Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  Tuesday, 13 March 2007

  Holiday blues

  I have gone away and left everyone behind. It is just me for a week, and I am guilt-wracked and tense about the whole idea of a holiday on my own. Not so guilty that I did not get on the plane to Los Angeles. It has been such a long time since it was just me that I do not know if I can do it any more. What if I am really bad company?

  I left my husband a note:

  Be patient with the children.

  Be more patient than I am with the children.

  Remember the six-year-old likes peas, hates beans.

  Remember the four-year-old hates peas, likes beans.

  Both eat raw carrots but hate boiled carrots.

  Don’t try to make them eat boiled carrots.

  Remember the six-year-old needs a Comic Relief red nose for school on Friday.

  If the six-year-old has a red nose, the four-year-old will want one.

  Best get the baby one so she doesn’t feel left out.

  Remember to ring my mother at least once while I am away.

  Remember to hear the baby if she cries at night.

  Remember the binmen come on Thursdays.

  Remember you love me.

  Back soon.

  Wednesday, 21 March 2007

  ‘Welcome home, Mummy’

  Well, I’m back. Mummy’s home and did I mention the six-year-old is getting bullied at school? ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ I want to gnash my teeth in rage and push someone smaller than me over. I was thousands of miles away and my husband revealed the six-year-old had told him he likes school, he loves his teacher but that ‘sometimes the other children aren’t nice to me.’ He is heartbreakingly reasonable about it: ‘Some people aren’t nice to other people. That’s just how it is.’ Cor blimey. Maybe the world is like that but you do not want your six-year-old aware of that fact.

  I had already remarked on the number of accidents he had been involved in at school. The head teacher wondered if he had something wrong with his ears, or maybe his eyesight. He does not fall over at home; apparently he is like a young Norman Wisdom at school. During his time there, he has fallen over playing horse (a massive lump on his forehead), been hit with the rounders bat, and walked into a cupboard (because, a note informed us, my son ‘forgot it was there’); he has also hit his head during a tug of war. Oh, and not forgetting the broom in the eye. If these injuries had happened at home, the social workers would have us on a list by now.

  Accidents are unfortunate but they happen. I am infinitely more concerned by reports of physical aggression and that my son is feeling socially isolated. Now I know why he is biting his nails. One youngster told him: ‘I wish you weren’t at school any more.’ He tells me that at break: ‘Sometimes I don’t play. Sometimes I just walk around the playground and sometimes I sit on the bench.’ This is your cue as a parent to drop your head on to the wooden kitchen table and groan loudly. I am trying very hard to be as reasonable as my six-year-old about it. On Thursday, he was swung round and hit his chin on a wall. (On the upside, at least he was playing with someone. Fair enough: another accident.) But on Friday, he was kicked hard enough for my boy to fall to the floor, hitting his head and prompting another trip to hospital. Monday, he had a day off for good behaviour, then on Tuesday he was pushed over in the playground. Today, he was bitten on the cheek and a door repeatedly kicked in his face as he tried to get back into school from the playground. I believe, taken together, this amounts to bullying.

  We now have a little collection of notes from the school. Today’s note read that one boy ‘hurt’ my son’s cheek and ‘apologized’ for it. That’s all right then. Friday’s note bears little relation to what my son says happened. It says he ‘overbalanced on his chair’ and ‘fell, bumping his head slightly’. He says he was standing beside a different schoolmate when he was kicked and fell to the floor. This was at 10.30 a.m. The schoolmate, along with yet another child, went on to berate my son at lunchtime for taking the last morsel of something when he was queuing for his lunch. The berating went unwitnessed by staff, but afterwards my son refused to join in normal school activities. All this in the last week.

  Not that my son is blameless. Leaving aside the occasional klutz-like walk behind a bat or hapless push-me, pull-you with a skipping rope, he has a nasty habit of intervening in the world around him. He admits he was bitten after telling the boy not to swing on a fence in case he hurt himself. He says he got pushed over trying to help a younger child get her skipping rope, which other girls were standing on, while on Friday, he told me that he was only kicked over after that boy told him his work was scribbly and my son kicked his chair. Fair dos – he would perhaps have done better to kick the chair and run away.

