Sick

Well, this is a proper pickle isn’t it? A month ago we were all leading our lives as normal, and now we’re all reading The Stand to find out where the hell we’ll be in a weeks time. As a single man working, sleeping and living in the same room pretty much 24/7 my problems have scaled back from find a way of moving forward in life, and are now; how to avoid turning my room into a masturbation furnace. Turns out that a lack of access to toilet roll is actually a boon in this situation.

Communication with my kids, who currently live with their mum (on account I rent a room, not a house) is mainly via video calls. This means that most of our conversations consist of the word; “What?” or the sentence “This connection is really bad.” And how weird is it that when you have a bad connection on a video call, it’s always the other person’s fault? It’s the modern equivalent of lending someone your favourite mix tape only for their tape player to eat it. And now the internet is the single most important thing in the world. So well done Tim Berners-Lee. Pop your feet up Tim and have a can of Stella (he seems the sort).

As the children of key workers both the Kids are eligible for school. News they greeted with expressions that roughly translated as “What the fuck?” and “You couldn’t be cool, could you?” The Boy, now a full fledged teenager with spots, random erections and a penchant for opening the fridge and grunting, doesn’t go to school. He’s trustworthy. So trustworthy he spent £150 in micro transactions on his PlayStation in two days. So he gets to be at home on his own, which for the first week was super awesome, and for the second week has been dull as arseholes. Yesterday the Girl went to school and was outnumbered by the teachers 4-1. And she still won the lunch time knife fight and made the Head Teacher cry, and left the school with a cheery "Toodle-oo, motherfuckers!"

That's not true that last bit. But it could be true.

I see them as often as possible, within the strictures of the lock down. We take the Dog for a walk, or rather we take the Dog out and watch her fuck off into the distance whilst we shout at her to come back. She is the epitome of “One word from me and she does what she wants.” It’s a habit she’s picked up from the Girl.

And meantime the Kids and I talk about the pandemic I spend most of the time diffusing the crap they’ve picked up from social media. In particular this week that the Corona virus is linked in some way to the Chinese 5g networks. Not that long ago they were shitting on the sofa. Now they’re David Icke. My favourite so far is that it’s a plan to improve the Chinese economy by destroying the Chinese economy. That’s some mental acrobatics right there. Pop your tin foil hat on, watch out for the drones.

But the main takeaway from this whole situation is this. Now we know what’s important like we never did before. Family, freedom, the NHS, education, time with our kids. And it doesn’t matter what happens after this, because we’re all going to be okay, because we’ll all have a better understanding of what’s really important in the end. 

Us.

Stay safe. Keep calm. Stay the fuck at home.

Back to Scratch

And so things change. My last blog post was bittersweet. This blog post sadly will be bitterersweeter. Yes that is a word. Yes it is. Look it up.

To make a long, dull and frankly humourless story short, the Wife and I have parted.

There we are, it's said. But a public facing blog isn't the place to air my dirty laundry, so I won't go into details. Suffice to say the blog will continue, as the Boy and Girl remain fully part of my life as the Ex and I coparent.

This blog will now be for single dads, because there are a lot of us. For all those dads scratching their heads, wondering what to do next, and wondering how they went from building an awesome Lego robot ninja, to being soley responsible for two fully functioning sociopaths half of the week.

The Bin Lids appear to be largely unscathed by the current situation and dealing with it pretty well, albeit with somewhat different priorities to me:

"Yay! Two Christmases!"

Although I did get called up the Girl's school to speak with her teacher the other week because she was concerned about some of the things the Girl had been saying. I asked for an example:
"Carrots."
"...artery."
x

"The other day we had a class discussion about what they want to be when they grow up and the Girl said 'Mass murderer'."

Laughter, apparently, was not the right response. The teacher pressed on:

"She has also been talking about how she enjoys cutting things up."

I looked at the Girl.

"What did you mean?"


The teacher then suggested that she could have an exercise book to write her thoughts and feelings into, which brought me in mind of this...

Teachers, it turns out, have no sense of humour about these things.

