Four Little Seymours live on a building site.
Sometimes, it might surprise you to read that I forget this fact. We muddle along accepting shed life as the norm, and overall, life is good.
But maybe this existence is taking its toll…
I must admit that this week, I have been contemplating the merits of evacuating my offspring to a remote Devon village (Hatherleigh or Monkokehampton, perhaps?). The Four Little Seymours can board a train dressed in shorts and caps, and then learn how to milk cows, drive tractors and be at a safe distance from the destruction that is going on here. Surely, they’d be better off..?
Take, for example, the sleeping arrangements. I really must start to accept that Little Seymour Number One is not actually little any more, because how many other tall twelve year-olds would willingly share a small shelf with her three younger siblings? She certainly has moments when she doesn’t enjoy it. Twice now, she has declared murderous intentions to her brother. But by and large, six weeks in, they’re rubbing along alright. Sadly, I have given up trying to send them all to bed at the same time in order to “get an evening”. There are way too many of them for that. But if you stick Number One in a corner with something from Cadbury’s, she’s usually no trouble, leaving the others to fight over book lamps and Beanie Boos until they drop off. (To sleep, that is – not The Shelf).
Then there’s the lack of a cooker. I must update you with the excellent news that we now have a camping stove set up out the back of The Shed. I can make curry! But when it comes to using an oven, there’s still the two hundred foot trek up the garden to the dusty old remains of the Funny Little Bungalow before anything can be roasted. I’ve never enjoyed cooking, but the situation we are currently in is a bit ridiculous. It’s clever of Big Seymour, really. It means that I am itching to create foodstuff, given the right equipment, so that one day, he may have the kind of wife that’s eluded him so far; a buxom feeder.
We do have a means to wash in The Shed, but still, Number Two’s feet have taken on a noxious cloud all of their own, and I was mortified last week when she had them measured in Clarks. Maybe it was no coincidence that the newfangled iPad-esque foot measurer device failed to work after she’d been on it…
Mini Seymour, being mini, fits in just fine. Due to everything being accessible, though, I have found her making potions with my Clinique eye make up remover and my special, super-dooper, anti-ageing, flower-based, rarer-than-gold facial oil that I got cheap in Boots. I wondered why everything smelt beautiful, until I spied the empty bottle.
As for my dear Boy Seymour, I can only think he is growing so fast that he forgets how to behave sometimes. I know I’m in trouble if he’s laughing maniacally and swinging something around. This is usually then accompanied by him pursuing his sisters, intent solely on getting their goat, until I have to physically stop him and banish him to The Shelf to reflect. It’s not ideal.
On Tuesday, Little Seymour had a dentist’s appointment after school. After that, I planned to head to Tesco, to return a pair of trainers that Boy Seymour had not been good enough to qualify for.
Said trainers were safely locked in The Shiny Van to stop him from spoiling them before I returned them, and so, I went to collect the trainers before leaving to get the Four Little Seymours from school in Minty, the Polo.
There were no trainers.
I knew he’d got at them. There was no other explanation. But when? How had he managed to find the Shiny Van keys (I never can) and sneak past me, into the vehicle, out with his quarry and remember to lock the door behind him, too? He’s clever. It’s a worrying development.
I remembered to seek the logical solution, and headed down to his tree house, the “splinter camp”, where he keeps his kettle and plastic work bench. A brief look around was all it took to spot the stolen footwear, half tucked behind a small oak tree, and still in their protective casing.
The trainers were duly returned to the Tescolorum Emporium.
However, ever the skinflint, I had spied some better value trainers in Clarks, and he is now on Best Behaviour Watch until he qualifies for those. The start of Best Behaviour Watch was postponed, however, after an incident on Wednesday, which, to cut a disgusting story tastefully short, resulted in Boy Seymour using hot soapy water to clean human s*!t off his sister’s PE trainers, whilst Mummy was putting off finding the shovel by despairing physically in the middle of the garden that her darling boy has turned into a feral, pilfering, trainer-obsessed git and it is all her fault for making him live in a shed with four women.
Hey ho! Life is never dull! Best Behaviour Watch is going rather well, actually. Boy hasn’t turned puce with rage for at least thirty six hours. He’s offering to help, using his manners, and hasn’t been caught short in the garden wearing any of his sisters’ shoes since, either. For which I am very grateful.
As for evacuation? Devon does beckon, and half term is looming. But, despite their quirks, the Four Little Seymours are mine, and I love them. So they won’t be packed off alone. If they go, I go.
I wonder if Big Seymour will mind fending for himself in The Shed without an oven for a few days…
I guess we’ll see.
(Oh bugger, I forgot to give them caps)
0 Comments