yuk2

Some of F13’s class were on the front page of the local paper last week, beaming quite convincingly over some Haggis they had made in class. One can only assume they'd not yet put fork of same to mouth. What remained of F13’s sat untouched in the fridge awaiting loin girding. I've had haggis once. Never again. It had been badly closed up, the box it came in because F13 himself had closed it, and had splurted and spattered sheep stomach stuff inside his new backpack. Gagging, I’d cleaned it, scrubbing at the gummy zips.

“Why weren’t you in the picture?” I asked, raw of hand.
He shrugged.
“It would have been lovely to have had a picture of you.”
“Why?” he said, “you can see me any time.” A literal child can be a tedious thing.
“I could have sent it to people,” I said, wading further into pathetic land.
“People who want a picture of me already have one,” he said. “Besides, the paper came during lunch time.”
“Ah, so you chose to stuff your face rather than get in the photo?”
“I have to eat –“
“Everyone has to eat. You can eat anytime.”
“I’m a busy man; my lunch takes ages.”

His lunch is barely liftable. I get his point. I do do good lunch, I like to feed my little men up, and sometimes feel a bit Witch to their Hansel and Gretel, but still my children are skinny. They would remain in the cage and I would stay hungry were I in the business of fattening them up for the pot.
But in a week when a smartie sandwich was in the papers, I can be relied upon to be smack-worthily smug about the worthy little pots of olives and chicken rolls, homemade brownies, yoghurts and fruit that are stuffed, holiday-suitcase-ful, into my boys’ lunchboxes.

When I did a stint as a dinner lady at their primary schools (strictly on an opening packets of crisps basis, and saying, “Eat nicely, Benjamin”: no hairnets, no ladles, no twizzlers), there was one family. I rather liked them, a travelling family permanently outgrowing their static caravan, as child after child was born to join the wild straggle of siblings and cousins.
The children were sweeties and so were their lunches. A typical offering comprised a mini packet of sugary cereal, a box of tic-tacs. Maybe a bald piece of steamed dough. “Our” children were not allowed sweets, or chocolate and glared droolingly at the Haribos constituting these children’s meals, the lone slice of toxic pink penis masquerading as meat, the chemical crisps.

I hesitated, but spoke to the Head about it. It was heartbreaking seeing them eat such crap, their building blocks being E numbers and fat.
She made a brusque cutting swipe with her hand. “Racial,” she said, “Can’t do a thing about it. Oh, and that reminds me.” She’d bustle off, and on days such as that would a letter come home from school regarding suitable lunches.
“It has come to my attention,” the Head would megaphone, “that some parents are still sending in grapes unhalved. Choking constitutes a real problem with grapes unless halved. And may I remind parents that as well as operating a strict no nut policy, we have also banned kiwi fruit on health and safety grounds. Your cooperation is appreciated.” I would scan the letter, trawling for spoken, and then unspoken, strictures on supplying boxes of cereal, tubs of tic-tacs and found them missing.

No one wanted the haggis. The fridge door opened, and closed. Evasive action was taken to jiggle it to the back, out of sight, out of mind, to let it rot in quiet until a quiet funeral could be arranged in the bin. I had thought that E might choke it down. He is, when it suits, half Scottish. I was wrong. He evinced minus interest in it and was quite rude.
It served one useful purpose, however, for which much thanks. Food which traditionally might go down badly (fish pie, say) when offered up with a dangling, “Or there’s the haggis…” was temporarily greeted with relieved gusto.
The haggis grew a crust.

The inevitable happened. The dog perked up. She skittered and danced on clattery nails when out it came, eagerly dancing it to her bowl. It had shrunk and sat resentful on its plate but was pounced on with grateful relish by the easily pleased in our midst. She downed it in big, gulping glugs, taking out much of the silver foil too.
She smacked her lips, thrilled, and looked around for more, hoping perhaps even for a box of tic-tacs, a packet of cereal of dubious date, a Haribo. Unconsidered trifles which the fusspots eschew. Giddy days, dog, but not that giddy.

pie in the sky

He’s been and gone, the Skyman, not a chap to be defined by his absence since the extent of his personality was revealed in but a sequence of grunts and flunked eye catching. Still, he wasn’t there to be my best friend, he was thereto arm himself in a surprising amount of clothing to scale a ladder, rising 4 or 5 giddy rungs to install a, sssshh, a dish. The shame. But prior to that,

“You’ve had Sky before,” he said accusingly.
We’d ticked a box saying we hadn’t. We’d also cleared a room to allow what’s called Easy Access to the phone line. He’d told me brusquely that we needn’t have bothered, which left me facing an hour of bashed shins to anticipate in shunting it all back.
“No,” I said, hasty to declare our Sky virginity, “We haven’t, it’s just for the Ashes, nothing more.”
“You have,” he said, totally uninterested. “Look. The marks on the wall.”
“Well, maybe the woman before, but I don’t remember seeing a dish.”
“It was here,” he said, “you’ve had it before.”
Clearly his ‘you’ was not my ‘you’ so I let it go.

