My lovely friend Ros over at Watching The Wheels recently posted a poem, which I love called Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. Wander over to Ros’s place and check it out.
I read it at the funeral of a very dear friend of mine, who was also god-mother to my girls. Despitee it being over five years now since she died, I still miss her and think of her, and this poem is for her.
Anne my love, wherever you are, I hope you’re having a blast. You earned it.
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Tagged anne storey, mary oliver wild geese, ros at watchthatcheese, watching the wheels
About three weeks ago I ran a competition on these hallowed pages in which I invited you, my patient readers, to regale me with tales of how Christmas officially starts in your house. I promised a prize for the one which made me laugh the most.
A few days later I promised I had not forgotten that I had to award a prize.
Then today I realized that I had.
For which I am truly ashamed.
Anyway. The belated, although thorougly deserving winner is J. whose story made me laugh so much I nearly did a wee:
It is here:
We have the teetering pile of Christmas cards, too. Usually I hang up a ribbon and pin them on (with cute tiny clothespins or rusty nasty paper clips–whatever comes to hand first) but we are preparing to move house and I can’t be bothered this year.
Christmas officially kickstarts in my family with several of us seated around the decorated tree in my dad’s family room with glasses in hand, carols tinkling on the stereo in the background. The doorbell rings, and my stepmother leaps up and says “That’s X! [Insert horrifying new revelation about X's life here] but don’t say anything!!!” before running to open the door and ushering X in with hugs and cries of “Merry Christmas!” (X=any one of the various relatives in our huge family.) Previous horrifying revelations have included X breaking up with their spouse, X’s spouse being sent to prison for dealing cocaine to support her habit, X getting back together with a spouse he had previously divorced, X’s illegitimate pregnancy, Xs losing his/her jobs, X’s house being foreclosed upon, X’s miscarriage, X’s horrible new medical diagnosis, X abandoning his spouse on vacation in China, etc. No one knows why our stepmother does this, but she does it without fail every year.
So J. If you are still around and haven’t flitted off to blogstures new, drop a comment in the comment box and I will e-mail you about a prize. As previous winners of my competitions will attest, the prizes are random, bizarre and unpredictable. It all depends on what I feel like when I go out to buy it. So I can’t tell you what it will be, but it will be something you probably haven’t got. You may wish you still hadn’t got it when it arrives, but it will make an interesting raffle prize in the summer fete tombola.
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I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I love Simon Schama. He may well fall into the category of unsuitably weird crushes, about which I posted quite a while ago, and which I am compiling a new and updated list for.
Here he is:
In this photo I think he is trying for the ‘foxy but broodingly intellectual’ look. Note how he has eschewed the traditional academic’s tweed jacket for sexy, rumpled leather, and is fondling his glasses in a come hither way rather than perching them atop the bridge of his nose a la Professor Yaffle, who reminds me of him in a strange way:
Now I don’t think Simon needs to try looking sexy. He just exudes sexiness. Mostly, for me, when he is getting terribly excited about some random factette in history, and his little face scrunches up with boyish enthusiasm and his hands fly about like a man obsessed by doing the world’s fastest mime to ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’ and he’s twitching away, tweed blazing in the light of his intellectual rigour:
See him here, in mid explanation, the hands flying, the glazed expression, staring into a world of intellect that only he can see clearly, shining like the grail on a far distant horizon.
Sigh…
For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work I will explain.
Apart from being an intellectual sex behemoth, he is a kind of modern renaissance man who writes epic books about subjects that you might think are going to bore the pants off you, but which are actually made rivettingly interesting because of two key things. One is that Simon totally believes 100% in what he is doing and has an unquenchable zeal and enthusiasm for his subject which, if you are within a three mile radius is totally inescapable. You might be an AA man, called out to fix his flat tyre. You have no interest in say the politics of the French Revolution. After a hard day’s work, coughing up exhaust fumes in a layby on the A50 you like to watch repeats of Bull’s Eye and make scale models of Chartres Cathedral out of match sticks. Simon kindly engages you in conversation, hoping to take your mind off the tedium of having brake fluid dropping down your vest, and ten minutes later you are in the grip of an epiphany. You realise that the early political machinations of Robespierre are the most fascinating thing you have ever come across and you don’t understand why you hadn’t discovered this earlier. You replace his tyre in hasty gratitude and bunk off work for the rest of the afternoon to head off down to the library and become intimately engaged with the writings of Christopher Hibbert, and even Simon himself. Such are Simon’s power and charisma.
