I bumped into Mrs Lovely.
“Apparently, I’m Uber Bitch from Hell today,” she said. “I’d even rather be out here, with Muffin in the rain,” (she indicated erstwhile perfect hair and both of us avoided taking in Muffin who was busy dry humping this footstool of a dog he favours for stress relief). “They all hate me.”
“More than usual?” I asked.
“I’ve lost the router.”
Modern parenting requires that we let our children go on the internet, “for homework,” and onto games consoles, “because I’ve done my homework,” and then – often while crouched over our own phones scrolling and clicking and somewhat glassy-eyed – deplore the beast that electronics make of our offspring and crossly stride round the house confiscating remotes and controls and, in Mrs Lovely’s case of final defiance, the router.
“I put it somewhere safe,” she wailed. “I only wanted Lulu to do her homework but she wouldn’t get off Facebook.”
“Fatal,” I said. A Safe Place has cost us all dear, and I’ve seen scraps break out between random teens in the library over Facebook so resonance was there.
“And I’m just worried I’ve left it in TK Maxx. But that’d be Melanie’s fault.”
Melanie, good twin, it seemed had expressed a desire for heels.
“So I found some, £89 –”
“£89!!” I squealed, “Are you MAD!”
“Reduced … to … £7!” finished Mrs Lovely triumphantly. “They had a six inch heel and I, well I felt like Prince Charming with Cinderella’s slippers.”
“Jeez, six inches! Is she mad?” Some slutty old Cinderella, no wonder she took a tumble come pumpkin time.
“Not. High. Enough,” said Mrs Lovely.
We were both silenced.
“But I feel too tall for heels at 5’7”,” I said.
“Same here,” she said. “But, no, Melanie wanted 7. Or. 8. So I had to take them back and I’m just wondering about the bag, and the router, and would I have thought that that was a safe place?”
We pondered the tippytoey nonsense of heels of 8” and the folly of safe places which often have to be drummed up at speed and regretted later.
“How tall is she?” I asked.
“5’8”. And the boys are all … so high.” Her illustrative hand hovered around our waists. We had munchkin men and monster girls.
“And what about Lulu?” I asked, needing a quick fix of Lulu. It had been a while.
“Shaved hair,” she said, closing her eyes. “All round here, round the back, up the sides. Floppy bit. You can tell she hates it. But she won’t say a word.”
I thought of all the words we don’t say. And the ones we do. Usually the nonsense ones. Lives lived on a level of exchanging trivia and needing something to laugh at to take the edge off. And that sometimes we take an extra turn around the field, despite the rain and the mud and the dogs being vile just because it provides a beautiful void and is in itself a safe place.
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
later
“All you do is nag and drink wine.”
The need for both is linked. I had a mouth full of pins at the time, altering the curtains, so couldn’t squawk in outrage. I thought about it, but guessed that death might get in the way.
“You said you’d stop nagging.” This could only be a teenager speaking. Or maybe a recalcitrant footballer to a humiliated wife. Sue me.
“Nagging is only repetition,” I said tartly, momentarily pin-free, and taking the opportunity for a medicinal tot (me nerves, doctor, summat chronic) of the vino. “And repetition is only necessary when you don’t do what you’ve been asked to do a hundred times. I said I wouldn’t nag, if you just did. And you haven’t done.”
E strode by. He frowned. “There’s pins on the floor.” He has a mediaeval belief that pins will pierce his skin, take the boat, sail north and puncture his heart.
“Pick them up then,” I might have snapped.
T14 looked blank. “Anyway, I’m crap at exams.”
“You’re crap at exams because you don’t do enough work for them.”
“They’re not for ages.”
“They’re not for ages, until they’re suddenly tomorrow, and yours are in 4 weeks. However much you might dislike the idea, the day will come when you are on a chair and facing a paper you are quite capable of easily passing. If you’d just thought to glance at a textbook beforehand.”
The evenings are light and long and the urge – never strong – to brush up on diffusion and refraction and negative enlargement and irregular verbs, ebbs further as the wind drops and the park beckons.
His local chums, at the local school, phone endlessly, “’s T14 there?” they grunt as if I hadn’t known them a decade and fed them fish fingers in their tiny days. These boys’ exams were a fortnight ago. “Wanna go down the park, T14?”
The head boy at T14’s school went to look round Durham, or was it York? with a view to studying medicine there. He abandoned a 1st XV match to do so. And was despatched roundly, for “only” having 7 A*s and 3 As at GCSE. Apparently you won’t be considered without 8 A*s. Bye! Could try harder. A mother panics.
