We were unloading the car on Christmas Day after a decadent celebration with family when I heard my son ask why the front door was open?
Obviously, everyone was very quick to deny any knowledge or responsibility.
It took me back to growing up, where we didn’t have keys for any of the doors into the house. I think you could ‘lock’ them internally but it only briefly slowed down an invader (normally a sibling) because you could just lift the door in the frame to jimmy it open.
We did have keys for the car and tractors, which were stored safely… in the ignition.
That might have been ok in the middle of nowhere down south in New Zealand, where it was a big event for another car to be on our road, but it’s not the way things work in London.
So it was with a lot of trepidation that we looked around.
Stepping back through our departure, one of the kids admitted they may not have checked the door closed after they ran in for a last minute item.
While the door could have been partly open for hours, nothing had stirred in the house (although I can’t confirm about the mouse).
So while I may have been on the cynical side of Christmasteria, I definitely found the joy. For the cynics amongst you, it had nothing to do with the extensive lecture the kids then received…
So, to be honest, I’m still deciding the exact definition.
It’s either the perfect word to describe my 12 year old daughter’s current obsession with all things Christmas and the sense of anticipation of the immense joy her proposals will deliver.
Or, it is the sinking feeling I get on listening to said proposal knowing I’m probably moments away from popping said anticipation and immense joy…
This manifested in a Christmas list early November (in PowerPoint).
Then a plan to make our own advent calendars. Gone are the days that opening a cardboard door to a picture of something was fun. Instead the plan was to each sew our own and fill someone else’s with goodies. This got watered down to one for her, and glued because the sewing machine doesn’t work, and some chocolates because skincare products every day for 24 really was only an insta pipedream… (pop!).
Then there was the seasonal pajamas, which of course you have to get early in December to fully get the value… only she made the tactical error of raising this before my birthday (it really is early enough in December for there to be minimal Christmas chat before that), and not appreciating the equally festive offering I sourced (post-birthday) that was significantly cheaper but not as soft… (pop!).
So as I’m making up the term ‘christmasteria’, maybe it can be both, and we leave it to a flip of a coin as to which will win out at any particular point.
Excuse me while I go find my Christmas joy and work on subduing my inner-grinchness…
My son has turned 14 and seems to be taking the whole teenage thing to heart. This is after he swore he was never going to turn into one – he might have been 10 at the time…
Mostly, this has played out with him vaguely grunting to acknowledge us and then us reminding him to find his words. This rolls as smoothly off the tongue as it did when he was three…
However there are some occasions that seem to break this pattern.
The standard – after he is supposed to have headed to bed.
When it is just the two of us – and I then can’t prove to my husband that we had an actual conversation.
And when he has a plan.
Unfortunately, this generally means he can’t think or talk about anything other than the plan. So then a bit like Dug, in the Disney movie ‘Up’, while you think you’re having a good chat, you’re actually only ever moments away from him spotting the squirrel if you will. In this mode, it seems you either have to be like a ninja or a sledgehammer to successfully disrupt the programme.
So actually, perhaps it’s a relief when the plan has been implemented and normal programming resumes…
As part of our recent mid-winter Christmas family get-together in New Zealand, we decided to import a much loved festive English tradition – the After Eight game.
For those new to the game, the aim is to move chocolate from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands. So even if you lose, you’re still a winner!
The first challenge was finding the After Eights. They aren’t really a thing in New Zealand – we have mint chocolate biscuits and peppermint chocolate slabs but the wafer thin square coated in dark chocolate, not so much. After an exhaustive search of both supermarkets in town, we found a couple of boxes – on the international food shelf!
Then there was the conundrum of how best to play when you have potentially forty people participating. Inspired by the Olympics, my son calculated the heats, semi’s and finals. There was a picture and everything. Although, the most debate was about whether all those with receding hairlines needed to have their own heat…
Luckily, it didn’t take long for the team to understand the objective of the game. My nephew managed a cracker of a heat with a single movement head snap and catch. It was even caught on camera with multiple slow motion replays, which the judges (me) scored top points for both style and speed.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be repeated in the finals…
So what did we learn:
My family aren’t very good at following instructions. Apparently it’s difficult to remember what numbered heat they were allocated.
