Economy Drive

As part of my constant quest to keep our food supplies up and the cost of feeding our children down, I often trade down a brand or two in my shopping.

Having grown up with Heinz, Kelloggs and Ribena, you’d think this wouldn’t come naturally to me. However, I do remember as a child, in learning the value of money, I failed to understand why Mum (and everyone really) didn’t buy the cheapest possible of everything. To be fair, I don’t have the most discerning of palates. To me a custard cream tastes the same whether it is ‘basics’ or ‘finest. ’ Unfortunately Ben can tell his biscuit quality and rejects both the basics and the supermarket own brand in favour of McVities. I blame my mother, if she didn’t stock the more expensive variety in her house, there would be no comparison to make and he never would have developed superior taste buds.

I do agree some things are quite obviously not as good. For example, you can’t help feeling a little cheated if your weetabix are skinny and rectangular, and multi grain hooplas are not nearly as nice as Cheerios. Although it doesn’t stop me buying them if the kids aren’t complaining. Most food stuffs we buy are essentially just to fill a hole (or six of them) and we’re not overly fussy. Even Waitrose has an essential range, though it amuses me that they stock ‘essential hummus’ – only Waitrose customers would consider hummus ‘essential.’

I find myself driving to Lidl in Leatherhead to get the 4 pints of milk for £1 deal, I can’t taste any difference in the milk but I do worry about the cows. Unless you bulk buy milk like we do, it is almost not worth the petrol over there. As I told Mum, I will shop more morally when I can afford to, I like to think that even if the cows are badly paid they are not badly treated.

I love getting a bargain though and mysupermarket.com is great for this. Not only does the website make a satisfying ‘ch ching ch ching’ noise as you select the cheaper option, it simultaneously fills up your basket from each supermarket with the total price comparison and then sends your order to whichever shop you select. (Surprisingly Sainsbury’s has usually come out the cheapest.)

I once scoured the packaging of the supermarket own brand pitta bread and the everyday value version to find out what the actual difference was between them. I discovered that the extra 20p you paid in going for the brand up was for the extra virgin olive oil and sea salt as oppose to olive oil and salt. Who could tell? The value pittas were also slightly smaller but that was admitted on the packet. Considering I often buy seven packets of six at a time, my £1.40 saving from choosing the value range is not to be sniffed at.

I love the anti- marketing of the basics products. The strap line on the pitta bread is ‘a little bit smaller, still fills up a lunchbox. ’ The long’ grain rice is marked up with; ‘some broken, still fluffy when cooked.’ When the marketing team can’t think of anything nice to write about the food, for example on the soups, they just put ‘no fancy packaging’ or even ‘nothing fancy.’

Some other examples that made me laugh, some purely for their dreadful puns or lame rhymes;

Peeled plum tomatoes – ‘some peel, still appealing’

Prawns – ‘smaller, no need to shell out more’

Bread- ‘simple recipe, a little less dough’

Peas – ‘a little less sweet, still go down a treat’

Mushy processed peas (not that I’d ever buy them anyway) – ‘more mushy, still lovely’

Mixed vegetable savoury rice – ‘fewer vegetables, still satisfying’

Tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce – ‘same spaghetti, different sauce.’

It tends not to bode well if you describe food as ‘different’, it usually means you are trying to be kind about it.

The use of the word ‘still’ or ‘even’ to promote something is surely not a positive marketing strategy, but maybe that is the point.

Any basics cleaning product just says ‘cleans, no added promises.’

Who knows what else you get if you pay a bit more, a product that also mows your lawn?

They may as well write ‘It’ll Do,’ but considering that is exactly the attitude with which I shop, it suits me perfectly.

The other day I was so busy in the shop trying save a pound here and fifty pence there that I totally forgot to pay for the car park. Luckily I remembered mid shop, abandoned my full trolley and got to the car in time with a ticket before the traffic warden did. It really would have made a nonsense of my penny counting if I had got a £40 parking fine.

The most uneconomical way to shop is to take the children with you. Then I get “Please, please can we get the iced doughnuts with sprinkles,” from Ben and “Can we have this cereal? It is my favourite, please! ” from Patrick. Then it’s “Please can I get these chocolate mousses for my packed lunch?” from Emilia, and because she knows me so well she adds “They are ‘Basics’.”

Shopping with Rachel is also tricky, not because she fills up the trolley with stuff she wants, although there is some of that, but because she refuses to go in a lift. If it is just the two of us, I have to put the trolley in the lift, press the button, dash out before the door closes and race the lift up the stairs with Rachel to meet it at the top. This is works fine mostly but is not so easy in the multi storey car park I sometimes use, where the stairs and the lift come out on a different floor on different sides of the car park. I nearly managed to lose all the children this way as they escorted Rachel up the stairs and came out somewhere else. They actually found the car before I did. Fortunately, I have not yet lost my hundreds of pounds worth of shopping in this complicated lift system. Now that really would be uneconomical.

