Wild Woman

One of the drawbacks of being my age is thermostat problems.
I overheat.  

“Is there anything you can do about it?” asked Nigel as yet again I threw the bedclothes off.

(Tetchily) “Well there’s HRT, but I’m not resorting to that yet.”

“Nothing else?”

(Grumpily) “Soya milk can be natural HRT but it gives me wind.  Oh, and there are herbs that are supposed to help – sage and the like.  One person I knew drank a special menopause tea.  If you wanted to be a loving and helpful husband you could investigate that…”

A few days later, a package postmarked Glastonbury arrived.

The contents looked like pot–pourri.  But the label read “Wise Woman Tea”.  What a tactful name.

When we applied hot water, it seemed to contain a great deal of clover – “Are you calling me a cow?”  It tasted wholesome and herby.  But after a few sips I said,

“It’s no good – I still hate men.”

Later that day, Carenza called, “Mum, do you want some of that Angry Woman Tea?”

At bedtime, Perran said, “There you are – I’ve made you a cup of Mad Woman Tea.”

Finally  we have agreed on a mutually acceptable name for the beverage – it has become my Wild Woman Tea.

Defining Beauty

Photo by Nigel

At my age, gifts are not always welcome:

“Where am I going to put that?”

“I already have one in the cupboard under the stairs.”

“It doesn’t match my waffle iron.”

But a couple of weeks ago, I received a very different gift from Carol.  On hearing we were taking the family for a short break to Athens:

“There is something you must do…”

She recommended an excursion.  I just nodded politely – we were in Athens only three days – did I really want to spend a third of it somewhere else?  But the next day, I received an email from her, giving precise travel details. 

This was a gift horse and I decided not look it in the mouth.  We would follow instructions.

Consequently, on only our second day, we took a metro to the port at Piraeus, ferry to Aegina, negotiated a ticket for the infrequent and decidedly vintage bus, drove up into the hills.

An abiding memory of smooth pruned pistachio trees rising out of a sunshine host of marigolds.

Further, past terraced ranks of silvery olives and ancient Greek whitewashed churches.

Until finally we arrived at a grove scented with pines and carpeted with the asphodel that grows in Elysium itself.

We found ourselves alone there in the presence of the ancient and perfectly proportioned Temple of Aphaea, carved out of creamy limestone.

Thank you, Carol.

Follow me @ClareFHobba

Cheeky Parcel

A certain feature of student life has been missing from our lives. 

When my father was at university, he could not afford to have his shirts laundered, so would post them to his mother in far-away Cornwall.  After all, she had nothing to do except run a farm. 

When I was at uni, college supplied beat-up twin tubs for laundry.  However, there were no university libraries in Cornwall, so for vacation reading, I used to bundle up a stack of books and post them home.

In previous generations things cost a lot of money while postage was cheap, so if I had left behind a hairbrush or a pair of slippers, Mum would post it on.  Now the equation is different. 

However, this Easter, after our family trip to Athens, Pascoe flew straight back to Edinburgh.  So we still had at home his beloved unicycle, Goldberry, and his fire-juggling equipment (he had visited the National Juggling Conference earlier).  "Obviously", he needed these things in Edinburgh.

The hour had arrived – a student parcel was called for.

I loathe spending time making a parcel secure with yards of sticky tape, and then queuing at the post office, so the task fell to Nigel. 

As you can see, when Pascoe receives the parcel, it will look positively pleased to see him.

Follow me on Twitter @ClareFHobba

Superstitious

“Are you going away at Easter?” asked a fellow classics teacher.

“Athens.”

“Lovely”

But then I blurted, “I’ve never been before.”

He raised a restrained eyebrow: my statement was the equivalent of an English teacher admitting ignorance of Macbeth.

“It’s because I got a bit…superstitious…about Greece.”

The other eyebrow lifted.

“We went to Rhodes when Pascoe was a baby.  He got gastroenteritis.  We ended up in a Greek island hospital. Terrifying…..Fifteen years later, we were about to set off for Crete when Pascoe got a ruptured appendix, peritonitis, and nearly died.  If we’d actually been on Crete, who knows if he’d have survived.”

My colleague had clearly changed his views by now,

“And you’re going again?!?”

“Yep.” 

Somehow therefore, it was no surprise when Pascoe, Carenza and myself were felled by a mystery, flu-like virus two days before departure.  At least Perran was okay, until, that is,

“Perran, where’s your passport?”

“Bristol.”

Nigel took a five hour mercy dash down the M4.

Our time in Athens was great, but on our return, there had been a mix-up and our car was trapped deep within the ranks of cars in a storage pound, necessitating not only an extra member of staff but also an expert in logic to get it out, while we waited for hours in the unwelcoming foyer of Stansted.

Meanwhile, Pascoe has seized the chance of a couple of extra days in Athens and has stayed on alone. 

I am trying not to fret.

