Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years

by Stephanie Calman

  ‘I’ve already got my skill,’ she says.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Sewing, of course.’

  She’s been sewing since she discovered her thumbs. So not strictly speaking a new skill.

  ‘Hmm, OK. What about the volunteering?’

  Having not seen her volunteer too often for anything round the house, I’m somewhat sceptical.

  ‘Freya works at a charity shop. I can do it with her – and get first pick of the clothes. Win-win!’

  I prepare to sneer, but when I hear how far they have to walk before pitching their tents, quite possibly in the dark, my cynicism evaporates. I haven’t seen her so motivated since the campaign to get a rabbit.

  ‘I wish we’d had D of E,’ I tell Peter. ‘It would have been so good for me – and all of us floppy creative types. It would have made me more, you know, self-reliant.’

  ‘Yeah, less useless.’

  At my school pretty much everyone was either academic, academic-and-musical, academic-and-sporty or academic-and-arty. I was in a very small subset of girls who weren’t any of those, who bunked off games and weren’t even going to university, whom the school put up with in a bemused sort of way, as you indulge a pointless but diverting pet.

  ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘D of E would probably have made you less feeble.’

  But there’s a hitch.

  It’s oversubscribed. The group is full to bursting, and anyone who doesn’t get in must do the compulsory alternative.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Combined Cadet Force.’

  Er, I don’t think so.

  We’ve seen them, marching in uniform to the local war memorial on Remembrance Day – the Army in brown, Navy in navy and Air Force in dashing light blue. And while it’s very moving and all that, I really cannot have any child of mine participating in military manoeuvres, even if the only piece of equipment they’re holding is a flag.

  ‘We’re happy for you to get up at dawn to walk twelve miles with a huge backpack and put up tents on the sides of mountains,’ I say, ‘but no playing soldiers.’

  ‘But I TOLD you: D of E is FULL so I have to DO THIS!’

  ‘I’m sorry but that’s the end of it.’

  Even Peter, who hates refusing her anything, tacitly agrees.

  And to conclusively put the lid on it I email the school:

  Dear Squadron Leader Miss XX copied to Head of Year Mrs Y,

  Lydia is very keen on outdoor activities and camping, but the military nature of CCF does not appeal to her, nor does it fit with our values. As you know, she has a very full extra-curricular life with gymnastics, climbing courses, music, designing and making clothes, but as the available time shrinks even further in the period building up to GCSEs, we are not happy for her to have to take on another activity that she is not motivated to do, and which we cannot support. Is it possible for her to be reconsidered for D of E?

  To which the answer is: No.

  ‘Thank God that’s sorted,’ I tell Peter, and make a note to award myself another Effectiveness badge.

  Later that very day, Lydia comes in from school and as the front door swings shut, a happy voice trills up the stairs:

  ‘Mum! Dad! I’VE JOINED THE NAVY!!’

  The only other choice, if we really really object, is volunteering.

  ‘What, like working in the charity shop?’

  ‘No! Helping people.’

  Royal Navy Combined Cadet Force subsidized by the Ministry of Defence it is, then.

  Now, in a surprise development, Lawrence has also begun to express an interest in the outdoors.

  It’s six years since he was brought home from Hippy Camp, and his aversion to sleeping in the rain has faded.

  How strange. Why?

  He wants to go to his first music festival.

  But unlike all his friends who are going he was born in August and is not yet sixteen.

  ‘Maybe I should go,’ says Peter.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I’ve inspected the website and I can’t see how he’s going to get in otherwise.’

  ‘You, a fifty-six-year-old man, want to go to a music festival.’

  He looks quite good for his age, but ‘Festival Dad’? With grey ponytail, batik shirt and floppy, drawstring trousers . . . And a tie-dyed poncho for evening wear.

  ‘Maybe he should just wait until he’s old enough to get in normally,’ I say.

  ‘But all his friends are going. After their GCSEs – and all that.’

  ‘I thought the post-GCSE treat was going to be coming to France with us.’

