With the children safely back at school, the house seems eerily quiet. I feel a bit like a spare part, aimlessly wandering round surveying rooms and wondering where to begin with the post holiday clear up.
First I must attend to the felt tip scribbles on the landing that mysteriously appeared one morning, much to the bewilderment of the children and one very red-faced toddler. I must also rub out the equally mysterious pencil marks from the wall beside the Toddler’s bed. “I saw Clover do it,” he said innocently when I confronted him, quick to pass the blame on to the artistic Labrador puppy.
Then my attention turns to the toy cupboard, which requires some serious attention. Armed with my bin bags, I open the door and a box of ‘Pick Up Stix’ tumbles out on top of me. I sift through boxes of playing cards, Top Trumps and Snap alongside piles of arts and crafts, play dough, puzzles, and endless games. It occurs to me that we only played one game in the holidays. This was an attempt at Snakes & Ladders that lasted five minutes at best. It resulted in my daughter running to her bedroom in tears as her brothers nudged their pieces along the board and refused point blank to slide down a snake.
I then stumble on a large box full of Play Mobil pieces. Connected together, they produce the most wonderful aeroplane, ambulance, camper van and police car and entertain the boys for hours on end. The problem is that it requires an adult to remain very patient when asked at least thirty times a day to, “put the wheels back on the plane”, “search for the pin size gun for the policeman,” or extract the, “old piece of apple that The Toddler wedged into the aeroplane’s hold a few weeks ago.” All this pales into insignificance when I unearth the Lego. Hundreds of tiny pieces lie redundant in a box with no trace of an instruction leaflet in sight. Occasionally, I recall my son appearing with the box during the holidays and saying, “Mummy, will you help me make a T14 Assault Tank?”
My bin liner only contains a few items that have been chewed by a dog or have obvious pieces missing. For a moment of madness, I am tempted to sweep the boxes and their contents into the bag without a thought. However, my guilty conscience takes over. The only solution is to embark on a massive building and fixing project. For the next few days, I must spend my time connecting hundreds of small pieces back together again, to reconstruct a mass of vehicles. For now, the Big Turn Out is on hold.
