All grown up

Child #3 is all grown up. I don’t just mean she is in her mid-twenties and has a real, adult job, with a salary and five weeks’ holiday, and bills to pay. That she has to make her own sandwiches for work and get to bed at a reasonable hour on weekdays. No, I mean she has started to say the kinds of things that grown-up people say.

Most notably, she has begun to express dismay at the way some teenage girls dress and act. Their skirts are unbelievably short, they show way too much cleavage, why so much make-up? How are they so confident with adults? Not her sister, yet, but we are keeping a careful eye on that situation, not least #3, who is taking it terribly seriously.

Funny how things change. As I point out to her, we have photographic evidence of her younger incarnation dressed in ridiculously tight dresses that barely covered the essentials. He Who Knows Best and I reminisce about the time she was grounded for a month along with #4 after the pair of them disgraced themselves with way too much revelry at way too tender an age. She grimaces at the memory. We laugh and breathe a sigh of relief in the way that parents can manage only once all that is behind them.

What I don’t tell her is that I was older than she is now when we went partying after work one night and I was the star of the photo on display in the office the next day. Dressed in a mini skirt, dancing on tables, whooping it up to the cheers of my only slightly more sober colleagues. He Who Knows Best carried me to the car over his shoulder that night. I’d like to see him try that now – I’m guessing it would end with him enjoying an extended stay in the hospital and complaining for ever more about how his back will never be the same again.

#3 and Boyfriend #1 will be heading back to London in a couple of days. #6 will get her room back, there will be no more discarded items of clothing strewn across the floor (well, not if she wants her allowance, anyway) and the food bill will drop significantly. There will be no more raucous laughter well after an acceptable time at night, no more rum bottles littering the tiny kitchen counter, no more gambling with pennies and accusing each other, at great volume, of cheating. Peace will reign once more, we will settle back into our routine that cannot rightly claim to be a routine by most people’s standards … and we will miss them like hell.

Inspiration struck today at ... Washington Square Park

While this beautiful green space at the bottom of Fifth Avenue is buzzing during the day, especially at weekends, first thing in the morning it is a tranquil spot, attracting dog walkers, yoga classes and those unusual types who have time for meditation before a hard day at work.
Pros: Pristine surroundings, with some top-notch street artists demonstrating their talents.
Cons: Impossibly skinny thirty-somethings stretch their slender limbs on the lawns while the rest of us fantasise about having croissants for breakfast.