The decorating is coming along a treat and we have managed to work our way around paint pots and rollers to continue with normal life during the process. It has been my aim to limit most of the required work to applying several coats of emulsion and to resist any conversations about wallpaper.
It is not that I mind a bit of paper hanging it is just that you don’t have to worry about plumblines and matching patterns with vinyl silk. You are also spared the embarrassment off confirming to the world that you never learn to cut a straight line with scissors.
I was happy that my plan was coming together when out of the blue, and in the middle of a conversation with our daughters, my wife mentioned that she would like to have a feature wall in the lounge. I asked what one of these might be and was told that it was good taste to paper one wall in order to show some creativity. Apparently it should stand out from the other walls in order that the other colours might find their own voice. In the name of all that is woodchip what has the world come to?
Not satisfied with this homage to makeover programmes the girls started to talk about accessorising the room. I listened further and understood this to mean, amongst other things, that the collection of photographs marking the Molineaux girls’ changes in hairstyles would no longer hang on our walls. The pictures themselves were not the problem; it was the fact that none of the frames matched that caused concern.
‘Feature walls, accessorising, colours having a voice’, I mumbled as I went off to apply masking tape to anything that could not be moved.
The girls spent their time looking through photograph albums trying to agree on which pics would sit well on our bright, clean walls. You can probably imagine that such agreement was not easy to find.
Females never like any of their photographs; or if they do find one that is just about acceptable a sister will object that it is not a good one of them and therefore couldn’t possible be used. My wife was pleased with most of them but, caught up in the spirit of decorating, held them towards the emulsion to see if they clashed which I am not sure is a wholly acceptable way of judging your children.
Meanwhile I carried on applying a mixture of paint and loose hairs from the brush to the walls. I daydreamed of simpler times when colours had names like Post Office Red or British Racing Green and when it was acceptable to cover old work surfaces with sticky backed plastic.
I was drawn back to the conversation by the girls’ hysterical laughter and my need to feel included. They had found a family holiday photo that had captured their whole attention.
Daughter number one must have been around thirteen and it was obvious that a family vacation was not what she wanted to be involved in, let alone a group photograph.
Imagine the scene; the whole gang on the beach, all wearing our cossies and factor six million sun screen (Mrs M being a nurse a lecture on sensible sunbathing was always an important part of our holiday enjoyment). I had my traditional holiday hat to protect my bald patch from harmful rays.
With the bright sun, the blue sky and the golden sand it was a beautiful and colourful portrayal of family life. Except that is for Mrs Molineaux’s eldest; she was wearing black trousers, black shirt, black coat, and dark sun glasses.
It was as if the teenager had been superimposed on to the photograph after the event. Her whole manner, even her facial expression, shouted her disapproval at being with the family on holiday.
As we viewed the photograph she admitted to not being totally committed to the collective family experience that year. I tried to encourage her by saying that perhaps she was our ‘Feature Daughter’ in that she stood out from the others and allowed them to find their own voices.
Feature Wall
Abseiling
As a youngster I enjoyed the usual practice of joining clubs of various types. I am not sure what it says about my character but I invariable stayed in each one just long enough to cause my parents the expense of buying the necessary uniform. Then, with hardly a grass stain on my cricket trousers or a bead of sweat on my judo outfit, I would leave.
So it was that I approached parenthood with a little nervousness; feeling sure that my mother’s grandchildren would take suitable revenge on my lack of stickability by dealing with me in similar manner.
We went through various dance and sports clubs and I am pleased to report that my girls must have inherited their mother’s ability to remain in a group for more than five minutes. So when our youngest daughter announced that she wanted to join the Scouts it was not my confidence in her ability to last the course that caused my concern, just her choice of club.
‘The Scouts only let boys join’. I explained in that over confident way that parents have when they feel sure that they know more than their offspring.
After an increasingly frustrating exchange I was un-nerved enough to phone a fellow parent only to find out that not only do they now allow girls to join but the leader was in fact a lady. You could have knocked my down with a woggle.
So it was that the youngest of our tribe became the first female in the Molineaux family to both dib and dob.
I knew, as all parents do, that such involvement in a club was not merely for the kids. There is a force at play that has been around for generations; one that no feeble Dad can resist. It is the momentum that makes you have to join in with some event that all your logic tells you can only end in tears.
