Thursday March 6th – The Tragedy of Hairy Jam Tarts

Oscar woke up with gummy eyes today.  I hoped it was a passing phase and that he’d just poked himself in the eye overnight.  This is not as ludicrous as it sounds.  He is quite an active sleeper and invariably wakes up wrapped in the duvet, or under the pillow, or hanging by his toes from the bars of the cot.  Sadly it turned out not to be mere pokeage, despite my wishes, and when I went to pick him up from nursery at lunch time his eyes were gunked to the max and he was officially banned from nursery until the conjunctivitis, for that is what it is, has gone away.  Poor little bugger, he does look a mess, and he hates having his eyes bathed so much I have to strap him into his high chair to stop him twisting his head off. 

I can’t help feeling just as sorry for myself though to be honest. I spent my morning off cleaning the house and doing several more acres of laundry I found breeding in the kids room.  I didn’t worry overmuch as I was supposed to be having Friday to myself, and these things have to be done.  Then it turns out I’ve been a slave to housework all morning and I don’t get Friday off. Darn it.  Not only that but I have a very sticky, very grouchy boy as my companion for the day as well.  Still, I am having Saturday off to go to London for the day, and Jason has the children all alone, so this may be my penance for sneaking off and not doing my wifely duty at the weekend.  There’s always a price to pay.

The thing about conjunctivitis is that it is both messy and wildly inconvenient.  It is also one of those boring things where the child is not ill enough to be interesting or quiet, but just irritated enough to be grouchy throughout the livelong day.  It’s also irritating for the parent, because how do you explain to an eighteen month old with crusty eyes that it isn’t a good idea to poke them with your finger, or wipe them on the chairs?  You can’t tie their hands, because I’ve read somewhere that it’s illegal.  Consequently you have to watch them like a hawk and every time they so much as raise their hands above elbow height you pounce on them like a lion on a wounded wildebeest.  After a day of this the child hates the sight of you and keeps sidling off into corners where you can’t get at them, and you’re run ragged and have to keep having a sit down.

No child likes having their eyes washed repeatedly, especially when they’re at that lovely age where you can’t reason with them and explain anything (this lasts until they’re about twenty five I believe).  Because it is highly contagious and I don’t want anyone else to get it I have also had to strip Oscar’s bed clothes and wash all the towels, which meant that the afternoon was also spent up to my ears in a welter of laundry.  I will also have to repeat the procedure tomorrow and every day thereafter until he is better.  It works, but it’s very labour intensive and far too housewifely for my liking.  I’m bathing his eyes in cold black tea (tannin is an eye friendly antiseptic) and stuffing homeopathic euphrasia down him every hour.  He likes the medicine because it’s sweet, but we’re both covered in cold tea and it’s rather unpleasant.  I don’t drink regular tea anyway, and I really don’t like the smell of it too much, so it’s definitely shower time this evening.  I smell like a works canteen on a busy day.

When we were kids we used to get conjunctivitis all the time.  I used to enjoy waking up and not being able to see because my eyelashes were welded together with gunk.  It was cool and a bit scary.  It was also gross, which is great, because kids love gross things.  We used to get sent to school with it regardless, as our mothers were a much hardier breed and wouldn’t let you stay at home unless your limbs were dropping off or you were coughing up blood.  Now if you have so much as a scraped knee you get a medical report, fourteen phone calls and instructions to keep them at home for a week.  If you do that they then send you a stern letter telling you that your child having so much time off of school is playing havoc with their statistics and if you don’t sort yourselves out they’ll send the truant officer round.  You just can’t win.

