let me take you by the hand

Dear Marianne,


We had a lovely day out in London this half term. Sorry, no we didn’t.

The queue for train tickets was out of the ticket office and along the wall when we arrived at Tunbridge Wells Station. The first train had just the four coaches needed to accommodate the usual number of commuters, but this being half term there were a few more than the usual number of commuters. So we all squashed on to the carriage, Mike on my lap Anna on Becky’s lap, I lost track of Stan and Archie for a bit but we communicated through shouts until Tonbridge where at last they added more carriages. How difficult is this game with numbers and seats on our trains, Mike mastered it the day he got his Underground Ernie train set.
The Underground, by the way, also had a little difficulty accommodating everyone who had made it to the Big City in the half term holiday. Waiting for ten minutes for a District line train didn’t bode well, as the heaving masses of ordinary London folk, joined the throng of unhappy families with back packs and buggies and, as Anna quite rightly pointed out, shoved us beyond the yellow line.

When it eventually arrived, we rushed the train, relying on our sheer weight of numbers and the bulk of Stan bringing up the rear with a sharp edged buggy in hand, to get us all aboard. Anna and Mike promptly freaked out, I got in to an argument with a woman who wouldn’t move up the train, because she had some important bags she wanted to protect, and by the time I had a space to breathe in, I had lost contact with Becky and Archie. So the shouting started again: “Becky where are you?” “Here”, “Is Archie with you?” “Yes, I’ve got his hair!” “Where’s Craig?” “Don’t know?” “We’re getting off at South Kensington!” This I shouted at everyone, including all the strangers who were smiling at me and rather enjoying the free entertainment; I like Londoners.

If we hadn’t yet understood the monumental stupidity of our decision to go to London with all the children on a rainy day at half term, the animal like herding by security (children in luminous green jackets) as we left the train at South Kensington ensured that the penny dropped. Our family and the trillion other families who had the same rotten idea, obediently mooed and baaed the way up the steps to the underground walkway which leads to our great national museums. “This way for the Science Museum!” shouted a small child in a luminous jacket and then whispered something important in to her walky talky; I think it was “suckeerrs…” This way for the queue for the Science Museum actually, and this way for the queue for the Natural History Museum and this way for the queue, oops no, there is never a queue for the V&A what a shit Museum that is; nice café though.

Craig, who I have to say is usually three things: optimistic, decisive and calm, had unfortunately fallen apart. He joined the queue for the Science Museum, which by this time was snaking back to the gates at the tube behind us, and stared, into space. I gently pointed out to him that we were about to stand for forty minutes with five children, all by now white with hunger, to get in to a hugely crowded museum, where they would perhaps get a chance to maybe see a button they couldn’t reach, which would make a skeleton they wouldn’t be able to see, cycle on a bike they could only guess was there. It was a long sentence, but gradually he came round, and suggested a curry; hurrah the children cried.

So we had the most expensive curry of our lives, paying out for seven buffets despite the fact that Mike’s consisted of a bite of a popadum and seven coffee chocolates he charmed out of the waiter. After the curry we found a new sense of purpose, unfortunately our purposes were different, Craig wanted to try the Museums again and I wanted a long walk back to Charing Cross, with support from ice-creams and sweets, pigeons and guardsman etc.

So, we joined the queue for the Natural History Museum, and fifteen minutes later we found ourselves in hell. The building was so crowded that I longed for the space and safety of Camden Town underground station at six o clock on a Friday night. I was scared for our children, it was a dangerous place to be, and not because of T. Rex, because he wasn’t there anymore, and not because of the lifelike Dino Works, because we couldn’t get even close to that; but because of the demented parents charging around with screaming kids, determined to give them a bloody good day in bloody London if it killed them or us.

We did manage to squeeze ourselves in front of the Ant exhibit where we all marvelled at the wee things carrying leaves up and down a horizontal stick. An event I could have supplied for our children in the comfort of our own back yard, for nothing. We left after ten minutes and staggered to the nearest bench. “I want to go home”, said Mike.

