The Grandpa Annex

 May I share something with you? It’s a little ditty that’s been occupying my headspace.  To the tune of ‘The Drunken Sailor’, altogether now:

What shall we do with the aged parent

What shall we do with the aged parent

What shall we do with the aged parent earl-ie in the morning

Hooray and off he wanders

Hooray he’s talking nonsense

Hooray I’ve kept my patience

Earl-ie in the morning

Good job!  I could almost hear the harmonies.  Regular readers of my blog will be familiar with the grand plan I put into place last summer which was to move my elderly father in.  Not in with us, strictly speaking, that way accidental patricide might lie, but into a separate annex or little flat so he’s there, but not THERE if you get my drift.

Intergenerational living is going to be the next big trend, I’m willing to bet on it.  Have you seen the cost of care homes?  I took one look (average weekly cost circa £500) and as our trans-atlantic cousins might say, did the math.  Even if the NHS picks up the tab, many care homes don’t get a very good press, in fact some of the recent horror stories documenting pensioner abuse make me wonder if the staff were trained at the Goebbels-Stalin school for care of the elderly.  But I digress, and also apologise if you have recently settled a loved one into, or are indeed currently residing in a care home.  We all have to make our own decisions.

In my situation it seemed ludicrous to have us in one smallish house, my father in another smallish house also belonging to us, 25 minutes away, as a kind of remote sitting tenant, covering the mortgage but not making us any profit. To me it made perfect sense to pool resources and hey, if you want to purchase anything sizeable in Sevenoaks it’s either that, or send your kids out to work or secure yourself a big fat bonus from the boss.  The kids weren’t keen on being sent up chimneys (the indolent creatures) so the other options had to be examined.

Sadly at my level in my industry (broadcast journalism), annual bonuses are the stuff of legend, although I did once get an extra 700 quid for risking life and limb going to the Kuwait/Iraq border with US troops just before the 2003 invasion. So that was worth it.  But in fact as far as people just giving me money, frankly I stand more chance of finding rocking-horse droppings. 

So with that in mind I hatched a plan and like any good strategist, split it into digestible chunks.  Phase 1 – make some proper money from broadcasting, writing and property development.  Phase 2 – find a house in good location in Sevenoaks with potential for us (me plus husband, son, daughter, 4 cats) and space for said annex/flat.  Phase 3 – move into house.  Phase 4 – create annex.  Phase 5 – move father into annex.  Phase 6 – renovate and sell father’s current property.  Phase 7 – use money from that property to create nice family home.  Phase 8 – oh you get the picture – Phase 126 is probably ‘live happily ever after’.

Amazingly, after a few years of hard graft, I now find myself at Phase 6 (please see above as I really can’t be bothered to go through all that again) and moving my father has been anything but straightforward.  First of all, he was a hoarder.  Not just a slight hoarder with a few piles of Reader’s Digest and old newspapers stacked here and there, oh no.  A class A, fully paid up member of Hoarders Anonymous, you know the ones who would go to weekly meetings but can’t actually find their front door behind all the stuff – boom boom.

Clearing out his house was traumatic to say the least.  He must have spent thousands of pounds over the years accumulating stuff. I’ve never seen so much tut.  For example, we’d clear out a corner of the living room and amongst all the junk, put aside 5 packs of scissors, unopened.  Then we’d open a drawer and find another 3 packs.  Then in the kitchen there would be 8 more packs stashed in various cupboards.  It was the same with fishing tackle, screwdriver sets, tool kits, packs of stationery, socks, photo frames, t-shirts, plastic colanders, boxes of tissues - the list was endless. It’s quite distressing on a personal level when you realize that a parent has been living in a kind of hemmed-in hovel for years with just narrow walkways to shuffle from room to room.  Cleaning and general hygiene had gradually slipped way down his list.

Now, I have the good fortune to be married to a very kind and practical man who recognized how upsetting I was finding the whole house clearing process, and gently took charge of the worst bits, and between us we managed to salvage the good stuff and bin the rest.  It took a week. We then did a boot fair and made enough money to make the stress almost worthwhile.  Every cloud and all that.

My dad has been here 5 weeks and has settled in nicely.  We established a few ground rules such as phoning first, thus maintaining each other’s privacy and avoiding “it’s only meeeee!” scenarios.  He invites me round for a cup of tea and to help him with paperwork.  We invite him for weekend lunch and the occasional barbeque. Last Friday he joined us for wine and tapas in the evening sunshine to celebrate Husband’s first week in his new job.  The kids love having Grandpa in the annex and like nothing better than a quick half an hour after school watching his TV and scoffing biscuits in his cosy lounge kitchenette.

