The Aged Ps Go 3D

The Aged Ps are back from their foray into the Roman sewers of Germany and are full of zest and get-up-and-go.
"It's me. Y'mother."
"Hello. How was the holiday."
"Go on, tell her!"
"Oh hello, Dad."
I am caught in yet another telephonic pincer movement from the Ageds.
"Oooh, yes! Well, guess what!" says Mother.
I sigh. Waiting for Godot might be a more profitable way of spending the evening than waiting for this stereophonic wittering to make sense. I decide to play along and guess what the blazes they are going on about.
"Erm, the sewers still had real live Romans in," I say.
"Don't be so stupid. You watch far too much Doctor Who," says Mother. "I blame y'father for introducing that drivel to you at a young age--"
"All right, so I can't guess what," I cut in.
"What?"
"She can't guess what," Dad explains helpfully. "About the you-know-what!"
"Oooh yes! The you-know-what!" squeals Mother. She takes a deep breath and I imagine the twinkling in her eyes as she girlishly prepares to unveil her latest news: "WE'VE GONE 3D!"
"Well, strictly speaking we have always been 3D, but what your mother means is--"
"WE'VE GOT A NEW TELLY AND IT'S 3D AND - AND - EVERYTHING!"
I hold the receiver slightly away from my ear and shout, "That's nice!"
"So now you will have to bring the grandchildren to come and see us, because our TV is better than yours," sasy Mother triumphantly. "Small Boy will be able to watch all his wildlife programmes IN 3D! And the animals will JUMP OUT AT HIM! It really is amazing you know, this 3D. And do you know you get to wear specs as well?"
How the Aged Ps will manage 3D glasses when they already have glasses for reading, glasses for driving, glasses for swimming, glasses for deciphering Latin inscriptions on the walls of Roman sewers and glasses for seeing whether it is gin or water they are drinking, I do not know.
"And they are BATTERY OPERATED!" Dad chips in.
"Battery operated glasses? What on earth--?" I begin.
"We have no idea why they are battery operated. In fact, we have no idea how to work the TV yet!" says Mother, giggling at the outrageousness of it all. "But I leave all that to y'father, as you know."
"Yes," I say.
"But the problem is, all I can do at the moment is set it up on the analogue setting," says Dad, his voice dropping to the low, serious I-used-to-be-a-lawyer pitch he uses when any technical language is involved. "And I haven't worked out all the business with the hard-drive storage and the internet streaming. But it's OK because we haven't gone digital yet."
"So," I say. "What you're saying is that you can't actually watch anything in 3D yet and you can't record anything or watch any of the digital channels?"
"NO!" shrieks Mum. "Isn't it hilarious?"
I take a moment to picture the Aged Ps sitting on The Pink Sofa (the one that shall not be sat on by anyone who dares not sit on it correctly, thereby failing to appreciate the importance of it as a central feature in the Aged Ps' lives). There they are, side by side, gin and tonics in hand, battery-operated 3D glasses on, earnestly peering at a programme on analogue BBC1 (which is still very much in 2D) and wondering why it's all gone blurry.
"Yes," I say. "Hilarious."

Trouble in the Dragons' Den

Things are hotting up for Small Boy and his mates as the deadline for pitching to the Dragons approaches.

“It’s a disaster!” he wails, running out of school, pain etched on his small pale features. “Molly’s hamster has died so we are one pet down for the Petting Zoo!”

“Oh dear,” I say. I cannot say I am surprised. That hamster had it coming. Molly’s mum was forever telling us how she did not think the creature would survive another night, and that she only hoped it would hang on in there for the Dragons’ Den challenge.

“Yes, it is ‘oh dear’,” huffs Small Boy. “Cos now I have to beg James to let us have his rabbit, Graham, and James is not even in our group. He is saying that he will rent Graham to me but when I told him that we had already spent our budget on renting the guinea pigs from Ollie and on all the bottles of hand gel we need, he just laughed and said, ‘No money, no bunny.’”

I stifle a laugh of my own. “Well, it doesn’t matter that much if you are one animal down, darling. A hamster is only a very small pet. People will be much more excited about the chickens and the lambs.”
“Yeah, s’pose,” says Small Boy, sniffing.

“And calling a rabbit Graham is a bit – odd,” I add.

Small Boy grins reluctantly. “I know – that’s Grandpa’s name! Imagine Grandpa as a rabbit!”

I would rather not. I have met this rabbit and it is decidedly cute. Indeed I had enjoyed having a lovely snuggle with it until I discovered it had the same name as my father-in-law. I had handed it back pretty swiftly after that.

