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I’ve just returned from a mad, pre-Christmas weekend in Lille, where my son soiled every single pair of trousers I packed and, it turns out, the family attractions are closed for the winter. 

On the other hand, I did manage to eat my body weight in croissants and meet a donkey named Igloo.

But how have YOU been?

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Robyn x
MY BUGGY WAS DETAINED AT CUSTOMS: A SURVIVAL STORY
Illustration: Naomi Wilkinson
 
Readers, here follows a cautionary tale.

Last weekend, my family and I went on a pre-Christmas mini break to the French city of Lille. My husband had originally booked the trip as a surprise, but then told me about it, wisely figuring that suddenly barking, “PACK YOUR BAGS!” at a woman with a longstanding anxiety disorder and vivid imagination might give her the wrong idea.

We live 10 minutes’ walk from our local Eurostar. It’s not one of the main ones with the fancy atria and Oliver Bonases as far as the eye can see; it’s mainly used by businessmen and on the concourse there is a single forlorn-looking piano, just waiting for a passing hipster to sit down and knock out the first four bars of Für Elise. It never happens.

However, it does mean that you can chug into the heart of northern France in just an hour! That is unless you are stopped at Customs. I am always stopped at Customs. I don’t want to be lazy and say that it’s because I’m a brown person, but I am a brown person, I’ve been travelling internationally all my life and I can count on the fingers of one hand how often I’ve managed to stroll through Customs unmolested with the (for some reason, unequivocally blond) people I’ve been travelling with.

Sure enough, at Eurostar Customs, my husband (blond, again), three-year-old son (also blond) and one-year-old son (brunette this time, but with sun-frosted tips in the summer) zoom through the gate, then have to double back because Mum’s being taken aside for a polite little friskeroo.

Despite being stopped, I’m not too worried, because inevitably I always get to continue my journey. “Yawn,” I think. “Snore,” I think. “I hope we don’t miss our train,” I think. Then I meditate on what might be the hold-up this time.

Might it be, as it has before, that the surname on my passport differs from that of my children, so the Customs people just want to make sure that I’m not stealing them? (Which seems fair enough.)
“I don’t want to be lazy and say that it’s because I’m a brown person, but I am a brown person and I can count on the fingers of one hand how often I’ve managed to stroll through Customs unmolested”
 

Or is it, as it has been at least twice before, that my children “do not look like” me, and therefore birth certificates are requested and I have to explain to everyone’s satisfaction that I am, in fact, these children’s actual, legal, in-actuality mother? (Which seems less fair, seeing as – besides being white – they both look just bloody like me and, moreover, their white father never gets asked any of this.)

So busy am I, musing about all of this, that I don’t notice the growing clutch of blue-gloved official-looking types gathered around my passport.

“Madam,” says one of them. “You’re going to have to fold up this baby buggy so we can scan it.”

A chill settles over my heart. Not because we’re at Customs and I am a brown person, but because…

“I don’t know how to,” I whisper.

The buggy is a behemoth I got as a freebie; I don’t drive and the buggy lives in the shed, so I rarely collapse it. On the rare occasion I’ve had to, it’s involved the watching of YouTube tutorials on the topic, a minor emotional breakdown and restorative cups of tea. None of which are possible in this environment, especially with the queue of annoyed-looking travellers that’s building behind our security bottleneck. Lamely, I pull on levers and jiggle at catches.  

“Are you sure you need to scan it?” I plead, now in full panic mode and with one foot stuck in the buggy frame.

“Yes, madam, it is imperative that we scan your buggy,” the Customs lady is now extremely stern. “We have swabbed your buggy and found,” here she takes a deep breath, “traces of explosives.”

“Traces of explosives?” my husband exclaims, to utter silence.

“Traces of explosives?” I clarify and literally everyone in the queue falls to the floor.

What the fuck? I mean, it is a Swedish product. Do they make buggies of dynamite in Sweden? Head reeling, I hold fast to the children, who are hellbent on escaping into the Chunnel for kicks, while my husband grabs the buggy, basically glares at it until it collapses on its own, then loads it on to the conveyor belt. The buggy goes through the scanner without incident, then we’re handed it back and told we can proceed through Customs.

