‘Who isn’t any use.’
‘It neutralizes the Calman anxiety quotient.’
He thinks we run about with our arms flailing, emotionally over-reacting to everything all the time, like characters in a bad Italian film, and that his Mission on Earth is to balance us out. I only have to come home with any kind of complaint or problem I’ve heard in the playground for him to say: ‘You haven’t heard the Other Side.’
‘If I said they were rounding up Jews in Dulwich Village, but that they hadn’t rounded me up personally, would you say that?’
He gives me his Rising Above It look. You can almost see his feet leave the floor.
‘If it wasn’t for me you’d be—’
‘Crazy or dead, I know. And if it wasn’t for me, you’d be going on wine-tasting holidays and polishing the car at weekends.’
However, there is an unexpected upside to this shoulder shrugging. In fact, I’m about to appreciate that Balance can be a Good Thing. Having the children at a scarily high-powered school gives us licence to let go at other times. No: we have to, to achieve Balance. Now that Lawrence is being drilled in spelling and times tables all day, I no longer worry about the fact that he lies around all weekend eating Quavers and watching Jackie Chan. In fact, I insist upon it. Peter thinks long and hard before giving me his analysis.
‘Our children need to watch more television,’ he says.
Not everyone shares this view. In fact, if there’s one thing that unites the middle classes – far more firmly than food or politics – it’s the attitude to television. Even mothers who use formula milk agree that TV is Bad. Whenever I take mine to someone else’s house, the first thing they do – if they’re a woman, obviously – is apologize for the mess. (Men don’t do this. Left alone with children for any length of time, they don’t tidy; they’re triumphant if the house doesn’t burn down.) Then, if the television is on, they leap up, look at it as if they’ve never seen it before, and rush to switch it off, saying, ‘I just put it on for a few minutes while I was boiling the kettle/answering the phone/having 4.5 seconds to myself.’ Then, they have to add: ‘They hardly ever watch it.’
Why? Because they have to prove what good mothers they are. Letting our children watch television is like masturbation used to be. We all do it. We’re pretty sure – no, we know – everyone else does, yet we feel guilty about it. Nonetheless, we can’t stop doing it. And as with household mess, the more we hide it, the worse other women feel when they do it, and so on. Why?
Aha, you see. Television’s bad because (a) it gives mothers a break, and (b) it’s passive. You sit down, and … you don’t have to make notes, or draw or build anything out of Lego while you watch, so … Hang on, isn’t that just like going to the cinema? Only – er, cheaper? Is that bad? If you go to your local UGC or Vue, or whatever it’s called now, and you suddenly see your friends going past, do you have to rush and hide behind a cut-out of Tom Hanks? And if they spot you, do you have to say, ‘Honestly, we hardly ever go. Actually, we were looking for the library and came in here by mistake?’
And while we’re at it, what about other passive activities? If you go to the opera and sit still in your seat, just listening – assuming you’re not one of those people who follow the score which you carry around in a black velvet pouch – is that passive? If you stand in front of a painting in a gallery and just look at it don’t write a thesis or ski at the same time – is that passive? If you go underneath during sex, is that? Sex is the original interactive entertainment you could say, but one of the things that’s always drawn me to it is that it’s one of the few exercises you – generally – do lying down. But is it less passive, and therefore better, if you go on top? (In the seventies there were books for wimmin that said it was.) And if you read a book at the same time, is that best of all? More educational? More middle class? There’s a character in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, a waitress, who’s always sparring with her boss the chef. Alice, the polite new girl, thinks she hates him. Then the waitress suddenly yells right across the kitchen: ‘Mel, I could lie under you, eat fried chicken and do a crossword puzzle – all at the same time!’
Now, that’s multi-tasking. But back to television.
My mother, while not accusing me openly, is very fond of the phrase, The Electronic Nanny. She groups it with other supposedly down-market maternal failings, such as smoking, bottle feeding and not talking to kids when they are small. I’m not going to be drawn into a contest about who has the more intellectual values, so let me just say that this is a bit rich, coming from someone who has been known to watch Shoestring. She brought us up on loads of telly, which is particularly bad when you consider that when I was small, it only broadcast for about five hours a day. In those days, nice kids only watched about eight minutes. A week.
