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?

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.

Does My Bum Look Big In This?

I may have mentioned before that I have a total lack of sense when it comes to fashion. It is like a foreign language to me. When I was a small child, about that age when you think anything is possible, before the harsh realities of life and one's own shortcomings are realised, I had delusions of becoming a fashion designer extraordinaire.

One day in the summer holidays when my parents were at work I found an old pillowcase that had been thrown to one side for my dad to use as rags (Why do all men need oily rags? Even the ones that aren't conversant with car engines or large machinery. Why does looking at the washing machine whilst scratching your arse and pretending you know what the problem is require an oily rag?).

Anyway I decided that my Dad had enough oily rags to supply a Formula One pit crew so I commandeered the threadbare pillowcase and my mother's sewing box. What I came up with was a crop top affair and matching skirt made from pink flannelet. I couldn't sew so there was no attempt at hemming, I just roughly hacked it into shape with a pair of blunt scissors, cut holes in the "top" for my arms and head and tied the "skirt" at the side over my hip. Remember the cave women in the Lynx adverts a few years ago? Imagine the urchin child of one such women and you'd be pretty close to what I looked like.

Pleased with my attempt at fashion design, off I went out to find my mates. After an afternoon of farting about in the park, I returned home to find my fire-breathing mother, who was already miffed that I'd "borrowed" the sewing box. This, however, was soon put into perspective when the vision of me in all my frayed, pastel glory finally registered.

"Please tell me you haven't been out wearing THAT!"

My memory of the events that followed is merely a blur. I suspect my subconscious has repressed the whole business from my mind as it would be too traumatic to recall. I do remember that I was watched closely when given clean sheets to change my bed, and pillowcases were counted in and out of my room much like a surgeon's instruments during an operation.

Jamie has now taken to asking for the sewing kit. I recently found an old pair of her stripey punk socks that she had attempted to turn into fingerless gloves. I have hidden the sewing box and begun taking a weekly inventory of the bedding.

Stig'll Fix It

Over the years we have lived in many dilapidated houses. During Stig's years as a student we rented houses that were in need of a lot of TLC in return for reduced rent.

Stig fancies himself as a bit of DIY whizz. He can turn his hand to anything; electrics, plumbing, wallpapering, shelving etc. He's a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades; knows a little about everything but an expert on nothing, except maybe farting, fixing aeroplanes, and making scrambled egg in the microwave.

When my friend arrived for her annual summer visit, dragging behind her the biggest suitcase I've ever seen - complete with broken wheel - Stig was called to action. He briefly pondered the wheel conundrum before inspiration struck and he dragged the offending suitcase off down our cellar. When he reappeared the suitcase had a shiny, new wooden wheel, yes that's right; a wheel made from a piece of wood.

Now my poor friend has to drag it around on her travels, drawing attention to herself and her freaky suitcase because it makes such a terrible racket as the wooden wheel rumbles along, creaking under the weight of the suitcase and its contents. My friend, despite the embarrassment, is quite chuffed with her suitcase and it apparently now has miles left in it.

The thing is, however bizarre Stig's methods are, he won't be beaten and he usually wins in the end. Hence the reason that our house may look like a DIY disaster zone, but everything works. Stig is always very quick to point this out when I bemoan the state of the curtain hooks made from key rings or the baby monitors that now look like they were used to bring Frankenstein to life. What he considers to be creative genius, the rest of us find bordering on the insane.

The kids broke the AV button on our TV recently. Not a problem to Stig, he carted the huge TV into the garage, dismantled it and commenced an intricate gluing masterclass. Unfortunately the glue was no match for Charlie's stabbing little fingers and it lasted all of five minutes before the AV button retreated into the innards of the vast TV once again.

Ever defiant at the prospect of defeat, Stig dragged the TV back to the garage. He coaxed the terrorised AV button out from hiding, and again glued it into place. It was left for several hours to set properly before being reintroduced the hell that is Hayes House living room. One shriek from Charlie and the AV button promptly cacked itself and fell off.

It was me who had to deliver the news to Stig. Expecting spontaneous combustion, I had the Argos catalogue to hand and had picked out a stonking new flat screen in preparation.

Of course the threat of my parting with a significant amount of cash horrified Stig even more than the demise of the AV button, and he left the house with an Arnie-like "I'll be back" (roughly translated as "Don't spend any bloody money while I'm gone").

I knew better than to expect him to return with a new telly, or any telly, but what he came back with was quite perplexing...

A brass doorbell.

Our living room TV is now in full working order. When you switch on the TV, you merely need to ring the doorbell that is fitted to the side of it, and presto, we're on the AV channel. I'm NOT kidding!

Woohooooo!

I can't beleive it! I wrote "Where I Write" (below) for a competition and it's received a comendation and will appear in Leaf Books writing magazine. It's not a winner but a mention will do me. Sooooooooo chuffed!
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If you want to write you need a writing desk, right?

My desk is coffee stained, filled with stuff (a-la-offspring) that has nothing to do with me or my writing, and is slightly compressed around the edges where I regularly cling to it in desperation, praying for sanity to restore itself just long enough to finish this next paragraph.

It was "donated" to me by a seven-year-old Nicki when she and Jamie first embarked on room-sharing and had to sacrifice one of their respective desks. Hence my desk is from the Argos plywood-in-drag range; beech-effect with pink panels on the drawer fronts.

