Summertime. And as the watery British sun filtered through the clouds, our little family cut its losses and did what was only right and proper: fled the country, weighed down by a plethora of bottles, sterilisers, eco-nappies for the Boy Child’s sensitive little bum, squeaky toys and improving books. Plus assorted robes, headdresses and jewels from the National Theatre’s costume department for our annual costume party at our house in Tuscany. (NB: I am aware that this makes us sound like New Labour politicians - or at the very least, somewhat smug. Although we live in Islington we could never be accused of being champagne socialists. We drink only prosecco, imported directly from the motherland).
I am not going to recount the journey – which happened to be the Boy Child’s first trip on a plane. Having eschewed budget airlines for British Airways it was a slightly better experience than expected, but still painful. Enough said. Thus followed a short visit to the ancestral home and to Granny, who had spent weeks agonising about bedroom allocation so as not to alert the maid to The Situation, almost resorting to forcing myself and Papà A to share a room until he pointed out that she had in fact never shared a room with her own husband and that it was quite proper for a family of aristocratic standing to – in matters of repose at least – divide and rule. The Boy Child behaved impeccably, taking one for the team as he dipped and bobbed in the pool, which she had had cleaned especially, almost without a murmur.
Duty completed, we drove off down the peninsula to our little Tuscan hideaway. This may conjure up images of rolling hills dotted with cypresses and the odd medieval hilltop town. Wrong. Where we are is cowboy country, swampy marshland once drained by Mussolini and now covered in dense woodland, which houses a menagerie of wild boar, wolves and venomous snakes. Maremma is the Gordon Brown to Chianti’s Tony Blair – darker, brooding, and not remotely concerned with keeping up appearances. The valley in which the house is situated is known - by us at least - as Mordor, due to its tendency towards howling gales and storms whilst the rest of Tuscany basks in golden sunlight.
However, as we inched up the almost vertical hill that leads to the house, pushing our hire car to its limits, I breathed a sigh of relief at being back. This place has many happy memories for us, one being our decision to take the leap of faith into the strange and wonderful world of parenthood. I wondered to myself how the presence of the Boy Child might affect the holiday.
As the house filled up with the usual assortment of misfits, drunks and homosexuals (ie our friends), I began to realise that the answer to my question was at once not much and entirely. On the surface of things little had changed: prosecco was still opened at 11am, a medley of cheesy pop and 70s Afrobeat boomed from the speakers, and dinners stretched on late into the night. But the Boy Child was there, and making his mark. I began to realise that being on holiday with children is not being on holiday. It’s like every other day but without the reassuring routine of home. It means entertaining them without the usual means at your disposal. Children don’t know that lie-ins are the main point of being on holiday. Before the arrival of the Boy Child the only time I experienced morning was if I hadn’t been to bed the night before. Now I was up at 7 every day.
However, luckily, I wasn’t the only mother in the house, which gave me the long awaited opportunity to observe at close quarters an entity of mythical status: the Italian Mamma, revered, reviled, respected and feared by the males in our house in equal proportions. I was eager to find out why.
I am not going to recount the journey – which happened to be the Boy Child’s first trip on a plane. Having eschewed budget airlines for British Airways it was a slightly better experience than expected, but still painful. Enough said. Thus followed a short visit to the ancestral home and to Granny, who had spent weeks agonising about bedroom allocation so as not to alert the maid to The Situation, almost resorting to forcing myself and Papà A to share a room until he pointed out that she had in fact never shared a room with her own husband and that it was quite proper for a family of aristocratic standing to – in matters of repose at least – divide and rule. The Boy Child behaved impeccably, taking one for the team as he dipped and bobbed in the pool, which she had had cleaned especially, almost without a murmur.
Duty completed, we drove off down the peninsula to our little Tuscan hideaway. This may conjure up images of rolling hills dotted with cypresses and the odd medieval hilltop town. Wrong. Where we are is cowboy country, swampy marshland once drained by Mussolini and now covered in dense woodland, which houses a menagerie of wild boar, wolves and venomous snakes. Maremma is the Gordon Brown to Chianti’s Tony Blair – darker, brooding, and not remotely concerned with keeping up appearances. The valley in which the house is situated is known - by us at least - as Mordor, due to its tendency towards howling gales and storms whilst the rest of Tuscany basks in golden sunlight.
