musingsponderingsandrants

Parenting, profundities and humour

Category: life lessons

House Poetry anyone? — June 17, 2016

House Poetry anyone?

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So Eldest is in his first year at Senior School. That is First Form in old money and Year 7 in today’s new-fangled counting system.

The school has a very active House System. There are 6 houses named after Old Boys of the school. Eldest was very happy to be placed in Bell. Not because of the accomplishments of its namesake, of which Eldest can tell me very little, but because their house colour is purple. His favourite. And so his tie has a purple stripe. And if he makes Head of House in Year 12 he will get a blazer with purple trim. This is now his aim. Purely for fashion reasons.

All his form are in Bell. He was elected Year 7 House Captain and gets a , yes you guessed it, purple lapel badge.

There are numerous House Events. The usual sport, music, drama, debating. But also some more unusual ones. So far this year he has been House Ten Pin Bowling, House Water Sporting and other such fun activities. He gets to mix with the older years and generally have a ball.

Bell have been ahead all year. According to Eldest this is very unusual. They have not won for five years at least. I like to think their Year 7s are particularly strong. But I may be biased. At the end of every term the leading house has its house colours suspended from the flag pole. Photos have been acquired.

So over all we are fans of the House system. And then Eldest came home with an instruction to write an entry for House Poetry. He wasn’t best pleased. The poem had to start with one of three Shakespearean lines. And had to be between 12 and 30 lines long. He stormed and riled against it. It hung over us all through half term. And then on the last day he dashed off the poem below. I think it is quite good for a 12 year old. Again biased.

I had written one for him to ‘pretend’ with in a worst case scenario. But his is better to my mind.

So there you are. Sometimes it is good to be forced to do things that one finds difficult. You might just surprise yourself.

By Eldest

When I consider everything that grows

I think of the smallest of creatures to the largest

I think of the loudest to the quietest

The predator to the prey

The oldest to the young

 

The different places with life

Africa to Antarctica

The varieties of animals

The difference in types

Prehistoric to the modern day

 

When I think of life

I think of myself

How I have grown up

Mentally and physically

All the memories I have embraced.

 

 

Will Power — April 27, 2016

Will Power

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Tomorrow I am going out with friends for lunch.

I do this quite a lot. To break up the tedium of housework. To compare taxi-ing schedules. To bitch about school and homework and husbands and cliques. And to discuss Game of Thrones.

But tomorrow three of us are going out specifically to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

As such I thought it might be nice to get a card. And a gift. And so yesterday, having a bit of ‘parking at school hideously early to get a spot before pick up’ time free, I walked to the supermarket and, as well as restocking the fruit bowl, I bought a card and a nice box of chocolates. There are far too many ‘nices’ in that sentence. I may edit them out later. Although editing may fall foul of the ‘nice to do’ versus ‘need to do’ rule in the frantic-ness of Cub pick up.

I often buy my friends presents based on what I would like to receive. And there is no situation, in my opinion, that is not improved with a nice box of chocolates. In this case those sea shell ones. Um, umm loverly…. (That word again sorry).

Now I like to think I am a person with quite a lot of self discipline. I am especially good if I have lists to stick to. I tend to be driven by a schedule of tasks and the satisfaction of crossing them off once accomplished. Hence my cleaning rotas. And interminable To Do lists.

I didn’t have ‘Buy card and present’ on my To Do list but still I felt good about getting those tasks accomplished two days ahead of schedule.

I felt even better about myself once I had resisted writing those tasks on my To Do list just so that I could immediately cross them off.

I went about the rest of my evening. The usual. Taxi ing. Feeding people. Clearing up pots, and sweaty kits and dirty socks. Assisting with angles revision and with drawing an exploded diagram of a sandwich (don’t ask). Brushing hair containing yoghurt. Forcing reluctant children into beds. Etc. (I feel a need to tell my angles joke…should I? Oh go on then. Here is the family of angles; a baby (acute), a mum (right) a dog (reflex) and…. a dad (obtuse)…well I like it).

