ONE of my granddaughter's friends is forever in my good books for writing a thank-you letter straight after being one of the ten girls who attended the sleepover in our house. Not only was I charmed by the fact that she actually wrote a thank-you letter, but my ego was somewhat enhanced by the fact that she praised my home-made pizza as being 'a lot better than bought ones'. The girl will go far. I thought that writing thank-you letters seemed to be a thing of the past. At one time it was something children were made to do after birthdays and Christmases, and often one of your presents was a pack of notepaper and envelopes just for this purpose, which I always thought was a bit of a swizz. You were supposed to wax lyrical to whoever had bought you a present, extolling its virtues, which was a bit difficult if it was a boring old book of fairy stories or a pair of gloves. It was especially difficult if an elderly great uncle had forgotten that you were no longer seven and had just entered your teenage years. Thanking him for the set of doll's clothing without actually revealing this fact demanded tact and diplomacy. Perhaps many of today's children are exempt from this task, or perhaps they e-mail or text their thanks. It is therefore nice to see that it isn't altogether a thing of the past, because now I'm an adult, well almost, I can see the benefit of continuing to teach children to be grateful and to learn a few nice manners. The sleepover was a success, in that the house is still standing, the cats returned some time the next day and only one glass was broken. That counts as a huge success in my book. In fact the only one in disgrace during the event was me because I said a very naughty word when I picked up a bag of flour out of the larder and found that someone had put it back upside down and it spilled all over the place. Sleepovers are definitely a new thing. When my children were young you might allow one child to stay, or two if you were very brave, but if anyone suggested a dozen you would have thought them totally bonkers. I suspect it's an American influence, all those pyjama parties in teen movies, but it's a growing trend, or should I say on behalf of parents, a groaning trend. However, having said that, I was surprised both this time and on one other occasion, that it isn't quite the shell-shocking experience I had expected. Even though the combined noise from eleven 14 and 15 year olds is astonishing (you could call it gigglehurts if you want a measurement tariff) everyone was well behaved, polite and helpful. I have found in the past that other people's children always behave well when out of their own house. Tell this to some parents and they look at you in amazement. I used to when someone said how helpful, polite and well-behaved my own had been. 'Such a little treasure,' they would say of the same person who didn't appear to understand the mechanics of the washing up bowl in her own home and gave a regular Oscar winning performance of teenage angst when asked to hang her clothes up. They were all sweet to my grandson, who couldn't believe his luck in having ten visiting girls to dance attendance on him. They cleared up their mess, were appreciative of the food and spent the evening playing music, board games and watching a video before settling down to keep each other awake all night. They even all brought their own sleeping bags. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and were collected at various times of the morning by parents who, when they delivered them, either looked at us with sympathy or with the growing understanding that it would soon be their turn. So all in all, a teenage party sleepover is a lot more enjoyable than birthday parties for ten year old boys, which I still remember with a shiver all these years later. Firmly embedded in my mind is the sight of a small dark haired boy having a full blown temper tantrum, foot stamping like a mad flamenco dancer, while standing on my sideboard, merely because he hadn't won a pass the parcel prize. And as for the food throwing, well, I'll draw a veil over that, although it took weeks to get the icing off the dining room wall. Teenage girls are easy peasy by comparison. The next party on the horizon will be less elaborate. My other granddaughter is to be 13 on the day after Boxing Day. Having your birthday so close to Christmas is always a bit of an anti-climax, just finding birthday wrapping paper when all the shelves are loaded with Christmas stuff is a bit of a headache. Plus nobody wants to even think about occasions which involve food and drink for at least a week. Plans for taking her on a short break abroad somewhere on Boxing Day have been thwarted by several factors, including impossibly early flights and prices which are increasing by the day. My daughter has threatened to seek out a flight to Cyprus, which is ridiculous because we'd have to return almost as soon as we had got there, but she did point out that I might, but she didn't necessarily need to because although I have to be back to work on the Wednesday she has several weeks of school holidays to go. Of course the drawback there, as I was quick to mention, would be that she would be kidnapped by the farm next door again. Earlier in the year when we were on holiday my son and I went home on the Sunday, leaving my daughter alone until the Tuesday afternoon when she expected a friend. When she arrived back after drooping us at the airport she found all the lights were out. Electricity cuts are not exactly unknown in the area, in fact everyone has the telephone number of the local electricity works so they can ring up and find out how long it will last, and everyone knows that 'an hour or so' can mean half a day. There was also a bit of a problem with the electricity connection anyway, which was as a temporary measure connected to the farm (as was the water supply) which came unconnected sometimes, but it was never much to worry about, if the plug fell out it was pushed back in. On this occasion she noticed that although all the lights were out at the farm too, nobody else's in the area was. While she was debating whether to walk across in the pitch dark, manoeuvre round the goat pens and find the front door there was a tap on her own door and she found the two ladies of the house there, along with several of the children. They indicated that she should come with them, and, taking an arm each, escorted her back to the farm where there was now some light from a generator. For the next several hours she was given fruit juice, food, shown how to make one of the local delicacies, offered banana plants for the garden, introduced to the entire family and, when the eldest son came in, discovered that the electricity box had caught fire and that someone was coming to mend it. As nobody spoke any English and she speaks not a word of Turkish, conversation was limited to sign language but it was obvious that they didn't feel that a woman should be left alone in an empty house with no lights. The grandmother even offered to come and stay with her. It took a lot of hand signalled persuasion for them to escort her back to her door and leave her there alone. Don't get me wrong, these are lovely people, who despite the fact that they've now got a group of villas built practically on their doorstep are unfailingly kind, welcoming and friendly. But there's only so much sign language you can take, so the next night my daughter had to keep a very low profile in case it happened again. We are both now studying Turkish.
