November 25, 2010 · 8:30 am

The travel was more painful than the funeral

THE worst part of attending a funeral last Friday wasn’t the grief, but the travel involved.

It took four and a half hours to get to Newcastle, driving in thick fog, and a ridiculous six hours to get back, thanks to rush hour traffic and several ‘phantom’ jams (where there appears to be no physical reason for the hold-up, like an accident or roadworks).

Considering they were cooped up for such a long time, the kids stayed remarkably sane. “There’s no point shouting at the other drivers Mum, they can’t hear you,” muttered eldest son as I ranted endlessly about the idiot drivers without lights on in pea-soup conditions.

We only had to stop once each way for loo breaks and cake bribes, and Bonnie was persuaded to regress a few months back into a pull-up nappy in case of accidents. We got home, exhausted, at around 10pm. Ever since I’ve felt I need a hip and knee transplant due to the dodgy Corsa driving position.

We had decided not to stay over in Newcastle because Bloke is still working away and was only coming home for the weekend. He was due to fly from Belfast to Birmingham, and a train home should have seen him back by 7pm.

That was before the transplant plane crash at Birmingham which closed the runways.

After getting the only flight available, to Gatwick, getting a train into London, another to Northampton, and a cab, he was home just before 11pm.

Which of course meant he had absolutely no sympathy for my own epic journey. Bloody typical.

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November 21, 2010 · 9:00 am

The taxi-driving life of the Luvvie Mother

 THREE years ago our two eldest sons got the parts of John and Michael Darling in Peter Pan at Derngate, Northampton, alongside David Essex.

Jed and Dougie were aged just ten and eight, I was heavily pregnant with Bonnie, and Billy was only just four. After a month or more of ferrying them all back and forth from rehearsals and shows, over Christmas, we were all completely knackered.

And I decided then that it had been a brilliant experience, but we wouldn’t do it again.

Jed and Dougie in Peter Pan with David Essex, Christmas 2007

Fast forward a couple of years and we appear, somehow, er, to be doing it all over again.

This time in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, next door at the Royal Theatre.

Its different. Slightly.

The boys aren’t principal characters with lines, but part of the larger chorus. They are also, obviously, older and more independent.

So how do you suddenly find yourself as the parent of ‘performers’? Isn’t that the mark of the ultimate in pushy-parents? The uber-pushy?

Well no, actually, this has very little to do with us. Honest.

Jed has been part of Northampton’s County Youth Theatre group, which meets every Saturday at Clare Street, for years. Then Dougie joined too, and in a bizarrely casual way they caught the performing bug and wanted to audition for everything they could.

Usually I say no.

However, when they came home asking to audition at the Royal, I wavered.

It’s the Royal’s Christmas show (never call it panto), which I’ve actually been reviewing for the Chron for about the last 12 years, ever since the days of Michael Napier Brown and Vilma Hollingberry (that’ll show your age).

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is being directed by Dani Parr, who I’ve met a few times through her shows for kids, including Where’s the Bear and Flathampton.

So when auditions came around in late summer, I relented.

They auditioned over a weekend alongside a hundred or more other kids (most of whom wore ankle warmers and ‘jazz shoes,’ while my pair wore muddy trainers).

It’s a peculiar experience, the child-actor audition. There’s a lot of waiting around, and everyone has a number. Mostly you’re in and out, and unless they tell you to hang around, you know fairly quickly if they’ve been rejected.

At the end of this one, they called dozens of numbers and took those delighted children away.

We all assumed ours hadn’t got in and got ready to console them and bribe them back to happiness with promises of pizza. But agonisingly, those called out hadn’t got through, and there were more tears than at an X-Factor sing-off.

Rejection is the really tough bit for both children and parents to handle. Beforehand, rather than telling them how brilliant they are, you have to keep reminding them that they might not be chosen – because they are too young, to old, too fair, too dark, whatever you can think of – so the blow is cushioned. At the auditions I saw one parent really losing her rag with the stage manager, loudly demanding to know why her child wasn’t chosen. It was painful.

