Dear Dave

  Don't frighten the broccoli!

Dear Dave,

Don't feel bad. These things happen. No matter what you do, children are going to go head over heels once in a while. Fraser has used his nose as a pogo stick on a number of occasions.

That said, it's unfortunate Sam slipped on the ice because he was looking over his shoulder to find out why you were shouting after him to be careful. Never mind, though. I'm glad it's only a minor fracture and his arm will be out of the cast in six weeks.

Hopefully you'll be over the guilt in around six years...

Of course, if you hadn't said anything and he'd gone pavement surfing on his face, you might have felt even worse. 'Be careful' is parent-speak for 'That's not a hundred percent safe and is liable to result in tears (which I don't have the time or the energy to deal with) but it isn't that dangerous and I should really loosen up a bit. Telling you to stop would be over-protective and probably worse for your long-term development than a nasty scratch and some light bruising. Who knows - you might even learn from your mistakes! As a bonus, now I've warned you, disaster won't be my fault and I can say, "I told you so." Go have some fun, and if it winds up being sore, don't come running to me.'

'Be careful' is also a signal to other adults that the parent speaking is neither irresponsible nor ignorant of the situation. It means 'Yes, I may not have had quite enough sleep for nearly a decade but I'm still aware one of my children is up to something unwise. This, however, is their decision which I reluctantly support them in because I can't entirely be bothered to argue right at the moment. Besides, I'm trying not to stifle them. Don't worry - if events go too far or they start becoming a danger to others, I'm on the case.'

Essentially, 'Be careful' is a very short phrase that contains a vast amount of implied content. Saying it is a way of relieving some of the tension of walking the line between keeping the kids safe and allowing them the freedom to grow. I use it all the time and I frequently overhear other parents using it too. Sure, it's totally and utterly lame, but we can't just stay silent in these situations or we'd explode. Not saying 'Be careful' would be like being sympathetic when a small child complains, 'There's something in my shoe,' rather than replying, 'Yes, it's your foot.' It simply can't be done.

Still... I hate saying 'Be careful'.

It's vague, unhelpful and makes me feel like I'm not in control. I've been trying to use alternatives recently. Some of them are situation specific, like 'Don't get stolen', 'Try not to wear your food. It's really not your colour' and the ever-popular 'You can do that but if we have to go to the hospital, we won't be home in time to watch Basil Brush'.

Other warnings I use are more general and merely designed to increase the kids' awareness of their surroundings. They include, 'Watch what you're doing', 'Pay attention' and 'Ow! That's painful. Please, stop.' Sadly, these are almost as limp as 'Be careful'. I much prefer to go for more extreme options, such as 'Look out for aliens', 'Don't blame me if you find yourself in 1955' and 'It will all end in blancmange'.

The last one, in particular, always makes my children stop and blink in a confused fashion. It's maybe not the most accurate advice but it amuses me and at least they're not getting into trouble...

All the best and I hope Sam cheers up soon. In future, remind him not to play chess with wildebeest.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Perhaps pointless warnings are an unavoidable part of life now. I saw a vending machine for hot drinks today that had a sticker stuck to it which read 'Warning! Hot Drinks!'.

I mean, honestly...

Labels: children, children (vol.5), housedad

 
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9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Unexpected unplugging

Dear Dave,

I spoke too soon - the snow is back. There's almost an inch this time. Another two or three days like this and Tesco could run low on supplies of bananas. I hardly dare contemplate the chaos that that will cause and, in preparation for the end of civilisation, I've nipped to the shops to stock up on canned goods, bottled water, bin-liners, candles and shotguns.

There's every chance the whole lot will have melted by tomorrow but it's best to be prepared - having grown up in the country, heavy snow is irrevocably linked in my head with power cuts. When I was a kid, the sky would turn grey, the snow would fall and the lights would go out. I don't know why.* My family was compelled to huddle around the fire and actually talk to each other until the telly came back on. It wasn't right. I had to sneak off somewhere and hide under a blanket with a torch and a book.

Having moved to the city, the scenario is unlikely to repeat itself now I have a family of my own. Which is fortunate, since we don't have a fireplace. I'd have to gather round a roaring fondue set with the kids.

When I was a teenager, I had a teacher who claimed that my class wouldn't be able to cope if the power went down. We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves without our music and TV and computer games. I was quite offended. Give me a pen and paper and I can entertain myself for hours. A power cut has to have exceptionally bad timing to throw me.

You know, like if I'm wet and naked.

Er, maybe I should explain that one... To fully set the scene, though, I'm going to have to tell you about my hall of residence at university. You see, Andrew Melville Hall is built to resemble two colliding concrete battleships.

No, really:



Inside, it's strangely reminiscent of a cross-channel ferry. This effect is heightened by the heating system. Originally, the building had underfloor heating but there was subsidence and one of the ships sank somewhat faster than the other, knackering the scheme. Radiators were installed, along with all the pipes to feed them. Descend to the windowless corridors of the lower decks and the place feels like a submarine.

To give you an idea of the haphazard fitting of the remedial plumbing, four pipes ran along the ceiling of the shower cupboard in the virtually subterranean section I inhabited. Two of the pipes had kinks in them above the shower-tray to move them just far enough apart to allow anyone over six feet tall to stand upright while taking a shower.

There I was, getting clean one day, my head wedged between some pipes, and a swan hit the power lines. The lights went out. Everything was suddenly pitch dark and cold in a very confined space. When I managed to feel my way out into the corridor, everything was pitch dark and cold in a slightly less confined space which had other people in it.

Not the best start to the day.

So, yes, a power cut can be inconvenient but I've never been left aimless. More recently, of course, they've become a whole new adventure:

A couple of years ago, as tea-time approached, we had a power cut while I was in the lounge with the children. It being winter in Scotland, the sun had already gone down and we were plunged into total darkness.

For added dramatic effect, I'd just uttered the words, "Marie, why are your trousers damp?"

Once the initial screams had died down, I got the kids to sit exactly where they were until I'd found flashlights that actually had batteries in them. Then we had tea by candlelight. Afterwards, I gave them a bath to pass the time, illuminated by a selection of toy light-sabres and sparkly wands. That way, although they were wet and naked, at least I knew where they all were.

It's been a while since they all fitted in the one tub, though. Not sure what I'd do these days. Then again, now they're older, they're less prone to carelessly toddling off and falling down the stairs. Marie is rather fond of playing in the dark, in fact, and she sometimes manages to persuade Lewis to join her. On a few occasions recently, I've found them lurking in our internal bathroom with the lights out, attempting a hand of UNO while holding torches. I'm sure they'd both manage to get by for an hour or two without mains electricity and possibly even find the experience exciting.

