London - The policeman was so tall it was like having Hagrid, the giant from Harry Potter, in our kitchen. The top of his helmet touched the ceiling and his imposing presence provoked a miracle in the house: complete silence.
Minutes earlier, the four siblings had been arguing over who was to be the waitress in their ‘breakfast cafe’ game, although my son had just opted out of the squabble by saying he was the chef and was ‘on his break’ (men don’t like confrontation).
The three sisters were wielding pens and notepads (even the two-year-old) trying to take Mr Candy’s order at the same time as elbowing each other surreptitiously.
I was staring into the freezer wondering what the hell a rubber glove filled with frozen water was doing in there.
Quite frankly, I’m frightened to open any of the doors or drawers during the school holidays because every day they are at home is a cross between a science experiment and a practical joke competition for my children (the mummified orange was yesterday’s gruesome discovery).
‘I have come for your husband,’ the officer said sombrely, ignoring the chaos around him.
I was tempted to quip: ‘About time!’ But he didn’t look much like a laughing policeman. Besides, my dad was a policeman and the sight of the badge made me feel about ten years old again.
Mabel broke the rare silence. Nothing bothers a fearless Number Four.
‘Man, what you doing?’ She asked. Then she pointed at his hat and said: ‘That’s mine.’
‘Sir,’ the officer began to explain, ‘we have a CCTV video of you filling your car with petrol last week and driving off without paying. We have to recover the money owed or...’ And he paused.
At this point my son, aged six, who is prone to dramatic over-reaction, let out a loud girlish screech and fled upstairs. He slammed his bedroom door so loudly it probably caused a small tsunami off of the Orkney Islands.
Silence, once again.
‘Ignore him. We do,’ the eldest commented before wandering off, uninterested in her father’s fate.
Mr Candy and I exchanged glances and sighed.
Honestly, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before. The date in question was after another broken, almost completely sleepless, night where three of the four had been throwing up in relay due to a tummy bug.
I could barely remember my surname the following day at work, so Mr Candy can be forgiven for forgetting to pay for his petrol.
Actually, I think we deserve a medal for being able to walk in a straight line after a decade of sleep deprivation. That’s us and every other parent in Britain.
I still find it astonishing to think that industry survives and business continues while most of the population is powered by less sleep than four-hours-a-night Margaret Thatcher. Even royalty endures it, as Prince William revealed this week.
I was so tired after having the second child just 17 months after the first that I once walked to the supermarket shoeless. When I had the third, I had to take him to an emergency doctor’s appointment one morning and I got halfway there before realising the buggy was empty — I’d left the baby on the floor in the lounge.
I could fill a book of bedtime stories with tales of sleep-deprived behaviour, but so can we all. And, as my mom is prone to remark, you forget it all when they hit their teenage years and start sleeping for England.
Anyway, Mr Candy followed the policeman to the garage to pay, where by all accounts it took some time to rectify the situation.
My son reappeared after the long arm of the law had vacated the premises.
‘Phew!’ he said, ‘I thought he had come for Mabel.’
On holiday in Cornwall the week before, my two-year-old had secretly put a huge ornament from a ludicrously over-priced beachside shell shop in the front pocket of her coat and zipped it up.
We had no idea she’d been shoplifting tourist tat until we were 200 miles away when it fell to the floor in a motorway car park.
The toddler just grinned. A master criminal in the making. - Daily Mail
* Lorraine Candy is editor in chief of Elle magazine.