A long busy weekend that was, crammed with child centred activities specially chosen for their high development content. Playgrounds were visited and museum gift shops were ransacked. Sadly it all only went to prove the old wisdom that no matter how hard you try or how much money you spend, somebody is going to end up crying about something.
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10.45 pm.
Reading that back now after a little reflection (and a spot of Pays D'Oc) it does sound a bit gloomy, and I wish to make it clear that I am not downhearted, nor do I consider the whole weekend pointless. Persistence is all and the chldn will still be there tomorrow so I will learn, regroup and carry on.
I don't think Prince Charles should carry on painting though. As part of my ongoing interest in celebrities I have followed his development as watercolourist and even attended an exhibition of his work late last year. His early pictures had an undeniable charm and energy but I feel his recent work is a trifle stilted and self-conscious, not to mention overpriced. I think he should stop before he loses the goodwill of his worldwide audience and I urge him to retire now to enjoy a truly unique and unchallenged status as The Prince Formerly Known As Artist.
Our first Spatial Awareness seminar was set for yesterday (Thurs) evening. I had wanted to start with suitcases and car boots but it was raining, so we had a go at dishwashers instead. I was explaining how you get more crockery in if you nest the little bowls inside the big bowls when I sensed that Mel was somehow not with me. She had that glazed expression which comes over the chldn when they hit what I call a ‘learning cliff’. However she has agreed to persevere, albeit rather frostily.
A big ‘hello’ to my regular readers in Oz, India and the US. You know who you are and thanks for sticking with me.
Found an article I had missed in last Thursday's Guardian assuring us that dance music is finally on the way out. I'm more than happy about that. As a music lover I felt betrayed by it right from the start and have long awaited its demise. We were promised a creative explosion based on computer technology and a new music whose only boundaries were to be the limits of the human imagination. Instead everyone bought the same machines and did exactly the same thing with them and we've been treated to fifteen years of dgg tss dgg tss dgg tss dgg tss.
Jake has recovered his energy sufficiently to discover that Hamtaros bounce if you throw them down the stairs. School can't come too soon.
Treated ourselves to a Bank Holiday pub lunch yesterday. Food good: service slower than Tim Henman's second. Caught myself hoping there were caterpillars in Zoe's strawberries - probably the easiest way to get some protein into her apart from encouraging her to cycle round the park with her mouth open and hoping a few midges sneak in.
I think the holidays have gone on long enough now. The chldn have been nidgy with each other for days as if exhausted by the months of heat. The easy flow of their creativity seems to have dried to a parched trickle - the Sylvanian windmill stands deserted and the familiar rasping clunk of Beyblades is stilled.
I've always had simple tastes and like most men, I think, I have found that all around me life becomes increasingly complicated as it goes on. Marriage for me produced a welter of extra considerations and refinements - I had never ever heard the word ‘ramekin’ till I was married and I only found out how it was spelled after I typed it just now. Sometimes I catch myself yearning for simpler times.
As we monitored the family targets over breakfast it became clear that we have overshot on ‘hours of TV watched’, mostly thanks to the YuGiOh Marathon that's been on Cartoon Network for the past two mornings. I didn't approve but I did appreciate the Peace Dividend it yielded.
Zoe and Jake have watched so many cartoons over the years I'm surprised they still speak with English accents, but it did occur to me recently how to turn this to advantage. Now that they have seen every episode of Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls I feel it shouldn't be beyond me to draw out and bring together the deeper themes they cover, then recontextualise these within the longer traditions of Greek tragedy and Old Testament retribution.
I don't want them growing up without a moral compass, and if I have my way they'll get a moral protractor and two ethical set squares too. I have pencilled in the next long car journey to get the process started.
As I mentioned yesterday I'm increasingly concerned about how our domestic products are becoming filled with powerful exotic essences these days. I feel some kind of co-ordination is seriously needed - a sort of air traffic control for aromas. Gone are the days when the cocktail of pine essence in loo paper and lemon in Squeezy was all we had to contend with, and if the manufacturers think this stuff is worth putting in then I reckon we ought to be careful about how much of what we expose ourselves to.
