Ending it all...

In between shamefully hoovering up the contents of weekly gossip magazines with the furtiveness that only a mother of young daughters can acquire, I read more worthwhile literature spasmodically for a monthly Book Club. My particular Book Club is made of around eight wonderful ladies who are hugely patient with the fact that nine times out of ten I haven’t finished reading the book. But I’m not always alone in that, thankfully.

Anyway, I have excelled myself in recent months and managed to finish two books. Smuggery is abound. And it was these two books – namely The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford – that have led to this blog. These two books, both excellent but so very different in genre, setting, period and protagonist have one thing in common: the swift ending.

What leads authors to write and give us so much carefully crafted joy only to exit at the last minute, like a spoon about to dip into the last bite of a savoured pudding only to have your plate suddenly snatched away by a nimble-fingered waiter? In Donna Tartt’s case it was a 6-course meal that led up to it. But in Nancy Mitford’s, it was a light, nouvelle cuisine meal of excellent proportions to be savoured up until the moment that the Usain Bolt of waiters sprints past, flicking your plate up like a baton on the way past.

Mitford’s book ends so very sadly, with the demise of both Linda and Fabrice, and it almost seems to be added as an aside within the last two pages. Perhaps this adds dramatic effect – I was pretty shocked at this tragic outcome that I hadn’t anticipated (perhaps a bit dimly, in hindsight, as the hints were there). But then the indignance set in. The book had turned into a bit of a romp and a lark into a full-blown tragedy. Just like that.

Perhaps Nancy’s agent had called and told her to hurry the blithering hell up and finish. Perhaps Nancy had many small mites ensconced in her own airing cupboard and couldn’t spare the time it would take to expand on the ending. Or perhaps she felt that writing about the tragedy in more detail would polish the shine off it. Or that she would save our sensibilities for fear of us bursting into tears like Fanny does so readily. It’s a bit like the end of a fairytale that a parent skirts over… “And the mermaid bade her friend Emily farewell as she dived back into the sea, never to be seen again. Anyway, dear, lights out, night night, sleep well.”

 Still, I’ve come to the conclusion that a swift ending is preferable to a dragged out one, particularly one that’s sad. And perhaps it’s more affecting for readers if we can make our own conclusions about a character’s feelings and experiences than have them described to us. And that, in my opinion, is what makes Mitford’s novel so great – that it is as much about what she doesn’t say as what she does say. Nuance: that’s the word.

And that’s the end.

Really.

Vampires and Hamsters

Last night, Daughter 2 (aged 8) told me that she and her friends had plans to play Vampires and Hamsters in the school playground that day. Naturally, I was intrigued. And mystified.

Fortunately, Daughter 2 is the kind of child who's happy to explain the ins and outs of her day-to-day activities at school. I'm aware that some children aren't so forthcoming. In fact, I've got one of them. Daughter 1 can veer between providing me with TMI ("too much information," Mum. "Didn't you know that?") – like what one of the boys in her class does with his bogeys in minute detail – and just grunting and saying that her day was 'alright' but giving me a look that clearly indicates that I'm not to pursue any further lines of enquiry.

Anyway, Daughter 2 was happy to explain what exactly Vampires and Hamsters is. Here are the rules of the game:

Anna* is the Queen of the Vampires. She has vampire helpers as well. Their aim is to catch the Hamsters, whose aim is to run away. (Pretty familiar formula so far.) Now, Vampires eat Hamsters, so they had ovens that they put the captured Hamsters in. And the Vampire jailer locked the Hamsters into the oven, with keys ingeniously made out of a hair-tie and some golden Kirby grips dangling off it. (I don't think that part will be so familiar with you, unless you've been spying over the bush at the Primary School, in which case you're asking for a restraining order.) Apparently, the smallest child was in the dessert oven... But – and here's the denouement – there are cracks in the ovens so the Hamsters had the chance of escape if they could reach the key that the jailer drops. And, of course, being nice girls, the jailer probably left the key near the Hamsters' reach and helped them out.

J. K. Rowling, you've got NOTHING on that.

You see, much though many adults love to pontificate – often pompously and to those who are most likely to agree with them – about how young children do nothing but watch TV and stick their faces into their DSs or iPads and how these "electronic devices" are threatening the particular cells in the brain that prompt their imagination and the will to read, this couldn't be further from the truth. I have spent a lot of time with children of school age for quite a while now, and there hasn't been a single day when I haven't heard a child say something imaginary, fun, inventive or creative.