The second thing is that Simon is a scurrilous gossip monger and loves a good historical bitch fight. I imagine that going out for a drink with him would be a total blast, as he casts his critical eye over the seething mass of humanity before him and pronounces pithily on matters of fashion whilst casually dropping in nuggets of conversational gold: ‘Did you know his left foot is entirely made of Gouda?’ etc.
And this is the way Schama presents history. He leaves in all the juicy bits, he embraces all the salacious details. He gives you the dirt, the human interest and the scandal. All the stuff which history teachers leave out. He tells it to you like you were watching the world’s most gripping soap opera. Imagine Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington doing Elizabeth I. Total respect…
And not only does he write books. He does this stuff on telly too. My absolute favourite is his series called The Power of Art. It is sheer genius, and if you ever thought art was boring I defy you to watch this and ever think it again. Even Jason was interested.
Anyway, Simon deserves a post all to himself because not only is he a genius with a brain the size of a planet, but he may also be the key to solving one of my long standing problems.
Currently they are re-showing his epic series ‘A History of Britain’ on one of the history channels. If you are interested and live in foreign climes, you can buy it here, on Amazon as a box set for the staggeringly good price of £17.88, and if you are in the UK and still want it anyway, postage is free.
Anyway, I missed this series the first time around, because I am what marketing gurus call ‘A late adopter’. i.e. I turn up to the party after everyone else has buggered off, and spend the evening helping the hostess remove ground up Hula Hoops out of the shag pile Wilton instead of getting down to the funky beat. Such is my role in life. So, I am watching them now. And I love them, and they are all the things I have described. Unfortunately, Simon’s voice is incredibly soporific. Every time I put one on, without fail I am asleep within ten minutes. I am forced to watch him in a Youtube style manner, which means that every episode lasts me for ages.
Last night I watched ten minutes of one at 11.00 p.m. Jason woke me up at 1.00 a.m. to go to bed. I went straight to bed and straight to sleep. This morning Jason pointed out how rare this is, and how brilliant it is, and had I thought of buying some Audio CD’s so I can take Simon to bed with me every night? I was thrilled. Not only does it mean that I will get to sleep. It means I get to sleep with Simon Schama with my husband’s consent.
Winner.
First, an update on Tallulah. We are still having flurries of rebellious behaviour. Not as extreme as at the weekend, thank goodness, or by now they’d be definitely carting me off to the basket weaving department for some raffia therapy, but she is still acting out in smaller ways, pushing and prodding to see where there’s a weak link in the chain she can exploit. This evening’s worst foray was in failing to sit still while I combed her nitty hair for the billionth time and then saying it wasn’t fair to expect her to sit still because I didn’t understand how boring it was. I have to admit that things got a bit shouty for a while. I would rather tend to an exploding bottom than comb nitty hair, so I’m a bit sensitive on the topic. Especially now that I’ve been doing it for several days and have several more days ahead of me.
I have been helped enormously by your kind and practical comments. I have decided that we will definitely pursue Justme’s recommendation of a martial arts class. Tallulah’s anger needs an acceptable outlet and some discipline and this will be great, if she likes it. Which I hope she will. The other big concern for me is the slightly sociopathic failure to empathise. The whole, ‘I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to spend two hours of your life picking nits out of my hair,’ scenario. I was thinking about the idea of play therapy which several of you suggested, and which had crossed my own mind. It’s a big step to take though, and I’ve kind of put it on the back burner. Whilst I was throwing the idea from one corner to the other of my tiny brain I remembered a drama class that Tilly joined about two years ago. It was in the church hall just down the road, and instead of focusing on audtioning for Annie and sewing sequins, the woman who ran it used it as a tool for helping the children express their emotions in play situations, learning to empathise and become more confident about their own feelings through the scenarios they worked through. It didn’t work for Tilly and she left after a term because she’d been all for sequins. But it might be perfect for Tallulah. I’m going to look into it.
Although things still aren’t easy at the moment, these ideas and your support have given me viable options, which I didn’t think I had at the weekend, and more confidence to go forward. So thank you for that. You are good peoples.
