Rain

You're not going out in this?

My father stands in disbelief as I ready myself to get on my bike and cycle it to Euston Station. The weather is abysmal and it's seven miles away.

But...

Tomorrow I'm going to Liverpool. The only way to get my bike there is to send it by train. The only way to get it on the train is to cycle it to Euston. The rain is streaming down. I don't really fancy cycling down the North Circular in it, but I don't tell him that, of course. Besides. What other choice is there?

The tension that has been simmering all summer between us spills out into a furious row.

Don't go, he says, but I do. Slamming the door shut. Certain, with all the arrogance of youth, that I am right and he is wrong.

The bike and I make it to Euston in one piece, I am absolutely sodden when I get home. I know I should make up with him. I am leaving home tomorrow. Never go to bed on a row, is his motto, and normally mine. But I am still too angry.

All summer long he's been needling me about my reading list. That'll teach me to take a degree in his subject. Have you read The Faerie Queene? Lucky you, you're going to study Anglo Saxon. You'd better get on with that list you know, otherwise you'll be behind from the beginning... On and on he goes. It's getting on my nerves. I wish he'd just leave me alone.

My twin gets none of this of course. Lucky her, she's not even here. Besides. He knows nothing of Biology.

I love my father dearly. But I hate it when he forgets to be my dad and tries to teach me instead. I don't like the two roles muddled, and I am defensive and snappy. He just wants to help and is hurt and angry back. Usually we tiptoe round each other and avoid confrontation. For my father when roused is unpredictable. I hate rows and am a past master at evading them. But, that last day he pushes too far, and I let fly. Why then? Why couldn't I wait one more day? It is the only time I ever let him goad me into a fight. And I am too proud to say sorry. So I don't.

We have a tense drive to Liverpool the next day. I am map reading for the first time and accidentally take us off the M62 a junction early, and he bites my head off. But eventually we get there in one piece. My mother and twin wait in my room while Father drives me to Lime Street to pick up my bike. I am taut and anxious. Will he start another row?

That bloody bike, is all he says, but then laughs his way through a Liverpool traffic jam. He's so unpredictable. I want him to apologise first, but this is as far as he can go. I meet him halfway, but I still can't bring myself to be the one to make peace, and it's an uneasy truce.

We get my bike back to my hall, have a quick cup of tea, and then they say goodbye.

Lucky you, says my father as he climbs in the car. I wish I was on the brink of a whole new life. Lucky you.

I don't feel lucky as I wave them goodbye, and walk back down my dark forbidding corridor, where all doors are shut to me. I feel miserable, heartsick that our argument is unresolved and terrified of the new life that awaits me.

He thinks my terror was indifference. He has yet to tell me the story of his mother, so I don't understand that he is jealous of my chances.

The rain falls solidly those first few weeks. Every time I get on my bike it seems to rain. I am perpetually drenched.

Slowly though I make friends, and begin to enjoy my freedom. But my course is hard. Much harder then I'd anticipated. And there are bits I really hate.

How's the Anglo Saxon going? He asks when I ring home. I can't face telling him, knowing how it is his favourite subject, I've barely attended a lecture. Education is wasted on the young.

I am often homesick, but pride prevents me from taking a trip back home. Pride and a determination to punish him.

I'm appalled by how cruel I was now. I wonder if he minded.

Eventually I make it home for Christmas. And he is there. Same as ever. Giving me a big bear hug.

Everything is as it was.

We never row like that again.

But I still haven't read The Faerie Queene.

Star Man

The real poet in the family is my big sis... but this refused to come out any other way.


Look. There' s Cassiopeia.
And there. See. Orion's Belt.
I am six, maybe seven.
My father takes my hand and shows me the stars.
There's Ursa Minor.
And see. There. Ursa Major.

Can you see
see
see?

Later in Greece, the lights go out,
In a cafe by the sea.
The Milky Way flares into view.
Vast and impenetrable in a dark bay.
Is this what he saw, long ago,
On a boat in the Atlantic?

Can you see
see
see?

After he's gone,
In a valley in Spain
I watch Mars glower large in a clear night sky.
I take my daughter's hand and show her the stars.
Look. There's Cassiopeia.
And there. The Pole Star.

Can you see
see
see?


Always and forever.
When I look at the stars.
I see you.



My clever poetic big sis will be reading one of her poems at Jodrell Bank tomorrowas winner of the Times Moonbounce Competition. She is so clever. And he would have been so proud.
To follow her progress tomorrow you can go to: http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology

Days I'll Remember all My Life

You have to hand it to Ray Davies. He has the knack of reaching into an experience and pulling out a song of incredible depth which can speak to you on so many levels, and yet which appears deceptively simple.

Days is one such song. And when he played it the other week at the Albert Hall it seemed to resonate in a way it hadn't done with me before.

I think that may be what's set me off on this nostalgia fest about my dad. I have no idea of the provenance of that song, or who it's for. Presumably it's a love song. But oh.... how powerfully it taps into the emotions I'm feeling.

Take for example the line about days when you can't see wrong from right. My dad was one of those people who have a clear moral code. He could always see wrong from right, and had a strong sense of natural justice, and a righteous anger about people who did very bad things for selfish or material gain. In that way, he reminds me slightly of David Tennant's portrayal of the Doctor, without the ruthlessness. My dad was never could never have been ruthless, but he shared that steely anger when people have really gone too far. (Maybe that's why I like David Tennant so much.)

I remember him once telling me about going for a medical check up. He was a heavy smoker but at that time had only just resumed smoking after a period of two years. As he was getting changed in the next cubicle, he heard the doctor bullying an elderly Jewish lady calling her Mother, constantly and subjecting her to a series of nasty racist jibes. This so infuriated my father, he wanted to bring the doctor down a peg or two. When it was his turn to be seen, he subjected himself to various tests, including a chest x ray. He was also asked about his general wellbeing, including the inevitable question, Do you smoke? Oh, yes, responded my father. The quack, who by now had my dad's x ray in front of him, looked rather perplexed. How many do you smoke a day? Ooh, about forty. The doctor was left scratching his head as to how my dad's lungs could possibly look so clean when he smoked that number of fags. My dad left laughing, having not admitted to having only started smoking again the day before. Don't get mad. Get even...

But more then that, this song resonates, as I'm sure it does for everyone who likes it, with that line about the days you'll remember all your life. There were so many. So very very many.

Days like the ones we had the summer before I went to university. I, two of my sisters and Father were all knocking about at home kicking our heels for a few weeks. We were getting bored of each other and getting under each other's feet. So periodically, Father would say, let's go out. And off we'd trot. We went to Woburn Abbey and laughed at the monkeys. We went to Frinton and had chips on a sea wall. Another visit with my mother took us to Poole. She had to go off on an errand for work, while we sat on the beach in the sunshine.

Days I remember as a child when he'd suddenly announce a treasure hunt and take us to our local park. Hidden among the foliage in the massive greenhouse would be toffees and other treats. Nobody else's dads did things like that.

Or very early days when he would sit patiently with me at the kitchen table helping me spell out words on a board, or taught me to play gin rummy.

Thanks to him I'm truly not frightened of the world, I do bless the light of every day he gave me. And though he's gone every day was utterly precious. And I am so grateful for each one.

Ray Davies really knows what he's taking about.

Thank you, so much, for the days.

Gold roses and champagne

I stand nervously in our lounge, fiddling with my wedding dress. The wedding car taking my mother and the bridesmaids to the church has gone, and I am left alone with my father.

The nature of my relationship with my father at this stage in my life is somewhat complicated. I love him dearly and know he loves me, but he can be unpredictable and his moods capricious. He also has a habit of delving deep into subjects I would rather keep private. I want to be happy in this moment I have with him, but I am terrified he will start quizzing me about things I'd prefer not to discuss, or give me sermons about how I should live my life. I realise now of course, that this was the way his natural concern for me manifested itself, but then I found it excruciating.

It is only when he has paced the room for the fourth time, that I realise that he is in fact more nervous then I am. We look at each other and laugh. I think we both feel better for that. In fact, he gives me no sermons whatsoever, and instead we practise walking down the aisle together. It is the start of a properly adult relationship with him. One which I later felt cheated that I hadn't had for longer.

I have chosen gold silk for my bridesmaids' dresses, and my bouquet is of gold roses. They're my favourite, my father tells me. And I'm glad it's the colour I've gone for.

We get to the church and have an hilarious few minutes taking the mickey out of the photographer. My father has a keen sense of the ridiculous and can't take the posed shots seriously. The result is some great photos of us laughing - there's one in particular I love. The photographer lines us up with the bridesmaids, turning back to the camera. Father has me in stitches, saying, which way should I look, do you think?, as he turns his head this way and that, in genuine mystification about what the photographer is after.

Eventually the photos are done and we enter the church ready to walk down the aisle together. The door of the church is open, but the priest isn't ready. Father and I look at each other. Neither of us knows quite what to do.

Perhaps we'd better shut the door, he whispers. Perhaps we'd better, I whisper back. It feels like we're in cahoots together. I don't know why.

The door shuts. We stand there dithering. By now, we are both fighting hysterical giggles. In the end, he says, well we'd better do something, and flings the door wide open again.

The church has a very short aisle, so we're down it in no time. Father hands me to Spouse who looks faintly green. I am so happy about my future life, I don't really think about how he must have been feeling. But quietly and without fuss, he has just discharged himself of his duty of care, and given me to the man who will I hope care for me to the end of our days. (Actually cherish - the word I choose instead of obey in my wedding vows is more appropriate.)

