Notes from Inside My Head

Slow down season

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Sun, 25 Sep 2016 16:31:00 +0000

This summer appears to be holding on for dear life here in London. We're heading fairly quickly into October now and today is cotton dress weather; hot as hell and barely Autumnal.

I'm doing a lot of walking at the moment, also running, yoga, making things with my hands. I'm trying (and generally failing) to stay off the internet unless it involves writing - generally I'm just trying to retrieve myself in some way after a year of living in a bubble.

I enjoy what I do for a living and by all accounts I'm fairly good at it, but ultimately, even when it's good, I burn-out because I become so immersed in making it perfect that I can't switch it off. I'm an all-or-nothing sort of person, I realise and I spent a long, long time living in a world of compromise, a sort of partial world where I was working 60 hour weeks and when I wasn't working, I was forcing myself to meet someone else's standards and parenting in between. It was exhausting and unhealthy, because I was consistently trying to do it all, hating it and failing, miserably.

It turns out that hitting that level of burnout isn't something you can just spring back from. I am permanently on edge and permanently 'on'. Switching off is nearly impossible, my brain works a mile a minute, it over-thinks everything and is totally unable to relax. I'm jumpy and I'm still not really sleeping and it's been nearly a year since I turned off all the really harmful things.

It's been exacerbated by my inability to stop taking on new things and filling my life and my calendar. Recently, something which has taken a massive volume of my time and energy has come to an end and I can already feel myself surging to fill the empty space, because I am just unable to stop.

I am blessed with a large volume of friends, large enough that should I want to go out several times in a week, I can manage it easily. And because my internal system is always racing a mile a minute, generally I accept every invitation I receive, which results in me continuing to do too many things, which exacerbates everything which is wrong with my head.

So.

It may take me a while, I may struggle, I may fail a lot, but I am going to try to do fewer things, to see fewer people, to spend more time with myself and my boy and make a point of calming my head.

I guess this remains to be seen.

All the dusty corners

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 21:34:00 +0000

Writing is a form of therapy; I'm not sure what actual therapists think about that, but for me, when I write, stuff comes out of my brain that I wasn't sure was in there.

I'm writing something big at the moment, something I'm unlikely to release into the wild but it's turned out to be really fun. It's involved me looking up a lot of people on the internet whom I haven't seen for 30 years or more and to be honest, it's been a riot.

Part of the exercise is looking back on how I was and how that has made me who I am now; what decisions I made, particularly ones which I make repeatedly and which it might be a good idea to shelve. The other part is to look at some of the people involved in those decisions and, frankly because I'm a nosy cow, I've gone and looked them all up.

So far I've not had as many surprises as I would have liked. The boy who I thought would be a doctor is a dentist, the boy I thought would take over his father's farm probably did just that, at least he's sitting on some agricultural board somewhere. The girls I thought would get married and settle down early are now grandmothers, the ones I thought would go off the rails are still wild and beautiful; some of them look a bit lost now, but then I'm sure I do too.

Some people are impossible to find; some have either resisted the lure of the internet; or perhaps they have died or changed their names or moved so far away that they are lost in a sea of people with the same names.

Some I've found through their obituaries, memorial pages on facebook and the like. Equally, some who I thought would have died years ago are still alive and living in strange and wonderful places. Some have gone on to do wonderful things. Some couples who I thought would never last are still happily together; some I thought would last forever are now parted.

The great surprises are the best part of this stalking of my past, way better than the dentist; like the chap I thought would have overdosed years ago who now looks absolutely fantastic and is living some sort of dream in an exotic location with a beautiful woman... or like the first boy I ever kissed properly who is still handsome as hell and looks like he's having a blast being an awesome teacher. Or like the pinched, mean little lying girl who is now a beautiful singer songwriter. Time has brought things to all of us.

It's helped me remember too what I loved about myself back before things got so miserable and the upshot is that I'm going to try putting something out in writing on a daily basis. My writing skill is a muscle and sadly it's pretty flaccid these days; but I have a book to write and various corners of the internet to dust off, so I'm going to see what happens.

Lacuna

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 22:43:00 +0000

So this is pretty much my life now. Everything is on fire, and what wasn't burning already, I've struck a match underneath and lit up anyway.

I get like this. When things start to slide and I can't hold them back, I start looking for things I can throw onto the pile. It's like a mania, I start throwing shit out of my life and I can't really stop until everything is gone except the stuff I feel is completely safe.

A year ago I threw the frog out, finally. It was about time. Even the child was fine with this. I then started doing All The Things I couldn't do with him around and because there were so many of them, I started doing too much, until I realised I was holding on to way too many things, I was running a mile a minute, two miles a minute, more.

Things started dropping and sliding, stuff caught fire. At first I resisted, then I realised how good it felt to let go of some of this stuff... now I'm in full 'Burn It!' mode. It feels good.

But, there's a but, the problem is, I threw out something quite precious. I didn't mean to, I just felt it slipping a bit and decided it was unsafe, so I put it on the bonfire to see what would happen and sadly, it seems to be going up in smoke.

I've never pulled anything off this sort of fire before and this is something that should probably have burned up a while ago. But it's a shame, it's given me a lot of comfort over the past year. I guess once the fire has cooled off, perhaps the ashes will reveal some great truth. Or maybe not.

Sometimes things just burn.

