A Tiny Bit Marvellous (8 page)

Mo

I have an angry rash on my face from my allergy to the expensive anti-ageing cream, AND … The bloody dog is bloody pregnant. It’s sod’s law, isn’t it? I finally get round to having her spayed and the vet tells me this. I did notice she was a bit fatter, but we’re all a bit fatter. I’m fatter and I’m not pregnant. Dora’s fatter and she’s not pregnant …

Oh God … Please say she’s not pregnant! Surely not? She’d tell me if she’d started having sex … She couldn’t possibly have had sex without telling me – could she? And surely not with that boy – can’t remember his name – Ben? Tom? – not with him, please. He’s only two inches tall. Please tell me she hasn’t had sex with Tom Thumb, without telling me? No, I genuinely think she would. There is already precedent for open dialogue on that subject – we definitely sat down and had a proper eye to eye across the table frank conversation about sex and what it involved, when she was about thirteen. Definitely. The channels are open. Yes. Sure of that.

Anyway, the dog is the far more pressing thing at the moment. The kids are delighted of course, even Husband thinks it is ‘cute’ for Poo to get the chance to be a mother. Yes, we all love puppies but what the hell are we going to do with them? Who’s going to take them? How many will there be? The vet reckons they will be born in six weeks or so, which is just around Dora’s birthday. Great. Two separate major stresses converging at once.

Dora is asking for a ‘prom party’. What has happened to British teenagers? It’s as if they’ve taken a communal drug that convinces them they’re in a cheap American horror flick. I didn’t know what a prom was at her age. I didn’t know what a sleepover was. I didn’t know what an actual nightmare Halloween could be. Why do they all want to dress up in tuxedos and cheap satin and have beauty pageant hairdos and tiaras and pretend they’re from the Midwest? Whatever happened to warm cider and a few joints at a mate’s house followed by a frantic fumble in a graveyard? That’s a party. Oh, it doesn’t matter. We can go down the route of the dread ‘prom’, I suppose. I tried to point out that she will have already just had the school ‘prom’ (the entire school have obviously taken the same delusional pill) weeks earlier but she assures me that ‘duh, it will be sooo completely different’. How?!!

Why is it that I have a nagging feeling of failure when it comes to kids’ parties? It began when mine were both small and the fierce competition started up between all the mothers as to who was giving the best parties. I freely admit I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. The phases were clear. Early on, the aim was to have the best clown or puppet show or storyteller. Ruby Bond’s mother easily won that when she had an ‘in’ at the BBC and secured an actual Blue Peter presenter. Then there were the eco-friendly and arty parties. Make your own piñata and paint a plate. Again, Ruby’s mother was the champ, ensuring all ugly plates were glazed and delivered to the parents accompanied by a mug with an adorable picture of the birthday girl emblazoned on the side. Damn her to hell, I was still struggling to find the correct party-favour bags to impress.

It was Nell Barlow’s mother who trumped us all in the end though, when she arranged an entire petting zoo to be present including hugging a koala, a boa constrictor experience, and a donkey ride to finish. Plus the kids were all given documents to prove they were now adoptive parents to individual, personally named, specific, orang-utan babies. One each. Bugger. I threw in the party towel there and then. You win, Nell’s mum.

I must banish all these irritating distractions and crack on with my book. I have settled on Teenagers: The Manual, as the title. In order to write it well, I am having to remind myself constantly that I am good at my job. I know fundamentally I am. People recommend me. People return to me. I have, on occasions, worked with two different generations of the same family, so I must be doing something right. I am doing a lot right. You don’t get to be forty-nine without discerning at some level whether or not you are successful. It’s one of the facets of this job that, in time, one gets ‘a nose’ for it. I can often detect the root cause of the trouble within a few sentences.

Of course, I may be proven wrong, but honestly, not often. That may have something to do with my strongly held beliefs that pretty much all toddler and teenage malaise can be rooted in the parents. The parents, of course, don’t want to hear this, so that is always my first hurdle, to reassure them that A. they’ve taken the brave step by coming and B. that it’s not their fault. I am usually telling them by session ten that it is, in fact, their fault. Of course, I don’t use that word. No blame is apportioned in my room. Ever.

