A father's ponderings on twins and their devious ways
Another overheard conversation from this morning. I’m ashamed to admit I’m not 100% sure who was taking which part, but anyway, here it is.
“One elephant, two elephant, three elephant…”
“No, that’s seconds. Minutes is like, one……… two……… three………”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.”
They were clocking roughly 3 seconds per minute.
Hannah was wandering around at bedtime tonight singing a little song about car insurance, as you do. Actually, the song was Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, with the phrase “car insurance!” thrown in at random. Apparently it’s off an advert.
“Do you know what car insurance is, Hannah?” asked Nicola.
“Yeah!” chirped Lauren’s voice from the toilet. The family reconvened at the open door to the smallest room to hear more. “And it’s not the only kind of insurance,” Lauren continued, beginning to count off on her fingers. “There’s pet insurance… life insurance…”
“Home insurance!” chimed Hannah.
“Yeah, home insurance…”
“How do you know all this, girls?” I asked, feeling somewhat impressed.
“Well, you know at Tesco’s, near the till, yeah?” said Lauren. “They’ve got all those leaflets, and there’s pet insurance, life insurance…”
“Home insurance!”
“Yeah, home insurance… and… there’s one you’ve forgotten, Hannah!”
Short comedy pause.
“Peg insurance!”
Whereupon Lauren laughed so much she fell off the toilet.
I knew this whole Grease thing was a bad idea.
Hannah and Lauren are having an unexpected day off today due to a burst water main at school. We’ve also brought one of their class mates home with us, so I’m working upstairs while the three girls play in the living room.
I just went to check on them and, of course, they are watching Grease. Their friend bounded across the room and grabbed my hand.
“Mark! Mark!” she shouted, “Isn’t it right that you need to have sex to have a baby?”
Hannah and Lauren looked on with wide-eyed curiosity.
“Erm… what… well…” I explained.
“My mummy told me,” she continued. “I know what having sex is, but don’t worry, I won’t tell them.”
I have now escaped to the spare room upstairs where I’m sitting with the door closed, typing this and planning my next move. Frankly, I’m terrified. They’re only six! This is all Travolta’s fault. Would sex have reared its ugly head if they’d been watching Wallace and Gromit? Of course not.
Oh hell, someone’s coming up the stairs. Perhaps I can climb out of the window and make my escape? Help!!
This is just one of the terrifying questions I’m anticipating now that the girls have discovered the institution of girlhood that is Grease. Actually, “discovered” is a coy understatement: they’ve recorded it and have taken to watching it several times a day. I’d never seen it before and I had no idea just how adult the dialogue is, not to mention the pelvic gestures.
Nicola, on the other hand, is taking it all in her stride, assuring me that she went to see it at the age of 6 with her grandmother and it all goes over your head at that age.
I suspect I’m just “being a dad” on this one. Do any readers have any Grease-related personal stories they can share which might calm my troubled mind?
I’ve overheard two superb bits of chit-chat from the girls today. The first was this morning as they were in the bathroom supposed to be getting washed. I have no idea what the context was and I don’t want to know. Context would only spoil it. All Nicola and I heard was a small voice pondering, “What if a baby calls the rat Alan?”
The second was in the car on our way home from school via the park. It’s a lovely hot day and Hannah and Lauren had been running rings round me playing tag. From the back seat, Hannah’s voice piped up: “When I’m hot, this booby hurts… but when I’m cold, this booby hurts.” They both cackled about it for ages, and Hannah now refers to the left and right sides of her chest as “hot booby” and “cold booby” respectively.
Today, obviously, it’s hot booby that’s causing her the most discomfort.
I’ve just sat through a pretty uninspiring first half between Poland and Ecuador with Hannah and Lauren – the girls’ first exposure to international football. I would liken the experience to trying to pay attention to the first 45 minutes of a corporate fraud trial with a bag of angry wasps in your pocket. I managed to miss Ecuador’s only goal because Hannah decided at that precise moment that she needed to take my photograph.
To be fair, though, they were pretty attentive and most of the distractions came from football-related questions. Here are just a few that I was called upon to resolve using my expert football knowledge.
Q: Why are lots of the football players little children?
A: It’s only the grown-ups that are footballers. The little boys just come on at the start to sing for a bit then they go off again.
Q: Why is that man holding his heart? Is he poorly?
A: No, he’s singing his national anthem so it’s a bit like he’s saluting.
Q: Why is that goalkeeper running around and playing football and not staying in the goal?
