Alexia-Rose Ritter Talks Back

My name is Alexia-Rose Ritter.  I am eight years old.  I am the last but not least daughter of Jules and known here for some silly reason of my Mum’s, my Dad Mr. Jules.  My older brother Oliver, Ollie for short , is eighteen and my sister Sophie-Georgia is 15.  I’m only 8.  You would think that they could have got the sums right and had me a few years earlier as they do in “normal” families.  People will always think I came along as an after-thought or even worse “a mistake baby” like my Aunty Miriam.  Mum says “You’re lucky to be alive it took me seven years to persuade your Dad.”

Anyway here I am, only eight years old in a household of adults.  They forget about me you know.  Often I hear conversations that no self-respecting eight year old should have to listen to.  Sometimes they remember I am within ear shot and say “Pardon my French, Alexia”.  This gets me really confused as it is never preceded by French words but rather words that I hear on American TV when they think I am upstairs watching the Disney Channel.  Talking of TV I have to watch adult DVDs at night with them.  These are the ones where grown-ups kiss and do other smoochy things or sometimes kill each other.  They all shout “under the covers Lexi” and throw my blanket over my head.  Sometimes I sneak a peak around the side but often wish I hadn’t.

My Mum is a “writer” or at least trying to be.  The only thing I like about her being a writer is that she is good at rewriting essays and homework, especially Ollie’s.  This reassures me because then I know that when I have essays to do for school she will help me with them.  She calls this “polishing”.  We always know when she is doing this as she tends to shout words like Sloppy and Poor and Crap, Oliver.   Oliver gets really mad and they get into a shouting match but I know she loves him really because when she talks about him leaving next year to go to University she goes all teary-eyed.  He’s already banned her from going to the airport to say goodbye.  She’s always crying.  When Ollie had to say goodbye to his first girlfriend Liz who went back to the States she was the one who burst into tears!  Liz and Ollie were really brave but Mum had to turn the tap on as usual.  Now Ollie has Lucy and I really like her, we all do.  Since Ollie met Lucy he is much nicer to everyone.  Mum says it’s because of the sleep-overs. 

I think my Mum is a bit mad as some days she spends hours in front of the computer wearing clothes that she has slept in and hardly registers my presence and then on other days she looks really pretty and is nice to me.  I would like the pretty and nice Mum all the time but Dad says “she’d be a royal pain in the arse if she didn’t write”.  She’s met lots of new friends on her blog – Dad calls them “weirdos”.  Dad also works from home and he can look and smell pretty bad too when he is not going to meetings.  He spends a lot of the day shouting down the phone in three different languages.  I am learning German at school and he is really happy when I practise with him.  Ollie and Sophie just laugh at his Schweizer-Deutsch which I think is mean.  So there is a lot of crying, swearing and shouting in our house.  I wish I had the parents that I see on TV, the ones with the smiley faces and the clean clothes.

Sophie-G and I have bedrooms that are joined together with a passage through the wardrobe.  Mum thought it would be nice for us to be close but Sophie finds me annoying most of the time.  She can be moody which Mum calls her “hormones” whatever they are.  I hope I don’t get them.  When she is not having her “hormones” she can be really nice and let’s me sit on her bed and look at her facebook site.  

Parents can be so embarrassing especially mine.  At the Piano Recital, Christine – that’s my music teacher – forgot to call me up to play which was terrible and kind of weird but Mum stood up and started waving her arms about and shouting.  That was a bad way to end the year but I’m glad she did it, although our family are incapable of doing anything quietly,  as I had practised so hard that I never want to hear the words Deck The Halls again.  I had to play it last night at the Church but this time I messed up at the end.  I think I work best under pressure.  We are atheists but Mum sometimes says humanists which is stupid as we are all human.  Anyway, we go to Church at Christmas.   Mum calls it “Carol-Singing Faith” .  I could hear Dad’s terrible singing voice in the Church, right up at the front where I was sitting, I obviously didn’t get any musical talent from him. 

We are in the mountains this Christmas and Grandma is in England.  I will miss Grandma as she loves Christmas as much as I do and Charades will not be the same without her.  She’s always on my team, never Dad’s.  He refuses to play on Grandma’s team for some silly reason harking back to an incident years ago during a game of Trivial Pursuits.  It will be up to me to bring in the Christmas cheer,  wake everyone up early, give out the presents and make sure they wear their paper hats at lunchtime.   No-one at school believes in Father Christmas anymore and when I told Mum that I didn’t either she looked so sad and said quietly “I still believe in him”.  I thought that was kind of ridiculous, I mean she’s 47!  So I will go along with all the silly traditions that she loves and even fake astonishment at the half-eaten reindeer carrot.  I’ll be exhausted by the end of the day but I will happily sleep knowing that we all had a wonderful Christmas.