“So you see? You’ll be better off without Graham,” I say firmly.
“But the other problem is that now Molly does not have a pet to bring in but she is still in our team, and our thing is the Petting Zoo, so now that she is without a pet we have had to think of another job for her to do,” Small Boy says.

“I see.”

“So she has come up with this idea that we will take photos of people holding the pets and then sell those photos to make more money,” he continues.

“Very enterprising,” I say, impressed.

“But it’s not a good idea AT ALL!” he wails.

“Oh?”
“NO! Because while she is going off printing the photos, who will be there to take even more photos of the people who are waiting? She has not thought about Supply and Demand,” he cries.

“Well I think these are the lessons school is hoping you will learn from doing this exercise,” I say.

“But I don’t want to learn any lessons from it. I just want it to be FUN!” he complains. “I bet the real Dragons’ Den people, or Apprentice people or whatever, don’t have these kinds of problems,” he adds.

An image pops into my mind of Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones arguing over whether or not someone should be allowed to rent a rabbit called Graham. “Not these exact kinds of problems, no,” I agree.

“I hate team work,” says Small Boy with feeling.

Poor Small Boy. It is slowly beginning to dawn on him that life is not as uncomplicated as he had thus far believed it to be. Sadly I feel it is all downhill from here on in.

Small Boy Ponders the Big Questions

"Do you believe in Re-in-kar-nat-shun, Mum?" Small Boy asks.
I retract my head from the fridge and say, "No."
I am trying to decide what to make for tea out of the contents of a mostly empty fridge. I am toying with the idea of introducing the children to the concept of a risotto. I picture the look on their faces when I serve up gloopy white rice mixed with chopped up bits of their most hated vegetable (The Courgette). Suddenly a debate on The After Life seems a more appealing way of spending the evening.
"Why?" I ask. "Are you learning about it at school?"
"No," says Small Boy. "I was just askin'."
"OK," I say, sighing and returning to the fridge.
"Only William says you can choose what you want to come back as," Small Boy persists.
I shut the fridge and turn to face Small Boy, eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, William says that he, just f'rinstance, is going to come back as Jesus."
"Oh, is he?" I say. "And I suppose he asked you who you would come back as?"
"Yes!" beams Small Boy. "And I said I would be half giraffe, half lemur."
"Great."
"What's he going on about now?" asks Daughter, slouching into the room. "And what's for tea?"
I choose to answer the first question, it being the easier to deal with at the present time.
"We are discussing reincarnation," I say, sitting down. "What do you think about it?"
Daughter rolls her eyes. "Well obviously it's a load of rubbish," she says.
I am constantly in awe of the way a teenager can push aside centuries of debate and philosophy with such bullish confidence. "Right," I say.
"Well, OK," says Small Boy, squaring up to his sister, "maybe it is, but have you ever thought about what it would be like to be able to come back and live in any point In History? Hmm?"
Daughter looks suitably impressed at this idea. "Yeah, that'd be cool," she says. "I'd come back as a Roman."
"Oh no!" howls Small Boy. "You're turning into Grandma!"
I snigger, but catch Daughter's eye and quickly stifle it.
"What about you, Mum? When would you live In History, if you had the choice?"
"She would go back to the Seventies," Daughter snorts.
"Excuse me, that was my own childhood!" I exclaim. "That hardly counts as history."
"Not for you, maybe," says Daughter.
I take a deep breath. "All right. Well, how about Tudor times?" I offer. "I'd have to come back as someone with lots of money though. And come to think of it, I think I'd have to come back as a man."
"Euw," says Daughter. "That's just weird."
"What about you?" I ask Small Boy. "When would you come back?"
He looks at me pensively and then says, "I think I'd come back to yesterday." Daughter and I laugh. "Well, yesterday is in The Past, and The Past is In History," he points out.
"Yes, but why yesterday?" I ask.
"I had a nice time yesterday," replies Small Boy.
I smile and think, not for the first time, that I envy Small Boy his lovely uncomplicated life. I decide not to ruin it by giving him courgettes for tea. I would not want today to turn into one of those days he would never want to visit again. Either literally, or in his lively imagination.

Don't Mention the Bowels!