So we spent most of this morning finding out what juices are in what bottles. Then we wrote the results on that chalkboard in the kitchen which has carried the single word ‘biscuits’ for the past six months. My plan is to reserve soporifics for the bathroom and put all the invigorating stuff in the kitchen. Anything that just says ‘Herbal’ is out.
I have started to worry about how the barrage of exotic plant essences Mel absorbs through the day may affect her in the long run. We're into a new area here, with no long term studies for reference, being as we are the first generation to have a diet of plants that live on opposite sides of the planet. I mean do we really know what the long term effects of mixing guava, ylang ylang and sandalwood might be, let alone adding elderberries?
M now says I am overweight and don't take enough exercise. She says running out and shouting at foxes doesn't count. I don't want the threatened crispbread even with raisins in. We have agreed to have a full scale dietary review.
I'm not as insensitive as Mel sometimes suggests, so as my contribution to our drive to deliver a better family life I have resolved to address my male inability to multitask. Drinking coffee while doing the crossword has always been about my limit and it puts me to shame the way that M can help with two children's homework, slice onions, follow the Archers and do pelvic floor exercises all at once.
The point of no return was last night. I was home early to allow M to go to the Chinese herbalist, sitting listening to the news as I went through a vacuum cleaner bag looking for a small but vital part of one of Jake's Robot Wars toys. Zoe came and asked me why animals live in a kingdom when they don't have kings and why humans don't although they do. I couldn't give her a decent explanation, forgot what I was looking for and realised afterwards that I'd missed the Test score and had to look it up on Ceefax. I have promised to work at it if M works on her spatial awareness.
Becoming parents is not something we have ever taken lightly. At times it has been a disorienting blend of the unfamiliar and the repetitious, rather like stumbling into a Radio 1 Chart rundown after a year's absence. We agreed from the start that we must be prepared to make sacrifices and Mel did indeed give up wine during both pregnancies. My sacrifices have included watching my old beloved toys being smashed to pieces in front of me and giving up the idea of learning to windsurf, but there are also the small, telling things.
For instance this Sun I took the chldn to the cinema so that M could have a little peace. They chose Daddy Daycare, although I'm pretty sure the irony was lost on them. We were in the middle of the trailers when Zoe suddenly announced she was about to throw up. (She has always had a hair trigger stomach especially in the car, where she has been known to hurl at the smell of a catalytic converter - too reminiscent of egg sandwiches). There were 3 possible destinations: over her trainers, into her popcorn container or into my bag of chocolate brazils. No contest: it was Number 3.
pm.
A nice relaxed day. The cricket washed over me and I fell into a kind of reverie, listening to the chldn in the garden and reviewing the small milestones in their young lives. I have greatly enjoyed Jake's progress from telling the time to owning a wristwatch, and I look forward to the stage at which he remembers where he left it. I also remembered with pride the point at which Zoe could first tell the difference between a bidet and a toilet, a distinction that I have found many adult party goers are still unable to grasp.
The two of them were v keen to watch the new Pop Idol series tonight. I took the opportunity to point out to them that the show is not primarily about talent but is actually the product of a cynical alliance between the opinion forming media and a major record company, that the whole point is to do market research and get the public to pay for it, and that it prevented more interesting artists getting access to air time. They just said how they thought it was brilliant and asked me to stop talking because the adverts were over.
This weekend we have no plans to leave the house. The weather here is nice which means the chldn will leave me alone. I also plan to enjoy some cricket what with the Third Test so finely poised.
Got an angry reply from the journalist I mentioned in my posts of 1st and 23rd July. He didn't challenge my contention that minor celebrities are only truly interesting on the subject of celebrity itself, nor indeed did he take offence that by implication I had called him a prawn. Instead he was furious because I had called him an Australian, an error that so enraged him that he refers to it three times in his email. He doesn't say what nationality he is though, and I still don't know because his slim and unhelpful biog displays a narrow arrogance common to teenagers worldwide. Furthermore he didn't even thank me for the extra traffic I had sent to his site.