Oscar was exhausted from being ministered unto, so he went for a refreshing snooze this afternoon while I spent the afternoon preparing dinner.  It was Tallulah’s parents evening, and we had a load of role players round, so I had to be on the ball.  I’d also promised the kids they could make jam tarts, so I needed to plan ahead.  As we know, this is not my forte, but it did make me remember that the thing I should have bought from the Co-op yesterday was in fact chocolate spread.  You see, I don’t like jam tarts because I’m not overkeen on pastry, nor am I a fan of jam.  The kids don’t like it much either, but they had this bee in their bonnet about making jam tarts.  My reasoning was that we would make some jam tarts, but mainly chocolate tarts.  This meant that they would in fact be eaten, rather than me spend an afternoon up to my elbows in flour and jam only to have to give away forty rather grimy jam tarts that nobody in my house would eat.

Oscar and I plodded back round to the Co-op and duly purchased said chocolate spread.  I’ve never cooked chocolate tarts before, so it was all a bit experimental, and I wasn’t sure if they’d just burn to a crisp, but decided to forge ahead in the name of scientific enquiry.  Mum, when asked for advice, suggested I bake the pastry cases blind and add the chocolate afterwards.  This seemed a) too fiddly, b) too time consuming and c) too practical, so I decided against it.

The other thing I did was cheat over pastry.  I bought pre made pastry from the freezer section, short crust and puff pastry.  Not only is it pre made, it is also pre rolled, which given the time constraints and the childrens rolling ability, seemed like a star buy to me.  I know I should lovingly prepare pastry by the sweat of my own brow, but it is one of the few things about cooking that I really don’t like, and which I am not very good at.  I can turn my hand to most things cheffing wise, but pastry is a skill I don’t possess.  I have always been told that it is important to have cold hands, and that if you have them, you cannot fail to make good pastry.  I am one of the coldest mortals in the Western hemisphere.  I have hot water bottles in August.  You think I would be a natural, but sadly not.

Whenever I go to make my own pastry I immediately start to heat up like a volcano which is just about to blow.  My hands go from little blocks of ice, to sweating, throbbing, heat ridden paws in about thirty seconds flat, and the pastry just goes mental.  I can actually achieve a form of matter which could technically be called pastry, but it is invariably grey, sweaty and rather dubious looking, as am I by the time I’ve finished the process.  This is before the children have gotten hold of it.  After they’ve rolled it and cut it and shaped it for a bit it then becomes slightly hairy and has finger prints in it.  It’s quite unnerving and a bit horrible, and nobody, except people we don’t like, should be forced to eat it.  Consequently shop bought pastry is a gift from the gods.

We made a tray of strawberry and blackcurrant jam tarts.  We made a tray of chocolate tarts, and when the kids had become bored of flicking flour and pastry everywhere, and nibbled on raw pastry until they felt sick, I made a treacle tart with puff pastry all alone, with no help from my short minions.  The chocolate tarts were hugely successful and didn’t burn at all (ten minutes at gas mark 7 if you want to give it a go).  The strawberry tarts were eaten by Jason and Tilly, and everyone avoided the blackcurrant ones like the plague.  The treacle tart was eaten by several hungry role players with lashings of double cream, and my reputation as a good host was cemented for another week!

Parents evening was good.  Tallulah is doing well and proving the whole hell hound at home/ angel at school scenario.  In some ways this is good.  I can cope with her hell houndish ways as I’ve had years of practice.  I’d much rather have her sitting on the naughty step at home than be dragged down to the school every thirty seconds because she’s tried to sever someone’s jugular with a bit of duplo.  It’s a much better balance.

I’m making slow progress with my book on Tragedy.  I managed two chapters today, but I’m not sure if it’s me being tired or the book being obtuse, because I’m finding it really rather difficult to follow.  It seems rather fragmented and vague.  I feel like this most of the time, so I’m thinking it’s probably me, but I can’t honestly say that I’m getting much out of reading it so far.  I’m hoping that I feel a bit more awake tomorrow and that I will be able to read a chapter while I am alert.  This way I can compare and contrast and see if it makes any more sense.  In a weird kind of way I’m hoping that it won’t and then I won’t have to worry about the fact that I am getting too tired to think about anything except laundry.  Fingers crossed.