Children – Page 6 – Achilles & Aristotle

Beside the Seaside

‘Oh we do like to be beside the seaside’ as the old song goes. And thanks to a new family business venture, we’ve been spending much of the summer there, on and off.

Setting up a cute little holiday home, to entice punters and their hard-earned cash, has come with big spin-off benefits. Family days at an increasingly familiar port of call, have given the kids a space and place to roam and wander – far more than our restless urban life allows.

Less clock-watching, fetching and driving. More wandering, pebble throwing and beach combing. And we all seem happier as a result. A change of scenery and a change of pace has done us a power of good.

We can’t really afford it, it could all go wrong and we could lose our shirts as well as our houses. But human beings always rate risk higher than reward. You don’t get that many summers; and this has been a particularly sunny one.

Children, Life, Poetry

Deux Mille Treize

Early start
Car packed out
Road hit squarely
Awake barely
Channel tunnel
Bridges and viaducts
Coffee machines and petrol stops
A1 French roads
Reduce down to
Salt pans and mussels
Over water
Paradise lost
Paradise found
Dream campsite
Canvas, clams and camp loos
Washing up and hammocks
Sun, sea and cycling
Then en route encore
To sunflowers and cooling towers,
Overnight stop in
Rural splendour, with mozzies and Aussie
Toulouse trek
Arizona valley
The long and winding road
To
Swimming pool, shutters and searing sun
Pain, cheese and ham
Bendy roads and supermarkets
Barbecues and rosé
Hot and bitten, but not bothered
Splashing and laughing
Pink, then pinker then browned
Before lassitude and food fatigue set in
Le depárt
Massif drive and sick bags full to
Paris, pool and parking
Kir, Cupole and walking
Metro, dodo
Tour Eiffel and boat trip
Montmartre then long marche
Auchan, duck and Chunnel
“I spy something beginning with…”
Cars.
Blighty, black clouds, driving rain
Before Home, sweet same old Home
Triumph, acclaim, then bedtime
A fine vintage
Deux Mille Treize

Children, Life

Simply, Beautiful

My daughter and I have started pressing flowers – we have three on the go. My son likes a flower too.

So I was pleased, last weekend, to cheer our kitchen, with an old gin bottle saved from the recycling and a tress of roses I found forlornly hanging heavily over the bins.

Simply, beautiful.

Postscript

Ingredients:

Sunday
sun
cheap plastic bag
park
boy
wild flowers
grandparent
phone

Children, Life, Poetry

Glad to be Dad

The kids are getting older
And a little wiser.
But not much.

Bigger limbed,
Larger but still largely children
Both in impulse and action.

I see younger Dads,
Babes in arms,
Pushchairs and scooters.

I’m through that now.
Less needed for physical support,
More for moral.

The seasons change,
And the ask
But I’m always glad to be Dad.

Walking about a cafe-lined street – waiting for my boy to finish his latest activity – I notice lots of younger dads. Some tired faces, lots of kit and caboodle; prams, scooters and constant distraction and vigilance for trips, tears and tantrums.

Phew, I’m glad we’re through that. So far through it, that I’ve rejoined the adult majority – mildly irritated a set of young parents couldn’t stop their toddler screaming – as me and the boy ate a breakfast muffin. Shame on me.

The ‘ask’ is changing. Not physically fetching and carrying but constantly ferrying and permanently travelling: to netball, skating, rugby, dance and school fêtes and events. And there’s a growing need for encouragement and some tough love, in enforcing ‘sticking at’ stuff.

The job is changing with the seasons but there’s no need to be sad. There’s plenty of demand for Dad.

Children, Life, Odysseus, Work

Tree of Life

Instead of ‘keeping plates spinning’, I’m coming to the conclusion that a better metaphor for my middle years, is a spreading oak, full of twittering birds.

Many feathered, they can’t be tethered; birds come and go and freely choose your branches. Some stay a while, some just pass through. Some coexist peacefully with the rest of the tree. Some scare others away. Some sing beautifully, others cheep incessantly. And quieter birds just appreciate the support and shade.

Right in the centre of my tree is the ramshackle but solid nest which is my little family: cheeping, pecking each other and squawking periodically for food. Sustenance delivered, this nest is the driving purpose of my whole tree.

Sadly my oak – like so many urban trees – suffers regular vandalism. A couple of people regularly urinate on it. Every now and then a f#ckwit carves “I am a f#ckwit” on it. Periodically someone tries to strip the bark and make my branches droop.

But my tree is home to a good many happy singing birds most days. From the smiling faces in the coffee shop, via the cheery waves from security and the cleaners to the rather more demanding nesting birds of the people who work for me. And of course the noisy but life-filled family nest, bursting with love, at each end of the day.

My tree of life ain’t a bad habitat. And seeing its many occupants cheeping, twittering, singing and flitting in and out is a happier picture than the pointless spinning of plates.

Keeping the vandals away, the ravens at bay, the roots deep and the branches strong, is all I need to do to enjoy life-filled and happy days. That, and a heart of English oak.