The babysitter

“Hi, I’m Vladimir,” comes a vaguely familiar voice from downstairs in the hall. Youngest has just answered the door while we’re upstairs getting ready to go out, it’s Friday night and we’re late, as usual.

“Mummy, Mummy! You have to come and meet the new babysitter!” Youngest bounces into our bedroom. “He’s from Russia and he can’t speak very good English! He’s never seen a DVD before!”

When I get downstairs I find that Vladimir bears a striking resemblance to our eldest son, but I shake hands with him anyway. It's a brilliant idea. Youngest responds so well to role-play, it’s one of the few things he does respond to. So when we asked Eldest if he would consider babysitting his two younger brothers for the first time, while we go out to a do at the school, I hit upon the sneaky trick of getting Eldest to go out the front door, stand on the step, ring the bell and come in again as ‘the babysitter’. But I can’t take credit for the Russian bit, that's his own idea: a brainwave.

Those who know Youngest in real life, or have been loyally following this blog (she knows who she is and I promise to pay for your cappuccino next time. Large, right?) will be familiar with Youngest’s penchant for pretending. Remember the goat? when he said nothing but ‘maaa!’ for two days and I had to put him to bed in a shed?

Well, the other day he managed to be two different people - at once. He was simultaneously a three year-old version of himself and a teenager called Jake (don’t ask me). It was confusing to say the least. Every time I thought I was addressing Jake, it turned out I was addressing the three year-old and vica versa. Until I discovered the genius wheeze of getting Jake to persuade Youngest to do all the things I couldn’t get him to do (are you following this, I will be testing you at the end, over that cappuccino).

It went like this:

“You really MUST get in the bath now! I’m not going to ask you again. It’s getting late and your hair really smells. It really is time for a wash.”

“I don’t want to! I won’t! You can’t make me!” etc. etc. Whine. Whinge. Procrastinate.

“Jake!”

“Yes?”

“Please could you help me get my naughty little three year-old here into the bath? I would be most grateful.”

“Oh yes, of course, happy to help,” says Jake (who is actually Youngest…still following?) and then Youngest jumps straight in the bath because Jake has told him to. And then Jake has to be called upon to get Youngest out of the bath, when I’m unable to do it, and then Jake manages to get him up stairs to his bedroom and even encourages him to brush his teeth (his own teeth, in fact). It really worked, even if it did feel mildly unsettling. Is this how schizophrenia begins? I wondered.

So, when we go out on Friday evening leaving Eldest (I mean Vladimir) looking after Youngest and Middle One for the first time, he is also minding a three year-old and Jake. Quite a houseful.

And we only paid him a tenner.

Exam stress

Can you write it by four o’clock, please?” says the editor. I look at the time. It’s 12.30.

“Um…” I say. “How many words?”

We’ll need about a thousand.” she says.

“Um…” I say again, “actually, my husband is having a vasectomy today. He’s just on his way home.”

There’s silence.

“And, um, my eldest will be back from an exam any minute for lunch.”

There’s more silence. I know this trick. I’ve done it myself.

“So, I’ll give it my best shot,” I hear myself saying.

“Great,” says the editor, “and if you could interview some other parents and a teacher or two would be fantastic, to get their perspective.”

“Right.” I say, “no problem, I’ll give it a go, I once wrote something for the Thunderer in two hours, so, how hard can it be?”

I put the phone down. There’s a voice somewhere in the back of my head screaming, ‘Oh My God How The Hell Am I Going To Do This!’ but I ignore it and start writing.

Eldest comes home.

“I can’t talk,” I say. “I have to write a thousand words on a mother’s exam stress by four pm.”

“Oh,” he says.

He has to go back for his English exam in two hours. I was going to go through it all with him. Instead, we negotiate what he wants to eat for lunch (I offer scrambled eggs, he counters with a sausage sandwich).

“Alright,” I say. “I’ll put some sausages in the oven, that will be easier anyway, but you will have to keep an eye on them, turn them over…”

I put six sausages in the oven: two for me, two for husband two for Eldest. Then I go back upstairs to the office.

I interview a friend whose children did their GCSEs last year (Eldest is doing Year 10 exams at the moment).

Husband comes home. I dash downstairs to greet him.

“Poor you!” I say. He is walking very gingerly. “I’ll put the kettle on but I can’t look after you I’m afraid, I have to write a thousand words for The Times by 4 pm.”

“Gosh.” says husband, bravely, then he sits down on a deck chair outside.

I go back upstairs. I interview a teacher who teaches GCSE physics and has a son in Year 11; I interview a friend of the editor who gives me lots of anecdotes. I write it all up. By this time it’s getting quite late and I’m feeling rather hungry. Eldest walks into the office.

