Tag Archives: children

October 8, 2011 · 8:15 am

Meet Jemima, the latest addition to an already overcrowded house

Billy and Jemima

MEET Jemima, the latest addition to the household.

Yes, yes, I know I was avoiding getting a pet as we can barely keep up with the four little monkeys for whom we’re already responsible.

But I was sucker for those big eyes, that doleful expression . . . not from the hamster, from Billy.

So for his 8th birthday, we surprised him with Jemima, a Syrian hamster.

Actually, it wasn’t even his birthday yet. I collected her the day before, and I had three-year-old Bonnie with me.

There was no way we were going to be able to keep a secret for 24 hours, even though she and I had several chats about what a secret was.

“I know secrets,” she said, slightly put-out that I would think otherwise. “Peppa Pig has a secret box and then George cries and then they have a secret club with Susie Sheep but Mummy Pig gets it wrong.”

To tell her NOT to talk about it when we picked up the boys from school was a big ask.

The older two, who were in on the secret, managed to talk loudly over Bonnie in the car when it seemed she was about to blab.

We realised there was no way Jemima was going to stay in our room overnight without Bonnie exploding with excitement, so we brought her cage into the boys’ room early. Billy was delighted.

We had a hamster before, when Jed and Doug were little, and to be frank, it wasn’t a happy arrangement. They were probably too young.

Doug had been nipped on the finger early on and had refused to have anything to do with the (oddly-named) Outfit from that point. Jed was sporadically interested but all the mucking out and feeding fell inevitably to me. When Bloke bought a more interesting cage with tunnels and pipes, Outfit stubbornly set up camp in one corner and refused to move.

Jemima is a whole different hamster. She was her pet shop’s ‘handling hamster’ during children’s clubs and so doesn’t mind being picked up and held.

She gets excited and swings from paw to paw along the roof of her cage when Billy gets up in the morning and comes home from school.

She takes to her exercise ball like an Olympic athlete in a Zorbing ball, shooting across the room bashing into the piles of discarded clothes and general rubbish scattered around the boys’ room. She doesn’t even wake them up when spinning in her cage wheel at night.

Sometimes, when I’m popping in to pick up the aforementioned laundry, she comes to see who’s there. I find myself mesmerised as she scurries around her cage, swinging and climbing, stashing food in her cheeks for later.

Both the older boys enjoy her company, putting her in her ball when they are meant to be doing homework. And as for Bonnie, she has introduced yet more conditions into her daily routine, including saying Good Morning and Goodnight to the hamster that so far hasn’t bitten her.

Of course, within the first few hours she’d had a nibble on both Dougie and Billy’s fingers. It was just after reminded them that fingers must never be poked into the cage as Jemima will think it’s a carrot. They learned their lesson, and thankfully we’ve had no nipping since.

In short, we’ve been very lucky to get such a lovely hamster. Only thing is, because she was adopted, we haven’t a clue how old she is. They live around three years, and we’re hoping she’s not actually an unusually active granny hamster otherwise we’ll soon have a houseful of heartbreak on our hands.

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October 6, 2011 · 9:29 pm

Dangerous streetlight switch-off may signal end of paper-round

OUR eldest, who turned 14 this week, started a paper round at the beginning of the summer. A paper round he may have to take early retirement from thanks to the council street-light-switch-off.

As his pocket money comes in the form of a £10 a month phone top-up, he was always moaning about lack of cash.

The Thursday paper round pays pitifully little for around 150 papers, but at least it’s regular cash in his bank account, independence and responsibility.

We’ve had a few lively discussions about it, as he’s already bored with the routine of dragging his heavy trolley around the streets on a night he could be playing yet more rugby.

And his plan to get at least one brother to help in return for him taking on their chores is proving unreliable.

However, since Northampton’s street lights have been turned off, we’re wondering if it’ll be us who call a halt to his employment.

Last week, despite the glorious weather, he had to come home early without delivering his full round, as it just got too dark to see. He ended up doing the rest the following day, on his birthday.

In our street, a town centre location, they haven’t turned off, say, one light in two on each side of the road, but turned off the entire right side of the street. The light from the two remaining on the left is too distant to be of help.

I’ve listened to the arguments about street lights. I don’t object to some going off as long as it’s not affecting residents. Or even all of them in the early hours or moonlit nights!

But when the clocks haven’t even gone back yet and you can’t see where your car is in the street, or where someone’s front gate is, isn’t that just asking for trouble?

I’m even thinking about investing in headtorches for the school runs once winter arrives. It’s a ridiculous situation. Especially when empty council-run buildings stay lit-up at night like ruddy beacons.

