by Hatch, Ben
She shakes her head.
‘Someone must have one.’
‘They did, love. But they thought I was a pikey.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They wouldn’t let me use it.’
‘Are you all right?’
Nottingham’s aberration aside, it’s a lunchtime courtesy we’ve become accustomed to. People, generally, don’t mind heating up baby food. It’s been the case throughout Wales, the Midlands and the whole of the North-west. Cafes, restaurants, pubs; they don’t mind if you’re eating with them or not, they’ll help out. It’s something to do with it being baby food – the universal regard for the welfare of a child – because I doubt it would be the same if it was, say, a Barbecue Beef Pot Noodle.
Dinah sinks to the grass and twists her head away from me. I crouch down.
‘You’re really upset.’
‘Why is Mummy crying?’ asks Phoebe.
Phoebe comes and sits in her lap. Charlie does the same.
‘Poor Mummy,’ they say.
Dinah laughs and hugs them towards her.
‘Is it because you banged your toe?’ asks Phoebe.
Dinah laughs. ‘Yes, I banged my toe.’
She kisses Phoebe’s head and laughs.
‘I cry when I bang my toe,’ says Charlie.
‘I know, sweetheart.’
In the end I give Charlie some yoghurt instead of milk. And Dinah tells me about what happened. She saw the microwave in the kitchen on the way into the cafe and so went up to the man behind the counter and asked if he’d mind heating up the food.
‘But he just said no.’
‘Just like that?’
‘He was horrible. I practically begged him, Ben. I was so polite too. You should have seen me. I actually grovelled. I was so humiliated. “It will just take twenty seconds.” “Sorry, we’re busy,” he said.’
‘He knew it was for a child?’
‘I told him. They weren’t even busy. I felt this big.’ She holds up her thumb and forefinger. ‘He was leaning on the counter chatting to his chi-chi looking wife. They’re probably laughing at me right now. I really, really hate this place.’
Pretending I’m going to the dustbin on the other side of the green with some rubbish I peel off and go to find the cafe. It’s a trendy-looking wooden-floored place with shiny metal tables inside and out. I see the microwave and the man at the till Dinah described. A handful of people are drinking tea, one or two are eating. I walk up to counter. The man serving is about fifty, with a checked tea towel draped over his shoulder. He’s standing next to a woman with a flower in her hair, the chi-chi wife I’m guessing. I take out my Frommer’s card, introduce myself and go into my spiel. I’m writing a guidebook, Frommer’s: Britain With Your Family, I am compiling the ‘North-west and Around’ chapter and looking to include ten family-friendly places to stay, eat and visit. Their cafe has been recommended to us by a number of people.
‘Do you know Frommer’s at all? We’re the American equivalent of Time Out. Frommer’s has one of the biggest travel websites in the world.’
The lady steps forward.
‘I know Frommer’s,’ she says.
‘So do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I see you’ve got high chairs.’ I indicate a stack by the till.
‘And colouring-in books and pens,’ the woman froths. ‘We also have a children’s menu.’
Tea towel man hands me one.
‘Thank you.’
I glance at it and make some notes, nodding as though impressed.
‘And we also do half portions of adult meals for half price.’
I make a note of this.
‘And how about staff attitude?’ I ask.
‘Sorry?’
‘You know, some places they claim they’re child friendly but deep down…’
‘Oh, I see. No, we’re definitely child friendly.’
She looks at tea towel man, who nods.
And that’s when I do it. I know it’s unprofessional. That it’s vindictive and petty. But I do it anyway.
‘Well, that’s funny,’ I say, looking puzzled, ‘because my wife was in here five minutes ago and you wouldn’t heat up some baby food.’
There’s a momentary silence before the woman backs away from the till like I’ve punched her in the face. I close my notebook. She starts babbling about ten orders they had at the time. I pat the top of the counter with my pad as she changes tack and tells me she can’t be held responsible for heating the food up of anyone who happens to walk past.
‘Of course not and it wasn’t a test,’ I say, ‘sending my wife in like that,’ although I realise I’m making it sound exactly like one.