If chosen, there’s lots of form filling, and laying out of rules. There’s no payment, one pair of free tickets, and you must be on time and available for two months.

You have to get written permission from their headteacher for them to be out of school for some days in December when they’re doing matinee shows – which doesn’t often go down well.

Rehearsals began over half-term, and have continued at least one school night and Saturday or Sunday since. Towards the opening night, on November 30, they rehearse just about every evening and some days.

But they’re loving it. They’ve learned fight scenes with the ‘proper’ actors and a ‘proper’ fight director . They tell me they are playing a hippogryph and a satyr (I had to look it up).

They’re also evacuees, reindeer and baddies. “I’m an imp baddie, and Doug’s an ape baddie, so he doesn’t need make-up,” said Jed, before being tackled to the floor. By the ape.

It’s a relentless schedule. Jed and Doug are doing 22 shows between December 3 and January 8, including Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. But they are one of three junior casts doing a whopping 66 performances. At least this time, they aren’t doing matinees and evening shows on the same day, and get some days off. It’s an extraordinary thing for the theatres to organise.

For the parent, it’s nerve-wracking and a little isolating. You hand them over to chaperones for the fun part and just feel like chief taxi-driver and sandwich-maker. You also have a life and other kids to make feel just as special. The evening shows and rehearsals can finish late, and in our case, with Bloke working away, this means relying on the kindness of a friend down the road to pop up and babysit, or too frequently, putting the sleepy siblings into the car on the PJs. It’s not ideal.

If your child does show a leaning towards performing arts, it’s important to be both encouraging and grounded. Being in theatre shows is a brilliant ways to boost confidence, learn skills and make friends, and it certainly shouldn’t be seen as a step to instant fame and fortune.

If any of my lot want to tread the boards full-time when they’re older, that’s fine. But while they’re still kids, I’d like them to have a normal life and a childhood.

And maybe you have kids who prefer to sit in a comfy theatre seat and watch others dress-up in funny costumes. That’s our Billy’s plan anyway. . .

 • Tickets for the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe are on sale at Royal&Derngate, via the website or box office, on Northampton 624811.

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November 12, 2010 · 8:39 am

Welcome to Autumn Sick Week. *sniff

IT’S officially Autumn Sick Week. No really, it’s A Thing. At this point in the school year, pupils and students start dropping like flies. Sick flies.

It’s got lots to do with timing. The weather turns cold and wet. Yet anyone still living with their parents refuses to go out in anything more than shirt sleeves. Then they come home to centrally-heated homes which circulate dry, warm, dusty air.

It’s just after half-term, when everyone has confused their immune systems with lie-ins and changing clocks. Thenthey get tipped back into the bug-soup of school or university.

A year ago at my part-time job at the university, someone warned me about this particular phenomenon. “Don’t get to settled thinking you’ve got good attendance rates, they’re about to plummet.” And sure enough, the students became less numerous. I thought it was just that they’d sussed me out and decided my waffling wasn’t worth getting out of bed for.

However, true enough, after a couple of erratic weeks the classes drifted back to normal sizes.

This November too, my mailbox is littered with excuses for non attendance (I’ve got stricter). They’re all ill and “going to the doctors.” Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a cold.

When two-year-old Bonnie became uncooperative and downright whingy at the end of last week, I should have twigged. She was, to use medical parlance, ‘going down with something’.

Sure enough, after a couple of days inexplicable whining, over the weekend she became the snot monster. Uncharacteristically clinging to my knee and depositing snail-trails of nose juice all over my clothes. Refusing food at mealtimes but demanding ‘jooce’ and ‘toaaast’ at sporadic intervals.

“I poorly,” she announced to anyone who tried to change her plan to lie on the living-room floor watching endless re-runs of Peppa Pig.

When children are ill, there’s often little more you can do than dose them up with Calpol, keep them warm if their cold and cool if their hot, make sure they drink regularly and cuddle them if they’ll let you.

