Lemon Drizzle

私は非常に残念です*

2011-03-17T23:23:00.001+00:00

I first fell in love with Japan when I was twelve years old, nearly three decades ago. I can remember it very distinctly.
Back then I was a quiet child who loved books, and Lego, and Star Wars, and - most of all - videogames. One day in the Summer I opened my copy of 'Computer and Videogames' and saw a special feature on 'Games you'll never play'. It was all about Japan and the Nintendo Entertainment System, and on the right hand side, in a tiny box with a blurry screenshot, was a paragraph - no more than 50 words - describing a game about Godzilla. It looked utterly unremarkable, except that it shipped with a special controller that had a microphone in it, and to make the monster on screen transform or fire lasers you had to shout commands into the microphone: It would hear you and react. I could not believe what I reading; it seemed like the most insane, wonderful thing ever. The article ended with a brief parting shot saying that Japan was full to the brim with things like this, and was a place with a videogame arcade on the corner of every block, and books just full of comics that even grown-ups read. It sounded wonderful.
Five years later, I bought a Sega Megadrive, one of kind imported from Japan a long time before they came to England, from a seedy little shop in The Lanes in Brighton. The games were expensive, and hard to come by (there was no Internet back then) but, by God, they were good. While everyone else played on their Amiga or Atari, I saved the money from my Saturday job and bought obscure, unreviewed games from small listings in the back of magazines: wonderful, arcade-perfect gems like Ghosts'n'Goblins and Thunderforce II, and although the text was in Kanji and I had no idea what was going on and had to learn each menu by trial and error, I loved it all.
From that point on, a little bit of Japan, of Otaku culture, seeped into me and has been a part of me ever since, two decades plus and counting. It's probably not the best way of getting to appreciate a country, it's people or its culture - but I can't help that: that's what happened to me. I started to love Japan from the other side of the world. I never expected to get to visit.
But I did: I was lucky enough to go to Japan in my late twenties, as part of my job, and it was everything I hoped it would be. Vending machines in the street that sold cans of hot coffee, public notices written in the form of cartoons, vendors on the street selling octopus balls, Tanuki statues standing guard outside restaurants, and - at least in Tokyo - a videogame arcade on every corner. And I got to go back there, again and again, with different jobs: it was the business trip I didn't mind taking, the customer visit that I'd tag a days holiday onto the end of. I have never liked a place more, never wished more that I was part of another culture, than when I was standing in Akihabara Electric Town on a Sunday afternoon, watching the neon signs and the milling crowds. I loved it all; the plastic food in restaurant windows, the gachapon machines, the Shinkansen train, the scramble crossing in Shibuya, the ancient wooden temples in Kyoto and the Tokyo subway lines where trains come into stations halfway up the side of buildings.
And I have passed this all on to my children. Eldest sleeps in a Princess Peach T-Shirt, Youngest sleeps with a Cinnamoroll soft toy. Youngest's favourite film is My Neighbor Totoro, and Oldest can probably name over 400 Pokemon, including their moves and evolutions. Their favourite meal is chicken and rice, because that was Hello Kitty's favourite dinner in the DVD I got them. They prefer Nintendo over XBox and Playstation, because they already know that you have to pick a tribe, that it's gameplay over graphics, and that nobody is ever going to face down Shigeru Miyamato in that contest. Their Daddy's love of Japanese gaming culture has seeped into them through their genes, so much so that my wife warned me that one day they will leave us to live in Japan and that it will all be my fault. I took a quiet pride in that possibility. At least they would live somewhere cool...
Then there was an earthquake, and a tsunami, and a nuclear accident, and I quickly realised that I know absolutely nothing about Japan.
This was because of a picture I saw - this picture, in fact, which first caught my eye because a detail looked familiar - a woman on the far left is holding a shopping bag with a picture I recognised; it is Rilakkuma, the 'relax bear', and I recognised it because it was the first soft toy I bought in Japan for my baby daughter. It is the first thing I noticed but it is the least important detail: the picture shows a long, snaking queue of people, waiting in line to try to buy food from a shop with empty shelves. Nobody is pushing, nobody is shoving: they are hungry and their children need to be fed, and as a nation they are facing the worst that both nature and science can throw at them and they are standing in line to wait their turn.
And you see this again and again, example after example, the very best of people in the face of the worst of times. I read today of a Tokyo shopkeeper who accidentally overcharged a foreign visitor, and so cycled to the bus station the next day in the hope of catching his customer before they left his wonderful, bruised country because he wanted to give him the correct change. How can you not respect that?
I am humbled: by the Japanese people's stoicism, their resilience, their order and structure and the respect they show for each other. I realised that have I loved Japanese culture for all my adult life, but I have been doing so for all the wrong reasons.
What I want to say then, is: Japan, I am so very sorry, for what has has happened, and for what is happening to you. I realise that the sadness I feel is meaningless - I have no insight, cannot begin to imagine what you are feeling - but I love you more now than I ever did.
I'm grateful for the impact you've had on my life and and one day - as soon as possible - I'm coming back. We all are - I want my daughters to see you for themselves.

* (Watashi wa hijō ni zan'nendesu) -"I am so very sorry"

The man that my wife dreams of...

2011-01-16T20:35:00.002+00:00

The alarm clock makes a horrible shrieking noise. I turn it off and gaze blearily at the grey light filtering through the curtains. It is not even bright enough for the birds to have recognised it as dawn yet, but nonetheless I have to get up, because I have to go to work, and I know that the car will have frozen solid overnight and will require at least twenty minute of rigorous effort to scrape the ice off it. The Wife needs to get up as well, because the children will need to be marshalled through the breakfast/wash/dress process. If left unsupervised they will eventually get up with no problem, but will then simply watch Pokemon cartoons until the sun goes back down again. So I give the duvet-shrouded lump huddled beside me a helpful nudge, just to help get her started, much as you would bump start an old car that fired up a bit unreliably.
"Urgh" she says.
"It is morning, my sweet" I say.
She sits up, and squints around the room unhappily, before finally fixing her gaze on me. "Oh, that's disappointing" she says.
I fumble in my drawer for socks. This is a tedious process. I have about a thousand 'black' socks, and yet incredibly none of them quite match. This is because I am always putting my socks on either in the dark (Winter) or with my eyes crusted over due a cold (Autumn) or hay fever (Summer), or simply scrunched tight in quiet agony due to a hangover (any time of year). This in turn means I am basically careless about making sure the left and right ones match up when I put them on, and so they have all been washed a different number of times, which means they are now all slightly different shades of dark grey. Also, many of them have worn right though, but when I encounter these I am too lazy to throw them away and just throw them back in the drawer, where some have remained now for literally years. This makes the simple act of putting socks on each morning a tombola of frustration, as 50% of the articles in my underwear drawer should really just be taken outside and burnt.
"What is disappointing?" I ask
"I dreamed you were someone else," replies my wife, sadly. "But you're still just you."
A lesser man would be at least a bit wounded by that, by I am made of sterner, or possibly just less caring, stuff.
"Oh yes?" I ask. "Gary Barlow again?"
(At the height of Take That fever - the first time around, back in the early nineties - my wife was delighted to discover that she was born on the same day as Gary Barlow, in the same hospital. As a result she feels that they have, on some level, a connection. I'm glad this belief added some secret spice to her purchase of the cassette single of 'Why can't I wake up with you?' in 1993, but now, nearly twenty years later, I really think she should let go of the idea that their destinies remain inextricably intertwined. This is something she doesn't appear quite ready to give up on just yet, though, if her dreams are anything to go by...)
"No" she says, shaking her head groggily. "It was you. But a much better version of you. A dream version."
Again, some people would regard that as insulting, but happily I am blessed with the cast-iron belief that all those around me, and my wife in particular, are lucky to have me in their lives, regardless of how loudly they may protest the opposite. So instead of taking her comment as a slur on my character, I merely consider it an interesting topic for further discussion while I struggle manfully with my boxer shorts.
"What do you mean? You are already living with the dream version of me," I point out. "In real life."
She laughs hollowly - the laughter of a woman who was one number out for all six balls in the lottery. "The dream version of you was so much better" she says.
I pause, underwear only halfway up. "I don't think that can be possible" I say.
"He really was."
"Why?"
"He was more romantic."
"Uh huh.."
"More...intense. More sophisticated..."
I snort loudly, causing a bubble of early-morning snot to appear briefly in one nostril. She is making the dream version of me sound like a brand of filter coffee. All he seems to be missing is the rich aroma.
"And what did he do, exactly?"
"Not much. He was just there, being thoughtful."
"He sounds dreadful..."
"He was lovely." She is now girlishly hugging her knees in bed. It is faintly nauseating.
"And what did he have to say for himself?"
"He didn't say much. We mostly just communicated on the emotional level. I could tell what he was thinking."
"Can you tell what I'm thinking right now?"
"Yes. And the dream version of you would never be so unpleasant..."
"Tell me, did the dream version of me ever...take it to the bedroom, if you know what I mean?"
"No, he didn't. That was one of the things I liked best about him."
"Perhaps your dream version of me is gay? Anyway here in the real world, your real husband has to go out and earn some money. I'll see you tonight."
"I shall be daydreaming about him," my wife calls after me. "Just so you know. I might have a little affair with him, in my head..."
I don't bother replying to this. In my head I've been carrying on with Winona Rider for the last fifteen years, so it seems only fair.

The evening interrogation: Sheep lips and ghost pudding

2010-12-12T23:01:00.000+00:00

My daughters and I have instigated a new game. Or, more correctly, they have instigated a new game, and I have to suffer through it. It is called 'questions at bedtime' and it goes something like this: I read them a story, tell them it is time for bed, kiss them goodnight and make for the door. At this point one of them, in an effort to postpone the moment before I turn off the light and leave them to go to sleep, will say: "Daddy, can I just ask you something?"
This initially seems like reasonable request, so I pause, hand on the light switch, and say: "Yes, of course". This is my first and only mistake, but it is grave one. What then follows is a game of wits: they will a string together a series of infuriating questions, many of which will be gibberish, but for reasons that I cannot properly comprehend, I feel somehow honour-bound to try and answer them. The 'game' ends when either am forced to say "I don't know", or I crack up entirely and start shouting "For God's sake, go to sleep!" It is a game that I always lose. The whole process, frankly, is a specialised form of intellectual torture.
Youngest goes first. She always goes first, because she can soften me up with any kind of nonsense question off the top of her head, giving Eldest the opportunity to then pick holes in whatever I say.
"Daddy," she asks, "Why do we have lips?"
A relatively easy opener, I think. This one I can answer. "To help us speak" I say. "So that we can make lots of different shapes with our mouths to make different noises."
Youngest nods at this, satisfied. Eldest, however, has sensed an opportunity."Why do animals have lips, then?" asks Eldest. "If they are for talking?"
"Um..." I say. Great, I think, one question in, and already I'm struggling.
"Because, Daddy, you know animals can't speak..." she reminds me, in the manner of someone gently chiding a simpleton.
"Yes, but they still communicate..." I insist.
She looks at me with contempt, as if I have somehow let her, myself, and the entire family down with my foolishness. "With their lips?" she asks, in a voice that is heavy with cynicism.
"Ye-es," I say, though now with noticeably less conviction as I am beginning to doubt myself.
"Sheep? Sheep do this?" she asks dubiously. "In a field? Outside? Sheep wrinkle their lips at each other, even though they can't talk?"
"Yes," I say, thinking, Ah, no, that really doesn't sound right at all now. "So that they can make different noises" I add.
"But sheep don't make different noises," she points out. "They just go 'baa'.."
"That's true..." confirms Youngest, in her unappointed role as Chief Fact Corroborator.
"Yes, but I think the 'baa' noises sound different to other sheep" I offer.
"Because of their lips?" asks Youngest
"Yes," I say, though at this point I am now about 95% certain that I am wrong, and I can't think of single earthly reason why sheep should have lips in the first place. It's not like they have much to talk about.
"Are you sure?" ask Eldest, but only because she is still relatively young. In a few years time she will just shout: 'That sounds like bullshit!', which is clearly what she actually means.
"Good night, then" I say brightly, deciding that a swift exit is the best policy
"Daddy, wait, wait!" says Youngest. "Why are animals in zoos?"
Again, on the surface, quite a simple question. "So we can go and see them" I explain.
"Do they go home afterwards? When the zoo shuts?"
"No," I say, realising that she possibly thinks that the cheetahs at Whipsnade are there because it's their job to pace up and down in their enclosure all day, and perhaps that they get to clock off at 5pm and drive home to their families. "They actually live in the zoo."
"Even when the people aren't there?"
"Yes, all the time."
She ponders this. "Don't they get bored?" she asks.
Personally, I tend to think that they do. "Yes, probably." I say, nodding, as if I know this for a fact.
"What do they talk about?"
"They can't talk, sweetheart" I say.
"But they've all got lips. Just like sheep..." points out Eldest, who has been listening carefully and has now masterfully located an inconsistency with my previous statements, which she can now exploit mercilessly. Sometimes she is so like her mother. Nonetheless, I feel a touch of paternal pride: if she can keep this up, a glittering career as a barrister clearly awaits her.
"...and anyway: birds don't have lips, but they can still communicate" she adds.
"Birds have beaks, not lips, Daddy" agrees Youngest gravely, as if I really should have considered this before speaking.
I sigh deeply. I really would very much like to go downstairs and eat my dinner now.
"Birds have tongues, though" I say. "And that's all part of how animals communicate. Lips are just one option."
Eldest looks deeply sceptical, as if I have somehow cheated by holding this fact back.
"No, birds have beaks," insists Youngest. "Not tongues."
This could literally go on all night, I think. "They have beaks and tongues. Now go to sleep" I command, turning off the light and stepping out of the door..
"Daddy, daddy, wait, wait!" shouts Youngest. "I want to know something else!"
I pause on the threshold. "One last question" I say.
"If you go out, and Mummy goes out as well, and nobody is here with us..."
"We won't ever do that, sweetheart. Somebody will always stay with you."
"Yes, yes, but if you did...."
"But we won't. Don't worry."
As it turns out, she is not worried. She has more pressing concerns.
"But if you did...and it was lunchtime, would a ghost appear?"
"No," I say emphatically, "There would be no ghost."
"Well, then - who would make our lunch?"
I pinch the bridge of my nose and realise how tired I am. It is late, I haven't eaten yet, and my four-year old daughter wants reassurance that if we were ever abandon her, we would at least have the decency to first arrange some kind of catering ghost who can rustle up a sandwich.
"It is time for bed now", I say firmly.
"What would a ghost make for lunch, anyway?" asks Eldest. I realise that she is directing this question to her sister, and I am now superfluous.
"Ghost pudding" says Youngest with a speed that suggests she has previously given this topic considerable thought.
Eldest muses on this. "No, that wouldn't work" she says. "Because ghost pudding wouldn't really be there, it would be just be made of air."
"No, it would be made of ghost..." insists Youngest.
Eldest shakes her head. "No, it wouldn't. Any anyway, you only get a ghost when something dies. So you would have to make a pudding and then kill it to get a ghost pudding"
I shut the door on them. I think a large drink to go along with dinner is very much in order.

