August 21, 2011 · 8:49 am

Riots in Northampton or kidults wanting some drama?

AS parts of the country were razed by rioting, we should be grateful in Northampton that most of the trouble in our county was restricted to a bunch of prats on the Wellingborough Road and ridiculous rumours spread by bored teenagers.

Only the older kids and I watched events in London unfold on TV, and the following day, a baffled Billy watched the breakfast news and asked us solemnly if we had heard: bad people somewhere had been smashing stuff up.

How do you explain the riots to a seven-year-old when most of the grown-ups don’t seem to know what on earth just happened?

As Day 2 went on, we were seeing rumours appear on Facebook and Twitter about how things were ‘kicking off’ closer to home in Northampton. We soon realised the sources were 14-year-old girls living in rural villages, desperate for some drama.

Later that day we were heading to the sunny Racecourse, to play on the swings, when a group of about six teen boys with scarves covering their faces and baseball caps started to congregate near the play area, swaggering, shouting on their phones about how they were going to join together their ‘flocks.’ Six turned into eight, then 12, and before long about 18 youths, fired-up by testosterone and each other, were blocking the entrance to the park.

They weren’t breaking the law, but the atmosphere was hardly relaxed. They were playing at being what they’d seen on TV.

As we walked home, we saw a police car arrive and within moments the would-be-looters were gone, hopefully home to have their tea and watch telly with their mums.

They might not like it now, but those lads should be grateful that they do live in boring old Northampton. I know I am.

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August 15, 2011 · 2:28 pm

Time to enter the Rescue Run and raise funds for the Air Ambulance

IF you need an exercise goal then Northampton’s annual Rescue Run is ideal, offering either a five or ten kilometre course you can run, walk or skip around with the family. This year’s Rescue Run takes place at Billing Aquadrome, Northampton, on Sunday, September 4 at 11am.

The Rescue Run has been organised for nine years by new Mum Selena Jacobs from Virgin Active and her band of volunteers, and all the entry fees go direct to the Warwickshire and Northants Air Ambulance.

Our unfit family joined in a couple of years ago complete with three under tens and a baby in a buggy. We may not have got the fastest times but felt rather proud of our efforts!

You can enter on the day or get the paper work out of the way by printing out the form in advance by clicking RR Entry Form 2011

Entry costs £8.50 for adults and £5 for under 16s on the 5k run, and £12 adults and £10 kids on the 10k run. There are medals for all finishers!

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August 12, 2011 · 8:46 am

Who’s for the chop?

WE don’t spend much on haircuts in our house, as you can probably tell. I’ve got used to fellow parents on the school gates sniggering as my poor children scurry past.

“Been to the hairdressers have they?” (Translation: Did you subject them to your appalling scissor skills again?”

I did try with hairdressers when the elder boys were smaller. I took a toddler Jed to the hairdressers when his shoulder-length blonde wavy locks made people tell me what a pretty daughter I had.

He liked looking at himself in the mirror and the up-and-down chair, but as soon as the snippety-snip lady came near he dodged about like she was a wasp.

When he turned 13 I took him to a reasonably posh salon where they charged £30 to cut about half-an-inch off. He went bright red and couldn’t speak during the ‘cut’ as the 19-year-old pretty stylist in a vest top kept leaning over him.

Bloke took the boys to the barber’s a few times, but they came back looking like they were from the 1950s.

The clincher was when Bloke started to give up on his once dense curly locks and simply shaved his head once a month. The professionals were charging him a tenner for the privilege, so we invested in a set of clippers. I think they were about £17 from Boots in 2001, so they’ve certainly paid for themselves.

Clippers are brilliant for the home-hairdresser with sons. You simply clip on the right length of guide comb, press a button and start combing towards the crown. It’s quite hard to mess it up. You can change the comb lengths depending on which bit you’re doing.

Mine don’t freak out when the whizzing sound starts, but they have started to moan about the quality of my cuts. Apparently I was OK when they just wanted short hair all over, but now they are getting fussy: they want floppy fringes.