The Boy being the Boy, doesn't really appear to have noticed, possibly because they haven't brought out a Minecraft mod about it. He's been focussed on his school work, which given his predilection for bursting into flames when asked to do his homework is disturbing in it's own right. It's had the knock on effect though with the Girl cheerfully relaying to a friend of mine

"At school the Boy put his finger up a pigs ar..."

"...."


Thank the maker.

The good news is then, on the Kids front things haven't really changed, which explains why the Girl threw a wobbler about some awful task she'd been given...

"Could you pick that sock up, darling?"

...and kicked me in the face. Normality reigns.

Oh, look. The Girl's brought me a cardboard box with a present in it...

All Good Things

For the past seven years I've been living in fear. What feels like many moons ago the Wife and I decided to get a cat. More accurately, I came home one day and discovered we had a cat. His name was Boris, and he was kind of an arsehole.

Boris was made famous in this blog for being the recipient of a endoscopy conducted by an 18 month old Girl and a spoon. Yet strangely he was always very fond of the Girl. It's possible he had a prostate issue.

The Girl has always been mad on animals, and in particular cats. Most of her life she has been adorned in cat merchandise. T shirts, trousers, underwear, flip flops, umbrellas,  you name it. So, our biggest fear was what would happen when he finally bowed out. That thought has given me the odd sleepless night over the  years.

Then, three weeks ago we found out the cat had stomach cancer.

Breaking bad news to a child is always difficult, and doubly so to a small Girl who can, at the age of nine, kill a man with her thumbs. Naturally the Girl was distraught, as was the Boy, and the pair of them dissolved into the consistency of a damp hanky.

They always surprise you, kids. And they bounced back quite quickly. Especially as, since Boris wasn't in pain, we decided to keep looking after him until it was clear it was the end. In fact the Girl recovered so well that when we bumped into some friends the next day she replied to their cheery Hey, guys! with an equally cheery

My cat's got cancer!

For the record, this doesn't work well as an ice breaker.

Three weeks went past in the blink of an eye, as they do when your kids are around ten. We went camping whilst Boris stayed with friends, we drove around Suffolk, we got home and unpacked. The Girl told us she's written graffiti in the dirty on the van

Oh, goodo. What does it say?

I wrote the mummy loves the builder.

(We're having some building work done)

Oh yeah? Which one?

Dick.

Dick?

Yes.

So... What you wrote on the back of the van, that we've been driving all round Suffolk in for the past three days, was...

Mummy loves dick.

In short, normal service was resumed.

Today Boris took a turn for the worse, and clearly it was time to do the right thing. So, this evening he went to the great cattery in the sky. Boris the mighty, the cat that shat on my pillow, the cat that got shot off a fence with a champagne cork, the cat that had a spoon up his arse, moved on to the next adventure.

Goodbye, you big silly bastard. We'll miss you.

Nuts

A couple of weeks ago the Girl had a major meltdown. This was unlike her usual meltdowns, because it didn't end in bloodshed. Instead she became all wobbly and emotional because the Boy got her a drink.

That was it. He brought her a drink of juice, and she wigged out, burst into tears and decided to send herself to bed.

"Uh, oh..." the Wife said.

"What?"

"She's getting hormonal."

I thought about this carefully for a moment, because it's always good to be calm and considered at times like that. After a picosecond of consideration, I gave my verdict.

"No! NO! She's not allowed to get hormonal until you've done that menopause thing because I JUST CAN'T DEAL WITH IT!"

I then excused myself and went to bed. It was six thirty.

Today I picked the Kids up from school and once we'd got home and I'd spent a few minutes shouting "Door!", "Shoes!", "Bags!" and the like the Boy said to me

"We had a really interesting lesson today at school."

"Righto." I replied, eyeing a bottle of wine on the table and trying to figure out how long I had to leave it alone before it wasn't classed as middle-class alcoholism.

"It was about puberty."

"Oh, REALLY? So, what did you learn, because I'm still not sure what all the bits do."

"Oh, you know. Body changes and feelings and stuff."

Annoyingly, he wasn't embarrassed. As mentioned previously, my Dad started this conversation with the words "You might be feeling randy..." and I cut him off by bailing out of a moving car. My Kids, it seems, simply cannot be trusted to react correctly.

