#BestHalfTermDayOutEver

Life has been so busy these last few years, I honestly thought my days of mum blogging were behind me. But sometimes, a particularly fine gem of a day out with the kids, when you’re stuck right in the middle of a dreary February half-term, just screams out at you, saying, ‘Blog me! blog me! – and so here is my latest offering:

Trigger alert: vomit, cat castration and more vomit 

The day starts at around 12.25 am the night before – Child #3 is calling me from upstairs. She can’t sleep and her tummy hurts. I cuddle her and assuming all is okay, head back downstairs for some more late-night reading and Netflix. 

Twenty minutes later she’s crying more pointedly and is now green of pallor. I drag her with unexpected ferocity (think: save my carpet) to bathroom to stem already-emerging tide of vomit and shover (shove her) head over the toilet bowl. 

Vomiting frenzy ensues. 

(Bitterly resentful) cleaning frenzy follows. 

Some ten (twenty? fifty?) more times in the night, child awakens me for more crying or more vomiting or more of both. I’m no longer used to this hellish nocturnal party central with tiny infant. She’s meant to know better – she’s 7 years, not 7 months, old. 

Official day then starts (again) at around 7am. Bleary with fatigue, we have to panic-dress and rush out of the house as we need to get to the vet on time to get our two kittens neutered. 

 As with a previous blog post from a few summer holidays ago, in which I naively hoped a pet-related activity would pass for a passable school holiday “outing” – and was proved spectacularly wrong – this outing promises to fail dramatically even before it’s begun. 

We put kittens carefully in pet carrier and head off. Child #1 and Child #2 complain vociferously that I’m rushing them out of the house before they’ve eaten breakfast and that they’re !!!#STARVING#!!! Child #3 cries weakly that she feels too ill to leave the house and then promptly proves this to be true by turning green of pallor again before we’ve even exited our very short road in our battered Honda.

I shover – and myself – swiftly out of the car and she throws up, on the pavement. (So far, I’ve been remarkably successful at avoiding vomit landing in wrong places; let’s hope my luck continues.) 

I deposit her firmly with dad and the remaining five of us (me, two human children and two felines) trundle off up the A41 and A1 to picturesque Borehamwood (‘Bore’ promises to sum this whole day up in one) to drop kittens off at vet’s. One child continues to rail loudly due to hunger-related woes. 

Kitties safely deposited, we trundle back down the A1 and A41 and start considering breakfast needs. We land on Brent Street, London NW4 – arguably the grimmest, most soul-destroying, most down-at-heel, most in-need-of-spontaneous-self-destruction high street the leafy suburbs of North-West London have to offer – hunting for a decent breakfast joint.  

Inexplicably, I find myself sharing a slice of very rich Sacher Torte with Child #2 in an over-lit cafe before it’s even 9.30 in the morning. Not satisfied with the menu, Child #1 appropriates my bank card and goes foraging in nearby Tesco Extra for other breakfast items.

Inexplicably too, as we munch on over-sweet cake, Child #2 and I feel called to look up full lyrics of a terrible, sadistic, bad song playing on loop on Capital FM at the moment, which is painfully stuck in my head, with lines that seem to speak of “whips and chains” and did I hear something about “choking”? (Yes, Google confirms there are indeed repeat mentions of choking – “I’ll choke you, but I ain’t no killer, baby” – in this delightful ditty, but it’s okay because: “you can whip your lovin’ on me, baby, whip your lovin’ on me, baby.“)

Should I worry that my three primary-school-aged children, along with most under 18s in the nation’s capital, are listening to this fine artist’s material on loop all day long?

The day has already felt very long, I observe, as 10 am slowly creeps up on us.

Where else to go in the rain when we have one hour spare before we need to reunite with greenish Child #3?  

You guessed it (again): that retail mecca of NW London: grey-of-hue, boxed-in, brutalist Brent Cross Shopping Centre located at the positively bucolic intersection of the North Circular Road and the A41.

We buy Child #3 a Snoopy keyring as a get-well-soon present; we then waste plenty of money buying various overpriced edibles that Child #1 and Child #2 still apparently NEED to satisfy their hunger: Bubble tea, warm pretzels, and the like. We then fritter away lots more money buying specialised haircare products that both Child #2 and I apparently need to “unlock our curls”.  

