Dress like a pterodactyl day

Once a term, the school unleash two weeks of hell on me. Once a term my children will dance home with a homework sheets that starts with, ‘We thought it would be fun if the children come to school dressed like a pterodactyl on a pirate ship time-travelling from the 19th century! It’s a really good way for them to engage with this term’s topic on asphalt! Your child can wear the costume to school on that special day when they all get to compare their costumes to work out who has the shitest parent or carer!’

Then they stick it in the child’s bookbag and run.

I hate this homework. I hate it for a number of reasons, and it’s taken me seven years of making costumes for various topics, and costumes for book week, and one fun year, a costume for maths’ week, which, in total, equals 44 costumes, to work out why I hate this particular homework.

It’s because the children don’t have to bloody do it.

I am not a supporter of homework in primary school. I've read (heard about) reports that show that homework in primary school serves no academic purpose. I don’t buy the idea that it prepares the child for when they have to do homework at senior school because they’ll learn that when they’re at senior school. I do respect the fact that homework does encourage a parent or carer to engage with what their child is learning at school. However, for that to work, the child has to be in the same bloody room as the homework in question.

There are some homework tasks where my sole input is to hand them a piece of coloured card and let them get on with it. Occasionally, my input is to sit beside them to explain the bits that they don’t understand. Usually, my input is to stand by the table yelling, ‘Just do the sodding homework! If you’d started it before you started this whining session, the homework would already be done! We all have to do things we don’t want to do, and do you hear me whinging about it? Well, Yes! Obviously you do, but it’s not the same because Reasons!’

But then the dress like a pterodactyl homework comes around and I get my comeuppance because this is a piece of homework I have to do or my child will be all left out and will look at me with wide, sorrowful eyes full of tears while I bribe them out of their misery with cake and ice-cream.

Sometimes there is input from the child, in that they come home and say, as they did for the current topic, ‘You have to make a, Egyptian costume, and I want you to make me into a pharaoh!’ So the first part of your homework is trying to sell, ‘Wouldn't a slave be more fun? We could make a wonderful slave costume… I know pharaohs are more important, but slaves are great too! I thought I could put you in one of Daddy’s t-shirts and put a belt around the middle… No! We haven’t done t-shirt-and-belt for every costume! Sometimes we do the cut-arm-and-head-holes-in-a-pillowcase costume! Sometimes we even stick things to the pillow-case with glue!’

Child's vision

Then the child will wander off in a fug of unfairness that they’re going to be a slave and not a pharaoh.

My ability

Then the real fun starts. Herewith the Mulgrue process of completing the dress like a pterodactyl homework:

1. find a man’s XXL t-shirt that is no longer needed without starting the row that it was the only possible t-shirt that he could ever wear, and then you have to buy another t-shirt which will sit in the back of the wardrobe unloved and forgotten until the next costume homework whereupon it will suddenly turn into the best t-shirt that he’s ever owned. 
2. find a belt that will go around the child without needing to be looped around three times. Prepare yourself for the inevitable crying about how uncomfortable the belt is, and understand that they will shed it in the first 5 minutes meaning that your child’s costume is now, ‘A t-shirt’.
3. be crippled with guilt that your child will be deeply disappointed when they see all of their friends in sparkly pharaoh costumes while she’s the only slave in the classroom.

Meanwhile, the child engages with their homework by lounging in the living room watching Stampy videos where, if you’re really lucky, he might be building a pyramid.

So I get to work with the homework.

I think it should be abundantly clear by now that I cannot do this homework.

All through my school life I was a good student. I worked hard, got my homework in on time, worked through a beautifully formatted study timetable for exams, and never missed a morning lecture because I’d been out the night before. Yes; I was that kind of smug student.

I cannot do this homework. I will never get to feel smug again. When the picture of the costumes appears in the newsletter, my child will be the one with the sad-face at the back of the group, mostly hidden by someone else’s flung out arms as they bask in their brilliant pharaoh costume.

All my child will learn is that Mum knows an awful lot of swear words. And, because I'm regularly driving them somewhere, they already know that.

I do recognise that there are ways to engage your child in this activity. As well as teaching them the valuable lesson that life is full of disappointments, it is the opportunity to demonstrate that you can do an awful lot with Wonderweb.