And no wonder: most of it was crap. There was Watch With Mother, with Andy Pandy on Tuesday, Bill and Ben on Wednesday and so on, for about twenty incredibly bland minutes, and only really two programmes for the five-plus age, which were Jackanory – not bad, depending on the story – and Blue Peter. Thank God we were never made to watch that. It was full of hearty types collecting milk bottle tops, going on about ‘targets’ represented for some reason by giant thermometers, and endlessly stroking animals – something both my parents regarded as tedious and faintly suspect, like the Scouts. As we got older though, the choice improved: we had Dr Who, Star Trek, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Avengers and The Prisoner, often as we ate supper. And – get this – the TV was even on the table.
Now we have some very good television. Of course, that brings different challenges. The children have been put in front of The Simpsons as soon as they could sit up. But I’m not very keen on the word ‘butt’. However my attempts to try and weed it out of their vocabulary fail completely.
‘Lawrence. Don’t say butt: say “bum”.’
‘OK, Bum-head!’
I’ve got no one to blame but myself, so it’s a relief to know that as they get older, their peer group will become more significant. We take a keen interest in Lawrence and Lydia’s classmates. As I’ve said, we’re looking for charming and well-off children who’ll invite them on lavish holidays. But also, when things go pear-shaped, we’ll need someone to blame. When I was fourteen, the two poshest girls in my class were arrested outside Lords cricket ground – in their nighties – attempting to steal a Members Only sign with a pair of wire-cutters. In the aftermath, the main thing both sets of parents were concerned with was blaming the other girl. So your child’s best friend is yours too. Possibly.
Lawrence has already fallen under the spell of one boy who he wanted to impress by doing naughty things. At three, the scope of their naughtiness was fairly limited. Splashing water on the cloakroom floor is something even private schools don’t get too heated about. But two years on, the horizons are widening fast. Lawrence is now very keen on another sinisterly charismatic boy who has a talent for bringing out the worst in people, a bit like some TV producers. When he comes round to play after school one day, I think, as you do: They’ve gone very quiet … Then I get upstairs to find lists of expletives – including the c-word – neatly written out and taped to the bedroom wall. Should I use Positive Reinforcement? Say: ‘That’s very good writing, boys. Perhaps a different list of words now?’ Or a more Andrea Dworkin-style response comes to mind: ‘I feel abused by your use of a name for the female genitalia to promote the wholesale degradation of women. This word makes me feel violated.’
But though I’m not fond of the c-word, my primal fear is of the reaction from other parents. I don’t want it there when one of Lydia’s well-brought-up little friends comes round. They won’t even recognize it, I shouldn’t think, but their mothers will shun me as the Amish would have Kelly McGillis, had she slept with Harrison Ford in Witness. And while I’d risk a bit of shunning for a night with Harrison, I’m not prepared to go under socially for the sake of a word.
While I’m considering this, I voice my immediate concern: ‘What have I told you about Sellotape? You’ve bloody well gone and taken the paint off the wall! Look!’
While taking it off I do mutter something about people finding the c-word upsetting, and insist that next time they use Blu-Tack. It’s a bit like under-age sex, I suppose: you don’t want them to be doing it at all, but if they are doing it, could they at least use a condom?
Shortly after this, I see the boy who taught them the c-word ringing old ladies’ doorbells and running away – something I and my friends did a lot at that age. And the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from seeing a child behave worse than mine makes everything in the world right again.
But the status, does not remain, as it were, quo. Rude words, like the spores of GM crops, are in the air and drifting towards us. If we want to keep our children pristine, we should have started off like the family at my sister’s school, who allowed no outside influences whatsoever, even to the point of birthday parties with no guests. But anyhow their plan backfired: they mistook my mother’s erudite aura for mental purity, and allowed them to mix with us.