  As soon as I say this, I feel like some pathetic creature whose child is their whole life. I can feel my firstborn starting to slip away, and it’s not happening the way I thought it would.

  ‘Yes, but this is the Treat with his Friends.’

  Of course. And he can’t go because he’s under age. Or he can, but only with a parent.

  ‘I knew it,’ I say. ‘This is what comes of having an August baby.’

  ‘Don’t start: it’s not about you.’

  ‘Well, it’s not my fault he’s the youngest in the year.’

  Actually it sort of is. If I’d moved the C-section to the following week he’d have been the eldest in his year.

  ‘Look,’ says Peter. ‘It’s all going to be fine. He can get in with me to the family section, then peel off with his mates.’

  ‘Then what’ll you do? Just come back? You’re going to drive all the way to Suffolk, and straight back again?’

  A pause.

  ‘We thought I might stay a couple of days.’

  We?

  Lydia comes in.

  ‘Hey Dad: Georgie’s definitely up for coming with us!’

  I shoot Peter a look. He looks at her. I look at her. She looks at me – accusingly.

  ‘What?’

  She and Georgie are both nearly fifteen. So also under age.

  ‘So let me get this right,’ I say. ‘You’re going so that Lawrence can go. And Lydia’s going so that you can go.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Peter.

  ‘No,’ says Lydia, at the same time.

  ‘And Georgie’s going so that Lydia has some company under the age of sixty.’

  It goes without saying she won’t be invited to ‘hang’ with Lawrence and his friends.

  ‘I’m not sixty for another four years yet.’

  ‘Whatever! No one cares.’

  ‘The point is no one will look as though they’re going with their dad.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Even though they are.’

  ‘I’m not getting involved in this argument,’ says Lydia, slipping out of the room. She’s picked up her father’s ability to detach herself from disputes that she totally is involved in, and just float away.

  This is tricky. On the one hand, I’m faintly appalled by the thought of my ageing spouse grooving in a field. Would you want to emerge from your tent to see your own parent dancing to Clean Bandit with luminous hair and waving glow sticks, trying to ‘blend in’, let alone – don’t even think it – sharing a spliff with someone called Cleopatra who reads crystals in Shepton Mallet?

  ‘Your view of festivals, by the way,’ says Lawrence, ‘is about a million years out of date.’

  On the other hand, I’m far more panicked by the prospect of my daughter and her friend in a tent, basically a large bag, exposed to thousands of semi-clothed, off-their-face males.

  ‘There’s a separate family section,’ says Peter. ‘With parents and kids and so on.’

  ‘Yes, thank you: I know what a family is.’

  It means both our kids can have this great experience and I don’t have to go anywhere near it.

  I’m starting to come round to the idea.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Peter. ‘The family campsite’s cordoned off from the rest of it, with showers and proper loos – with soft toilet paper. And lots of craft activities, like making string from nettl
e stems.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Lydia’s really looking forward to it.’

  He’s right: sleeping in the rough and making stuff out of twigs, plus music: it’s her perfect dream of Hippy Camp grown up.

  ‘It’s not just music,’ adds Peter. ‘There’s comedy and poetry and stuff. It’ll be great. You should come!’

  It’s been over twenty years; does he even know me?

  I have camped once in my life, as a child in Scotland – where the gorgeous scenery is guarded in summer by hordes of midges, so the choice is being frozen or bitten, plus rained on. We spent most of it in the car, eating chips. And my most feral experience was when my friends pulled me through a hedge into an open-air concert when we had no tickets. I had on a mohair jumper and spent the whole time looking over my shoulder in case the police had analysed the fluff stuck to the hawthorn and were coming over the grass to arrest me.

  There is nothing that appeals to me about sleeping on the ground in a room made of cloth. It’s like trying to reverse evolution:

  ‘Hey, let’s go Neolithic! We can eat raw meat and die in childbirth!’

  Also, my family have already roughed it. My grandmother didn’t get shot at running from the Tsar’s border guards so I could queue for water and sleep in my clothes.

