I hiate. I flit, I flee. I vacate to Stornoway (Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Go United!)

For some 3 weeks I will be back in the land that birthed me. I will attend the wedding of an old friend; I will be Godmother to the child of another old friend, I will drink heartily and merrily with many old friends. I will be daughter, grand-daughter, niece and old chum. And mother, now, too. I can’t wait.

Dave will be with us for a week or so but he gets claustrophobic on an island and will probably go travelling in Europe for the remainder. It goes to show what the landscapes of our up-bringing will do to us. When I was in the Midwest, where Dave grew up, I could never yet feel quite settled. I couldn’t ever locate myself on any internal map because there were no coasts, no identifying rivers or natural borders to define where I was in my head. I liked Minnesota but couldn’t feel anything other than itchy there.

Too much identifying coastline, however, too little vast, scriptless expanse is what does for Dave. The very idea of being on an island that he has to wait ’til Monday (no Sunday sailings) to get off, drives him insane. It might be different, now we have broadband.

If time allows, I will most certainly be keeping up with you all from Stornoway. It might be some time before I post again, though. So, still not dead, and not planning a death of any sort for the next 3 weeks. I’ll just be on my holidays.

Toodle-pip!

So, I know this Horse-Whisperer – well he’s really more of a shouter, as he works at a home for retired sea-side donkeys and many of them are hard of hearing.

So, I know this Donkey-Shouter and, when I asked, he told me something of the “fiendish giggling” I’d read about over at Latigo Flint’s* excellent site. I was unaware that this was even a part of horse behaviour. How wrong I was.

Latigo* says that the Western horses of yore displayed this “fiendish giggling” whenever their masters met with misfortune, on account of all the spurrings, lashings and “Yeehah!”s they suffered when being urged down perilous canyons etc.

This particular sort of fiendish giggle is a fiendish giggle common to all put-upon equines. It resonates somewhere between an unpleasant snicker and a whinny – a “sninny”, if you will. But, if something really, tremendously dire-and-tragic-AND-awful happens to their fun-fair masters (a saddle sore going septic or the fatal rupture of a candy-floss’n'inertia-born pile, perhaps) some of the more abused (formerly abused, that is- Donald’s very gentle) and bitter donkeys will go so far as to “whicker”, darkly.

And who can blame them? Really? Perpetual beast of burden, the donkey, with a long and storied, but underappreciated history:

- There was a bit part in the Christmas Story, of course, and a Christmas carol spin off but little in the way of steady work since then.

- Jobbing donkeys have been cheap, reliable amusement for centuries’ worth of toddlers, whether at fairs or on the beaches of Britain.

- They were the inventors of their eponymous jacket, taking leading roles in all parts of the design and manufacturing process – even travelling to China to view working conditions in the garment factories.

- And how would anybody have ever climbed a mountain or discovered a lost world without the donkey?

But what thanks do they get for all this sterling service to ourselves? What recognition is there in popular culture of this steadfast loyalty to man?

Eeyore, that’s what.

“Man’s best friend ” (“Pah – suck-ups! Brown-nosers!” – The Donkeys) gets leading roles such as Lassie and Old Yeller and Benjy, and the “noble”, “magnificent” (Pfft! The Donkeys) horse gets Black Beauty and Seabiscuit. (“Rubbish! Sentimental clap-trap! Where were horses when Jesus was born eh? Too good to carry Mary and her precious load, eh? EH? – The Donkeys Again).

In film history, typecast as stubborn burros or easily dispatched beasts of burden in films of varying quality, donkeys have had only a narrow and stony path to plod in both Hollywood and in Life, which is like Hollywood but with poorer lighting.

But most (in)famously, donkeys are introduced to the fresh young minds of generations of cinema-going humans as Eeyore, the gloomy, mumbling friend of Pooh who can’t even get it together to fix his wee shed. Their’s is a past and future filled only with character actor roles. Donkeys are doomed to be forever Falstaffs; always the bridesmaids never the brides. They’re the equine thespian equivalant of the nannies and the butlers. They are the Pete Postlethwaites of the animal acting world: enormously talented and respected but “not quite the look we’re after for our leading role in ‘One Helluva Handsome Bloke’“. When will they get their Philip Seymour Hoffman moment? When will it be their turn to shine?

“Yes. When?” (- The Donkeys)

* Here is Latigo: http://anewwordforfast.blogspot.com/ His blog is thoroughly recommended reading. Great fun. The horse post is here: http://anewwordforfast.blogspot.com/2006/05/true-western-truth-143.html#comments

On Saturday, I’m having a birthday party for the girls. Dave’s away and I’ll be on my own so I’m hoping a parent or two will stick around as I elevate the blood sugar of their children to dangerous levels.

