I can't help it.

“I don’t want to be here.” Says Middle One getting out of the car near the shops on Saturday afternoon.

“Why did you say you wanted to come with me to buy some shoes then?” I say.

“I didn’t.” He says.

“Yes you did.”

“I didn’t. I said I want some new shoes,” he says, “it’s not the same thing.”

I decide not to reply to this. He’s being unreasonable. He knows he’s being unreasonable. It’s because he’s twelve and hormonal and stroppy. I remember being twelve and hormonal and stroppy myself. Well, probably not twelve, probably more like fourteen, but children are much more advanced these days aren’t they? It all starts sooner.

We walk past a children’s shoe shop, that one called One Pound Beyond, or something and I turn to go in.

“I’m not going in there.” He says.

I ignore him. He stands outside with his arms folded.

“Do these come in size 5?” I ask an assistant.

“I’m not going in that kids shop.” Says Middle One from outside on the pavement. He can be heard through the open door. I smile at the assistant.

“I think so.” She says.

I pick up the boots and look at the price on the bottom. £55.

“Is there anything like this in the sale?” I ask.

There isn’t, of course, so we go on.

Now we’re in Blacks looking at ski jackets for Eldest who’s due to go away on a ski trip with school at the end of January.

“I don’t want to look at ski jackets.” Says Middle One.

“Do you think this will fit him?” I ask.

“I don’t care.” Says Middle One.

We go to TK Maxx and look at shoes. Middle One says: these aren’t shoes they’re trainers; those are women’s shoes; those are crap; I don’t want to look at any of those; I want to go home; I don’t want to be here.

I say very little.

We go upstairs to look at ski jackets. I say: what d’you think of this one; do you think he’d like this; do you think this is too big; how much do you think this one is, can you see a price?

Middle One says: I really don’t care.

We go to Debenhams. I take back a dress I bought the other day. (I bought it in two sizes because I couldn’t be bothered to try it on. Just for the record, I’m keeping the smaller one.) We have to wait in a queue. Middle One says: I’m so bored; this is so boring; I’m so hot; I can’t believe how bored I am; I wish I was at home; why did you drag me here; it's so hot; you’re being selfish.

I say nothing.

We walk back to Blacks and buy the ski jacket. It’s reduced, £34.99 down from £79.99 and since husband doesn’t have a contract of employment at the moment I think this is probably a good thing. I say: this is a good price; nice isn’t it; do you think he will like it?

Middle One says: I don’t care.

We go into Clarks. I say: what about these; when I was here with Eldest we got a nice pair; these might come in your size; what do you think?

Middle One says: these are man's shoes; it's all crap; I hate those; those are hideous; don't be stupid.

We walk down the street.

“You are very rude.” I say.

Silence.

“I know. I can’t help it.” He says.

I know this is true. He didn't used to be like this. He used to be a delight to take shopping. I try not to say anymore. I try to be understanding.

We go to the pet shop to buy saw dust and food for Middle One’s gerbils.

“I like this!” Says Middle One, “Can I have it!”

It’s a plastic ball for the gerbils to play in. It’s £2.99.

“Please!”

“No.” I say. “You can’t. You’ve been horrible and rude so you can’t have it. Normally I would have bought you that,” (I would as well) “but I’m not going to because you have been horrible.”

Middle One says nothing. We drive home.

“Did you have a nice time!” Beams husband as we walk in the door.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/relationships/article2875431.ece

Father Christmas makes mistakes

Father Christmas makes mistakes. There was the year Middle One was desperate for a particular new DS game. We watched him excitedly unwrap it in our bedroom on Christmas morning, as is our family tradition. The three of them drag their heavy stockings down from their rooms to ours and we all sit on our bed as they open everything. I take photos. The rest of the presents, the ones from “us” and other members of the family, are opened later, mid-morning, along with coffee and Florentines.

“I wonder what that can be?” I said.

“It’s the game I wanted!” He said.

“Really?” I said.

