Wednesday 6 July 2016

The Boy and The Spaniard

It's almost a week now since our Spanish student arrived at chez Poppy Cottage, at silly o'clock in the night. The Boy was too excited to go to bed before we collected our student from the college.  We were all too tired to really think about the oddness of picking up a young person from a bus and whisking them away into the unknown, the unknown for all of us. The shyness didn't last long.

I felt like I had planned for all eventualities, but I hadn't thought about how having an extra male in the house might shift the balance in the house.

Well, it has.  In fact,The Boy has turned into a walking ball of testosterone. In just seven days, he seems to have acquired broader shoulders, a deeper voice, hairs on his chest and a John Wayneesque stride.  All at the ripe old age of 8.

He has also developed an insatiable appetite to show off.  This show-off-ness seems to be linked directly to undoing my cleaning efforts.  His main mode of transport around my hobbit house is his scooter, best used after repeatedly coating the wheels with mud.  Random acts such as pulling the crumb tray out from under the toaster are common.  At 10pm at night.  There's disappearing when dinner appears on the table to pretend to swim under a couch that he can barely fit under.  Why? Just why ??

Then there's the ransacking of the house to look for 'his favourite' football jerseys, to impress our footie mad Spaniard, amid Euro 2016 mania.  I adopt a puzzled look, assist in the searching and tell The Boy that I don't know where they are.  I decide not to remind his that, until last week, he hated the fabric in the jerseys (I'm not a big fan myself) and that I have in fact, given almost all of them away.  I just hope that his younger cousins don't arrive down in Nana's house sporting the gear any time soon. Thankfully, he finds a jersey that had escaped my recycling endeavors, although he can barely stretch it over his pumped up muscles.

This whole adventure is costing me a fortune.  Today I was cajoled into buying a new pair of football boots, socks and a football.  When explained to the guy in the sports shop about our new found interest in soccer, he showed us the new Real Madrid jersey, which is actually pretty cool, even in 'that' fabric. It will be next on the wish list, no doubt.

But overall, life is good.  The fridge has never been so well stocked.  I'm taking half days from work which means home cooked dinners and desserts every day.  I am digging the Domestic Goddess feeling. My sensitive vegetarian nose is just about getting used to the house smelling of meat.  It's easier than trying to convert a carnivorous teenager to my way of thinking.  And I can always dilute the smell with another rarity in my house, the scent of cleaning products.

As I write, the now over tired Boy is doing anything to avoid sleep and from his bedroom, is cackling like someone who needs an exorcism.

Thankfully, there's wine.  And it doesn't have to be Spanish

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