Do I LOOK like a child abductor?

Much is made these days of the fact that children are overprotected by their parents.

I would like to venture the suggestion that there are some children who should probably be protected from their parents, as the parents do not seem to be the most reliable of people. I refer, in particular, to the following two experiences, both of which have taken place at our home in N-o-T within the last two months.

Scenario 1

Sunday, early afternoon. TH is busy doing the Tour du Shed (pre-burglary) and I am pottering. The doorbell rings. In the absence of anyone else to do the deed, I answer it.

On the doorstep stands a rather unkempt and slightly harassed-looking man, accompanied by a small boy.

“I’ve come to collect Katie” he says.

I look back at him, waiting for additional information.

“Katie?” He says “From the party?”

“I think you have the wrong house” I say, politely. “I do not know a Katie, and there is no party here”

He makes a loud “Tut!” of exasperation, turns on his heel and marches off, as if it is my fault that we are not hosting a party, or as if maybe we ARE, and have forgotten to issue Katie with an invitation.

I return to my pottering, throwing a bit of muttering in, for good measure.

Scenario 2

Approximately 5.45 pm this afternoon. I am sending a few e-mails. The doorbell rings. I answer it.

“Caroline?” says the man on the doorstep “Caroline’s mum?”

I refrain from jumping in with any response, pending further clarification.

“I’m looking for my daughter” says the man. “She’s here on a playdate, and…I’ve got the wrong house, haven’t I? My wife would kill me if she could see this, I told her I knew exactly where it was….do YOU know where Caroline lives?”

I reply that I’m sorry, but I don’t know any Caroline living nearby. None of the small boys next door appear to be called Caroline, and I’m fairly certain that none of the small girls in the immediate vicinity are called Caroline, either.

I apologise, and, refreshingly, so does he, as he sets off in search of Caroline, asking as he leaves whether I mind him leaving his car outside our house whilst he conducts his search.

I wonder how such a big thing as not knowing where you’ve left your child actually occur, and am then reminded that the PM and Mrs C successfully left their offspring at the pub over the weekend. It seems to be an increasingly common oversight. And rather worrying…..

Fish Soup...nearly!

Today was my day off..sort of. It has turned out to be more “off-day” than ”day off”.

Rising slightly later than is my normal habit, I was taking my time, briefly tuning in to the breakfast news, when I happened to walk past the fish tank.

I am not a great lover of fish tanks, I have to say. However, when we bought our current abode, the previous owners had made some structural changes to the house. Among them was the removal of a wall to open up what had once been a corridor running almost the length of the house.  This has made the living room much larger, but has resulted in what was once an enclosed corridor becoming an open corridor, with a floor level much lower than that of the living room itself. In order to prevent the unsuspecting from hurling themselves over the precipice from the living room into the corridor, they erected a sort of planter, which for many years was filled with plants, for that was its purpose.

As time passed, and planters became increasingly associated with open-plan offices, TH and I deliberated what to do with this unwanted “feature”, which cannot be removed without a great deal of effort and upheaval. Eventually, we decided that we could sit a fish tank on top of it, which would divide the room a little, and sort of look as though it was meant to be there: which it does. However, in order to cover the offending planter in its entirety, we had to buy a rather large fish tank. It takes 300 litres of one of our scarcest commodities, and requires quite a few fish and plants to keep it looking as it should.

And so, this morning, as I strolled towards the kitchen, I noticed that it looked for all the world as if the fish had also decided to have a lie-in. They were all at the bottom of the tank, not moving much. I then noticed that one of my kissing gourami – a large fish, as it has been with us for several years – was lying on its side and looking quite unhappy.

I rushed round to the other side of the tank, where the thermometer caught my eye, and realised that the thermostat had gone haywire, and was slowly heating up the tank into 300 litres of bouillabaisse…..

Having rushed to the kitchen and found a bowl, I scooped the gourami into it and ran back to the sink, where I added some cool water. The fish, obviously unaware that I was trying to save its life, perked up a bit and started trying to leave the bowl by the nearest exit, so I clamped a plate on top. I know it’s only a fish, and therefore not able to think rationally, but I wasn’t going to have it commit suicide in the kitchen sink after I’d gone to the trouble to save its life! There then followed a good hour of me shuttling back and forth with bowls of water, as I ladled the hot water from the tank and replaced it with cold water.

Having reduced the temperature (it took about an hour of ladling and replacing) to something closer to normal, I returned to the kitchen and lifted the plate, to find the gourami had made a full recovery, so I released him back into the tank. He’s now swimming happily around with his fishy chums. Hopefully there won’t be any lasting after-effects!

Tidying up is bad for your health

 

Visitors often say that my house always looks tidy. I’m not really in a position to judge, but since sons #1 and #2 more or less vacated the premises, I see a small improvement, and also a corresponding lapse in standards when they reappear.  Then there’s the odd (very regular) occasion when the cat brings in a mouse and leaves the bits he doesn’t like at the side of his plate. Only the cat believes that the hall carpet is the side of his plate, so owing to his lack of opposable thumbs or human emotion, I spend a disproportionate amount of time with the Vanish and a cloth, scrubbing at the stains and muttering expletives under my breath.

Visitors, of course, are blissfully unaware that they only have to open a drawer or cupboard to unleash a veritable explosion of clothes, household objects and assorted haberdashery which has been hidden away in order to preserve the veneer of tidiness. I do try to keep things tidy, even when they’re hidden away, but sometimes I just take the lazy option and stuff them into any available space in the spirit of “out of sight, out of mind”. And “out of mind” is usually fine until I start looking for things.

Take last summer, for example. I came back from a couple of months in France to discover that a whole stack of important documents seemed to have disappeared. I didn’t actually blame anyone else, but nor was I prepared to shoulder the responsibility knowing, as I did, that even in my most stupid of moments I wouldn’t have thrown them out. They included my Premium Bond Certificates and the paperwork for a savings account. After giving it a month to see whether they turned up (as stuff usually does, eventually) I gave up and rang the institutions concerned to get copies. So imagine my surprise when I discovered, some 3 or 4 months down the line,  that I had carefully filed them in a new file which had been sitting on the shelf all along. 

And that’s my problem. Over the past couple of months, I have noticed that my ability to lose things has increased exponentially, and my ability to find them has diminished in equal measure. Yet I swear, I put them away with care and some thought. However, my ability to find where I did put stuff has turned into a pastiche of that famous Mastermind sketch by the Two Ronnies where Ronnie Corbett is answering the question prior to the one he’s currently being asked. Allow me to explain..

A few weeks back, I hunted high and low for the installation CD for my printer, as I needed to install it on another computer. It was nowhere to be found, but I did manage to come across the cat’s vaccination record. When, a few weeks previously, I realised I’d lost the cat’s vaccination record , it was nowhere to be found, but I did track down the registration document for my car, the search for which I’d put on hold.  When THAT search was in full swing was when I found the missing Premium Bond certificates…

I am seriously considering beginning the search for a suitable home for the bewildered.