Sunny day...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 13:20:00 +0000

I am out of work and, due to various tedious, middle-class reasons that have to do with insurance forms, today I have been to the job centre to sign on.

I did this same thing for the same reason 11 years ago and to be honest, it was not as grim as I expected. I confess however that I was expecting it to be a lot worse this time, given that the job centre nearest to me is being converted into luxury apartments (yes, really), and I have been sent to the giant Brixton Road one
where they lock the loos to stop people shooting up in them (yes, really).

I have to say though, the whole thing was brilliantly done and I'd like to commend the staff there for making a huge effort to be human. In fact I began to wonder if my career aspirations are really worth the agony of the day-to-day slog that I've been doing for the last 7 years.

The woman who did my initial interview was funny, sweet and relaxed; the chap who checked my papers was smiley and kind, the security guards were friendly and I got convinced to sign up to a free boxing class by an incredibly enthusiastic couple of women.

Everyone working there seemed to be really enjoying their day - maybe it was just that this is a good day, the sun is shining, it's Friday... but my intake chap has been working there 10 years and said outright that he loves his job.

I've been informed that I have the luxury of looking for work at my current level until the end of the year, following which I need to revise my expectations downwards... however perhaps I should revised them upwards, towards something that might actually make me happy.

Somewhere in Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 16:23:00 +0000

Did we walk among them,

did we brush the corner of their blanket

laid out against the sand

covered with oil and books and cigarettes?

Did we capture him

in our sunset snaps

the panoramas

is he locked in place?

The sun went down, the light

like a blanket laid out against the dusk.

Who would not want to swim,

gold like a tiger rolling over their arms

Did we see them go,

treading through the surf,

laughing and splashing,

watching the moon rise?

As they stepped into the waves

the four of them under the orange sun

we debated the wine

and took more pictures of the dimming sky.

They did not suspect,

they laughed as they swam,

they called each other,

the sun flickered out.

When the ambulance came

and floodlit faces scanned the falling tide,

we ordered ile flottant,

and the kids asked the driver what was up.

He was not aware,

he has gone beyond

the helicopter

and the rescue boats.

We read the news online.

When he came out of the water it told

only what we all knew,

but it didn't say the obvious, that

somewhere in Paris

a woman knows what

it feels like to have

the son the sea loves

the most.

Sea Magic

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 10:54:00 +0000

The summer holidays are coming to a much faster end than expected...this summer simultaneously seems like it's been going on forever and that it's screaming to a premature end.

We are as usual in France, it's hot, the sea is warm and I'm working much less than usual - in fact shortly I won't be working at all. Having spent the last 7 years working weekends and evenings and every single holiday I ever had I am burned out to the point that every time I see my doctor he asks me when I'm going to be getting some rest. Now I have an answer for him - 26th September. There will be job hunting but there will also be resting, retreating, relatives and I'm running out of appropriate words starting with 're'.

There are not many things more rejuvenating than going body boarding with an 8 year old boy, either. The sheer joy of catching the same wave and being carried along until our knees hit the sand is not to be underestimated. We've stopped lugging the mountain of paraphenalia which we used to bring to the sea - buckets and spades and nets and umbrellas and mats and balls and books... now it's just body-boards and beach blankets, because once we get into the water, that's pretty much it.

Even the Frog has been seen clutching a board and making an effort - which is great because leaving the boys together allows me to swim out beyond the surf, past the other swimmers to float and spin and dive and hang in the sea like a piece of ungainly seaweed.

Yesterday I clambered out of the water as the rising tide started lapping at the boulders of the sea wall. I sat on a rock and watched as the sun begin to sink and the boy gambolled like a puppy, making signs and practising his sea magic. The Frog joined me and we sat in silence as the sea rose over our feet and up to our possessions, then we collected the boy and waded back to the steps, salty and quiet.

This is where it starts.

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 17:37:00 +0000

I'm writing this as a sort of a spacer; an ellipses between the 11 months of dead air which have blown through this site and an unknown period of air until the next post.

The blob, the spud, the boy himself is nearly 8. Writing about him behind his back no longer seems quite so amusing. He still does idiotic and very funny things. He is obsessed with farts and cricket and minecraft and riding his bike and is desperate to start his own YouTube channel. He's learning to code Java, he's reading the house dry of words. He loves camping and the sea and picking blackberries and running. He has skinned knees and elbows and likes his hair to be cut a specific length. His report card was superlative but he's not top of the class. He talks a lot and shouts a fair bit. His room is medium tidy. He loves the Kaiser Chiefs and and Dr. Who (and Dr. Seuss) and Harry Potter and dragons. He's made 5 loom bands but he's bored of them now.

He's a boy, in other words, a 21st century boy. He should be writing his own blog, not being written about in mine.

I have no idea what will happen to this blog next. For us, life goes on. The summer is nearly over, the blackberries are ripe; enjoy the sun while it's here.

Like...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 22:40:00 +0000

Well, here we are, the year seriously moving on. It's been, for those of you not in the know, quite a decent year as years go. Sunny, warm, full of things to do and one of the best summers I can recall in years. We're now having the perfect Autumn; rain interspersed with warm sun, the leaves are turning perfectly and it's dusk when I pick the boy up from school. We see bats in the park every evening now and the other day, an owl.

This perfect fall is a source of frustration round ours at the moment however; the child is already tiring of walking home in the gloaming and today became insistent about demanding spring and summer back, despite winter not actually having arrived. He was even willing to skip Christmas for the promise of camping. Something may be wrong with him, come to think of it.

