Gavin, Rachel, Matthew and Peter's Diary

Better late than never…

We went to Edinburgh to stay with Grandpa Martin, and thence to Perthshire to Cicely and Joe’s wedding (lots of kilts, pipers, ceilidh dancing and other Scottish wedding things). No, we didn’t see the pandas in Edinburgh Zoo. You have to book a slot in their diaries a long way in advance, further than we were able to. But we did see everything else that the people who were queueing for the pandas weren’t seeing.

Back home, it rained a lot and was cold a lot; and we all got ill, and just about got better again, having spent suitable amounts of time huddled around the woodburning stove feeling sorry for ourselves and watching ridiculous amounts of children’s TV.

And those two things, plus Easter and work, seemed to take up most of the month. Ho hum.

Quite a lot seems to have happened this March. Including a bizarre spell of July-like weather.

We went away: (a) to visit friendly Bearons near Ormskirk and moving dinosaurs in Liverpool; (b) to Granny Jane and Grandpa Robin’s 40th wedding anniversary celebration, aka “the big squish” (11 people in one medium-sized semi). The latter featured Cousin Marcus as himself, ie a very cute small toddler who likes to watch and copy his big cousins. The boys had fun.

Matthew’s class won a film award. I went with Matthew to the grand red-carpet reception and ceremony for the Leeds Young Film-makers “Golden Owl” awards, folliwng their nomination in the 3-7-years category for the cinematic masterpiece “The Monkey Who Wanted To Fly”. When the Mayor opened the envelope and announced “and the winner is… Shire Oak Primary School” the crowd, or at least two rows of it, went wild.

Peter’s life is, happily, lived on a smaller stage. But Peter’s life is quite interesting enough for Peter. He has now learned to write “Peter”, with all the right letters, if not always in the right order or the right orientation. He has also developed a closer relationship with Copernicus than Matthew ever seemed interested in (possibly because Copernicus is a much more sociable cat than he ever used to be). These days Peter and Matthew often go out on the landing before 6.30am (the official start of morning) to play with Copernicus. I emerge at 6.30 to see three pairs of hungry eyes looking up at me.

Gavin spent a weekend playing with the brightest source of light in the known universe.

I was on the Today programme for about three minutes. I also did a plenary at the Society for the Study of Theology (answering questions from serried ranks of theologians for more than an hour). Until the former happened, I would have expected the latter to be the most high-pressure experience of the month, or indeed the year.

Why does February, even in a leap year, seem so much shorter than January? I mean, how much difference can two days possibly make?

Anyway, in February:

We had a woodburning stove put in. It looks pretty good. Immediately after the installation, the weather turned mild, so we’ve only really had the chance to appreciate the stove’s decorative function.

Matthew learned to swim underwater. A skill of limited usefulness unless he can also learn to come up to breathe. He’s working on it.

Both Matthew and Peter watched a lot of Horrible Histories. I’m not convinced it’s suitable viewing material for Peter, but it beats In The Night Garden.

The tree services people came and took down the very large Norwegian spruce that a previous owner had planted in a fit of misplaced enthusiasm (“wouldn’t it be nice to have a Christmas tree in the garden?”). We didn’t keep the wood for the stove, because we’d never have had space to store it all. We now have a much clearer view of, er. lots of trees (the ones in the woodland at the end of our garden, about which we can’t do much even if we wanted to).

I go on the first part of a leadership and management training course and learn inter alia that, in common with everyone else on the course, I have no capacity at all for directive or authoritarian styles of management. This is probably something to do with the fact that we all work in a university. Telling academics what to do is the management equivalent of punching holes in treacle.

Gavin, much more constructively, spends lots of time in high-powered meetings, working out how to get academics to do sensible things (like sharing equipment) without actually telling them what to do.

Copernicus is promoted to Senior Cat (With Roast Chicken) because the shop stops selling his previously-preferred cat food. He copes with the promotion very well, and is now authorised to examine other cats.

Here’s an idea – why don’t I make some notes each month instead of waiting for the end of the year and forgetting everything that happened in the early months? Well, it’s a good idea in theory.
In January:
Matthew started swimming lessons. So far they seem to be focusing on learning to float, which seems a pretty useful skill even if you never get beyond that.

