Kids Dented Egos and a Nice Cup of Tea

Having been brought up in a family of girls, when I had my first boy 15 years ago, I looked in bewilderment at this small manchild who peed in an arc every time I tried to put a nappy on him and a mum in the ward next to mine said to me, ‘Boys are a gift – they are tough on the outside but very, very soft on the inside.  They need more nurturing and care than you would think.’  Mind you she may have been a little biased as she had just given birth to her third child, a girl, who was born with a full set of milk teeth and I left hospital as she was shrieking at the midwife that there was ‘No  f***g way’ that she was going to breastfeed…

3 boys later and her initial words could not be more true.  Throughout the years from the first stumbling toddler steps and Upsy Daisy moments, to the first little sports day races, to the first sprints on full on athletics stadia, my boys have matured into little men – all tough and muscly on the outside, but very soft on the inside.  And part of that growing up process is dealing with fear, and dealing with failure.  And part of dealing with those, is how you deal with it as a parent.

Whether it is losing at a sporting venture, or your child not getting the academic qualifications that you had hoped for, or your teenager has suffered heartbreak for the first time, it is how you react that determines how your child copes with his very real (even if hidden behind a façade of Don’t Care)sense of failure. And it doesn’t come easy.  And there is no way of knowing if you have got it right or wrong, until it is said, and then it can’t be unsaid.  Does the ‘Upsy Daisy, Get Up Now’ approach from a little toddler tumble, ascribe to the utter desolation of being the one to lose a penalty kick?  Does the ‘I love you because You are Special’ sentiment actually work when all the child wants to do is fit in with his peers?  And does the ‘Just ignore Them if they are being Mean, they’re only Jealous’ statement apply when your child is deliberately being targeted?  When is it time to step in, and when is it time to stand back?

As adults, it seems fairly simple – we have developed our own coping mechanisms, and either vent to our good friends and family over a nice cuppa, set out to prove our detractors wrong, or hole up for a while, licking our wounds until we have come up with a strategy.  It is up to our kids to discover their way of dealing with it, and it is up to us to support them with it.

In my case, last week was a week of very mixed emotions.  Little Man, at 9 years old being the only boy in his dance class, and the only male dancer in his school class, had come back from his weekend of all male dance with the Royal Academy of Dance full of pride in what he had achieved and the fact that he had felt part of a ‘gang’.  His school encouraged him to show off his certificate and talk about what he had done in an assembly.  On leaving the room, some alpha females called him Weird.  In a rugby match later when he was delighted to be moved up from the C’s to the B’s, some of the boys were querying why.  But he said nothing to me as I waved at him from the sidelines, and he threw himself into it with gusto and tackled well, going off with honour and a bloody knee.  It was at the match tea, when someone pushed him out of the queue, that his bottom lip started to quiver, and then the tears began to fall.  The male Games teachers, looking hopelessly out of their league, brought him to me.  Initially I tried the Upsy Daisy method.  Didn’t work.  Then I tried the ‘Just ignore Them if they’re being Mean, they’re only Jealous’ approach.  More tears, because of course all he wanted to do was to belong.  So, as it was nearly the end of the day, I took him home, and we had a cuddle on the sofa, and he had a good cry about maybe he should give up dancing but he didn’t want to, and I held back a few tears.  And then we had a cup of tea.  And then we were laughing. And when he was in bed I replied to his teacher’s concerned email.  And the next day he came back beaming because everyone had been nice to him.

And then yesterday Eldest Son (14) played in the semi  finals of a National Schools rugby tournament in which over 500 schools had taken part.  It was held at Allianz Park, home of the Saracens, and the boys were enormously proud to walk out on to the 3G pitch in front of a roaring crowd.  Eldest Son is the fastest in his team, and is used to sprinting past everyone on the pitch and so plays on the wing.  Unfortunately, the opposition’s fastest man was playing against him.  It became a contest of speed.  Eldest Son lost the battle, and limped off the pitch with two bloody knees and a dented ego.  His team were simply outclassed.  The boys bowed their heads in defeat, utterly miserable and dejected.  The watching dads clapped their sons on the backs and tried the Upsy Daisy method.  Some boys had tears streaming down their faces.  The mums tried the ‘ We love you because you are special, you did really well to get this far’.  The boys carried on walking.  They went back by coach, vented to their friends, and by the time they arrived and we were waiting with carefully blank faces, they were laughing.  They had sorted it out amongst themselves.  They had dealt with it in an adult way.