  In his former East End primary school, classes were brim full. This is a tiny village church school with a church spire visible across grassy fields where sheep wander, and up to now we have been very happy with everything about the school. Perhaps this is my fault – I have always taught my son to take responsibility for his own actions and that he has a duty of care to his little brother and baby sister and to look out for younger children. Big mistake. His father wants him to slide into playground oblivion. Stop telling other children what to do, for a start. But I do not want the sort of boy who turns into an adult who crosses the road when a teenage gang picks on a young mother waiting with her buggy at a bus stop. I want Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. I wonder if Henry Fonda got bullied at school. How to survive at school? They should give lessons in it. How to teach your child to survive at school? They should give lessons in that, too.

  Thursday, 22 March 2007

  The Jungle Book

  If I cry, do I look like a victim? Probably. Do I care about looking like a victim? Probably not. I am old and, for that matter, mean enough not to care how I look. I certainly wanted to cry this morning when the Evangelical Man, who was in school last week, said he had noticed that my son was unusually quiet and anonymous in class. He described him as ‘a different boy’. Even the head teacher described my son’s face, normally responsive, as ‘set’ in the last recent while. Sheesh! This afternoon I went up to school to see for myself what was going on. I was informed that the child who had bitten him yesterday, managed today to ‘accidentally’ sit on my son’s head. The boy apologized – as you do when you accidentally sit on someone’s head.

  I am assured the school is taking our concerns seriously. The committed and professional teachers seem as concerned as I am by my son’s unhappiness. There have been conversations and meetings; next week we go back for an official update with the head, who is a woman in whom I have every confidence. You trust teachers with your children’s lives, quite literally. I have no idea what happens when you do not trust the teaching staff. Panic horribly and home-educate? God. The thought of home schooling brings me out in shingles. My children would get bullied then, by me.

  In the meantime, like nice middle-class parents, we are checking with a nice middle-class doctor in case there are ‘spatial awareness’ problems with our son. I am not quite sure how spatially aware you have to be to avoid having your head sat on. In any event, I have issued my son with the first few pages of his jungle survival guide: ‘Do not sit next to him. Do not stand near him, talk to him, play with him, have anything to do with him. Do not pull a tiger’s tail.’ He looked at me, puzzlement clouding his blue eyes. ‘What tiger?’

  Friday, 23 March 2007

  Blog off

  The blog has been good for me, giving me a professional and personal focus. I have wondered whether anyone who knows me up here is reading it. I cannot know if it has deterred some people from getting to know me better – possibly. I imagine others may feel they know me better than they actually do. In any event, it is not a secret diary, locked up with a tiny key, click, turn, in a gilt clasp; saying what you think, out loud in cyberspace, can get you into trouble. They are reading it. I blogged what has gone on at school and to say the atmosphere is chilly would be putting
in mildly. No one said a word to me this morning when I took my six-year-old into school. Nothing. Not a ‘Good Morning’ or a ‘How are you?’ or a smile. I can understand it and I am trying not to care but my six-year-old did not want to go in and they cannot think that is normal behaviour. He clung to me and buried his face in my hip. His teacher had to peel him off me as if he were a long boy-shaped strip of skin. It almost made me bleed.

  Saturday, 24 March 2007

  Oyster, oyster

  It is not often you get to see a farmer with his oysters. Man and shellfish in perfect harmony. We drove out over grassy pastures to an isolated stretch of coast opposite Holy Island. It is a bleak and beautiful shore where the oysters grow, a strangely disorienting no man’s land between the North Sea and the sandy beach. The island beyond; the sea, flat in the mid distance, and grassy dunes behind you. You have no choice but to crunch through thousands of barnacled, blue mussel shells to reach their oyster brothers. Best not to look back when you walk on what was the seabed – the post-traumatic stress could kill you. You have to time it perfectly in order to plunder land which belongs to the sea and is claimed back again so quickly. When the tide slides out, it reveals trestle tables crouched low and iron in the sand. Bags made of strong plastic mesh lie hooked to the tables so that their contents are not snatched back by grasping waves. There is a spot on the river tour of the Thames where a lip-licking guide will show you where offending unfortunates were chained to rusty iron rings to drown when the tide ran in to the capital. Somehow the oystered bags reminded me of that. Presumably they are happier about their situation than yesteryear’s river victims.