My family is very competitive. Once they’d seen the demonstration, the gloves came off and the elbows came out.
Practice does help. The English contingent had the benefit of experience and were difficult to beat. Although due to the aforementioned point, the next competition could be tougher…
And, of course, we confirmed the universal truth that it really is hard to take someone seriously when they have a chocolate trail down their face!
Recently, over the UK summer, we took the kids back to New Zealand, leaving behind the light rain jackets for the winter woollies.
The last time we were home for Christmas, the kids were 4 and 2, so one of my sisters volunteered to host a mid-winter one.
There’s a magic to our get-togethers.
The date and venue is chosen, one that can absorb 40 odd people – seven siblings will do that! Then everyone brings a food contribution for lunch. While some siblings have become responsible for specific contributions (can’t be short on the ham and potatoes), it’s pot luck. Somehow there always seems to be a feast with enough leftovers for the those hanging around for dinner too.
Given the number of us, it was decided years ago to move to Secret Santa as getting presents for everyone would either result in a lot of pens, notepaper and Moro bars, or penury. But the discovery of the present stealing game (aka white elephant) really upped the ante.
This is a no holds barred kind of game. Ten years on, it was an eye opener for the kids to see the noise, tactics, horse trading and hilarity that ensued.
You can now tell how comfortable a newcomer is to the family if they’re happy to ‘steal’ from an in-law, or my mum for that matter!
The kids quickly got into the spirit of things, leaving behind any thought of British restraint. So much so that Nana had to add some rules about the number of times a present could be stolen!
And I think they were both quietly happy that their kilogram bags of broken CookieTime Cookies (best biscuits in the world) might have won the award for most purloined presents…
I’m ok with my own company. Growing up on a farm, I spent hours on a tractor, whether it was topping thistles or levelling after the plough.
My Walkman was brilliant – for about the first hour as the batteries always seem to run out. With no back-up batteries, there was a lot of time to sit in your own head… particularly as the only song I could seem to remember was Eurythmics’ Missionary Man, and really there’s only so many times you can sing that.
As I left the farm behind, time by myself morphed into running (though definitely not for the same amount of time!).
However, my husband has taken the kids to New Zealand to visit my side of the family, and so I have five weeks in the UK by myself.
I realised it’s the longest I have lived on my own. Whether it was flatting or solo travelling, there was usually someone around. And, of course, kids come with their own special frequency that seems to be both constant and cut through any background noise.
Now, there’s silence.
I hadn’t realised how loud it can be.
Although, funnily enough, I now seem to have my daughter’s voice in my head telling me to tidy up after myself. She prefers order to my chaos and just-in-timeness. I’ve even been refiling the spices in alphabetical order…
My family recently took off to New Zealand. I think my husband was a bit nervous about solo parenting to two teenagery kids, while catching up with my family.
The kids themselves exhibited two very different styles while preparing.
My daughter found the perfect packing cubes. She had to explain these to me, and apparently they are essential to ensuring a tidy, organised suitcase experience (too much YouTube?!).
Two weeks to go, she had laid out the proposed items to be packed, and continued to refine them.
My son on the other hand… asked by his dad a week before about when he was going to pack might have grunted in response.
He finally got round to dumping some clothes on his floor a few days beforehand. My husband asked how I managed that and I somewhat flippantly responded I asked…
After highlighting that he was going back into winter, he’d grown a few inches in the last few months, there weren’t many usable hours left to actually check he wouldn’t be either a) embarrassing himself or b) freezing, and his dad was going to have a conniption if he didn’t get his A into G (which my mum used to say a lot and I only belatedly realised it was short for arse into gear – since the worst thing she’d said before that was golly gosh it made me look at her a bit differently…).