Then about nine o’clock, just as husband and I settled down to watch The Tunnel, my wonderful will power gave out.

I should perhaps mention that the strength of my will power is affected by many factors. The time of the month. The thing I am trying to resist/ make myself do. My boredom/ tiredness/ hunger level. The volume the ‘little voice in my head’ is set to. Etc.

The ‘little voice in my head’ began telling me that I should reward myself for my foresight in accomplishing my unscheduled ‘Buy Birthday Present’ task in some way. I was starting to regret not allowing myself to add it to the list and cross it off…

This was unfortunate. Especially as the only thing the ‘little voice in my head’ thought would be perfect as a reward was…sea shell shaped chocolates.

I lasted until the first advert break before giving in and opening the box.

So today after my haircut I popped into Lidl and replaced the box with another, considerably cheaper yet almost identical looking, and hopefully tasting, box. I then went to a friends for coffee. And as it transpired lunch.

I had left the chocolates in the car. When I got home a couple of hours later I brought them inside.

I should explain that although it is sunny here today it feels like mid winter. This has been going on for a while. There was frost on my car this morning and I am still wearing my bobble hat. The heating is clicking on and I have yet to remove my thermal vest despite it being perilously close to May. This current weather is more than slightly worrying ahead of our camping trip/wedding to the Welsh coast in a couple of days. No doubt there will be a blog entry in that. If I thaw out enough to write it.

So despite the sun and because of the frankly chilly outside temperature I had not given any thought to the possible downsides of leaving a box of sea shell shaped chocolates in the car for a couple of hours. This was again unfortunate.

Suffice to say the chocolates are no longer sea shell shaped. But rather have morphed into a multi hued slab of chocolate adhered to the box lid.

Therefore over the next week or so I shall be able to directly compare the ‘real thing’ to the Lidl rip off version. I will let you know about that taste thing. Although the melting and resolidifying process may provide sufficient doubt to render a direct comparison inequitable.

In upshot tomorrow, ahead of our lunch, I will be buying another present. Which in hindsight might have been a better idea all along.

Flowers I think.

 

Just a Quickie… — March 10, 2016

Just a Quickie…

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So Eldest is revising for his next science test. On reproduction.

The topic started off quite benignly with pollen and wind assisted fertilisation and stamen. There were pretty pictures and bee attracting strategies.

The life cycle of a frog was mentioned at dinner one night.

And then things went quiet. I think they had started on human reproduction. Not something Eldest cares to discuss over meatballs. And who can blame him.

So tonight I was helping him fill in his key word sheet. They have one for each topic and it helps revision. This one didn’t hold any punches.

We meandered through the gamut of sexual organs, menstruation, hormones, birth, placentas and such.

I corrected some misapprehensions. For instance that the cervix is the gap between the vagina and the anus.

That in-vitro fertilisation is ‘how frogs do it’.

That the process of labour is like having leg cramp in a ‘delicate’ area. Well his teacher is male and I guess this is the nearest men can get to understanding it.

That Urethra Franklin was not a soul singer. OK I made that one up. Because I can. Ha ha.

But overall I was quite impressed with his knowledge and lack of tittering. Although it wasn’t completely absent. The tittering that is.

There is a diagram of the female reproductive system hastily drawn by me on the dining table. Without an anus. But with a cervix. To clarify it is on a piece of paper on the dining table in case you were worried.

And my son now understands that his parents had sex at least three times. He is grossed out.

Ha ha-er.

 

 

 

 

The cost of everything, the value of nothing — February 28, 2016

The cost of everything, the value of nothing

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smashed phone

So Eldest. We gave him a phone when he started Senior school in September. It was an old handset of husband’s with a SIM only, well SIM.

Almost as soon as he had it and the novelty had worn off he was on the internet researching better models.

And then regaling me ad infinitum about the advantages of the Samsung Edge or the I phone 6S. Or some other such technical wizardy. In which I had no interest. And no intention of indulging him.

