Eddy Currents

My life in Car Crashes

The earliest vehicle smash I can remember was a ghastly affair involving my old man, the compulsion to sleep, and wall near Dorking – Pixham Lane? funny how these places fade; I once had a boyfriend who lived down there, he seemed so important then and he so isn’t now. He’s lucky to be alive, they cried. And I have no doubt he cried this too because he knew he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel, behind the wall..

He grew a beard to cover the stitched gash around his mouth. At four years old, I found the itchy broom on his face repulsive. It didn’t match with the dapper Dad who leaned into the bunk at night to kiss us goodnight, his knitted tie whiffing of curls of cigar smoke, wearing dapper polished shoes, pinstripes, cufflinks; he was a neat and smooth man; famously he has but three hairs on his chest. When the wounds healed, he shaved the hedgehoggy thing off and mercifully, he looked scrubbed again and the scar on his upper lip, like a silky livid pink slug, was beguiling.

Some years on, with dinks in between, the next major incident was less of a smash, more of a meandering, terrifying farce: mother climbed into the estate car with my little sister but her jeans ripped. She jumped out and ran back into the house and was tugging on another pair in an upper window when she saw the motor slip its anchor, my sister standing on the handbrake between the seats. Gracefully, the big green Cortina sailed away from the kerb, across the road and, as mum flew down the stairs, lumbered over the undulating front garden and flower beds of the old couple who had a dog called Buster living opposite.

Mum got her hand in the window and pulled hard but the weight of that lummocking  metal boat was too great for her already slipped discs and with the momentum of a wildcat strike at Ford, the car containing a  baffled two year old forged onward, over rose bushes, past Buster’s side gate, over another kerb, across the sloping cul-de-sac, and nose-dived over Reg Rawlings’ wall. It’s all walls, eh!

The disastrous car events continued as I grew up, including Dad’s ill-fated trip up a hill and around a corner with a trailer load of lazily secured furniture; the time when he hitched bumper onto a petrol station booth and kept on going with the guy inside; reversing over buckets; parking in the sea. Shamefully, several driving licences were surrendered, headlamps were shattered; tales of near misses with inflatable dinghies atop roof-racks and jettisoned toys on autoroutes flowed as fresh as a draught of Long Life ‘lager beer’ between gear changes.

There were salutary days such as when Dad’s Mercedes met a boy-racer over-taking a milk float on a bend, and he slewed into a hedge. Hell, that was close. And the time that mum arrived to work at the bookshop needing a strong coffee after the scene she’d encountered on her way in when she passed a man in an overcoat thrown into a field, his vehicle’s engine still running in a ditch.

My own record was fairly embarrassing, especially in the early days but you learn with each bash, don’t you? And then there were the misfortunes of others that I witnessed with writer’s relish (I should be so clever) - the glint of the motorcycle after it frantically de-clutched and somersaulted into a pond; a blow-out on Streatham Common; motorway puffs like magic tricks in the fast lane.

We stopped laughing about car accidents though, when one went and killed one of us.

After mum’s death, for a long time I think  - I’m a bookseller, not a shrink - I was suffering from post-traumatic stress: there I’d be swanning round the South Circular with kids in the back when suddenly, out of nowhere, I’d hear an almighty crash. I knew it was in my head so the babes were safe but the sound of a car slamming into my own when I went over forty was on repeat for about five years. I didn’t tell anyone of course; I flinched, held steady and drove on. Gradually, I stopped hearing it. Gradually, the traffic on the road righted itself. I had my new blogged prang recently, and then Jon went and had one too. Our recently acquired Renault Squashed Tomato was living up to its name.

Then, just when you think it is safe to take your hands off the wheel, bugger me, my sister has a really frightening smash in Dubai. And there she remains, with a pelvis broken in three places and a taxi driver in prison. She told me, during a twenty quid mobile phonecall last Sunday, that when the car she was riding in made its second bounce off the crash barrier, she was knew she’d die when it hit it a third time. It did. She didn’t. But as she lay injured on the backseat, the driver gone, the car began to fill with smoke. She decided she would die afterall. Then, between us there was a pause that went half way round the world...

