Snouts are the new ears

Here we still are.

What can I possibly find to tell you? This (admittedly oddly pleasant) child wrangling hiatus is even less interesting than me navel gazing. Oh! We found a multipack of dried snouts in Carrefour for the weepette that were obscurely entertaining, but Fingers would not even let me near the camera in case it distracted me from snack duty. Whenever I edged, cautiously, towards the laptop he would summon me back to lay out his biscuit collection by size and colour, or crueller still, commandeer the computer for the dark, dark works of Playhouse Disney.

When not busy bending me to his will, Fingers drew Steve Green, the Stegosaurus. As a stalling mechanism it was of limited success since it was the work of seconds, but we were both pleased with the result.

Steve (and Dave, frequent commenter on these pages):



Life According to Dinosaurs is horribly popular with the spawn. It's the combination of mindless violence and exotic, English swearing ("you ate my arm, ya green fucker!"). They don't know which the English bad words are, but they know they are in there, since I have mentioned it in an unguarded moment. Lashes is desperate to know.

"Is it 'kill' maman? Or 'chess'?"

"No. I'm not going to tell you anyway, you hear enough swearing as it is"

"But what IS it? I won't say it ever I promise"

"It's something I say all the time, so it's hardly new to you"

"Shit?"

"No, not that one. STOP ASKING"

As for Lashes, today he made a draughts board with beer capsules for pawns at the house of hippie. Beer capsules play a central rôle in all Belgian cutting and sticking type projects. There's a reason why this:

is a common sight in Brussels' car boot sales. Otherwise I am none the wiser as to what happens at hippie summer school, though I have noticed that the hippies see fit to just allow their charges to wander off into the public park outside at the end of the day with no supervision whatsoever. I am torn between respecting - admiring even - their trusting stupidity, and atavistic fear that my child will be the one who decides to lie down in the road for a bet. Tomorrow I expect they will provide them all with a packet of Rizlas and an eighth of decent grass.

The whole thing is slightly reminiscent of the deprived kids club I used to go to in York (single parent = deprivation in early 80s North Yorkshire). They were always taking us on half-arsed coach trips to local sites of interest and forgetting half of us in Knaresborough, where we would have to find our own way to the nearest police officer and explain our predicament. It was tremendously character building, and noone actually died, to my knowledge.

There's something about this unseasonally warm weather and aimlessness that reminds me of being seven myself. I can't believe the freedom I had - particularly since I think of my mother as being a superlative worrier - even outside of the Terrifying Club for Latchkey Kids Who Wanted To Beat Me To Pulp. I spent the rest of my time roaming around between the seven sweet shops in the Groves, eking out 8p on Cowans Highland Toffee and and trying to poison Alice Gladwin's next door neighbour with midget gems mixed with Baby Bio because we had decided he was a spy. Or taking the rabbit for walks on a lead to the City Walls. Or just wandering aimlessly around the lanes of York in the summer evening pretending to be a pony. I would love Lashes to have that slightly terrifying freedom and you know, I think I trust him not to be any more of an idiot than the next 7 year old. Bring it on, hippies. Do what I don't quite dare to. Give him a jumbo box of matches and a tram pass. Set him free!

Tell me in the comments whether you want to see dried snouts. Cassandra, I am giving you a chance to rock the no vote here. Use it wisely.