What we don’t yet realize is that we’re witnessing the early signs of regime change. Soon we will be like old royals deposed in a velvet revolution, allowed to stay on in the old palace, but with ceremonial status only.
The new order is a democracy.
Ages 16 & 17: Animal Magic
Time for another hideous extra-curricular experience organized by The School which the kids are supposed to Set Up For Themselves, and which in reality parents end up having to Sort Out At The Last Minute: Year Eleven Work Experience Week.
When it was his turn, Lawrence got a week in the Optical Telecommunications Department at University College London, thanks to my old schoolfriend Lucy, one of those lovely people who doesn’t say:
‘Gosh, I haven’t heard from you for about a year and now you want me to find a job for your child by tomorrow’ – because she too is a parent and has Been Through It. And while he didn’t come away determined to devote his life to Optical Telecommunications, Lawrence was made a huge fuss of and taken out for pizza. He even helped a bit in the actual lab, though doing what I can’t tell you because I didn’t understand it.
And now it’s Lydia’s turn, and she wants to be a vet.
I say:
‘Is this like when you were going to be a doctor?’
‘What? NO. God . . .!’
‘Good start,’ says Peter. ‘Well done.’
She reminds us that she’s been interested in animals since at least Year Five, which is true, because I definitely remember having to watch Animal Emergency. Then, more recently, she became devoted to the Supervet. And in between there were the guinea pigs, the sweet but agoraphobic members of the household who failed to enhance our lives in any way, though she did usually clean out their cage.
‘Well then!’
But you have to get A-star in about twenty subjects, because getting in to do Veterinary Science is harder even than Medicine – harder than becoming Pope, by the look of it – though I don’t understand why.
‘Because unlike doctors, you have to know all the anatomy for every kind of animal, instead of just one,’ says Lydia, none too patiently.
Blimey.
But how can she get any Work Experience? We don’t know any vets.
‘Hang on,’ says Peter. ‘I’m having an idea . . .’
His friend Jonathan is now a writer but used to be a farmer, having swapped one impossible way to make a living for another.
‘He’s bound to know a vet.’
And he does. Not only that, but Lydia can stay with him, his wife and two little girls, near Totnes where the vet is based. Work experience and a week in her beloved Devon countryside. Solved!
She gets the train down and is taken to the vet’s each day by Jonathan’s wife Jess – because in the country you have to drive everywhere – and reads bedtime stories to the two lovely little girls in the evenings, and it all sounds idyllic.
She returns, having attended a neutering and a canine mastectomy, and a bovine ante-natal session at one of the local farms.
‘Did the Bernese mountain dog mind being “done”?’ I say.
‘He was unconscious.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Just watched.’
‘Right. And did you get to feel any of the calf embryos?’
‘No! I just wrote down which cows were pregnant.’
‘OK. So how do you feel about becoming a vet?’
She looks appalled.
‘Absolutely no way am I doing that.’
‘Oh. Why not?’
‘I was on my feet ALL DAY.’
Still, her interest in animals undimmed, she and I go to the cinema to see Rams, a darkly humorous Icelandic drama about two feuding brothers, both sheep farmers, and the unexpected events that force their relationship to change.
‘Lydia must be the only teenage girl in Britain,’ observes Peter, ‘who actively wants to see a film about Icelandic sheep farmers.’
The film is good: tense, poignant and punctuated by deadpan humour. And all goes well until about halfway through, when a trio of teenage boys come in through the fire exit. They talk loudly and play with their phones, making no attempt to keep their voices down, until eventually it’s so distracting I say, politely but firmly:
‘If you’re not going to watch the film, could you please go out?’
And, with a bit of muttering and hissing, they do. I hold my breath for a few moments, as they pass us. Then, slightly to my surprise, instead of telling me off for being embarrassing, Lydia leans over and says:
‘Thank you for doing that.’