It didn’t last long. “But get this,” she added, helpless in the hospital bed that’ll be her home for the next two months, “the chief of bloody police brought me roses! Ha ha.. How bonkers is that?” and our echoing snotty laughter defied the million miles.

Jon is at the Palace game:

Tall chap approaches with book five in a Sci-fi series. He says: “I should have read book four of course.”

“I can order it,” I offer.

“It’s okay,” he replies. Then he adds: “Do you know how you can tell when we are in for a spot of democracy?”

“Er.. go on..”

“When there is a return of Star Trek. Check it out. The first series and every one since has been matched with the election of a Democratic president. Bye then.” No vulcan salute, no nothing.

Next!

“Your postcards really crack me up..” and a very large, very nice man places three William Blake pastiches on the counter. “I especially like the one with the blue plaque for George Orwell right next to a CCTV camera. Big Brother really is watching you. Hahaha. My work colleagues at the Home Office really liked that one…”

Next!

“Erm, what do you know about this author?” and he holds up a Saramajo. “Is he classy?”

“Well classy.”

“It’s for a friend at work. And it’s her birthday. It isn’t about death or anything is it?”

I hesitate as we both regard the reaper in black on the cover holding a scythe.

“Well..” I begin.

“It’s okay as long as it is classy,” he decides. “Can you wrap it?”

“Yep, no problem.”

“Have you got any birthday cards?”

“Over there.”

He returns with one depicting a jolly cupcake covered in hundreds and thousands.

“Have you got a pen?”

I laugh: “Would you like me to write it for you?”

He glances up: “My handwriting is really crap…”

“I think you’ll manage,” I say sternly.

He takes a breath and begins to write, then stops. “Hope I get her name right…”

Bugger the scramble for a play-off place, the shop gets all the best goals..

A Mother's Day

I’ve got some absolutely brilliant friends and they clubbed together to buy me an unlimited ticket to “the people’s spa”, The Sanctuary, which I decided to cash in as I was in danger of implosion.

It took some organising but at some point I made it onto a packed 176, paid the driver me two quid and tried not to be too stressed about my lateness as the bus drifted through the morning rush hour, its passengers oblivious to the panorama from the top deck thanks to the thickness of breath on the windows.

Eventually, the cobbled insincerity of Covent Garden gave way to the sudden calm of the spa shop front and its winding, unadorned staircase at the back.

I am a fan of the place but, nonetheless, under no illusions about its aim to make a packet out of us worn out, baggy women who can’t afford a flash membership at a fancy chrome ‘n carrot juice gym or weekend break somewhere on stilts where the treatments take place on giant banana leaves. There we queue, feeling vaguely loved and shabby as fuck, sipping our freebie cranberry juice, already exhausted by the prospect of rest.

Personally, I like to spend a day voucher alone. I can listen to the endless gabble of hen parties, quietly regarding the champagne and scones with a sniff of superiority; I settle down with the latest ‘Psychologies’ and marvel at the haze of lite navel gazing dressed up as science, between the same glassy wedding dress ads you find in every other fashion mag, and watch the world go by in slightly off-white, slightly frayed, oversized, very un-fashionable bathrobes.

So, I did my lengths (swerving round the larger ladies in floral cozzies) then got frothy in the Spa pool, sweaty in the Whirlpool and ducked the squawkers on the swing in the decorative Atrium pool. I nose-bagged on goat’s cheese and fish, and lay down for a good pummel up on the Jasmine landing, the sensation of which was not unlike being licked by a cow.

