{Cheese and Beans}

This morning the machinery of our house spat us out of bed at the prescribed moment, pitching us into the morning routine. I woke several times as the radio filled the room with the usual political doom and gloom – never quite gathering the impetus to get up until I fell asleep and then woke with a start – panicking that I had overslept.

Why does your body do that? Why do you fall asleep for a minute or two, and then wake abruptly?

A half naked four year old greeted me outside our bedroom door. Her sisters could be heard arguing over breakfast production downstairs.

“Why aren’t you getting dressed?”

She looked at me with a tilted head, and walked backwards into her bedroom, banging into the door, and vanishing out of sight.

Downstairs I found our eldest stood at the kitchen worktop with a loaf hacked into crazy shapes in front of her. Recollection dawned on me – a voice earlier in the morning in our room asking if it was okay if she cut her own toast. While I was sympathetic to her cause – this was her first go at cutting crusty bread – I was also annoyed.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s hard… I can’t do it…”

“Why didn’t you ask for help?”

She shrugged, and started looking at the floor. I hacked another inch off the end of the loaf to level it out, cut her two pieces, dropped them in the toaster, and made my way to the shower.

After enduring our hopeless excuse for a shower for a few minutes, and dragging some clean clothes on I wandered back into the kitchen. Eldest daughter was now stood forlornly in front of the toaster, eating the toast with nothing on it.

“Why haven’t you put anything on it?”

“I couldn’t find anything”.

I opened the cupboard right in front of me, and retrieved two or three different things.

“What are these?”

“I didn’t know what they were…”

It was one of those moments when you decide that any further conversation isn’t going to help anything, so got on with making packed lunches. A few minutes later I heard Wendy from the living room saying “No, don’t get that out now – you need to get ready for school”. Two little girls walked into the hallway, bobbing their heads from side to side as they passed.

A few minutes later – while hunting for “extra stuff” to go in sandwich boxes, I heard a crash and a whoosh from the lounge, followed by panicked “I’m sorry!”’s from the girls.

I looked through the lounge door, and saw a sea of Aqua Beads rolling in every direction across the wooden floor. Thousands of them. Wendy followed me, and flew into the maddest rage I’ve seen in quite some time.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO GET THAT OUT! WHY DID YOU GET THAT OUT! WE HAVE TO GO IN FIVE MINUTES!”

I looked in again, and saw three little girls on their hands and knees, picking up tiny beads one at a time. I let them get on with it.

Just as they seemed to have cleared the worst of the devestation, I heard it again…

Crash… Whooshh…..

“OH YOU SILLY, SILLY GIRL! YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN! THAT’S IT – THEY’RE GOING IN THE DUSTBIN”

In between various work requests and support calls from customers, I sat at work this morning watching the clock – watching for 11am to arrive; knowing it would mark the end of a little life in a vet’s surgery a few miles away.

I didn’t tell anybody at work until the time had passed. I worried about calling home – wondered if I should or not. Wondered if somebody would want to hear from me, or if they wanted to be left alone.

In the end I did call, and was surprised at the upbeat voice on the other end of the line. We didn’t talk much. I asked if it had gone okay. I got a despondent “yes”. I volunteered that I might be able to finish early and pick the children up from school.

Thus began the task of requesting an early finish, and telling various female friends at work about the fate of our little man – a trouble we had not shared with many. The surprise was perhaps that both male and female staff were taken aback. Our little man had become known to quite a few colleagues over the years – singling them out for claws and footprints on their smart clothes while en-route for a night out (or a night in with pizza and rubbish movies).

I made my way down to school, and took a wrong turn. I went the wrong way in the town I have lived in for the last ten years. I got lost in the same roads I walk every weekday morning with the girls.

Fate decided that I would be breaking the news to the girls. Little Miss 4 didn’t really understand.

“Where Mummy?”

“She’s staying at home because she’s very sad”

“Why is she sad?”

“Because you know Simpson was very poorly? He died.”

“He died already?!” (a note of consternation – obviously the four year old brain still thinks the world revolves around them)

After a few minutes stood among the gaggle of Mums – many of which I know, and all of which totally ignored my presence (and Wendy’s absence), Little Miss 6 came bursting from school. Little Miss 4 broke the news.

“Simpson has already Died!”

“Oh no!”

“We need to get nother cat! Cheer Mummy up!”

“Yeah! Dad – we are going to get two cats…. (pause for thought)… can we get three cats Dad?”

I say nothing. She starts skipping.

“Yay! We’re going to get three cats. We’re going to get three cats!”

“I said nothing of the sort little madam”

“Awwwwww”

She then feigned tears, before brightening up considerably on sight of one of her friends, and went racing off to play in the playground while we waited for the eldest to finish school.

Without exception, each child’s first remark upon leaving school was “I’m starving – have you got anything to eat?”. It’s nice on days like today to have some kind of consistency.

Over the past few weeks we have been keeping a brave face on a rather sad story at home. Simpson, our many adventured cat, has run out of lives. What we thought was a cold didn’t get better – and taking him to the vet turned into a week’s stay in hospital.

He has a tumor in his head – causing breathing difficulties – or rather in his case the ability to breath through his nose. No nose means no sense of smell, and no sense of smell means he won’t eat (it turns out cats need to smell what they are about to eat). You might think hunger might defeat that base instinct, but no – he’s literally wasting away in front of our eyes.

The result of his hospital stay is a pipe stitched into his stomach to allow him to be force fed by syringe. Not exactly the quality of life you might wish for any animal – let alone one who was rescued fifteen years ago from an animal shelter.

While it’s easy for me to see this weekend as perhaps his last with us, it’s not my decision. He’s not my cat. He lets me know he’s not my cat (cats have staff, don’t they). As much as I might joke about wishing him away from time to time, in reality I can’t imagine what the house might be like without him.

He’s had a fantastic life with first Wendy, then myself and Wendy, and latterly being forcably adored by three little girls. Now we approach his final days, and need perhaps to all be brave, and know when the time has come.

I’m guessing there’s going to be rather a lot of hugs and tears in this house in the coming days.

Taken while en-route to school this morning… what a change – over the course of three weeks we have gone from all walking, to all riding bikes. The youngest still has explosions of temper as she makes unplanned trips into bushes, walls, lamp posts and other obstructions, but by and large they are all doing great.

While skimming the various news outlets around the internet before turning in for the night, I happened upon a news story relating the frustration of home schooling parents who cannot find faith related science books that teach the same thing that their children would have been taught in school.

One of the biology textbooks promoted by several of the faith schooling institutions has the following printed in it’s preface;

The Christian worldview is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is.

I could write an awful lot about this, but am struggling to cling to my fence top position. Perhaps a few observations might be in order…

• If you want your children to have a rounded education where they learn not only about real science, but also about the variety and richness of beliefs and faiths that the many peoples of the world follow, you should have let them go to the same school as everybody else.
• Just how threatened are those preaching faith as any kind of answer when they do not encourage free will? Oh, sorry – I forgot – if you encourage free will, you end up with no “followers”, and that’s what it’s all about really, isn’t it… your gang. Everybody likes to be in the biggest gang, don’t they – so they can claim the high ground, which proves their view is the truth…

Bah humbug.

I know this post will annoy a few people. I make no apology for having written it – I happen to believe in free speech, freedom of thought, and free will. You are free to complain vociferously in the comments in just the same way that I was free to write this.