However, as we inched up the almost vertical hill that leads to the house, pushing our hire car to its limits, I breathed a sigh of relief at being back. This place has many happy memories for us, one being our decision to take the leap of faith into the strange and wonderful world of parenthood. I wondered to myself how the presence of the Boy Child might affect the holiday.
As the house filled up with the usual assortment of misfits, drunks and homosexuals (ie our friends), I began to realise that the answer to my question was at once not much and entirely. On the surface of things little had changed: prosecco was still opened at 11am, a medley of cheesy pop and 70s Afrobeat boomed from the speakers, and dinners stretched on late into the night. But the Boy Child was there, and making his mark. I began to realise that being on holiday with children is not being on holiday. It’s like every other day but without the reassuring routine of home. It means entertaining them without the usual means at your disposal. Children don’t know that lie-ins are the main point of being on holiday. Before the arrival of the Boy Child the only time I experienced morning was if I hadn’t been to bed the night before. Now I was up at 7 every day.
However, luckily, I wasn’t the only mother in the house, which gave me the long awaited opportunity to observe at close quarters an entity of mythical status: the Italian Mamma, revered, reviled, respected and feared by the males in our house in equal proportions. I was eager to find out why.
My sample was:
C: ever-smiling primary teacher from Bologna. Mother to 4 year old twin boys, married to the equally smiley F, who copes with the never-ending energy of their sons by making frequent dips into an jam-jar containing some of the strongest weed ever known to man. Makes excellent ragù.
Parenting style: firm but fair, videos of Toy Story on repeat, food offered at regular intervals, small glasses of red wine imbibed at regular intervals, JM cigarette constantly to hand.
M-C: throatily glamorous divorcee from Sicily. Mother to the 4 year old R, a golden-locked ridiculously beautiful boy, given to fighting with above-mentioned twins and wearing his mother’s jewellery. Makes excellent gin-and-tonics.
Parenting style: damage limitation of son’s violent streak, finger painting to Botticelli standards, food offered at regular intervals, large glasses of white wine imbibed at regular intervals, Marlboro Light constantly to hand.
S: a force of nature, known to dive for octopi clad in nothing but bikini bottoms and a knife between her teeth, ripping them from the rocks with only her bare hands. Mother to the 3 year old F, a light breeze to her mother’s tornado, and the smiliest, roundest little cherub you ever clapped eyes upon, and who will of course be leading the Boy Child up the sentiero di giardino as soon as he’s old enough to follow her. Partnered to The Silver Fox, a genial Sicilian of middle years, of Falstaffian proportions and appetite. Likes to offer traditional Sicilian remedies for all childhood ailments, which usually begin with the phrase ‘first grind together with salt and garlic the carcasses of 25 slugs.’ Makes excellent everything.
Parenting style: has only to raise an eyebrow to get her point across, screenings of the execrable 70s cartoon Heidi when F will not go to bed, cordon bleu standard food offered at regular intervals, entire bottles of prosecco imbibed without interval, Camel Light constantly to hand.
A sudden gust of fresh air blew away the army of Islington yummy mummies that I’d spent the last 6 months with. Gone was any pretence at remaining organic; the thought of post-pregnancy Pilates banished. These were women who said that their obstetricians insisted that they didn’t give up smoking whilst pregnant because of the shock it would give their unborn child. Bottles of lunchtime beer were explained away by the handy phrase ‘fa latte’ – or ‘makes milk.’
My downfall was swift. One night, after an excellent dinner, having given the Boy Child to his father for the night, I sat at the kitchen table with S & M-C. A few bottles in, I gave way to a year and a half’s worth of cravings and demanded cigarettes.
That first inhalation was divine – and all the better for being the epitome of mummy badness. S and M-C welcomed me into the bosom of bad maternal behaviour and we toasted to the agony of childbirth, telling ourselves we deserved a little bit of fun.
Before I knew it, it was 7 am and I woke, naked and sweating alcohol into one of the bunk beds that we had had made for future use by the children. Cursing lightly, I fumbled for my expressing machine so that I could express the boozy milk, a practice somewhat vulgarly known as pump and dump. Papà A and I had agreed on this strategy the night before – all was well. Apart from the loss of a valve absolutely necessary for the functioning of said pump.