"Well, it'll happen to you one day."

"Already has."

"No it hasn't, you're ten."

"It has. Look."

And then he showed me his penis.

I'm going to bed.

In the Midnight Hour

In the dirty hours of this morning I found myself mulling over the person I seem to have become. Ordinarily I sleep like narcoleptic with a Valium addiction, but I was afforded this wakey time thanks to the Dog. 

The Dog now sleeps in our room, as this helps prevent her doing dirty protests on the shagpile. When we go to bed she's curled up in her basket next to the bed. However, the moment she thinks I'm asleep she climbs onto the bed and works on pushing me slowly out of bed over several hours. Sneaky little bastard.

Last night she was a bit restless, so she jumped off the bed before waking me by applying her cold nose to my arse as if to say "HIYA! IT'S ME!"

And so the start of my existential crisis. I think it was David Baddiel that said that during a bout of insomnia the only things you think about are; sleep, death or the possibility of a fifth wank. No so me. This was my thought process.

When the hell did my life revolve around resolving arguments between the Kids?

"Daaaad... the Boy annexed the Crimea..."

"Well she invaded the Sudentenland!"

It's like being the UN.

Why do I start each morning switching the electric toothbrush on before I've put it in my mouth and spraying toothpaste all over the wall?

When did I buy trousers on which the flies are always open?

Why can I no longer sit down where I want to?

"BISCUITS?"

Why do I spend so much time retracing my steps looking for something that has dropped out of my pocket?

Similarly, how much of my life has been spent looking for the fucking remote control?

Why does the Dog deliberately, and with malice of forethought, shit as far as caninely possibly from the dog poo bin?

And other such mundanities of life. This is why I'm so popular at parties.

Tonight, the Girl came downstairs after bed time clutching her book (it's hard to tell them off for reading too much, it feels like saying "You've done TOO MUCH HOMEWORK!"). Ostensibly this was to show us that her name was in it.

"That's great, Girl. But it's time to put the book down and go to sleep."

At this, she started jumping on the spot. She'd been undergoing a period of mania since four snowflakes had fallen in the back garden.

"I told you that you need to calm down, darling. It's bed time."

"This is how I calm down."

And she hopped out of the room and up the stairs, much like an articulated lorry full of marshmallows crashing into a pillow factory. Ten minutes later she was snoring like a walrus.

I'm jumping up the stairs to bed tonight.

Relationship Status

IIf there's one thing that pisses of our cat, it's our Dog. Apparently Boris the cat doesnt appreciate having a wet nose applied to his arsehole - possibly due to the Girl interfacing a spoon with it some years back.

For a while Boris dealt with his frustration by hiding at the top of the stairs for the Dog to appear and then clouting her as she rounded the corner.  However,  when some friends came round with their dog some weeks ago,  Boris decided enough was enough and buggered off.

Now,  the Girl has moved on somewhat from her early career as the first fully weaponised toddler and thrower of epic tantrums to a somewhat willful, but always kindly minder of small children and animal lover. She's a vegetarian, she's a member of the RSPB, the RSPCA, and she's sponsored a snow leopard to do a sponsored silence or something. She scowls at me when I eat bacon.

She also loves that cat. She loves it the way Donald Trump loves racism and misogyny. So when it fucked off she was distraught.

In times of strife the measure of a man is in how he conducts himself. So to set a good example, I continued to drink wine and watch football. Which I was selflessly doing in my daughter's honour when she came downstairs and handed me an envelope. On the front was written

Dear mum and Dad (drunk) from the Girl (a sad message)

Inside was a note...

"I love Borrie boy"

"The relashonshup me a Boris share" 

"I miss Boris"

I know you're now thinking the same thing as me; what an emotionally manipulative little bastard, right? I agree. And it worked. The Wife promptly went off down the street to find Boris was now living with an elderly family under the assumed name of "Charlie", like he was in the Witness Protection Programme. Since then he's had nothing but the best cat food, constant treats and the understanding that if he wants to sleep on my pillow all day, it doesn't matter how many times he pees on it.

I love cats.