Then I ascended the stairs in the Koi lounge for.. drum-roll.. ‘Sleep Therapy’. Like any of us need a lesson in how to drop off. But nevertheless, I was willing to be a sheep and took my place on the candlelit bendy bed with the rest of the waffle-towelled flock, and put on my headphones.

Suddenly, the babble of females discussing honeymoon outfits was drowned out by an instructive voice, soft as bosoms but firm as a tummy untested by childbirth. You are in a garden, she said. I am, I replied silently in resignation. The garden begins to vibrate. That’ll be the button we’ve just been told to press. Then, I’m on my back and floating. I can hear water pouring somewhere. Knowing my luck I’m headed for rapids. Christ. Then the voice tells me I am beside a fountain. Thank the lord. I am now upright, off my raft and treading the shallows. But, wrong again because she says I am standing on cool grass watching the cascade over stone and touching the ancient text which reads: This is Your Secret Garden. Blimey. Bucket of cold water, nurse.

“Walk on the cool lawn,” the bosomy voice commands, “in your simple white frock,” – I eschew all cynical thoughts of continuing subliminal indoctrination by Pronuptia - and I do, indeed, experience the quilty greeness underfoot and wander in my flimsy skirts to “a hammock”, where I lie down and rock gently under the canopy of a tree.

Then I hear bird song. In both ears! Distant at first, the sounds develop into a host of individuals, each proclaiming their place in the copse: dumb old wood pigeons doing that irritating though strangely comforting cooing thing, blackbirds chipping, green woodpeckers thrumming, swallows careening the open space and, was that a cuckoo? Yes, there it goes again. I’m transfixed.. It’s a cuckoo, a real cuckoo. Must be the first of the year. I know there’s another knot of trees beyond the ornamental pond and fountain and I stretch my finest earbones to ascertain the bird’s direction. There it is,  CUCK.. OO...

.. and the lights come back on. And I feel a right plank for being had. And who ever heard of swallows in Feb? In fact, none of we mutton can look eachother in the eye because we feel so silly. We clop down the open-plan stairs without so much as a baaaaaa..

Later, once I’d settled the fragrant tab, I headed out onto the blur of the Strand and put my arm out as a 176 approached. Momentarily nonplussed by the grumpy black cabbie who seemed to think that a female amidst a crowd at a bus stop sticking her arm in the air meant it was his ride – he hit his horn petulantly when I ignored him – I stepped up and proffered my two gold sobs. The driver looked at me as if I was insane. “Tickets-in-advance-from-the-machine-central-London,” he intoned, without punctuation.

“What?”

He repeated the mantra.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I beg.

He repeats it a third tired time and nods at the black box winking on a post beside the bus stop outside.

I survey my audience who regard me patiently with shopping bags on their laps, their chips mid-bite, their texting suspended..

And I step back off the bus to their collective snigger, and a single voice says as the doors swish shut: “Where the bloody hell has she been?”

Languid

Wednesday before half term and my last swimming class is a no-show. Perhaps ‘class’ is an exaggeration as it seems to imply numerous willing pupils bobbing up and down while I take a sodden (I said sodden, not sodding) register. However, what it lacks in quantity, my final lesson makes up in exuberance; two speckled blond brothers, small, slippery and hellbent on splashing nine shades of aquamarine out of eachother. So much so that, though we have tried, nobody else can or wants to be, taught alongside them. It simply isn’t possible; their mischievous influence irresistible, the minute someone joins them in the water, it is like an air crash and teaching a stroke becomes a battle to have anybody above water for long enough to listen. Let alone, not drown.

I don’t hate ‘em but they are gorgeous little lads who just give me a very hard time and if I could get out of teaching them, I would. It would be different if the scratchy towel of convention could be thrown in as it were, along with the scrutiny of my boss (whose blood pressure rises so rapidly in their presence, he resembles a tumbler of Ribena being poured), the disapproval of other parents watching from the side (it is far worse than parallel parking), ASA directives on lesson planning and correct practice, child protection and health and safety, and all other notions of organisational teaching. Then, I could just chuck ‘em about in the water, have a laugh and get out. Which is all they bloody want anyway.