So, am I counting the completion of Phase 6 as a complete success?  Hmmmm, being a natural cynic I’m taking it day by day!

ipadmummy? i'mafraidnotdarling.

Kids and computers, or games consoles, ipads, ipod touches, X-Boxes, wiis or Nintendos or any other thing you can think of which has a screen and moving images, all these devices are being likened to a kind of crack cocaine for children, such is their addictivity (is that even a word?) and appeal.

I have long been viewed as a parent with slightly fascist tendencies, not allowing my kids anything electronic apart from advert-free TV (limited to weekend mornings and occasionally after school if they've been well behaved) and very occasional supervised computer time if they have to research something for homework.  They have recently been given for their birthdays (7th and 9th) second-hand ipod nanos on which they can listen to music only; no games, no internet access.

Son started nagging for a Nintendo when he was 6.  A lot of his friends had either got them already, or were on a promise for a forthcoming birthday or Christmas.  We said no.  I almost wobbled when I found him, aged 7, with an empty mini cereal box, a piece of string and one of those little pencils you get in Argos or Ikea.  He'd made himself a 'pretendo', complete with stylus (the pencil) attached via the piece of string, sellotaped to a corner of the box.  He sat there for a while pretending to play games like he'd seen his friends do, before chucking it in the corner and running outside to kick a ball around, as kids should do. 

Husband and I laughed privately (so cute! so inventive!... la la la) and then had the inevitable discussion about whether he was somehow missing out by not having the real thing, whether we were taking the hardline for the sake of it.  I questioned friends who had succumbed bought various portable games devices for their kids.  I wanted to know how they decided what to buy, how much they'd spent and how much time on average, their offspring were allowed to use said device during a normal school week.

The answers did not much sway me.  Most had taken the plunge because of prolonged nagging and a belief that if other kids the same age had them then it must be ok. Hmmmmm.  The money spent varied from £40ish for a second-hand Nintendo and pre-owned games, to a few hundred pounds for a new mini ipad.  Double hmmmmm.  When did it become the norm to give a young child such an expensive (and breakable) toy?

Roughly half of those questioned said that they'd had to severely limit the amount of time the child spent playing on it, using it as a reward for good behaviour and setting a timer to signal when to stop. The other half confirmed that the child 'hardly went on it anyway' after the initial excitement.  Which lead me to wonder what was the point of buying the damn thing anyway?

On the rare occasions that we eat out as a family, it's now commonplace to see other groups, adults talking, the various children, heads down, concentrating fully on a small screen in front of them.  Yes I can see that it makes for a much more peaceful gathering - don't get me wrong - Husband and I often exchange weary glances over yet another mealtime ruined by childish bickering, brattish tantrums and questions of the extremely silly variety (and that's just us - boom boom!) and wonder why on earth we bother.

But we do bother, and continue to bother, believing strongly that children should be aware of and fully engaged with their surroundings and need to learn how to exhibit good manners (table or otherwise) and contribute to interesting conversations.  As soon as you stick a screen infront of their young, impressionable faces, they cease to do either.  Recently in China, brain scans were carried out on adolescents diagnosed with internet addiction, an increasingly common condition.  The scans showed that the white matter of the brain - the part that contains nerve fibres - was significantly altered as a result of prolonged exposure to electronic screens. Described as "groundbreaking", this research revealed worrying evidence that nerve fibres used for emotions, decision making and self-control were damaged by too much screen time.  Nobody yet knows how much of this damage is reversible.

Two summers ago we drove to Spain, camping on the way.  We were offered by kind and thoughtful friends the loan of: a portable DVD, a laptop (on which to play games) and a Nintendo. We declined all, opting instead to buy the kids a selection of doodle books, reading books, magnetic puzzles, CDs and crucially a photocopied map so they could track our progress.  All in all I'm glad we did.  Yes the journey had its 'moments'.  Yes there were times when I contemplated the benefits of opening the door and throwing myself from a fast moving vehicle to get away from the flipping whining emanating from the back seat. But they were small moments and they passed and we all look back on that holiday as being quite magical.

I feel a need to qualify my ranting: neither Husband nor I are 'anti' technology - we don't live in some sort of self-imposed exile, shunning all attempts at modernisation and communication.  Far from it; I spend most of my working life in one of the most technologically advanced media hubs in the world, regularly and enthusiastically grappling with new and advanced kit.  Husband knows his way around a hard drive (matron!) and we both own whizzy smart phones.  But we are adults and we use our technology as tools to do our jobs.  Our brains are fully formed by virtue of having spent our formative years enjoying a combination of playing outside, playing real sport - not waving a wand at a wii, getting muddy, reading books, climbing trees, making dens, doing jigsaws, watching rubbish 1970s TV and most importantly having time to be well and truly bored. I want all that for my kids too.