  These are Pacific oysters rather than natives. What crime do you have to be guilty of in a previous life to come back as a Pacific oyster living in the North Sea? When my farmer friend told me his oysters were hermaphrodites, I was not quite sure what to say. It seemed like too much information too soon. Particularly when they were right there in front of us, listening. It is a far cry from a seafood platter in a London restaurant, and a strangely timeless way to harvest food. It is believed that monks who lived on Holy Island harvested oysters as long ago as the fourteenth century. This most recent foray into oyster farming was begun in 1989 by my friend’s father.

  Seaweed festoons the oyster bags, which are unclipped and then spilled out into a box to be sorted and sized. Tiny green crabs dash for cover between the gnarled and calcified shells, all covered in sandy mud and smelling of the sea – of nothingness and salt. Oysters as small as a thumbnail are ‘seeded’ in the bags and grow for three or four years before they are big enough to be promoted to crushed ice and certain death. If they are too small for gastric tastes, they are returned to their trestle to await another Judgement Day.

  When the waters began to lap around my feet, I looked up from my work and calculated the distance across the pulling sands and crisp shells to the car. I asked myself whether I would make it and wondered what would happen if I did not. As I came back, bouncing in the open back of the 4×4 with the other oyster harvesters, we passed the patch of beach where naturists frolic. I cannot believe there are that many naturists in Northumberland. They must be a hardy lot – maybe I should try that next as part of my quest to feel more at home? Maybe not. I might meet someone. The Oyster Farmer happened upon a couple of naturists as he was driving out to his oyster beds. He knew they had to be local: the man covered his paraphenalia and the woman her face.

  Sunday, 25 March 2007

  In at the deep end

  Another children’s birthday party in the soft play centre. I know exactly how Scarlett O’Hara felt when Rhett dumped her on Melanie’s doorstep. I am a scandal. I have made a fuss. The mothers smiled and said hello, but no one mentioned it. No one seems to know what to say to me. Do they think I am an over-protective mother, a middle-class London hysteric? I am probably both of those things, but that does not mean I can step back and leave a small boy to his tears. I cannot say I entirely understand what has shifted in the social dynamic of the school, but I know that my six-year-old has gone from loving school to daytime dread and night-time terrors. The boys rocketed off to play. I plastered a beatific smile on my face and let the toddling baby finger-walk me to where she wanted to go – the toddlers’ ball pool. I climbed in to sit with her in a balled-up sea of pearly white and plastic green and blue; I was in no hurry to climb out from behind the netting on to dry land again.

  Monday, 26 March 2007

  My breasts develop a mind of their own

  Bizarrely my breasts have started breastfeeding again. They seem to have decided this without me. I am wondering whether it is because I am feeling particularly protective of the six-year-old or because they know there is a war on. My breasts are entirely out of luck if they think I intend to start suckling the six-year-old again. I thought I had finished with the whole shebang, having been heartless enough to stop so that I could get on a plane on my own and leave them all behind. That was a seriously bad mother thing to do, but I figured that the baby, who was sixteen months old, had had a good innings on the breast front. The nocturnal feeding finished some time ago and I was down to just morning and bedtime anyway, I explained to her, suitcase by the door. ‘You won’t even know they’ve gone’, I said. ‘They’ll write, OK?’ Despite the fact I have not fed the baby for ten days, they have flipped back into operational mode. I am rather impressed at their determination to maintain functionality. It was really quite a Stalinist mother-of-the-nation thing for them to do. They appear to have a mind of their own. I am wondering whether they will want to take charge of the television remote control of an evening.