Peter spent a lot of time being a pirate. And a lion. Peter’s invisible friend Croc continued to play a small but significant part in our lives. Croc knows a lot of things (mainly things that Peter wants to be true but has no authority for). Croc has a cousin, who is also invisible, and is known only as Croc’s cousin. Croc goes to school and nursery and parties and various other destinations, but never ends up in the same place as any of us (apart from Peter). Eveything else about Croc, including his precise ontological status, is somewhat unclear. “Croc is my invisible friend, but he isn’t really”. “You mean he isn’t really invisible?” “No, he’s really invisible”. “OK, you mean he isn’t really your friend?” “No, he is really my friend. But he isn’t really”. “Oh – you mean he isn’t real?” “Of course he’s real!”

Daddy goes to lots of meetings. Mummy finally gets a bit more writing done. Roll on February.

OK, this blog doesn’t do very much any more, but to prove we are still here I’ll do a quick review of 2011. The overall synopsis: calm; moderate or good, with fog patches (mostly relating to work). Nothing exciting happened this year. In the light of 2010, we are, on the whole, profoundly grateful for this.

January: Snow snow snow. I can’t really remember anything that happened in January other than getting cold. I can’t remember anything exciting from March either – will come back and fill in if I do.

February: round about now Cyrilla the large ovarian cyst grows, causes severe pain, is named, and retreats a week or so later leaving no trace. Not fun, but not there any more.

April: Matthew hardly goes to school, because of the way Leeds school holiday dates interact with a very late Easter and someone’s wedding do. This means inter alia that we can spend a sunny week in Studland enjoying peaceful sandy beaches before most people’s holidays have started.

May: Mummy and Daddy escape for a long weekend, walk on Ilkley Moor without hats and survive.

June: Peter acquires a scooter, and the pace of his life increases rapidly. Sometime around now we briefly live in a Flanders and Swann song: the gasman comes to call, summons his friend the kitchen fitter, who tells us there’s a problem with the drains and summons his friend the builder, who tells us the joists are rotting. Before anyone paints over the gas tap, and in the middle of the Great Mouse Invasion (in the face of which Copernicus is no use at all, other than in locating the dead mice and presenting them for inspection), we decide to get the kitchen redone.

July: Matthew learns to ride a bike; no stopping him now. Yearly Meeting Gathering in Canterbury; vast numbers of Quakers in the sunshine, in family and friend reunions, in earnest conversation about sustainability, in animal masks (Peter’s age group), in trees (Matthew, Peter and all their new friends), and in meetings for church affairs in a very very large and very warm tent (the grownups). Gavin gets appointed to agenda committee, so for the next few years all the YM-related things we’ve been moaning about for the last many years will become his fault.

August: We get used to washing up in the bathroom and cooking in the dining room while the kitchen disappears and reappears. Then we go away to relive some of my childhood holiday memories by the Solway Firth. Sure enough, it’s cold and rainy most of the time and parents can still almost persuade children that it’s fun to run round the lighthouse in the rain. But there’s also a mini swimming pool nearby, where the boys increase noticeably in confidence. And they spend some time with their great-grandparents, which is a rare and important thing.

September: Matthew’s sixth birthday party on the first day back at school. We just about recover by the end of the month. Fortunately I’m on sabbatical (nearly). So I can observe with horrified fascination the trials and tribulations of the administrative merging of two departments. It’s getting there.

October: Matthew goes to Edinburgh for half term. He also starts reading lots more, with ever-increasing appetite for reading; we get the first of many occurrences of “I’ll go to bed as soon as I’ve finished this chapter…”. Peter can read and write P-for-Peter and seems to think that’s quite enough. Getting back into volunteering and with a little more time flexibility, I spend several mornings pottering around at the drop-in for destitute refugees and asylum seekers.

November: Gavin spends a weekend shut in a portacabin inside a huge concrete box, firing neutrons at things and trying not to get hit by any of them himself. I spend a week in San Francisco talking about interesting things with nice people. This advances our research, in both cases. Sometimes I’m pretty confident I picked the easier line of work.

December: Peter goes to lots of birthday parties and seems happy to have his own little box of food (especially when in contains pizza). Two unforgettable Christmas shows featuring Peter as an owl and Matthew as the principal investigator of the Magi stellar observation programme. A research council decides that Gavin can have lots of money to spend more time playing with neutrons [etc], or instructing his minions on how to do same; he is happy. Our Christmas travels are a great success despite the best efforts of the pig on the line near Cheltenham. And so to bed.

2012 looks like it could be marginally more interesting (there’s a start-of-school, and variously increasing responsibilities at work; there’s a ruby wedding celebration and a wedding celebration to go to; if possible we’d like to get some more bits of house taken apart and put back together; but as we know and Macmillan apparently never actually said, it’s events, dear boy, events).

