Boys and how to survive them

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Case 1 – Donald T
2010-09-30 18:26:00
The first person diagnosed with autism, in 1943, was Donald Triplett.  He’s now 77 years old,  still lives in his home town of Forest, Mississippi and spends a lot of time playing golf. Two journalists recently tracked him down to find out about his life after diagnosis. It might help us work out what we’re going to do with the wave of autistic children who will become adults in the next ten years. Some form of ASD now affects about 1 in 110 children. But Donald is not in any way an average autistic. Like Temple Grandin, he comes from a well-off, well-educated  family with the time, money and contacts to make sure their son had the best help available. Without that, he would probably have remained in the institution in which he was placed at 3 years old with the vague diagnosis of ‘some glandular disease’. He still lives in his parents’ large house and has enough money in his trust fund for a great deal of world travel, a Cadillac and membership of a...
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A big but
2010-09-16 16:07:00
The boys are back at school after two and a half months of sweltering heat, boredom and swollen ankles. The average daily max temperature is back below 35C and I can finally manage to string a few coherent thoughts together. It hasn’t been eventful. Tiger had an exciting social life with whichever friends weren’t on holiday in any given week and spent a great deal of time in swimming pools. He also had two brief trips to the beach where he became nicely browned for the mosquitoes. Puffin and I were less fortunate since we had no money and no transport. We visited friends within walking distance and Puffin got up to his neck in water a couple of times which was a real advance for him. He also learned chess and earned several Kinder eggs by beating the computer. My holiday project was doing P90X and scraping my way up to about grade 4 piano. The biggest news of the summer is that I’ve passed the fostering course but – a big but – I will not be assigned an...

The Incredible, 100% True Adventures of Charlie Small
2010-07-31 19:42:00
Charlie Small is eight years old and he’s been trying to get home for four hundred years. He’s fought off a crocodile, swung through the treetops of a jungle with gorillas and made a pet of Jakeman’s Steam-powered Rhinocerous (patent no 102633). But that’s just the beginning of Charlie’s adventures. The next book introduces him to a ship full of female pirates and another of Jakeman’s incredible inventions. He’ll visit the Mummy’s Tomb, the Planet of the Gerks and the Land of the Remotosaurs. He’ll meet pirates, desperadoes and maybe even the great Jakeman himself. When small boys have adventures in made-up worlds you don’t need to explain the whys and wherefores and Charlie’s backstory is sketchy at best. But having got to wherever he is the author’s imagination has no limit. They’re quite long and involved stories for younger children but the illustrations help hold their interest and kids are delighted ...
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King Solomon’s Mines
2010-07-25 11:04:00
This huge hole in the ground is what’s left after mining companies finished extracting copper (in 1986) and gold and silver (in 1996) from Rio Tinto. The name means coloured or painted river and it’s naturally orange because of iron dissolved in the water. It’s probably the oldest mine in the world; worked for more than five thousand years. Some people think it was the source of the legend of ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ – worked by Tartessos or Tarshish: “For the king’s ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram: every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.” 2 Chronicles 9:21 The legendary founder of local village Zalamea la Real was Salomea, the daughter of Solomon. However, the word in Arabic means peaceful and the area is certainly that, now that the miners have gone. The Phoenician’s conquered it, followed by the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the R...

Eco Cardboard toys
2010-07-19 17:18:00
Here’s a rocket if you have budding astronauts. Mine are much more the medieval castle type and you can get those too, in all sizes, for your toy soldiers or your kids to crawl about in. They are all made by Kideco out of 80% recycled cardboard and come in silver, natural brown or white if you’d like to paint it yourself which sounds like a wonderful idea for creative boys who are bored of dinky table-ornament projects. It comes in its own cardboard box so you can store it away, and the large cardboard box is always the best part of any present as long as no one sits on it, the dog doesn’t move in and Mum doesn’t tear it up for kindling. It’s too large to fit easily in most cars though so you’ll have to get it delivered to its final destination. I had a castle made of cardboard when I was young and it was one of my favourite toys. It was made by Playmobil back when they were Play People. It was quite cheap and if it got torn you could mend it with...
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Power Towers
2010-07-16 21:12:00
The shining tower in the picture is the Ps10 ‘Power Tower’ outside Seville. I get a distant view of it driving towards the city from the west and it’s quite beautiful if you like large scale futuristic glamour. It produces 11 MW by focusing the moving mirrors (heliostats) on the top of the 115 m high tower, where there’s a steam turbine. Behind it is PS20 which produces twice as much power and came online last year. Spain has a target of generating 30% of it’s energy from renewable energy sources by 2010. We’ve already achieved it. Spain has put solar panels and solar hot water systems on all new buildings since 2005.  There’s one on a roof in my street, despite a dispute with the town council who like the historical centre of town to look ‘authentic’ and traditional for the tourists. There’s very little NIMBY feeling from actual property owners though. Urbanites like the subsidies and farmers like the fact that their most...