 

This morning the carpenter came in to start on the skirting boards.  Passionate about rugby, he had been watching his only son of 17 play in a match at the weekend. He asked how Eldest Son’s match had gone and I told him.  ‘We lost ours too,’ he said gloomily, and we both stared into the mid distance.  I gathered myself. 

‘Cuppa?’ I asked brightly. 

And he nodded, smiling ruefully.

A Story for Evie

This is Evie.  About a month ago she didn’t feel very well and so Mummy took her to the doctors and he looked at her and made her stick her tongue out and say Aaaah which was funny, and then he showed her how red her blood was as he sucked it up in little injections, and then he gave her some tablets.  And the best thing was that afterwards Mummy took her to the café and she had a massive piece of cake and an even bigger hot chocolate with cream and sprinkles.  But the thing was, Evie still wasn’t a hundred per cent, and so she went to a great big hospital in London which was stuffed to the rafters with children and toys and lots of happy smiling doctors who said that they would make her feel better. She had a go at some painting, and learned to play the harp, and all her friends sent her cards and presents and she was very happy even though she still hurt a little bit from all the medicine that she had been given. One day, a nurse sat down with her and her mummy and said that they needed to give her some really strong medicine that might make her hair fall out.  Evie was very upset, but the nurse said that she could choose a wig, made from real hair, all for her very own, until hers grew back.  And her Mummy, who has the longest hair of all the mummies she knew, said that she would cut her hair off to give for a wig for the next child. This is a story for Evie…

The Hairy Fairy

Now we’ve all heard of the Tooth Fairy, and if truth be known, she is one of the bossiest fairies.  She is pretty and blonde and very, very, clean with sparkly wings and a shimmery dress.  She doesn’t carry a wand, because most fairies don’t – they only get in the way of Good Deeds. She carries a little clipboard around with her, and has a big blackboard with signs saying Wobbly with a date underneath for when the tooth is due to come out, and Teething with a date in which a tooth is due to go in.  You see, it’s a little known fact that when you lose your baby teeth, the Tooth Fairy collects the tooth from wherever you have left it – in a pot, under your pillow, on a windowsill – she will find it, because it is all on her clipboard.  And at the end of a teeth collecting night, she goes to her little house in the woods (shelives  by the canal, because she likes to hear the sound of the ducks quacking) and she has forty winks (because even fairies have to sleep) and then she gets up and scrubs and scrubs at the little milk teeth that she has collected. In the afternoons she goes into the houses where all the teething babies are asleep (because they never sleep at night) and she pops a shiny bright tooth into their gums, so that it can be used again.  And then she ticks it off on her blackboard when she gets home.

The Tooth Fairy has a sister called The Hairy Fairy who is a little bit quieter, and a bit dreamy, and not very pretty.  In fact, she doesn’t really look like a girl, even though she is, because she has a beard.  And she doesn’t wear a dress, but likes big baggy shorts, a white linen shirt, and some teeny tiny fairy Timberland boots.  In fact, she looks a bit like Evie’s Uncle Bill (but we won’t tell him that).  Anyway, the Hairy Fairy is very kind hearted, and she is also a bit of a collector.  But she is also a bit disorganized.  Where her sister has pots of gleaming teeth all in different sizes and orders, the Hairy Fairy has bags of hair, all in different colours and lengths, and all jumbled up.  She doesn’t have a blackboard with dates on, and is very haphazard  -that is why, when Evie’s daddy started to go a little bit bald, he didn’t get any replacement hair, because all she could find was orange curly hair, and that would look a bit odd. 

‘What I need,’ thought the Hairy Fairy, ‘Is some help in sorting out my hair bags, and then I will try and be bit more organized.’   All that thinking made her tired, and so she went off to have a cup of dew and a nice sugar crystal (which her sister had banned, because it was bad for teeth).  And I’m afraid to say that she fell asleep in the sunshine.