Hunger Games

I think my children must have hollow legs judging by the amount of food we are getting through at the moment. During the Easter holidays I felt like I was constantly making meals. I keep discovering the lid off the biscuit tin or the evidence of cheese and crackers on the table. The fridge is continually being raided and meals are supplemented by bowls of cereal at any random time of day, as well as being their traditional breakfast and pre-bed snack.

I do remember as a child myself always wanting food. I was nicknamed ‘the bottomless pit’ at school and even after having seconds of school dinners I would hang around my packed lunch friends hoping I might be offered a crisp or two. Actually, I still have a reputation for being a bit of a pig with a high metabolism, so I can’t really wonder where the children get it from.

My mother-in –law looked after all the children for a day and told me that next time they came she was just going to lay out an all day buffet for them. The cumulative effect of their hunger is quite astounding if you are not used it.

On our family days out the rucksack carrying our lunch is both heavy and bulging. We are having a lot of days out at the moment, which is a result of my fierce determination to get our money’s worth from the Merlin passes we splashed out on this year. It does cover us to visit a lot of theme parks and aquariums and London attractions, but even at half price, for six of us it is still pretty exorbitant. My justification for these is that it is my youngest’s last year at home before she goes to school and possibly the last year our eldest will want to be seen with us, as secondary school looms. I want to make the most of doing fun stuff with him before I lose him to his peers.

One day, when we were with friends at Legoland, Ben complained;

“Mum, you didn’t bring enough food!”

This was after they had eaten between them, 22 mini sausage rolls, 35 cocktail sausages, buttered tea cakes, apples, peppers, grapes, cucumber, tomatoes, yogurts, a choice of ham and cheese, ham or cheese and pickle or tuna and sweetcorn pitta breads, ham wraps, packets of crisps and a packet of biscuits. They also helped their friends demolish a tube of Pringles in seconds and took anything else that was on offer in the communal food sharing. They also had cups of hot chocolate. When they were still hungry, four of the children had half a hot dog each. (We weren’t going to pay for one each! We’d brought lunch with us.)

A lot of the time feeding the children is just a good tactic to keep them busy in the queues for the rides or in the back of the car, so I do always try to make sure I’ve lots to offer them. I was incredulous at Ben’s complaint. I literally couldn’t have carried anymore.

I figure they are just growing children and this is just a normal healthy appetite, until Patrick asks for a pint of milk and broccoli with his breakfast one morning. This is not normal.

“I am trying to grow tall” he explains “I need to be 1.3 metres so I can go on all the rides by myself.”

These Merlin passes are clearly going to end up costing me a lot more than I thought!

Desperately Wanted / Desperately Unwanted

I am so looking forward to day that I am not woken up to cries of

“ Mummmeeeeeee, can you wipe my boppom?!”

I groan, and lie there in the dark for a moment, feeling disgruntled and thinking, yes, I can, but so can you, before admitting defeat and rolling out of bed and downstairs to the waiting bottom.

It won’t be long now until this phase, like the nappy era, is over.

No one is going to wipe her bottom at school in September.

I remember as a child just not seeing the absurdity of the question I asked my Mum in the midst of this phase; “Whose bottom do you like wiping most?”

There is a lot of talk in my house about whose job it is to do certain things. Ben isn’t at all flexible and will refuse to do a job, if it is not written down under his name on the meal time rota for that day. And yet he will think nothing of getting Patrick to take out the recycling or tidy his room for him, tasks which aren’t written down at all but are generally expected of Ben.

I insist that getting Emilia’s hairbrush is her job, she thinks it is mine.

One morning she was howling about the injustice of having to go upstairs and find it when I had apparently just come downstairs and could have got it for her. I was ignoring the noise which had, without missing a beat, turned into being about another issue as she fell over on her way to her room.

“Mummy, you don’t care.....I hurt myself” she wailed.

“I do care” I replied, “but you are always wailing, how do I know that you have hurt yourself? You are the boy who cried wolf, so I don’t take any notice, especially when I am busy getting things done before school.”

“Mummy, you’re only busy with us in the morning, then you have the whole day to do what you want, I have to work hard at school all day....(woe is me, etc, etc.)”

It did make think though. Does she really believe that without her and the other children around I am completely redundant and my time is my own? (9.15am until 12.15pm, all of 4 mornings a week.) Therefore, by her reasoning, outside these times I should be completely pandering to them.

Interesting theory.

They won’t always need me to the extent they demand now and I got a little glimpse of the future recently. As an incentive to get themselves ready on a school morning, I say that once everything is done that they can do as they like until 8.30am. Inevitably this is screen time.

At 8.30am I looked in at our open plan living room/ dining room to see in every corner someone on a screen. Ben was computer programming on the desktop, Patrick was playing on the Wii, Emilia was writing a story on my laptop and Rachel was watching television.