Now showing in glorious Vomi-color!

2010-11-22T19:20:00.001+00:00

Our local cinema, on a Sunday morning. They run a special offer every weekend, whereby fairly recent children's films, which are no longer on general release, are shown for £1 a seat - presumably as a way of milking out those last ticket sales before the DVD is released. On the premise that it is (a) raining and (b) cheap, we thought it might be a nice idea to bring our two to see 'How to train your dragon', which the promotional leaflet tells us is showing in 'mind-melting 3D'. Unfortunately, when we arrive we quickly realise that everybody else with a child under seven living in a ten-mile radius has had the same idea. The place is packed, full of willing punters all happy to have their minds melted by however many dimensions it takes, as long as it shuts the children up and gets them 90 minutes of relative peace.The queue is colossal.
"Did you book the tickets?" I ask The Wife.
"No. Why would I book? It's only a pound each. The price would double with credit card fees. And it won't help, the queue for ticket pickup is just as long as the box office."
I look at the ticket pickup queue. She is right, it is enormous. A confused-looking woman at the front seems to be trying an endless succession of different credit cards in and out of the machine, while her children swing off her arms and the people behind her 'tut' with impatience. She look harassed, and the queue looks angry.
"What shall we do?" I ask, fully expecting The Wife to say 'bugger this, let's go somewhere else'.
"I'll queue up for tickets," she says. "You go over there and get sweets or something." She points me to the queue for the popcorn counter. It is longer than all the other queues combined. They should take a photograph of it, and print it in the dictionary next to the entry for 'despair', for illustrative purposes.
"I am not spectacularly happy with that outcome," I announce, though perhaps not in those precise words.
"Get queueing" she says, waving me imperiously away.
Eldest elects to come with me, presumably not so much because she prefers my company over her mother's, but more because of my increased proximity to sweets. She has already put her 3D glasses on, saved from the last time we visited, and is gazing about her in puzzlement.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Nothing looks different," she says. "Except that it's all darker."
It take me a second to realise what she means. "No," I say, "You don't need those glasses to see 3D in the real world. It's 3D already."
She moves a hand back and forth in front of her face while pulling the glasses up and down, to see if my theory stands up to scientific scrutiny. A woman ahead of us smiles at her indulgently, as if she can't decide if Eldest is being cute or is just simple.
A man and woman come up to join the queue behind us. He looks at it carefully, and then turns to her and says "I just don't like popcorn enough to go through all that." They walk away.
I have to agree with them. I don't like popcorn that much either: I even think the three minutes it takes to make it from scratch at home in a saucepan is too high a price to pay for the end result. But at this point I notice the Häagen-Dazs concession stand. There is no queue for that - I don't want ice cream at 10:30 in the morning on a Sunday, and it appears that nobody else does either. But it looks like they also sell the same bags of sweets as the main cinema shop. Perfect.
I march Eldest over to to the stand. "Hello," I begin. "Do you sell sweets?"
"Yeah, we do" says the deeply interested man behind the counter.
At this point, I hear hurried footsteps heading in my direction. I turn round to see Youngest, hurtling towards me, her face grey and with panic in her eyes.
"Daddy! she cries, "Daddy! Quick! I think I'm going to be...Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerugh..."
And then she throws up, all over the front of the Häagen-Dazs stand.
The people standing in the queue for the main shop, watching this little drama unfold, all make a disgusted 'urgh' noise, and the whole line seems to shimmy as it takes a collective step back from us.
"Ah..." I say, for wont of anything else.
"More coming!" shrieks Youngest, bracing herself against the side of the concession stand."Daddy, more sick is coming! Dadddeeee....Bleeeeeeuugh"
A second, larger dollop of foul-smelling white poultice is deposited on the floor.
"Wow. Cool." say Eldest, who is studying the scene with interest from behind her glasses, and is presumably thinking that the whole incident been arranged for her benefit, in order to demonstrate the immersive power that 3D imagery can bring to the vomiting experience.
"It smells of lemons," she observes, with detached scientific precision. "And you can see where she was eating pickled onion Space Raiders...." A woman in the queue gags audibly at this.
"Did you want some sweets?" asks the man behind the counter, with some impatience. I realise that the entire incident has taken place at knee-height, out of his field of vision, and he has thus seen nothing. I turn back to him and smile brightly.
"Could I have some of these paper napkins?" I ask, helping myself to a large stack before he can answer.
"Yes..." he says. Then, slightly aggrieved: "I thought you wanted sweets?"
"Personally, not quite so much now, no..." I say, judging the puddle on the floor below and helping myself to more napkins
"I want sweets" says Eldest, automatically.
"Me too..." says Youngest, who has straightened up and seems almost cheerful now her stomach is empty.
"Fine," I say, deciding that the path of least resistance is probably easiest here. "A family bag of Malteasers, please. And more napkins. And could you point me at your nearest rubbish bin?"
Later, with the floor mopped up and the dirty napkins disposed of, I discuss the incident with my wife.
"It smelled of lemons..." I say, wrinkling my nose.
"Well, yes," she says. "It would. I gave her a lemon to eat in the car."
I find this statement so outlandish that I feel I have to challenge each element of it individually: "You gave her a lemon? To eat? In the car?" I say, each question increasing in pitch to denote my rising tide of incredulity.
"Yes," she says, clearly annoyed, and then mimics my voice in her reply: "Yes, I did. Because she asked for a lemon. To eat. For breakfast. In the ca-aar..."
"A lemon?" I repeat.
"Oh, don't keep saying it. She likes lemon."
"Yeah, but didn't you think it would make her sick?"
"That wasn't the lemon. That was because of your driving. You were swinging the car about too much..."
"We were late..." I interject.
"...so when she told me she was going to be sick, I said, 'Go and tell Daddy'..."
"Wait a minute, she told you she felt ill? And so you sent her over to me to throw up on?"
She looks defensive. "Well, I wasn't giving up my place in the queue..." she says.

The tale of the sea anenome

2010-11-01T20:44:00.003+00:00

It is about one o'clock in the morning, and all four of us are awake - and although all in bed, only my wife is where she should be. This is because Youngest is ill with a nasty chest infection and keeps coughing herself awake, which means that I have been turfed out of my bed to allow her to sleep in the same bed as her mother, because she somehow finds her presence soothing. I find this frankly unfathomable, because 'soothing' is about the last thing I would describe sharing a bed with my wife as, but there you go. This means that I have been banished to the spare bed, in the loft (which is not as Dickensian as it sounds: there are proper walls, windows and carpeting up there, even if you do have to climb a ladder to get into it). Fidgeting away beside me is Eldest, who started crying and had a major tantrum when her sister swapped beds because it left her all alone in their room, and so after much fuss it was decided she would share with me in the spare bed so she wouldn't be lonely. This may sound sweet, but is actually quite annoying, as I am exhausted, whereas she is feeling chatty and wants a story.
"I will tell you about the last time I had to share a bed with you, if you like?" I offer, sensing an opportunity to impart a valuable life lesson about not making a needless fuss.
She nods without any enthusiasm, perhaps (rightly) realising that this is about the best she can expect, and that I'm really not going to climb back down the ladder and return with a selection of picture books for her to choose from, no matter how many time she says 'please' and makes puppy-dog eyes.
"It was about four years ago - you were still very little. Mummy was still pregnant with your sister..."
"What does pregnant mean?"
"That's definitely a story for another time. For this story it just means your sister wasn't born yet and Mummy needed to sleep in a proper bed, OK?"
"OK"
"Well, we were staying at Nanny's house. Mummy and Daddy were sleeping in the spare room, and you had your little blow-up bed in the other room. But you were scared, and kept waking up, so wanted one of us to sleep in the same room as you..."
"So you did?"
"Yes. It was a long night."
"Why?"
"Well, first of all I had to make up the sofa bed up, then find a blanket. And then, once I'd done that, you decided you wanted to sleep on the bed next to me, but still stay in your blow-up bed. So I had to lift your whole bed up and lie it next to me on the sofa bed."
"That doesn't sound bad. That sounds funny..."
"Oh, you had only just got started with your demands. Then you decided you wanted to share my blanket, so I had to drape it over you which meant it wasn't quite wide enough to cover me, so I got a cold draught up my back. I had to go and find my sweatshirt to sleep in, but you didn't want to me leave you alone and so I had to carry around Nanny's house in the dark, bumping into things while I looked for my sweatshirt..."
"Nanny has a special cupboard where she hangs all the coats and jumpers up."
"Yes. I know that now. Anyway, when I found my sweatshirt, and put you back in your bed on my bed, you decided it was too dark..."
"So you put the light on?"
"So I put the light on. But then you said it was too bright..."
"Hmmm..." she says sagely, in sympathy with her younger self - as if unpleasant ambient light levels have been a lifelong burden that she has just somehow had to learn to deal with.
"So I turned the light back off. But then it was too dark again. So I had to pick you up, again, because you didn't want to be left on your own, and blunder into the front room, where Nanny had this battery operated table-light made of fibre optic threads..."
"I don't know what that is..."
"The sea anemone light. The one you use to play with all the time."
"Oh, that one. I liked that one."
"Yes. You used to pick it up all the time..."
"It used to change colour. It was pretty. But I don't think she has it any more."
"No. No, she doesn't."
"What happened to it?"
"I believe you broke it, shortly after this story takes place..."
She ponders this.
"She should definitely buy another one. What happened next?"
"Well, I went and got the sea anemone light, and put in our room, and put you in your bed, but on my bed, though under my blanket, with the main light off...and then you said the sea anemone light was too far away for you to see it properly. In the end I spent half the night lying on my back gazing at the ceiling with the sea anemone light held on my chest, just so you would go sleep..."
"Ha!" she says, amused.
"It is not funny," I say. "Now, think; why do you think I am telling you this? You were very little, but you are much bigger now. So what does that story tell you?" I ask.
She goes quiet while she thinks about it. I wonder how she must feel, hearing about the demands her younger self used to make. It is a silly sweet story, I think, but there is a point to it, and she is old enough to realise that sometimes you just need to get on with things for the sake of others...
"I think," she announces, brow furrowed in concentration, "it says that you used to be a much nicer Daddy than you are now?"
I am at a loss for words. I literally have no idea what to say.
She senses opportunity and presses on: "Can you buy us a new sea anemone light?"

A bit of a stitch-up...