“I’m sure you’d rather we took more care than less with passengers’ security,” the Customs lady tells us, primly.

“Yes, but is it safe?” I say. “What about the explosives? Is it safe to use the buggy with my children?”

“Oh, yes.” All sternness has now left the Customs lady. In fact, she’s become rather gossipy. “Our swabs are notoriously sensitive and did you know there is nitroglycerine in practically everything?”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, the most common culprit is ordinary garden fertiliser. Have you been to a garden centre lately?’

Well, of course I’ve been to a fucking garden centre lately. I’m a mum of small children; garden centres – with their cafeteria, aquaria, duck ponds and play areas – are my spiritual home. In fact, I took the kids to look at the Christmas decorations at one just yesterday. With the buggy. Oh.

So, that was that. We got through Customs, I did not go to Guantanamo and my buggy has not exploded. YET. So, heed my tale, reader, lest ye too fall back on lazy assumptions around your skin colour and Customs protocol. Also, tattoo the instructions on collapsing your buggy to your very soul. And, of course, if you go to a garden centre before embarking on international travel, for God’s sake destroy all the evidence.

 

 
LISTOCRACY
9 confessions of sleep-deprived parents
Thanks, tireless factologists of Reddit (also, re the last item on this list, I do take PayPal).
1
Bruce Willis wore fake bare feet during the filming of Die Hard.
2
Jingle Bells is actually a Thanksgiving song and was written about drunken sleigh racing.
3
Every year, Norway sends the UK Christmas trees as thanks for “preserving Norwegian liberty” during the Second World War.
4
Eighteenth-century poultry farmers would walk their turkeys all the way from Norfolk to the Christmas markets in London. The journey took three months. And the turkeys wore little boots.
5
Christmas Day only became a public holiday in Scotland in 1958.
6
In Iceland, it is tradition to exchange books on Christmas Eve, then spend the evening reading them and drinking hot chocolate.
7
Victorian Christmas cards featured dead birds as standard.
8
Twelfth-century English monarch Henry II paid a man called Roland every Christmas Day to fart on cue.
9
In Ireland, children leave Guinness out for Father Christmas, instead of milk.
10
In 1956, Harper Lee’s friends gifted her a full salary for Christmas, so that she could take a year off work to write. Lee used that time to write To Kill A Mockingbird.
WISHLIST
3 ways to help this Christmas
Arrival bundle
Choose Love, £23
The Pool supports Choose Love, a store that allows you to buy actual, practical gifts for refugees. The arrival bundle provides a child with a Thermos, blankets and a coat; there are also bundles for mothers and babies, and individual bundles, containing tents, sleeping bags and food.
Heavy Stocking
Bloody Good Period, £17.01
Bloody Good Period provides menstrual-hygiene supplies for refugees and asylum-seekers. This “heavy” stocking will buy someone two packs of day pads, one pack of night pads and two packs of pantyliners.
One For One Campaign
Piccolo
For every pouch of Piccolo baby food you buy throughout December, Piccolo will donate a pouch to a family in need via food banks and children’s charities, in support of the British Red Cross.
RECIPE
My boozy Christmas truffles
These truffles are easy to make, full of festive spice and will get you nicely merry. Also, they are from my very own recipe, which – fact alert! – featured in Brooke Magnanti/Belle de Jour’s bestseller, The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl.
Photo: Paul Carvill
MAKES AROUND 12 TRUFFLES
150g good-quality dark chocolate
2-3 tbsp dark rum
150ml double cream
24g unsalted butter
The peel of one orange
2 whole cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp plain flour

(to add dryness when rolling)
1 tbsp cocoa powder 

(optional)
Toasted nuts
1
Break up the chocolate and melt in a saucepan or bain-marie, along with the cream, butter and cloves.
2
Using a cheese grater, grate the orange peel directly into the saucepan. Add a squeeze of orange juice, if you like, and stir for a few minutes.
3
Next, stir in the rum, add half the cinnamon and mix well for around three minutes.
4
Pick out the cloves and transfer the truffle mixture to the fridge overnight, or for at least two hours.
5
Once the mixture is chilled and set, dust a wooden board with some of the flour, cocoa powder and remaining cinnamon. Keep the toasted nuts nearby, if you’re using them.
6
Flour your hands, scoop out heaped teaspoons of the chilled truffle mixture and roll into small balls with your hands. Then, roll these in the flour/cocoa/cinnamon mixture, and the nuts if you’re using them.

