What Do You Want to Know about Twins?

Everyone’s interested in twins, especially now that Beyoncé and Amal Clooney are each expecting a double bundle of joy.

Twins fascinate me too. Here’s a clue.

twins at the soft drinks dispenser

Sensibly, parents-to-be who read my book Twins and Multiple Births, or who join TAMBA, want to find out what’s in store for them. But other people only seem to care about secret languages, ESP, and other freaky twins stuff. Like this.

“Fun fact 1”: twins reared apart may have habits in common, like nail-biting or drinking the same brand of beer.

“Fun fact 2”: some twins have sexual relationships with the same person.

But are the similarities in behaviour and thinking really that extraordinary? It could just be chance.

Take twins who independently come back from the shops with the same coat, for instance. If a coat is widely available in a store like Marks & Spencer, nobody, twin or not, would have to go far to find someone else wearing exactly the same thing. Add in the fact that identical twins are the same age, and usually similar in colouring and general appearance, and bingo! No wonder they find the same garment suits them.

twins in school uniform

Sometimes twins are so close that, even as adults, they finish each other’s sentences, must work in the same office, and are incapable of truly independent living.

I always encourage new parents to raise their twins as individuals. That’s best route to healthy development in so many areas, including speech, behaviour, and social skills.

singleton-photo-august-1989

My wishes for parents of twins (and those like grandparents or others who help care for them) include these tips.

1 Learn to relate to each as an individual from early on. That means being able to tell them apart easily, and using their names instead of lazy shorthand like ‘Twinny’ or ‘Pinky and Perky’.

2 Cherish each child for what she is. You won’t necessarily raise two Nobel prize-winners.

3 Avoid comparisons. One of them is not ‘the good one’ just because he sleeps through the night first.

4 Recognize that fair treatment doesn’t mean equal treatment. You’d be surprised how many people think twins must have identical birthday cards or presents, even though it ruins half the fun.

5 Make time to enjoy your children. Sure, there are twice the number of chores, and work beckons too. But, before you know it, they’ve grown up.

How do you make time when you have twins or more? I may cover this in a forthcoming blog post. If I can fit it in, that is.

If you’re expecting twins or more, you really should join TAMBA. It’s the only UK charity dedicated to improving the lives of families with multiples.. Click here to find out more.

1Feb2017

Remember the Days of the Old School Yard….

Posted in Family life by carolcooper

If you too love reminiscences about school, this post will fit the bill perfectly. Author Jo Lambert wrote it a year or two ago, but since when does nostalgia go out of style? I give it 10/10.

JO LAMBERT

Our school days are supposed to be the best days of our lives – right? Well I guess that very much depends on who you are. Certainly I enjoyed college a whole lot more – freedom to dress how I wanted, lecturers who treated you like an adult and a far more relaxed teaching regime. Having said that, there were many memorable moments during those school uniform years – and after.

I grew up in a tiny Wiltshire village on the edge of Salisbury Plain which had no shop or post office, no pub and no school. So from five to eleven years of age I attended school in the next village three miles away. There was nothing remarkable about those first six years of schooling – fifty pupils, three class rooms and three teachers. That same school today has a teaching staff of over 25, the building has been…

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20Dec2016

Christmas Wishes

Posted in Family life by carolcooper

You’re all busy, especially this time of year, so this will be short. Whatever you’re doing this Christmas, I send you my best wishes for a wonderful time, hopefully with family, good food, and not too many arguments or hangovers. Here’s to a vintage Christmas, and to a new year that’s an improvement over 2016.

Not that I’m holding my breath.

The Night Before Christmas, 1949 edition

20Nov2016

Autumn is Just a New Beginning

Posted in Family life, Places by carolcooper

It’s hard to capture the loveliness of autumn in words, still less on video. I totally failed to immortalize a magnificent tree that shed most of its leaves over a period of a minute, creating an orange snowstorm. Here’s the tree now.

It being the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, I can at least show you these.

Autumn marks la rentreé, the beginning of the academic year and serious work. I spent many hours here, most of them wondering what the lecturer was talking about.

And what could be more romantic than walking to class or work among the bright fallen leaves?

Watch out for dog turds lurking underfoot, though.

New beginnings are in evidence everywhere, with cranes on the horizon, and buildings popping up all over the place. Alas, fresh starts mean the fall of the old order.

If you were at Newnham College, you may just recognise your old room among the ruins.

The new buildings will be splendid and useful, I know. I trust the people in charge of the change, and I’ve seen detailed plans as well as the architectural model.

But other new starts are less certain, and a hard winter may be on the way.

***

To take your mind off our crazy world, here’s a two-minute video of the demolition of Strachey.

