Saturday 25 November 2017

Cold Comfort (Adventures of L-Plate Gran)


It is nearly the beginning of December. Everywhere is gearing up for Christmas: lights are being strung between High Street lamp posts, Christmas goods are enticingly displayed in windows, shops have placed twinkly trees in pots outside their doors in precisely the wrong place for a passing double-buggy, and we have all gone down with coughs and colds.

Small brought it back from nursery first. Little G then caught it, and with the loving generosity displayed by all small children towards their adored grandparents, they gave it to us. We are both fuzzy-headed, bleary-eyed, badly-slept, runny-nosed, coughing and generally under the weather.

Meanwhile Little G and Small, perfectly accustomed to living with a wide variety of minor ailments, forge through the day, mopped up at intervals, waiting expectantly for us to provide the next entertainment. All we want to do is curl up under a duvet without being used as a slalom or a trampoline. It doesn't happen.

L-Plate Grandad has cunningly mastered the ability to sit with his eyes closed and zone out for 5 minutes, but I am too worried about Small's ability to run amok to relax. I am like a coiled spring, constantly monitoring him for incipient catastrophes involving stairs, drawers, plugs, doors, small found objects on the carpet, the cat, sharp objects, or cupboards, for which I will be held accountable by You Must Be Mad. I do not remember feeling this heart-lurching sense of responsibility when she was growing up.

In an effort to corral the wagons pre~CBeebies time, I sit them both at the kitchen table, give Small some crayons to eat, and help Little G compose her letter to Father Christmas. I write to her dictation: ''A crown, a wand, a dressing-up box and a police outfit.'' She signs it. I am impressed. Little G is clearly going to rule the world when she grows up.

If she could also find a cure for the common cold, that'd be great too.

8 comments:

  1. I do hope you feel better soon, Carol - it's so tough looking after small children when you feel rotten. (And a word about what you have to look forward to ... concussion, head cut open and rivers of blood, small boy stretchered off rugby pitch on a spinal board and neck brace (he's fine) ... and the one healthy child complaining that everyone else gets s trip to A&E except him and it's Not Fair!)

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  2. There are times when I’m not sorry I have no grandchildren...this would be one of them. Get well soon, CarolStar!

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  3. "give Small some crayons to eat"....Bwahahah!

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  4. I hope your cold has gone in time for Christmas, Carol... never the right time for feeling under the weather!

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  5. Hope you both recover quickly, Carol and the snotfest doesn't linger too much longer. I asked my three for their lists the other day and OMG I miss the days of 'crown, wand...' it's now laptop, MAC make-up, football boots AAAAHHHHH!!!

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    1. Yes..... hahaha...the joy of NOT being a parent. And having had a daughter in the 1980s when STUFF was less!

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