Hooptedoodle #341 - Maybe not the Moon, then?

Noah sat at the kitchen table and glowered at his mother, who was bustling about, preparing for whatever it was she had said they were going to do. What he really wanted was to get back to playing with the rude noises he had downloaded on his smartphone, but experience told him this current inconvenience might not last too long. Noah was four. To pass the time, he idly punched his twin sister, Olivia, who was sitting next to him, staring out of the window at the pigeons on the garage roof. Olivia spun round in her chair, with a grimace, to find him staring innocently at their mother, who was having some problems.

Katharine was attaching some large sheets of paper to the front of the refrigerator, using button magnets. Because the sheets of paper had been rolled up for a while, they needed extra magnets at the bottom to stop them curling up. Once they were hanging straight and flat, she found they were in the wrong order, so with a little tut-tutting she swapped them around until everything was right. She cleared her throat and took a telescopic pointer from the mug on the adjacent windowsill.

"Righto, you guys," she said, "we need to spend a few minutes revisiting our plans for our holiday this year."

No response - Olivia had gone back to staring out of the window, and Noah just carried on glowering, thinking about his phone.

Katharine continued.

"Now, these are the results of our brainstorm from March. You remember that we decided that the most important things - the things that you said mattered most to you for this year's trip - were that we wanted to go somewhere really quiet and somewhere that offered the very best sandcastle-making facilities ever. You will recall that we got into a bit of an argument about some of this, and the meeting was cut short because Noah pulled Olivia's hair, but - as we left it - we were looking at the possibility of going to the Moon. I have to say I was never completely comfortable with this choice, though we have to keep faith with the process, as I always say..." she laughed nervously, "but I think we can't put this meeting off any longer."

She paused, partly for dramatic effect, partly to take a very deep breath.

"It looks as though the Moon is not going to be a possibility, Twinnies. I'm really, really sorry, but there are some big problems. I've been doing some more reading, and I really think we should go somewhere else."

The screaming started immediately.

"But you PROMISED!" roared Olivia. "You said we could go anywhere we wanted - that it was our choice. You told us a LIE!"

"Promised...  lie..." echoed Noah, kicking his sister under the table.

"No, no," protested Katharine, "Mummy would never tell you a lie, you know that. It's just that, well, the Moon is a very difficult and expensive place to get to, and our car won't be able to get there, and we can't afford to buy a car that could. I don't know very much about the Moon, as I told you last time. It seems it's always the details that cause the trouble - there wouldn't be any ice cream, and one thing that worries me rather a  lot is that there is no air there, so we would all die. That wouldn't be very good would it?"

"But you promised," said Olivia, tearful now. "I don't care about the stupid air! I want to go to THE MOON. I told Victoria that we were going, too. You said we could go anywhere we wanted. That was a LIE. I'm going to call Child Line"

Noah was calmer.

"Where will we go instead?"

"Well, Daddy and I thought we could go back to that super camp-site at Ilfracombe - remember what a lovely time we had there last time? We think it would be marvellous."

"Last time it was raining," said Noah, "and I cut my foot on the beach. I don't want to go there. Anyway, the toilets were smelly."

This was not going well. Katharine fell back on her methodology training - it had never failed her before. She raised her voice a little, to be heard above Olivia, who was now sobbing on the table, her face laid on her arms.

"Well, we could start again with new Terms of Reference, and we could have another brainstorm - that would be the best and fairest thing to do, I think. You two happy with that?"

The meeting ended at this point. Noah pushed his sister off her chair, and she banged her head on the recycling tub, and there was a lot of screaming. Katharine put her pointer back in the mug and went to rescue her daughter.

It was true. She had, in fact, promised. That was the worst bit of the whole thing.