“Yeah,” says T14, “See ya.”
Fourteen is a bit of a rubbish age. I wasn’t allowed to be fourteen. I only realised what a teenager could and should do when I was about 35 and aghast at the feral offspring of eye-rolling, older friends, “What can you do? They’re teenagers!”
Too old (dammit) to be Mummy’s boy and too young to be anything useful. Still tied to the chemistry textbook while dreaming of a VW campervan laden with chums making its way across America.
“J14’s coming to America,” says T14.
“Is he,” I say, “Is he really.”
J14 chucks a cricket ball against the wall and grins vaguely. The funding of the trip is not broached.
“I’ll revise later. Promise.” He’s off, a head phone in one ear, cycling hands-free to the park, free from piano practice and valencies, from the nagging alkie, the pin-freak and the bossy professor:
“T14’s not wearing his helmet!!! Phone him, phone now. Tell him he’s got to put his helmet on!!!”
Somewhere in the past couple of years, I’ve seen him artlessly naked for the last time. I didn’t, of course, realise that it was the last time, just as I didn’t realise when it was that I closed the cover on my final goodnight story.
Progress brings backwards steps, a merging from the individual to the masses, to fitting in with the other honking poltroons. Soon he’ll be like all those others, you know the ones, the ones who won’t kiss their mothers in public and who go out leaving the hot tap on and the back door open, a loaf of bread in the sink; who turn up just to frown at the fridge’s content and expect mounds of laundry to transform into neatly piled clean items. He’s never been a taking for granted type of child, but it’s seeping in, edging out the charm and softness. Leaving himself behind. I hope he finds a good new him to inhabit.
The next day, such is the volatility of what the in-flight magazine called Those Hard To Please Teens, he is smiling again, and singing on the stairs.
On leaving me at my brutal breeze-block Halls of Residence, strip lit and lino-floored, my father patted my shoulder, “You don’t need to come back at Christmas,” he said. This was his version of reassurance, to spare me the horror of claustrophobic obligation. Bugger off and don’t look back. Ha. Way to prompt a major neediness… I’ve missed only one Christmas in the decades since. Trap them and they don’t come back. I sit on metaphorical hands and grind a zip across my mouth against the urge to smother and annoy.
His face, his beautiful face, is changing. I thought all this would last forever. I was wrong. The bones beneath the skin are cranking and stretching, the hair's a little lanker. Sometimes his childish beauty is still there, or an echo of it, and sometimes the mix of growth is not that pleasing and the spots flare and the nostril flares and the lip curls and the eye no longer holds mine. Then he grows into himself a little more and edges a little older, another day away.
And the girls on his Facebook page call each other whore and slapper and bitch and fucker and say, “Oh Charl, you’re so pretty Charl, I hate you Charl, you bitch. Ellie tell Charl she’s a bitch.” And all the boys click Like. And the girls fly into a frenzy.
The door goes and in he comes, and he hugs me and he says, “Mummy,” and he says “Sorry,” and I say, “Darling,” and I don’t say, “Maths?” or “Geography?” though it nearly bloody kills me not to impart a wise word. He goes in to the kitchen and he fumbles on the window sill where all their school-books lie and he selects a textbook and neither of us says anything and he sits down and goes as if to read it.
“’t was boring down the park,” he said. He lies.
His eyes stray to the window, to the big sky beyond, and then, reluctantly, back to Henry VIII’s monastic reforms.
The need for both is linked. I had a mouth full of pins at the time, altering the curtains, so couldn’t squawk in outrage. I thought about it, but guessed that death might get in the way.
“You said you’d stop nagging.” This could only be a teenager speaking. Or maybe a recalcitrant footballer to a humiliated wife. Sue me.
“Nagging is only repetition,” I said tartly, momentarily pin-free, and taking the opportunity for a medicinal tot (me nerves, doctor, summat chronic) of the vino. “And repetition is only necessary when you don’t do what you’ve been asked to do a hundred times. I said I wouldn’t nag, if you just did. And you haven’t done.”
E strode by. He frowned. “There’s pins on the floor.” He has a mediaeval belief that pins will pierce his skin, take the boat, sail north and puncture his heart.
“Pick them up then,” I might have snapped.
T14 looked blank. “Anyway, I’m crap at exams.”
“You’re crap at exams because you don’t do enough work for them.”
“They’re not for ages.”
“They’re not for ages, until they’re suddenly tomorrow, and yours are in 4 weeks. However much you might dislike the idea, the day will come when you are on a chair and facing a paper you are quite capable of easily passing. If you’d just thought to glance at a textbook beforehand.”
