Temperama

Sheep Dog & Ducks

Such is my mastery of Internet technology that it has taken me only slightly more than one year to figure out a) how to upload a video to YouTube and b) how to stick said bit of video on my blog. Thank you...thank you...no, really, that's enough applause, it'll only go to my head, and so on. And now, fellow intellectuals, please enjoy this exclusive footage of Craig, star sheep dog at The Big Sheep theme park in Devon, rounding up some, er, ducks. I believe you click on the arrow thing in the middle to make it start.

Footnote: I am related to two of the children in Craig's audience, including the "hooded youth" in pink. Well, we do live in Hackney after all.

Happy Birthday Thirdborn

My Thirdborn is 16 years old today. He keeps a low public profile, so what can I tell you about him that won't ruin his image as a man of mystery? Well, he's taller and better-looking than his dad, difficult though the latter may be to believe. He's working hard towards his GCSEs, especially in drama his teacher assures me. He spends too much time playing Warcraft, though that also applies to one or two middle-aged men I could mention so I suppose we shouldn't hold it against him. Also, he's loved very much by Fourthborn, Fifthborn and Sixthborn, which isn't always how younger children feel about male teenage siblings. Anything else? Oh yes. He's exactly 15 years older than this blog. Happy birthday, Thirdborn. And don't worry - all your other secrets are safe with me.

Chicken Pox Days

Here is the main reason why I didn't get much done last week: Sixthborn at that scabby stage of chicken pox when the afflicted is once again fit as a flea but not yet allowed back in school. Still, we had lots of lovely snacks and wrote down lots of lovely letter "a"s, talked lots of lovely rubbish and - as you'll see if you click on the mini-pics to the right - appreciated each other's grace and beauty. It's a man's life in househusbandry.

Holiday Snaps: Fourthborn & Boat

Portrait of a waterbaby.

Holiday Snaps: Sixthborn & Craig

Pictured with the star sheep dog who rounds up, er, ducks at our favourite theme park.

Holiday Snaps: Fifthborn & Boat

Lovely lad, aint he? (If I do say so myself).

Easter Break: Sailing

Ms Melancholy loves the shipping forecast:

"My 11 year old son and I were listening to the shipping forecast at 5am this morning. Being up before sunrise always brings out the melancholic aspect of me. I have learnt that this is a time for sadness and the darkest of thoughts. I told him that I used to listen to the World Service when he was a tiny baby, and that the shipping forecast was my favourite part of the day. Instantly soothing to me, like being swaddled tight in a blanket."

Continues here. Image from the National Martime Museum Hope the weather's better where I'm going.

Easter Break

This blogger is going away for a few days. I've timed a few posts to appear during my absence in the hope that they will keep you off the streets. Happy egg-hunting!

My Mum

It turns out that my mother has had a stroke. She's home from hospital now complete with appropriate pills but still only a partial grasp of why my father and I wanted her admitted in the first place. Dad thinks it must have happened five or six weeks ago - not that he, being Dad, said anything to me about it at the time. In phone conversations with Mum I'd noticed only that she was a little more repetitive than usual and, on one occasion, oddly vague. It wasn't until I got a phone call from their next door neighbours that I learned dramatic changes had occurred. Mum had gone round there barefoot first thing on a rainy morning in a state of terror, claiming Dad was going to kill her. He wasn't. On her first night in hospital, she told me Dad had died and was worried about how I'd cope with having to make his funeral arrangements all on my own. But Dad hadn't died. He was at home snoozing in front of Sky News. Next day, Mum was convinced that all the doctors and nurses were imposters and that her fellow patients were spying on her. One night, she got so wild she had to be restrained and then sedated. She still has the bruises on her arms.

I didn't know a stroke could have such an effect. It was established as the cause after a brain scan was taken, an event my mother has no memory of. She can, though, remember the phone number of her GP and how many fish cakes are in the fridge at any given time. The drugs are doing their work but it's still easy to detect the corridors of confusion her mind has blundered down. My parents are fortunate in that a "very nice" support worker from the local mental health team now visits every day, a senior colleague will be dropping in once a week and that next Tuesday we'll all sit down with a consultant psychiatrist to discuss what happens next. Until that happens it is unclear what her recovery chances are. What is clear is that the main responsibility for caring for her will fall on my dad. He is ninety years old. She will be eighty-five later this month. I have a family, a job and live a four hour drive away. Here is a tale of modern Britain - a small, personal tale, but of a type that is becoming more common every day.

Invasion Of The Origami Frogs

Our house is overrun with origami frogs. Fifthborn has constructed a great, hopping knot* of them from sheets of pale yellow paper, following instructions from a book kindly given him by Sixthborn's best friend's mum when he was recovering from all that birthday weekend vomiting. Now there are origami frogs everywhere, sometimes arranged in complex military formations, sometimes gathered in a decadent heap on Fifthborn's bedside table, sometimes engaged in long-distance races down the hall which have to be suspended halfway through because it's time to go to school. When the latter occurs I am given a stern warning not to step on any of the origami frogs en route to the front room or to allow their positions to be disturbed by breeze from the front doorway when I go out.

These instructions need to be taken very seriously because Fifthborn remembers everything. To me, every pale yellow orgami frog looks much like all the others, but to Fifthborn each is a distinct individual about whom he has compiled a detailed dossier listing personality traits, individual strengths and weakness and performance data relating to a series of athletic and intellectual tasks. The demands on everyday life made by these origami frogs has, you'll have gathered, been substantial and, at times, exacting. I may yet retaliate by deliberately failing to return to Sixthborn's best friend's mum the very attractive Tupperware-style container she mistakenly left here recently. However, the emotion stirred in me most strongly by the invasion of the origami frogs has been melancholy nostalgia.

I never went in for origami as a child - martial arts have never been my thing, boom boom! - but I was every bit as keen on disappearing into deeply private fantasy worlds based, in my case, on Subbuteo leagues or Smarties tube top Olympics or tiddly-wink Grand Nationals, the outcomes of all these events meticulously documented on a tatty typewriter and stored in loose-leaf binders for posterity. Seeing Fifthborn so absorbed in similar types of activity affects me quite powerfully, though whether I am gratified more than I am perturbed is hard to say. Do I want him to turn out just like me? Not sure I'd recommend it, actually.

*(Yes, "knot" is a collective noun for frogs. And, by jove, there are others!)