1.  Like A Duck To Water

2.  Proud As A Peacock

3.  Eggs

4am. Son 2 aged 19m woke screaming.  I went down and got him back to sleep in the double bed. And went back upstairs to read Two Lives.  He woke again. I went down again. It’s His Teeth.  Fast Forward. The Hotel Pool.  Son 1 aged 4y 6m wanted to go the Hotel Pool because he wants to go swimming with Son 2.  The Man won’t go with us, and you need two adults for two children at the Town Pool.  Not at the Hotel.  Son 1 had the noodle, Son 2 was in foam armbands and a swimming costume wetsuit.  We played in the baby pool, we splashed in the fountains. We played Humpty Dumpty.  Son 2: (pointing) Dump! Dump!” We swam. Son 2 can float a bit.  Son 1can push and glide, do dolphin dives and do star, pencil and frog floats.   Only not in the Hotel Pool, which is four foot deep all the way through.  They both worked incredibly hard.

After, we drove over to the Farm Butcher to get a joint for tomorrow’s lunch. Son 2 passed out in the Hotel car park.    He woke up when we stopped the car at the Farm Butcher.   Peacocks wandered around the car park.  As we all watched, a male spread its tail, shaking and shimmering at an unconcerned female idly pecking by.  It was fantastic.  Amazing moving colours, brilliant blues and emerald and lime greens.  In the shop, at the back, there were scores of peacock feathers sticking out of a row of about 10 vases.  “Let’s buy one,” said Son 1. “I don’t think they’re for sale,” I said.  “Ask the gent,” he said.  I did.  It is apparently bad luck to take a peacock tail feather outside.  You can take them in to a building, but not outside again.   Many people have asked for a peacock feather, but the Butcher is superstitious.  The Butcher himself went out to look for new one.  It was left outside by the door for Son 1, who was truly delighted with it.  Back home, the feather has not come into the house. 

We went to Nanna’s for tea.  Nanna always comes to us.  It was easier. But after a particularly difficult teatime, we decided to try every other Saturday at her house.  I dropped off Lightning McQueen buckets for her to use in an egg hunt.  We arrived. The boys took their buckets and went into the garden.  Son 1 found one egg and started eating. Son 2 found one, I peeled it halfway and he started eating.  Son 1, squealing, found marshmallows and more chocolate.  Son 2 found a Creme Egg.  “Ur Ur,” he said, having bitten through the foil to eat it, the other egg still in a hand.  I removed the foil from his mouth.  Nanna has a tiny ancient bird pond full of dark green water.  Son 2 went for it.  So did Son 1.  Nanna gave them tubs.  They scooped and poured.  Within 10  minutes Son 1 had soaked his clothes and was stripped naked. Son 2 was down to his vest. It was freezing, the skies charcoal. Upstairs was a vintage tin bath which Nanna used to bathe us in, 40 years ago.  I put a kettle of boiling water in it, added cold, and put it in the garden.  The boys both went for it, and, spotting it as the only available outside warmth, wouldn’t come out. The Man brought out new clothes, and we had tea.  Nanna had bought oven chips. “They’re not as nice as I thought they would be,” said Son 1 casually.   Our chips start life as potatoes, cut into chips, blasted  in the microwave for five minutes, dried and then roasted off for 20 minutes in olive oil in the oven.   ”Delicious, yum, yum,” says Son 1. Now all we need to do is get his manners as refined as his palate.

1.  Words

2.  Pictures

3.  Action

I woke at 4am and couldn’t go back to sleep.  At 5am I went downstairs with Vikram Seth’s Two Lives.  A Wednesday Mother is running her book club this month and we are all reading it so we can go along.  A Suitable Boy defeated me.  I can’t remember why, especially as I’m really enjoying this one.  And I’m usually good at persevering.  I think the only other one I abandoned, bored, baffled and bewildered, was Ulysses.  One miserable summer when I decided I would only read mind-enriching work.  I escaped into  Harlan Coben and wouldn’t come out for months afterwards.   The Man came down at 0530, and then decided he’d have another go at going back to sleep.  And next thing I heard from upstairs was the shower running. 

Son 1 aged 4y 6m wet the bed and Son 2 aged 18m did a mighty poo that went through his pyjamas.  The Man showered Son 1 and stripped the bed while I pressure-washed Son 2.  Into the bath together.  Two shiny wet faces, looking up smiling. They’re grrrreat.  Our morning routine destroyed, we ended up in the lounge.  Son 1 was pulling out the train track; Son 2 was pressing the button to make the DVD drawer come out and go back in again.  And removing the Sky card.  And taking the DVDs out and putting them somewhere.  Poor Cars.  We’ve only had it five days and it has been posted somewhere that only Son 2 knows about.

We went to a Family Fun Day at the local secondary school.  Loads of activities, all free.  Son 1 loved it. He skateboarded and ran round with Best Friend.  Son 2 was harder.  I spent a lot of time trying to catch up the others with the Big Pram in a school riddled with stairs. And then packed it up in the car and carried him.  Son 1 was playing on the skateboards, but Son 2 just wanted to run around.  In an area where 10 year olds on BMXs were swooping back and forth between ramps.  He was tired, strong-willed, deeply interested, not old enough and more than I could manage.  We went inside.  Son 1 waited for half an hour for a dinosaur balloon from the Balloon Man. And then we went outside and Son 2 ran around, picking daisies and crunching up fallen leaves.  The sun blazed down.  Son 1 stripped to his pants and played with Best Friend.  His Mother and I finally got to sit on the grass.  Until Son 2 spotted a gap between some classrooms and started his usual bid for freedom.  

I put Son 1 to bed, lying next to him.  And fell asleep.  The Man woke me when he went to bed at 11pm.  I still needed to work… and stopped at 1am.