I'm not so certain about Fraser. Give him a pen and paper and he's liable to hand it to me and then insist that I find some way to entertain him. He might go and hide under a blanket with a book but, bereft of computer games, he's just as likely to want me to play Scrabble.

I can keep myself busy without power; making sure the kids are occupied is much more like effort. I should probably go charge up all the portable electronics in the house to be on the safe side.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

*I suspect a load of plump robins over-stressed the cables by all turning up and posing for Christmas cards at the same time. I was never able to confirm this, however...

Labels: children (vol.5), stuff, town

 
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9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Snowball etiquette

Dear Dave,

Glad you weren't hugely affected by the snow this week and were only driven slightly mad by all the people wondering how come four inches of frozen precipitation causes the UK to shut down while other places regularly carry on as normal under four feet of the stuff.

Personally, I reckon the answer is that it's less effort coping with the infrequent chaos than trying to prevent it. In many parts of the country, heavy snow is only an issue for a handful of days every five or ten years. It's simply not worth devoting vast resources to dealing with it. Besides, it's nice occasionally having an excuse to skive off, stay home and laugh at reporters who've fought their way through treacherous conditions to stand at a busy junction in a blizzard merely to tell us not to make unnecessary journeys.

Of course, some areas are more vulnerable to the weather than others. One of the perks of growing up in rural Norfolk was that snow days were relatively common. In a place so flat that grassy banks at the edge of the road constitute major topographical features, it doesn't take much wind to fill minor highways with drifts. We got two or three days off every other year. Getting to miss lessons and make snowmen instead was one of the highlights of my childhood.

In contrast, it hardly ever snows in Edinburgh. When it does, it's usually during the middle of a day when the kids are at school. By the time they come out, we're lucky if there's enough left to scrape together a snowgnome, let alone a proper snowman.

This week, though, there was actually just about sufficient quantity for a proper snowball fight even at home-time. We raced to the swing-park for some wintry combat before other children used up all the ammo.

Bizarrely, however, everyone else went home rather than making the most of the pristine, quarter-inch layer of snow that had settled on the spongy bits of surfacing around the climbing frames and roundabouts. We were nearly the only ones there.

As it turned out, this was for the best.

We've had so little snow the last few years, Fraser didn't grasp the basic rules of snowball etiquette:

1. Don't scoop snow from next to the wall at the edge of the pavement where dogs normally do their business. This is quite an important one. Remember, if you can't see the poo, that doesn't mean it's not there. Having been raised on a dairy farm, I know this to my cost...


2. Don't throw snowballs at adults you aren't familiar with. And while you're at it, try to avoid their toddlers, dogs, cars and elderly relatives.


3. Don't throw snowballs in someone's face. Especially from six inches. (Although Fraser did do better than my best friend at his age, who failed to let go of the snowball entirely. That was sore.)


4. If your snowball is bigger than your opponent's head, then it's too large. It just is.


5. If your opponent is already crying because you've recently ignored rules 3 & 4 at the same time, don't throw another snowball at them. It may be fun but it won't endear you to your friends and siblings...

Goodness, I spent half the time we were there keeping him out of trouble. How can something as simple as a snowball fight be so difficult?

I'm sure there were some other rules as well. There were definitely some extra recommendations. For instance, I couldn't help suggesting that crouching to scoop up snowballs was a smarter plan than kneeling. No one listened. It was chaos.

I suppose things might have gone more smoothly if I'd drawn up a list of the rules in the Autumn and talked it over with my children so they were ready when the snow fell. Also, perhaps I should have gone to the expense of kitting them all out in waterproofs. We muddled through, though, and the kids enjoyed themselves (even if they were grumbling loudly about their cold, wet knees for most of the journey home).

Still, maybe I ought to put a plan in place for next year, just in case...

(Yeah, right.)

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS If you thought we had it bad with snow on the roads, spare a thought for the people of Austin, Texas the other week:

Labels: children (vol.5), town

 
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9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Wanting it now

Dear Dave,

Where the heck is Barking?

My Xbox is stuck in a sorting office in Barking. I keep refreshing the parcel tracking web page every few minutes but it's still there. Wherever there is...

For crying out loud, it only took a week for the thing to get to Germany and be fixed. It's taken nearly as long just to get back again...

Click.

Still in Barking...

And this is after spending a night in Frankfurt for no obvious reason. Gah! Don't these people realise that there's an empty space in my 'safe place' that's missing an Xbox? The little corner of the house I go to in order to hide and get peace and quiet is incomplete. I want it returned to normal. I feel like a secret agent without an escape route. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be fine, but there's a constant gnawing sensation at the back of my mind that in the event of an emergency, there will be no way out. Even a minor setback this week could leave me unable to cope. I want my Xbox. And I want it NOW! (Before I get captured by a bald guy with a cat and suspended over a pit of ravenous toddlers.)

Click.

Drat. Still in Barking...

This would actually be easier to deal with if I had no idea where my console was. If it weren't for email alerts and internet updates, I wouldn't even be expecting the thing before the end of next week. Its early arrival in a couple of days would have been a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, modern technology has revealed that only a minor touch of efficiency and a small dab of luck would have had it here yesterday. Despite the whole process taking less than a fortnight, I'm disappointed already.

And, to think, I was complimented on my patience the other day. Not my current levels of patience, obviously, but my ability to remain calm when the kids were small despite having had very little sleep. I suppose back then I always knew I'd get to collapse on the sofa with a beer at the end of the day and I was under no delusion that that moment would come early. There was every chance it would arrive late, in fact. I simply pressed on.

Now the kids have set schedules tied to school and clubs, I feel more impatient than I used to. If I tell them to do something, they have to get on with it or we're going to be late. Constantly goading them gets quickly wearying. Since they have definite bedtimes, it's easier to count the minutes until there's peace and more frustrating if lights-out is delayed.

Sadly, it's actually the kids' lack of patience that most often tries my own. If they ask me for something and I'm busy and I tell them 'later', they simply won't leave me alone. They keep pestering me. It's really hard to finish a task when you're constantly being asked if you're finished. Sigh...