To reward you I will offer up some Boo family choice tidbits from the last few days:
Oscar on surveying granny’s newfangled stock cubes, which are jellylike and come in small plastic tubs:
Oscar: ‘What’s that granna?’
Granna: ‘What?’
Oscar: ‘That thing there?’
Granna: ‘It’s a stock cube Oscar.’
Oscar: ‘No it’s not. It’s a dog yogurt.’
Tallulah to my brother, as he sits watching snooker on television as she flits by:
Tallulah: ‘What’s that Uncle Robber? Is it American Football?’
No reply as he chokes hysterically.
I wish it were.
Oscar on the landing, lying on his back, flailing and waving his arms and legs:
Me: ‘What are you doing Oscar?’
Oscar: ‘I’m being an exploded beetle doing his morning exercises.’
DUH!
Oscar sharing a toilet cubicle with me, whilst we are in a busy shopping centre. Said at the top of his voice:
‘Mama! You had better put your willy back in your pants quickly or the birds will think it is a sausage and eat it up, chomp.’
I could not make eye contact with a single person as I washed my hands. My card is marked.
Then there is my confession.
It may surprise you to know that Tallulah has nits. I know. I should have broken it to you gently, perhaps offered you a chair. I am sorry.
Anyway, we follow a boring but effective routine whereby I wash her hair, slather it in conditioner, comb it through with the nit comb, rinse her hair, pour on neat tea tree oil, give it a cursory comb and then plait it until both eyes are on different sides of her head with the strain. TWICE A DAY. FOR TEN DAYS.
On Friday, as you know, I ran out of tea tree oil and conditioner, and my parents were kind enough to drop me at the chemist to get some more supplies. Because they were waiting outside, I dashed round, flinging things into my bag, paid and left in a matter of minutes. I was doing Tallulah’s hair later that evening and reached for the new tea tree oil. I started absentmindedly pouring it onto her head. It usually comes out in drops. It was only when I noticed it literally pouring that I looked properly at what I was doing. I turns out that I had picked up the wrong bottle, and what I was pouring onto her head was a tea tree nail varnish. Oh very dear. Still, it only took another twenty minutes to rinse it out, to no ill effect.
I am thinking now that I should have left it in. They’d have been much easier to catch had they been laminated.
Tilly’s gnome fetish goes from strength to strength. She claims to want to be an artist when she is older. I fear she will be some strange performance artist dressed like this:
doing things like this:
I worry about this, as I am hoping that I will be able to steal all her clothes when she is older. If she dresses like this I shall look a right tit at Help The Aged tea dances.
I blogged previously about a skirmish she and Tallulah had over the matter of making calendars for their nanna who lives in Canada. Tilly came up with the original and troubling idea of ‘Advice Gnomes’, one for every month of the year, and Tallulah tried to copy her. Carnage ensued.
Nevertheless, after the wounds had healed, Tilly finished and I have taken a very rubbish photo of some of the fruits of her labour.
Introducing the March Advice Gnome
Yes. I must go on a photography course. In the meantime, I will translate: It says ‘It’s time for Spring, a great season. Take a walk in the lovely weather that you will hopefully get!’ (you can tell she is English, no?) To the right in red it says: ‘This is one of the younger information gnomes who thinks he looks cool (which he doesn’t)’. His t-shirt says ‘Gnomelicious’ and his shoes have yellow and red lightning bolts on.
I think he’s a bit of a surfer gnome. He has a kind of surfer’s goatee going on, rather than the full blown,traditional gnome beard. Probably so that he doesn’t get it trapped in a rip tide or something. I disagree with Tilly. He does look quite cool, compared to other more traditional gnomes. At least he’s not wearing knickerbockers, or clutching a giant blue trowel.
So, imagine my surprise, when I broke out of my fetid house into the dingy light of Leicester city and its environs and found this in my favourite charity shop:
Oh yes! A book entitled: ‘Knitted Gnomes and Fairies’ by the craft goddess Jan Messent (apparently she made it into the big time craft wise with her seminal work ‘Knitted Farmyard’). I was jubilant. I felt that it was sixty pence well spent and would restore me the title of ‘top mama’, at least with the first born.
