Jellicle Cats, Hexbugs and new beginnings

I’m through. I walked out of work for the final time. It was an ignominious Christmas Eve departure. The bank of desks where I sat all but deserted. The head honchos have long since flown off to wherever in Europe from whence they hale, and all who remained were the lowliest administrators. Only the CEO, a woman in her 40s brought her kids in too. She looked across at my two, absorbed for a change in CBBC, and gave me a look I could hardly fathom – something between confusion that my children were the same age as hers and pity I wasn’t nearly so well paid. I ate with the kids in the canteen and I waved goodbye to a freelancer who’d been nice to me when others were pointedly not asking me to lunch, and got on the wrong tube to Oxford Circus, meaning we had to change at Baker St.

We had hours to kill until Tom finished up. The plan was he’d meet us in Carnaby Street for a pre-theatre supper, before heading off to Cats, which I’d booked back in the summer when I was relatively new, and full working days seemed my long-term fate.

Given how bleak it was on in the office, despite being “bring your kids to work day”, there was no way I was staying till five on my last day with nothing to do.

I formulated a plan to take them to Hamley’s, the Christmas Shop at Liberty’s, stop for a cuppa, look for a pressie for Tom from the kids and by then, hopefully he would have met us.

It being the 22nd of December, Regent’s Street was a circus, the crowds were too thick, and my goat coat, entirely made of nylon, was kindling me into a cortisol-soaked sweat. I held hands tight and told the kids to look at the lights while I negotiated them through the milieu. Within moments of reaching Hamley’s packed doors, Jonah was asking to leave. “Let’s just have a quick walk round,” I plead, having got that far.

We went downstairs to the ‘nerd’ zone, the least busy of the escalator options, and within two minutes, we’d been given a slick demonstration of magic pens and a brief argument with a woman whose son pushed past us vigorously. Soon, both kids were demanding to purchase Hexbug Strandbeasts with the cheque they’d been given from Nana Helen. Of course, the cheque goes straight into their accounts which they can’t touch till they’re 18. I never get to see the money. It was an idea I had when they were babies, s was being given a barrage of shit they didn’t need and I didn’t want.

Now they’re old enough to spend their own money, a cheque doesn’t seem much of a pressie – money that’s likely to be devalued by the time they come to use it. Together, the toys cost £50. I mentally tot up how much I would be spending on coffees and  ice creams to get us through the nine or so hours before we could finally go back home.

I relented in seconds. The place was hideous, we all just wanted to go, but it seemed churlish to leave without buying anything having waded though eyeball deep crowds – a sound business strategy if ever there was one. In addition, I panic bought a gift for my 17 year old step-brother and we funneled off down the backstairs , and up an alleyway into the network of alleys near Carnaby Street, where all was slightly calmer.

Of course, they wanted to play with their toys, so I took them to Kingley Court, a pretty fairy- lit square of restaurants and seating areas, where I attempted to release said bugs from their bondage of hard to crack packaging and lock-tied straps.

Inhaling deeply on my e-fag, I considered my options, eventually begging scissors from a waitress. The Hexbugs were unshackled.

MmThe kids killed 20 minutes regaling a group of slightly reticent Asian tourist kids with Strandbeast battles (like remote controlled, robotic crabs – the other kids, who watched intently were too afraid to give them ago. I purloined cucumber-infused water from the smoothie shop I’d gone to a couple of weeks before with Sam, and let time slip by. At least it was 13 degrees outside.

After a while, I cajoled the kids to wander into a couple of shops with me, enticing them into Liberty’s through the Chocolate Room at the back. With temptations piled high and tempers frayed, I gathered them into a safely into wood paneled lift and did one quick turn of the Christmas Shop on 4th before turning tail and heading to the 2nd, where the queue for the tea shop was too long and smart to even consider waiting.

It still also only 2.30 pm. By now, Ava’s foot was hurting where Jonah had stamped on it last night, and I was becoming slightly desperate for a hot beverage.

We headed back out the back, and wandered the streets in search of somewhere else to sit. Every table was packed. Eventually we rounded into Ganton Street, and there were a few empty table at Dehasa, a smart wine-bar serving expensive vintages and specialty European antipasti.

I begged the waiter to let me have a coffee. “We’re not allowed to serve drinks without food,” he said. “But I have two small children, and there’s nowhere to sit and we’re tired,” I plead, feeling like a modern-day Mary who’d been told the inn was full. The waiter relented, and I sat the kids in a corner so they could play with their Hexbugs and ordered a £3.00 Americano because it was a cheapest thing on the menu, and a reluctant diet coke for the kids to share, while I updated the blog I wrote that morning at work wishing I hadn’t bothered schlepping all the way across town to go there in the first place.

Time ticked on. I ordered a glass of wine (the waiter was past caring about his license by then). Tom turned up late, but the Hexbugs had kept the kids amused for literally hours, making them well worth every penny. He ordered wine, and then we ended up talking to a lovely Dutch couple whose kids had obviously been persuaded by the the magic pen demonstration in Hamley’s, and Ava had gone over to their table to see them in action.

In a beautiful defiance of language barriers, she then joined their table to draw alongside  their also six-year-old daughter, while the boy, the same age as Jonah, came outside with his perfectly English-speaking mum to play Hexbugs (she told us about a Dutch artist Theo Jansen, who created Strandbeest art installations that can move), who drank a glass of wine with us. We ended up ordering seconds, finding each other on Facebook,  promising to visit them one day in Deflt.

Mildly sozzled, we piled a few doors up to Pizza Pilgrim, where we had the nicest, most well-priced pizza and-on-tap Prosecco available capital-wide, I’d wager. The kids were, by now, in fine fettle, despite the wait (I suspect the coffee soaked sugar lump I’d allowed them in desperation before Tom showed up had gone some way to keeping their spirits up).

We wandered to the Palladium in jolly anticipation, queuing again outside before the doors opened and then again in the upper circle bar (I’d bought seats in the gods) and again in our seats. Not a moan from the kids, but they polished off a bag of Aero bubbles and half a box of Smarties in the first act, as well as an ice cream at half time. I was expecting fireworks, and we got them – pyrotechnics and timeless tunes kept Jonah only slightly twisting in his seat- I realise only now that Andrew Lloyd Webber spun out the same five chords though out not only one, but all his musicals!

Ava fell asleep ten minutes before the end. We guided them down the backstairs onto a backstreet I’d last walked as a star struck eight year old.

Despite my sense of deja vu and mild hangover, Jonah and I swang our arms, singing show tunes like bawdy drunkards all the way to the tube.

The whole thing was proclaimed a success, to hell with the cost, and the fact that tomorrow, my first proper day off since the summer, I will no doubt pay the price of a late night and a sugar overdose. My chronic insomnia’s a small price to pay.

For now, it was a night to remember. And this morning, the kids slept in till 9.00. Sucess indeed.