Smaller Than Life

Cheeky Bubble

2013-01-15T13:41:00.000Z

It's been a while...

But I've been busy. I've created one of these mobile phone "app"s that all the kids are using these days with a friend. It's fun and FREE - just hold your phone up to someone and it tells you what they're thinking*.

Check it out and please tell your friends...

Seriously, Where Did the Last Three Months Go?

2011-12-19T16:11:00.003Z

Well, it hasn't exactly been a dull year. Somewhat predictably, in the having a new baby/moving house/keeping up with the blog stakes something had to give. The good news is that MY LOVELY DAUGHTER is lovelier than ever (as is MY LOVELY SON - must remember to treat them both equally) and we managed to move house without me murdering my freeholder's solicitor. He really is the luckiest man alive. They say that the best revenge is living well, but even Jesus would be thinking about putting dogshit through this guy's letterbox.

So, the second advent calendar will have to wait until next year as it is currently in a box in the garage. (I have a garage!!! It is full of boxes!!! It has a door which goes up and down when you press a button!!! I have pressed this button approximately a million times!!!)

So, I will wish you all a Merry Christmas and leave you with my favourite thing that I wrote this year, which I think will just sit nicely in my readers' Venn diagram intersection of clever satire, 70s references and awful puns:

Just been listening to Lonely This Winterval. It's political correctness gone Mud.

You Have Been Watching ...

2011-09-28T15:59:00.002+01:00

I AM A FATHER OF TWO!!!!!11!!1!!!!!11!!

2011-09-17T19:27:00.003+01:00

I am a father of two!!!! It is a girl!!! She is lovely!!!! All other babies are inferior (apart from the one I had four years ago, who was equally brilliant)!!! Mine are best!!!!! I have a million photos of her asleep!!!! She held my finger!!!!! It was amazing!!!!!

(And as a side note, is there any document less studied than an emergency medical consent form? Not even the terms and conditions of the Adobe Acrobat Updater are read less often. Absolutely nobody is poring over it thinking "Yes, but does it affect my statutory rights?" Thankfully, all is well though.)

Guess What?

2011-09-15T16:16:00.003+01:00

If you guessed that we have had a baby and moved house then you still have three more guesses.

If you guessed that we had not had a baby, but have moved house, then you still have two more guesses.

If you guessed that we have had a baby, but not moved house, then you still have one more guess.

If you guessed that the baby doesn't know the meaning of the word 'deadline' and that I would gladly strangle one particular party in our property chain with my bare hands then you win £5. (Is there anyone in England and Wales who, after buying or selling a house, has said "Yep, that's a great system - I can't think of a single way of improving it"?)

In fact, just go back exactly four years and re-read the archives as it is all exactly the same - we have avoided the September 11th birthday, I have successfully had my pre-baby haircut for the photos, and it looks like our children will be sharing a birthday, which will make things easy to remember.

In Other News

2011-08-16T12:18:00.006+01:00

1. What has happened to my Sellotape?

It has all slid out evenly to make a section of cone. How has this happened????

2. My Lovely Son will soon have a Lovely Brother or a Lovely Sister. Due date 6th September.

3. After the longest, most tedious and most expensive house-purchasing saga ever (don't bore me with your stories - mine is the best) we might finally be moving. No completion date set yet, though it's looking like being around 6th September.

4. After a quiet period earlier this year, work has suddenly become quite busy, with two of my own ideas being developed at the same time by different companies. Fantastic news. And when would you like those scripts delivered? Oh ...

5. But mainly, what the heck happened to my Sellotape?

In Which I Post the Word ‘Cunt’ Through Winnie-the-Pooh’s Letterbox

2011-08-15T21:14:00.006+01:00

We are having a family day out at a country park that contains Hundred Aker Wood, a charming recreation of the world of AA Milne, complete with houses for Winnie-the-Pooh and all his friends for small children to explore. My Lovely Son is optimistically wearing a sunhat under his cagoule and all is well with the world. He has been here before and apparently there is a letterbox at Pooh’s house where you can post a letter, so he has drawn a picture for him.