He asked some fairly detailed questions about how many days it is going to be until summer, and then when I told him it was over 200 he started telling me what he thought about my answer and his sentences were full of phrases such as 'and then I was like' i.e. "So when you told me summer was so far away, I was like 'that's a long time' and now it's like, going to be winter I'm like 'I wish the winter was already over' but it's going to be, like, a really long time."

The addition of the word 'like' as a quotative in his sentences is relatively recent; I'm not exactly sure when it arrived, but it's become a fixture since the onset of the latest school year. The worst thing is that I'm not certain whether or not I use it in sentences myself and am in fact the model. I recently subjected myself to the ordeal of listening to a recording of me talking in a meeting and realised that I hugely overuse the phrase 'you know' as a sort of sentence bridge or a pause when I should more properly be shutting up, so perhaps 'like' is equally a feature in my grammar and he's getting it from me.

Either way it's a sign that at 7, he's seriously grasping the things he needs to do to blend in and grapple his way up the ladder into adulthood, which I guess is all well and good. I guess that misusing the word 'like' is possibly the least of my worries given that we're raising him in a massive urban pressure-cooker of a city.

In the meantime, it remains to grapple our way through the year, which time we have agreed to mark by the highlights to come - Halloween, Bonfire Night, Yule, Christmas, Equinox, Easter, Beltane and then camping. Or rain. One or the other. Or, more likely both.

But, it will be, like, fun.

Easter

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:41:00 +0000

The Easter half-term holidays appear to have arrived only seconds after the last half-term holiday; it's a wonder my son learns anything at all given he's only in school five minutes at a time.

He has however appeared to learn something recently, although I'm not quite certain it's exactly what the school was aiming for.

This week we've been doing some child-care swaps and on Tuesday he had a friend over for the day.

After lunch, I found them playing 'crucifixion' in the living room, taking turns nailing each other to the 'cross', ie the sofa. At one point they were chanting 'CRUcify him CRUcify him CRUcify him'. It all ended when they started arguing about whether or not they could pull out their own nails.

I sense the finer points of their Christian education are being slightly lost in translation... I'm pretty sure that's not what the school had in mind...

... having blogged about it, I suspect the finer points of my education were lost long ago...

New Year. Bit late.

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:07:00 +0000

So, it's a new year, or at least it was a new year a few weeks ago. We've had a lot of new starts, the upshot of which are that we have somewhere new to live (hooray); no money (boo, but what's new) and quite a lot of things to do.

I never make new year resolutions for all the usual reasons - plus I have a memory like a goldfish. This year, however, I have made a sort-of resolution - or at least, issued myself a challenge.

We were a bit homeless last year, which is to say that we were living in a few rooms with all our things in storage, bar the child's clothes and toys.

We expected to have moved by March, so I kept out my winter clothes and stored the rest. This meant however that once the sun started to appear and all I had was jumpers and furry boots, a little bit of shopping was required. By the end of the full 12 months, I had acquired a whole second wardrobe - along with a shopping habit.

Roll forward to December this year when the boxes were finally unpacked and I was faced with a true first-world problem - too many clothes.

The first thing I did was cull, robustly. Three bin bags of kit went to the Barnardos shop right away and another went a few weeks later.

Having narrowed it down to things I couldn't bear to part with, I made myself a deal. No new shoes or clothes for the whole year. None. Further, I have to wear everything in my wardrobe at least once this year, or out it goes.

It's odd. I thought that the simple act of not-buying things would be really easy, but now that I can't buy clothes I am obsessed with the spring window displays - which is bizarre because really I'm not much of a consumer; 60% of the jumpers I still wear are ones knitted or woven for me by family before I left home. I'm nearly 50 so I think that counts for something. The rest are ones my husband purchased because he couldn't stand to see me in 35-year-old knitting. He may have had a point.

I essentially live in the same 2 pairs of jeans and 5 tops year round which is part of the problem. I keep thinking I should wear something different so I dabble in the shops. A dress here, a pair of shoes there... so the wardrobe grows. But it does mean that I have had been growing a pile of clothes that I never wear and that's what's going to change.

I will wear them. I will wear them and if they don't fit then I'm going to pass them on. If I can't wear them, I can't keep them - and so, I am wearing them. Every day I pull out something from the wardrobe that I haven't worn in a while. I wore a trouser suit the other day that I haven't worn in about 3 years. Looked great

I have no idea whether I will have learned a goddamn thing by the end of the year and frankly this isn't about lessons or denial or any other worthy thing. I'm broke and I have too many clothes - it all seems to make sense.

In the meantime I've added 2 more charities to my list of automatic monthly donations (Sight Savers and Shelter) partly because clearly there will be a teeny bit of cash I'm not spending - and partly because I'm appalled at my own excess.

Happy New Year everyone, I'll be the one looking awkward in a dress.

The Thread Bears...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:23:00 +0000

For the last 25 years, 3 raggedy old teds have weathered cold, damp, dust and neglect, stuffed into a box in the well room of my parent's house. Once in a while, I dig around in it, hunting for this or that and I take them out, give them a squeeze and put them back. Seems a sad fate for the bears I loved best of all.

So, this summer I brought them home.

