Real life | 31 March 2012

My friend operates an open-door policy on her country home. So when I wandered into her kitchen the other day to find it deserted I decided to make myself comfortable, as she has often stated I should, and put the kettle on while I waited for someone to appear.

As I did so, her two young grandchildren burst through the kitchen door, screaming and fighting with each other.

I don’t know much about children, having never had any, but I do know that these were what you would call toddlers.

‘Where’s mummy?’ I shouted, above the din.
‘Waaaaaaaaaaah! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’ they screamed back. ‘Woof! Grrrrr!’ said someone else.

My spaniel was now tussling with my friend’s dogs, a Labrador and a bulldog. As the children wrestled each other to the floor, the three dogs tumbled over and over each other barking and growling.

‘Where’s grandma?’ I shouted, barely making myself heard.

‘Waaaaaaaaah! Grrr! Woof!’ they all screamed, tearing chunks out of each other. The older boy grabbed a little scooter and started to zoom around the kitchen, knocking over everything that got in his way.

There then followed a collision between the boy and the dogs resulting in a morass of child, scooter and dog so that it was impossible to make out where toddler ended and hound began. As I tried to disentangle them, the little girl tottered up to me, shoes on the wrong feet, to reveal that she had somehow, in the two seconds I had not been watching her, painted her entire forehead black with a felt tip pen. ‘What on earth have you done?’ I asked. ‘Mummy eyebrows!’ she said, evidently much pleased with herself.