Be careful what you wish for

Regular readers of my blog will have noticed a certain bored, twiddling of thumbs going on of late.  People who have the misfortune to actually speak to me on a daily basis (yes that's you, school mums) will have observed first hand just how listless and moany I become when I've only got one or two things going on in my life.

When I have fifty things that need to be done I seem to be in my element, dashing about here and there, planning, doing, laughing about how mad life is.  For a while.  Until the novelty of being super-busy wears off and I get a little tired and start wishing for life to quieten down again.  Contrary?  Moi?  How very dare you.

Anyway, the other night I was on my way to Taekwon-Do, all togged up in my gear when suddenly my phone rang.  It was the BBC newsdesk asking, ever so nicely, if I could possibly get myself over to Gatwick airport - ASAP - as some of the gas-plant hostages had been released from Algeria and were apparently on-board a secret flight back to the UK. 

My heart did a little leap and I got that surge of adrenaline that used to be my drug of choice in the old days when this type of call was the norm.  At this point I could have massively flattered myself by thinking they'd called me because of my specialisms in defence and terrorism and they knew what brilliant and incisive questions I'd be able to ask the wretched hostages about their ordeal, putting the whole thing into a global context whilst expanding on the concept of AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb).  But really I knew that they'd called me because basically there was no-one else and I happen to live about 25 minutes drive from Gatwick.  Keep it real.

I hesitated for a nano-second: I was meant to be meeting some girlfriends for a hot-chocolate and a gossip straight after training and it was bloody cold out that night!  But Reader, how could I refuse a small taster of my old LBK (life before kids)?  So I found myself about 30 minutes later, my 'TV face' on, dressed in 3 layers of thermals, driving to Gatwick all ready for an action-packed night.

Of course it never quite pans out how you think it will.  The camera-man and I spent at least 20 minutes driving madly round the Gatwick internal ring-road in a Benny Hill-like sequence trying to evade the cops who'd clocked us acting suspiciously in an effort to locate our satellite truck.  They eventually got fed up with tailing us and simply blocked our path with one of their 4x4s, just as I'd spotted the damned satellite truck up ahead.

Needless to say the hostages never arrived, it must have been duff intelligence.  We spent most of the night sitting in the Arrivals hall (as if the hostages were going to walk through like tourists and present themselves for interview!) along with Sky, Fox, NBC, ITN etc watching a board that never changed, waiting for the plane that never came. 

I managed to persuade the newsdesk to send someone over to replace me at about 5am as I suddenly realised that in my haste to get out of the door I'd completely forgotten to check with Husband what train he had to be on in the morning or whether or not he could do the school run.  Oooops.  Kids.  I have some.  Responsibilities.  I have lots.  Sigh... it can never be truly like the old days....

Back to Black

Well that's it then.  My name is definitely on the list.  I'm going to be grading for my black belt in April.  Gulp.

Dragging my sorry arse off the sofa to go to my Taekwon-Do class last night was hard. I'd enjoyed rather too much the preceding two weeks of cosy warmth, twinkly Christmas lights and a Sky+ menu of fabulous TV teamed with lovely bottles of Rioja and Merlot and a groaning cheeseboard.  Oh how I love to lounge about and stuff my face.  Stepping onto the scales on Sunday morning was enough of a motivation for the lounging to cease and the exercise to commence - pronto.

It was a cold, wet and uninviting January night into which I trudged, hat pulled low to keep my ears warm.  The training session itself was OK in that I didn't get an overwhelming urge to vomit half way through the warm up unlike last year when I remember having to lie down with my legs in the air to get the blood back to my head and then tripping over someone and spraining my big toe - ouch.

No, last night was all manageable and I very nearly remembered all my patterns.  In Taekwon-Do there are nine patterns to learn, each one corresponding with a coloured belt.  The patterns are meant to be sort of mock fights where you go through all the moves as if one or two invisible opponents were attacking you.  They're all quite different but cunningly some sequences of moves are very similar to others so it's not uncommon to see people (oh ok, me) stood stock still, mid-move realising they they've unwittingly merged two patterns into one and now can't remember what should come next.

Then just when I was thinking "I've survived the dreaded return to training, I'm alive!" my instructor asked if anyone was intending to grade for black belt in April.  My hand, seemingly with a life of its own, suddenly and rather precociously, shot up.  "Aha", he murmured, jotting something down, "see me after class".  I naturally assumed that this would be when he would gently but firmly tell me that perhaps I should wait for the next grading in October, work on my fitness, improve my sparring etc etc, but no. 