Zoe is not enjoying sharing a bath with Jake the way she used to and bath time now seems ripe for reform. I'm not thrilled at the prospect of two bath times in series - an obvious doubling of time outlaid for the same result - but on the upside it could be an opportunity for her to use up the vast stockpile of exotic bath oils we have accumulated, which read like a dessert menu along the bathroom shelves.
Mel feels they do not fit her current aromatherapy needs and I'm never going to use them as I don't enjoy the idea of washing in a fruit salad. They have been sitting there as a mute and awful reminder of how long it took before M finally heeded my advice and stopped going to Body Shop when she was hungry. I think we would both welcome their removal.
Z and J have been gripped by that Celebrity Pets Big Brother-type show on cable. I have forbidden them to ring in but it seemed mean to ban them from watching it at all so they have been using up their TV allowance goggling at small creatures vying for our affections while cuddled to famous bosoms. The sooner it's over the better for me so I'm hoping the footballer's Great Dane eats the pop star's Chihuahua and the series gets shortened by one round. Of course the real crunch comes tonight with the start of the new Pop Idol - they can't watch both.
V busy week so far - lots to catch up on at work.
Apart from a bit too much heat and way too much cheese our holiday was marvellous and I really enjoyed my time with the chldn. They have always played nicely together, even before they saw Spy Kids, and watching them set me thinking about expanding the ‘win-win’ concept that so dominates all of our working lives.
By the second week I had begun to think through a ‘win-win-win-win’ strategy within our family dynamic, and the minute I came to see how much the visit to the ruined Benedictine abbey had become a ‘win-win-draw-sulk’ situation I resolved to plan more broadly in future. The nearest I got (Thurs 5 pm: week 2) was with Mel asleep upstairs and me drinking wine by the pool watching the chldn splash about, but lessons have been learned and I'm sure we can do better.
Unfortunately my faith in French radio was entirely misplaced. I was right that they wouldn't play Blazin' Squad but they seem to have dozens of Equipes Brulantes of their own who are much worse in my opinion. The chldn agreed with me for once, and complained that they couldn't understand the words. I smiled and savoured the moment as I told them that now they knew how I had felt for years.
When we finally drove off the ferry the chldn were desperately eager for new, refreshing ‘English’ music but instead the very first thing we were served with was Justin Timberlake's whiny offering of three months ago. “Rock Your Body” has only one redeeming feature for me - the mouth percussion section, but only because it lets me hope that his next record will include a section of face percussion, i.e. the sound of somebody slapping him repeatedly around the head.
We're all refreshed after a terrific two weeks in France. Boy was it hot though! Abbeys and castles are usually cool enough but this time their lack of air con was a serious problem. We found that standing in the meat and dairy sections of the local supermarkets was a pretty good cooling down policy and struck me as more honest than pretending to be interested in expensive consumer goods several times a day merely to get the benefit of the superior AC in posh shops. We stuck to the big warehouses selling food. However, we were v scrupulous and always bought some cheese.
Mel and I were really looking forward to French food but we knew it was going to be a problem for the chldn. So to guard against malnutrition we took some multivitamin pills shaped like teddies with us. Big mistake. On the first morning they looked so sweet that Zoe instantly bonded with hers, named it Vitty, and within seconds it had moved into the Hamtaro house she had brought along. She was back for more about two minutes later and, of course, from then on actually eating any of them was completely out of the question. So it was pasta and fruit juice as usual boosted by whatever nutrition there is in breakfast cereals (with the dodgy French preboiled milk kept to a minimum).
Z finished the Potter which gave me a chance to make some progress in it myself, but I rather lost heart after the wonderfully descriptive phrase ‘a slightly stunned silence’ appeared on p 406 and slightly stunned me into silence. That and the barrage of people looking malevolently, talking dangerously, yawning either widely or hugely, and Ron's ears going red.
I'm still as keen as ever to improve our performance as a household. We spent most of the trip back selecting key targets. I chose hours of TV watched, Mel chose completion of homework by 7 pm. There will soon be a chart on the kitchen wall with different coloured lines to keep us all informed of our progress. We are also looking at bath time and bickering but we have yet to establish agreed measures.
We're back. Lots to say, no time to say it as yet.