The trials of half-term with a bored kid
Juggling kid adventures and caffeine chaos, I'm surviving a chaotic half-term with my son
“Ted, come and look at the monkeys!”, I yell for the third time, unconvincingly. My five year old son remains unmoved, his attention transfixed by a Lego model of a snow leopard. “This one’s from Asia”, I half-heartedly add as he boggles at the plastic model of an animal whose flesh-and-blood inspiration is currently situated in an enclosure less than fifty metres away from where we’re standing. I sigh and put the paper map of the zoo back in my pocket. This is going to be a long half-term.
As previously documented, I’m currently between jobs. School is closed all week, and therefore it falls to me to provide this week’s entertainment for my high-energy son. I began with earnest plans of BBC-esque public service: educate, inform, entertain. But now it’s midway through day two and I’m happy to just shovel flapjacks into my kid’s face until my partner finishes work at 5pm.
I thought the zoo would be sure-fire: we took him here once when he was three and didn’t make it past the soft play area at the entrance. Now he’s nearly six, I reasoned, we’d be able to explore the various flora and fauna of Twycross Zoo together, marvelling at the incredible gifts bestowed upon us by Mother Nature. Instead, I’m trying to persuade a child to come and look at a tired flamingo because I’ve paid £37 each for the privilege of being here.
Eventually, we both come to terms with the arrangement: I let Ted entertain himself on the frozen play park for twenty minutes, in exchange for him pretending to be interested in the rhino and gorilla exhibits so I can convince myself I’ve properly visited a zoo. For a brief, exciting, moment, we’re the only people to witness the Sumatran tiger emerge from its indoor den and strut casually onto the wooden walkway atop an observation bridge, where we pose for selfies with a tiger directly above our heads. This was worth the entrance fee, I find myself thinking, before a dozen other people join us for the photo op.
The next day, I find myself pulling on a harness and wristband at a climbing centre, to accompany my spider-like child for an hour of indoor climbing. Within seconds he’s effortlessly pulling himself up the vertical surfaces like one of Spider-Man’s chattier cousins, while I grimace from the floor mat and try to adjust the straps that are digging into my crotch. Maybe jeans weren’t the best outfit, I reflect.
Eventually I try to climb up alongside him, and find myself unable to physically summon the courage to scale the heights my child is comfortably reaching. I cling to the wall like it’s the only thing allowing my sanity to prevail, and worry that the rope and strap keeping me anchored to reality isn’t properly adjusted. I watch a seven year old confidently leap from the top of a wall and calmly glide like a phoenix down to the ground, swaggering all the way. By contrast, I decide to save my knees the effort of climbing back down from my not-so-lofty perch, and gingerly jump free of the wall. An involuntary shriek accompanies my movement and I half fall back down to the ground, graceless and aching. Ted watches me with a knowing stare.
Finally we’re in the cinema for his ninety minutes of kid entertainment and I relish the opportunity to enjoy uninterrupted screen time with my phone. I sit back and read a book about the Holocaust while the plot of Dog Man plays out on the Odeon Luxe screen below us. The mum in the reclining seat next to me falls asleep and soon her snores disturb my concentration. Ricky Gervais somehow appears in the film and I lose my ability to concentrate on my book.
Later in the week I bribe Ted into accompanying me to several chores and odd jobs with the promise of a McDonalds at the end of it. By 11.30am he’s clamouring for his Happy Meal so I reluctantly take us for lunch less than two hours after I ate breakfast. I eat the worst burger I’ve had in living memory (oddly cold on one side, but obviously I don’t complain and consume the entire thing) and Ted happily taps away at the stalk-mounted tablet which sits atop the kids’ tables while a bloke with headphones on lies asleep with his head flat on the tabletop beside us. I’m never coming here again, I think, but of course it’s a lie, because McDonalds know you’ll be back, know this is the Great Leveller where everyone, rich or poor, eventually ends up, through circum– or happenstance.
We go for father-and-son haircuts together and I’m initially grateful for the barber who buys Ted some sweets from the vending machine as well as a bouncy ball while my cut is finishing up. My gratitude turns to anger as I see Ted in the mirror passionately throwing the bouncy ball around the barber shop, chasing it under chairs and between electric razors as they charge. He catches my eye in the mirror and turns to wiggle his bum at me with a mocking grin, and I try (unsuccessfully) not to laugh in the face of the taciturn Turkish barber who’s currently trimming my fringe.
Half term: it’s nearly done. So am I.
Mini-feels this week
For want of espresso…
I bought a fancy coffee machine a year or two back. It came with a manual tamper – a little handheld device to “tamp” down (eg. compress) the coffee grounds in order to aid the extraction process.
My long-suffering partner Maddy struggled to make good coffee with this tamper due to the physical strength required, so I bought an expensive automatic tamper with a spring-loaded action to make the process easier. This resulted in even worse (eg. under-extracted) coffee, because the portafilter (eg. the metal basket the coffee grounds are stored in) is too tall and has curved sides that don’t fit the tamper properly.
Next I find myself buying a similarly-expensive basket filter imported directly from Italy, which has a shorter (and straighter) profile. This basket should work better with the auto-tamper, and when it arrives I have to buy another bag of coffee beans because I’ve used the last of the previous ones up “dialling in” the correct settings for the new equipment.
Eventually I manage to make a half-decent brew with the new equipment and try not to reflect on the fact that I’ve spent almost a third of the cost of the machine on buying these after-market accessories, solely to improve the quality of the coffee my partner occasionally makes me. Next time I’ll just make them myself.