It is an astonishing book. For a small volume it is packed with fabulous patterns and ideas including how to make Titania and Oberon, Water Elves, Leprechauns, Goblins and even a Toadstool House. There is a double page, full colour photo shoot OK stylie showing, and I quote: ‘Oberon and Titania, have discovered the Irish Leprechaun taking a rest under a bluebell.’
Here for your delectation is a picture of The fat and thin Goblins preparing to take a ride:
I feel slightly cheated that she hasn’t made any effort to knit the bicycles. She’s clearly slacking off here. Thinking she can rest on her laurels after the hoo ha about the knitted Border Collie. Tsk.
Anyway, Tilly is almost as thrilled as me, except when she realised that neither she nor I can knit. Granny has been known to knit, but it is not really her forte. Our womenfolk tend to go in for the sort of tense, vicious knitting employed during the war to help make prefabricated housing and nuclear fall out shelters. Not ideal for recreating the wee folk prancing round the fairy glen.
I have come up with plan B. Aunty Squirrel (this is not a blog name by the way. She chooses to be called Aunty Squirrel, in public. All the time), who is a regular frequenter of our abode, is an ace top knitter and has been helping Tallulah knit a handbag for some time (she also has nerves of steel and is the only person to ever best Tallulah vis tantrums). I am sure that bribed with sufficient baked goods and a regular supply of hot dinners, she may be persuaded to branch out into helping Tilly knit Mr and Mrs. Gnome, who according to Mrs. Messent are ‘industrious creatures who love the warmth of a log fire when work is done’.
There are two key looks for this season.
Firstly the male, floor length snood:
A versatile look which can be bought off the peg, or fashioned from old curtains, throws, bed spreads and other lengths of cloth. We call this look ‘Vintage Hobo’. Note here the chenille fringing, the plum colour of the snood contrasting fetchingly with the khaki outerwear and the accessorising of the beard. Beards are also a key look this season. Work the seasonal trend with snow flakes liberally sprinkled throughout. Note that the snood can be lengthened to cover the head should the model offend the eye too greatly.
Look Number two, Ear Socks for the Laydee:
A stunning ensemble which is both practical and stylish. With the ear sock what is particularly appealing is the avoidance of hat hair. It is unfortunate that this model had not yet recovered from ‘bed hair’ before the photo shoot, but needs must when the devil drives. These are by John Galliano, and a mere snip at £249.99999 per sock. Socks are sold singly in order to allow mix and match colourways, and also the humiliation of losing one in the tumble drier. It’s not often that Galliano triumphs both stylistically and practically, but we predict he will become a household name with the ear sock. Don’t leave home without one.
Another morning in which the children spent their precious time playing one off against the other to see who could get who into the most trouble. I do love the smell of squabbling children in the morning. I have a sore throat from shouting. I am not good at patience before coffee, and they were so fierce I didn’t get coffee until we were nearly ready to leave this morning. As we were walking to school I pointed out that there was no point trying to kill each other and climb over the bloodied corpses of their defeated siblings to curry favour with me. I said: ‘I have no favourites. You are all my children, and at the moment it’s fair to say I dislike you all equally, so there’s no point in trying to better it.’ Luckily they laughed. Unluckily it is the way I feel at the moment.
I adore my children. But sometimes I really don’t like them much, and this morning, sitting at the table writing notes, and dinner money cheques etc, I caught myself thinking about the fact that they were really unpleasant human beings, and that I would rather be elsewhere. That’s a tough thing for a parent to admit. It is one of the last parenting taboos. Admitting that your children are not always very nice. I wonder why this is so? After all, I am not always very nice and I know lots of adults who are positively repellent and I am fine with that. I guess it’s the fact that it is still a strange, human conundrum that we can love someone with a fierceness that would make us take a bullet for them, and yet not want to sit round the breakfast table with that same person because they are doing our head in. It’s a push me, pull you of the emotional world and it is frying my brain a bit at the minute.
I know it will pass, but it is very uncomfortable to be in it.
I am continuing to take the hard line with Tallulah. She started acting up over her homework last night and was beginning to spiral. I needed something to grab her attention, so I ripped the offending page out of the homework book, tore it into little bits and said that we would only re-do it if she behaved, and if she didn’t I would send the pieces to school in an envelope, with a note to the teacher about sending Tallulah back to the baby class where she would be more suited. It worked. She is never naughty at school. She is a shining paragon of virtue. She hates anything that threatens that, because it is the one place in her life where she is totally confident and right.
