It's Yesterday Once More

The Mangamuka would get me every time. Mum would bring the Krispie biscuits which supposedly kept car sickness at bay but the grueling, winding incline would always win over at the top.

We were on our way to Pukepoto, Kaitaia, where we spent most of our school holidays at the family friend’s farm.

As the only girl, I was vastly outnumbered among the five boys. I would rove between trying to fit in with the boys, who couldn’t resist teasing the only girl, and hanging round mum and her friend, who seemed to be having copious amounts of cuppas accompanied with the baking both had made at the kitchen table and catching up on several month’s conversation.

Upon arrival, we would always check out the barn; the three boys had built huts and traps in the new

hay bales. It would always be different. We would play Go Home, Stay Home, climbing and jumping between bales. I was often ‘It’ as they would let my brothers in on where the new nooks were. One time, they made a big hole in between bales and covered the opening with loose hay. I fell down into a deep well. It was a soft landing but I climbed back out and re-joined my mother and her friend for some more baking and eaves-dropping on their chit-chat.

Dad and the boys’ dad would be off down the farm – we wouldn’t see them, except at meal times. Sometimes we’d go find them on the motor bikes. One of the boys would double me and usually drive through mud and, once, cow sh*t, at full speed making it splatter up over me, much to his delight. Despite being petrified, I would always end up laughing too. Another time, one of the boys and I packed a picnic of the baking, took the dog and went to eat it in the paddock. As we climbed over the electric fence, I got a shock and dropped the baking, which was promptly eaten by the dog. Our eight-year-old selves ended up rolling around in hysterics. That was the end of our picnic.

We roamed the paddocks for miles to go eeling, often falling in the creek, having slipped off the rocks and would come back to a good, hearty home-cooked dinner.

They breed them tough up there, those farm boys - and rude. I would usually return to my school in Whangarei with new crass jokes and verses to an ongoing song I had learnt on the farm.

Those were good times.

These school holidays I took the kids up north to a friend’s farm, as I do most holidays. I take them the coast way so there was no vomiting. The kids made huts, rode quad bikes, took the dog on

adventures roaming through the bush and crab hunting at the local beach, fishing off the wharf and eeling in the creek, later returning to cook up the crabs and mussels as a mornay.

My daughter spent her time roving between the four boys and me and my friend, who spent a fair amount of time (but not all!) sitting at the kitchen table drinking cuppas, eating baking and catching up on several month’s chit-chat.

Dinner Time Phone Calls

It’s never a good idea to ring a phone or internet provider when you’ve hungry kids around.

It’s just going to put life on hold for an hour while you listen to a tinny rendition of Lorde’s Team on repeat. Sorry Lorde but I now loathe your song.

But phone them I did when I realised my stagnant inbox was the result of my email account being shut down several days earlier.

Admittedly, it’s not as bad as the days with toddlers hovering round your feet, upending things and pooing their pants but still, hungry, bored kids are not ideal.

There’s always the option of putting the phone on speaker and going about the daily tasks with one hand, which is what I do – it’s all about multi-tasking after-all – but it’s rather hard peeling kumara with one hand and, no sooner have I put the phone down, then Lorde’s song abruptly ends and a man’s thick-foreign accent carries across the kitchen.

I drop what I am doing and lunge for the phone. I don’t know why I do this when they’ve kept me on hold listening to their bollocks entertainment. I’ve been through this before, including earlier that day; It’s all about delegation, you see. I phone up, give them my details and security passwords, they decide it’s too hard and likely to make them go past home time, so they forward my call onto someone else ‘who can help’. I am placed back on hold, which is when song number one on their playlist comes on. Someone answers and I repeat the problem before they interrupt to ask my passwords. They inform me I’ve been put through to the wrong department and the song starts up again. Repeat this times ten.

During this circular game, the kids approach for food and I remember dinner. The potato and kumara chips I chopped earlier to Lorde’s sound track are now crisp in the oven but I hadn’t got the veges or chicken on. I switch off the oven – dinner will have to be staggered tonight.

I am now onto a young Kiwi guy who sounds like he knows his stuff and – hurray - I can understand! He asks permission to take over my computer from his end and I call my very bored daughter over to watch the cursor magically fly around the screen off its own accord. She looks from the cursor to me in wonderment and mouths “Wh-at?”.

She knows to be quiet because mummy’s on the phone and keeps telling her noisy brothers to shush. They’re well over it though and whatever’s on the screen of the ipad is holding them enthralled, causing raucous exclamations. I’m done with telling them to be quiet – I’m sure the IT gurus have heard worse and I had to listen to Lorde on repeat for an hour, after-all, putting me off an iconic Kiwi singer.

While he is mucking round with my computer I take leave of my chair and make another attempt at dinner. He tells me the screen has frozen at his end and asks how things are looking my end. I am looking at a fry pan, but he doesn’t know that. I run back to the computer.

It appears the man has fixed my problem but he’s thorough – he wants to check something else. I want to go. The boys have emerged from their devises, and Missy has decided she’s had enough of being quiet. They are all making a racket and bemoaning their empty stomachs. I need to put the veges and chicken on and also need to go bathroom.

I am back in email-land and tell him politely, I no longer care about retrieving the last few days emails I’ve lost, and with a headache from the loud, tinny music, hang up and pick up where life left off an hour earlier.

I never did find out what song number two was but I hope I never do. 

Return of WWF Super Stars of Wrestling

Be warned parents: WWF Superstars of Wrestling is back on trend!

Or, as corrected by my eight-year-old son: ‘It’s not WWF anymore mum, it’s WWE’.

This all came to my attention when Miss Eight rushed through the door one day after school last week declaring that her brother had copped a blow. It must’ve hurt – it is the first time in his schooling career he has been reduced to tears.

But by the time he came in a minute later, I realised my sympathy was a surplus to requirement as he was well over it. In fact, upon closer scrutiny, it transpired that he had even got his own back.

Let me just say here that I am anti-violence and the school certainly doesn’t condone it. In fact, when I next set foot in the school the following week, the teacher approached me to let me know how they had dealt with it. Amongst other ways, she was adding wrestling to the class treaty.

So, it was here I learned that this new wave of rough and tumble stemmed from the return of the Superstars of Wrestling.

Back in the day it was big! We’d earn our pocket money and walk up to the dairy to buy our bubblegum which came with collectors Superstars of Wrestling cards, which we’d swap if we already had. By memory, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Hulk Hogan and Ravishing Rick Rude were favourites. Why I was into this, I don’t know. The wrestling itself didn’t interest me, but, like the Garbage Pail Kids series, which some boring old adults subsequently banned for their indecency, it was just another craze to get swept up in.

And now, it would seem, one of them had made a come-back.

At a guess, some kid likely came across it online and has given a demo to his peers, who have raced home to Google it themselves and study their own moves to try out on their buddies in the playground.

But being amatuers, this hasn’t gone too well, resulting in tears, fall-outs, sorry notes, parental consultations and tellings-off.

Apparently a RKO is the most popular move, and I only became aware of this after questioning my boisterous boy as to why he kept body slamming himself onto the beanbag.

“I’m practicing the RKO,” he replied.

“What does RKO stand for,” I asked.

He drew a blank at that so I Googled it and discovered it does not stand for Repeat Knock Out, thank goodness, but rather the initials of a wrestler. (Although, when I investigated further, the meaning sounded just as bad).

But before I could intervene and try to steer him in another direction, it turned out the boys had already moved on from this wrestling business. Besides the fact the school have banned it, according to Master Eight who listed off the names of friends who’d been reduced to tears, there were just too many casualties.

They have now, thankfully, returned to the much safer game of tag.