Tuesday Mornings

Tuesdays are generally a pretty inoffensive day.

Certainly they are not widely regarded as particularly a dificult morning to face. This is especially so when compared to the horrors of Mondays and the danger money inducing evil of first thing on a Thursday.

Yet today was a very different kind of Tuesday.

Rude Awakenings

Today involved being woken by a crazed 10 year old throwing ping pong balls at the wall in the next room in an attempt to rudely rouse me.

The reason for this uncouth behaviour from the kid I look after was simple. The world has spent its time since Saturday tightening the spring that drives him.

On Saturday Edward hit double figures. An important milestone for two reasons.

The obvious one is the air of distinction that having a double numerated age brings. The other is a more unexpected boon. 10 marks the beginning of that age range where relatives become aware that a child has developed interests of its own which are 100% alien to them.

As a result of this the birthday presents begin to cease taking the form of water guns or football stuff, which suit the generic wants of the single figure sprog, and instead are replaced by cold cash. For Edward this birthday was a hard cut, with nearly everyone making the leap to money.

The result was £55 in his pocket on Saturday morning. This was far more money than he had ever owned and the hole it was burning in his pocket was severe. So we headed into Liverpool in the afternoon to relieve him of his wad.

Except things did not go to plan.

Young Edward was not going to buy just any old thing. He was not going to, for example, buy the 5 dreamcast games, second hand, that he had wanted for months. Neither was he to buy a Liverpool FC new season official shirt. Edward was fully aware that he had here an astouding amount of money and that this demanded to be spent on a single astounding item. Never before had he been able to look at an object which cost £55 pounds and then decide to purchase it. The problem was that he also wanted something which was actually worth £55 and finding that was a real problem.

We looked in computer shops, we tried on football shirts and we even toyed with the idea of a £40 skateboard. Nothing met the stringent criteria so we went home, losing the battle but still with the money to fight another day.

Everything was to change though. Sunday saw the arrival on merseyside of Aunt Liz and Uncle David. These two came bearing a gift.

The gift was £30.

£85

Imagine that for a second. £85. You are 10 years old, your pocket money is £2 a week and you've only ever recieved small amounts and book tokens on birthdays before. Yet now you have £85.
Edward now knew exactly what to do.

The Game Boy Advance

"I am going to buy a Game Boy Advance"

he announced excitedly.

Then a realisation came. If he was to own this new zenith of handheld technology he could trade in his Game Boy Colour toward it. This meant he had access to more than £85. It also meant a busy job for me escorting the young prince around as he bartered with shopkeepers over the price of his machine.

Unfortunatly for Edward this was not to take place on Monday. The £30 extra was in the form of a cheque and no one would have the cash till Tuesday. This meant waiting.

Therefore we have the situation this morning. Where the 10 year old had decided that since I had commited a heinous crime, of sleeping past the agreed time for our walk to town to be outside the shop when it opened, I deserved a strange, table tennis based, wake up call.

Mersey Rain

I rose and looked out of the window. It was raining. Rain here on Merseyside is fascinating. Unlike other places I have lived, where I have seen rain fall in drops and, on occasion, in sheets, Mersey rain falls in blocks. Looking out this morning I saw the sky falling down to Earth.

This rain was serious.

There was no avoiding it though. So we struggled down to town, avoiding the new rivers forming in the streets while pets and small children were washed downhill into the Mersey.

The Art of the Purchase

We arrived in Birkenhead and checked all the shops to find the machine to be more pricey than we had thought at £90. At that cost a game to go with it would be impossible.

Then we tried the last shop. Here we found the grail. This place was selling it at £79.99. £5 less than we had expected and £10 less than at other shops. Even better than this was a sign offing £30 trade in on a Game Boy Colour against the Advance. This was Edward's promised land and the excitement glowed in his eyes like, well, the eyes of kid who is about to spend £85.

We went in and selected the machine and found out that Edward could afford a game as well. Obviously he was now ready to burst.

We went to the counter presented our prospective purchases and the game boy to trade in. The assistant picked up our colateral and went over it with great care to check its condition and then he said it. Well we'll take it but we can't give you full trade in without the box.

Horror.

Edward had thrown the box away. Without this cardboard he was facing £20 of loose change and no new game.

I, however, had forseen this and calmly removed from the bag a carry case for the Game Boy Colour that I had noticed at home and knew was useless without the machine. I asked the guy whether if we threw that in we would get the full price. He thought about it and said yes.

So I was a hero. Edward got the game and the machine and we rushed home, stopping only to buy chocolate with his £2 change. Now we are home Edward has repaid my quick thinking by ignoring me for 4 hours. This may sound quite bad but believe me, as an Au Pair I can think of little better present from a kid than 4 hours of sitting still and quiet so that I can read the paper.

This rainy Tuesday is better than I thought.

To get back to 'Scott Bennett's Diary: Index' click here