What was previously going to end in a tantrum, delayed bed time and homework until ten at night, suddenly switched to being able to do her sums in under twenty minutes, quietly, thoughtfully and with a certain amount of pride.
I have burned my bridges though, with that technique. It was a once in a life time opportunity and I have used it. Still, it got us through the moment. And when bed time promised to get feisty I merely pointed to the homework book and announced that I wasn’t having any more nonsense. She went to bed beautifully and was asleep within minutes.
It is knackering, this level of discipline. Knackering and disheartening.
Still, at least I have some time this morning to think things through and get myself into a better space. Oscar gets his free hours at nursery this morning. I was supposed to be using them for a driving lesson, but the instructor rang me to cancel. All the snow is now beginning to melt and the side roads are covered in a winning combination of slush and ice. He set out to get to me and slid three times in under ten minutes. I am glad he cancelled. I have no desire to learn about hand brake turns this morning.
The house is a fetid heap, and I really should be cleaning, but my mind is all over the place and I think I am going to pick up Oscar and run away to town instead. We will have lunch, we will browse the charity shops for post Christmas bargains, and we will draw a veil over domestic matters in favour of over indulgence. It can’t hurt.
I didn’t post yesterday, or answer a single e-mail. This usually only happens if both my hands have been chopped off and I am forced to operate with stumps.
As my fingers are clearly working today it means that blogging was postponed for other reasons. Unfortunately I would have been happier if someone had chopped my hands off, because the real reason was that Tallulah was so horrifically badly behaved yesterday that hand maiming would have been jollier and easier to fix.
I spent most of the day locked in combat and the rest of it stressed, near to tears and despairing. Not a good way to spend a snowy Saturday in the East Midlands. It sucked.
As we know, she is the classic, difficult middle child, and is prone to temper tantrums and general bad behaviour. As this is tempered with her being hugely creative, massively entertaining and jolly good value for money, she is allowed to live. Her behaviour tends to swing in arcs, and if she weren’t six I would swear that she was under the sway of challenging hormonal issues. As it is, I dread the time when she is under the sway of challenging hormonal issues as she is likely to run amok with the carving knife and will probably end up banged up in Holloway for the rest of her natural.
Yesterday’s behaviour was off the charts. It has been brewing since just after Christmas to be honest. We are adept at a number of tricksy deflection manoeuvres (Look! A giant inflatable balloon in the shape of David Tennant, etc) that have saved our bacon, but we have been waiting for the day when these wouldn’t work and battening down the hatches. Usually she has a magnificent paddy and then relaxes for a few weeks until things begin to ramp up again. We have learned to live with it, exhausting though it can be.
We do have strategies by the way. We use the naughty step. When that fails we often use the isolation in the bedroom technique, or taking away a treasured possession which must be earned back through good behaviour. If we are out and about she is given a warning, if this doesn’t work we leave. If she acts up on the way somewhere and everyone else is being well behaved, she sits in the car with one or the other of us until either her behaviour changes or the others are ready to leave. We have tried ignoring it. We have tried embracing it. We have tried joining in. We have tried empathising. We have tried giving her tools by which she can articulate how she feels before she flips. We have tried the short sharp shock treatment, including the rare smack. We have tried encouraging her through positive rewards for good behaviour both in the short and long term. We have excluded, included, danced a jig in pig muck wearing sprigs of rosemary in our hair. We cannot be accused of failing to try, and we do not give in to terrorists. She never wins. Ever. But she is totally tenacious and only gives up when she is limp with exhaustion. She also does not care what happens to her during the tantrum. If she has to chop her own face off as a dramatic gesture, she will. She is totally out of control at these times, and it is frightening for her and for us.
The last twice she has lost her temper she has resorted to physical violence. This is a new departure. She runs at the person who is challenging her with all her strength and attempts to batter the living daylights out of them. Luckily she is very slight and refused to go to martial arts lessons, so her technique isn’t honed. Even more luckily she has only tried it on me and Jason, rather than her siblings. It is not good though, is it?
The other thing is that she flips over the strangest things. There is no logic and there is no warning. One minute everything is fine, and the next it’s armageddon in tights.