OK, having spent a day going around being ridiculously and pointlessly proud of Matthew, and knowing that this blog is mainly read by people who don’t mind the occasional opportunity to be proud of him, I shall note that he was ‘elected’ as one of two Year 1 representatives (one boy and one girl – they operate a strict quota system that would be highly controversial elsewhere) to the school council. I have not heard that this election (conducted on the shut-your-eyes-and-put-up-your-hand system, electoral reform still being a long way off) was marred by any dubious practices, although apparently the fact that some of the candidates (including Matthew) had worked out that they could vote for themselves, and some hadn’t, did affect the result. The stated criteria were being ‘good at talking, good at listening, and good at having ideas’, and clearly (humour me, this is parental boasting time) this applies to Matthew fairly well, even if the second item doesn’t always apply to successful politicians. I asked him what he would have to do on the school council, and he said in an offhand and somewhat world-weary tone ‘Go to lots of meetings’. I think he’s somehow got the idea from Mummy and Daddy that meetings are not exciting.

from our holiday in Southerness (near Dumfries):
- Following visits to some of Historic Scotland’s finest monuments, Matthew deciding that the sandcastle needed a sand visitor centre next to it.
- Peter trying to persuade his parents to take him swimming again despite the fact that the swimming kit was still wet: “But it’ll be the same water!”
- Matthew trying (with some success) to learn to play chess, and then transferring this to a game he and Peter were playing around a wooden castle/fort in the playground. Peter: “I’m being a knight!” Matthew: “OK, I’ll be a rook…”

Peter falls over and bumps his head. He comes downstairs lamenting loudly. Mummy picks him up. Daddy is in the same room. ‘What happened, Peter?’ Peter tells Mummy what happened. Mummy applies the normal range of cures (kissing the head better, cuddling Peter). Peter continues to lament loudly. Mummy asks ‘is there anything else that you think would help to make it better?’ Peter sobs ‘I need… to tell Daddy about it!’ So Peter is passed across the room to Daddy, who repeats the entire performance (from ‘what happened, Peter?’).

Another day Daddy is away overnight. In the evening Peter is stung by a wasp. As he is carried upstairs crying, to have anti-sting cream applied, he wails ‘I want to tell Daddy about my wasp sting!’ Daddy isn’t here right now. ‘I will have to tell him when he comes back!’ Fortunately in that case the wasp sting stopped hurting before the talking-to-Daddy cure could be applied.

Matthew enjoyed his last couple of weeks in Reception and brought home an impressive pile of samples of his work from the year. It’s particularly interesting looking at what he chooses to write, given a free hand, e.g.:
‘My mum has lots of plants. She grows spinich to feed snails’.

And we had a full transcription (by one of the adult helpers) of the story he made up when a storyteller ran a workshop for the class. They were given 3 random objects (in this case models of a person, a dog and a cottage) and asked to tell a story:
‘Once there was a lady called Bethany who was 100 years old. Her only food was orange, chicken and meat from the dog. They lived in a floating house on a raft on the sea. One day Bethany put on her diving suit and set sail to catch further food. She dived into the sea and collected 20 sardines, 10 barracudas and 14 puffin eggs. She swam back, went inside and got the chicken ready to lay and the dog’s bones ready. “Strange”, said the lady, “I have a garden shed that leads straight into my house”. She went inside and boiled the puffin eggs, chopped and fried the sardines and barracudas. Then she got the motor ready to sail the house to the Isle of Purbeck in the South of England. When they got to the isle they set off to the harbour of Studland, south of Purbeck. They set off to the ice cream parlour. They had come to celebrate her birthday”.

[I think, even assuming "meat from the dog" is a typo: full marks for celebrating older people, no marks for environmental awareness... ah well...]

He then celebrated the first day of the holidays by learning to ride a bike – or perhaps by realising that he’d learned to ride a bike. The two are hard to separate, so I think we declare him able to ride a bike at the moment he turns round from a long unsupported pedal and shouts “I can do it now!”. It was a good moment.

Tonight tucked into Peter’s bed there were, and had to be before night-time could officially begin:
Peter
Beh the zebra
Newzie Lamb (the soft toy lamb with New Zealand embroidered on its top, which we try very hard not to call New Zealand Lamb)
Little Lamb
Teddy
Teddy With The Tie
Ming-Ming the duckling
Einstein (the woolly mouse who looks like Einstein)
Socks the dog from Chicago
Fireman Sam the knitted fireman
Two sets of plastic castanets that came free with the ZingZillas magazine
Duke the small metal toy steam engine (as used on Peter’s birthday cake)
And Duke’s tender.