There were five little elves who had nowhere to live, because a Scout Camp had pitched their tent right on the toadstools which they called home.  So they wandered around, looking for a safe place to start building again.  They came upon the Hairy Fairy, who was asleep outside her house in the sunshine, and they peeked inside her big comfortable home.  The eldest elf, Leo – said ‘What a mess! And Ru, the next eldest looked in and went ‘Urgh!’, but the three little ones, Isa, Cob and Oll clapped their little hands in glee.  Because you see, there is nothing an elf likes more than tidying up, and let’s face it, poor old Hairy Fairy’s house was an absolute disgrace…

Hairy Fairy woke up with a start.  She was late again, and had to do some hair collecting from a hospital from some children.  She scuttled into the house and gave a big scream that woke her pet frog, who started to croak loudly and jump all around the place.  All of the hair bags had been sorted, the house was clean and tidy, and the kettle was boiling noisily on the stove.  Hairy Fairy rubbed her eyes, and looked again.  There were five little elves, heads cocked to one side, looking back.  And Hairy Fairy whirled round and round in the room for joy and hugged them.

‘Thank you so much!’ she cried, and tears ran into her beard.  And the little elves (who had been a bit scared of the big bearded fairy) jumped up and down and laughed and laughed in their shrill voices.

And so you know what they did? They stayed with the Hairy Fairy and they helped her from then on.  Leo was in charge of the new blackboard, and Ru was in charge of the sorting whenever Hairy Fairy came in from carefully collecting all fallen hairs off pillows and sheets, in the corner of floors and from sink holes (she needed gloves for that job).  And the three little elves Isa, Cob and Oll would jump into the piles of hair and roll around in them and have hair fights before Ru got them all under control again.  And they wove themselves each a blanket out of the odds and sods, so that they were warm at night.  And they made a special blanket for Hairy Fairy out of Evie’s hair.  

But Hairy Fairy hasn’t changed too much – and she is still a bit disorganized, and gets a bit distracted.  And that is why, when babies are born, some have lots of hair, some have patches of hair, and some have no hair at all. 

And that is why Evie’s dad never did get his hair back.

If you have enjoyed this story, please use the link below to donate to the Little Princess Trust, who provide real hair wigs, free of charge, for sick children who have lost theirs.  Many thanks.

Little Princess Trust

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 BIB awards

Who's the Daddy?

I make no apologies in this post for going back to my roots where I first cut my blogging teeth in what is now affectionately known as ‘The Muttley Blog’.  For those of you who are interested in knowing more, please look at  www.anirishdog.blogspot.com  .For those regular readers who still follow our madcap household, this is the latest installment.

I came in yesterday after some emergency shopping for G’s impending birthday and in an attempt to get away from some minor decorating work that we are having in the house.  The sound of drilling came from upstairs, and downstairs the floor was covered in black hair.  The carpenter appeared at my Hellooo and accepted a cup of tea.  He nodded to the floor – ‘You can see where I had my lunch’ he chortled, ‘And where His Nibs was sitting…’ Just then a little happy black furry face appeared joyously barking at the kitchen door, drowning out any further conversation.

So, we have a dog called Muttley, and right now he is in the first of two seasons of moulting – one just before spring and one rather inconveniently at Christmas.  He came to us as a 4 month old puppy from Ireland, brought over by a charity who deals in young strays from any part of Southern Ireland where there is a policy to eliminate unwanted dogs.  We hadn’t set out to get an Irish dog in particular, it was more that we liked the look of the dog – and that, as dog and pet owners know, is that.