Bonnie only usually wants cuddles if you’re hugging someone else. But when she’s ill she wants cuddles everytime she wakes in the night (which at the time of going to press was about 15 times a night). I put vapour rub in a bowl of warm water on a heater (out of her reach) to help her breathe, and resign myself to several nights of broken sleep. It’s like having a newborn in the house again.

You do have the option of calling the NeneDoc out of hours doctor’s service if your child’s temperature gets high and won’t come down with liquid paracetamol and fewer bed covers. But thankfully, most children are over the worst of a cold or a bug within a couple of days.

And of course, once they’re feeling better, that’s when everyone else in the house catches it, one-by-one. The tissues pile up and you’re forced to re-arrange your working hours to cope.

I’m anticipating my own cold will be caught in about a week’s time, just when I’ve taken on my busiest schedule of work this year. Ho hum.

Oh, and did I mention this is also a point in the calendar when everyone starts bringing home nits again?

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November 10, 2010 · 2:26 pm

Firework fun? Or just standing around cold and wet?

FOR the first time in a couple of years, I succumbed to the offspring’s nagging to go to an organised firework display.

My usual objection is that it always seems to rain, or be the coldest night on record, or that there’s something better we could be doing, like watching TV, in the warm.

There’s the other issue of not knowing how smaller kids will react. As a toddler Dougie had the screaming ab-dabs at a cub firework display and we had to head home sharpish. He’s 11 now and loves ’em.

Living in a town centre rather than a village makes a difference. While many villages have a pleasant community event, with soup and sparklers and a bar nearby, us townies have to settle for endless pyrotechnics and the sound of gunpowder for two weeks leading up to and after November 5.

Quite frankly, it takes the fun out of fireworks when the squeals and blasts go off every night, all night, and wake up your kids.

However, there was an organised Fireworks Do at Casuals Rugby Club, where the boys play, so I relented.

As I stood for what felt like hours with our rain-soaked seven-year-old beside the dripping pushchair which held our indignant-to-be-strapped-in two-year-old, as our drenched eldest sons played football in the mud, I remembered again why I don’t do Bonfire Night. It’s cold, and wet, and boring.

Then the fireworks started. Youngest two instantly covered ears and eyes, until they were cajoled to look at the amazing sight of stars and colours and sparkles of light bursting in the sky above us. It was ten minutes of whizz-banging joy to make up for all the discomfort and waiting.

No one minded the journey home in a damp and muddy car, and there’s something to be said for the pleasure of getting back to a warm house and into warm clothes.

Next year though, I’m definitely staying indoors.

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November 6, 2010 · 9:18 am

E for effort: the painful process of teaching British university students

AS there’s plenty of chat about university places at the moment, I thought I’d dig out a column from earlier in the year featuring some of my beloved former students:

FOR the past few weeks I’ve been marking exam papers. And it’s made me realise how much of a under-used skill spelling seems to have become.

I appreciate the fact I’m a journalist, writing in the ‘Chronical'[SIC]. Being fussy about spelling errors.

But there’s a difference between the occasional typing error or misplaced comma, and the apparent lack of effort by people who are supposed to be in the top percentage of learners – university students.

I know, I know, it means you’re getting old when you start moaning about how badly young people are educated ‘these days.’

However, I know as a parent of primary age children that they still have weekly spelling tests and are expected to learn them.

So what happens after that? Do secondary schools mark down homework and coursework for incorrect spelling? Why do seemingly intelligent teenagers with reasonable A Level grades arrive at higher education with such a poor grasp of grammar? And then expect to get degrees in ‘writing’ subjects like English and journalism?

It’s not all of them, of course. Across the classes there are many whose use of English is perfect. More often than not, the ones who spell correctly are from overseas.

Mature students, and those with dyslexia, also tend to produce work that has been corrected.

Those who don’t bother tend to be late teens, early 20s, and British. It’s not just their work, their entire communication is full of errors.

I don’t agree that it’s texting which has perpetuated this laziness with English. After all, most use predictive text which spells words for you. Today’s students spend their entire lives talking to each other via instant messaging, texts, email and tweets.