Still only around 11.30am and we’re back home with Child #3. How, oh how, will I fill the day? I ponder to myself. 

Child #3 picks up a bit in shade of physiognomy and eats a crust of dry toast. Emboldened, I rush her off to Dunelm with Child #2 for another spot of retail therapy, pushing down threat of inevitable existential crisis this homeware mecca brings out in me as soon as I step foot inside. (What’s the point of lampshades? What’s the point of 375 types of fitted sheets? What’s the point of dog-shaped umbrella stands? What’s the point of 87 different shapes of raffia storage solutions? Why is this shop so idiotically named? Who am I? Why am I here?) 

We leave Big Child #1 at home for a short while for his “screen-time” (in italics and with quotation marks to highlight the “who am I kidding?” aspect of calling this screen-time, and in so doing, keeping up the pretence that this is an activity with a tightly controlled start and end-time).

We make it over the threshhold of Dunelm. My mood starts to marginally lift. I put Child #3 in trolley and we wheel around ground floor of store, looking at sheets and dog-shaped umbrella stands. Suddenly, you guessed it…..green pallor……….. 

We charge out of store. We make it but not quite in time to avoid splashes of vomit landing modern-art-style on the large mat at the store entrance. (I did let a shop assistant know, in case you’re wondering if I’d stoop low enough to ‘puke and run’. I’m of high moral standing, you see.) 

Back home far too soon – and I’m not even looking at the clock. I give up on life, rain, half-term and everything and crash into bed with inclement child. We nap blissfully for some time. Vaguely hearing two loud screens blaring in other parts of the house, I put thoughts of being a terrible parent out of my mind and slumber some more. The afternoon slowly rumbles along.

The vet calls and all is well with two kitties. We’re instructed to collect them at 17.00. 

Some time later: it’s back up the A roads to Borehamwood, this time armed with sturdy sick bags. We pick up neutered, shorn, but otherwise quite perky, kittens and head home.  

Traffic, rain and general malaise accompany us as we head back along the A1/A41 for the fourth time today.  

We nearly make it into the general area of Hendon Central (as also discussed in a previous blog post) when, you guessed it again, sick bag is urgently required. 

Back home; supper, mess, laundry, more mess, hunger, no more sick (hurrah, but am I speaking too soon?), hunger finally abated, haircare products tried out and bedtime finally puts a close to the longest day recorded in human history. 

Signed: A tired parent at 23:11 of the same day.  

Picture of the two feline protagonists of the tale.

Clearly it was a bad idea to go for a hot chocolate in HENDON CENTRAL

It’s fair to say that 600 months of lockdown melting almost seamlessly into 400 further months of summer holidays can leave even the most enthusiastic parent holding up their hands to heaven on a midweek grey August afternoon  beseeching the Powers of the Universe with a howling refrain: “What ELSE can I possibly do to keep three young children entertained?”

It’s a grey midweek afternoon in the middle of an interminable August. It’s 2020. The Year of the Pandemic. We’re having a staycation, a homeliday.

I am with my three young children in a back garden in London NW4.

We are rabbit-sitting a cute rabbit called Beyoncé and unfortunately have smashed Beyoncé’s water bottle. So I hunker down on my phone and discover on Google Maps that there’s a pet superstore just down the road in West Hendon.

HALLELUJAH! Just when I’m wondering hopelessly about where to take the children after we leave our bunny friend, a plan has miraculously manifested itself.

We have a mission! We have an outing! Never have I felt so grateful to a smashed bunny bottle before. We’re off to the pet superstore!

We bomb it over to pet superstore. One beady-eyed child eyes up a Tesco Metro that we pass and starts hammering about stopping for a treat. “No, pet superstore is shutting VERY SOON,” I reply mendaciously, “so we can’t stop.”

We arrive at pet superstore and glide into parent-with-children parking spot right in front of entrance. It’s clearly meant to be.

Horrible disappointment number one: After promises to three excited children aged 3, 5 and 7 about what adorable little puppies and kittens and bunnies and guinea pigs we’ll find – for whom we will obviously have unlimited stroking privileges  (Covid-19 notwithstanding) – in pet superstore, we discover there are zero animals on-site. All cages, runs, hutches are deafeningly empty.

Oh.

Try in vain to interest children in cute shaped hutches and interesting rabbit treats.

