....or alternatively..... Ecofriendlytreehugginggreenparentingmalarkey
Let’s get one thing straight: Tom doesn’t give a monkeys about the environment. He gives more of a monkeys about monkeys. Find an endangered monkey and stick it in a discarded box and then perhaps you’d grab his attention. Of course he’d end up playing with the box but at least it’d be a start. As his parents we’re marginally better but all too often we find we’re your classic middle class; shocked and distraught at the state of the world but unwilling to let our decaf lattes get cold in order to sort it. But we try.
Take washable nappies. What a fantastic invention. What did our parents do without them? When Tom came along we (alright, Jane) swore that we were going to do our bit. Washable was the way forward; cuts down on refuse, cuts down on expense, cuts down on chemicals and, for the Brighton crowd, nicely retro. Jane actually went so far as to pretend that she preferred them to disposables. I made no bones about it: using one was like dressing Tom in a toga. Outside. In Wales. During the rainy season, effectively May 14th to May 13th.
There’s always a chance I was using them incorrectly but I found that within two hours of fitting Tom into one, doubling his hip capacity to size Tinky-Winky, he would be seeping. We’re all adults here but ‘seep’ with all its accompanying implications is not a pleasant word. At the time he could usually be found nestling on either Jane or me and so we would encounter the seep-and-soak effect. It may have helped empty our dustbins but it pushed our washing machine towards the China Syndrome. I lost all the hair on the left hand side of my body passing our white hot machine one particularly misty afternoon in November.
Bio-degradable is the compromise we’ve latched onto. This way we assuage our consciences and stand a chance of getting through Boogie Beebies without the place looking like Splashworld. They cost a bit more than ordinary evil nappies as well. A fantastic marketing ploy this and one that truly works amongst today’s moderately well-off. ‘Well, if that costs more than that brand then it has to be better for the environment. Hey look! Organic Cauliflowers for under a fiver!’ However, we are still embarrassed discussing this around serious people and have premonitions that our grandchildren will be forced to live on top of a refill site in some crazy dystopian nightmare where a robotic Gillian McKeith rules the world with a rod of Perspex.
After the switch, our washing machine was hoping for time off for clean behaviour but hey buddy, there’s no such thing as a free spin cycle. I often fondly recall Tom’s Day of a Thousand Outfits. His first top fell prey to a careless Weetabix, his second an explosive poo, a third went with a spilt smoothie and a fourth bit the dust through lunch. By the time we’d reached 2pm his cupboard was looking stressed and I was eyeing up his wetsuit. It struck me then that ideally Tom would be dressed in edible clothes he could nibble on through the day (some sort of rhubarb vest would make a nice treat at 5.30, after he’s worked his way through his Sweet Potato Hoody and Turkey Trousers), and have a gore-tex coated hemp sack strapped around his waist. Sunflowers waiting out back would swallow up his waste whilst we doused him down in the rain water butt. Honestly, he’d love that!
As it happens the prospect of Tom chomping on his second suede shoe of the day isn’t as outlandish as it may seem, for as far as food goes, Tom’s got a bit picky recently. He used to wolf down any old healthy vegetable we threw his way but lately he’s got a taste for afters. Pancakes, crumble, ice cream, chocolate, semolina. I think we could probably get him to eat his shoes as long as they were coated in maple syrup. Now I’m not blaming Jane for this, although God knows her family has history! Uncle Andrew lives on Toblerone and full-fat milk and her mum equates a lack of enthusiasm for dessert with a liking for wanton and indiscriminate acts of violence. Ironic this, as Tom loves a dessert and also rather fancies a slice of wanton destruction of an afternoon. Ha! That’s shows her. But this takes nothing away from the fact that Jane has tried so hard to introduce Tom to a variety of healthy, organic, homemade foods. Luckily none of it ever goes to waste as Jane cherishes it considerably more than her offspring and usually ends up eating the last of the parsnip and pea surprise as Tom burrows his way into a treacle pudding like some latter day Doug McClure. I swear the last cake he ate had planning permission.
So what do you do? You end up feeding your son fish smeared with custard, carrots dipped in semolina and potato squeezed meticulously inside a hollowed out crème egg.
Alright, I made the last one up.
Where does that leave us? I guess that ultimately there’ll be people out there who read this and think we’re monsters of Bushian proportions. Others will have us down as wishy-washy liberals who probably think that serial killers should have rights to free dry cleaning. Well, we’re somewhere in between I guess. Ultimately we do what we do. Jane and I try our best with the resources and time we have and then, if it goes wrong, well, Jane blames me. Seems fair.
Dave Fouracre
……just another day in the life of ‘Dave the Dad’ at TheBabyWebsite.
Dave Fouracre aka "Dave the Dad" is a regular feature writer here at thebabywebsite.com.
Read more about his hilarious experiences as a Dad.
May 2 2007 |
Dave The Dad 35 - 15 weeks and Counting
