Christmas rolled seamlessly into the Cutester’s birthday as usual, though at least, as usual, she was surrounded by family for the usual modest celebration. And it’s now established tradition (i.e. we did it once before) to have a proper party a whole month later, so I’ve got time to organise it. Not on my own, of course: the Redster has planned all the games already, with a theme and everything.

I’ve been storing up Cutester Sayings for a while and on the occasion of her birthday, or not too long after her birthday, I would like to share them with t’internet. This is an erudite child who has learnt how to relevantly use a literary quote to the best possible effect:

1) (Years ago, lying with us on our bed listening to noises outside on the street one morning, sucking her thumb)
High heels going past on pavement: Clip, clop, clip, clop
Cutester, taking thumb out of mouth: Who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge? (replaces thumb)

2) (Her first go at Angry Birds. Together we destroy two pigs but fail to touch the third)
Cutester, pointing at third pig: And that little pig lived happily ever after.

3) (A visit at Christmas to a friend of my sister’s, who actually lives in his own, real, 16th century castle. The castle owner has left the room to get us some tea.)
Redster: Does he really own the whole castle all by himself?
Me: Yes he does.
Redster: So he’s like the king!
Cutester, whispering to me: Are we the dirty rascals?

You see? She is absolutely priceless.

I think we can safely say there is no-one like the Cutester. She can be as stubborn as anything and also as good as gold, but only on her terms, and not to please anyone but herself. I actually respect that about her – it makes her acts of affection or helpfulness all the more precious, because they are completely whole-hearted, rather than done out of obligation. I hope that quality stays with her. Happy birthday you rascally cute Cutester you.

Cutester: Five at last

As we loaded up the children’s stockings on Christmas Eve (sorry if I have shattered any illusions there), up in Ganny and Gandad’s place, we had to carefully step over a small outfit that had been laid out on the carpet for the next day, with everything from hat to boots in the right position. The Cutester does like to pay careful attention to her wardrobe. On the actual day she was bombarded with clothes and got through about four outfits, sometimes wearing them simultaneously…

The Cutester knows full well that the Santa idea is not strictly factual. But the stockings, as well as keeping both girls busy until 7am, inspired her to reciprocate. The next evening I found both my pairs of Christmas slippers under my pillow. The following night I found this:

The parcel

Inside was this:

Parcel contents

The shoes were a bit grubby, to be honest, but it’s the thought that counts.

Ganny was delighted to discover a child’s hat and a pair of nail scissors on her pillow the next night, but it turns out that I put them there myself by mistake. Maybe we should just all give each other stockings. I haven’t had one since I was 34.

Our school does its infant school Christmas plays on a strict three-year rotation, so the Cutester performed the same show, ‘The Magic Box’, that her sister performed in her first year at school. To her disgust, however, the Cutester was not cast as a snowflake like her sister (even though she’d memorised the dance perfectly) but as a Christmas cracker. I don’t know if it was in protest, or if she was just overawed by the serried ranks of mums and dads, but on the big day she declined to sing a single word and performed all of her actions approximately ten seconds after everyone else. (She was nonetheless the cutest character on stage, bar a tiny black girl dressed as a snowman in an over-sized top hat.)

I remember shedding the odd tear as the Redster and her tiny peers came on stage back in their Reception days, wearing their star-spangled pillowcases – but here’s another example of second child, second fiddle; the repetition of the show made it feel jaded, plus I was sitting in the worst possible place to actually see her, and practically had to stand on my chair when it was time for the Christmas cracker dance.

In the foyer afterwards, I looked out for a review by the Redster – all the Juniors are invited to write one after seeing the Infants’ show dress rehearsal. It didn’t seem to be there, and I was just wondering despondently why they hadn’t seen fit to display it, when my eye fell on a fun-looking review tucked away behind the door. I read it to the end, impressed by the writer’s empathy for the younger ones – only to discover it was written by the Redster herself.

So here it is (click to enlarge):

I haven’t updated you on the Redster’s eighth birthday extravaganza (a film party! Easiest yet! 13 children sit in complete silence for an hour and a half, eat cake, go beserk on the trampoline and go home!) or described the progress of her incredible half term project Eiffel Tower model, or boasted about the Cutester’s nascent reading abilities (she sounded out ‘f-r-o-g’ all by herself!) but I have done this:

The View from the Tank – a non-cycling mother writes

so that will have to do for now. Sorry.