  Peter says:

  ‘Georgie’s parents think it’s a great idea.’

  I bet they do. Who isn’t in favour of someone taking their offspring somewhere they themselves would never set foot?

  ‘I will find something else to do,’ I say stiffly.

  And if anything does go wrong – dubious substances ingested, unsafe sexual encounters in the mud, it will be on his watch.

  They set off in a stuffed car with Georgie, Lawrence’s mate Will, a tiny pop-up tent for them, a large two-room tent for Peter and the girls, a small Campingaz stove, two pans, three mugs, a cafetiere, a pack of Lavazza, about twenty sachets of instant porridge and a strangely heavy backpack which has also appeared.

  Peter sends his first text.

  Am NOT the oldest one here! Some have long grey hair and beards.

  Lyd loving music and craft – plus Eddie Izzard, beat boxing + doughnuts.

  And L?

  Glimpsed him once, bare chested in neon warpaint.

  He’s been instructed to bring the strangely heavy backpack round to the other section to hand through the fence at nightfall. It’s full of beer. Word spreads, for Lawrence tells him:

  ‘A guy has literally just come up to me and said: “I hear you can get stuff in” . . .’

  So, Festival Dad meets The Shawshank Redemption is a huge success.

  ‘In the dark I was less conscious of my age,’ he reports afterwards.

  ‘What, like that cartoon: “On the internet no one knows you’re a dog”?’

  ‘Not like that at all. And the girls were fine about being with me.’

  He made sure not to so much as nod his head to any music.

  At the end of the three days they went round to get the boys, Peter keeping his distance so as not to embarrass them with his presence in front of their mates.

  ‘Actually he looked rather relieved to see me, given the challenge of packing up camp in his fragile condition.’

  ‘You didn’t do it all for them, did you?’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’

  He and Will were fast asleep in the back of the car before they were even out of the site, and remained so all the way home. When they stopped for petrol he sent me a picture of them, slumped in their seats, their heads on one side, like two giant toddlers who’d been finger-painting.

  I hate to admit it, but he’s pulled it off.

  I wonder how he’ll feel next year, when they can go without him?

  Ages 15 & 16: Uber Your Own Piglet

  Once upon a time, the children used to say adorable, slightly inaccurate things that I wrote down in a notebook, like ‘uppa-plane’ for aeroplane, because it goes up. Aaaah.

  Now, Peter and I say similar things, but the line between amusing parental malapropisms and the failure to know stuff is unsettlingly thin.

  For example, there’s an American woman on the radio talking about Play-Doh, which seems an odd subject for Radio 4. Has someone left it on a commercial station? Lydia . . .! Then the woman says he was an Ancient Greek philosopher. What? Oh, wait . . .

  I tell the kids, and they find it quite amusing. I’ve not got it wrong because of my age; they might just as easily have misheard it like that too.

  Lawrence is becoming quite interested in food, so I take him out for a treat to a glamorous new restaurant full of twinkling lights, pale wood and large chunks of eucalyptus. For his ‘small plate’ – because starter is so last week – the waitress grates some wasabi root against a slab of something that looks like the asbestos tiles we used to use in the school physics lab, and gestures at a tiny square dish.

  ‘And that’s the soy sauce.’

  It seems to be just a thin layer in the bottom and it’s turquoise: a fashionable kind of soy sauce in a ‘statement’ colour? I say nothing. Lawrence doesn’t react either. Then she pours in some brown liquid out of a small pottery bottle and melts away.

  ‘Ah!’ says Lawrence. ‘That’s the soy sauce.’

  ‘I thought it might be that blue stuff,’ i.e. the glaze, I say, relieved.

  ‘Me too!’

  For a minute there I was nervous.

  ‘Ha ha,’ says Lydia later. ‘Well, I used to think “Silicon Valley” was where everyone had had plastic surgery.’

  Which is completely understandable; why wouldn’t it be a place where all the inhabitants have smooth faces and abnormally round tits?

