Do Dolphins Quack?

Jo Adamson-Parker - 7 Apr 19

I feel I’ve just been on a week-long endurance test that culminated in a pair of my knickers flying northwards up the A165.  I’ll rewind slightly….

First week of the school holidays and we took the boys away, supposedly for a break. Now, when I booked this I didn’t think I’d be without wi-fi or phone signal, we were, after all, only going to the East Yorkshire coast, not the foothills of Tibet. But I was thrust back to the dark ages, of a time before mobile connectivity and Sky TV!  Don’t get me wrong, I can live without my technology, but last week I could have done with a bit of contact with the outside world and distracting myself with some ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.

Bubba was ‘on one’ all week and I mean ALL week. There was moaning and whining to an impressive level accompanied by tantrums and screaming, anger and tears,(mostly his!)  Nothing we did was right, certainly nothing I said was right. Everything was met with ‘no it isn’t’, ‘why not?’ or ‘that’s not fair’! Oh and his favourite saying at the moment, ‘not going to happen’ which is usually heard in reply to any request made of him or when pointing out the error of his ways!

On days out we had constant defiance coupled with his refusal to listen, which sat beautifully with his high anxiety. This provided our week away with its own soundtrack of whooping, screeching and bizarrely, chicken noises! ‘Luckily’ for us Squeak tends to copy whatever his brother does so we got our soundtrack in stereo!

Bedtime and we had the usual requests for a drink, claims it was too dark, too light, too cold. He did everything he could to avoid going to bed by a couple of hours.! As usual he urgently needed answers to life questions like ‘what’s Moana’s favourite animal?’ ‘do dolphins quack?’ and ‘why can’t I have a horse?’

According to him he’s really wanted a horse for like, forever. Apparently even back when he was a baby at his foster carers it was all he’d ever wanted. This was news to us, first time he’d ever had any desire to be near a horse let alone own one. But he pitched his argument well and sobbed like his world had fallen apart most nights (again wasting thirty minutes or so).

All became clear though when we realised he could see a ‘pony’ from his window. Once he’d delayed his bedtime each night and it had been agreed I was mean for not buying him Black Beauty, he’d fall asleep.

But I think the high point came on our way home when we decided to visit a bird sanctuary. I know, after the noise and chaos of the week we took our feral family to destroy the peace and calm of birdwatchers on a coastal path! Even the crashing of the waves and gentle calls of guillemots couldn’t drown out the high-pitched squawking and cacophony of screams caused by our two cherubs joined by the weary calls of me and ‘The Wife’ reminding them to ‘be quiet, don’t disturb the birds’.

Why? Why do we bother saying ‘be quiet’ and more to the point why do we even take them to these places when we’d be better off finding a field somewhere and letting them loose for a hour!

And I nearly forgot… got back in the car and obviously give them ten minutes in a confined space and they’re arguing. We’re on the way home so had a bag of dirty washing sat between them, relatively safe you’d think except they decided to fight over the bag, rip it open and have dirty washing fall everywhere. Not really relishing the thought of them throwing my pants around the back seat for a couple of hours we pulled over so I could rescue it. Never that easy though is it as a gust of wind took the washing and blew it back the way we’d came.

I can only hope that the sight of me chasing several pairs of my knickers up the road amused some passing motorists! Thanks boys!

Jo Adamson-Parker

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