Children I think have a natural instinct to love the underdog and despite his piles of adored new animals with hypo-allergenic super-soft stuffing, the boy has taken my old bears to heart. Teddy, Panda, (apparently I was not a particularly imaginative child) and Timmy (originally my Father's and dating from the 1930s) have a place on his pillow at night - and by day, take their turns being allowed to watch him do his homework, play Minecraft, or build Lego.

Recently however, I noticed that Teddy had a particular smell. Not a bad smell - a sort of sweet, chemical smell and I began to think critically about what a bear made in the 60s might have for stuffing. The answer, apparently is 'powder'.

I ended up taking them all apart.

Timmy was the best. Hand made, most likely by a relation, in the 1930s he was originally stuffed with sawdust, (some of which still lingered around the odd paw) however had been re-stuffed, with wool. Panda had a remarkably sound but very weird moulded rubbery inner - but Teddy was stuffed with foam which had completely broken down.

Anyway, I found the whole thing fascinating. I opened them, emptied them, turned them inside out and mended them, soaked them and washed them, re-filled them with washable stuffing which should take them through another 40-odd years, put new chamois behind Timmy's nose, bought Teddy some new eyes and stitched them up - and this is how it went.

Before:

Not that tubby or chubby and definitely not stuffed with fluff:

(except for Timmy here...)

...and nobody knows (tiddly pom) how cold my toes... etc...*:

...and here they are. Not quite like new, but as good as it gets for 3 bears with a combined age of 150:

And that's about it. They might not look it, but I think they're pretty happy as teds go. They get cuddled and carted around and dropped on the stairs like real bears and, more importantly, when it drops below freezing in the well room they will be clean, dry and snuggled up underneath a duvet with someone who loves them.

Sounds like a good winter to me.

*obvious thanks to AA Milne for this bit

Now we are six

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:36:00 +0000

It's been a big year. It's been an odd year, actually with quite big chunks of stuff thrown in (more another day) - and now my little spud is 6.

He's not so little, as one might guess; at least not when compared with most of his school mates; next to whom he is a veritable tower of legginess. Get him onto a crowded bus though and suddenly he's all tiny again; perspective matters when you're 6.

We got his first report card back in June; apparently he's a dreamer and doesn't listen to anything he's told. Academically everything was fine and apparently he's a nice boy... until the day after the report card arrived when he was involved in a punch-up in the playground. Short term it landed him 'on the wall' (a term I had completely forgotten about) for the rest of the last week of classes. Long-term it probably gained him a best mate; anyway, luckily the report card came first.

I fretted about the report card for a while, because it's true, he is a dreamer who never listens; but then I went home and picked up all my old report cards... and, er... so anyway we're not so worried about him anymore.

Although maybe we should be.

Anyway, we did some stuff this summer - stuff with our families, stuff with friends who are practically family. We travelled, we hung out; er, and we played a lot of minecraft.

So, after everything, Charlie turned 6 and just to prove it, he managed to crack his head open just like a real boy. Then, yesterday morning, he took his glue head into his second year of school. Year one, here we come.

...double standards...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:37:00 +0000

We have reading... not quite actual-in-fact reading but we have some nearly-reading and some pretty good guesswork and it's clear that reading is about to enter the child's world - or more precisely, the child's bedroom, after 'lights out'.

This is, of course, is nothing new. One of the first clues I had that the Frog might be marriage material was when on an early sleepover he nervously picked up a book and confessed he liked to read a bit in bed; since then we have gaily traded book-lights in many a Christmas stocking.

While I am deeply delighted that my son is taking the first steps to a lifetime of sleeping next to a toppling pile of half-read novels, I am less keen that he has already realised that firstly, reading after he is supposed to be asleep is quiet and therefore he is less likely to be caught and secondly, that we are less likely to kick up a fuss than if we catch him playing Dr. Who and doing all the voices.

And what am I to do? I have countless memories of being busted with my torch reading under the covers - something my mother was brilliant at working out mainly because that's what she used to do. It's a family tradition!

The thing is, I also remember being tired for school every morning and so of course I want to stop him - but the hypocrisy is dreadful. I have recently purchased what I think is the perfect book light - and what, I ask you, is reading with a book light while ones partner sleeps other than the grown-up version of reading under the covers? In fact, since we have moved and Charlie has temporary tenure in a double bed, I have been known on particularly insomniac nights to sneak into his room and read in there to avoid waking the Frog.

So... what am I to do? For the moment we can insist on lights out as he can't really read much anyway... but give it a year or two and he'll be arguing his case - and I won't have leg to stand on.

Giraffes everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:27:00 +0000

So finally it snowed in London; an event my son considers to be so normal that only last week he was whinging about the on-going lack of the white stuff this winter. Compare this to 1996 when I returned to 2 inches of snow after Christmas and my cabbie told me "It's like there's blinking giraffes in Trafalgar Square".

In fact Charlie has been begging me to visit his grandparents 'because it's always snowing in Canada'; (an imbalance of expectation which my Mother has made me promise to rectify by taking him out in the summer).

Needless to say he was delighted yesterday and here's the mandatory cute picture of boy-in-the-snow to prove it.

Thankfully it's all melting now - it was lovely while it lasted but that's all the snow I can handle - 24 hours and gone, brilliant.

In other news... well I have no other news. These are the sorry facts of my life; my child is in the 'didn't he say something cute' phase which never fails to fill me with tedium when I read it on someone else's blog and I am working full time with barely a moment for a nice satisfying sneeze.