Dear Reader, imagine my shock when my instructor (have I mentioned what a clever, patient and gifted man he is?) put my name down on the official list and said he was pleased that I was going for it!  So there we are.  I now have in front of me three months of bloody hard work, mental and physical, and those of you who read my previous post about not being a great sticker at things, well, I'm going to have to see it through now or risk looking like a right loser (note to self: channel La Mandelson "I am not a quitter..blah...blah")

Very soon I'm going to have to face my biggest demon and that is the sparring element of Taekwon-Do.  I've had six months off due to the knee operation I had last summer to rid me of the crippling osteo-arthritis I'd developed and I just know it's going to be a massive challenge when I face my first opponent in training.  For me it's a psychological barrier rather than a physical one that I have to get over.  When you're face to face with someone, trading punches and kicks, it's self-belief and perseverance that counts.  Of course fitness and technique play a huge part, but it doesn't matter how great your aerobic capacity, if you don't believe you can win then you won't, simple as that.

It was that rather sobering thought that reverberated as I battled home in the darkness last night.  I have to believe that I can and then I will.  Simple.....?

Wanna be startin' something

First of all I'd like to wish you a Happy New Year and all that.  I hope your dreams came true and your resolutions are holding firm.  I'm a big fan of resolutions myself.  In fact I'm what you might describe as a 'good starter'. 

I'm the annoying one, usually sitting in the front row of say, a language evening class, eagerly lapping up all the knowledge from the tutor.  At the beginning of anything I've ever taken up, I zoom ahead of most of the people in the room, pronouncing difficult words with ease, executing promising kicks and twirls in a new martial art.  "Yessss!  I'm going to be good at this"  I say to myself "this is my thing for sure!"

I love that feeling of being on the cusp of something new, be it the determination to shed a few pounds "as from tomorrow breakfast time I am going exert an iron will and eat sensibly, avoid biscuits and definitely book myself into an exercise class every day this week", to the stunning realisation that if I actually forced myself to sit down and knock out a thousand words a day, my novel would in fact, be finished in 3 months - how easy is that! "OK, as from tomorrow, I shall return from the school run and simply sit down and write and I shall not stop until I have reached a thousand words.  I shall repeat this process every day until the weekend comes around".

I get a physical thrill down the spine as I say these words to myself, sometimes even pausing to nod and smile confidently at myself in the bathroom mirror.  My reflection glows back at me, returning my determination and future happiness without any effort or doubt.

And reader I do start exceptionally well!  I can guarantee you that for at least 3 days next week (most possibly Tues - when the kids return to school, till Thurs) I shall be eating most healthily and exercising to the max.  And when I am not sweating at the gym, I shall be sitting at my desk, engrossed in my novel, typing like a demon and probably knocking out maybe a thousand and fifteen words, just to prove how keen I am.

But sadly I know what I'm like. I'm not what you might call a natural 'stickler' at things.  Reader it's not my fault - I get so bored!  Instead of persevering with the aerobics or the writing, I will prefer to be chasing the next big idea in my life instead.

Rather depressingly I just know that a new concept, be it for an article or a business will suddenly ping into my little head and I shall have to abandon whatever it is I am meant to be sticking at to pursue it, just for a while you understand, to see if it has any merit.  I shall be momentarily excited, fired up, all guns blazing while I do my research.  I may even mention it to a few friends who, being the lovely people that they are, will give me encouraging feedback which will of course make me want to pursue it further.

Gah!  By the end of January I'll still be the same weight and needless to say the novel probably won't have reached fifty thousand words. Bugger.

Brown is the new black

Courtesy of the release of the latest Census figures, we can now be sure that mixed race people are the fastest growing ethnic group in the UK.  They are now so strongly represented in every walk of life, think Jess Ennis, Barak Obama, Alesha Dixon, Rio Ferdinand etc, etc,  that the majority of people no longer have a problem with either the concept or the results of inter-racial breeding.

I must admit to having a vested interest in the fortunes of mixed racers as I happen to be one myself.  I am the product of a black, Trinidadian father and a white, British mother, who met and married in the late 1960s, a time when society was not blessed with the racial tolerance that we revel in now.  I believe they were actually spat at in the street and certainly, my mother's parents boycotted the wedding day.

I grew up in a fairly middle class, predominantly white part of Kent, where the nearest most of our neighbours got to experiencing another culture was when they went to pick up their Indian or Chinese takeaway on a Friday night.  At the primary school I moved to when I was 8, I was the only brown-skinned child there and boy did I know about it.  'Paki' seemed to be the greeting of choice, closely followed by 'blackie' and 'nigger'.  I remember wondering what on earth was the correct response when being yelled at by other kids to 'f**k off back to where you came from'.  "What, you mean Dartford?" I would occasionally reply to their snarling faces.

