Chapter 16

'Daddy said I can blow my nose and twirl my spaghetti on a fork.' Ian was proud of his accomplishments. Neither of his brothers could manage either at that time. He was so thrilled that he imagined he could achieve them simultaneously. While Lars was telling the Manager at nursery school in his recently-acquired Berkshire accent that a monkey's tail was 'prehensoil', Ian was receiving speech therapy, so he loved being one up. The competition between the boys was ubiquitous. They each had clearly defined areas of expertise which they never failed to remind each other of. If two of these areas were juxtaposed, so much the better.

The three were quite happy to compare bodily functions.

'I'm doing a long wee wee.'

'I do mine standing up like a big boy.'

'I don't ever need to do a wee wee.'

I had also brought them up to use the correct biological words for parts of their bodies.

'What's that, Daddy?'

'It's your scrotum.'

'What's it for?'

'It'll come in handy later, darling, so you can store your seeds in it for when you want to make babies.'

'It's under my WILLY, Daddy. My WILLY.' Unable to shock with the correct anatomical word, they sought to achieve the same effect with the euphemism. And they succeeded. They also found that they were able to do exactly the same in reverse at nursery. I absolutely couldn't win.

'They keep saying 'penis'.'

'I'm sorry. They're not actually saying anything wrong. Oh, I suppose it's out of context. Sorry. What do you want me to do about it?'

In the absence of any ideas, I made mention of bodily parts out of context a going-up-to-the-nursery offence.

'No, I'm sorry, I know what you mean by saying the word 'woollie' when it's nothing to do with something you wear. You're just trying to be clever and, no, you can't tell your brothers that you shouldn't have farted.'

'But you tell us that we shouldn't fart, Daddy.'

'What Daddy tells you is correct. You shouldn't... Well, you just shouldn't. All you're doing is offering a gratuitous reflection. In any case, Daddy doesn't give explanations. He only gives instructions. So don't chop logic with me, please.'

'Nursery says it's rude to say 'fart'.' Anything to say the word.

I am sure they were right, but it's used to good effect in Chaucer and is a direct enough word addressing a straightforward action. Until nursery mentioned it, they were unaware that the word was as vulgar as the action it describes. Maybe nursery was just a little too linguistically strict for me.

'Look at this Daddy.' Piers held something brown and plastic under my nose as I came to collect him from there at the end of the day. 'What is it?'

'Looks like dog poo.' His teacher looked askance.

'No, that's just what I'm teaching them not to say. I'm not happy with your saying this.' She took the imitation meatballs to the kitchen area. 'And can you bring their jumpers in tomorrow? They were cold today.'

'But it's late summer, 20 degrees. They're boys and they're British. They shouldn't be cold.'

The teacher shrugged. They wore their woolly jumpers zipped up tight to nursery the next day. Daddy was in shirtsleeves. At the end of a day there was a message. 'Lars and Ian were unco-operative. This needs to be addressed,'

'And Piers has just been rude to me,' said the assistant remaining on duty.

It did, indeed, need to be addressed. All children are truculent sometimes. To have all three of mine truculent together was a novelty. It was with three of them clinging to my legs, howling, that I left nursery that afternoon.

When they came home, there would be a treat of some sort waiting for them to have with their milk. 'What's the treat today?' they would ask in unison. At first, I tried to make it something they had asked for the day before. Such is the fickleness of an under-five's penchant for anything edible that it took me some while to realise that what they wanted one minute was simply that - what they wanted at that minute. 'Can we have gingerbread men, please Daddy? They're our favourite.' Out I went next day and found some. 'Now what was it you said you'd really like?' 'Marinaded artichokes' came Ian's instant answer. On this day it was to be small custard tarts.

'As you've been naughty, you won't have the treat that Daddy was planning for you. It's straight up to the nursery. No milk and no treat.'

'No Daddy, I won't be rude again. I promise.' The tears were springing from Ian's face like from a cartoon character's.

'I want a treat. I want one. I want one.' Lars was inconsolable.

'If I have to go up to the nursery, I'll knock you over.' Piers aimed a kick at my shin.

By the end of the car journey, the howling had subsided. They went upstairs. Two of them had a video programme. Piers did not. They had no custard tarts. I had four for dinner.

The normal disciplinary method by this time was reward. Chocolate was the favourite. Ian was going through a phase of waking me at half past two in the morning, every morning.

'Dadee-ee. I've lost my toy.'

'Dadee-ee. It's too dark.'

'Dadee-ee. I didn't know where you were.'

'Dadee-ee. I'm tired.'

The one that tugged at the heartstrings, even at that time in the morning, was 'I cried - but you didn't come.'

Eventually, I resorted to bribery.

'If you don't wake Daddy up in the night, you'll have a chocolate.'

It worked. Every morning, they would chose one from a box, their small fingers twitching, hovering above the decorated delights, suddenly pouncing on whichever they thought would be the tastiest.

'The one you touch is the one you choose.'

Later, I tried the same tactic with nocturnal continence. As they slept so very well, I thought I would make life easier for myself by just letting them get on with sleeping. I put them into nappies when they went to bed. In the morning, I would dangle them critically and tell them whether it felt like one wee-wee, two wee-wees or more - or, on a rare occasion, none. I crackled the cellophane on the Dairy Box.

'If your nappy's completely light, if there are no wee-wees, you get a chocolate.'

'I'll never get a chocolate,' Lars sighed one morning. He decided to make an all out effort to get one. That evening, a few minutes after kissing them goodnight, I found his dry nappy outside the door and him on the lavatory.

'But you said we were to go to lavatory, have a wee-wee and go back to bed without our nappies.'

'You're right, but I had expected you to go to sleep first. Off you go to bed.'

'I've got a dry nappy,' he announced proudly, a few days later. Sure enough a dry nappy was outside the door.

'Well done, Lars.'

'But my bed's terribly wet...'