I will however pass on something which the child of a friend of mine did the other day. She wrote, in her own spelling (she is 5) the words to The Gingerbread Man and managed to write 'Run, run you cunt' on a single line, which frankly made my day when her mother related it to me. I hope it's enlivened yours.

I don't wanna grow up...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:18:00 +0000

We moved just before Christmas. I may have said this before. Anyway, we are in temporary digs while we look for somewhere else to live and this is proving tricky. Firstly, half the things I need are in storage; secondly, the place is somewhat, shall we say, 'dignified'. Meaning, because it might need spelling out, that it is beautiful but decrepit - and utterly impractical. It needs wiring, plumbing, insulating, flooring, heating, plastering, damp-proofing and, er, modernising.

That said, it turns out that we are brilliantly happy here, all except for the Frog who is finding the volume of doors that need closing, drafts that need excluding and lights that need turning out to be vaguely overwhelming, particularly given that I am not very good at most of the above and Charlie is rubbish at all of them.

I am used to a small kitchen - our last flat was bijou all round - however the kitchen here contracts the meaning of 'small' to the point where one might logically ask 'what kitchen?'; however it has one unexpected joy: the stove and all 2 feet of counterspace face a small breakfast bar with two stools. Every evening Charlie sits at it, at eye-level with me, doing his homework while I cook his dinner.

Turns out that this arrangement is brilliant, I am surprisingly even hoping to be able to mimic something like it, (yet magically larger), when we move. Charlie and I spend this hour laughing and talking and fooling around together and he talks to me - properly talks to me - about his day, his friends and sometimes about the things that frighten him.

One of the most heart-breaking things that he says to me is that he doesn't want to grow up. I mean, he wants to be in Year One at school, but he doesn't want to be six, he doesn't want to learn to read or to get taller or to to go school. This doesn't stand up to much scrutiny as he wants to marry his girlfriend and have babies and live in a castle, but he really, really, really right now, doesn't want to grow up.

Who knows what this is about. I suspect it's because in the last four months he's started school, buried his cat, left his house and put half his toys in storage... I guess growing up hasn't been much cop recently. He also talks about his dreams; they are often bad, filled with fire and loss; or sometimes good, filled, surprisingly, with cats - the same dreams I had when I was little and had just moved house and started school and left my cat in another country.

Mainly though we make stupid jokes and invent rhymes and laugh. It's good. It's good that we can talk about things with more depth than wondering where Dalek poo comes out; I really do think there's something in being able to talk to one's child at eye level that makes conversation really flow.

We may not live here for long; Charlie will continue to grow up, Daleks will continue to have secretive poos and things will carry on changing but perhaps this is something that can stay the same, this conversation.

At least, until he becomes a teenager and stops acknowledging my existence completely....

And another year enters...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 00:35:00 +0000

This year has been quick out of the gates let me tell you. It's twelfth night already and I feel like January is nearly over.

The whole thing started with a bona-fide New Year hangover, the like of which I've not seen for some time - we invited 'a few neighbours' around for 'afternoon drinks'... in the end I think the count was 17 adults, 12 children and possibly, although I may be wrong, nearly two dozen empty bottles of fizz by 2:30 in the morning... It turns out that I am too middle-aged for all this.

We moved house a few days before Christmas, something I don't recommend to anyone. Most of our things are in storage and we are ensconced in temporary digs which was all well and good when we were 'on holiday'; however now that the year is losing its glow, we are beginning to realise that we packed a great number of things we actually use every day and so the debate begins... replace it? Or live without it? I whisked egg whites with a slotted spoon this evening. Most of them went down my front.

Charlie is adapting very well, due largely to the arrival of Santa Claus and various items of desire which are helping him to forget that we accidentally packed two of his favourite train books. Our favourite of the new toys is a remote control Dalek which can be made to follow you around the house shouting Dalek obcenities and making the boy shriek. "I'm your fwend!" he tries to tell it; "You Are An Enemy Of The Daleks" it dictates back, implacably.

We had a wonderful existential debate while I was making him and his mate some dinner this evening, discussing whether we would prefer to be Daleks or Cybermen and which of them have the better lives. We were doing really well on the imagination front until the conversation degenerated completely as we started saying things like "Give Me Some Jelly" and "I Need a Poo" in Dalek voices.

A new year and a new baby cousin yesterday - almost exactly 3 years after another of my cousins had a baby girl. Welcome Amelie Violet, happy birthday Ruby and happy new year, one and all.

Merry Happy!

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:09:00 +0000

Chess

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Charlie has discovered chess and is patiently allowing himself to be beaten game after game while he learns the moves. He's already worked out the complicated Knight and is getting to grips with bishops and rooks and the omniscient Queen; he's learnt how to castle his King but he is finding pawns hard to master with their erratic manoeuvres...

I'm delighted and frankly I credit all the problem-solving games he's been playing on my phone for the past year and a half. Every game he gets a teeny bit better and he is longing for Christmas when we will be staying in a house with a proper chess set.

All this budding chess genius talk is making no impression on the Frog who pronounced after his 5-year-old's third-ever game of chess "He's rubbish, he can't remember which piece is which!" He also commented, more accurately that "I bet he'll have dropped it in a week" - so no pressure then.