I could see that a lot of these kids were actually quite curious about someone who looked a bit different and as time wore on some of them became friends of sorts.  Even at that young age I could see that the problem lay with how they had been brought up, in households where ignorance and prejudice ruled the day and that they, by verbally abusing me, were simply regurgitating stuff they'd heard at home.

Secondary school, a typically 'bog-standard' comprehensive, was similarly white.  Again I found myself encountering racial abuse on a daily basis.  I remember other kids wanting to fight with me quite a lot. I probably did myself no favours as on the outside I refused to be cowed by people calling me a 'f****ing Paki' even though inside I was absolutely bloody terrified!

When I get together now with my two oldest girlfriends, classmates from that school, we reminisce about how different life was then and just how many times I was forced to use my fists to get through the day.  We can laugh now about the one time when they literally stood by me, one at each shoulder and said to the main tormentor "if you want to fight her, you'll have to fight us aswell". Ah those were the days eh?!!

But it's funny being mixed race - half and half - dual heritage - not one thing or the other - call it what you like, it's made me totally 'colour-blind' when it comes to other people; I really do not make assumptions based on how people look and I find it quite extraordinary when others do just that. Do you remember Greg Dykes's comment about the BBC being 'hideously white'?  I found that troubling in so many ways.

I suppose at the heart of it I believe in the very best people being chosen for the job, regardless of their skin colour.  It bothers me that in this tolerant age there might still be situations where a 'person of colour' (to borrow that slightly sickly American phrase) might be passed over for promotion because of their skin tone.  But it also bothers me to the same degree that a white person might be overlooked in favour of someone darker, just to balance the books, as it were.

So in my school days I was considered too black to fit in, until that is, we all turned 14 and something miraculous happened.  Suddenly (and I mean suddenly, it was literally overnight), the perceptions of my schoolmates began to change and being different equalled cool.  They also noted that I was lucky enough to have a year round suntan, something all my pasty peers aspired to in the days of 80s neon disco clothes and immediately, with a few stubborn exceptions (offspring of National Front supporters probably) I was someone cool to hang with.

Another time I shall regale you with the story of when I found myself curiously 'not black enough' to fit with my manager's stereotypical view of what a mixed race person should look like, if such a thing is possible.  Until then dear reader, until then.

Listen very carefully, I shall say zis only once

As from this morning there is a new rule in our house.  It's a very necessary rule as due to the apparent inability of my children to focus on a damn word I say to them in the mornings, I was well on the way to turning into something rather unpleasant.  Think half human, half sheepdog but without the winning displays of affection or the lovely waggy tail.

Sick of the sound of my own voice endlessly repeating tedious missives like "time to brush your teeth" or "ties, jumpers and shoes on NOW please" and observing said children wafting about engaging in push-shove-screech 'games' or simply just wafting, aimlessly around the place, the stress of simply trying to leave the house on time for school was just too much.

"For goodness SAKE" I'd hear myself cry, "it's the same routine every BLIPPING morning!  You KNOW what to do to get ready for school!"  And so it would continue, often culminating in me frantically herding them out the door, one eye on the clock and forgetting that vital envelope containing something so important that if it wasn't handed into the school office TODAY the world will surely end.

So at around 0732, I informed them, in a slightly detached, non-confrontational manner, about the new rule.  "Oh kids?  I have something to tell you actually, about this morning, in fact every morning from now on."  They pricked up their little ears and I suddenly had their full attention.  "You see the thing is, Mummy is only going to tell you to do something one time.  I'll make sure you've heard me" (it would be a bit unsporting to whisper it) "and then if you don't do it straight away, well, I won't be shouting at you or chasing you around anymore, no.  I'm just going to get myself totally ready and wait by the front door for you.  If you make us late then you'll have to go in, on your own and explain to the teacher why you're late and if it happens more than once, well, the headmaster will probably get involved too".

Reader, you should  have seen their little faces.  And it worked - a treat.  I didn't raise my voice once, the only moment of doubt was when delightful daughter - DD - tried to test me by not coming to have her hair plaited when I asked her to.  I simply put the brush down and told DD that she'd be going to school resembling a scarecrow.  She complied immediately and the hair got done.  The best bit was when super son - SS - allowed me to kiss him goodbye on the top of his head (I'm not allowed to make kiss-contact with any other part of his face anymore sadly) and said "Mummy, it was really good this morning.  Can we do that all the time?".