Gobble Bags and Fist Gloves

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away lived two elves with unusual names….. While it’s tempting to continue along that theme, I think it’s probably best I told you the real story. This year we spent a lot of time in France. As you know, I am now a swimming god and so perhaps not surprisingly to entertain our two daughters, we spent a lot of time at the local swimming pool complex. This place is actually worthy of a post in its own right. It’s probably the earthly equivalent of purgatory. Set on the shores of Lake Geneva, this open air complex makes pretty much every other swimming pool complex you’ll ever come across look like a boating lake in the local park. The problem is that everyone who goes there is a perfect human specimen. So on the one hand, it’s a fantastic place to sit and watch the world go by. On the other than, it won’t fail to make you feel hugely inadequate. Anyway, since becoming a swimming god, I’ve needed to carry my goggles, fist gloves and lubricant (look, it’s a swimming thing and it says more about you than it does me) around with me and I use a small green wash bag. That’s it. Nothing to it. It just means that when we go swimming, the very last thing to balance precariously on top of, or hang from the already well loaded buggy is my small green bag. There are turnstiles at the gates to the swimming complex. They are set up for people who weigh less than 81/2 stone. So, you can imagine wedging a buggy which is now buried in inflatables, bags, food and the odd child through these very “French” gates, takes some negotiation. Incidentally , it’s interesting that while taking the buggy through customs is a massive pain in the proverbials, it does become a means of carrying absolutely everything we own out with us when we go anywhere. It’s amazing what we can balance, hook or pack onto it. It’s alike the old Jackaroo game…. I hate to think how we’re going to cope when there’s no need to take our means of lugging all our stuff about. On our numerous trips to the swimming pool, the unloading of all the “important stuff”, loading up of the buggy and the management of the kids took nearly as long as we actually spent at the pool. The very last thing to find and “load” each time was my small green bag. I call it my goggle bag, because I keep my goggles in it. Elodie couldn’t say goggles. She could manage Gobbles. So she, and now Alexa call it the Gobble Bag. As they too are now aspiring “swimming godlets” my bag now carries four pairs of Gobbles. Being the last thing to leave the car, The Gobble Bag quickly became the thing to argue over and very definitely “the thing” to be seen with for any fashion conscious 18 month to 5 year old. So they each wanted to carry it. Initially the argument as to who would get to be seen carrying the gobble bag, would start as we loaded the buggy, but as the three weeks (yes, we’re that posh/tired) went on, both Elodie and Alexa had begun lobbying earlier and earlier in the day and in the end were even “negotiating” loudly and at length the evening before. As you can imagine, with a full three weeks ahead of us, the prospect of this debate lasting for the full period was starting to become a cause for concern. We had a few “objectives” for our holiday. One was for Elodie to swim a width unaided and to eat a full plate of food at meal times in less than 48 hours and for Alexa to eat a meal without sharing it with everyone in a 1 mile radius. Each of these things proved challenging. Add to that the now predictable escalation of the “who carries the gobble bag tomorrow” argument and you can form a picture of how meal times were becoming. One and a half weeks in it was reaching a level that even very large gins couldn’t drown out (and we did try). One night I am ashamed to admit, I snapped. I went from mild mannered, easy going, happy-go-lucky dad on holiday, to an NLP Ninja, ruthlessly focussed solely on achieving peace and tranquility, whatever the cost. I mustered every ounce of “four kids dad experience”, some “hello magazine” psychology and a “holiday” size glass of wine and announced a new competition. This time the stakes were high and failure would not be an option. Each night, at dinner time, I would announce the winner of the competition. There would be no rules save that I would make the decision who the day’s winner was and that there would be no debate. The only sure way to ensure you were in with a chance….to be good. The prize. The winner… Had the right to carry the Gobble Bag the following day. Would be able to have the Gobble Bag in their own room overnight. Would have their photo taken with the Gobble Bag. It was remarkable. The arguments stopped immediately. Both girls were extremely focussed on eating their dinner, neither mentioned the “bag” and for the remainder of the holiday behaviour was almost too perfect. When I can find it I will post a photo of Elodie (the winner on the first day) with the Gobble Bag and a winner’s crown. Alas Alexa still flung her dinner far and wide, but she did eat most of it and Elodie still took an average working day to com Winner of the Gobble Bag Competitionplete a meal, but the arguments stopped. Elodie did swim her width, unaided and “celebrated” with one of the loudest swimming burps I’ve ever heard. She got a round of applause from everyone in the pool….but we’re still not sure if it was for her swimming or her form of celebration…this was France after all! .