Close encounters

So, here I am again. Aliens abducted me. They had those strange lightbulb heads and the black almond eyes, and obviously there were probes. Thank God there were actually, because there's no Sky TV up there. Anyway, all things pall and we reached a deal - they'd bring me back home and in return, I'd send on a recipe for lemon curd. Well I'm back but truth to tell, I have never made lemon curd so there's a good chance they'll come back mad as hell. I'm planning to google it or at the very least lay in a few jars so I'll have them to hand if they start trying to suck me back into orbit.

2010 then, and I haven't even done a review of 2009.(I must do one, it's just I'm not that sure I want to look too close. There's a few messy bits.) As a rule, I enjoy auditing the year but my house was full of relatives and friends, and I didn't get the chance to do much more than think that next year I am booking my pal who runs a catering van to park outside my house and feed all-comers, that and "Is it too early to start drinking?" My parents arrived on the Tuesday before Christmas. Courtesy of the snow, the roads around us became impassable and my parents stayed. Then it turned to ice and the roads were too dangerous and my parents stayed. Then it rained and the roads flooded and my parents stayed. Eventually, I found them a way out through the ice and the floods but they decided to stay on the grounds it was a Tuesday and not a Saturday and my dad thinks the roads are quieter on a Saturday. Three and a half weeks after they arrived, they went home. Now, there's a dead sperm whale on the beach. You put a dead whale on the beach and it's begging to be a metaphor. Let's hope it's not a metaphor for the year ahead.

"To all parents"

A note came home from school yesterday. Usually, they say things like "Coffee morning on Saturday" which makes you think: "Great. Cake." Sometimes, they say: "Remember your child needs a sun hat and sun cream" which makes you think: "God we live in a paternalistic society." Then: "I have no idea where the sun hats are." This note, in my six-year-old's Spiderman rucksack, said on Friday 11th May "a man with a goatee beard, driving a small green car tried to pick up a y4 pupil" outside another village school a few miles away. It went on: "The attempt was unsuccessful but please make sure that your children are aware of stranger danger and remain vigilant at all times."

You read it twice. You feel your skin chill. As you read it the second time, sitting in your kitchen with your child safe home from school and drinking milk, you think. Whether the sort of man who "keeps himself to himself" as they always say of monsters, when discovered, is watching every news bulletin with budding envy in his twisted heart, not horror. Whether on Friday, he turned the key to start up his small green car, still thinking of perfection. And told himself: "It's a nice day. I'll go for a drive."

What do you say to your children? What warnings do you give them? Do you make them turn away from an old lady's kind words in the bakers? Drill them in fear? Talk of black clad childcatchers? Sweets with too high a price. Puppies and secret birthday parties, promised but never delivered? Say there are those who want to hurt children, feed them poison candy, take them away from mummies and daddies? Do you talk of evil? Say it drives a car? Tell them to shout "No" so loud that trees fall down, refuse lifts, run screaming like banshees from men with goatees? Or smiles. Do you say: "Look, here in the paper. This little girl is called Madeleine"?