Over the past year, this black and white mixed breed midsize dog has taken to our family with the same speed that we took to him. He has entertained us with his attempts to speak  (yes, he may sound like Chewbacca, but we kinda know where he is coming from, and wine helps), he has taken us on many walks – where we think he thinks he knows where he’s going, we realise that we don’t, and he then sits down with a look as if to say ‘Well, you’ve only gone and got us lost again…’ as he speeds off at pace, us panting behind him, only to see that he is chasing a squirrel… 

Our house has never been so muddy or hairy.  And our garden is a mass of mangled footballs and shredded dog toys. Our mornings would not be complete without the scit scit scittering of claws pacing up and down on the wooden floor downstairs in readiness for a big Hello when we stagger down for a morning cuppa.  And we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves if we didn’t open the door after a few hours out and get knocked down by an enthusiastic talking bundle of fur.

And one of the things about being a dog owner is of course that it has to be walked. And the benefits far outweigh the negatives of tramping through mud, puddles, ice, snow and rain.  Where else would you find an old lady towing a Great Dane on a retractable lead, or a man who had no idea why his dog was so curly until he described his ex wife’s hairdryer that he had been using- and I explained that he was using a diffuser… And where else would you get the barrage of questions and advice that comes with any new ‘baby’ – the main ones being ‘Are you getting him trained?’ ‘Has he been done yet?’ and ‘What breed is he?’  The first two are a relatively straightforward ‘Yes’, but the last is a bit more complicated.  Being a rescue dog, we simply did not know what he was – we assumed Border Collie was in the mix as he has a half ruff and white socks and displays a lot of the collie characteristics – rounding up, circling, intelligence and of course the talking. We were told by the charity that he was also probably either a bit Labrador and possibly Lurcher.   Other than that we had no idea.

Of course, this led to great speculation amongst my fellow dog walkers – one of whom informed me that he definitely had Japanese fighting dog (Akita) in him and to watch him with the kids.  Another one said that if he was from Ireland he most definitely had Lurcher and Staffie in him.  And then one woman said ‘Ireland, he’s from Ireland?  Well, you know what happens over there?  They can be crossed with all things – even wolves…’  I queried as to whether there were any wolves in County Cork, but she brushed it aside with a ‘Well, if it’s not wolves, it’s definitely foxes…’

I was bewailing the fact to a friend of mine, Stevette, and she turned to me in all seriousness and said ‘Well you can always get him tested.’  I looked at her in disbelief, as she reddened a bit, and then admitted that she had had hers done, for nearly the same reasons.  He had been bought as a pedigree Labrador, but other dog walkers had kept querying his origins, and she got so fed up that she had had a DNA test done on him.  I was intrigued.  ‘What was he?’ I asked, leaning forward.  She looked at me somewhat gloomily. ‘A Labrador’, she said.

Anyway, this did not stop me getting the address and it was not long before the pack arrived from www.whatbreedismydog.co.uk and with some trepidation I swooshed around the little toothbrush swabs in Muttleys mouth and popped them back in the post.

The results arrived yesterday.  The chippie was on a tea break and so he sat as expectant as a contestant on the Jeremy Kyle show as I opened the envelope.  On reading it, I started to laugh…

There was indeed Border Collie present. But there was not one iota of Labrador, or Lurcher, or Staffie, or Wolf, or even Fox.  There were a number of percentages of other breeds, including Lhasa Apso (15%), Belgian Malinois (14%) Anatolian Shepherd Dog (6%) Finnish Spitz (5%) and English Setter (4%). But  aside from  Collie, the other main DNA strand that comprises my dog is – wait for it – a Miniature Poodle…

The chippie and I looked at the dog.  He looked at us, yawned, and shook vigorously, fur flying everywhere.

Muttley

One thing to be sure to be sure, our Irish dog is definitely not Irish…

Cry Baby

G and I both come from families of criers.  When I say this, I do not mean that we all react badly in a crisis, or suffer overtly from anxiety – only that at moments of high emotion the tears roll.  This is usually in the middle of a film, a particularly well written book, a play, a funny story, or even a song on the radio.  G’s dad is a crier, my dad is a crier and both G and I are terrible criers. And it reaches a family peak when we watch any of the kids partake in something of which we are proud.  Thus athletics meets, football tournaments, rugby matches, school plays and even good reports on parents evenings pass somewhat blurrily. And the gene has been passed on – I found Eldest Son a little red cheeked after watching a Save the Children advert.  And Middle Son refuses to stay in the room when an RSPCA ad is on. So you can imagine what we are all like when we see Little Man on stage.

