End of an era

It’s the end of an era: after years together, as a team, a family, they’re moving on to pastures new. Childhood is over, a new chapter is beginning, another phase. Something intangible is lost forever. It’s so sad.

Middle One leaving primary school? No, actually, I'm referring to the new Toy Story movie we saw on Sunday, but the parallels are uncanny.

I’ve spent a lot of the last ten days in tears and Toy Story 3 didn’t help. My blubbing started when Woody, Buzz, Jessie, et al, think they’re going to die: sliding toward the fiery abyss they stop trying to fight it, they look into each other’s eyes, they link hands. So brave! And I cried from then on.

(Spoiler alert: don't read this next bit if you haven't seen the movie.)

When Andy gives his toys away, I couldn’t look at the screen - they’re animated characters, for God’s sake, digital creations, nothing more than a load of pixels! But my children have grown up with Buzz, Woody and the gang, particularly Eldest, who’s the same age as the first movie (I think it came out in 1996). And there he is, sitting just a few seats along in the darkened cinema, next to his younger brothers, taller than me now, legs sprawled out in front of him, nearly all grown up, just like Andy. At least we’ve actually got him to the cinema with us for this whole-family outing: an increasingly rare event.

I suppose the crying began at the school play a week before, at the moment I heard, “when I grow older, I will be stronger, they call me freedom, just like a waving flag,” to be precise. Youngest had been singing the lyrics round and round the kitchen for days and their familiarity, and poignancy, was unnerving suddenly heard again in the charged atmosphere of an end-of-term production. It was too much for me. Growing older, getting stronger, all of it so significant at the moment with Middle One reaching the end of primary school and Youngest struggling to recover from a broken collar bone (again). And then on Thursday there was the leavers' assembly…

Strangely, I didn’t cry during the assembly itself, although I expected to and I took tissues along especially. In the event, the atmosphere was jolly, quite upbeat, maybe because there wasn’t any music or singing until the end. I heard that the Headteacher was determined there shouldn’t be any, “hysteria,” like last year. And there wasn’t. By the time Middle One stood up to read his memories, receive his award, take his certificate, it just felt right: time for him to move on, like Andy in Toy Story (see what I mean about the parallels!).

Still, I know I’m losing a little piece of him: his primary school persona, and our precious chats on the way to and from school. Inevitably, I will no longer be so involved in his life. I won’t see, and partake, in the little details. The secondary school world he is about to inhabit is largely unknown to me: I don’t know the lay-out of the buildings, I don’t know the teachers or the curriculum. It’s a whole new environment for him to explore and for me to observe from the sidelines.

Struggling him into his new uniform - the oversized blazer, the stiff white shirt, the scratchy trousers - he suddenly looked strange, alien, and just like all the rest: another sausage for their sausage factory. His clothes have been such a big part of his identity at primary school: ludicrously tight skinny jeans, brightly coloured converse trainers, rock group t-shirts, Rolling Stones courier bag slung casually across his shoulder: I will miss it. And I will miss seeing his familiar, loping frame descending the Year 6 stairs as he chats to his friends, and watching him rise from the bench at Friday assembly to read a piece of work. That little boy has gone, never to return.

Thank goodness there’s another, younger brother.

N.B.

Dear Guardian reader: any resemblance between the sentiments expressed in this blog and Tim Dowling’s column on Monday in G2 are entirely coincidental…and rather spooky! I wrote this on Sunday after seeing Toy Story 3.

And also...

Dear all and any-type of reader: this is my last entry for a while. I’m taking the summer off and will return to blogging the week beginning Monday 6^th September. Happy holidays!

Heartbreaker

A teacher rings to tell me there's been an accident at school. I’ve just plonked down at my desk having whizzed round the house, at top speed, eschewing my usual coffee and chat after pilates on Thursday, to tidy up and make beds in preparation for the grandparents’ visit. They’re on the train right now from Yorkshire, coming to see the youngest two in the school play tonight.

It happened during rehearsal this morning, says the teacher. Youngest fell off a bench and seems to have hurt his collarbone. Again? It must have re-fractured, I say. This is one of those moments, I want to rewind, put the phone down and pretend it isn’t happening: the play tonight, plans for the next few weeks, the much anticipated holiday in Spain, sports camp for the youngest ones so that I can work, all of it flashes before me like a roll of film played out, rewound and played anew. I can hardly bear it.