Dougie shorn

You know you’re turning into your mother when the length of a child’s fringe makes you reach for the scissors. Even when it’s not your child and the scissors are kids’ plastic craft ones.

The problem is that floppy fringes are usually sported by boys-becoming-teens, and boys-becoming-teens have greasy hair and spots. Spots made worse by greasy floppy fringes. Argh!

There comes a time when the fringe even irritates them, so they grudgingly allow me to get the scissors out. But apparently I don’t do it right. It’s never straight. Or it’s too straight. Or, as one son came home from school and told me: “My mates say I look like a lesbian.”

Jed’s isn’t too hard to do, as it has a slight curl to it which hides mistakes. Dougie and Billy’s is so straight and thick that when it’s long they look like glam rock kids from the 1970s.

When the summer holidays started Jed gave in and let me cut off the floppy fringe and cut the back short. Dougie refused point-blank to let me anywhere near him, insisting he wanted it done at the hairdressers. So last week in the Weston Favell centre he was sent into Supercuts and a very nice lady gave him a scissor trim. At first he insisted she left his sideburns long, but he looked like a spaniel, so we sent him back and he came out looking more than reasonable.

Secretly I like the boys’ mass of wayward, thick floppy hair. I want them to enjoy it for as long as possible because I dread that it won’t last. You see, there’s always been a claim that baldness is inherited from the mother’s side, and my poor Pa lost his locks at 21.

I know I’m facing the biggest battle with Bonnie. Cutting her fringe is about all I’ve managed so far in three years. And that looks a little wobbly because she’ll sit still for the first snip and then wriggle for the rest. Oh, and don’t try cutting it when they’re asleep, trust me, it doesn’t work. . .

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August 11, 2011 · 9:47 pm

Northampton’s Lings Forum Cinema is a welcome blast from the past

IT was raining, it was midweek in the school holidays. The kids had been nagging to go to the cinema. We relented, but by the time we got around to checking times, all the kids films at Cineworld and Vue had already started.

There was a solution: Lings Forum Cinema at Weston Favell. Northampton’s hidden treasure.

They were showing Kung Fu Panda 2 at 2.30pm. Off we all trooped.

If you haven’t been I can’t recommend it enough. It’s one screen, with the oldest Pearl and Dean titles I’ve ever seen, (and I saw Star Wars in 1977). It even asked you to turn your pagers off. They should NEVER update it.

You won’t get mugged by the pic ‘n’ mix or popcorn either. Bring your own, or there are vending machines in the gym entrance next door. I understand the evening shows have wine available. How civilised!

All in all it cost just over £18 for all six of us, thanks to a couple of quid off for Bloke’s Trilogy Leisure card. And of course the money goes to this excellent independent cinema which often shows great films the big multiplexes don’t show.

During the holidays, the Kids’ Screen films happen every day except Sunday at 2.30pm, and during August you can see Transformers 3, Horrid Henry, Cars 2 and the Smurfs. It’s £4.30 for adults (£3.80 with leisure card) and £3.60 for kids (£3.30 with LC).

You can’t book over the phone, but there was plenty of room and we had great seats. A perfect solution for a rainy day.

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August 6, 2011 · 11:58 am

Please could everyone start realising the difference between regional and national press?

Just a quick one: while everyone is shocked and scandalised about the techniques of the national papers, there hasn’t been any mention of the regionals other than to lump us all in as one giant scummy mass.
The regional press used to be where the nationals got all their story leads. The very low-paid provincial cannon-fodder reporter, who had to use a contact book rather than a cheque book, did the ground work, did the interviews, got the pictures, played by the rules.

And then the nationals would send in their troops to piss everyone off and bugger off back to London to twist and spin the original tale. The broadcast media also get the bulk of their stories from papers, local and national.
The idea of local papers hacking anyone is pretty laughable. Most offices don’t even have a landline on every desk, let alone the cash for a PI or bung for a bent copper.
Since the switch to celebrity over story about 10 years ago, the regionals have seen less of their stories stolen. Now the owners of the regionals give them away for free.