Easter not as planned

From pancake Tuesday to Easter is Lent.  Traditionally, Christians give up some pleasure over that period.  I relinquished alcohol but wasn’t sure I’d last out, so didn’t broadcast.  Somehow, friends and relatives seemed immediately to sense my decision and began to buy me drinks.  

So for me, Lent began three days late. 

  

After that I did pretty well and even enjoyed my sobriety.  But I DID slip up several times. 

However, each time, I forgave myself and gave up again.

Easter was fast approaching.  I like to be at home for Easter to take communion in my home church and exchange the sign of peace (a handclasp or embrace) with old friends.  Plus, for later there was a bottle of prosecco chilling in the fridge. 

Easter Sunday dawned bright and the white blossom of our mirabelle tree gleamed against the sky.  But I couldn’t get out of bed, and neither could Carenza or Pascoe. 

We had flu.  Not just a nasty cold.  As soon as I heard Nigel and Perran leave for church, I rolled over and went back to sleep.  If you need a measure of how ill I felt, it didn’t even occur to me to regret the prosecco.

BUT, tomorrow is another day.

Follow me on Twitter @ClareFHobba

Art Without Kids

Life’s been pretty busy.  A PGCE followed by  NQT teaching has taken up a lot of time, but in the last month or so, I’ve been getting some of my life back.  And yesterday, I got Art Exhibitions back. 

Carenza, knowing how much I admire John Singer Sargent, had spotted an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, so we decided to go.  As we set off, I found myself checking twice that I’d locked the front door - always a symptom that I’m feeling slightly guilty about taking a day out, doing something pleasurable. 

I LOVED the Singer Sargents.  The revelation was not how great his painting was – I already knew that - but just how many important cultural figures he knew socially.  And the fact that he was also an accomplished musician.

“How on earth did he manage it all?” asked Carenza.

I checked the labels for scant biographical information:

“No wife or kids.”

After Singer Sargent, Carenza led me to the white-painted halls of the Saatchi Gallery where we basked in the colour and pattern of the paintings, and were particularly fascinated by a room of tree art.  

Root and branch together.

I am glad both that Singer Sargent had no children to distract him and also that I do have them.

Murmuration

In December, Nigel and I travelled to Brighton to see the murmurations – the patterns formed in the sky by flocks of starlings as they ready themselves to roost on the pier.  The sunset was spectacular and the flock swirled, twisted and glinted in tight formation. 

Then, all of a sudden, as if at some invisible signal, the starlings poured into the space beneath the pier and stayed there.  I had not expected this and it made an impression on me.

This Friday, I was reminded of that moment when all my “starlings” converged on their home perch.  My own evening was supposed to be dinner with some women friends, but before it began, Carenza and I had already been to the station to pick up Will.  

During my dinner, Perran arrived at the station from Bristol Uni, and I texted him to get a taxi home.

After dinner, I drove again to the station to pick up Nigel (a business dinner in London), 

then twenty minutes later, back to the station to collect Pascoe, home from Edinburgh Uni.

But by the time the last family members had returned safely to their perch, the youngest had gone out again for drinks with other friends, also freshly returned home.

Not quite like starlings then.

Pascoe making his way across St Pancras.

How to Deal with a Canvassing Politician

Out hiking with my friends this morning , I was watching a lapwing through my binoculars when my phone dinged.


It was the family Whatsapp group.


Carenza, who is registered to vote and has particular political views had just encountered the local Tory MP with whom she has no truck.

“Ohhh guys I just had theeee cringiest moment ever: Anne Main knocked at the door canvassing and I couldn't be bothered to talk to her, so I pretended I was too young to vote (I said I was 17 really unconvincingly).
Then I remembered it was a school day so pretended I was off sick and no one else was home then she looked a bit concerned and asked what school I went to and I told her and she said that she was there yesterday doing a husts thing and asked why I hadn't been there so I coughed and pretended I'd been off all week SO EMBARRASSING OMG she KNEW I was lying.”

I was still pondering the first message when another came in:

“She kneeeeew.”


I turned to Dee, “Do they still have truancy officers?”


But Whatsapp dinged again immediately, and it said,


“But it’s okay – I’m sure Anne Main’s too busy canvassing to call Social Services.”


Carenza is clearly better at dealing with her mother than with Tory politicians.

Breaking Bad II

A few days ago, I blogged about how my old friend Rosie put the wind up Nigel and I by quietly letting herself into our house at 11pm when we weren’t expecting her.

She came round early on Friday morning so we could watch the eclipse together and we laughed about the incident.

Ha, ha, ha.

It was just the two of us as Nigel had been away at a work do the previous night and was catching the train straight from work to his parents’ in Northumberland that evening.

In the face of cloud cover, we gave up on the eclipse, stowed our colander in the kitchen cupboard; and had resorted to the telly and unrivalled views of Brian Cox.

“The picture’s gone a bit dark – I can’t see Brian properly.”

“Why has it gone dark?”

Then -

“Wait a minute, what was that?”