Middle One has lots to do in the play. He dances, he plays guitar, he acts the part of a traveller who comes to the kingdom, solves a mystery and is crowned King. And Youngest has a couple of lines too, he says, “he might be the paparazzi!” and, “let’s dance!” So he's thrilled. He’s doing Michael Jackson’s Moon Walk as well and he’s over the moon about that. It will be the last time they’re both in the primary school play and the first, and last, time they’ve been on stage together.

At school, sitting alone on a tiny chair, looking pale and hunched and fragile, his arm slung across his body in a flimsy piece of gauze, as soon as I see him I know he's broken something. That look is familiar, except, hang on a minute, that's the other arm! It’s not the bone he broke a few weeks ago, it's his right side this time!

He’s so little, and skinny, and he struggles with so much, the mere thought that he won’t be able to take part in the play after all, when he’s been so looking forward to it, with his two precious lines, and the Moon Walk, in front of his Grandparents…it’s too dreadful. I crouch on my knees to look into his big, doleful eyes. “I'm so sorry,” I say, “this is so sad, it’s breaking my heart. It’s just breaking my heart.”

Luckily, I’ve brought a carton of juice, for Youngest, and lots of spare cash for the car park, anticipating the inevitable trip to A&E. But what about the grandparents? How will they get in the house if I’m not there? I ring my mother’s mobile. No reply. Then I remember, she only switches it on when she wants to ring someone. I ring husband and he says he’ll try to get through, I also ring a friend. Luckily, I happen to see them emerging from the Tube as I drive past and pull over like a lunatic (double red route and a bus lane) handing them the key and shouting out the alarm code as I go.

After two and a half hours in A&E, Youngest and I finally escape only slightly better off than before, and a great deal more frazzled: he has a marginally better sling and I have official confirmation that the right collarbone is broken. Oh, and he decides he’s going to perform in the play tonight come hell or high water. Really? Are you sure? Yes! The show will go on.

I’m so over-wrought by the time I get to the performance that I sob all through the start as cute little Year 1’s sing the Africa song. Middle One sees me from his spot in the wings and looks horrified; but it’s all wonderful. How Youngest manages to dance in the middle of a throng of thirty gyrating Year 3’s without being bumped or knocked is a miracle. Had I known quite what he was proposing I’m not sure I would have agreed, but he does it and it’s fab. By the end of the hour, after a heady cocktail of nervous energy, adrenalin and pride I can hardly speak.

Later, gingerly helping Youngest lie back on his pillows as I put him to bed, I notice tiny bits of disco make-up still sparkling on his eyelids.

“Is your heart okay now, Mummy?” He asks. “It’s not still breaking is it?”

One small step for him, one giant leap for me.

5.10 pm.

I’m sure he’s fine. He’s eleven. Just think what I did when I was his age. And he’s sensible, mature for his age.

5.15 pm

Rehearsals finished at 5.00. With a bit of chat, walking down the stairs, meandering out of the playground, then down the High Road…

I’ll just start dinner, that’ll take my mind off it. I need to make a white sauce for the lasagna...

If any of this anxiety sounds familiar you’re probably the mother of a newly independent child, like me, and you have my deepest sympathy. It’s late afternoon on Wednesday, I’ve already picked up Youngest from school and now I’m waiting for Middle One to appear - one of his first forays into freedom, walking back from school all this week after rehearsals for the end of term play. I’ve been here before, of course, with Eldest – and have my regular panics about him still - but this is different, I’m not used to this yet, and despite the fact he would never admit it, neither is Middle One.

5.20 pm

The doorbell rings and I rush to answer it expecting to see a familiar skinny frame through the glass, to hear a laconic response as I open the door. But no. It’s two charity workers wanting money. I’m unreasonably short. I was expecting my son, I say, as if it’s their fault he’s not standing there on the step.

