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It wouldn’t be fair to leave out a piece on the latest new bike in the family. Our adventures at the toy warehouse were in fact very successful and the following Sunday morning at just past 06:30 had a certain little boy standing by my bedside inviting me to accompany him to his bedroom where we were to build his garage. A few hours earlier as my head hit the pillow I said to my Darling, “wanna bet how early Ted comes through asking to build his garage?” Naturally she declined.
I had appeased him the night before by promising that we would assemble said garage in the morning as it was too late after returning home. Since I’d agreed he could place the unopened box beside his bed these were grounds enough for him to go to sleep. Quietly.
Similarly his sister Scarlett agreed to go to bed if I promised to put the “stabey-lizers” on her bike in the morning.
Now it was time to go to work. As with all things for kids these days there’s a multitude of bags and packaging inside the box, there’s bits of plastic, string, all different colours and somewhere – hopefully – the instructions. It appeared not.
It’s a simple child’s garage not dissimilar to the one I had some thirty five years ago although mine was wooden painted from all kinds of lead based paints and this one was plastic. It turned out not to be that difficult to assemble except for the major task of settling Scarlett who thought it very unfair that we were doing his garage before her bike. Neither of them had given any thought to my wish for a cup of tea!
Within the half hour we were assembling the string on the drum for the platform used to raise and lower the cars into the park decks and I managed an escape providing I put the stickers on later. And yes I have since done it! In fact it it’s where I found the intructions for the assembly of the whole thing – on the back of the sticker sheet!
And so to the “stabey-lizers”. We’d had a spot of luck with the bike and by being a demo model it got us a hefty 15% knocked off the price but it also meant having to check all the nuts and bolts, turn the front wheel round by reversing the handlebars so the brake calliper was on the front side of the frame and of course fit the “stabey-lizers” Easy really and soon she was off. After a couple of test runs we tightened the loose pedals and hopefully nothing else will come adrift in the next few days, at least nothing important.
Of course it won’t be long before she’s riding sans petites roues and the favourite game at the moment if they happen to be out playing when I arrive home is to be chased along the driveway by my car tooting all the way. Being something of a big kid myself I fail completely to see the dangers in this but I’m sure it is dangerous?
Oh, and she also started at the English Speaking Playgroup (we’re in Switzerland remember) and has been having a whole lot of fun doing a topic called ‘herself’ there. One I feel sure will be a firm favourite in time to come.
They say the camera never lies and in the times before digital imaging became freely available to anyone with a few dead hours and a PC with Photoshop it surely never did.
These days however it’s perhaps not the camera that lies but, the images can certainly tell more than a thousand words and not all of them honestly. We have a change in the times, some call it progress, some would say the opposite, either way it’s here and one of the ugly results of that change in the times is a phenomenon found on the internet under the banner of “social networking sites”.
Broadly speaking they are internet places where we can create (and there’s the key word here) a page of information about our good selves. Consisting of pictures, words on hobbies, interests and thoughts and a web-log of activities for all our other social networking friends to read and admire. Right around the world cyberfriends can meet. Put bluntly they are places where we can tell all sorts of stories…
And this is where the temptation lies to lie. The responsible organisations that create these sites, whether they are individuals or groups put in place a set of terms and conditions and then hey presto let it grow. Their infrastructure may prevent foul language, obscene remarks and similar unacceptable material and maybe they have a way of controlling the text so as to highlight controversial threads, comments deemed to contravene the Ts and Cs but they can never check whether anything written or placed by anyone about someone is really true, can they? Neither, according to some of their terms and conditions do they under any circumstances have any obligation to check such material.
So our youngsters quite understandably get involved in this; it’s cool. They can tell everyone things about their lives; hook up with people ‘out there’. After all it is really neat to be able to send a message from your private keyboard and seconds later there is a reply from the ‘other place’ but we have to ask where is that place? Who is sending back the messages? According to the rules it should be someone that our youngsters know, so that’s alright then? How do you ‘know’ someone who has written that they like;
“fast cars, fast women, driving hard, rappin’ to the beat, a few drinks with their mates and hangin’ out in cool places for a laugh”
…when in fact they are twelve years old, sitting behind a screen in their bedroom underneath pictures of 50 Cent, P Diddy, Lego Bionicles and the Fast and Furious?
You can’t know that person, all you can know is the image, which is a likeness, a reproduction or imitation, even a mental picture or impression, in essence not the real thing at all. And I put it to all the social networking sites that they are breeding a fake nation, a generation of young people with false confidence who will ultimately either change the face of our world by removing face values such as honesty and integrity, because if they’re all lying it will make it alright, or they will preferably be found out as counterfeits and dropped off the screen.
Only then could we return to some decent honesty and stop faking the image.
One of our daughters was three last week and after seeing her brother join the two-wheeled world she hasn’t let up since April with her requests for a bike. Specifically it should have ’stabey-lizers’ on the back and a basket on the front – for her dog.
Obviously as caring PC parents we had to concur with this request and the search has been on since then. Unable to find anything locally we set off for a day out in nearby France to visit the toy warehouses. A short-ish trip down the motorway and a long-ish queue out of Switzerland (???) saw to that but not before the first of countless toilet stops.