The Aged Ps have given up calling in stereo because they are "far too busy", Mother explains.
"That's great!" I say, with feeling. The busier they are, the fewer and further between the phone calls. "So what have you been up to?"
"Going to funerals, mainly," says Mother with relished gloom. "Everyone we know is dropping like flies."
"Oh dear," I say.
"It'll be us next," says Mother. She then pauses dramatically.
I rack my brains for a suitable response. "Oh, I shouldn't think so," I say eventually.
"Well, y'father's having his cholesterol tested again, so goodness only knows what that'll throw up. And his bowels are behaving most strangely, so he's having a tube shoved up his–"
"Holidays!" I interject.
"No, that's not what I was going to say," says Mother. "Haven't you been listening?"
"Definitely," I say. "It's just I was remembering that the last time we spoke you said something about going on holiday soon."
"And me talking about y'father's bowels reminded you of that?" says Mother. "Mind you, I'm not surprised. His bowels do get jiggered up whenever we go away–"
"Yes, so where are you going?" I persist, struggling to dispel certain extremely unwanted images from my mind.
"Germany."
"Oh?" I am surprised. They usually go to Italy, Greece or Turkey to look at Roman remains. How nice, I think, they are having a change.
"Yes, we thought it would make a change," Mother says, echoing my thoughts. "So we are going to walk along some Roman sewers that run underneath Cologne cathedral."
"That's . . . slightly . . . different," I say, wondering how Dad will feel about this, given his present predicament. "Anything else?" Even the Aged Ps cannot be doing this all week, surely?
"There's a reproduction of a Roman fort we thought we'd see as well."
"Right. This is with a group is it? An organised tour?"
"Yes. But we're not going with anyone with know. We prefer our own company. Which is a good job really," she adds gloomily. "As everyone we know is dropping like flies at the moment. . .'
And so (to borrow from a myth from that other great Ancient Empire most beloved by the Aged Ps) as with Sisyphus and his boulder, we are back where we started.
"Oh dear," I say.
"It'll be us next," says Mother. "I've told y'father to be careful on holiday. I've told him, 'Whatever you do, don't mention The War.'"
On that baffling note, I wish them a gute Reise.
"Don't you mean gute Fahrt?!" says Mother with a snort. "Knowing your father's bowels at the moment, that would be more appropriate!"
"Probably," I say, quickly adding, "bye, then!"
I know when I'm beat. There's only so far I will go with certain conversational boulders, it being too obvious where they will lead. And I am not woman enough to go there.

The Pet Shop Boys

Small Boy barrels out of school at top speed.
"I need to get home quick so I can Skype William!" he yells, bashing me in the back of the legs with his rucksack.
"Why do you want to Skype someone you've just spent the whole day with?" I ask.
"More like why would you want to look at that boy's face any longer than you actually have to?" comments Daughter, scathingly.

“Well,” says Small Boy, putting on his what-I’m-about-to-say-is-terribly-important voice. “We have to Skype so we can plan what we are doing for the Dragons’ Den."

"I'm sorry?" I am already losing the thread of this conversation.

"Dragon's Den," repeats Small Boy. "We have to get into teams and decide what we are going to pitch to the Dragons to make money for the end of term fair, and me and William, right, we are going to pitch the totally fantastic idea of a Petting Zoo!”

I hold my breath and wait for him to tell me this is another of their make-believe games, like the time they both came running out of school and announced they were opening a Real Life Zoo in our back garden with “real lions and seals and giraffes and everything” which they were going to get from Longleat "cos that Lord Bath guy has far too many already".

“A petting zoo?” says Daughter, giving him her most contemptuous of looks.

“Yes, like, you know – a zoo of pets!” says Small Boy.

“You’re telling me that school has given you permission to bring in your pets? To the actual school premises?” I ask him.

Small Boy waves his hands impatiently at me. “They haven’t yet. But they will,” he says ominously. “And anyway we are going to make loads of money out of it,” he adds.
“Hang on a minute," I say, as it dawns on me that he is serious about taking our pets in, "you can't take the dog and cats! They would hate it - well, the cats would.”

The last time I took the cats anywhere Psycho Cat peed in her cat box and looked like a drowned and particularly smelly rat by the time we reached our destination, and the other one made such horrendous noises I had to turn the radio up full blast to stop myself from having a panic attack and crashing the car. As for the dog, the idea of bringing in our over-enthusiastic Labrador who will not sit still if even one child is in sight, let alone 300, and whose bowels are not the most predictable--

“NO! Of course not,” says Small Boy, shaking his head in despair. “I’m taking the chickens in.”
Good grief. “And, dare I ask, what is William bringing in?”

“His chickens.”

“So this is a chicken zoo rather than a petting zoo,” I say.

“No, deerrrr, because Ellie is bringing in her tortoise and Molly is bringing in her hamster and Maeve is - well, Maeve isn't actually bringing anything in obviously, as she doesn't have any pets, but she's going to help William with his lambs which he is also bringing in,” says Small Boy.
“I see.”

“And Ollie has said that I can rent his guinea pigs for the day for £1.20 each.”

“So you’re already in debt before you’ve even started,” I point out.

"Mu-uuum!" Small Boy protests. "You are not really getting the point of this whole Dragons' Den thing, are you?"
No, I don't believe I am to be honest. But when has that ever stopped Small Boy and William when they are on a roll?