‘I will not to be held hostage to that incident,’ she says, her voice quavering, and I slide the menu back towards tea towel man.
‘Of course not. It’s a pity, though. You were highly recommended. Highly recommended,’ and I walk out, feeling like a gunslinger spinning revolvers back into his holsters.
‘I am a boy with a pet dog, who changes into a cartoon character whose first name begins with T?’
‘Tommy Zoom.’
‘That’s right, Tommy Zoom, Phoebe.’
‘Give me another one.’
‘OK, I am a pretty woman with seven small friends whose first name is what falls from the sky when it’s cold and isn’t rain?’
‘Snow White.’
‘That’s right, Phoebe.’
‘Let me do one for Charlie, Daddy,’ says Phoebe. ‘I have a trunk, what am I?’
‘Efant.’
‘Well done, Charlie,’ she says.
‘Let me do another one. Charlie, I have stripes what am I?’
‘Tiger.’
‘Well done, Charlie.’
‘Charlie, I am yellow with a long neck?’
‘Orange, Phoebe.’
‘I know, I know, Charlie, I am orange with a long neck, what am I?
‘Efant.’
‘No, Charlie.’
‘I am orange. Elephants aren’t orange.’
‘Tiger.’
‘No, Charlie,’ says Phoebe, and whispering now, ‘Giraffe, Charlie.’
‘Rarf.’
‘That’s right, Charlie.’
‘Phoebe, don’t whisper it to him.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did. We heard you.’
‘It was too hard.’
‘Well, you set it.’
Phoebe laughs. ‘OK, OK, I’ve got another one…’
After my small victory it’s a heart-lifting drive to Keswick. We cross Dunmail Raise, the scene of the defeat of the last king of Cumbria by King Malcolm of Scotland. The sun’s out, the trees have a startling cartoon greenness that pings out while the hills shooting past us are perfect brown ovals. In between playing guessing games with the kids and staring at the scenery we relive the confrontation.
‘And they’d actually heard of Frommer’s?’
‘That’s what made it so perfect. You should have seen her face, Dinah.’
‘I wish I’d been there.’ She giggles. ‘The little shits.’
She slaps me five, gets out her Frommer’s business card.
‘Frommer’s,’ she says, holding it up like a cop. ‘A Wiley imprint. Sir, I am writing you down for no stars. You will have no smiley-faced emoticon next to your kids’ menu. You will not make a hundred and fifty words in the “North-west and Around” chapter.’
‘Charlie, I am a C,’ says Phoebe from the back seat, ‘and I have hump. What am I?’
‘Efant?’
‘No, Charlie.’
‘Tiger?’
‘Charlie, not every answer is elephant or tiger.’
‘Legend has it that in the early 1500s, a violent storm in the Borrowdale area of Cumberland led to trees being uprooted and the discovery of a strange black material underneath. This material turned out to be graphite, which shepherds began using to mark their sheep.’
The Cumberland Pencil Mu
seum is based at the Southey Works on a bend in the River Keswick, north of the town’s high street. The kids are asleep and we’re parked outside and Dinah’s reading from the blue file.
‘A cottage industry of pencil-making soon developed, culminating in the formation of the UK’s first pencil factory in 1832. That factory is now the Cumberland Pencil Museum.’
‘I think you have to admire that.’
‘What?’ says Dinah.
‘The sheer audaciousness of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not even a museum about stationery, or a museum about pencils and pens. It’s not even a museum about pencils per se. It’s a museum about pencils FROM CUMBERLAND!’
‘But, have you seen the sign?’ Dinah points to the large red and black lettering down the side of the building that reads in capitals: SEE THE WORLD’S LARGEST PENCIL!
I smile and close my eyes with pleasure.
‘I thought you’d like that,’ she says, and reads on. ‘The factory has had various owners in its 175-year history, but became the Cumberland Pencil Company in 1916. The Lakeland children’s range was launched in 1930, followed by the Derwent brand of fine art pencils in 1938.’
‘So do you think that’s a big deal in the world of pencils, then?’
‘What?’