A spot of lunch at a chinese restaurant where we’ve been before but will never go again had them suitably ready for a stint in the toyshop. When we finished our table resembled a minor bomb site but the kids were full. Although the price was reasonable for a buffet-scoffalot the familiar tradition of utterly filthy French toilets and countless adults not using the hand-washing facilities meant we couldn’t face the place again.
With small children it’s almost a necessity to visit the toilet in places like restaurants. Maybe it’s out of curiosity or maybe it’s fun, nearly always it involves actually needing to make the visit too. With one child it’s possible to get the act out of the way and then commence the ever important hand washing part of the visit. You can usually get their hands soaped, washed and then dried off before they go and touch something else like a urinal basin or toilet pan! With a quick swipe of a paper towel on the exit door handle you can be out and away without too much stress. Other times it’s just not on. No paper towels, just a hand drier six feet off the ground, water all over the basins and so on just adds to the complexity of the task. They can be far too curious if there happens to be someone else using the loos as well! With two children however the stress levels while visiting the toilet just go off the scale.
I hate toilets in restaurants!
Completely the opposite to how I feel about visiting toyshops though… Just like the kids I don’t know where to look first. The wonderment is what does it, the feeling of all that imagination sitting there on the rows and rows of shelves, untapped, waiting patiently to begin their jobs as toys. The kids were off and to our pleasant surprise the place was empty. They could run about and check things out ’til their hearts were content. We tried out a bike but the tyres were flat so I asked for a pump to which the grumpy assistant replied she didn’t have one, try them as they are! No sale.
So we got every single pedal tractor, excavator and scooter off the shelves and tried them all. We did put them all back I hasten to add but the temptation was there to leave them all over the place. Then the manager came round for a grumpy look, he never spoke, just glared. We ignored these actions and got on with the business of untidying their pristine, if somewhat grumpy toyshop. To the strains of;
“Dad, I just wanna show you something…”
We rushed about checking out everthing. One year old Lottie had never seen anything like it and now she could walk, what a place to be! Unfortunately it was not the place to get the bike. First the attitude was all wrong for a toyshop. There’s no way you can have such miserable people running a place like that. Those poor toys, I imagine they are all busting to get out of that place. Second they didn’t have what we wanted so we would have to look further.
The next place did have just what we were looking for and although poor Scarlett was totally bemused by it all we convinced her we’d found the right bike. Although it doesn’t have a basket on the front but that’s OK, because now we won’t need to get a dog… yet.
A much more pleasant toy warehouse and easily filled with far happier toys. So it was mission accomplished with a perfect birthday bike, Ted’s birthday money spent on a garage for his Matchbox cars- thank you Grandparents – and the grown-ups now ready to go home. Even if this particular grown-up didn’t get to look at the RC helicopters!
An uneventful journey home was not without stops. The first another official toilet stop with the two toddlers (aarrggh) at the motorway services. Passable as clean. The second an unofficial quick exit off the motorway to stop in a lay-by for another bladder relief. Where on earth does it all come from?
Finally, at about nine that evening we arrived at the house just underneath the end of the rainbow we’d been following and within the hour they were all sparko!
Last night I pondered over the huge amount of intelligence already evident in our one year old daughter. As I sat by the bath with the first one of them already in pyjamas and downstairs I watched intently as she pushed a toy baby buggy around the bedroom looking for something. Now, she already knows that the Lego racing car among the dozens of other toys in the playroom has to have a small figure seated in the cockpit. I didn’t teach her this, she must’ve gleaned it from watching the others. Anyway, Schumacher sits in the red racer. Presumably she was now looking for something similar.
Without seeing me, which is always cute she stottered about and found a teddy who was promptly seated albeit head first into the buggy. What a look of delight as she padded round to the handles and began pushing teddy round the bedroom. Almost the same chuffed to bits grin when she made those historic first steps alone across the kitchen floor less than a week ago.
After much threatening postures and scuttling round the coffee table she finally took more than three steps, (doesn’t qualify as walking if it’s not more than three…) towards me in the kitchen unaided. She looked so pleased with herself, genuinely thrilled that she could now do what the others do. The end of an era for us too as our youngest daughter leaves the floor and joins the upright world. She walks everywhere now.
Back to teddy’s ride in the buggy and she played happily for ages while I retrieved the third wet urchin from the bath. There’s no words from her yet just sounds and noises that mimic the real thing but the intelligence that signifies she knows is all too obvious. It’s quite amazing, almost as if there’s a lot of knowledge already built in just waiting to learn the ways to get out?
One year old and all this going on…
After months of waiting my parents finally have a broadband connection delivered to them and with their shiny new PC all connected up they’ve taken the plunge into the electronic age. They come from an era when letters were the norm for corresponding and the most urgent way to get a message to anyone was a telegram. However the need to get in touch has become more and more urgent as we are now in Switzerland and they are not. Exchanging our news and images has never before been so important and so they have to catch up with the rest of the world.
They have coped remarkably well by embracing the other rotten little phenomenon we all have to deal with on a daily basis that is text messaging or SMS to give it the correct title.