30Oct2016

A Parent Worries Forever

Posted in Family life, Writing by carolcooper

Seen that touching Lloyds Bank photo where the mother is hugging her ‘baby’ before he nonchalantly sets off for university? I can’t reproduce the image here, but you can check it out by clicking on Lloyds Bank. I showed it to some of my friends, who variously remarked on the mother’s height relative to her son, the blissful smile on her face, and the flimsiness of rucksack on the son’s back.

Those with children noticed none of these things. Their reaction was just terror.

When expecting your first child, there’s usually a golden moment during which you’re thrilled at the prospect of having a baby but haven’t yet realised you’re heading for a lifetime of worry. Well, savour it while you can.

My twin boys arrived when I had one son already. In a flash, my anxiety levels trebled. The children seemed intent on working their way through the alphabet, with accidents, asthma, appendicitis, and (scariest of all) anaphylactic shock.

Some letters stand out more than others. D was for Duplo, a normally safe toy, except when you stumble face first into it. G was for golf club, as when eldest son was smacked in the face by a 5 iron at the school fete, necessitating yet another tip to A&E.

Occasional false alarms brought light relief. At eighteen months, one son was on the bus, sitting forward in his eagerness to miss nothing. When the driver braked suddenly, my son’s face collided with a metal handrail. He screamed, and bright red stuff poured copiously from his mouth. I laughed hysterically when I found he’d only been chewing on a red crayon.

In my novel Hampstead Fever, I couldn’t resist including a super-anxious new mum. It’s not just the prospect of mishaps that cranks up her worry levels. She has studied the parenting books, so she’s aware of potentially lethal conditions like sepsis, where symptoms can be minimal in the early stages yet take a child to death’s door within hours. Like many parents, Laure suspects it’s dangerous to let her guard down, because that’s when things are most likely to go wrong.

Worry can drive mums (and dads) to become over-protective, turning into helicopter parents and doing for their children things that they should be learning to do for themselves.

For some parents, anxiety becomes hard-wired. I’ve seen them make idiots of themselves as they continue to stalk their kids on social media throughout their teens and even twenties, panicking if they haven’t posted anything in the last few hours.

Not me, of course. I’ve finally learned to ditch unnecessary anxiety about my offspring. I’ll tell you how I did this. Not this minute, though, because first I need to text my sons to see how they’re doing without me.

20Sep2016

Twelve Snapshots from Freshers’ Week

Posted in Family life, Places by carolcooper

Freshers’ Week is a bit like the 60s – if you can remember it all, you weren’t there. So these glimpses will have to do:

1 Mists and mellow fruitfulness.

2 Not knowing where anything is, and trying to get there by bike, if you can remember which one’s yours.

3 Existentialist conversations with a swan.

4 Signing up for everything at the Freshers’ Fair.

5 Blood-red Virginia creeper.

6 Smiling at everyone in case one of them becomes your best friend.

7 Buying lots of instant coffee and biscuits for all your new friends.

8 Ridiculously cheap booze at the Freshers’ Disco.

9 Kebabs and puke.

10 Reinventing yourself (because you can).

11 Staying up till 3 a.m. (because lectures haven’t started yet).

12 Getting a meningitis jab (because it’s really important).

So many new beginnings, but for some things it’s an end. Goodbye, Strachey Building. I won’t be there on Friday when the wrecking ball comes for you and the Porters’ Lodge.

10Sep2016

How to Deal with an Overflowing Inbox

Posted in Family life, Writing by carolcooper

A digital detox is refreshing, but the price of being away from emails even for a few days is returning from your holiday to a bulging inbox. Even after deleting the obvious (You want sexy Russian girlfriend?), there’s usually a melange of matters that need attention. Dealing with each of them eats into valuable time just when you’re trying to clear your brain fog and get back into the here and now after your holiday.

But I may have stumbled on a solution. It’s the all-purpose email response, and it goes something like this:

The premium you quote is now greater than the cost of the bicycle, so I shall not be renewing my insurance policy. How lovely to hear from you after all this time, and to learn you have now completed your OU degree! The revised gas bill you sent me is still incorrect and I am passing this on to the Energy Ombudsman along with all previous correspondence. I certainly do want to stop the cruel dog meat trade and intend to make a small donation as soon as I can remember my online banking details. Sorry we couldn’t make dinner last week as we were away, but what about lunch in the next month or so? I am honoured to be asked to be a trustee of the charity. Since you ask, my first tip on getting started in journalism is to learn the difference between your and you’re. I strongly object to the planning application for a two-storey rooftop extension on the house next door to me on the grounds that it is totally unsuitable for the conservation area, would be detrimental to the local streetscape, and looks crap. There was no need for you to send me four emails with exactly the same press release, nor to bombard my literary agent with phone calls as she deals only with books. Yes, Abigail has always had big bones, so I can appreciate that you may not have realized she was expecting; anyway, many congratulations on becoming a grandmother. I will not write an article for you on head lice, and the fact that you have no budget for it is not my problem. He was a bastard and you’ll soon see you’re better off with him, but meanwhile I hope he’s keeping custody of the lizards. I regret that I may not have time to read your latest novella How to Be a Better Zombie as I am just back from holiday and have a mammoth to-read pile. Very sorry to hear you have been detained in a Nigerian prison and lost your handbag and your credit cards, but at the moment I can’t send any money as I don’t know what the hell my online banking details are.