So… the Cutester has started school. She’s completed a whole week of mornings – though, being in the oldest third of the class, by next week she will already be doing 9.00 – 3.30. While on the one hand all sorts of freedoms beckon me, I am not looking forward to finding out what shape she’ll be in when full days get underway. She’s already completely toasted.

(At this point I have to explain that the family photographer has gone out for a drink without first posting recent shots of the Cutester on Flickr, so you’ll have to make do with mine instead.)

The first day went as well as can be expected. She breezed in easily, knowing a good proportion of the class already as siblings of the Redster’s friends or alumni from her nursery. (I did my best not to feel superior towards the new parents at pick-up time, though I did graciously condescend to advise on parking, reading books, PTA, and so on. Then I took my rightful place in the clique of established parents which stands slightly upwind of the rest of the herd.) It will probably be remembered forever, poor child, that on her first day she came out of school wearing borrowed underwear, her tights and pants being handed to me gingerly in a plastic Sainsbury’s bag with the handles tied firmly together. It seems that she was too busy to realise she needed to go, and then too embarrassed to ask. She didn’t seem too flummoxed though, as she was very taken with the knee-high grey socks she’d been lent.

New kids on the block

On Thursday and Friday mornings she didn’t want to go to school – why? It’s boring, the teachers always tell you off, you have to tidy up constantly… but as soon as it was time for the queue of very short people to file from the playground into the school, off she went, without a backward glance.

It’s a good thing that at her age, she can’t possibly conceive that there are at least twelve years of all this stretching ahead of her.

Come Friday, it seemed right to drop my normal objections to MacDonalds and treat her and some friends to a celebratory meal, followed by messing about in the sprinkler at another mum’s, followed by some probably quite damp cakes.

It is, after all, the first week of the rest of her life. And mine.

The Redster has been nervous. Year three is the start of juniors, so no more being top of the food chain in the playground or at lunchtime, and in her one experience of junior school lunch a year four girl stood up to say grace – so she’s been convinced this duty will be forced on her sometime in the first week. I think all sorts of things built up in her mind in anticipation, but on the actual day, all went well. We were so ahead of the ten-minute-earlier start that we practically witnessed the janitor opening the school gates, but not quite, and the Redster was so pleased to see her friends, and they her, that she didn’t seem fazed by her two best girlfriends having matching Hello Kitty pencil cases with three separate compartments stuffed with everything including protractors.

As usual for the beginning of a school year, the parents formed a foolish-looking huddle as the children filed in and sat down, taking turns to crane our necks round the door of the classroom and generally point and titter. Junior school looks different. There is less of the brightly-coloured nursery look you get in infants, the chairs are bigger, the tables are bigger, and that leaves no room for a patch of carpet to sit on. That’s it. No more carpet time. Something gone for ever. I feel very emotional about that carpet.

Well, goodbye carpet, but hello Eljay the Elephant. He came home from school with us yesterday, along with a diary, to record what he gets up to between hometime and 8.50am the following morning. I turned to the previous day’s entry, written by a boy who is notorious in the year for being, shall we say, high-spirited:

‘Me and Eljay watched TV. We watched Horrid Henry. Then we went upstairs we played my gutar. We played a song I made up on the gutar called the Chicken Flushed His self down the Toilet. Then we made up some more songs so there is a whole serees. They are all very rude.’

That boy has now gone way up in my estimation… it was a hard act to follow, but Eljay did not lack stimulation in our home either, especially when he got caught in the crossfire of a ripe tomato fight.

OK, I confess. I had just told her that if she stuck her fingers in the cake again (the main body of cake, not the slice on her plate) I WAS GOING TO CUT THEM OFF.

I forgot how literal four-year-olds are. I know, I know, she won’t understand that recurrent nightmare about a knife-wielding digit-severing maniac resembling her mother until her late forties and only after a lengthy and expensive bout of therapy… and I did immediately reassure her that I was being silly and give her a hug… but not before this picture was taken, because it’s so tragic, and so terribly funny.

It still makes me laugh. Possibly a sort of guilt-evading laugh of denial. What sort of parent am I anyway?

In other news, we made the cake from a recipe in the back of a Fifi Flowertot book – the plot was terrible, but this was the nicest chocolate cake I’ve ever made, and baking it was probably the highlight of the Cutester’s holiday so far. I’ll never know how much its delicious moistness is owed to her current streaming cold, but who cares? Cake anyone?

Before we get onto the subject of camping, may I draw your attention to the Cutester’s hairstyle? Yes, it’s a stylishly graduated inverted bob, the like of which I’ve been trying to get my hairdresser to perform on myself for years, without success. She has been congratulated repeatedly. I’m never sure how to react because the hairdresser was her sister.

