Julie's Boggle

Something Jonathan finds very hard to resist is following me into the kitchen when I am in it. Even though all his toys are elsewhere and long after he has explored every area of “fun” in the kitchen, he still doesn’t want to go anywhere else!

The things he plays with first are the washing machine – opening and closing the door and putting random things into it – and the plastics drawer – general unpacking, rummaging, and stacking of various containers.

Then follows the dry goods drawer, which he won’t meddle with too much if he’s not bored, and the tray drawer under the oven (he’s quite good about this, carefully extracting the cooling rack and the anti-fat-splatter device from this one and then closing it again).

Another favourite is the pot and pan drawer, and lids are noisily placed and re-placed on the pots which are deemed safe to stay in there. The habit of crashing the lids into the tiled floor was not widely appreciated and he seems to have cottoned on to the fact that if he does that, the entire drawer becomes out of bounds. Clever lad.

He’ll also generally pay a courtesy call to Daddy’s tool drawer, but there’s not much of interest in there and he gets cautioned for touching anything so that doesn’t last very long.

The opening of the freezer is like a siren call. Jon will abandon whatever he’s busy with to come over for a poke around in the cold. He firmly believes that all freezer drawers should be kept closed and makes continual helpful attempts to put them to rights while I’m in there. He’s also getting quite good at helping me to push the door closed (mastering getting his legs out the way first) when we’re done.

The problem comes once boredom sets in. At that point Jon tends to throw caution to the wind and experiment with just about anything. Usually it’s back to the utterly fascinating dry goods.

It won’t be much to start with, just a casual fingering of the lasagne sheets, tweaking pegs and box flaps. This progresses to rougher poking, lifting out the enticing crinkly little packet of baby pasta shapes and shaking it about, or even a big bold move like heaving a bag of something out onto the floor.

At which point, the maternal alarm sounds and Jon is firmly removed from the drawer and carried, bleating, off to his proper toys.

Needless to say, he is back in a flash, and usually straight back to that drawer to start pushing the boat out again.

I’m not quite sure what it is that holds him in the kitchen but I sometimes wonder if somewhere in that fluffy head, there’s the understanding that if an adult is in the kitchen long enough, food will follow…

Out and about in the streets these days, it’s hard to miss the colourful signals that the season is changing yet again. Gloriously yellow but increasingly threadbare trees losing their hold on the last of the summer’s leaves – a vivid reminder that autumn is here.

In South Africa, where the seasonal changes are a lot less obvious, you very seldom hear people come out with phrases like “we had a quiet summer”, or “that project will start in the autumn”. I used to think it was a quaint habit (it reminded me of American movies), but have fallen into the habit along with all the locals.

While autumn feels so much like an ending – of all the lovely long evenings in particular – it’s when the school year starts. (In all countries actually, but here in the northern hemisphere it just doesn’t coincide so neatly with the start of the calendar year). 17-plus years spent in various institutions whose years begin in January make this a hard one to get used to (“What? Back-to-school merchandise in September?”), but I’m gradually getting over it.

Then comes winter which the English like to get all gloomy about. And it is somewhat sobering when the sun starts going down before 4pm. But for me it quickly became synonymous with Christmas and all the happy thoughts that go with that. Frosty air, dark streets and warm, cosy scenes through the lit windows.

Winter doesn’t even get a chance to loose its grip properly before the spring bulbs start to emerge – the bright yellow daffodils generally stealing the show. Then comes March and the gorgeous cherry blossom on many trees. Spring is also the last of the UK three school terms, so it’s when students and scholars start knuckling down for finals – the promise of long summer holidays on the horizon.

And then there’s summer. A lazy time when almost all organised activities come to a halt. Many families, especially those with school-aged children head off on long holidays and across the City there seems to be a collective pausing for breath.

This year I was much more conscious of the laid-back summer approach, mostly because I suddenly had two months with nothing on the calendar! All the regular activities that Jon and I stay busy with weren’t running and once I got into it, it turned out to be a very welcome change of pace.

At the last play group of the term, many phone numbers were exchanged, (“Gosh, better make some plans or we won’t see anyone for 8 weeks”) and suddenly everyone had time for visiting and going to the park on their relaxed summer schedules.

When autumn arrived, I certainly felt like the summer break had made a difference. There was a busy, exciting term ahead, a time to get stuck in. On the day our play group started again, I reflected that it was pretty much a year ago that I started going with Jon – my babe in arms. Back then it was all quite foreign, whereas this year, Jon and I felt very much at home. And it was good to be back.