The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids (19 page)

We need to do things together and to break down the distinction between work and domestic life. I would love the kids not even to recognize a difference between work and play: imagine if they could enjoy the washing-up as much as going to the cinema! This is surely possible. I am currently attempting to involve the entire family in washing-up: I wash, the younger two dry and the eldest puts away. It’s easiest with our three-year-old because no one has yet told him that it’s unpleasant. All activity is the same to him: a game. He has not yet learned how to discriminate and rank. It’s not always easy with the other two. Arthur – how he dawdles! And then how tempted I am to bellow. He doesn’t seem to mind, though, as he is busy making it all into a game as well, inventing little systems with string and pulleys. This all started when – oh, happy day! – the dishwasher broke. I’d been campaigning against this ugly whirring power-drainer for years. The dishwasher wrecks the idea of the family doing the washing-up together. Because the parents have to unload it. When we all
work together the whole job, including putting away, is done in about fifteen minutes. It’s not always easy to get them started – indeed, they resist being told what to do – but once we have begun it can even be enjoyable: many hands make light work – and you can listen to music or sing songs while you are doing it.

I was pondering the reason why Arthur resists helping with the washing-up so forcefully. I concluded that it was because he had seen or heard us complaining about it ourselves and therefore learned that it is a despised activity of low status. So I resolved to at least put on an appearance of enjoying the washing-up, singing while working, with the idea that the kids would be fooled into thinking that it’s something enjoyable. This trick could apply to any form of work: whistle and pretend to enjoy it when there are kids around. This way you can train them to work for you.

Growing your own fruit and vegetables together is another easy way to encourage the kids to enjoy good food. Start at the planning stage by asking them what they would like to grow. Peas are the wondercrop here. ‘You can never have enough peas,’ wrote the great smallholder John Seymour, and he was dead right. Eaten straight from the pod they have all the fun value of a Dairylea Dunker with a zillion times the nutritional value. They come in a compostable wrapping! And their small size makes them ideal for kids. And they are very tasty, almost unbelievably sweet. Kids enjoy podding in the kitchen, while eating the odd one or many. And they can eat as many as they like. Peas are our most ancient vegetable. This year I am going to sow three times as many peas as last year. It is very easy: you don’t need well-rotted compost for them. You simply dig a ditch under where they are going to be sown, and then chuck in fresh kitchen waste. Add a layer
of soil, sow the peas and then cover with more soil. I use Kelvedon Wonder and the tall-growing Alderman. Protect them, though, from birds. My hens wrecked many of my best-laid pea plans with their pecking and dirt-bathing. Our other favourite is the French climbing bean, long purple pods that turn green on cooking, in satisfying Willy Wonka fashion. The more you can grow at home and the more you can indulge your children, the better. They will like vegetables and they will know where they came from. It’s also cheaper than buying vegetables and gardening is a free activity for the kids: it doesn’t bear comparison with the costly waste of a day out to the theme park. They will learn far more, too, when gardening. Take them with you when you go to the veg patch and let them hunt for slugs in return for hard cash, or make bug traps or lists of wildlife, or sow seeds, which they will do in delightfully carefree fashion. Henry especially enjoys carting muck with his mini wheelbarrow.

So make food at home, and try to grow it. Let the kids make bread and cake. Relearn the arts of life alongside the children. And encourage good manners, ideally by example, but if that doesn’t work, by
brute force!

‘I don’t like mud!’ screams my mother on the rare occasions she comes to visit us down on the farm. ‘I don’t like it. And why have you got all these animals?’ My mother’s philosophical approach to the world could be defined as ‘anti-nature enlightenment’. She believes in the power of hard work and ingenuity to replace mud, and chickens wandering through the kitchen, and cold and wet, and all the awkward messes of nature with paving stones and supermarkets and central heating. She likes clean, tidy, mud-free spaces. She wants to
conquer nature. She lives in a world of shining chrome and gleaming white plastic kitchen appliances. And she hates animals. We never had a cat or a dog when I was growing up. I was allowed a hamster, Toby. And a second one, a nervous little creature called Claude. After Claude we had a free-range gerbil called Kevin, who lived behind the kitchen units and whose short but exciting life came to an end when my father trod on him. ‘He ran under my foot,’ was how my dad put it.

So when we moved to our scruffy farmhouse I at last had the freedom to get some proper animals involved in our lives. The first additions were Milly and Mandy, two tortoiseshell cats, now aged five. These two sisters have suffered an enormous amount of abuse from our children over the years. They have been hurled from a first-floor window. They have had their tails cruelly pulled. Milly on one occasion was suspended in mid-air by her tail. They have been squashed, sat on, chased. But what is wonderful is how little they have retaliated. Animals seem to sense when their attacker is a mere child and is not posing a serious threat, so they don’t scratch or bite. Only once or twice have the cats given the children a little warning snap of the teeth, when they have been pushed beyond endurance. Indeed, I have often found myself willing the animals to make a more decisive attack, in order to end the teasing and teach the children a lesson.

It’s true, though, that the cats produce some pretty dreadful smells. Finding sloppy cat turds under my desk in the morning is not a pleasant way to start the day. And sometimes we simply cannot find the source of the stink. I have been known to ascend into apocalyptic rages when discovering cat messes around the house. ‘They’re coming
in
to have a shit!’ I scream. We throw them out at every opportunity, with the result that they mew piteously at my study window in the
morning until I take pity on them and let them in, whereupon they pad slowly across the floor and settle themselves in front of the fire for a day-long snooze.