The evenings are light and long and the urge – never strong – to brush up on diffusion and refraction and negative enlargement and irregular verbs, ebbs further as the wind drops and the park beckons.
His local chums, at the local school, phone endlessly, “’s T14 there?” they grunt as if I hadn’t known them a decade and fed them fish fingers in their tiny days. These boys’ exams were a fortnight ago. “Wanna go down the park, T14?”
The head boy at T14’s school went to look round Durham, or was it York? with a view to studying medicine there. He abandoned a 1st XV match to do so. And was despatched roundly, for “only” having 7 A*s and 3 As at GCSE. Apparently you won’t be considered without 8 A*s. Bye! Could try harder. A mother panics.
“Yeah,” says T14, “See ya.”
Fourteen is a bit of a rubbish age. I wasn’t allowed to be fourteen. I only realised what a teenager could and should do when I was about 35 and aghast at the feral offspring of eye-rolling, older friends, “What can you do? They’re teenagers!”
Too old (dammit) to be Mummy’s boy and too young to be anything useful. Still tied to the chemistry textbook while dreaming of a VW campervan laden with chums making its way across America.
“J14’s coming to America,” says T14.
“Is he,” I say, “Is he really.”
J14 chucks a cricket ball against the wall and grins vaguely. The funding of the trip is not broached.
“I’ll revise later. Promise.” He’s off, a head phone in one ear, cycling hands-free to the park, free from piano practice and valencies, from the nagging alkie, the pin-freak and the bossy professor:
“T14’s not wearing his helmet!!! Phone him, phone now. Tell him he’s got to put his helmet on!!!”
Somewhere in the past couple of years, I’ve seen him artlessly naked for the last time. I didn’t, of course, realise that it was the last time, just as I didn’t realise when it was that I closed the cover on my final goodnight story.
Progress brings backwards steps, a merging from the individual to the masses, to fitting in with the other honking poltroons. Soon he’ll be like all those others, you know the ones, the ones who won’t kiss their mothers in public and who go out leaving the hot tap on and the back door open, a loaf of bread in the sink; who turn up just to frown at the fridge’s content and expect mounds of laundry to transform into neatly piled clean items. He’s never been a taking for granted type of child, but it’s seeping in, edging out the charm and softness. Leaving himself behind. I hope he finds a good new him to inhabit.
The next day, such is the volatility of what the in-flight magazine called Those Hard To Please Teens, he is smiling again, and singing on the stairs.
On leaving me at my brutal breeze-block Halls of Residence, strip lit and lino-floored, my father patted my shoulder, “You don’t need to come back at Christmas,” he said. This was his version of reassurance, to spare me the horror of claustrophobic obligation. Bugger off and don’t look back. Ha. Way to prompt a major neediness… I’ve missed only one Christmas in the decades since. Trap them and they don’t come back. I sit on metaphorical hands and grind a zip across my mouth against the urge to smother and annoy.
His face, his beautiful face, is changing. I thought all this would last forever. I was wrong. The bones beneath the skin are cranking and stretching, the hair's a little lanker. Sometimes his childish beauty is still there, or an echo of it, and sometimes the mix of growth is not that pleasing and the spots flare and the nostril flares and the lip curls and the eye no longer holds mine. Then he grows into himself a little more and edges a little older, another day away.
And the girls on his Facebook page call each other whore and slapper and bitch and fucker and say, “Oh Charl, you’re so pretty Charl, I hate you Charl, you bitch. Ellie tell Charl she’s a bitch.” And all the boys click Like. And the girls fly into a frenzy.
The door goes and in he comes, and he hugs me and he says, “Mummy,” and he says “Sorry,” and I say, “Darling,” and I don’t say, “Maths?” or “Geography?” though it nearly bloody kills me not to impart a wise word. He goes in to the kitchen and he fumbles on the window sill where all their school-books lie and he selects a textbook and neither of us says anything and he sits down and goes as if to read it.
“’t was boring down the park,” he said. He lies.
His eyes stray to the window, to the big sky beyond, and then, reluctantly, back to Henry VIII’s monastic reforms.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Ssshh
We went to the library, F12 and I. Outside the doughty staff were waving placards and thrusting petitions for us to sign. I duly signed. This being the 3rd most popular library in the county it is due for closure. The council has spent a great deal of money on it in recent years, fitting automatic doors, modernising the Children’s Centre, installing self-service booths, streamlining the Wi-Fi area and polishing the coffee machine.
(Unexplained item in the Bagging Area. Remove. Oh, that’ll be a book, tsk.)