I have an ambivalent relationship with chess. My Dad started teaching me when I was about 6, no doubt with the same dreams of owning his own personal chess savant that I harbour. I always wanted to be good at it but sadly the light never shone for me.

I have fond memories of visiting a very good friend who was living in Paris for a while and being taken to his local cafe where chess was played at any hour of the day by wizened Frenchmen smoking tiny, pungent roll ups. We sat at a table and started a game and within a few moves he had me up against the wall. As I was concentrating fanatically on at least taking his queen with me before I went down, I noticed the occupants of the cafe edging slowly towards me, muttering to each other.

Before long we were surrounded by chess players and wreathed in cigarette smoke. The muttering got louder, they were clearly itching to help out... then, unable to stop himself a thin hand snaked down from the closest figure and gestured at a move I should make.

Hugely annoyed at the interference, I made the move and drained my wine glass in irritation. My friend responded; again I sunk into baffled silence. The muttering grew quickly into a loud debate about which gambit I should be taking and the whole cafe was now standing around our table.

Another move was suggested and just as my annoyance was peaking, I realised what was happening. Letting them take over, I watched a beautiful, full-on turn-about take place... I can't remember who won or lost the game but for a few moments, the door into chess had opened and a chink of light had shone through.

Who knows if Charlie will still be playing chess by Christmas? I don't know and I don't much care but I am certainly going to be encouraging him to do anything which takes his mind away from shooting zombies, throwing angry birds at pigs, sinking pirate ships or any of the destructive video games he's been playing.

No, it's going to be about murdering bishops, capturing queens and pillaging pawns from now on - death to the king!

Not playing

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:42:00 +0000

There something about the way the boy looks when he's lying down that makes him seem so much older. Standing up it's clear he's a half-pint; lying down all stretched out with his long legs and his baby face pulled back by gravity he's shockingly much more grown up than I think I thought he should be.

Anyway, so all this growing up has clearly been happening right under our noses and while we've been blithely purchasing longer trousers and bigger shoes and helping him read and write and swim and... well, all the things a growing 5 year old might do, we've somehow failed to notice.

It's just that so much has remained the same. He still loves his trainset - in fact we're buying Brio for Christmas for the 3rd year in a row. He still has warm milk at bedtime, he still loves Peppa Pig and busses and the Transport Museum - and he still hates to dress up.

For some inexplicable reason, we've managed to avoid the Nativity Play for the past two years - his last nursery didn't engage in anything so overtly religious; however he is now in a full on church school and has been coming home singing songs about Baby Jesus for the past two weeks. This has culminated in a letter requesting the construction of a costume - angel or shepherd. He's chosen shepherd (thankfully; not sure I would be very good at making wings or that he'd be good at wearing them...).

He might have chosen a shepherd's outfit, but he's not going to wear it - and we all know that. I know it. His Dad knows it. His teacher knows it. All his friends know it and he knows it - although he's not admitting to it at the moment. So, even though we all know that this is a total fantasy, I am making the costume. I am even making the headdress. I may even make a shepherd's crook, who knows.

What we do know is that the outcome will be a total repeat of the last nursery play, the one from the lovely Montessori he was at for a few months, where we made a costume and packed it up and he wholly and completely failed to wear it.

In fact, I'm going to post the picture up again, because I'm 100% certain that, barring the age of the children around him, this is the picture I will take at the nativity play next week; Charlie in his normal clothes, sat tearfully on someones lap, mouthing the words to the song while all around him, pixelated children sing loudly and do all the right hand-gestures.

And, I will be delighted; proof that he's still actually quite a little boy... at least for a while.

Fights and Phantasms

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:41:00 +0000

Charlie is asleep at the moment, he's drifted off listening to Danny Kaye singing songs from Hans Christian Anderson; a CD which never fails to rocket me back to when I was his age listening to the record on the turntable, watching the lit rectangle of my bedroom door and listening to my parents potter about, still up.

I still know all the songs and while it took him a few listens, Charlie can now be caught humming some of them under his breath and offering to play them for friends, which I like.

This lovely moment of childhood innocence is totally marred by his performance in the school playground where he has already been banished to the 'little playground' where miscreants go... for fighting. Oh yes - apparently he and another boy were windmilling each other in fun until one of them landed an accidental haymaker and then it all got a bit pistols-at-dawn, necessitating an embarrassed conversation in the playground with the Mother of the other boy.

Since then there have been a few other incidents; Charlie complains routinely that they are 'not his fault' but then he also claims to know everything about ballet; although sadly refuses to impart any of this wisdom when pressed. He got a deep scratch across his face last week while defending his beloved from a boy who had kicked her.. I had a hard battle with my Motherly Love on that one I tell you - difficult not to be damn proud all over him because, obviously, fighting is wrong...

There are all these stages one marks off when one has a baby - first breath, first poo, rolling, sitting, crawling, first steps, first teeth, first this, first that... then you have a toddler then a little boy and then it's the first day at school, the first fight... and then what? Now what?

What is this creature currently snoring gently in the nursery? It's not a small child anymore yet it's not a big child; it's wily and cunning and reasoning, it counts, it reads, it writes, it dresses itself and comes out with a range of odd yet accurate facts; one can carry on a perfectly adult conversation with it and yet it still believes in Santa Claus and sleeps with one arm wrapped around Tigger.

Watching him now, even though he's only 5, it's possible to imagine one is watching the man begin to form. Up until now there have been these big stages, each of which marked a massive sea-change in movements or speech or growth; now it's just tiny incremental steps.