I efficiently locate new bunny water bottle with great ease in record time and head off to  check-out.

Overly optimistic prediction of how much time pet superstore outing will use up of this endless afternoon prior to arrival: 1 to 1.5 hours.

Actual time spent in store: 3-5 minutes.

Come on children, let’s go back to Beyoncé to give her her new bottle and we’ll stop to buy a treat on the way, I say.

There’s no other way to get back to Hendon from West Hendon other than through Hendon Central.

There’s no avoiding it. I’m going to have to take the children out in Hendon Central. Possibly the grimmest traffic junction in the whole entire world? Hendon Central is this: Three-lane traffic roaring up the Hendon Way, people marching in and out of tube station, traffic lights flashing, seedy shops spilling out in all directions, a boarded-up Jews for Jesus store (Jews – and everyone else – are for one thing alone in Hendon Central: getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible and heading home), a youth hostel, more seedy shops, umpteen fried chicken joints, a Mama Africa restaurant with darkened windows, a hair regrowth clinic, and lots of greasy cafes should you need to take three children out for an apple juice and a bite to eat.

We park the car. I go buy children snacks in Tesco and some magazines with plastic tat freebies on the front to keep them entertained in whatever eatery we end up in.

Can’t face walking through the grim underpass to the Other Side of Hendon Way where there’s a Costa café. So I look around hopefully near where we’ve parked. I spot a little Italian restaurant and pile the children in there. There are no other mums with children; just a few groups of men from different European nations sitting around quietly at various tables munching and chatting.

The waitress is smiley and lovely to the children. I want to hug her.

We order our: apple juice, orange juice, hot chocolate and a Mocha for Mum. I get out the new magazines, our ever-present bag of felt pens and colouring books so the children can busy themselves while I sit back and take a sip of my drink.

Mummy can you open my magazine?
Don’t knock over your orange juice!
Mummy I need a straw!

What’s the magic word?

Mummy can you open my slime?

Mummy my hot chocolate is not sweet enough.

Mummy can I have a sip of your mocha.

Mummy what’s a mocha?

Mummy I don’t like my orange juice.

Mummy what are you meant to do on this page?

I NEED that green pen!

S/he snatched my new toy from my magazine!

Children, how about being a bit quieter?

Eventually things quieten down.

There’s even some actual colouring happening.

I take another sip. Bliss?

But only momentarily.

One child needs the toilet. And not just an innocuous Number One.

Oh no, it’s the dreaded Number Two. And I didn’t bring any wet wipes with.

Shudder.

Child needs me in the toilet urgently. There’s been a bit of an accident and underwear is, well, soiled.

Child cannot stay in soiled underwear so we take it off, soiling my hands and their other clothing as we go. The horror of it all. Why does no one talk about how much poo you’ll get on your hands for years to come when you first announce you’re having a baby?

I wash out soiled underwear as best I can and wring it out. I blitz my hands with half a bottle of hand soap and hope for the best.

Distracted by another child’s howls of protest wafting through to the toilet from the restaurant. I rush back and see they’re being bullied by the other child at the table who keeps grabbing their stuff from the new magazine and not giving it back.

It’s MINE! Child keeps screeching so so loudly. I hush them urgently.

Felt pens are strewn all over the floor.

Everyone in the restaurant, including Nicest Waitress in the World, is still smiling and being nice to me and not one bit disapproving and tight-lipped like they would be if they were English (I’m English myself so I’m just being self-hating not racist, in case you’re wondering).

I give the waitress a generous tip and she tells us, you won’t actually believe it, to COME BACK AGAIN. We love children, she says!

I almost forget I’m in Hendon Central and imagine I’m in Sicily for a second.

I bundle the children, felt pens, plastic toys, hoodies, magazines, mobile phone and me out of restaurant and back to the car.

As we’re driving back to Beyoncé, I suddenly remember with horror: I left the balled-up wet, soiled underwear sitting in the sink in the toilet at the restaurant! I forgot to throw it away / take it with us!!! And the waitress was SO nice! How could I have left that vile object behind?????

So just to apologise in advance – in case you ever – inexplicably – wanted to meet me in Hendon Central for a drink, I’m terribly sorry but I simply can never show my face there ever ever EVER again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An afternoon in soft play hell

It’s two days before the end of the winter holidays and bucketing down outside. Any inspiration for coming up with yet another edifying cultural activity to take the little ones to long gone, there’s nothing for it, an afternoon at soft play hell beckons.

