Playground skirmishes raise an interesting dilemma

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Jonathan

Over the last few years I have written the story of our adventures as a family, and our children in a blog. I’ve shared countless stories, observations and insights because the story has remained our own. Events this week have challenged the future of me writing about anybody but myself, and I’m now not sure what the future might hold in terms of “telling the wider story”.

Cutting a long story short, our eldest daughter is being targetted at school by another child, and it’s effecting her massively. In the autumn her year group will be leaving primary school, and moving on to secondary education, and we suspect this change is at the heart of it all.

Some of the year group will be going to a school across town with an entrance exam, some will be be spirited off to various other schools out of town, and the rest will go to the state school just down the road.

As the children are divided, circles of friends are going to be broken up. Some children will have to find their place among circles they have never mixed with before. We suspect that’s exactly what’s going on with our daughter – a child who is about to lose many of their friends is busy acting the cuckoo, and has landed right in the middle of her circle of friends – manipulating, twisting, and turning them against each other.

It’s such a shame – and yet in many ways is unavoidable due to the kind of area we live in. A significant proportion of the families here are wealthy – the elitism, social sharpness, and choosing of friends based on their benefit to you kind of comes with territory.

In some ways I’m sad because the children are being exposed to it – almost being forced to grow up at last – but also happy because we managed to shield our daughter from that world for so long. We somehow managed to hold on to the happy-go-lucky kid that plays football for the town on Saturdays, laughs uproariously at berps, climbs trees, reads books, and does a hundred other things. We somehow managed to avoid a kid that cares what labels are on her clothes, what kind of car we drive, or what street we live in.

Anyway. I mentioned a dilemma in the title.

If I carry on telling the story of our life in a public forum, the tightrope I already walk is going to become even thinner. These stories about growing up, and social circles, and values, and aspirations are stories about real people who might read this and take exception to it.

Is it really worth the effort required to dilute every story – to abstract every happening to the generic, rather than share “my” views and opinions?

A part of this of course is where the story of the children becomes their own, and I stop telling it. I’m not sure we are there yet with our eldest, but these first struggles are probably a harbinger of it’s arrival.

Late Night in Monaco

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Jonathan

After washing the dinner things, tidying the kitchen up, putting the kids to bed (Wendy was out), and checking email last night, I finally made it into the lounge by about 10pm. After watching a few eipsodes of “Community” – my latest television addiction – I switched the XBox on, and escaped to Monte Carlo for an hour.

Observation one. Getting old is a bitch.

After half an hour of finding braking points around the track, and finally avoiding the barriers, I turned in some half respectable laptimes. Inbetween practice and qualifying, I went to make a coffee, and seriously thought my neck was about to snap off.

Observation two. I can still do it.

Against all expectation I started threading laps together like the video game player of old. Those years of introverted game playing somehow became unlocked, and huge lumps fell off the laptime. The team crackled over the radio that I had pole by nearly a second – shortly before I got cocky and wrapped the car pretty spectacularly around the fountain at the casino.

The race was a mixed bag – either pulling out seconds per lap, or becoming a panic stricken, barrier scraping, late breaking lunatic. Carlos Fandango had nothing on me.

After switching the TV off, locking the house up, and sneaking off to bed, I lay there with my eyes shut, seeing the streets of Monaco whistle past. I also wondered if the muscles in my neck, shoulders, and forearms would ever be the same again.

Dancing girls and unexpected credit

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Jonathan

Over the past few weeks my better half has been working on a secret project – at times our lounge has been carpeted with penguin headpieces, and at other times red velvet vampire cloaks. I was sworn to secrecy ahead of the shows staged this evening at the theatre in town.

You see, there’s this amazing dance teacher in town, who we’ve come to know through our children. It all started as both a thinly veiled strategy to create friends for our eldest when the adoption first went through, and to improve our youngest’s coordination (she had shocking motor skills following years of neglect early in her life). She has this gift of fostering enthusiasm in children, and the results that we get the chance to see perhaps a couple of times each year are beyond words.

During the performance tonight in front of the assembled parents of half the town’s children, a couple of moments stood out. Firstly, where on earth did our youngest learn to follow such long and complex dance routines so enthusiastically? Secondly, who knew the youngest daughter of the dance teacher was such a good dancer? (this is where I realise I’m the last to notice). I know I’ll be accused of bias because I “kind of” know the family now, but the difference in quality between her and the rest of the dancers in her routines was huge.

Oh – one more thing – imagine my surprise when the show ended, and my name came up in the credits… “Website design by Jonathan Beckett”… if nothing else, our eldest suddenly realised that what I do isn’t just tapping at keys in the study.