In my student days, I used to think, fiery feminist that I was, that the idea of being given away like an object by your father was somewhat degrading. I don't now. I think it is more of a silent contract between two men who love the same woman, to make sure she continues to be loved. My father, very typically felt his job was done, and told me from now on my first duty was always with Spouse. Duty is a bit of a dirty word these days, I think. It makes people uncomfortable. But I know what he means. I love my parents dearly, but Spouse is my future. And my father is incredibly generous about letting me go.

His speech is short and to the point. He simply wishes us well and toasts us with champagne. Knowing how eloquent he is and how, if he chose to, he could make a speech that no one else could match, I am touched that he takes this approach. I've been at weddings where the father gets incredibly sentimental and describes his little girl as a princess or some such other sugary term. This isn't my father's style at all. His way is to stand back and let us have our moment in the sun. And to do so without me feeling the slightest bit bad that I am leaving him behind. I am immensely grateful for that.

All day long he complains about wearing a penguin suit - at least we didn't make you wear a top hat I retort - and by the evening, and after plenty of champagne, he comes downstairs wearing the terrible ratty old jumper he loves best. We all laugh. From the maitre d' to the gardener in one fell swoop.

It is the best day of my life, and my father is there. He so easily might not have been.

Gold roses and champagne.

The most precious memory I have.

Wind

16th October 1987. The day of the Great Storm. If you lived in southern England at the time, it's a day you'll never forget.

I have another reason for remembering it. 16th October 1987 was also the day my father had his heart bypass.

The night before, my mother, my brother and I who were the only ones at home, retired to bed early. Anxiety meant that none of us were sleeping well, but I can remember around midnight being aware that it was becoming rather windy. I slept at the front of the house, facing a suburban street. Nature doesn't tend to feature in such places.

My brother slept in the loft, in a rather creaky conversion which faced downhill towards the bright city lights of London. He reported that night, that it was rather like sleeping on board ship.

I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. I can remember thinking, blimey it's windy. And then a sudden bang woke me out of my anxious doze, and I leapt out of bed, as did the other two. We met on the landing to discover that a window in my parents' room had smashed. Deciding that as none of us were sleeping anyway, we may as well go downstairs, the three of us headed for the kitchen. Just after the kettle boiled, the lights went out. My brother fetched his battery operated radio, Mother made hot chocolate on the grill, we lit candles and sat crouched over the radio, listening to the shipping forecast. As the announcer sonorously sounded, The wind is rising to x number of knots it felt like we were the only ones left on the planet.

As morning came we watched the two silver birch trees that graced our garden and had formed a feature of my childhood, being the perfect place for both a swing and later a tree house, bend with the wind and practically touch the ground. The damage done on that night meant one of them had to be cut down just before my parents moved house. I cried when I came home and saw it had gone.

My father, meanwhile, also wasn't sleeping. He reported later, how at some point in the night a window in his ward had swung open with a bang. He and several other elderly chaps, all due for heart operations, leapt out of bed to shut it. It was probably the most exercise any of them had done in years.

It was touch and go as to whether he should have the operation. Power supplies were down in London, and transport had more or less stopped. I was doing a publishing course at the time, and opted not to go in. I think, but now can't quite remember, that my mother struggled to get to Barts to see him before the op, but later came home.

I do remember a rather tense wait to find out if they were going ahead or not, and eventually the phone call came through that they were.

During the next few hours we distracted ourselves by clearing debris from the garden, and watching reports of the damage wrought across the south east. It was a wierdly surreal experience.

At some point, I can't remember when, we got a call to say the operation was a success. My father was resting, but all was well.

It was several days before I saw him, my mother as a former nurse, adamant that he needed rest and too many visitors would be bad for him.

When I did see him I was shocked. He had a huge scar running down his chest, he was badly bruised and looked as if he had been a victim of a traffic accident. Worse still, he seemed to have aged. My father was a tall man who always held himself erect. He had walked out of our house with a straight back, but he came home bent over, and shuffling like a little old man.

The weeks that followed were impossibly bleak. I was home from university, owed far too much money to the bank, hated the course I had booked myself on, and Spouse who still had a year to go before finishing his dental course, was still in Liverpool. It was by no means clear to me at that stage that we would have a future together, but after two and a half years together, being apart from him was killing me.

We couldn't afford to see each other every week, so we took it in turns to take the coach trip up and down the M6 every other weekend, or when we felt marginally richer, the train. He didn't have a phone, and was a poor correspondent. Sometimes three weeks would go by without us meeting. When I did get up to Liverpool we'd have frantic weekends when we would cram in as much activity in forty eight hours (I remember once going to the cinema twice in a day) before I would leave on the last available train from Lime Street Station.

I would get home around midnight, and the house would be shrouded in silent darkness. In the morning I was always the first up and out of the door. I used to stand at Wood Green station hearing the tramp, tramp of commuter feet and wonder why I hadn't stayed up north. My father's health didn't seem to be getting any better, the home I loved seemed for the first time in my life gloomy and cheerless. I wasn't keen on the Smiths, but heaven knows, as Morrisey liked to put it I was miserable now.

Then one day, Father had a bit of a blip. His heart started beating out of rhythm, so he had to go back to hospital. They stopped his heart, and restarted it (just thinking about that makes me feel slightly sick), and then sent him home telling him he was doing really well. It was as if that was all he needed.

That day he walked back into the house, standing straight and tall , his head held high. From then on, his recovery was smooth, and rapid.

My father was back. And all was very very well.

Sunshine

This weekend it's Father's Day. Though it has been twelve years since my father died, I have been thinking about him a lot lately. So the next few posts are all about him. These are intensely personal memories, so if that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable look away. I'll be back to posting silly stuff in due course...

I lie in bed, early in the morning, sun streaming through my window, silent tears rolling down my cheeks.

It is twelve years to the day my father died. Often his anniversary passes unnoticed - or I remember then forget the day itself. For some reason, though, this year, he has been much in my mind.

As I lie there, unable to sleep, I remember another sunny morning, literally half my life ago, in Liverpool.

It was the end of my exams, and I think if memory serves, I had made a bit of a night of it with my flatmates in Ye Old Cracke, thanks to John Lennon, one of Liverpool's most famous drinking holes. I awoke with my first ever hangover, brought on by an insane notion that drinking whisky doubles was a really good idea. I've never touched the stuff since.

At some point when I am slightly compos mentis, I decide to ring home and let my parents know how my exams went. They had been up to see me only the previous week, and I am guiltily aware I should probably have rung them by now.

My mother answers. There is a slightly odd tone to her voice, explained by her first words, "There's no need to worry..." I feel a very big but coming on.

The very big but turns out to be that my father has had a heart attack. He's actually been in hospital since Monday, and she hasn't told me. I know it's to protect me. But...

My father has been in hospital for a week and I didn't know.

And the stupid irony is, that he had mentioned having bad indigestion the day before their visit. We had joked about him not having the steak at dinner. In actual fact, he'd had his first heart attack the day before driving two hundred miles to see me. Not content with that, he'd gone on a round trip to see two of my siblings who were also at northern universities. He drove over six hundred miles in just over twenty four hours without realising that in fact, he ought to be in hospital. It's a miracle he didn't crash on the motorway.

But hospital was where he was now.

There's really no need to worry, my mother assures me. It's only a mild one. A bit like a warning, really.

When I suggest coming home, she tries to put me off, but I'm not playing ball. I have a week between exams and getting the results. I don't have to be here, and I'm not going to stay.

I can't remember now why I didn't go straight away, I expect it was money constraints or something. But I remember spending the rest of the weekend in a daze. I wasn't quite twenty one and my father had had a heart attack. I had no idea what that meant. How ill was he? Was he going to die? It seemed melodramatic to even have the thought.

I certainly couldn't articulate any of this to the people around me. We were young and free and living suitably young free and hedonistic lives. Barely anyone I knew had lost a parent at that stage in our lives. It wasn't how life was meant to be. My flatmate's dad had had a heart attack too, but though I mentioned what had happened, I can't really remember confiding in him. I didn't really know how.

I went home on the Monday, and entered a parallel universe, where my father was wierdly missing from the family home, and my mother was behaving as if nothing untoward had happened. Her only acknowledgement of the undoubted anxiety she must have been feeling, was to comment that she was wearing bed socks, as the bed was cold. I knew she was trying to protect me, but I was baffled too. I didn't want to be a drama queen, but this seemed a rather big deal to me. Yet time and time again, when I met people I knew in the street who enquired after my father's well being, I would smile and say, Oh he's fine, joining in the conspiracy. It's just a little setback. All will be well.

And all was well. After a week, and having reassured myself that he really wasn't at death's door, I headed back to Liverpool for the end of term, where I threw myself back into my partying hedonistic life style, and tried to put the unsettling events at home behind me.

Looking back now, after all this time, I am struck now how absent my father is from my memories of that period. I remember so many occasions of that bright, sunshine-filled summer, and for the year afterwards, when he just simply wasn't there.

Arriving in Manchester to cadge a lift home from my mum who was driving a sister back to London, it was a shock to see her alone.

On my 21st birthday, I wanted to see Shakespeare at Regent's Park. Father couldn't make it, and we went without him.