The deal had always been that he would keep the old hand set (which actually is an I phone 4 and so not too shabby, certainly better than my entry level Samsung touch phone) until at least Year 9. When apparently phones become so important it is impossible to live without the latest model. Well certainly not at Eldest’s school. Where ‘everyone else’ has a better phone than him.

Ah school. The one-up-manship. The ‘my phone is better than yours’ ship. Every time Eldest whinged about his phone’s short comings I was transported back to my own Year 8. And red shoe gate.

I suppose I should explain. I always wore ‘sensible’ shoes to school. Anyone born in the seventies and growing up in the eighties will know that this meant black lace up Clark’s shoes. In a time when Clark’s shoes were not fashionable. In any sense.

I was teased mercilessly about my sensible shoes. Others persuaded their parents to buy them court shoes. Slips ons with bows and tassels. It was the eighties after all.

I finally got my mum to buy me some of these beauties. To wear outside school. They were bright red slip ons. With bows. And they were shiny. Finally I was going to be accepted by the teenage girl elite. Of course they were not regulation black and so I had to sneak them into school in my back pack without my mother seeing. And change into them in the loo. I should also probably point out at this juncture that our school uniform was maroon. And the shoes were crimson. One does not have to be a fashionista to work out that that combo was not all I thought it was.

Suffice to say I got more ribbing wearing the red shoes than the sensible black lace ups. In fact I wanted to click my heels and forever disappear to Kansas. I never wore them again.

So there you have it. I have no interest in keeping my children up with the latest trends in order for them to ‘fit in’. It didn’t work for me.

And then of course Middlest is hard on Eldest’s heels. He was recently accepted into the same Senior school and is, of course, expecting a phone. To be able to function.

So actually it is not just that I didn’t want to get him a better phone so he could fit in. It is also that I didn’t need to. Nor could justify the cost.

And then a series of ‘incidents’ occurred. Eldest swears all accidental. Which may be true. At least consciously.

He first disabled the phone by changing the PIN on the lock screen and then forgetting it. And inputting it wrongly so many times the phone disabled. Well suffice to say about four evenings and a trip to the phone shop later we finally managed to un-disable it. I think much to Eldest’s disgust.

Then he took it out when he went to play football with a mate. I asked him to take it. Because it is a mobile phone and not much use sitting on my kitchen counter. Communication wise. So what happened next was of course all my fault. Namely that it fell out of his pocket during a rainbow flick. And smashed. Not beyond help. But enough to threaten cut fingers during screen swiping.

So of course now he has a better phone. Only up one level to an I phone 5 but still.

Twelve year olds are damn cunning.

I made him give me ALL his birthday and Christmas money though. All £110 of it. And spend some of his Amazon vouchers on a proper case. So now he is broke. Until next Christmas.

Serves him right. And at least now he has a better understanding of the value of things. After all it has cost him everything.

 

 

15 Years and Counting… — November 18, 2015

15 Years and Counting…

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wedding

I have a vague idea I should write something about marriage.

The reason is that today (well at 3 o’clock this afternoon) I will have been married for 15 years.

Also it is Week 3 – see Keeping Clean Sheets if you don’t understand that reference- and so I am employing as many avoiding tactics as I can. I have done three fifths of Week 3 and have re-jigged it a bit so I no longer have the family/ scuss bathroom to do- poor Week Two is the down hearted recipient- but still major avoiding needed. The Kitchen Diner is left…need I say more?

The downstairs loo is leaking again. The number pad on my PC keyboard has stopped working. I have the mother of all weeks meetings/ helping at school/ parents evening/ ferrying/ school concerts wise. And so feel like taking this morning easy before I leave the house at 1pm and do not return except to briefly stuff sandwiches into kids until gone 9pm. My ‘working’ day, always a bit odd.

And anyway Christmas is arriving after a flurry of on-line activity yesterday and I do not want to miss a courier whom I have accidentally drowned out by over zealous vacuuming.

