Читать книгу A Spoonful of Sugar - Liz Fraser - Страница 26

When I left home at the grand old age of seventeen I felt a colossal sense of loss. Really, it was like having a huge hole ripped out of my stomach, and I felt totally rootless for a while. Of course, I loved that I was finally going out into the great big world by myself – that was the most exhilarating feeling ever for an adventurous sort like me, and as soon as I could I packed a huge rucksack and set off around the world on my own for six months – but leaving the place I grew up in was a painful wrench and when my parents sold the place a decade or so ago I couldn’t even go back to help them with the move. It had to stay in my mind just as it was: patterns in the cracked paint that had been there for years making shapes that became my companions, of strange faces, animals or faraway islands; marks on the walls where, in a moment of wilfulness, I’d scribbled the name of someone I fancied; the smell of the lounge carpet in the sunshine; the reflection of the bay window on the top of the piano – all of it had to remain just like that.

What made me so attached to my home was, oddly enough, not the people who were there (they are still around, even though they’re in a new place now), but the incredibly strong sense of routine that was present: every day, from the age of six, I’d get up at the same time, catch the school bus at the same time, come home at the same time, have dinner, a bath, go to bed, read and sleep. Weekends were for music lessons and practice, walking the dog, homework, jobs around the house and family time. The same things, every week, for years and years. It was constancy, a familiar, known rhythm, which gave me a huge amount of comfort and security when times weren’t quite so rosy. Even through the turbulent teenage years when I was, according to reliable sources, ‘a bloody nightmare’ to live with, my routine changed very little and my house – the building itself – was a passive, non-judgemental observer of all who lived in it, which made me like it all the more.

I wonder what Granny thinks about routine and the importance of setting out some patterns and rhythms in a house with children? Is it good for them, and should we be trying to stick to routines that work for us? Or do they need more flexibility and irregular patterns in their lives?

‘Routine is vital for a child, oh yes,’ she tells me emphatically. ‘And the most important one is bedtime.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, just think about it: I hear of parents who just cannot get their kids to bed in the evening – but they’re watching the television until two minutes before bed! How can they ever sleep then?!’