A year later, when I graduated from university, on another bright sunshiny day, my parents came to see me take part in an outdoor performance of the Chester Mystery Plays. I was so excited that they were there, but the evening turned cold - too cold for my father - so he stayed where he was in the car, and my mother watched my performance alone. In the morning, having indulged in his usual practice when in Liverpool of eating black pudding, he felt ill, and therefore missed coming to the sherry reception in my department, and my mother and I went out for lunch without him. I think though we tried very hard, we both felt all at sea. I can remember to my shame, feeling rather cross about this. It was the most important moment of my young adult life. Was he intending to miss everything?

I am happy to relate that he recovered enough to see me graduate, and I have the pictures to prove it. But it was a strange and unsettling period of my life, and I never knew how seriously I should worry about his illness.


Time passed, and eventually Father had a heart bypass, from which he made a full recovery, and then he and my mother moved from our family home in North London and went to live in Shropshire. From there he lived the next eight years in a great deal of happiness, I think. Once more, all was well.


The years passed, and I had semi forgotten my worries about him, although there was always a slight residual angst. Did he seem over fatigued? Was it wise to drink quite so much red wine?

I am good at worrying about things before they happen, so I dismissed my fears as being foolish.

Then the year before he died, he ended up in hospital again for a prostrate operation. His heart was causing concern so they performed an angiogram. It revealed that the bypass was beginning to fail. He was going to need another one.

He recovered from the first operation, and everything again, seemed well.

Until the day I came home from work to a message on the answerphone. My father had had a stroke, and was in hospital. Again, my mother hadn't told me straight away. Trying to protect me (I was nearly thirty, I felt rather cross that she still felt she had to), trying to protect him. When he woke up in hospital he was unable to communicate anything other then the fact he didn't want any of us to see him in the state he was in. I can understand that now, though at the time I felt shut out, and angry.

As it happened I was going up north on the Monday to give a talk in a library in Tamworth. I went a day early and stayed with my mother - if I couldn't see my father, I could at least keep her company. She was upbeat and optimistic about what had happened. The stroke was caused by a blood clot. His heart trouble was at the root of this. The letter for the date of his second bypass, ironically arrived the day he was taken to hospital. When he recovered, he could have the operation. All once more would be well.

I wasn't so sure. I can remember a distinct feeling that our luck was running out. How much longer could my father sustain these assaults on his body? It was a feeling I only articulated once or twice, worrying that I was being overly dramatic. But I had the strongest feeling we would be celebrating the next Christmas without him.

The next three months were punctuated with trips up and down the M40. One I remember particularly, as it was a rare weekend spent entirely alone with my parents (as I am one of eight, opportunities to be on my own with them didn't come by very often).

My father was an eloquent man: words were what defined him. Words were his bequest to me. And the cruellest part of his last illness was that his words deserted him. He struggled to string a sentence together, and at times I found it unbearable to listen to him try.

During that weekend I sat listening to him painfully trying to explain to someone at Barclays that he had been ill and therefore hadn't made a payment on his account. It was clear from his frustration that the person at the other end thought they had a nutcase on the line. When he finally managed to spit out the words, I could almost feel his interrogator relax. I wanted to weep, but I felt proud too. Father could have asked me to do it, but he was nothing if not determined.

Two other important things happened that weekend.

I've mentioned before, on this blog, that Jane Henry, the name I blog under is actually my grandmother's name. She died when I was a baby, but my father talked of her so constantly, I have a very clear picture of her in my head, and I feel an immensely strong connection. He had told me in passing that when she was young she had a place at Liverpool University to read English, but thanks to a father who didn't believe women should be educated, she never took it up. I was twenty when he told me that and it made me hugely sensible of the privilege I had been given, and determined to always make the most of my opportunities. It suddenly occurred to me, that I had never told him how inspired I was by the memory of his mother, and I finally did so. He was touched to the core, and I feel grateful to this day, that I did tell him. It was probably the most important thing I ever said to him.

The second thing, was something he said to me. Which gave me strength and sustained me for the weeks that followed.

Your mother wants me to have another bypass, he began. Then he paused and pointed to his chest. I'd rather take my chances with this old ticker though. I laughed and said, don't be silly or something. But I think he wanted to tell me, so I would tell my mother, who quite rightly was trying to be positive. I think in fact, he was then preparing to leave us. He had had enough of being ill and hospital. He knew there were things he would never do again. I think he was tired out from the effort of keeping going. Knowing he was content, made everything a lot easier.

The last time I saw my father was a bank holiday weekend. We had been up north again, visiting friends, and we called in on the way back. It was a busier time as several of the family were there. So I didn't speak to him alone. We had had our moment of shared confidences. Then I didn't know there would be no more opportunities to talk again. But even if I had, would it have made any difference? We'd both said all that needed saying. There was nothing more to add.

He was sitting in the garden as we left, not saying a good deal. I think the effort of speaking was probably a bit much. I kissed him goodbye, and walked away in the dappling May sunshine. I never saw him again.

A few weeks later, on another sunny day in May, I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang. It was my mother, and I didn't need to be told that my father was dead.

The shock - though I was expecting it was enormous, and the feeling that the world had shifted on its axis one that I have never quite recovered from.

The sun shone through my office window, as I sat ringing people up, all of them crying when I told them my news. I grew quite impatient in the end. He was my father. And I wasn't crying.

It felt like a block of ice had settled in my chest.

My father was dead, but I didn't think I would ever be able to cry again.

Now you see it, now you don't...

Sorry if you think perchance you are going mad....

I DID just post up a story about twins by Mad Twin, but we decided to take it down again as she's entered a writing competition and we suddenly realised it might be in breach of competition rules.

If she doesn't win (and how can she not, it's a brilliant story) I'll post it up again later...

Black Hole

I am a scaredy cat of the highest order. Or as my darling Spouse puts it, I am the most risk averse person he knows.

To date my neuroses (which get worse with every passing year, and have increased in number since having children) include the following:

Flying. It's not natural. If God had intended us to fly he'd have given us wings.

Dogs. I thought by dint of Spouse forcing me into dog therapy, and me forcing myself into patting the things so the kids won't be scared, I'd got over that one. But... then lots of my friends got dogs and now I'm worse then ever...

Water. This, I know is odd for someone who is training for a triathlon. I am fine in water myself. I like swimming. And I love boats. But... put me anywhere near water and my offspring and I am a complete neurot. Even though the two big ones can swim pretty well now, I can't bear watching them do it...

And as for childhood illnesses. Don't get me started.

Every time they have a temperature, I still check for meningitis.
I'd like to keep chickens but I'm afraid of bird flu.
And though it hasn't been a problem for ages, I STILL stress out when nos 2&4 have colds in case they get a full blown asthma attack (with five hospital visits between them, perhaps that isn't so unnatural...).


I can trace EXACTLY the moment I changed from being mad, bad and dangerous to know and not caring an iota for the dangers inherent in this world, and became Ms Neurot Extraordinaire.

I was ten years old, and I used to go swimming every week at the local pool. Amazingly, when I think about it now, one of my chief pleasures was going to the top board (which was very very high) and jumping off in the deep end, which in those days was properly deep (12ft 6 deep, in fact.). My other party trick was to spend hours in the deep end trying to see if I could touch the bottom. I watch no 1 doing the same in a depth of about 3ft and panic like mad. I cannot now imagine what possessed me to do such a thing. I presume it was because, despite lurid urban myths about the person who belly flopped and split their stomach open, I thought I was invincible. Until the day I merrily climbed to the top of the high board and looked down and suddenly thought, YIKES!!! That is a long way down. A long long long way down.... And I couldn't do it anymore.

Just thinking about it makes me feel a combination of longing to have that fearlessness again ( I can still feel the joy of leaping off into space and having that nanosecond of fear and excitement before I hit the water) and a slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I have been a cowardy custard ever since. Which is why I have enjoyed reading my bloggy friend Kate Harrison's book The Self Preservation Society immensely, as her heroine is even more of a scaredy cat then me (until she gets a bang on the head and starts to realise that she can take risks in life).

It was also particularly pertinent that I was reading it while were on holiday.

In Wolfsburg where we stayed in Germany, we visited a fine leisure centre called Bade Land. It puts our crap leisure centres to shame. There is a wave machine, an Olympic size swimming pool, a river thing (the kids love it, I hate it as it makes me stress. There's a surprise), and two very high rides.

No 1 and Spouse tried out the rides on our first visit. They were very enthusiastic about the tyre one, but the other ride, which was called The Black Hole induced a peculiar retinence in both of them.

Do you want a go? Spouse asked. I'll look after the kids.

I looked at the high windy tubes that snaked their way outside the building and remembered a prekids trip to a water park in Majorca where I had gone in similar and hated it.

Not a chance, mate, I said. You know me. I'm ever so brave...

However, on our second visit, I suddenly thought. Come on. Your ELEVEN year old did it. How scary can it be?

So as we were gathering everyone up to go, I said, You know, I will have a go at one of the rides. For some absurd, stupid reason known only to my subconscious, I didn't want to go home thinking I hadn't tried.

Ok, said Spouse, we'll be waiting at the bottom for you.

So I set off up the stairs. On my own. It was a Friday and the place was pretty empty. There were a lot of stairs. And it seemed to take a long long time to reach the top. Oh shit. What was I letting myself in for?

I got there and I saw two openings. One was for the tyre ride, but I hadn't brought my tyre. Besides, Spouse and no 1 had assured me that The Black Hole was great fun. I should have known better. I really should.

The Black Hole looked absolutely terrifying. It was a black hole, or rather a tube, with water running down it. When the light went green, I was meant to climb in, holding onto a bar above my head, and then let go.