This is what it’s all about, I thought to myself. This is what makes it all worthwhile. All that tramping around the shops, stressing about ordering the turkey, wrapping all those hundreds of tiny presents, this look on a child’s face right now. But the look quickly changed from sunny joy, to disappointment. A great thundering cloud passed across it, right in front of my eyes, because the box was empty. No game. Nothing. Zilch.

Obviously Father Christmas wasn’t there to witness this crushing disappointment. If he had been he might have reflected upon what had gone wrong. Had he bought the game in Woolworths, perhaps? (This is going back a couple of years, you see.) Had he taken it to the tills at the front of the shop, rather than the ones at the back where they sold CDs and DVDs and games and then added them to the empty boxes from the display? Had the assistant at the front tills forgotten to do this and Father Christmas, in his pre-Christmas stress, not noticed either? Perhaps. But, as I say, Father Christmas wasn’t there so we were the ones left to pick up the pieces. And it wasn’t pretty.

This year he messed up as well. He doesn’t usually even attempt to deliver the presents until well after midnight when, I guess, he can be sure they’re all asleep. But I think he got cocky and over-confident. Perhaps he knew they’d all been skating at Somerset house with friends in the afternoon and were shattered? (Youngest says Father Christmas knows everything, even if you’ve been “naughty or nice," because it says so in that song.)

Whatever the reason, Father Christmas delivered his presents early this year, before midnight, (I think he was keen to get to bed) and shortly after, we heard stirrings and the patter of little footsteps coming downstairs to our room and there was a little bleary-eyed boy, with a bulging sack clutched to his chest and a big smile on his face, standing at the end of our bed.

“He’s been!” He cried.

“It’s not morning!” We cried back.

After much cajoling we managed to get him back into his bed (cursing that Father Christmas all the while) only for him to reappear shortly after, and then again, and then again, until, finally, at about 2 am, we gave up and let him stay in our bed where he thrashed around and fell asleep about an hour later. I didn’t.

Most parents of young children experience Christmas day through a haze of exhaustion, I know we have in the past. But we really thought those days were over. Apparently not. I hope next year Father Christmas gets his act together. But I suppose he must be getting on a bit by now.

Saturday 18th December: The miracle before Christmas

It’s Saturday morning a week before Christmas, it’s snowing hard and my £150 tickets to see Paul McCartney at the Hammersmith Apollo tonight still haven’t arrived. I look them up on the UPS tracking system and discover to my horror that they are at the depot in Croydon due for delivery on Monday. Great. I speak to UPS. They’re afraid there’s nothing they can do: adverse weather conditions and sorry, no, they can’t put in a call to the depot in Croydon, even a request to put in a call to the depot in Croydon wouldn’t go through for 24 hours, at least, which, of course, will be too late for me and my tickets.

I ring Getmein.com, the division of TicketMaster who sold me the tickets. No, they’re afraid there’s nothing they can do either. They can’t provide proof of purchase; they don’t know the ticket ID or seat number so they can’t provide evidence I could show on the doors tonight. They are sorry but due to blah, blah, blah, it’s beyond their control. Blah.

I very nearly give up but then I have an idea. We don’t live very far from Croydon, maybe I could drive there now through the snow and persuade them to find the tickets for me? They’re there somewhere. I google UPS Croydon and find an address on an industrial estate and an 0208 telephone number. I ring it. Eventually a girl answers and I explain my predicament. I beg. I imagine her sitting in a freezing cold desolate Portacabin on the outskirts of Croydon. I promise to bring her hot chocolate and mince pies, anything.

She says she’d love to help but there are hundreds of packets and parcels, it will be like looking for a needle in the proverbial. I give her the ID number. She says she will try and that she’ll phone me back regardless. And do you know what? About an hour later, just when I’m stepping out of the shower, she actually does! She rings back! She’s found my tickets and she’s put them on a van! I thank her profusely. I realise how very, very much I wanted to go to the concert tonight and that I had been holding back the disappointment, trying to convince myself it didn’t really matter. And now I’m actually going to go! So I cry. “Don’t cry!” Says the mortified UPS employee on the other end of the phone. “Now you’re freaking me out!”