When we come out into the foyer, she sees the same boys sitting at a table, and we point them out to the staff, mentioning their behaviour, the fact that they almost certainly came in without paying – and their blatant lack of appreciation for contemporary Scandinavian cinema.
‘I suppose they were harmless enough,’ I say, ‘but it was so annoying.’
And Lydia says:
‘For one crazy moment I thought they might lock the doors and start shooting.’
What?
But it’s not so crazy, is it?
It’s only three months since the horrific killings in Paris. And America has had two recent shootings in cinemas, in 2012 and last year. So people have actually been murdered while watching movies. The cinema, my favourite place, is no longer inviolable. I don’t think for a minute Lydia will stop going, but I want to say something – useful. Yet none of the words that come to mind seem up to the job.
Outside, Brixton is its usual self. There’s steel pan music drifting over from near the tube station, mingled with entreaties from a man outside KFC to invite the Eternal Lord Jesus into our lives.
We walk to the bus stop.
‘Aside from those idiots interrupting,’ I say, ‘what did you think of the film?’
‘Good: I liked it.’
The bus comes and we get on.
And as it pulls away, the Voice that announces the stops has a new message for us.
‘Please hold on,’ it says, ‘while the bus is moving.’
‘Phew,’ says Lydia. ‘Because we wouldn’t want to fall over, would we?’
Ages 17 & 18: Au Revoir and Toodle-Pip
In the autumn, Lawrence will be going to university – in Manchester, two hundred miles away. It’s really happening!
He’ll be only just eighteen. But it’s not purely about the degree.
‘No offence. But I really want to get away.’
Oh.
Thanks.
But I know he’s right.
It’s just going to be such a wrench. I never left home, or went to university; the whole idea is utterly alien.
What’s it like? How does it feel?
I ask our friend Sarah H how it felt when her girls went off.
‘It was really hard during the first year,’ she says, ‘when they’d come home, dump their bags and go off with their new friends.’
Gulp! The dreaded tumble turn.
I just know I’ll be standing at the door with a freshly baked cake and a DVD of 21 Jump Street, looking totally desperate.
As he heads towards the end of his last ever year at school, I distract myself from the coming Exodus by collecting recipes from the papers that I think look tempting and relatively achievable, and sending optimistic texts like:
How abt mkg spag bol with me later? – in the breezy tone of someone who’s just spontaneously come up with the idea and hasn’t been thinking about it for days. And who isn’t his mother.
And I either get no response, or:
Bit busy now, maybe later.
‘He’s taking his A levels,’ says Peter. ‘Leave it.’
‘But the A levels are finished now.’
‘Then he’s winding down after all that hard work. Leave it: he’ll be fine.’
‘But he’s going to be Out There,’ I say. ‘Unable to cook.’
I am gripped by the fear that he’ll live on alcohol, takeaway
s coated in mysterious blends of spices and antibiotics, and food-like, chemical compounds in packets. And by the end of the first year, my healthy glowing lad will be reduced to a hollow-eyed stick. Or worse, a lump of grey flab. He might as well be saying: ‘I’m leaving home specifically in order to eat rubbish and ruin my health.’
‘But no one in your family ever learned to cook before leaving home,’ says Peter. ‘And look at you now. And your sister.’
True. I only really got interested in it when the children were small, to avoid putting them to bed. I can put plain chicken pieces on a tray with a few veg and get praised for it, like the Emperor’s New Supper.
‘So,’ he says, ‘I think you should calm down and stop worrying. It’s actually getting a bit tiresome.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘No more about Lawrence and food.’
And as soon as he’s out of the way I get out the special scrapbook I’ve been saving for Lawrence’s New Life, with pages for copying and pasting in recipes, and little integral folders for tucking in the ones cut out of magazines.
I start with my lazy tortilla, basically a big omelette filled with anything you find in the fridge and not folded, because it’s like trying to fold a mattress, but finished under the grill.