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September 29, 2011 · 2:25 pm

A little late, but I’ve never been good with figures: Numberjacks review, Royal & Derngate, Northampton

IF you’ve seen the Numberjacks TV programme on Cbeebies, you’ll already know it’s more odd than even.

What with computer generated talking numbers alongside human baddies, including a creepy bloke in a white top hat and frockcoat called the Numbertaker, yes, very odd indeed.

So imagine this transferred to a live stage show at Northampton’s vast 1,400 seater theatre – with fewer than 50 in the audience.

If you were going expecting a ‘like the TV show’ experience you’d have been disappointed, as well as £10+ per ticket poorer.

The only ‘real’ Numberjacks appeared on a giant TV screen well into the show. Numbers 1 and 4 staggered about as tatty foam shapes with legs, and watching a human ‘Number 3’ emerge from her parked foam ‘body’ was surreal, too much like that scene from ‘V’ and altogether a little disturbing. Almost as disturbing as the actress’s high-pitched shrieking.

The two main characters, a cleaner called Jamie (think CBBC’s Barney’s scruffier cousin) and waitress Astra (a younger, brunette version of Amanda Holden) managed to somehow string out a plot and interact panto-like with the audience.

For all its weirdness, Bonnie, who loves the TV show, and her fellow pre-schoolers were gripped throughout. Bonnie sat on my knee whenever the Numbertaker came on stage and has been talking about him as some kind of generic bogeyman everytime she wants to get out of doing something ever since: “I can’t, the Numbertaker will get me” kind of thing.

I don’t think it’s Royal & Derngate’s fault, but the production people of this touring show need to have a good long think about whether this should have been booked for such a huge space.

If they’d sold tickets at say, £3 a head to local nurseries and reception classes, and filled the Royal stalls, I think they’d have a larger number of children enjoying a theatre trip and a better atmosphere in which to show that both theatre, and  numbers, can be fun. If a little weird. . .

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September 8, 2011 · 8:34 am

All the fear of the fair

Bonnie and Billy fearless at the fair

AS parents living at the less salubrious end of Northampton’s Racecourse, several times a year we have to run the gauntlet of ‘The Fair.’

With all its bright lights, noise and smells, it gets our offspring in a frenzy when we unavoidably drive, walk or cycle past. It may say ‘only £1 a ride’, but that soon racks up when you have four kids.

When I was a kid the fair only came to town once a year. So excited were the people of Great Torrington in Devon that they saved up for it. They bought new outfits for it. And everyone secretly worried that their teenage daughter would run off with the bloke on the waltzers.

The fair was considered edgy and unpredictable – dangerous on more than one level.

Not these days. You can diary in the appearance of Northampton’s familiar family-run fair around the bank holidays. The danger comes not from the rides but from the mobile phones flying out of pockets.

Do you remember not being scared of fairground rides? When does the fear take over the fun? Is it when your wallet pocket starts to hurt?

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August 30, 2011 · 12:51 pm

Tears and tantrums (mostly mine): it’s uniform-buying week

WE’RE meant to be shopping for school uniform. I’m leafing through the endless racks of black trousers in BHS when I realise I’m talking to myself.

Two of the boys are across the shop wrestling over a tape measure while another and his sister have managed to climb on top of a Thomas the Tank Engine toddler ride in which they’ve already lost 50p.

Their coats and bags are strewn across the floor which other shoppers are having to step over. I shout. It’s all rather embarrassing.

One of the boys is ordered into the changing room laden with eight pairs of trousers in differing sizes, some of which are unhelpfully security tagged together in pairs, so when he emerges to show if a pair fits, he’s dragging its twin along like a bedraggled, dusty tail. None of them fit properly.

The shop assistant stares, unhelpfully, as I try to fold them back onto their hangers.

While another son grumpily enters the changing room, daughter decides she’s going to take every adult shoe off the rack and try them on. When this game is stopped she starts the wailing and flopping routine, refusing to walk or be carried.

Son emerges having decided the first pair of trousers he’s tried are fine and throws them into the basket. I look at the label: £16 for one pair. I send him back in with a £7 pair, knowing I’ll be spending most of the year sewing up hems and gussets wrecked by breaktime football. They fit. We buy two pairs. Then two more, cheaper, in M&S.

Here we go again then, one week to go before they’re back at school and the hell of uniform shopping is firmly upon us.

With three offspring in school, two of whom seem to grow every time they leave a room, it’s an expensive time of year – especially if you’ve just reduced your working hours for the holidays. I think this September’s uniform will have cost me over £300. And I’m a make-do-and-hand-me-down-bargain kinda mum.

