The Imperial Digger Museum

You know when people tell you not to worry about something until it happens? Well, sometimes they're right. (Only sometimes, mind.) Last week's destination was a trip to the Imperial War Museum (triggered by collective parental guilt about our lack of knowledge about the Battle of Britain after a visit to Louis' great-grandpa). I figured we'd able to do a quick crash course, while Louis amused himself looking at an aeroplane or two and wandering through the trenches. What I hadn't figured was what I'd tell him the museum was all about. After all, war is a tough concept for anyone to grasp, let alone a two year old.

But as it turned out, I needn't have fretted. Louis took one look at the giant caterpillar tracks on the tanks dotted throughout the ground floor and said: "Diggers!" After that, it was just a question of dragging him away from them long enough to find the Second World War exhibit. Which we did, but only after walking through the replica trenches at least six times. (Again, concerns that he might be scared by the dark, like a fellow toddler who was inconsolable after her parents tried to take her in, were pointless; he adored them, mainly because we had to walk on the "train track" because of all the mud....) Only Louis would watch a black-and-white film of the Blitzkrieg through France twice over because he was waiting for the German Panzer digger brigade to reappear.

The only disappointment was that you can't actually climb into any of the diggers, sorry, tanks, although you can walk through the nose of one of the bomber planes and explore a submarine. And that he didn't give us quite long enough to atone for years of ignorance about the finer points of the Battle of Britain. So instead, I wrote a comment piece about it for the Indy on Sunday, which you can read here if you'd like. And no doubt we'll back at the Imperial War Museum soon enough, if only on another "digger" hunt.

Having it all

So, it's official. As a working mum I can give myself a pat on the back for making the right decision and not staying with Louis 24/7 because he'll turn out the same either way. Or I could if I had a hand free. Because as a working mum, as everyone knows, "hands" and "free" aren't exactly sentiments that go together. Which is why any sane person grabs every bit of help that they can, whether it's the odd extra hour of childcare courtesy of some very kind grandparents or the ultimate luxury of a fortnightly cleaner (doesn't ask what the house looks like on day 13).

Or at least they do, if they're anyone but Emma Thompson. The actor and mother-of-two decreed this week (ironically via a publicity interview for her latest Nanny McPhee film) that working and mummying don't mix - unless you have a household full of staff to do the dirty work for you. Which was a timely dig at all those supermum celebrities who neglect to mention their back up when they preach about the effortless joys of being a mother (naming no names, Gisele-breastfeeding-should-be-law-for-six-months-Bundchen or Angelina Jolie). Weighing into the debate about how people's working lives just aren't working for a lot of women, Thompson claimed she never wanted to "delegate the running" of her house to others so that she could forge ahead with her career.

I applaud her sentiment but I'm heartily sick of the likes of her trying to pretend that their lives remotely resemble the wider populace. And I don't believe for a minute that she cleans her own toilet. Or mops her kitchen floor. And I resent her implication that she does. (I also resent the fact that I, like millions of other people, try somehow and see parallels between my own life and the rich and famous, but that's hardly her fault.)

It would have been more useful if Thompson had made more of the fact that she hadn't had her biological child until she was 41 to point out the ludicrousness of the situation that means any ambitious women out there feel they have to prove themselves in the workplace before allowing themselves the chance to have a family. Now that we'll all be working well past our dotage, isn't it time that someone pointed out it makes vastly more sense for women to have children in their 20s and then hit the world of work in their mid-30s, when, let's face it, they'll still have a good 40 years toil minimum ahead of them.

Perhaps that way we could move on from the debate about whether working mums are or aren't the devil's spawn. And women really could have it all.

Art attack: part two

Inside the Serpentine Pavilion

More news on the toddler-friendly gallery front (on the offchance anyone is following what seems to have become what newspapers love to dub an "occasional series"): we stumbled on two more gems this past week. The first is admittedly obvious: Jean Novel's giant red tent - well, at least that's how I sold it to Louis - outside the Serpentine in Hyde Park. It's their annual summer pavilion-cum-cafe; architecture and caffeine, a winning combination. Louis enjoyed the chill out corner, complete with red air mattresses and red beanbags to bounce on (everything's in iconic London red; even the fruit and vegetables growing in the garden) and DJ and I enjoyed the coffee. There are chess tables and ping pong tables, so it might be fun checking it out without Louis too, especially as it's open into the evening.

The second exhibition I picked purely with me in mind. Francis Alys at the Tate Modern. I'd stumbled on him a year ago at the National Portrait Gallery where he'd curated, rather than painted, a room full of portraits of a Catholic Saint, Fabiola. I may not know my religious art, but somehow her image, side one, head hooded with a red veil, is hauntingly familiar. All the more so in fact after seeing 300 or more different takes on her that he scooped up over the years at various car boot sales or what have you and hung in a single room, barely inches apart. So simple and quite outstanding.