  I am a big fan of breastfeeding. I am about as far as you can get from statuesque, and if I had not breastfed my babies, I would never have known the charm of life as a woman with big breasts – and it means you can eat more. Apparently it is quite good for the babies, too. The Yorkshire Mother told me she ended up with two differently sized breasts courtesy of breastfeeding. She used to let her babies do most of their feeding from one particular breast. She used her free arm to make tea, hoover and fry sausages. She told me this, and I laughed at her and her lopsided breasts. Since I am profoundly jet-lagged and had little else to do last night with a sleeping husband by my side, I decided to see whether breastfeeding has had a similar effect on me. I did this very carefully – firstly, because I think you should be scrupulous in matters scientific and secondly, I did not want my husband asking me what on earth I was doing, or worse, whether he could help. With the right hand, I took the appropriate handfuls and then cross-checked my findings with the left hand. I scooped and weighed thoughtfully. Do you know, I think they are different. How about that! You do not get told that in the glossy little breast-is-best leaflet you carry away from the maternity ward – that your breasts are going to be different sizes from here on in and may want to watch Coronation Street on a Monday.

  Tuesday, 27 March 2007

  Bud stop

  I started learning German yesterday, as you do when you go to bed between two and three in the morning every day and are so busy you think your head might drop off. A couple of months ago, it seemed like a really good idea. One of my closest friends just moved from Edinburgh to Germany at the behest of her husband, and I thought: ‘I must learn German.’ Another mother from school agreed to teach me. Sitting at her kitchen table, I learned: ‘Guten Tag’, the word for tour operator (‘die Reiseleiterin’) and how to say ‘Mein Name ist Hannelore Herzog’ – of course my name is not Hannelore Herzog, but it might come in handy. Perhaps I will call myself Hannelore when I visit my friends. I had the lesson and walked back through brilliant morning sunshine to the house. I thought to myself: ‘How I feel right this minute is probably uncomfortably close to insanity.’ When I got back, my husband asked quizzically: ‘Why are you learning German? You know there’s no time for self-improvement.’ I growled at him, in German. Later, both my husband and I went up to school to discuss strategies. The meeting went well on a number of fronts
, not least the fact that I managed not to cry during it. Close-run thing at one point, but just scraped through. I do not think a parent is ever at their strongest in a staffroom, even with a china cup of tea in their hands. Part of you is thinking: ‘Should I be here?’ and ‘Now I’m for it.’ I wonder whether teachers ever feel that way. The teachers do not want to see an isolated child stalk their corridors and haunt their playground. The head teacher is determined to stop the hurt. Among various proposals: increased support in the classroom and supervision at breaktime; playground buddies and a friendship bench were also mentioned. I love the idea of a friendship bench. An honest place where you admit a primitive need. A bench on which to sit while you wait for someone to cross the painted asphalt and take your hand with its bitten-down fingernails in their warm and grubby one. Someone who will say those magic words: ‘Come play.’

  Wednesday, 28 March 2007

  Playing house

  I like and trust my builders. They are conscientious and want to solve problems that come up. They are helpful, intelligent and reliable. They would be good to have as brothers-in-law. One of them built his own beautiful house even further north than we are so he looks at the issue of costs from both sides – the making-a-living side and the oh-my-God-you-have-to-be-kidding side. I asked him for a list of costs for all those jobs we want doing which are not in the spec. I do wish I hadn’t. But more importantly than the costs, we are struggling to bring it all together; men are sweating out their days to brick-build our future and I can see it all slipping away. Can you have a dream house and an unhappy child living in it? I do not think so. We had another successful meeting at school this week; we figured our way through to strategies that will protect my six-year-old and get him past his feelings of isolation. The only problem is my son does not yet know that his problems are over, that happy days are here again. He did not want to go to school again today, clung to me in the corridor, burrowing into me. I had to sit down on a chair or fall over. He climbed into my lap and flung his arms round me, his face in my neck.