We ordered some books online at the weekend and they haven't arrived yet. The children are demanding I go on the computer and tell the postman to hurry up. They want to know where the books are, why they haven't arrived yet and when they're going to show up. Unfortunately, that parcel isn't being tracked, so there's nothing to do but wait. They're not too happy about this. I've had to drown out the whining with stories of the olden days a couple of times:

Back when we were kids, mail order took weeks. When they said, 'Allow 28 days for delivery', they really meant it. Three days for the order to reach them, two days for caterpillars to eat their way into the envelope, another two days for someone to take the cheque to the bank, a week for the cheque to clear, another week for anyone to notice, several hours for a troll to find the ordered item in the warehouse, two days for the item to travel along a conveyor belt of snails to the packaging department, another day to find a box the right size and then three more days in the post.

Sometimes I didn't even get what I ordered. If the thing was out of stock, I got something 'similar'. Being able to purchase an item over the internet and have it arrive within 48 hours still feels like magic.

Not that my children see it like that. They want the books NOW!

Ironically, a firm timetable or a progress bar would help them be patient. Knowing their books were stuck in Barking and wouldn't turn up until the day after tomorrow would allow them to put the thought to one side. It's like if I tell them that I'll be with them in a bit - they keep asking until I actually go. If I tell them I'll be with them in eleven and a half minutes, there's a good chance they'll go away and I'll have ten minutes or so before they return to stare at me expectantly.

Meanwhile, here I am, clicking every couple of minutes to check where my package has got to, hoping it might get here tomorrow after all but wishing I didn't have a clue so I could just forget about it. Click... Ooh, it's at Tamworth now.

I don't know where Tamworth is either.

If they're going to do this, they should do it properly. The next step is full GPS tracking. I want to be able to follow my package on Google Maps. I want to know if it's stuck at roadworks near Newcastle or going round a roundabout in Watford. I should be able to tell if the driver has stopped for a cigarette in Jedburgh. I need infrared satellite imagery of him sitting in a Little Chef in Doncaster and I need to be able to text chat with everyone else stalking the same delivery. That way, when he has a refill, we can all moan together that he'll need to stop for yet another comfort break just past Durham...

At least it would give me something to do while I'm waiting (other than tell the kids to get a move on, that is).

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5), Xbox 360

 
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9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  The scary blue yonder

Dear Dave,

The days are getting longer, the weather is unlikely to get much worse before it gets better and it's only a few weeks until the first flowers start coming out. Cheer up. In another couple of months you can start taking the kids to the swing-park on a regular basis again, rather than having to fight your way to the softplay through the icy rain. For now, enjoy the excuse to stay Inside. Crank up the heating, plonk Daisy in front of some Teletubbies and have a little doze on the sofa. You deserve it.

The rant in your last letter about being stuck indoors actually reminded me of something I read recently. I was helping a friend who is applying for UK residency revise for her Britishness Exam. This involved flicking through a book of multiple choice questions and asking any that caught my eye. I tended to home in on ones which were obscure or scary: How many members of the Scottish Parliament are there? When is St George's Day? Do women get the vote? Is it necessary to pass a test before driving a car?

The one that really got my attention, however, was about childcare. Without the book to hand, I can't remember the exact wording but it went something along these lines:

'Children in the UK do not play outside as much as they used to in the past. What reason is often given for this?

A - Increased danger from strangers.
B - They'd rather stay home and watch TV or play videogames.
C - Many parts of the country are infested with hordes of radioactive zombies.
D - Geoff Hurst in the 1966 World Cup final.'

Since glowing undead are restricted to small pockets of East Anglia and 'D' was clearly a trap for people who are too English (we've enough of them already and we don't need more), this only left 'A' and 'B' as likely options. It couldn't be 'A', though. Despite some dreadful cases receiving vast publicity, there's no evidence that attacks on children from strangers are increasing.

With a feeling of resignation, I checked the answer. It was, indeed, 'B'.

When I got to a computer, I looked up the study guide online. The reasons it gives for children staying home more are: TV and increased parental fear of attacks by strangers.

But is this really the case? For a start, TV and computer games are a symptom as much as a cause. If kids are at home anyway, they need something to do. And, let's face it, at the moment they're going to be at home a lot:

I helped out on a nursery trip yesterday. We took a bus to the general vicinity of Edinburgh Castle and then hiked up the Royal Mile to have our picture taken in front of the gate as part of Scottish Week. It was a chance for fresh air, exercise and a little culture - all the things kids allegedly can't be doing with these days. Sure enough, half of them were crying or pleading to go home after only ten minutes. This had more to do with the weather than a desire to plug themselves into a PlayStation, however. It was cold. The kind of cold where small children judder up and down uncontrollably while making noises like a moped. The snot wasn't quite freezing on their faces but it was close.

I haven't seen the photos yet. If there's one where we're all smiling, I'll be astonished...

Add to the miserable weather the fact that it's dark an hour after the boys emerge from school this time of year, and there's not much chance of us doing a great deal of outdoor playing. I'm glad they have their computer games to keep them occupied or they'd be constantly squabbling and amusing themselves by working out how to build Weapons of Mass Destruction from LEGO.

Of course, there's no saying my boys won't spend plenty of July Inside with the curtains drawn, waving wiimotes around. Even when the weather is nice, Outside can be pretty dull without friends around (unless you like hunting grasshoppers or talking to trees). This isn't the fault of computer games, as such. I used to spend my summer holidays reading books and playing board games against myself rather than venture into the garden. When a friend came round, that still didn't make enough people to play Tig, so we stayed Inside and played Monopoly.

I suppose once upon a time, in the good old days, there were always packs of children roaming the streets, so kids could head out the door and know there would almost certainly be someone to interact with. This critical mass of youngsters with the power to pull in others is now much less common. The problem becomes self-perpetuating - there's no one Outside to play with, so kids have no incentive to go Outside to be there for others to play with.

It's up to parents to shove them Outside to enjoy themselves, whether it's lonely and raining or not. So why isn't this happening? Well, I suspect that in the good old days, when people had twenty-seven children and only two rooms, they were only too desperate to chuck the kids out the door and clear some space to put the laundry on to boil. With a modern ratio of children to bedrooms that is much closer to parity, there's more stress to be had worrying what the kids are up to Outside than from tripping over them if they're lurking around Inside.

Never mind the potential danger from strangers, I'm much more afraid of cars, four-year-olds with sharpened sticks and climbing frames. Small children can find any number of ways to get themselves into difficulties, no matter how safe the environment seems.