I go back to cooking, thinking of all the things that could happen, I decide getting run over is most likely. I think about that driveway into Tesco Express, the way cars whizz in at top speed. I think about the programme I caught the other night on BBC Four, In Loving Memory, with all the sad little ways in which people commemorated the loss of their loved ones, and in particular, I think of the scene in which a mother takes the camera crew into her 15 year-old daughter’s perfectly preserved bedroom: here’s her teddy, here are her photos, here is her handprint photocopied for an art project. The mother gently rests her own hand on top of her dead daughter’s ghostly imprint. “We were very alike,” she says, and she cries. Again.

5.25 pm

I remember, when we lived in our old house, the first time I let the oldest ones go to the sweet shop on the corner; I stood by the gate watching them run down the road. Only twelve houses or so along from us, no roads to cross, and I’d already told Mr Yogi, the lovely shopkeeper, that they were coming, asking if he would keep an eye on them, and I know he did. But I still worried.

I remember the time we first let them go swimming at the local pool without us, after they nagged and nagged. They’d only been gone ten minutes when I changed my mind. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea? Eldest was 11, but Middle One was still only 9. Was it too young? Would Eldest be sensible and wait for Middle One? I fretted, and after a long while, when they weren’t back dead on time, lost my nerve completely asking husband to look for them. He went off on his bike. There they were, just round the corner, walking very slowly, bickering all the while, Eldest just about to give Middle One a sneaky little kick. And we were so cross, we said they weren’t allowed to go anymore.

5.30 pm

None of this helps. I look at the clock. Rehearsals finished half an hour ago. It doesn’t take half an hour to walk back. I drop the spoon in the saucepan, pick up the keys, walk out into the street and peer down the road. Nothing. I go back in. Will you go and look for Middle One? I say to Eldest. Just walk down the road a bit? I have to cook, Youngest has a friend over. Eldest nods and goes to look for his shoes. I stir the sauce. This is it. What shall we do if he doesn’t come and we can’t find him? Who can I ring? Will anyone still be at school? The doorbell rings. It’s Middle One leaning against the porch, hand on his hip.

“You were a long time,” I casually remark as he lopes into the house and throws down his bag.

“Yeah, it took F a really long time to find his things. Then I went to Tesco for a cinnamon whirl.”

Of course you did.

“Okay,” I shrug, giving him a relieved little hug and kissing the top of his head.

I go back to the sauce and almost straightaway forget that I was ever worried.

Until the next time.

The school trip

We’re on our way to Dulwich Picture Gallery for the Year 3 school trip.

“What’s got molars and a crooked nose?” says Youngest’s classmate, L, sitting next to me on the coach.

“Molars? What, like teeth?” I say.

“No!” Says L, making little imaginary dots on his cheeks. “Molars, like this, on your face!”

“Oh! Moles.”

“Yes. That’s what I said, molars on your face.”

I let it go. He’s half French. “I don’t know, what has moles and a crooked nose?” I say.

“Ugly.”

Incomprehensible riddles aside, I’ve landed on my feet here. No public transport (hooray!) so no tube changes with no herding six unruly boys (they always give me boys) on and off the Northern line. And no sweaty-palmed anxiety either, as one of my party runs ahead, turns a corner and is suddenly, albeit temporarily, lost.

No, this is the crème de la crème of school trips, the Thompson a-la-carte, rather than the day trip to Butlins. Metaphorically. They don’t actually take children to Butlins, although having said that…

Going back a few years there was a trip, when Eldest was in reception, that, even after all this time I haven’t expunged from the memory. Like some sort of post-traumatic school trip stress, it’s seared in there.

It was very hot, like today, but unlike today there wasn't an air-conditioned coach to waft us to and from our destination, nor fresh, green manicured lawns with mature oaks to sit under for a snack when we got there.

For some baffling reason we set off by train to a funfair in Battersea situated on the baking, featureless, tarmac surrounding the old power station. Upon arrival each adult was given tokens, for rides, and that was it. Just me, my group of boys (of course), the baking sun and about four hours to kill.

Of all the horrific moments that day - and there were many - two people’s expressions stay with me. Eldest’s stricken little face when he came off a huge bouncy castle at the entrance, rather than the exit, and for several excruciating moments couldn’t see me through the crowd. (I could see him, but getting to him, while shepherding four others, was another matter.)

And the unflappable reception teacher. Slim, tall, elegant, her smooth grey bob still as smooth and grey and bobbed at the end of the day as it had been at the beginning. It was just her smile, while every bit as firmly attached, which was rather more ruffled.