Personality traits are hardening up, ideas are evolving, skills are developing - and he's in there, this man who my son will become. He's in there and he's just beginning to emerge, the lightest of phantasms; but he's there, stepping gently and carefully out of childhood and across into the unknown land of grown-up...

I just hope he keeps his fists in his pockets from now on.

School daze

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 22:45:00 +0000

So it's happened, Charlie has started school. This is old news, it's been going on for weeks; it's practically normal. The other day he turned to me and said 'Mummy - I'm a school boy now! A school boy!' as if this is a hallowed dream that he has been clutching to his chest along with his nest of buses and model trams.

There he is in his uniform, blowing a kiss as he heads out for his first day and here he is at the end of it, smug as anything.

He already looks like he belongs on the cover of a Clash album in his uniform, he's all crooked tie and un-tucked shirt. He's a proper boy now, he's rushing away from us at light speed.

Already there is pressure on us to conform. The other day he ordered me not to walk to school, but to drive there, then to wait outside in the car, around the corner... until social services showed up, presumably.

Everyone asks how the settling in process has gone but he has slipped simply and easily into school life and is gaily practising handwriting and phonics as though he's been there ages.

It helps enormously that his school is tiny and that he knows children in almost every year. It helps that I am standing outside his classroom with parents I met when we were all pregnant. It helps that his beloved Lizzie is in the class above him and despite her raving beauty and superior age is still willing to be his girlfriend at playtime.

It all helps - him, anyway. None of this is helping me at all. This has all been much too easy; if he carries on growing up like this it will be no time at all before he is striding off to university and leaving us to the darkness of life without him.

Frankly I could do with a tantrum; perhaps some begging and a little clutching around the knees before school. I feel like doing a little of it myself, to be honest.

Don't grow up quite yet, my lovely boy.

Cinco de boyo...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 21:39:00 +0000

I'm doing some hocus pocus and dating this to the start of the month and I'm doing this because that's when my son turned 5 and, should he ever read this damn blog, it would seem harsh to have missed it.

5 is quite a momentous birthday - it means school, more independence- reading and writing... or in our case, it means that clearly, Charlie is old enough to be in charge of everything and do what he wants, because, apparently, he is all grown up. So 5, it turns out, also means quite a lot of arguing about things in general.

5 year old boys, it seems, like Doctor Who a lot. Universally the kids have moved from playing Octonauts to playing at Doctor Who. 'The Monster' is now always a Dalek (I relish the story of one of his girl-friends, who, inspired by Charlie's enthusiasm, taught her best friend to play Doctor Who at her house. They marched up to their parents shouting 'We are the Garlics' to universal hilarity)

5 year old boys not only ride their bikes, they race them all about everywhere and don't much care if they fall off. Wounds which a few scant months ago would have had our boy lying prone on the sofa, daintily holding his stricken limbs in the air, now only appear at bathtime when his clothes come off -skinned elbows, grazed knees, massive bruises around the shins - who knows where they come from? 'I fell down' he says, or 'someone pushed me but I'm OK'.

5 year old boys - ohhhh, this is so lovely - 5 year old boys make their parents breakfast in bed!!! Oh yes. Alright so we're talking cereal with no / too much milk in it and apple juice with a few sloshes around the edges but you know, it's a huge start on what I hope to be a future in-house catering project.

5 year old boys are also not so grown up that they don't want a lot of cuddles, thankfully. They climb into bed and put their arms around you and kiss you on the nose and tell you that you're their favourite and can they have your iPad?

5 year old boys want dance parties and Spiderman cakes and invite everyone they know and make you play the Kaiser Chiefs and the Ramones over and over and over while they do robot dancing and get all sweaty.

5 year old boys are unbelievable pedants. 'Have a fish finger Charlie' 'No, Mummy, you mean, have ANOTHER fish finger'. 'Let's go' 'Mummy, you mean let's go TO THE PARK'.

5 year old boys are pretty amazing. I've got one, I ought to know.

Thanks for the mammaries... I mean, mammogram...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:39:00 +0000

I was informed recently that our NHS district has lowered the age range for breast screening by ~~4 or 5~~ QUITE a few years. Lots actually; lots and lots and LOTS and lots...coughcoughcough. Indeed.

Anyway, this is so that those of us who are, let's say, very much younger than 50, for example coughhackretch can be included in the process.

Along with this came an invitation to a screening - not, sadly, the sort of screening which involves, say, watching Benicio Del Toro looking moody in a ripped shirt (ahem), but one which requires medical humiliation. So, off I bravely toddled Friday morning to the local breast screening clinic. I say 'bravely' because about 18 years ago my lymph nodes went funny and I ended up being shipped off for a mammogram, so I've Done This Before.

Back in those days it involved, as I recall, pressing the girls between two plates which were then screwed tightly together as though the doctors were pressing wild flowers (which is of course, how I like to refer to my assets). The resultant pancakes were then photographed and I went home feeling as though I'd just had sex with one of those blokes who like to use one's girls as a gear-stick.

...NOT, I must say for the benefit of any reading spouse or parental units, that I've ever done THAT. No no no. Not much, anyway... you know this really is a bad cough.

