Nothing is ever straightforward in Seymourland.
Of course, there’s the ongoing saga of the homelessness. And the persistent issues surrounding THOSE EVIL DEVICES!
That battle rages on, and is actually turning into more of a war with myself. I wonder continuously if I am over-thinking the whole twunting business. Perhaps with my nagging I am ruining my relationship with my (stroppy but nonetheless normal) darling son. If I leave him to SELF-REGULATE, maybe it will all just work out ok. After all, most of the other kids are doing it. And so far, it seems to be causing him minimal harm…
BUT! Then there’s the little voice in my head that says he is incapable of any self control, and it is my duty to take charge. And his duty to do as he is bloody well told.
The battles go on.
Last week, we enjoyed half term. Well, I say enjoyed, because we did enjoy it… but it was not without its challenges.Indeed it was described as a shit show by Number One before Tuesday was even out. If you can bear it, I shall regale you with the events of our week forthwith:
We departed our fabulous holiday cottage on Sunday, as legitimate guests (as opposed to housing market refugees like us) were arriving. Once again, I was totally baffled by the amount of stuff we seem to accumulate. The quick tidy-up I had hoped to deal with progressed into the afternoon, and even then, Big Seymour still had a shower to fix. A shower which, funnily enough, decided to give up the ghost during our stay, and nobody else’s. Typical!
Finally, leaving Big Seymour behind to impose on his parents alone, the kids and I set off for our first place of refuge on our itinerary; Banstead.
Why Banstead? You may ask, and the answer is simple: we have some very good friends there! Professor Finklebuhm and his wife made us very welcome. We learned all about sweet chestnut trees, squirrels and Brad Over The Road. The Four Little Seymours were overjoyed to be in the company of the Finkelbuhm grandchildren, and I was with two of my besties, sharing a dorm’ like old times, with the modern addition of a Mini Seymour snoozing deeply on the floor whilst we giggled and guffawed about nonsense late into the night. (Well, it felt late, but was probably only ten thirty.)
The fly in the ointment was, dare I say it, my darling Boy Seymour who seemed to inhabit one of his more challenging personas just at the point when I needed him to be on his best behaviour. We were visiting our friends, and I had asked him to be good. It seems to me that the pressure of such a task was too much for him, and his twitchy synapses would not let up. He could not stand still, he insisted on lobbing sweet chestnuts, and the only thing that calmed him down was – yes, you guessed it – his bloody phone. Oh, and card games. So we played a lot of those.
Over the course of two days, Boy managed to: impress us all with his nut poker skills, fall off his scooter badly twice, piss everyone off and charm them in equal measure. He behaved in Pizza Express (just!), had a full-on fight, carved pumpkins, convinced me to let him buy a collectable model of a BMW that doesn’t work properly and ran away and got lost in Banstead Woods. Upon leaving the Finklebuhms’s, I had an over-ridingly optimistic- if ridiculous – feeling of achievement at the fact that we had neither lost the chap nor felt the need to strangle him.
On Tuesday, the next adventure began.
Leaving Banstead late in the afternoon saw us heading to collect Number One from University as she didn’t want to miss out on all the half term fun. We collected her, and then dashed to Asda, for we were not sure of the eating arrangements going forward and needed a loaf of bread and some butter.
Seventy quid later and we were on our way once more, but with time to spare, so we swung past the cousins’ house to gawp at it, and then on through a suburb of Brighton that we once knew well. For me, it was a trip down Memory Lane. For the Four Little Seymours, it was a boring, pointless and annoying detour.
Next stop: back up to Grandma E’s, for Number One to say hello and to collect something or other that was vitally important, but which I can’t now recall. (Gloves, I think….) And then, on the way to collect our friend from round the corner (for she had the key to our Next Destination) we had to pull over. Big Seymour telephoned in a stress to say that he had been sat for AGES outside said Next Destination, waiting for us. I could not fathom why he had taken it upon himself to head that way when it was a big time-wasting risk, then remembered the message I had sent him earlier, to see if he’d be in Brighton later… My meaning? To collect Number One, if he was passing, and thereby save me a trip. His understanding? Come down to see us for a social. We remonstrated loudly with each other over the phone until we realised it was fruitless, prompting Number One to use the aforementioned Sh!t Show as a metaphor for her half-term family reunion.