In all the improvements, I don’t see many new books. Plenty are for sale, an arbitrary selection of Think Yourself Thin to brand new picture books; the selection process of what to sell / what to keep is baffling.
The books which are there occupy an increasingly small footprint of the library. A healthy spread of rape and pillage – crime pays – and the paperbacks arranged in colour. That’s right: pink covers displayed with pink, orange with orange. Blue with – keep up.
Trouble is, books aren’t even books anymore. Not only are they the poor relations to DVDs, the homespun option to zingy CDs, they are reclassified as mere learning resource support materials. Or something. “Support” always seems to muscle in these days. It’s hard to think sometimes, once there, with the music blaring. The OAPs drift around to the pulsating throb of Eminem. I think it’s called making the library relevant. Or something.
I went in, trotting to save my scarf from doing an Isadora Duncan in the fierce sucking hush of the automatic doors closing in my wake and made my way to the FastBacks. I love the FastBacks. It’s all the stuff which is just out and you can only keep for a week. Which is more than you need to read a book. I did “War and Peace” in four days. An elderly gentleman and I tussled over the latest Michael McConnelly but breeding, respect and manners won through and he conceded the book to me.*
(*I wish. A girl can dream. In real life, and not in that crazy fantasy life where I end up with the thriller, I did my trilling “No, no, no!! I insist,” bit, all the while desperately hissing to self, Do Not Say, “you have it, while you can; you may be dead next week,” and it was he who tucked it under his arm and strolled off, whistling flatly through ill-fitting teeth leaving me with sub-standard fare like Rosamund Pilcher to pick over.)
Three girls, sub-teens, were squabbling over facebook, “Look, she’s called me a slag. The cow.” Fearful of being stabbed no one got involved. My friend Kitty said that she dreamed of being a librarian, of tucking small cards into the pockets on the tickets, of the satisfying thunk of the date stamp. We all had dreams about date stamps. Now it’s all processing and items and barcodes. Nothing to kick-start a gleam in a small child’s eye, apart from maybe the shiny name badge. Progress I suppose.
Pensioners silver-surfed or risked Maiming By Cappuccino at the coffee machine.
Eminem segued into Lady GaGa.
A sturdy lass with a string of children herded them all into the loo. The loo can take wheelchairs or families with half a dozen children. It’s why there’s only one. And a queue. Tena Lady Seniors formed an orderly line, edging in silent panic from sensibly clad foot to sensibly clad foot, pretending to ignore the stifled cries within as Shayne, Wayne and Dwayne peed somewhere near the lavatory. I know, I know, the SnobGod will get me.
Mr FastBack was struggling with the self serve, his wife hovering at his shoulder, the Rosamund Pilcher having found an appreciate home and pincered in her knobbly claw of a hand. He wasn’t sure what the “item” in question was meant to be, or the card he had to swipe, or what to do when that was your done.
“It’s your book,” I said, helpfully. Meaning my book. “And, here, your card, your library card.” He tucked his Tesco ClubCard back in his wallet and fumbled for his library card which he then held away from the scanner, dabbing it in the air nearby, frowning lest the red line bite. Another queue formed.
A member of staff, one of the few not out playing 1968 outside, hurried forward to help him use the self service. It’s all that’s left for them to do. The comments book bulges with praise for the staff, for their helpfulness, their kindly patience. Inevitable that they be phased out.
Some time later, significantly later than in what are rapidly becoming the Good Old Days, the transaction was complete. No one looked convinced. Beyoncé was urging the gathering Seniors to Put A Ring On It. Surreal, thy name is Library.
“Home love,” the old chap said to his wife, who was clearly still bemused. “A cuppa, a cracking read and ‘Deal or No Deal,’ what more do you want?” he smiled. The wife looked like she was tempted to offer “Whisky?” He patted her gloved paw. Technology taken on and conquered. They shuffled out towards the automatic doors, and triggered the alarm. The item had the last word. No way did it fancy being plonked on a sofa stranded with Noel Edmunds.
F12 ambled over with a teetering pile of books. “I haven’t got my card,” he said. “Will it matter?”
(Unexplained item in the Bagging Area. Remove. Oh, that’ll be a book, tsk.)
In all the improvements, I don’t see many new books. Plenty are for sale, an arbitrary selection of Think Yourself Thin to brand new picture books; the selection process of what to sell / what to keep is baffling.
The books which are there occupy an increasingly small footprint of the library. A healthy spread of rape and pillage – crime pays – and the paperbacks arranged in colour. That’s right: pink covers displayed with pink, orange with orange. Blue with – keep up.
