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The Tea Maker
A friend of mine has just been asked to travel up North with his wife to do a stint of childminding. He’ll be looking after his two grandsons for a weekend and he’s really nervous. This is the first time he’s had to do an overnight so he thought he’d better get some advice from an expert – yours truly.
My experience isn’t technically with children as my grandkids are really delinquents and should have been locked up when they were two years old and forced into therapy. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, even though they see me as nothing more than a walking ATM machine.
During one stint, Senior Management (aka my wife) and I took them all off to a school Gala Day, where No.2 Grandson was playing in a football tournament. Teachers demonstrated their classroom management skills as they tried unsuccessfully to organise a tournament between six teams of fucking hooligans. The parents of this toxic waste sat around chatting, sometimes waiting until they’d actually swallowed their huge mouthfuls of hamburgers and cakes and sometimes not bothering, preferring instead to talk and spray at the same time.
We took a different approach.
I was left to scream my support from the sidelines, even though I hate football, while Senior Management went shopping. Two hours later she was back, arms loaded with bags and boxes that have now become her trademark. Her spree resulted in a massive boost in retail sales, which almost jolted us out of recession and her contribution to the local economy was such that the Chamber of Commerce is seriously considering a fucking statue.
“Who won?” she asked.
“You did.” I said.
The boys forgave her absence when she produced a bag of goodies for each of them and asked, “Who wants ice cream?”
“We don’t have any money.” they said.
“That’s ok,” she replied, “He does.”
I was immediately attacked and beaten to the ground in a hail of kicks and punches as they tore at my clothes, prised my wallet from my grasp, emptied it and threw the limp piece of leather at my feet. This wasn’t exactly what happened but this was how it felt as they all walked off towards the ice cream seller.
By the time we took them home, their parents had returned and everyone said they’d had a great day. I didn’t say much at all, but I did suggest to the boys that they might want to go into the garden where we could play a game of ‘soldiers’. They agreed and, an hour later, I’d managed to capture them, gag them, chain them by their thumbs in the garage, hood them with old sacks, brutally torture them, retrieve what was left of my money and leave them hanging with their toes barely touching the floor.
An hour or so after leaving, I decided to call my son and thank him for inviting us down. I also told him where he could find his offspring.
The Tea Maker
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