Zoe has put in a lot of time this week dreaming up ideas for the school mag. She should have some good proposals to put to Mrs Gore the Headmistress next week. Personally I think that if they really want to improve the whole thing then they should carry fewer poems. Most of the ones in last year's edition were, quite frankly, childish.
Mel has spent a fair amount of time with Sybille from opposite recently and has been making good progress in the hunt for the roots of her self-image problems. S has now got her as far back as the moment she was cast as Friar Tuck in a school play aged seven.
Jake has been doing some more serious thinking about careers which has pleased me. He's quite keen on joining a rock band now. Doing something like the bloke in Evanescence who shouts “Wake me up!!” particularly appeals.
We had some delicious cheese after supper last night, straight from Prince Charles's farm. It's so nice to be back to broad spectrum food. Never has the call of “Pass the Duchy 'pon the left hand side” sounded so welcome.
My disillusionment with modern pop music continues and deepens. The pleasure that listening to music on the radio gave me as a child has been replaced by anxiety at what we're all going to be confronted with next. Radio programmers seem to exercise zero discernment, constantly mixing up material bland enough for the Pope with records that are effectively recruiting jingles for the criminal underclasses.
I greatly regret that the tradition of disguising references to sex in songs as references to dancing has now been abandoned. It gets less and less easy to explain lyrical content away.
Some recent examples.
Nelly - “It's getting hot in here/so take off all your clothes”. Just manageable - it was summer at the time.
J. Timberlake - “Gonna have ya nekkid by the end of this song”. Luckily this slipped under the kiddie radar as merely incomprehensible. And I'm not surprised. it is a bizarre thing to say to anyone anyway and especially so on a record. Heaven knows what repeated plays would help you achieve, Justin.
Electric Six - “Yeew, I want to take you to a gay bar”. When the chldn asked me why exactly the shouty Electric man wanted to take his listener to a gay bar I'm afraid I had no good answers. I said that the music was probably quieter there but it was a guess as the song itself gives few clues. More plausible suggestions would be gratefully accepted.
Blazin' Squad - Flip Reverse. All of it. Absolutely horrible. Up till now they've just been feeble but this is inappropriate and inexplicable throughout. Remember this is an act aimed exclusively at very young consumers.
Times have indeed changed. I think the hardest job my parents had in this area was to explain that “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” didn't actually mean anything.
Some kid walked past us in the street last week and his mobile spat out 50 Cent's P.I.M.P. as a ringtone. The chldn began to sing along. They love it. By some miracle they haven't asked what P.I.M.P. means yet but it's probably only a matter of time. I'm ready. ‘Fiddy’ is a Private Investigator and a Member of Parliament.
It'll have to do for now.
Another small milestone was passed yesterday evening with the demise of the last of Jake's baby teeth. Mel finds it hard to distance herself emotionally from organic childhood cast-offs so she meticulousy preserves teeth, nail clippings and tufts of baby hair in a small box. I reckon if you haven't used a tooth in the last three years then you're never going to but she won't part with them.
There's probably a chapter on ‘Trophies’ in the Life Laundry book I gave her last Xmas but I can't check because it disappeared over on her side of the bed some time around Easter and hasn't been seen since.
Anyway J demanded £5 from the Tooth Fairy to mark the occasion. I refused and he launched into a Tantrum Triathlon, which is an endurance event combining three disciplines, Shouting, Stamping and Sulking. It took him about two hours to complete the course. He got the usual 20p.
It's half term. We decided a while ago to take advantage and have a long weekend away somewhere, so through a friend of a friend we booked an isolated cottage in Wales that sounded lovely. It was not, sadly, the success we had hoped for.
We left after school on the Fri and made good time. I used the opportunity to give the children that talk on morality in cartoons that I had long promised myself. I thought it was both instructive and entertaining and I was more than a little hurt when I turned round to find both of them wearing their Walkmans.
Things started to go wrong after we came off the motorway. I was navigating by then and we got stuck behind a car with one of those ‘Baby on Board’ stickers. I've never quite seen the point of them apart from as a straight forward boast of the kind to which new parents are all too prone. It became clear that the sign should have read ‘Unpredictable Idiot on Board’ but not before Zoe started complaining of car sickness. Two miles later she was sick into a plastic carrier bag I had hastily snatched up and given to her. This unfortunately turned out to be the one in which Mel had put the instructions for finding the cottage.