Mostly I blame ‘It Doesn’t Matter’ syndrome. It’s just a quick post on Twitter, so it dunt matta. I’m just replying to someone on Facebook, so it’s informal. Teens will always stick two fingers up to the oldies by vandalising language.

And that’s fine, in their own time. But not when you want me to mark your impossible-to-decipher essay.

So how to fix it? This wasn’t just a handful of teens who didn’t know the difference between their, there, and they’re. This was the majority.

Most common offences seem to be the disregard of all capital letters, at the beginning of sentences or for proper names. Then there are words that sound similar but they can’t decide which to use and can’t be bothered to check. And apostrophes? Stuck in anywhere! (Mostly for plurals, or should I say, plural’s)

One of the first things I insisted on was that any emails sent to me had to be spell-checked, with capital letters in the right places and correct use of apostrophes, or I wouldn’t read them. Then they had to proof-read each other’s work in class, which bored them rigid and made them at least hit the spell-check button more regularly. And it has improved. One girl admitted she simply hadn’t noticed how badly she communicated. Another was delighted when he finally understood when to put an apostrophe in “it’s.”

I find it disrespectful to receive communication where people can’t even be bothered to put a capital letter on their OWN name, let alone mine. Is it really so hard to type the word you’re unsure of into an online dictionary? Or, heaven forbid, use a REAL dictionary?

So when I’ve been marking work which is littered with errors, it shows they haven’t bothered, so they lose marks. Assignments and exams should be a reflection of your best work, showing off your abilities.

Basic grammar and correct spelling are like table manners. It puts me off if you don’t use them.

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November 5, 2010 · 9:14 am

‘Bring me a Minion!’ (and a cinema booster seat)

The Minions

WE don’t get to the cinema that much as a family, due to Bonnie’s refusal to sit still for more than a few minutes unless Peppa Pig is on screen.

However, after much nagging by the boys, over half-term we went to see the new animation Despicable Me at Cineworld. (Billy and Bonnie have trouble pronouncing ‘despicable.’ So of course, we make them say it as much as possible.)

We have two cinemas in town but tend to always go to the older one at Sixfields, because the parking is so much better and the staff are good. But their top-brass could do with bunging some money at the tired old loos. Yuk.

If you have small people with you at the cinema, make sure you grab a plastic ‘booster’ seat on the way in. It prevents you having to fish out your distressed and doubled-over offspring from the innards of the folding seats when their bottoms inevitably fall through the gap.

The film was great, thanks mostly to the Minions, an army of little yellow pill-shaped workers whose toilet humour and sniggering noises made the kids belly-laugh every time they were on screen.

The basic plot involves grumpy, lonely, wannabe villain, Gru, adopting three little girls, Margo, Edith and Agnes, to use in a sinister plot to steal the moon.

Without becoming Disney-sentimental, it is a poignant and hilariously funny depiction of the modern family, and for once, little girls are the heroes.

We chose the 2D version over the ubiquitous 3D showing, because Bonnie just won’t wear the ill-fitting glasses.

Usually avoiding 3D makes little difference, but when the credits rolled, there was obviously an amazing spell of visual brilliance with the minions (who have names like Mark, Phil, Stuart and Dave) popping out of the screen towards the audience. So if you get a chance to go, it might be worth the battle with the specs.

As we were leaving, Bonnie said: “Mummy, my have min-yin.” (Translation: Mother, get me a minion, now.”)

And while I’m sure she’ll want plenty of minions running about after her when she’s older, for now a toy minion has shot to the top of her letter to Father Christmas.

Let’s just hope he can track down somewhere that actually has them in stock. . .anyone. . ?

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November 4, 2010 · 8:45 am

Swapping childminder for nursery: farewell second mum

 END of an era for the kids this week, as Bonnie left our faithful Childminder Claire and moved to nursery.

The change has come after six years, on and off, of family-home childcare, and it’s a bit of a wrench.

Our older boys went to nursery when just a few months old. Things have certainly changed in a decade.