As you are probably now aware, he is a bit of an anathema to us.  He has led us on a little journey into the land of stage and theatre that we have enjoyed, but not pretended to understand.  We watch, teary eyed as he dances and sings in various productions, enormously proud of what he has achieved so far, but with no idea of how he is progressing.  In amongst his personal friends, other than the girls that he has met in his dance school, he stands alone in pursuing the arts – the rest all bundle around like puppies, kicking footballs and charging around the playground shouting.  But at no point have they dismissed his raison d’etre – and make a point of promoting it amongst the outer circles of friends.  This all embracing approach is rather wonderful to see – and shows that there is a chance that the new and liberal future generation will encourage different ideas rather than shame others into conforming, as in the past.

But I suppose we probably didn’t realise the impact that being different was having on him, until this weekend.  I have got used to seeing him, at 9 years old the only boy, towering above the girls in his dance class, and he appears to me to be gawky and clumsy as they trip daintily around the room in choreography.  He is not as flexible as some and has difficulty with some of the moves.  This is not because he is bad at dance, but simply because he has a different physique which does not allow him to move as gracefully as the females. 

A chance came along to attend a two day Boys Only workshop run by the Royal Academy of Dance at the Point in Eastleigh, and it was with some trepidation that I asked him if he would like to go.  He thought for a bit and then answered in the affirmative.  It took 40 minutes to get down there and he walked in, knowing no one and registered himself as I hovered behind him, tears in my eyes as all the other boys ranging from ages 7-17 milled around, all avoiding eye contact with each other in the foyer.  He looked nervous, but determined as he waved good bye to me.  I sat in the car until my eyesight cleared and then drove home.

When I went to pick him up 7 hours later I was early.  Other mums waited uneasily, faces carefully blank, but eyes darting around, belying the anxiety that I know only too well.  It seemed that most of the young boys attending were in the minority in their dance schools, with a lot, like Little Man, being the only boy in their class. The boys all walked out together, dressed in an array of gear – joggers, leotards, t shirts, hoodies -  chatting easily amongst themselves, and for the first time in a long time I saw Little Man looking confident and at home.  It was less a Swan Lake moment and more an Ugly Duckling revelation.  He was amongst his people.

Courtesy of Royal Academy of Dance

The next day the Point were holding a 10 year anniversary celebration of Headstart, a programme specifically designed for male dancers, and in partnership with various local all male dance groups as well as some professional troupes.  The RAD Boys Only workshop were invited to perform, the mayor and his wife attended and it was a packed theatre. In an explosive evening of male dance ranging from contemporary, to street, to ballet, to modern, we saw boys, young, teenagers and some disabled, joining together in a fast moving programme.  This was nothing like I had seen before – no pretty tutus, no fluttering across the stage, no cheesy smiles.  A duet between two boys was more like a choreographed street fight.  Within the groups there were gymnastics, a complicated and clever routine involving Twister with plastic bags and focusing on the repetitive nature of OCD, the list was endless.  And the RAD boys did well with only two hours to learn two routines, they shone in the coordination, the pace and the glee in which they performed.

On the way back home Grandma leaned back in her seat and said loyally (as she does after everything the boys do, regardless of whether they have won or lost, performed well or badly) to Little Man, ‘You were really good darling.’

From the back of the car came a newly confident and very sleepy voice.

‘I know, I was, wasn’t I?’ 

And my vision went blurry.

Road Rage

There’s something about getting in a car that turns even the most mild mannered person into a force to be reckoned with.  Currently there is an advert on the local radio station that advocates us to get cheaper car insurance if you ‘Drive like a Girl’.  This is apparently achieved through a monitoring process with the use of a little box in the car and at the end of a certain period it is then determined whether or not you qualify. I think the overall idea through intensive research into accident stats and so forth, that there is some proof that the female driver is safer than the male driver, and that therefore Womanhood should not be penalized financially for Mankind's need for speed.

