Dotty

The arrival of The Girl and Boy's Australian citizenship certificates brought a lump to my throat. I know Australia isn't exactly stealing my children but that's how it feels. 

It got me wondering (not for the first time - I'm not that bad a mother) how this move will affect them. The Boy probably won't notice, I guess, though he may wonder why mummy is permanently covered in a thick white film (Factor 60) and keeps reciting How Now Brown Cow. But The Girl is nearly four, as she tells me fifteen times a day, and has a solid foundation here involving Very English Grandparents, Marmite and Mary Poppins. She is the happiest little thing I've ever known - what if our Big Adventure turns out to be a Big Disaster for her and she can't adjust to life Down Under? 

And okay, she might be running around the house all day since she got her certificate yelling: "G'day! G'day! I'm an Australian!" But what if that's just a smokescreen for the trauma she's going through?

The trauma doesn't seem to have affected her love of asking me difficult questions. "What's a polka dot?" she asked earlier. Which was fine. "Yes, but why is it called polka? What's the polka bit? I know the dot bit." Anyone? Anyone? Maybe the Australian heat will slow her down a bit . . . 

 

It's My Non-Surprise Party And I'll Cry If I Want To (Or Even If I Don't Want To)

There's an awful lot to do when you're emigrating, I've discovered. For weeks I've been fending it off. I'd managed to convince myself that I was doing more than enough by killing off the house plants, not putting anything in my diary post-April (not that I can ever find my diary) and using up the jam and all that body cream stuff that people give you for Christmas that otherwise sits in the bathroom cabinet for decades (sorry to all those people who have given me body cream in the years when I was not emigrating, but I can never be arsed).

Behind the scenes, however, my mum and some of my close friends have been plotting . . . not, I discovered to my dismay, plotting to keep me here, but arranging a surprise leaving party for us. However, it got much too complicated to surprise The Australian and I, mainly because all our trusted babysitters would naturally be at the party, and apparently people actually wanted to speak to us instead of politely observe us singing How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? to The Boy - he can do the woofs in all the right places, why wouldn't anyone want to watch that over and over? And then something about me being house-proud and yet arbitrarily a total slob, which made them feel uncomfortable about having it here without my prior knowledge. So all was revealed over the phone a couple of nights ago. 

While my friend was spilling the beans, I felt tingly and warm at the thought of the secret plotting and wanted to ask her to carry on talking for hours all about me and how much they'd miss me and the lovely surprise party . . . but I thought she might worry I was using her for phone sex. And then I felt a lump in my throat and a sting in my eyes: we are really going. I know, I know, it's obvious we're going - we have tickets, the packing boxes have arrived, blah blah blah. But the fact is that if my mum is actually planning parties, that means she's accepted it. She is the last person to do that. Correction: she is the penultimate person to do that.

However, I am working on it. Yesterday, for example, I switched on Home and Away and snuggled up with The Girl, promising beautiful shots of the beach, happy-smiling-beautiful people and a jolly knees-up at The Diner. Seconds later we witnessed a dog run over by a car. "Oh look!" I said, hurriedly thinking of a cover-up. "The doggy is hiding under the wheels of the Ute." "The what?" she said. And then we got talking about Utes and that seemed to distract her from the yelping, bleeding pup. It was a close shave. We were almost not going to be able to go at all, what with her being so traumatised . . . hmm, it's on every day, isn't it? Maybe there'll be a helicopter crash tomorrow, or a mad gunman will open fire at the caravan park . . .

While You Were Rewriting...

I'm forcing myself into a brief blogging coma in order to get on with a sudden, urgent rewrite of another novel. Meanwhile, if you haven't already discovered Taking Life For Granted, I urge you to read it.

Before I go, a snippet of those endless questions I was telling you about last month:

The Girl: Mum, what's a fiddler?

Me: Someone who plays the violin.

The Girl: Oh. Am I a fiddler?

Me: Do you play the violin?

The Girl: No.

Me: In that case, no, you're not a fiddler.

The Girl: Okay. Just checking.

See you soon!

(And no, Ross, I was not tempted to call this post Kiddy Fiddler.)

Child Health Alert!