As usual, My Lovely and Environmentally Aware Son has used the back of a piece of paper from my scrap paper pile to do his drawing. This stack of paper comes from old drafts of scripts I've printed out and no longer need. He's done a lovely drawing of a jar of honey, so we approach the letterbox confidently, knowing that the bear of very little brain is going to love this. The piece of A4 is too big to fit in the letterbox, so we carefully fold it. When I see the other side I see that something has gone a bit wrong in the whole posting a letter to Winnie-the-Pooh scenario. Whilst most of my writing is for children's television, My Lovely Son has done a lot more drawing recently, and to retrieve this piece of paper he has gone quite far down the strata of paper to a short film script I wrote a few years ago, which contains the word 'cunt'. Several times. A piece of paper which we are about to post through the letterbox of one of the world's best loved children's characters. I look at My Lovely Son. He looks back up at me. He loves Winnie-the-Pooh, and is very proud of his drawing. With a bit of help he has even spelled the word ‘hunny’ correctly. There is no way that we cannot post this, so I lift him up and in it goes.

Hopefully Owl, whose spelling goes all to pieces over delicate words like 'measles' and 'buttered toast', will help Pooh to read it and tell him that I wrote a script about King Cnut.

Funny Things That I Have Said That Really Deserved a Wider Audience #5

2011-07-15T14:50:00.002+01:00

I am watching ZingZillas with My Lovely Son. It is time to stop watching ZingZillas and go and brush his teeth. He doesn’t want to stop watching ZingZillas and go and brush his teeth. A man comes on ZingZillas and starts playing the saxophone. I say that when the man stops playing the saxophone then it will be time to stop watching ZingZillas and go and brush his teeth. My Lovely Son agrees. (All parents will recognise this kind of negotiation. The whole Arab-Israeli Land for Peace idea that’s been going on since 1967 is basically modelled on trying to get a 3-year-old out of the house.) The man carries on playing the saxophone for quite some time.

MY LOVELY SON: “He’s never going to stop!”

ME: “Yeah, that’s jazz for you.”

Game Show Proposal

2011-06-10T21:51:00.004+01:00

It's called Rock or Hard Place. The contestant is put in a situation with a choice of two equally unpleasant possible outcomes and we watch to see which they choose. Like Deal or No Deal the outcome is completely random, and the fun is in watching the contestant squirm as they make up their mind.

As a completely hypothetical example that I have just plucked from absolutely nowhere whatsoever, imagine being in an aeroplane toilet with a 3-year-old who, despite much cajoling, hasn't produced much of anything all day, but has just announced that he really needs to go. Meanwhile, a stewardess is banging on the door telling you that if you don't go back to your seats right now they're going to have to abort the landing.

Rock or Hard Place?

Snowmen Die in Hot Cars

2011-02-01T16:06:00.000Z

Living the Dream

2011-01-11T12:11:00.002Z

Last night I dreamt that my girlfriend and I were going to do a load of washing and were discussing whether to do a light load or a dark load. This is what my dreams have come to. Literally. My life now revolves almost entirely around work, MY LOVELY SON and other family commitments. But the six or seven hours of sleep I get a night are mine and mine alone. In my unconscious mind I can still go anywhere and do anything, with no responsibilities. I could fly, swim underwater, travel to outer space or make love to supermodels with no feelings of guilt. And what am I doing? Laundry.

Maybe tonight I’ll have another dream. A dream that dark-coloured washing and light-coloured washing can one day go in the same laundry cycle.

Advent Day 25

2010-12-25T09:25:00.002Z

I know that most advent calendars only go up to 24, but this is one Christmasier, isn't it? So without further ado, let's see what is behind the fairy at the top of the mast ...

MERRY
CHRIST-
MAS! X

Again, a slight lack of pl-
anning ahead, but this is a time for goodwill to all, so:

MERRY CHRISTMAS! X

Advent Day 24

2010-12-24T09:24:00.001Z

And behind the ridiculously tiny sail (how on earth is Father Christmas planning on getting round the world in one night with that?) is ...

A nativity scene!

Blimey. Compared with the Christmas cake this is like the Sistine Chapel ceiling. I suspect that the labour got divided up and this is one of my sister's efforts. Whilst you all admire it, let's have a round-up of the year before tomorrow's final window:

We didn't move house, saving that particular joy for next year.

My shoulder, which was very painful in January, is loads better, but as of Saturday I've now got a sore neck which is making it difficult to sleep. I have definitely reached the age where it's best not to ask me how I am, unless you have quite a lot of time on your hands.