I attempted to draw a donkey for Pin The Tail On The Donkey tonight but it’s clear to me that this won’t be a success. I fear that “Come on boys and girls, lets play Pin The Tail On The Bactrian Camel!” will be met with blank stares and that I will cause K&J to be ashamed of their own mother at 4. It will be a personal blow for me too, because I was hoping to hold off the parental shame ’til 6.

I hired a small bouncy castle for surprisingly little money (and in direct party plagiarism of another child’s party we were at recently) so I reckon if I feed up the kids, set them loose on that to shake up their little sugar-laden tummies, and then send then home to their families to vomit, it will be a birthday party well thrown. It’s only a two-hour deal so there probably won’t be too much time for other stuff anyway. In fact, that there is the fact that has broken my poor humpless bactrian camel’s back – he/she is for the bin.

Cheap, bouncy thrills, that’s what today’s preschoolers want, anyway isn’t it? Not the time-honoured party games of yore. If I close my eyes I can smell the peat and potato sacks we used top do our sack-races in. But commercialism is a powerful combatant for a parent, especially once kids go to school. They want Dora The Explorer this and My Little Pony that. The preschool set these days want French lessons and ballet, skiing at Klosters and summers in the Hamptons. They do!

Me, I ‘ad a stick when I was wee. And I was damned happy to have it too. Envy of everyone I was. “Coo, look at her stick!” my friends would say in awe and, if they were lucky, I let them play with it too (we shared our mud ‘cos times was ‘ard and we assumed Cockney accents too, for the same reason).

And I remember when all this (sweeping gesture past the fermenting kiwi fruit in our fruit bowl and onwards to the kitchen sink) was fields and, actually, in Lewis, it still is – lumpy, boggy ones which will break the legs of any lamb foolish enough to attempt a gambol in one but that almost never happens because they are too depressed about the weather. All Lewis sheep suffer from SAD or “Seasonal Affective Disorder” but studies show that treatment with melatonin really helps them get back on their hooves.

Yep, all fields it was, as far as the eye can see because the Hebridean idea of urban sprawl is what happens on the pavement outside the pub when the barman has called time. Sensible town planning and hard drinking – that’s progress Western Isles style. Our town fathers left a small footprint on the environment but a deep headprint on the pavement.

Tomorrow, May 1st, the girls turn 4 and Dave becomes 64 (“Will you still need/feed me? do-be-do”).

How did that happen? 4? Already? I know that it can be explained by the inexorable passage of time, the maturation and multiplication of cells and by the mortal fact(or), but I don’t believe any of it. The forces of nature are having me on, surely. I mean, come on! Only yesterday the girls were 2, and it was just this morning that we were eating cake “decorated” with a farce of a “3!” (I can bake OK but wield an icing-bag like I’m blindfolded, unopposably thumbed and have an inner-ear infection which affects my knowing if I’m the right way up or not. Looking at pictures, now, of the 2! birthday cake, which was chocolate with red (?) icing, it looks like an industrial accident at Hershey’s. It tasted OK which, as my dad would say, is all that matters because it’s all going down the same way, anyway. I have never believed that and I don’t think my girls will go for it either.)

The difference between 3 and 4 is great. Even in these last few months the girls have seemed to grow up much too quickly for my comfort levels, once set at “Fireside Bean Bag” but now feeling more like “Nettle Patch”. Parenthood is zipping past like a cat with his bum on fire and the speed’s about as unsettling.

The most noticeable things that have changed since Christmas are in fluency and complexity of speech and thought. I’ve really gone downhill. But the girls are sounding more grown up every day. This manifests itself in a number of ways:

Insightful Observations: “Ladies can’t take their tops off outside when they’re hot because their bosoms might go on fire in the sun.”

Troubling questions: “Mummy, why have you got stripes on your forehead?” This took me several minutes of mirror-peering at my face which looked … usual. Stripes? Stuh-ripes? Eh?

Then, in a flash, I saw myself as they see me. They were talking about my wrinkles, or the fine lines that Oil of Olay is making no headway on, at all. Now I barely see anything else when I look in the mirror. I would not at the time, however, admit to my children that they were wrinkles, but asked myself, what would a woman, who will never admit to being past 29, say? What would Bette Davis or Mae West say? What would my granny say?