When he arrives about an hour later, through the snow and ice and gales, I give the UPS man a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates for the girl back at the office (I put her name on it). And later, at the concert, as I stand about ten feet away from Paul McCartney himself and witness him singing Yesterday and Hey Jude and Let It Be and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and Blackbird and The Long and Winding Road and Get Back and all my other very favourite songs in the whole world, the best pop music ever written, by one of the best singer-songwriters ever, himself, in the flesh, in front of me. I silently thank that girl in the UPS Portacabin in Croydon.

I’m not a religious person, in fact I’m an atheist, but seeing Paul McCartney in the flesh - I reckon it’s the nearest thing to a religious experience I’m ever going to have. And getting that ticket just in time today, you could say that was a Christmas miracle, if you were religious.

Thursday 16th December: The ghost of Christmas parking

It’s ten days before Christmas and I need to find the wrapping paper I bought the other day to start wrapping presents. I know I left it in the car. But where’s the car? I scour the street cursing Husband for parking it somewhere strange, and then I remember: I parked it last night when I came back from a playdate with Youngest. There were no spaces left because the Catholic school on our road was having their nativity play. A woman gestured that I should wind my window down. “No room at the inn!” She shouted, or words to that effect: nowhere to park on our road. “But I live here!” I protested, as if that would make any difference.

I had to reverse back out on to the main road, which was a rather hairy operation to say the least, and go round the other way and I’d been triumphant to discover an empty space after all, right up at the other end of the road near the Common. “Stupid woman!” I said to Youngest. “There’s space right here in this stable!” Then, after we parked and got out and tramped all the way down to our house, there was another space right outside the front door. But I didn’t bother to move the car again because it was cold, and it was late, and dark.

So where was that? I tramp up and down the road looking. It was up here…near the Common…very near to that Disabled Bay there…. Oh dear. I think the car has been towed. Sure enough, when I ring the car pound, they say they have it. Somehow I will have to get out to darkest, deepest Colliers Wood and collect it. And pay the fine. £200. Happy Christmas.

My dear friend and neighbour takes me in her car. After she drops me off I have to sign multiple paperwork. And pay the fine. Not £200 as it states on the website, but £250 with the parking ticket added on as well. I can hardly look at the man. I know it’s not his fault and I’m not a violent person, truly I’m not, but I’d really like to punch him in the face right now.

He tells me to wait and then to come through the side door to the car park when he gets there on the other side. I don’t wait, I just walk through the door and march straight up to my car. I get in and slam the door. He’s trying to tell me something but I ignore him and drive up to the gates. It’s my tiny victory over the system. I won’t have anything more to do with him. I won't speak to him. I want to be out of here. I want to be gone. This is not happening.

But the gates don’t open and the man just stands there looking at me with his arms folded. Reluctantly, I wind down my window. “You have to sign this.” He says.

“I’m not signing anything else.” I say. “You have my £250 and now I have my car back and I want to leave.”

“You have to sign this waver saying that we haven’t damaged your car.” He says.

“I’m not signing that.” I say. “I don’t know yet if you've damaged it or not.”

“Well, you need to take a look,” he says, quite reasonably. So I have to get out of the car and walk around it and pretend to look when really I can't see anything because I'm blinded by rage.

It seems fine, that is, no more beaten up and scratched than it was before. I sign and the electric gates slowly slide apart. I rev the engine far more than necessary and then, finally, I’m free to go home and start wrapping the presents.

Two o'clock in the morning

It’s two o’ clock in the morning and four of us are awake: Husband, Eldest, Youngest and me. Our neighbours are having a party.

Earlier, lying in our own bed, in our own bedroom, at 11.30 on Saturday night, the music was so loud it was like actually being at the party ourselves: both the wall and bed were shaking (no wise cracks please) from the thumping base in the living room on the other side of the wall.

