Tallulah asked me yesterday if bananas only grew in warm places. For her this was a very normal kind of question and I was highly relieved. I answered with a simple ‘yes’, and got on with scrubbing something sticky off the kitchen floor. She thought about this for a few minutes and then asked me whether I thought this meant that she would be able to grow bananas under her bed. I realized that no question Tallulah ever asks me, nor indeed any conversation she ever engages in will be straightforward. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I merely plumped for: ‘No, bananas will not grow under your bed.’ She thinks it’s because of the carpeting. I didn’t want to disabuse her. I hope I don’t find her digging up the carpet tomorrow after school.
Bananas it seems are a naturally perplexing fruit. I recall several years ago my friend Stevie and I having a very confusing conversation where I thought she had told me that bananas share 98% of our DNA. It turns out that it was the half a bottle of red wine that I had just consumed that contributed to my hearing problem, and that although we do share some DNA similarities with bananas it’s not that high. It took an hour of incredulous debate and a lot of arm waving before this could be established, and actually it was only because Jason got back from wherever he had been too and hadn’t drunk half a bottle of red wine that the problem was resolved at all. Left to us we’d probably still be having that very same conversation.
Then recently a friend of mine tells me that bananas are sterile and that soon there will be no more bananas at all. At the rate Oscar eats them this tragic tale of genocide is likely to be over much more quickly than scientists estimate. I may have to write them a letter. I have a feeling that they’ll be back though. After all, there is no Latin for Banana because the Roman’s didn’t have them, and they conquered most of the known world. Then suddenly, after the Romans there were a plethora of bananas and banana related language. Probably they’re alien fruit that dropped from the sky and after a few years of not having any the mother ship will sail over us again and drop off some more. That would be good. Not that I’m a huge fan myself, but I wouldn’t like Oscar to be deprived. The fact that we share DNA with alien bananas is probably great news for conspiracy theorists everywhere.
You’ll have to excuse my blogging today. I wrote quite a lot of this last night and was too tired to edit it properly. Then today I’ve been weaving backwards and forwards in between dealing with a particularly grumpy toddler, inserting random thoughts as I pass, which explains the oddly bitty nature of the entry. It’s as good as it’s going to get today. Tempted though I am to blog the entire day away, I have promised myself that I will be good, resume Leonardo and write an essay this week. I am starting tonight. I am already thinking of ways to wangle out of it…
This is a bit of yesterdays:
When her father came back from taking Tilly out for the day and was telling us what a great time they’d had, Tallulah was sitting at the kitchen table drying her nails where I’d just feebly painted them for her. She was feeling pretty left out, but that doesn’t deter her. She just determinedly made her mind up to shoehorn herself into the conversation by hook or by crook. She had nothing to say about the world of climbing which is what they were talking about so, out of the blue she just said: ‘Daddy? Don’t you think that it’s not fair when people with really pretty names have really ugly faces? I really don’t like that at all. They should change their names…’ and then got back on with the job of contemplating her nails while we all stood and looked at her.
In the afternoon when we had returned from our garden centre odyssey we let them watch television for a while. On Sunday afternoons on CBeebies they often show signed programmes which Tallulah was watching in a derisory manner. She doesn’t like the fact that some of the programmes had sign language subtitles. She tells me that she doesn’t like the way they stand around flapping in the corner of the screen because; ‘they just look really, really stupid.’ I explained the concept of sign language and how brilliant it was and said that if she were deaf she would be utterly delighted to have those people there or she would never be able to watch television. She just looked at me disparagingly and in that very clinical and matter of fact way that children often have went: ‘Well! Yeah! But I’m not deaf am I? And they’re still stupid.’ It’s hard to know what to say to that. I do try to inculcate a sense of charity towards others and a healthy regard for difference, especially given that my children may not be deaf but they are most definitely different. I feel we have some way to go.
She took particular umbrage with one of the signers who had a small stripe of beard down the middle of his chin. She really didn’t like that at all. It didn’t matter if he were the best damn sign language signer in the whole world, because his beard was just too ridiculous to contemplate. She went on about it so much that Jason and I stared, rapt at the comings and goings of Bob The Builder for five whole minutes so we could appreciate the absurdity of such a beard. Actually, she may have been wrong about sign language, but she was dead right about the beard.
When I was at university we used to have a beard chart of excellence. It was the time in the early nineties when goatees of all shapes and sizes were beginning to make their first big resurgence since about 1888 and most of the men at university either had them or were attempting to cultivate them. We had a ranking system for beard wearing activity. I can’t remember what the categories were now, although I did write an article for the magazine about it. It never got published. I believe the editor may have been a practitioner of the art of the goatee at the time and I had touched a raw nerve. Growing your first fledgeling beard is never easy. I should know, I’m at about that age now where I have to keep my eagle eyes peeled for any sign of incipient bum fluff around my jowels. All hail to the menopause and the wonders it brings. I might go for a Zapata moustache and pointed devil beard myself. It makes a change from a blue rinse and a lot of sandalwood.