Marie saw some other children playing in the small, enclosed park out the back door at the weekend and asked to join them. I was busy making lunch, so I got her coat on her and sent her out to fend for herself. I had some trepidation after last time, however. At the end of the summer, I let her run free in the park with a couple of older children but, within five minutes, one of the others came hurrying to get me. Marie needed help. She'd slid herself headfirst along a bench and halfway through the armrest at the end before getting stuck, leaving herself dangling over backwards in a painful fashion.

She'd been barely out of my sight, I had the door wide open and I was listening for trouble. I was still caught out.

Things went better this time but I was nervous, nonetheless. When the kids are Inside, I can hear what they're doing and I know instantly if there's a problem. Sometimes they can be left to their own devices for an hour at a time. If they're Outside, life isn't so simple. Once they're beyond the end of the garden, who knows what's going on?

The official guideline is that children under thirteen shouldn't be left unsupervised at home. If children are left in the care of an under-sixteen, then their parents are still legally responsible. And that's in the house. What about the world beyond that's full of cars, pointy sticks and malicious park benches? Surely the same principle applies?

Essentially, this means that if one of my kids wants to go Outside, I have to go with them. If I go, the others have to come too. A quick breath of fresh air becomes a family expedition and is much less likely to happen.

It's not the fault of computer games that kids don't play Outside so much. It's more to do with parents' justified fear of cars, public seating and just about everything else. Most of us are too afraid to admit it, though. It's easier blaming Nintendo.

Ho well, maybe that's too complicated for the Britishness Test to deal with. Perhaps the questions should stick to common knowledge that is less open to debate and will help people blend in. Might I suggest asking who won X Factor and which buttons to press in Wii Bowling?

Happy dozing.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5), computer games

 
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8:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  A land that's fair and bright

Dear Dave,

Have you ever considered that the world might be a better place if we put small children in charge?

Er, OK, maybe 'better' isn't exactly the right description. Obviously, if pre-schoolers ruled, then we'd rapidly find ourselves in a Big Rock Candy Mountain scenario with fewer cigarette trees but far more Liquorice Allsorts. Grown-ups would be forced to do ceaseless menial tasks, stopping only to feign delight as some passing four-year-old shouted, 'Look at me!' and then attempted a complicated trick, such as jumping into a muddy puddled, waving a stick or standing on one leg and then... falling... over... slowly...

This might not change our lives much but other people would probably get upset. The adults would stage a revolution after only a few hours and it would all end in tears, tantrums and early bedtimes. Nonetheless, the cleaning up would take weeks and the unwary would still be blundering into left-over sticky patches years later.

On many levels, putting children in charge would be a disaster. Still, it might be worth it, if a conversation I overheard recently is anything to go by:

"You're not my friend anymore," said one of Marie's nursery companions, Jasmine.

Marie was distraught. "Why not?"

Jasmine screwed up her face and stamped her foot. "Because you didn't say sorry."

"Well, I am sorry," said Marie with deep sincerity. "I'm very sorry."

"OK, you're my friend again," said Jasmine, matter-of-factly.

"Good," said Marie and they hugged. Then, as they walked off together, hand-in-hand, she added, "So what did I say sorry for?"

The dispute (whatever it was) was resolved quickly, the details didn't matter much and it was as if it had never happened. There wasn't even any mess involved. You have to admit that this makes a refreshing change from how things normally go on The Six O'clock News.

I definitely think there's a case for more under-fives in government...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5)

 
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9:00 PM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Seeing yourself in small

Dear Dave,

Thanks for filling me in on how Sam's doing at school. I'm glad he's enjoying it and making friends. I wouldn't worry too much at this stage that he takes a while to get round to things and that he has to be encouraged to be more verbose in his responses - there's every chance he'll come into his own soon. Hopefully it won't always take him a day and a half to think of something to report about his weekend, especially if all he can eventually manage is, 'I watched TV.' (That can't reflect well on your parenting style...) Although, since I only received your Christmas card this morning and it was signed 'Dave, Liz, etc.', I should probably point out that sometimes we get the kids we deserve.

For myself, I can't really complain too much that my boys don't want to leave the house, are allergic to new experiences and love to talk about computer games at length. Given my own inclinations, I shouldn't have expected much else. Whether it's nature or nurture, they've got it from me.

I was thinking about this the other day while watching The Little Mermaid 2 - Return to the Sea. (Bear with me here...) Thanks to Marie, I've seen the original a gazillion times and it drifts over me as I daydream about cute girl/fish hybrids. (Although TLM herself looks a little young these days - it's usually safer if I let my mind wander to other Disney films. Beauty and the Beast, for instance... Or a possible sequel to The Incredibles... Mmmm, that I'd want to see...)

Er, anyway...

In The Little Mermaid 2 roles get reversed. Ariel goes from being an adventurous teenage mermaid who wants to explore the shore, despite being forbidden by her protective dad, to being a protective mum who forbids her own adventurous teenager from exploring the sea. You can almost hear grandparents everywhere chortling at the poetic justice.

Of course, it all leads to near disaster but at least Ariel finally notices the irony and admits she really should have predicted her daughter's actions. This makes a pretty deep point for a Disney movie:

By looking at ourselves, we can understand our children better.

A scarier point can be made, though, by turning things around: By looking at our children, we can understand ourselves better. Even as this idea came to me, I looked at what my kids were doing and wondered what it revealed. Nothing good, I suspect. You see, although they were only watching a film, there was a lot to be learned from the manner in which they were doing it:

We'd had a secondhand three-seater sofa delivered that day to replace our old bed-settee because, since we don't need the bed anymore, we thought it would be nice to have something a little firmer to actually sit on. (We're getting old.) The people were supposed to deliver the sofa and take the settee to sell.

Except it turned out that the settee didn't have a fire-safety label on the mattress. I'm sure it had one originally but it must have fallen off back in the mists of time. The upshot was that they refused to take the settee away. As Lewis was rather attached to it, I suppose this was ultimately for the best but it did leave us with a three-seater sofa, a two-seater sofa, an armchair and a three-seater settee in our not awfully large lounge. As things stood, drawing the curtains would have involved airborne gymnastics.

I spent half an hour shuffling furniture and children to make everything kind of fit. It was like one of those tile-sliding puzzles but much heavier and more argumentative.

(Oh, and when I say Lewis was attached to the settee, I'm not joking - the moment they turned up to remove it, he latched onto it like a limpet and burst into tears. Luckily, however, he grabbed hold of a cushion rather than the frame, so I was able to pry him off.)