The journey home was the same as going, but backwards, well you know what I mean; claustrophobic, sweaty, scary, exhausting, uncomfortable and disappointing. We felt so bad for the children that we foolishly promised extra holiday money as a form of compensation. Anna and Archie immediately took me up on this and I had to spend another hour lugging my lead heavy legs around Victoria Place shopping centre, before I could sit in a comfortable chair with nobody on my lap, and no stranger’s arse in my face.

As we dragged ourselves from the train and up the hill homewards, we experienced the first piece of light relief in eight hours. At the top of the hill, we found a Securicor van parked outside Lloyds Bank and screeching, “Help, the driver of this vehicle needs assistance…Help, the driver of this vehicle needs assistance…Help, the driver of this vehicle needs assistance!” Inside, the large driver was trying to look small in the front seat, whilst giving out reassuring smiles and thumbs up to concerned passers by. Now this was something for the whole family to enjoy, funny, cheap, entertaining. It was only Mike who didn’t enjoy the irony and he deserved a bit of fun, he’d put up with so much nonsense all day. But we should have known that the forces at work hadn’t quite finished messing with our heads, and just another minute up the road, outside the Library stood two Llamas with their keepers, seemingly advertising nothing but themselves; so now even Mikey was amused.

Rx

mountain...bridge...trea...sure island!

Dear Marianne,

Anna and Mike nicked off school and nursery the other day to go and see Dora's Pirate Adventure at the Assembly Rooms in Tunbridge Wells; me and Craig nicked off work.

My old friend Stephen had spent an arm and a leg on the tickets for his family and mine and when we were there he spent a head and a torso on merchandise. As we approached the Assembly Rooms, he said to me, "If the whole thing is a papier mache head on a stick affair, we're leaving." I knew what he meant, this sort of thing is a lottery, the Australian "kids show" Hi-5 came to Town in April last year and I went to see it with Anna, who is a real fan and particularly keen on Kathleen. Oh, it was grim, all wrong for young children, long, convoluted stories, lots of dialogue and the weakest of piss weak songs. Attention drifted very early on in a very long night, there was a great deal of wandering about, bored faces and tired tantrums, and the kids weren't too impressed either.

The nadir came, not from the awful group of second rate dancers and singers on stage, but from the very close up view I had of a cool Dad, standing and dancing and singing to the sound of Hi-5's theme tune. His wife and child looked on helpless to do anything for him or me, I wanted so much to vomit up the oversized bag of maltezers I had just eaten. But I didn't throw up, or leave, or punch the cool Dad, I held it together for Anna, who, despite being very bored for the whole show and passing the time staring at the other kids, told me how brilliant it was all the way home. I agreed with her whole heartedly, even to the point where I said that I also thought Kathleen was the best, even though she had been replaced on stage that night by someone called Rose.

Dora's Pirate Adventure turned out to be an American production and was therefore magnificent, loud, bolshy, no talking, great songs, lots of shouty characters, exciting sets and it all moved along at one heckava pace. Mike, who was frightened to go, was just blasted into submission by the relentless pitch of the production and sung along and joined in whenever he was told to, by the relentessly positive Dora, he was even quite loud by the time we got to Dora's greatest hit, "We Did IT!". He waved his flag, shone his £8 torch (which broke that night)and wore his Dora baseball hat at a jaunty angle, which shows either a rather camp side to him or a rather cool dude side to him, only time will tell.

After the show I saw a poster which revealed that Chris from Cbeebies would be Buttons in the Panto at the Assembly Rooms this Christmas. I'm torn, Chris from Cbeebies! he's a hero, a breath of fresh air in a crowd of shouty, patronising, children's presenters, he is charming and sweet and very camp; Mike loves him.
I'm torn because, a) we have no money for such luxuries for goodness sake and b)we should be in Brighton by the time Chris scampers on to stage in Kent. But that all depends on selling the house, or as we like to say now, selling the fucking house.