It’s not just the cost, it’s the stress. I know you’ll tell me it would be a trillion times worse if I had three girls, but let me assure you, traipsing around the shops with bored and grumpy boys isn’t fun either.

I’d hoped that Dougie’s compulsory school uniform would last more than a year. It hasn’t. His blazer has a weird bleach mark across it, his tie is mutilated, his PE kit is either lost or too small. Along with Jed’s new kit, the official stuff is going to cost the best part of £200 when the shop opens this week.

Shirts are easier. Multipacks for boys are between £7-10 and Bill’s yellow polos cost a fiver for three. Job done.

But then there’s the annual trouser hell. Girls seem to have lots of styles and stretchy fabrics. Boys are stuck with flat front or pleated in stiff Teflon coated fabric. Two sizes – skinny or enormous.

Shoe shopping for our boys seems to have a basic formula.

The conversation usually goes:

Them: “I like these.”

Me: “They look like trainers. You aren’t allowed shoes that look like trainers.”

*repeat several times and get home empty-handed.

There have been some successes. A speculative TKMaxx run stocked us with rucksacks, coats and shoes for Jed. Dougie is still shoeless and Billy’s, bought at Easter, may have to last a little longer.

If you witness me having a nervous breakdown in a shoe shop later this week, keep walking, there’s nothing to see. . .

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August 26, 2011 · 8:15 am

No pocket money for my kids, they’re better off than me

DON’T talk about pocket money in earshot of my children, because they don’t get any.

Yes, you read correctly. That mean woman doesn’t give her children any pocket money.

Well, they don’t get any traditional, set-day, hold-out-your-hand-if-you’ve-been-good pocket money.

Last week a press release issued by a bank (I’m not going to give them more publicity) turned into a news story. Despite the recession and the ridiculous hike in the cost of living, children have apparently seen a rise in their pocket money.

Oh, and consistent with the unequal grown up world, boys get more cash than girls.

The figures show a third-from-bottom ranking for the East Midlands, with an average £5.62 a week.

The national average for 12-year-olds is £6.60 with a whopping 8p increase on that for being 13.

We used to give pocket money, briefly, when Jed and Dougie were aged around four and five. It was around £1 each.

We did it to encourage them to learn about money, about how you need to save for things you want, rather than nag your parents every time you saw a new toy/chocolate bar/balloon/ball/comic. Chores had to be done and behaviour good to earn that weekly hand-out. It could also be withheld.

It soon became clear that a) the boys weren’t very good at remembering they were due pocket money b) we weren’t very good at remembering to give it to them. Piggy banks became stuffed with IOUs.

It sounds a lot to me, and I know what would happen if I stood and doled out £5.62 a week into each of my kids’ waiting palms.

Jed and Dougie would race to the Co-op, spend it on sweets and then fight over them.

Billy would squirrel his away in one of his many piggy banks then nag daily about going somewhere to spend it all on Star Wars cards.

Meanwhile, Bonnie just thinks money is something to post between floorboards.

Unlike our parents’ generation, for whom household money talk happened away from little ears, we have always been candid with our offspring about cash, especially the fact we never seem to have much.

We’ve tried to be honest: there are things you need and the things you want. We taught them that if you want something you need to save.

They’ve all got junior bank accounts holding varying sums: the two littlest have healthy statements because their birthday and Christmas money has been saved over the years and I hold their bank books.

However the two elder boys were sent their own cash-point cards once they turned 12. This means they’ve all but emptied their accounts getting out a tenner here and there for sweets and pop, so I’ve taken guardianship of the cards.

Eldest now has a paper round which pays less than a fiver a week, but at least he’s earning.

While I might be mean old Ma, they are given ‘pocket money’ by relatives and friends. Both sets of grandparents sneak little envelopes of cash to the kids, as do fairy godmothers and child-free friends.

Embarrassingly, even strangers have given our kids pocket money.

Once, while waiting on the corner of Billing Road and Cheyne Walk, Billy, then aged 6, was reading aloud the faded inscription on the Edward VII memorial. An elderly gentleman, clearly delighted at this effort, tried to give Billy a pound coin, then realised it was a bit of an odd thing to do, and tried to give it to me to ‘reward’ him instead.

Similarly, at a recent concert, Billy was unself-consciously dancing his socks off, and a nearby security lady was so impressed she told him he should dance for a living and handed him yet more “pocket money.” Confusing messages: Don’t accept gifts from strangers/Money should be earned.