This time Alys, a Belgian artist who has lived in Mexico City since the mid-1980s, has some powerful stuff to say about the state of Latin America. Witness a video of a man pushing a giant block of ice around Mexico City on a hot day. Unsurprisingly he is left with nothing to show for his endeavour. Likewise the driver of a VW Beetle that tries to drive up a steep dirt track to the soundtrack of a brass band rehearsing. Every time the band stops, the car stops, sliding back down the track. There's also footage of around 500 people strung out in a line along a sand dune. Spades in hand, they advance, step by painful step, digging as they walk in a futile attempt to move the dune. The video of children building a sandcastle on a beach as the tide turns has a similar message about the futility of life, especially for a Latin American. Ditto the one of children skimming stones into the sea. Plip, plip, plip, plip, sink. Plip, plip, plip, plip, sink.

All those videos made it another perfect exhibition with Louis in tow; the sand and digging an added bonus. Not to mention getting in early with such a vital life lesson. Or is that a bit bleak?

Toddler logic

(A piece of watermelon; but it might as well be a sausage!)

You've got to love a toddler's logic. And here's two reasons why: 

1. Louis and the sausage. 

It's the end of a BBQ at ours. So far, so delicious: Geof and DJ have enjoyed some Mummy-made beefburgers and sausages, while Louis and I have tucked into the usual vegetarian barbecue fare of aubergines, peppers and some halloumi for good measure. There may even have been a corn on the cob. But now Louis is trying to work out how he can wangle some ketchup. I attempt to point out that he can't have any because, "ketchup is just for sausages". So Louis, my darling veggie son who hitherto has turned up his nose at even the scant bit of chicken I've reluctantly offered him, immediately declares: "Louis wants a sausage." 

Me: "Really? But Mummy doesn't like sausages."

Louis: "Louis likes sausages!"

Me: "Really? Are you sure? Mummy really doesn't like sausages."

Louis, smiling: "Louis LIKES sausages." 

Me, grimacing: "Okay then....." 

And, readers, he ate the sausage; well, half of it. Liberally doused in ketchup. 

2. Louis and the bicycle

One of Louis' best books is one that a friend bought him just before we jetted off for DC: Little Louis Takes Off. It tells the tale of a little swallow, little Louis, who can't fly, so instead of flying south with his family for the winter, he has to travel in an aeroplane. After (re-)reading it the other day, I contrast "Little Louis in the book" with "Big Louis" who is reading it. 

Pause, as Louis' brain works overtime to recall all those conversations (aka tantrums) we've had about bicycles that conclude with me telling him that 'no, he can't have a bicycle until he's a big boy'....

Louis: "So now Louis is big, Louis can have a bicycle!"

Tell me how I can argue with that?! 

Ernesto Neto: the toddlers' artist

In the interests of balance - well, I am theoretically a journalist as well as Louis' mum - I figured it wasn't fair to moan about the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum without eulogising about the amazing exhibition we went to this morning. (On the dinosaur front, I'm told that first thing on a weekend is the time to go, plus we managed to miss the moving dinosaur that was at the end of the very hot and sticky throng of people in one particularly crowded gallery.) 

But back to today. After giving up on seeking out kid-focused museums, we figured we'd use yet another overcast, dull day we had all together (heatwave; what heatwave?) to check out Ernesto Neto at the Hayward Gallery. The exhibition is part of the South Bank's summer homage to all things Brazilian. Which thankfully stretches beyond the ubiquitous Haviana flip flop. Two things inspired us to go: my lovely and very talented artist friend Sonoko, who is keen to see it, and the much photographed open-air swimming pool that is part of his show and which would have provided respite from the heat, had the weather not been lousy. 

If you don't know Ernesto Neto - and if so, join the club - he belongs to the tactile school of art. He doesn't so much make sculptures as redecorate entire galleries with wonderful interactive creations you can touch, sit on or even climb into. He has transformed the internal concrete mass of the Hayward Gallery into a sensuous living organism, with nylon membra strung from ceiling to floor to create tunnels and caves that suck you in before spitting you on the terrace where you can take a dip in an inflatable, crocheted pool. (Provided you're taller than 1.10m. And have brought your cossie and a towel, which we, inexplicably, hadn't.)

I want to say it was parental heaven. Just imagine: an art gallery where you won't run the risk of being thrown out just because your toddler/child has come within looking distance of an exhibit; an exhibition you're actually encouraged to interact with. But I'm wary of sounding exactly like the sort of nightmare the Independent's art critic feared would regard Neto's work as the ultimate bouncy castle for their "shrieking Toms or Daisys". 

In my defence, I was so busy telling Louis not to touch the sides of the extremely tactile nylon tunnels that the gallery attendant told me not to worry so much! Needless to say, Louis had a blast. And thankfully the Hayward isn't a magnet for the fluorescent-yellow bibbed school crowd that make places like the Natural History Museum such a nightmare so we did too. In fact, I can't wait to go back. If I thought I'd be able to get value out of the members' bar at the Royal Festival Hall I'd pony up for South Bank membership, which would give me a summer's worth of floating in Neto's pool. If I didn't have a sub 1.10m Louis in tow, that is.