So as we observe the intellectual contamination of our children, the rather disconcerting reality becoming apparent is that we are the bad influence. It takes a bit of getting used to. In fact, a touch of chemical comfort is required. One night, quite pissed, I go up to their room to find out what the loud thumping is. When I come in, they are bouncing on their beds, shouting: ‘Shit, pooh, fucking hell! ’
It has a catchy kind of rhythm. I find myself joining in. Peter comes up and joins in as well. We agree that it is the funniest thing we have ever heard.
But of course we never hear it again, because I have – accidentally – invoked Newton’s Third Law of Parenting, which is that you have only to join in an activity for your children to reject it immediately. Right: that’s the smoking issue solved. I may get lung cancer, but it’ll be worth it.
Well, actually that’s not quite true. The real reason we haven’t heard ‘Shit, pooh, fucking hell!’ again is that they’ve found something else to frighten us with and this time I really don’t have anyone else to blame. Just before Lydia’s sixth birthday, two brothers the same age as her and Lawrence come round to play. I suggest some music with their supper, and Lydia chooses Michael Jackson.
Now, I see no reason to deprive my kids of some great pop music, just because of an artist’s preposterous, creepy, and quite probably sinister personal life. But I am reckoning without their excellent memories. I mean, it must be ages since they asked me why he’d been arrested, and I tried to – well, answer honestly. But, my mind being full of vital matters such as swimming kits and running out of ketchup, I don’t remember. So here is the exchange I overhear during the meal:
LYDIA, putting on Thriller: ‘Michael Jackson got arrested. But this was before he got arrested. (The junior equivalent of describing it as Middle Period Michael Jackson.) He wasn’t a robber or anything.’
FRIEND, aged seven: ‘What did he do?’
LYDIA, casually: ‘He slept in a child’s bed.’ Friend looks baffled.
LAWRENCE, knowledgeably: ‘If the adult doesn’t know the child, and sleeps in the child’s bed, that’s against the law.’ Friend is even more baffled. Friend’s little brother, aged five, is sitting over his shepherd’s pie with eyes like LPs. My son then goes on to detail how to entrap an unfavourite adult.
‘Say there’s a grown-up you don’t like much. You just invite them for a sleepover and when they’re in your bed you just call the police! Can we have pudding now, Mummy?’
21 Stabbed and Picked On
Some time has gone by since they’ve been to the dentist. They went once, to a nice man called Dennis, ran round and round his surgery until the nurse had to contain them, and got stickers. Then no reminders arrived, so I left it. There’s a mother at school who’s a dentist, but just knowing one doesn’t count. I think about it, open the address book to ‘Dentist’, and leave it for a few months. Eventually Lawrence starts complaining of a pain on his upper left side. On the way to school I notice a nearer dentist, in a sweet little house. We could save forty minutes’ driving time. It’s private, but the charge for a check-up isn’t too bad. I make an appointment. The receptionist is very nice. The waiting room has a piano. A sign says: Please feel free to play the piano. I tell the children: ‘Stay away from that.’
The dentist puts Lawrence in the chair and tells Lydia where to stand. Exactly where. Possibly she has had a bad experience with a child lunging forward, tripping, and making her stab a patient with one of those sharp prongy things. Or she could be one of those people who has to tell people where to stand.
‘Stay there,’ I say to Lydia. She moves her foot. ‘No, there.’ The slightest movement might provoke this woman to do God knows what.
‘So – you want me to do something about this hole.’
‘Hole …?’
‘Two, actually, I’m afraid.’
‘Two??’ Play for time. What do politicians do? Talk about something else. ‘The – er, well, of course I’ve – Lydia! Stay still!’
‘I assume you’ve seen it while cleaning his teeth?’
‘Er. Well … Lydia! Don’t move!’
‘You look shocked.’
‘Well, of course! It’s not as though he hasn’t been brushing. He doesn’t even have that many sweets. They both do. Don’t. Lydia!’