Meanwhile, their separated parents take it in turns to bring them and my cause isn’t helped by the dad’s inability to get them into the water on time. Ever. Old fashioned chillum types, she with smoke grey hair and he with an Afghan style Cornish pasty hat (it is) and neither wearing socks with their espadrilles, even in the absolute freezing armpit of winter, their cheering hippy sensibility, though endearing in the lit faces of their lovely boys, doesn’t stretch to communication. Thus, she asks me every other week if he managed to arrive for the start of the thing the previous week and I, cringing and exhausted from trying to get her sons to conform for long enough to learn anything, have to tell on him.

So, when they fail to show, my relief is manifest in some hard drilled lengths while the lifeguard plods about in the warm air, gathering up the floats in a slow, wafty fashion (word of warning: lifeguards simply aren’t paid enough to move fast). Seven minutes before closing time, I haul myself out of the water, take a meditative swig of cold tea from my thermos cup (the rules about no food or drink on the poolside are blatantly flaunted in my case - ah, the rebel in me - though I stick to those regarding bombing, smoking and petting) and peel off my wet suit. And their little faces plop round the changing room door. Followed by the face of the father who already knows he is in a shedload of trouble from the ex-missus.

One of the boys, however, isn’t in his trunks and his eyes are all red.

“I had a real fight to get them out of the house,” the dad shook his head. “I think only one will go in.”

I said: “I’m no going to even attempt a lesson now. Let him get wet. He can play.” I liberated a float and some sinkers and a hoop from the lifeguard’s labours and dangled my legs over the side to finish my tea.

The skinny boy looked tiny, alone in the corner of the pool, under the pace clock. With no sibling to hold under, or splash incessantly, he seemed a bit baffled. He turned a slow somersault, experimenting with the sensation, then dived down to pick up the sinkers. His brother watched, the occasional sob shuddering still, and his dad shoe-gazed. Sorry, toe-gazed. Casting around, the boy shot a couple of hoops and then swam to the deep end. Then, to my quiet satisfaction, he did a length of carefully measured front crawl, breathing properly all the way and remembering to kick quickly, unlike much of the male of the species. His dad looked up and caught my eye.

Amazingly, the boy snipped a second length, this time of breaststroke, digging down and exhaling on every pull. Then, he turned over and completed a beautiful, languid length of backcrawl with his slender arms perfectly timed as they ticked through the untroubled surface, his long hair dressing the little bow wave.

“That – was – fan – tastic!” I yell and the little bastard gave me such a knowing, twinkly triumphant grin. “Now get out..” I growl, adding a wink. And I thought I’d  been wasting everybody’s time for weeks.

Squashed Tomato

As if my luck needed livening up, some daft old codger pulled out on me just as I was innocently driving to work. No mirror. No signal. One lurching manoeuvre. He took out my headlight as he slammed into my port side. Livid as a tub of bees, I found myself bashing my head on the steering wheel deliberately, while the fella was sat behind the wheel of his Zetec blinking. “Idiot! Bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody…”

Eventually, I could get out of the car – its nickname, The Squashed Tomato, now possessing the kind of irony that makes me want to have it towed instantly to a breaker’s yard – without my mouth drilled into a howling maw, but the silly bugger was still sat there opening and closing his eyes.

Insurance? I demanded, snapping open my hand. Like that was going to happen. The old bloke wearily climbed out and replied: “I know a man who’ll fix it..”

Later, in nursery, after I’d bitten off the heads off several small children, my line-manager (for it was she), asked if I thought I might be in shock. Shock? Shock? I am in fury, I reply. Until, of course, I hide in the store cupboard (minus two degrees c, a ton of play equipment and the smell of leaking fruit – the scheme is complicated by the edict that age 3 and 4s are only entitled to half a piece each..) and phone Jon. Who gets shouty and says I drive too fast and, whatd’youmeanyoudidn’tgethisinsurance? Then I crumple and have to go and compose myself in the teacher’s lav. Well, not quite ‘in’ it. I wasn’t gonna beat myself up that badly.

