Things I’ve learned from my children today
Some bakeries are better than sliced bread.
Boy One was doing his homework and I was loading the dishwasher. Dishwasher loading now has to be done with much stealth and silence as the slightest clatter and Boy Three hirples through to get in with the pans which probably isn’t good for him or the door hinge. So the dishwasher was being filled quietly and the radio was on. I’d probably just listened to The Archers – and was trying to figure out how come Sid had shuffled off while I wasn’t looking – so it would be Front Row, on about some arty thing that’s more interesting in a five minute chat than the flesh. And suddenly the radio goes “blah blah blah erotic literature blah blah”.
“What’s erotic mummy?”
“Get on with your homework.”
“What does erotic mean?”
“It’s to do with sex.”
“Oh. What’s an erotic bakery then?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“An erotic bakery?”
“I don’t know. I’m fairly sure they don’t exist.”
“They must have them in America.”
“Oh, really? I’ve never heard of them.”
“They had them in the Simpsons, so they definitely have them in America.”
Excess can be a source of pride.
The Panther of News occasionally puts on his special whistle to coach Boy Two and some other lads in the Quarrier’s FC Under Eights team. The season has finished and in a year the little players have gone from ambling around hacking at the ball to actually resembling a football team. One day I asked what the tactic was and he said: “We all try to kick the ball to K and J who go and score.”
To celebrate a year of football – Friday training and Saturday games – it was the prize giving in Port Glasgow town hall. A warm evening and dozens of over-excited little footballers hurtled around to disco music while their parents shouted at each other and drank warm wine. Eventually, I took an overwrought Boy One and Three home to bed and left the soccer hard-core to it. At midnight I found myself on the sofa wedging my eyes open and feeling that I might have to get used to the sensation of waiting up for a Boy. Finally they clattered in talking loudly. “I had eight Cokes, mum. It was awesome,” said a wild-eyed and sweaty Boy Two as he was chased to bed.
Focusing blindly on the journey not on the destination may take you somewhere you didn’t expect.
Boy Three is a climber. At a remove this is a good thing and demonstrates agility, strength, coordination and determination. However, lately it has made things a little fraught: He’s been found on the kitchen table, the bookshelf, the top of the stairs, the wine rack and the shelf where the phone lives. He’s usually caught grinning madly and casting around for something new to be-drool. So it was with much gusto he discovered that the box of nappies led to the roof of the doll’s house in his bedroom. He was however a little nonplussed to find that the roof of the doll’s house led to… his cot. And there he was astonished and disgruntled behind the bars with nothing new and interesting to play with.
We have an erotic bakery here in Tunbridge Wells. It's called Gregg's. They sell huge phallic French sticks and sticky iced buns with cherries on, which look like knockers.
Gregg's certainly fires up the passions here! My husband reckons they have the rudest staff ever. But perhaps that's because they have a saucy secret – and not just ketchup.