Eventually we found it but by then it was pitch dark and raining hard. I managed to get the water and electricity on and left the others huddled round the kettle for warmth while I lit the fire. This didn't prove easy because, like a bad day on a search engine, no matches were found. I got it going by lighting a roll of newspaper on the cooker grill element. The fire soon rose to a roaring spark which we admired at close quarters, wearing all the clothes we had brought. The matches turned up next day in a tin marked Cocoa.
Sat morning we took a car tour of the surrounding area and admired some derelict religious remains through the steady drizzle. Jake had heard about declining church attendances and suggested that the authorities could make a start by putting the roofs back on. The cottage visitors book had recommended a local cafe for lunch. It turned out to be unlicenced and there was no pasta on the menu. The chldn ate bread rolls and we were treated to Michelin standard omelettes, by which I mean the tyres not the restaurant guide.
We walked down to the river in the afternoon. I think the wind had dropped by then but it could just have been that my face had finally gone completely numb. After our return to the cottage for tea I spent the next hour standing up, unwilling to exchange the warm parts of my clothing that were touching me for the cold ones lying in wait if I sat down. M lit the fire and did a better job than I had managed, helped I might say by copious amounts of newly bought weekend supplements that were actually dry. I ended up in disgrace because I used some hot water to take the chill off a nice bottle of red, and this it turned out was all there was in the tank at the time so the children's bath had to be put back by two hours.
Sun morning was much nicer. The magnificent view we had been promised was finally visible so we decided to climb the hill behind the cottage before lunch. About an hour into the climb we got a call from Central Station telling us our burglar alarm had gone off and asking us to attend, so we descended the track at great speed then left immediately. Four hours later on arrival home we found no signs of a break-in, only a small cobweb next to one of the sensors. Broken into by spiders we were, so it seems.
They say disasters come in threes, unlike Jehovah's Witnesses who come in twos, but I think this trip ranks even worse than the time when Z was three and I had to stick my hand down a motel toilet for five minutes trying to find a lost Snow White figurine only to see it produced from a coat pocket as minute six began.
Sybille from over the road has spent a lot of time with Mel recently, which M has found v comforting and seems to have inspired her to expand the spiritual dimension in her life. I would have thought that the time she spends on the Aveda website would be enough for anyone but apparently not.
The homework is still regularly getting done by 7 pm but this is almost entirely because we have promised the chldn they can watch The Simpsons if they have finished it by then, leaving me stranded between relief that the work is getting done and horror that I have become a bedfellow of Murdoch. Actually I think this might be the one thing he has ever done that has ever been any help to anybody.
Having watched a few episodes myself now I'm somewhat reassured and I commend the show on several counts. As a role model I think Lisa is very good for Zoe although I'm less keen on having Jake grow up like Bart. To allow Z to watch and ban J would be unfair, but also to stand over J and shout “Don't you ever do that!” all the way through seems impractical and would I'm sure be exhausting.
It's not entirely without educational content either - the subject of Pi came up in an episode recently. This gave me a wonderful starting point to tell them both about geometry in general and ratios in particular. I thought of it as rather a success although I think we might have missed a few jokes. All good stimulation, and I really had to intervene because the character in question claimed that Pi was exactly three.
Had a chat with Jake about careers at lights out. I'm still keen for him to develop an interest in the law but judging by the state of his bedroom floor he will probably grow up to manage a betting shop. He was unusually definite about his current choice. He saw the coverage of the end of the Blainefest and now he wants to be an Illusionist. Any job where you sit around all day doing nothing and get to go to bed when you feel like it looks pretty good to him.
He had heard that Mr B came away five million quid richer and he asked me how much we should be paying our hamster, as he reckoned Leo was doing pretty much the same thing.
I explained that doing without food was the key element here. Mistake. He then wanted to know how much he could earn by not eating the meals put in front of him at school. I felt we were getting bogged down in details so I broadened out the discussion to explain that grown ups often set out to do things they found difficult and that they were often heavily rewarded for accomplishing them. That seemed to break his concentration somewhat and goodnights were said.
Having been forced to think it through so thoroughly I find I'm not so impressed with ‘Thinboy’ Blaine. Apart from being completely pointless, living ‘without’ food for 44 days seems to have been pretty easy for him. I think it would be much more stirring if he were to stay in that hospital and deny himself publicity for 44 days.
