Tuesday was also a non-work day this week and, although I was of a mind to return to the Botanic Gardens with several footballs to bounce on the grass and a wheelbarrow to fill with illicit plants to test the resolve of Ms Grainger, I resisted the temptation. Instead I took Amy to Athletic-Tots. Amy was unaccustomed to spending so much one-on-one time with me and kept asking where her gran was. (She did this sometimes when we had been together for long periods.) I hoped she wasn’t getting bored with my company as it was very likely that given my lack of dating ability, she was stuck with staring at my face for a long time to come.
Athletic-Tots was a group activity held in the main hall of a local sports centre. The play-area was normally cleared of anything dangerous (except for one week when several javelins were left lying out). It allowed the toddlers to run around like headless chickens for an hour or so and blow off steam. There was a small climbing frame with a padded floor underneath and a soft-play area littered with toys, mainly trikes and bikes. It was completely unstructured and I liked it.
Pauline and I often said that if anyone ever had any doubts that humans were anything but primates, they should go to one of these classes and watch the toddlers climb, jump, clamber and wrestle with each other although I would recommend taking a child with you otherwise you may be suspected of being a paedophile. Also it was worth seeking permission to take said child to avoid a kidnapping rap.
Never more acutely did we resemble monkeys in our behaviour and mannerisms than when we were under the age of three. I wondered why we ever grew out of the jumping and climbing phase. It was probably just as well or we’d have climbing frames instead of coffee machines in our offices – though that might actually be more fun. It would certainly be healthier.
Whilst Amy was bouncing around the athletics hall I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. (I tended to keep Katy Perry silent when I was out and about. Russell Brand maybe had the same idea which had probably added to their problems.) I pulled it out and peered at the screen. I didn’t recognize the number but answered it anyway.
‘Hello?’
‘Andy?’
‘Yeah, who’s this?’
‘It’s Carrie, just thought I’d give you a phone.’
‘It’s OK, I’ve already got one.’
‘Sorry?’
I really needed to stop making stupid jokes or I would probably remain single forever. I was surprised to hear from Carrie.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m the one that should be sorry. It’s lovely to hear from you, just my stupid joke about phones. . . .’
‘Oh, right yeah. . . . Ha ha. . . !’
Somehow I didn’t think her laughter was genuine.
‘Anyway, Andy, I just wanted to have a quick chat before we meet up, just to . . . well . . . break the ice, I suppose, and to make sure you are actually going to turn up – I hate being stood up on these things.’
Her reference to ‘these things’ made it sound like she got stood up on a regular basis.
‘Andy, are you still there?’
‘Hi, yes, sorry I was just . . . distracted, for a moment. Of course I’ll turn up. I’m looking forward to it,’ I lied.
‘Good. I find men are unreliable most of the time and I just like to know where I stand. Now, I’ve only a few minutes left as I’ve got to be in a meeting at half ten. Where are you, it sounds noisy?’
I gazed across the large hall at the numerous toddlers screaming and running in random directions like bad extras in a low-budget horror film. ‘I’m at the Leith Athletic Stadium.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know you were into running and fitness, it doesn’t say anything about that in your profile.’
I glanced guiltily down at my latte and large slice of chocolate-smothered shortbread.
‘Well, I’m not really. . . . I’m here with my wee girl. She’s the one running around like a headless chicken with a million other kids.’
‘Oh, OK that sounds like fun.’ Again I didn’t think she was being genuine. ‘As you’re busy I’ll leave you to it. So I’ll see you on Saturday at seven?’
‘Yep I’ll be there.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure about what?’
‘Sure you’ll turn up?’
‘Of course I’ll turn up.’
‘You can tell me if you aren’t coming, so I can then organize something else.’
Now I was starting to get confused. ‘Do you want to do something else?’
‘Eh?’
I sighed. ‘Well it sounds like you maybe want to do something else. If you do that’s fine.’
‘No, Andy, I will definitely be there.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure, that’s why I called you, remember?’
At that point I wasn’t sure who had phoned who, or even quite why I was having this conversation. I also decided that it was likely to go on for some time if I didn’t just agree with her. I’d learned from being married that just agreeing with a woman was usually the path of least resistance.
‘No, that’s fine, Carrie. I’ll see you on Saturday.’
‘OK, bye.’
