School play season...

My boy’s school play took place last week.
I had it written in the calendar, which is hidden behind the mountain of important letters, which are pinned behind the funny postcards on the notice board in our kitchen. How could I possibly have missed it?
On Wednesday morning my youngest son asked me where his ox costume was, that the school play started in an hour and he would much prefer to just wear it in instead of his school uniform.
I know that I promised that child that I would fashion him an ox costume, I remember nodding as he described how it should look, however the manifestation and materialisation of promises department in my brain let me down badly.
I stood and nodded again as the boy told me how nervous he was about his big performance and tried not to let him see me hyperventilate as he impressed upon me the need for a really good costume, not one fashioned from something stupid like, I don’t know, plastic bags. The boy may well have psychic abilities.
Now, I know how important these things are for any kid’s school cred and I also know that this express costume challenge is payback for the predicament I left my own mother on many a December morning back in the day.
In fairness my own mother was slightly less flamboyant in her Christmas play costume design. There was no faux fur or silky material wasted on us. Regardless of what role I was playing she fashioned my outfit from those striped flannelette bed sheets that were all the rage with Northern Irish housewives in the 60s.
‘You’re a donkey eh? Well you’re a donkey of the faded bed sheet variety that is common in Peru.
‘You’re a little star? Where are those bed sheets? You can be a washed out bed sheet star and we’ll give you a belt make from tinsel, that’s Christmassy eh?’
I suppose she had to get it spot on once, the year I was a shepherd. Well, everyone knows that the standard issue shepherd’s uniform consists of faded stripy bed sheet and tasselled tieback from the living room curtains.
I vowed to spare my son from rushed and ill-thought out Christmas play costume humiliation.
So I sent the boy upstairs to get in the zone and spent the next 30 minutes running around the house picking things up and putting them down, throwing stuff overhead out of cupboards and muttering maniacally.
Despite being half country girl (mum from Donegal) my eyes have never once gazed upon an ox of any description. Do they even exist in Ireland? Where do the teachers get these wacky ideas?
Yes. Well, apparently the Bible.
A quick search on Google revealed that the ox was, in fact, the main man to keep Baby Jesus warm in the Manger. All thoughts of using that Scooby Doo Halloween costume went straight out of my head. A giant, talking dog just wouldn’t have fitted in among all those deeply religious men that bore witness to the birth of Christ. This was a serious role and demanded a serious costume.
I decided that Caolan’s interpretation of this blessed ox would look shockingly like the sandy coloured fluffy faux fur throws I bought last week in a well-known fabric and furniture store to cover my sofa.
I sewed those throws like my life, and the reputation of my boy as a serious actor, depended on it. While Caolan got himself into the role I fashioned the best dog-gone ox costume I, or anyone else whose eyes fell upon it, had ever seen. We’re talking BBC props department stuff here. In fact I’d say there were a few parents in the front row on the day of the play feeling more than a little nervous about the inclusion of an actual live ox in the proceedings. It was that good.
My older son played an inn-keeper. Everyone knows inn-keepers circa 1AD sported washed out stripy bed sheets, much like their sheep shepherding pals. Daniel added to the effect by drawing a big bushy beard and elaborate curly moustache, using a permanent black pen. And, surprisingly, it was a good look for the boy. Good job too because it’ll be weeks before it comes off.
Daniel might just be the man to bring drawn on facial hair back into fashion in primary school age kids. You mark my words 2011 will be the year of the fake beard.

Send help. And chocolate....

I don’t know how much more I can take. We have been stranded for more than a week now. The six of us together. In the same house. I’m hoping that the following information will go someway to allowing the proper authorities to piece together the circumstances running up to the assaults, criminal damage and various other crimes that happened in the week from hell.
If by some miracle this message reaches you, please send help. And chocolate.

Day one, Saturday
Mood – Christmassy
Housebound for the day due to failure of car that never starts to start.
Snowflakes falling gently outside, fire roaring in the hearth. Children’s laughter rings out throughout the house. The smell of sweet cinnamon cookies hangs in the air. The baby coos in her pram. The husband tinkers lightly under the bonnet of the family car, whistling a Christmas tune. All is right with the world.

Day Two, Sunday
Mood – concerned
Snow fall significant. Children laugh and fashion various snow-related characters in the garden before walloping their heads off with spades. Have to fashion an imaginative dinner from what supplies are left in the fridge. Children demand new, warm, clean clothes at 15-minute intervals due to snowy conditions. Car that never starts still wont start. Husband floats between broken car and Google, hoping that random people on the internet might send good vibes and advice on how to fix it.

Day Three, Monday
Mood – Increasingly worried
Children ready for school and packed into the car that never starts, which doesn’t start. Husband risks combustion by asking passing bin lorry for a jump-start. Trek to school in Arctic conditions, wearing boots that can unbelievably hold several inches of snow inside. Husband decides a week working from home is only option as five years worth of snow falls outside our windows. Mechanic doesn’t come. Husband tries beating his fist on the bonnet of car and waving other fist to the heavens as a method of starting car. Doesn’t work.

Day Four, Tuesday
Mood – Deranged
Children off school due to the 10-foot of snow and deadly daggers of ice hanging from every surface. Car that never starts sits on the driveway like a giant ice cube laughing at us as we huddle in the house, with dangerously depleted coffee supplies and bereft of proper sustenance. Husband walks to the shop three miles away, leaving us with the words ‘I’m going for a walk, I may be some time’. He arrives back some time later with news that the shop has sold out of most things except beans, of which he has purchased 14 tins. Struggle to plan bean-related breakfast, lunches and dinners for the next few days or weeks. Spot four horsemen of the Apocalypse outside our window, pointing and laughing at our frozen car.