So there we have it I thought a quick post avoiding the use of as many numbers as possible would be the order of the day. And as today is my wedding anniversary it seems like as good a topic as any. Although it involves, already, too many numerals.

I have started this entry and discovered that since I last wrote Wordpress, my lovely blog host, have decided to change everything. I cannot find buttons. I no longer appear to be able to link to my other entries in a logical way. The Save button has mysteriously disappeared. I don’t need this in Week Three, I really don’t. Don’t they know I have been married for 15 (arghh) years today?

As you may have gathered we are not doing anything special today, despite its significance. Well I am having bacon on cheesy rolls for lunch but otherwise, no.  At about 5.30am husband used the assistive light on his phone to blind me and also deposit a wrapped article on the bed. I tried unsuccessfully to fumble under my bedside table for his gift and card. He told me to leave it until later. He has probably forgotten that there won’t be a later. He ordered me to get more sleep (probably the most romantic thing he will say to me all day- in fact one of the few things he will say to me at all today) which I tried to do. It was difficult with burning retinas.

In any event that present isn’t up to a great deal. I am far beyond those times when I spent every available lunch hour devising, planning and purchasing a perfect gift for each anniversary (and birthday and Christmas). The present was purloined off his Christmas list which I only extracted from him on Saturday morning. And so although Youngest and I tried to find something more inspired between football matches and rain showers in town we failed. Fifteen years is crystal. We have enough tumblers. And what would a grown man do with a small glass animal? And in any event my mind is too full of what to buy small people for Christmas and what other people can buy my small people for Christmas and what I should buy the teachers for Christmas and what I would like other people to buy me for Christmas…. perhaps more time? It is like this every year and led me once to forget our anniversary completely. I was that ‘buying flowers in a petrol station’ cliché. My tip is not to get married in November.

Anyway back to this morning. Once the alarm went off a mere half an hour later I struggled blindly through my minimal ablutions and then took a pause to open his gift and card before rousing the kids. Do not fret dear reader my retinas are recovered. I always struggle blindly through my morning ablutions in a kind of denial. About morning. About the day to come. About, well everything really. I do not usually leave this ‘denial’ phase until the caffeine from my first cuppa has kicked in.

The gift was lovely. A pair of earrings and a necklace. Some sparkle. I love a bit of sparkle. Oddly for someone so un-girly. We recently went to the V&A in London just to do the jewellery section. It was darkly lit with everything on black velvet and looked simply stunning. Although come to think of it my retinas did hurt a bit then too…

I put the earrings in. This took longer than it should as the holes have partly closed up as I haven’t worn such adornment since around  2004 (or blank blank blank blank as my duff keyboard would have it). Which does, not unco-incidentally, co-incide with the birth of Eldest.

Not one of my children liked the earrings. It is just the shock I think. They will come round. My new hair cut (which my mother does not appear to have noticed, or if she has noticed she does not approve of enough to say anything, either is worrying) apparently calls out for earrings according to my good friend. And maybe, judging by today’s gift, silently husband.

Just so you know I have now found the Save button. But not the Review button. I shall keep going and also keep you posted. But hopefully not this entry. It is too soon for it to be posted. As I haven’t reviewed it yet. I digress.

All this anniversary guff meant we were behind schedule. The kids gasped at the clock. Corners were cut. It is likely Eldest will have to swim in Speedos out of the Lost Property basket. Is there any fate worse?

I shouted instructions through the open window of my friend’s car as she pulled out of our drive. ‘Find out your cello lesson’, ‘Don’t forget to find your snack pot’, ‘Get out quick tonight so I can get to my meeting’, ‘Please remind me you need hike boots for Cubs’, ‘For god sake do not let me forget piano again’, ‘Eat a hot school lunch it is only packed tea tonight’. Etc. Etc.

I retreated indoors to the carnage left from the morning and the relative peace. I retrieved that gift from under my bedside table and put it in the grubby Kitchen Diner where hopefully husband will see it when he returns from Cub pick up much much later tonight. I will find out if he likes it when I get in from my last meeting at circa 9.30pm. It does not have much sparkle. I do feel slightly out done gift wise. It is not as bad as on our first anniversary when he bought me a diamond eternity ring and I got him a….magazine subscription. In my defence the first anniversary is paper.