‘Having the world’s largest pencil? It’s probably like skyscrapers. Rival pencil manufacturers all around the world are probably shaking their heads with wonderment right now at the incredible news. They’ve just broken the record in Keswick!’
Dinah puts on a German accent. ‘Add ten feet of graphite, Hans, we’re taking zis 2B up to sixty-five feet.’
Not only does the museum contain the world’s largest pencil, another sign claims it also has: A SECRET WARTIME PENCIL.
‘A secret wartime pencil!’
However many times we say it we just can’t envisage a secret wartime pencil.
‘It sounds like a children’s story. James and the Giant Peach. Tommy and His Secret Wartime Pencil. But what can be secret about a pencil?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Dinah, who has her eyes closed now.
‘What’s secret in wartime?’
‘Weapons,’ says Dinah, yawning.
‘So it’s a weapon.’
‘Not an ordinary weapon,’ she says still with her eyes closed.
‘Or else it wouldn’t be secret,’ I say.
‘A secret terror weapon.’
‘Dinah, do you think Churchill planned to fire giant HB pencils at key German cities in the dying days of World War Two?’
‘I do.’
‘Are you going to sleep?’
‘Trying to.’
‘Huge very sharp pencils raining down on German cities, fired from secret stationery silos. Our response to the V2 rocket. Dinah, are you imagining plucky, cockney British munitions workers turning huge pencil sharpeners in factories in the East End to create these ultimate terror weapons? Dinah?’
‘I am.’
‘Are you picturing Churchill on military rallies inspecting these giant pencils, testing their sharpness with the tip of his gloved index finger? And, of course, they had one other great advantage, pencils over traditional military hardware, didn’t they, Dinah? Dinah?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘They could scribble on buildings on their downward trajectory. Doodles on the Brandenburg Gate sapping Jerry morale. Scribble on the Reichstag. Air raid wardens with giant mobile rubbers racing around to get rid of the daubings. But then it would escalate. It always does. A new arms race for the next terror weapon. Who gets it first? Us or Hitler… The BIRO. Dinah?’
‘I am awake. I’m just resting my eyes.’
‘Are you bored of this?’
‘A bit.’
‘Do you want me to shut up now?’
‘I am a bit tired, love.’
Entering the Cumberland Pencil Museum via a mocked-up mine we learn about Borrowdale graphite, the drawing material of choice of Michelangelo, 450 years ago. I take pictures of Phoebe and Charlie standing beside the world’s largest pencil (26 feet long) while the secret wartime pencil turns out to be a pencil manufactured with a disguised compass and map inside to help downed allied pilots during World War Two find their way home.
At the end of the museum there’s a small theatre. The big screen plays an extract from Raymond Briggs’s animated cartoon, The Snowman, which was drawn using Cumberland pencil products. I bought The Snowman DVD for Phoebe last Christmas. We’ve watched it so many times she still recognises the Howard Blake score, ‘Walking in the Air’, when it comes on the radio. Or as Phoebe always corrects me, ‘Not walking in the air, Dad. Flying in the air. You can’t walk in the air, Daddy.’ Phoebe climbs on my lap and puts her thumb in. Although we’ve seen it dozens of times somehow I’ve never noticed the frame before showing Brighton Pier. It’s unmistakably the Palace Pier lit up at night. The snowman and the boy fly high above it holding hands on their way to Lapland. It’s such an unexpected reminder of home, it makes me shout across to Dinah, ‘Look!’
We all stare at it.
‘That’s where we live,’ I say to the kids. ‘That’s home. Do you recognise it? The pier.’
‘Where they have rides?’
‘Where they have the rides, that’s right, Phoebe.’
The film ends, we leave the museum and on the way to the Castlerigg Stone Circle, a few miles off Penrith Road, Phoebe says, ‘Daddy, when are we going home?’
It’s the first time Phoebe’s asked this. In a way it’s a question I’ve been dreading.
‘Not for a while yet, pops.’
‘I thought we were going home soon.’
‘Well, we were going to go home, Phoebe.’
‘When we had the accident?’
‘When we had the accident, yes. But then…’
‘We got blue car.’
‘Yes, we got blue car and we thought we were having such a good time we’d carry on.’
