We've got a respite fortnight ahead of us, a young man whose foster parents are going on holiday and not taking him.
Apparently he's fine with this, they are a good bit older than him and he's uncomfortable being seen with uncool adults.
Not being cool is a big issue in fostering.
Up until recently I tried my best to be down wiv da kids, but not no more, and I'm more comfortable than I used to be, and somehow so are our foster children.
What's more embarrassing for them; a couple of fuddy-duddies who prefer Bo Diddly to Snoop Doggy or a sad pair of wannabee young ones making out they get the new Zelda and are thinking of getting a tattoo?
The lad who's coming to stay with us might think his permanent foster carers are behind the times, he ain't seen nothin' yet, wait 'til he gets a load of us.
We wear slippers. We drink 29 cups of tea before lunchtime. We go to bed after News At Ten. We listen to Steve Wright's Love Songs on a Sunday morning while I'm peeling the veg for Sunday roast and husband is cleaning the car.
We disapprove of bad language and believe that teeth should be brushed at least twice a day. We believe in proper pyjamas and dressing gowns. Hair should be combed and faces washed, that's what flannels are for.
We like family films better than ones with non-stop car chases, we don't mind Mock The Week but don't care for Frankie Boyle. (Actually we do, but watch it on catch-up when they're not around).
We wear sensible clothes, our hair is the colour God intended. We floss and take a multi-vitamin every morning. And a vitamin D tab.
And calcium, now we are both non-dairy, which is as dangerously trendy as we get.
And you know what? I swear our wonderful real children and our lovely foster children prefer it that way; it speaks of some kind of natural order of things, and offers our young people a gap ahead of them, a future world that we don't get, and it belongs to them.
I can't wait for the moment when our respite lad catches the eye of one of our other foster children and they collectively sigh at how totally out of touch we are.
It takes a truly cool couple to be happy to play the uncool couple, but it works.
So: cardigans at the ready...we're going for a nice walk to help dinner go down...
What I loved about this post is that it describes my husband and I. We're both 28 and we foster. We're probably categorised as hipsters - bookish, nerdy, vegan and dressing gown and slipper lovers. We've never heard of or met foster carers in their twenties. We don't know where our values and old fashioned standards came from, but they seem to be working well for ourselves and the kids so far.
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