I was suddenly transported back to that sodding waterpark in Majorca. There was a ride there which was immensely high. Spouse and I laboured to the top, and I watched in awe as ten year olds threw themselves over the side of it. We tentatively sat down to go, and then.... Spouse went and I lost my nerve and didn't. I stood up there feeling like a total plonker, and he (despite having hated it himself), nobly came up again and made me come down with him. I did it, but I was absolutely terrifed.

I can do this.

Of course I can do this.

My ELEVEN year old did this....

Oh sod it.

I am toooo old to prove anything to anyone. I don't have to do this, and I won't.

Feeling like a child who's having a tantrum I make my way pathetically down the stairs again. It would be nice to recapture that sense of fearlessness....

Spouse roars with laughter when he realises I haven't done it. But then he says, Oh go on. It's great fun. Look, no 1 will come after you.

Now I really can't lose face. I totter back up there with no 1. It's brilliant, Mummy, she assures me (the little liar)...

The Black Hole looks even less inviting second time around. But I have a child looking at me questioningly. I'm her mum. She deludedly thinks I am brave. I can't show her I'm not. Amazing how strong the instinct not to show yourself up in front of your offspring is.

I sit in the tunnel and hold onto the bar. It feels horribly claustrophobic, and all I can see is a black black pit. Which I am about to enter. I must be bloody mental.

I let go.

I scream from the minute I get into the tunnel till the minute I get out.

It is horrible....

I am shooting down a dark tunnel at a frantic speed. I am totally out of control. I am screaming like a banshee and wondering where the fuck the lights that no 1 and Spouse have promised me are. The tube thing I went in in Majorca was at least light. And it wasn't this sodding long.

For a moment I am put out of my misery as I flash briefly through a part of the tunnel which has a few miserable sparkly bits. I stop screaming for a minute, but then next thing I'm flying through the dark again and screaming as loudly as ever.

Another brief respite comes in the shape of some coloured lights, which remind me of a kaleidoscope. I pause for breath, maybe I'm at the end...

... or maybe not. The kaleidoscope drops suddenly away as I whoosh straight down, faster then ever into another black hole. My stomach is hitting the floor, I feel sick, dizzy and am utterly hysterical.

And then I land with a thankful splash into a pool. I struggle out of the water, spluttering and helpless. You bastard, I manage to gabble at Spouse, who not unnaturally is struggling to control his hysteria, That was awful....

To my utter shame I collapse in hysterics. The kids are mystified. I've never seen you cry, says no 2 in awe. No 2 is a mum in the making though. Being a champion cryer herself, she knows that thing to do in these circumstances is give the cryer a hug. Which she does. Oh lord. My humiliation is complete. I've shown myself up utterly in front of my children (no 1 cunningly comes down the stairs having opted not to repeat the experience, and is laughing uproariously at my discomfit). This story is going to go down in the annals of our family forever....

Still. At least I've taught them a lesson.

When I've recovered my composure, I tell them what it is...

In life, you should face your fears , I say. And that's what I did. (I'm so brave.)

What they say to everyone they meet is: Mummy went in The Black Hole and cried.

Oh well...

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light....

I approach the lift in the home mil's sister in warily. Spouse is in the car with the kids, while I am here to pick mil up. The lift is surrounded by three people in night attire. They sway in sync, and spookily say nothing. The lights are on, but nobody is home, nor has been I think for some long time. It feels like a scene from Shaun of the Dead. Any minute now I expect Simon Pegg to pitch up complete with LPs to chuck at them to clear my path....

No 1 thought I was terribly cruel for describing them in such terms. And I know it's horribly black, but quite frankly if I didn't laugh I'd have to cry.

Mil's sister has MS and has been living in the same home for over forty years. She is mentally still all there, but she is surrounded by people like the ones I encounter by the lift. The only reason I think she stays sane is that she is an awkward old bugger (every family should have an Awkward Aunt. With apologies to my nephews and nieces, I fully intend to turn into one in my old age) and makes life difficult for those around her. It's her only weapon in a fight against a world that with every passing year must seem increasingly to shrink and become less accessible to her.

Mil's sister is the main reason we have come to Germany. We are the closest family she has (she has no children), and we're a long long way away. And we can only ever come for the shortest of visits. I can't imagine how bleak her life must often seem. Luckily she and mil have inherited a steely determination for an aunt whose life philosophy was Ich Kann, Ich Will, Ich Muss (I can, I will, I must) - it clearly keeps mil's sister sane and so far has kept mil out of a wheelchair (mil has a condition known as a benign essential tremor - benign only in the sense that it isn't caused by a malignant tumour. The results of it are anything but - she has a dodgy sense of balance, her hands shake uncontrollably and she only walks now with the aid of her pushalong zimmer. Anyone else would have given up the ghost by now. But not mil.)

The trouble with our visits to Germany now is that most of the people we meet tend to meet are elderly and like mil's sister in a poor way. Her home does its best, but sheesh. I think if I ended up like that I'd be tempted to top myself. And while the majority of the staff there certainly look after the residents well, I was really cross with one care worker who bossily broke into a photo session we were having because mil's sister had to have her lunch then and there. It was done with no kindness, or thought, or appreciation that for mil's sister those five minutes were incredibly precious. What did it matter if she was a little late for lunch? I think that attitude sums up the problem with these kinds of places. However hard people try, and however much thought goes into them, in the end the inmates become a part of the system, and lose their individuality for the sake of the bloody system which prevails above all else.

What's the answer? I'm not quite sure really. Because another visit we pay shows up clearly the personal cost of keeping a loved one at home. Mil's best friend and her husband were farmers. Though they have now passed their farm over to a close family member (they too, have no children of their own), they still inhabit part of the huge farmhouse they own. When I first came here they were in their sixties, sprightly, active and running a highly successful farm. Now mil's friend has alzheimers. She doesn't recognise her husband any more, asking him constantly where her husband is. He is saintly beyond belief and shoulders the burden with dignity and courage. But it is sad beyond belief. Though she briefly comes to life when she meets mil, and this year seems to remember me (last year I was constantly asked if Spouse was my husband, despite her having been at our wedding, and my having stayed in their house several times). The overwhelming impression we have is one of two lonely old people, who are eking out their days in a quietly tragic fashion. If anything would make you want to rage against the dying of the light, it's that...

It's not that I think this is a problem specific to Germany - it is simply we get a huge concentrated dose of the problems affliciting the elderly when we come here - but I think it is one that affects the West particularly. We don' t care for our elderly at all well. We give them scant respect, and are often impatient with them. If they end up unable to cope we shove them in homes which in many instances aren't fit for a dog. Ok, that's probably an exaggeration, but I was horrified when fil spent two weeks in a home (highly recommended to us by the social worker who organised it for us) to allow mil some desperately needed respite care. There were members of staff who seemed to care, but for the most part they were indifferent, and far less considerate then their counterparts in Germany. Fil wasn't eating a great deal at that stage, and he was also slightly confused and bewildered. No one made any attempt to bring him out of himself. Or feed him. I came to see him several times and found food sitting congealed on his plate. Sometimes I think they even took it away, completely untouched. He developed an ulcer while he was in there, and despite several requests, he only managed one bath.

Poor fil. It was only a month before he died, and he was very grumpy. So they dismissed him as a diffcult old sod and didn't care. Or worse, patronised him as if he were some petulant little child. I wanted to smack them. The things he had done in his life. The courage he showed under fire. The brave moral decision he and his colleagues took at the end of the war not to repatriate Yugoslavian refugees. And these people treated him like he was an idiot. It made my blood boil and still does.

The old are the advance guard. We walk in their footsteps and if we are wise ourselves, learn their wisdom. To see them reduced to gibbering zombies is maybe inevitable in some cases - we cannot, for example stop a disease like alzheimers - but if only there was a way to motivate people better, to keep them engaged and interested in life, maybe we could manage care of the elderly better.

We couldn't make it any bloody worse.

Tic, Tac, Toe....

Tic, tac, toe.
Give me an A,
Give me an O,
Give me a three in a row.
Tic, tac, toe.

I've never known what this game was before, but Spouse and I are getting a crash course as the kids have played it all the way from Paris to Worms (where we stopped overnight), and are now in full flow en route to Hanover.

It turns out to be a version of Paper, Scissors, Stone, and when someone wins/loses the game continues with the winner tracing a finger up the loser's back with the immortal words:

Spider crawling up my back,
Which finger did that?

The loser then has to guess the offending finger (nos 3&4 cheat all the time and guess all of them).

Whoever loses that time gets punched on the arm with:

I win, you lose,
You will get the biggest bruise,

followed swiftly by:

I win, you're a nickel
You'll get the biggest tickle.


I don't know where my kids get this stuff from. They pick it up in the playground through some kind of weird childhood osmosis. Lots of the rhymes they sing are variations of one that were around in my day, but tic, tac, toe is a new one on me.

Not that I'm complaining mind, because we're driving through the Weser mountains in the pouring rain and I'm immensely grateful for anything keeping them entertained.

We're on the third leg of our journey, and it's no 2's ninth birthday. Poor no 2, being as her birthday falls on bank holiday weekend, we always seem to be away. She hasn't had a birthday at home since she was four. When she was five, we went to Ireland for the weekend; when she was six we went to Germany. And I will forever remain covered in guilt - I'm a catholic, I give good guilt, me - that thanks to Spouse whisking me away to Venice for my fortieth, we weren't actually there AT all on her 7th. (Mind you, she told me the other day that she got three cakes as a result, so perhaps the experience hasn't scarred her for life). Last year we were in Germany again, flying out on her birthday. She must feel very got at.