I'm afraid there was no more Rothkowatch as the writing project was put on hold due to lack of funds, which was annoying for all concerned, especially me, to whom those funds should have gone. It may one day be resurrected, or the picture might be auctioned off to pay creditors. Who knows?

Things That I Will Probably Never Get Round to Doing #4 would probably be 'Some More Blog Posts About Things That I Will Probably Never Get Round to Doing'.

But this advent calendar means that I've written the most posts since 2007 (when, in absolutely no coincidence, MY LOVELY SON was born). And it's been wonderfully nostalgic fun as well as a good exercise to have to write one small thing each day about a subject I have no control over. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you did, please do leave a comment. With the advent (geddit?) of feed readers I now have little to no idea if anyone is still reading this.

Don't forget tomorrow's window in all the excitement.

Advent Day 23

2010-12-23T09:23:00.002Z

And behind the jack is ...

A stocking!

That's pretty clear, isn't it? Let's see what's in the stocking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jy4X87fDk4

It's Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses, the best Christmas song ever!

Advent Day 22

2010-12-22T09:46:00.002Z

And behind the ensign is ...

Happy Birthday Grandad!

I spent all but one of my first 15 Christmases with him (I believe that the snow was too bad for the drive north one year), and I have happily taken on his festive role of winding up small children with tall tales. The 22nd was also his wedding anniversary, which was a great piece of planning as it would make the date difficult to forget. Though maybe there wasn't a lot of choice if you were getting married in 1939... Happy Birthday Grandad!

Advent Day 21

2010-12-21T09:40:00.004Z

And behind the ship's stern is ...

A present!

Hang on - we've already had one of those on the 5th (behind the crow's nest):

And the rule was definitely that there had to be a different thing behind each door. Nooooo! Have I just discovered that my whole childhood was a failure? Did I not really achieve all the things I set out to, like scraping a pass in my Grade 4 violin? Has my entire life been built on a lie?

Ah, no wait a minute, let's look at today's present again:

Look - it's got a vertical pencil line coming out of its top, so that clearly shows that this isn't a present, but a present-shaped Christmas tree decoration. And that's totally different. Hurrah! And anyone who says that I've just drawn that line on is lying. You can get it carbon-dated if you want (what with pencil lead actually being graphite, a form of carbon) and it will definitely date from around 1979. And anyone who says that I have kept a pencil from around 1979 in case I ever needed to doctor the advent calendar in any way 30+ years on is lying.

Advent Day 20

2010-12-20T11:18:00.003Z

And behind the green present is ...

An anvil? An upside-down cross-section of railway line? I am going through something similar with my LOVELY SON at the moment where I look at his scribblings and have to work out what they are, so I now sympathise with what my parents must have gone through every morning. The only difference being that I was at least six years older. But I am going to say that it is ...

A wine glass!

Note to other nine-year-olds contemplating making advent calendars for their parents: red wine works better. See?

Also, your linking of Christmas with alcohol at such an early age is rather worrying.

Advent Day 19

2010-12-19T09:19:00.002Z

And behind part of the blue present is ...

A teddy bear!

A sort of greeny-grey teddy bear. Unless it's a greeny-grey gingerbread man. Either way, the 11th was now definitely a soldier, as the rule was that the thing behind each door had to be different. An entirely self-imposed rule, but a rule nonetheless, and without rules there would just be anarchy.

Advent Day 18

2010-12-18T09:18:00.001Z

And behind part of the red present is ...

Break up Yipee!

We break up!
We break up!
We don't care if the school blows up!
No more English, no more French!
No more sitting on the old school bench! [What a hardship that was.]
If the teacher interferes,
Tie her up and box her ears!
If that does not serve her right,
Blow her up with dynamite! [Or gelignite, depending on your preference of high explosive. Unlike dynamite, gelignite doesn't sweat unstable nitroglycerine, so can be safely stored, handled and moulded to fit your teacher.]

Ooh, hang on. If we broke up on the 18th, then I might be able to work out what year this was. OK, December 18th was a Sunday in 1977, so that's out. It was a Monday in 1978, and I can't see us having gone back to school for just one day after the weekend, so that makes it 1979 (a Tuesday) at the earliest. Or possibly 1980 (a Thursday), though I definitely had fischertechnik that year, not an Inter-City 125 set (though I perhaps already owned that and just wanted to draw a picture of it). Surely it can't be 1981 (a Friday)? I can't still have been making homemade advent calendars with my sister at the ages of 11 (me) and 14 (her)? OK, that is possible, but I think that I would have been more likely to draw a ZX81 in 1981, so I'm going to go with 1979, though there may be more clues to come, either this year or next.