It’s someone’s birthday. We know this because they were singing Happy Birthday. And they really like Blur. We know this because they were joining in with the chorus for Song 2 turning up the volume on the ‘yoo hoos’.

I say ‘we’ but husband did - very annoyingly - manage to fall asleep. He’s a lark you see, while I’m an owl, or perhaps a dormouse would be a more accurate description. Either way there’s no way I could sleep through that racket so I made up a bed up in the office at the back of the house, dragging a heavy mattress and bedding across the landing.

I shut all doors to rooms with adjoining walls to the house next door and lay on the floor in the dark; except it wasn't dark because it turns out that electronic equipment has lots of flashing lights. So I lay on the floor watching the flicker of tiny green lights and listening to the hum of computer and slightly more muffled thump of base.

Surely I won’t be able to get to sleep like this? It’s all in the mind, I think, and try to convince myself that I'm actually at a party (through choice), I’m really, really tired and I’ve just sloped off to find this lovely bed to sleep in all by myself... Not so hard, it’s what I really do feel like doing at parties a lot of the time.

And it must have worked because before I know it I’m waking to the sound of even louder base, which means I must have been asleep, for a short while at least. But now I can hear something else…a creaking door and footsteps. It’s Youngest coming downstairs from his room. And then Husband bursts in.

“So that's where you are! This is ridiculous!” He says, “Both Youngest and Eldest are awake now.” (I’m paraphrasing - obviously he doesn’t actually refer to his own children like this). “It’s two in the morning and Eldest says he hasn’t been to sleep at all yet.”

To prove the point Eldest comes in to recount the entire playlist. It includes The Clash and Arctic Monkey’s. So at least they have good taste. Husband says he’s going to complain, which just goes to show how bad it is because usually Husband would rather die than complain (unlike me). So here we both are, fully clothed, shaking with rage and ringing the next-door bell in the middle of the night.

They do eventually turn the music down, a bit, but not before arguing with us that it really wouldn’t be so bad if they’d just managed to warn us about the party first - which they hadn't. I point out that, although courteous, forewarning us would make no actual difference to the inconvenience. But they don’t seem to understand this, perhaps because they’re drunk.

Eventually, after listening to a lot of car door slamming and taxi engine ticking, we settle down again to try and get some sleep. But Youngest refuses to go back to his own bed and spends the rest of the night thrashing around in ours digging his feet into my kidneys.

The school hall

The primary school hall. To what has this Victorian room borne witness? Two world wars, votes for women, the election of the first Labour government with its pledge of free universal education for all, thousands of children passing through en route to great, or more likely average, things and now, on a Friday evening, the genitalia on Arthur Smith’s comedy pants.

Rewind to the Friday morning and the very same room is thronged with eager faces waiting for proceedings to begin. The children? Actually I was thinking of the parents who regularly fill the place to capacity to watch children presenting work they’ve been doing in class that week. Evidently not something the Victorian architects anticipated.

I’ve been coming here every Friday morning at ten for years. At first I invariably sat at the back along with one or two other stay-at-home mums, sometimes even with a stay-at-home dad (or should that be freelance?). Now it’s standing room only if you don’t get there quickly enough.

While this perfectly demonstrates how the school has changed over the years and the heartening way in which so many parents now take an active role in their children’s progress, there’s also something a bit unnerving about it as a frenzy of waving and blowing kisses kicks off between offspring and parents.

What about the children whose parents never come? What about those whose parents work five days a week or haven’t the inclination? And are the parents who do come here to share in the success of all pupils or just celebrate that of their own?

Sometimes it’s a troubling atmosphere, undoubtedly one of celebration but also of competition. The school is keen to reward good work and behaviour in the form of certificates presented to two children from every class each week but as there are 30 children in most classes it means that 28 children are not rewarded. To address this rewards are evenly distributed over time so that everybody gets one in the end, in which case isn’t it all a bit meaningless? Tricky.

Michael Rosen has written that the current fashion in education for constantly rewarding the few with stickers and certificates and medals effectively means punishing the many. I’m not sure I agree; but sometimes, in assemblies in particular, I see what he means especially when it comes to praising projects (projects are one of my pet hates).