Today, I am writing a chapter entitled ‘Time and the Teenage Clock’. I’m hoping to try and explain some difficult neuroscience in layman’s terms. I have been reading up on the teenage brain and finding it fascinating all over again because the adolescent brain differs from the adult in virtually every way. Not only is it not yet fully cooked in terms of development, but it actually seems to have functions that are present only in teen brains. Like the whole idea of ‘teen-lag’, where the night-time troughs and daytime peaks of melatonin secretions occur two hours later than in adults. This puts teens in their own time frame, two hours adrift from the rest of us, hence a possible explanation for the really tricky grumpy mornings, and the very late nights. Although, frankly, with my own teens, their idea of time is aeons out of synch, not just two hours.

Dora is still clattering away on Facebook at two in the morning quite regularly. I wake from sleep and instantly know she is still at it. Of course, I had no such possession as a kid her age. I’m sure I would have found it equally as mesmerizing. I’m grateful it wasn’t an option. The more I think about the time she gives to machines, the more I realize, with horror, that at the root of my constant fury about them, is something like jealousy. It’s as if I am locked out. Locked out of her life. It’s preposterous. I don’t want to be her friend. It’s exactly the advice I most find myself giving to my clients. Parents who wish to be liked by their children are on a doomed route. And yet … I do find myself longing for a closer relationship, where we properly speak and listen and, most importantly, HEAR.

If I’m totally honest I really mean that she properly hears me. After all, nothing Dora says is anything I haven’t heard before, from countless other teens. I am already ten steps ahead of her, I can predict how it will pan out. So easily. The difference in our family is that both Dora and Oscar have access to a mother who is trained to understand teenagers and their problems, who knows that what really counts is to listen to them and give them healthy amounts of quality time, where only THEY matter.

Damn it! Husband is shouting up the stairs for me to come and join them all for lunch. I don’t want lunch, for God’s Sake, I don’t want to talk, I want to press on with my book. When will I get my quality time? Bloody never.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Dora

Had such a weird conversation with Mum. Sometimes she is like so deranged. She shouldn’t be allowed to do her job really, coz how would people feel if they knew how nuts she can be? She’s supposed to be the calm clever one but I swear to God she gets it so wrong sometimes. Mostly it’s coz she’s such a drama queen. Everything is such a big deal. She just can’t seem to chillax atall. She’s gonna like die of a heart stroke or something if she doesn’t chill.

It all started with her telling me that Poo is having puppies. Yay! Me and Dad and Peter have been longing for that for eight years. It’s not fair for her to have the spaying done before she even gets the chance to have just even one little puppy of her own to love and cherish. She doesn’t get a say in anything, stuff just gets done to her, she doesn’t choose at all. We choose her name, her collar, her bed, her food, when she goes out or stays in, everything. Now she’s really struck out for herself. She’s gone and done it with some other dog. We don’t know which one, it could be the manky poodle from the sweet shop, it could be the Labrador from the park – it could be like, any dog.

Apparently they do it really quickly? Maybe that would be the better way for us as well. Meet a guy in a park, look each other up and down, make a quick decision yes or no, have a sniff of their toilet parts … Actually, no not that bit. Then just mate. Over and done with, then walk on without even like looking back. Thank you. Trot on. Very nice. Goodbye. That way you wouldn’t get your whole heart broken in two and made to feel like a big fat loser by Sam Tyler the world’s smallest freakboy. And you could do it with the next one you meet in the park two minutes later, without having to like, get your highlights done and your bikini line waxed and have a bath and get new clothes and stuff. They wouldn’t care. You wouldn’t care. You’d just do it. It’s more honest, to be honest.

Actually, I am like so over being a virgin now. I really want to not be a virgin soon? My eighteenth birthday is coming up and omigod I’m like, still a virgin? It’s so like embarrassing. Omigod.

Anyway, Mum was yapping on about y’know, ‘what’s going to happen with the puppies? Where’s she going to have them? We’ll need to get the vet here so she doesn’t die …’ Blah Blah. Panicking on and on. And me and Dad are like, ‘It’s going to be fine. She will know what to do instinctively. We’ll make a little corner up for her. We can put an ad in the local paper to sell them.’ Like that, but she’s not listening, and suddenly, out of nowhere, she asks me to come and sit at the table. That always means it’s going to be bad if it’s not a meal time. We like NEVER sit down at the table like that. Looking at each other.