“Any chance of a sausage sandwich up here?” I say.

“Oh! Sorry.” he says. “I ate them.”

“What? All six?”

“Yes.”

“What about Daddy?”

“He’s in the garden.”

Eldest gets ready to go back to school.

“How’s your English preparation?” I ask. “Did you re-read Journey’s End like I said?”

“No,” he says. “But I read the notes.”

“Did you re-read Of Mice and Men?”

“No.” he says.

This makes me feel stressed.

He leaves. I ring a friend and ask her if she can collect Youngest from school today and hold on to him for an hour and then, when husband wakes up, I ask him to cancel the drumming lesson. Then I write up the article, interviewing another teacher at a different school and adding that bit at the end, and file it. It’s okay. Actually, it’s quite good. I feel great.

Middle One comes home.

“I just wrote a thousand word article for The Times in three and a half hours,” I say.

“Mmmm” he says. “Mummy? I thought I did really badly in my maths test, but it turns out I didn’t because it was all Level 7 stuff.”

“Oh.” I say, “Okay, well, let’s wait and see.”

This makes me feel stressed.

Eldest comes home.

“How did it go?” I say.

“Not very well,” he says. “The questions were really stupid. They asked what was dramatic about this particular bit, but there wasn’t anything dramatic about it.”

“Right.” I say. This makes me feel stressed again - and frustrated.

I sit down. I suddenly feel incredibly tired.

“What’s for dinner?” asks Eldest.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article3007885.ece

Work

April 4th

I’m standing on a desk in a year 10 classroom in a secondary school in Sheffield waving a Chinese flag - and it feels fantastic.

It’s because I’m working again, as a producer/director, making a short film for a publishing company to promote a GCSE Mandarin textbook.

It was a phone call out of the blue that did it, just one little phone call. All those years of waiting: years in which I cried for it, buried it, mourned it and finally let it go. In the end I was content, at last, to move on from my old life as a TV director to be ‘just a mum’ and a writer at home.

I waited so long for the phone to ring that I decided it never would, that’s why I called my blog, ‘I don’t know how she doesn’t do it’, because I don’t feel I do ‘it’, not like so many other mums, the ones juggling families alongside exciting careers. I was just a mum stuck at home with the kids. (I wanted to call my blog ‘stuck in the house,’ but that was already taken).

And over the years I’ve managed to keep myself busy with journalism but it didn’t really feel the same as my old job. It didn’t fill the need to get out of the house, to meet new people, to create something from nothing - not in the same way that TV and film making did.

I’ve worked with P before, many moons ago. He said he was ringing with a question. Oh yes, I said. I thought it might be some advice, a contact he needed, a bit of info about an article, but then he said:

“Would you like to help me make some short films? It will just be some producing, writing, keeping an eye on the narrative and then directing on the film day with kids in schools and helping with the edit?”

Would I!

So here I am, up north, in a school, asking a group of Year 10 children to stand in a huddle and shout something in Mandarin. And it’s been a great day. I’ve been interviewing a teacher. I’ve been filming a Chinese lady writing Mandarin characters. I’ve been asking the children to do vox pops for the camera. It’s been fab.

And then we wrapped and I caught the train home to London, and as I walked up the long length of our road from the Tube at dusk - back to my house, my husband, our three sons - I was thinking about what it would be like to come home after a wonderful day’s work, now that I’m a proper I-don’t-know-how-she-does-it-mum. I will be pleased to see them. They will ask me how it all went. I will give them all a hug.

But when I walk in the door I see there’s mud up the stairs.

“What’s this?” I shout.

(This is not what I planned. I was going to call out: hello! I’m home! How are you all? It’s meee!)

I go the loo and there’s even more mud all over the bathroom floor (and the cleaner just came this morning).

“Why is there all this mud?”

There’s no answer. I reach out for the loo roll. There is none.

“Why is there’s no loo roll! Why am I the only one who ever replaces the bloody loo roll?”

There’s a lengthy silence…

“I’ve just got in!” I scream, like a harridan. “I’ve been working all day! Can someone please get me some loo roll?”

“Get it yourself,” comes Eldest’s voice from somewhere very close by.

Nuts

I’m on a train travelling between Reading and Oxford sitting between two men who are clearly nuts.

One of them is somewhere in front of me along the carriage loudly engaging a hapless young man from the armed forces in conversation. The other is somewhere behind shouting even more loudly down his phone. It is impossible to tune out. Believe me, I’m trying.

“Oh yeah!” Booms the first man, “The power of those Tornados, it’s just incredible, I used to live near RAF Lyneham in Norfolk, and I’d watch them coming in to land.”

