themselves, 'Yes, I see it now! My life simply doesn't contain enough maths...'

In fact, we had just the one older student. He had a sign taped to the door of his room which read, 'Within lies the difference between age and maturity.' In general, he blended in with the eighteen-year-olds around him. Only the wrinkles and a touch of sense gave him away.

Another month and I'll be thirty-five, which is roughly the age he was at the time. I don't imagine I'd blend quite so well, however. The kids have blown it for me. On the one hand, I'd be telling the teenagers to look where they were going and to eat their food nicely. On the other, I'd be intimidated by their energy and confidence.

In some ways, I feel less mature than I did when I was a teenager. After Fraser arrived, I was sent a handbook on being a parent. I'm still waiting for the one on being an adult.

As we did sums, I thought about asking Ned his opinion of me but I didn't dare. I preferred to hang onto my not-totally-uncool illusions. That level of communication is probably beyond him for now, anyway. He'd have grunted something non-committal and then hoped for a change of subject. If I'd forced him to come up with a proper answer, the squinting would have caused permanent damage to his eyebrows and I'd definitely have needed those mugs.

We struggled with the mortgage calculations. They were harder than I was expecting and I'm not sure we got them right. Nevertheless they gave some idea of the huge pile of cash that my bank won't be getting. Ned was impressed by the number but he still wasn't convinced about his need for maths. Somehow, he knew that we'd have been much quicker logging on to a financial services website and using one of their widgets.

"Isn't this on the internet?" he said.

I was tired and my patience was wearing thin. (I've become crotchety in my old age.) "Yes," I snapped, "but someone has to write the internet, other people need to be able to point out their mistakes in great detail, someone else needs to blame the government, yet more people need to blame immigrants, someone needs to correct their grammar, others need to blame the government for immigrants and you need to know why they're all wrong and escape before the Star Trek fans arrive."

"Er..."

I took a deep breath. We'd made some progress but there was no point pushing it. "Biscuit?" I said, finding another packet. It was time to call it a day. "Played any good games recently?"

Before he could reply, there was another shriek and thump from upstairs. "The sofa's being bad again, Daddy!" yelled Marie. "Come and tell it to stop."

I headed to investigate, nonchalantly shoving an entire chocolate digestive in my mouth in one go as I went. Ned looked on in awe - there's no way his dad would ever do anything like that. It may not have been exactly cool but it wasn't totally uncool either. His reaction gave me hope that I can come across as mature without merely seeming old.

I didn't let on that the only reason I hadn't eaten the biscuit normally was to avoid making crumbs.

Still, maybe I haven't entirely turned into a grumpy, shrivelled husk yet. Maybe I can keep the balance between age and maturity for another year, and hold off on a mid-life crisis until Marie's at school. With the rest I'll get then, I might be able to avoid one altogether.

This would be for the best. Who knows what might happen otherwise?

With my luck, I might decide my life simply doesn't contain enough maths.

I'm not sure I'm ready for that...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: Ned, science

 
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