Speaking as a parent

Achy Breaky Arm.

My arm aches today. Right arm, but not from excessive beer lifting. No, sadly. The broken thumbnail is another clue. Yes, ten pin bowling is the culprit. Half an hour hurling heavy round things down a narrow malicious strip of wood that is not flat, no matter what they tell you. It slopes to the left. Definitely.

The boy won. I blame my red, silver and blue shoes, which were too tight, and sloped a bit to the left too. He also won the air hockey afterwards, for which I have not yet developed coherent excuses.

That left us with half of Sunday afternoon to fill so we dipped into the Surrey Quays Odeon on spec and found that Open Season was about to start. We crept in, expecting to find a hushed and empty cinema. Instead we entered a bear pit (ho ho) buzzing with young voices. We hunched up and crunched across the toddler-flung popcorn to take up seats at the front.

Now is it just me or are all these cartoons with wacky animals not coping with being in the wild just a little samey? And unfunny. I nearly wrote about Madagascar when it came out, but thought better of it. Then there was Over the Hedge - quite good, but predictable, and OH so saccharine. And now this, which is not "the funniest film of the year!!" but a long unstated joke about how a bear can't sh*t in the woods.

If I could find the energy I'm sure I could do a Christopher Frayling type piece about how American capitalism now mistrusts its frontier values, urbanisation is killing us - plus animals and art - how spies and serial killers for grown-ups have been joined as cultural icons by disoriented animals for children and it's all to do with America's doubting of its imperial mission. But what I actually think is that it's just plain dopey old Hollywood again with no ideas and pressing the same button like a lab monkey till somebody else shows them another one.

So, anyway, the arm is not in the best of sporting conditions for the gruelling Halloween that lies ahead. We haven't been afflicted by threatening trick or treaters yet. Mostly we get little toddlers, so we are usually ready with sweets. Which we throw at the weeny pests as they walk up the path.

This year we have a different option. I want to deploy the kitten. I thought I might put up a notice saying something like "Beware of the Kitten", but I realise that probably isn't all that hot as repellents go. Something like "Please Do Not Disturb The Kitten" might be better and could buy us a little peace. But I know that the pride felt by certain members of the family would demand something more like "Please come in and admire the beautiful ickle kitty". So perhaps our front door will have to remain mute and stern.

But if someone turns up in a cute animal mask from Open Season I might flip over into a cross cultural media analysis moment. Now that would be scary.

The Dog Strikes Back.

We're home. All all right.

But the poor dog who has been the centre of Zoë's attentions for the last six years is feeling very put out. His little fabric nose is severely displaced and his little buttony eyes are tearful and rheumy. He has been left far far behind, like a cuddly Captain Scott in the race to the South Pole of Cute, and he knows it.

This is the first stunt he pulled on our return.

A little later we heard mournful doggy plonkings on the piano.

The old order changeth, yielding place to new.

The Cat in the Hat.

Had to send her away this evening. Get back, honky cat, we said. Get back to where you once belonged.

Got to go north for the funeral tomorrow. Cats not invited. Sent her back to her mother. Good-bye till Friday. The children hope she remembers us.

1966.

A reflective weekend here. Just me and the two juniors looking out at rainy skies. No memorable action in the growing up stakes. Jake now reads this and has started piping up 'bons mots' and demanding that they be included. I told him that the essence of blog was 'veritay', and that my decision was final. I should have used less French and just told him to be funnier. Still, I liked my description that the Tube is faster in London because it goes in straighter lines, or "as the crow digs'.

Saturday we attended an exhibition closing party. Quite grown-up. By Sunday the weather had eased off and it was merely raining kittens and puppies. But a day indoors followed.

Catching up on reading a few days back I was rather taken by the idea I saw at Mike's, which seemed to have come from here, about looking back at where you were 10, 20, 30 etc years ago. I'm not going to do all that, but it does tie in quite nicely with several recent conversations chez nous, relating to Zoë's start on learning German and my trip to north Germany in the famous year of 1966.

It was hot. My aunt had got married. We, or rather 'we' - I can't abide people who give themselves places in a team consisting by law of no more than eleven players - had won the World Cup. I saw it, in black and white, and to this day all the footage of England in red that day still looks wrong to me.