They’d been alone for five minutes, on a Tuesday, when I’ve been doing an actual job in an office and the kids have had an actual nanny to look after them. She went to see what they were doing oh-so-quietly upstairs, and discovered that the over-sized teddy, the Redster’s fringe and the Cutester had all been dramatically modified. The Cutester’s shoulder length hair was only shoulder length on the left side – the right side was in the above style, and she was just doing the finishing vertical nicks with the scissors she’s seen the hairdresser do so many times. When I’d got over the shock, all I had to do to tidy up was make sure the left side matched the right, and voila.

It was hard to be cross with the Redster. I’ve officially stopped her pocket money for ten weeks, but to be honest I never remember to give it to her anyway; and I could save a fortune by getting the Redster to cut my own hair from now on…

We live halfway between Enfield Town (scene of riots last night) and Tottenham (where it started the night before). I have friends in both places who were kept awake last night by sirens and helicopters and reading alarming tweets (probably unwisely). I was in the local park today at about 3pm when I heard the news that all the shops on our high street were closing on police advice. The park playground began emptying, and we walked home past shuttered shops, to the sound of a low-flying helicopter.

The Redster began regurgitating everything she’d learnt about the Great Fire of London, and came up with a series of impractical suggestions to stop our house burning to the ground. I am amazed she is asleep now. My own prayer life has certainly livened up. It does seem though that this area’s escaped any trouble tonight, thank God. Sleep tight all.

Disgruntled, http://cityexile.wordpress.com

I cannot tell you how much excitement there was in the anticipation. There was a daily countdown from about two months before. It was like Christmas. The above was the best part of the anticipation for me. Knowing we had the kit in our front garden which was going to turn our ratrun into a playground – oh, the power…

Disgruntled, http://cityexile.wordpress.com

Barriers in place. Everyone welcome (except for cars of course). Now what?

Disgruntled, http://cityexile.wordpress.com
A fire engine, for a start. On purpose that is.

Erase, www.flickr.com/photos/erase

Facepainting was a big hit. The main facepainter had never done it in her life before and insisted she wasn’t up to much, but doggedly knocked out a choice of either butterfly or tiger from a crib sheet in front of her – very comptetently I thought. Then the Redster produced a facepainting book and insisted on this sunset. Our facepainter gritted her teeth and obliged. Look what a great job she did! Also, the friendship the Redster now has with this lady is one of the nicest things to have come out of this day.

Richard Crutchely, www.flickr.com/photos/doiknowyou

There was also a lot of chalk involved

Disgruntled, http://cityexile.wordpress.com

And a fair bit of paint

Erase, www.flickr.com/photos/erase

so we displayed the results properly.

Towards the end, the facepainters had other things to do, but the paints were all left out. A very nice couple of teenagers began painting all comers, and each other, then the rest of the kids took their cue from that and some intereting DIY designs emerged on faces, hands and arms. That was fine until the Redster got confused at painted her sister’s face with washable poster paints. (NOT designed for skin, really, especially when it gets into your eyes, and the ‘washable’ part only applies to clothes.)

Richard Crutchely, www.flickr.com/photos/doiknowyou

After the tug-of-war rope snapped spectacularly, 30 seconds into a whole-street contest (the ones smiling at the back haven’t realised yet and think they are winning)…

Erase, www.flickr.com/photos/erase

… we decided it was easier to concentrate on the children and give them their own tug of war.

The girls mostly beat the boys. They’d give the rope a jerk, knock all the boys off their feet, then drag them across the winning line. Simple.

Richard Crutchely, www.flickr.com/photos/doiknowyou

And we found another use for the snapped rope. Mainly the adults, that is. There was a lot of reliving one’s childhood going on.

Disgruntled, http://cityexile.wordpress.com

Four hours after the barriers were put into place, they were reluctantly removed. People, on the other hand, were not so easily moved. Both adults and kids stood in knots on the tarmac long after the road was re-opened, and drivers just had to squeeze gingerly around them. For an hour or so it was possible to imagine a world where car is not king.

But the utterly best thing to have come from this one single afternoon is the change of atmospthere in our street ever since. I have enjoyed conversations and friendships in the last three weeks that did not exist for the previous fifteen years, both for us parents and our children.

I can’t recommend this enough. Check out Playing Out or London Play and think about shutting your street. It’s about a dozen times easier than you thought.