Later still, His Nibs calms considerably and puts the phone down having spoken to the fella. “He knows a man who’ll fix it,” he says.

On the Monday I drive the circus down by Rye Lane, around the contours of the old lido (you can still see a swimming pool blue fountain with its moulded luxuriant cascade amidst the shrubs and rats), to meet my nemesis as instructed. Why I am taking orders from him, I know not, but he says I’ll never be able to find the garage he uses without him leading me there. However, our cars did not coincide (!) and I was back on the blower to take my next command kidnap style, my confidence wavering betwixt tarmac level and exhaust pipe. His missus said: “He’s been driving’ round and round and he never saw you. You see, it wasn’t a very clever place to meet..”

On the Wednesday, having demanded a real live address, I track down ‘Blessed Autos’ under the arches in Peckham. Yes, if I wrote it as fiction I would lay myself open to all kinds of accusations and brickbats, nicked or otherwise. But the facts remain untouched by parody: a big black chap with gold gnashers told me to bring the Squashed Tomato back on Friday morning and he’d slot in a new light and re-spray the side. When I whimpered that I’d need it back by teatime, he shook his head as if I was totally, totally mad and hissed that, “The paint gotta dry…” Meanwhile, the old bloke peeled off a single tenner and pressed it into the mechanic’s hand like he was a grandchild. I retreated on foot, using the walk home to test the feeling of being stressed without a motor to stitch me from one commitment to another.

I spent a sleepless Friday night wondering if we’d ever sell the house, buy the one we’ve already shelled out a bunch of legal fees on; whether I’d get to Chiswick for my Aunty B’s 60^th birthday party the next afternoon with 4 kids and the District and Picadilly lines shut and Tfl saying there were no trains to Clapham Junction – toss, turn, toss, turn; whether I’d get to the arches early Saturday morning and find my car there and my swimming floats still in the boot so that I could be in the water to teach by nine-thirty am – toss, toss, turn, turn.. The stress in my stomach was in no small part affected by the haunting answering machine message that greeted me after work that day saying: “This is the wife of the man that went into your car. He has paid the man at the garage so if he asks you for any more money when you go to collect your car, DON’T give it to him…..”

And did I mention that through this I was doing my motherly duty by lovingly celebrating my middle-daughter’s birthday, with chocolate cake and a surprise ear-piercing? The look of utter shock on her face when she realised what was happening resonated with the week’s events. The decadence of a dreamy recall of her birthstory would have to wait for another less  busy night’s sleep.

And did I mention that, as well as the birthday presents and scabby ears, my son had football and we had to get a parping crowd to music school on Saturday morning? Never mind Blessed bleedin’ Autos, Blessed Emma stepped in and somehow collected us at sparrow’s fart the next dawn with the mist still swirling round the skips on Heber Road and took us, as I simmered with trepidation, to the arches under which I’d left my car.

It was there. As were the floats. And there was a new headlight. And every single dent and dink on the port side had been ironed out and coated with a fresh layer of ketchup, touch dry. The starboard side looked like it belonged to another car.

Never has a set of swimming lessons seemed so easy on a Saturday. Blindfold and pissed would not have made a difference as I felt so relieved and able. And despite Tfl’s best intentions, we saw Aunty B on her birthday that afternoon. On Sunday, while the world lay in, I took my son to Charlton in The Notso Squashed Tomato to play a football match and then, while Jon manned the till and my lot did their homework and Dulwich thronged the aisle in Sainsburys, I treated myself to getting the car hand-washed in the carpark by an Eastern European with deadly armpits that stun within twenty paces. Bring on the brickbats..

