So The Pox is back. This time, Boy Seymour is afflicted – but I am hoping it will be short-lived, mild and uneventful. So far, he’s bearing up.
I guess it’s no surprise. With the Four Little Seymours sleeping on what is essentially an oven tray in this heat, germs, bugs and poxes are going to germinate nicely and do their microbial worst.
It was only yesterday really that Boy Seymour started to feel unwell. On Saturday, he was quite fine, because in the twenty minutes I spent helping Big Seymour to baton the last side of the house, Boy got to work on a project that he had “seen in the DVD player in his head.” (His words).
As I clung to the scaffolding, trying to draw accurate pencil lines according to the spirit level (such a marvellous invention!), I could see The Shed. Little Seymour Number One was mucking out The World’s Most Spoilt Guinea Pigs. Number Two – the least trouble of them all (mostly), was out of view – but probably colouring, bless her. Mini Seymour was watching ants on the lawn. Or so I thought. And Boy was mooching about.
Mini Seymour was not watching ants – oh no. She was, in actual fact, digging great scars in my lawn with a kebab skewer for no good reason. When asked why, she pointed out that there was a hole there already.
I was speechless. Not least because the kebab skewer had found its way into her possession – it’s the prop for the guinea pig ramp, for goodness’ sake! Not a trowel.
I reprimanded myself for not noticing this detail whilst watching Mini from the scaffold, then did my best to move forward, trying not to glance at the injured lawn and the little piles of dried mud unearthed beside them.
But back to Boy.
Later, when Big Seymour was down off the roof, the small chap obviously wanted to share his recent and shady accomplishments with his father, and so he went and found something he’d made earlier. In the time it took for Big Seymour and I to hammer a couple of batons in, that child had sourced a conifer stalk, some blue rope, a roll of electrical tape and an antique butter knife. He’d strapped them all together and made himself – prepare yourself – a bayonet.
For the second time that morning, I was without words. I took the “thing”, surveyed it, and could only make soundless shapes with my mouth. I looked at Big Seymour, who had passed this whole business on to me to deal with, and watched him walk away. What do you do with a child who’s had no previous interest in weapon construction, but has just casually fashioned himself his very own (rather impressive, I might add) tool of bodily destruction?
Needless to say, the bayonet was confiscated, but only after I had raised it aloft (like She-Ra) and implored Boy to answer me the question; why did he make such a thing? His answer? To deal with intruders, of course.
Not his sisters, he assures me.
I guess what this business proves is that I am still of very little help to Big Seymour. All the while I have clever (and slightly dastardly) Little Seymours busying themselves about the place, I need to be suspicious. Unless they’re watching The Next Step, which, for some reason, holds every one of them in a trance from beginning to end. Maybe it’s something about the intricate (yet subtle) teenage love triangles and complex moral dilemmas that intrigues them all enough to keep them in one place (together and not arguing) for twenty-nine minutes. Personally, I can’t see the appeal. My televisual tastes are not the same as my children’s. Rightly so. I’d be worried if they liked watching Cap’n’ Ross glowering in his shirtsleeves, or King Louis clicking his glorious heels. Or, better yet – Phillipe D’Orleans getting it on with his chevalier.
But I do wonder what Boy Seymour is watching in the DVD player in his head, that is giving rise to such creative, yet deadly concoctions. I think he and I need to have that conversation.
I shall report back in due course.
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