Action Movie

It is with some trepidation that I now drive over the new retractable bridge after a near early-morning adventure this week.

There’s excuses for being late to work but this one would have taken the cake had it played out the way my vivid imagination foresaw in the moments of panic that ensued after being trapped between two barricades signaling that the part of the bridge I was on was about to lift 90 degrees.

I noticed the red stop lights start to flash as I followed the car in front of me over the bridge but, because they had only begun flashing, believed there to be plenty of time. However, two seconds later, the car in front slammed to a sudden halt and the people inside began frantically looking behind them as their reverse lights came on.

But they had no where to go as I had nowhere to go - there was a tightly-packed line of cars behind us. The car behind managed to just squeeze back far enough to miss the barricade as it swung down in front of it, thereby blocking the exit of the two cars remaining in the middle of the bridge.

I was one of them.

Was this the part where the bridge lifted up with us on it? Visions of abandoning my car and making a desperate leap for safety played out. Or worse, if it had already begun lifting, I would have had to cling to the end, like Annie in the movie, as it rose into the air. 

I had Annie fresh on my mind as I had just hauled out the video (yes video) from my childhood to show Miss Five the evening before in the lead-up to the show this weekend.

Except this would be worse, because I would be dodging flying cars from those trapped on the ascending bridge as I made my escape.

Confused panic seemed to be setting in around me. The bridge still wasn’t moving but it could just be a matter of time and I wasn’t about to stick around to find out when. Grabbing my bag, I lunged for the door handle … but that was as far as I got in my adventure. Some kind person at the other end of a monitor must have pushed a button and the barricades rose to let us out. Trouble was there was no where to go.

Then the people behind me indicated we reverse onto the other side of the road. After-all, it wasn’t like any traffic would be coming through on that side for a while. Duh.

With all the cars safely on either side, the bridge did its thing and the barge passed through underneath, its occupants probably confused by the hold-up.

We sat in our cars and waited in silent newly-found comradeship, like the aftermath bonding from a natural disaster.

The bridge re-opened and we parted on our merry ways. I was thankful I hadn’t inadvertently starred in a local action movie. Still, had I survived, it would’ve made a jolly good yarn for being late for work.

Famous Five

It’s always a pleasure to witness your childrens’ reactions as they first engage in something you enjoyed yourself as a child.

Whether it’s a special toy or game you’ve kept all this time or simply an old favourite tv programme from the 80s such as Inspector Gadget. But I’ve been keeping The Famous Five series up my sleeve for a long time, ready for when I thought Master Eight would enjoy it as much as I did and his nana before me.

I have most of the original series passed down from my mum – they probably don’t look too appealing to a child of this century - but Enid Blyton’s adventurous prose has managed to capture the imaginations of generations since the 1930s. So last year I decided he was ready. Once the twins were tucked up in bed, we sat together on the couch and I began reading a chapter a night.

It was thrilling stuff, I was riveted as the Famous Five took me on a well-remembered adventure discovering treasure maps, secret tunnels behind false walls and ruined castles and, of course, treasure.

So engrossed was I that it wasn’t until about Chapter Nine that I became aware to the fact that Master then-Seven seemed to be focusing on the silent tele in the background.

“Are you listening?” I enquired.

“Yes!” he said indignantly.

And so I continued reading.

But the next night I was suspicious and decided to question him on something that had just happened in the book. He struggled to answer and that was when I realised he just wasn’t into it.

How could this be possible? I was gutted and abandoned the book, although it was tempting to finish it myself. 

Not wanting to give up, and putting it down to his age, this week – a year later - I decided to give it another try.

By page three it became clear that he was paying attention all right.

“Oh Daddy, do telephone Aunt Fanny,” I read as Master Eight cracked up.

Trying my best to keep a straight face I read on.

“Do shut up Dick,” said Julian a little further down the page as Master Eight erupted again.

This wasn’t going to plan. With all the mentions of fannies and dicks, by the end of Chapter One he was a giggling, tittering mess and I’d dropped the act and succumbed too.

But I perservered and, by Chapter Two, the laughter had subsided and I think he began focusing on the plot. It was a stilted effort – I had to keep pausing to explain old-fashioned language such as ‘queer’ (strange), ‘gay’ (happy), ‘bathing trunks’ (togs) and ‘cowardly’ (scaredy cat).

But eventually I think I got him hooked. At least I think he is – perhaps at a year older he’s just better at covering up.

Ambitions

“Mum, do I have to work when I’m an adult,” enquired Master Five the other day. 

“Um, you don’t have to but you should.”

“Well I’m not then.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know how to get a job.”

Golly, the things bugging them at the ripe old age of five. And I thought it was bad enough Master Eight asking what was for dinner before he went to school that morning and then fretting all day when I told him it was one of his loathes - chicken.

“You don’t need to worry about how to get a job yet,” I told Master Five. “That’s why you go to school. You learn things and, by the time you’re an adult, you might have an idea of what you want to be and then you can go to a special school to learn to be it. Or you might decide to be a builder and then after you leave school you learn to build.”

“I can already build,” he said, perking up. “I can build block houses.”

Right. Actually, it’s true. The three of them have converted the whole downstairs room into a block house city and after watching The Lego Movie, they also created a Lego city which is so elaborate to the point I cannot hoover down there anymore.

There are farm yards, intricate stairs leading up to hotels, people dining at restaurants, garages with cars in them, a supermarket with shelves brimming with the miniature New World toy food – they’ve thought of everything. Bar the occasional fight which comes from someone stealing a block or, god forbid, accidentally knocking a creation down, it’s good imaginative play which keeps them occupied for hours.

While Master Eight still maintains he wants to become a police officer when he grows up (so he can taser and arrest people), Miss Five’s ambitions include having a baby out of wedlock.

“Oh but then you won’t get to wear a pretty dress and mummy won’t get to come to your wedding and you’re my only daughter,” I cajole.

“I’m not getting married!” she declares, almost in tears at the thought of being ridiculed by her brothers about having a boyfriend. “But I can still have a baby – I just get a seed.”

I’m not sure where she’s getting her information from there – it could have something to do with the memory of her older brother some years earlier asking how the daddy sheep puts the seed in the mummy sheep when sheep don’t have hands.

But I needn’t worry about the ambitions of my children - after-all, when I was a child I proclaimed to my mother, for a number of years, that I was going to be a postie when I grew up.
Riding round on a bike all day looked like fun.