We had heard a sound from the front door. 

If only we still had that metal colander.

WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE:

Make lots of noise to scare the intruder away.  Never corner them.

WHAT WE DID:

We BOTH got up and went out into the hall….

to find Nigel.

“What are you doing here?”

“Hello to you too.   I’m going to work from home today – thought I might need to take the car to Mum and Dad’s later, instead of training it.”

Phew.  For a moment there, I thought I was going to have a Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Eclipse

Pascoe captures the start of the eclipse

I  thought I didn’t really care about the eclipse that much.  I had vaguely noted that I could improvise a pinhole camera with a colander if I needed to.  (Although wouldn’t a colander be better suited to a sci-fi fantasy novel, where a planet might have many suns?)

Then the hype started and I wished I’d sent off for special specs (or at least, knew where I’d put the ones from last time).  But I went to the cupboard and checked.  My colander might be missing a handle, but it was still full of holes.  Everything would be okay after all. 

As a snapshot of my family: I invited Rosie over, but it was overcast, so we ended up ditching the colander and watching it on the telly.  Carenza and Nigel were both stuck on trains, also with nothing but white cloud overhead.   

Perran had not responded well to my advice to be careful what he did or he could go blind (which sounds like the kind of conversation fathers used to have with their sons a couple of generations ago).  Following the eclipse, he texted  “Don’t use a stoooopid colander, three pairs of sunglasses does the trick.” 

The triphids are waiting, Perran.

Pascoe, however, was not only the true scientist, but also the best placed of us, in Edinburgh and sent us these great photos.

Budget

You could tell the life-stage that Nigel and I are at from the parts of the budget that made us prick up our ears.

There will be a lower cap on pension relief allowance. 

Pensions – when did we start being interested in pensions?  Yet suddenly we are.  Until the children left we felt we were living in the epicentre of our own lives, but now one of the big conversation topics  among our fellow empty nesters is “How long before I can retire?”

There is to be a new ISA designed to help first-time home buyers.

In the next few years, our children will start work, and may be joining the battle to get onto the property ladder.   

Suddenly our focus has changed toward making savings – both for our own decrepitude and also to compensate our children for the fact that they will have to earn their living and raise families in a world much less economically hospitable than we did.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering what part of the budget made my children prick up their ears and very much hoping it wasn’t that bit about a penny off a pint of beer.

Unexpected Mother’s day Gift

My mother and my daughter

I was making conversation with some small boys in between lessons.

“So,” I asked wistfully, “What are you guys planning for Mother’s Day?”

“Do you think I should get her a present?”

“I’m sure your Mum isn’t expecting you to spend lots on her.  But she’d probably appreciate a home-made card.”

Of course, I was talking about myself.  So to whoever that Mum is who now doesn’t get an expensive present, Sorry.

For me, I had thought Mother’s day was a thing of the past.  It is cruel of the gods to place Mothering Sunday in the middle of university term time. 

Except of course, that some universities have ridiculously short terms. 

Last year, wonderfully, Carenza was home in time.  This year, however, she planned to stay on to do some work, which is exactly what I used to do.  So I had gathered my expectations up and locked them away in a bottom drawer.

But then, we got the text:

“Can you collect me on Saturday?  Want to come home for a break.”

Was that Handel’s Halleluiah Chorus I could hear playing?

I turned back to the boys:

“Breakfast in bed is good too.”

“I dropped mine half way up the stairs last year.”

“I didn’t even get out of the kitchen with mine.”

Again, Sorry.

Breaking Bad

For the first time, we’re doing the box-set thing and working our way through the great Breaking Bad. It is, after all, addictive.

It was eleven o’ clock on a Friday night and we had just watched a scene where Pinkman breaks into the creepy house of a junky couple, ending with a woman crushing her partner’s head under an ATM.

“Gross”

“Mmm”

Then: “What was that?”

We have two front doors, an inner and an outer, and I thought I had just heard a noise at the outer door.

We turned the TV down.

Then we heard the inner door open and shut.

WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE:

When suspecting a break in, make a lot of noise to signal to the intruder that the house is occupied.  Do not corner the intruder.

WHAT WE DID:

Nigel, unarmed, went straight out into the hallway to investigate. 

He immediately relayed the identity of the burglar.  Apparently, it was somebody called,

“SHIIITTTT!!!!”

Luckily, there was simultaneously another voice going,

“SORRY, SORRY, SORRY!!!”

And I recognised the voice, the voice that was saying “I left a message on Clare’s mobile, and another on your answering machine….”

It was one of my oldest friends, Rosie, who mostly lives in New Zealand.  She is over in the UK helping out a sick relative, and a couple of weeks earlier I had given her the house key in case she ever needed a bolt-hole.  And then I’d forgotten all about it.

It’s just as well we didn’t have an ATM handy.

Death and the Vole

Doomed Vole

Yesterday, Cath, Cecily and I were missing Dee, so took yet another break from our rubbish attempt at the Ridgeway and went for a local walk. 