Which is how Papà A found me crouched over the bathroom sink trying to milk my ample bosom, by now bursting with vile and poisoned liquid, weeping lightly at my bad behaviour. Giving a light tut, he sent me to bed and took the Boy Child off for some formula.
I woke, several hours later, to a raging headache and the dulcet tones of C, who not only reassured me that I had done NOTHING wrong and that frankly, ANY mother would feel the same way, but that she had nipped down to the village and hired a breast pump which we could keep for as long as we liked. Bursting into tears of gratitude, I immediately attached it to my enormous tits, and sank into a state of blessed relief.
C: ever-smiling primary teacher from Bologna. Mother to 4 year old twin boys, married to the equally smiley F, who copes with the never-ending energy of their sons by making frequent dips into an jam-jar containing some of the strongest weed ever known to man. Makes excellent ragù.
Parenting style: firm but fair, videos of Toy Story on repeat, food offered at regular intervals, small glasses of red wine imbibed at regular intervals, JM cigarette constantly to hand.
M-C: throatily glamorous divorcee from Sicily. Mother to the 4 year old R, a golden-locked ridiculously beautiful boy, given to fighting with above-mentioned twins and wearing his mother’s jewellery. Makes excellent gin-and-tonics.
Parenting style: damage limitation of son’s violent streak, finger painting to Botticelli standards, food offered at regular intervals, large glasses of white wine imbibed at regular intervals, Marlboro Light constantly to hand.
S: a force of nature, known to dive for octopi clad in nothing but bikini bottoms and a knife between her teeth, ripping them from the rocks with only her bare hands. Mother to the 3 year old F, a light breeze to her mother’s tornado, and the smiliest, roundest little cherub you ever clapped eyes upon, and who will of course be leading the Boy Child up the sentiero di giardino as soon as he’s old enough to follow her. Partnered to The Silver Fox, a genial Sicilian of middle years, of Falstaffian proportions and appetite. Likes to offer traditional Sicilian remedies for all childhood ailments, which usually begin with the phrase ‘first grind together with salt and garlic the carcasses of 25 slugs.’ Makes excellent everything.
Parenting style: has only to raise an eyebrow to get her point across, screenings of the execrable 70s cartoon Heidi when F will not go to bed, cordon bleu standard food offered at regular intervals, entire bottles of prosecco imbibed without interval, Camel Light constantly to hand.
A sudden gust of fresh air blew away the army of Islington yummy mummies that I’d spent the last 6 months with. Gone was any pretence at remaining organic; the thought of post-pregnancy Pilates banished. These were women who said that their obstetricians insisted that they didn’t give up smoking whilst pregnant because of the shock it would give their unborn child. Bottles of lunchtime beer were explained away by the handy phrase ‘fa latte’ – or ‘makes milk.’
My downfall was swift. One night, after an excellent dinner, having given the Boy Child to his father for the night, I sat at the kitchen table with S & M-C. A few bottles in, I gave way to a year and a half’s worth of cravings and demanded cigarettes.
That first inhalation was divine – and all the better for being the epitome of mummy badness. S and M-C welcomed me into the bosom of bad maternal behaviour and we toasted to the agony of childbirth, telling ourselves we deserved a little bit of fun.
Before I knew it, it was 7 am and I woke, naked and sweating alcohol into one of the bunk beds that we had had made for future use by the children. Cursing lightly, I fumbled for my expressing machine so that I could express the boozy milk, a practice somewhat vulgarly known as pump and dump. Papà A and I had agreed on this strategy the night before – all was well. Apart from the loss of a valve absolutely necessary for the functioning of said pump.
Which is how Papà A found me crouched over the bathroom sink trying to milk my ample bosom, by now bursting with vile and poisoned liquid, weeping lightly at my bad behaviour. Giving a light tut, he sent me to bed and took the Boy Child off for some formula.
I woke, several hours later, to a raging headache and the dulcet tones of C, who not only reassured me that I had done NOTHING wrong and that frankly, ANY mother would feel the same way, but that she had nipped down to the village and hired a breast pump which we could keep for as long as we liked. Bursting into tears of gratitude, I immediately attached it to my enormous tits, and sank into a state of blessed relief.
I am still working on the retrieval of my lost dignity.