2010-09-28T20:38:00.002+01:00

I am sitting in my favourite armchair by the window, reading the paper while sipping tea and grimacing.
The reasons for the grimace are twofold: firstly the newspaper has done its best to assure me that the world in general (and the country in particular) is slipping slowly but inexorably into financial meltdown, and secondly because my tea contains artificial sweeteners instead of sugar, and therefore tastes just like a good cup of tea that has been ruined with a teaspoonful of shite.
I have been trying to wean myself off the good stuff and onto a low-calorie alternative for some time, but I have found it surprisingly difficult - none of the products I have tried have met their manufacturers promise of tasting 'just like the real thing'; instead each has had a peculiar tang which seems to have been custom-designed by scientists to render tea undrinkable. All the sweeteners I have tried have seemed unpleasantly chemical, almost metallic, giving a taste which I have come to mentally associate with drinking from a robots shoe - an image which does nothing to contribute to any enjoyment I might take out of the process.
In the background I can hear the hum of a sewing machine, accompanied by the low mutter of conversation and the occasional giggle: my wife is clearly doing some craft project or other with the children that has them enthralled. I have just turned to the sport pages, to read of a shocking recent performance by Arsenal FC that does nothing to lift my mood, when Youngest appears at the door with a message for me:
"Daddy, Mummy says do you want her to fix your floppy willy?"
I look at her. She looks back at me. She doesn't appear to be joking.
"Pardon?" I ask, after the longest pause.
"Mummy wants to know if you want her to stop your willy flopping?" she reiterates.
There is another, longer pause. She looks at me expectantly throughout, while I look at her as if she has just landed from Mars.
"No, she doesn't..." I decide, having mentally worked through as many possible scenarios that could have led to this statement, and finding none that can explain it.
"She does. She has her sewing machine out. She says she can fix it now."
That sounds both implausible and also quite eye-watering. I put down the paper and rise from the chair to investigate. Youngest takes this as a sign that I am willing to participate in....well, whatever it is that my wife has in mind, and runs off ahead, calling over her shoulder: "Go and fetch your pyjamas..."
This is sounding really ominous now. I enter the dining room with some trepidation.
"Where are they, then?" asks my wife as I enter. I notice that the craft project she has been doing is making bunting, but I am not sure that we have much to celebrate. It all seems very incongruous.
"Where are my what?" I ask
"Your pyjamas. The ones with the big hole in the seam at the crotch" she explains.
"That your willy might flop out of, if you wear them again..." clarifies Eldest.
"Oh..." I say.
"Nobody wants to see that..." adds my Wife.
"No!" chorus both girls in unison.
"Um..." I say, usefully.
"Go and get them, while I have the sewing machine out," says my wife. "And get that other pair as well, they look like they're going in the same place, I've no idea why - what is it that you do that seems to destroy pyjamas from the crotch outward?"
"Er..." I reply, by way of explanation.
"They are upstairs" she says, pointedly, with unmasked impatience.
"Upstairs, Daddy..." echoes Youngest.
"In your drawer," adds Eldest, as if dealing with a simpleton.
I go upstairs and find my pyjamas with the torn crotch, then return them to the cabal huddled around the sewing machine. My wife holds up my pyjamas, thrusts her hand through the hole and 'tuts' noisily. My children look at me as if I have committed some kind of hate crime. I back out of the room, feeling inexplicably diminished by the whole experience.
I sit back down in the armchair, and take another gulp of tea. It really does taste bitter.

Long queues and wrong clowns

2010-09-14T21:06:00.001+01:00

A seaside town in Cornwall.
I am sitting, pretending to gaze out to sea, but in actual fact my eyesight seems to be deteriorating at an alarming rate so I am just actually gazing vacantly at a vague grey blur: it could be anything, really - but I can hear seagulls, the air smells faintly of fish and the car park was stupidly expensive, so I'm going to go ahead assume it actually is the English seaside. The faint spatter of rain suggests it is, anyway.
Snuggled next to me, gazing out at the scene, (which she can presumably see in far greater clarity) is Eldest. She is wrapped in a black and white polka-dotted waterproof jacket with a hood, which she has zipped it up tightly against the elements, giving her the appearance of a ninja Dalmatian. All I can really see of her is a vague opening that contains a huge pair of eyes, though there must be a mouth in there somewhere as well, because an ice-cream is disappearing into the gap at an alarming rate. Her mother and sister are currently absent, away somewhere queueing for the toilet yet again. We seem to spent a lot of our 'quality leisure time' as a family queueing for toilets. Fortunately, as both our children are girls, this is my wife's responsibility - she tells me that the length of the queue tends to be in inverse proportion to the quality of the surroundings when you finally get to your seat, so I'm pretty happy to not be involved. On this occasion both Wife and Youngest have been gone for quite some time, so I idly wonder if the operation has gone as smoothly as it might - I live in dread of a repeat of the infamous '2009 Legoland incident' (which was the occasion when after queuing for thirty minutes for the only serviceable cubicle, Youngest decided to exit by sliding out on her back through the gap under the door - leaving it locked from within, to my Wife's embarrassment and the despair of thirty onlookers with crossed legs). I gaze into the middle distance and shudder at the recollection.
"Daddy," asks Eldest, suddenly, "What do you think of your holiday?"
I look down into her hood aperture. What I can see of her looks genuinely interested. I am suddenly quite touched.
"Well," I say "I know the weather's not great, but I'm having a good time. It's always nice to go away together, isn't it? And it's lovely for me to see so much of you and your sister, because I often miss you when I've been at work all day.You're both growing up so quickly, so it's great for me to spend time with you and just relax. So: I like my holiday very much. Thank you for asking."
The hood nods slightly, as if carefully digesting this information.
"What do you think about it?" I ask.
"I think you are a bum-clown" she replies, without missing a beat.
I pause. I must have misheard.
"A what?"
"A bum-clown"
"A bum-clown?"
"Yes - a bum-clown. A clown whose head is a bum."
I gaze sadly back out to sea, lost for words.
"His whole head..." she clarifies.
I nod mutely.
"I just made that up" she adds proudly.
"I see..." I manage to say.
Behind me I can hear raised voices coming from the toilet block. I sigh, and think: four more days and I can go back to work...
"Can I have another ice-cream?" asks Eldest.
"No," I say. "On the whole, I think not..."

Real men use their fingers...

2010-08-29T12:12:00.002+01:00

A camping shop in Cornwall. I am drifting up and down the aisle, brow furrowed in concentration. The shop is full of serious outdoor-living men, who are all shopping for serious outdoor-living equipment: tents that can survive a force 7 storm, rucksacks that can save your back from breaking in the event of a cliff fall, hermetically sealed bio-nutrient bars that will allow you to survive for days in the desert - that kind of thing.
I really feel quite out of place. I am not a serious outdoor-living type. I am not, in fact, any kind of 'outdoor living type'. I dislike mud and rain and nature; I much prefer the comforts of home: books, Nintendo, the Internet, ready access to Salt'n'vinegar Hula Hoops and a nice cheeseboard, soft toilet paper, etc etc.
Nonetheless, I am browsing in the camping shop, because it looks like it may be the only place for miles that has what I need: I am shopping for a knife.
I am also hoping I can find one with minimal fuss, quickly purchase it and then leave with no questions being asked: I really do not want to have to explain what I am doing in there in front of all the survivalist types. Sadly, the shop assistant has other ideas...
"Can I help you sir?" she asks. She is, as you may expect, also a serious-outdoor living type. She is broad and strong and tattooed - almost fearfully so. I suspect she may have been suckled by wolves.
"Um, no, that's all right..." I say.
"It's just that it can be bit hard to find things in here", she adds with cheerful persistence. "We carry so much stock.."
What the hell, I think, if I keep my query general enough it might speed things up...
"Where do you keep your knives?" I ask.
Her eyes light up. "Fishing or camping? she asks. I notice that some of the various survivalist types in the shop have overheard and are now taking a passing interest: I suspect that they all have a knife on them - they look the type. In fact, some of them look like they always sleep with a knife close to hand, and perhaps have even given that knife a pet name and like to talk to it at night.
"Um, camping? I think..." I manage to say.
She begins to lead me towards the display of lethal weapons I noticed beneath the glass counter when I first walk in. Sadly, I know this is not what I am looking for.
"Ah, no, I don't really need a sharp-bladed knife.." I say
The shop assistant pauses, confused. This obviously sounds like nonsense - why would I want a knife without a sharp blade? "What do you need a knife for, then,?" she asks.
Here it comes, I think. I clear my throat.
"I need it to spread houmos on bread," I say.
She looks at me blankly. I hasten to explain further:
"You see, my wife and children are outside - we are having a picnic. And my wife has brought this houmus, and also some nice brie, but forget to pack a knife. So I can't spread either of them on the bread she brought..."
The shop assistant continues to look at me as if I am raving mad.
"Of course, I can just tear the bread," I say, as if that somehow demonstrates my outdoor survival skills. "But you can't really spread houmos with your fingers...well, I don't think you can, anyway. My wife says I'm being fussy, but your shop was just here, and..."
"You want a picnic knife," the assistant says flatly, though the faint note of disdain in her voice is unmistakable.
"Yes..."
"This way please..."
A few minutes later, I rejoin my wife outside. I notice that most of the houmos has already been eaten, as has a large proportion of the bread. My wife looks up at me expectantly, so I hold up my purchase: a large pack of bright yellow picnic cutlery which has cost me about three times what I was hoping to spend.
"What have you brought all that for?" she asks, puzzled.
"It was all they had. I figured we might use them again.On other picnics..."
She shrugs. "Normally I just bring our standard knifes if we need one."
"Yes," I agree, pointedly. "Normally you do..."

PS: Apparently that really is how you spell 'houmos' (or at least, one of the ways). I still think it looks wrong, but then (and now you should brace yourself for some comedy gold)...it's all Greek to me.

It's all down to Daddy...

2010-06-20T18:24:00.002+01:00

In retrospect, its easy to imagine how it happened. I'll never know for certain, but I suspect it occurred a few days ago, and went something like this:
Eldest is sitting at the dining table, swinging her legs and frowning. In front of her is a folded sheet of card, onto which she has drawn a picture of me (looking both younger and slimmer than I actually am - though in real life I have a full compliment of fingers and both my arms are the same length). She has drawn me wearing an England football top, and then drawn herself alongside me with her hands held aloft, a speech bubble spilling from her mouth that reads "Goal".
Clearly not a work of realism then, as nobody in an England shirt seems to be in danger of scoring at the moment - though perhaps it's not that farfetched in other respects, as I do feel that on England's current form that even I have a chance of qualifying for the squad (though that is not saying much, because on this weeks evidence I also think that Eldest plays well enough to have easily earned a place - and she is six, and prone to sitting down on the ball itself for a breather if she gets a bit tired).
Within the card, she has written "Dear Daddy, Happy Fathers Day". This has not taken up much space, so she calls out for her mother, who is doubtless pottering about in the kitchen making yet another cake.
"I have too much space left in my card," she shouts. "What else can I write?"
"Write something nice about Daddy..." calls her Mother.
I imagine, at this point, that there is lengthy pause while Eldest gazes out of the window with furrowed brow.
"Like what?" she asks finally, clearly out of ideas.
Again, I imagine at this point there is another, lengthy pause, while her Mother suddenly halts with an icing bag in her fingers and also realises the impossibility of the task.
"Tell Daddy how grateful you are to have him," calls her Mother in the end. "Write about some of the nice things he does for you..."
"I don't know what you mean?"
"Tell Daddy what he means to you. Just write a thank you to Daddy for all he does for you..."
There is another pause. Then Eldest shrugs, and sets to work with her felt tip.

Which is why today, on Father's day, I open a card that reads as follows:

" Dear Daddy.

Happy Fathers Day.

Thank you for earning all the money that buys me things"

Love..."

Lousy news from seat 8C...

2010-05-26T21:15:00.002+01:00

We are on a crowded aeroplane, recently landed after a 4 hour flight, in those first few minutes after coming to a halt - the point when the seat belt light has gone off and everybody has stood up, but nobody can get out. Instead everybody surges forward, hungry for space, desperate to be out of this unnatural flying tin can and back on solid ground where the air doesn't smell so much of socks and boredom. The people in the window seats, trapped in place, frown anxiously because they want to stand up but can't without bashing their heads on the overhead lockers. There is much aggressive arranging of hand baggage and general tutting.
In the seat behind me, Eldest yawns, stretches and looks around, bemused at all the people who have magically appeared in the aisle beside her.
"Hello, sweetie," I say. "How are you feeling?"
"My head itches" she says.
"You've probably slept on it awkwardly."
"No," she says breezily. "I think I have headlice."
The people nearest us, crammed stupidly close together - and thus able to hear everything but unable to move away - laugh with a gentle insincerity. They are mildly amused and mildly concerned, in about equal measure.
"You do not have headlice..." says her mother automatically. But we are both thinking about the text we recently received from school notifying us of an outbreak of headlice in her class. (Warnings of childhood parasite infections via SMS are apparently standard practice in a lot of UK educational establishments these days. I know - how lucky we all are, eh? What a time to be alive...)
I fix my best fake smile in place and glance around at my fellow passengers. I decide I will make a bit of a joke of it all.
"Can't you speak a bit louder, next time?" I say to Eldest, putting on a hideous 'ha ha, kids say the funniest things, eh?' tone for the benefit of our audience. "The people at the back of the plane can't hear you..."
There are some wry smiles from the crowd.
Eldest looks puzzled. The she stands on her seat, faces the back of the place, and shouts:
"MY HEAD ITCHES. I THINK I HAVE GOT HEADLICE. ."
There is a pause. People further down the plane, hearing this news for the first time, laugh gently. The people immediately around us, I notice, do not laugh nearly as much this time round.
"SHE REALLY DOESN'T..." calls my wife reassuringly down the body of the aircraft,
"YES, WE ARE ALL VERY CLEAN AND PARASITE-FREE...." I add.
"HEADLICE!" calls Youngest, not wanting to be left out.
The women next to me starts to involuntarily scratch at the back of her head.
There is long queue at passport control. A lot of people glare at us while we all stand in it.

Butt-flies, gi-ants and hungry caterpillars

2010-05-04T21:57:00.000+01:00

And so, on a blustery and wet bank Holiday Monday, to Butterfly World, newly opened for the Summer season. Their website explained very carefully that only phase one (of three) of the build was complete, so my expectations were duly curtailed ("No, kids, I'm afraid the giant tropical biodome will not be ready - but where it will stand there is a large chalk outline of a butterfly on the ground that you can...look at"), but even so, I was kind of hoping to see, well, a butterfly or two. That seems reasonable, no?
It's not that I'm a huge butterfly fan, or anything, but when an attraction goes to all the trouble of putting an insect so prominently in their name, you do kind of expect a few of them to be knocking about. Sadly, I saw none. I am certain they were there: there was a tropical greenhouse to go into, which under the circumstances it would have been surprising if it contained, say, lizards - but there was a queue, and my need to see butterflies is not as great as my need not to stand out in intermittent drizzle for 45 minutes. And there was plenty else to see, after all.
"There are no butt-flies here..." says Youngest, shivering at my side as we gaze up at the 50ft tall sculpture of an ant that stands a short walk from the cafe.
"No..." I agree, thinking that in this wind they wouldn't have a prayer anyway, they'd all be blown out to sea. "Not yet, anyway. Maybe we'll see some later."
"There was a butt-fly in our garden..." says Youngest.
"Yes," I agree, the sad truth being that the only butterfly we have seen so far today was the one we encountered on the path while walking from our house to the car. And that one was dead.
"This is a model of an ant..." observes Eldest, her neck craned, her brow furrowed.