“Time for school” I announced brightly.

There is not a flicker, no one reacts, they all just continue staring at their screens as if no one spoke. I am completely ignored. In fact it takes several nagging attempts and a power shut down before I can tear them away and get them all out of the door.

This is how you go from being desperately wanted to desperately unwanted in one short morning. Could this be the shape of things to come? Straight from their bottoms to the back of their heads.

A Squash and a Squeeze Theory

People often think that having four children is a lot and ask how we juggle it all. It just depends what you are used to, if four is the norm then that doesn’t seem that difficult. It is all a matter of perspective, if you have two children, you may think we have double the work. That is only the case with a few things, like bedtime stories, (why I do them all individually I don’t know?) also reading homework and fingernail and toenail cutting.

My children’s nails seem to grow at a phenomenal rate. It seems I cut them all and in no time their nails seem to be long and dirty and it is time to do it again. When I actually counted up, I worked out that, including my own, I am responsible for 100 fingernails and toenails. No wonder it feels like I am constantly wielding the nail scissors.

It is all relative though. It is like the Julia Donaldson story of a Squash and a Squeeze; the old woman moans her house is too small and is advised to bring all her animals into her house one by one, until she really knows what a small house feels like. Once she shoos them all out, she appreciates her space again, stops complaining and is full of frolics and fiddle-dee-dees.

This is pretty similar to what goes on in our house and I am all for filling the house with people and animals anyway, but it has the added bonus of making us feel like a house with only the six of us is relatively peaceful.

Here is our own version of a Squash and a Squeeze, and you can see what I mean.

"With a couple of dogs to look after for Kate,

A house built for 6 feels crowded for 8.

Then bring in my nephew, my sister and Gran,

And other odd bods - what a curious plan!

Then count in my Dad  who is only one more,

But the house is a squash when you add in all 4.

And inviting in-laws in for coffee will mean

What was comfy for 12 is cramped for 14.

But when neighbour Dom appears on the scene

With the Scotts from next door – it’s gone up 19.

A ring of the doorbell brings kids off the street

So it’s 21 now  -  hope they don’t want to eat.

And as they traipse in with Bertie their cat,

The Jehovah’s witnesses call for a chat.

So what started as 6, is now 24

People and animals -  ceiling to floor.

My kitchen is bedlam but before it gets worse,

The visitors suddenly start to disperse

And gone are the godly, the kids and the cat,

And there‘s space once again in the room where they sat

And though it’s quite fun to have people around,

It’s quite roomy in here I’ve suddenly found

With relatives returned to homes nearby

I could swing a cat now, if I wanted to try.

Now everyone’s gone and we’re back down to 8,

With the dogs in their basket and now here comes Kate

And as soon as she’s taken the two dogs away

The house breathes a sigh as there’s now room to play.

With just 6 of us now it’s so quiet and I feel.

That having 4 children  is not a big deal

And we're full of frolics and fiddle dee dees

Our house is no longer a squash and a squeeze.”

I do love the chaos and I am really very happy to have this busy happy household of visitors, just so long as they are not queuing up for me to cut their nails.

Pants

Patrick came downstairs one morning last week wearing two pairs of pants.

“Patrick!” I said exasperated “take one of those off and go and put on your uniform, you don’t need two pairs of pants on.”

“He does if he is playing golf” pipes up Emilia.

“What? Why would he need two pairs of pants to play golf?” I said, in all innocence.

“In case he gets a hole in one” she replies.

Not bad for 7.30am. Certainly too early for me, and for Patrick clearly, who put in, “or if I am playing cricket.”  

I tried explain that cricket didn’t work with the punch line, but that joke had gone over his head, he was thinking the extra pair was going to protect his balls from the cricket ball.

Later on, I discovered that he had not taken off the second pair and had worn them both all day. Briefs over boxer shorts– not a great look, hope he didn’t have PE.

I remember Ben doing the same thing on occasion and absent-mindedly putting on two pairs, either that, or wearing one pair twisted so that his waist was through the tight leg hole and a baggy waist was around one thigh. How that could not feel totally uncomfortable and wrong all day, I don't know.

He obviously has a high discomfort threshold. Once, Ben forgot to take his pants off when getting changed for school swimming. He just put his swim shorts over the top. He only realised when he came to get changed again. He was only 5 at the time and not knowing what to do about it, just put his school trousers over the top of his wet pants.

Rachel has no such inhibitions about going commando and we’ll frequently discover halfway through the day that she isn’t wearing any pants at all. She dresses herself mostly and goes straight for the trousers. Clearly she thinks knickers are over rated.

There must be some family ‘pant blindness’ gene going on here.  The children’s Great Grandmother was living in an old folks’ home where she kept insisting that someone had stolen all her knickers. It was later revealed she was in fact actually wearing eight pairs. That is one way to keep warm I suppose.