Advent Day 17

2010-12-17T12:11:00.006Z

And behind the long row of portholes is ...

Activate zoom ...

An Inter-City 125 in original 1970s British Rail livery!

Which means it is entirely possible that I had one of these that Christmas (as I definitely had this at some point):

Note that I didn't try to write 'Inter-City' or attempt the tricky BR logo - I had obviously learned from the Christmas cake debacle (if it was a Christmas cake). The Inter-City 125 (surely today they'd drop that hyphen and just have an intercapped 'InterCity') wasn't launched till 1976*, and Hornby didn't bring out their model till 1977 (see below), so that means that the earliest this advent calendar could date from would be 1977, though I'd kind of worked that out already from the standards of handwriting, cutting out and mention of orchestra parties.

My sister had a friend whose dad worked for British Rail, and I remember her cheerily informing me that the people standing by the railway line on the catalogue cover would be sucked into the air surrounding the speeding train and killed. Merry Christmas!

* They are still going strong today, despite the rest of the world having moved on from high speed diesels.

Advent Day 16

2010-12-16T11:56:00.007Z

And behind the bauble is ...

Er, let's take a closer look ...

Nope. Closer still ... ?

Hmm. 'HAPPY something'? I'm going to take a guess and say that it's a Christmas cake with HAPPY CHRISTMAS written on the side (as we always have a round Christmas cake, so this must be a side view). The light blue edging does look a bit like how my Mum ices cakes. I don't know what's on top though - a little Christmas tree next to a red blob? Is that Father Christmas? Or are the green and red together meant to be a piece of holly? If so, it's a pretty big piece of holly. Or a pretty small cake.

I think this is the worst illustration yet, even including Tinselgate. There are a couple of lessons to be learned here: firstly, when drawing something that is going to have a message on the top, don't draw it from the side. And secondly, if you're writing text inside a limited space, than always

Advent Day 15

2010-12-15T09:15:00.002Z

And behind the star is ...

Another star!

That actually made me laugh, 30+ years on. If you then opened that star would there be another slightly smaller star behind it? And so on into infinity? No - we only had two pieces of A4. I still love it though. The only thing better would be to open the door and just see the phrase 'ceci n'est pas une étoile'.

Advent Day 14

2010-12-14T10:18:00.002Z

And behind the anchor is ...

A bauble!

OK, not much to say about that, so here's an early Christmas present:

http://www.youtube.com/user/awkwardchristmas#p/u/3/NO8Q4Pdpk8o

(Office Party by Helen Arney & Paul Richards, featuring Terry Saunders, from the album It's Going to Be an Awkward Christmas, Darling.)

Advent Day 13

2010-12-13T09:55:00.003Z

And behind the scary (and rather topical) shark's fin is ...

ANDALUCIA!

OK, I am now officially stumped. The plot has thickened from the 11th's suicidal soldier (they're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace - this one's topped himself) and is now resembling an episode of 3-2-1. I'm afraid to open any more windows in case I win a dustbin.

Let's look at the clues. Er, it's an autonomous community of southern Spain. And I'm pretty sure we didn't actually go to Spain for a day, so all I can think of is that we went to a Spanish restaurant on the evening of 13th December 1970-something. Which was still pretty exciting for the 1970s. I expect that we all ordered omelettes. I've Googled andalucia+restaurant+town near our village, but if they did exist 30-odd years ago they've gone out of business since. Perhaps their unimaginitive clientele mostly died of high blood cholesterol.

But if it was a restaurant, then it does mean that my pre-teen life, with its orchestra parties and foreign dining, was actually a complete social whirl compared with December 2010. The highlight of this year's advent calendar would read 'Get new tyre before VAT goes up'.

Advent Day 12

2010-12-12T09:06:00.001Z

And behind the banana-y moon is ...

Take a guess. Go on. It will be more fun than charades. What's that, you say? A twig? No, it's not a twig. A brown railway line on a map? No, it's not that. A very hairy caterpillar? Nooooo. I think this game could go on a long time, so I will put you all out of your misery by telling you that it is ...

A piece of tinsel!