She started off pretending this was like some kind of normal girly chat thing like we always do or something? Not. Then, out of bloody nowhere, she suddenly says, ‘You’re not pregnant, are you Dora?’ Like that. Like a bloody gunshot or something. The dog is pregnant, so I must be pregnant? Eh? What is she talking about? Like somehow you catch pregnancy off dogs? What is her bloody planet? And thanks for assuming I’m some kind of slut or something. Doing it all over the place with, like ANYONE. And thanks for like rubbing my nose in it just when I’m feeling so 188% virgin that no one wants to sleep with me anyway coz I’m so bloody fat or something. And thanks for pointing out how much fatter I’ve got that you even bloody think I’m bloody pregnant you bloody idiot Mother.

She makes my skin creep. Why is she my mother? Why couldn’t I have one like Lottie’s who just, like listens and doesn’t say stupid untrue stuff all the time just to bloody hurt you? Why did I get the mad one? Dad just got up and walked out, he was just like, so grossed out.

‘No Mother, you major douchelord, I am not pregnant. Shall we put that in the paper to let people know? Like, “Mr and Mrs Battle are delighted to announce that their daughter Dora is currently unpregnant.” Would that do?’

She went on and on about how she is ‘entitled to ask’ and perhaps if I ‘included her’ more she would feel like she is a part of my life. I don’t want her in my life full stop – never mind telling my private stuff to. I only live with her because I have to. I can’t bloody wait to get away from her. I full on proper hate her. I do. I hate her.

Look what she’s bloody made me do now. I have to eat like this whole packet of Jaffa Cakes to even feel a tiny bit better. So thanks Mum, for all your endless belief in me. Perhaps if you stopped thinking I’m a slag, I might actually like myself a bit more and then I might NOT eat so many Jaffa Cakes? Excuse me. Who is the shrink now?

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Oscar

Well, really. Is it my lot to be so unutterably disappointed my whole lifelong? Today I was forced to come to terms with the undeniable notion that even The Enchantings might ultimately prove to be shallow. With the exception of myself, of course. One hopes against hope that one’s choice of members is sound and well judged, and yet …

We convened at the usual hour, in the dingle. Today’s password was ‘Audrey Hepburn’. Hargreaves knew well enough who she was, but Wilson commenced a litany of atrocious transgressions by pronouncing her name to be ‘Angela Hopburn’. What a beautiful fool he transpires to be. He claimed never to have heard of her. Thus followed a full fifteen-minute briefing on the many attributes of said Ms Hepburn. Hargreaves employed words such as: ‘elegant’, ‘tiny’ and ‘posh’. I rather fancy that I was a jot more eloquent, parrying with the likes of ‘gamine’, ‘flawless’ and ‘dainty’. I even dared to posit that very naughty word, ‘pert’. Ultimately I reduced them to a respectful hush with ‘paragon’. Yes, a fitting victory.

We endeavoured to move on to various other topics including the necessary withdrawal of Anton Du Beke from the top ten list of Enchantings’ Icons, due to his recent ill-mannered trespasses, and of course the ever-thorny and controversial issue that is Peter Andre. Hargreaves was generally chatty and willing to contribute whereas Wilson was bafflingly inadequate, revealing himself to be pathetically wanting.

Have I massively overestimated him? Perhaps I have been blinded by his beauty. I suppose if I were charitable I would remind myself that he is, after all, only a Year 9er, rendering him a good couple of years junior to myself and Hargreaves. He simply hasn’t lived as we have. The sheer paucity of his Enchantings-worthy knowledge ought to be excusable, yet I find him to be increasingly irksome.

It could well be that he simply pales in comparison to Noel. I am acutely afflicted with Noelitis, that’s a cert. Even Hargreaves’s hearty attempt to lift my spirits with a breathy rendition of Gershwin’s ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ didn’t do the trick. My heart remains leaden. I took the opportunity of a willing and captive audience to recite some lines from an Ode to Noel, which I have been working on.

O my racy pulse stops, and a sleepy sorrow starts

My mind, as though of serpent’s sap I had sipped

Or spilled full lull into the dear sweethearts

Of two star-crossed buds, hence been nipped.

Admittedly I owe a certain debt of gratitude to Keats but I feel sure he would commend my attempt. Wilson seemed somewhat saddened when I spoke the lines. Perhaps he guesses that he has been usurped in my heart by Noel. I admit it. I have Noel fever. Help me, doctor.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous