Happy New Term

 So it’s back to school tomorrow following the tumble-weedy no-man’s land of Jan 2^nd – 9^th that forms the tail end of the Scottish schools Christmas holidays.  During this grey period when other mums have been grinding their teeth in frustration as their children get in the way of a good binge at the sales, I’ve in fact enjoyed having the Boy at home and will rather miss him lolling upside-down on the couch, dirty feet scraping the walls, chewing filthy fingernails as he moans for more Wii time.

  I may get to keep him for another day, mind you.  He’s cultivated a nasty cold that left him sounding like a retired miner come bed-time, so a rare ‘sickie’ might be in the offing.  And I mean rare, mind.  I’m not your ‘soft mum’ who keeps the little darling tucked up in bed at the merest sniffle.  That’s not how we were brought up.  As a child, even if one of us had managed to sever an arm at the shoulder we’d have been packed off to school, provided a couple of tendons remained intact to keep the thing dangling inside the sleeve of our shirt in the manner of a stringed mitten hanging down its duffle coat arm.

  No, the reason I’d keep the Boy at home would be to avoid the displeasure of his teacher.  Pushing forty, I still worry about upsetting the authorities, and the Boy has mentioned Miss __ complaining of sniffling (or was it snivelling?) children bringing their infections into the classroom.  I don’t want to upset her.  Mind you, my card’s probably already marked because the Boy didn’t give her a Christmas present.  There seems to be a growing trend to give teachers lots of stuff at various points in the school year and I intended to participate but kept swithering about the right gift.  One of the mums-in-the-know said she likes Vodka Mules but that didn’t seem appropriate.  Sending my six year old to class with alco­-pops clinking in his school bag might have given the wrong impression of his home life, and the teacher may have been a little disturbed to think that the parents are wise to her drinking habits.  I was also told she smokes and for a brief moment was tempted to wrap up a packet of Lambert and Butler but she’s actually quite nice and that didn’t seem fair.  And again, there’s the ‘questionable home life’ issue.

  So in the end, rather predictably, I ran out of time and Miss __ got nothing from us, save the card the Boy was organised enough to write himself.  Despite scrambling around in cupboards on the last morning of term I couldn’t even find an intact packet of mince pies to be wrapped up hastily.  And of course then she gave each of the children in her class a present.  Sigh.

I’ll just have to pull out all the stops come the Summer holidays.

Vodka Mule, Miss?

It’s. Called. Guising. Right?

So, half-term, a.k.a. the Tattie Holiday has been and gone.  And more importantly, Hallowe’en’s over, with all its new-fangled ‘Trick-or-Treat’ bollocks cementing itself finally (as far as I’m concerned) in Scottish culture, with hordes of hooded teenagers demanding sweets off us for the price of nothing more than donning a crap mask under their hooded top, and with the ‘foaming’ of one of my three masterpiece pumpkins by some little shite.  Jokes and sing-songs were thin on the ground and I can’t help a curmudgeonly nostalgia that believes America’s got a bloody lot to answer for.

Much as my mother bemoans the loss of the happy meaning of the word ‘gay’ from common parlance, I bemoan the loss of days when small children staggered about the pavements at night-time in cardboard cut-out monstrosities or mum’s nightie held together with safety pins and wishful thinking, some dribbling ‘blood’ suspiciously similar in shade to Yardley’s ‘Cherry Bomb’ lipstick.  Now you can deck your kids out as a Tesco zombie, or an irresistibly pretty, pink net pirate for half the cost of the amount of lipstick you’d have needed back then.  And as for finding a cardboard box big enough to make a Rubik’s Cube these days, well, if you haven’t bought a new fridge in October you might as well forget it and kids today don’t know what that is anyway.  I remember my makeshift Witch, my Queen of Hearts, my (last-minute) Cleaning Lady (WTF??) all beginning to fall apart three houses in, and I’m quite sure even the most patient of our neighbours was dismayed by my determination to complete T.S. Elliot’s ‘Skimbleshanks‘ in its entirety* before they were allowed to throw some monkey nuts and 20p my way and get me the fuck out of their house.  Nowadays, however, you’re lucky to get a joint rendition of that bloody ‘Christmas-is-coming‘ rhyme before they stick their sweaty paws into your sweetie bag for a gluttonous rummage; cherry-picking the good stuff and muttering fibs about being allergic to nuts.  Well, HA!  I know how to deal with that particular porky:

“Aaaah, what a pity I’ve mixed the wrapperless sweeties in with the peanuts. Looks like you’ll be leaving empty-handed.  Wouldn’t want your mothers to sue me when your tongue swells up like an inflated airbed.  Shame.  Cheerio now!”

You know, them ruddy kids take all the fun out of Hallowe’en.

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*Actually, I’ve just read that poem and am pretty sure it was only the first verse.  Still bloody long though.

My name is __ and I’m a Pushy Mum.

Hello.  My name is Ehmum* and I’m a Pushy Mum.

Actually, I don’t think I am but having spoken at length to, ooh, at least two other mums of Boy’s school friends, it seems I am.  When it comes to homework at any rate.  No, I don’t smack his fingers with a ruler as he runs them below his Stage 6 Oxford reading book (Stage 6, did you hear that? Top group, you know!) which is currently ‘In the garden’ [sic], starring the oddly-named Biff, Chip, Kipper and Floppy (guess which one’s the dog?  No?  I struggled with that one too.  It’s Floppy.  And Biff is a girl.  Go figure.).  Neither do I withhold food and/or other ‘treats’ for poorly-formed phonetics.  I do, however, get a bit arsey with him for scenarios such as this one:

Boy – “They.  Went.  Into.  The.  Garden.”
Pushy Mum – Really?  Now, tell me what you did half an hour ago with your football.
Boy – “I went into the garden.”
Pushy Mum – Did you?  You didn’t, “Go.  Into.  The.  Garden.”?
Boy – *laughs* No, Mummy, “I went into the garden”.
Pushy Mum – Well, say it that way when you read then.  Go on, try again.
Boy – “They went into the garden.”
Pushy Mum – Good stuff, mate!  You’ve got it!  High Five!!  (I know, I know.  I avoided it for so long, but that bloody High Five is just so damn useful as a physical ‘Gold-Star-and-a-VG’).

So.  He now understands what I mean when I ask him to read it as he’d speak it.  I know he can do it.  He knows he can do it.  He doesn’t do it and I ask him to try harder.  He tries harder, reads it more naturally and voilà!  Bob’s his and my uncle (which throws up any number of uncomfortable familial relationships more commonly found in my Highland homeland, but essentially means he’s got the hang of it).

So tell me, is that being pushy?

I don’t think I’m a pushy mum.  But that doesn’t mean I’m never going to push.

Discuss.

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*Clearly it isn’t.