A cursory check of my son’s bag even made me suggest he might want to find some packing cubes….
Words I never thought I would hear coming out of my mouth!
Remember four square? This was a school yard game that I recently discovered was international – well at least in both NZ and England.
It’s been making a comeback in our road.
We’re lucky enough to live in a cul-de-sac due to a gate at the end of the road. As well as being an excellent net, it has been very successful in deterring traffic. So now that it has mostly stopped raining, it’s been a good opportunity for the neighbourhood kids to get outside.
Given the range of ages (from 6 to 4-something-ish), we needed a sport that catered for all and reduced the risk of broken windows from stray tennis balls.
Hence four square.
Turns out it can quickly turn into the rules game, with more rules than the yellow car game (who knew…?).
We’re also still following the feudal system where I seem to be the peasant more often than not.
Much to my son’s chagrin, my sister-in-law currently holds the crown for most number of serves as ‘supreme emperor’ after a recent international tournament. I’m sure my brother wasn’t expecting to be trooping out for a match on his trip to the UK, but no doubt it was the highlight!
Frankly, I’m taking anything, that gets the kids off their devices is a win.
In New Zealand, as a sheep is being shorn, different parts of the fleece need to be sorted into different classifications to get the best price for the quality. So, of course, there are different names for each part.
The best bit of the fleece is the back and sides, from which you need to remove the crutch area (it can be a bit daggy) and the frib – the really short curly crusty bit of wool between the side and the belly. Also separated are the shanks around the leg (if they’re short and stained) and the top knot, the tufty bit of wool on their head (not to be confused with the jowls which, as you’d expect, are the woolly cheeks but which also don’t make the grade).
Some sheep don’t have it one – a ghost topknot if you will.
That was always a bonus when you’re trying to manage sorting the wool on the board (picture a raised platform) where usually three shearers were each shearing as fast as they can (they’re paid by the sheep and usually motivated by being the quickest in the shed or getting to at least 200, so basically running at least a marathon every day at work).
I haven’t had to sort wool for a very long time. Not a lot of need in London.
However, I have concluded that my son (almost 14…) is growing a top knot.
Or, as my husband put it, a front mullet.
When he was younger, my son wasn’t keen to go to the barbers so I ended up cutting his hair more often than not. Covid continued this out of need, if not choice. Although, now he is not so trusting – either of me, or my husband taking him to the barber, something about dad directing a short back and sides…
He did take himself off a while back to get it cut but I’m not sure he was very happy with the result. So he now seems to be focused on growing the winter coat early. After all, it has been a cold start to the summer…
He’s heading back to New Zealand shortly so perhaps I can just ask one of my siblings to get the handpiece out…
Explainer:
If the number of times I’ve had to correct auto-correct is an indication, some of the terms used may not be very familiar…
I’m assuming crutch is self-explanatory although a crutcher is someone who is just focused on removing the dags…
Dag can have a few meanings – rattle your dags means hurry up, or if one is a ‘dag’ they’re funny, here though I’m referring to a crusty piece of poo hanging from the fleece.
Handpiece is the industrial version of hair clippers although the combs could be confused with lethal weapons.
Frib – according to Oxford Dictionary there is less than a one in a million (0.01 in fact) chance that you’ve heard this before…
I recently went on a course with work. This one was actually immediately useful.
Apparently, the emotional part of your brain responds four times faster than the rational part of your brain. For both evolutionary reasons and to capture your attention, this is called our chimp.
Once you see your chimp, it’s very hard to unsee it.
Although, as we get older, we get better at managing it. Usually.
That was put to the test on returning home.
Both kids had bees in their bonnet and introduced me (again) to their chimps. Explaining my recent learning did distract them momentarily and eased the escalation. Sort of.
Although I might have heard mutterings of mum being more of a gorilla when they walking away…
Tough Mother 