Mel follows current affairs rather more closely than me. I have always preferred to use my spare time to follow culture. She frequently has flashes of insight and I'm keen to bring them to a wider audience. So here is the first of an occasional series.
Mel's Question of the Day: No 1.
Iain Duncan-Smith stands accused of employing someone who then didn't do enough work to warrant their salary. Should everyone who has ever done this be subjected to a semi-judicial enquiry?
The chocolate biscuits are back. Hooray!
I have had more searches re YuGiOh than for anything else ever. Most are seeking the opinion of parents.
I'm astonished. Grown ups needing to be told what to think of a child's card game. How reversed is that? Perhaps I'm lucky but I've never needed to be told what to think. I liked trees before I read Tolkien.
What is it then that is so baffling about this particular game, apart from working out why the cards are so expensive? Some people seem to need to know, so for the record my definitive Opinions re YuGiOh are:
1. The Cards.
- They are cards not monsters. Have a good look. They're flat. In colour admittedly, but completely flat. Put one in a sandwich if you don't believe me. Or sit on one.
- They have no independent life of their own. If you put a pack down it stays exactly where you put it.
- You pay for them. You possess them. Not vice versa. That is the structure of the deal. Invariably.
- The rules get invented and refined as the TV series goes on. Don't bother learning them. And don't bother watching either (see below).
- I thought for a while that, in the absence of Latin in our schools, the details on the cards might stand in as honorary irregular verbs. Unfortunartely they haven't encouraged mental discipline in our house, just consumer lust. Mea culpa.
2. The TV Series.
- Any TV series where every action of any of the main characters is followed by a collective “Hwoh” by the rest of the cast doesn't count as great drama.
- So if it's not art then what do you think it might be? Could it be that YuGiOh is Japanese for “Ha-ha we've got your money again. Pokemon was only the start. If you keep buying this stuff then we'll keep sending it.”
3. General.
- Your children have ears. “No” goes in as easily as “Yes, of course I'll buy you some, dear. Just don't cry again.” And it's shorter.
- (For Christians.) Ask yourself: do you feel uneasy because YuGiOh isn't mentioned in the book of Genesis? Or because it's made by the Japanese? If so then ask yourself if Panasonic DVD players fill you with the same morbid anxiety.
I think that covers it for now.
Mel and I had a long frank discussion today that started at breakfast and continued till teatime. Moans about moans turned into talks about talks and eventually deals were done. The good news is that on Day 35 the healthy food regime has been abandoned, or ‘revised’ as M prefers to put it.
Settlement terms include:
- I will no longer demand full cream milk, even on porridge.
- No naan bread with Indian takeaways.
- I fought hard for a sugar allowance on Weetabix but in the face of a flat refusal I have foresworn Weetabices.
- I shall in future weigh, not guess, quantities of rice and pasta. This will at a stroke remove seconds and thirds and thus represent a real saving in calories.
- Meat to be served twice per week maximum. No hardship this. All my favourite pasta sauces are vegetarian.
- I am not required to eat the cucumber left at the bottom of the salad. (This was a dealbreaker for me.)
She admitted that she didn't actually feel any healthier and it's fairly clear that I'm no thinner. I think she may have accepted that my stomach will probably remain rather more cheeseboard than washboard.
A few home truths were told. I confessed that I'd been getting through with the help of regular large lunches and extracurricular Kit Kats. She confessed to eating clandestine fruit and nut crunch bars. In a spirit of generosity I said that I thought they were probably allowed.
“Not once the chocolate spread was on them they weren't”, she replied.
So the low friction environment that used to be our trade mark has been reestablished. Phew.
Took Jake to the park this morning for some more stamina work and was surprised to find Alan Butterworth already there doing the same thing with his son Spencer, or the Mission Creep as I've come to think of him.
I joined Alan on the bench and between readings of his stopwatch we soon got onto the subject of declining standards. I insisted that it was not possible to encourage excellence while at the same time blurring the definition of failure. He asked for examples.
I chose the BBC's ‘safety net’ policy re following The Archers. Nowadays, I explained, if you miss an episode one day it's not only there again the next but it's in the Omnibus edition come Sunday, and it's even available on the net for you to catch later at a convenient moment of your own choosing. I said that giving people four chances at a simple piece of time management is surely no way to encourage responsible planning and it cannot possibly be helpful in the drive to deliver a world class economy.