Soon after, and possibly with gloating in mind, we went as a family to north Germany's lake district, an obscure part of the world largely hidden, even from Germans, and known to history only through the impossibly mind-taxing Schleswig-Holstein question. So, by boat from Harwich to Bremerhaven and thence by train to the small town of Malente-Gremsmulen. (Pauses to pour cold water on the spell checker, which is still wrestling with the Schleswig-Holstein question.)

My German was scant but I put in an early guess that Malente-Gremsmulen meant 'small town - used to have a mill - now absolutely bulging with wasps'.

My progress in German was spectacular over a short distance and I soon picked up important phrases, most of which have never left me. The best was "Haben Sie ein Twinni?" (more cold water) which was the local way to get an amazing exotic two flavoured ice lolly constructed round two sticks.

The problem, then as ever since, is that no matter how well you learn to say your bit, you are absolutely sunk when they say anything back, like telling you they haven't got any despite the sign outside, or asking you where your mother is, because small boys don't wander around alone in this town.

"Mrplmrplschlecteschlechte" they would say. (Water, water.)

I realise now that I should have replied with a quick chorus of: "Two world wars and one world cup" and some pointing, which would not have been lost on them, because the events in question were all rather closer in time and more relevant than they are now, when it's just idiots who sing that.

But the highlight of the trip was when I changed position on a large swinging horse thing in a playground, mistimed my move and brought the bridge of my nose crashing down onto a metal handhold, unleashing several galaxies of pretty coloured stars inside my head and making a funny fizzy feeling at the back of my nose that only school rugby has reproduced since. And giving me the two best black eyes you've ever seen.

We were the only English people in the town, and quite possibly the only English people they'd ever seen who weren't in black and white and thumping them at football. So they didn't know what to make of us. For about two seconds that is, then they worked out that either I was the naughtiest boy in the world, or that my parents were expert child-beaters and unashamed of their handiwork, flaunting me round the place. They all avoided us, leaving us to sit alone drinking apfelsaft with about a million of the local wasps.

My attempts to buy a Twinni were called off and never resumed.

So for the rest of the fortnight we went to the Baltic seaside and watched children throw jellyfish at each other, gazed at the wonders of the Kiel canal, and I swallowed a helicopter.

The hotelier's name was Zimmerman. I wonder if he was any relation...

Cultural Parallels: The Horror Continues.

My two most recent cultural experiences. I went to see Seth Lakeman at The Scala. Not La Scala. I saw Hoodwinked with the boy at the Peckham Multiplex.

The predictable thing to do now would be to draw these two things together in an amusing and thought-provoking manner. So I won't, to try to inject a little danger and edginess round here. What with pictures of kittens and everything.

But I will say that one was mostly loud and the other was a bit quieter. The talking bits were better in the film. I stood up at the first and sat down at the second. The first was being filmed, the second had ALREADY BEEN filmed. What are the chances of that, eh? And they were both good.

Getting the weekend in perspective now. We missed Robin Hood because at 7 p.m. the teenager in the house wanted 'The X Factor', not swords and 'prithee'. I think the two could be brought together in a new series featuring Henry VIII, about him choosing wives. Suggested title 'The Axe Factor'.

Jake asked me a question on Sunday while sitting in the bath pretending to use the soap. "Daddy, why do some roads get called 'A' and some get called 'M'?"

"Well now-w-w," I said in my 'interesting point that' tone of voice.

He sighed. Then I heard him mutter: "I bet that means it goes back to ancient Mesopotamia."

I kept it short.

The kitten was on cute duties all weekend and has become quite bold in encounters with our noisier white goods, even the fan-heater under my desk. The gender differences between the way the boy and the girl relate to her are clearly detectable. Zoe immediately wanted to stroke little Lizzie, sit her on her lap and talk to her. Jake on the other hand started his relationship with Lizzie by dangling toys in front of her, getting her to pounce and chanting "Bloodlust, bloodlust!".

Very reminiscent of the way the two of them related to Thomas the Tank Engine a few years back. I can't bear Thomas and find him as bland and craven as Little Lord Fauntleroy on Prozac. Zoe, however, immediately responded to his human. vulnerable qualities and was never interested in running him round a track or getting him to pull trucks. She just wanted to tuck him up in bed in her doll's house.