(This is a messy job, so you may need to dust your wooden board multiple times.)

Plop the dusted truffle balls into petit-four cases and chill until ready to serve.
These truffles are ideal for Christmas gifts, by which I mean they’re ideal for idiots like me, who realise on Christmas Eve that they’ve forgotten to buy gifts for several people, so need to pop down to Tesco Express, sharpish, for truffle ingredients.

Top tip: to avoid gluey chocolate hands, chill the truffles with a lolly stick in the middle, and/or include wet wipes in the gift box.
PODCAST
The travelling mum
Listen to our exclusive podcast with Paloma Faith talking about the five things they don’t tell you about the first year of motherhood.
THE PANEL
Real parents brainstorm your problems
Q. Help me, please. As a toddler, my daughter had a bad virus and I caved and gave her squash to keep her hydrated. Now, she “does not like the taste” of water and I’m worried that, when she grows up, Louis Theroux will end up interviewing her because she only consumes Coca-Cola.
A. Dr Amit Patel
Diversity and accessibility consultant, father, disability activist 
@BlindDad_UK
Having recently done the same with my toddler when he was sick, I had exactly the same concerns. I’ve found that reducing the cordial content slowly can help wean them off it. I also often make up a jug of water with fruit or cucumber in it, which the whole family drinks from, and my toddler loves having the same “grown-up” drink as us. Hope that helps and, if not, remember: like everything, it’s probably just a phase!


A. Meg Pickard
Business consultant and tired parent of one daughter (six) with ASD/ADHD and one “threenager”

Don’t beat yourself up. Water is inherently dull, which is why bottling companies have to persuade the public that it tastes like remote glaciers or tropical-island springs instead of what comes out of your tap. Besides, a little squash is a long way from letting your child drink golden syrup.

If gradually reducing the ratio of squash to water doesn’t work, our home hack is: pop in a frozen blackberry or raspberry, or both – you can buy a big bag from the freezer department of any supermarket or farm shop, and they gradually melt, adding a little more flavour to the drink as they do.

A.  Pete Reynolds
Dad, adopter, primary carer 
@ReynoldsPete 
My first thought is a new bottle. Get her one you’re confident she’ll love or let her choose one herself. Then feign outrage when you get home, read the small print and learn that this wonder bottle can only hold water – no squash allowed! If that and every other effort fails, you could minimise the parent guilt by investing in a healthier squash – Rocks Organic springs to mind.

Most importantly, though, don’t sweat it. This is probably not the thin end of the sugar-addiction wedge and, whatever you do, or even if you do nothing, she’ll probably be back drinking water before you know it. Worst-case scenario, your daughter will get to meet the lovely Louis.

In a parenting quandary? Let our panel of real parents offer some solicited advice.
3AM READS
Food for thought through the night feeds
The Independent has rounded up the most (Waitrose’s own) and least (Ferrero Rocher) environmentally friendly chocolate wrappers, in time for Christmas • Sesame Street is coming to the big screen and Anne Hathaway might be the star • Metro has a lovely series called Mixed Up, which profiles people of mixed ethnicities • This teaser for Game Of Thrones season 8 isn’t giving much away • Here’s a HuffPost piece on women diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant • My friend Samantha was diagnosed with a rare kind of pregnancy-associated breast cancer and, unfortunately, her prognosis is not good. She has asked me to raise awareness about the symptoms and you can see her GoFundMe page, too • Big fan of the British Library’s charity Christmas jumper in this round-up by The Pool (it’s covered in books!) • Fascinating Guardian piece on the psychology of our beloved toys from childhood • Here’s an interview with the brilliant lady who recently heckled Louis CK • Finally, and relevant to my intensely high-brow interests: there is a Riverdale version of Monopoly!
HAVE A GREAT WEEK!
May your Christmas shopping go this well...
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