My girls still play imaginary games together and they have become more elaborate with age. There have been many studies to support the fact that imaginary play is a form of therapy for children, and I remember clearly, about 3 months after Daughter 1 was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes back in December 2012, listening to the two of them sitting in her bedroom and playing at Doctors and Nurses, hearing them pretend to check each others' blood and inject their insulin. And rather than being worried about this, I acknowledged that this was a sign of acceptance and a way of coping.

(Who am I kidding, it was probably just exciting at the time because of the lure of some pretty cool medical kit and some new important-sounding names to learn: "Ketones, pancreas, bolus, wow! Pass me that pricky thing!")

We adults have our own form of imaginary play, we just don't realise it. Fantasy Football league, anyone? There was dress-up Friday for a while in our office, and that involved a fair bit of creativity. We are quite willing to do daft things for charity, which is a masked excuse for behaving like a 1 year-old - sitting in a tub of baked beans is pretty much what a toddler does in their highchair most teatimes. It's just that on the days in which we don't do bonkers things for charity or have fancy-dress parties, which is probably about 360 days in the year (unless you're Jordan), we are expected to behaved like sane adults and have forgotten to remember the days when we put a bucket on our head and waved a stick around pretending to be a knight.

So I'm proud of my daughters' fervent imaginations and encourage the times when they disappear into their bedrooms and talk animatedly about whatever fantasy they have invented. May they grow up to enjoy many a fancy-dress party, and not be backward in getting into the bean bath (but NOT shave their heads for charity, thankyouverymuch). And I really hope I'm there to join in.






*She's not really called Anna.

The First One...

This is my first blog, so please go easy on me. I find it’s easy to clarify my thoughts in a mind but once I start typing to get them down they become ^£*%&>$&)*%”! I’d like to share my family life with you, if you can bear it. The title gives you a clue – it’s a madhouse, indeed, but we’re no different from any other family in our day-to-day life.

I’m focusing on pre-pubescence quite a bit at the moment. It’s a gentler forerunner of Puberty – the land of grunts and crabbiness. My older daughter (Daughter 1) is rapidly approaching puberty. She turned 10 in December and virtually overnight Mother Nature handed her a wallop to the back of her head for a birthday present. She leant over head bed and said “It won’t be long, girl, so Go Forth and be Crabby”. And since then there’s been an onslaught of daggered stares at her little sister (Daughter 2, currently aged 8 minus three days) as if she was a permanent eyesore and she should apologise for her very existence, outbursts of “It’s not fair!” – I particularly like that one; it’s usually aimed at me and reminds me of my youth – and “I hate you” (although that’s the big gun so it’s only come out once SO FAR). I’m as yet waiting for “No, you do it that way” and “I’m going out”, which will no doubt make an appearance in a year or two. “You’re so embarrassing” was got out of the way several years ago, incidentally, but that’s hardly surprising.

Daughter 1’s also started developing small crushes on public figures. The other night we were watching “Splash” (yes, I know, I do apologise. It won’t happen again…) and she says to me:

“Does Tom Daley have a girlfriend?”

Me: “Err, no – he’s gay, actually.”

Daughter 2: “Who with?”

Me: “Err, I’m not sure.”

Daughter 1: “Oh.”

Daughter 1 is disappointed. I don’t know what her expectations are, but her shoulders and head go down, but only to disappear back into a game on her iPad, from which she probably won’t appear until she’s 18, when she’ll suddenly pop her headphones off her head and say, “That’s it now, I’m ready. I’m an adult now. Have I missed anything?”

That’s another feature of pre-pubescence that I’m noticing: the withdrawal from family life; a sloping off, a creeping out. 98% of the time it’s to dive into the iPad. I can’t say I blame her. The Harry Potter DVDs have all been watched a million times now so that excitement’s worn off, and school must be constant noise, 9 to 3pm. When you’re young you just put up with the constant racket at school, but when I go in there from time to time I feel like clamping my hands to my ears and shouting “Make it stop!” I don’t know how our wonderful teachers cope. Perhaps they go off to the loos for a few minutes and stick their heads in their iPads for sanity too.

All I can say is, technology can be blamed for a lot of things, but it does provide a bit of a Time Out.