Back when I had Child 1, if you hadn’t been at the same job for two years then you only got three months maternity leave. Now you can have up to a year off (mostly unpaid).

At one point having Child 1 and Child 2 in nursery cost me over £850 a month. Which was more than I earned. I was £10 a month down. But I did it to hang on to a full-time job and (I thought), career.

Scroll forward to 2003 and time for one year old Child 3 to need childcare. Fees had gone up, while our wages stayed stagnant.

I was recommended Claire through a primary school teacher pal. It was not only cheaper to hire a childminder, but I got a good friend into the bargain.

She looked after Billy full-time until he started half-day nursery at three-and-a-half, then went had him part-time before he started school.

When I was running late she collected the boys from school for me. When I needed holiday cover she took them all in. Naturally, when Child 4 Bonnie came along, I went to Claire for childcare again, although this time I was a freelance, and my hours were much more erratic.

When her own daughter, Leah, came along after two sons, Bonnie had a playmate the same age. The pair of them have been partners in crime ever since. They giggle like, well, little girls.

Bonnie might be older by a few months, but two-year-old Leah is definitely the boss.

But Claire has decided to pack in the childminding, and spend some one-on-one time with her own offspring. So Bonnie is off to the same nursery that her eldest brothers attended.

It was funny and touching when we visited nursery with the boys, who haven’t been there for seven or more years. Lots of the same staff who looked after Jed and Doug as nippers were still there, and recognised them. There was much hugging and cheek-pinching, and bashful delight as the boys were told how tall and handsome they’ve grown.

Bonnie’s started this week, and the early signs are that she loves it. Tables with dough on? Painting areas? Brilliant!

But I suspect that despite all the new friends and excitement, she’ll miss her little mucka. I think we’ll be popping around for lots of cuppas to stay in touch. After all, Claire’s been like a second mum to Bill and Bonn. She’ll be missed.

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October 31, 2010 · 9:33 am

Damn you cupcakes, you’ve killed the humble fairy

Bonnie makes cakes (but only eats the topping)

WHATEVER brought about this recent revival of the humble cupcake, it has left me with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I have a simple and usually enjoyable half-hour activity beloved by all the kids which usually results in something vaguely edible.

On the other, I’m eating way too much cake.

There’s also the competition. No longer can you get away with producing a plain fairy cake, perhaps embellished with a spot of buttercream or jam and some ‘wings’ gouged out of the top.

No, now it’s all muffin cases and three inches of pink icing, topped off with chocolate whirls and silver baubles. Or fancy hand-crafted decorations, fashioned as if by real tiny fairies, and delicately placed like artwork atop a light sponge scented with lavender and lemon zest.

Bonnie, aged two, isn’t so fussy. She’s happy just to play with cake mix and scoff any sweeties that might be destined for the topping. The only part she’s not interested in is actually eating the cakes.

Well, someone’s gotta do it. . .

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October 29, 2010 · 8:21 am

Do your children play Call of Duty, even though they’re underage?

THE major topic under discussion in our house lately has been whether or not I should pre-order the Xbox game Call of Duty:Black Ops for our eldest two sons.

They’ve saved up their money by selling their used video games, and want to get it ‘pre-ordered’ for once (I usually make them wait until games come down in price).

The biggest issue at hand is that CoD-BO (yes, get with the lingo Grandma) is certificate 18. Surely “no”, then?

Ah, well, we’ve already started out of shaky moral ground here, because we’ve allowed them to play the previous six versions of these games, which ranged from certificate 15. Our eldest sons are aged 11 and 13. So already, Very Bad Parenting.

I might scramble back some foothold by saying we didn’t buy the games for the kids. Bloke bought them for himself, and the boys were allowed to play them after he did.

Would we let our boys watch 18 rated films? Er, no. So why the double standards?

For the uninitiated, Call of Duty is a series of visually stunning, reasonably historical, scarily addictive first-person shooter games. Essentially war games with you as a soldier with a gun.  