No 2's birthday is one of the reasons I wasn't keen to make this trip right now. The first reason was the wedding, which I had been invited to over a year before mil decided we had to visit her German family. I don't mind going, in fact, I like it, but... I was very grouchy about a)having my plans interfered with and b) no 2's birthday. (there were two other reasons making me grouchy, of which more later)

No 2 was actually astonishingly good about the fact that she spent most of her birthday in the car. We tried to lighten it up for her by opening some presents in the hotel in Worms before we left. Luckily one of them was an electronic game of twenty questions, which also caused much diversion. I managed to fox it by suggesting toe nails as my object and Spouse confused it by saying hair. Thankfully, it kept the kids entertained for hours...

Our first stop was Hanover, to meet up with mil's cousin who has Parkinsons and lives in a home there. It's all a bit sad really - the first time we went three years ago the cousin who is possibly suffering from something alzheimers related forgot all about us, and went off to her room. Last year when we were there, she was brighter, but the joy with which her fellow residents greeted us suggested that they don't get to see the young very often.

And I don't know, maybe it's me, but... even though this home is very bright, and has a lovely cafe, and lots of facilities, there is just something unutterably sad and hopeless about these places. People are just sitting here, eking out their last few years with very little to look forward to. God's Waiting Room by any other name...

But, despite that, mil's cousins are pleased to see us all, and we are particularly pleased to be reunited with the younger sister, whom we last saw in Berlin in 1991, I think. She has brought little Berlin bears for the children, and we have an interesting chat about how Berlin has changed (we went just after the wall came down, and before they took Check Point Charlie away). Luckily she speaks a fair bit of English, because since my French sojourn, I seem to be utterly incapable of understanding any German whatsoever. I can hear the words, but they're washing over me. Sheesh, I feel like I understand less now then I did on my first trip eighteen years ago...

We can only spare an hour or so in Hanover before going on to the little town we stay in outside Wolfsburg. We've stayed in the same hotel several times, and they know us. Because there is a bank holiday, though, the whole place is shut up and we've been given a code for the safe to get our keys. To my amazement it works...

I was angsting hugely before we left about how to get no 2 a birthday cake, as the bank holiday would mean no opportunity to buy one. Luckily I was in Waitrose half an hour before school pick up on the day before we went, so it suddenly dawned on me I could get a cake there. I have had it at my feet all the way through Europe. The weather is so rubbish, it has no opportunity to get too hot in the car.

No 2 has sat patiently for hours not opening presents, so we let her rip everything open as soon as we are settled. Then we pop across to the little restaurant across the street, where mil hilariously accuses the proprietor of having put on weight (apparently in Germany this ISN'T an insult, as it indicates you are prosperous. Sounds a bit mediaeval to me...) - in fact it isn't the proprietor at all, but his brother. Whom we meet the following night, and are reassured to find is still very thin.

Along with the cake, I have secreted candles, but now that we've both given up smoking we have no lighters (Spouse in fact has made it a year today) - so we borrow some from the restaurant, and I sneak the two littlies back to our bedroom, where I frantically set about lighting nine candles, which stubbornly refuse to be lit, while Spouse brings mil back, and no 1 distracts no 2.

To me utter amazement it works. The room is in darkness, everyone crowded in the corner, and no 2 hasn't had a clue till she walks in and we start singing her happy birthday. The sight of her face gets rid of (most of ) the guilt about not being at home, as she genuinely thought she wouldn't be getting a cake.

She might not get the best of birthdays, but they're always... well sort of... interesting....

Fur Nummer zwei, mein kleines leibchen....

Herrzliche Gluckwunsche an dein Geburtstagxxxxxx

PS as a rider to this post. Today it is mil's birthday. And no 1 is taking part in a quiz for school. It is also the ONLY day I could arrange a birthday party with no 2's best friend. Soooo....

I have already been round to mil's with flowers and a cake.
I am picking the kids up at 3.30 and whizzing round there with a present.
I have to be at Pizza Express at 4.45.
And someone is picking no 1 up at 5.45 and depositing her with us.
Spouse may even join us at some point.

Think of me....

French Fairytale

We arrived at the wedding with moments to spare. Our flit into Paris has meant I had about twenty minutes to get changed in the hotel. Despite the purchase of sat nav (christened by the kids as Ingrid for some reason) I am not all confident that it will get me to the church on time. Or in this case the Mairie (or town hall)...

Luckily, Ingrid, despite a tendency to go apoplectic when you don't follow instructions (Recalculating, recalculating she fulminates like some kind of in car dalek), does manage to find the way, and the Mairie is right next to McDonalds, so Spouse is able to whizz off there with the sprogs once I've been deposited unceremoniously on the pavement.

The pavement is overflowing with people, chatting, mingling, laughing. I spot my host busy among a group of wedding guests, and hazard a guess that the pretty girl in the rusty satin dress must be his younger daughter - who was a bump last time I saw her. The bride is nowhere to be seen at first, and I can't spot her mother either. I know absolutely no one here apart from the bride's parents and I haven't a clue of the form at a French wedding.

A joyous shout greets me, and my host spots me, flings his arms around me in welcome. Why didn't you come and say hello, he accuses. I was being typically English and hovering about in the background is why. Besides, I can see he's busy. We have a brief chat before he disappears into the crowd again. His place is taken by his lovely wife - oh the laughs we had together when I stayed with them. I owe to her my first excruciating experience of waxing...

I am introduced to the bride - I recognise her from her pictures, but where is the little girl I once knew? It's been twenty two years. It is strange to meet up after all this time. She is charming and bubbly and fizzing with pleasure. The ambiance is one of excitement and fun. I don't mind at all that I am on my own. In fact, as I explain to a fellow guest who kindly takes me under her wing, I am so rarely alone in my normal life, I am positively relishing the experience.

We are soon ushered into the Mairie, where, to my surprise, my host dons a sash and brings the bride and groom together to perform the ceremony. It turns out as a former Mayor of the town he is entitled to perform wedding ceremonies if the actual mayor isn't available. It seemed like a charming and personal way to begin.

Although up until now I have been quite pleased with how well I seem to be communicating in French, I have to fess up here and say I didn't understand a lot of what was going on, but the gist was clear. And the happiness on the faces of the bride and groom said more then any words could.

Once the ceremony is complete, it is on to the next part of the wedding at the church. My friendly French friend kindly offers me a lift, which is just as well. I'd been to the church before, and my memory of how close it was is more then somewhat rusty...

In many ways the whole experience was not so very different from an English wedding. The cars were decked out in ribbons, the bride wore white, we threw rose petals rather then confetti, but the gist was the same.

However, the little differences delighted me.

My French friends are an immensely egalitarian couple, and so they both took their daughter down the aisle. I thought that was brilliant and it's certainly something I'd consider doing. Traditions sometimes are made to be broken.

The service itself was fairly easy to follow, but my next surprise came towards the end when I suddenly realised that both my friends were in the rather lively choir which provided the accompaniment. Talk about a hands on wedding...

We emerged from the church to be given a little posy of almonds (that's happened to me at a English wedding once, too. I think it signifies luck or happiness), and some gold/red petals to chuck at the happy couple.

One thing that strikes me immediately is the brightness of the colours on display. There are reds, and pinks, oranges and yellows. I feel rather dazzled, as if I'm in a crowd of peacocks. My friends explain that the theme of the wedding is flames: to symbolise warmth and life. It certainly makes for a dramatic impression.

In the church I make the acquaintance of an old friend of the bride's mother. She is half English, which is handy, as she kindly fills me in on the bits I don't understand. I am aware that my brain doesn't work fast enough to keep up with my mouth, so a lot of my French is coming out semi garbled, and in places rather more like gobbledegook then sense.

My chauffeur from earlier kindly takes me on to the reception, which takes place in a fabulous old abbey. He's got sat nav too - which is just as well as the abbey is in the middle of nowhere. We arrive to the sight of the bride and groom on the lawn waving us in.

Then follows the photos - just the same as an English wedding. Lots of hanging around while people are dragged in and out of the pictures.

Finally, it's done and we all traipse through to the courtyard for drinks and foie gras (flamed very dramatically over a huge pan). I have to confess, the notion of how foie gras is made really appals me, but on the other hand, when in Rome etc, and I've never had it before, so... Having been assured by my English speaking friend it is quite delicious, I have a taste of some. She's right. It is. And judging by the queue around the pan it is only my English sensibilities that are worried by where it has come from...

The courtyard is stunning. Drinks are served in the corner, underneath a barn like roof, which looks as if it has always been there, and tables are dotted about here and there on the cobblestones. It is a wonderful location to have for a wedding. I feel so thrilled to be here.

Everyone I meet is more then kind to me. No one can quite believe that I've bothered to come all this way after such a long time. But... As I said in my previous post, my hosts are vrai amis de mon coeur, and time and distance is immaterial I think in such relationships. I was only with them for a very short and intense period, but we forged (I think) a very deep bond. I feel both touched and honoured to be here.

The next part of the evening takes us inside where we start the long slow process that is a French celebratory meal. My ESF, who is sitting next to me tells me that we probably won't get up from the table till midnight. It is now around 7.30. I'm not sure I believe her, but in the event, she turns out to be right.

We start off with a fish dish, which is light and tasty. There is a nice combination of formality and informality about this. The food (of utmost importance in France) is the formal bit, but in between courses, there are several informal and impromptu speeches. At one point we are invited to search our tables for two questions about the bride and groom. They're answered in a very funny powerpoint presentation. At another point we're treated to another powerpoint presentation featuring the story of how the two grew up and eventually came to meet. In the bride's baby pictures, I see photos I was shown over twenty years ago...