Then I put in my dad’s braised lamb, the first meal he made me at his flat when I was five, using ultra-cheap middle neck of lamb, onions, potatoes and carrots like Irish Stew, but also – since he wasn’t Irish – tinned tomatoes. I also include dual-purpose meatballs – press down to make burgers – and basic tomato sauce. And gravy. I find it hard to leave things out, so he ends up with about twenty of my own favourites, plus quite a lot of others I’ve saved over the years. Then I cover the whole thing with a luscious picture of pancakes with blueberries and cream, cut out of the Observer Food Magazine.
Then I move onto Life Tips, such as How to Prevent Hangovers, How to Avoid Getting into a Fight – always, always back down – and How to Stay out of Debt, though with this I’ve reckoned without the government raising the future interest on student loans to over 6 per cent. So I just say Not to Buy Anything Involving a Purchase Plan, since ‘A top of the range motor for £200 a month!’ usually means £200 a month for four thousand years at 1,000 per cent APR. Finally I add How to Wash Up, since, being the Dishwasher Generation, they’ve hardly ever done any, and I’m married to someone who never uses enough washing-up liquid, which might be genetic.
And I know that I’ve been imagining him – and his sister – as empty vessels, waiting, like jugs on a shelf, for knowledge to be poured in, forgetting that the main point of going to university is to find these things out for yourself. And that even if you don’t, as I didn’t, you find out stuff anyway – just by living. But I do it all the same.
The packing begins, and seems to go on for days. On the day he’s due to leave, I go into his room and put the scrapbook on his bed, near the two boxes of spare pans, mixing bowls, wooden spoons, a whisk, a potato masher and several food canisters I’ve saved.
Then he comes in and says:
‘Can you not put things on the bed? I’m laying all my stuff out there.’
So I move it close to one of his holdalls, without actually putting it in. But it’s in the way, so I put it on top of one of the boxes of kitchen utensils. And he looks up and says:
‘You know I won’t be using all this, right?’
As if I’ve packed five sleeping bags, two tents and a harpoon.
‘You’re not going catered, so you will have to eat.’
‘Can you just let me pack?’
‘Why not just take the cutlery and a couple of pans,’ I concede eventually. ‘Just in case.’
And he puts down his beer, reverts to his serious face – the one I imagine he’ll use to tell us he’s been caught dealing at a festival or got someone pregnant – and says:
‘Mum, this fantasy of yours, of me cooking for my friends all gathered round the table, just Isn’t Going to Happen.’
And I say:
‘I know.’
And I carry on collecting recipes because parents aren’t as intelligent as laboratory rats and don’t learn.
For his Last Supper I make paella, which I learned from Pablo, a small hotel owner – or owner of a small hotel – near Ronda some years back.
On The Day, which is unusually warm for September, Lawrence puts on shorts and flip-flops, which make him look more vulnerable.
And suddenly it’s Time.
And Lydia and I go out to the stuffed car for a final hug. And Peter says he’s just going to back it out, and runs over Lawrence’s foot.
‘PETER!’
‘DAD!’
‘DA-AD!!’
‘Go back! Go back!’
And Peter goes back, and somehow manages to run over his foot again.
And I rush forward, the whole scenario – A&E, X-rays, crutches, the missed freshers’ week – all flashing across my head like a running news caption.
‘Oh my God!’
And Peter gets out of the car and says,
‘Are you all right?! I am so, so sorry.’
And Lawrence lifts up his foot, looks at it, and says,
‘I’m OK: it’s fine.’
Maybe we’ve just witnessed a circus trick, that we – and he – didn’t know he could do. Or could it be a message from the universe saying: Your Child is Stronger than You Think? Literally, as the children like to say, and metaphorically.
And he gives Lydia a huge hug, and me a huge hug, pressing my head against his reassuringly solid chest.
And then they’re gone.
Lydia and I get fish and chips and watch A Knight’s Tale, the film for every occasion, especially when your firstborn has left to make his way in the world and become a self-non-catering student.