After tea, Marie wanted to watch Little Mermaid 2 in the lounge.

"Lewis is playing the Wii in there," I said. "You can watch the film in Fraser's room."

We went upstairs, I put the film into the flickery portable TV/video combi and she sat down in front of it. Then she insisted I stayed to cuddle her during the scary bits. I sat down next to her.

A minute later, Lewis came through and started to watch.

"I thought you were playing the Wii," I said.

"Nah, I was building a tower with sofa cushions. It's very tall."

"I bet," I sighed. "Are you wanting to watch the film too? If you're not playing the Wii, we can put the film on in the lounge."

"But it's Fraser's turn to play the Wii."

"He's watching CBBC in the kitchen," I said, shaking my head and entertaining the possibility we have too many TVs (and that wasn't taking into account the video projector I'd brought home ready to set up and 'run some tests on'.)

"He'll want to play the Wii when he's finished," said Lewis, mesmerised by mermaids, and sat down next to me.

"OK."

Five minutes after that, Fraser came to find us. "Why aren't you playing the Wii, Lewis?" he grumbled. "I was giving you extra time."

"It's your turn," Lewis replied, eyes remaining glued to the TV.

"You could have still played."

"No, I couldn't."

Fraser started to say something else but got distracted by animated fish. He stood there for a bit, then sat down next to Lewis.

Time passed.

...

...

So, to recap, despite having three sofas between the four of us in the lounge and the potential to create our own cinema, we were all sitting on the floor in Fraser's room, watching a 14-inch telly showing a picture from a VHS player with dodgy tracking.

I considered suggesting we go through to the other room but I knew my kids would only moan and complain. They're resistant to change and can't be bothered to move if they don't have to.

I wondered what this said about me...

Then I decided that thinking about it was too much effort and it would be far easier simply to lie back and think of Mrs Incredible.

So I did.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS I thought Marie was immune to the computer games, preferring to jump about and do craftwork (sometimes at the same time). She's got into the educational games on her Leapster recently, though, and keeps squeaking excitedly about the new levels she's unlocked. Worse, she's not content with merely talking about her achievements - every so often she demands to make a greetings card about them to give to Mummy when she gets home.

Adding glitter to the witter is taking things to a whole new level that I'm not sure even I deserve.

The other day, Marie also demanded that I stand by the front door with the card in hand. I complied until I discovered she wanted me to stay there, waiting to present it to Mummy as soon as she arrived. Since Sarah wasn't due in for another couple of hours, I wasn't hugely impressed and suggested that leaving the card on the kitchen table would be a better plan.

"No, Daddy. I'll stand behind you and tell you when you're standing wrong."

Two hours of being criticised about my posture by a four-year-old definitely wasn't on. I handed her the card and told her to give it to Mummy herself. She whined about it, then took up watch, waiting eagerly for the return of her favourite parent.

I went and made myself a coffee.

Two minutes later Marie came through to the kitchen and put the card down. "Maybe your idea to leave it on the table was a good idea," she said. "I'm going to go play on my Leapster."

I just nodded and smiled...

PPS I take it you don't recommend the card printing service you used:

Labels: children (vol.5)

 
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  The joy of being a troll

Dear Dave,

Need coffee. Back soon.

...

...

That's better...

...

Nope, I'm going to need a chocolate biscuit as well...

...

...

munch...

...

Yes, I think that's done it. I'm probably awake enough to type in a straight line now. I just need to resist the urge to go lie down under a blanket and have a nap...

After the disruption of the holidays, we're back to the normal routine of nursery, school, clubs and homework. It's been more of a wrench than normal, though. This was the first full holiday since Marie learnt to do without adult company upon waking in the morning. Up until the last week of the summer, she'd need her bottom wiped first thing and then demand breakfast ten minutes later and want dressed fifteen minutes after that and then, before long, insist on a game of Mousetrap. I'd keep sneaking back to bed but there wasn't much chance of real sleep. Essentially, once she was awake, so was I.

Suddenly, this is no longer the case. Despite sharing a bedroom with all three children while staying with my in-laws this Christmas, I was almost unaware when they got up. There was a bit of grunting and shuffling in the early morning darkness and maybe a hug from Marie and then I rolled over and went back to sleep.

For hours.

The kids policed themselves. I was confident that if any of them got into mischief or trouble, at least one of the others would come and snitch. As it turned out, the only arguments were over whose turn it was to play on the Wii and these conflicts involved such arcane calculation methods that I had to leave resolving them to the boys anyway. ('Lewis had an extra fifteen minutes when it should have been my shot because I got to choose what level we played when we were playing two-player on his shot. But he says the half an hour I had before he got up was part of my turn because he was asleep and he should get an extra turn before tea but the level I want to do in my shot takes an hour and Lewis got an extra turn the day before yesterday while I went with you to the shops. I told him that if he let me play until tea-time, he could play all morning tomorrow, but he doesn't want to do that because he might forget to get up and he said that it wasn't fair that I wanted to play a one-player game on my shot when we'd played a two-player game on his shot but he was the one who wanted to play two-player. I wanted to play the DS but...' Etc.) Marie simply ignored the boys and got on with... Erm... Actually, I've know idea what she got on with. I stayed up late, got up late and came down to find all three of the children playing happily and without complaint.

It was fantastic but a little weird.

I'm paying for it now, unfortunately. Despite having to wake early to get everyone ready in the morning, I'm still in the habit of staying up late. This arrangement isn't so good for obtaining enough sleep to function as a human being; it's more in line with the slumber requirements of a particularly grumpy troll. Hence the coffee and biscuits, in an effort to quell the urge to go lurk under a bridge and hassle passing goats.

Not that I'm really grumbling. I got more proper lie-ins over Christmas than I've had in a long while and, in some sense, even the tiredness I have now feels good. After years of sleep deprivation caused by babies and toddlers, it's kind of liberating having the chance to screw up my bio-rhythms myself for a change. Besides, with luck, the magic will hold and I'll get to catch up with a couple of extra hours under the duvet on Saturday morning.

The kids getting older may be bringing me career uncertainty but it definitely has its plus points...

Now I think of it, I noticed some other advantages over the holidays as well. Not least, Fraser has finally moved onto proper board games involving dragons and such like. This should make my life more entertaining, especially when we open up my his new Crossbows and Catapults set and get to fling little plastic projectiles across the room at each other's castles. Having children is finally paying off!