You could even, as I tried one time, teach them to sew.

Quick tip for parents out there; don’t teach your child to sew.

Our sewing lesson went like this; ‘It’s a sewing machine! … Yes, I know it’s a bit dusty… Now this is called a bobbin… Yes, just like in the song… Yes, I know the song… Yes, it’s a good song… Yes, I remember the actions… Mostly because of that time when you sang the song for over two hours before I knocked you out with Piriton… OK, I'm just reading the instructions … Yes, I do know how to use it… OK, let’s go… Shit, shit… Shit… No, I don’t know why it’s crumpled… Right… Shit… Do you really need armholes? … Yes, it’s fine for you to go and watch StampyCat, but could you try to find a video with a pyramid?... OK, yes, death-race is just fine…’

I have, over the years and with long practice, become a little bit better at the dress like a pterodactyl homework. This term, my input was to yell into the dining room, ‘Honey, your daughter wants to dress like a pharaoh for the Egyptian costume day! You’d better get on that!’ before scurrying out the door.

She’ll be dressed as a slave in one of his t-shirts with a belt around the middle eating chocolate cake and ice cream while she walks sorrowfully to school.

The beach.

I am doing so much better than I have been in the past couple of months. It’s been tough, and I’m not at the top of the mountain yet, but I’m at least half way up.

Part of what I’m trying to do to help me feel better is to take regular walks outside. Unfortunately, my inherent laziness is getting in the way, and I’m finding it easy to excuse myself because of the rain, or the fact that there’s something really good on the telly. (Did you see the sport on Saturday? What a marvellous, marvellous night!) I am trying though, to walk briskly enough to feel the muscles in my legs working, and to feel the blood pumping around. I pay attention to my breathing and concentrate on my breath rushing through my nose, cooling the back of my throat and filling my lungs. These walks don’t always bring a perfect stillness, but it does make the noise in my head a bit quieter for a while. 

This week, I’m at home with the children. I was a bit worried about this, as they tend to add to the head-noise. I was also a bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to leave to find these moments of stillness, or if I did, it would be on their schedule and not on mine. I pondered and fretted about this, until I came up with a subtle and cunning plan: I’d just take them with me.

I’d walk a little slower, but the breathing could still happen. I could point out the soothing things I found on the way; those bricks, that garden, these leaves, and they could look or not. Yesterday I took them to the park to do some running about, so I got my exercise, and by a clever use of the ‘run all the way to the big rock!’ command, I got my alone time too.

Today, I was happy and confident enough to take them in the car to the beach. And you know what? It ended up being better for having them with me.

Look at my tall strong boy here; all limbs and muscle. He wants to be an Olympic runner, and he has the tenacity to get somewhere with this wish.

Here they are together, about ten minutes before they were both soaked to the skin. Claudia's usually the more courageous of the two, but she had a feeling she didn't want to go far without him just yet.

I wish I had some pictures of them digging in the dark, wet sand, and looking for crabs. Or the moment that Claudia thought she’d try to get back to me walking across the stones, going; ‘Ow… ow… ow…’ with every footstep, but it not occurring to her to go the short way or to cut across the sand.

I hope that these memories stay in my head for a while. Good times, small smiles, salt in our noses; these moments are often too few and too far between. I’m beginning to realise though, that one or two tiny moments of joy in the course of the day is just about enough.

It’s put me in mind of this poem by E.E. Cummings;

5

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Pip xxx

The Haircut

I enjoy cutting people’s hair. I mean, I really enjoy cutting people’s hair. I think if I could live my life again, I’d ditch university and learn how to cut people’s hair well enough to charge money for it. Well, probably not, and if I did I’m sure I’d learn to hate it, but occasionally, the urge strikes me, and I march into the living room wielding a pair of scissors, and I brightly ask; “who wants a haircut?”

My husband used to let me hack away at his hair a number of years ago. I think I did four really good haircuts for him over the course of a year. Unfortunately, I then did a really bad haircut for him, and he hasn’t let me near him since.

The children, however, are too young to understand the danger of answering me gleefully with; “Yes please! Can I have a Mohican?”