The light had a soft, hopeful gleam to it.  Somewhere George Harrison was singing “Here comes the sun.”  Cecily shed one of her numerous pullovers. 

Spring had finally arrived.   

In the woods were drifts of snowdrops. 

And rustling around at the base of a tree, a little vole.  We watched it bumbling about. 

“I wish the children could see this.”

In reality, none of our children are any longer at the vole-admiring stage.  Probably in fact, still sleeping off the night before in their respective digs.

“I miss them.”

“We all do.”

But then we noticed that the vole was limping and blundering about as if dazed.

“Oh dear.  I don’t think he’s a well vole.”

“Nope”

We left it in peace (or more probably to some nearby predator), and walked on to the pub.

“Mind you,” said Cath, “If the children had been with us, we wouldn’t have been allowed to leave a sick vole to die of natural causes.”

“No, agreed Cecily, we’d have had to take it home somehow….”

“….and watch it die slowly in the kitchen.”

“You know, I’m not sure I miss the kids so much after all,”  I said sipping my lime and soda and leaning back on the sunlit bench.

Like a Tortoise Mating with a Drinks Can

As we watch our darlings depart for university with their whole lives before them, many of us mothers are now starting to tango with the menopause.   I thought I should find out more and last summer I attended a seminar.  It was a hot August day and the room was crowded.  Pretty soon, there were a lot of very flushed middle-aged women fanning themselves.  The venue manager grabbed her mike and announced, “The heating is stuck ‘on’ and we can’t unlock the windows, but don’t worry – IT’S NOT YOU!”

One friend who told me how, as she queued to pay for cough mixture while the local pharmacist had a lengthy discussion with a rather deaf old lady, her eye was caught by a novel menopause treatment – magnets. 

Yep.  Magnets for your pants – “Attach them to the fabric to alleviate menopause symptoms.” 

Being game and perhaps just a little bit desperate, my friend bought these and duly positioned them.  She felt a lot better and all went well until her supermarket shopping trip, when she experienced a tugging sensation and discovered that her lingerie was being inexorably attracted to her metal shopping trolley.  Apparently it looked a bit like that YouTube clip of the tortoise trying to mate with the drinks can.

It’ll be some time before she can return to Sainsbury’s.

Quiz Night

This particular annual quiz between local churches has been a fixture in our diary for over a decade.  Church people are usually such nice people, except on quiz night, when they’re not.  

The event has a competitive edge so sharp it could slice steak.

The first time we went to this particular quiz, we had no idea.  We ambled in 2 minutes after the 7.30 start time to find that the questions had begun and that the rest of the team had already completed the table rounds.  I then disgraced myself by drinking two glasses of wine in quick succession which made my general knowledge go all blurry and limp.

Although this happened a long time ago, I have not been selected for our church’s A team since and I have dragged Nigel down with me.

However, I always hope one day to redeem myself, and had even trained this year by watching Pointless while visiting my parents at half term. (It actually turned out to be Two Tribes, but we just thought it was the same programme with slightly different rules.)

Last night, we were one man down as Nigel had a fever and things didn’t look good.  But we came a very respectable second and (most importantly) were a whole two points ahead of our church’s A team.

Super Powers

In Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, resting my Super Powers

At half term I returned to being full-time mother and daughter in a disorienting programme of visits to see my sons in Edinburgh and Bristol and my parents in Cornwall.  On Monday, however, I pinned my hair back into a bun, perched my glasses on my nose, donned a work jacket and returned to being old Dr Hobba the crusty Latin teacher at a local school. 

It’s a bit like being a superhero.  Inside, I find some of the things the pupils say hilarious.  In my head, I use some choice words, when I am thwarted.  But I must keep these super powers hidden.  Pupils like to think that teachers are completely unable to access their in-jokes, and actually probably don’t even know any swear words. 

It’s all about boundaries.  The only time one crosses them is to reprimand a pupil who is covertly (ha!) being mean to a classmate.  At this point, the selective deafness has to break down, rather like one of those old-fashioned hearing-aids which would unpredictably pick up a private aside on the other side of the room.

The pupils look at each other with amazement: it is as if Clarke Kent just morphed into Superman before their very eyes.  Not only did old Dr Hobba hear what they just said, she even appeared to understand it.

Catwalk

As I've said before, the enthusiasms of your children take you to places you would never have predicted.

So last night Nigel and I attended Fuze 2015 at Bristol, the largest student-led fashion show in the country. 

Perran texted us excellent advice on which were the best seats, but due to his inclusion of an ambiguous comma (hotly debated between Nigel and me), we ended up in the second best seats.  However, they were still pretty darn good, right on the front row.  
Next to me was a friendly young woman representing the D1 modelling agency and it all felt very exciting.  Although when the models stalked on in swimwear it got a bit too exciting as we had an unimpeded gusset view.  Nigel modestly averted his eyes. 

