Interesting places (part 1)

Last week I had a much needed post-christmas week off work. We can't afford a proper holiday, but we did our level best to recreate an authentic vacation experience, only without the luxury of paying someone else to sleep in a strange place. We did once enjoy a week in Cornwall with my parents when our eldest daughter was little more than a year old, but this was our first attempt at holidaying as a family of four so, as well as the usual, stress relief-based motivations, this was a chance to introduce our children to new experiences. So we got to enjoy not only the feast of culture with which we provided ourselves, but also our girls' reactions to it.

Our first excursion was to Canterbury: the uniquely interesting city where my wife and I met, fell in love, studied art and lived very happily for several years. Every return fills us with nostalgic yearnings to move back there, although I confess that the now unfeasible student lifestyle played a major role in the life we miss. But it remains a charming place with a lot to offer, so I relish any visit there.

Upon arriving in what turned out to be a wet and miserable day in Canterbury (in a weather sense only), we sacrificed our life savings in exchange for a parking space, then popped into the idiosyncratic bookshop in which both my wife and I had worked after graduating. Many of our former colleagues still work there. Some even recognised us. I was struck by the contrast I perceived between interacting with these people as an interesting art graduate, and as a responsible parent. I should stress that none of them treated us any differently (other than taking a delighted interest in being introduced to our children), but simply meeting them raised my awareness of the changes in our lives since we last had.

On the recommendation of our former manager, we proceeded to Canterbury's newly refurbished library, where we were positively jubilant to discover that the new gallery boasted an exhibition celebrating the work of children's picture book author and illustrator, Anthony Browne. We had inadvertently stumbled across some textbook Children's Day Out fare. Unfortunately, just as we paid and entered, two things happened: 1. A large gaggle of excited young schoolchildren appeared from nowhere to storm the gallery, and 2. Our eldest daughter spied an antique doll's house in an adjacent room. She really loves a doll's house, does our eldest daughter. The Anthony Browne exhibition was excellent; thoughtfully curated and generously interactive, but I am afraid to say that it failed entirely to be appreciated by us for these two reasons.

The rest of our day was passed visiting tourist attractions we had never felt it necessary to consider when we were residents. These mainly consisted of good, wholesome museums. Canterbury has a rich and varied history and I soaked up as much of it as I could (I'm a sucker for an artist's impression of a Roman settlement) while struggling to control a buggy and its occupant. We could really have predicted that this particular element of our cultural festival would appeal more to us than to our children, but I was honestly impressed with the small level of engagement they did muster. Above all, I feel that it's our responsibility to at least expose them to this environment, hopefully thus beginning the subliminal encouragement to be interested in interesting things.

With this in mind, we embarked the following day on their inaugural train journey. A train to Big London City, no less. Our older daughter in particular was mesmerised by this first leg of our journey alone. By the time we had arrived at Victoria and spent rather a long time looking for the right bus stop (we didn't dare take on the tube with a buggy), everybody's enthusiasm was under threat. But soon enough, a noble bus driver was transporting us westwards while dealing admirably with the obligatory Inexplicably Aggressive Passenger, and we arrived before long in Posh London. Amongst the million pound flats, tree lined avenues and estate agents' with their own bars of Kensington lies the Science Museum.

The Science Museum is cool. This was Daddy's treat. Mummy's treat was the astoundingly good restaurant within. But after eating the astoundingly good food we went to look at rockets and space and that sort of thing. And the flicker of education-based excitement I had contrived to witness in our daughters the previous day was reignited. I have to say that we were slightly underwhelmed by the proportion of the museum aimed specifically at young children, but enough of the bits that weren't seemed to engage them to some extent anyway. Our firstborn seemed particularly interested in the aeroplanes. She confessed to me that she would like to be a pilot even though the cockpits looked "a bit uncomfortable." Fair comment, really.

Inevitably, by the time we reached the fourth floor, certain people's levels of interest were flagging slightly. At this point we decided to skip the rest and simply pop next door to the Natural History Museum. My wife describes this, with some justification, as her favourite building in the world. Even if it was empty it would be worth a visit. But it's not empty. It's full of flippin' dinosaurs. Our youngest, probably the least rewarded by our week's activities so far, loved the dinosaurs with a passion quite impressive in a fifteen month-old. She was roaring fearlessly at the tyrannosaurus rex and everything. All too soon though, we had to drag her away so that we could commence what turned out to be an epic search for the correct bus stop to get us back to the train station.

We arrived home weary but suitably proud of ourselves. We hadn't seen everything we could have, but we had proved to ourselves that we can go to interesting places and do things. I genuinely cherish being a parent, but it does have a way of making one doubt that one can go to interesting places and do things. But one can. And we would do more such things before the week was out.

In an effort to avoid boring anyone with all the interestingness, though, I shall reveal the rest at a later date.

Holiday

Our daughter has just returned from her first ever holiday. We went too. As did my parents who, incidentally, are her grandparents. And we all had a rather nice time. Far from manifesting our fears over her ability to sit happily in a car for five hours, or to sleep in a strange room three hundred miles from home, our daughter had the time of her life, and was impeccably behaved throughout. Well, near enough.

Furthermore, the change of scenery seems to have accelerated - or at least highlighted - her development. It was only shortly before we went that she had finally mastered walking. But tottering around our dining room table is a far cry from the determined sprints she repeatedly made towards the open staircase in our delightful holiday retreat. Or, conversely, from serene strolls in the Cornish countryside to which she took with mature and eager aplomb last week. I'm assuming that an aplomb can be eager. And mature.

Her conversation seems significantly closer to taking place in English now. She is still to learn many real words, but has at least redoubled her efforts to invent her own. These efforts now centre around the Two Syllables Game, in which she lists endless pairs of phonetics which are apparently randomly chosen, yet delivered with decisive conviction. "Dada, uh-oh, ahblig, findoo, woodum..." This can go on for ages, and is surprisingly entertaining. Especially when her arbitrary stylings coincide with my schoolboy sense of humour, as they did the other day when she declared: "Dick-yes." My wife and I have now taken to using this phrase as often as possible. But not in polite company.

Interestingly, within 24 hours of our return home, another curious development in her speech suddenly took place. She woke up on Monday having decided that "Mama", "Dada" and "Nana" were now to be referred to as "Mummy", "Daddy" and "Nanny." We're all agreed that this is a welcome modification.

It's a truism that changes in a person are more easily noticed by those who see the person less often. This, of course, is why you probably spent your youth being intermittently subjected to confirmation by your grandparents that you had grown. As someone who sees my daughter every day, the changes in her are too discrete to cause me much of a surprise. But I have come to appreciate the delight with which other relatives - who aren't fortunate enough to have quite such frequent access to her - greet her every development.

What I hadn't realised until now was that a change of scenery can have a similar effect. The changes in our daughter over the past week seem all the more pronounced even to us because - although, clearly, we spent the week in her company - we weren't seeing her in her usual environment. So her abilities at walking and talking as demonstrated in our house were separated by a week from those displayed before we left.

Does that make sense? I shouldn't really watch TV while I'm trying to express vague ideas about notions I haven't quite clarified.