Having been to so many assemblies over the years I’ve also got to know the national curriculum rather well. If there was something a bit Groundhog Day for me about watching reception recite the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, in unison and with actions, again last week God know how the teachers must feel.

But it was charming and the faces of those children’s parents, craning their necks to see from the back (and the audience does mostly consist of parents of younger children), was a sight to behold: all wide smiles and glistening eyes. Of course I was - am - a doting parent myself: I’ve even re-scheduled a day out next week because it clashes with the afternoon carol service at the local church. I wouldn’t miss that for the world. As I’ve already blogged, there won’t be many more primary school carol concerts for me …

In the evening a crowd turned up again to cram the same school hall with much the same enthusiasm, this time for the PTA comedy night. Quite a contrast: the wide-eyed innocence of the morning’s proceedings set against the expletive-ridden filth of the evening.

Much of the audience was the same but instead of a model of a World War 2 prisoner of war camp held aloft or the story of The Three Billy Goat’s Gruff to regale us, we cried with laughter as a grown man pulled his trousers down (the evening was so much more that that and very funny).

Both events were entertaining and just go to show what a multifaceted lot we south London parents are.

Time and tide wait for no man

Children have a way of cutting you down to size. There was the time Youngest said, “Mummy! Your boobs look really droopy when you do that!” as I lent out over the bath to wash his hair. Or when Middle One told me how much he loved his “beautiful” nursery teacher, Elaine, and I stupidly asked, “so do you think Mummy is beautiful too?” “Of course not.” He replied.

So I wasn’t particularly surprised when Eldest pondered out loud at the dinner table one evening last week that he had absolutely no idea what I was going do with myself once Youngest left primary school. “Quite soon you’re going to have no life at all, Mummy,” he said, hitting that particular nail on the head with a crash. Thank you darling. The thought had occurred.

At the moment the primary school is punctuation in my otherwise free-form life. It provides a start and end to my working day; my closest coterie of friends from its seemingly endless stream of lively, intelligent mummies (and daddies) and a rolling itinerary of events, from more prosaic Friday morning assemblies and afternoon teas, to glamorous Friday and Saturday night discos, parties and quizzes, the most memorable of which was the PTA Stars in Their Eyes evening, one of the best nights out I’ve ever had. (Which isn't saying much but should in no way detract from how good it was).

Indeed, as Eldest made his remark I was just sallying out of the house to the Christmas shopping evening and, as a Class Rep, I’m currently selling tickets for the forthcoming comedy night (hosted by local celebrity Arthur Smith, don't you know).

So, although it may be a bit soon to start panicking, (Youngest still has the best part of three years to run) Eldest is right, of course: I am aware that a deadline of sorts is looming even if it is still a little way off. Perhaps deadline is the wrong word...watershed? I was even more aware of it after I went to see Clocks, a film that was showing continuously until recently (it’s just finished) at the Glass Cube Gallery off Piccadilly.

Clocks is a film lasting 24 hours consisting a series of very cleverly cut clips from hundreds of movies that happen to reference time, either visually or verbally, running exactly to real time itself so that it too is a clock, of sorts. It’s very, very clever, I might even say, brilliant. Not only are the clips wonderfully edited to make a beautiful whole: a piece of moving art, but the continuous, minute by minute reference to time and the passing of time with endless clocks and watches and alarms, creates a sort of profound shared experience. It's a commentary on the transient nature of life (no less!) and its meaning seemed to build as it went on.

When I saw it, it was lunchtime so, inevitably, there were hundreds of clips involving lunch and eating. Among many other things, it made me think about how much time is spent preparing and eating food, especially a mother’s time.

Paradoxically, I didn’t have much time to stay and watch it because I needed to eat and get back to school to collect Youngest at 3.15. I hope to be able to see more of it again one day. Perhaps when Youngest leaves primary school and I have more time on my hands.

P.S. It's not an accident that lots of words are in bold. Did you get it? Husband didn't.