Our poor house stopped being a home when it became our chance to pay off debt and our ticket out of Dodge. It's all fine and dandy whilst things are moving on between us and the buyers, but when it all goes pear shaped then the house gets some serious slagging up. It becomes a great big ugly bulk, and you can't believe you ever liked it, like a boyfriend who was sophisticated, romantic and witty, until that night he came home hugely drunk and you woke to find him dressed in socks, leaning over your dressing table trying to throw up in to the victorian egg cup your grandma gave you... Anyway, you know the kind of thing, you've moved on and he's holding you back.

Our house is holding us back, it is a stumbling block to a better life, where the sun will shine every day, people you've never met will stop to say hello, the neighbours will bring you cups of sugar and children will play in the streets. On the other hand, I could be putting too much pressure on my poor house to step up to the mark and look as sexy as the houses up the road, and I may be hoping for too much from Brighton, can it really be a cross between Passport to Pimlico and Dora's Pirate Adventure. I need to be more relaxed like Chris, and see the world as Dora does, If we sell the house on time we will be in sunny Brighton by December, surfing those crazy waves and having fish and chips for Christmas dinner and we can say "We Did It!" But, if we are still in the Royal Wells, I will be able to take the whole family to see Chris being magnificent as Buttons in Panto. Of course, if Cinderalla turns out to be a papier mache head on a stick type affair, we're leaving.

Rx

i'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony

Dear Marianne,

I am considering going back to College to learn something about journalism and here is my first article entitled: A New Foreign Policy for The West. Constructive criticism will be much appreciated, although you may find it hard to find fault, except in some cases with the grammar.
A New Foreign Policy for The West
Thank goodness for North Korea. No other country puts on a proper patriotic show anymore, with lots of dancing soldiers, twirling their guns, committed and obedient crowds in huge arenas spelling out the words of the Dear Leader: KIL AL MEN which then metamorphoses into a picture of their national flag, if you can't be impressed by that then you have no soul.
We used to rely on the Soviet Union to do this sort of thing, you must remember Misha the Bear, mascot of the Moscow Olympics. The Soviets also supplied the great entertainment that is the military march past with bombs and tanks and excellent manic marching, although for really mad marching the North Koreans are the experts. But, the Ruskies went all soft on us and May Day just isn't what it used to be. So we have to rely on the madness of Kil Al Men and his company of players, for the fifties looking footage of fun at a military parade and after nuclear bomb blast party.

Now, I know the bomb is scary and everything, but I think it might be more useful to focus on the fact that the Dear Leader is deliberately starving to death the people of North Korea, and I think that knowing this The West should jolly well send in lots of their own gun twirling soldiers to sort it out; but apparently that's when this nuclear bomb thing works for the mad boy of North Korea, because the mad boy of the USA is scared even though he has his own much more pretty bomb. I think then that If the Western powers can't quite stomach North Korea, how about showing a bit of bottle in Darfur, Zimbawbwe, The Congo and well lots of other places that nobody cares about.

My extensive research in this area therefore leads me to the suppose that if you've got oil in your back garden you will probably get a visit from the gun twirlers of the West, but if your main export is carrots don't hold your breath. Anyway I don't want to put a downer on it all, I know at least one small boy from Africa who will be eating strange vegetarian food tonight, in a great big house in the English countryside. If you are rich and famous enough you really can buy babies and children, I'm sorry to contradict the Beatles, but money can buy you love.

So, in conclusion, my new foreign policy initiative for The West is that we should make enough rich and famous people, who can then go and buy all the starving children from the other bits of the world that are quite shabby, they can then bring them up in The West on a staple diet of designer clothes and ponies. I imagine that my argument may find those who counter with the suggestion that Western countries have enough money to save us all from starvation, but Governments need that money for the gun twirlers and the nuclear bombs without which, I think you'll find the world would be a very dangerous place.