Not all their presents were so appealing, mind you, but making words from random selections of letters in Boggle is still a step up from most of the games the kids have had before. The highlight was when Sarah suggested a word made from combining the letters 'S', 'X' and 'E'.

Fraser looked embarrassed. "I thought of that but didn't say it."

"Do you know what it is?" Sarah asked.

"I think so," he said but didn't elaborate.

Sarah nodded. "It's where the dad puts the baby seed into the mum."

"Or it can mean whether someone is a boy or a girl," I added.

Fraser squirmed slightly. "Oh," he said, "I thought it meant something different."

True to the name of the game, this statement boggled my brain. Then the Queen's Speech came on and we had to be quiet. Quite what he did think sex was, I never found out. (Fun as the discussion would have been with Great Aunt Edith in the room, this was probably for the best.)

Of course, besides more sleep and decent board games, there are all the obvious improvements that having older children brings, such as an end to nappies and greatly reduced dribble, but we passed those milestones a while back and I was expecting them. What I wasn't expecting was for Marie to spend three hours playing an educational Fimbles game on the computer, the other afternoon. I didn't settle to doing anything much because I kept thinking she'd stop at any moment and want me to give her some attention. She didn't. She happily entertained herself until tea-time. If she starts doing that on a regular basis and I'm prepared for it, who knows what I could achieve?

Life is changing.

We've even recently migrated from the toddler TV of CBeebies to the children's TV of CBBC. We have entered a world of gunge tanks and documentaries about farting, all linked together by a presenter with impossibly cool hair and a grouchy cactus as a sidekick. This is more my level. I may never have to watch the Teletubbies staring at a tap-dancing bear ever again.

Bliss.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5), housedad, sleep, TV

 
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  Essential skills for the modern age

Dear Dave,

Glad to hear you survived the relatives at Christmas and managed to get them to look after the kids long enough for you to have a lie down somewhere quiet. Hopefully Daisy's sleep will have settled down in a few months and the new year will be a lot less grey and foggy than the last one. Your zombie existence is almost over. All being well, next Christmas, neither you nor your young daughter will doze off from exhaustion face-down in the trifle. (And, yes, it was somewhat mean of your in-laws to post the footage of that little incident on YouTube.)

For ourselves, we spent most of the holidays staying with Sarah's parents. It was great to get away and have some help with the children. We did all have to cope with a different house and different ways of doing things but this was probably good for us:

One breakfast-time, I was sitting in the lounge drinking my coffee, when Fraser came through from the kitchen.

"Can I have some more toast, please?" he asked.

"Sure," I replied.

"Thanks."

I didn't move. He stared at me, waiting for me move. I stared back at him, waiting for him to go away. He didn't go away. We stared at each other.

Time passed.

"You can make it yourself," I said, to clarify the situation.

He laughed at the ludicrous nature of this suggestion. "How do I do that?"

Our kitchen at home is set up for a 187cm housedad. (That's six foot three in old money.) Stuff that's needed all the time, such as plates and bread, is on high shelves which I can see and reach comfortably. My stash of crisps is stored so far up that even Sarah has to stand on a chair to reach it. The low cupboards that I have to bend to look in are full of fondue sets and unlikely cooking utensils which I hardly ever use. One small problem with the arrangement is that the children have limited access to the equipment necessary to feed themselves unless they're looking to zest a lemon or make their own ice-cream. The beer, meanwhile, is at a handy grab height for me on the way to the lounge and the coffee sits permanently out on the worktop ready for every conceivable emergency.

Nonetheless, I was still somewhat shocked to discover that, despite being eight and half years old, Fraser didn't know how to work a toaster. I realised I might have to give him some training. (After all, he's going to need a wide range of gadget experience by the time he's sixteen in order for me to fulfil my plan of getting him a job at our local electronics store and shamelessly exploiting his staff discount.) I seized the opportunity to let him practice in a kitchen where everything was in reach and that wasn't my responsibility to clean.

"You get some bread out of the bag and put it in the toaster," I said. "Then you press the button down."

He looked nervous. "How far?"

"Until it clicks."

"How does it know when to pop up?" he asked, starting to panic.

"It pops up by itself." I decided not to blow his mind with any extra information about the little dial with numbers on.

"But wh...?"

I tried to sound as calm and nonchalant as I could. "Just go give it a try," I said, waving him away.

"OK," he said and scampered off to the kitchen.

I went through three minutes later. He was staring at the toaster.

"Does it normally take this long?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Maybe it's not working." He peered closely at the toaster which was glowing orange inside and that had the first hint of smoke emerging from the slot. Then a slice of toast popped up and made him leap backwards in surprise.

"It's working," I said.

Of course, Fraser hadn't thought to ask whether anyone else wanted mildly charred bread before operating the toaster only half full. He didn't know from experience that it's always worth completely filling a toaster because the popping sound they make has a strange Pavlovian effect - it's bound to make someone in the vicinity think, 'Hmmm... Actually, I really fancy a slice of toast,' even if they've just had a slice of toast.

"I want a slice of toast," said Marie, cramming the last bite of her previous slice in her mouth.

I sighed and put another couple of rounds of bread in the machine...

The whole episode made me wonder what other skills I should teach Fraser. I started by thinking about the useful skills I learnt while growing up but most of them are now defunct.

For instance, there was a big fuss made that my Physics GCSE course included wiring a plug as part of the curriculum. It was supposed to be an attempt to promote practical skills but the normal reaction was, 'Surely everyone knows how to wire a plug?'

As a teenager, I fiddled with the internal workings of any number of plugs. Gadgets came without plugs attached or I got given my siblings' cast-offs that still had round-pinned plugs rather than square-pinned ones. Barely a month went by without me having to ponder why it's the live wire and not the earth wire that's brown.

Then things changed. I suspect the GCSE Physics results one year must have been really bad and someone somewhere decided that plugs are too advanced a technology to leave in the care of ordinary individuals. Gadgets started coming supplied with moulded plugs.

I haven't had to wire a plug in ten years.

Another skill I learnt at an early age was answering the phone. I used to answer my parents' phone all the time. We lived in a big farmhouse, we only had a couple of phones and my parents got a lot of business calls - there were plenty of instances where I happened to be the only one close enough to hear the ringing. My children are growing up in a house which is less than half the size but has five phones and hardly anyone calls.

The only times I don't hear the phone are when I'm running their bath, I'm hoovering or I'm in the shower. On the rare occasions when someone calls at one of these moments, it takes the kids a couple of rings to notice the phone is ringing and another three to twig that I'm not answering it. At this point they start shouting that the phone's ringing.

