Speaking as a parent

Taking Steps.

I have been given a small plastic object to wear on my belt. An iPod? Nope. A spy in the cab. My wife has forced me to take receipt of a pedometer. Healthy organs, for the promotion of. Irresistible force finally brought to bear on an immovable object.

This all happened Thursday lunchtime, after the arrival in the post of said unwelcome gadget, free with some yukky breakfast cereal. How can anybody eat at that time in the morning? And keep it down. But not content with that they hand out quasi-scientific, life-wrecking instruments too.

Anyway. By teatime it read 0097. Well, I do have a sedentary occupation, y'know. I was quite pleased with 97 steps, which principally represented the distance covered foraging for one cup of coffee at about half past three. After a trip to the corner shop to get milk before supper it read 0674. Not bad, I thought, even allowing for several false enregistrations when I kept taking it off to read it. But not good enough, according to the Minister for My Interior, and I was informed that I must do 'better' the next day.

So in that moment the mad world of Stalinist bureaucracy and the planned economy arrived chez nous. I was on notice to get my figures up. So I sat on the loo the nest morning, shaking the bloody thing. But as luck would have it, I had to go out in the afternoon to have my hair cut, buy some flowers for a mother who had had the boy for a sleep-over, and seek out some cat litter in Peckham's bustling covered market. Come the evening assessment, including a particularly bouncy climb to the bedroom, the meter read 6931. Joy! On target - and more - having not only doubled but multiplied my score tenfold.

I wasn't expecting good results from today though. The coffee and corner shop trips were indicated, but neither haircut nor cat litter would be likely to be required. As luck would have it we went to see "Mr Bean's Holiday" at the Peckham Multiplex, but I forgot to wear my little clever friend. So it's up and down the stairs till supper for me.

What Did You Say?

On Friday I went to Bournemouth.

Not eye catchingly interesting, that, you may say. But wait. I went to see the wedding of a drummer to a philosopher. That I had to see. An old musician friend married an actual professional academic philosopher. Someone accustomed to hitting things was pairing off for life with someone who could effectively plant seeds of doubt in his mind that his drums, or even he himself, did not exist. Or didn't exist in the ordinary meaning of the word. If the concept of meaning has, of itself, any meaning at all.

Anyway, by 9 a.m. I was sitting in a nearly empty train, heading for the south coast with a frighteningly hot pasty seething on the table in front of me. The man sitting at the table opposite then proceeded to give a master-class in mobile phone cliché, with special reference to office jargon. He started strongly by announcing to someone that he was "on the train". He actually said it. He then called his partner 'sweedy' at the end of every sentence; he called his builder to ask him not to come too early the next day and signed off with "fantastic stuff"; he conferred with a colleague and used the words 'killer idea' and 'blue sky' in the first three sentences. Winchester, his destination, came cruelly slowly.

Later, having arrived safely in Bournemouth, the marriage ceremony was short and sweet, ranking very highly in my experience for its extensive and sympathetic use of (early) Stevie Wonder songs. Some pleasant mingling and a lunch followed. An unfamiliar but friendly looking figure walked up to me. "My sources tell me you're a wank honour, sir." I bridled. Then I realised he had said "a wine connoisseur". My hearing for music is still very acute. It's just people I find unintelligible.

I was back on a train by 3 p.m..

With much champagne sloshing around my system, and exhausted by my strenuous witnessing and congratulating efforts, I drew deep joy from the fact that this time I seemed to have the whole carriage to myself. I felt safe, as thoroughly immobilised as any prized car. Peace came upon me. So the appearance at the next station of a chubby, bustling girl was less than welcome. She paused at the end of my table as if drawn by the splendidness of my splendid isolation. "Mind if I sit here?" she asked sweetly. "Yes, very much," I intended to reply, but the words wouldn't pass my champagne flecked lips. "No, no," I said, enhancing my regal benificence with a small gracious wave of the hand. An error I soon regretted

Her initial comprehensibility disappeared as quickly as most of my champagne had. "Dubblu wubble yaar red," she said, waving her own hand and pointing at the plastic bag she had placed opposite me. I made an effort to acclimatise my ears. Fortunately she then broke me in slowly with a long, detailed run down of her travel warrant procedure, allowing me to get hold of her rhythm and the mist lifted from round my ears without obligation of reply. A sort of conversational equivalent of an athlete doing a quick burst of altitude training.