Tilly had a wonderful day out with her dad yesterday and didn’t get aerated about the world of beards or killer monkeys in the process, which is good. As I mentioned they went climbing. It turns out that Tilly is a naturally gifted climber and that Jamie wants to talk to me about arranging lessons for her. I’m really pleased that she loves it, and that she is good at something so physical rather than her usual cerebral pursuits. I am less pleased about the fact that Jamie talking to me about it will probably involve him trying to work out how I can do all the running around after her. This sounds really selfish I know, but with three children of such disparate ages it isn’t that simple to do lessons of any kind. Yes I can get them there, usually, but then what do I do with the other two kids while the third one is enjoying themselves hugely? Well, what usually happens is that the other two get very bored, very jealous and very fidgety while I spend the whole hour having to explain to them that yes when they are older they too can dangle from the ceiling festooned in crampons, but until that time they have to sit still and be good. It isn’t much fun. Next year when Oscar will be coming up to three life will be so much simpler in lots of ways. We can start taking him to the cinema and he can become more involved in the activities the girls do, until then it’s just a juggling thing where I always know that balls will inevitably be dropped, usually on my toe.
Tilly watched a Bear Grylls type survival programme with Jason last night before she went to bed. As an aside, I have to confess that I like the fact that Bear Grylls survives by going to five star hotels. I’d let him do all the chewing beetles stuff and just wait for him back at the hotel. I hear that Ray Mears is very cross with him, but much as I revere King Ray, not all of us are fit for a life whittling our own bread boards. Some of us need five star service and pancakes delivered by room service. I know this to be true.
Tilly was very impressed by this programme and what with this and her climbing experience she was inspired to give it a go herself. When I went to get Tallulah up for a wee I found Tilly covered in bits of string, dangling from the ladder up to her bed. I asked her what she was doing and got a very enthusiastic babble which when decoded into English turned out to be an explanation that she was playing at being a survivor in the wilderness. Apparently surviving in the wilderness involves hair bobbles, string, teddy and a fluffy heart shaped pillow. These must all be strapped to your person whilst you dangle upside down until your ears go purple and then voila, no bears will eat you.
About twenty minutes after that I could still hear her crashing around, so I went to investigate (French for shout a lot). Turns out that she had discovered a moth in the bathroom and was stalking it. She wanted to know what moths eat. To be honest this one stumped me a bit, apart from letting their larvae chew tweed hacking jackets I have very little information on the culinary disposition of the humble moth. I do wonder if their fatal attraction to light bulbs is indicative of the fact that they actually survive on beams of light. I’m grasping at straws here to be honest, but you never know. Well, actually David Attenborough does, but I’m not going to bother him on a Monday morning over such trivialities so we’ll just have to keep guessing. I’m clearly going to have to look it up because Tilly announced that she has now adopted the moth and that she is going to call it Softy the moth. Nice one. Just what we need, another complicated diet and mouth to feed.
It might not be too bad actually. Softy was hanging out on the landing wall this morning when Oscar spotted him and has also taken a shine to him. I spent twenty minutes chasing around after the bloody thing trying to protect it from Oscar’s evil clutches. I’ve managed so far, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to exert that high a level of vigilance all day, which probably means that poor Softy’s hours are numbered and I won’t have to worry about what to give him for tea after all. I am now worrying about the etiquette of moth funerals. If it’s not one thing it’s another.
So, the kids have gone back to school this morning, hoorah! It wasn’t too horrible either. I think they had about as much fun at half term as I did, so were absolutely gagging to get back to school and their non-nagging friends. They were practically battering the door down this morning and Tallulah even remembered her p.e. kit voluntarily which may sound trivial, but which I’ve had to write down because it’s a historical first, and probably last, but never mind. For a Monday and a school day, and the first day back after the holidays it was one of the smoothest starts to the day we’ve had in a long time. I was very impressed of them.
Oscar on the other hand has been vile. He refused to have a nap yesterday and was steadily more hideous as the day wore on. Another tooth came through last night, which might explain things, but he doesn’t seem to have gotten any less vile in the intervening hours. I had lots of chores to do in town today, but decided to put them off until later in the week because I thought Oscar could do with a day at home, his naps and some kind of return to his regular routine so that he can start to feel more normal after having been so poorly and disrupted last week. I have so many jobs to do at home as well it really doesn’t matter too much.
I was a fool to myself. We should have gone out and damned the expense. He is absolutely shattered and has been since breakfast, but he is refusing steadfastly to go to bed or to eat breakfast, at which he has now had three failed attempts. I have tried once to put him to bed and he screamed for twenty minutes, which wasn’t very restful for either of us. But when I get him up he keeps making nests everywhere and climbing into everyone else’s bed. He insists that he is not tired, he just wants stories. So far I’ve read Topsy and Tim get a dog twice, Charlie and Lola three times and Old Mother Hubbard complete with flaps and actions twice. When you tell them to him he really is too tired to listen and his head keeps drooping onto my shoulder, but if I skip a page he goes mad and wakes up instantly.
I’m in disgrace because I’ve just refused to read Old Mother Hubbard for the third time. He is now sulking with me by filling one of the girl’s toy suitcases with all the books off of my shelf and trying to take them away, probably to burn them on the lawn. Luckily for me he has put David Crystal’s Glossary of Shakespearean Terms in there and now can’t propel the suitcase along the ground it is so heavy. He has just had to have a little break, lying on the floor and scowling at me in a manner that suggests he’s just off to learn to bench press encyclopaedias and he’ll be right back on the case, as it were.
So far this morning it has taken me over two hours to clean the kitchen and drink a cup of coffee. It’s all a bit tragic really. I don’t know about him needing a nap, I know I do. Instead of which I am going to attempt to get him to go to sleep once more, and then sweep strange crunchy things off the hall floor. Wish me luck…
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