"Yes..." I agree, somewhat needlessly.
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why? It's a sculpture. It's just for looking at."
"Yes, but why is it an ant?"
"I don't really know."
"This is Butterfly World. And they made a sculpture of an ant..."
"Yes.."
"A really big, giant ant"
"Yes?"
"Why isn't it a butterfly? For Butterfly World?"
"I...I don't know.
"This isn't Ant World. It doesn't make sense..."
"No, I guess not..."
There is a pause. She gazes up at it, impassively, as if seeking some deeper meaning in its fibreglass mandibles.
"Perhaps," she decides, "the people who made it are all stupid."
"No," I say, hastily. "I'm sure that's not it..."
"Maybe they do not know the difference between an ant and a butterfly..."
"I'm sure they do..."
"Butt-flies have wings" adds Youngest, in case the point needed clarification.
"Exactly..." says Eldest, as if this has proved her theory.
"Oh, look, shall we go over there?" I suggest, pointing in the direction of the gift shop.
"They can stick wings on later..." suggests Youngest.
"That will not be a butterfly" says Eldest, dismissively. "That will just be an ant with wings."
"Perhaps it's a joke?" I suggest. "It's a giant ant. A giant. A gi-ant. See?"
Neither child laughs. Youngest looks confused. Eldest looks scornful.
"But that is a really bad joke..." she says in wonderment, as if the lunacy of adults never ceases to amaze her.
"Let's see what all those people are looking at..." I say, dragging them away.
What they are looking at, it turns out, is somebody dressed up as the Very Hungry Caterpillar.
"Wow, look!", I say to Youngest. "It's the Very Hungry Caterpillar! You love him..."
She shrinks back and hides behind my legs.
"What's the matter? I ask
"He is big..." she says, eyes wide.
"Yes?"
"He might eat me..."
"What? Don't be silly! He is lovely! Why would he eat you?"
"Because he is hungry. It is his name..."
"He is very hungry..." corrects Eldest.
"He doesn't eat people!" I say. "He's a caterpillar. He eats fruit..."
"Actually he eats lots of things," corrects Eldest. "He eats anything He eats sausage on the last day. And salami. So he likes meat..."
"I don't like him.." say Youngest, in a tiny voice.
Eldest studies the Very Hungry Caterpillar appraisingly, as if weighing him up.
"I think he might eat children" she decides. As she speaks, the first drops of very heavy rain start to spot the tarmac.
"Let's go home" I decide.

Miss Mischief in the morning

2010-04-17T13:03:00.000+01:00

Easter holidays. This means, unusually, that my children are sometimes not awake when I get up to go to work. Which mean that I occasionally have to go into their room (they are currently sharing a bedroom) to give them a goodbye kiss.
To my mind, never are the differences between their personalities more apparent than first thing in the morning...
Eldest is snuggled under layer upon layer of blankets, like a dormouse in its nest. She has dozens of soft toys scattered around her, arranged in a strict heirarchy according to their popularity, which then dictates their position in relation to where she sleeps: first-rank toys get to share the bed with her, second-rank get to sit on the bed, third-rank go have on the chair and fourth rank can sod off up onto the shelf (this is a system I believe she has inherited from her mother, who often threatens me with demotion to the sofa downstairs). Regardless of rank, all of Eldest's soft toys are kept in pristine condiction, but there really are a lot of them: it is occasionally quite difficult to find her in the bed, lost amongst the myriad bunnies and teddies and kitties.When I gives her a kiss, she opens her huge, placid eyes and yawns, then immediately snuggles back down again, with the languid air of a sleepy cat.
In contrast, Youngest's bedclothes are scattered, literally, across the entire room, and her soft toys - ugh, I can barely talk about them. They are clearly much loved, but she happily 'doubles them up' as both a chew toy and as a handy absorbant surface for the mopping up spillages, including anything that comes out of her nose. Her bed gives off the faint but undeniable tang of a hamster cage as a result. Nonetheless, as I approach she sits bolt upright in bed and gives me what appears to be the dazzling smile of a lottery winner.
"Good morning, little one," I say to her. "You look cheerful..."
"Hello, stinky bum" she says, gleefully.
"I beg your pardon?" I ask.
"Stinky bum" she repeats, and then, in case further clarification was needed: "Your bum is stinky..."
I realise that it was not the genuine smile of a lottery winner after all. Instead it was the sly false smile of the person who collects the subscription money from the lottery syndicate each week, but who then secretly spends it on vodka and cigarettes instead of tickets.
"Stinky. Stinky bum", she says, than adds: "Farty".
"I am not farty.." I say
"You are. I heard you. It sounded like a duck."
This is disconcerting, because, well, as it happens I did fart recently. In bed. Fairly loudly, in fact. Even now, my wife is still lying in bed, grimacing, with the covers pulled up tightly under her chin to stop any noxious vapours seeping up from where I have left them under the duvet. This is now part of our traditional morning routine: breaking wind is something I tend do within five minutes of waking up every morning, and she is quite used to it by now. For the first few months when we shared a bed, mornings were excruciating, what with me having to get up and go into the bathroom to blow off, just so that I could keep up the pretence that I was civilised. We've been together for 12 years now and I no longer bother - but even so, it's not something you want your three-year-old to be commenting on.
"If it sounded like a duck," I say, attempting to dazzle her with 'adult' logic, "then perhaps it was a duck." Even as I say it, I know I am on a hiding to nothing.
She looks rightfully skeptical. "There are no ducks in your bedroom, silly..."
"Maybe it was outside the window."
"No, it was a fart", she says decisively.
"Maybe it was Mummy..." I suggest, marvelling inwardly at how little shame I feel while doing so.
"No. It was you. You did it..."
I decide it best that we leave this topic of conversation. "I am going to work soon," I tell her. "So if you want to get up and watch the TV, I'll put it on for you."
"Don't want to. Want Mummy."
"Fine."
She wanders after me back into the bedroom.
"It smells in here" she comments. I say nothing.
She looks at where her mother is feigning sleep in the hope that she will be left alone. She needn't have bothered: Youngest climbs bodily over her to get into the side of the bed that I recently vacated. I hear my wife groan as her kidneys are battered by a tiny elbow.
"Wakey-up time!" announces Youngest, throwing my pillow on the floor to give herself more room. She notices that I am trying to furtively get dressed.
"I can see your knickers, Daddy," she comments. "They are stripy"
"These are boxer shorts" I reply.
"Knickers" she insists.
"I do not wear knickers. Men do not wear knickers..."
"Knickers," she repeats, bottom lip jutting.
I decide to cut my losses and leave - what the hell, I can always finish pulling my trousers on as I make my way downstairs. As I hop out of the door I see that my wife has cracked open a single eyelid and is observing my departure balefully.
"Good luck with that today", I say, pointing at Youngest.
As I descend out of view, socks in hand, I hear a little voice saying that Daddy did a fart and tried to blame it on Mummy, and can she please have chocolate for breakfast?

Dirty talk at bedtime

2010-03-21T22:25:00.003+00:00

It is late evening. There is nothing on the TV I feel like watching, I have finished the book I was reading, and I am bored of playing 'Super Smash Brothers' on the Wii. My mind turns, as it always does under similar circumstances, to thoughts of a 'romantic' nature.
I communicate this to my wife by crashing into the living room and announcing, in a voice that I hope is heavy with implication, that: "I am going to bed."
She does not look up from her knitting. "Yes, you should," she says. "You could do with an early night - you look awful at the moment...really tired."
"No," I say, patiently. "I mean that I am going...to bed." I arch my eyebrows in what I hope is a suggestive manner, though the effort is wasted because she still does not look up (which is perhaps just as well, because when I catch sight of myself in the hall mirror I just look confused and angry, which is not the look I was going for at all.)
"Yes, you just said that," she replies, then adds "When you get upstairs, will you check on the girls? You might need to take the little one to the toilet, she had a lot to drink this evening and I'm worried she might wet the bed again..."
I sigh, and decide that subtlety is not getting me anywhere."When I said I was going to bed, what I really meant was that I thought that we could go to bed. Together."
That finally makes her look my way. She realises the full implications of what I am suggesting and wrinkles her nose in faint distaste. I sometimes think my wife considers 'marital relations' in roughly the same way as she thinks about putting the bins out on a Thursday: it's an unwelcome chore to have to do last thing at night and she'd rather she didn't have to do it, but nonetheless she understands that for the smooth running of the household it's necessary that it happens at roughly weekly intervals.
There is a pause while she mulls my suggestion. I lurk in the doorway, feeling faintly stupid..
"But I am watching Mad Men...." she says finally, pointing at the television in case I need corroborative evidence.
"You can record it."
"Well, I suppose it's nearly finished."
"Come up after that, then..."
"Meh..." she says, which I take to mean begrudging acquiescence. Then, nodding at the TV, she adds: "Donald Draper is very sexy..."
"You can pretend I'm him if you think it will help..." I say, stalking off upstairs.
Thirty minutes later, she slides into bed next to me. Sadly, this is not the beginning of the magical experience I had been hoping for.
"Did you take the little one to the toilet?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Did she go?"
"Yes..."
"Good. Was it just a wee?"
"Yes. Look, can we talk about something else? This isn't doing much for the mood..."
"Ooh, that reminds me! Did I tell you what I read in a magazine the other day?"
"No, I don't think so."
"The thing about the underwear?"
"Underwear? No, you didn't. That sounds much more promising. What magazine was it?"
"I can't remember. A woman's magazine."
"OK. So, it's about ladies underwear? Tell me about it..."
"I read that every item of underwear that you put in your laundry bin..."
"Stop right there. This is about laundry?"
"Yes."
"Oh, for the love of..."
"Shh, listen, it's interesting...every item of underwear you put in the linen bin has, on average, a tenth of a gram of faecal matter in it..."
There is a pause.
"Can you believe that?" she adds.
"No..." I say. "And I can't believe you're telling me. In fact, why are you telling me? I don't want to know that..."
"A tenth of gram!" she says again, in wonder.
"That....that sounds like a lot of faeces..." I say weakly, noticing the linen bin by the door.
"I know - it does! They even suggested you should wear rubber gloves when you load up the washing machine..."
"Please stop talking..." I say. I can't help but notice that the linen bin looks like it has a full weeks' worth of family washing in it (and thus, if her figures are to be believed, at least two grams of family faeces).
"I put our bedsheets and the girls knickers in the same white wash all the time...they suggested you don't do that..."
"Look, I'm begging you, stop talking..."
She giggles, and puts her hand on my stomach. I recoil as if punched.
"Don't tell me you're squeamish, Mr Draper?" she says.
"Don't touch me! Did you wash those hands before you came to bed?" I shout.

Hey look, it's the missus...

2010-03-09T23:01:00.005+00:00

I am upstairs staring down at the toilet bowl.
It is clear from the evidence in front of me that I am not the first to visit this smallest room today, and that one (indeed, possibly both) of my children have made use of the facilities before me. We have a (haha) backlog situation.
There are two distinct camps when it comes to talking about impending fatherhood: on the one hand you have the whole "That's it, mate - your life is over" hard-drinking school of mock manly despair, and allied against them you have the whole hippy-trippy life-affirming "best thing that will ever happen to you" crowd. For my money, I could have used a more useful, practical assessment of the road ahead, so let me pass this on to impending fathers: when your kids are small, you will spend lot of time wandering around behind them, turning off the lights and running taps that they have left on, stepping on discarded Lego bricks in your bare feet, and flushing toilets.
There will certainly be moments of despair, even anguish- and yes, also wonderful golden soaring moments when your chest threatens to burst with swelling love and pride - but between these moments you will encounter a lot of food mashed into the carpet, pick up a lot of strewn clothes and watch a great many sub par Disney films. You will fruitlessly search toy shops for items that have long sold out. You will inevitably learn, through some unsought and unwanted osmosis, some of the lyrics to High School Musical, and the names of about thirty Pokemon. And for a period of about two years, you will find every toilet in your house has been mysteriously pre-used, and will contain a vile tobacco-coloured liquid that will occasionally not flush away due to the huge volume of toilet paper wedged into the U-bend.
That's the road ahead, fella - my gift to you. Pay it forward.
Of course, everyone has different mechanisms to cope with these trials: I myself like to idly imagine the death, in a huge multi-car fireball, of many of my fellow commuters on the M1 at 8.10 each morning, and I also write this blog. Which brings me, finally to the point of this post: even as I was bending a coat hanger into a suitable shape for clearing blocked sanitaryware, I could hear the tap tap tap of a keyboard downstairs.
This is because my wife now also blogs, but if you were to visit her site you would never believe (a) that we lived in the same house or (b) that she remained married to me.
This is because her blog is chock-full of nice things: of soft furnishings and ribbons, and colour swatches and LOTS of cake. She one did a post about fabric, and a woman in a trendy New York loft commented how much she liked her typeface selection. This is clearly not a world I either know or understand, but as she continually directs site traffic over here (very few visitors stick around, it must be said) it's high time I returned the favour: why not go and see what the woman who married the troll thinks about life? You can find her over here. (Warning: site may contain pictures of cushions, and also people being nice to each other)
Please tell her I sent you. I always need the brownie points...