Naively convincing myself that surely a lot of other schools must have already gone back, I blithely drive into the car park of a large, popular soft play located not far from us in North West London.

And then proceed to drive straight out of the positively rammed, full to beyond capacity car park immediately thereafter, my heart plummeting fast.

Out of the corner of my horrified eye, I see something that looks like a queue spilling out into the rain at the entrance to the soft play, but quickly convince myself that surely this must have been a mirage.

We park at the first available spot several hundred metres away in a nearby giant supermarket car park. We trudge back up, bumping the buggy over the potholes and    humps in the road, inching our way round large puddles, all the while as the skies pour down on us.

We arrive at the door to see there is indeed a very real, very tangible queue of harassed looking parents and their restless offspring spilling out into the rain.

Notice on the door to soft play hell:

I look in my purse, I have approximately 37 pence made up of 1 p and 2 p coins in cash, alongside an armada of credit cards crying out to be used.

Cursing all manner of deities, I wearily trudge off again, this time down a dreary alleyway snaking round the backside of the giant supermarket with my three bedraggled small people in tow in search of a cash machine.

Cash duly acquired, we enter soft play.  We are welcomed with gaiety:

Glaring at the beaming cherubs in this painted scene, I dutifully shuffle along in the mother of all queues until it’s finally our turn to cough up cash-only cash in order to voluntarily enter soft play hell.

And we’re off. Instantly we are swept up in an intense cacophony of noise, children’s screams, loud music, heat, bright flashing lights, lurid Christmas decorations abound. Sensory overload.

A densely populated, heaving mass of humanity has packed itself tightly into this primary-coloured vision of dystopia.

Children streaking by, children wailing, children squealing, children chasing each other, children sliding down, children climbing up, children tumbling, children laughing with delight, children crying with undelight. All breeds of children. Big ones, small ones, pocket-sized ones, wild ones, dreamy solitary ones.

Tables packed full of families chowing down burgers and chips, slurping on lurid-coloured ice slush drinks, crunching on packets of crisps, chewing on chocolate bars, as far as the eye can see.

Mum in question (me) feels existential pangs. Is this what it’s all about? I wonder for the enth time. I spot another mum in the throes of her own existential moment, sitting alone at a table absorbed in pencil sketching on a piece of paper.

I try to stealthily ignore large signs plastering the place stating that outside food may not be brought in and feed my children vaguely healthy lunch fodder brought in from outside. Soft play manager (#dreamjob) catches us red-handed within three milliseconds of said forbidden food items appearing. Disallows continued consumption. Groan. We’re all hungry. Off we troop to food station and fork out for the necessary supplies of crisps and confectionary.

I put my one-year-old down next to the table to crawl around at my feet. Take my eye off her for one second as I sip my cappuccino, look down again and she’s gone. Panic stations. Will I ever find her in the mêlée? With intense relief I see she’s zoomed off as quickly as her four paws will carry her over to the ball pond and is trying unsuccessfully to dive in.

Phew. Save her. But then, with dread in my heart, I realise exactly how the rest of my afternoon is panning out: From then on I am entirely at her beck and call, and must obediently trail after her up and down and round and in and out the bouncy, slidey, baby-friendly side of the soft play apparatus. Feel a brief moment of hilarity-cum-despair when I am forced to get down into commando crawling pose to lower my non-baby-sized self under a particularly height-restricted bar overhead in order to keep up with fast-moving toddler ahead and prevent her from tumbling down a slide face-forward.

You gotta laugh, it seems.

At such points in one’s life, one must be grateful for small mercies:

Small mercy #1: My two larger offspring go off to the main soft play apparatus to climb, slide, chase each other to their hearts’ content and do not require my participation in any of these activities.

Small mercy #2: Management of soft play emit frequent reminders over loudspeaker that visitors to their den of pleasure must not overstay their two-hour visit, or else will be charged an extra fee.

Our two-hour visit mercifully draws to a close.

We reclaim our footwear and stumble out into the chilly grey gloom of an early January afternoon in London.

As we head off home, my five-year-old says, totally spontaneously (and before his tiger mother has a chance to roar any command):  Thank you very much Mummy, we had so much fun.

And that, my friends, is what it’s all about.