Jake on the other hand saw different possibilities in his goody-goody blue metal frame. "I'll play with Thomas. You have Percy," he would insist, then get me to hold Percy on the carpet in front of him. He would then pick Thomas up and swing his arm back in a large arc , then CRASH Thomas into the face of my Percy at nandrilone speed. I would profess horror and urge him to play gently. While at the same time secretly enjoying every blow on the pi-faced puffer's little nose.

Life Goes On.

My father in law is no more. Aged 79 plus two days.

I have been left in charge of the house and have been tempted to have all my friends over for a dancing party. Instead I have listened to the radio and ironed. I have also been handing out lessons to the kitten, about not standing on the table, leaving rooms when asked and not using the shower as a toilet. Not getting through, I fear.

Extract from forthcoming web sensation "Lizzie's Blog: View from the Quadrant Shower".

Zzzzz.

It's very quiet, but a bit lighter than when the grumpy man last went up the stairs.

Walking, walking. Up, up. I ask if anyone else is awake. They say that they are now. No sympathy from me. Should have eaten me on the first evening. Too late now.

Old grumpy has appeared. And he's turned pink! I think I'll go back down.

Die, die, die! You weird green mouse, you.

Zzzzz.

I think I'll stand in my food now. Quite like the way it sort of squashes in between my pads.

Hmm. If I hide under the hall table for a while d'you think they'll do that running all over the house thing again? I LIKED that.

I just wish they'd make up their minds which room they want me to be in. THEY keep changing rooms. But when little Lizzie does the same then all of a sudden it's "Oh no, this room's empty now". Idiots. Wouldn't last two seconds in a pet shop.

Yum yum. Yawn. Some bottom for dessert.

Hmm. I'll go and see if that interesting door is open, the one that leads to the white thing in the corner. That was smoother than anything else in this house and nice and cool on the feet. I've seen old grumpy in there too - not sure what for - but he goes there about as often as I go to my tray. Roughly. So surely he can't mind if I use it too.

Ooops. How wrong can a cat be. Blimey. Chill, dude. When I was in there yesterday, on my own just sitting, there was no trouble. None at all. And now suddenly it's all shouty shouty and grab grab. All I'm asking for is a little con-SIS-tency. Is that too much?

Zzzzzz.

Silent Night.

Blank.

Post of the Week.

"Oh, So You Play The GRAMOPHONE."

1st DJ: Fancy seeing a film?

2nd DJ: Um. Dunno. Who's the projectionist?

Via.

Your Country Needs You. To Think.

A busy weekend for the children on Club Penguin. Zoe has bought a hard hat and is now entitled to use a road drill. I am not making this up. Jake likes to sign in unpaid accounts then get himself banned for swearing. He has been told to stop or his Eminem CD will be impounded.

Lizzie the kitten has discovered the living room, a treasure trove of sofas to run along the top of and Lego to chew. It also contains a circular yellow and black racetrack which Jake bought with his after-Penguin credit on Saturday, and we have been racing little cars in it. Round and round they go, the object in NitroBatllerz being to ram the other car out of the bowl or push it into the Plughole of Doom in the middle. Lizzie now has an advanced case of Wimbledon neck from watching the cars and deciding whether or not to join in.

I watched most of that England game. And I suffered.

Not good, and a fairly horrible similarity to the worst of Eriksson's England off days. And the link? Well, it's fairly clear. It's the players, innit?

So we have to demand of this England generation: show me the brainy.

All those Englandy football virtues, like being tall, spitting, running in straight lines and pointing at what just happened etc. I'm reminded of the tactical repertoire of the bull in bull fights.

Gerrard and Rooney may be the best of the bunch, at their best. But shiniest whistles in the shop? Um. Neither of them on good form, and look at the others. The best players the world has shown us can usually speak several languages and even read poetry. Our current lot are still struggling with tabloid English. I saw the end of one of those junk 'Top (Pick A Number) Somethings of All Time' list shows last week. Top foreign footballers in England. And look at them. Henry, Bergkamp, Cantona, Zola. I could add Ardiles, Klinsmann and Gullit. And what they all have in common? I mean apart from loads of Google for me. Yes, it's brains.

Like the difference between Connors and McEnroe, or Mansell and Senna. Not the difference between the tortoise and the hare, but more like between a tin of corned beef and a cow. Or between the Daleks and Billie Piper, when managed by The Doctor that is, not when she made records.