I am humiliated. My mother was obsessed with teeth. She grew up in pre-war Glasgow where her dentist was an alcoholic and the diet was terrible; many people had to wait for the NHS to be created so they could get their first full set of teeth. She wouldn’t buy, or let us have, Coke, squash, fizzy drinks, ice lollies or boiled sweets, because of the oral carnage she had witnessed in her formative years. Now, my pristine son has got holes in him. I can’t tell her. We’ll have to move, disappear into the Bad Mothers Protection Programme.
‘And when we do the procedure, we find it’s much better if you don’t stay.’
Hang on a minute …
‘We find the anxiety transmits itself to the child and generally makes it worse.’ Anxiety? What anxiety? I’m not anxious, I’m ashamed. This is another test and I have failed.
‘Are you good at times tables, Lawrence?’ Lawrence looks doubtful. He must be wondering, as I am, what the hell they have to do with teeth. ‘We always do times tables when we do fillings. We have lots of fun.’
He looks aghast. She invites him to get down, and I assume it is safe for Lydia to move. As we reach the door, she says: ‘Oh, and make sure your shoes are clean next time, will you?’
I’m too stunned to answer. We get out of there, and all I can hear in my head is, Your son has dirty shoes. When I get him to school: ‘Bye-bye! See you at home time!’
Your son has dirty shoes. In the supermarket: ‘Buy One, Get One Free!’ Your son has dirty shoes. In the car, listening to the radio: ‘Come on, Minister, answer the question.’ Your son has dirty shoes. It’s like King Midas and the Ass’s Ears, in which the foolish king is punished by Apollo for judging his music not to be the sweetest. The barber who sees the king’s deformity is driven mad by the burden of his secret and shouts it into the grass. The grass grows and the secret is whispered on the wind continuously – until the whole world knows. Somehow, everything I’ve achieved as a mother feels undermined by this slur. True, they’re not the cleanest children in the world, but I am – in my own bumbling way – proud of them. I can’t get over this – judgement.
At some point, my mother rings.
‘How are things?’
‘I took Lawrence to a scary dentist who said he had lots of holes and had to do times tables and clean his shoes. I hardly give them any sweets. They do brush their teeth, they really do! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’
‘Oh, dear! Well, I’m sure there’s another dentist he can see.’
There is. There is Dennis. His practice
is not in a sweet little house. It is on a frightening main road flanked by Exhaust Centres and House Clearance shops. There is no piano in the waiting room, only a man humming.
‘And when was his last visit?’
The receptionist makes me feel better: bleached blonde and motherly, with a smoky voice that suggests a lot of nightlife in the past.
‘Um …’ I don’t mention our defection. ‘It could have been a while.’
‘I’ll just check …’
I start tensing up. She’s going to judge me. No, come on! Claire had a boyfriend who didn’t go for twelve years.
Maybe it’s not as long as I thought. Time flies when you—
‘Here we are. Ooh, it’s been two years!’
Christ! No wonder he’s got two holes. His whole head’s rotting away and it’s my fault.
‘We didn’t get a reminder. I hardly ever give them sweets. He has been brushing.’
Dennis says: ‘We haven’t seen you for a while.’
‘We didn’t get a reminder.’
‘Well, let’s have a look.’
Lawrence squirms a bit.
‘Sit still, Lawrence, for God’s sake!’
That’s a good technique: take out your guilt about not taking them to the dentist’s by snapping at them when you do get there.
‘Oh. Hm. Ah.’
‘What?’
‘Presumably you’ve seen this hole?’
I choose my words carefully.
‘I am aware of it, yes. Lydia, get away from there.’
‘I mean, the one nearer the front is much smaller, but—’
‘There are two, then. God …’ My hope that there are no holes, that the other dentist is mad, fizzles out.
Why didn’t we get one of those little white cards? If he’d bothered to send reminders, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
‘Yes. You see – can you lean back again, Lawrence? The smaller one’s there. And the rather larger one is … there.’
I can see it now. Almost half the tooth is gone. I feel weak.
Confessions of a Bad Mother Page 18