Grandmothers

Just before I was about to say I had to go, the Italian lady told me her grandma had died on Wednesday. She was 98 years old and had lived with her daughter in Paris for the past ten years. She was a part of life. I listened to what she had to say and wondered what my grandmother was doing. She has just been diagnosed with cancer. She is 89 and lives on her own in the North East. My father and his sisters are taking it in turns staying with her. This Sunday is Mothers Day.

New job

There are four of them. Four almost excluded Year 11 pupils who have been given the opportunity to work on an almost one to one basis so that they can complete their GCSE courses. So far I have seen them once. They completed a past exam paper with grunts and groans and grumbles. This is their last chance but are they grateful for the opportunity? That remains to be seen. Their main concern was that they were not allowed to leave the site to go to the neighbouring supermarket for snacks; "We were told we could," they protested with unconvincing knowledge of the rules. Roll on Monday afternoon and the second session.

Friday morning was an appointment with my Italian tutor at a local coffee shop for conversation practice. The wife sniggers at this; as far as she's concerned this is me enjoying myself. Which in a way it is. What is the likelihood of being able to talk Italian in such a quintessentially rural English location? In fact my Italian lady is really French but was raised by Italian parents. At home they spoke Italian. She welcomes the chance to speak her mother tongue in this "backwater". By character she is urban but personal circumstances have conspired to insist that she lives in an ugly, badly constructed house in the middle of nowhere with an absent husband who spends his time travelling to foreign parts selling things. Her default mode of conversation is diatribe, in an entertaining hyperactive Latin manner. It's obviously good to talk for her as well.

This week we spoke of my new job and of the sad fates that befall so many young people in this country; excluded from school, drug use and early pregnancies, leading to a dependence on the state. Her cleaner was a case in point. A wonderful hardworking single mother whose daughter sleeps during the day so that she can work for a phone sex chat line by night thereby funding her drug habit. What's a mother to do?

On Top

There's a photo on the shelf in the dining room of me leaning on a trig post at the top of Ben Nevis. It was taken over ten years ago but only recently rediscovered. The thing that I find most amazing about the photo is not how little I've changed over the intervening years but that for one short moment in August 1993 I was the highest man in Britain.

Mad Dumb Men

I saw a car number plate with the letters MDM in the school car park today. Apart from having some numerical meaning for Romans, it was also part of the number plate of the Ford Granada which belonged to my parent's neighbours when I was growing up. A rather random and peculiar bit of information to carry around with you for all these years, by my reckoning at least thirty, but it's imprinted in my brain because I made out of those three letters the mnemonic "Mad Dumb Men". Why is it that I can remember something like that and yet can forget to take my daughter a snack for after Rainbows?

Proceed with caution

The old man shuffled slowly across the road; his hips stiff despite their numerous operations. Oncoming traffic swerved to give him a wide berth where the builders had erected barriers across the pavement. He was on his way to church and dressed in his dark grey overcoat and flat cap.

I was taking the hounds for drive to the country park and watched him hobbling on his crutches as I waited at the road junction. The sister, sitting to my left, commented on how dangerous it was for him to be on the road. But what choice did he have? The builders had dug up the pavement.

I'm a frequent cyclist and it's one of my bugbears that some car drivers don't seem to class cyclists as legitimate road users. They pass too closely to bikes and pull out in front of them at junctions. Most frighteningly they've also tried to overtake me and the daughters down residential streets when traffic is coming the other way. Part of the problem, I think, is that drivers aren't used to seeing bikes on the roads these days and they are also not familiar with how it feels to be unprotected by shiny metal armour. Car drivers, by and large, are not also cyclists but cyclists are generally car drivers as well.

Another problem is that we have, for reasons of safety, effectively separated cars and cyclists and pedestrians from each other. For reasons of safety we have created distinct zones in our environment for those who walk, for those who cycle and for those who drive. Conflicts occur when one or other of these zones meets another: when a walker steps into the road or when a bike rides along the pavement.

Watching the old man walking along the road this morning made me think that if only motorists were more used to finding their progress interrupted by a pedestrian or other less well-protected but equally legitimate road user, they may take more care and drive at slower speeds.

When you're in doubt you proceed more cautiously.

Good deeds

Eldest daughter made pancakes this morning once I'd prised her away from the television. They were actually much better than mine, probably because she followed the recipe properly. I've always viewed recipes more as guidelines.

I have a feeling that there are going to be rather a lot of interruptions in this post because the baby won't settle.

It's not actually my baby but the one I'm babysitting or rather the youngest of the five I'm babysitting. That's the thing about being in a babysitting circle you do have to occasionally do some babysitting. Still I can't complain because at least three of the others are asleep and the fourth is reading in her room. So it's just me and the youngest who as I type is rattling a red star around as though it were the most fascinating thing in the world, so intent is she on trying to make sense of her world.

We bought a car today. A red estate car which the wife has already informed me will not be used for transporting the hounds. In addition to the wife, the sister, three daughters, a goldfish and an invisible cat, I share my home with two rescued greyhounds. One of these is an ex-racer of Irish extraction and the other is a Glaswegian beauty who was slung out of her home for falling pregnant. In our desire to do a good deed we invited her into our home as a companion for the "Old Fella" but frankly I think he'd rather we hadn't. Having been assured that she was about his age, we quickly discovered that she was much younger and a bit of a floosy. It's easy to see now how she got pregnant. On her first night with us we were woken by the sound of a grumpy, grizzled hound telling her to get out of his bed.

The two of them have come to a truce over bed sharing and now like nothing better than a trip to the local lake for a squirrel hunt. They have been quite succesful in their endeavours though you should have seen the one that got away!

The baby is now making soft gurgling noises as she explores a fabric book with her mouth. I wonder if she would like to try going back to sleep?

Rendezvous

Have just got back home from dropping the girls off at school. The youngest vanished into the crowd without a goodbye.

LATER

After cycling home I had a compulsory mug of strong coffee and changed into my interview suit. Then with the sister driving went to discuss arrangements for a new pupil referral unit. How many men get to live with their wives and sisters and work with them as well?

At lunchtime I swapped cars and drove the wife to a country house hotel where she's staying overnight on a course. I'd always wondered what it was like behind the brick walls as I drove past. Now I know. A redbrick Georgian Mansion with lawns ending in an ornamental pond and views out over flat fertile farmland towards the border. At reception a man who looked like Elvis was waiting with his wife to complain about the state of his room.

The wife and I exchanged parting kisses and I meandered slowly back home behind a rural bus.

Friday night is pizza night so I made pizza dough, using plain flour because we don't have any strong, and stashed it in the airing cupboard, before buckling up the cycling helmet and heading out into the rain on the school run.

Friday night is also video night, so once the daughters had been fed and watered, thanks to the afterschool fairy, we walked down to the local video shop. There's always an argument as to which film to choose and today the honour of the tantrum went to the littlest daughter who had also decided that what she really really wanted was not a video at all but a magazine with a bit of plastic tat on the front. I told her calmly that she couldn't have it and off she went, throwing herself to the ground and wailing. The rest of us ignored her and made our selection. I'm sure the shopkeeper was glad when we finally left. The shopkeeper happens to be the uncle of the youngest daughter's sworn enemy. Or is that best friend? I find it hard to keep up with my daughter's social relationships.
Outside the video shop we bumped into the daughter's class room assistant. Abruptly the tantrum stopped.

We are now just about to watch the chosen video and then I shall put the daughters lovingly to bed before heading out once again into the darkness for an illicit rendezvous with my wife in her hotel bedroom.

There are definitely some advantages of having your sister living with you. On tap babysitting being one of them.