Without pocket money, the boys have become very good at negotiating deals between each other. They sell their used computer games on eBay and pool their takings to buy newer games, or computer game credits.

They also save up and contribute towards any expensive school or sporting trips that they know we just wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise, due to there being four kids in the family.

Now I don’t give pocket money each week, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get anything.

The older two got mobile phones when they turned 12, but not on contract. I pay £10 a month for each to have phone credit, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.

Then they get ‘tuck’ money when they go to various clubs and activities. That’s usually about a £1 each a couple of times a week. Or comics, which happens about once a month for the smaller two.

And there are the random, increasingly rare occasions when I’m in a good mood in a shop and they ask sweetly for sweeties. Add it all up and they probably do get about a fiver each, maybe just not every week on the same day.

Kids might be getting a rise in pocket money, but they are getting hit by inflation even more than us. Children’s typical purchases include sweets and chocolates, which have seen a 24 per cent price hike. Games consoles are up by 27 per cent, while mobile phones have increased by 10.4 per cent.

And children are affected too by cuts: many parents have reduced the amount of pocket money, or stopped it all together, while children’s bank accounts have some of the worst interest rates. Poor kids. . .

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August 25, 2011 · 10:33 am

We need safety in numbers at the Numberjacks

CHILDREN’S theatre can be a joy. It can also be a bum-numbing ordeal. I can say this because having had four children in ten years, I’ve seen it in most guises.

Northampton’s Royal & Derngate gets a huge range of shows for the good parents of the region, with its own award-winning shows and many touring productions.

Coming in September is TV shoe tie-in The Numberjacks. And quite frankly, it freaks me out. A combination of real-life kids and computer generated talking numbers and the weirdest baddies you’ve seen.

Mention the Numberjacks to my three-year-old daughter, however, and she’ll jump for joy. Loves ’em. Not freaked out at all.

So we’re going to the show when it comes to Northampton. Just to see how on earth they will be transferring that weirdness to the stage. You should go too. Safety in numbers. . .

The Numberjacks and the Puzzler

The press blurb:

CBeebies award-winning television series, Numberjacks, takes to the Derngate stage on Wednesday 14 to Sunday 18 September as part of their exciting UK tour, helping young children learn about numbers, shapes and sizes in a fun and imaginative way.

 Embarking on their first live adventure these ten superheroes need the audiences help solve tricky problems which crop up along the way, but watch out for the dastardly meanies who do all they can to disrupt proceedings.

 These horrid meanies include The Numbertaker, tall and silent he causes trouble by taking numbers and numbers of things and hiding them up his very long sleeves. He and the Spooky Spoon delight in stirring up trouble but with Northampton’s help the Numberjacks could win the day!

 Winning the Royal Television Society Award for the best pre-school educational programme two years running, and adheres to the Early Years Foundation Stage syllabus and the Primary National Strategy Framework for Teaching Mathematics, Numberjacks introduces children as young as two to the world of maths in a fun and lively way.

 Join the CBeebies heroes at Royal & Derngate when Numberjacks perform live on Wednesday 14 to Sunday 18 September. Tickets are priced at £13 and are available by calling Box Office on 01604 624811 or online at http://www.royalandderngate.co.uk.

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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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May 10, 2011 · 12:51 pm

Abandoned baby from Bedford will just have turned 16

A LITTLE jolt as I was just clearing through an old chest – as I found the cuttings from a story I’d done about an abandoned baby.

Back in 1995, on April 9, a newborn baby girl was found abandoned in an outhouse in Kempston, just outside Bedford, where I worked as a junior reporter on the Bedfordshire Times and Citizen.

Nurses at the hospital named her April, and as far as we were aware, they didn’t find her mother. She was thought to be of mixed asian-white parentage and police suspected that her mum was possibly very young and from a strict family who would have dis-owned her had she revealed the pregnancy to them. Terribly, terribly sad.

The cutting from the Beds Times back in May 1995

I hadn’t had children myself at the time of reporting the story. To be honest, I’d forgotten all about it. Now I have four children of my own, I admit I had a lump in my throat reading the story back, wondering what happened to those involved.

Hopefully, baby April and her mum were re-united. Perhaps she went up for adoption and had a wonderful life with new parents who couldn’t have children of their own.

If she wasn’t ‘reclaimed’, I bet that there hasn’t been a day over those 16 years when that mother hasn’t thought about her baby and her agonising decision to give her up.

Happy birthday April, if that’s still your name. I hope you had a brilliant 16th party, and that life has dealt you a better hand than the one you started with all those years ago.

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