Problem solving on the hoof. Hannibal is famous for selecting elephants for his away games, but he had more than that in his locker. Alexander had his phalanx but could deploy other formations. Which brings us back to Macedonians. And they did a very good job, because they had watched videos of England sides scratching their heads when early goals hadn't appeared and running even faster hadn't worked either. McClaren needs Cole and Lennon as much as he needs Rooney to stop running into his team-mates.

And well done Scotland.

Me, Me, Me.

I have been tagged twice about this book meme now. By him and her. For such an unliterary person, a diligent ignorer of the world's great literature, this presents some problems. But I am prepared to be brave. And thanks for asking.

1. One book that changed your life.

Um.

One day, one person, one decision - yes, could probably supply. Do books change anyone's life? I can see how 'Vasectomy - The Do It Yourself Guide' might change things a bit, but I don't think Jane Eyre or War and Peace could change anybody's life.

2. One book that you've read more than once.

I read Lord of the Rings when about eleven, starting with the second volume (or Book III for buffs. See, it's not just the evil George Lucas who has confusing numbering. Oh wait - perhaps he pinched that too). I skipped the descriptions of flowers, the 'songs' and the poems in Elvish. I reread it at about fifteen and skipped almost everything except the courtly dialogue.

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island.

"Well Sue, could I have a recent version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica?" That appeals but it's bit like Nick Hornby asking for ten thousand songs in his iPod. The Britannica that I have is in 24 volumes. Don't fancy swimming ashore with that in tow.

Actually I veer rather more to the John Lee Hooker school of desert island literature. He admitted to Sue Lawley that he wasn't very good at reading and asked for one of those books printed on glossy paper, with pictures. Of pretty girls.

4. One book that made you laugh.

Most of the Molesworth series by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle. At one point I did actually go to a school very like St Custard's in outlook, if not in catering. It even had a skool dog.

I am still ambushed by phrases in anything by P.G. Wodehouse.

5. One book that made you cry.

A biography of the Duke of Monmouth. But it was more like it made my eyes water, and that was because it fell on my head when I pulled some other books out of a bookshelf scheduled for repainting.

More recently there were passages in a book about Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812. Before that, and more consistently, was a book called 'Grass Soup' about life in a Chinese prison-reform camp. Absolutely awful stuff about man's inhumanity to everything. People literally starving, imprisoned by walls less than three feet high. They stayed put because there was nowhere to run.

6. One book that you wish you had written.

I wish I had written the Bible because it is unbelievable the sales it's had
(Readers to add own punctuation)

I did write a book about legal systems, available once upon a time by mail order. And plagiarised extensively by a major publisher of legal titles. They settled out of court.

I would like to write a book about belief systems.

Less ambitiously I would be happy to have written any book that got into a shop.

7. One book you wish had never been written.

Any geography text book I ever read.

8. One book that you are reading at the moment.

India: A Million Mutinies Now, by V.S. Naipaul.

9. One book that you've been meaning to read.

The Master and Marguerita. Given to me by my wife and recommended.

10. Five others that you’d like to do this.

Belle de Jour. And four of her mates.

Liza with a ZZZZZZ.

So, shall I tell you about this really cute thing the kitten did yesterday? Well, it's either that or I'll just start ranting about the way that everywhere I've turned over the last thirty six hours I've been confronted with Liza Minnelli. In print or sound or vision I mean, not in the flesh. That would be too horrible. She being my least favourite showbiz person of all time. She that I can't stand when she's either singing or talking or acting. Or getting divorced even, which takes up at least as much of her time as any of the aforementioned.

No, kitten story it is.

Last night little Lizzie was trying to climb up her scratching post when...

No. Change of plan. That Liza diversion has got me steamed up now and I gotta vent. So here comes the hard rain.

I've had real issues with her right from the start. Like about her not being very good. Not nearly as good as she thinks, anyway. It doesn't help that two people independently have fed my original prejudice by telling me stories that highlight that she is 1. stupid and 2. weird. How fair they are or true I don't know. But anyone who routinely compares herself with Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland etc, and co-opts herself into their company of 'artistes' has got to be a bit thick-stroke-nutty, when all of them could both act brilliantly and sing in tune. Sheesh. And I'm a tree.