So the cats certainly have their downsides. But they have many good qualities. The first is their talent for hunting. We’ve not seen a mouse or rat in the house since the day they arrived. They catch other things too, of course. Many dead robins have been left on the front doormat. And decapitated frogs. They also torture and kill lizards. We once found a dead long-eared bat in a barn, and countless shrews have been eaten or killed and abandoned. Once I spotted Mandy beneath the car eating a wild bunny. When we drove off there was nothing left of the creature but a fluffy white tail.

But where the cats have really helped us has been with the children. Delilah in particular loves them very much. She takes Milly to bed and carries her around with her like a living doll. Delilah has a sentimental streak, and she says of herself: ‘I care for all animals. Not just nice ones. Even rats.’ She cried when I showed her a rat that I had killed with my air rifle. There is a lot of love between Delilah and the cats and it’s a joy to witness. It goes without saying that children enjoy looking after animals, feeding them, giving them water and stroking them. And the cats provide much amusement; the children particularly like to watch the cats play and hunt. Dusk seems to be the time when they come out to frolic, and they dash at amazing speeds across the yard and silently leap up trees with great agility and grace. The cats can also provoke great hilarity when playing with bits of string: I always think of the wonderful Fat Freddy’s Cat cartoon strip, in which the hippy owner Fat Freddy gleefully dances about, holding a piece of string for the cat to paw at. When the game is finished the cat wanders off and reflects to itself: ‘It’s
amazing how much fun one of them can have with a piece of string.’

Finally, on the subject of cats, I would add that they are very beautiful creatures to have around the house. Our two are like moving cushions and arrange themselves in the most amazing shapes on sofas and chairs.

Now on to bunnies. Our first rabbit was christened Rosie Blossom Brownpatch (‘because she has a brown patch,’ Delilah said). We loved her. She was a house bunny. She lived in the kitchen and she was friendly and charming. It’s true that she ate the curtains, but she was a clean bunny and provided a lot of fun and games. Even my mother loved her. And Delilah especially adored her. But then it all went wrong. Ask Delilah what happened and she will say: ‘Mummy killed her.’ Mummy did indeed drive over Rosie’s back leg when the rabbit was playing in the yard. The vet said it would cost £900 to fix up, so we decided to go for the cheaper option, which was to have the bunny put down. (Even that cost over a hundred quid.) Well, that was very sad. We’d loved that bunny. We all cried, except for Arthur, who coldly suggested that we get another one. So we did buy a new rabbit, and this one was called Lizzie Molly Flower Fast Bunny (‘because she is a very fast bunny,’ Delilah said). She was sweet but just not in the same league as Rosie Blossom. So when she decided she wanted to live outdoors we let her go. Then began two glorious years. Our neighbour’s white bunny, Felicity, was also living outside. The two rabbits became friends and lived somewhere in the barns. It was a wonderful sight, to drive down our lane and see one white and one black-and-white bunny dashing in all directions in that zigzag path that rabbits take. They were very canny: both managed to escape a visiting lurcher by dashing into secret little holes in the barns.
Each evening both rabbits would come and mill about in the yard with all the other animals, so we would be treated to the delightful spectacle of the pony, the chickens, the rabbits and the cats all eating and playing together. Our farmer was amazed that the bunnies survived in the semi-wild as long as they did. But after two years of this fantastic menagerie both rabbits vanished within a couple of days of each other. Whether they were taken by the fox – which had just despatched all the chickens – or by the buzzard I had seen circling around, or whether they had gone deeper into the wild with the big jack rabbit we’d spotted once or twice hanging around in the yard, we’ll never know. I hope they are living somewhere nearby in a cosy warren. But inside or outside a rabbit is a very good pet: comical, pretty, cute and a good size for little ones. ‘Of all animals rabbits are those that boys are most fond of,’ says Cobbett.

Those readers who would really like to embrace thrift might also consider breeding rabbits as a source of food. This was encouraged during the Second World War. Everyone knows that rabbits breed quickly and the meat is delicious: ‘Three does and a buck,’ says Cobbett, ‘will give you a rabbit to eat for every three days in the year.’ Each rabbit also provides a nice bit of fur. Why not sew them together and make a little coat for the child? Animals are very useful when properly processed. Eating them will also teach children that those bits of meat in the supermarket actually came from a real animal. And if you want to eat meat, should you not be prepared to take responsibility for the life and the death of the animal?

We have kept chickens and pigs for their eggs and pork, and in doing so we have saved a lot of money. But both are also real enhancements to daily life. The chicken is a curious and entertaining creature. They are actually very beautiful to
look at. Think of chickens in art, particularly Klimt’s
Chickens on the Path
. They possess an attractive mixture of dignity and innocence. They reward close study. They emit a wide range of clucking noises. They run in comically ungainly fashion, when pursued, for example, by Poppy, our black Labrador. Chasing the chickens has provided endless amusement for the children. Arthur also learned how to catch them (grab the tail feathers first). He waited until it was nearly dark and all the hens were roosting in their barn. He grabbed one quickly from behind and then made the amazing discovery that when you move a chicken’s body around its head stays in the same place. Try it and you’ll see.

Particularly magnificent is the gentlemanly cockerel. We decided to keep one on the advice of John Seymour, who writes: ‘Hens like having it off as much as we do.’ He also looks after the hens and of course there is the possibility of chicks. When you feed the flock he makes noises to tell the hens that it’s feeding time. He then stands back and waits till every hen has started to peck at the food, and only then will he move in for his portion. Every now and again he jumps on a hen, which teaches children about sexual reproduction: ‘Look, Daddy,’ Arthur said to me, without the hint of a snigger: ‘The cockerel is fertilizing the hen!’