I hung up and wondered if Carrie would turn out to be a nutcase. The signs so far were good for that outcome. Maybe all women (except Lindsay) were nutcases, or maybe she was a nutcase too and I was just blinded by love. That got me to thinking about all the females I came across at the various nursery groups I took Amy to. They varied depending upon my work-share days which changed from month to month. I’d been to most of them now and although I was usually made to feel welcome, occasionally something happened that changed that.
I was normally comfortable in women’s company – my work was mostly female and I liked women, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the whole getting married thing – but in this environment it was different. I was an oddity, a curiosity and, possibly, a threat. Once I was told I was all three by a self-righteous middle-class ex-teacher. I’ve never got on well with teachers and I can trace that back to my school days.
When I first started going to these groups I was viewed as being unlucky and regarded with pity and sympathy, which was fine – I was getting used to that. However, all that changed one day at Tree-Tots. This was a group run by Marjorie Faulks, a large woman in her mid-fifties. The whole point of TTs, as she called it – her acronym sounded rude to me as she pronounced it ‘titties’ – was educating the toddlers. Every week Marjorie brought in a four-foot model of a tree, and tried to teach the children all about that particular tree and the effect it had on the environment – quite ambitious for a group of toddlers aged between eighteen months and three. On this one occasion I had made the mistake of chatting to a lovely blonde girl called Janice (yeah, blonde again!) who was a single mother, had a reputation (unknown to me) of being a man-eater and had, according to Marjorie, who told me this later, tried to seduce some of the other mummies’ husbands. Why that should affect what they thought of me I don’t know, but it seems that after that I was tarnished. My reputation, for what it was worth, had been sullied. Maybe they thought I was out to snare myself another mummy for Amy. Who knows? After that, the reception I received at various toddler groups was frosty for a while – although it had improved recently.
I stopped going to Tree-Tots shortly afterwards anyway as they were running out of interesting trees and the cost of the class was high at £5.50 a session – probably the cost of the materials needed for Marjorie’s models. Anyway, I wasn’t sure Amy was getting much from Tree-Tots, because at her age she didn’t really know the difference between a tree and Simon Cowell.
Besides, on the final week we attended, Marjorie had brought in a large fern tree to the group and used a stuffed dinosaur to explain that fern trees were one of the earliest plants to populate the earth, and had been around when dinosaurs had ruled the world. (As opposed to Take That.) Unfortunately, the dinosaur looked very much like Barney and after Amy had shouted ‘He’s a poof’ for the tenth time, I decided it was time to retreat from Tree-Tots for a while.
The other ‘classes’ – as Pauline liked to call them – Amy attended on a fairly regular basis were: Little Tots, where they basically played with toys and fought with each other; Lazy Tots, where they did pretty much the same as Little Tots but occasionally did some face painting; Eazy Tots, where they did much the same as Little and Lazy Tots but occasionally baked cakes.
Although the toddler groups had some variation of venue type and activities, they all had one common feature: fighting. No matter where you went there was always, at any one time, two or three toddlers knocking seven bells out of each other. At that age, gender is pretty much irrelevant; boys and girls are equally as strong and aggressive.
I am of sufficient age to have grown up when such playgroups didn’t exist. We as kids had to make our own entertainment and, not blessed with any siblings, I could only torment my poor mother as my father worked long hours. Between the ages of two and three I managed to swallow a bottle of coconut imbibed sun-tan lotion, blow up my father’s music centre by repeatedly banging the plug and socket with the heel of my hand, and set fire to my ‘Pooh’ teddy-bear by squishing his head between the bars of the electric fire. (I have to say in my defence that all three of these events could have been prevented with some simple parental prevention measures, but my mother – although very loving and caring – didn’t and still doesn’t have a great deal of common sense.) At the age of seventy-five, she fell eighteen feet from a tree by managing to saw through the tree branch she was clinging onto at the time. I think this last event illustrates my point well. Firstly she didn’t make the connection between the tree branch, her hand and the saw. Secondly, why the hell at the age of seventy-five is she climbing up a tree in the first place?
For my part, only the consumption of the sun-tan lotion posed me any discomfort, producing copious diarrhoea for three days and nights. My father mourned the loss of his music centre until the day he died, and I still have the scorched remains of Pooh Bear somewhere. I believe his remains are interred in the spare bedroom in my apartment.