Today's Guardian interview continued the same vainglorious line. She glibly declares that her song "New York, New York" is now an anthem, post 9/11, which is why she went to NY to sing it in the aftermath. Words fail me.

No they don't.

"NYNY" if I recall correctly is generally associated in the minds of the general, unconfused public with Frank Sinatra. No? I think he recorded it first. I think it was even written for him. (No it wasn't. It was actually written for her. Very delayed comment from Ed.) (OK, Ed, but the only version I have ever heard is by Frank.) I But that's not all. NYNY is about ambition, and I'm sure that's why Liza likes it. But in case anyone has missed this, the bombers specifically went to NY to 'make it'. They became kings of the hill and A number ones. They became a part of it; the news was spread. There was nowhere else that interested them. Perhaps that kind of textual reading doesn't come easily to the Minnelli entourage.

But Liza, you are not an icon of American resistance to terrorism. You just aren't. What you are is instinctively attracted to uncritical clichés of all kinds, the more self-aggrandising the better. I hope for your sake that this is the last addiction you have to face. And good luck with it, up there in the Pantheon of all time all time greats.

I read somewhere that she didn't suss that Edna Everidge was actually a man when the Dame interviewed her. I remember her appearance on the Muppet Show and I'm not at all sure she sussed that they were puppets either.

So anyway, the kitten climbed up, and then fell off.

I guess you had to be there.

Penguins.

So, this penguin thing then.

They're not in the house - that would push Mel over the edge large style. The stress of having one kitten has already pressed too many of her hot buttons about small scuttling things, invasion, dirt and disarrangement.

No, they're net penguins who live at Club Penguin. This is the new, er - thing - which is sweeping the nation and has gripped our children like a psychotic mole-wrench. For those not in the know it is a rolling, interactive game cum chat room. It appears to be as worldwide as SMERSH, and just as evil.

The attraction seems to be that the penguins have names and talk to each other in little word balloons. This means that the children can meet their mates at prearranged times, and talk. How this laborious procedure is better than doing the same thing at school beats me. Of course they can throw snowballs at each other afterwards and this they cannot do as we stand, I admit. But they can't play virtual penguin conkers, can they? (No, they can't. Ed.)

Apart from the attractions of speaking to people they already know in word balloons there are two bonus activities. First, they can meet people they don't know, or rather penguins they don't know, and get to throw snowballs at them. Secondly, they can PAY for special membership which allows them to buy exclusive clothing and headgear, of the sort that penguins require for a good Antarctic life. Like sombreros, diving masks, Viking helmets... you know, you've seen the documentaries. The other thing they all want to do is to make and toss pizzas. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

So a blitzkrieg campaign of pester-power was waged and poor Daddy had to get out his credit card and shell out for memberships for our two little waddlers, to turn them into potential tossers. They've both got a month's worth, stopped out of their pocket money, natch.

Whatever next?

Novelty.

Earlier, and not quite right.

And a bit later.

Surrender.

Oh the drama, the excitement!

Or alternatively:

Oh the trauma, the excrement!

New kit in town. Ev'rybody's talking 'bout the new kit in town. Lots of new things, especially new rules, which get made up and then broken in a dizzying whirl of mutual life-style adjustments. The sort of relativism that makes Pope's heads turn and old-school Tories wince.

Or alternatively:

She does exactly what she wants to. We are helpless.

Well, not exactly helpless. There aren't many things that bleach or rubber gloves can't fix. Anyway, as I write she is skittering round my office-studio, bravely hunting plastic bags. She isn't meant to be in here. She is.

My room, my sanctum cum fortress, is traditionally known as the Mad Room - as in "Daddy will go mad if you go in there". It is now the most popular room in the house. Because it has computers in it. And because it makes an excellent toilet.

I can sense the public demand for images is high. I have never put photos on this blog for three main reasons. 1. I wanted the page to load quickly. 2. Can't do html. 3. Can't do cameras. Pictures are supposed to be worth a thousand words so I decided a while ago that I'd just do the thousand words. But things move on. Tories are now officially optimistic, thus bucking a thousand year trend on the Right, so if they can change then maybe I can too. All it needs is Zoe to get her camera recharged, me to get a Flickr account, and we'll be off.