As we walked home, she hummed the theme from the TV Series “The Professionals” (the music for one of the numbers), and asked if I might buy her the new Madonna Album. I smiled as we walked along, humming the song, and skipping the odd step. I think somehow her football career might be coming to an end, and she might go back to the dance classes she walked away from. I bet the dance teacher saw it coming too.

I guess the trick will be staying impartial (she’s a far better dancer than footballer).

Car Crashes, Running, and Boobs

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Jonathan

While exiting the relative safety of the quiet country estate roads while cycling home last night on my mountain bike, something rather entertaining happened (although I’ll admit that this form of entertainment sits on a knife edge between hilarity and horror).

As I pulled onto the main road and began accelerating, I heard a screech ahead of me. The world turned into slow motion as it so often does in moments of blind panic, and I freewheeled while watching a car snake across the road, narrowly avoiding hitting the car in front. Then I saw her, and figured out exactly what had just happened.

Every year – in May – the town holds a 5 mile running race. I was supposed to be running it this year, but various pulls on my time caused any thoughts of running it to fly out of the window like so many flying pigs some time ago. In the weeks ahead of the local race, people start appearing in the early mornings and evenings around town – pounding out the miles.

Alongside the near collision, a girl was running towards me on the footpath. She was perhaps in her mid 20s, athletic looking, with obviously “enhanced” breasts that weren’t perhaps being controlled as well they might by her choice of sports undergarments, wearing a tight white lycra top, and it was raining.

My guess is the driver of the first car couldn’t quite believe their eyes, and lost all consciousness of where they were, and what they were doing. The car behind probably suffered the same fate, and almost participated in what would have been the most entertaining car acccident I’ve ever not seen.

Just imagine the insurance claim form… “I was driving down the road looking at the girl’s chest, when I hit a car that wasn’t there…“

The day after the night before

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Jonathan

I’m rapidly discovering that burning the candle at both ends doesn’t really work. It probably doesn’t help that I’m not so much burning both ends, as throwing the entire candle in the fire.

After finishing various chores last night, and working for a couple of hours on a freelance project, I finally got around to playing with the XBox 360 (not before I wrestled with the XBox Live connection dropping out – I had to put it on a fixed IP address, and set the DNS servers to Google’s before it started behaving itself). Big hint – staying up until 1:30am playing racing car games isn’t very good for your health. I guess it might have helped if I had been able to sit down before midnight with it – but that’s not going to happen for the forseeable future.

Aside from the XBox, I haven’t been well at all for the last few days – neither has anybody else in the house. Of course I didn’t tell anybody I didn’t feel well – I just carried on. Nearly passing out when I arrived at work yesterday wasn’t in the plan…

Anyway – lots to get on with at work.

Tuesday Morning Parcel Club

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Jonathan

It’s Tuesday morning after the bank holiday, and I’m sat at home, watching the minutes tick by. Apparently a parcel is “on the road” en-route to me via the Home Delivery Network. A voice on my shoulder is expecting them not to arrive – in the same way that they didn’t arrive on Friday (in spite of reporting they delivered the goods that never arrived).

So. Sat here. Waiting. I’ve emailed the office already and told them I’ll be late. I have a coffee, my bag is packed, and my bike is standing on the decking, ready to go. Of course my colleagues probably expect me to blow the day off – because they know what the parcel will contain (an XBox 360). I could never do that – guilt would eat away at me, and I would end up confessing hilariously.

Quite how I’m going to find any time to try the games machine out is another matter entirely. Even without doing freelance projects for people, my morning begins at 7 with the sprint to get breakfasts and lunches made, the cats and chickens fed, the children out of the house, and the overnight washing up put away. If parents I used to see at the school gate ever wonder where I am these days, they can probably hear me grumbling as I cycle up the road towards work before my day has even begun.

Evenings are a bit better, but not much. I typically walk in at 6pm to the handiwork that a working mum and three children can cause in the hour or two between their arrival and mine. The house I left looking fairly presentable will typically look like a minor hurricane passed through it. A foot of postal mail will have arrived, numerous pieces of paper from various schools, all manner of games kit will be heaped on the floor in the kitchen, and discarded lunchboxes will either be hiding in air-dropped schoolbags, or festering on the kitchen top.

Of course then you have dinner, and washing up to deal with. Some days it takes no time at all – but sometimes it comes straight out of the “worst case scenario handbook”. Wendy is vegetarian, and our eldest is Coeliac. Suddenly spaghetti bolognese requires double the number of saucepans, and our spacious kitchen looks like Apocalypse Now has been filmed in it.