  And then I tell her that while looking for my gloves I’ve found a business card in Lawrence’s spare jacket belonging to ‘The Dealer’ – I didn’t know they had them. And she looks up the url on it and tells me it’s dealer as in deals, i.e. special offers on meals that, in this case, also support local charities.

  And don’t I feel stupid!

  But using the wrong word for something everyday and obvious is not the same thing.

  Thinking of an image we passed in the street somewhere, I say:

  ‘I liked that music notice we saw the other day.’

  And Lawrence says:

  ‘Do you mean poster?’

  And I think: of course I do; I know what a bloody poster is. Also, which is worrying, I didn’t even intend to say it, it just came out. But sometimes I get so nervous about sounding out of touch it makes me say the wrong thing, as if I’m in the Resistance and am going to personally lose us the war.

  ‘Le petit oiseau est dans l’arbre,’ says my contact.

  ‘Er . . . oui?’

  Then when caught by the Gestapo I’d be shot for not handing over the codes, because I really wouldn’t be able to remember them. On the plus side, I’d be remembered as ‘terbly terbly brave’, though dead.

  ‘Music notice’ indeed! Next I’ll be asking them how to download ‘WhatsUpp’. Possibly I already have.

  Lately our conversations have been derailed quite often by detours like this. You’d think their irritation would have died out by now; since they’re on the verge of adulthood, not twelve. I can see how at that age kids want to show how up to the minute and sophisticated they are, and how out of touch and lame their parents. But we’ve surely long passed that point; we totally know that they’re young yet mature and worldly-wise and we’re middle-aged and bumbling, and so don’t need to be pulled up on every tiny mistake.

  But I’m wrong.

  And I recognize Lawrence’s contrasting reactions to Play-Doh and ‘music notice’ from when I used to snap at my mother: it’s fear.

  I couldn’t bear her making mistakes because they were proof that she was getting older and would at some point start to forget things permanently, and eventually deteriorate, perhaps even into dementia as her mother did.

  Peter has a different theory.


  ‘They’ve got to get annoyed with us, haven’t they?’

  Er, have they? Why?

  ‘If we never got annoyed with our parents, and went on liking them unreservedly, we’d never lead independent lives.’

  David Attenborough says it’s hardwired into us, the mechanism that enables us to leave the pride and set up our own. So I suppose it must be true.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘but that’s more of a male-challenging-dominant-male thing, though, like stags and gorillas and whatever, not snapping at the chief lion for saying “music notice”.’

  ‘Chief lion?’

  ‘Pride leader or whatever. So, me.’

  But he does have a point.

  And I wonder if this process has become trickier.

  In ye olde dayes it was straightforward. You put on your high-heel sneakers and the latest 45, and at least one parent would be guaranteed to jump up, whip the needle off and slam the door, muttering that Elvis was a degenerate and Little Richard not only a negro but a blatant wearer of women’s make-up, and that music had been rubbish ever since Handel. Job done. And if by any chance that didn’t do the trick, a Ban the Bomb poster in the front room window would usually sort it.

  And then in my day there was punk, which made it even easier. A random safety-pin or two in the school uniform was enough to get even a liberal teacher breathing a bit faster, so you could have all your rebelling done by break, and not even have to smoke in the playground – which was handy if you didn’t really like punk, which most of us didn’t, and didn’t actually smoke either, only took it up now and then to stick it to The Man. Or, in the case of my school, the Actually Quite Reasonable Woman. My friend Tilly had her own range of civil disobedience techniques, of which the most satisfying was to smile at the fuming teacher and say:

  ‘And I love you too . . .’

  Rebellion-wise, my parents presented something of a challenge. My mother read books like Deschooling Society and listened to Shostakovich and Nina Simone. And even my father, who was quite strict, had a goatee and interviewed jazz musicians for the papers. So, there was no mileage there. Even if I’d come home with a Val Doonican album they would have been baffled but not annoyed. And anyhow, I really did like the same music as them. I came into school one day looking gloomy, and one of the other girls asked what the matter was.