Trouble is, books aren’t even books anymore. Not only are they the poor relations to DVDs, the homespun option to zingy CDs, they are reclassified as mere learning resource support materials. Or something. “Support” always seems to muscle in these days. It’s hard to think sometimes, once there, with the music blaring. The OAPs drift around to the pulsating throb of Eminem. I think it’s called making the library relevant. Or something.
I went in, trotting to save my scarf from doing an Isadora Duncan in the fierce sucking hush of the automatic doors closing in my wake and made my way to the FastBacks. I love the FastBacks. It’s all the stuff which is just out and you can only keep for a week. Which is more than you need to read a book. I did “War and Peace” in four days. An elderly gentleman and I tussled over the latest Michael McConnelly but breeding, respect and manners won through and he conceded the book to me.*
(*I wish. A girl can dream. In real life, and not in that crazy fantasy life where I end up with the thriller, I did my trilling “No, no, no!! I insist,” bit, all the while desperately hissing to self, Do Not Say, “you have it, while you can; you may be dead next week,” and it was he who tucked it under his arm and strolled off, whistling flatly through ill-fitting teeth leaving me with sub-standard fare like Rosamund Pilcher to pick over.)
Three girls, sub-teens, were squabbling over facebook, “Look, she’s called me a slag. The cow.” Fearful of being stabbed no one got involved. My friend Kitty said that she dreamed of being a librarian, of tucking small cards into the pockets on the tickets, of the satisfying thunk of the date stamp. We all had dreams about date stamps. Now it’s all processing and items and barcodes. Nothing to kick-start a gleam in a small child’s eye, apart from maybe the shiny name badge. Progress I suppose.
Pensioners silver-surfed or risked Maiming By Cappuccino at the coffee machine.
Eminem segued into Lady GaGa.
A sturdy lass with a string of children herded them all into the loo. The loo can take wheelchairs or families with half a dozen children. It’s why there’s only one. And a queue. Tena Lady Seniors formed an orderly line, edging in silent panic from sensibly clad foot to sensibly clad foot, pretending to ignore the stifled cries within as Shayne, Wayne and Dwayne peed somewhere near the lavatory. I know, I know, the SnobGod will get me.
Mr FastBack was struggling with the self serve, his wife hovering at his shoulder, the Rosamund Pilcher having found an appreciate home and pincered in her knobbly claw of a hand. He wasn’t sure what the “item” in question was meant to be, or the card he had to swipe, or what to do when that was your done.
“It’s your book,” I said, helpfully. Meaning my book. “And, here, your card, your library card.” He tucked his Tesco ClubCard back in his wallet and fumbled for his library card which he then held away from the scanner, dabbing it in the air nearby, frowning lest the red line bite. Another queue formed.
A member of staff, one of the few not out playing 1968 outside, hurried forward to help him use the self service. It’s all that’s left for them to do. The comments book bulges with praise for the staff, for their helpfulness, their kindly patience. Inevitable that they be phased out.
Some time later, significantly later than in what are rapidly becoming the Good Old Days, the transaction was complete. No one looked convinced. Beyoncé was urging the gathering Seniors to Put A Ring On It. Surreal, thy name is Library.
“Home love,” the old chap said to his wife, who was clearly still bemused. “A cuppa, a cracking read and ‘Deal or No Deal,’ what more do you want?” he smiled. The wife looked like she was tempted to offer “Whisky?” He patted her gloved paw. Technology taken on and conquered. They shuffled out towards the automatic doors, and triggered the alarm. The item had the last word. No way did it fancy being plonked on a sofa stranded with Noel Edmunds.
F12 ambled over with a teetering pile of books. “I haven’t got my card,” he said. “Will it matter?”
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
ouch
5 and a half months? Who’s counting.
5 and a half hours in A&E it was the other night. I was counting then. Me and F11. Yes, he’s gone up a year. He’s also, in this 5 and a half month hiatus, passed for one of the best schools in the country, aka a “super selective” grammar, passed with a pleasingly high mark. E and I cried, we really did on opening the letter. The boast will end with recording that we reckon (deciphering the results takes some doing) that he got full marks on the notoriously difficult second paper, this despite having freaked us out a-plenty by having finished both papers with 10 minutes to spare and finding them "easy." How the parental heart sinks while dwelling on this folly in the long wait for results.
Clever, difficult little beast. Tank feck there’s a reason for his, well, oddness: it be brains.