11Aug2016

#TBT: Dating 1940s Style

Posted in Dating, Family life, Places by carolcooper

The past is indeed a different country, especially when it’s in a different country. On this Throwback Thursday, I’m reminded how tough, and expensive, it could be to date in the 1940s.

This was Alexandria after World War Two. My parents, who had just met, struggled to find time alone together to indulge in illicit pleasures like a cup of coffee or a chocolate éclair. Here are my mother’s reminiscences.

Sightless, armless, legless, moving around on small wooden boards with wheels, or accompanied by a child or a barefoot woman in a black robe with bangles round her ankles, beggars were part of my earliest memories. They were everywhere we went. We knew them, and they knew us.

Portly one-legged Ahmed had taken up domicile outside my grandparents’ house on rue Fouad in downtown Alexandria. He was outside other people’s homes too, but he liked my grandparents’ house best. He and Mohammed the porter would sit side by side on a bench on the pavement chatting about this and that.

Not only did Ahmed know by name everyone who went in and out of my grandparents’ home, he could get about more quickly on his one good leg than most people could by car. Having just seen me leave my grandparents’, he would be waiting outside Pastroudis, a favourite café of the English, before I had even had time to get out of my Fiat.

That evening, at a cocktail party at the other end of town, Ahmed was there. He stood, a broad smile on his unshaven face, and a white carnation in the buttonhole of a coat that had been a hand-me-down from one of my uncles and was now grubby and frayed.

Holding a necklace of fresh jasmine, he hobbled over to greet me like a perfect host, as if he lived in the beautiful home where the lights shone and where Glenn Miller’s tunes filled the air.

“For you, oh Princess!” He offered the jasmine necklace in the manner of a grand seigneur.

“May Allah keep you,” I said to him, opening my purse to give him baksheesh.

In a stage whisper Ahmed said, “Where’s the handsome English captain I saw you with at Pastroudis this afternoon?” His eyes studied me as I blushed. “Ah, I swear on the Prophet that the English are very good people. Very generous!”

I doubled the baksheesh. I’d kept the rendez-vous a secret from my parents. It was going to be hardier and costlier to keep it from Ahmed.

10Jul2016

The Dangers of Learning to Walk

Posted in Family life, Writing by carolcooper

Bringing up a child is the most natural thing in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, as forty-year old Laure was finding.

Jack was toddling now, with a confidence far in excess of his ability to balance. To stop himself falling, he’d grab at whatever came to hand. It could be a tablecloth or a lamp. Today he got brave and weaved his way unaided across the middle of the living room, screeching with pride once he reached the little table on the other side of the room. He lifted one foot after the other off the floor, then took both hands off the table. He squealed with glee a few more times and promptly fell, mouth open, onto the edge of the table.

Laure rushed to gather him in her arms. The bleeding was torrential. Had he torn an artery in his mouth? Or knocked out one of his new teeth? She struggled to take a look but he screamed and wriggled and kicked and cried. Each scream pumped out scarlet blood mixed with saliva.

“Poor baby, poor baby,” she incanted as she grabbed paper towels from the kitchen. She could see a jagged wound right through his lip to the inside of his mouth. No wonder he was howling.

She felt her breathing change. Harsher at first, then faster. And her heart was beating all over the place, especially in her chest and her temples. Her hands trembled despite herself.

“There, there,” she intoned, barely audible above his screams. He had spat out the paper towel. She could smell his blood, his baby smell, her own helplessness.

Who was there to call? The health visitor was elusive after 10 a.m., and the GP was never available.

She tried some ice. Jack didn’t like it, but the bleeding was easing off.

Calmer now, Jack dribbled a little blood-stained saliva onto his beloved blankie.

As he was happily playing with his toys, Laure left it. She also left the bloodied paper towels on the kitchen counter as exhibits for Dan when he got in.

He breezed in from work, his kiss reeking of garlic.

She gave him a blow by blow account.

“Relax,” said Dan. “He’s learning to walk.”

“He could have really hurt himself.”