Somehow this post has got quite long and yet I have said hardly anything about the nature of marriage. Or have I?

15 years ago I walked up the aisle- well a corridor made by two sets of chairs we didn’t do the church thing- to start on this road of married life.

To begin with the road was a flower bordered bucolic path meandering through fields and by river banks. We idled along hand in hand taking in the view. Revelling in its beauties. We took long metaphoric picnic lunches and the sun shone.

Over time the road has changed beyond all recognition. It now feels more like a motorway whizzing along at breath taking speed. I do not know when this happened. When the route morphed from footpath to bridleway to A road to six lane monster.

At times it has felt like two parallel carriageways with far too few shared service stations . It can be full of pot holes and road works. Nearly constantly it is crowded by other travellers getting in the way and driving recklessly with no regard for the rules. I am not always a good driver. I go too fast or do not look in the mirror enough. I get road rage and shout at the sat nav. Sometimes I know where this road is headed but often I need a map.

But at the heart of it all there is that other person racing along too. Providing solidarity. And earrings.

Glad its you Andy.

x

 

 

 

 

Pushy Parent? — October 27, 2015

Pushy Parent?

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For the last three days Eldest has been on a County Chamber Music course. Playing his cello.

When the invitation to sign up came out he met all the criteria and so I asked him if he was interested and surprisingly he said he was. I might have mentioned his old cello teacher would be there. And he might have been slightly distracted by Minecraft but he agreed readily.

Of course on the morning of the first day he was less keen. He didn’t want to go. He was nervous of meeting new people and of not being a good enough player. I assumed that he would be with others roughly his age playing music roughly of the right standard.

Well he got through that first day and had texted me during it with reassuring little messages. He was exhausted, as expected after concentrating for five hours, but went to bed happy enough.

The next morning however he was weeping into his Weetabix refusing to go back. He felt that he wasn’t good enough, that he would let his other quartet members down, that he had no one to talk to. Suffice to say that a combination of the lack of the promised teacher, three girls in his group much older than him, and apparently much better players than him, and not being able to find the toilets had put him off.

And then I had that dilemma all parents face. How much to push.

It doesn’t matter in what field or at what level, at some point every parent has to decide whether to push or not. It can be anything, anywhere. A party for five year olds when they just want to cling to your leg. The decision to send them on a Cub camp or not. The first residential school trip. Your toddler screaming on the side of a swimming pool refusing to jump in for the teacher. When they are stuck up a large tree you have no hope of climbing and the only way forwards is for them to come down by themselves. How to leave your sobbing four year old on the first day of school.

All of these, and a myriad others particular to each child, involve this knife edge decision.

In this case the instinctive part of me wanted to just ring up the course co-ordinator and say he wasn’t coming back. And tear a strip off him for the lack of introductions, support and basic venue familiarisation undertaken for my 11 year old.

But then the rational part of me remembered that my son is highly strung, a perfectionist, liable to remember only the negative. And a brilliant cellist for his age. Who played a solo in front of 250 people at the end of year school shin dig without much fuss.

I realised that if he quit those three violinists would be left in the lurch.

I knew from experience that although the performance aspect would be scary it would also be exhilarating.

And so I rang the co-ordinatior, bit my tongue and merely explained the facts. He spoke to Eldest and reassured him and he agreed to go back.  I made a separate deal. That if he could ring me at lunch and tell me hand on heart that he had hated the whole morning I would fetch him back, no questions asked.

Of course that didn’t happen. His old teacher materialised. The girls found out he was only in Year 7 and took him under their wing. He rang me at lunch to ask if he could order pizza and stay between the end of the dress rehearsal and the actual concert so he could spend more time with them.

We are leaving soon to watch him.  He will probably go wrong. And be a bag of nerves. That is fine. But he will also get a massive high from the experience.