Brains were sadly most def forgot on Sunday when he went out on his bike (brand new, 24 hours old). Sensing a 4x4 looming behind him he dived for the ditch, fearing that she’d splatter him. Maybe she would have done, but she got out of the car and asked very nicely if he was OK. I imagine he growled at her and she retired hurt and he limped home nursing his wrist; his helmet crushed, his amour propre in tatters but his bike unscathed. I left a caring ten seconds before asking about the bike. And he seemed fine.
I know that I’m not a natural nurse, this mainly to counterbalance E’s quite unacceptable hypochondria, but I did ask about him first, and bike second. I really did. I think.
Monday he was booted into school; me deaf to bleatings about the wrist and murmurings about a stomach ache and and and... Typical back to school stuff. Get on with it. Off. Go.
He managed well at karate, too. He seemed fine; after all there was no bone poking through the skin, no swelling, no bruise even. What's a mother to think? But at supper E, nice E, said, “I really think he should go to A&E.” So off we went. Each with a book. F11 finished his; I managed 100 pages of mine which, since it was “The Children’s Book” by A S Byatt is good going.
The waiting room was heaving with kids. “Trampolines are our bread and butter,” said the nurse. There was also evidence of a football ankle, a climbing frame elbow and a skateboard knee.
There were 3 Poles, jabbering over ownership of a tripod;
an ancient man, so very old, shouting into a bells and whistle mobile phone: someone appeared, he handed them money for fish and chips before returning to bellowing into his phone.
A glamorous woman, glamorous enough to have been a man in full slap, held a finger dipped in a purple cup. I longed for details.
Another man looked so confused turning in small circles round his holdall, round and round, that for the first time in months I felt comparatively well sussed and smart and up together. And so we read on.
Life passed slowly under the neon gaze. A TV too loud to ignore, too quiet to follow babbled in the corner of a room littered with torn magazines, abandoned plastic tumblers of leaking coffee dregs, and crumbs. Lots of crumbs. It wrote off quite half a dozen chairs and the place was nigh-on full. A serious place for the munching of snacks. Enough to turn the strong-stomached weak (and I am not strong-stomached) contemplating the snarfing of meat pies and slurping on sub-standard beige liquid; crumbs, crumbs and pools of squalid damp. People in public don't bother with bins. Another reason not to be a nurse, the fumbling with damp and the finding of crumbs in odd places. Spare me.
After what seemed like a week but was in clock time 90 minutes, a triage nurse prodded and poked and mispronounced F11’s name and called me "Mum" and then back out again we were, turned round quick like the loon round his holdall and back out onto the hell of the hard metal chairs. In the interim, ours had been taken by the next lot of oddballs who'd trooped in, being a group of four adult children. It’s the only way to describe them, not care in the community as such, not 100% fresh from an institution, possibly passing for normal in some circles, but still. Large, lined, one clutching a bag which dangled at chest height as if from eager paws. Very jolly, but slightly unnerving. Too loud, too friendly. They stood very close and touched each other a lot.
“Don’t catch their eye,” I muttered sotto voce to F11. A mistake.
“What? Who?” he demanded loudly looking all around him with avidity. “Oh, them.” He stared.
Eventually we ended up in the X-Ray department. Empty and a bit scary.
“It looks fine,” I said, expertly surveying the images on screen.
“Not allowed to say,” the handsome radiographer said.
“Oh?” I said.
“In case we get it wrong.”
I felt that this was code for “Yeah, he’s fine,” so I nodded slightly patronisingly, one radiographer unto another. But it seems, from the doctor who was allowed to say, that he has a buckled radius – the bone isn’t meant to splay out like that – and bone flecks in his palm. The doctor was called away mid-explanation to speak to the police about someone in the cells. Feeling like a teenager, I managed to take photos of the computer screen with my phone. Imagine.
“It’ll need a cast,” the doctor said, swishing in all important from police business. “We’ll isolate the thumb since I’m worried about these flecks.”
When young, the now T13 used always ask hopefully, on hearing of illness, “Is there blood?” I feel his interest now. Illness should show. There should be a clue. The wincing of a child is not clue enough. Not with Monday and back to school on the cards. I felt mean and defeated. Buckled. Bone flecks. Another reason why I’m not a nurse nor ever could be: bad, so very bad at all the ill stuff.
More waiting, then in with the nurse. She wheeled in the plaster in its own stand. Another nurse lounged in the doorway waiting her turn with it. Seems they don't run to 2, trampolines notwithstanding. Meanwhile, one of the adult children was pulled across on a trolley through the corridor at the back. Back and forwards a few times she went, the orderly taking touching pains each time to open and shut with care the double doors impeding his progress, anxious lest they bang the trolley. She looked thrilled, she clutched her bag the tighter. I imagined the other 3 big children watching, hugger-mugger in the corner, squealing, bouncing flat-footedly.