I think tactically speaking I lost the initiative at around this point as we had to break off the discussion to separate Jake and Spencer who had come to blows over which of them had seen a pound coin in the grass first. The 200 metre sprint involved probably gave him too long to consider his reply.
“Robin,” he said breathlessly, “you over analyse”.
I spent the rest of the day wondering whether he might not be right but on balance I have come to the conclusion that I don't.
Next Sat I think I'll take a cap gun with me and tell him that I'm training J to go on the B of ‘Bang’. I'll enjoy watching him trying to get Spencer started on the inverted comma just before it.
Zoe is full of ideas for the Brockham Hill School mag. She's become particularly excited about choosing typefaces and has been scouring the web for exotic fonts. I advised her not to try for over-ambitious effects as they can backfire. She can take a lesson from one of our local night clubs. They chose a stylish square font designed to communicate both modernity and hedonism. It did look quite cool but it also made Club Nero look like Club Nerd.
When I got home this evening Jake seemed full of questions. The first thing he asked me was if it was possible to be offside in blow football. My instinct was to say ‘No’ but I was curious so I held back.
“Well...” I said, in an attempt to buy time, and I tried to say it slowly like they do so frequently in Potter 5.
He carried on with some vigour and as more arcane questions tumbled out a small spark of hope kindled in me that he might one day grow up to be a lawyer. He's always been keen on arguing but his chosen subjects had seldom been so intellectual before. We went on to cover:
In Snakes and Ladders, If you throw a six and land on a snake it does still apply doesn't it?
In Chess if you are playing as Black do you get a bonus turn when you take one of your opponent's pieces?
Then suddenly the disappointing truth dawned on me. Spencer Butterworth must have been sent round to play again.
At school Jake continues to resurface the playground with the knees of his trousers and Zoe has been revising for the pre-Mid Term Assessment assessments. She has mounds of homework to get through every night. The school says it should take about twenty minutes. I can only assume they mean the kind of minutes that minicab controllers count in.
Last week's guest stint at Troubled Diva was a rewarding experience for me but it did make me wonder whether I have been missing a few notes on the emotional scale in my writing here. It showed me that blogs can address deeper and subtler matters than I have so far been brave enough to touch upon. This is not because I do not feel emotions. I do. I am a man after all. If you prick me do I not faint?
I was very affected by what qB had to say about motherlove and I know that Mel had a very similar experience. Usually it is not a feeling so publicly shared but it lies squarely at the centre of parenting and at the start of all our lives, if we are fortunate. It is also so intense and so personal a subject that it has seemed almost taboo to discuss it here. Till now.
Parental love is not something that every person will have the opportunity to give in their lives and this stark fact affronts us in a world so filled with choices. Parenthood and its potential joys are handed out without fairness or reference to moral worth, denied to some yet seemingly squandered on others. No half measures. I have friends and relatives male and female who wished to have children but did not and I know it is a source of permanent and deep sorrow to them. Our happiness delighted them but in some small measure it hurt them too, a reminder of a life withheld.
More personally, that first birth is also the moment at which the unit of two becomes a unit of three. Few changes so far reaching happen at an hour and a minute and a weight that are so meticulously recorded. It is an irrevocable change that needs to be accepted. It is of all faits the most accompli.
Ante-natal classes in my case did not cover this area at all and instead got me to see my role as a rememberer of socks and buckets, not as someone whose entire emotional compass was about to be recalibrated. Maybe this is so obvious that I shouldn't have needed telling. Traditionally women are not told how much childbirth hurts. Perhaps that is obvious too but they are left to find out for themselves.
Fathers are left to find out for themselves how deeply the new arrival will change their relationship with the mother. The dark side of this is violence and desertion. The upside is only available when the father truly accepts that his life has changed for ever. Not all do. I did.
And so after some years of reflection this blog was born too.
Home late tonight. Probably just as well.
Zoe was already asleep but I did manage some v high quality time with Jake. His light was still on and although I had done one flight of stairsworth of preparation for a lecture on the importance of a good night's sleep, I was disarmed when I found him with his head in a book about Space we gave him two Xmases ago.