I asked a run of idiotic questions. The terseness of his answers suggested he’d considered murder as an option to replying. He used words like ‘scart’ and ‘input’ and 'AV2' to spoil it for me. “It’s all in the manual,” he said.
“You get to an age when you can’t face the manual,” I said.
“Better press on,” he said.

On went the steel-capped boots and the hard hat, out came the ladder. Doubtless a Certificate of Competence in ladder management, awarded following a 2 day course, lay in the glove compartment (I say "glove" but does anyone keep gloves in this compartment, or a hideous miscellany of tat: scratched sunglasses and rumpled A-Zs shy the relevant pages?)
3 people from school, teachers and, what are called I always find rather alarmingly, ‘support staff’ – I imagine them there, poised beneath open windows, ready to catch flying infants, or braced against a wall, shouldering it into submission – took such a course, in stepladder use. 2 people are always to be present, it seems, when grappling with steps: hence the need for 3 when, inevitably, one of them is off on long-term sick leave.
Amusingly, the 3 plucked for this noble task were the fatties. I pause to smile at the images of all 3 getting the Christmas decorations out of the loft, happy days, drenched in tinsel; tempers just this close from fraying; tight, short laughs; trapped fingers and panic and blame; plenty of tepid tea.

And just yesterday, the waterman came.
“Come to read the meter,” he said.
Since it had been tipping down, I winced and said, “Oh, your feet ...” Beige carpet, you see, relatively new after three years of squalor and grime.
“Gotta keep ‘em on,” he said, “health and safety.”
“The meter’s just here, under the stairs,” I said. “It’s quite safe.”
“Gotta wear these boots,” he said. “Sorry. I used to keep a pair of protectors, in the van, for nice people such as yourself, but I got reported. Not allowed to wear ‘em.”
“Can I read it?” I asked.
“You can,” he said in terms of well, I’ve heard some crazy things. “It’ll have to go down as a customer reading though. One of these days, you’ll have to let one of us do it. Mental, I know. Sorry about the mud.”
The mad mad world of meter reading.

Meanwhile, I made F10 some breakfast. There was very little milk.
“Is that it?” he asked in great outrage, he grabbed Catty by the scruff of its exhausted neck as witness to my slack housekeeping.
“It is. You’ll both have to have water, I’ll get some more later.” Both! What am I saying. This cat is stuffed.
“Is there no back up milk?”
“What would back up milk be?”
He rolled his eyes, “For when the normal milk runs out.”
“It’d go off,” I said.
“No it wouldn’t,” he said, “I’d drink it. And Catty would drink it.”
“I’ll go and buy some now,” I said, resisting the lure of the cat-led circular conversation.
“And don’t forget to get back up milk too.”
What that boy and his cat, his ambitions and expectations, needs is an office and secretaries. I feel sorry for them having to settle for me.

I bought a thing of big milk instead, and a lemon and some garlic. Not very breakfasty but I like to do my bit with regard to unnecessary purchases to help keep the shop afloat. The price they charge meant they could close by lunchtime and still make a profit on the day. Empty of purse but bursting with milk, back up or otherwise, I trotted back.

“He wanted you,” F10 said, “the man who doesn’t like his job.”
“Did he say that?” I asked eagerly.
“No. You can just tell.”
“How?” I said, loving glimpses into his thought processes.
“You just can,” he said warningly, “end of conversation.”

I took him to school, he miaowed and purred and talked about Catty who, little does either of them know, is doomed to a morning spinning round in the washing machine.
More end of an era stuff up at the gates, with the current Year 6 lining up for the last time. Brings tears to your eyes, or it did to mine; the crop of mothers there looked stolid and unresponsive, and you have to hope that nostalgia, at the very least, is playing out somewhere in the depths of their flinty hearts: I’m expecting great use of hankies at pick-up time and not just by me.

Somehow, next year, my random F10 will be in the big boy line. He gave me a wonky smile and faked a miaow at me through the bars. We’ll have to do something to quell his inner cat before year 6. That and watch a lot of cricket, if I can be bothered to read the manual.