Since they tend to stand next to the ringing phone while doing this, rather than moving somewhere closer to my location, the chances of me becoming aware that the phone is ringing are not greatly increased.

Two rings later, the answering machine cuts in. The children listen to the out-going message and then come and find me to tell me that 'the answering machine is talking to itself' in a tone that suggests they think it's gone wrong. I ask them who's calling. They shrug. I send them to listen to the message that's being left. They get downstairs again just in time to hear the person hang up.

I could maybe train them to do this job a little better...

Then again, we have an answering machine, so why bother? It's the same with things like lighting a fire, boiling milk in a pan and preparing for a nuclear attack. These skills don't seem as essential as they once were. Even programming a video recorder is on the way out.

So what is the important knowledge kids should learn these days?

Well, for starters, when we got back from Gran's, I taught Fraser how to put fresh batteries in the Wii remotes.

I slowly and painstakingly showed him how to peel back the non-slip jacket, open up the casing, remove the old batteries, insert the new batteries the right way round and then put everything back together again. This took longer and involved more explanation than you might expect. When he'd emptied the rest, I turned to Lewis and told him in great detail which drawer in the kitchen to put the tired batteries in, ready for them to be recharged. I also told him twice not to put them in the tub at the front of the drawer because that's where the charged batteries are kept.

Lewis ran off on his mission while his brother finished putting in the replacement batteries. Fraser negotiated the trials of slipping the non-slip jacket back on the last remote and beamed at me, highly pleased with himself.

"Well done," I said. "Now you can change the batteries in the Wii remotes yourself. Do you know where the fresh batteries are kept?"

"No," he said, looking blank.

He'd been precisely two feet away from me when I'd told Lewis... twice.

Lewis returned.

"Do you know where the fresh batteries are kept?" I asked him.

"Of course I do," he replied, as if this was obvious information that any fool should intuitively grasp and not something that I'd had to tell him only forty-five seconds previously.

"Great!" I said. "Next time the batteries run out before breakfast, the two of you can work together. Lewis, you can find new batteries and, Fraser, you can put them in the controller. Neither of you will need to get me out of bed. Teamwork!"

We all beamed at each other, highly pleased with ourselves.

Next week I'm going to move on to teaching them to use a tin opener without injury and without covering them, me or the toaster in custard.

Wish me luck.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5)

 
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  The parable of the sweets and the scooter

Dear Dave,

I eventually managed to get the kids to stop complaining about their stolen chocolate Santa by threatening to feed them canned peas if they didn't keep quiet. Nevertheless, it was only a couple of days before we found ourselves in another discussion of equality and social justice.

I once heard a talk by a guy who thought children have an innate sense of fairness. He reckoned this is obvious because they're always saying, 'It's not fair!' at any given opportunity.

Even at the time, I felt this was a somewhat misguided observation. Now, however, having accumulated over eight years experience as a housedad, I can confirm that it's crazier than giving a hyper-active toddler a drumkit.

'It's not fair!' can usually be translated as, 'I'm not getting as big a cut as I expected!' Occasionally, from the mouth of a more enlightened child, it can mean, 'I'm not getting as big a cut as I expected and my friend/sibling/hamster/cuddly toy isn't either!' It certainly doesn't mean, 'Hang on! This isn't entirely equitable. I think I might have a couple of biscuits more than my share...'

This is only to be expected, though. Even putting self-interest aside, 'fair' isn't a simple concept. It's something pretty hard to determine and something we have to learn.

'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need,' could be the definition of fair, for instance. Many would argue, however, that in general, 'From each according to their ability, to each according to what they've contributed,' is actually 'fairer'. Then again, plenty of situations essentially come down to, 'Let's divide the spoils equally and split the bill.'

More than that, it's possible for individual people to hold all these views at the same time. Sometimes about the same thing. The fairest solution to any given situation isn't necessarily straightforward. This makes instilling a sense of fairness in children more difficult than it first seems.

Lewis is definitely struggling with the concept at the moment.

Last week, the whole school went to see a pantomime. At the end of it, the cast threw sweets into the audience. Lewis didn't manage to get any but Fraser happily showed one off in the playground at the end of the day. As he unwrapped it, though, he admitted that he'd had one earlier.

Lewis immediately demanded Fraser hand over the sweet he was about to eat. Since Fraser had already had one, Lewis felt natural justice demanded Fraser give the other one to his brother. One each was only fair after all.

Well, in some sense... I didn't know what Fraser had had to go through to get the sweets. Fighting his way out of a scrum of screaming, excitable children was a distinct possibility. At the very least, he'd had to do some crawling around in the dark. There'd probably been plenty of luck involved but he deserved some reward for his efforts. Besides that, Marie had been at the pantomime and hadn't managed to grab a sweet either. Lewis had no more claim to Fraser's loot than she did.

Fraser hurriedly piped up that he'd had three sweets initially but given one to the child next to him at the pantomime. This didn't exactly appease Lewis. Nonetheless, it considerably surpassed my expectations of Fraser's generosity and put me firmly on his side. I decided to deflect Lewis from the issue.

"You know that boy who was asking for a go on your scooter ten minutes ago?" I said. (Lewis comes out before Fraser and we loiter in the playground for twenty minutes.)

"Yes," said Lewis.

"Did you give him a shot?"

"No."

"Then why should Fraser give you his sweet that he's never going to get back, if you're not prepared to give someone else a quick go on your scooter?"

Lewis hugged his scooter jealously. "He said he has his own scooter at home. And a bike. He could have brought them."

"Uh-huh..." I muttered, shaking my head. Lewis couldn't see the connection and I knew that pressing it further would only lead to us talking round in circles. Luckily, Fraser had had the good sense to pop the sweet in his mouth by then, so the point was moot. We headed home, Lewis grumbling as we went...

I think I've still got plenty of work to do with the whole social justice concept.

Maybe I should start with teaching the kids about providing for the elderly... and parents. Particularly elderly parents. Elderly parents deserve nice nursing homes.

After everything they've had to put up with it, it seems only fair...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5)

 
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  They're getting craftier than me

Dear Dave,

Marie loves to make things. She can spend hours painting, arranging Hama beads, gluing shiny stars to paper or making a necklace by stringing baubles onto a length of elastic. Leave her alone with some art supplies for a few minutes and she'll have them all stuck together and painted pink before you know it.