The bride's aunt gives a very touching speech about the nature of love and commitment - I don't understand it all, but its meaning is touchingly clear.

One of her friends provides each table with a bag of sugar cubes and some paper. We all write messages for the happy couple and wrap them up for them to presumably open in the months to come.

Every little detail has been considered. I don't think I've ever been at a more well thought out event.

It is indeed midnight before the bride and groom cut the cake and the last course is served. The dancing is just getting going as I leave. I long to be dancing too, but - needs must. Spouse is alone in a hotel room, frantically trying to stay awake for me - he has the key, malheureusement.

We are all invited back for the wedding breakfast, though. So we return in the morning for cafe and croissants and French bread. I do love French breakfasts...

My hosts throughout have been incredibly warm and attentive to me. They, their family and friends have made me feel so at home. My little charge, though all grown up, hasn't actually changed all that much. In her joie de vivre and mischievous teasing I see the little girl I once knew. Her sister is equally charming and I am glad that after so long I have finally made her accquaintance. I am rather stumped that so many years have gone by without our having met up, but I suppose that's what happens in life. We get on and we get busy, and before we know it we've lived another couple of decades.

I'm planning to make sure it's not twenty two years before we meet again.

I have never been to a French wedding before, and it exceeded my expectations. It was a wonderfully joyful and lively affair, and I felt privileged to be part of it.

The amis de mon coeur, really did their daughter (and me) proud....

Vive le France, et l'entente tres cordiale!

Pour mes chers amis en France avec toute mes bonne penseesxxxxx

La Ville de Mon Coeur

Ah, Paris....

City of my heart. City of my dreams...

I first came here 25 years ago on a French exchange trip. It was my first trip abroad (my already well travelled kids will probably mock that in years to come) and the experience was rendered with that extra bit of magic that all such first experiences have.

From the very first moment, I loved everything about Paris: the cafes, the buildings, the bouquinistes. The Metro seemed impossibly smart and smooth next to the Underground, the compactness of the city compared favourably to London's urban sprawl, and my first views of Notre Dame as I crossed the Pont Neuf took my breath away.

My exchange visit, alas, was somewhat less successful. I stayed with a rather sulky girl, who engaged in internicine warfare with her incredibly strict mother to a level I couldn't comprehend. There were rules in my house, but in the main, as I wasn't going out sniffing meths in the local park, my mother very rarely said no to any activity I suggested.

My French friend, on the other hand, lived under a set of rules I would have found suffocating: no parties, no boyfriends, no telephone calls, no seeing her best friend (whom Maman had decided was a very bad influence). So of course my FF did the lot. Despite Maman having put a lock on the phone, the minute she was out of the house, FF would be searching for the key, ringing up Bad Influence and arranging to meet several streets away. Meanwhile Maman, knowing damn well what she was up to, would test her out by coming back unexpectedly or lurking on street corners to see if a rendezvous had been arranged (which nine times out of ten it had). When confronted with the evidence of her misdemeanours FF had perfected a brilliantly blank stare, and Gallic shrug. Her ability to lie in the face of incontrovertible proof was quite extraordinary. If I hadn't been so stressed about getting caught up in the consequences of it, I'd have been a lot more admiring I think.

Because of course, I did get caught up in the consequences. Every time FF set off on an escapade with BI, I was sworn to secrecy, and made to promise that I would tell Maman nothing. Lying doesn't come easily to me, and certainly didn't then, when my normal role in life was to be Miss Goody Two Shoes, so when the spotlight of Maman's interrogation fell to me, I retreated into the only defence left to me: namely blank incomprehension. If I pretended not to understand the question, then I couldn't lie...

The worst occasion was when FF and BI decided to go shopping at the out of town shopping centre, several miles away, despite having been told not to. Maman clearly didn't trust her one iota, because as we got off the second of two buses to our destination, BI spotted we'd been followed. Really. She had tailed us for fifteen minutes. We then spent a farcical hour diving in and out of shops to hide from her. Eventually she caught up with us as we leapt on a bus home, but being slightly plump and out of condition, she didn't make it onto the same bus we did, so we left her raging on the pavement. And when she got back, FF STILL denied we'd been there. As the French would say... incroyable...

My other chief memory from the period is discovering the joy of French cuisine and cheese, only slightly marred by the fact that the TV would be on in the corner during every meal. As it was my first experience of speaking French on a daily basis, I struggled to follow the conversation when I could see out of the corner of my eye, pictures of British soldiers piling onto troopships, and catching the occasional frustrating mention of the words: Malvinas and Task Force. I hadn't any idea what was going on (my hosts didn't do politics, and apart from one uncle who kept teasing me that we were about to lose a war - what war? He never actually got to that bit), so my first question when I got home was, Are we at war? to the huge amusement of my family. Galtieri had invaded the Falklands the day I left England. We'd been at war for over two weeks, and I hadn't had a clue...


My next trip to Paris was altogether more delightful. I left England on the day of the first Live Aid concert to go and be an au pair for a French couple my sister had met during a year spent in Paris. The sun shone and the Channel was the calmest I've ever seen it. It was the first time I had taken a trip abroad, alone, and I felt (laughably probably to most gap year students now, but opportunites to travel were less then) like I was having a real adventure. My host met me at Gare du Nord, and then I was whisked to a Bastille Day party in the town I was staying in, where I chiefly remember struggling to understand everything that was said to me, but mainly feeling made incredibly welcome. Two days later, on my 20th birthday, they thoughfully provided a cake and a small party. I was very young, and slightly homesick, and they pitched it perfectly. I knew from that moment I was among friends.

My charge was four years old and an absolute dream. Her wonderful parents made me feel at home straight away, and I spent a merry summer in their house, taking long trips to the park during the day, and indulging in fascinating intellectual and political discussion at night. I had little experience with children, beyond babysitting, but luckily despite a slight sense of mischief (Maman says I can have as much hot water as I want in my bath - Maman, says no such thing it turns out, as several days running I inadvertently use up all the hot water in the tank) I fell in love with the little girl I was looking after, and she gave me not a moment of trouble. In fact she was so easy, having to cope with my own children came as something of a shock, I can tell you.

At the weekends, my employees generously paid for me to have a carte orange, so I could go and explore Paris. I had many wonderful days alone, strolling through the near empty Paris streets in the sun (this was August, so most Parisians were away). It was quite quite glorious, and I spent many happy hours in Montmartre, or strolling down the Boulevard St Germain looking in the bookshops. I had no money, and this being the early days of my courtship with Spouse I missed him hugely, but the joyous freedom of those days will forever be imprinted on my memory.

Conversation round the dinner table was also a hugely enjoyable part of the experience. My charge's father speaks the best English of any foreigner I've ever met (in fact, he probably speaks it better then some English people), and at the time his wife didn't speak all that much English. Their daughter had been brought up to be bilingual, so she understood everything I said to her in English, but being a bright little button, she quickly twigged that I could speak French so though the idea was for me to encourage her to speak more English, I fear I rather failed on that score. However, my French leapt forward hugely, thanks the rapid rate of translation from one language to the other round the dinner table, and by the time I returned to England I had got the point of dreaming in French. Indeed, on my first day back in London, so immersed had I become in France and the French way of living, I felt like I had come back to a foreign country. That love of France has never since gone away.

Something also happened to me for the first time on that trip, which has occurred several times since. Despite a working knowledge of both French and German, I find there is always a gap of understanding of the subtleties of the other language, and an inevitable lack of knowledge about certain aspects of the other culture. But with certain friends I have met abroad, that gap and lack matter not one whit. Because something happens which transcends language somehow and you reach an understanding with the other person, which goes beyond speech. I can't explain it better then that. But I like the French phrase: l'ami de mon coeur. I have several in Germany, and here in Paris, all those years ago, I made two for life.

And now, thanks to them, and their wonderful daughter, I was back. Visiting the city I love most in the world, and showing it off to my children. Something I couldn't have envisaged in the slightest back then.

We didn't have much time, so we took a quick flit into the city in the morning, emerging from a Paris subway to spot our first sight: Notre Dame towering magnificently over the Seine. Those tall Paris apartements were just as I remembered them; the cafes spilling out onto the streets (I know cafe culture has tried to come to England, but we just don't do it as well); the bouqinistes setting up by the river - it was all as perfect as my memories. My heart did a little leap, as we drove up and down the river, past the Louvre, the Jardin de Tuileries, the Place de Concord, and (rather hairily) around the Arc de Triomphe. The kids were thrilled to bits at the sight of the Eiffel Tower (as was mil who has never been to Paris before), and we amazingly were able to park up near enough to leap out and get a few pictures. Time alas, was running out, so we couldn't stay long, but that brief snatch was enough for me to know I have to get back for a proper visit, and show the children what a magical place it is.

Ah, Paris...

Vraiment, et pour toujours, la ville de mon coeur...

You Know You're On Holiday When....

...You've booked Eurotunnel.

But you've never been Eurotunnel before, so you don't EXACTLY, QUITE.... know where you're going.

And somewhere in the mad packedness of getting all seven of you ready and out of the house you haven't quite apprised your husband of the fact...

And DESPITE the fact you've read the bit of paper you printed off from the internet, which looks less reassuring every mile you've travelled, which SEEMS to mention Eurotunnel in connection with FOLKESTONE, somewhere in your brain you have the idea that when you prends le train through the tunnel it goes via ASHFORD. So you go there.