Yesterday it started because we were going to granny’s house. Granny had agreed to have the children for an hour so that I could go out in the car with Jason without the small chorus of disapproval in the back. Which was a great help. We asked the children to get ready. Bearing in mind that the temperature was below zero yesterday and there were snow flurries on and off all day, Tallulah came down dressed in a sleeveless party dress and a thin, summer shrug. Jason quite rightly, asked her to go back upstairs and put some warm clothes on because a) her clothes were patently inappropriate for the weather, b) granny’s house is old, cold and draughty and c) they were going to go and build snowmen in granny’s garden when they got there anyway. She started shouting as she went up the stairs about how it wasn’t fair and she was oppressed. Jason called up after her that as long as she packed some warm tights and a jumper with the dress, that she could take it with her to change into after she had played in the snow.
And that was it.
She went ballistic. Absolutely ballistic. She hit, she screamed, she flailed, she heaped invectives upon him. She wanted to wear her dress now. That was the only answer she would accept, and if he didn’t cave in immediately to her demands she was going to destroy worlds. This went on for an hour, during which she ended up with a smack in return for trying to mangle his man bits with karate blows (I am not endorsing smacking, by the way, but I do feel that sometimes children need a bit of a shock in these circumstances, and if someone were attacking my man bits, I’d probably smack them too).
Eventually he got her dressed.
Then it was my turn.
As you know, she has nits. I asked her to come into the bathroom so that I could apply some tea tree oil to her hair and plait it. I didn’t want her running around granny’s house giving everyone nits with her free flowing locks.
She went insane.
Eventually, because she was going to hurt herself I ended up having to hug her in a kind of body lock. For about an hour, while she tried everything in her power to damage me and her in every way she could think of, including: ‘I hate you. I hate everyone in this family. I don’t love you anymore. I wish you were all dead and I lived on my own. I am not part of this family anymore. Everyone else gets to do what they like but all you want to do is hurt me and that makes you happy.’
She exhausted herself. I plaited her hair. Then she started again. Luckily she was more tired now, so we nipped it in the bud fairly quickly and had a serious chat. Then we made friends again.
Finally we went to granny’s, with her winter clothes on, and her hair plaited. By this time over two hours had elapsed and there was no time to go driving.
She was angelic all afternoon and I was very grateful. I assumed that things would follow the normal routine and now she would be a delight for a few weeks.
How wrong I was.
We got home at bed time. After their shower and Oscar being put to bed I decided to treat myself. I love Doris Day films, particularly the ones with Rock Hudson and Cary Grant in. My favourite is That Touch of Mink, and I got it on DVD for Christmas. Doris always makes me feel that the world is a good place to live, and I needed that. I decided to put it on, and ask Tallulah if she wanted to sit up with Tilly and I and watch it. Jason had gone out to play poker and I thought it would be a good way of having some girly time and mend some bridges by making her feel included. She said yes, but that she wanted to do X, Y and Z as well. I said no. I said that it was my time now and that if she wanted she could watch the film or go to bed, but it was not time to play anymore. She could choose. And that if she chose the film, she would have to also accept that when it was finished it would be bed time and no nonsense.
She chose the film.
It was lovely. We had real fun and by the time it was finished I was feeling more relaxed than I had been all day. I felt that we had made some progress and that a modicum of peace had been restored.
I asked her to go and get ready and that I would come up and tuck her in.
That’s when it started. She decided that it should be Tilly’s bed time as well. I reminded her that Tilly was four years older than her, and had different privileges. Privileges that she would be entitled to at that age. I reminded her that Tilly’s behaviour was nothing to do with her, and that all she had to worry about was herself, and the fact that she and I had had an agreement. She grudgingly went upstairs.
Then she decided that she wanted to read and listen to her CD. I explained that this wasn’t part of the deal. By now it was three hours past her regular bed time, and that she was pushing her luck. That if she wanted to be treated like Tilly, then she had to stop behaving like Oscar, because she couldn’t have it both ways.
She went mad.
This time I lost my temper. Earlier in the day I had been incredibly patient. I hadn’t put up with any nonsense, but I hadn’t raised my voice. I had reasoned with her. This time I was heartbroken, tired and had no more bandwidth. I freaked out. I put her to bed. Turned the light out and shut the door. She screamed and screamed.