He will feel braver and more self confident as a result of pushing through the fear. Let’s face it life is full of things we do not want to face.

And I was right to push.

But it is a balancing act.

Too much pushing will see him resent me for making him do things that made him miserable.

Too little and he will miss out on experiences that could really enrich his life.

It’s a toughie.

Stuff what I have learnt today — October 8, 2015

Stuff what I have learnt today

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keep-calm-and-learn-hard-7

So here goes. Some random stuff I have discovered today.

  • It is possible to drive to my kids’ school and back in under 15 minutes when on a games kit/ cello induced mercy dash.
  • If you turn up 15 minutes late to an exercise class you just miss the boring warm up and only semi important station explanation. Although I may discover tomorrow how vital that warm up is.
  • Deleting about 18 months worth of text messages will turn your phone back into a relatively responsive tool.
  • The shops are no longer full of orange hued home accessories now I have decided that orange is to be the accent colour for our newly decorated lounge.
  • It is apparently Christmas already.
  • Allowing the kids off music practice in the morning so they can get more sleep after a school induced late night will see us all falling out.
  • It is quite pleasant to write blogs in Costa.
  • Belgian chocolate tea cakes make that even pleasanterer.
  • My phone’s predictive text will predict good when I want home and home when I want good. Which makes that sentence really hard to get right.
  • One should keep an eye on boiling potatoes rather than ignoring them to write.
  • It is best to wait for the ceramic hob to cool down before clearing up boiled over water. Unless you like the smell of burnt J cloth.
  • Allowing Eldest to have a phone not only heads off games kit/ cello induced emergencies but also allows him to text me cute messages which make me feel better about the tiredness induced morning arguments.
  • I enjoy employing deliberate grammatical errors in my writing. Not sure why. Probably so I can claim any actual errors are supposed to be there. And to annoy pedants.
  • My reverse parking sensors are wildly over cautious. And I actually need gate post sensors.
  • Asking Middlest to be quick out of school will make us late for football training.
  • People are still wearing leggings that are see through enough to be correctly categorised as tights.
  • It is impossible to watch the final of the Bake Off a day late and not discover who the winner is during that day. And I don’t mind that much.
  • As much as I love Billy Joel he doesn’t cut it driving music wise. And I still prefer soft rock.
  • If I would like Youngest to practise her times tables I must threaten the removal of football training.
  • I can’t do bullets on my phone and will have to add them at home later before the scheduled publishing time. Home more to do at good I mean good more to do at home.
  • We can still name all the characters on In the Night Garden. And Makka Pakka is still our favourite. Isn’t that a pip?
  • I still don’t know when to use practice and when to use practise. So I looked it up. C for noun, s for verb. So I need to practise and get some practice in.
  • I care about accent colours.
  • That last discovery worries me most.

So there you have it. Just a normal day. One is always learning.
If you are my husband then obviously the Costa is not part of my normal day. Honest gov.

Have you seen my…? — October 6, 2015

Have you seen my…?

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image

We have a saying in our family. And it goes like this.

“Have you used your Lady Eyes?”

There are a lot of us in this house. Sometimes it feels like there are far too many of us. But the number of children I decided to have is maybe an issue for another day.

So there are a lot of us. And so we have a lot of stuff.

And it appears that it is my job to keep tabs on it all.

I spend a fair amount of my day mentally logging the position of many useful objects, most of which do not belong to me.

For instance my husband finds it really hard to keep track of his spectacles. They appear to be a mobile object despite having arms and not legs. Whenever he is home and I walk past them I make that mental note so that when the inevitable enquiry is made I can respond with a GPS location. Arm of sofa, window sill in bathroom, atop the laundry basket, on the patio furniture, beside the toaster. And such like.