But the local papers, mostly owned by corporations in some distant land, have been left to decay. They still have great trained staff, they abide by the law, they know their patch and their readers. They will usually have the same breaking national news as well as news that is actually of value to the locality for less than 50p a paper. Yet they are suffering from falling readership and chronic lack of investment. The single quoted annual salary of a Times columnist would pay for at least a dozen regional reporters.

So, as more and ‘exposures’ come to light, don’t lump your local in with all this distaste for the alleged reporting methods of a handful of national hacks, execs and private investigators.

Want news? Buy local. Buy your local paper.

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August 5, 2011 · 11:06 am

Camp Bestival 2011 review: Primal Scream, Debbie Harry, Amy tributes and Guardian shoulder bags as far as the eye can see

We’re just back from Camp Bestival 2011. I meant to ‘live blog’ while we were there, but the phone reception at beautiful Lulworth Castle in Dorsetshire-by-Sea is non-existent.
Which means it is a pretty good place to host a load of tech-addled parents and their phone-addicted offspring in the first week of the school holidays.

Hi Di Hi! (reads the massive sign they're leaning on)

We’re seasoned festivalers now. Helped enormously by owning a knackered rusty Mazda Bongo campervan whose seats-which-are-meant-to-collapse-into-a-bed but refused to budge on the evening we arrived. We had severe camper-envy on the distant hill on which the campervans were precariously parked.

Camp Bestival is truly the mother of all family festivals. Created by DJ and Dad Rob Da Bank and his fellow festival-loving music media workers, who have an uncanny ability to book a seamless line-up of classic bands, up-and-coming musical wizards, intelligent speakers and kid-friendly entertainers whose appeal spans generations.

We came prepared. We had a Luggable Loo in the awning and a garden trolley to cart any tired children around during the evening. The campsites had opened on the Thursday this year to allow a more leisurely set-up.

We were ready.

Friday July 29 – Priorities: Food, Carl Barat, Jon Ronson, Labrinth, Blondie.

We encountered our first long walk of many long walks from tent to site, found food, the cleanest composting toilets, kept the kids away from the queues for the fairground rides and heard a little of Jon Ronson’s book talk. We tried and failed to find where everyone had got their bright yellow Screamadelica Guardian shoulder-bags.

Castle field view

We split up late afternoon, with me taking the smaller two of our four children back to the tent for a chill-out and food bribes, while Dad and the oldest two watched Labrinth.

Back at camp we could hear ‘Sunshine’ sung across the valley in the blazing hot weather. Lovely.

We packed jumpers and waterproofs into the trolley for the night run, and got a plum spot to watch ABC and then Blondie, who did a fantastic set. We tried to explain to our sons why so many Dads were staring misty-eyed at Debbie Harry: She was hot when your Dad was your age. Sooo hot. And she’s still got it.

We headed home to the van each night knowing we’d missed lots of shows more suited to adults in the comedy tent and the silent disco but we were grateful the kids stayed up happy enough for us to watch the headliners.

Rain on Friday night didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits.

Saturday July 30 – Priorities: Find a Guardian bag, watch House of Pain, Mr Tumble, Mark Ronson, Groove Armada

What a day. A lazy breakfast and then down to see what was going on in the Castle Field.

Somehow we timed it perfectly to catch Dick and Dom getting thousands of children (and adults) to shout “Bogies” as loudly as possible.

"Daddy, they're singing my song"

Then to our three-year-old daughter Bonnie’s delight and bewilderment, the entire crowd sang “My Bonnie lies over the ocean.” Her song.

Perched atop Daddy’s shoulders, she then had a perfect view of the Zingzillas.

Her tiny mind was further blown when non-other than the iconic Mr Tumble took to the stage. And she didn’t bat an eyelid when Keith Allen wandered past with a pair of pants on his head. Best day EVER!

Back to the tent for half of us while the oldest boys were allowed a little free-rein to watch (running late) Miss Dynamite and Gentlemens Dub Club. We heard The Wonderstuff and Eliza Doolittle back up at the Hill.