I felt like a child myself, watching one of those mesmerising educational films, as the nurse wound various layers round F11’s arm.
“Ah,” I said approvingly at one point, “you’re isolating the thumb.”
She gave me a look. At the end, having tossed the protective apron she’d laid over F11 in the bin (“Don’t want this plaster getting all over you”), she fumbled with the paperwork. A curse escaped her. “Gotta isolate the thumb!” she said. Plaster splattered everywhere. “It’ll wash off,” she said.
He’s back at school now, the cast hidden under his jumper. “He might need a scribe for his SATs,” said his teacher.
“Can you imagine?” I said.
His teacher blanched. F11 does ramble so. A clever boy, but random.
I’d taken a photo when it was done that night, to text with the x-ray to E and T13.
“Not T13!” F11 said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he’ll forward it to all his friends and then put it on Facebook,” he said.
I told T13 this. “What!” he said outraged. “I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t go round telling people. I know what he’s like.” A beat and, “Oh, all my friends are really concerned, they all, like, say Get Better and stuff.”
“It’s private,” said F11.
T13 looked baffled. By now he would have arranged a press release, a photo call and a rota of willing helpers to carry his bag. Much the same as when he last stubbed his toe.
“It’s not private,” I said, “It couldn’t be less private.”
Every other child in the Western world would be displaying their cast with pride. I put a hankie-sling on Catty, “Look, Catty’s hurt, too.”
“No!” he wailed, “Not Catty. Catty can’t be hurt, I can’t bear it.”
So Catty got better very very quickly, about as quick as it takes to snatch a hankie off his head, while narrowly avoiding breaking his neck. Human time will be a little slower. But not as slow as A&E time. I hope.
5 and a half hours in A&E it was the other night. I was counting then. Me and F11. Yes, he’s gone up a year. He’s also, in this 5 and a half month hiatus, passed for one of the best schools in the country, aka a “super selective” grammar, passed with a pleasingly high mark. E and I cried, we really did on opening the letter. The boast will end with recording that we reckon (deciphering the results takes some doing) that he got full marks on the notoriously difficult second paper, this despite having freaked us out a-plenty by having finished both papers with 10 minutes to spare and finding them "easy." How the parental heart sinks while dwelling on this folly in the long wait for results.
Clever, difficult little beast. Tank feck there’s a reason for his, well, oddness: it be brains.
Brains were sadly most def forgot on Sunday when he went out on his bike (brand new, 24 hours old). Sensing a 4x4 looming behind him he dived for the ditch, fearing that she’d splatter him. Maybe she would have done, but she got out of the car and asked very nicely if he was OK. I imagine he growled at her and she retired hurt and he limped home nursing his wrist; his helmet crushed, his amour propre in tatters but his bike unscathed. I left a caring ten seconds before asking about the bike. And he seemed fine.
I know that I’m not a natural nurse, this mainly to counterbalance E’s quite unacceptable hypochondria, but I did ask about him first, and bike second. I really did. I think.
Monday he was booted into school; me deaf to bleatings about the wrist and murmurings about a stomach ache and and and... Typical back to school stuff. Get on with it. Off. Go.
He managed well at karate, too. He seemed fine; after all there was no bone poking through the skin, no swelling, no bruise even. What's a mother to think? But at supper E, nice E, said, “I really think he should go to A&E.” So off we went. Each with a book. F11 finished his; I managed 100 pages of mine which, since it was “The Children’s Book” by A S Byatt is good going.
The waiting room was heaving with kids. “Trampolines are our bread and butter,” said the nurse. There was also evidence of a football ankle, a climbing frame elbow and a skateboard knee.
There were 3 Poles, jabbering over ownership of a tripod;
an ancient man, so very old, shouting into a bells and whistle mobile phone: someone appeared, he handed them money for fish and chips before returning to bellowing into his phone.
A glamorous woman, glamorous enough to have been a man in full slap, held a finger dipped in a purple cup. I longed for details.
Another man looked so confused turning in small circles round his holdall, round and round, that for the first time in months I felt comparatively well sussed and smart and up together. And so we read on.