Smug

I’m experiencing an odd lightness at the moment, as if not only my own blood pressure is low but also the blood pressure of the shop, the play table, the above-the door-heater and the traffic outside. Breezy. But not carefree. Perhaps it is because my wee son is away on his first residential trip – 90 London kids terrorise Kent as they learn to do wall-climbing (apprentice burglary), archery (for when knives are no longer cool) and beach scavenging (scavenging anywhere is a vital skill for city-living, especially for the state school boy son of impoverished booksellers who find most of their most interesting interior design effects in skips).

Perhaps my headiness is due to the hangover of a tantrum a dear friend threw at me in my ballet (threadbare I may be but I am forever middle-class) class t’other night. I forgave her at the time and, indeed, threw my arms around her in horrified shock as she railed against the unfairness in her life compared to the cosiness of mine. She actually called me ‘smug’. Smug. Does smug mean contentedness? Three bloody jobs. Three bloody kids (one absent). Driven from Dulwich by our inability to make money. Or does smug mean resigned? We have to move, or we will be moved. Why is my effort so offensive? Then she apologised by the barrowload and we wiped the streaks off her cheeks and got back to our grands battments. No prizes for guessing whose arse I imagined kicking.

The event was still with me the next morning and today. Even when she phoned to say sorry again, my crossness fizzed. Even as I texted my insider at the Venture Centre and asked her to pass on the FA cup replay score between Spurs and Reading to my breakfasting son, I had to resist the urge to bore her with a tedious miniature but grammatically correct (I’m soooo old) Nokia rendition of the injustice I felt. I suspect though, the cause of my quease and sensation of untetheredness is the blasted landline call I took yesterday, which said, flatly, that the bastards who had given us hope and offered us half a million for our beloved home, had decided not to buy afterall.

Two months of relative emotional calm sifted out in a second. Two months of feeling like we’d done the right thing. We’d found somewhere we could envisage coping, a garden finally. Oh, and a new kitchen with cupboard doors. And importantly we’d pictured a future without quite so much stress in it.

Selling a house is such a public procedure. You can’t do it quietly. It is worse than being pregnant. At least that’s a gradual thing and you can half enjoy the is-she/isn’t she? glances. And having a baby is generally something that results in, well, a baby. So, the sign goes up and unless you send a postcard to everyone you know announcing that you are selling, you are then subjected to the slow-discovery as one-by-one the world drives past your domicile (semi-detached terrace in sought after location) and does a double-take. “I didn’t know you were moving,” they say the next time you meet. And I resist unkind sarkiness and launch into the explanation for the illionth time as to why we are leaving the area we like a lot, that we arrived at in the eighties as early yuppie pioneers of a tubeless district, in an experiment. And no, the children aren’t changing schools. And then, every time you meet them again, their genuine concern for your progress means endless repetition of boring stuff about searches and surveys and storage quotes. Being up the duff elicits a sweet, plumped up warming smile as your arm is squeezed in anticipation of pleasure, but selling a house returns a lip-chewed frown of solidarity, many times over.

As Christmas ambled off and we patted the back of 2007, we could look at the New Year with nice clean eyes and ideas and take a big fat draught of fresh hopeful air. I had gotten used to the world knowing our business. We are moving!! Be proud.

Now, we’ve gotta start all over again. Those words in that rotten call from the estate agents continue to make me sick and giddy as I repeat them: “The purchasers have pulled out.” How dare they deprive me of the sheer delight of being smug.

(Wasn’t that a novel by Milan Kundera?)

Spookily, art imitates life; when I got back after receiving the call, I found the sign had blown down.

Christmas Day 2007

My bloody father used to hoover on Christmas Day. And we really resented it. Sure, we joked about it to his face. Because we could. Because it was Christmas and he was in a good mood. Up until the mid-80s, he was miserable when he wasn’t at work and it wasn’t until he started making money that he cheered up after the office was shut. So, it was December 25^th and the mess us children made messed his head up.