Last Christmas I stumbled upon a fantastic stand for him to use. That is a picture of it up there. It is positioned on the window sill next to the front door. (And incidentally whilst we are there that is the place everyone should look first for any missing item. Just saying). And the stand helps slightly. He uses it when arriving home. Or when swapping from sunglasses to indoor glasses. But it hasn’t eradicated the whole problem. I believe a string around the neck is the only sure fire way. Or he could just wear them all the time…

And then we move on to my children. I suppose we must. The current items which cause the most issues are Eldest’s phone and Middlest’s I pod. In the case of the former we could ring it to find it’s location but unfortunately it is set by default to silent so he does not fall foul of the ‘no phone use in or between lessons’ rule at school. And Middlest’s is not ringable. We lost both yesterday. And then I found them almost entirely camouflaged on the black granite fire surround in the family room. I have suggested that putting their entirely black electronics on the hearth is maybe not such a good idea moving forwards. Especially when we begin lighting the fire.

When things are actually leaving the house the pressure ramps up. I seem to be the only person who does a mental check list when leaving a sports field. This weekend I had a ‘Lady Eyes’ fail.  We discovered this at 7.45am this morning when their school lift was revving on the driveway and Eldest decided he had better check his Games kit and found his Ripstop was missing.

The Ripstop is a compulsory item. A sort of semi-waterproof, pull over the head tracksuit top. There are three in this house. People scoff at my diligent name label sewing which I undertake annually each Autumn. They say I should use a laundry pen on the care label. They don’t have three sets of everything in very similar sizes to out sort from the laundry. A name in the collar is actually as useful for me, the laundress, as it is for keeping the kit ‘safe’.  I do not want to waste time hunting for initials on a care label on a side seam.

They all have red and black stripy games socks. I decided not to bother labelling them as it is quite hard to sew a name label onto something as stretchy as a sock. What a mistake. I often have 6 socks that look almost identical but are actually slightly different sizes hanging from my airer. I am sure I am probably ruining Eldest’s feet in the manner of Chinese babies and it probably explains the blisters Youngest sometimes gets after football training.

So anyway Eldest must have taken his Ripstop onto the field for his (very sunny) Rugby match on Saturday. And left it there. At the end of the match I did send him off for his water bottle which was clearly missing but as I hadn’t seen the Ripstop come onto the field and it was about 20 degrees it slipped my mind.

It will serve him right if he gets into trouble at Rugby training today. When heavy rain is forecast. I would laugh but it really isn’t that funny at £20 a pop.

Generally my kids do quite well at not losing their stuff. That is because I get very cross when they do. And I have a rule that if they lose something they will pay to replace it. I am training them early to do their own mental checklist. Obviously there is still someway to go.

I am also a name labelling maniac. I put sticky labels on everything. Including Eldest’s phone. Which he is surprisingly sanguine about. I put a sticky label on every one of the fine liners in the pack of 10 I bought Middlest this weekend. They cost nearly £1 a pen. I felt justified. A lot of stationary gets ‘borrowed’ at school. If stuff is labelled some other child cannot claim it is ‘their’s’. Middlest explained that actually each pen cost 99.90p. I retorted that I would allow him to merely pay 99p for the last pen he lost but £1 per mislaid pen up to that point. I think he got the message.

Compared to their school mates, and possibly because of my mercenary approach, they do OK. Already this term there have been impassioned e mails from other parents pleading for the return of black jumpers, entire Games bags with contents, mouth guards, blazers (yikes £75 a go) and odd shoes. The latter really worries me. How did they get home? Hopping?

When they come out from sports clubs in kit my Lady Eyes checklist follows a certain order:- Blazer, school shoes, mouth guard, other branded items, generic clothing of which I have a spare pair at home, generic items of which I have 5 others at home, black socks. I also try to remember to mentally note any lack of musical instruments but to be fair it is quite hard to miss that a cello is missing. If you see what I mean. The absence of a  violin my slip through the net however.

And so I am chief ‘finder/ retainer of all things’. Here are my maxims:-

  • Always put stuff in the same place.
  • Always label everything.
  • Ensure kids are on board by employing a mix of ‘mummy is very disappointed’ and financial penalties.