Back down for a fat burger and chips, in time to feel the ground shake for House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around.’ Into position for Mark Ronson, who opened with Dave of the Zutons for his original rendition of Valerie, in tribute to Amy Winehouse. It was the first of two versions of the song by Ronson, who also included a cover of Winehouse’s awesome, melancholy ‘Back to Black’, performed by Charlie Waller of the Rumble Strips.

It was a scorching set by Ronson and the Business International and guests, including the Bike Song, Somebody to Love Me and Bang Bang Bang. And this wasn’t even the headline act.

We’d been looking forward to Groove Armada but technical hitches (lack of sound and the big screens) led to us getting bored and restless and heading back to camp.

But we did get a couple of bright pink Guardian bags that day. £1.50 for the paper and the bag came free! Bonus!

Sunday, July 31. Priorities: Find the corn on the cob van, walk the Dingly Dell trail, see Sound of Rum, Wretch 32, Katy B, Nero, Primal Scream and the fireworks.

By now, we’re all knackered from so much walking and so many late nights, but somehow all still positive. The kids had made friends with neighbouring kids on each side, and were happily kicking footballs at each other and clambering over better vans than ours.

In the morning run up to the site we spent £2.50 three times on identical copies of the Observer, just because we wanted the new bright green bags, emblazoned with Primal Scream’s anthemic song title ‘Get Your Rocks off.’

We had a wander and settled for lunch in the kids field to be treated to a troop of Indian dancers and acrobats doing daring deeds and telling a sad traditional story of a princess and her suitors.

Pauline Black and The Selector were Ska-ing up the main stage with relish, and we settled into our tried and tested spot to the right of the stage for Wretch 32. Only a short set, including an out-of-character cover of a Script song. He pulled it back with storming versions of Unorthodox and Traktor.

Katy B's in there somewhere, rubbish photo

Newly orange-haired Katy B, who was the breakthrough act at Glastonbury, proved her vocal dexterity with an energetic set including Easy Please Me, Katy on a Mission and Perfect Stranger.

We’d have liked her to do more, and she could have, because dubstep duo Nero were a no-show, having already had their place in the pecking order elevated. Bah, losers.

Their slot was stirlingly taken on by beatboxer extraordinaire, Beardyman (who as far as we could see had no beard). A sublime set, clever lyrics and amazing visuals. Son 2 turned to his Dad and said: “You have to buy his album, so I can nick it off you.”

Then it was the big one. What we’d all been waiting for, either to reminisce about life before kids to the soundtrack of the Screamadelica album in full (us) or see what all this Primal Scream fuss was about (the kids).

What a soaring, hands-in-the-air, Bobby Gillespie rock-god worshipping experience it was. By the time they reached ‘Come Together’ it was as though the whole field could solve all the worlds’ problems just by singing. Incredible. The kids totally got it. Eldest son hasn’t taken off the t-shirt which cost him all his weekend cash.

Settling in for Primal Scream

The evening, and the festival, was topped off by a truly awesome fireworks display from the top of the castle, which had animation projected into it while a booming soundtrack accompanied the visuals.

The kids were still buzzing with excitement by the time we got back to the tent (Bonnie was asleep in the trolley on the way back). Our airbed may have acquired a puncture but we slept well, and when it came time to try to get the seats back into postition to pack the van and drive home, they slid into position effortlessly. Obviously good karma.

Mr Da Bank is, we agreed, a Top Bloke for putting on the best Camp Bestival yet (and we loved the previous ones too). Many thanks to all who came together to make it a festival experience to remember.

No fallow year either: next year’s Camp Bestival is already scheduled for Thursday 26th to Sunday 29th July 2012. Book early!

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August 5, 2011 · 8:57 am

Will the ‘princess stage’ inhibit my daughter’s ambition?

Bonnie and Rapunzel

WE were reading a bedtime story about what Piggy Wiggy was going to be. The relative merits of employment as a doctor, firefighter, pilot and explorer were all debated.

Inevitably, I asked three-year-old Bonnie what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“A fairy princess,” she said, without hesitation.

“Yes, but when you aren’t being a fairy princess, what job would you like to do?”

