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Hayes House Pages

Thursday 26 August 2010

Mothers, Knickers and Phones.

Women and telephones are like peas and carrots, as Forrest would say. Not me though, the telephone is my arch nemesis when it comes to providing opportunities to make a prat of myself.

My parents lived abroad some years ago and it became apparent that the quality of ladies' undergarments was not quite up to my mother's usual high standards. This resulted in my having to stand in the middle of Wilkinson's, holding aloft large pairs of knickers whilst trying to describe them to my Mother on my mobile phone, which was wedged between my ear and shoulder.

The mild embarrassment of questioning looks from shoppers was topped only by Stig, who had endured enough knicker scrutinising for one afternoon. He snatched the phone from my already precarious grasp and announced to my mother "I've got a tow-rope in the back of the car, I'll make you a g-string". There followed several crackling expletives from my mother who, after threatening to murder her then future son-in-law, thankfully saw the funny side.

My mother has featured more than once in my phone humiliation. I was particularly drunk one night and had ordered a pizza. Stig had given up all hope of the takeaway arriving and taken himself off to bed. Ever the optimist when it comes to food though, an hour later I was still waiting... Still no pizza. I decided to phone the pizza place and enquire if my food was ever going to arrive. Being drunk and unable to remember which takeaway we ordered from, I picked up the phone and hit redial. It was 3am by now.

"Hello..."
"Hello, I ordered pizza a bloody hour ago and it still hasn't come"
Silence.
"Hello?" I was beginning to get that sinking feeling.
"Clare?"
"Mum?"
"You're drunk. Go to bed"
"Oh. OK. Sorry."

I had redialed on the wrong handset. She very considerately phoned me back at 8am to check if my pizza had arrived.

Then of course there was the time that I phoned my friend who seemed very confused to hear from me...

"Hi, sorry were you sleeping?"
"Clare; I'm in the Dominican Republic. It's 4am here"
"Shit, sorry."

I have to have reached a certain point in a relationship with anyone before I consider giving them my phone number. They are usually warned in advance by a sniggering Stig about what they can expect.

Having become accustomed to embarrassing phone conversations, we now have a game in Hayes House; whoever answers the phone in our house is given a word by the other people in the room that they must integrate into the conversation with the person at the other end of the phone. This is most effective when that person is a stranger such as telesales people or someone from the electric company.

Tis most hilarious getting my own back on Stig, listening to him say "shiver-me-timbers!" to the nice man from Asda home shopping, who had only phoned to tell us that he would be delivering our weekly shop in about 10 minutes. I'm amazed he actually turned up that week.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

The Language Barrier

What is it with kids? When you say "No!" They rarely come up with a more convincing protest than "Aaawwwww!"

This phenomenon seems to last about 6 years, give or take. When Jamie first entered into the "Aaawwww!" phase (around two-and-a-half years old), I was just grateful that the throwing-herself-onto-the-floor-and-bashing-her-head-against-the-door-frame phase seemed to be over.

A year later though I was completely aghast that she was still doing it. It had never got her anywhere. Never once after her pleading "Aaaaaaww!" did I ever proclaim: "Well; now that you've made that very attractive sound, Go ahead, Be my guest!"

I don't even want to contemplate the impending years when it becomes "I hate you!" or "You're ruining my life!" and other such intelligent arguments. The under-breath mutterings have already begun.

Because of course, we don't understand. We were never kids ourselves. Never once felt miffed that our mother's wouldn't let us go to the best party of the year, or leave the house wearing skirts that were barely visible and badly applied make-up that was visible from two streets away.

Raising them is problematic enough but I am convinced that Hayes House has some mysterious communication scrambling device. None of us seem to glean the same meanings from anything that is said in our house.

"STOP-IT-RIGHT-NOW!", for example, is usually heard by the kids as "Don't mind me my little cherubs, you just carry on recreating the Apocalypse in the living room, that's absolutely tickety-bloody-boo".

When Stig says "I'll be home in an hour" I know that the secret formula is to double it and add half an hour for a realistic ETA.

When I yell "Girls, is your room tidy?" in the general direction of the stairs,
and they reply "Nearly"...

That means "Nope, we've been sat on our arses making more mess for the past two hours."

And when Sam is acting suspicious, and I ask him what he's done, and he says "Can't remember" whilst looking at his feet with his hands clasped behind his back, you know you're going to discover ground zero somewhere in the house.

Sunday 8 August 2010

Little Houdini

Charlie is a boy on a mission. That mission is to escape Hayes House at any cost. Maybe he was an inmate at Alcatraz in a past life, who knows? I can see the reasoning, there are days when I'd cheerfully escape from here, never to return.

We have safety gates, guards, and one of those playpens that opens up to form a long barrier of metal bars around the TV/Wii/Sky box etc. The front door and garden gate have to be kept locked at all times or he's off. Our home already resembles a high security prison.

First Charlie learnt how to open the safety gates. The solution to this was to cable-tie them shut. This means that everyone who enters Hayes House through the front door has to perform some kind of acrobatic display to get into the living room. It's OK for us but not so good when elderly relatives visit.

Then Charlie learnt to climb over the gates, hence the demise of the AV button and the regular disappearance of the Sky viewing card, along with Wii games used as Frisbees.

But the main problem with this is that Charlie can now get upstairs and into the bathroom and bedrooms. We've had Shampoo Art on the landing carpet, a recreation of a biblical flood in the bathroom, and a three-year-old in heavy drag make-up complete with hat and scarf after his latest expedition into the girls' bedrooms.