"Hate sitting on me own," she said. "Why?" I asked, although I was mostly interested in where she was planning to get off. "Coz it's borin'." Her idea of excitement seemed, in practice, to be to explain to me what was in her shopping bag, that it was heavy and that its contents were meant to last the weekend. I offered that she could help her sore, red hands if she ate the food before she got off. This was a feat she looked well capable of pulling off. It would be lighter, I offered helpfully. "Tactics," I said. Blank look.

A very, very short silence followed. "You look tired," she remarked. "Are you going all the way to Waterloo?" "Yes," I replied, fervently praying that she wouldn't announce that she was too. "I've been to a wedding - round trip inside the day," I explained. Unexpectedly my ribaldry returned. "A drummer marrying a philosopher. That I had to see." I smiled. She didn't.

A longer pause ensued.

"What's a philosopher?"

Suddenly, changing the subject looked good. Changing back from the subject of Me to Her, that is. The only constructive approach to the situation seemed to be to enjoy this rare and privileged view into the mind of someone who found themselves so profoundly interesting, to the exclusion of anything else. So, with minimal guidance from me I was taken on a tour of her world, its geography, its characters and, to my horror, its sex life. This lasted all the way to Southampton Airport Parkway, an unbroken trail of words hanging in the air, stretched across the best part of twenty miles. Not so much a stream of consciousness, more a flood plain.

What a day. Here's me thinking I understand people when actually I have proof that I not only don't understand what they say, but I also can't even hear what they say. Perhaps I just listen to too much Radio 4.

Next week I will be mostly staying in.

Ad Break.

Shaggy Blog Stories.

A collection of amusing tales from the UK blogosphere.

Buy Buy Buy!

So, strangely, and after all these years, I arrive in print. Along with 99 other bloggers, inside a book on sale to raise money for Comic Relief. I seem to have sneaked in at no. 96. They probably took pity because my submission was so short. Anyway, grateful for small mercies etc, will try not to abuse my new fame etc.

So, people; you can read about the whole, rather remarkable process here. Or you can buy it here.

Beats sitting in a bath full of custard for the day.

Shaggy Blog Stories

Inspiration in the Fingers.

Gentle hints have been received that I have not, as promised, told anybody what is going on over here.

Well, that's partly because nothing of a blogtastically interesting nature has in fact happened over here. But also partly because I haven't yet fully reincorporated time at the keyboard into my daily routine. I've just been writing music like a maniac. Or rather writing music in a maniacal fashion. I have no idea what music made by a maniac sounds like. Perhaps you can point me. This makes music unlike blogs, where I have a good idea what a blog written by a maniac reads like. (See comment thread five below.)

In other news, I have received some fantastically futile and utterly useless spam e-mails which seem to have no purpose whatsoever. No selling, just investment advice. Like I'm going to take my lead from complete strangers who can't spell. Would I take racing tips from a hoover? They are only redeemed by their spectacular subjects, the very best so far being "Turnip Elopement". Beat that.

The boy has been writing a blog and keeps asking me things like how anyone will know it's there. Right to the heart of the matter, old son. As he asked me his big round eyes were filled with very palpable thirst for bloggy knowledge, and for once I could enlighten him. Unlike when he asks me about Batman villains' costumes from the sixties. I enjoyed the sensation of feeling my head fill with hard won, hidden wisdom. Meanwhile the Madroom seemed to melt gently away and I imagined we were sitting in a monastery garden somewhere in East Asia. "Well, Grasshopper," I said with the patience of a mountain, "what you do is read every blog you can find, but not too far down. Then leave complimentary messages on a recent post. And be sure not to offer anyone debt consolidation. That'll do it. See, it's all about comments. Leave them, and they will come."

Later, while checking up on his reading adventures, I found that he had probably been a little too indiscriminate. "And you are.. ?" was the reply to one of his offerings, impeccably debt free though it was. I pointed out that recent Bible college graduates probably aren't really interested in Club Penguin, which provides his main material. "Have a stab at guessing whether they would come more than once," I hinted gently. But he seems to be making some nice friends now. I promised him a link if he kept it up for a week. That was over a fortnight ago.

So.

Here he is. It's worth a read.

(P.S. If you like it, please tell him - not just me. So he gets the encouragement. I've got enough glory after today's Comic Relief Shaggy book.)

Red Nose.

This seems like a good idea and I've put in a little bit of nonsense.

Well done Mike.

A short update about us should appear shortly.