There’s a low reluctant murmur of ascent from hapless young guy from the armed forces.

“She nearly pooed herself when I told her!” yells the second man on the phone behind. And then, after a pause in which the person on the other end is clearly saying something, “Yeah! When he grows up he’ll learn the truth about his dad."

And after another momentary pause,

“Yeah! He’s two!”

I would like them to be quiet. I've had a very stressful morning. Two hours ago I didn’t even know I was going to Oxford today. I’ve had to pull some last-minute childcare out of the bag: not for my own three, who are all busy until after four o’clock when their father can take over, but for a three year-old and his brother and sisters who are under my charge until this evening because their parents are away.

Against all the odds I’ve actually made it on to this train from Reading, where I had to change, to the last leg of a journey that has so far included overcoming the suspension of the Bakerloo line and a fatality on the track outside Paddington Station. Now, at last, I’m hoping to relax.

I look at my watch, the meeting started ten minutes ago and I’m about twenty minutes from Oxford where I will have to get a taxi.

I close my eyes.

“Yeah! Those fighter jets based out there in Norfolk are incredible!” Comes the first voice from somewhere in front.

“She really looked like she was going to poo herself when I told her!” Yells the second man from behind down his phone.

“I can’t stand this anymore.” Says a third voice from somewhere very close behind my head.

I open my eyes.

“I’m going to have to kill them,” says the third voice. It is low and male and very menacing.

Is he talking to me?

“If I have this all the way to Manchester I am definitely going to have to kill them both, but especially that one...”

He is not talking to me; he is talking to himself. Out loud.

“He's an idiot,” he continues. “There are no Tornadoes at RAF Lyneham. And I happen to know that for a fact.”

Tomorrow

It’s 6.30 on Sunday evening and we’ve just got back from a meal out. It feels lovely not to have the usual mountain of washing up from the roast dinner. No hair washes tonight either because Youngest and Eldest had their haircut today and it was washed at the salon (Middle One had his done yesterday). It’s almost worth the exorbitant £21 each for the cut just to have someone else wash their hair.

So, all in all I’m looking forward to a relaxing Sunday evening. For a change. I decide to get on with some writing and I’m on a roll tapping furiously at the keys when Eldest swans into the office:

“Got any tissue paper?”

“No…..What for?”

“It’s for my art homework.”

“When for?”

‘Tomorrow.”

“Perhaps you should have thought about this before now?”

“But we were out having a meal!”

“No, I mean before that. Before today even. When the shop that sells these things at the end of our road was open.”

“I’ve been busy!”

“You've been skateboarding.”

He wanders off. I will not get riled. I will not get up and go and look for some tissue paper. I will let it all wash over me. I am writing…

About ten minutes later Middle One waltzes in:

“Mummy?”

“Mmmm.”

“Have we got any A3 paper?”

“What for?” I’m not looking up from the computer screen. I’m still tapping at the keys furiously. I will not look up.

“My geography homework.”

“When’s it for?” My teeth are so gritted I can hardly get the words out.

He says the answer out loud at the exact moment I mouth it silently to myself: “Tomorrow.”

“Nope.” I say.

He wanders off.

“Mummy!” Youngest is shouting from his room upstairs.

I ignore it.

“Mummy!”

I still ignore it.

“Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!”

“What!” I yell back.

(I bet Jane Austen never had this problem.)

“What the hell are you shouting for? “ Asks husband coming up the stairs.

“I’m not shouting, he is.”

“Where is my Woody!” Comes the disembodied voice from above.

“I don’t know!” I shout back.

“You are shouting.” Says husband.

Youngest comes into the office.

“I can’t find my Woody doll. I haven’t been able to find him for ages. Will you come and look with me?”

“Please.” I say.

“Please.” He says.

Reluctantly I get up and go and look for Woody. I look everywhere I can think of: under his bed, in his bed, in his wardrobe, in the playroom…I can’t find it.

By now it is nearly bedtime: a long, lavish affair at our house as each child goes up at a different time and requires to be followed shortly after as one of us either reads a story (as in Youngest’s case) or tells the child to stop reading a story (as in Middle One and Eldest’s case).

It’s an exhausting process but one that is almost coming to an end as I enter Middle One’s room at about 9.30 and tell him to turn out his light.

“Mummy?” He says.

“Yeeees.”

“I’ve got something to tell you. It’s not good I’m afraid.”

“What?” I can feel my teeth beginning to grit again.

“What is it?”

“I lost my PE kit at school.”

“Right.” I say, as calmly as I can muster, “And when do you have PE next?”

But I’ve already guessed the answer.

The bridge.

It’s half term, we’re at my parent’s house and we’re trying to escape from the children, just for one night, but Youngest is sobbing.