This hot off the press! Err, well not the press but CBeebies: popular nursery rhyme Pop Goes The Weasel is a potential health hazard. As the CBeebies presenters explained earlier today, before you do the POP, you must wash your hands . . . 

Excuse me?

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle,

That's the way the money goes - 

[WAIT! Hang on . . . scuttle-scuttle . . . splash-splash, squeeze of Kandoo, rinse-rinse, dry-dry . . . scuttle-scuttle . . .]

POP! Goes the weasel.

I am amazed I'm still standing, frankly, with all the filthy-handed popping I've done over the years. Perhaps the BBC could offer us further nursery-rhyme-related health n' safety tips. 

eg. 

Knee-pads for Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses 

Helmets / life jackets for Row Row Row Your Boat

Protective gloves for If You're Happy And You Know It

Steel Toe Cap Boots for This Little Piggy

Feel free to add your own. 

Look After Your Penny...

Great excitement last week as the local POUND STORE had a closing down sale (practically throwing their stock at passers-by). What, I wondered, would they put in its place? It's got great square-footage, and while I wasn't dumb enough to hold out hope for a bookshop or some gorgeous cafe where you can let your children run wild, cared for by a bunch of highly trained staff, while you read the paper (hey, I can dream)... what I wasn't expecting was:

THE 99P STORE

All my Christmases have come at once.

The Kid's Got Talent

Help me: I have turned into one of those dreadful people you meet at the school gates who tell lies about their children to make them sound more impressive.

I don't know how it happened. I mean, I'll admit (just the once, here and now) that I think my children are far superior to anyone else's. Including yours, though I'm sure yours are nice, too. Of course they have their faults (The Girl has a tendency to tell me how old I am all the time, while The Boy requires my company frequently during the night) but basically they rock. However, I always meant to keep this to myself, and let them do their thing without having one of those awful pushy parents glaring at them, urging them on. And I have certainly never been tempted to tell lies about their abilities. Even when people have gasped in horror at my lack of parenting skills as I recount how many times the baby wakes or how long my daughter took to potty train, I have been proud to tell the truth (and then bitch about those gaspers and stick metaphorical pins in metaphorical Voodoo dolls of them).

But today outside nursery, waiting to collect The Girl, I lied.

'Wow, he's a big boy now,' said one mum, as I slung The Boy onto my hip. 'Is he walking yet?'

The way she said 'walking YET' - her tone and the very slight arch in her eyebrow - did something strange to me, and I found myself saying:

'Yes. Well, he's taking 4 or 5 steps at a time and then falling on his arse, hahaha.'

At that point the doors opened and we went our separate ways, and as The Girl ran into my arms and The Boy did his rapid leg-wiggle that makes it feel like I'm holding an excitable labrador, I felt the deep, deep shame of knowing that I'd exaggerated by TWO steps.

What the hell was the point of that? Two steps?? I mean why didn't I just lie properly and say that he's already in training for Olympic Speed-Walking? And while I'm at it, why don't I enter him for a beautiful baby competition or this - apparently they now have a 0-36 months category: parents are given 1 minute to show judges that their baby is the cutest and has the best personality. 

Ludicrous! Not to mention hugely scarring for the 3 year old who is told they have only come second in the contest, having lost out to the huge personality of the 2 week-old whose current party trick is opening its eyes, and closing its eyes.

It's ironic, this newly discovered trait of mine, seeing as the last novel I wrote was about pushy parents.

Kindness is Contagious

In recent years I've made friends with a fair few writers - some I've met in the flesh, some not but it doesn't seem to matter when it comes to the level of support fellow writers are prepared to extend to one another. We laugh about going into bookshops, spotting a novel or picture book by an author we've chatted to on the internet or met at a reading, and putting it in the most prominent spot possible (we do it with our own books too, of course!). We rally around those who have had a knock-back, and write big heartfelt HOORAY's when someone gets a deal or an agent. And okay, there might be pangs of jealousy (and of course you can't like everyone you meet, on- or offline) but the friendships I've formed are really important to me (and their books are truly wonderful).

So it came as no surprise when I read about the hundreds of blogging authors who supported Patry Francis on January 28th, and you can read all about it here.