Not only this, he has figured out how to open the garden gate. Yesterday we only just caught him cycling off up the street on his little bike. When intercepted, he informed us that he was going to Johnny's Fun Factory.

After two escape attempts, a near miss with a disposable razor, and my threatening to buy a Charlie-sized cage, Stig finally decided a new approach was needed. Have you ever seen the film Labyrinth? That weird room near the end with the upside down staircases where all perspective is seriously messed up? This is fast becoming our home.

The only solution Stig could come up with so that Charlie can't escape, but the other kids can still get in and out of the living room, was to put a door handle at the top of the door. It couldn't be in the corner of the door as Charlie could stand on the windowsill and reach it so we have a brass (a-la-AV button) door handle smack bang in the middle of the top of our living room door...



Unfortunately Nicki can't reach this handle so a piece of plastic tubing now hangs from it on some very attractive orange cord. It looks like an emergency parachute toggle. It hangs down at just the right height for Nicki to reach, she merely has to yank down on it and the door will magically open.

The garden gate has had a similar treatment with more brass handles. Our house is beginning to resemble a retirement home from a parallel universe. You never know, maybe one day soon we'll have enough weird buttons and toggles that our house will rival Johnny's Fun Factory for amusement value and the little sod will choose to stay here voluntarily!

Give Me Strength!

It's no wonder that the summer holidays are peak season for parental nervous breakdowns. Picture the scene:

Sam and Nicki are sat in their imaginary car in our living room. They're going for a drive, presumably somewhere in America because they are talking to each other in that fake whiny American accent that only British kids of a certain age can produce.

Nicki: "Sam, I'm driving"
Sam: (whilst wrenching the non-existent steering wheel over to his side of the non-existent vehicle) "No, I'm driving"

The same line was repeated back and forth whilst I watched in disbelief at the wrangling over the steering wheel. Despite myself I am being dragged into this fantasy and am visualising the steering wheel being pulled from side to side as they fight over it.

Sam could argue forever whereas huffiness always gets the better of Nicki...

"Fine then, I'll walk!" She slams the car door (by now I can actually see the imaginary car) and then reaches through the car window with a grabbing motion towards Sam.

Nicki: "And that twenty bucks is mine!"
Sam: "No, give it back, it's mine!"
Nicki: No it's mine, you want it, you'll have to catch me"

Nicki runs off waving her twenty bucks aloft as if this will prevent Sam from reclaiming it. Sam hurriedly gets back into the car, fastens his seat belt and "Drives" after her whilst wailing about the twenty bucks.

It's not often that I am lost for words. My usual course of action would be to confiscate whatever it is they are arguing over (hence the reason there is a growing pile of random children's crap in my bedroom) but how does one even begin to settle an argument over an imaginary twenty bucks or give a lecture on why it is wrong to run your sister over in your imaginary car?

I'm thinking maybe a travelling circus might take them as trainee mime artists?

Sunday 1 August 2010

Going Underground

There was a death in Hayes House last summer. We had two guinea pigs; Holly and Willow, and unfortunately Willow fell victim to some mysterious guinea pig illness. She was poorly for a day or so when she very suddenly deteriorated. I was pretty sure that she would have to be put down so we sat the girls down and explained that we didn't think Willow was going to get better and that we thought the vet would probably have to put her to sleep. We explained to two very tearful girls that it was the kindest thing to do as Willow was very sick.

They each held her wrapped in her towel and said their goodbyes. There's nothing worse than seeing your children hurting like this and feeling powerless to take the pain away, but when I gently took Willow from them and placed her in a box the girls they threw their arms around each other in the most dramatic fashion and wailed like a pair of bereft animals. A split-second enquiring glance passed between Stig and I.

Stig took Willow to the vet and as expected he came back with her little body in her cardboard box, which caused even more trauma to the already emotional girls. Again they wanted to stroke Willow in the box and say goodbye. By this point Willow was starting to feel a little firm as rigor set in. Another look passed between Stig and I and I knew that despite myself my initial wave of sympathy at the girl's distress was beginning to be tinged with amusement, which I did my best to ignore. Have you ever been in a situation where the most inappropriate thing to do is laugh, but it only makes the urge to do it worse?

Despite the trauma Willow's death was rather timely as we were just about to lay some flags in the garden. The girls made a cross with messages of love and "Rest in Peace" written on it. Stig and I dutifully oversaw proceedings with the required sombriety. Stig dug a hole and both of the girls wanted to lay Willow to rest so they decided to lower her into the ground together.

Except they weren't exactly in sync and they dropped a now rock-solid Willow, who obligingly landed face down, ass up in the bottom of the hole. At which point the flinging of arms and wailing commenced once more, and it was all I could do to stifle a laugh-snort. I was barely holding it together when I made the mistake of looking at Stig, he had turned his back and I could see definite shaking of the shoulders as he made a deliberate coughing noise.

We struggled through the next ten minutes or so of the girls taking turns to step to the "graveside" to throw in a handful of earth over poor Willow's presented arse. Further sporadic wailing followed as stig filled the hole in and placed the cross at the "head" of the hole in the ground. There followed a further period of graveside reflection during which Stig and I struggled not to succumb to the giggles.

Funerals are not an occasion of mirth but to have the most serious of proceedings for a guinea pig who will forever rest with her little furry butt in the air was too much to take seriously. When it was finally all over I had to spend a good ten minutes in my room with my face firmly wedged in a pillow to absorb the sound of my laughter before I could compose myself.

I can only conclude that we'd be no good in a pet cemetery, probably be banned for life in fact.