Taking Umbrage in the Ball Pit

Wednesday

I'm watching TV after Mr Young has retired to his bedchamber in the East Wing when I hear a loud thud from above. Ruby and I catch each other’s eye, but we don’t hear any cries of pain or alarming noises. Nonetheless, as a dutiful wife, I feel I should investigate so I go upstairs to find him sitting up in bed.

‘My water bottle fell on the floor,’ he says, looking sheepish. ‘I must have knocked it over in my sleep.’

‘I thought you might have fallen out of bed and hurt yourself,’ I say. ‘Or had a heart attack.’

‘You can't have been too worried,’ he says. ‘I heard you stomping your way slowly up the stairs. Probably calculating how much my life insurance is worth.’

I take umbrage at this. Whatever umbrage is.

‘Hardly stomping,’ I say. ‘And I certainly wasn’t slow. I’m quite fast when I come upstairs. Fleet of foot, in fact. I’m much fitter than you, anyway.’

‘No. It was definitely a dumpf, dumpf, dumpf,’ he says, with a satisfaction I do not like.

‘I think you’re confusing me with a certain other dumpf, dumpf, dumpfer in this house,’ I say pointedly and leave so as to have the last word.

Ruby gives me an approving look when I come back into the sitting room. She always takes my side when Mr Young is being difficult.

I look up umbrage. It originally referred to literal shade, foliage or a shadow. Shakespeare uses it in Hamlet. And if its good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.

If perchance Mr Young should drop his water bottle – or even himself – again, I may well invoke my umbrage once again.

Alas poor Mr Young, I knew him well.

Friday

I take umbrage again this afternoon. For two reasons: a) I’m retired so by rights, taking part in a Zoom meeting should be a thing of the past and b) I shouldn’t even be on this speed awareness course. I really, really want to tell my instructor Ernie* this. Incidentally, he is not, as Mr Young had told me he would he, a traffic policeman but an actor who reveals he was once a milkman for two days. Why only two days? My fellow highway reprobates are all wondering about this as much as I am, judging by the puzzled looks on their faces. Did he get sacked for skimming off the top? Milking the system? Or did he just get bored with the dairy monotony? (Ha! Plenty more where that came from!)

You're no doubt thinking, but come on! You're being a bit of a drama queen, umbraging over a speeding ticket! But bear with me... I was sent the ticket because I was driving at 36 mph through Birmingham during the first week in January, and they’d changed the speed limit from 40 mph to 30 mph on 31 December but hadn’t yet altered the road signs to reflect this. With me so far? Do you see how grotesquely unfair that is? So if anything, I should have been sent a dawdling ticket, not a speeding ticket.

Nonetheless, I guess I was technically ‘guilty’. It’s not a hill I’m choosing to die on. (My Joan of Arc moment is going to be something far more exciting – chaining myself to the railings for women’s rights and the freedom to vote – oh, we already did that…).

I'm anticipating, naively, an hour of on-line multiple-choice questions with a test at the end, but it’s three hours, including watching various scenarios and telling Ernie what we’ve spotted regarding potential hazards. Worryingly, I get every single one wrong. Probably a good job I’m a dawdler rather than a speeder.

But at least I’m not a failed milkman.

Saturday

Harry and Jonny are away for the weekend as is – coincidentally/suspiciously – Mr Young, so me, Nancy and Elliott have two fun-packed days to ourselves. We are spending this afternoon at Riverside Hub, which is an amusement centre so vast and exciting (or so I am reliably informed by two enthusiastic children who are bursting with words like disco laser go-carts ball-pit fairy grotto amusement-arcade climbing-wall cocktail-bar – I might have imagined the last one) that I will probably want to spend the rest of my life in there.

I have therefore re-mortgaged the house and booked a two and a half hour session. My plan is to wear them out, buy a Happy Meal on the way home, and score major Granny points with everyone.

They already have the VIP bands from their last visit, so they get a free gift this time; Nancy has an impressively fancy charm bracelet and Elliott has some sort of Lego transformer robot. We stash these away and hustle off to the biggest Ball Pit in the world.

It certainly feels like the biggest Ball Pit in the world. The only way up to Fairy Grotto Land, Nancy tells me, is by going through this Ball Pit, which is five miles long. You fall over many, many times and also get hit in the face by the balls your grandchildren and other children have the right to throw at you. These are the rules. Apparently.

I do remind them that this is my treat, and they are supposed to be nice to me, but I don’t think they can hear me above the noise and it’s quite difficult to talk when you’re being assaulted by large plastic balls. We eventually arrive at Fairy Grotto Land which is beautiful with crystals and waterfall slides and tree stumps, and then go into the huge Soft Play area where I do a lot of running around and climbing and some pretty impressive manoeuvres on a zip wire thing - look at me, Nancy, I find myself calling at one point, only to receive a withering look before she runs off - and then we have to return to the Ball Pit and play Shark Attack for fifteen hours.

It’s only when we leave that I notice there are stairs that lead up to Fairy Grotto Land. I feel like pointing this out to Nancy but, quite frankly, I’m pretty sure she already knows. I now know why there weren’t many other adults in the Biggest Ball Pit in the world and why I was targeted by so many small ball throwers and shark attackers.

‘Can we go again next time, Granny?’ Elliott says, as I’m putting him into his car seat.

‘Maybe,’ I say cautiously. ‘It’s a very long way to come just to play in a ball pit though, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’s the biggest Ball Pit in the world!’

Yes. Yes, it bloody well is, I think, as we head off towards Macdonalds.

But at least I know where the stairs are now.

Sunday

I had been hoping that I could hide Elliott’s Lego Block Warrior in his suitcase but we have to start building it immediately after breakfast. Three hours later, I am still hard at work, still in my pyjamas, trying and failing not to swear too much. The IKEA Hemnes chest of drawers is a walk in the park compared to this stubborn little bastard. Unfortunately, in between playing with Nancy upstairs, Elliott is working hard next to me, putting together the tiniest parts in a random fashion so that I’m breaking my nails trying to separate the parts he has just built as the not-head or the not-arm.

‘You’re doing a good job, Granny,’ he says encouragingly at one point, coming into the kitchen for a mid- morning snack. ‘Shall I get dressed now?’

‘Yes,’ I say distractedly just as the arm falls off again. ‘I’ve nearly finished.’

In the end, Block Warrior is apparently completed to Elliott’s satisfaction, even though it can’t stand up on its own and a few pieces are mysteriously left over. It’s supposed to be a Transformer, although I’m not sure what it’s supposed to transform into.

I daren’t ask Elliott in case he attempts this as I suspect it will actually be a magical transformation back into the original pile of disorganised Lego.

‘Come on,’ I say, in what I hope is a Mary Poppins kind of voice, ‘Let’s take Ruby for a lovely walk while the sun’s shining!’

They both look dubiously at the grey sky outside, but she has heard both her name and the word WALK and so, thankfully, I hide lopsided Block Warrior behind the fruit bowl, hurriedly get dressed and we set off to throw Ruby’s tennis ball until the rain arrives.

Good old Ruby to the rescue.

To misquote Hamlet again, every dog shall have her day.

*Not his real name. But Ernie is obviously a great pseudonym if you’re of a certain age.