After I had told him about my day he asked me about the asteroid that did for the dinosaurs. This worked as a marvellous opportunity to broach the structure of the solar system, the dependence of plants on sunlight, the rise of the mammals etc all of which I covered pretty thoroughly, or at any rate till my glass was empty. It was then that I noticed he was peacefully asleep, leaving me to savour a moment of high quality fatherly tenderness.
I'll come back to the mammals some other time.
Fri evening I was in big trouble when Mel returned from her yoga to find that the banana smoothie she'd left in the fridge had gone. Into me. It was the most delicious thing I had found in the house for ages. Voices were raised. Turns out it was for putting on hair, not drinking.
My defence was that it was fair game in the fridge, and that if it had been in the bathroom cabinet I wouldn't have drunk it. Worse, it turned out she'd made it using the last of the organic bananas so she couldn't make any more till the next morning and she had to administer it immediately because it was a full moon that night. Maison du chien.
Sat was better. I took Jake to the park to begin the stamina-boosting programme I have devised for him. I bumped into Alan Butterworth in the corner shop as I picked up my paper and later, as I sat supervising J from my bench, I spotted him over the top of the Review section, not only watching J as he did his circuits but timing him too.
Nasty moment this afternoon. We were all watching an improving video about butterflies when the voice-over stated that witchetty grubs are high in protein and v low in cholesterol. I suddenly had visions of M serving them up for months on end topped with wholemeal flour. Thinking fast I pretended that I had seen a mouse. The ensuing panic may have have averted the danger, but only time will tell.
M found the whole weekend v stressful and she has now announced she is embarking on a five day mint detox.
This place is not yet exactly a madhouse but I do think that as of now it qualifies as a menthol institution.
We have a new living room carpet. It's a plain earth colour.
I collected all the suggestions for hamster names together this evening, one nomination each. The shortlist was:
Biggles (me)
Justin (Zoe)
Hammy (Mel)
Hypnodisk (Jake).
In the end I had a flash of inspiration and suggested Leo. Short, to the point, probably accurate and easy to shout if necessary.
After the promise of some Cadbury's Tasters for prompt settlement Leo it was.
The hamster was reported missing again this morning and the ensuing search forced a postponement of the naming till my return from work this evening.
The search continued after school. Zoe crawled round the furniture trying to coax him out with soothing words while Jake tried some Spanish, which he felt might be more understandable to a foreign creature. No joy and the chldn went to bed with the hamster still unfound and nameless.
Mel happened to mention this to Sybille from opposite while thanking her on the phone for last night's meal. S wondered if our new family member might be a Leo, i.e. adventurous and inquisitive. This made a good deal of sense by her standards. She advised us simply to wait because she was sure the extrovert part of his nature would draw him back to his audience. He duly reappeared a few hours later during ‘The Human Mind’ from behind one of the spider plants.
This got me thinking about astrology on a wider basis and so far I have decided, with the help of Sybille's Pet Astrology column, that our toaster is Aquarius (warm but fickle) and our shed is a Taurean (a solidly built, outdoor type and protective too).
We're not quite back on the straight and narrow re sleep yet. I probably spent too long trying to find Mars with the chldn a few weeks ago and this whole hamster thing has knocked us back a good way.
Anyway we got them into bed early tonight as we'd been invited to dinner at Sybille's. It was the meal of a lifetime - at least it seemed to take that long to get it down. I'd be thin too on food like that.
Sybille asked me if I'd ever had an out-of-body experience. I said that when younger my one trip to see a medium had led to a vivid out-of-money experience.
We quickly moved on to Mel's fear of mice and S suggested that hypnosis might help. If I'd thought faster I would have asked her for something to address M's craving for shoes, which I don't think you can get little patches for. Instead I just said it wasn't a big problem but that something to give Zoe the confidence to eat the crusts on bread would come in handy. Not her field apparently.
Mel thinks I shouldn't have brought up the ‘hamsters are nocturnal’ thing last Sat and told me so again when I woke her up to go home. I'm sorry but I just can't help giving out proper information to the chldn. She says I should be less forthcoming. Perhaps she's right. I do still regret telling Jake that the way to find out if spaghetti was ready was to throw it against a wall. The strand by strand testing that followed was definitely one of the low points of 2002.