But, as I say, Dulwich Picture Gallery is nothing like that. There’s a café-stop built into the schedule (despite word on the street that coffees for parents are now strictly forbidden), and lots of parents too, so groups are small and manageable. What with clean, fresh loos and plenty of opportunity to sit down, every box is ticked.

There is, alas, still the obligatory getting involved, as Lois, actor-turned-drama-teacher (all smock dress, rounded vowels and hair scooped-up sixties-style), enlists our help on the bongo drums. But apart from that, it's a lovely day and a perfect end to the year.

On the way back, I sit next to L again.

“What has more molars and a crooked nose?” He says.

“Don’t know.” I say. “What has more MOLES and a crooked nose?”

“Still ugly.”

How do I look?

I’m looking at clothes in Marks and Spencer trying to choose something for the boys to wear to a wedding on Saturday. I like the white granddad shirt and beige waistcoat combos. They don’t have them in Youngest’s size but they do have one age 11, for Middle One, and one age 14, for Eldest. Can I get away with it? I think the last time they wore matching clothes was on holiday in the Caribbean six years ago. I still have the photo, three boys on the beach, standing in descending order sporting brightly patterned short-sleeved shirts from Gap. I love it.

I have something for Youngest, so I buy the shirt and waistcoats in a mad flurry of optimism. Back home I remove the labels from the bigger set, leaving it lying on Eldest’s bed and later in the evening he comes downstairs holding it aloft, between thumb and forefinger, like a piece of limp road kill.

“Is this meant for me?” He says.

“Um, well, I thought…” I say.

“You’re joking, right?” He says.

“Yes, well, I know it’s not very trendy, I just thought it’s for a wedding and…”

“But I have a really nice shirt from Top Man I’m going to wear. That tight one.” He says.

“Yes. Of course, that’s fine.” I shuffle away to get on making the supper. Silly me.

I should remember that what you wear when you’re a teenager is hugely important. How can I forget all those sweaty, static hours trying things on in Chelsea Girl? Marks and Spencer is just never going to cut it.

When I was 14 my mother let me have my monthly Family Allowance. I planned each buy meticulously, coordinating everything; some of those outfits are etched in my memory still. Like the pink jeans, matching jacket, stripy top and crocheted scarf from Dotty P’s (as modelled by the mannequin in the window). I bought that for the school trip to France and my best friend, Susie P, copied it in blue (you know it’s true, Susie).

We wore our matching ensembles on the coach and a cool French boy gave me a vulgar non-verbal come-on, which I took to mean the outfit was a big success (but later realised might have been an insult). Then there was the black and gold ra-ra skirt with matching gold lame leggings. Strangely, I didn’t manage to pull in that…

Despite being all grown up now I’m still prone to the odd sartorial meltdown. Earlier this year, when husband and I were going to a trendy do for a tenth wedding anniversary (important because lots of friends from uni would be there), I was overwhelmed by three possible choices: sexy slut, sophisticated but boring or trendy but no shape to it. Initially I opted for sexy slut (of course) but then had a crisis while appraising myself in the mirror at the last minute.

“Do I look tarty?” I asked husband. Big mistake. Just in case there are any men reading (I know it’s unlikely), the answer to that question is, no, you look great. In fact, that's always the answer to the question, just so you know.

Unfortunately, husband didn’t know (yet). After the briefest of glances he said, “Well, yes, you do a bit.” Fatal. I had a fit - during which I changed outfit more than once - and asked for his opinion again. He replied, calmly, that he really didn’t want to get involved. Another big mistake. We rowed all the way to the Tube and onto the tube and while changing tube from the northbound Northern line to the northbound Victoria line, until I sat on a bench (to get his attention) refusing to go any further.

“I’m not moving until you apologise.”

“For what?” husband asked, fairly reasonably.

“For saying that you didn’t like my dress and then not offering any more advice.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like your dress. I can’t say anything right,” he complained, “I just don’t want to get involved.”

“But you ARE involved. You offered an opinion at the beginning. You were up to your neck in it!”

