Routines are useful things. They may be a bit boring, but life is generally easier to manage with some kind of pattern.
I find this to be especially true when the very house you live in is constantly on the change, and you never quite know where the front door is from one week to the next.
Ok, I exaggerate. I know where my front door is. It’s behind a three and a half foot block wall, inaccessible but to the very agile. So the door we are using as our “front” door is round the back, and has not moved since it was put there in 1961. But every few days, the access to this shifts slightly, in the style of an Escher painting, and I start to feel a bit dizzy.
It doesn’t help that it’s half term. Don’t misunderstand me – I love half term. There’s nothing more welcome than a week of drifting from one spontaneous event to another, with no real time pressure and no expectations. It’s a welcome change.
But during half term, and in the absence of the normal rules, life with the Four Little Seymours can go slightly awry.
I shall use getting out of the door as an example.
Ordinarily, we must be at a certain place by a certain time. We have our alarms and our triggers, and there is a level of stress that only serves to chivvy the Little Seymours along nicely, and to get us where we need to be.
There is precious little extra time for Boy Seymour to even contemplate climbing the sand mound, or piercing a new bag of cement with a piece of copper pipe.
During half term, there is plenty of time.
On a school morning, the Little Seymours know that we turn right out of the door, and head – more or less, to the car. There has been the odd occasion when I have discovered, in the process of getting them all out of the door, that one of them has seen fit to go all the way down to the bottom of the garden and have a chin wag with Smokey The Chicken, but as a rule, I’m wise to this now. I herd them closely.
During half term, however, my surveillance standards seem to lapse.
On Monday, Little Seymour Number Two had a hearing test. We had to be there by mid afternoon, which should have been easy enough.
I kept glancing at the kitchen clock, pleased to see that I had plenty of time, and could carry on pottering away.
But it seems that, rather like on the Titanic when the ship went down, the kitchen made its clock stop in protest when the insult of its very floor being violated became too much to bear. So, when I finally realised that the clock had been telling me it was ten o’clock for the past two hours, the Four Little Seymours had to snap out of half term mode pretty sharpish.
And that’s when I remembered how difficult it is to get out of the door.
Every time we venture outside, it’s like whole new magical world to a small child. The Little Seymours are re-born to their surroundings each day. There’s a fresh mound to clamber over, a new mallet to wield, or a glistening patch of wet concrete to push one’s extremities into, after Big Seymour has worked into the previous evening and got things done long after bed time.
I can see the appeal. It reminds me of the Magic Faraway Tree; which land will we find ourselves in today? Will it be Massive Pile of Wood Land, where Mini Seymour can clamber up a wobbly structure made out of Big Seymour’s old pallets, until she can see over the fence to chat to the chow next door?
Or might it be The Land of the Tarmac Chipping Hills, where all of the Little Seymours – even the biggest one, will be unable to resist a mini mountaineering mission that will leave them covered in tar and with bloodied knees..?
This is all very well. But on Monday, after I had bellowed “WE ARE LEAVING” for the umpteenth time, and we had managed to emerge into the misty, grey October weather, the excitement caused by the new position of the piratical access planks proved too much. That, combined with a wheelbarrow left in Boy Seymour’s direct line of vision had me wailing in desperation at them all, as each and every one of them had their own agenda that didn’t involve going straight to the car, like I needed them to.
Living on a building site certainly has its disadvantages – especially as the winter approaches. Holes in the floor can result in draughts. A Trench outside the door generates mud. No insulation in the roof leaves a nip in the air. Mounds of sand leave grains in every crevice.
But so far, the Four Little Seymours don’t seem to be complaining. All they see are opportunities; Mini Seymour asked if she could wee in the hole in the kitchen floor. To her, it’s a second toilet. (I said no).
The trench has been both a pottery and a bakery, and we have some very fine hand-thrown mud loaves air drying in the autumn sun.
A massive pile of sand is a nuisance to me, but to the Little Seymours, it’s an unseasonal excuse to dig the toboggan out.
And as for a lack of insulation – it’s still all I can do to get them to put socks on their feet, so rarely do they feel the cold.
I think, though, that there are far more advantages than disadvantages, and if I can manage to see things through the Little Seymours’ eyes, the whole project might seem a bit less daunting.
At least until the dreaded (and much-mentioned) day when the roof comes off.
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