Claudia’s never been to a real hairdresser. I was determined for her to have gloriously long, princess hair when she started school, so the few trims she’s had while it’s been growing have been an inch off the bottom to neaten it up. A few weeks ago I noticed it was looking a bit ratty and tangled, so I asked if I could cut the bottom bit off. She agreed with gusto, and told me she wanted it short like Harry’s. When I suggested just a bit off the bottom, she put her hand close to her crown and said; ‘This short!’ We compromised on a bob.

Being four, I didn’t think layers or anything fancy were necessary, so I just cut it in a straight line to the top of her neck, and I have to admit, it looks really cute.

She spent two, gratifying days saying; “I love my short hair!”

I was briefly sated.

A few weeks later I walked into the living room with a gleam in my eye, and my husband instantly ran away to don every hat in the house while muttering; “it’s fine! There’s months’ worth of growth in it yet! Years even.”

Then my eyes fell upon my son.

Now my daughter has perfectly lovely, normal hair with a slight wave at the back and curls at the front. If I screw up while cutting it, it springs back to wherever it wants to be, covering my epic failure. My son’s hair is a whole different kettle of fish. Tom’s hair is thick. Not just slightly thick, but really, really thick. He has around three times as much hair as is strictly necessary on a human head. Each individual hair is quite fine; it’s not like it’s wiry. There’s just an awful lot of it. And after that bit, there’s an awful lot more.

It’s also straight. Absolutely, completely, utterly straight. It’s straighter than a Roman road. It’s straighter than the route that the crow flies. In the sixties, people ironed their hair for hours on end to get what my son naturally has.

The problem with this is that if it gets just a little bit long, it hangs on his head, covering his eyes, and given time, probably blotting out the sun. It needs to be kept short for the good of humanity. He doesn’t have wispy, fair waves that he can toss freely with a slight lilt of the head. If Tom shakes his head too quickly, lives could be lost. The other problem with this, is that it refuses to nicely cover up any accidental scissor lines or slightly longer bits.

So I’ve been saying for a few weeks; “Tom needs a haircut.” My husband has been happily ignoring these comments, but when his muttering turned from; ‘it’s fine!’ to; ‘it’s not that bad,’ I decided to take matters into my own hands. Literally my own hands. We’re a touch strapped for cash at the moment, so a barber’s out of the question, and an extensive search for the hair-clippers came up with nothing. It was going to be down to me, and my trusty pair of scissors.

I sat him down on a chair, put a video game on to render him virtually comatose, and I went to work.

As always with these things, I started with joy in my heart and a; ‘tra-li-la, hum-diddly-um…’ in my mind.

After the first five snips I realised that we were officially past the point of no return, and I really didn’t have the first idea what I was doing.

There was nothing for it, but to persevere.

I cut a bit more.

I started hoping I’d work out what I was doing before long.

At about half an hour into the experience, Tom asked if we were nearly finished. At this point, the hair at the top of his head looked slightly like the pudding-bowl look as is often seen in medieval period dramas. The back hadn’t been started, and that part was still quite long and flowing. It was… what’s the word I’m looking for here? Oh yes, mullet. Mullet central. There was absolutely no way I could stop now.

At about forty-five minutes, we reached Tom’s sitting still limit. I was roughly at the point at which I needed to snip neatly around his ears. I decided to sacrifice neatness in exchange for not accidently drawing blood.

We mutually decided to just stop when we reached the one hour mark when my trusty method of; ‘just cut it shorter and shorter until it vaguely looks right’ failed me slightly. I went to run him a bath muttering things like; “he’s six! Nobody care’s what a boy of six’s hair looks like!” and “it’s better than it was, at least. Sort of. Maybe if you squint at it a bit.”

Oddly, he actually quite likes it. I suspect I’m going to finish the job at another point over the weekend, but a lesson has been learned. I’m not exactly sure what that lesson is. I suspect Tom’s lesson is; ‘Never say yes!’, and my husband’s is; ‘Hide the ruddy scissors before leaving the house!’ Unfortunately for them, my lesson appears to be along the lines of; ‘if at first you don’t succeed, just keep cutting and cutting until eventually it’s at least short, even if it’s still not even.’

At least I’m not cruel enough to post pictures of it.

Well, apart from this one.

Pip xxx

(I have had another go, and it looks substantially better now!)