‘And Daddy,’ says Charlie, seriously. ‘Blue car doesn’t smell, does he?’
I smile at Dinah. ‘No, he doesn’t smell Charlie.’
‘Although it will start to,’ says Dinah. ‘If we carry on dropping our sandwiches on the floor, guys, and if Daddy doesn’t give me his apple cores and stuffs them in the driver’s side door.’
‘Because red car,’ says Charlie, ‘smelled yucky. Didn’t he?’
‘He did.’
‘So we got a new one.’
‘Well, it didn’t happen exactly like that, Charlie.’
A few minutes later I park in a lay-by on Castle Lane. We cross the road and walk up to the Neolithic stone circle. At 3,000 years old, it’s one of the oldest in the country. There are thirty-eight stones arranged around a 30-metre diameter with ten standing stones inside this forming a rectangle. On a low flat hill there are views to Skiddaw, Blencathra and Lonscale Fell. We play hide and seek for a while and grandmother’s footsteps, the kids have running races and afterwards I’m lying prostrate on a stone bathing my face in the sunshine when Phoebe jumps on my stomach. I ask her what Mr Nobody thinks of the holiday, if he’s enjoying himself.
‘He likes doing some things,’ she says.
‘But not everything?’
‘He doesn’t like everything.’
‘What doesn’t he like?’
She sighs. ‘He doesn’t like it when his sandwiches are cut into little squares. He wants big long sandwiches.’
‘I can understand that.’
‘Daddy,’ says Phoebe, ‘When we go home and I start school I’ll be a big girl, won’t I?’
I look at her white, finely boned, bird-like face and feel a tremendous pang.
‘You will, sweetheart.’
And from feeling homesick earlier, I now want to stay away longer. In fact, I don’t ever want to return. I want us to live on the road forever. Phoebe won’t need to start school then; Charlie won’t have to go to nursery. We’ll simply freeze the way we a
re right now, stay the same, and just carry on driving around the country – the four us – staying in different hotels, reviewing family-friendly attractions for the rest of our lives.
Armathwaite Hall Hotel opposite Bassenthwaite Lake is a former sixteenth-century country house. The hotel has mounted tiger heads on the wood-panelled walls and the press pack mentions a kids’ weekend programme, so posh it includes cooking with chocolate, falconry and young etiquette sessions organised by Walpole, the butler, where kids are shown which knife and fork to use for certain courses, how not to shovel peas, ‘And probably what the correct glass is for a highball,’ jokes Dinah.
On the lawned grounds the kids play their first ever game of croquet (they pull up the hoops and throw them in the car park) while, in the chandeliered dining room, Charlie turns me into a slip-catcher during his main course, forcing me to constantly dive from my chair to catch the tiny morsels of food he flings to the carpet. Phoebe, meanwhile, midway through her bangers and mash turns to two ladies behind us to ask, ‘So where are you from, then?’ Startled by her precocious urbanity they’re about to reply when she maddeningly ruins it by discarding her teaspoon then beginning to eat her mashed potato using her hand like a bear paw.
We’re back in the bedroom after a glass of wine on the terrace downstairs and getting ready for bed when Dinah shows me her phone. ‘I almost forgot. I found this earlier.’
She calls up a web page entitled ‘world’s tallest pencil’. It’s a story about a 76-foot pencil that was built in 2007 in Queens, New York. The pencil commemorates the life and work of artist Sri Chinmoy.
‘So it wasn’t the biggest pencil in the world.’
‘It’s not even the previous record holder. That was a 65-foot Faber-Castell in Kuala Lumpur.’
I hand the phone back to her.
‘Good research.’
‘I thought you’d laugh more.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Thinking about tomorrow?’
I nod.
She looks at me, guesses talking about my dad will stop me sleeping, and leaves the room.
‘Just make sure you keep tabs on the Wadcrags,’ I call out after her.
Earlier, when we couldn’t find Armathwaite Hall and rang the hotel for directions, the receptionist had for some reason gone on and on about the village of Wadcrag.
‘Have you been through Wadcrag yet?’ she’d asked.
