Let’s do this together
The war of attrition continues at Dark Lord Towers with light bickering, biting sarcasm and a fork amnesty. Since I refused to comply with the stroppy teenager’s demands to serve dinner at 6pm because she’s hungry enough to eat her toenails, we’ve both dug deep into our opposing trenches.
“I have to survive on just my packed lunch all day,” she wailed earlier in the week when I first put my foot down.
“This is what most adults do,” I explained to the teenager, who’s just waking up to the fact that after a certain age you don’t have puddings after every meal, three ice creams a day on holiday or a bag of Haribos on the way home from school.
“You’ve just never known what it’s like to be hungry,” I added.
We pass in the hallway now – her taking the plate of pasta she’s just made to her bedroom.
“Hard cheese?” I chuckled, knowing that’s the only topping she can rustle up.
Then I make a proper dinner, but leave leftovers in the fridge for her (I’m not a complete monster). So far, she hasn’t touched them because that would be admitting she misses my cooking.
However, the only trouble with TDL taking her meals up to her bedroom – like a Victorian lady – is that all our cutlery is going missing. I went to look for a fork and there were only those weird three-prong dessert ones left in the drawer.
I knocked on her door, and called: “Bring out your dead! You must have all the forks among the food debris in there.”
School broke up for half-term yesterday, although she only managed two out of the last five days due to unconvincing feebleness and excessive dry coughing.
She probably could have dragged herself in earlier but it was Wellness Day on Wednesday, and TDL point blank refuses to take part in any organised fun. I read out the school email through her bedroom door: “It says here you have to wear your games tracksuit and sports hoodie tomorrow.”
She opened her door. “Well that settles it then, I can’t go in because I sold it to Finn for a tenner.”
This wasn’t the first time the mini Del Boy has flogged her games kit, but at least she’d grown out of it last time.
“I paid for that – you owe me money,” I cried. She went back into the dark recesses of her room, then emerged and slapped one of her Christmas £10 notes in my hand, saying: “Here you go.” I wish the family wouldn’t give her cash gifts – it removes my only form of parenting control.
In the meantime, TDL and I continue to cook and eat at different times. We’ll see who breaks first – or ends up in hospital with scurvy.
■ Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.