I write in Hayes’ House, and my desk is the eye of the storm. The storm being five children and a child-like husband. The chaos theory rules here. One of the children can fart at the bottom of the garden and consequently another, who is sat on the toilet, will fall off it.

When Sam enters my writing domain for the eighth time in as many minutes to request that I put the wings back on his dragon, I resist the urge to beat him to death with it and I write about it instead. Surely someone somewhere can relate to this misery?

Writing should not be an exercise in multi-tasking and yet somewhere between cooking a roast, applying plasters to injured knees, and drinking myself into oblivion there is that blissful ten minute window of just me and a blank screen. Here I get to vent, paint my family in a particularly unfavourable light, and feel satisfied that I’ve wreaked my revenge in doing so.

I’d love to say that I write in a haven of serenity where I can hear the birds sing on spring mornings and sunlight streams in through French windows. But in reality I have the living, breathing inspiration of family life, without which my writing would be meaningless. Having said that; whoever said that we should suffer for our art needs a plastic dragon shoving where the proverbial sun doesn’t shine.

This Shepards Pie is Bollocks!

When I was pregnant with Sam, I spent the majority of my time hanging around the bathroom waiting for the next session of sporadic vomiting. The smell of absolutely anything would set me off, hence cooking was a problem.

Stig gallantly came to my rescue and offered to cook. The idea filled me with dread but having established that I couldn't enter the kitchen without wretching, I agreed. I painfully explained Hayes House Shepards Pie proceedure to Stig in step-by-step detail. I thought I had done quite well in my instructions but I double checked with a question and answer session at the end. Stig passed with flying colours and so I had little choice but to let him proceed.

However what I said, and what Stig heard were clearly two very different narratives...

1. Boil giant pan of spuds to death
2. Boil mince in nothing but water for 5 minutes and decide that this will be sufficient.
3. Pour drained mince into oven dish, who needs gravy? We don't.
4. Don't bother draining the spuds (Stig didn't) as they have absorbed most of the water anyway.
5. Mash spuds into a pulp with the consistency of wallpaper paste and "pour" the spuds over the mince.
6. Realise that you have forgotten to add onion so sprinkle some chopped onion over the top of the mixture and poke it in with a fork.
7. Put Shepard's Pie in oven.
8. Switch oven on.
9. Remove Shepard's pie from oven and add cheese, replace in oven.
10. Serve with a ladle.

I felt a wave of grief wash over me when I glimpsed it on my plate for the first time. The resulting Shepard's Pie was a pasty looking pile of slop.

I knew that I'd at least have to taste it before I could berate his efforts. It was when I encountered the first unidentifiable brown chewy bits in it that vomiting ensued.

This was followed by a tirade of abuse from me and abject disbelief at Stig, who was heartily tucking into his Shepard's Pie in order to re-enforce his point that it "wasn't that bad".

Dear Chris...

Meet Our Friend Chris...

The Energy Crisis

When Sam was a baby / toddler he used to sit in his pram being wheeled around like royalty, looking to pray on unsuspecting women. He especially liked women wearing long skirts with elasticated waistbands, because he very quickly perfected the knack of grabbing said skirt and tugging it in just the right way to expose one butt cheek's worth of knickers, all in the space of a split-second as he wheeled past. This was mostly considered acceptable, and even cute, as he was so little. Even the poor woman in front of us in a supermarket queue who got her bum groped forgave him because of his cheeky grin.

He is six now, and still cute, but I thought we were over the worst of this sort of thing.

Sam is feeling the effects of the energy crisis. I don't know if the rest of the world is still experiencing this phenomenon, but Hayes House certainly is.

You can tell when we are going somewhere that Sam isn't particularly happy about. His engine keeps stalling. He stops dead in his tracks, causing me and the other kids to screech to a halt too (as we're all interconnected via Charlie's pram and a complicated hand holding system). I glance down at him to enquire if his shoe has fallen off. He is slumped over like a drunken sloth with his arms swinging idly and his knuckles trailing on the ground. He can feel me glaring at him and, without looking up, proclaims:

"Need a power-up, Mummy"

I sigh while I wait for him to do his imaginary "power-up" which involves making two fists, sticking his thumb and little finger out on each hand in Crocodile-Dundee-fashion, and gently revving them by circling his wrists back and forth. The revving builds and he comes back to life as his body slowly rises to the upright position (think blow up doll). This is accompanied by a gentle buzzing sound which crescendo's into a loud whoosh, and he's off down the street dragging us along with him.

This only happens on the way to school, never on the return journey. His periodic refueling has been an accepted part of the school morning routine for some time now. I was just beginning to desensitise myself to the embarrassment when he discovered the power sock.

Sam likes pink, a little known fact which we'd hoped to keep to ourselves until he was at least through high school. The sock is one of Nicki's old odd socks. It is pink. If you whiz it around above your head like the rotor blades on a helicopter, it negates the need for power-ups by providing a more reliable source of energy. Hence it is the Power Sock. Unfortunately, much like me with my mobile phone, Sam cannot bear to go anywhere without it in case he runs out of power.

I can now be seen everywhere I go with a camp six-year-old spinning a pink sock above his head. We have escalated from mild embarrassment to total public humiliation. Thanks Sam.

Maybe he knows something we don't. Perhaps the oil industry and alternative energy sources are now obsolete. All we need is a power sock each and we're sorted.