Of course, it is always nice to see Big Seymour, but what with traipsing around the home counties with half of my worldly belongings and most of my children all week, my mental capacity did not stretch to worrying about his whereabouts too, and clearly, we crossed our wires. Still, he only had to wait a bit longer (in peace and quiet on a Hove driveway with oodles of mobile data) before he could indeed join us for that social.
Anyway… I scooped up my friend and off we set – to Hove and a couple of nights in the company of her and some more besties who were joining us from The West. Bliss!
Wednesday started well with a blustery walk along the seafront, and then we dropped Number One back to university after her flying visit to catch up with us all. It was then that we were presented with a problem. Our friends were visiting family locally, and so it was up to me to pick an activity that was fitting for the Three Little Seymours I had with me. We mooted Jump In (“The South’s Largest Inflatable Theme Park”). I considered Drusillas (but then remembered it costs a limb or three), and even thought about going swimming, but in the end, I opted for a good old bus ride into the city of Brighton. From our base in Hove, it should have been easy enough…
Famous last words. We found a bus. I made sense of the timetable and we got on. Boy Seymour brought along his assistance scooter (ok, his normal scooter, but it stops him moaning about walking), and we sat at the back, up top and rode into Brighton, admiring the view and marvelling at all the hustle and bustle out there in the city. It was fun, it was different! We could do this.
But then Boy decided to start whacking dust out of the bus seats and trying to aisle surf. Then, when we alighted at Churchill Square, he expressed surprise and disgust that we wanted to go into shops (!), and started googling the nearest skate park. Now, as much as I wanted to be without the quick-onset, constant verbal berating that he was doing very publicly, I could not send him off across The City of Brighton alone, to some far-flung half pipe, and so he had to do Primark.
Oh! The fuss he made. He stopped whinging only when he saw something he might like to buy (with my money, not his) and kept scooting into people. It was not fun. Number Two only wanted a quiet shopping spree but couldn’t find anything she liked, and with Mini Seymour developing an independent streak and wanting to shop alone, I felt like I was losing control. We exited Primark, crossed the road with gritted teeth and pushed on through. We found The Apple Store, which I knew Boy would have loved, but he was sulking on a bench outside the mall. We found Victoria’s Secret, and Mini Seymour was agog – she had literally just introduced me to the song of the same name and in my admiration for the clever lyrics, we thought we should pop in. But at the sight of a mannequin sporting what can only be described as pants with reins(?) we sniggered and left. I mean! (The sulking Boy would have had a field day!)
My mercurial man cheered up just enough to bag himself a rotten pineapple for 50p from a street stall (my money, not his) before we jumped on a bus back to Hove, where we alighted a stop too early, I lost my sh!t with him outside an estate agents’, and then it was time to break for lunch.
What better way to relax after a nice meal of re-heated pasta and cheese than a bit of property porn! And I allowed myself time to dream about buying an enormous Victorian defensible barracks, currently for sale and cheap as chips, down in Wales. I love it! Rightmove will keep sending me this stuff… they must know I’m tempted.
Once our friends returned that afternoon, we were rested and recalibrated, and up for the next mission, which involved returning to the city shops. We had a day’s bus pass to squeeze some more value out of, and everything looks different in the dark. It would be a totally different adventure! But this time, Boy would not be bringing his scooter; he would try to be sociable. He wasn’t keen on the idea, and he enjoyed spouting this and all the other reasons why he is dissatisfied with life into the patient ears of my friends (his almost-aunties) all the way there.
Brighton at night did not disappoint – shops were open, there were interesting people to look at and bus shelters to do scooterless stunts in (yep – that’d be Boy). The pier was great fun – Mini won treasure! And the only odd thing was that we could find literally nowhere to eat out after 8pm. In a flippin’massive city, that was a surprise. But because of this astonishing lack of eateries willing to feed us, we offered the (poor, starving) children a takeaway of their choice. Yes, somebody said “Just Eat” and there we were, deliveroo virgins, trying to work out how this newfangled system of magicking food to your door really works. Suffice to say, it wasn’t easy, and it invloved a car journey before all of us were sated.
On Thursday, we returned to the shire and to a night with Grandma E, and thence back to the holiday cottage for the forseeable.
We still have no moving date. We are still at the mercy of friends. But if this whole experience has proved one thing, it is that we do indeed have friends; friends and family who are willing to put us up, feed us, entertain our whim to make ourselves homeless and not only tolerate but embrace a tricky young boy, his sisters and his eccentric parents.
This aint no sh!t show! It’s bloody great. 
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