“I’ll be a princess, and a fairy,” she explained slowly, as if I was slightly dim.

Bonnie is stubbornly determined to obtain every Disney princess doll, outfit and handbag available. Mostly unsuccessfully.

She hasn’t even seen all the films, but she knows who they all are. There’s Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Tiana (the Princess and the Frog), Snow White, Jasmine (Aladdin), Mulan, Pocahontas, Ariel (The Little Mermaid) and Cinderella (who until the arrival of Rapunzel, was Bonnie’s favourite).

There are also the unofficial princesses, in the form of Alice (in Wonderland), Tinkerbell and even the very foxy Maid Marian from the animated classic Robin Hood.

People with daughters tell me that this is just a phase that all little girls go through, but I don’t remember this onslaught growing up. Apparently the Princess franchise was only dreamed up in 2000, because Disney sales were taking a dip.

Should we be worried though, if our daughters strive to be pretty and well-dressed rather than clever and brave?

Boys don’t get verbally judged every time an adult addresses them. They might get “little man” or “Tiger.” Girls will get told they’re pretty, or that their outfit or hair is gorgeous, and get called ‘Princess.’ None of this, of course, is deliberately intended to stereotype them, it’s just the way we talk to girls.

There are those who think its damaging to allow our daughters to even be exposed to Disney’s addictive Royalty. Girls might do better than boys in exams, but the amount of teens I’ve met who aspire to marry a footballer or claim they need plastic surgery before they’ve even finished growing shows the toxicity of the superficial.

How many teen girls you know could tell you who Marie Curie was, or what Karren Brady does other than appear on the Apprentice? But I bet they could probably tell you the colour Ariel’s hair and complete biographies of all the Kardashians.

I know a Dad of girls who banned any Disney princesses in the house because he didn’t want them to think that life was all about finding your prince and getting him up the aisle.

I also know a Dad who banned his sons from having toy guns or any ‘violent’ characters like Transformers (and his offspring are about the most aggressive children I’ve ever met).

It’s true that all our boys had their phases – dressing up as Spiderman for an entire month or imagining themselves as Transformers – it passed, although they all still have their Bart Simpson moments.

I don’t want to stop Bonnie enjoying her Princess phase. We just have to balance all that pink fairydom with exposure to other, less sparkly things too. She’s already leaning more towards Lara Croft, chasing her brothers around the garden dressed as Cinderella and brandishing an AK47 pump-action water pistol.

I have my limits. You won’t find a single Barbie in our house, not until she gains at least two stones and gets a PhD.

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August 4, 2011 · 8:52 pm

Ten top tips for camping with kids

BY the time you read this, we should be back from our annual camping trip. For the few days before, I wasn’t in much of a holiday mood.

Getting ready for camping with kids is like mobilising a small army. Or at least involves searching every room in the house and spending a fortune on things you probably already had.

I’ve a few tips for those brave enough to take to the great outdoors during the summer break:

1. Take a high-sided travel cot for babies and an all-in-one snowsuit. It gets cold at night and the cot doubles as a playpen.

2. Buy readybeds for under sevens. (Preferably when they are on offer out of season). These are all in one airbeds and sleeping bags that fold up to the size of a football. It’s easier to persuade them into bed when there’s Tinkerbell or Buzz and Woody on the covers

3. Use ready-made formula milk cartons if camping with a baby. You can freeze them and keep in a coldbox to defrost slowly.

4. Wipes are your salvation against stinkiness. Baby wipes for bodies, antibac wipes for everywhere else. Hand-gel that cleans without water is essential.

5. Pack light, but for all weathers. You’ll need thick coats and woolly hats for night, foldable waterproofs for days. Slip on shoes to nip to the loo, wellies just because. While my sons would happily wear the same clothes to run about in and sleep in too, I insist on at least clean underwear and pyjamas. Shoes off at the door of the tent.

6. Solar fairy lights mark out your tent at night, and we have one of those flagpoles with a fish on top to help us navigate during the day.

7. Wind-up torches are noisy and don’t last long. Gas lamps sold in camping shops are a great investment, but keep out of reach of kids. Headtorches are a great invention. A solar radio will last far longer than your smartphone’s battery.

