AT last, the boys have gone back to school, university and work. I can have the Christmas present I bought from my husband to me all to myself again.

He was, admittedly, surprised when I told him what he was giving me this year. Especially since I had told him not to bother buying me anything.

“But you said we had so much clutter in the house and you had just had a big clear out and the last thing you wanted was more stuff that you didn’t need,” he reminded me when I rang him to explain that I had found the answer to his present buying problem.

I chose to ignore the fact that he didn’t seem to realise he had a problem, the problem being he had actually believed me when I, the mother of his five children, said I didn’t want anything for Christmas.

For not only had I bought his present to me the week before Christmas, I was also saving him the bother of having to wrap it: “I have bought it already and I have to use it now, so I’m using it straight away,” I said. “Thanks,” I added, without a hint of irony.  “Just what I needed, very thoughtful.”

If he wondered why I sounded so calm and relaxed, it was because I was, in fact, sitting on my Christmas present – a portable back massage chair – at the time.

Clinical in design, it’s not the most attractive gift I have ever given or received. In fact, it’s pretty ugly. One friend’s comment when she walked into the kitchen and saw it was: “It looks like an old people’s home in here.”

But, after a ten minute trial on the chair, she oohed and ahhed a bit before announcing: “I want one of these.”

That was my reaction when I first tried my sister-in-law’s version while I was visiting my mother in Ireland just before Christmas, and something seemed to snap in my back as I packed my case to go home.

Half an hour in my sister-in-law’s massage chair worked wonders, so I headed to the shops to buy one once I got home.

Still feeling the odd twinge in my back, I decided to go for one of the luxury versions, offering both ‘rolling’ and ‘shiatsu’ massages, covering the full back or neck and shoulders and lower back only as desired. And then there was the added option of heat pads and an additional thigh vibration seat.

I went for the lot. My husband, after all, was buying this for the mother of his five children. And carrying five children in pregnancy, not to mention heaving hefty toddlers about, must have put an enormous strain on my back over the years.

I felt certain he would want me to have the very best portable back massage chair on the market.

The boys all laughed when they saw it. Like my friend, they too thought it looked like it should be in an old people’s home.

But, like my friend, they only had to sit in it for a few minutes and they were converted. It isn’t gentle. At first, the firmness of the massage does come as a bit of a shock. But your back relaxes, once all those knotted muscles feel like they’re loosening, you get used to, even begin to welcome, the pummelling: “Ohhh, this is really good,” said 19-year-old Patrick. “My back seems so much better after that,” added 21-year-old Charlie, who has suffered from sporting injuries to his back.

It felt like we had our own personal masseur in the house. Before long there were fights: “Mum, mum. Roscoe’s been on it more over 15 minutes and it should be my turn now,” moaned 12-year-old Albert.

Designed to work on more or less any seat, hard or soft, we can use it everywhere, from sitting at the kitchen table to at a desk or on the sofa in the living room.  Which means I am constantly searching for it as the boys transport it all over the house.

Their friends are using it too. Whole families who came to visit over Christmas and New Year were queuing up to have a go. Even those who were sceptical were won over after a few minutes.

But there was one exception. My husband, who was working away when I first brought my personal masseur home, looked aghast when he first walked in and saw this interloper, which his family had become so attached to, sitting in his kitchen.

“It’s so ugly. I’m putting it under the stairs,” he announced. “Just try it,” we urged. “Honestly, you’ll be converted in minutes.”

He resisted for weeks.  And then, one evening recently, he tried it.

“Owwh! Awwh! Oh, that hurts!” he yelped. He didn’t last long. “That is really quite sore, you could do yourself a real injury on that thing,” he moaned.

Speaking as the mother of his five children, having been through labour and childbirth five times, you can imagine just how sympathetic I was as he rubbed his back, complaining about the pain.

 

Filling the Void (from The Northern Echo, October 2)

I DESCRIBED in a previous column how eerily quiet our house is since son number three left home to go to university. It seemed to strike a chord.

 

I am not the only parent struggling to cope with an empty bedroom, one fewer place setting at the dinner table and fewer dirty socks and damp towels to pick up from the bathroom floor.

 

One mother told me how she went back to work the weekend after dropping her daughter off and cried at her desk, on and off, for four days.

 

“Every time someone asked me what I was crying about and I told them, it often set them off as well,” she said.

 

A dad emailed, describing his sad farewell as he watched his daughter walk away and not look back. She was the one who was very musical. Without her piano, violin and voice, he explained: “What we notice most is how quiet the house has suddenly become.”

 

Another parent told how she returned home, distraught, after leaving her son behind at Liverpool University and started steam cleaning her kitchen as a way of distracting herself. She moved on to the living room, bedrooms and bathroom.

 

“If you were in my house and stood still for a moment, I would have steam cleaned you as well,” she said.

 

Like her, I have been busy distracting myself. The weekend after Patrick left, I decided I would clear out his room, which has always looked like a bombsite.

 

After a pretty ruthless attack, which involved delving into drawers and crawling into the dark recesses under his bed, I emerged with stacks of bin bags, half for the rubbish bins and half for the charity shops. Then I moved on to his other brothers’ rooms. So far, I have 12 bags for charity and 13 for the bins. And I’m not finished yet.

 

Just two weeks before Patrick headed for university, his two older brothers, who have just graduated, left for London. So I am suffering from a particularly bad case of ‘empty nest syndrome.’

 

Having had five boys at home all summer, our household has suddenly shrunk from seven to four. And while I reassure myself that while they’re at university they have long holidays and come home for extended periods, the world of work is different.

 

Charlie, 21, now has four weeks’ holiday a year, and I don’t expect he will want to spend all of that with his mum and dad. William, 22, has embarked on a three month paid internship and, of course, we hope there might be a job at the end of it, which would mean he won’t be coming home much either.

 

It’s their youngest brothers who probably feel it most. Roscoe, 15, and Albert, 12, have grown up, quite happily, in an atmosphere of benign neglect.

 

From the moment they were born, they’ve had to tag along after their older brothers. Because their dad and I were so busy with the other boys, they were often left to their own devices.

 

Now, we’re in danger of turning into the sort of over-attentive, and slightly frightening, parents who constantly hover over their children, while making the rest of us feel guilty. 

 

The boys look startled when they come in from school and we’re suddenly showing an obsessional interest in what they have been doing all day. We’ve even started attempting to interfere with their homework, which they’re used to getting on with on their own.

 

If one of them needs a lift to rugby or football, we’re both jumping at the chance to be the one to take them, instead of begging the other to do it this time, or finding other parents to share lifts with.

 

The 12-year-old has been particularly quiet since they’ve all gone. In fact, he looks a bit sad. I asked him if he was missing them the other day.

 

“It’s bad,” he said bluntly. He used to love playing football with the bigger boys. And, being good mimics and quite funny, they could always make him laugh.

 

He misses their friends too. There are no more semi-comatose bodies lying around the house on a Saturday or Sunday morning after they’ve had a late night out and shared a taxi home. No more girlfriends coming to stay.

 

“But it’s really just them I miss. William and Charlie and Patrick and who they are,” he said glumly. I could have cried.

 

I went to find his dad: “We need to get a dog,” I said.

 

 

PATRICK phoned home last Wednesday: “What have you been up to?” I asked. “Not much, it’s a free day on a Wednesday,” he said. “But you have free days on Saturdays and Sundays. What do you need a free day on a Wednesday too for?” I asked, pointing out that he was paying £9,000 a year for the privilege of studying at university. “ Since he’s paying so much for it, ‘free’ is hardly the appropriate word.