Note: [The term The West is used as at all times to mean The Wild West]

Rx

all the guilt will be on your head

Dear Marianne,

I spent half an hour chasing Mike around the front room with hair clippers and scissors this afternoon, during which he screamed and shouted and stamped his feet. By the way, stamping feet is something I think grown ups should indulge in, say for example when you are in a queue at the Post Office or trying to discuss issues relating to parking with local attendants, you will find it is a technique difficult for people to argue against. Anyway, after my Edward Scissorhands impression, Mike stood in the middle of his shawn hair, weeping, his head half shaved, his face covered in snot, wearing only hairy pants(from the hair on his head you understand), - that's all he was wearing before, but it just made the whole image much worse. He looked like a child from the Gorbals circa 1953, staring vacantly up at the photographer from Picture Post, the only thing missing from the moment was a caption reading, "...what future for poor Billy McConnolly?"

Apart from all the obvious misery of the moment and the knowledge that I will have to repeat it tomorrow, what got to me most was that two months ago he sat in the hairdressers chair (on a slat of wood on a chair actually), whilst Janet did him; she cut and combed and sprayed him with water, and he smiled and chatted and laughed whilst sitting very still. I had even taken the precaution of giving her a get out at the beginning of the cut, explaining that he would probably get up and leave after the first snip, but she wasn't to worry and I would pay her anyway and blah blah. Janet smiled and thought, that's with you love, there'll be no such nonsense going on with me and Mike, I'm not his Mum.

This happens all the time with your own chidren. You spend ages explaining to child minders, nursery staff, baby sitters, auntie Sue and Denise from next door that Mike/Anna/Archie needs the light on and the door open at bedtime, her milk warm but mash potato cold, you tell them that blanket and bear are vital for his afternoon nap to be successful, and that he will poo after lunch, so look out for the far away look so that you can get the nappy on in time, or you will be scraping poo off his pants, trousers, hands and your sheepskin rug. When you return from whatever it is you have been doing that makes you feel like a rubbish Mother, you find a happy and contented child who has eaten hot mash potato and drunk her milk cold, had a two hour afternoon nap despite the fact that you drove away with blanket AND bear, asked for a nappy before pooing and is now fast asleep with the light off and the door shut.

When your children are with other people they retract their emotional blackmail antenae and go about their daily business as though life was fair and rules were there for a jolly good reason. Anna used to worry us sick, because her daily food intake at home until she was four, was two peas, half a fromage frais and a third of a small banana. However, she would return from her child minder having eaten two hearty meals with puddings and all the sensible savoury snacks in between. What kind of black magic was this woman dealing in, we used to ask ourselves, until we remembered that she wasn't related to Anna, she didn't need special powers, but more significantly, Anna had no biologically driven special powers to contront her child minder.

I'm not allowed to cut Anna's finger nails, she puts her hands behind her back and starts to yelp before I get the tiny safe childrens scissors out of the plastic holder, but grandad John can put neat TCP on her sore knee without her flinching. I can't get Stan near a green vegetable, but if Denise serves him a plate a broccoli he smiles a charming smile and clears the plate, Archie grunts at us but uses whole sentences when our friends come round, and so it goes on. Friends, school teachers, even passers by get the unfucked up stuff from our children, we get the grim stuff, the end of day, over tired, end of tether snarling that strikes fear into all parents. What nature banks on of course is a parent's emotional and biological connection with these angry snarly things, and nature is right a Mum's got to do what a Mum's got to do. Which in this case, is have another go at Mike's hair tomorrow without bringing up the fact that he was perfectly fine with Janet and what's wrong with Mummy's haircuts?

If he gets the chance to answer this question, he will point out that I make him look like a kid whose Mum uses a wonky bowl to cut his hair, and then he will use his emotional blackmail skills (learned in the womb) to point out that I am his Mum and in his eyes I am supposed to supply, a roof over his head, hugs, kisses, food and chocolate. So tomorrow I will finish the haircut, then I will feel guilty that a) it looks so bad and b) that I should be doing lovely Mummy things with him instead. This see-sawing of emotional blackmail and maternal guilt will then continue for oh, say, another thirty to forty years at which point I can get myself some guilt free senile dementia and then lets see how the children like it!