Anyway, it hurt a lot - so much in fact that I actually repressed the memory. I'm not kidding; about 5 years ago someone I knew went for one and the memory came flooding back 'OH my god' I said 'I've HAD one of those... I had completely forgotten'. 'So it's not that bad then' she said. I stayed quiet.

Needless to say I was full of trepidation. Reassuringly the clinic was clean and bright and the machine spotless. The nice young nurse had me stand up and gently laid a boob out on a plate attached to the machine, then, gently again, lowered a clear plastic tray on top of it.

I feel the need to interject here; as immediately I noticed that there were several trays of different sizes and, satisfyingly, she switched the smaller one for a larger one. The small one had numbers up to 5 on it, my one went up to 6! Just as I was preening myself I noticed there was another one that went up to 7, so there's me, just average. Sigh.

Anyway, so she lowered the thing down and then, yes, screwed it tightly - and this time, miracle of miracles, it didn't hurt! Wow.

As it was all over, I mentioned this to the nurse and expressed my gratefulness that medical science has moved on... it was then that she burst my balloon, so to speak.

'Ah yes, that would be because at that time your breasts would have been more glandular'.

'Really?' said I 'What do you mean by that'.

'Well, you know - that long ago they would have been firmer and more glandular.'

'You mean, because I was younger...' 'Yes' she interjected '...and hadn't had a baby?' I finished, lamely.

'Yes' she said again and she laughed.

Right. So there it is, incontrovertable proof that... the nurse is incompetent! No, no no, proof that once I had young firm boobs, obviously...

No, really.

Sigh.

How much TV?

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:48:00 +0000

I need to ask all you parenting types out there how much TV your child actually watches; and whether you feel that their behaviour afterwards is normal - or does it change?

We've noticed that after a prolonged episode of TV watching, Charlie is irritable; he complains, he flops, he shouts - he's really not keen to do anything else at all. We limit his TV watching these days to a bit in the morning to get him up and a bit in the evening as a treat - anything more and we have childzilla on our hands.

It's the same with video games - those endless little tricks one can play on one's telephone. Perhaps it's because his brain is active, generating adrenaline and various emotional responses while his body just sits there getting tense - who knows.

Either way we're not worried about his physical health too terribly much as the boy is addicted to dashing around on his bike at the moment. We're not overly worried about his imagination, as anyone who's listened to him play with his trainset can attest; but I am vaguely worried about something and just wondered if any of you have had the same sort of thoughts about it - and if so, what you're doing?

ta!

London Riots...a Womble for the day...

noreply@blogger.com (Sparx) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:35:00 +0000

Actually I hate the term 'London Riots' - it should be 'London Looting'... and of course it's not just 'London'... In fact it's more like the UK's lowest common denominator all acting out their 'what I did on my summer holidays' essay - clearly putting it down in joined-up writing is out of the question.

I was transfixed by Twitter last night, I watched the #londonriots hash tag in dismay for hours as things spread and spread and spread, listening to the sirens crashing past us. Brixton was spared a second night of looting - the first was bad enough though - that's the Footlocker on Brixton High Street, burned out.

I then discovered #riotcleanup and like hundreds of others thought that I had to do something - as someone said - last night we needed Superman, now we need the Wombles... so I headed to Clapham where a clean-up was planned.

What I love the most about this is that overnight, someone set up a twitter account, organised places to meet to clean up and actually did the thing. At the start of the day the account had over 20,000 followers he now has 85,000+. @riotcleanup is now organising people to meet in Enfield to clean up the Sony Centre and will no doubt be carrying on to organise cleanups in other cities... the man had 3 hours sleep last night if you were reading his tweets and absolutely deserves a medal.

Practically the only shop in Clapham that didn't have its windows smashed in was Waterstones - the book shop - which rather tells you all you need to know about the looters. This was all about the TVs, trainers and telephones, not about civil rights or liberties or any of the things people riot for in other countries.

My favourite tweet of the day 'It's like Hogwarts, everyone getting off the train at Clapham is carrying a broom'. I was initially quite embarrassed on the bus like some obsessive mad-woman with her brush but I wasn't alone, there were several people self-consciously hiding their bristles then getting braver and braver about waving them about as we got closer... it was all sort of beautiful and surreal and quite funny, given the shit circumstances.

Clapham didn't really need us to sweep up, the council had it well in hand and in the end it was a completely symbolic gesture; I guess we all just wanted to stand up and say 'fuck you' really. Not often you get to say 'fuck you' by waving 100 brooms in the air.

I managed to be in the group of 200 or so they let in to do the initial clean-up and after a bit of a wait while shopkeepers were allowed in, we headed down. The theme of the day was to see two or three people crouched over some near-invisible splinters of glass with their dustpans, surrounded by cameras - there were almost as many media as cleaners (there's a massive camera lurking in the shadows to the left of that green van). I did actually get to clear some glass though; I met a lovely girl on the bus on the way down and we bagged up some huge sheets of window between us... it's amazing how quickly 200 people can clean up a street.

We may not have been needed for the actual clean-up (at Clapham, anyway) but we were needed so we could stand up and be counted - there were hundreds more Wombles cleaning up today than there were rioters the night before, and that's a good thing.

It may have only been a gesture but at least it wasn't a two-finger 'fuck you', or a pathetic finger gun. We're not just about the riots here, it's only the miserable little cretins who are about that.

All in all, I'm pretty happy to have been able to stand up and be counted. I came, I swept, I went home.

And now, I'm going to bed.