Small People

The great thing about living with children is you never know what they are going to do or say next. Each day is a whole new realm of possibilities from loudly pointing out the flaws on total strangers e.g. Pickle: (looking at a hapless acne-ridden teenager in the lift at the shopping centre) ‘Look Mummy, that lady’s covered in chicken pox!’ – to unabashedly blurting out random thoughts e.g. Pickle: (on a crowded tram) ‘You know, I think I fart so much because I eat so much ketchup…’
Thankfully the language barrier here may hide a multitude of faux pas in public, although you never really know.

And then there are the indiscriminate acts of stupidity designed to get Mummy a little bit greyer.

Like sliding down a glass roof.

Yes, believe it; last weekend while Nobby was out watching a football match I let my little ones outside for a final play before bed time and smiled to myself while I washed up as I heard them laughing and giggling. I went out to call them inside to find them crawling up the sloping glass roof which covers next doors empty swimming pool and sliding down it. On scarves, to make them go faster. How I didn’t faint I have no idea. I decided not to yell at them, I had them talk through the possible consequences instead - What happens when you knock glass too hard? What happens when broken glass touches your skin? What happens when you fall 6 metres onto the tiled floor of an empty swimming pool? How does Mummy get into a locked house to rescue you? When realisation struck we all had a good cry about that one.

And then a couple of days later Pickle disappeared again. We were having a lovely walk with Tiggy while Poppet had her first Craft class after school. Usual scenario: Mummy turns her back for a second and the boy is gone. Half an hour later I am back at the school getting one of the bi-lingual teachers to write down ‘Have you seen a little boy on his own with a Scooby-Doo hat on?’ in Hungarian because I haven’t found him yet, there are hundreds of people around at after-school clubs but none of them understand a word I am saying. It comes out afterwards that he had found his way back to the school when he realised he’d lost me but when he saw the security guard he thought he was going to get in trouble for being on his own and ran off again!! We were eventually tearfully reunited after he heard me calling for him. He told me it’s a good job I get so much practice at shouting loudly. Ha! Anyway, that was one way to get introduced to the new headmistress of the school and have her remember me forever more.

See, that time when Poppet was about 10 months old and I came back into the lounge after making a cup of tea to find that the baby was missing was just a warm up. I still had all my blonde intact when I eventually found her up two flights of stairs emerging from under my bed in hot pursuit of the CD player with the cool button that makes the lid pop up. Here we are a couple of years on and I’m almost ready for my blue rinse.
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When I told my Mum I found a grey hair last week, she was very sympathetic and told me it was totally unfair and I shouldn’t be getting greys before I am forty. Pansy, on the other hand (formally known as Peony, but she requested the change and if you know who I am talking about you’ll agree it suits her better!) laughed out loud and said ‘Good! About time too - I’ve already got about 50!’ Not quite what I wanted to hear of course, and besides I have never noticed a single grey on her head. Of course I always assumed she would be hiding a couple in there given that she has a French mother-in-law and all (!). But if greys are indeed little souvenirs from our darling children for each disaster then I reckon I am doomed to resemble my granny by the time I make it back to Blighty.

Just to add insult to injury the car has been joining in the fun recently. The new one has a sophisticated system whereby when you unlock the car it has to detect this little black box thingy that you keep on the key ring so the car knows it’s you. If it doesn’t detect the box then you get a warning beep then the alarm goes off. And when that happens ‘Skyguard’ know about it and they phone for a password. I have one password for ‘Quick, the car’s been stolen!’ and another one for ‘Sorreeeee, I set the alarm off by mistake.’

Well, it got to the point where the alarm was going off each and every time I tried to unlock the car, even though the black box was right there on the key ring. And I couldn’t turn the deafening alarm off either. I stopped having to actually say the password when Skyguard called, I just held the phone out towards the honking hunk of metal to prove that I still had it in my possession, however much I actually wanted to push it off a cliff at that moment. In the end I was leaving it unlocked with the dog inside, until someone suggested changing the battery in the little black box. How was I supposed to know it runs off a battery? But it does, so we did, and now all is calm once more, although Poppet still keeps her hands clamped over her ears until we have made it a good mile or so down the road.
It’s nice to know I can get my own back and put the willies up the kiddies every now and then.