He started to laugh and I tried desperately not to join in. Then I started to laugh too. Sitting next to each other on a bench at Stockwell underground station with people dashing past, all of them giving us a much wider birth than strictly necessary, we laughed hysterically while I was wearing the trendy dress and wishing I’d worn the sexy one.

After the incident with Eldest and the waistcoat I lose confidence and wait another day before trying to get Youngest to model his new shorts and shirt (he thinks just holding them against him will suffice). As he’s putting them on, Middle One strolls in from the garden and spies the Marks and Spencer white granddad shirt and waistcoat combo (age 11) on the hanger.

“Is that for me?” He says.

“Yeees…” I say, hesitantly.

“Cool!”

Thanks for the memory

“Thanks for my birthday Mummy,” says Eldest as he gets up from the sofa to go to bed. He bends his head towards me and I put my arms around his neck so I can kiss him and ruffle his hair, “and thanks for not embarrassing me!” High praise indeed.

He was 14 on Sunday and instead of a party with balloons, pass-the-parcel and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, like the one we held for our eight year-old three weeks ago, we agreed he could take some mates for a meal. He wanted to “go Nando’s,” and he didn’t want us tagging along.

Fair enough, but what about paying for it? “I could turn up and pay at the end if you like?” I suggest, hopefully. “It doesn’t really work like that,” Eldest patiently explains, “you pay first.” So that’s classy. We agree to give him the money and he looks absolutely delighted.

You don’t really want your mum turning up at Nando’s when you’re 14. I get it. I want him to have what he wants for his birthday, I just have to accept that doesn’t include me anymore. But we did still celebrate as a family in the morning. There was the customary opening of presents followed by the fry-up Eldest requested and then a cake with candles in the afternoon before his mates turned up. Did he want to wait and have the cake with his friends? No, he didn’t. I guess that’s embarrassing too when you’re 14. Funny, because by the time you’re in your forties it’s really rather nice.

Negotiation. At this age, it’s all about negotiation, and so far (cross fingers) it seems to work. There’s none of the conflict and emotion I had with my mother mostly because Eldest is so calm and laid-back about everything. He didn’t want me to go to Nando’s, or sing happy birthday with his friends, but he’s tactful, he doesn’t say, “Oh my God! That would be sooo embarrassing!” He just shrugs, raises his eyebrows a little and suggests we might not do it like that.

Then there was the sleepover on Sunday night (it was an Inset next day) when I agreed not to embarrass him by telling them to go to sleep at 10.30 and checking if they’d brushed their teeth, I said they could stay up, so long as we didn’t hear anything. Apparently, I’m the only parent who tells them to go to sleep at sleepovers. Yeah, right. Whatever. They all slept in the basement and we didn’t hear anything, so it worked; I guess.

It’s all a far cry from the first time, his real birthday, that June dawn 14 years ago, still my favourite memory and the one I use late at night when I’m trying to sleep. The other two births were lovely too but Eldest’s was special because…well, because it was first and it was good, great even. I know it’s not what everyone wants to hear, especially other mums with traumatic birth stories - and there are so many of them - but it has to go right sometimes. What can I say? I must be a peasant or something: I could have crouched in a field, had him and carried on threshing.

Instead of a field I almost had him in the car on Battersea Bridge on the way to the hospital. There was no time for pain relief and no time to ask for the water birth I wanted either, (as explicitly requested in my three-page birth plan. What a waste of an essay that was!). I arrived in a sort of animal trance, threw off my clothes, climbed on the bed and just managed to grunt the word, “water!” So they brought me a glass of the stuff.

“You’re going to have this baby within the hour,” said Jane, the wonderful young Australian midwife. It was just the three of us in the room – husband, midwife and me and dawn was breaking over the Chelsea rooftops: the beginning of a stunning summer day - and a new life.

That quiet early morning, the view through the window, the lack of intervention, the encouraging midwife, I think it all helped to get me through it, and I told myself, I can do this, it’s what I was made for. I’ve certainly never felt stronger or more alive and I guess there was some sort of natural high that kicked in as well. Of course it hurt, it hurt like hell; I didn’t wear the gown they gave me, and I didn’t lie down either, I knelt, with my arms over the head of the bed, and I had him, like that. It was wonderful.