Christmas was fine so long as nobody mentioned presents or being excited by the prospect of them.

He found the whole thing so very stressful that only way he could regain control was to get out the old vacuum cleaner and suck up a sackload of wrapping paper, cat fluff, tree needles, fag ash and toys. The latter irritated him so much that he would throw away what he could as soon as possible, often times still in their jazzy ribbons. This plaything phobia extended into our adulthood when toys that mum had managed to keep from his clutches and store in the attic were chucked after she died; dollshouses, teddies, anything with childhood stamped on it was taken to the dump without sentiment. He wasn’t being malicious either. When asked if he recalled what he had culled, he was cheerfully and absolutely blank. All he saw was a nice empty space that no longer troubled him.

One year, he was so cross with us for not meticulously noting which gift was from whom, that he gathered up all our loot and told us it was going to Oxfam to be given to kids who would appreciate it enough to remember who it was that gave them the jolly stuff in the first place. We did not see the flaw in his reason and were beside ourselves with distress. The lesson was learned quickly and today my lot are not allowed to open anything without first writing down the donor’s inside leg measurement and hat size.

Once, when we were possibly even contemplating ‘enjoying’ the festivities with our toddlers, he asked me what he could get them for Christmas and added that he wasn’t buying toys because they had “far too many already”. And I kept counsel on the fleeting nature of childhood. Give ‘em bottles of port Dad, and a Montecristo cigar each. That’ll be swell
.

But he wasn’t a grumpy bugger all of the festive time. Pour him a drink before 10am and he warmed up rapidly. Take toys out of the equation – ie. when we got older – and add a walk on a beach or across rainswept fields, and he was ecstatic, and very funny. In fact, once the fear of him losing his temper was diminished by our age related enablement, when we could tell him shut up and stop being a fusty old git in a pinny without getting clumped, Christmas as a family, including our beloved Marian and Simon, their best friends, became the focal point of our year and we planned the next one from the moment the twelfth day closed.  Our best Christmases were undoubtedly as freshly grown ups; sitting together in a dim rented house in South Devon, the electricity cut by storms and the bird cooling in the dead oven, steep lanes impassable thanks to ice; present-opening fuelled by gin and Gauloises; Dad wearing snorkel, goggles and fins, over stiff new pyjamas (he still sleeps in his birthday suit) and us laughing so hard that our glands ached from the pressure. Pubs, walks, dogs.. Mainly though, presents were still a taboo and many a Christmas Day passed with stuff left unopened under the tree because somehow he couldn’t face the giving. More likely though, it was the mess.

S’all different now. With mum gone, our new relaxed Dad (with delightful new wife) thoroughly relishes surprising the children. Whether it is festooning a tree at Easter with eggs for them to harvest – their enthusiasm, to his bafflement, somewhat muted by the fact that he used dog poo bags to hang them in – or encouraging his grandson to strike matches for him to get a New Year log going without a trace of health and safety in mind, before distributing exquisitely wrapped gifts that reveal themselves to be perfect, like a remote-controlled speedboat for Fred, or a telescope for Willa; amber bracelets for Constance; bags and bags of chocolate; trinkets; toys.
.

We don’t ‘do’ Christmas as the Family Crow any more. Not with Dad. Nor with me and my three sisters. Or with Jake, Marian and Simon’s son, who we consider our brother. Indeed, even they are divorced now, with new partners: as older adults, we have new rituals and other familial concerns. Patterns change
.

It has been a while since I’ve blogged properly – my energies diverted by swimming teaching, school job, a busy bookshop (yeh!.. but just hear the arctic howl in January) – now Christmas has finally arrived and I’ve been to mum’s grave, the turkey is in and all the carefully selected and wrapped presents have been scattered, trashed, squashed and discarded, and I am sitting beside our open fire for the very last Heber Road Christmas before we up our roots and resettle on the otherside of the wood. And I am thinking how thrilling and pleasant it is to have the time and space to think and write, while the children are distracted by their new Scalextric..