The disruptions of Sun were followed yesterday by a long hectic day for me coping with a full in-tray and monitoring three websites, the old one, this one and Troubled Diva where I am guest blogging this week and where I ended up defending myself against accusations of substandard writing and anti-Scottish bias. That sentence is clearly too long and I will fix it when I get the time.
After a spin around the blogosphere and a final post on TD I felt exhausted. So I used my usual posting time to watch television instead. I really enjoyed Early Doors. It's nice to watch some TV that is human paced. I also watched the Kumars and ended up wondering why they bother with guests at all.
We need a name for the hamster. It's a male Golden Syrian and there is some talk about it in the Comments under Citronella. Suggestions?
The hamster wasn't much in evidence at 2 am.
Nor 4 am.
At 6 am I got desperate and stuck my hand into the bedroom pod section of the labyrinth. It bit me, locking its little teeth onto my thumb and as I hastily pulled my hand out backwards it flew across the room in a graceful arc, landed on the sofa and scuttled over the back. It took till 7 am to retrieve it. Since then it has managed to escape twice more out of tiny gaps in the joints of the pipes.
We have been getting more familiar with our neighbours lately. Mel has become quite matey with the woman opposite, Sybille, who writes self help books and whose house smells strongly of incense. She also does a Pet Astrology column for the local paper. M admires her thinness and calm demeanour. I find her a bit vague and she reminds me strongly of the goth girls who used to run stalls in Kensington Market a few years back. She has suggested citronella candles to combat stress. I'm in favour if they calm hamsters down as well.
The Feelgood Factor was pretty high today by the end of breakfast. Not only yesterday's win over St Hugo's but also the arrival of the latest Horrible Histories comic for Zoe. But best of all was the discovery that after some skillful management by me and a massive effort all round we are back on track on ‘Completion of homework by 7 pm’.
A small reward seemed in order so I voted for a trip to Tate Modern. The chldn voted for a hamster. Mel failed to back me up and voted for a trip to Kew so the chldn won 2-1-1. That got me thinking that democracy might need the odd bit of managing too.
Anyway we went out and chose one this afternoon. It's now living in a corner of the sitting room in something like a cross between a Day-Glo Pompidou Centre and a model of Oxford Circus tube station.
After an initial euphoria the chldn have been a bit disappointed with the hamster as an amusement. It immediately hid itself away and hasn't shown itself since. Perhaps it was disoriented by the journey. Either that or it was terrified by the mace wielding Bionicle that Jake put in its play area to cheer it up (since removed). I mentioned during bath time that I thought that hamsters were basically nocturnal and explained that they preferred to come out at night. Bad move. The chldn insisted on being woken up at 2 am in the hope of actually seeing it awake and moving.
Jake's football team continues its good form. He doesn't seem to mind if they win or lose but I find that I do. Today I left work early to watch them play their deadly rivals St Hugo's at home and caught the second half. I was filled with pride as Brockham Hill ran out 11-4 winners.
Jake is back to playing his recorder although fighting it might be a better description. I'm not sure how many more times I can take ‘O when the EEK go marching EEEK’ without saying something potentially v hurtful. I am pretty sure this is a negotiating tactic to get me to buy him that drum machine.
Today he left his recorder at home, probably deliberately, but they're wise to that sort of thing at school. The child doesn't get to miss the lesson but gets to ‘play’ his ruler instead.
I can see the virtues of this approach and I am going to suggest that J leaves his recorder at school and practices at home with the ruler.
Twenty days of ‘healthy’ food and Mel continues to scrutinise our diet as a one woman Ofscoff. I'm coming to think that biting the hand that feeds me might represent a tasty alternative.
We have decided that the living room carpet needs replacing. We discussed it exhaustively through supper tonight. Mel wants a plain earth colour. I understand and respect that choice, but I want one I saw in a style supplement that's designed to look like it's covered in bits of Lego. I just think it will save a lot of time in the future.
The dry dirtying is pulling ahead of the dry cleaning again. Jake is running v low on trousers. He seems to be working in a coal mine in his breaks and several shirts may be irrecoverable.
We need to make him aware that his clothes go where he goes and are actually a little nearer to sources of dirt than he is. I'm going to put up a poster in the kitchen covering these points. I also have a title: ‘Tough on Grime - Tough on the Causes of Grime’. I'm rather pleased with that.