Beardwatch: two weeks of whiskers

2010-02-24T20:19:00.009+00:00

Days 1-3: These don't really count, as any beard growth during these days is both minimal and simply a result of laziness. At any given point I normally have a light dusting of grimy whiskers, which are due entirely to an ongoing lack of interest in my own personal appearance, rather than in any attempt at facial styling.
Day 3: Have the dawning realisation that my chin now makes a faint scratching noise when rubbed. As a result I spend several happy minutes sitting alone at the dining table, absent-mindedly stroking my nascent whiskers with the back of a teaspoon in order to listen to the variations in whispering tone the different parts of my face now produce. This experiment is rudely interrupted by The Wife, who tartly requests that I make sure I put the teaspoon straight in the dishwasher when I have finished.
I decide I will let the whiskers grow for bit, and see what happens. At this point, I am officially 'growing a beard' and Beardwatch 2010 has formally commenced.
Day 4: My whiskers are thickening in a really strange pattern. From a distance, it looks as if my face has been cupped lovingly in the hands of a chimney sweep who has some missing fingers.
Day 5: Eldest daughter loudly complains that my chin is prickly when I kiss her goodnight. As a result, Youngest hides her face under the bed covers and will not let me kiss her. Instead, she kisses her hand then wipes it on my face, a process which is actually quite unpleasant and which leaves a lengthy, unwanted runner of her dribble all down the front of my T-Shirt
Day 6: Stubble length is now roughly equivalent to that of 'Faith'-era George Michael. Secretly amuse myself by recreating the album cover in question in the mirror. Idly wonder again, as I did back in the late eighties, why he chose to be photographed sniffing his own armpit for the cover of his debut solo album. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but I wonder if he has ever regretted it since. Probably not, I would guess - he'll have had other things on his mind.
Children once again refuse to let me kiss them. I retaliate by rubbing my chin on the top of their heads while they cower under the bedclothes.
Day 7: Whisker length, is now, I feel optimum. Wife remarks that she quite likes my appearance. This in itself is worthy of recording.
Day 8: My mother visits. She does a double-take when she sees my face.
"Do you like it?" I ask.
"You look like your Dad" she replies.
This seems somewhat evasive, and very open to interpretation, but two things occur to me as a result - firstly, that my father has not had a beard in over 30 years (so The Pedant Within wants to argue strongly that I must in fact look less like my Dad than usual...) and secondly that 30 years is about the length of time that my parents have been divorced, though I don't believe these two facts are related. Certainly, his beard growth was not cited in the divorce papers anywhere, at least to my knowledge.
I then recall a picture I once saw of my father when he was nineteen, with a beard that was significantly more bushy and luxuriant than anything I can grow now, at exactly twice that age. I feel the faint twinges of beard-envy as a result.
Day 9: I notice that under the artificial lighting of the bathroom, my moustache and chin whiskers seem to be quite different colours. The lower half of my face looks dirty and swarthy, while the growth on my upper lip is the same strawberry-blonde of my Youngest daughter's hair. The mix-and-match effect is striking, but I must confess not entirely pleasant - at certain angles it kind of looks like I am wearing a badly-made false moustache.
Day 10: Itches a bit.
Day 11: Catch site of myself in the mirror while wearing a brown V-neck top and decide that I look quite like a Jedi Knight, which pleases me immensely. I stand there in the hall making lightsaber noises and calling my reflection 'Young Padawan'. I then recall the time my sister caught me piloting an imaginary Speeder Bike around the forest moon of Endor by clinging onto the bathroom sink taps and lurching from side to side, so decide to go to work before anyone sees me.
Day 12: Itches quite a lot now, and quite a lot of the time.
Day 13: Eldest gazes up at my face, studying me closely. I wait patiently. After a short while, she announces that she has noticed that (a) some of my whiskers are white, "like an old man" and that (b) my face "looks ridiculous".
I inform her that when she is old enough to get pocket money, I will be withholding some of it.
Day 14: I am gazing vacantly at my monitor at work, when the screensaver kicks in, and the screen goes black. In the darkened surface I catch sight of my reflection and suddenly remember why I stopped growing a beard last time: after about two weeks, I start to look eerily like Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.
I shave the whole lot off within fifteen minutes of getting home that evening. My children still refuse to kiss me goodnight because they now think it's funnier to hide, though Eldest says it is nice to see my my chins (yes, plural) again...

Dead pandas and Christmas trees

2010-02-10T22:20:00.002+00:00

I am driving Eldest back from her swimming lesson, en route to pick up T'wife and Youngest for a day out in London. We are going to the British Museum, which I have some misgivings about: there are some great things to see there if you are at all interested in history, or culture, or anthropology - but none of those subjects feature highly on either of my daughters 'must see' list. However, as there are no Museums dedicated to either Bella Sara, My Little Pony or 'wiping bogies on your sister', it will have to do. For her part, my wife (whose idea this trip is) is certain it will be great, because their website says there is a 'Children's trail'. I am far less convinced, because unless this 'Children's trail' winds it's way through a display of Hello Kitty! merchandise, I can't see it holding their interest. (From personal recollection there are an awful lot of ancient clay pots in the British Museum. You can call it a 'Children's trail' all you like, but it's still clay pots in display cases, even if you give them a free colouring book...)
Nonetheless, I feel it my duty to instill some kind of anticipation for the day's forthcoming events in Eldest.
"So, are you excited?" I ask. "About going to the museum today?"
Eldest signs theatrically and gazes out of the window. "I have been to the museum before..." she says, in a voice that suggests that any discussion on so mundane a topic fills her with world-weariness..
"Not this museum, you haven't" I say.
"Yes, I have. It has a dead panda in it."
"No, that's a different museum."
"Then it is the one with the old aeroplanes."
"No, that's another different museum..."
"It is the one with the dinosaur bones?"
"No. That is the same museum as the first one. The one with the panda."
"The dead panda. The dead panda in a case..." (This is said in an accusatory tone, as if she suspects that I was somehow responsible for having the panda killed and stuffed, just so that it could be ready for our visit)
"Yes, yes - the dead panda in a case. That is the same museum as the one with the dinosaur bones. We're not going there."
"You take us to a lot of museums with dead animals in..."
"What? I don't! I've taken you to two! The Natural History Museum and the Tring Zoological museum."
"Which is the one with the dead armadillo?"
"I don't know...wait, actually, I think they both have dead armadillos."
"Which one are we going to, then?"
"We aren't - look, just let me tell you about it without asking more questions, OK?"
"I don't remember going to the Christmas Tree Museum with you..."
"What?
"The Christmas Tree Museum."
"Eh?...ah, no, I said 'history' museum. Natural History Museum. Not 'Christmas tree' museum..."
"I thought you said 'Christmas tree'..."
"Well, I didn't. Anyway, the museum we are going to see today..."
"Is it the Christmas Tree Museum?"
"No! No, it is not. There is no Museum of Christmas Trees."
"There is!"
"There isn't."
"Yes, there is! I remember now. We went once. There were lots of trees and decorations."
"You...did?" (I study her face in the rear-view mirror. It certainly looks like she is telling the truth, but then she has half my genes and I am a consummate bullshitter, so appearances can be deceptive)
"Yes," she says, with a note of finality. "We did."
"Really?"
"Really."
"When?"
"We went with Mummy. You weren't there. She bought an apple decoration for our tree."
"That...that wasn't a museum. That was a shop. More specifically, it was the Garden Centre."
"No, wait - we are both wrong!" she announces with triumph. "I remember now! It wasn't a shop or a Museum, it was a whole world. It was called Christmas World..."
"No! No, it was still the Garden Centre...look, that doesn't matter: we are not going there either. We are going to a new museum today - you haven't seen it before. It is called the British Museum."
"Has it got dead animals in it?"
"No."
"Has it got any..."
"Before you ask, no, there are no Christmas trees."
"What has it got then?"
I struggle for a second to think what to say. The British Museum contains a myriad of fabulous historical artifacts, a great many of which appear to have been stolen from other countries back when Britain had an empire, and which those countries would quite like to get back. As a result whenever I visit the place I get a strange mixed feeling, consisting of both a huge sense of awe and a twinge of shame. But these are hard concepts to get over to a five-year old, and you also don't want to oversell it: I can recall vividly my own childhood sense of disappointment when one of the 'Wonders of the World' that I had been promised turned out to be some carvings, and not the giant menacing statue I had been hoping for.
"It has a stone with three languages carved into it," I tell her. "And some statues. And quite a lot of old pots."
She contemplates this information.
"It sounds boring..." she finally announces.
"Mummy says there is a Children's trail..." I say, and then pause before adding: "This is all her idea..."

Defiance for dessert

2010-01-26T20:09:00.012+00:00

Early evening, though it is already dark outside. My youngest daughter, all tousled hair and jutting lower lip, sits at the dinner table scowling at me. She is only three years old but somehow manages to emanate the kind of sullen resentment you would normally expect of a teenager who isn't allowed to get their ears pierced. I sit opposite her, hand on chin, staring bleakly at her while she pushes her meal around her bowl with her fork. Everyone else has finished their dinner, and long-since left, citing extreme boredom at the ongoing battle of wills. We have been sitting here so long now that my mind has started wandering, and I occasionally lose track of why I'm still there and start to get up to go and do something else, before noticing her frowning away at me.
"Come on," I say. "Just three more mouthfuls."
"No, thank you, Daddy" she says, having learnt quite early on that if she cunningly combines outright disobedience with extreme politeness it confuses her parents.
"Three more, please..." I insist.
"No, thank you very much."
"Why not?"
"I have already eaten all the good bits. Only the stuff that tastes like yuck is left."
I look at her bowl, the contents of which are now unrecognisable due her prolonged stirring and mashing. There is no doubt she is correct: what is left really does look like 'yuck', but frankly that's her own fault and in any case is entirely beside the point - I am the Daddy, and (in the absence of her mother) the senior authority figure at the table, and thus in charge.
"It is not yuck," I say. "Mummy does not cook food that taste like yuck..."
(This is almost entirely, but not quite, true. In the spirit of full disclosure there was once a chorizo and three-bean risotto that nearly brought about the end of our marriage after I gave a full and frank account of what I considered to be it's many, many shortcomings, but the lady from Marriage Guidance said I probably shouldn't mention it to my wife again and perhaps should try and learn from the resulting experience...)
My daughter looks at me sullenly. "Well, it is yuck now..."
"It is not."
"It is."
"It is not..."
"You eat some, Daddy." She pushes the bowl at me.
"No." I push the bowl back, suppressing a shudder of revulsion. "It is your dinner. You eat it."
She put her fork down, reaching out to place it as far away from her bowl as she can. Then she glares at me.
"I do not want it" she says."I do not want it, because it tastes unpleasant."
I'm slightly taken aback by this. All children learn new words at a rate of knots, and often don't know what they mean, even if they use them in the right context. (She once told my mother that 'Nothing out of the ordinary occurred...' at her playgroup that day..) Even so, it's slightly uncanny when it happens
"Eat it!" I say, realising sadly that this has become a straightforward war of attrition, and that although I am older (and thus supposedly wield all of the power), she has the advantage of being able to fall asleep sitting on a hardwood dining chair and also has no interest in watching Hustle at some point during the evening. These are advantages that will cost me dearly if the deadlock goes into the long haul...
"Eat it!" I say again, for want of anything else to say
She points at me with a tiny, grubby finger.
"Daddy, your behaviour is shameful" she announces.
I rise immediately from the table and leave, biting on my knuckles, because if she see me laughing, it's all over. Later than night, when she is in bed I put her bowl of mashed goop to one side, fully intending to make her eat it later. Then I fall asleep in front of the television, and my wife wraps the mashed food up in newspaper to put in the green recycling bin.
On the whole I'm not chalking that one up as a victory...

Nobody can touch the Duplo peacock...

2010-01-14T20:07:00.023+00:00

I was particularly looking forward to Christmas this year.
Not, as most folk might think, because of all the traditional Christmas stuff: peace, goodwill, family visitations, gifts, feasting and the like - I'm sure that's all very nice for most normal, well-adjusted people, but I've never really considered myself to fall into that category. I'm pretty certain that at no point my life up until now have I ever been, nor in fact will I ever be, described as 'getting into the festive spirit'. I don't really do 'festive - I despise tinsel, for a start. I'm always the one at the Christmas dinner table who flatly refuses to put the paper hat on from out of the Christmas cracker ("No, you're wrong - actually it's not fun, and you all look like mental patients..."), and who supplies their own, deeply inappropriate punchlines when anyone starts reading a joke out: "What's worse that finding a worm in your apple, you ask? How about me finally cracking and killing you all with this fork...?"
However, this Christmas was always going to be special, because this was the year that Eldest reached an important and life changing milestone: this Christmas, she graduated from Duplo to proper Lego.
Now, your immediate reaction there might have been to think that this is not a big deal - but if so you would be incorrect, and should feel ashamed.
Let me be clear about my thoughts on this: Lego, as the Internet-savvy youth like to say, is both 'teh awesome' and 'made of win'. In fact, I would go further than that: I would say Lego exceeds both these descriptions, and is made of an exciting new alloy of both 'awesome' and 'win' (a material that I shall henceforth call 'Awswinium') - it's that great.