But you would have been proud of me: never once did I say in an over-loud voice “Nobody would ever wear that!” Although one collection which employed not only heavy brocades, but also those tassel trims that you sometimes see on lampshades did look a bit…..curtainy.
But we weren’t really there for the fashion.  Fuze is so called because it fuses catwalk fashion with numbers belted out by local singers and with fizzing dance routines, and the dance included Perran.  He looked fabulous and danced powerfully.  “Your son is so good,” whispered the woman from D1. 

All Over the Place

With Pascoe in Edinburgh

“That’s a rubbish pentacle you’re drawing,” commented Nigel.

“It’s not a pentacle – I’m plotting my half term journeys on a map of the UK.”

It could be more complicated.  But, since we saw Carenza in Oxford last weekend and Nigel is visiting the Northumberland grandparents next month, all I had to do was visit Pascoe in Edinburgh, my parents and brother in Cornwall and Perran in Bristol.

That’s fine then.

Bristol and Cornwall are by car, and Edinburgh was supposed to be by train, but since the plane was both cheaper and quicker, Nigel and I guiltily broke our own rules and arrived in Edinburgh reeling not from jet-lag but from severe cognitive dissonance.

Some teachers are probably having a rest and a catch up with those bits of domestic admin that never seem to get done, but it appears I’m not, although of course I did mean to. 

The idea of parallel universes came as no surprise to me as I regularly plan several different versions of how I will spend my time without fully acknowledging that I will be forced to choose between them.

My main worry this week is that as I go south west on the motorway, I will peer into a car in the opposite carriageway returning north east, and my own face will look out at me.  I will finally have “met myself coming back”.

The Mummy Car

I have to take everything out of the Ford Galaxy.  I find sweet wrappers (expected), old apple cores (suspected), the odd mouldy sandwich (dreaded).  I also discover spare gloves and a bottle of sun lotion – to keep my tribe safe both in winter and summer.  There are road maps so old that the Icknield Way is marked in dotted lines as a road under development.  In the pocket, an audiotape of “Three Men in a Boat” and a Paloma Faith CD.  Next to them is my Latin dictionary. And let’s not forget the strong, leak-resistant plastic bag in case of vomit incidents. 

I put them all in a holdall, these items telling the story of six years of family life, then I heft them into my beat-up Fiesta, and drive away, abandoning the Galaxy at the Garage. 

I have had a nasty prang on the way to work – my fault – and the Galaxy has been written off.

I don’t look back, but I have a lump in my throat. 

The Galaxy has been my mother ship.  The car before it was a Galaxy, and the car before that. Capacious, big enough to separate squabbling children, big enough to take our massive tent (the tent looked smaller in the showroom, I tell you), big enough to shift the children’s junk to university.

But nowadays, there is often nobody in the car besides Nigel and I, so we have decided to put the insurance money towards a second-hand Ford Focus.  Yet again, life has become more streamlined.

Outgoing

 "If you wish to leave a message for Nigel, Clare, Pascoe, Perran or Carenza, please do so after the tone.”

I was never quite sure about that outgoing message - thought I sounded rather Hyacinth Bucket posh. 

We bought our current phone system at the same time as we moved into our family house. There were four handsets so that we could always find one.  Except we always couldn’t, so in the end we pulled the old phone down from the loft. With the handset attached by a cable it couldn't migrate up to the children's rooms.

Over the years, one handset had been entirely disabled as the result of an inaccurate lob from one end of the sitting room to the other : "It's for you. CRASH."

On the other sets, sections of LCD screen had ceased to function making the numbers we dialled appear like the dingbats round in pub quiz.  One set has lately started wheezing like an asthmatic as it strains to recharge its worn-out batteries.

Did we need to replace the landline phones at all? Well they do provide a last resort for friends who can’t reach me any other way.  So we agreed to replace the phones only to be faced with a new Empty Nest rite of passage. The outgoing message.  If a friend who is fed up of waiting on the doorstep rings now, what they will hear is merely, "If you wish to leave a message for Clare or Nigel, please do so after the tone.”

Perran challenges firework safety code.

You tell your child not to play with fireworks, but do they listen?

Click here to see evidence of firework safety infringement.

End of Teen-age

There have been tantrums, slamming doors, sulks, heart-stopping failures to return home on time after parties.

We located the obligatory bottle of cheap vodka in the sock drawer.

On a couple of occasions certain people have gone out for the day to Camden Market and returned with more piercings than they set out with.

We have discovered in dark corners outdated detention slips or disastrous exam results.  We even once had one of the twins ring us to come and get them at the police station.

But sometimes I have had conversations with other careworn women and realised that actually our household scored quite low on the Richter scale of teenagerhood. 

Since 2004 we have been the parents of teen-agers.  Now, eleven years later, this is the week when that ends.  In truth I haven’t thought of Perran or Carenza as teenagers for a couple of years, but technically they still were.

I’d like to thank them for worrying us just the right amount.