The Recruit
2010-07-15 13:46:00
I bought this because one of Tiger’s friends recommended it to him. It’s not at all the sort of thing he normally likes. Anything that smacks of real modern life involving school, homework and shopping bores him rigid. He feels most at home with the Spartan mess type of atmosphere that you often find in historical or futuristic fantasy – all boys together and no need to worry about who’s washing the socks. But here is a spy thriller with a brain in which the realism manages to be the main attraction. Our hero, James, is recruited into a secret organization that uses children as spies. That premise sounds hilarious to anyone over twelve. There must be lots of ways you could turn the idea into a joke – but the author has thought about and dealt with all of them. He spent thirteen years working as a private investigator himself and doesn’t waste time stitching together gaping plot holes with the latest James Bond hi-tech gadget. The characters are be...

The Choir Boy
2010-07-12 17:49:00
We won. I missed the long awaited goal because I had to take home a fractious and bored Puffin but Tiger stayed in our favourite bar til the bitter end and staggered home exhausted, accompanied by car horns, those irritatingly loud whistles and slightly hysterical singing from all around. I’d been following the commentary on the BBC’s website but when Iniesta finally scored the winning goal I didn’t need to wait for the update – I could hear the howls from the bar at the bottom of the road. The party in my small town was over by about 2am – at least sufficiently over for me to get some sleep. Walking with the dog at 7am this morning I found all the building sites bustling and no hangovers in evidence but broad smiles on everyone’s faces. Our team have just arrived home and been whisked off to meet King Juan Carlos, who would have been there to watch the victory if he hadn’t been recovering from lung surgery. Then they get a much needed rest ...

Puzzle Play Mat
2010-07-09 17:46:00
This is a huge mat which is ideal for small rug-rats on hard floors. It’s easy to clean, waterproof (because accidents happen) and doesn’t have that foam-rubber smell. It grips my hard tiled floor so well that I sometimes borrow it to do yoga on. But it’s much more than just a useful mat. You can play hopscotch on it or make a large snakes and ladders board (with a few pictures, stuffed animals or lego constructions for the snakes and ladders). You can try to touch all the letters of your name with your hands and feet or build a wordsearch for your little brother. Then when you’re bored with two dimensions you can make a cube to hide things in or a tube to crawl through. Unless you live in a mansion it’s big enough to divide and have a small play area in several rooms and one on the patio. Of course each child will want the letters of their own name in their own room. This is the moment when you realize you didn’t give nearly enough thought to nam...
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Surprise inspection
2010-07-06 19:35:00
So there I was, at nine o’clock in the morning, doing a little exercise in very skimpy clothing (as you do when you’re in your own living room and it’s 39 degrees outside) and suddenly the social workers were at the door. I had to dash off and find a bath robe. They were very nice about it anyway. This was my surprise visit – the last hurdle before I’d receive my fostering certificate. The main themes, after the brief tour of my house seemed to be hot water, chronic health problems and my boys. Had I even told them what was happening? Was I expecting Tiger to pitch in and bath the baby? Could I stand it if I didn’t find the time to mop the floor every day? Tiger fielded his own interview very well and Puffin said ‘Hola‘ and then lapsed into nonsense-speak – thus excusing himself from interrogation. Anyway I got my certificate in the post today so it can’t have gone badly. It seems ridiculous though, to be proud of a certifi...