But I might just get the hoover out first….

cum on feel the teapot..

Crikey Caro, how much did you bid on eBay for Dave's hat? I am not worthy...

ps. Willa hasn't spotted it yet

Snip Snip

So, cheering myself up with the scissors, I set about Willa’s fringe with the zest of Nicky Clarke (eeeuuuw.. a culinary image I wasn’t expecting). Afterall, the little witch rarely lets anybody near her bird’s nest but this particular morning she actually asked me to trim it. Trouble is, the shears she handed me had seen more sellotape than barnet and I feared that I’d loose the advantage if I had to go in search of some sharp ones.

With the waste paper basket under her chin and one eye on the clock, as we were already running late, I snipped. Then I let out an involuntary giggle where the straight line should have been. Well, it was straight, but not horizontal.

“Mum!” she spat, when she looked in the mirror. Meanwhile, her big sister mouthed: “Oh my god,” at me.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” I begged and shoved the bin under her chin again. “I can rescue it..” But the bloody scissors wouldn’t play ball. Or maybe I was shaking with laughter just too much. Either way, another section of fringe was deftly removed without any skill whatsoever. The contrast between both strikes was.. um.. well, vast. So different that they could have been two separate hairstyles. If the word style was applicable.

“Idiot..” she seethed.

“Don’t call me an idiot,” I demanded with mock indignance.

“Well, don’t do things what idiots do,” she snapped.

Later on the way to work in school, I saw her in the dinner hall. She waved at me sweetly and I waved back. Then, once through the swing doors, I couldn’t resist catching her eye again and making a snip-snip gesture with my fingers though the safety glass.

The following Sunday evening, we were all bouncing round the kitchen like a real life family to REM or David Byrne or something off Napster and I came out with a cod Brummie accent and said we ought to try the kids on Slade. And Jon said, he couldn’t bear the noise and the last thing we needed was Freddy doing a Noddy Holder. And I said, worse, we couldn’t ever, ever let Willa see a picture of Dave Hill.. In case she spots the similarity.

Moody

My mood is as cloudy as South Norwood pool was yesterday; house is back on the market so between bookshop, school job and teaching swimming, I am forced to spend every spare moment fretting about filthy fishtanks, or fingerprints, or – worse – utterly knackered kitchen. And you try keeping a wetsuit, several cozzies and rotting towels and rubber hats - not to mention umpteen footie kits and muddy boots - stylishly invisible, whilst outside the temperature plummets with the house prices. Wouldn’t mind if we were upgrading to a flashy Dulwich gaff. Instead, I am trawling the outer suburbs for a hitherto undiscovered corner of London where the houses are big and cheap, the roads leafy, the municipal amenities functioning and where the street gangs preen like Russell Brand and are the type you’d leave in charge of handing out swiss roll at the community centre. Yeah right.

I keep telling myself it’ll be a relief when it is all over and we are newly installed in a mansion, but the kids have no intention of surrender and are piling on the stress with their increasing insecurity. And apparent discernment: “I am not living here. It smells..” Fortunately the vendors are usually too deaf to hear. Otherwise, it is not as if the muggers of Plumstead give a monkey’s about what Willa thinks. Where once I nurtured a dream of a home by the sea, now one without a yellow murder board in the garden would be nice.

So, feeling sorry for myself, I turn down the invitation to sit in a warm caff with my girlfriends, to nurse my woes over a cappuccino, and instead say that I have to go home and scrape the kitchen table before the steep climb up the face of the day. “All I want,” I say to the cheery women as we gather on the corner after school drop-off, “is a normal life.” And then I turn to hide my blushes and march off shame-faced, because I’ve just made the world’s stupidest pronouncement to a person whose husband has lymphoma.