If there had been no jolts at all, we’d have felt we hadn’t had the full parenthood experience.  But on the other hand, there has been nothing life-wrecking either.

So far as I know.

Four Women and a Map 1: If a Thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

My friends, Cath, Cecily, Dee and I are hitting that empty nest territory.   Between us, we have raised nine daughters and two sons, surely a great contribution to the UK and its future, but we have earned little money or glory.

And now, it must be the case that we are free at last to take our time in our own hands and do what we want to do.  It will keep our minds off the absence of our offspring.  We all know people who have bought a new sports car or taken up marathon running.

Our aspirations are more limited.  In September, we decided we would walk the Ridgeway, an ancient, long-distance foot path which stretches for 85 miles between Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire and Overton Hill in Wiltshire. 

Not a major ambition, achieved by perhaps thousands each year in the course of a long weekend.  We should do it easily.

But we are not quite as free as we thought: aged parents require more and more care, and none of them live on our doorsteps.

Our children arrive back from university or fledgling jobs and we must seize these precious opportunities to spend time.

Plus, the routine responsibilities of house, garden and married life remain. Not to mention, part-time jobs and efforts for charity.

And then our bodies are showing wear and tear – carrying a heavy rucksack for many miles is beyond us.  

Maybe we should put the whole thing off and wait for a moment when all four of us are free from domestic emergencies and injuries.  

But maybe that moment will never come. 

We decide that we will be the best kind of hero and walk the Ridgeway anyway, inch by inch if we have to.  In a slightly crap and much interrupted manner, we embark. 

We agree with GK Chesterton that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.  

The Secret of Good Parenting

People fret about how to be good parents, particularly during the troublesome late teenage years, so Nigel and I have established one simple criterion.

Our parenting tip came to light when I was out hiking with Carol, Caroline and Diane. 

“You know,” Diane said, “Even though the girls are grown up now, I can’t rest at night until I know they’ve got home safe.”

“Yes,” agreed Carol, “I often find myself listening for the key in the door.”

“It’s so worrying,” said Caroline, “When they’ve said they’ll be home at a particular time and then they’re not.”

I hadn’t said anything.

“What about you, Clare?”
I hesitate, then:

“Actually, we have trouble remembering who’s at home and who’s not and who’s out and who’s in.  Quite a few times now, we’ve double-locked the front door and gone to bed.  And it’s only at breakfast we discover we’re one short.”

Silence.  Rapid blinking.

“I mean, their friends’ parents usually give them a bed for the night.”

Silence continues.

“So now it’s a joke in our house.  When Nigel says ‘I’ve been a Good Parent tonight’, it means he hasn’t locked any of the kids out.   Ha ha ha ha ha.”

But none of them joined in.

Funny, you’d think they’d be grateful that we’ve distilled the mystery of parenting into one clear principle.

Hobbits and Old Friends

"If only I was in the Theory of Everything instead."

Last January about eight of us met up to remember Malcolm Mladenovic who died of a heart attack in 2008. 

The outing we usually undertake together is one that would have been his choice – a sci-fi/fantasy film then a meal.  Wine is raised in a toast to him, which is inappropriate as he was always teetotal.

This year there were twelve of us, blinking, astonished that a whole year had passed in a flash.  

We must be getting old.  

Last year’s film was The Hobbit 2, and one advantage of time passing so quickly is that Nigel and I clearly remembered how terrible it was.

So this year, as our friends passed into the maw of The Hobbit 3, we quietly filtered off right and went to see The Theory of Everything instead. 

The only down side was that afterwards, when we met up with our friends in the pub, we could not join in the head-shaking and giggles over the Hapless Hobbit.  But at least we could raise a glass to Malcolm.  It is a tribute to him that so many were prepared to turn up and sit through the Tolkien Travesty III in his honour. 

But then, it only seems like yesterday that he was still with us.  

Packing away the perfect Christmas

All through the merriment of Christmas dinner, opening gifts, muddy walks, meeting up with friends there was a moment looming that I was dreading.  On the eleventh day of Christmas, Nigel, Perran and I were to drive home from our visit to the Northumberland grandparents.  But Pascoe would head straight back to Edinburgh and Carenza with him.  And Perran was booked on the 5pm train back to Bristol. 

One moment there had been five of us, eating mince pies round an open fire, the next just two. The house that we came back to was freezing cold and an evil smell wafted from the compost bin which we had forgotten to empty.  

And to add insult to injury we had to take down  the Christmas decorations. 

If anything can add gloom to an already desolate scene, it is the sweeping up of glinting shreds of tinsel.  If anything can make a cold day colder, it is the stacking away of Christmas cards full of warm greetings. 

I sank into a post-yule Slough of Despond.

But then my phone lit up.  Pascoe and Carenza were visiting Edinburgh zoo and were busy on WhatsApp.  They were posting pictures of animals that reminded them of us. 

And they had picked quite cuddly ones.