And so for the last few nights we’ve been in daily contact acting as tech-support and talking them through all manner of details to attain the Holy Grail of sending an email. And it’s worked, to an extent.
Each message that drops into my Office Outlook contains progressivley more text and info and they’re even signing off the mails so that I know if it’s Dad, Cyber Pilot 1 or Mum, Cyber co-pilot who has written it. A lot of the mesages are really cute because they ask if they’ve arrived, or they plead that they will get there!
A bit like calling someone after you’ve sent them a fax to see if it’s come out, which is as valued as phoning someone at home and then asking them where they are!
There is still some way to go however and as they say pratice makes perfect. If you know them you’ll realise what a monumental achievement this is for two people who have stoically remained on the sidelines, if you don’t know them then I bet you know someone just like them.
For me the last weeks have not been a trial of patience and endurance but more an eye-opener of just how baffling the whole world of computers and internet really is to most people. Like for example, where is the internet? There’s not been one silly question either, even the one about whether any paper makes a journey for an email… And to those of you who may snigger here tell me just exactly how does an email work?
As I keep telling them, they can only get better at this for none of us were born with any knowledge about such things at all. Their messages are early drafts and we will look back soon enough to see how these little e-notes have grown into longer messages. They will also have to get to grips with attachements before long.
And then when the time is right I think they’ll do very well with a messenger system…
Musings were varied last night but some of it centred around an old Mercedes Benz car I have that was so big and so heavy and also so not driveable, that it was left behind in France when we moved. I had acquired it the previous summer with grand ideas about getting it back on the road. It’s not a wreck by any means but it is 38 years old and in need of some fettling, shall we say.
The problem is, as ever, complicated by emotions. In simple economic terms it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to spend what could amount to a small fortune on recovering it with trailers, long journeys, paperwork and the inevitable chaos of trying to import of all things, a car into Switzerland.
Far more sensible to just place an advert and try to sell it locally to relieve our dear French neighbours of it sitting and quietly rusting in peace. Trouble is, I can’t. I really want that car. Hence the emotional turmoil racing around in my head. You know the sort of thing, little devil on left shoulder whispering “keep it, you love it” and dazzling white angel on right shoulder hailing “sell it, it’ll cost a bomb and only end in tears”
Several glasses of wine later and I was still thinking, do I listen to the ‘right’ shoulder or the hell with it and go with what’s ‘left’?
The last post was about the young one’s bike and how it had been gently, albeit comprehensively squashed under our farmer neighbour’s bale trailer. As I had pre-supposed in this day and age of throw-away things the cost of repairing the bike ran into figures of Swiss Francs in excess of replacing it. Made in China…
We took the crumpled wreck along to the bike repair man in the back of the car and explained what had happened. The outcome was that he’ll rustle up a costing of the repairs and let us know as soon as possible. Well aware that a four year old sans velo is akin to a teen sans MP3 and earphones.
In my day of course a pair of bent forks, crumpled wheel and twisted brake would’ve been perfectly repairable and from about the age of 11 carried out by me. However, as we’ve been thoughtful enough to involve our local cycle shop in the process of providing our youngsters with transport instead of going to some mega-store it transpires that Hans-Peter can provide a new replacement bike at a fraction of the cost of repairing the bent one.
So it was.
The very next day promptly delivered to the door a brand new Mustang Commando. The observant among you will quickly twig that there is something different here. It was a Messenger that got bent and a Commando that arrived in its place.
He probably thinks that the bike repair man is not only pretty cool but something of a magician in order to be able to make his new bike slightly bigger and a different colour!
But then again he’s a smart four year old and really thinks he’s simply got a new bike out of it all.
What a reaction though, you’d thought it was Santa himself standing there.
As he raced down to the farm for a ride on the tractor and trailer he skidded to a halt and laid his bike down on the path.
Without thinking too much about putting it out of the way he was gone like a rat up a drainpipe into the cab, whereupon Peter eased the big tractor out from under the shelter to set off with the trailer and collect bales. At first he felt nothing but then a little resistance, he glanced at the young Ted alongside him and realising he was safely in the tractor carried on moving off. The slight resistance came and went as the tonnes of Bücher tractor easily towed the trailer off down the track.
It wasn’t until a few seconds later when a glance in the mirror revealed the source of the slight resistance. There laying on the path was a quite properly squashed child’s bike!
Young Ted in his haste had left it sitting smack bang in the middle of the roadway and it hadn’t been noticed by either of the young farmers aboard the Bücher. Now there was a problem. It wasn’t completely destroyed although with crumpled wheel, twisted forks and mangled brake caliper it may well be technically ‘written off’ if the repair costs are anything like what I suspect.
Poor Ted was distraught. His shiny new Mustang Messenger of a mere six weeks lay there on the ground and he shed a tear or two for sure. Peter too was pretty shaken for he’d never made this sort of mistake before, although I cannot let him take the blame entirely as Ted must learn that a farmyard is a busy place and where there’s a place to park bikes it must be used.
I even received a phone call at work from a tearful young boy, thank heavens he wasn’t on it though, maybe we can fix it…