Life passed slowly under the neon gaze. A TV too loud to ignore, too quiet to follow babbled in the corner of a room littered with torn magazines, abandoned plastic tumblers of leaking coffee dregs, and crumbs. Lots of crumbs. It wrote off quite half a dozen chairs and the place was nigh-on full. A serious place for the munching of snacks. Enough to turn the strong-stomached weak (and I am not strong-stomached) contemplating the snarfing of meat pies and slurping on sub-standard beige liquid; crumbs, crumbs and pools of squalid damp. People in public don't bother with bins. Another reason not to be a nurse, the fumbling with damp and the finding of crumbs in odd places. Spare me.
After what seemed like a week but was in clock time 90 minutes, a triage nurse prodded and poked and mispronounced F11’s name and called me "Mum" and then back out again we were, turned round quick like the loon round his holdall and back out onto the hell of the hard metal chairs. In the interim, ours had been taken by the next lot of oddballs who'd trooped in, being a group of four adult children. It’s the only way to describe them, not care in the community as such, not 100% fresh from an institution, possibly passing for normal in some circles, but still. Large, lined, one clutching a bag which dangled at chest height as if from eager paws. Very jolly, but slightly unnerving. Too loud, too friendly. They stood very close and touched each other a lot.
“Don’t catch their eye,” I muttered sotto voce to F11. A mistake.
“What? Who?” he demanded loudly looking all around him with avidity. “Oh, them.” He stared.
Eventually we ended up in the X-Ray department. Empty and a bit scary.
“It looks fine,” I said, expertly surveying the images on screen.
“Not allowed to say,” the handsome radiographer said.
“Oh?” I said.
“In case we get it wrong.”
I felt that this was code for “Yeah, he’s fine,” so I nodded slightly patronisingly, one radiographer unto another. But it seems, from the doctor who was allowed to say, that he has a buckled radius – the bone isn’t meant to splay out like that – and bone flecks in his palm. The doctor was called away mid-explanation to speak to the police about someone in the cells. Feeling like a teenager, I managed to take photos of the computer screen with my phone. Imagine.
“It’ll need a cast,” the doctor said, swishing in all important from police business. “We’ll isolate the thumb since I’m worried about these flecks.”
When young, the now T13 used always ask hopefully, on hearing of illness, “Is there blood?” I feel his interest now. Illness should show. There should be a clue. The wincing of a child is not clue enough. Not with Monday and back to school on the cards. I felt mean and defeated. Buckled. Bone flecks. Another reason why I’m not a nurse nor ever could be: bad, so very bad at all the ill stuff.
More waiting, then in with the nurse. She wheeled in the plaster in its own stand. Another nurse lounged in the doorway waiting her turn with it. Seems they don't run to 2, trampolines notwithstanding. Meanwhile, one of the adult children was pulled across on a trolley through the corridor at the back. Back and forwards a few times she went, the orderly taking touching pains each time to open and shut with care the double doors impeding his progress, anxious lest they bang the trolley. She looked thrilled, she clutched her bag the tighter. I imagined the other 3 big children watching, hugger-mugger in the corner, squealing, bouncing flat-footedly.
I felt like a child myself, watching one of those mesmerising educational films, as the nurse wound various layers round F11’s arm.
“Ah,” I said approvingly at one point, “you’re isolating the thumb.”
She gave me a look. At the end, having tossed the protective apron she’d laid over F11 in the bin (“Don’t want this plaster getting all over you”), she fumbled with the paperwork. A curse escaped her. “Gotta isolate the thumb!” she said. Plaster splattered everywhere. “It’ll wash off,” she said.
He’s back at school now, the cast hidden under his jumper. “He might need a scribe for his SATs,” said his teacher.
“Can you imagine?” I said.
His teacher blanched. F11 does ramble so. A clever boy, but random.
I’d taken a photo when it was done that night, to text with the x-ray to E and T13.
“Not T13!” F11 said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he’ll forward it to all his friends and then put it on Facebook,” he said.
I told T13 this. “What!” he said outraged. “I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t go round telling people. I know what he’s like.” A beat and, “Oh, all my friends are really concerned, they all, like, say Get Better and stuff.”
“It’s private,” said F11.
T13 looked baffled. By now he would have arranged a press release, a photo call and a rota of willing helpers to carry his bag. Much the same as when he last stubbed his toe.
“It’s not private,” I said, “It couldn’t be less private.”
Every other child in the Western world would be displaying their cast with pride. I put a hankie-sling on Catty, “Look, Catty’s hurt, too.”
“No!” he wailed, “Not Catty. Catty can’t be hurt, I can’t bear it.”
So Catty got better very very quickly, about as quick as it takes to snatch a hankie off his head, while narrowly avoiding breaking his neck. Human time will be a little slower. But not as slow as A&E time. I hope.
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