Thank heavens for the virtual world.

Diabolical drive

If I roll out of bed at 6am, and straight into the car, I can be with my parents in Cornwall by late morning.  That is at any rate the theory.

This morning however, the M4-M5 junction was shut and the tail-backs immense, so instead I navigated through Bristol.  All this took time, so I needed a rest break at Exeter.  If I hadn’t had the rest break, I wouldn’t have ended up stuck five cars behind a house.  Yes, that’s right, somebody was transporting a whole house on the back of a lorry, taking up both lanes of the A30.  I see I have already used the phrase “immense tail-backs” and I don’t want to over-use it. 

In addition, there were long stretches of M4 and M5 had been traffic-coned down to two lanes, often, it seemed, just for the hell of it as no roadworks were to be seen.

So it wasn’t until 1.30 that I arrived at the house where I was born.  After over seven hours of driving, you might have expected me to be wrecked, but instead I was ready to take my parents out for a stroll along the river. 

What had kept me in such good spirits? 

Carenza was with me, coming to visit her grandparents, stopping me from stressing with her desultory banter. 

And now we are side by side on the sofa in front of the fire.

The terrifying journey of the three wise men

From Mapshelfshire

 Carenza has arrived back from uni, but my term continues.  Left in the house on her own to put up the Christmas decorations, she appears to have got bored and texts began arriving on my phone.
"The terrifying journey of the three wise men:"

to the Bead Mines of Masterbedroomia

to the burning embers of Sittingroom 

to the frozen Jarstack of Fridge

to the seal colony of Mantelpiece

through the jungles of Windowsill

to the Herb Corridor of Death

Will those Wise Men EVER get there?

End of Term

Whenever your term ends, it is the rule that you feel it should have ended a week earlier.  Those last few days stretch into eternity.

Is my throat sore?  I feel a bit achey.

Tell yourself you don’t!

 Swallow crates of vitamin C tablets and chug Echinacea.  The end of term is coming and you will survive.

Don’t picture the soft bed, the warm central heating, the decadence of a lie-in.  It will soften;  with near fatal consequences.

Instead, greet the predawn gloom, shunt the car into first gear and keep going. 

Oh, sorry.  Up until now, I’d been writing this piece for both commuting schoolteachers like myself and university students like my children, but I now realise I need to re-write that last bit for students:

“Instead, get up when it’s well and truly light.  On December days when this doesn’t happen, don’t bother to get up.

If you do get up, saunter along to the railings where you last chained your bike and discern whether it’s still there.  If it is, meander into lectures; if not, go back to bed (default setting).”

And this, my friend, is why a degree is a bad thing – it means that adult life never looks good, by comparison.  Never again will you have so much fun, or so many lie-ins.

Enjoy.

Mind the Gap

The other evening in the pub, about ten of us were sitting round, the majority of us parents of children in their late teens or early twenties.  Comfortably over our beer or J2O (driving) or white wine (just letting the side down, really), we agreed that there was less difference between ourselves and our children’s generation than there had been between us and our parents’ generation.

We reached a consensus on that.

But then, our children weren’t there. 

From a material culture point of view, the thesis stands:  Perran clacks through my CD collection more often than I do, and Carenza now rocks the few surviving frocks in which I once painted the town red.  Likewise, Pascoe has been sighted at parties wearing my kaftan which a friend brought me back from Syria in better days.

On the other hand, the current range of relationships now on offer bemuses me.  If somebody had been my “Friend with Benefits”, it would probably have meant a purely platonic relationship in which he allowed me access to his toaster, possibly his electric food mixer. 

When my children raise LGBT issues, I have to get past my confusion with BLT – a kind of sandwich, and certainly not the appropriate mental image.  Hopefully, they think the long silence is because I’m considering their point deeply.

So if you’re reading this, and you know of a point where communication between the generations is difficult, please do email me and let me know.

Feet under the table

When I started this blog, the twins were polishing their applications to apply for university.  Only two years on, I have just popped in on Perran who is now happily ensconced in Bristol at the top of a Georgian house full of students.  From his palatial room, he surveys the university he has come to love.  

He had not told us that he’d had the bravery to join the 150 dancers auditioning for a few places in the much-hyped Fuze fashion and dance event.  

But he did tell us once he’d been selected.

 

Meanwhile, Carenza had casually mentioned that she also had a fish to fry.  After harsh parental interrogation, she divulged that she had launched a bid to become president of the JCR at St Hugh’s College.  

Even to stand demanded grit.  She has published a focused manifesto and spoken at hustings in a packed and beery bar.  She also had to eat a punishing number of burritos (apparently). 

On the night when the votes came in, I was visiting my parents in Cornwall, Nigel was with his in Northumberland.  Perran was waiting in Bristol and Pascoe had joined Nigel in Northumberland.  Over the course of the evening, we each, in our separate locations, kept taking out our mobiles and frowning at them thoughtfully.  Finally, at around 9pm, Carenza sent us her news.  