 Now this is a bit alarming to me on a lot of fronts.  What if I didn’t pass the ‘Drive like a Girl’ challenge then what would that mean?  That I am a man? Not that I am a particularly unsafe driver, or even a fast driver. In fact I am a pathetic go karter – the boys all cheer as they get out of theirs and  Mum is still serenely mooching round the last lap. There was a time in my youth that I did have a number of points on my licence, and I have had to pay a few speeding fines in my life.  But the advent of kids does naturally make you a more aware driver. 

But I’m pretty damned sure they haven’t surveyed the mummies from Hampshire and Surrey, or indeed any busy mummies at all – after all, how on earth would you get the last parking space in the crowded school car park, or muscle your way into the traffic jam outside school in order to get little Jonny to his footie club, by being girlie?  How would you manage to feed three kids in the car on the way to said club whilst negotiating several roundabouts and pulling in to the shops to get a drink because you had forgotten to bring one because you were rushing to get away from work so that you didn’t have to rush to the football club, but it didn’t matter because you are running late now anyway.  In fact, if I had an annoying little box in my car, I would have ripped it out by now and thrown it out of the window in a very unladylike fashion. (Rather like the fate of the digital box that we had for a while in the kitchen that kept telling us how much energy we were using every time we switched the kettle on.  Once G turned off the heating to save energy, it was just a matter of waving goodbye to the bleeping flashing bit of kit as it travelled off in the bin lorry). 

There is nothing worse than a good bit of road rage.  This morning I was trying to join a dual carriageway from a slip road on the way to school.  Cars were backed up on the slip road, and there was obviously a problem somewhere in the tarmac future, but nothing that we could see.  It was 8.00 in the morning, people sat bleary eyed in their cars, and Lisa Snowden and Dave Berry kept us all amused on Capital FM as we waited, the cars on the carriageway taking turns to let one in front of them from the slip road and it was all going steadily in a true British polite fortitude, until it came to my turn.

In true driving school fashion I indicated right to pull into the lane.  The car in front of me on the slip road was let in by the man in front of me on the carriageway. I attempted to go behind the car on the carriageway, but the man (and yes, it was a man) behind that car on the carriageway was having none of it and barged through into the gap gesticulating wildly (much to the fascination of the boys).  I had to brake suddenly.  All the cars in that lane on the carriageway braked suddenly.  A most UnBritish thing had just occurred!  The man, perhaps realizing the error of his ways, then let in a silver car who had ventured further up the slip road in the melee, as I was offered a place in the lane by the man behind him. 

Middle Son looked at me, waiting for the inevitable explosion.  I looked at him.  I thought, No, I’m going to Drive like a Girl… and so I simply said very sweetly to the back of the man’s head.  ‘Thank you very much, I hope you have a horrid morning,’ and I pulled into the fast lane and over took him.

As I looked in the rearview mirror, I noticed that he had been boxed in by the traffic, and the car he had let in front of him was going extremely slowly, and so he began gesticulating again. I smiled to myself (in a very girlie and charming fashion of course).

Drive like a Snail box anyone?

Teenage Hood

Mummy, where’s my hoodie?

Have you seen my phone?

What’s going on today?

Can I have a loan?

Is there breakfast somewhere?

Is it already cooked?

What do you mean, my hoodies' here?

Of course I looked!

Muuum, can you help with Maths?

Its due in tomoz

Why should you help me?

Just because…

Hey Ma, watcha doing?

There’s sport on the other side

Where’s the remote control you say?

The battery’s gone and died.

Oh and the cat’s been sick

The dog has done a wee

I’ve remembered that my friend called

And said he’ll stay for tea.

And the letter, that was on the side

Was it important? Only I

Spattered it with bacon fat

That I was trying to fry.

I've got no clothes that I can wear

What do you mean, why?

Just look in my wardrobe!

There's nothing Superdry!

My shoes don't fit, 

I've grown again

My waist size Boys

My feet size Men.

Mum, I can't remember everything

Your exams weren't as hard as mine

And no, I don't believe your brain

Has atrophied with wine.

Huh? Wait till I’m as old as you

And have kids of my own?

I’ll bring them here, to my old Mum

They’ll be with you, at home!