Although I do foresee some flaws with my plan, because, by this time my children will be playing their own fun version of blackmail and guilt with their children, and they will not have time for me and my wobbly, scary madness. I will quickly find myself in a home (which will not resemble a home in any way) and I will just be able to make out the words Becky is saying to the nurse, "...and she likes her mash potato cold and her milk warm..." before I am wheeled away, down a long corridor smelling of wee, to a dark room, where, despite being without my blanket and bear I will have to endure my compulsory perm, with the home's resident hairdresser, Janet.

Rx

auld lang syne

Dear Marianne,

With the arrival of his O level certificates my friend Dave and his family are now only days away from making their journey to Kuala Lumpar (I still cannot bring myself to call it KL and, by the way, I think we should keep the Pound). It is good to know that understanding algebra, reading Coming through the Rye and learning the complete table of elephants was worth it. He was only studying enough to take him in to the Post Office as counter staff, how could he know at sixteen, that in twenty years time his project on the Cliffs of Orkney would help to propel him to a new life in far far away land, KL that is(there...I did it...bleugh).

We had our last supper together and got stupidly drunk and cried and laughed and smoked cigars, which is very bizarre because we are all non-smokers. We planned a spectacular banquet for them, well five courses, which is quite spectacular I think. One of the courses was to be a Korean style cook it at your table job, but we don't have anything that would allow us to cook it at the table, although we did consider lighting forty tapers we had sitting being useless in our kitchen useful drawer next to our one chopstick. I rang round the usual suspects to find someone with a camping gaz thingy or Fondue Set - you have to say Fondue Set for the same reason that you have to say hostess trolley.You would not believe the number of people who used to have a fondue set, but now can only find four different coloured fondue forks in their kitchen useful drawer. "...I think my friend borrowed it, or is it in the loft? Rob did you give the fondue set to Cancer Research?!" Obviously my sister (for it was she)didn't think my brother in law had given it to their research lab, she meant the charity shop, the last resting place for stuff.

A couple we know who still live in the big city were so well organised that at four monthly intervals, they would have a clearout of unwanted stuff from their house which they would then take to their local Charity Shop. Ordinarily Dirk would deliver the stuff on his own, but one time Vi helped, arrived at the shop first, delivered her bags and was just about to go back out to help her husband, when she heard one of the old dear volunteers say to the other: "Oh no. Look, here comes that Dirk. He always brings a load of old shit." Catching her breath, Vi, left the shop, walked straight past Dirk without acknowledging him and headed home to be appalled and to laugh for a long time. When they told this story I remember our group outrage, how dare they cast aspersions on our stuff, we donated it didn't we, we didn't dump it at the tip, or worse give it to The Cat Protection Society.

Anyway fondue sets, used to be ten a penny, now you can't get them for love nor money (yes, I did spend the weekend with the Pearly King and Queen of Lambeth). At one time, in the early eighties, they were everywhere and if you went round to a friend's house for dinner you were pretty certain you would be eating four gallons of snot textured cheese with four loaves of bread. Later, when you threw it all up, it looked exactly the same as when it went down.

We never did get hold of a fondue set, nor, even a camping gaz thingy, so instead we set fire to the cooked steak in the kitchen and ran it into the dining room, where it flamed impressively for five seconds and then went cold. However, although I say it myself the food was very good, the strange Malaysian starter, the sweet and salty broth, the flaming meat, the fish from Scotland and the fool from Kent, the drink was lovely, the cigars were...well unpleasant actually.

Why did we have the cigars? I think because we were trying so hard to make it special, the memory of that night has to last us three years for goodness sake. Actually, the memory of six foot four inches of Dave careering up the road in the early hours of the morning accompanied by five foot 2 inches of Denise attempting to support him will stay with me for ever. Which makes the point, I think, we could have had five buckets of cheese fondue for our last supper, and still it would have been a wonderful night, because it is the friends we will remember and the friends we will miss.

I know his Mum was proud, but I wish Dave had never passed his bloody O levels.

Rx