I got hooked on Lego in 1977. Prior to that I had been given a big tub of generic red bricks, a hand-me down from an Aunt or Uncle. I liked them well enough, but back then they were fairly straightforward: bricks were red or white, came in either the 'eighter' or 'fourer' varieties, and you could use them to build a wall, or a house. They were OK - a rainy afternoon toy.
But then, in that fateful year, I saw a box of Space Lego in the local toy shop, and I have never coveted anything so much in my life. I can still remember to this day, over 30 years later, almost everything about the small kits that were first available to me: within my pocket-money price range were two 60p kits; a lunar rover with a white spaceman, and a small wedge shaped 'skimmer ship' with a red spaceman. I swear that even now, if handed the component bricks, I could assemble both sets blindfold. It became a much loved part of my childhood..
Fast-forward twenty years. My own Lego is long gone - sold, if I recall correctly, to help finance the purchase of a ZX Spectrum 48k home computer. However, that year Shell petrol stations briefly run a promotion, whereby anyone filling up at their forecourts receive a small box of Lego as a promotional item. I immediately switch allegiance and begin filling up at the Shell station, even though I have to drive a little bit out of the way to do so. I soon have the full set of promo Lego boxes. I put them in the cupboard, telling myself that one day I will have children, and we can all play Lego together. I do not play with the Lego, you understand, because I am an adult - I would like to make that clear. I do open one or two of the boxes and assemble the models, just to 'test them out' and make sure no bricks are missing, but I return them to the box afterwards. That is just testing Lego, it is not the same as playing with Lego.
Five years later, I go on to meet my wife. For the first few years we are together, I do not tell her about the Lego in the cupboard, because I am ostensibly a grown man (at least in terms of age, if not maturity) and Lego is a child's toy - but nonetheless, if the opportunity ever presents itself (perhaps in the sales, or other Shell promotions, or using up foreign currency at airports, etc) and there is a box of Lego going cheap, I purchase it and stash it in the cupboard.
In 2004, my first daughter is born. In 2006, the second. Their Grandparents buys them a box of Duplo, which is essentially the Lego equivalent of a gateway drug: it is purpose-designed to get you hooked on plastic bricks at the earliest opportunity. Both children like the Duplo very much, though not as much as their father, who once spent an entire morning fashioning a life-sized peacock out of the bricks, which was left on the front step for them to find when they came back from shopping. (Please note: making a life-sized peacock out of Duplo is NOT the same as playing with Duplo - it is a selfless act of paternal kindness for the amusement of children. Similarly, stopping those same children from actually touching the Duplo peacock is another selfless act, because Duplo models are delicate and break easily, and it's best all round if children don't touch them so that they can enjoy them for longer...).
Christmas 2009. Eldest gets a small tub of very pink, very girly Lego. I bring down the assorted boxes I have hived away over the years from the loft, which I notice in retrospect are perhaps not ideal for a 5-year old girl, as they seem be exclusively themed on either (a) Star Wars (b) killer robots, (c) the emergency services or (d) racing cars. But no matter, I think, we'll press on regardless - between us we must have enough bricks to build lots of models. She will grow to love Lego just as much as her Father did at her age. It will be brilliant...
Sadly, the long awaited Father/offspring Lego session does not go quite as I expected.
"What are you building, sweetheart?" I ask.
"A house. For the people to live in."
"That's nice. Which people did you choose?"
"These," she says, waving airily at a small assortment of minifigures, which I peruse.
"Ah. That is Darth Maul," I say after a second. "He is a Dark lord of the Sith. He won't really like living in a pink house.
"He is a girl now" she says. "Look."
I look closer. Darth Maul does indeed appear to have dropped his customary black cowl this season, in favour of a blonde ponytail. It is not, on the whole, a very good look for a renowned Jedi killer.
"Right..." I say, in a carefully neutral voice, because although I want her to really enjoy the whole Lego experience, I also think it's important that we respect the Star Wars canon.
"She is the Mummy of this house" she adds. "These ones are the Daddy and the children."
I look closer. Thanks to the magic of Lego, it appears Darth Maul wasn't really killed by Obi Wan Kenobi at all: in fact he married a helicopter pilot, and then went on to bear two children: a son in the police force who was tragically born with his head on backwards, and a daughter who liked to wear a top hat and carry an oversize spanner.
"Right..." I say. "And what's that?"
"Their dog."
"A dog? It is bigger than they are..." I point out.
"Yes" she agrees, brightly.
"It's also on wheels..."
"It doesn't matter" she says.
"No, I guess not," I say, thinking, Yes, it does. Dogs don't have wheels.
"What are you building?" she asks.
"A killer robot." I say. "It's really cool. Look, he has machine guns on his face..."
She studies it impassively. It is clear she is not impressed.
"Why do we need a killer robot for our town?" she asks.
"We're making a town?"
"Yes."
"Well, you wouldn't need him for that," I admit. "But perhaps he could attack it?"
"Attack the town?" she asks incredulously. Then, quite definitively: "No. That wouldn't be nice."
"It would be fun," I say. "Mrs Maul there could defend the family - perhaps she could set her giant wheeled dog on him..."
"No."
"I could build you another robot to fight him off..."
"No."
"Right. Well, what can he do, then?"
"He can stay away..." she says firmly, with a determined scowl that reminds me of her Mother.
"OK," I say, sadly. "What shall I build instead?"
"You can make a sweetshop."
I look at the Lego pieces in front of me. None of the assorted booster rockets, racing tyres, spruce trees and skeletal horses that I have collected over the years are going to be that useful in constructing a sweetshop.
"We don't really have the pieces for that..." I say.
"It's OK," she says. "We can just stick them all together and see what it looks like..."
I close my eyes and grimace. I am raising a Lego heretic as a daughter. It is clear that we have very different approaches: she is a five year old girl who likes playing with bricks, whereas I am a sad obsessive-compulsive who likes to follow the instructions. Never the twain shall meet.
"Perhaps we should keep my Lego separate from yours?" I say, noting with some inner sadness that I have just referred to it as 'my' Lego.
She looks surprised. "I thought it was all for us to play with?"
Yes, I think. That was what I thought too. But you're not playing with it properly...

Samurai Tiger Flu

2009-12-07T12:01:00.016+00:00

I've not been well this week. It started mid-afternoon on Saturday, when I first gave a little sneeze, and within 30 minutes my head was pounding, my breathing was tight and a hideous colourless liquid was pouring liberally out of my nose.
"You should go to bed," said my wife after a short while.
"I don't want to go to bed. It's boring."
"You don't understand. I want you to go to bed. In fact, I'm begging you to go to bed. You are just sitting there like a great depressing lump, with a blanket over your legs like an old woman, shouting at your children if they make a noise above a whisper, and radiating germs around the living room. Go to bed."
"Well, OK. But it's just further for you to have to walk when I need you to bring me things..."
"Just go to bed. Now!"
I go to bed. It is not as restful as I might have liked.
Within a few minutes, the Youngest arrives at my bedside, her arrival heralded by the customary crashing of the door back on its hinges. She looks at me curiously.
"Mummy says you are ill"
"Yes. Yes, that's right. I am."
"Poor Daddy..."
"Yes. Indeed. Poor Daddy. Poor, sad, tired Daddy..."
"Mummy says it is juzmanflu."
I ponder this for a second. As is the case with much of what my three-year old says, it makes no sense unless you mentally play it back slowly, syllable by syllable. I realise she means "just man 'flu", which suggests that my wife has been discussing my illness in disparaging terms with my daughters. I can all too readily imagine it to be something along the lines of "Daddy is such a wuss, he thinks he is really ill but it is just man 'flu..."
I am quietly enraged by this. "It is not man 'flu" I tell her. "It is much worse. Tell your mother it is...um, tiger 'flu. Tell her it is Samurai tiger 'flu..."
"OK" she says readily enough, and scampers off.
She is not going to go and tell her mother that, I think despondently. Not only can she not say 'samurai' properly, but I heard her go into her bedroom rather than downstairs...
Sure enough, she reappears a second later.
"Here is a picture of an angel" she announces.
"Ah, that's nice." I say. "Is that to make me feel better?
"No," she says, confused. "I am just showing you. I drew it at playschool".
"OK..."
"We all had to draw around our hands to make the wings and around our foots to make the bodies..."
"Very nice..." I manage.
"Do you like it?"
"Yes, yes, it's very good."
She snatches it back. "I am just showing you," she repeats. "You can't have it."
"Why don't you go and show Mummy?" I suggest, through gritted teeth.
"She has seen it already."
"Well, why don't you go and show her again?"
"OK" she says, and scampers off. This time I can hear her scrambling footfall down the stairs. I breathe a sigh of relief and settle back on the cool soft pillow, closing my eyes.
Minutes later my wife enters the room. She bangs a cup down on the bedside table, and sits down much too heavily on the edge of the bed, given the delicacy of my condition. (My wife is a lovely woman, who is a better person than me in almost every respect and who has a myriad of excellent qualities, but frankly she is never going to be renowned for her cat-like stealth).
"I brought you a hot blackcurrant drink" she announces.
"Thanks"
She gazes at my face with a peculiar mix of concern and frustration that is easy to interpret: it is the look a person gives to someone they love, but nonetheless whose illness is a matter of immense irritation and inconvenience to them. It is clear she is weighing up my condition carefully.
"You don't look ill..." she says.
"My head feels like it is being twisted off" I say.
"Hmmmm..."
"And my throat hurts and is all gunky. It feels like a fox shat in it."
"Hmmmm..."
"It hurts when I look at bright lights. It hurts when I talk to you."
It is clear she is not convinced about the severity of my condition, and that currently her annoyance is winning over her sympathy. It is time to wheel out the big guns.
"And the snot - you would not believe the amount of snot I'm producing right now..."
(My wife hates snot. She can cope with almost everything in the world, except for the common-or-garden bogey. She wipes our children's noses at arm's length, while looking away and retching. The very thought, even the word itself, can make her dry-heave. To her it's Kryptonite, only much runnier. I am typing this in the full knowledge that at some point she will read it, and almost certainly gag a little.)
"I don't want to know!" she says quickly, rising. "I will take care of the kids today and leave you alone...."
Oh, that's good, I think.
She pauses at the door. "...but I want you to know: you will owe me. Big time."
Oh, that's bad, I think.
She closes the door. Peace, I think. Just me and my agonising headache and the tiny rivers of vileness streaming from each nostril.
I drift off, feeling sorry for myself. I am not asleep for long, when the door crashes open again. Both daughter stand framed in the doorway, holding what looks worryingly like musical instruments.
"We have come to play you a 'get well' song!" announces the Youngest.
"You can join in, if you like!" adds the Eldest enthusiastically. She begins blowing discordantly into a plastic mouth organ, producing random notes and screeches at a volume that the guards at Guantanamo would probably consider a bit much, even for a psychological torture session. Youngest plays a single maraca by bouncing it alternately against her head and the bed frame. The noise is indescribable, so I won't bother trying.
"Get well!" screech my children. "Get well sooo-oon! Get well, Da-deeee! We hope you feee-eeel better! We hope you get up out of your bed sooooon!"
I am certain that the plates in my skull are beginning to vibrate against each other in a way that suggests imminent stress fractures. Fortunately, Britain's first musical torture squad stop performing before any parts of my head actually start popping open.
"Do you feel better?" asks Youngest.
"No.." I say, honestly. "No, not really..."
They immediately begin again, only louder.
"Feeling much better now!" I shout, frantically. "Much better now!"
Sadly, they can't hear me over the noise. I resolve I will go back to work at the earliest opportunity, just for the rest...

The Grumblemouth Incident

2009-11-24T20:14:00.010+00:00

Sometimes, trying to be 'fun Daddy' can backfire quite badly:

I am bathing the girls. They are in the tub, each wearing a pair of swimming goggles, and each armed with a small water pistol that they are spraying, gleefully, into the others face. I am sheltering behind the shower curtain, which is partially extended to stop more water from going onto the floor - a floor which has long since edged out of 'damp', through 'wet' and is now heading firmly into 'soaking'.
"Try not to get your hair wet," I say, pointlessly, for the ninth time. "Mummy won't like it".
This is actually massively hypocritical of me, as the whole situation is a result of my lax parenting, a situation that the Eldest has readily picked up on:
"But you gave us the water pistols..." she says.
"Pistols!" shrieks her sister, excitedly.
"Yes, yes..." I agree. "But I didn't think you'd shoot each other."
"But you said: Why don't you shoot each other..."
"Did I?"
"Pistols! WATER PISTOLS!" cries Youngest.
"Yes, you said: Don't you dare shoot me, but you can shoot each other..."
"Ah, yes. Yes, I did. But I didn't really mean in the face..."
"In the face!" adds Youngest, in voice wheeling with joy.
"But you specially went and got our swimming goggles..." continues her sister, coolly returning fire, "...to stop it going in our eyes."
"That was a precautionary measure," I say. "It wasn't meant to encourage you to get your hair wet. Mummy won't like it if you get your hair wet."
"She won't like the water on the floor, either..." she observes.
"No..." I agree sadly. The floor is far too wet now to be dismissed as an accident. It takes a concerted effort and a protracted absence of parental guidance to get a floor that wet, particularly given that the water pistols are tiny and only hold about an eggcup full of water each, and (most damningly), require my assistance in order to be refilled. It is clear I can't just blame the girls for the mess: all three of us are going down for this...
I decide I will distract them from the water pistols, and think I may have had a brainwave as to how. I start knocking gently on the side of the tub, out of their line of sight.
"What's that knocking?" asks Eldest.