It started on the way home in the car when Mrs Molineaux’s youngest informed me that the Scouts were going to raise money by abseiling down the church tower. I should have kept quiet, or at the very least told her to speak to her mother about it, but I feigned interest and was drawn into the trap. By the time we had reached home and her excitement had reached blue Smarty level I had agreed to take part.
The day came and the helpless parents were lead to the church hall with their energy filled offspring. We were given a brief lecture at which the phrase ‘accidents very rarely happen’ was slipped in almost un-noticed. I wanted to shout ‘Very rarely! What does that mean?’ but I was under orders not to embarrass my daughter.
The children went first and confident procession of eight and nine year olds, including daughter number, bounced down the side of the ancient tower. It was then our turn and I had the misfortune of following a Dad who must have been in the SAS in his part time because not only did he tell jokes on the way down but he went face first. I resisted the temptation to cut his rope and teach him a valuable lesson about showing off.
When it came to my turn it seemed that the crack team controlling all things rope-like were distracted by free pizza. Unsupervised I stuttered my way toward to ground until, about half way down, the equipment snagged meaning that although my top half kept going my lower body would not move. I hung up side down on a rope for a few minutes allowing the ‘helpers’ to enjoy their pizza.
Eventually, still the wrong way up, I was lowered to the ground to the applause of small children and the sniggers of other parents all of which was caught on video.
I showed the footage to my parents as evidence that my juvenile lack of commitment had done them both a favour; neither of them having to face the embarrassment of abseiling down a church tower or similar.
They were too busy laughing at the video to say thank you.
Royal Family
I have always imagined the Molineaux household to be a replica of the Royal Family; the one with Jim and Barbara rather than Elizabeth and Philip.
I am not making this comparison because I swear a lot and sit around in my vest or that we alternate our family alcohol consumption with drinking tea.
No! I speak of such things because we have been, for many years, a family that congregates around the TV even when there seems to be little of interest to view. It never ceases to amaze me that we have over seven hundred channels available and yet still we complain that there is nothing to watch.
What surprises me even more is that, in our search for entertainment, we can spend the whole length of a programme flicking from channel to channel before going back to the one that we started at. Even when the adverts come on we embark on a flicking session and often end up forgetting which programme we were watching.
I am not complaining about all of our TV experience because we, like many others, find a great deal of pleasure in arguing about the scores awarded to celebrity ballroom dancers or debating the comments given to singers who have been deemed to be factored with a large amount of X.
I had thought that this was the picture of our future until a few days ago. I walked into the living room, after doing one of those jobs that it seems only Dads can do, expecting to find my precious family huddled around the box in corner. The TV was indeed switched on but the sound was at a low level whilst the three Molineaux females present (wife and two youngest daughters) were all sat typing away on lap top computers.
Amazed, I stood and watched for a moment and then asked a few questions to find out what had brought this seismic change in our lounge room activities.
Daughter number four was simultaneously watching video clips on YouTube (think computerised low budget TV channel) and ‘speaking’ to her friends on MSN (think an electronic version of passing notes around at school).
Daughter number three was engrossed in a video editing session whilst listening to music on an IPod through her head phones (think miniature record player that isn’t affected by dust).
My wife, who is curiously able to use a computer but not equipped enough to tune in her own car radio, was setting up own Face Book page (think diary, photo album and scrapbook shared with others). The girls had banned her from having a My Space page (think Face Book but for younger people) because they were worried that their friends might find out.
Engrossed in their own cyber worlds they would occasionally communicate their findings to each other, yet none of them seemed to have noticed that football was on the TV. What are these amazing pieces of electronic wizardry that have the power to quench negative comments about sport on the telly?
Is this the future for our families? Will the TV be merely background noise to the sound of computer keyboards? Are we about to leave behind our Royal Family status?
I shared these thoughts with my wife who was horrified at even the thought that we resembled Jim and Barbara. ‘We are nothing like them’ she protested as she went off to make a pot of tea.
When I was younger entertainment choices were simpler. We all watched TV and chose from three channels some of which only showed programmes for part of the time. The next day we would laugh at Morecambe and Wise as we shared the experience again.
Sitting around the TV was what we did in the evening when Dad came home from work. We were real people watching made up stories about imaginary characters.
Now we can listen to music whilst checking out websites and email friends with football on the TV in the background.
There is one benefit to all these changes; whilst the girls spend their time surfing the net I get to use the remote control (think one of the greatest inventions of all time).