She was president.  

It was only a text, but we could definitely hear the chink of champagne glasses in the background.

Two years on, the twins could be said to have their feet under the table.

Face-painting

I used to have a face-painting kit and regularly appeared at school and church fetes to depict spider man, a tiger, or butterflies on chubby cheeks.    Conversation-wise it was as challenging as being a hairdresser,

“So, have you had a go on the tombola…?  I see.  No I wouldn’t want old bubble-bath either.  But you’ve had some sweets from the sweet stall then?  Lots of sweets.  Lots of sugary sweets.  Please do try to sit still for just a bit longer.” 

I’d have been very happy to continue face-painting – I thought I did it well.  But once my children reached eleven and left primary school, nobody asked me again.

The thing I had not realised about this art-form is that it is genetically determined. 

Yet just last weekend, I received solid proof that both of the twins have inherited a talent for face-painting.  

Are Pumpkins Essential?

Perran and a pumpkin of Yore.

Last year, the family pumpkin had hung around for a week with me muttering “must get round to that…” but not actually getting round to it.   

Finally, Pascoe heroically took up a Sabatier and hacked a toothy grin into the orange lantern, setting it outside with its candle just minutes before dusk fell.

This year, with our children all away at university, I didn’t bother with a pumpkin.  So not only did I not have to carve it, I didn’t have to pretend I enjoyed the pumpkin soup afterwards.

BUT, this evening, as Nigel and I tapped away on our laptops, we could hear outside the shrieks and giggles of children.  

I’d invested in sweets and put them by the front door.  But without the sign of the pumpkin lantern, the giggles passed by our door.  Nobody was knocking.

“How does one lure small children?” I asked Nigel.

“Perhaps a gingerbread house?” he suggested.

As we met eachother’s eye, we decided to stop.  After all, one doesn’t want to sound TOO much like a witch.

Instead, Nigel looked out some dinner party candles and set them ablaze outside.  Within seconds, tiny witches and skeletons had knocked at our door.  Within minutes, the first pack of sweets had gone and we were scratching about for more treats.   

And I was glad – who would want to miss out on so much fun?

Pastimes Past

In the dark recesses of many lofts are musical instruments, hockey sticks, tap-dance shoes.

When did they get put there?

Often, the answer is during the owner’s time at university.

School days are packed full of parent-pleasing, CV building activities that get slotted into the routine.  Often Mum/Dad pays any fees, encourages practice, acts as chauffeur and proudly attends performances.

But one day, the youngster wakes up in their stoutly built undergraduate bed, nursing a hangover  and says,

“You know what, I’ve quite enjoyed playing the euphonium, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but it was really Mum’s idea, not mine. In fact, I think she projected all her own euphonium-playing hopes and aspirations on to me.  I’ve been living somebody else’s glittering dream.”

As they trudge to the kettle for their first cup of coffee, they realise that if they ditched the euphonium, they might have time for what they really want to do. 

Smiling to themselves, they cram the musical instrument as far into the back of their wardrobe as it will go, pack their fire-eating torch and box of matches into a hold-all and head off for Circus Skills club.

So it was with great pleasure that last weekend, Nigel and I went to Bristol to watch Perran in a performance of the Nutcracker, and discovered how much, after all these years he still loves ballet.

Downsize the house

Not really our house

Sometimes, during university term time, I walk into a bedroom and feel the fine strand of a spider web across my face.  It feels a little chilly and smells only of air-freshener. 

It makes no sense to pay a mortgage on space that we’re not using, so we’re downsizing  to smaller premises.  Friends who are a few years ahead of us warn,

“But they’ll come back – it’s tough to get on the property ladder nowadays.”

But we’re taking a calculated bet that not all three will want to live with us at the same time.  Risky, I know, but the parts of us that yearn to be greener are rejoicing.  We will consume less heat and take up less space on this crowded planet.

And the cleaning, the house maintenance, the lawn-mowing will all be delightfully lighter.

The to-do list pinned up in the kitchen could be halved, our free time doubled. 

We shall have less, but we shall be and do more. 

Count Your Chickens

Plans shift like the sands.

“Were we this bad when we were their age?”

Probably not, simply because before the advent of mobile phones, last minute changes tended to result in somebody being left standing on a corner in the rain.

On the positive side, you don’t even hear the term “stood up” so much any more because a person who has changed their mind about a date will often at least text rather than simply not turn up.

It is now so easy to change social arrangements that they swirl and shift like sands sculpted by the tide.

Having three young people in my family, I keep my diary in pencil only.  Who knows when staying in for a family dinner will morph into the youngsters going out clubbing until 3 am.

So when I heard that all three of them would be at home for a whole weekend, I did not count my chickens.  As it got closer to the weekend, those chickens were positively jumping up and down squawking “count me, count me.” Yet still I did not enumerate.

But actually, the weekend arrived and we reached the desired total of three chickens at home with us for one whole day.

It was lovely.