She's not hugely worried about quality, however - a roughly-oval, orange spludge with a line coming off it is a mouse, for instance. Quantity is really what she's after. She can produce an entire colony of rainbow-coloured rodents in half an hour and then move onto pictures of computer peripherals and their accompanying mats. (Luckily, her computer mice are wireless so it's easy to tell them apart from the other kind - they're the roughly-oval, orange spludges without lines coming off.) At one mouse per sheet, she can race through a stack of blank paper and happily rack up more creative masterpieces in an afternoon than the boys managed in entire years of their preschool life.

There are only so many portraits of mice (furry or otherwise) we need, though. There's also a limit to our requirements for bead designs, glitter pictures and tacky jewellery. Marie hasn't yet questioned what happens to the surplus but I doubt she'd be too thrilled to hear 'they've gone to live on a farm'. It would be nice if she branched out to other things soon. Unfortunately, we've tried some of the 'makes' on TV and in books, and they're totally beyond her. She can't cut stuff out with any degree of accuracy or safety, glue goes everywhere and sticky-tape ends up stuck to her hair, itself and my socks. I have to make the thing, whatever it is, and then she paints the finished product pink. It's all a little pointless.

It's not like we usually have the materials to do most of the ideas anyway.

I remember when I was young, I watched one of the presenters on Blue Peter make a space rocket from an empty washing-up liquid bottle. It looked fantastic and I raced through to the kitchen to see how much Fairy our squeezy bottle had left. Disappointingly, it was almost full. Undeterred, I kept an eye on the bottle and bided my time until I could stick a couple of pieces of card to it, paint it silver and launch it into the galaxy.

Three weeks later, the bottle was still almost full.

In fact, it actually had more washing-up liquid in it than when I'd first checked. That wasn't right... I knew it was the same bottle, though, since the writing was worn off the side in the same places and there were some recognisable bits of gunge still stuck to it. But how...?

I checked with my mum. It turned out she bought washing-up liquid in bulk and topped up her supply from an industrial-sized vat in the shed. She'd been using the same squeezy bottle since 1962.

The flipping thing lasted out my entire childhood and I never got to make my space rocket.

Bah, humbug.

These days the concept wouldn't work because washing-up liquid bottles aren't even cylindrical anymore but that's nothing compared with a make for a toy car I saw on TV last week. It involved four large cotton-reels and a disposable plastic cup. Four cotton-reels! How many homes have that number lying around? Not many, I bet.

The results weren't even worth it. Sticking four cotton-reels, a disposable cup and a small spoiler to a cardboard box doesn't make a very convincing car. It might have been OK in the old days, when cheap plastic toys weren't quite so cheap, but the way things are at the moment, we could probably nip to a charity shop and get something better for not much more than the price of the disposable cup.

We've only had a few successes with homemade toys over the years. When Fraser was crawling, I cut a slot in the bottom of a cardboard box and turned it upside down. He spent quite a bit of time posting little toys in the hole, wondering where they'd gone and then being delighted when he discovered them under the box. He was also very impressed one train journey when he was four - I'd brought a dice with me and I simply drew a Snakes & Ladders board on a piece of paper. (Sarah spiced it up even further by adding mushrooms and stars to give the game a Mario theme and some interesting extra rules.) On other occasions, all three of the children have enjoyed making crowns to wear.

That's been fairly much our limit, though. In general, ideas for homemade stuff I've seen either require expensive materials or look naff. Sometimes both. Marie got a book recently with instructions for a princess jewellery box:

1. Get a small cardboard box and paint it purple.
   
2. Cover the top with glue and stick some shiny jewels in the middle.
   
3. Surround the jewels with rice.

In summary, the proposed object would need fake gems, be hideous and make passing pigeons explode if they ate it. I don't think we'll be making that.

So what can I get Marie to make?

Some of the boxed kits of craft items in the shops look tempting. There are all kinds of fluffy animals to create and key rings to design. Sadly, I know the reality would be nothing like the pictures on the box. If you don't believe me, go look at a packet of plasticine and examine the photos of smiling children standing behind 'their' model village, complete with accurately modelled people and mock-Tudor housing. Compare this image with your memories of playing with plasticine as a child. You'll probably notice that your recollections have rather more wonky snakes and considerably fewer hanging flower baskets.

Maybe I should stick to thinking up things to make from stuff we have lying around. Hang on a minute while I take a quick inventory.

...

...

Ah... Erm... Well...

Yes.

OK, I've taken a look, and the readily available junk at my disposal consists of: margarine tubs, dead batteries, carrot peelings, plastic milk bottles, beer cans and some lard.

Now I'm sure MacGyver could produce something pretty spectacular with that lot but it's beyond me.

Never mind. Perhaps I should just leave Marie to it. She insisted on painting a two-foot cardboard tube pink and gold a couple of weeks ago and she's been using it as a telescope ever since. She and Lewis keep piling cushions in the middle of the lounge carpet to make a pirate boat.

Creativity and teamwork at the same time. I'm not certain I could have organised that if I'd tried...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5)

 
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  The parable of the chocolate Santa

Dear Dave,

The nursery organised their usual fund-raising festive raffle last week. Parents were asked to donate groceries for a Christmas hamper and we were then sold tickets at a rate of five for a pound. At the end of the week, the tickets were put in a hat, a single winner was drawn and one lucky family got the entire stash.

The hamper was left on display in the hallway outside the nursery door and, as the week went on, it gradually began to fill with all manner of delights. There were packets of biscuits, bottles of wine, jars of jam, noodles, teabags, canned soup and, bizarrely, three tins of peas. Apart from the peas, it all looked delicious.

Perhaps too delicious...

You see, the nursery is attached to the primary school and school kids frequently walk by on the way to the toilet. At home-time on the Thursday it became clear that one of these children had seen a crafty opportunity - a chocolate Santa poked clear of the other items in the hamper, his head cleanly removed, as if a child had taken a big gulp in passing, silver foil and all.

When told about it, my boys were impressed. Robin Hood had daringly snatched a share of the loot. The whole idea made them fall about laughing.

That's to say, it did... until we won the raffle. At that point, they were suddenly overcome with righteous indignation. They wanted their chocolate Santa, no matter that carrying home the remaining contents of the hamper was still nearly enough to kill me and that our shelves are now overflowing with tasty treats (and canned peas). They wanted the Sheriff of Nottingham called in to deliver retribution and compensation.

Sigh.

I think this may explain rather a lot about the world.

Merry Christmas,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.4), children (vol.5), nursery, school

 
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