So I told them the stripes were those lines for musical notes. I occasionally still get the odd wee spot from time to time so I told them next time I got a blemish I would tell what note it was from its position relative to the stripes wrinkles lines and compose a great symphony across my forehead by filling in all the other notes with felt-tip pen. This backfired though, and has not resulted in any less talk about the stripes. Neither of the girls has heard of Botox yet but they may soon have to. The idea of having shots of toxins injected into my head is about appealing as having a shot of partially hydrogenated jet-fuel injected into my liver, but would it make me look better? (Biting fingernails). Oh, my children, what have you done to your mother? I never used to be vain and foolish. I never used to be vain.

Heartbreaking questions: Katie, whom I discovered all alone, sobbing her heart out, one afternoon. After a long time hugging and soothing, I finally found out that she was sad and scared because I wouldn’t be her mummy any more when she was 4. This took a bit of thinking to work out but, many questions and tissues later, I twigged it. I had told her I was going to be a Godmother for my friend’s baby when we go to Scotland in May. I had thought I’d explained about what a godmother was and had reminded her that she had two, AND a Godfather. But Kate’s main association with May is her birthday so, with the inimitable logic of small children, she had computed that I was going to be someone else’s mummy in May after she turned 4. She’d thought it meant she was getting too old to have a mummy but she still wanted one.

I should have known – she’d gone all quiet and withdrawn after I’d poorly explained the godmother thing, but several hours passed before she started to cry. I’d thought she just wanted to play quietly by herself for a while so let her sit in the sitting-room with some books while Jane and I played a short way off in the kitchen. After about 20 minutes or so I looked up to see her sitting in the middle of her books with her head in her hands and on her knees, crying as if the world had ended. She had been turning what information she had over and over in her brain, all by herself, and had worried herself to the point of great shoulder-heaving sobs.

Peculiar and particular demands: “Mummy, I want a make-up story about 3 baby owls and a white bus. And Hansel and Gretel are in it too.”

World-weary exclamations: “My teddy is sick, Janie, and I have no time to play Play-Doh and I’m terribly busy and I have to go and phone somebody.” And, from Jane, “I don’t like to pick up my crayons – it’s Spring.”

Calculatedly pitting one parent against the other by bringing up topics of personal hygiene: Jane: “Daddy’s toes smell like bottoms and mummy’s toes smell like flowers and like nice daisies. Ha ha ha!” “Ha ha ha hahahahahaha ha ha!”

I, of course, took this to mean that they clearly loved ME more than Dave! What could be more obvious? I have the more fragrant feet; I am, therefore, indubitably the more admired parent, right? But flowers are boring and bottoms are hilarious and it was the bottoms thing that kept them in gales of laughter right through several new issues of the daily newspapers.

Toenail curlingly, eyebrow wiltingly loud public remarks: “I need to go to the toilet but I don’t want to go past that hairy lady.”

And, “What’s wrong with his head?”

And (singing), “I need a poo, a poo, a poo! A big, big poo, a poo, a poo!”

Their humour, as they approch 4, is very British seaside and scatalogical. I think they get it from their father, as he approaches 64.

The mathematically sharper of you will be able to deduce that Dave must have turned 60 on the day the girls were born and you are right to think this, for it is true. I had been laid up with complications for several weeks and hadn’t had a chance to get him so much as a card. On his landmark birthday, therefore, it was just a question of slapping a note on my enormous tum and telling him to imagine that there was a bow on there too. Since then his birthday has been overshadowed by a riot of pink and giggles. This year, to make sure he’s afforded all the dignity of his position as father and grown-up, he’s getting a new coffee-maker and he will probably not have to wear a Strawberry Shortcake party hat, but if he does, I have promised him that he’ll at least get to take it off for photos.

May Day is also the day when, as a child, I washed my face in the morning dew on my granny’s assurance that that would keep me forever young and beautiful. I should have maybe rubbed a little harder on the forehead area, back then, it turns out. Our lawn is alive with rabbits in the mornings and evenings and so I hesitate to encourage my children to wash their faces in what I’m sure is a diluted solution of rabbit leavings. Besides, by the time they’re old enough to have stripey foreheads, L’Oreal or somebody will surely have some up with something that does actually work and everyone will be fresh-faced and blooming right into their 80s. Blee! That is the creep-me-outest thought I have had in quite a while.

So then, much of tonight has been spent in clandestine baking and present-wrapping and wondering about where the time has gone. Not only is it speeding by, it seems to be accelerating too.

4!

Man.