8. If you’re cooking in camp, do it on a proper stove. A disposable barbecue won’t heat the kettle. Mornings are more manageable with a cup of tea to hand

9. Use bribes, bribes and more bribes. Colouring pads, comics, sweets, crisps – whatever it takes.

10. Be relaxed. Yes, it’s dirty, the food’s cold and you’re missing Eastenders. Get over it, let the kids go feral and crack open the box of cheap wine. You’re on holiday.

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July 28, 2011 · 3:12 pm

Are we there yet?

image

There’s another one buried under all the luggage in the back…

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July 28, 2011 · 8:43 am

Don’t hate me, but the NSB waiting list has come up trumps

IT was Dougie who brought me The Letter. Our second son, proffering the manilla envelope with a Northampton School for Boys franking mark. His school.

With just a week left before the summer holidays, he wondered if he was in trouble.

As previously detailed in these columns, we have three sons in three different schools around Northampton.

Our first-born, Jed, didn’t get his first choice of the ridiculously oversubscribed school for boys, and has attended Malcolm Arnold Academy-nee-Unity-nee-Trinity for the past two years.

Much to our surprise, Dougie, a year younger, did get into NSB, where he has spent the first year of his secondary education happily knee-deep in sport, more sport, testosterone and sport.

Meanwhile seven-year-old Billy is endeavouring to make his own mark, noisily, at the large urban primary school his two brothers attended before him.

Back to the letter: it wasn’t about Dougie – it was about Jed. It was offering him a Year 9 place at NSB to start in September as two boys in his age group have left.

To say it’s come as a shock is an understatement. We’d applied two years ago, and along with hundreds of other parents, had failed to get a place. We’d appealed, and while 11 appeals had been successful, ours hadn’t.

We were told we could join a waiting list, but warned that the likelihood a place coming up was very remote. Indeed we reasoned that having been forced to take 11 more pupils in than they wanted, the chances of a place becoming available was about as likely as Jeremy Clarkson buying an electric car and joining the Green Party.

Stubbornly, I put him on the waiting list anyway.

And then last week The Letter arrived.

Jed was understandably conflicted. Having settled well at MAA, made friends, worked out which teachers he liked, been given opportunities to tour the Olympic Park, have lunch with Boris Johnson, act as a mock lawyer in a real magistrates court, play bass guitar, argue politics with Tory sponsor David Ross and talk on the radio about his experiences of the new academy, he was now going to have to decide if he wanted to leave, at age 13. We told him to sleep on it.

It was Dougie who volunteered the first advice. Dougie, 12, who has spent his entire life being known as ‘Jed’s brother,’ who was pleased to be at NSB without his older sibling.

“You should take it,” he said. “Think of the sport. Think how mad you get when you can’t do the sport you want at MA. . . Plus I want everyone to refer to you as ‘Dougie’s brother.’”

We discussed the pros and cons of each school. And although he was grateful for those friends and teachers who’d encouraged him at MA, and would certainly miss having girls around, he was resolute: NSB had been his first choice school.

Their facilities, like it or not, are amazing and the standard of teaching is proven. The range of subjects offered at GCSE is wider and the discipline strict. We agreed that while we felt disloyal, MA still needed a few more years to settle and that NSB could simply offer Jed more now.

I have spent the last week feeling guilty at our luck. I’ve so many friends whose sons also didn’t get in, and have spent hours, and plenty of column inches, raging about the unfairness of NSBs refusal to have a catchment area. I still stand by that opinion. If fewer boys were being bused in from Bedford, Brackley, Oundle and upmarket villages, there would be more places for boys who actually live in and around Northampton. It is, after all, NORTHAMPTON School for Boys.

Ultimately, however much we want all schools to have the same facilities as NSB, making ‘parental choice’ a redundant concept, they don’t.

We don’t even know if we’ve done the right thing. You take the best chances you can for your children and hope it all works out in the end.

One thing I will miss though: Malcolm Arnold’s uniform is far nicer than NSB’s.

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