It is the Last week of the summer holidays.
I am gutted and excited all at the same time.
Gutted, because the summer is over, another academic year is about to start, with all its hecticity (I made that one up) and glorious mayhem.
Excited, because, as ever, I have returned from my favourite place, where my brain is rejuvenated and rebooted, and am ready to be all creative and actually achieve something this year. Currently, though, I don’t know what day of the week it is. My mind is still bobbing about in the clear green waters of the Devon Coast, and my head is lost off the tip of Start Point, conjuring up stories of shipwrecks, pirates, sea rescues and lost villages.
The Four Little Seymours have had a blast, as ever. Coasteering, swimming, surfing, fishing, walking, playing, splashing. Their beach holiday was the perfect mix of roughing it and excitement. They’ve bonded with their buddies, and like me, are totally gutted that it’s all over.
Yet here we are. And as it is the last week of the summer holidays, I should be sitting in a cosy chair, reading books with my darlings. We should singing nursery rhymes with grins on our faces, celebrating the return to school, and enthusiastically calling out times tables by rote. We should have written diaries of our holiday – what better way to cherish memories whilst at the same time, boosting those phonics skills? That was the plan.
Instead, I am afraid, the little buggers are going feral whilst I deal with my Kilimanjaro of sandy pants, crusty t-shirts and musty sleeping bags.
The Funny Little Bungalow looked lovely on our return. All tidy and spacious. But as soon as we came through the door, and our stuff started coming in too, chaos ensued. How was I ever going to get everything back in its place? So much stuff! Where to begin?
This is the downside of a holiday like ours. The packing. The unpacking. It is a phenomenon. 6 people. Two weeks. Living in a caravan… a whole load of shit.
The Four Little Seymours do help – a bit. If I nag them enough, they might fetch a few things in from the car, or carry their laundry upstairs. They might peg out some washing, or feed the guinea pigs, but “only if I pay them 35p”. (Why 35p? I don’t know.)
But in general, their default mode is to turn a bloody screen on and watch clever idiots make millions re-painting squishies on YouTube, or indulge in a binge-watch of Futurama, with its decidedly iffy storylines and animated nudity.
I don’t abide too much TV. But if The Little Seymours are not held in one place, gawping with gaping mouths as the squeaky American lady with false glittery nails squishes a phallic-shaped carrot that she has just re-vamped, they are instead, meandering around.
When the Little Seymours meander, things happen. Stuff gets busted. Mess gets made. Walls lose paint. Inevitably, somebody gets thumped. Then there are screams. Ooh, I can’t stand those screams. Those whiny, non-emergency yet mummy-alerting, sibling grassing-up screams.
So, meandering means they’re messy and I’m stressy.
Yesterday, in the bathroom, for example, I discovered three new screws, neatly coated in toothpaste.
?
Last night, at about nine pm, Mini Seymour set up a dress shop in my kitchen, brought down THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF HER WARDROBE, and promptly went around shoving random stuff into carrier bags.
In Boy Seymour’s freshly painted bedroom, he now has piled everything on the floor, and consequently, as a result of this disturbance, his Jaws picture has fallen off the wall, taking the paint with it.
My over-worked laundry baskets have been hijacked as go-carts, and are being ridden all over my new floors. The scrapy scratchy sounds set my teeth on edge. But when the buggers took to riding them on the upstairs landing, I had to draw the line. Instead of spindles, we have sheet glass. No. I cannot handle an accident involving sheet glass. No no no.
This morning, the buggers have painted pictures. There is paint everywhere, and my acrylics, bought enthusiastically so that I could be all creative a few months back, are ruined. But I now possess three lovely canvases, one of which is of a spider crab, and is really very wall-worthy.
And they have just made cookies. I dare not go into the kitchen for fear it is an absolute wreck. Whilst the cookies are in the oven, the buggers – not wanting to waste a moment of their precious time chilling – are squealing like stuck pigs, and using the living room as a gym hall.
I cannot complain. They are (currently) not arguing. But I do fear for my glass doors.
Little Seymour Number One has been out all week. She is currently working on a drama showcase, to be performed at the weekend in school. She’s working hard! But I must admit, I will be glad when we don’t have the High School Musical soundtrack accompanying the squealing Little Seymours every evening. There is only so much Troy and Gabriella I can actually take before I shove their proverbial basketballs up their proverbial arses.
To complicate matters further, twenty four hours after we returned home from our holiday, our caravan was up for sale. We decided we’d get a smaller one – have a change. A chap wanted to view it – so we spent a frantic two hours emptying, cleaning and fixing, only for him not to show up. He can’t have forgotten – it was all so last minute.
Hey ho. Maybe we will keep the dear old thing. Better the Devil you know. It just means that I have some serious re-arranging to do on our driveway so that we can store it without it being a complete and utter eyesore, because now Big Seymour has started the patio’s dwarf wall, it ain’t never getting down the garden again.
Life is never boring!
UPDATE: the toothpasty screws were Boy Seymour’s tools with which to unblock the toothpaste tube. But why he needed to use three, I do not know.
He’s a prunt*. (I made that one up, too.)
*(PRUNT = prat x twunt. Not rude, really, but very satisfying to say out loud.)
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