B bounced awake at 7.30am, fully recovered from whatever it was that laid him low yesterday – though he was barely upright before announcing that he wouldn’t be eating any more cake. “That’s OK,” I said. “It’s your cake, so you can decide whether to eat it or not.” As he thought through the implications of the decision his face fell, and eventually he said, “Actually, I will have some more cake today – but only one piece.” After breakfasting sensibly on Weetabix, he was sitting with R, talking science, and was in the middle of explaining his theory about how the Big Bang might actually have worked, when L called to ask how he was. Having told her that he was feeling fine now, he said, “But, it’s still my decision if I want to stay here or go home.” We all agreed that it was indeed up to him, and having firmly established this principle he was happy, and the idea of leaving wasn’t mentioned again for the rest of the day.
It rained for much of the morning, and we split our time between watching B’s current favourite TV show, Kung Fu Panda: the Dragon Knight, and finishing the 100-piece Super Mario jigsaw that the menfolk started yesterday. But R and I were really keen to get the Boy out of the house for fresh air and exercise, so as soon as the rain went over we told him we were off to Charlecote, and hustled him into outdoor gear. B wasn’t keen, and R pointed out to him that he’d been there before and enjoyed it – but on reflection we realised that he’d been not quite two at the time, so it was clearly hopeless to expect him to remember the place three years later. We assured him that it would be fun though, and he was happy enough during the journey, but as soon as we arrived he announced that he wasn’t interested in the park or the deer, and wanted to go back home. For a short while I had visions of having to drag him out of the car by the ankles, but eventually R’s persuasions worked, and he emerged and stomped ungraciously across the car park.
Two minutes after entering the park he was an entirely different child, having discovered several heaps of deadwood lying around, on which a Boy could climb and have adventures. I caught this snap while he was still consenting to hold R’s hand, but by the time he reached the end of the trunk and turned to come back, he was insisting that he had to do it by himself. Watching this performance, after having been tasked with reading Twas the Night Before Christmas at bedtime last night, I found myself mentally paraphrasing: “As visions of hospitals danced in her head” – but luckily the Boy kept his balance, and I avoided a second trip to A&E in the space of seven weeks.
When climbing the fallen tree trunks palled, B began making up a fantasy about a system of underground tunnels, which starts, he said, underneath the floor of our snug, and has exits in a number of places, including several at Charlecote: the cavity underneath the root ball of one of the fallen trees, the haha beneath the garden wall, and several small holes in the ground which you and I might easily walk past without even noticing them. Puddles in the gravel paths are apparently an indicator of the route taken by the tunnels, and luckily, following these geographical features took us all the way to the café, where R and I had coffee and the Boy had a hot chocolate with marshmallows, a large sausage roll (good, he pronounced, but nowhere near as good as the ones his other Grandma makes), a humongous chocolate donut, and a cup of cold milk to wash down everything else. Probably feeling OK now, I concluded.
While we were in the café B drew a treasure map, marked with various hazards including the lairs of dangerous monsters and Bosses, and when we went back into the park he announced that we must now follow the map and find the treasure. The adventure went something like this:
B: “We have to go this way – come on! Oh no! Who’s that hiding behind the gate? It’s a Boss!! I will fight him with my magic wand!” Boy then leaps about, waving arms wildly and making explosive sound effect noises. “Phew! He’s gone!”
J: “That was great work – well done!”
B: “Oh no! Another one! Uh-oh – it’s Bowser this time!! You will have to fight him Grandma!”
J (thinking, Oh my days – I didn’t sign up for this): “OK! It’s lucky I have my magic camera!” I then dance around the courtyard, going “Bash! Bang!”, while waving the camera lens back and forth, and quietly hoping that this won’t damage the stabilisation system too much.
B: “Hooray! You defeated him! Quick – we have to go through these gates….. Oh no!!”
J (heart sinking): “What now?”
B: “It’s an alarm! There are laser beams!! We can’t get under them, and we can’t go round them, so we’ll have to jump over them!” Boy jumps through gate. “Come on Grandma! You need to be quick before Bowser comes back!”
J: “OK – here goes!” I jump through the gate – quite creditably for an oldie, if I do say so myself.
B: “WAH WAH WAH…. Oh no!! You broke the beam and set the alarm off!!! We’ll have to run – quickly – COME ON!!!”
And so on. And on, and on. Under the Boy’s ruthless direction we went round and round the garden – not like teddy bears, but quite a lot like people who’d completely lost their minds – for about the next forty minutes. And every time we thought we’d managed to get him moving towards the exit, he’d suddenly come up with yet another plot twist to keep the game going a bit longer. It was absolutely excellent, and I’m profoundly relieved that it all took place in the late afternoon, when the park was almost empty, and there was almost certainly nobody there who knows me.
On the way home we had to call in at the supermarket for essential supplies (chicken nuggets, strawberry Yoyos, and wine), and at the Boy’s request I also bought some bottles of food colouring and clear plastic glasses, for a scientific experiment he wanted to do. When we got home I made dinner, while B and R set up a tray at one end of the kitchen table and tried out different ways of mixing the colours together. This turned out to be a bit trickier than B had expected, but on balance he was pleased with his work – and I was equal parts pleased, relieved, and surprised that the experiment didn’t result in the kitchen needing to be repainted.
It was a lovely, if exhausting, day.
R: L2, C5, D11.