Immediately before the cord was cut or anything, I took him in my arms, held him close and looked into his eyes, and he looked straight back at me. He seemed so wise, so knowing that I felt he was looking into my soul and we knew each other straight away. And I often think, despite all the ups and downs, all the inevitable frustrations associated with raising a rather lazy teenaged boy, maybe that’s why we still manage to get on, most of the time, because there was some sort of deep understanding between us right at the start. Probably sentimental rubbish, but I like to believe it.

Star Gazing

I’m in Claridges sipping champagne with Kristin Scott Thomas. Actually she’s sitting at the next table but let’s not split hairs. I was the first to spot her. You know when you see a celebrity but you’re not completely sure? It happened with Natalie Imbruglia in a bar. I thought: that woman looks like Natalie Imbruglia, just paler and much thinner. Then realised it was Natalie Imbruglia and she is paler and much thinner, if that’s possible. She looked ill. It must be her, I reasoned, she’s wearing a bowler hat indoors, in July. So it was a tad embarrassing when a member of our party, all a bit pissed and over-excited, nicked her hat and ran off.

It’s the same with Kristin Scott Thomas. Not the hat nicking thing, the pale and thin thing. But it’s definitely her. The friend I’m sitting with is thrilled, she says it’s because there weren’t many celebs where she grew up in Coventry. There weren’t many where I grew up in York either, just Judy Dench. But apparently they’d have killed for a Judy Dench in Coventry. She is a Dame now I suppose…Judy Dench, not my friend.

I used to work in the media, you see, where celebs were ten a penny. I’ve worked with Joanna Lumley, I went to her house and she gave me champagne darling. And then there was lunch with Michael Palin, just me, the manager of my department and Michael. And I’ve rubbed shoulders with any number of early 90’s BBC has-beens, you know the sort: Jilly Goolden, Tony Slattery, people we never hear about now. I’ve got a great story about Tony Slattery I often reel out at dinner parties, and one about Jilly Goolden. If you haven’t heard them ask me - but chances are you’ve heard them.

I got to know Bernard Cribbins quite well when I worked on Jackanory (how old does that make me sound, for God’s sake?), and once had drinks, at Soho House, don’t you know, with an actress friend (called Beverly Hills, I kid you not) and her great mate Meera Syal. So, maybe that’s why I’m not that bothered about Kristin Scott Thomas.

But I do love that movie, The English Patient, fabulous. I just cannot agree with another wonderful friend of mine, let’s call her G, who, although pretty perfect in all other respects insists Meet The Fockers is better. Maybe it’s because she’s foreign, she doesn’t get all that British tight-lipped restraint in The English Patient. Well I’m sorry, but that sex scene, the one on Christmas day, in the heat, while all the soldiers are celebrating and they’re doing it standing behind a wall? Need I say more?

Right now Kristin Scott Thomas is eating tiny cucumber sandwiches like butter wouldn’t melt. I really can’t imagine her doing it against a wall. But that’s great actresses for you.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, I met the Queen at Buck House (as husband endearingly calls it), special invitation, arrived by limo because I worked on a programme about her. Then, afterwards, caught a Network South East train home from Victoria Station to my bedsit in Streatham. Sat next to a man eating a burger. Bit surreal. But all that was many moons ago, in another life, or rather, a life. Nowadays I have to make do with Arthur Smith in the local café, or that Andrew Rawnsley chap on the way to school. He writes for the Observer, you know. Well, it impresses me.

Funny thing about celebrities, however minor, they always know when you know, you can just tell, it’s almost imperceptible but it’s there, that telltale little look, they’re watching for it. Kristin Scott Thomas knows we know and for some reason I find that annoying.

Here at Claridges, with the chandeliers, and the music, and the dainty little cakes like miniature hats at Ascot, all worlds apart from my usual routine grilling fish fingers in Tooting, I’m blissfully unaware that in approximately forty minutes I’ll be back home, heels kicked off by the front door, new dress hanging in the wardrobe again, chatting to the boys and husband wearing my sloppy trackie bums and attempting to cook two Waitrose Essential pizzas for tea but burning them round the edges because I’m a bit pissed.

And you know what, you can keep your celebrity lifestyle; truth is I’m happy in the kitchen with my kids. It’s lovely having little trips away from it (and them) now and again, like this one, because they make me realise that.