A: That isn’t the goalkeeper, he’s called the referee.
Q: What’s a referee?
A: He’s like the teacher. He makes sure that everybody’s playing nicely.
Q: Is England the ones in white or the ones in yellow and blue and red?
A: Neither, England play tomorrow. This is Poland in white and Ecuador in yellow.
Q: Are Brazil playing?
A: No, just Poland and Ecuador.
Q: What was the goalkeeper holding up then?
A: He’s the referee, sweetheart. It was a yellow card, which means somebody’s been naughty, like tripping someone up. If you get two yellow cards then you have to go off. Or if you’re really really really naughty he shows you the red card and you’ve got to go off straight away.
Q: Do we want Poland to win or the other ones?
A: We don’t mind really. But hey, who will we want to win tomorrow??
Q: Brazil?
A: No, England! [slightly peevishly - we must have been through this a million times now]
Q [about 10 minutes later]: Is there an orange card?
A: No, just red and yellow.
Q: So what happens if someone’s really really naughty?
A: They get the red card and they have to go off.
Q: I thought the red card was for really really really naughty?
A [after long thoughtful pause]: There’s just red and yellow, Hannah.
Q: Why does the goalkeeper wear those big gloves?
A: Because he’s the only one who’s allowed to touch the ball with his hands. [This rash assertion was successfully challenged during a subsequent throw-in.]
Q: So the rest can’t touch it with their hands?
A: No, otherwise they’ll get a yellow card. [Is it yellow or red? I'm past caring.]
Q: What if they touch it with their legs?
A: That’s fine, legs are OK. And heads, and chests. In fact they can touch it with any part of their body except their arms and hands.
Q: Any part?
A: Except their arms and hands.
[There is sniggering]
Q: Even their widgies?
A: No, I think that might hurt. Just watch.
Q: Daddy, what’s the off-side rule?
A: Oh look, girls, bed time!
OK, I made up the last one but I swear the rest are genuine. 2 matches down, only 62 to go…
Hannah and Lauren are in the grip of a new craze, especially useful for instant conflict resolution: the game of stone, paper, scissors. In this action shot, Hannah’s stone has just blunted Lauren’s scissors:
Lauren’s dead easy to beat because she always starts with scissors. On the other hand, Hannah hasn’t cottoned on to this yet so it still ends up being a pretty fair contest. This weekend they must have played at least a million rounds and they show no sign of tiring of it yet.
I got a text message last night from my brother Simon (pictured above). Simon is dad to 9-year-old Beti who has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog.
Beti just suggested I phone you, put on a silly voice and say “Hello, I’m phoning about that mustard you ordered.” She’s been giggling ever since.
It sounds like the makings of a classic practical joke to me! But it also has me thinking, rather dauntedly, about the future combined forces of Hannah and Lauren at that age. The signs are not good. Their 5-year-old arsenal of trickery already includes:
Once they gain Beti’s level of sophistication I suspect there will be no limit to their evil.
Breaking news: Hannah and Lauren both appear to have wobbly teeth!
There’s a distinct lack of rigidity to the lower front teeth of each twin. Further news here as it breaks.
In the meantime, the girls are well prepared for this momentous occasion. They have both acquired (either as gifts or via pocket money) small pink sparkly tooth containers which appear to be compliant with known EU tooth fairy regulations. They’ve also been dropping plenty of tips to make sure the tooth fairy doesn’t mistakenly use 1970s tooth pricing guidelines in the 21st century.
Lauren: Zosha’s lost TWO teeth! And she got two pounds from the tooth fairy!
Us: What, two pounds for each tooth? Or two pounds for both of them?
Lauren: (pensively) Actually, I think it was twenty pounds.
Hannah: Yeah, twenty pounds!
Us: Per tooth? (well what the hell…)
A conversation with one of the girls yesterday shortly after taking the attached photo with my cameraphone.
“I wish I had a phone like that.”
“You don’t need a phone, sweetheart, they’re only for grown-ups.”
“Where did you get it from?”
“From a shop.”
“Did they have another one exactly the same?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well when I’m a mummy can you take me to that shop and show me so I can buy that one?”
“What a terrific idea. Of course I can.”
It’s lovely to think I’ll still be needed. An extra bonus point to the first reader who can correctly identify the twin in question… 
We were leaving the house for school one day recently when Lauren suddenly piped up: “Daddy, if Zosha’s house was the other way round it would be the same old as Mummy.”