"Oh, that?" I say, casually. "That's Grumblemouth. He comes out from behind the bath panel if the floor gets too wet."
Both stop dead in their tracks. I continue knocking.
"What is Grumblemouth?" asks the first.
"Is he nice?" asks the second.
"Sort of..." I say, reaching for the toothpaste and playing for time. "Sometimes."
"Is he...a monster?" she asks.
"Yes," I say, not really listening while I go to work. "That's right. He is a monster..." With my left hand, I make a fist, tucking my thumb in under the fingers. By turning my hand sideways and flapping my thumb up and down, I can make a monster's mouth. With the toothpaste I squeeze a blob of white either side of the knuckle of my first finger, forming two large gelatinous eyes. I am delighted with the result.
Ha, I think, this is brilliant! They will love this!
"I don't like monsters..." announces Youngest.
"Oh, you'll be fine " I say airily, still knocking on the side of the bath, and reaching for their blue 'Winnie the Pooh' toothpaste, which is mean to tastes like bubblegum to encourage them to clean their teeth, but which both find revolting and will go to quite remarkable lengths to avoid using at all. With this second toothpaste I add a pair of blue irises to the wobbly white eyes of Grumblemouth, and a streak of a nose.

Wow, I think, that looks amazing. They will laugh like drains!
"Is he going to come out? asks the Eldest, her voice quivering a little with what I think is excitement (but now, in retrospect, I understand was fear).
"Yes, I think he might..." I say, suppressing a chuckle. I start knocking louder, as Grumblemouth gets nearer.
They will remember this forever, I think. It will be a cherished childhood memory. They will pester me every bathtime to bring Grumblemouth out!
"I don't want Gumballmouth..." says Youngest, in a tiny voice.
"HERE HE IS!" I cry, and pop my hand up from of the side of the bath, ready for the gales of laughter.
The reaction is immediate. Both scream in genuine terror, far louder than I have heard either before. The youngest bursts into immediate tears.
"Nooooooo!" she shrieks. "No No No!"
Ah, I think. That's not gone well...
"It's OK! It's OK!" I soothe."It's just Daddy being silly..." I reach to cuddle her, which of course brings Grumblemouth closer, with his mouth gaping wide open as if about to bite. She howls, and lashes out with a shampoo bottle.
"Make him GO AWAY!" she screams.
I quickly duck my hand in the bath and swoosh it around to wash the toothpaste off. This doesn't work as well as it might, and when I bring my hand out of the water the toothpaste has simply partially dissolved and run a little way down my hand, making Grumblemouth's face even more disturbing.
"His face is melting!" shrieks eldest in sheer terror, forcing herself into the corner of the bath and trying to climb out backwards using the taps as handholds. She is right: Grumblemouth looks like that French bloke who opened the Ark of the Covenant in the first Indiana Jones movie.
"Aaaaaaaaaah!" wails Youngest. "AAAAAAAAAAAH!"
At this point my wife enters the room. She surveys the carnage with an open mouth.
"We were just playing," I try and explain, "and it all went wrong..."

Grumblemouth has not made an appearance since. I would like to particularly stress that fact to anyone reading who might work for Social Services.

In bed with Mrs. Bricket

2009-11-08T15:36:00.009+00:00

Sunday morning. I am dozing fitfully in bed, numb with sleep. It is my day of the weekend for a lie-in, having been up early doing 'Daddy Duty' yesterday, and I am determined to wring every last precious second of rest out of the morning. Sadly, others in my household have decided that my allotted time is up.
The door crashes open. A diminutive figure, all curly hair and determined jawline, struts into the room as if she owns the place. It is the Youngest, and she has the 'There will be no nonsense from you' demeanour of a nineteenth century land baron dealing with a tenant who has fallen behind with the rent.
"Wake up Daddy,"she announces."It is time for you to go to school."
This seems unlikely: I have not been to school for well over twenty years. I turn my head to the bedside clock, which reveals that the time is exactly 9.30 a.m, almost to the second. This is significant, as it the time my wife and I have agreed is the earliest point we will let the children disturb the slumber of whichever parent has a lie-in. My wife often generously lets me sleep longer, and the fact that she has allowed Youngest to wake me at the first possible opportunity is not a good sign: it suggests that the children have already worn down her defences this morning and she can no longer cope without reinforcements. This suggests that what is about to follow is likely to be trying...
It is. Youngest drags open the curtains, and pale November daylight limps lazily into the room. I notice that the the air is full of soft drizzle and on the horizon are dark ominous clouds: it looks as if the sky is made of old bruises and fresh tears.

"Ugh" I say.
"Yes," says Youngest, as if agreeing, then adds: "Daddy, this is Mrs. Bricket."
I gaze blearily at 'Mrs. Bricket'. She looks familiar.
"That is your rag doll." I say. "I thought it was called 'Lollopy'."
"No," she says firmly. "It is Mrs. Bricket. She is your teacher."
"Oh. I see."
"It is time for school now."
"OK..."
She sits 'Mrs. Bricket' in the bed next to me. This seems somewhat inappropriate behaviour for most teaching staff. At this point I can't help but notice that 'Mrs. Bricket' appears to have come to school this morning dressed only in pair of knickers and a vest. Perhaps she is a P.E teacher.
"And this," Youngest continues, "is Peppa Pig. She is the school nurse."
I look at the object that has been thrust into my face. It is a plush toy pig doll, dressed in medical gear. It looks uncannily like something I once had a nightmare about. She squeezes it, and it makes two short muffled 'oinks', like a quick succession of partially-stifled farts.
"And what is she for?" I ask.
"She is for when you fall down," she explains, in a tone of voice that somehow intimates that me 'falling down' at some point is an iron-clad certainty. In fact, she make it sound like when I 'fall down' it will not be an accident. With its scantily-clad teachers, porcine medical staff and the ever-present threat of violence, it sounds like Mrs. Bricket's educational establishment would keep the Daily Mail in headlines for months.
"School is starting in a minute," she says, "but we need to check you first."
This sounds ominous. I instinctively flinch as she reaches up and rubs the pig doll on my head.
There is a short pause while I work out what to say next.
"What is she doing?" I ask.
"Checking for nits."
I look back at the clock. It is 9.31. It is clearly going to be a very long day.

Call for the Animal Jooper!

2009-10-21T20:18:00.009+01:00

Saturday morning. I am lying on the sofa, where I have told my wife I will be reading the International section of the Guardian in order to keep abreast of important current events (you know, just in case the UN call to get my perspective on GM crops or something), but where I am in fact furtively playing 'Retro Defence' on my new phone, behind the paper that so she can't see me, should she happen to wander past the open doorway.
This deception is necessary because she has outright accused me of being 'more in love' with my new phone than I am with her, which I would like to state for the record is complete nonsense (though I would also like it to be noted that it is both responsive to the touch and can be turned on with minimal effort on my part, so I wonder if there are a few things that she could..no, on mature reflection we won't go there...)
Anyway, I am just approaching Level 26 on the tricky 'Spider' level when a soft toy bear flies into the room at head height, travelling at great velocity. It lands in the centre of the room. My Eldest appears shortly afterwards, whereupon she runs over to the bear, stamps on it's head a few times, and then kicks it into the side of the sofa. Only then does she notice me.
"Hello, Daddy" she says brightly.
"What on Earth are you doing?" I ask.
"Animal Jooper" she says, as if this explains everything.
It does not, to my mind, explain anything.
"What?" I ask.
"We are playing 'Animal Jooper'," she says patiently, and then, in a much louder voice "Animal Jooper! Animal Jooper! There is an animal in danger!"
My youngest then enters the room. I can't help but notice she has taken her trousers off, and is wearing them on her head like an outsized pair of bunny ears. I look at her in mild shock.
"I am the Animal Jooper!" she announces.
"Thank goodness you are here, Animal Jooper!" says her sister. She points at the forlorn and violated teddy on the floor. "This bear is in danger. It has been kicked and stamped on!"
"I will rescue it!" says the little one, nodding frantically so that her trouser ears flap up and down. She stoops and picks it up, then cuddles it.
"All better now!" she says after a moment.
"Good work, Animal Jooper!" says her sister.
In my hands, my forgotten phone makes a sad little noise as my suddenly unattended bases are overrun by red aliens. I finally remember how to speak.
"What are you doing?" I demand, my complete incomprehension giving my voice extra volume.
My Eldest sighs, as if the whole situation should be self-evident.
"She is the Animal Jooper..." she says, pointing at her sister, who nods solemnly, "and she rescues animals in trouble."
"I save them..." adds Youngest. (I notice at this point that the Animal Jooper appears to have coloured a large part of her face in with felt-tipped pen, which I presume has been deemed an essential requirement for animal rescue).
"I see..." I say, not really seeing.
I turn back to Eldest. "And what do you do?"
"I put animals in danger" she says, cheerfully.
"You...put...what?" I ask.
"I put animals in danger" she repeats. "So that the Animal Jooper can rescue them."
"She hits teddy bears " clarifies her sister, pushing the waistband of her trousers out of her eyes.
There is a pause, while I try and think what to say. Nothing obvious comes to mind, even after the longest time.
"Oh..." I manage to finally say.
"Today I have also put a mouse in a box up a mountain," continues Eldest, "and pushed a camel into a river."
"Oh..." I say, again.
They continue to look at me expectantly.
"Carry on, then ..." I finally say. They scamper off.
I look down at the paper. It it clear from the headlines that the world is slowly going to Hell in a hand basket. I reflect on the comforting words of that great sage of our times, Whitney Houston: I believe the children are our future, lead them well and let them show the way.
Frankly, Whitney, I am now not so sure about that. On the evidence from my house, results will be mixed, to say the least.
There is soft thump from the hall, as a toy hippo is dropped from the landing and suffers a bruising fall. The Animal Jooper clearly has a long day ahead of her...

Nude sausage rolls and little needy bunny rabbits

2009-10-06T22:04:00.005+01:00

We are all sitting at a table in a small bakery on the high street, enjoying a lunch of freshly baked pastry goods.
I say 'enjoying', but in fact I have to eat while deliberately staring at the wall, because both of my children are eating sausage rolls, which always make me faintly nauseous. I find the process deeply unpleasant to watch: both of them are in the habit of 'peeling' the sausage roll in layers, eating all the flaky pastry and then leaving a hideous tumescent pink worm of sausage-meat on the plate, which they may eat, or may simply just wave around like a fleshy light-sabre. The sight always reminds me, unbidden and unwelcome, of my grandparents Golden Retriever, which often had to be discouraged from cleaning its intimate areas while sitting in full view of the dining table. I have a vivid memory of my Nan slapping it across the muzzle with a rolled up copy of the Daily Express, and telling it loudly to "Put your lipstick away while we're eating."
Looking through the window, I can see the cashpoint over the road. I decide that rather than watch them eat, I'll go and find out if I have been paid yet for the month.
"I'll be back in a minute," I say to my wife. "I just need to check my balance."
"What?" she asks.
"My balance. I need to check it."
"Why?" she asks "Are you thinking of doing a tightrope walk? Hahaha!"
I look at her uncomprehendingly.
"Balance!" she says. "Checking your balance. To see if you can balance...."
She does a little mime of a tightrope walker, arms flailing. Other customers in the shop look on with interest.
"Ah" I say, flatly.
"Ha ha ha!" laughs my wife, much too loudly. "Ha ha ha!"
I give a grim little nod to indicate that yes, I have understood, but to my mind the joke is now firmly over.

"Ha ha ha! Balance"
"I meant my bank balance" I say, trying to explain.
She clearly doesn't care. "Hahaha!" she says, louder still.
I start to sidle away. Every now and again, my wife will make a joke that she herself finds so funny that she will be insensible for minutes. This has all the hallmarks of one of those occasions, and when it happens all I can normally do is ride it out. This is the first time, however, there has been a public audience, and on the whole I think I'd rather the floorshow went on without me.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"she says, knuckling a tear of mirth away from her eye. "Balance!"
Our children are both watching her, mouths open wide with fascination, their clothes scattered with pastry flakes. The normal business of serving customers has completely ground to a halt in the shop now, while everyone stares. Clearly, the best thing I can do in such a situation is to hastily leave it, so I turn on my heel to head for the cashpoint.
"Don't fall over!" she calls as I walk away. "HA! HA! HA!"
I grit my teeth. It is five steps to the door. As I take each step, she makes 'whoa!' and 'eee!' noises, to suggest that I am, indeed, on a tightrope, and struggling with my balance.
It is highly embarrassing. I am genuinely worried other people in the shop may burst into a round of impromptu applause as I exit, simply because I have managed to walk out without falling over.
As I leave, a man sitting at a table outside gives me a sad conspiratorial smile, and nods faintly in my wife's direction, from which I can still hear her giggling. I shrug.
With a faint tilt of his head he indicates his own wife, who is reading the newspaper beside him. He rolls his eyes.
With these four tiny gestures - the smile, the nod, the head tilt and the eye roll - I understand that he is trying to say: My wife does shit like that to me as well, mate...
I roll my own eyes heavenward, and shake my head sadly, as if to agree: Tell me about it - the things we put up with, eh?