We’ve had versions set in the Second World War, ones set in the modern Middle East, with levels in deserts, Arctic landscapes, shopping malls and dusty favelas. There is usually a ‘plot’ of sorts, which sees you having to make decisions about preserving yourself and your brothers-in-arms. But this doesn’t alter the fact that the game is about shooting people. You can even play online and ‘talk’ to other players via headsets, but this doesn’t happen in our house.

There’s no doubt that teen boys have a weird fascination with war and soldiers. Bloke is a total military history nerd. From an early age he was setting up armies of toy soldiers and replaying battles with his brother. He can tell you the formation of troops from Bosworth to Blenheim, how military strategies saw millions of men gunned down in the two world wars and yet is a card-carrying pacifist in real life. This, he argues, is because he’s well-informed about the realities of warfare, a view he came to through play.

Video games might be waved in the air by the scaremongering media as the reason for our violent society. And it’s certainly true that allowing your kids unfettered access to unlimited hours sitting in a darkened room shooting people on-screen isn’t healthy.

But ultimately, CoD is a game. It’s a well-rendered modern cartoon. It’s paint-balling without the mud and sweat. The boys are in no doubt whatsoever that what they are watching in CoD isn’t ‘real.’ The news reports and television documentaries showing the dreadfulness of actual war are real, and scary, and awful, and ultimately avoidable. CoD players have to problem-solve, make choices, plan and work as a team. They learn.

I’m not sure they do so from other games, like the ones where they take pot-shots at various mentally unstable cartoon rabbits (suitable for 3+).

I hasten to add at this point that when the older boys are allowed on CoD games, their younger siblings are elsewhere. We don’t allow any computer games on ‘school nights’ and usually restrict access to weekends. And they don’t have games or TV in their rooms, only in the living room where we can see what they’re doing.

We had a moment, last time a CoD game arrived in the house, where a level showed civilians being gunned down in an airport. We had prior warning of this moment from a gaming geek who told us that when we got to this level, there was a ‘skip level’ option. We skipped it.

Some parents argue that because their friends play the games, they should too, to avoid being left out of their social circle. I don’t buy that argument. Plenty of the boys’ friends are allowed to watch 18 horror films, and stay up every night until stupid-o’clock. But we censor post-watershed telly and everyone has sensible bedtimes (much to their disgust).

I also think its worth noting that 18 in movie terms means a lot more than 18 in video game terms. It’s still a voluntary system in the UK, with only the most extreme of games having to go up in front of censors. The game companies get a lot more media exposure, hype and sales for an 18.

This doesn’t alter the fact that we, as parents, have ignored the recommendations and allowed our boys to play CoD games before. Even the ones rated 15 are ‘too old’ for boys aged 11 and 13, despite their maturity.

Which leaves me on slippery footing. We know that our boys are not changing their behaviours due to a couple of hours war-gaming of a weekend. But am I being a ‘good’ parent by not stopping them playing an over-age game that involves killing?

It’s a decision I can delay at least a little longer. The game isn’t out until next month.

What would you do?

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October 22, 2010 · 8:34 am

New specs lasted four hours

WE picked up Billy’s new glasses last week. Despite this grumpy expression, he really was delighted with them.

His old pair had broken so many times, the lady in the opticians attempted one last repair so we could keep them for spare. We’ve had four new pairs in a year.

By morning break the day after collecting them, the new pair were mangled. They had flown off Billy’s face in some freak playground accident and someone trod on them the moment they hit the ground. Specs leg, nose pad and lens all busted. Billy was inconsolable.

At least we had a spare pair. But they lasted a day before one of his brothers managed to snap the leg off again during the usual bouts of sibling wrestling. I was dreading the call to the opticians. . .again.

Thankfully they are perfectly used to children’s glasses getting battered, and they can replace them for free within a certain time period. With an NHS prescription, you get a new pair for free each year from a selection or can put the value of the £35 voucher towards a pricier pair.

Still, now his ‘spare pair’ have one wobbly leg tied on with fuse wire, it’s probably time to actually buy some.

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