Day Five, Wednesday
Mood – Beyond crazy
Mechanic promises, for the third day in a row, to visit and fix our stricken vehicle. Mechanic has weather related problems and doesn’t turn up again. Youngest boy falls ill with bokey, screaming, and insomniac bug. May be cabin fever, may be over-consumption of baked beans.

Day Six, Thursday
Mood – End of proverbial tether
Two more children fall victim to the horrible bokey bug. House now filled with whingey, screaming children and crazy-haired, deranged parents. Still snowing outside with some freezing fog thrown in for good measure. Am awaiting the arrival of locusts to top off the apocalyptic atmosphere.

Day Seven, Friday
Mood – Oh Dear God, NO!!!
TV broken.
Loose wire at the rear means TV flickers on, teasing us with a brief glimpse at our favourite programmes before going blank. Toddler beside himself with Thomas the Tank Engine withdrawal symptoms. We are forced to listen to the radio for news of the outside world. Older children punch each other and destroy furniture for entertainment. It’s still snowing. We are still consuming baked bean-based meals.

Day Eight, Saturday
Mood – Fair to middling
Mechanic made an appearance six days late and fixed the car. Husband used scientific method to fix TV (hit screen with propelled shoe in fit of frustration). Celebrated by skidding sideways in fabulously fixed car to Sainsbury’s to purchase essential supplies – chocolate and coffee.

No level seven mummy's boys...

We have a cupboard under our stairs, which plays host to a vast array of broken, useless and long forgotten stuff. It houses ironing boards with bits missing, prams, odd wellies and doubles up as a vacuum cleaner graveyard.
I don’t know why I don’t throw these vacuum cleaners out, perhaps I hold onto the hope that the husband might one day be overwhelmed with the notion to fix them all, therefore providing me with a different vacuum for every room in the house.
I am also bewildered as to why I have such a high turnover of the things. Am I the black widow of vacuums as well as motor vehicles? Why does everything mechanical I touch turn to dust? These questions and more I pondered as I rummaged about in that dark, spidery closet under the stairs.
And then I saw it. The industrial vacuum cleaner that the husband purchased when I let him off the leash one day in B&Q. A big, angry brute of a thing that sounded much like a jet airplane and sucked up everything, including rugs and small pets. I believe he was sucked in, so to speak, by the pictures on the box – a boiler-suited gentleman vacuuming up leaves on a building site, a woman wearing goggles vacuuming a pond of all things, an astronaut using the machine to hold on to his friend in outer space. The thing was a monster and, for reasons known only to himself, my husband felt that it was right up our street with regards our household vacuuming needs.
The thing could not only handle household dust and dirt it could also suck up leaves from your driveway and there was a reverse button on it which allowed the operator (as in me) to shoot the contents of the drum out at 30mph. For the five years we owned the thing I never did figure out what that particular function was useful for, until now.
The husband has to constantly remind me not to ‘mother’ our boys too much. He’s from the ‘let them find their own way’ school of parenting. Whereas he would like them to make their mistakes, learn from them and not make them again, the mother in me tries to ceaselessly shelter them from the hurt and harm that life can bring.
He allows them to swing from trees, tussle in the garden, learn to box. I, on the other hand, make sure that not an inch of skin is exposed to the elements when we go out, I would honestly prefer they wear helmets and knee pads when they play football and that they do not reach speeds of more than 3mph while running around the playground. I also find it rather difficult not to want to throttle other people’s children when they hurt or insult mine.
Perhaps my way is detrimental to their development but the mothering instinct is inbuilt and at this stage I’m afraid I can’t be reprogrammed. Nevertheless the husband continues to try and train me to stop with the ‘mummying’ so as to prevent my lads growing up to be level seven mummy’s boys.
My training was put into practice this week when the middle boy returned home from playing in the street with an angry red slap mark on his face and his shirt filled with freezing snow. One of his pals had walloped him, close range, with an icy snowball, then helpfully filled his clothes with leftover snow. He was rather annoyed about the affair, and so was I.
My first thought was to go ‘psycho mum’ get that industrial vacuum cleaner from the deepest, darkest depths of the under stairs cupboard, suck up all the snow from the front garden and shoot it 30mph from the front porch in the general direction of the perpetrator while laughing maniacally. My second thought was to stop mummying the boy and allow him to stand on his own two feet.
I spent my later teenage years in a mixed sex school in Strabane. It was hell let loose at the best of times; when the snow fell, it was all out war. Being a teacher’s daughter meant I was a target for the snowball brigade. I had to learn to kill or be killed so to speak. That is where I learnt how to fashion proper flesh freezing, face stinging snowballs. There are people in that Co Tyrone town that whisper of those snowballs in hushed, worried tones. There are people there who will never smile again because of the trauma my snowballs inflicted.
So I bypassed the old aggravated assault with a vacuum route I had been planning and decided instead to teach the kid to make my world-famous, stuff of legends snowballs. As we stood there in the front garden making our snowy ammunition we had one of those universe aligning mother son moments. Here I was giving my son the tools (and the snowballs) to fight his own battles and he felt empowered enough to head right back onto the battlefield that was our street without fear (while I paced the living room floor while biting my nails).
Watch out kids, there’s a new mini-sheriff in town.