Bribery and the 5-year-old boy - the ups and downs of school holidays

Nobby is away on business again so I am late night surfing and Blogging because as usual I can’t sleep and every little noise sounds like an axe-wielding serial killer, although it’s probably just the dishwasher on the rinse cycle. Geez, you’d have thought with my ripe old years and a high-tech burglar alarm I’d be over the paranoia. Looks like that’s a ‘no’. At least I know that our ‘pet’ hedgehog is out there snuffling away in the garden and guarding the back door. I was watching him earlier fending off a couple of curious magpies who must have thought it was worth trying to peck off his fleas or something. We’ve nick-named him Sonic, of course.

This week has been just as busy as the last one but I haven’t had my parents around to detach the kids from my ankles while I’m trying to cook or clean. And the little beggars know it’s two against one now and are really testing me. So thank the maker for Holiday Clubs – where you can dump them off for a 7 hour stretch of painting, cooking, dancing, chasing, playing in the forest and generally wearing themselves out while I take off into Paris for some serious site-seeing and elegant dining, darling. Ooh, it’s been bliss - if you overlook the hour driving round looking for a parking space in the middle of Paris, the hour and a half queuing round the block in the rain to get into the Musée D’Orsay and the stilted conversation at the brasserie shouting to be heard over the pneumatic drills, cranes and diggers. Yes, it is road-works season in the city centre as well. Don’t try any clever back-routes or rat runs at this time of year, nine times out of ten you will come to a line of bollards with a diversion sign pointing back the way you came and an irate policeman waving his arms and shouting at the nutter in the Clio who decided the signs didn’t apply to him and has ploughed on through the barricade. These road-workers are turning motorist-baiting into a national sport. On my second trip to town with friend Peony we ended up at a café opposite a car park that was firmly ‘closed for renovation’ when we tried to get into it, only to see the workmen picking and choosing cars to move the barriers for and allow in – mostly women by the look of it. What a cheek! Perhaps two blondes in a BMW wasn’t appealing...

Ah well, at least I can now say that I have taken tea at Bonmarché (very chic, lovey, at a tenner a cup) and stood in front of some original Monets, Renoirs and Picassos. The gallery was amazing, although there was an annoying amount of tutting and puffing from people trying to take photos of their friends standing in front of the works of art, something I have never understood, while the rest of us were just trying to get a good view so we could gaze in awe at some true masterpieces. To me Monet’s water-lilies look a lot better without a Japanese tourist grinning inanely beside them.

Actually, I might be a bit jealous as well as annoyed, having recently been failed by my Sony digital camera. I seem to be plagued with electronic equipment which flips out the day the guarantee runs out. I can see a whole new conspiracy theory opening up before me. The electronics industry, led by Dixons I shouldn’t wonder, have secretly created a microchip which either completely disables your prized electronic devices or subtly instils them with bizarre personality disorders as soon as the warranty is up. And when you take it back to the shop obviously the cost of repair, in fact in some cases the cost of an estimate to repair, is going to be more than buying a replacement; how else are they going to get us all to continually upgrade? I think I may start a rest-home for tired and peculiar gadgets and appliances, starting with my own personal collection of schizophrenic contraptions (excuse me if I get a bit cross while reeling these off, I am gritting my teeth just thinking about them):
The digital camera which will show you the pictures in the memory but will not take any new ones;
The tape machine which will play a tape but won’t rewind or eject;
The DVD player which insists there is no disk in it at all times, even when I JUST BL**DY LOADED ONE!;
The Video recorder which eats tapes for breakfast, lunch and dinner;
The TV with the funny coloured patch at one corner of the screen;
The steam iron which doesn’t steam but spits out water instead;
The vacuum cleaner which only picks up half the dirt;
The child’s computer which will switch itself off in the middle of a game;
The refrigerator whose internal light doesn’t go off when you shut the door so it melts the bulb housing and HEATS UP THE FOOD!;

…calm, calm… deep breathes…

This list does not include my Dad’s video camera which won’t work in a warm environment because it insists it’s too damp and the portable DVD player which skips if it is used whilst stationary. So it’s not just me. Perhaps this could be my new career, providing tertiary care for weary, disturbed electronic appliances and counselling for their tormented owners. There’s definitely a gap in the market.

Well, the small ones are not in the holiday club tomorrow so that’s the end of my lunching and schmoozing for a while. I guess I will be the exhausted one after a day outnumbered by my offspring, trying to occupy them while keeping the house in reasonable order for when Nobby returns. Perhaps some cunning new tidying-up game is in order. They are just getting into money so perhaps if I throw in some bribery and corruption I might just get this place looking tip-top. Poppet recently lost her 7th tooth and she is very proud of the coin the tooth fairy left under her pillow in exchange. Pickle is distinctly miffed at not having a similar line of income – the average tooth yields 1 euro these days. So he has shown willing to undertake various small jobs lately in exchange for a bit of cash – making the beds, sweeping the floors, helping with the dinner. Of course he draws the line at dressing himself or cleaning his teeth when he’s told to but we can work on that. I have tried introducing alternatives to the money, because he doesn’t really understand the value of it, any coin is a real treat to him. Though it rather back-fired today when I asked him what I could possibly give him to persuade him to put his pyjamas on by himself and he replied, ‘a Playstation’. Hmm. I think I’ll be helping him dress for bed for a while longer.
Night night.