AND ANOTHER THING…
Domestic notes again, I’m afraid. Sorry, but I have to discharge both barrels & it’s probably best the blog absorbs the impact rather than next door’s cat or the china cabinet…
In September Emma returns to work full time, resuming her post as Head of Art at St Chris. This will mean farming out Reuben & Rosie for 5 days a week. Back in the spring we arranged with a local childminder that she would take them. We were to ring her in July just to make the final arrangements. We’d had good reports of her from colleagues who had used her & we were glad that, when the wrench came, they would be in good hands. A relief too was that she would cost significantly less than the various others whose tallies we had inspected, which was a crucial factor in my last year of gainful (just) employment.
I rang her yesterday morning &, with remarkable sang froid, she informed me that she was cutting back on her childminding commitments & would be unable to accommodate Reuben & Rosie after all. She was sorry that she had been unable to inform us of her decision earlier but she’d lost our ‘phone number. It was only after I had replaced the receiver carefully in the approved adult manner that I wished I’d asked her why the fuck she hadn’t a.) looked us up in the book, b.) asked one of the two colleagues whose children she had minded to provide it, or c.) rung the school. In fact, looking back I’m not sure what pissed me off more, the casual reneging on the arrangement or my failure to melt the ‘phone lines between us.
So there followed a flurry of Internet activity & subsequent ‘phone calls in a search, not for a childminder (now a damned & blighted breed) but a kindergarten that might have a couple of places free for September. We began positively. For a brief while we even managed to sustain the fiction that there might exist a congenial local outfit that wouldn’t charge fees more consistent with a private detox clinic. Such fancies representing the perpetual triumph of hope in the face of all reasonable expectation cannot last long &, after a series of polite no-room-at-the-inn refusals, we set off to inspect the only three that still had places.
The first was a nightmare. Situated in the middle of an industrial estate, it seemed to be staffed entirely by adolescents. The girl who showed us round can’t have been more than 14 (Emma reckoned mid-20s, but she has yet to notice how young policemen look). She was admirably keen, it has to be said. Information poured from her with all the programmed passion of a Soviet tour guide as she showed us absolutely everything in the place. (I found out, for example, that very young children use toilet bowls just like ours only much smaller & that at 12 months most of them can’t write their own names). We were ushered rapidly from room to room, each one staffed by panicky-looking teenagers sitting amongst infants & playthings, both in varying states of repair. As we fled backwards towards the electronically-locked gate, she thrust something that she called a ‘parent-pack’ at us (subsequently found to be a work of fiction about the nursery) & looked forward eagerly to meeting us again.
The second place was disturbing in a completely different way. It was one of a nationwide group of kindergartens run by a highly successful outfit called Jigsaw. All of them, rather in the manner of supermarkets or Little Chefs, are custom-designed & built so that whether you are in inner city Manchester or on the Isle of Man, you are actually in Jigsawland. As we looked at the bright green & yellow exterior I couldn’t quite identify my sense of unease. Then, as we stepped into the bright green & yellow foyer, I realised that we were tiny human beings in a child’s enormous playhouse. Everything looked as if it had been pressed together out of interlocking plastic blocks by some meticulous 4-year-old. Even the staff (slightly more animated teenagers) looked like little homunculi in their matching burger joint-style t-shirts & sculpted grins as they sat passively amongst their worryingly even more docile charges. A charming 17-year-old (Emma reckoned about 28) guided us around, explaining everything in breezy neologisms. In this room, we were informed, the toddlers – ‘littlies’ – are able to ‘freeflow’ in between satisfying the criteria laid down by the appropriate government department. I queried ‘freeflow’ & she stopped in her tracks, momentarily thrown. After struggling briefly with a small stock of synonyms, she managed ‘play’, I understood clearly & we moved on.
We kept the most expensive one until last, hoping (again in the face of all reasonable expectation) that one of the other two would fit the bill. It was housed in a large, rectangular building, clearly of commercial origin but very effectively converted to more social use. It actually looked like a nursery school with bright, slightly garish door frames & kids’ daubings pasted onto upstairs windows. We were welcomed by a lady of about 38 (Emma reckoned 39) with a barely discernible foreign accent. As she introduced herself as Renata, with a strange & unaccountable sense of reassurance I recognised it as German or Austrian. She guided us around the three floors, opening doors on rooms full of activities led by a multitude of highly capable-looking women & girls (& one young man). Everywhere there were paintings, mobiles, unrecognisable objects made out of toilet rolls & silver foil, boxes of toys &, most noticeably, mixed age groups from babies in cots up to 5-year-olds. Renata explained that the policy was to group the infants vertically & for each group to remain with its particular carer throughout the child’s stay. This, Renata declared, anticipating no contradiction, replicated family structure & made a great deal more sense than isolating babies in cots, crawlers in rooms with no hard surfaces or corners & toddlers out in the playground. She got no argument from two progressive school teachers.
Rosie slept throughout the visit, but Reuben, largely subdued during the previous two inspections, took over. He ran around opening & slamming cupboard doors, sweeping papers off all flat surfaces, drinking from two half-empty coffee cups & seizing Renata’s hand when he felt that she was dawdling. As we got into the car I gloomily computed that at £1,420 per month for the two of them it could keep us in penury for the next four years, if both kids were happy to remain there until ready for the harsh realities of primary education. So within the next few days the deposit will be paid & we shall join the swelling ranks of parents ready, grudgingly willing & only just able to punch holes below the financial waterline in order to compensate for our country’s near-total failure to make basic educational provision for the under-5s.
*Diaper, to my colonial cousins.