It helps. It hasn’t really dealt with the husband problem though. I guess he will get so short sighted at some point it will solve itself.

Just the four socks today...
Just the four socks today…
What do points make? — June 21, 2015

What do points make?

/sarahsmale/1 Comment

trophy

Every Bruce Forsyth fan (and I count myself amongst them, fond memories of watching idiots try to throw pots and ice cakes in 30 seconds on prime time TV in the 70s) knows the answer to that question, all together now

‘Prizes!’

It is soon Prize Giving Evening  at my children’s school. All the teachers wear their university robes, which is a bit startling when you have only seen some of them in shorts all year. They get some old boy (there are not yet many old girls it being only 10 years since the school went co-ed) to present books with a plaque inside to children who have presumably shone in various areas.

We knew eldest would be there as he recently co-won the Year 6 Humphriss Prize for Music at the Music Prize day.

All three of mine took part. Eldest played the cello and clearly must have done quite well with his Tudoresque, semi quaver fest. Middlest played his violin and the piano (not at the same time) and got lovely feedback from the adjudicator but was pipped to the Year 5 prize by a wonderful flautist. Youngest banged out ‘What shall we do with the drunken Sailor’ in her pre grade piano way. I think the adjudicators words were ‘great enthusiasm’…

Then today the prize winners were awarded with their book tokens in assembly. Eldest has surpassed himself and also won the Robinson Cup for the Most Improved Sportsman and duly received 2 book tokens. Youngest won the ‘something something’ prize for best person at PE in Year 3- probably because she won the Cross Country for the Year 3 & 4 girls and also the ‘how far can you throw a rounder’s ball’ event at last week’s field sports day. And she can run up House Point Hill very fast.

And middlest won nothing. Nada. Which is fine. Unless you are middlest, sandwiched between your award winning siblings. He had some hopes for the Year 5 Science Prize as all his exams this year have been in the 90%s. But, no, clearly there are many brilliant scientists at their school.

And so here is the very fine tight rope that is parent hood in perfect relief.

I am of course pleased for eldest and youngest. Eldest works incredibly hard. He deserves that Sportsman prize as he regularly falls into bed in a state of physical exhaustion after yet another training session. He was determined to shine with that cello piece after (and maybe I am being a bit partisan here) the really harsh examiner in April provided him with barely a pass for it in his exam. It was better than that even then. Now after a few more weeks of practise we can play it in our sleep. And it showed on the day.

Youngest is a born sportswoman as I may have mentioned before. And whilst this prize may be for something she is naturally good at she does attend every sports club going and she did go out training for that cross country, including taking part in a very cold Duathlon despite being terrified. She has an amazing untaught mind set- when I asked her how she ran through her stitch during the 2k cross country she told me she merely thought about how good she would feel when she won. The rounder’s ball thing was a surprise though.

So I feel they deserve their accolades and want to tell them that. It is hard to do so without middlest in ear shot and actually he should hear it. But how to do that without middlest taking it all the wrong way. My kids cannot understand that when I praise one I am not automatically denigrating the others. That just because I say ‘Well you worked hard for that so you deserve it’ I am not saying ‘And you, you just don’t work hard and deserve nothing’.

Middlest works hard, he isn’t a natural sportsman but tries his best, he is a fabulous musician (who won over that tough examiner in his violin exam to get a merit and leads the school orchestra), he is a brilliant scientist. On this occasion though others were just that bit better.

I feel for him. I told him that in my entire school career I never won a thing. Ever. And yes it hurts. But then I turned out alright didn’t I? He looked a bit askance at this, as he thinks I am a bit mad, but I think it helped. A bit.

And yes this is life. Life is tough. Get used to it. And all such platitudes. But when he is dripping tears into his cottage pie I don’t want to say that. I want him to have a damn prize. Damn it.

Anyway by bed he had become more philosophical. He has decided he would win the prize for ‘Best at Never Winning Prizes’. I may buy him a book and put a plaque in it for him. Not sure I will use his category though… maybe he should just win a prize for being generally wonderful…because he is.