‘Lawrence could be William Thatcher,’ she says.
‘And you’re definitely the beautiful farting blacksmith.’
Certainly not the soppy princess.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she says, and strokes my hair. ‘Did he take the utensils in the end?’
‘I’m slightly avoiding going in his room, so I’m not sure.’
He won’t be cooking, I accept that now.
And before I go to bed on that first night, and for the next few nights, I do walk quickly past his door, in case I find myself sitting on his bed and breathing in the smell of one of his jumpers, as people do in dramas when someone has been killed.
‘I feel OK,’ I say. ‘In fact, I think I can get through this.’
‘That’s good,’ she says, looking relieved.
‘Just as long as you never leave.’
‘Ha ha!’
‘No, really.’
You’d think evolution would have come up with something less emotionally draining. Couldn’t they just pack a bag, salute and say:
‘Well, Mother – I suppose it’s au revoir and toodle-pip.’
And couldn’t we just smile brightly and reply:
‘Goodbye, darling. And – good luck!’
A few days in, I get my first text from the Other Side:
What do you advise, for my first food shop?
And I feel like a woman in an old Hollywood epic, hearing that her son has found the One True Faith.
I dash off a random list of staples – rice, onions, noodles, tinned toms, beans, cheap jar olives? – before he changes his mind and asks someone else.
Then, a few weeks into the term, a breathless text arrives, in the same tone as I imagine that of Victorian explorers when they first beheld the Pyramids:
Big Asian shop has 12 tins of toms for £2.40!!
Followed a few days later by:
Just made huge pan of dahl. So cheap!
A month later I get:
Dinner tonight. Veggie chilli con carne with chickpeas, sour cream, tarragon and mint dip.
Wow. You cooking for others too?
Sometimes eat with others, sometimes make lots and keep portions.
The s
hock of my child actually doing this thing I wanted is thrilling but a bit unnerving. I feel like someone who’s nagged their child to practise Ten Little Fingers, only to see them pull out a guitar and start working their way through the repertoire of Prince.
By the end of term he’s made chicken tikka masala from scratch with his new flatmate Jack, lemon-marinated pesto chicken with paprika chilli sweet potato chips and garlic yogurt dip, and for their Christmas dinner, roast-chicken-with-everything for ten. I get a last-minute text about roast potatoes, but by the time I’ve replied parboil & shake in pan to make crispy edges he’s gone ahead and fed the whole flat.
In December he comes back for the holidays, and I make what may well be my last Christmas lunch.
‘I’m about to be redundant.’
‘Let’s not get carried away,’ he says. ‘You still have your uses.’
‘The washing up, no doubt!’
‘Show me how you do gravy,’ he says, to soften the blow of my impending obsolescence.
The last few meals he makes before he goes back in January are tinged with an unsettling sensation, of longing mixed with dread. When I see him cutting a lemon on the counter without a board, I’m just about to warn him not to scratch it when he rolls the lemon under the knife, cutting only the upper surface to spare the worktop. And I feel a kind of wrenching, like my friend Steve’s description of his mother’s last kiss before the train used to pull away to take him to boarding school: the overwhelming intensity of the love, combined with something very like grief.
‘He misses you too, you know,’ Peter explains.
‘Really?’
‘Of course! What do you think?!’
‘I don’t know. I have no sense of it.’
I’m aware it’s one of these things most people take as read, but that I have to be taught, like people with no nerve endings having to be reminded that hot things burn.
Once he goes back I resume texting him for cooking tips.
Maybe give up Maths and open restnt?
Ha, maybe.
Btw did u find anything useful in the scrapbook?
Going to get round to it, yeh yeh.
But it takes me a long time to actually call him. I fear he might not want to hear from me and will cut me off early to go and do something more interesting. It feels far too like the early weeks of a new relationship. Perhaps in a way it is.
Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years Page 17