Street fighter

Some things just don’t change.

The children informed me today that they both still believe in Father Christmas, and that no, eighteen and thirteen is not too old for this. You are never too old, they explained, happily, to believe in Magic. 

This is going to be expensive. 

Fortunately, both of their Christmas presents have already been arranged. Lucy will have had hers before Christmas. Father Christmas has arranged for her to be booked on to a Door Supervisor’s course in Manchester. 

This is related to her current ambition to grow up into a street fighter. She will be eighteen in a couple of weeks, and old enough to stand outside a nightclub and search people for drugs or put them in a headlock when they get stroppy. In order to do this you have got to have a licence. 

You cannot have this licence to intimidate until you are suitably qualified, and it is this qualification that she is hoping to gain in December. She has been booked on to a course running in Manchester, and is spending her half term reading the newly-arrived course programme with a fascinated enthusiasm that she has never seemed to experience about any of her A Levels. 

This has caused some agonising heart searching, or to be more accurate, wallet searching.

The course is in December, at a small and scruffy hotel near Piccadilly. Originally we intended to book her into this hotel for the duration of the course in order that she would be handily on site when the course started.

This was until we looked at the hotel website and discovered that the rooms had shared bathrooms and most of them were without windows.

Under no circumstances was this all right. A window is not just an aesthetically pleasing part of a room’s furnishings, it is also a handy back up facility in the event of an emergency, such as a fire or a zombie apocalypse. Neither did we think that we wanted Lucy to be sharing a bathroom, most especially not with any other would-be door supervisors who happened to be from out of town as well.

This is what has caused the problem.

We are coming to the Midland for the few days before the course starts, and we will be leaving Lucy behind when we buzz off back home, or in my case, back to work. 

We think that we are just going to have to bite the financial bullet and leave her there.

This has the dual advantage of being safe and familiar for her, whilst being suitably intimidating for any optimistic young door supervisor who might hope to accompany her back home after a merry evening socialising. We know the staff, and can leave instructions for them to rescue her in an emergency, and they have got our credit card details on file already. 

I hope that the prison service pay up promptly. We are going to need it.

We have got to feed her for four days as well.

Mark says that she can just take a suitcase full of Pot Noodles and crisps, which is her usual diet at home anyway. I suppose this will be all right, she probably won’t get scurvy in four days.

She is very excited about the whole thing. I am also pleased about it really, it might be expensive but she will never lack for work, and it will be good for her to have some practical experience of manhandling rascals before she joins the police force and has to do it all the time.

I am sorry to confess here that in a mischievous moment this evening I wrote to the deputy head at her school, the one responsible for organising the singing competition, and volunteered her services should he have any more problems with the little girls.

I am sure he will be delighted.

The picture is Oliver’s pumpkin, carefully composed by the children instead of doing their homework.