Jack chose this moment to beam at Dan and say, “Car,” as he offered him a plastic vehicle.

“Yeah, but he didn’t. It’s only a cut.”

She frowned at him. “It’s a very deep cut. Have you actually seen all this blood?”

“It’s stopped now,” Dan pointed out.

Laure’s heart was still racing.

You can read more about Laure, Dan, and their friends in Hampstead Fever, available online and in bookstores.

20Jun2016

How Did Father’s Day Go?

Posted in Family life, Writing by carolcooper

Geoff hasn’t seen much of his son for two years. The ex-wife took Davey to live on the other side of the world, and they only got back recently.

In the run-up to this Father’s Day, Geoff gets out the last card he had from Davey, a crumpled affair from two years back. Clearly made at school, it says

Dear Dad, Happy Father’s Day

Or, more exactly, Hapy Fathers Day.

The colours have long faded but he can still see it’s signed Love, Davey.

“I’ve got your room ready, Davey,” Geoff says brightly on the phone during the week.

There’s a pause on the line before Davey says, “I’m Dave now.”

“Right. Dave.”

“Let’s just make it a day visit,” says the ex-wife. “Easier all round. It’s been a while, after all.”

She’s probably right, concedes Geoff. Davey – sorry, Dave – has been away a long time with his mother and a man who isn’t his father.

So Dave is deposited at Geoff’s on Father’s Day.

Holding his son close is the same as ever. The best thing in the world, bar none. Of course, Dave has grown. He’s seven years old, wears a Cricket Australia T-shirt, and needs a haircut. But he’s surely the same inside.

“What would you like to do today?” Geoff asks Dave. He asked the very same question on the phone a few days ago, and got nothing useful.

By way of response, Dave pulls something flat out of his bag. That’s when Geoff realizes he’ll be playing second fiddle to an iPad mini.

Geoff is about to lay down the law, but the kid has only just got here. Cut him some slack, he tells himself.

Sure enough, Dave puts the iPad away for lunch.

The boy is quieter than he was, and has a wariness about him. To be expected, of course. He’s older and hasn’t seen his father for months.

After a massive pizza, Dave returns to his iPad.

“What are you doing there?” Geoff hopes he’s not being groomed or downloading porn.

“Killer Diller,” replies Dave.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a game?”

Geoff glances at the screen, where aliens are running about. He curses Sonya for allowing Dave to bring the damn thing, but it could be worse.

“Right. Well, don’t play Killer Diller all day. We could go to the park. I’ve got a new football.”

“I’ve got my iPad,” Dave reminds him.

“Well,” says Geoff. “Maybe a bit later we can have a kick-about.”

“Cool?” says Dave without looking up.

“Want some juice?” Geoff has stocked his fridge with Dave’s favourite tropical juice drink, the kind that strips tooth enamel faster than battery acid.

“Got any Seven-Up?”

“I don’t think so.” That’s another dental disaster, but the occasional can won’t hurt. “Do you have Seven-Up every day?”

“Nah.”

Eventually Geoff prises Dave off his game with the promise that they’ll stop for some Seven-Up on the way back from the park.

It’s sunny in the park, and Dave becomes almost animated, but that, Geoff reasons, is probably because he’s letting him get all the goals. Dave is barely trying.

The day passes so slowly that Geoff can hear it creaking. Dave doesn’t want to talk or play with Lego so he goes back to Killer Diller. Is this what it is to be a dad in today’s world?

At 6 p.m. Dave’s mother comes to collect him.

“Did you give Daddy his card?” she asks.

Dave gets out a mass-produced envelope and hands it over without expression.

Geoff hugs him.

***

Geoff and his son are just two of the characters from my forthcoming novel Hampstead Fever, out on June 30.

Pills & Pillow-Talk

Carol Cooper – trained to observe, born to write.

Category Archives: Family life

What Do You Want to Know about Twins?

Remember the Days of the Old School Yard….

If you too love reminiscences about school, this post will fit the bill perfectly. Author Jo Lambert wrote it a year or two ago, but since when does nostalgia go out of style? I give it 10/10.

Christmas Wishes

Autumn is Just a New Beginning

A Parent Worries Forever

Twelve Snapshots from Freshers’ Week

How to Deal with an Overflowing Inbox

#TBT: Dating 1940s Style

The past is indeed a different country, especially when it’s in a different country. On this Throwback Thursday, I’m reminded how tough, and expensive, it could be to date in the 1940s.

This was Alexandria after World War Two. My parents, who had just met, struggled to find time alone together to indulge in illicit pleasures like a cup of coffee or a chocolate éclair. Here are my mother’s reminiscences.

The Dangers of Learning to Walk

How Did Father’s Day Go?