Then I did what most girls do in times of crisis. I rang my mum. Who was hugely sympathetic and listened to my snuffling about how I had raised a psychopath, and clearly I had failed as a parent, and it was all my fault. She was very reassuring. After ten minutes I went back into Tallulah’s room and we made peace. She went to bed, in the dark, with no CD or book, and the punishment that she goes to bed at Oscar’s bed time every night for the next week, with no books or CD’s to remind her.
I am still fairly distraught. Her behaviour today has been impeccable. I expect she’s got it all out of her system. I haven’t.
I admire her tenacity and her spirit. When she is older if she can channel it she will be a formidable woman. If she can’t she will be lonely and destructive.
What stuns me is her willingness to lose everything and gain nothing, just for the hell of it. Like I said, she never wins. Never. She cannot be allowed to run roughshod over everyone else and rule the house. In some ways I suppose she does rule, because we wasted two hours of our lives yesterday morning on dealing with her. On the other hand, we took it in shifts, so that the other parent was with the other two children so they didn’t feel hi jacked by the situation or that they weren’t getting their share of us. And if we had given in, she would have taken it as licence to continue with the behaviour.
I have this theory. I think that she is fairly emotionally illiterate. She is really clever in thousands of other ways, but she really doesn’t have any clue about how she feels about things. She wants to be Tilly, but has the emotional equipment of Oscar, and this gap causes all the problems. I have tried to get her to think about feelings, to have a vocabulary to express herself emotionally and to try to communicate how she feels without resorting to rage and violence, mostly, I am sure, fueled by the fact that she is afraid, particularly of her own, overwhelming inner landscape. I don’t think I have made much progress. Jason assures me I have ,but that it is slow progress, and that we must be patient and keep trying.
There isn’t really anything else to do, is there?
Any thoughts gratefully accepted.
January is dragging on a bit isn’t it? And it’s only just started.
The dark days, the darker nights, the lack of money, enthusiasm and verve combined with the miserable weather makes it hard to remain optimistic that spring will come again, and soon we will all be frisking about looking at the bunnies and dreaming of roast, spring lamb.
The weight of nits oppresses me greatly and I feel the need for a little focus on some of the shinier things in life. A list. A bally list. That’s what will help.
The In-Betweeners
The In-Betweeners is very silly. Very silly indeed. And quite rude, and disgusting, and not at all the sort of thing you should watch with a) your children or b) your mother. It is a programme about four, sixth form boys and their hopeless attempts to get girls, get laid, get popular and not be ridiculed by everyone including their parents. It is excruciatingly realistic and hilariously funny. I bought Jason series one and two for Christmas and we have watched them, howling with laughter. Jolly good as a post Christmas pick me up as long as you don’t mind being grossed out.
Burnt Sugar Fudge
I’ve mentioned this before. It’s still bloody delicious, and now I’ve just discovered that they do stem ginger flavour, and chocolate flavour. I’ve ordered the stem ginger flavour, all in the spirit of consumer research of course.
Ian Dury
I wasn’t into music much when I was small, and Ian Dury had his hey day when I was small. I remember listening to ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ and thinking it was hilarious. Then he wrote the theme tune for the execrable television series of Adrian Mole, and I lost interest. There is a new biopic out today starring the excellent Andy Serkis, called ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll,’ and I am dying to see it. A few years ago, when Dury died, there were a lot of articles about him which inspired me to read his life story. He was an amazingly complex, tricky character and I was intrigued. Not intrigued enough to listen to any of his music until this Christmas when I got a double album of stuff in my stocking. I am thoroughly enjoying it. How can you listen to ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful Part 3′ and not be cheerful? I’ve always got time for a man who sings about goats as a reason for celebration.
Arguing Children
It’s not often you’ll find me listing arguing children as a good thing, but listening to Oscar and Tallulah going at it hammer and tongs over the question of the right lyrics for Fat Boy Slim’s ‘Praise You’ was a classic. Tallulah, convinced he sings: ‘I want to praise you like a shoe’. Oscar playing devil’s advocate and going for his favourite: ‘praise you like a pooh!’ Getting more and more insistent and smiley as Tallulah lost her cool. I didn’t help by throwing in the random idea that it might actually be; ‘praise you like a shrew,’ because of his extensive knowledge and love of the wildlife of Britain’s hedgerows. This caused chaos. While Tilly danced around the outskirts trying to restore order and being very proper with the correct lyrics (praise you like I should). Of course nobody was listening to the poor girl.