It is only at the point that you are queuing up in a roundabout towards Ashford, that you start getting wobbly about this UTTER CERTAINTY you have about the start of Eurotunnel. The utter certainty is fading away into some kind of... oh shit, why did Folkestone seem to be featured so highly in the contents of this very important bit of paper I have...

Such thoughts are immediately dispersed by the sudden realisation that your youngest daughter doesn't feel well. In fact, despite a travel sickness pill (carefully chosen to work fifteen minutes into a journey, as opposed to the crap kind we had last time which take two hours to get going), she is sounding distinctly wobbly, in fact, very wobbly, indeed.

I know I am on holiday the moment my daughter vomits everywhere just as my husband is navigating a roundabout sending us in the wrong direction (Ashford) as opposed to the right one (Folkestone). To be utterly sure we had made prats of ourselves we had to of course visit the Eurostar office, where we apprised of the notion, that whereas ten minutes, one traffic jam, one vomity child, and a wrong turn earlier we had been in plenty of time for our Eurotrain, we were now in danger of missing the fucking thing...

Fifteen minutes later, Spouse (who heroically rose to the occasion and drove like a maniac - as behoves a husband of this blog - to get there on time), pulled in at the check in for Eurotunnel. The car smelt like sick, everyone was moaning, we had no time for a clean up, and we hadn't left England yet.

What's more, it had started to rain....

In my family. As no 4 put it prosaically a couple of days later, I know I'm on holiday when it's raining....

If you weren't knocking about this blog last summer when I recorded the holiday from hell, well here's your chance for a recap. Our recent sojourn, wasn't quite so terrible, but it didn't start off promisingly...


(To find out what happened to us last year, go visit: http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html
http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html)

Luckily there is more that was more fun to come....

And I've just got back to the news that Frankie Dettori has won the Derby. Given that it is on my doorstep, and my favourite run includes half of the Derby racecourse, I have to stop to raise a brief cheer for that. There were LOADS of reasons (more to follow) for being pissed off for being away this week and the Derby was one of them. A couple of years ago, we watched Frankie Dettori in a race on Derby day (we knew it was him because he was chatting to the other jockies and that amazing accent? IT'S FOR REAL!!!) and I was chuffed that he won today... but bugger me, the most amazing Derby in ages and I missed it.


So you know you've been on holiday, when:

You nearly miss your train,
Your daughter is sick,
The weather is crap,
And your favourite jockey wins the Derby....

It's nice to be back folks, pip, pip!
(And thanks so much you nice people, for your messages on my farewell blog!)

Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen

Saying goodbye in foreign is so much better, don't you think?

Till we meet again, is so much less final somehow...


Tomorrow we're off to Paris, where I am thrilled to be going to the wedding of someone whose au pair I was half a lifetime ago. Last year I blogged about meeting up with her wonderful parents after an absence of many years, and now I'm off to see the whole family again for her wedding. It feels like a real privilege and honour to be invited, and apart from a slight angst about how utterly crap my French now is, I can't wait...

After Paris, we're off to Germany, staying overnight at Worms to break our journey (many years ago we were travelling through Europe and needed to stop for the night, and I made us stay in Worms on the basis it was Historic - there were many Diets of Worms, if sixteenth century religious politics turns you on - it's a beautiful Rhineland town, so we're going back for a night, before embarking on a whirlwind tour of northern Germany catching up with mil's rellies. After about eight visits, my German just about stands up to muster, but it's bloody hard work I can tell you. Spouse always accuses me of speaking in thoughts, not sentences... (and he's not wrong).

So, maniac mum is going quiet for a while.

Which is a pity.

As...

I was going to blog about my dodd (dear old departed dad), whose anniversary it is tomorrow, but hey, I''ll spare you the misery fest and just say, I wish he were here now to know that I was about to be published. Words is my business and words is what he taught me... I miss him more than I can say, even after all this time. One day, I'll do justice to that thought.


I was also going to blog about the madness of my day, trying to get packed and ready, and the stress of standing in a queue at Waitrose, when I wanted to be exchanging something at M&S, and I only had about ten minutes to make it back to school. But you're spared that too...

I will just say that I made it out again with Lovely Friend on another celebration of her birthday, except we were so sodding busy packing Spouse and I missed eating... The bottle of wine we drank was very nice though. And...

Eleanor Roosevelt once said something along the lines of you meet many people in life, who you like, but very few leave footprints on your heart. Lovely Friend is one who's left her footprint on mine. There are a few others too. I hope they know who they are. I certainly do.

It's late. We mistakenly thought we'd booked Eurotunnel for 11am and it turns out we were mistaken and it was 10 am. So we have to leave earlier then I imagined.

There've been a few more people coming to my blog of late, and I am immensely grateful to you all. Sometimes I feel like I'm pissing in the wind, so it's nice to know that somewhere, someone's bothering to read this...

See y'all in a week or so.

Be good now, why don't you....

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

We've had the greatest weekend.

In fact, I think I'd go as far to say its one of the best family weekends we've ever had.

Some months ago, when I got news that I was finally after eight years of trying going to be a published author, apart from thinking Waahahaaaaaay!!!! I also decided that rather then fritter all my well earned dosh away on boring things like school shoes and gas bills, we ought to go and celebrate as a family.

Now the kids are bigger, a trip to a London show doesn't present the scary prospect it once did (though my bank balance is somewhat dented), so I decided that's what we'd do. I really wanted to go to The Sound of Music, but being as tickets are like gold dust and you need to be far more organised then I am and book about a hundred years in advance, I couldn't get hold of any, so I went for Mary Poppins instead.

Mary Poppins for my generation = Julie Andrews, and though I've enjoyed revisiting the film with the children, I don't know... she seems a bit TOO prim and proper for me, and I've always struggled with Dick Van Dyke's atrocious accent.

So it was a nice surprise to find this Mary Poppins was somewhat more fun then the film version. In fact, I'd go as far to say that the stage version was heaps better. It brought depth, and poignancy to the story, in a way I wouldn't have imagined from the film. Plus the kids who played Jane and Michael were much much better.

I also really liked Bert, who was portrayed as a kind of guardian angel, and seemed to have as much magic at his fingertips as MP herself.

The kids were completely enthralled (despite no 4's initial reluctance to come as she was missing out on a party), so much so that no 3 turned to me in awe after the scene in which Mary arrived and picked things out of her carpet bag (including hatstands/lamps, sheets etc) to put up in the nursery - That's REAL, she said. Being nearly seven, I suspect the artifice/magic divide is beginning to slip a tad, but here we were, somewhere where she knew the magic was pretend, and yet... it might actually be true...

I know how she felt really. The whole production was so spellbinding, the dancing and singing so magical, the sets so imaginative, for a precious few hours I really could imagine a world in which a mysterious nanny comes blowing in when the wind changes to set right the domestic chaos of the Banks household.

Heaven knows, I could certainly do with her from time to time....

Another charming aspect of this production (and one I think probably missing from both the books and the film) was the portrayal of Mr Banks. To me he seemed the epitome of modern man in a way - desperate to keep some order while the chaos of an unfair world howls at the door. The scene where he finally showed his true colours at the bank, by denouncing a scheme he had failed to invest in as being shallow and false, and Mrs B comes rushing in to stand by her man, brought tears to my eyes. As did their realisation together that what they had as a family was more precious then the outward show of the house and the job, that others thought important.

Plus ca change...

At the end of the show, the whole family realise they don't need Mary Poppins anymore (a little bit like the family in Nanny McPhee) and she flies off with her umbrella, in what has to rate as one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen on a stage - they didn't just fly her off the stage, they took her up into the gods. The kids (and us grown ups too) were all sitting their with their mouths open.

It was absolutely wonderful - feel good theatre at its very best. And while it was punishing on the pocket, I hope we've given the kids an experience they will treasure forever.

Afterwards we wandered through Covent Garden and watched the mime artists, before heading on for TGI Fridays for something to eat. While we were waiting for our table the kids were sufficiently distracted by the big TV screen for us to have a quiet drink at the bar - although there was a collective Oh No! moment when they realised they were about to miss Dr Who.

We wandered back to Victoria through St James Park - a walk I took with the kids at half term. One of the joys of London I always think is its parks - vital green lungs in the heart of the city. And when we got to the Buckingham Palace end and looked back down the lake towards a fabulous old building (the which I cannot recall having seen before and I have no knowledge of what it is), I felt that happy ecstatic leap of joy that always comes to me on trips to London. It is just such a privilege to live close enough to visit, even if we don't do it often.

Yesterday we had to rouse the kids much earlier then anyone would have liked, as no 2 was in a gym competition, so we had to be at Guildford Spectrum at 9.40am, which was a bit grim for a Sunday morning.

However, after watching her compete (she tried her best but sadly forgot a part of her routine involving a bridge, and her cartwheel went in her words, totally pearshaped, so she didn't win anything. Still it's the taking part that counts...),we then spent an hour in the pool, which has several water slides and a wave machine. Just the place for a neurotic mum like me to spend a Sunday morning, especially as no 3 will insist on doing her own thing (like trying to go in the diving pool when she can barely swim 5 metres). However, the kids had a great time, and it reminded me of something I don't take notice of too often. Viz... when we're all together we do generally have a really great time.

It was too late for them to watch the repeat of Dr Who last night, so we videoed it for them and told them they could get up early to watch it this morning. Spouse even made popcorn.