I am not sure what it is about having warm bottoms, but another pant incident happened when we were children, when my Granny on the other side of the family came to stay with us. She wanted to warm her knickers before she put them on, so she laid her great thermal bloomers on the grill pan and put them under the grill to warm up. (Presumably she didn’t have a radiator in her room.) Anyway, she forgot about them and they burned and she was forever after known as Granny Grilled-her-knickers.

Let that be a lesson, Grannies and hot pants are never a good combination.

Top Dog

At the moment we are the classic nuclear family, if by that you read nuclear in the explosive and potentially disastrous sense of the word, otherwise we are the nuclear family; 2 adults, 2 children, 1 dog, plus some. (4 kids, 2 dogs.)

Children are always going to want a pet, it must be a natural instinct to want or need something to lord it over, be in charge of and control. The kids love it. As much as all the other plus points of having a pet to care for are nice, this really is the bottom line, the not wanting to be last in the pecking order.

I am all for pets, but don’t actually want the long term responsibility that inevitably falls to the parents when the novelty wears off. This is why in our house we borrow dogs, so it is always a novelty, and give them back before they become a chore. My theory is that in the children’s selective memory they will believe they grew up having a dog, but we needn’t actually go to the bother of getting them one.

Since this week we have not one, but two dogs, it works even better. There are two leads, so that minimises the arguments over whom gets hold them...or so I thought. Before the dogs even arrived, Emilia and Patrick had come to an amicable arrangement that she would take charge of the girl dog, Millie and he would have the boy dog, Toby.

One morning I just took the girls out to walk them. Two dogs, two girls, one each and no argument...what I didn’t bank on was them both preferring the same one, the female black Labrador who didn’t pull on the lead quite as strongly. We managed to keep the peace though with turn taking, negotiation and distraction.

You can see from Rachel’s face and demeanor that she absolutely loves the fact that she is not bottom of the pile anymore. She is constantly saying “No!” to the dogs, and telling them what to do and where to go. She enjoys the power of giving them their food, taking their leads on and off and generally bossing them about.

The children rose early the first morning we had the dogs and were nagging me to get out of bed so we could get outside and walk them. Talk about role reversal, on a school morning without dogs, it is me nagging them to get up. This enthusiasm was fairly short lived though, later in the week, they were less fussed and it ended up being just me walking them by myself. (Which is quite blissful, it has to be said.)

It is easy to romanticise the idea of a dog. It is lovely to see the child dog relationship develop. When you witness the scene of Ben reading in his hammock in the spring sunshine, with the faithful dog lying beneath, or of Patrick running along with the dog at his side, you can see the temptation. It is so heart warming to see Rachel and cousin Charlie cuddled up with the dogs in the dog bed, or Emilia trying to teach them tricks. On these occasions I really have to persuade myself getting a dog is a bad idea.

Also, what has been particularly gratifying is that the dogs recognise me as chief of this family, even over Mark. We were out walking and I detoured to deposit the bag in the dog waste bin, Mark called the dogs to continue walking the opposite direction with him, but after initial obedience they came running back to find me, causing him to remark,

“You are obviously the Alpha dog round here.”

Mark is Beta dog, as he had the same problem persuading the dogs to leave him to go off with Ben when I wasn’t there.

As much as I know deep down that if it was Mark who fed the dogs, it would be him whose authority would be recognised, it  does feel good that someone sees me as top dog round here.   

Perhaps it is me then, not Rachel, who is so desperate to be in charge.

We're Going On a....Poo Hunt

We’re looking after a couple of dogs at the moment, and it is a really lovely experience. There is something so wholesome somehow about getting out in the fresh air and walking, man and beast, at one with nature and your thoughts. 

My least favourite part, as I am sure it is with all dog owners, is the poop scooping bit. There is something intrinsically wrong with walking along swinging a small bag of poo, and with two dogs it can be up to 3 bags of poo. Grim.

However, one of the things I wasn’t prepared for was the magical disappearing poo. I bend down to deal with one dog’s business and see in the distance, the other dog going about his. I clock the tree it is near and having bagged the first turd, I make a beeline for the spot, but the poo that I know is there has vanished. I scour the area, where is it?

I put the dogs on their leads hoping they will lead me to it, but no. I feel like a complete fool as I loiter under the trees with one bag of poo in hand, searching the ground, while other dog walkers look curiously at me, as I try to make out that I have not just misplaced a steaming pile of crap. I think of the many times I have cursed dog owners as I have cleaned the dog muck from my children’s shoes or buggy wheels.

“Where’s the poo?” I repeatedly mutter under my breath to the mute dogs. I am a responsible dog owner I will find and scoop.

This is not the morning I imagined. If the children were with me this ‘find the poo’ game would perhaps make slightly more sense.