It took me a while to figure it out. Zosha is a school friend who lives on our road. I finally realised that her house number was Nicola’s current age in reverse. (For sake of argument, and chivalry, let’s say she lives at No 12.) Hannah and Lauren had just started to get the hang of big numbers and Lauren had just been struck by this little coincidence.
It’s a great insight into what occupies those busy little minds at idle moments – and a canny piece of reckoning to boot, I thought.
Hannah and Lauren are five today! Lauren informed us this morning that her nightie, which used to come all the way down to here, this morning only reaches to here. “But the nightie is still the same size… so I must have grown because I’m five!”
Hannah was able to confirm that the same phenomenon applies to her pyjamas. And you can’t get much more scientific than that.
Lauren came over to me this morning with her chest pushed forwards and some kind of lump in the top pocket of her school dress.
“Look, Daddy,” she said, “I’ve got a booby!” And then, after just the briefest of pauses, added: “It’s not really a booby, it’s a tissue!”
She had me worried for a moment there.
I have a vague recollection from early childhood of reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In fact, I specifically remember only one chapter: Chapter 2, where Tom is sent out to whitewash the fence. After a half-hearted and resentful start, the enterprising little oik realises that, if he appears to be enjoying himself, others will want to join in just to see what they’re missing. In the end, all the local kids are paying him for the privilege (payments including “a kitten with only one eye” and “a dog-collar – but no dog”) while Tom stands by, watches, learns, does a Masters in macroeconomics at LSE and becomes Conservative Minister for Trade and Industry.
By which point you’ll be wondering one of two things: (a) am I by any chance posting to the wrong blog? or (b) what, a real kitten? I can only address the first, and the answer is no. Read on…
I was put in mind of all this today after school as I was doing the washing-up. The girls were in the living room, watching CBeebies and eating raw carrots. Suddenly, Hannah appeared and asked: “Daddy, can I help you wash up?”
After the initial shock had worn off I replied yes, she could put the spoons away after I’d dried them. She stood there and thought for a moment.
“Can’t I dry the spoons, Daddy?” she asked.
And so off she went to fetch a tea-towel, and merrily set about drying all the teaspoons and putting them away in the drawer, before moving on to the other non-lethal cutlery. But where things got really Tom Sawyer (as experienced twin observers will already have guessed) was when Lauren wandered in.
“Aaaaaaaaaahhh,” said Lauren. (You know the one: that “aaaaaaaahhh” on a rising note that sounds a bit like a nuclear early warning klaxon and is synonymous with “that’s not fair!”) “Why can’t I help, Daddy?”
“You can!” I said. “Just get a tea-towel from the drawer. You can do all the plastic tubs and lids.”
And so she did. By the time I’d finished washing, all that was left for me to dry were the plates, bowls, cups, mugs, glasses, sharp knives, pointy things and chopping boards. So not that much labour saved this time round, but the point is: they’ve taken the first step. All of a sudden I had a wonderful premonition of me and Nicola, retired, our hard working days behind us, round at one of the girls’ houses and being well looked after. The only thing that slightly marred the image was the one-eyed kitten sitting on my knee. But that’s a price worth paying as far as I’m concerned.
The girls are currently going through a lengthy process of choosing their future husbands. I applaud their forward-thinking attitude on this one: marriage is a big step and not one to be entered into lightly.
A few weeks ago, Lauren announced that she was going to marry Daniel Lally because he’s “a lovely chap”. The next morning the two were inseparable in the playground before school, and over the following days Lauren took a number of love tokens into school for Daniel, in the form of drawings of them getting married and such like.
Within a few days, Hannah threw her hat into the ring and announced her intention to marry Daniel Lally. Happily it turned out that that was OK because Lauren had now set her sights on George Wadsworth. Daniel doesn’t seem to get much say in this, but then I don’t think he can tell them apart anyway, so he seems happy either way.
Since then, the girls have been round to their friend Emily’s to play, on which occasion Lauren was spotted creeping into Emily’s big brother Chris’s room and kissing him. The following day it was announced over breakfast that Hannah (yes, Hannah) is now going to marry Chris and Lauren is back to Plan A: marrying Daniel.
Understandably, we’re having a lot of trouble keeping up with all this. However, the subconscious mind is a great window into the heart’s desires, and on two occasions now we’ve gone to tuck the girls in late at night, to be informed by a sleeping Lauren that she’s “dreaming about Daniel Lally”.
Whoever said the course of true love ran smooth?