Later, that night, I make the grave tactical mistake of mentioning this silent exchange to my wife.
This information is not well-received, though that may be in large part due to the way I tell her, which involves an initial, lengthy diatribe explaining exactly why her joke wasn't funny, and then ends with:
"..and then he nodded at his own wife, as if to say 'I've got one of those, mate'..."
There is a pause.
I can feel the room get colder, as if all the human warmth has suddenly and mysteriously been sucked out of it.
"One of those?" asks my wife, in a voice suddenly as sharp and brittle as an icicle.
"...ye-es?" I confirm, sensing danger, but unsure why.
"Did you just describe me as 'One of those?' "
"No...well, yes, sort of, but I just meant 'a woman like that.." I amend.
This, surprisingly, does not mollify her in any way.
"One of those..." she repeats, her voice gently climbing in register. "As if women are things. Like old cars."
"No, I meant he had a wife who..."
"What a terrible thing to say: 'one of those'..."
Now, the more astute reader will know that the correct response here is, of course, to say 'You know what, my darling? I am clearly in error here. Why don't I leave immediately to buy you some jewelery and chocolate in order to make up, in some small way, for my boorishness?'
I steadfastly fail to say that, though.
"It was just a slip of the tongue..." I offer
"Tell me," she says, changing tack: "What other 'ones' are there, then? As you are such an expert?"
Oh, this is really not going well, I think.
"What kind of 'one' would you like?' she persists, warming to the subject.
"Um...?" I offer.
"Perhaps a little needy 'one'? A little needy bunny-rabbit 'one' who wouldn't stand up to you?"
"No..." I say, but a little too slowly, and actually thinking that might be nice, just once in a while...
"You," she says, with a note of finality, "Are lucky to have one at all."
I know when I'm beaten. "Yes," I agree, readily enough.
"Least of all one of these" she adds.

Pillow talk: Secret drawers

2009-09-23T14:28:00.004+01:00

Another bedtime conversation with the 'Mistress of the house', and another worrying trip into some of the less stable recesses of her imagination.
Recently, she heard some news about a married couple she once knew but whose marriage had since broken up - all the gory details of their separation were now beginning to trickle out into the public domain. Now, my wife is as interested in salacious gossip as the next fishwife, and lapped all this information up eagerly, but one little snippet caught her imagination more than anything else - apparently, when the house was being sorted out 'post breakup' it was discovered that the male party involved (who, as was very apparent in my wife's retelling, she deemed the villain of the piece) had a number of hiding places around the house where he had been concealing expensive consumer electronic goods from his wife. This was so that she could neither make use of them herself, or ever know how much they had cost: he had just bought them and squirreled them away for his own private use.
"Isn't that awful?" asks my wife, as soon as she finishes telling me.
"Mm-hmmm..." I say, feeling that I should at least indicate halfhearted agreement, because it's clear that even token dissent on my part would automatically mean I was siding with the enemy. In fact, what I am really thinking is that it seems pretty pathetic. In the scheme of things, when considering the whole great pantheon of marital felonies that a man can commit, 'hiding some stuff in a drawer' seems pretty lame. I am not familiar with the unhappy couple in question at all, and I have no idea if there were a number of other offences to consider, but still: this does seem like the marital equivalent of bringing down Al Capone on charges of tax evasion. I want to make it very clear at this point to the audience in general (and to one reader in particular) that I am not advocating shoddy behaviour in any way - but if my marriage lay in tatters all around me, I think I'd rather be described as "the bastard who ran off with a Latvian pole-dancer half his age" than as "the sad little man who hid an I-Pod Touch from his wife in the back of the wardrobe".

My wife, however, clearly does not share my sense of scale in this matter. She is consumed with second-hand fury about it.
"I think it is obscene behaviour," she announces, raising an eyebrow that dares me to disagree.
"It doesn't really seem that practical..." I murmur, thinking: When would he get to use this stuff? Did he have to wait for her to go out, or just lock himself in the bathroom? Surely there's very little point in buying a furtive PlayStation 3 if you can't actually hook it up to the television?
"It's got nothing to do with practicality. It's a betrayal of trust."
"Yes, yes...", I nod readily, thinking: Perhaps he also hid a television in the bathroom. Is that possible? Under those circumstances it would have made much more sense to buy a handheld, like a Nintendo DS...
There is a lengthy pause. About halfway through it, I realise I know what is going to come next.
"Here it comes..." I say.
"You had better not have any secret hiding places..." she warns.
"...annnnnnd there it is, right on the money."
"I'm just saying: you'd better not...."
Now, the very idea is laughable on many levels. Firstly, she complains to me on at least a daily basis that I am incapable of keeping my thoughts to myself, and in fact it would be better for her if, just for once, I could refrain from saying exactly what I was thinking at any given time. Apparently, when we got married and I agreed in front of a church full of witnesses that I would share everything with her, she hadn't envisaged that would extend to include a full report every time I visited the toilet ("Phew, the one I did at work today - that was really hard work. I needed to brace against the walls or I'd have been in there forever...why have you all stopped eating?")
Secondly: we have two small children. As a result, there is no privacy and there are no hiding places that would remain undiscovered. Only last week I came into my bedroom to get changed, and halfway through realised our three-year old had concealed herself in the linen bin and was watching me, giggling. In short, I am not a man who has secrets. She knows this. Nonetheless, I feel I should probably remind her.
"I am not man who has secrets" I state. "You know this."
She ponders this.
"That's true" she finally observes. "It's not like you really make more than a token effort to hide your character flaws from society at large. I can't imagine you'd have the willpower to then go ahead and actively conceal something you really cared about"
"Exactly. What you see is what you get with me," I say, proudly. "Open. Honest...."
"Tactless. Borderline rude..." she finishes.
There is another pause. It lasts so long that I think she has fallen asleep, but then she asks:
"If you did have a secret hiding place, what would you keep in it?"
"I dunno. Secrets?"
"Yes. But what?"
"No idea. I haven't got any secrets, we just discussed that."
"Yes, but that's dull. Think of something."
"I don't know. Guns? Porn? Drugs? Nazi gold?"
"Those are stupid suggestions. Those are criminal things, not dirty little secrets."
"Well, what do you think I would hide? What would be the worst thing?"
"Pictures of your other family. Your other, secret family."
(Now we've been here before. My wife has this peculiar affinity for daydreaming me as the lead villain in a series of charmless little vignettes, each riffing heavily on the themes of 'loss' and 'betrayal' and 'heartbreak'. These scenarios rarely seem to end well. I find it odd that she fantasises about me causing her misery - it's almost as is she wishes I actually was more secretive and mysterious, not less...)
"I see. My other family, eh?"
"Yes. Wife and two kids."
"Riiiight. Younger than you, is she?"
"Yes. She's from Thailand. You bought her over the Internet."
"Okaaaaay. So in my secret drawer, you think I would hide evidence that showed I was a bigamist who buys mail-order brides from the Far East?"
"Yes."
"Wow. I mean, just: 'wow'. The stuff that goes on in your head..."
"You've decorated her house as well, the way I want this house to look - shabby chic."
"Well, this place is halfway there - we just need to work on the 'chic' part..."
"And in her house, you have a secret drawer, and it's got pictures of me and the girls in it..."
"Oh. My. God. Have you been drinking? I really think you should stop talking now..."
She falls silent. After a while it occurs to me I should ask her the reciprocal question.
"What would you keep in your secret drawer?" I ask
"Pictures of Gary Barlow" she says, without hesitation.

Tablets, smut, molluscs and moles.

2009-09-03T20:06:00.010+01:00

It's been a while. I need to vent some spleen.
It's not the big things that will do for me - I've coped quite well with all the usual crises that we are told are dangerous for your stress levels: births, deaths, house moves, job changes, relationship breakups, car crashes, redundancy and the like - but the little things, the low-level daily unpleasantness and irritations, they are the events that are going to tip me over the edge. Instead of dealing with them calmly and rationally, I do nothing, and allow a corrosive bitterness to well up inside me, that finally vents in a moment of pure, blind rage over something innocuous. Be warned.
Recently, events that have contributed to my inner well of bile are:

The incorrect selling of hayfever tablets: In the UK, there is a limit on the amount of medicine you can buy at once, in an attempt to prevent people from killing themselves with fistfuls of pills. This is one of those well-meaning laws that are steeped in good intentions but in fact just cause irritation - as the legal limit only applies on a 'per transaction' basis, it essentially serves no practical purpose: would-be suicides can easily get all the paracetamol they need by simply queueing up again (which is a depressing enough process to have to do once, so I can't imagine that being forced to do it multiple times does anything other than underline their decision).
However, rules are rules, and I understand that. I also understand that, should I inadvertently have more then the legal limit of hayfever tablets in my shopping basket (let's say, ooh, three packets, instead of two) then the store is quite right to remind me of the law in this matter and refuse to sell me the extra packet. Perfectly reasonable. I can perhaps do without the patronising little lecture at the checkout, but OK.
However, if that same store is actually deliberately selling hayfever tablets on a 'three for the price of two' deal , thus encouraging members of the public to put three packets of tablets in their basket in the first place, that is not reasonable. That is both stupid and annoying, as I explained at some volume at the time. I am not suicidal, I am thrifty - and it's not my mental faculties you should be worrying about, you shambling pack of halfwits.
What annoys me most is the fact that I clearly let myself down a bit in the end. If I am honest, telling some poor misbegotten checkout girl on minimum wage that she should "fire your entire marketing department" is highly unlikely to affect any kind of change, and just makes me look like a pillock.

Discarded smut: I got a new car recently - yes, we are now a two-car family for the first time ever, allowing my wife some respite from spending up to 4 hours a day walking our children to the places they need to go, but also enabling us to destroy the environment more thoroughly and at twice the rate and efficiency. My new car is very nice, and as the girls never get to ride in it remains fairly clean - it is lovely to be driving around in a vehicle that doesn't have a thick mulch of hairclips, tissues and discarded raisins across the back seat - but it does sometimes confuse me in that the control stalks around the steering wheel are all in the opposite place than they are on the Focus.
This was brought home to me on my first trip to work. As I got out of the car it beeped at me, telling me the lights were on. I reached back in and flipped what I thought was the correct stalk to switch them off, and then slammed the door, 'blipped' the car locked and went on my way, whistling - unaware that what I had actually done was not turn off the lights, but switch on the rear windscreen wiper. When I returned to the car some eight hours later the battery was completely flat. I didn't have any jump leads, nobody would stop and help me, and in the end I had to call the RAC.
The breakdown van arrived very quickly. The car battery also charged very quickly. The bloke driving the van was very nice, we had a good chat about the reliability of my new car and the faults I should look out for with it. All was, in fact, going swimmingly, until he suggested I reverse out of the parking bay and just drive around the car park for a lap to see if all was well. As I backed slowly out, I became aware that he was staring down at the ground in front of my car quite intently. I poked my head out the window to see what was fascinating him, and there, just where my front wheel arch had been a second before (and looking for all the world like I had been reading it and had quickly discarded it when he arrived) was a porno mag. And not just any porno mag - no, this appeared to be a specialist porno mag, dedicated to the interests of the kind of gentleman who likes the (much, much) older and rounder woman.
He looked down at the mag. I looked down at the mag. We looked at each other.
"You've dropped your magazine" he said.
"That's not my magazine," I protested, but far too quickly. It sounded suspicious even to me.
There was an awkward pause. So awkward, in fact, that I felt myself blushing out of sheer embarrassment, which did little to reinforce my innocence.
"OK" he said, clearly not believing me. He picked it up and walked it slowly to the nearest bin, leaving me to cringe while I imagined him calling back to the control centre and asking them to redflag my membership and add a note to my account that I was pervert.
My anger here is towards the person who discarded the magazine in the first place, of course. Who leaves porno mags lying around in public? I can only assume you have so much porn that you don't notice when some goes missing, which frankly isn't a good sign - for God's sake, get another interest: do us all a favour and take up a sport or hobby, will you?

Slugs: Vile things. Little animated pockets of snot. Never liked them. But I like them even less now, since they starting hiding under the handle of the green recycle box, ensuring that they burst all over my fingers when I try and lift the box up.
Have you ever had burst slug under your fingernails? It is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds. I am actually dry-heaving a bit just typing this.

Children who throw dead animals at you: Picture the scene: I am on the beach in North Wales, leaning against the sea wall, and chatting amiably with an old friend and his girlfriend. We are discussing weighty, serious matters as befits people of our age and status: the economy, politics, long lists of all of our friend's character flaws, why Big Brother is shit - that kind of thing. The beach is warm and sandy, the waves are supplying a soothing background hiss, and the sea is as sparkling as our oh-so-witty conversation. It is a perfect holiday moment. What could possibly ruin it?
As it turns out: some children throwing a dead animal at us.
There is a rustling from the woods behind us, and a giggle, and then out of the sky drops an uninvited guest. It is a dead mole, it's eyes glazed, it's mouth firmly shut in a grim little rictus. It doesn't look any happier about it's sudden arrival on the picnic blanket than we are.
I stand up and look into the woods. A small band of children are melting back into the treeline, hooting with laughter. One of them - presumably the molehurler himself, a boy of no more than eleven - stops and calls over to me:
"Sorry about the rodent, mate"
Now, I know what you're thinking: What a schoolboy error. That's a common misconception, moles are actually of the Talpinae family and not rodents. And you are quite correct, though it's worth remembering that (a) he was a schoolboy and (b) if you are the kind of child who flings animal carcasses at tourists, then I suspect scientific classification is not high on your agenda: they are all just members of the 'ammo' family to you...
He smirks. I tell him, in short angry words, what he can do with his dead mole. He disappears, laughing, and leaving me to kick a small furry grey corpse further along the beach, so that my children won't find it and be tempted to poke it with sticks when they return with their ice creams.

There. I feel much better now.
Thanks for listening, I'm sure something will come along soon that winds me up all over again...