Why are you laughing? 

What’s the news?

What do you mean Retirement Cruise?

Who’s gonna find my missing shoes?

Or anything else I lose?

OK Mum, I get the gist

I understand your view

Now if you could find my phone

I really would love you!

Food Glorious Food

One of the things that G and I insist on in our chaotic life is that on a Sunday we sit down as a family and have a traditional Sunday roast. This is not set in stone, but on the whole since just before the boys started to arrive 15 years ago we have managed to stick with it, and the dining room table gets cleared of all the week’s debris and we chat, argue and catch up on funny things that have happened in the past few days over crisp roasted potatoes, the waft of cooked meat and piles of brightly steamed vegetables.

 

Alas, I have never mastered the Yorkshire pudding, but have tried on several occasions, and it always becomes a discussion point – the last one was flat, thick and solid and resembled a fried Victoria Sponge, which G rather kindly pointed out was probably a delicacy in a country somewhere…  So Aunt Bessies aside, everything else is slaved over and slavered over and disappears three times faster than it took to cook.  But it allows us an oasis of time in which the boys tell us and each other of any gossip, problems, or just argue over who is going to get the last piece of crackling.

The main reason, of course, that I insist on the roast, is an idea that when my boys fly the coop – which inevitably they will – they will always know that on a Sunday I will be cooking and hopefully they will occasionally return, partners in tow, maybe even one day with kids of their own.  And it will be just a case of tossing a few extra potatoes in the pan and then that ancient chatter will begin again.  Obviously I have watched far too many American movies, because I can’t claim this to be a family tradition, but I would love it to become mine.  Another friend with kids far older than me, but to whom this is a genuine generational family thing, said that in actuality it gets very stressful – one of her boys brought home a vegetarian girlfriend who insisted that she couldn’t eat anything, another grown up child decided to bring all his mates home from the all night rave they had attended and one threw up in the toilet, and her mother in law turned up unexpectedly once and has made it every Sunday since…

Food and its connotations is a funny thing.  There are generally two extreme camps – one who Eats to Live (E2L), and the other which Lives to Eat (L2E) – with variations in between.  It is very taxing if you are an L2E and you go out for a meal, or on holiday with an E2L.  One of you is looking forward to the new culinary experiences, the other is merely looking forward to getting through the next meal and going on to life experiences.  One sees the pleasure in food and the other cannot understand why food is a pleasure.  Often the E2L is a fussy eater too.  That really bugs the L2E.  It should probably be a category on Match.com – it would help shake those dodgy first date nerves if you knew that your date was more interested in his Steak Bearnaise than the chicken fillets in your bra…

A mummy I know who has 4 children will cook a different meal for each of her kids every night.  She is an E2L, and envies the fact that my kids eat what is put in front of them.  As a mum who leans majorly to the L2E side, I really feel for her.  (And I also feel a little bit smug…) But the fact of the matter is that food is a social thing , whether it is a takeaway with your partner on a Saturday night, a coffee and a bun with other mums at Costa, a picnic with the  family, a kids birthday party.

We have had some very enjoyable meals in our lives – Elvis in a Mytchett curry house, watching Duran Duran in The Sports Bar in Monaco, Grandma and Grandad’s 50^th Wedding Anniversary, Spanish tapas with friends. But one of the most memorable was a sandwich.  In a strange turn of events (another long story) we ended up lunching with a beautiful and acclaimed Welsh songstress, her then fiancé and her mum.  She picked at the Panini that the blushing waiter had placed in front of her.

‘What?’ she asked eventually, as Little Man (who was 6 at the time) stared at her hard.

‘Why have you left all your vegetables?’ he asked, pointing to the salad on her plate.

She looked around wildly, the waiter hovering anxiously as I glared at my child, and then her cheeks flushed.

‘I have had some vegetables today… I had some fruit juice before I came out this morning’, she said eventually, looking at her mum for support, who was laughing helplessly.

‘Oh,’ said Little Man, not looking convinced, totally ignoring my looks of death and then brightened.  ‘Can I have your chips if you’re not going to eat them?’

And he did.