Pooh
Another entry for the children here, and even more of an odd choice.
Oscar has grown taller in the last few weeks, and now no longer needs a step or a hand up in order to sit on the toilet himself. He now calls me only when he needs me to wipe his bottom. He has however, been having trouble remembering which part of the toilet to sit on. He knows that you should lift the seat up to pee. He hasn’t quite grasped the whole sitting on the seat to pooh. This led to him calling me last week, and when I went in he was precariously wobbling on the porcelain lip, complaining that it was very cold and uncomfortable. I prayed for him not to topple in, and after I had rescued him we had a talk about which bit of the toilet goes where, and why. Yesterday morning he took himself off to the loo while I was buttoning Tallulah’s coat for her. Suddenly he shouted very excitedly: ‘Mama! I’ve remembered Mama! I have remembered the pooh action! I’m doing the pooh action mama! Not the wee action!’ He was very proud. I was very proud but also hysterical with laughter. As I was wiping his bottom he asked me where Jason was because he wanted to tell him about it. As it happened, Jason too was in the loo upstairs. Oscar rushed off and banged on the door shouting: ‘Daddy! Daddy! I did the pooh action!’ Of course Jason had no idea what he was talking about and I could hear puzzled noises emanating from behind the door. Then Oscar shouted: ‘Daddy! Which one are you doing? The pooh action or the wee action? I hope you got it right.’
Me too.
I feel slightly sick. In a good way.
My friend came round this morning and I haven’t seen her for ages. We celebrated with chocolate eclairs for breakfast.
Then my mum and dad swept me up and took me to the pub for lunch. I ate glorious fish and chips and then succumbed to strawberry pavlova for pudding, even though I was full already, just because I liked the taste.
My clothes are rather snug. Never mind. We are still in the grip of icy cold, and have had another random snowfall today, so the layered look with rolls of insulating fat is very now.
These are good things. The other good things are that I am just about to have a bath. Alone. Despite the fact that the heating is on full, it is still cold. Despite the fact that I am typing this wearing my coat, and Sharon’s gloves and thick, warm, socks, I am still cold. I have decided a piping hot bath is just the thing to warm my bones.
Another good thing. I had to make an emergency dash to the chemist today. It’s a fairly long, icy walk away. I was not keen. My parents took pity on me and drove me there on the way back from the pub. Hoorah!
The bad thing. The reason for the emergency dash. Tallulah has nits. Full on, humongosaur, mutant nits wielding machetes.
Excuse my language do, but FUCKING NIGHTMARE!
She has been back at school for three days. Three whole days and she comes home with the entire cast of Swiss Family Nit running around in her locks.
She went upstairs to bed at eight last night, me following behind to make sure she didn’t deviate. Scratch, scratch, scratch she went as she ascended. Urk! I thought as I followed behind. That’s not right. I grabbed her, shone the torch of doom into her hair and surveyed the partay. Urk! Urk! Urk! I hates ‘em. They make my blood run cold.
So, two and a half hours later I had managed to comb her head as clean as I could. It was exhausting. Then I spent the next half hour combing everyone else to make sure they weren’t harbouring castaways from the Tallulah head apocalpyse. Then I went to bed with combers elbow and dreamed of nits. I woke up scratching.
We had to get up an hour earlier than normal this morning so that I could rewash and comb her hair. I cannot comb it without washing it because her hair is incredibly curly and incredibly long. I cannot get the comb through the curls properly unless they have been subdued. I washed and combed mine as well, just to be on the safe side.
I sent her to school with a laminated head, and hair plaited up so tightly that she looks surprised and more than a little stricken, and strict instructions not to even shake hands with another child. There should be at least half a mile radius of exclusion zone between small children at all times. They are fierce and disgusting creatures, best handled with gauntlets and a cattle prod.
The trip to the chemist was for more tea tree oil, more conditioner, more shampoo. Gah! £24.00 later I was not impressed.
I remain unimpressed, and itchy.
Still only another ten days to go.
