The Four Little Seymours have just had a splendid weekend.
They attended a posh wedding, got to dress up smart, and stay in a hotel.
The hotel was a Victorian manor house, complete with suits of armour, wood panelling, four poster beds and servants.
I think it would be fair to say that it’s rather different to our home in its current state.
Before we left the Funny Little Bungalow in a mad rush on Saturday, I must admit to being rather pedantic about the washing up being done and wet towels being picked up. Simple things, I know, but in a house like ours, such things can make all the difference to whether I lose the plot or not.
Knowing that I was going to be spending a night away in a pleasant, plush gaff made me all the more determined not to come back to something resembling the abode of a compulsive hoarder.
Our house is “busy”, to say the least. The Four Little Seymours have stuff. Boy Seymour hides treasures behind the curtain next to his bed. Currently, in his little magpie nest, he’s stashing four broken clays (of the shooting variety), some crumpled Topps Star Wars cards, his sister’s key ring and two pound coins. The selection varies every week or so, and whenever I lose my keys, I check there first.
Little Seymour Number Two has a veritable lair in her top bunk, where I have found glass ornaments, sweets left over from her birthday in March, books galore and Happy Meal debris. Thankfully, the fries et al are long gone. But the box, the straws and the flippin’ toys are up there. That can’t be a comfy collection to lie on.
Little Seymour Number One is amassing a large selection of cast-off make-up, and woe betide me if I dare to even contemplate getting rid of any of it. And as for the Mini One, she just gets everyone else’s stuff out. All of it. At once, and drags it, singing, on a blanket round the house for me to gather at my leisure.
We have books, games, dolls, pencils, DVDs, clothes, shoes, fairies, knights, ponies and puppies only a child’s grasp away from being unleashed onto the carpet at any given moment. And once grasped, the bombsite look is complete.
I often gaze at the Ikea catalogue in awe and wonder. Their kids’ rooms have stuff in them. And it’s often out on the floor. And it works.
I guess the backdrop of a musty, patterned old rug and mis-matched furniture will always provide more of a design challenge than Ikea’s light and bright theme.
So the point I am trying to make is that I had tidied. In much the same way as I try to do before we go on holiday, I had put stuff away. Just to minimise those inevitable and depressing feelings that result from comparing your age-worn, semi-derelict hovel with a luxury hotel.
In the end, coming home after the wedding wasn’t so bad. We had a fantastic time. Big Seymour pulled off his Best Man’s speech, the Four Little Seymours had eaten their combined body weight each in confectionery – a free-for-all candy bar seems to be a wedding trend these days. When they weren’t stuffing sweets in their mouth (and into little blue and white striped paper bags for later) they could be found in varying combinations in the pop-up photo booth. I have endless Polaroids of Boy Seymour in a blue wig with Mini Seymour wacking him with an inflatable green trombone, and Little Seymours Numbers One and Two with glasses and moustaches on, holding up banners saying “I only came for the beer” and “I’m sexy and I know it”.
Oh, how they loved that photo booth.
But the Funny Little Bungalow certainly has its merits. There’s nowhere quite so relaxing as your own home – even if it is rather untidy and surrounded by a big trench with only a plank for access.
The Little Seymours were also happy to be back. They had minds full of memories, and pockets full of wedding bubbles, confetti plus tiny bottles of hotel shower gel. Their secret stashes were re-stocked with striped blue and white bags of sweets, and Polaroids lay everywhere to remind them of the fun they had.
In the future, I don’t suppose we shall have wood panelling. We won’t have suits of armour, or servants. Nor a four-poster bed. But even now, we do have one thing the manor house didn’t, because thanks to Saturday’s heavy rainfall, we’re the ones with a moat.
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