The evening is rarely my own before 9pm these days; while I deal with the wreckage, Wendy typically does the bedtime routine with the younger children – mercifully, our eldest puts herself to bed these days.

Let’s imagine I do a couple of hours of work on a freelance project, if I have one – that takes me up to 11pm, after which I appear in the lounge with a coffee and sit to either watch junk TV, or noodle around with the iPad or netbook for an hour or two. Recently the US TV series “Community” has been our late night escape – watching the exploits of a ragtag group of older students at an American community college. I’ll admit to not enjoying a series so much in years.

Anyway… where’s this parcel?

When did she start growing up?

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Jonathan

Miss Eleven is changing in front of our eyes. Somebody seems to have taken the happy go lucky young girl, and replaced her with a demanding, lazy, resistive, obtuse mixture of argumentative hormonal horror movie creature.

While sat amid the self-imposed squalor of her bedroom early this afternoon, she complained about the injustice of us not “giving” her the remainder of the money she would need to buy a particular “thing” from a shop, or transporting her on command to the shop.

I have no doubt much of her attitude change has come from living in an affluent area, and many of her peer group at school having pretty much everything they ever ask for – mobile phones, ipods, the latest fashions, haircuts, skiing holidays… you name it. Against all of that we have no cleaner, we both work, and we are trying to instill the work ethic in the children too – making them earn treats through doing simple things to help us (preparing the table for dinner, tidying their own room, and so on).

In some ways her behaviour is her own version of attention seeking too. After festering in her pit all morning I offered to fill her computer (an aged netbook) with music if she helped tidy her room up. Just my presence in the room helping her made her do twice as much work as me. It wasn’t rocket science.

It’s too easy with the younger children making demands on our time to ignore Miss Eleven. She is often left out because she doesn’t push herself forwards, and then resorts to fighting against us to get attention.

We need to try harder…

Perhaps a quiet Saturday might be good

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Jonathan

It’s heading towards half past one on Saturday afternoon. The younger children are in the park in front of our house playing, the eldest is writing something at the dining table, the music player is pumping “Don’t you forget about me” across the room, and I’m sat here dribbling garbage into the blog once again.

I have to stay in today while waiting for parcels to arrive – only I don’t think they are going to arrive. Following the stolen XBox debacle yesterday morning, Amazon are supposed to be sending a second parcel. It was listed as “Dispatching soon” yesterday afternoon. It’s still listed as “Dispatching soon”. Having seen where the previous order came from, I’m not holding out much hope for it making it to me this afternoon.

The world seems to be conspiring against me at the moment. All I can really do is go with it, and accept the inevitable disappointment associated with pretty much anything I try to do (or cannot do because others expect me to either be elsewhere, or do something else).

I’m very close to walking away from Tumblr again – I guess you could say I’m in the “sitting on your hands” stage. It was broken for much of last night, and I really hate the new mobile app. It’s utility has been diminished to the point that it’s hard work to use or like. There comes a point when you start wondering if your efforts might be better spent elsewhere.

Anyway. The MotoGP qualifying session is on soon. A distraction from the washing machine, and child wrangling.

Come on Amazon! Improve my bank holiday weekend please!

Update… rather predictably, Home Delivery Network have not delivered the parcel. At 4pm this afternoon the “estimated delivery today” turned into “guaranteed delivery on Tuesday”. So, in summary, they have stolen one parcel, and failed to deliver the next one on the date I pay for an Amazon Prime account to guarantee. F*cking annoyed doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Of course now the parcel will arrive on Tuesday, and be delivered to my home address while I am at work. It will then either be left outside to be stolen, or go back to the depot.

The one where the XBox 360 was delivered, and probably stolen

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Jonathan

A few nights ago I ordered an XBox 360 from Amazon, along with a few games. It would appear the XBox isn’t going to get here because the delivery driver has either (a) lied and not delivered it yet, (b) lied and stolen it, or (c) left it without being signed for outside an office door that was open, and it’s been stolen.

I can’t quite believe that people are so incompetent.

I just got off the phone with the delivery company, who are going to try and get in touch with the driver. Apparently this might take 48 hours.

I’m furious.

Postscript – I called Amazon, and they arranged free, immediate replacement – to hopefully be delivered tomorrow. The order isn’t showing on the Amazon account yet, so I’m guessing we’ll have to wait and see.

Further update… Amazon processed the order 2 hours inside their own cut-off for next day delivery. It’s “estimating” delivery tomorrow. Lets see if the delivery partner chosen this time can redeem themselves.

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