3 p.m. Still no sex. I mean, text. But feeling much more composed about Roxster today. Calm, Buddhist, almost Dalai Lama-like. When he comes, we welcome. When he goes, we let him go.
3.05 p.m. FUCK ROXSTER! FUCK HIM! Suddenly doing death-by-texting after all that, that CLOSENESS. It’s inhuman. I didn’t like him anyway. I was just . . . just . . . USING HIM FOR SEX . . . like a, like a TOY BOY. And it’s a REALLY good job the children didn’t meet him – because now it is all over, so at least it won’t affect them. But where am I going to find someone I just get on with like that and who is so funny, and sweet and gorgeous and—
‘Mummy?’ Billy interrupted. ‘How many elements are there?’
‘Four!’ I said brightly, snapping back into the reality of the messy Sunday afternoon in the kitchen. ‘Air, fire and wood. And um—’
‘Not “WOOD”! Wood isn’t an element.’
Oh. Suddenly realize ‘wood’ came from a book I read about Elemental Design – when I had the fantasy of redoing the house into a Buddhist Zendo – and it said the house had to have water, wood, earth and fire. No problem with the last one anyway!
‘There are five elements.’
‘No, there aren’t!’ I said indignantly. ‘There are four elements.’
‘No. There are five elements,’ said Billy. ‘Air, earth, water, fire and technology. Five.’
‘Technology isn’t an element.’
‘Yes, it is!’
‘No, it isn’t!’
‘It is. It’s in Wii Skylanders: air, earth, water, fire and technology.’
Stared at him in horror. Has technology become another element now? Is that it? Technology is the fifth element, and my generation just don’t understand it, like the Incas just completely forgetting to invent the wheel? Or maybe the Incas invented the wheel and it was the Aztecs to whom the idea of the wheel just never occurred?
‘Billy?’ I said. ‘Who invented the wheel? Was it the Incas or the Aztecs?’
‘Mummeeeee! It was in Asia in 8000 BC,’ Billy said without looking up.
He had somehow got onto his iPod without me noticing.
‘What are you DOING????’ I burst out. ‘You’ve had your time. Your next time isn’t till four o’clock!’
‘But I wasn’t doing Skylanders for the whole forty-five minutes. I was only playing for thirty-seven minutes because it was loading and you SAID you would save my time when I went to the toilet.’
I grasped my hair and pulled it, trying not to think about the nit eggs. I just don’t know what to do about technology. It’s banned in the week, and at the weekend it’s maximum two and a half hours with no more than forty-five minutes at a time and at least an hour in between, but the whole thing gets like a complicated algorithm of finishing levels, and loading, and going to the toilet, and playing cyber wizards with someone across the road, and it just drives me MAD because it turns them into non-present creatures and I might as well still be in BED as . . .
‘Billy,’ I said in my best voicemail voice. ‘You have had your screen time. Would you please hand me the iPad, I mean iPod?’
‘It’s not an iPod.’
‘Hand it over,’ I said, staring Medusa-like at the evil thin black object.
‘It’s a Kindle.’
‘I said ENOUGH SCREENS!’
‘Mummy. It’s your Kindle. It’s a book.’
I blinked rapidly, confused. It was technological and black and thin and therefore Evil, but . . .
‘I’m reading James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.’
. . . it was also a book.
‘Well!’ I said brightly, trying to recover my dignity. ‘Anyone want a snack?’
‘Mummy,’ said Billy, ‘you’re so silly.’
‘OK, I’m sorrreeeee,’ I said, like a sulky teenager. I got hold of him and hugged him perhaps a little too passionately.
Suddenly there was a ping. Lunged at the phone. Roxster! It was Roxster!