So, when I came down this morning they were all fully dressed, and ready to go, having spent a happy half hour in front of the box.

And all the popcorn had gone....

I moan a lot about my life, but really.

Sometimes it is just great being a mum...

I Don't Like Mondays

Are you having a bad day?

It could be worse...


You could be this poor chap...

I'm fretting this might happen to me, after all I'm here all day on my own. I am rather hoping though, that my husband might notice when he walks from our bedroom to the office to go to the loo.

On the other hand...

All in One Piece

I actually went out last night. Goodness. That's two weeks on the trot. Any more of this gadding about and I might lay claim to having such a thing as a social life.

The reason I don't get out much is because of course I am the mother of four children. Apart from the fact that I am often too knackered to even think about it, just the effort of getting out even now makes it sometimes seem not worth the candle.

The only way we managed to get out last week was because our Lovely Friend came to babysit, and she is so lovely I don't feel too guilty about dropping everything and running, which is pretty much what we did. (Though in order for us to go out at all, the kids had to miss tennis and no 1 didn't go to Guides). It was the first time in nearly five years Spouse and I have been out in London together - our last attempt ended disastrously as I was called home to deal with no 4's first asthma attack, and ended up taking her to hospital at 1am, the thought of which still fills me with Big Guilt...

If you like me, are a fan of Jill Murphy, you may know a story about the Large family called All in One Piece. The Large Family are elephants and they have four children so not unnaturally I have rather a feeling of kinship with Mrs Large. In All in One Piece poor Mrs L tries to get out for the evening while the children cause merry mayhem around her. I know just how she feels....

As it was Lovely Friend's birthday, it was one of those occasions when being a lazy arse who can't be fagged to have a social life simply won't do. Lovely Friend not only babysits for us, she is the kind of friend who will drop everything for us in a crisis. I lost count of the times she's helped out when we've really needed it. I would go over hot coals to be at her birthday party if I had to.

And I nearly did....

Everything conspired against me from the off.

Spouse begged leave to go for a quick early pint, which I gave on the strict understanding he'd be back by 8pm.

Nos 2&3 were brought back from Brownies around 7.15, by which time no 4 was heavily ensconced watching The Lion King. When I became evil mum extraordinaire and turned it off, No 3 burst into paroxysms of IT's NOT FAIR type weeping.

I chased the littlies up to bed, and tried to get changed while no 1 fired rapid questions at me about downloading music from a cd onto the computer, so she can save it on her new MP3 player. It is a truth universally acknowledged by all parents that sooner or later your tweenie will start understanding new technology much much better then you do.

Nos 3&4 then launched into world war three, which I had to calm down while still half dressed.

Then no 2 decided she HAD to practise for her gym competition on Sunday. As this involved doing cartwheels in our rather small family room, and she has history of injuring herself, I thought it wholly advisable to watch her...

Cartwheels completed it was back upstairs to finish getting changed and sort out the latest barney between the little ones.

No 3 then announced she was hungry, and I told her she just had to wait.

By 7.50 there was no sign of Spouse, no 1 was still shouting at me, nos 3&4were stilll shouting at each other, no 2 had moved onto handstands and I hadn't even started wrapping the present. I also couldn't find my handbag, and when I went to switch on the dishwasher realised we'd run out of dishwasher tabs.

By the time Spouse arrived at 8.10 (he had got sidetracked watering our friends' allotment) I was screaming that No 3 was going to have to go hungry and wondering how on earth I was ever going to get out of the house. Thankfully Spouse dealt with the hunger pangs, while I wrapped the present and remembered that my handbag was still in the car.

I eventually left the house at nearly 8.30. As I passed the Co Op en route, I not unnaturally went to buy dishwasher powder... always thinking domestically me, even on a night out.

Lovely friend was there with very Drunk Work Colleague. VDWC is highly entertaining, so it was enjoyable sparring with him, given that I was totally stone cold sober. Mind you, that state of affairs didn't last long.

We were chucked out of the bar we were in at 10pm, so we wandered back up to the local Spouse and I have been drinking in since time immemorial. Aaah... the stories I have about that place. It seems to currently be working its way into the wip somehow. All I'll say here is that it is known locally as The Stranglers on account of a previous landlord having come to a sticky (and strangled) end at the hands of his wife's lover. It also has ghosts, or so I'm told, and is one of the few pubs I've ever been in that I don't mind walking into on my own.

Before I knew it, time had gone all elastic on me and it was midnight - which is way past my normal bedtime. Oh dear.... I rang Spouse to say Oh Dear, but I think he was feeling so bad about having got in late he didn't tell me off. I'll be back soon I said...

Soon turned into nearly 1am, so it was very oh dear this morning.

Particularly as I had promised to go swimming with another lovely friend...

It was a sharp shock I can tell you, but not a bad way of getting rid of a hangover...

And I've just reminded myself that sometimes it's worth the effort of getting out, even if I'm not quite all in one piece the next day...

To lovely friend, hope you enjoyed your birthday as much as I did....xxxx

The Auditors Are In...

I may have mentioned once or twice, that I am a big Terry Pratchett fan. Did I say big? I mean HUGE...

The guy is a living genius and should be up there with Alan Bennett et al as one of our National Treasures. I can't think of a single living author who so relentlessly and comically exposes the failures of our age (Soul Music - takes apart the pop industry; Moving Pictures - Hollywood; The Truth - the media; A Monstrous Regiment - the nature of war, with a strong empathy for the plight of the common soldier as well as a brilliant understanding of what makes women tick). He writes the most perfect satire, but because it is dressed up in the mad fantasy Discworld he's created (a world that travels through space on top four elephants supported by the great Turtle A'Ttuin), no one notices.

TP fans will know of course that at Christmas the first attempt to film a Discworld book was made by Sky. Being the season to be jolly, and everything else rhyming with olly (that line alone brings joy to my heart. Oh the sublime brilliance of the man), they not unnaturally chose The Hogfather, loosely translated as the story of how Death (who speaks in capital letters, has a horse named Binkie and tries very hard, and fails, to get humanity), saves the Discworld equivalent of Christmas.

Sadly, we don't have Sky, so we've had to wait till now to get the film on DVD. To our delight it was well worth the wait, being absolutely fabulous, incredibly true to the book, and very very funny.

The key premise to The Hogfather is that the universe is run by Auditors (that sounds familiar). They are shapeless beings (portrayed in the film in shimmering cloaks) who find humanity rather distasteful, and imagination awkward. So they hire the Guild of Assassins to kill the Hogfather, thereby destroying belief and ensuring the sun won't come up in the morning. Ultimately creating a world that is ordered and right, but without stories and heart and soul.

Terry Pratchett's big on stories, and I think he's right to be worried about the Auditors.

They've moved in to all areas of our lives, not least those of our children.

This week nos 1&3 are sitting the dreaded SATs. No 3 fortunately hasn't quite twigged what they are, but no 1 has been pressurised about the wretched things for months now. I have blogged before about how I think our current education system is just painting by numbers, so I won't go there again, but it does frustrate me that these poor kids are tested over and over again for no apparent educational purpose, but just so the Auditors can tick boxes.

I am lucky in that both my offspring are likely to do well in the tests (though quite frankly I don't honestly care if they don't), but no 1 never does as well in her writing assessments which she hates. Unfortunately THAT test is scheduled for tomorrow, which also happens to be her birthday.

Now I appreciate I am not a teacher and probably know diddly squat about education, but I was staggered a couple of years ago when one of her teachers showed me a tick box list of all the things that these kids are supposed to be able to put in their writing assessments. The list had about thirty five things in it, including use of adverbs, pronouns etc.

I'm all for them being grammatically correct and all that, but this seems to take the soul out of the bloody thing.

The main purpose of teaching our children to read and write is not so they'll all go on to read War and Peace (or even write it), but so that they can communicate with others when they eventually go out in the big bad world. So the essential points of any written work they do should be: does it make sense? Have they communicated their thoughts clearly and coherently?And if they're writing a story has it got a beginning, middle and end?

My inner editor was screaming as loud as loud can be, you're missing the bloody point here! Storytelling isn't about ticking boxes, it's about taking us some place out of ourselves into an imagined world created by a writer. Kids have the best imaginations in the world, and should be the best storytellers.

By breaking the act of writing down into so many disparate elements, the education system (I'm NOT blaming teachers here) has taken the Auditors' approach, and in doing so in my view they're destroying our kids' imaginations. No 1 regularly writes brilliant and wonderful stories at home, and yet time and time again I'm told that her writing is her weak point.

Is it her?

Or is it a system which is bleeding her imagination dry?

At the end of The Hogfather, with the help of his granddaughter Susan, and his butler Albert (gleefully played in the film by David Jason), Death defeats not only the Auditors, but Mr Teatime (pronounced Teah- tam- eh) the psychotic Assassin who's trying to kill Death just to see if he can.

He tells Susan that human beings need fantasies - or as he puts it the little lies: the Tooth Fairy, the Hogfather, so we can believe the big ones: justice, mercy, duty and so on. When Susan protests that it's not the same thing, Death points out that if you ground the Universe down through the finest of sieves you wouldn't find one atom of justice or one molecule of mercy. But we have to believe they exist to make them happen. Otherwise there's no point.

I understand that SATs are on their way out (at least in their current form), and if that's so, I certainly won't mourn their loss. Because there should be a place in education where the Auditors don't go, where children can learn to think and play and imagine. Otherwise, they'll never ever learn the big lies.

And then the sun really won't come up in the morning.