Category: journal

Enough about my pseudo-erudite reading, I hear you cry: what about the children?

Right now, they are in Italy with Isa, where I’ll be joining them next week. All reports are good: Lola was in her own personal heaven yesterday when she went off with Zia Dedi to make ice-cream; Neve is pathologically happy these days and geographical dislocation hasn’t affected that. They are both sharing a bed at Nonna’s house, which Isa says they are really enjoying. Apparently, they are also managing to sleep. Eventually. When they’re tired of enjoying.

The other day, I went to play my guitar for Lola’s class. It was science week, and they were looking at the science of music. They all (both reception classes) sat on the floor around me and listened while I ran through some key guitar facts; then we all sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; then I sang GI Blues; and we finished off with a bit of the “you hum it, I’ll play it” style of ad hoc song accompaniment. It was really great fun. The kids were attentive, inquisitive, friendly and generally great fun to be around. It makes one quite envious of a primary school teacher’s job (financial aspect aside).

What else? Well, in general, Lola has been going through a bit of an emotional-knife-edge stage: everything is lovely while life proceeds as she would dictate but, the moment a hint of “no” appears she is thrown into a fit of wailing and grief that would befit a world-ending catastrophe. Of course, one cannot give up the saying of “No” but remaining calm and applying sensible measures in the face of such exaggerated responses is far from easy.

Neve’s problem inhabits the opposite pole: the word “No” means nothing to her; you may apply it as liberally as you like but she will continue to beat Lola about the head, or pour rice onto the floor, or thieve yummy yum-yums from the cupboard. It’s hard to know what to do; the current decision is that we remove her to a separate room (perhaps the bottom of the stairs), have a serious talk with her (until she stops laughing), and then leave her there, explaining why. She doesn’t stay, of course, and we couldn’t enforce that; but it does get the point through. We think.

I should point out that, though I’ve picked out a couple of negative points for both girls, the negative is not dominant: they are both wonderful, happy, loving girls who bring us a great deal of joy and pride.

Actually, it wasn’t so Victorian. And it scared the wits out of Dad, who thought she might have died.

It seems that on waking yesterday, Mum experienced a crushing pain in the chest and, on sitting up and swinging her legs out of bed, she fainted and was out for long enough to give Dad a bad scare.

She came round (“why is the light on?”), feeling woozy and wondering whether she should make an appointment to see the doctor. Dad called an ambulance, which arrived very quickly, and Mum went off to Musgrove Park; Dad followed later with clothes, etc.

I called Musgrove on the way to work this morning and they put me through to Mum. She sounded quite herself and said she felt like a hypocrite (I’m not sure I understand why). Apparently, it wasn’t a problem with her heart, as they found no tell-tale enzymes in her blood; they have no idea what it was. They’ll be doing a treadmill/ECG test later though they expect to find nothing of interest.

Mum sounded cheerful and unworried: looking forward to going home later. Let’s hope it was just a one-off. (Though, she did experience this pain two or three times during the week preceding this incident).

It’s hard to describe the way Neve says, “more”: it’s somewhere in the transition between “Moe” and “myrrh”. She says it a lot, sometimes while pointing at her (maybe empty, maybe not) bowl of food, sometimes when wanting you to continue the game of you-hide-behind-the-curtains-and-I’ll-run-into-the-bathroom-and-giggle. She loves it when we are all together, because then she can point at each of us in turn and say, “Mamma . . . Low-la . . . Papá . . . Meeee!” Lately, perhaps because she has mastered the sound, she is putting an “i” sound at the end of many words. Particularly at the end of “Mamm-aye” and “Low-l-aye”. Oh, how we laugh…

The poor lass has got another couple of teeth coming through at the moment. It doesn’t seem to hurt but she is very clingy and really did not want to stay at the creche while Isa did her paediatric first-aid course this morning. I had to go down and, when she wouldn’t calm, bring her home. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so upset. She wanted to get out of the front door to find Mum and wouldn’t let me touch or hold her. I just had to leave her alone; eventually she made her way upstairs and started playing with the packets of buttons among the sewing stuff in the spare room — that eventually calmed her down. I came up and joined her and we played a bit then went downstairs, by which time she was happy to play alone. Not long after that, while she was doing some drawing on the coffee table, she put her head down and fell asleep. I don’t think we’ve ever seen either her or Lola doing that before.

Lo-la. Low-la! Loooooooooooooowww-la! Neve will call Lola in the morning until she wakes. She’ll point to Lola’s things and tell us they are Lola’s. She’s not beyond going to fetch her hat and telling us it’s time to go and get Lola from school. And Lola’s name punctuates Neve’s pseudo-talk all the time — it’s not possible to tell whether it’s semantically in context or she just likes the sound of the word.

Neve hits Lola — not maliciously: I thinks she just thinks it’s funny. Lola does not, and can get quite upset. When she cries, Neve comes and gives her a cuddle.

Neve is happy, funny, and excited about stuff. She loves going out; she loves visiting. She skips everywhere; often breaks into spontaneous dance.

And so, Autumn is upon us — as someone with awful literary style might be tempted to write. I’ve been casting around for signs of mellow fruitfulness but unable to see through the mist. S’been OK so far; September was very mild though the temperature has certainly dipped and there were a few days when we were glad of the new radiator in our modern and desirable open-plan living area.

Did I mention that I installed the radiator myself? Hung it on the wall, ran all the pipework (proper soldered joints, doncha know), spliced it into the heating loop, flushed and inhibited the system. Amazingly: no leaks.

In other news: Lola has started school! She’s about to finish her second week of full-time school; prior to that, there was a week of half-time. She loves it. She is very lucky that her very good friend Isla is also going to St Philips (and also went to nursery). One tends to assume that the experience would have been less easy without that support. Though, obviously, one cannot be sure.

What else? Neve is a happy, adventurous, resilient young lady; babbling like a goodun’ but no words beyond the basics yet. We bought a new table for the kitchen — new to us, that is: it’s a regency table in three sections, veneered and french-polished. £60 down the RSPCA shop. We’re going to take the polish off and slap some polyurethane on it. Heathens! We’ve painted the tall-boy we bought at the Sally Ann a deep, high-gloss pink. We got rid of our old kitchen table on Freecycle; and we picked up a set of Ikea tall kitchen cabinets that must be >£500-worth of stuff. I went clay-pigeon shooting off an old Thames barge up past the Thames barrier — corporate hospitality from NTT.

Garden has done well. We have been inundatted with tomatoes, many of which are green, though they many are turning red (cue my favourite Shakespeare quote but I can’t find the right phrasing). Unfortunately many of the later-picked are turning brown; the intention is to make some of the glut into chutney, if we can get to that before they spoil. Isa had the great idea of semi-drying the excess ripe tomatoes in the oven and then putting them in jars under oil. They should last six months in the fridge, though care in storage is required: mould pounces if they are not fully covered.

The Hungarian Hot Wax peppers did really well and are utterly delicious if char-grilled. Also pretty hot — some significantly more than others. We’ve given them some of the under-oil treatment, too. We shall see…

The Crystal Lemon cucumbers unfortunately failed to mature — we got two fruits from the entire six plants. These were lovely, so perhaps will try again next year. I think they were probably just planted a little late.

Now it’s Friday and I’m on my way home: hurray! And it’s grey and rainy: boo! Fingers crossed (at least, they will be after I’ve finished typing) for better weather over the weekend…