“I don’t want you to go! I’ll miss you and Daddy. Please don’t leave me.”

“It’s only for one night and you have your two brothers…”

I look up at Middle One who’s lying on the top bunk engrossed in his book.

“…and you’re here with your grandparents.”

“I know, but I’m still really going to miss you! You’re always going away.”

“No we’re not. The last time we went away was in October 2008. We went to Venice, for three nights.”

“Yes but I was by myself here in York just recently!”

“That was last October, four months ago, and Daddy and I didn’t go anywhere, we stayed at home in London with your brothers. You were the one who went away that time with your cousins, to stay here with your grandparents. And you are nearly nine now.”

“I know! But I cried then! I didn’t like it!”

I look to his middle brother for support but he doesn’t take his eyes from his book.

Brothers aren’t big on loving reassurance.

“Aren’t they even going to come to the door?” Asks husband when I finally make it back downstairs to the car.

“No.” I say. “Eldest is still in bed asleep, Middle One is reading My Family and Other Animals and Youngest is inconsolable. I think it’s best to leave them, we’ll be back tomorrow.”

We’re using my parent’s second car, an old Honda Prelude. It’s an automatic so husband is nervous about driving it. “Just remember to chop your left leg off!” Shouts my mother from the curb.

We manage to navigate our way out on to the bypass and from there into the countryside without too many problems, and then lapse into an exhausted silence. I stare out of the window, cramming in views like a starved person: large brown fields, spiky hedgerows, skeletal trees; it’s all so sharp against the wide sky and especially wonderful because we haven’t been out of London for six long months, since we got back from camping in August.

After parking near an old church we set off for a short walk before lunch keeping an eye on the time so we can get to the famous Michelin-starred, Star Inn, at Harome, before last orders at two. (We’ve never been.) And all goes well despite the irony that even out here, in the middle of the north Yorkshire countryside, we’re on a deadline, until husband, spotting the car on the other side of a river and checking the time on his iPhone for the twentieth time, says, “we’re going to make it for lunch!” and begins reading from the guidebook…

“Cross the river at the bridge to head back across the last field,"

“What bridge?”

There is no bridge, but just a little down stream near the far bank there is a suspicious looking jumble of wood and metal. Clearly there was a bridge. Once.

We weigh up the options: retrace our steps: a two mile walk back to the car with no possibility of lunch at The Star in Harome, or anywhere else probably, or, wade across an icy Yorkshire river - in February. Husband takes off his shoes and socks and prepares to give me a fireman’s lift.

And so it is that, with less than ten minutes to spare, mud-caked right foot flat on the Honda floor, husband screeches the clapped-out car up to the Star Inn in Harome and I am unceremoniously disgorged onto the grassy verge. And after rapping on the door with the urgency of a… well, with the urgency of a hungry Londoner, a cheery waitress ambles round the corner,

“Can I help you?’

“Oh yes!” I gasp, “Yes please! We’re here for lunch.”

“I’m so sorry, Madam,” she says, “but we don’t open for lunch on Mondays.”

Photographs

Saturday.

We’re hanging photographs on the bedroom wall. I’ve had a dozen of my favourite snaps of the children blown-up and framed: three boys paddling in an Isle of Wight estuary on a glorious late August afternoon; Eldest giving Middle One a piggyback in an autumnal London park; Youngest One’s little face, beaming, emerging from a bubble-filled bath, and lots more happy, sunny memories from the past. They make me smile and they make my heart ache in equal measure.

Later, Eldest comes back from the school ski trip: a whole week away from his family in the French Alps. He had a fantastic time. In the hall, I hug his surprisingly long, lean body. “Welcome home!” I gush, “We missed you!” He doesn’t quite meet my eye; he's a little aloof, separate. I feel strangely shy. Still, he lets me wrap my arms around him resting my head softly against his neck. He stands motionless for just a moment gently placing his arms back around me… then breaks away announcing he has presents for his brothers, two bright stripy lollies retrieved from the depths of a rucksack.

I try not to ask too many questions and after dinner, sitting with us on the sofa, he gradually starts to talk about the trip. Once began, it’s as if he can’t stop, talking and talking and talking: a booming man's voice ringing out across the room. I’d forgotten how loud he is. He’s stayed up late, he’s made new friends, he likes new music, he’s eaten new foods, he can ski, he can even do ski jumps now, he shows us a picture to prove it. He’s the same, but very slightly different, a tiny bit more grown up. Certainly not that little boy in the photograph on our bedroom wall, the one where he's running out of the sea towards the camera; a huge smile on his face, arms out-stretched, about seven years-old. He’s becoming someone else. And that’s why I want to remember. I want to remember it all.