Who knew?! You ARE interested in how it all began! Well, you asked for it …..
“Children properly managed” my mother always said, “can be made to pay.” As I’m one of five spanning twelve years, I should have realised she was speaking from experience. It was only as the decimation of our dream home ran into the umpteenth month that I saw the wisdom of her words.
We started tearing the place apart in pursuit of our Grand Architect’s grand architectural vision and the first victims were the heating and the plumbing – and the electricity was intermittent at best. However, children 1 and 2 soon proved better and cheaper than electric blankets. By sending them to bed at 7pm and 9pm we got about six hours free warming of the marital bed before we callously - nay selfishly - moved them to their own beds, where they started the whole process again.. Mr I squared his conscience by reasoning that the second time round at least his children were shivering on their own behalf: I had no need for such artificial scruples and was ruthlessly severe about sticking to bed-times. Just occasionally I felt generous, though, and I climb in between them, not out of weakness or concern for the environment, you understand: rather at last I understood the appeal of the old ‘three-in-a-bed’ scenario. It’s all a question of warmth. For a long time No.2 was consigned to a mattress on No.1’s floor. Her own room was so very cold and dirty, thanks to the incessant silent rain of building dust, that even I couldn’t bring myself to subject her to it. Added to which, by the end of the day neither of us had the strength to negotiate the builders’ trestle which seemed to have taken root – perhaps permanently? – across her doorway.
The baby learned to limbo under it of course, and did so to great effect. Many hours did we while away trying to coax him back. Nursery rhymes, action songs, books, treats, threats; we tried them all. For a while we hoped his nickname, ‘Jabba’, might hold the key to his recovery. Star Wars aficionados among you will remember that Jabba the Hutt was a huge creature of prodigious appetite: we tried tempting our Jabba with everything from prunes – messily, his then favourite – to my mobile phone (which he enjoyed with an occasional squirt of orange juice), to no avail. Eventually No.2 was sent wriggling through the legs of the offending equipment, only to rediscover her dressing-up box and contents with squeals of ‘I remember this one!’ Twenty minutes later, tired of the Viking and Snow White prancing just beyond my reach, I closed the stairgate and went for a quick coffee, only to find the electricity off again. Sometimes in those days, I was driven to think that God really did want me to drink alone before lunch.
At least while I was down in the kitchen (in those days still a very unpleasant shade of something only a mother would recognise), No.2 and Jabba were able to indulge in their new, money-saving hobby; stripping wall-paper. It’s a messy job at the best of times but joy of joys, we discovered that 30 years previously our acres of woodchip had been put up in an attempt to anchor blown plaster. We should of course have instantly been talking masks, those white paper Waking-the-Dead suits and plastic goggles. I however am talking a pair of small and determined children too young to know their rights. So much more cost-effective than decorators. And it all goes to show what I have believed ever since I first gave birth: ‘Mother knows best’.
