“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.” - Colette (the pen name of French novelist and actress Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette)

The problem with public holidays is they give otherwise busy people the time to ponder.  It has only been a couple of weeks since we suddenly and unexpectedly lost our beloved pooch, a mere seven weeks shy of her sixth birthday, but already thoughts have wondered toward the benefits of owning a dog.

Her absence is most felt when returning home.  No matter how brief the parting, she always greeted us as if we were returning conquering heroes.  The huge grin across her face, along with the rapid pounding of tail against the fridge door, led the beneficiary to believe themselves to be the dog’s favourite person in the whole world.  Unfortunately, that feeling only lasted until the next family member returned home, or the window cleaner entered the garden, or a previously unseen delivery driver rang the doorbell.

No matter how inconvenient taking the dog out was, it did have positive benefits.  At no other time would I have chosen to go for a walk during a gale force wind.  Skipping over liberated branches and ducking under unidentified flying debris definitely provided an all over workout.  And under what other circumstances would I have taken a stroll during torrential rain or a hale storm?  I know for a fact that without a dog, I would never have gotten to view an ice glazed park by torch light, the grass, trees and shrubbery glistening with a billion diamonds. 

Aura 2015

Walkies definitely benefited us as much as it did the dog, and therefore it outweighed any amount of inconvenience.  As for taking on another dog, I have said we’ll leave it a couple of years but maybe I should just say watch this space? 

“Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” – Robert Fulghum

With that in mind, I am having a bolt plus 5-lever Mortice lock fitted to the inside of my bedroom door. 

I am sure that my middle-aged heart would not cope with the strain of one more three a.m. wake up call.  Other parents will know the kind that I mean.  Those ridiculously early, dark mornings when you are woken from a deep sleep by a sudden chilling start.  You know that someone is watching you.  Even with your eyes closed, you can tell that someone is there.  You can feel their breath stirring the fine, invisible hairs on your face and in that split second before reason and reality kick in, you are consumed by terror. 

There is a stranger in the house.  An intruder in the room, watching, waiting to see if you make a move.  It may take a second or two but eventually you realise the intruder is less than three feet tall and is not an intruder after all. 

They have all done it, all three have stood beside my bed - watching.  They never went to daddy’s side, they never went to fetch him when they had a bad dream or needed the toilet or a change of sheets.  Instinctively my children just knew they had a better chance of seeing Father Christmas water skiing down the Goyt River than they had waking daddy. 

Now when they wake me during the night it is because they have forgotten their door key.  Or else they have made it inside and, although they think they are sneaking as silently as a ninja, they are actually making enough noise to wake the entire street.  As of old it is not dad who wakes but mum. 

It just goes to prove that we never stop looking after our children, its only the ways in which they need looking after that change.  

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.” - Robert A. Heinlein

Certainly, the above is something my children like to apply to their parents.  Given we only have a few days in which to emulsion, prime and gloss the refurbished loft master bedroom before the replacement carpet arrives, the children have been conspicuously absent.

Whilst mum and dad creak and groan their way around the bedroom floor, cutting-in emulsion above skirting boards, knees grinding as they go, the children sleep soundly in their beds.  Eventually, driven from his bedroom by the constant expletives emanating from the room above, the youngest made an appearance to wheel a roller for a few hours.

I am still waiting for that distant day when the children consider themselves adults and actually realise that their parents can no longer do it all and indeed, should not have to do it all.  But you know what they say, what you've never had you'll never miss.

Dulux Warm Pewter bedroom

“Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.” ― Samuel Pepys

Pre-dinner drinks followed by a meal at the Pack Horse, Hayfield.  The revamped modern pub / restaurant interior is comfortably.  The new management have successfully retained a rural country charm without resorting to chintzy clichés, making it an instantly relaxing venue.   

The Pack Horse, Hayfield, High Peak

Three generations ate, drank and made merry away from iPhones, iPads, tweets, Facebook pokes and WhatsApp updates.  The younger generation formed entire, coherent sentences, using words of more than one syllable.  With the conversation flowing as easily as the Prosecco, the late afternoon Boxing Day banquet proved to be a festive phenomenon.

It is funny how, as naive new parents, we thought that making it past the toddler stage would see us returned to the fine dining scene.  How wrong we were.  We had not factored in the bigger they got the more expensive their toys would become, squeezing our disposable income down to nought. 

We had not anticipated cancelled evenings out due to an offspring's bad hair or spots either.  You would have thought the child concerned was suffering from Yersinia Pestis bacterium or else had the kind of deformities usually only associate with Proteus syndrome, given the volume of protests.  Moreover, if by some miracle we did manage to herd all three out of the door, the evening was often cut short due to ceaseless bickering.  It was our own fault, of cause it was.  We decided to have three children.  We were the ones responsible for the age gaps too.

So how nice it was after twenty-three years to finally have them all there in one place with no long faces, no miserable pouts and no tears.  How lovely it was to witness grandchildren having in-depth conversations with grandparents on three-dimensional tattoos, car theft techniques and a dead dog.  It was definitely a family boxing day to be remembered.

Not all gifts made by children are made with love

How many mums woke up Christmas morning to a surprise present?  I am a believer in the thought counting higher than the cost of the gift but even I was more than a little disappointed this year. 

During an evening of entirely masculine festivities, my youngest child engaged in a Christmas Eve drinking game.  Now we have all been at that party so there is no need for any condemnation but at a guess, not many went home to flood the kitchen.  Now I understand that the flood was unintentional, but that did not make it any less messy. 

Apparently, child number three was feeling fine until he arrived home during the early hours and decided to eat the Simply Indian meal his devoted parents had purchased the previous evening.  However, prior to starting on his own plate, he thought he would finish off his sisters left over Grouse Pub Chinese first.  He is a considerate boy; he appreciates the cost of a takeaway meal and does not like waste. 

Within minutes of the food attempting to front crawl its way across several pints of larger, it accepted defeat and turned to retrace its steps. 

Taken by surprise, my son was considerate enough to hold it in from the dinning table to the kitchen sink, and for that, I am grateful. However, in a rush of innocent youth, he thought that turning on the tap at full throttle would clear the offending regurgitated mass whilst he cleared up a little premature seepage.  Experienced vomiters know you cannot wash the lumps down a drainpipe, you have to pick them out, which is why practised vomiters prefer to use a toilet.    

Within seconds, the plughole was blocked and the sink was full.  A vomit topped tsunami washed across the work surface before cascading over the edge, seeping into cupboards and draws on its travels.  Anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to experience a leaking pipe will know that water gets everywhere.  Pools of it settled inside a pair of Marigolds, it found its way into a new box of plastic bin sacks, as well as into the canned food cupboard and the clean draws.  Now the boy did attempt a clean up job using an entire pack of kitchen towels, as well as my brand new Christmas themed hand and tea towels, before stumbling off to bed, leaving a trail of unsavoury clothing on the landing from the stairs to his bedroom door.

I celebrated Christmas morning on my hands and knees disinfecting inside kitchen cupboards, picking up bits of rice and onion from places you would never have expected to find them, using yellow fluffy dusters.  Why dusters?   Because every floor cloth, dishcloth, tea towel and hand towel had fallen victim to the deluge.

When other parents were enjoying a relaxing festive breakfast, I was rinsing vomit stained kitchen linens, Ralph Lauren men’s wear along with a selection of bedlinen.  Thank goodness the very kind Martin Bickerstaffe mended my tumble dryer Christmas Eve morning. 

Merry Christmas 2016.

Christmas Teddy