Ah, youth!

You know you have family staying with you when not only do you have to use the ‘value’ set of cutlery that you bought as a stop gap measure, but also, you don’t care!

And the plates! You get into a routine of using plates steadily so that eventually the dishwasher is filled up ready to go, but you are still left with as many plates as you need for normal meals. The sequence of washing, stacking and using is soothing in its timeless rhythm. But, suddenly, there are people; all of whom need plates and they use them and there you are (sooner than eventually) with frantic dish washing as the food is being served out!

And it goes on. Spoons, cups, mugs – all being used and things that you vowed that you looked forward to throwing out are all pressed into service in a logistical nightmare that, apart from certain times in the night, never seems to be containable.

And the children. Well, the child.

I remember reading Stephen Hawking’s ‘Brief History of Time’ – to be absolutely truthful, I know that my eye passed over all the words in the book, even if my brain did not always manage to fit the words together into coherent sentences – and wondering about the concept of the black holes. Having been in the presence of a small child for the past three and a bit days, I now fully understand the thinking behind the postulation. How an inchoate human being, weak, inarticulate and totally vulnerable can suck into himself the energy of six adults with seemingly effortless ease day after day is wonderful (if enervating) to behold. I think the fact that he has dimples has something to do with it. Cute always cuts the deepest!

As I am no expert of children under two, he is a constant revelation. Although his vocabulary is confined to a few (and I mean a few, like three) basic words, he seems to be able to understand complex instructions and will suddenly do just as you tell him; if you speak Catalan!

His mood swings are the stuff of casebooks. His appetite is eclectic and bewildering. His manner imperious. His confidence overwhelming. His mannerisms captivating. His capriciousness bewitching. His morality, non existent!

All of this is, of course, old hat to those who have dealt with very young children before, but this is all new to me and drainingly fascinating.

You can see experience begin to dictate responses. He already almost knows what is captivating and will nearly consciously behave in a way which will elicit positive responses. This, you might say, can be said for all of us. But we are more knowing; his knowing is almost entirely instinct with just a flavour of intent!

I now know that parents of young children live for The Depletion. That magic moment when full face manic behaviour gives way in an instant to the comatose. And then the period of quietude when, for the first time that day, a breath may be drawn without the worry of what may happen by the time the exhalation has begun.

My childhood was, of course, exemplary. I remember one time after I had committed some juvenile indiscretion my father saying to himself, although my mother was in the room at the time, “Well, we have to remember that he had to be woken for his feeds.” It turned out that for my first three weeks of existence I did nothing else of note but cry: day and night. At the end of that time after my father had “thrown” (his word to me many years later) me at my mother with words to the effect that I was her child and she would have to do something about me. I then shut up and, as far as I can make out, my parents had a (relatively) easy run as far as being woken up at unreasonable hours was concerned. I will have to authenticate this reminiscence by reference to Aunt Bet: the repository of all family history, dates, lineage and true anecdotes.

I certainly played on that early (and misleading) behaviour throughout my life, leading to my father’s equally revealing observation, “Stephen, I have been waiting for you to say to me, ‘Dad, you’ve worked for me all your life; go out and work for yourself,’ – I’m retired now!” What I say is that he got off lightly!

One thing I do remember was my inclination as a child to be ‘off into the blue beyond’ as soon as the parental hand loosened. I do not remember trying to escape as a point of principle, it was just as soon as restraint, however loose, dropped – I ‘wandered’. My mother was a great believer in reins and adopted them as the only means she ever found to keep me roughly in the vicinity of her, admittedly manic, observation. The time that my mother’s attention drifted for “a few seconds” (her words) from her very young son, I was well on my way to England, periodically being swamped by passing waves, as I left the coast of Wales and the resort of Pendine far behind.

I will not dwell on the aftermath of my cheery (if somewhat spluttering) greeting, “Hi Dad!” as my father broke several Welsh, British and World records in getting out to me, urged on by my mother’s helpful hysteria! I would merely point out that if Childline had been in existence at that time I would have been more than justified in phoning them. Parents can be so unreasonable. I maintain that I was not drowning; I was merely being submerged on an increasingly regular basis. It’s all (as I didn’t get the chance to tell Dad at the time) semantics.

Who knows what excesses will be effortlessly committed before the end of tomorrow?

But, on the positive side, tomorrow is the traditional day of Carmen’s paella.

[Sighs happily!]