It’s all about Ralph these days really. We’ve become doting grandparents without a grandchild. The real problem though is Ralph. That’s his name, in human terms. He’s gorgeous and mischievous. We can’t take him out in public of course but we imagined how good and not so good he will be. A nice relaxing autumn week in Aviemore seemed like a wonderful opportunity to practice our grandparenting skills, if we had any.
This place is crawling with normal children, it’s tattie howkin week. God can the wee horrors scream. On and bloody on they go. Screaming at their Mothers when they must have something or another. Can you not just shut them up? We know our Ralphie would never play up in public. He would happily make his waffle at breakfast and spread jam on it, revelling in the human experience. I can hear his contented hums as I speak. Alien children seem to do a lot of this, I find it very soothing for the soul. We wanted to take Ralph to the soft play adventure park in the grounds so we dressed him up in a woolly yellow onesie and found a pair of ski goggles for him in the hotel foyer shop. You have never seen a little alien so happy!! He bounced up and down, slid down the shoots, the biggest one of course, climbed like a monkey on the frames and swung like Tarzan on the huge ropes. Things got a bit difficult when his agility superseded that of his new human friends. He became the focus of attention when the fire engine noises started and green snot oozed out of the ski goggles. Lots of people pointed. One woman had the cheek to ask us what was wrong with our little boy and did he have special needs, smiling indolently as I wanted to smack her one. John intervenes quite a lot on these occasions and no matter how much I protest I get dragged away seething, steam coming out of my ears and ready to smack him as well. I don’t know what happens really. I’m not a violent person. The snot had actually come from his almond alien eyes, perfectly normal, says his brother, the wee man was having a good time. John and I are on a steep learning curve. We had to make a quick exit.
Ok, I’ve undersold the minor altercation with the horrible woman at the soft play. She kept staring at Ralph. You know those blue cold eyes that people from the islands have? Red squiggly hair flying all over the place? Like a Viking? Be on you guard is what I say. I only reached her armpits and I got the distinct aroma that they were hairy as well. Oh man. There may have been a wee bit more snot than I mentioned. The green slime hung, wafting in the breeze of an open window, on the big monkey ropes. Long streaks of it. Some children very foolishly slid off, crying to their mothers that it was all Ralphs fault. What a bloody cheek. My poor boy has a very bad cold and has been faced with nothing but hostility. I let the hairy Viking have it full throttle. This was around the time management were called and John hustled me out a side door by the arm of my mountain hiking jacket. God the fuss.
By the time we got back to our room the snot around Ralphie had solidified and he was locked inside his own little statue. If you recall we had this problem with paper and slavers last year and John appeared with a power tool, frightening the life out of us all. Well, once again he didn’t disappoint as he came out the loo brandishing an electric screw driver and a pair of scissors honed to perfection for dehairing his nose and ears. I can’t tell you about the other places because this story isn’t about that. He bored holes through the shell so the wee man could breathe. I asked him quite innocently why he had an electric screwdriver on holiday and he turned around like a zombie with a very glassy look to his eyeballs. I don’t know. I didn’t ask again.
I bathed Ralphie and got him into his favourite blue and red space jammies and sat him on the bed with a drinking chocolate looking at brochures of where else we could go the following day. John got very red faced and said under his breath that Ralph wouldn’t be going anywhere the next day. I just said under my breathe that yes he bloody well would.