Keeping Your Spirits Level

My father taught me a great many things as a child. Which was weird because I wasn't born when he was a child. Those lessons spanned the distance between useful

"The only thing certain in life is change, Boy."

Dubious

"The quickest route to a brama is to check out another man's giggle pin in the bogs." *

And, of course, the frankly offensive

"If shit was a music you'd be a fucking orchestra, Boy."

That last one wasn't really a lesson, admittedly.

One of the things I got from Dad that I still use now was a stress relief technique he claimed he'd learnt from a Bhuddist Yogi during a trek through the Himalayas ^. 

^ Although come to think of it, he once claimed he had copyright on the letter 's', so it's possible he was lying.

Essentially it involved yelling

"SHITFUCKSHITFUCKSHITFUCKSHITFUCK"

very loudly.

The first time I heard him use it was when he drove through an unexpectedly narrow gap between two parked cars at about sixty. After we made it through unscathed and pulled over so we could both have a quick vomit he explained it's purpose, followed by the words

"It's friggin' tantric, innit?"

This came in quite handy in the time since my last blog post. You'll remember I'd been through a bit of a rigmarole with my eye due to a detached retina. The day after I posted that, everything headed south for the winter and the eye started flashing again. This prompted another trip to Moorfields Eye Hospital for a conversation that was primarily comprised of me shouting Dad's tantric stress reliever whilst a doctor tried to calm me down.

In short, whilst the operation had been a partial success there was still fluid sitting on my retina. The doctors tried to combat this by getting me to lie on my back without moving my eyes for two days. Take my word for it that not moving your eyes for five minutes is fairly tricky. After two days of it 

I'd gone from this

"A stranger is just a friend I haven't made yet!"

to this

"Axe delivery!"

I downloaded an audiobook about the Spanish Civil War that was 27 hours long and listened to the whole bloody thing both whilst sleeping and awake. I returned to the hospital to find that the net result of these two days were; backache, a working knowledge of 1930's politics in Spain, and bugger all else. So they scheduled another op.

As an aside, did you enjoy your dinner? Yes? Good. You're about to see it again.

The op they opted for (see what I did there) was called a whatthehellareyoudoingtomyeye er... ectomy. Or something. Unlike my first operation this was done under local anesthetic. The anesthetist was very sweet, and said that since I was a bit of a flower, he'd give me a nice sedative that made me sleepy so I didn't get stressed. Unfortunately he was also a liar and I was awake the whole sodding time. 

That said, I had enough sedative to find the whole thing quite fascinating. I can't really describe what it was like, but there were interesting colours and patterns and the drugs really were first class. I had a nice chat, had my footwear criticised and a GAS BUBBLE INJECTED INTO MY GODDAMNED EYEBALL.

The idea being that the gas bubble pushes the retina back against the eye where it reattaches. It all sounds absolutely ghastly, but actually it wasn't too awful. And remember, I'm such a pansy I threw a banana at a woman because I was scared by a spider.

This fixed the problem, for about 24 hours, when at the checkup they told me it had only partially worked. I've heard those words so often in the past two months I'm considering them for my epitaph. There was some head scratching, they told me to come back the next day and see the lead consultant. I came back, he scratched his head and said

"I think it's worth trying to laser the area to prevent any more fluid coming in. Follow me."

I followed him to a room where he sat me in something that was a bit like a dentist chair, leant me back and said those words that only doctors and dentists say

"This might twinge a bit."

Lets be clear here, friends and family, when a doctor or dentist says that they mean "This is going to hurt." Like when the nurse at the blood bank says; "Sharp scratch!" shortly before firing a harpoon gun into your arm. I responded with nervous

"Oooooooookaaaaaaay...."

He held something over my eye, there was a bright flash of light and I said

"Unh!"

He stopped and looked down at me.

"Did that hurt?"

"Well, I think it was surprise more than pain."

"Ok. Lets try again."

zapzapzapzapzapzapzapzapzapzapzapzapzapzap

"You know," I said "actually that is quite painful and I think I might"

And I passed out. 

I came round to find a rather flustered lead consultant apologising profusely and hustling me back to the waiting area, where I was given a pain killer in the form of a nice cup of tea. 

I'm not too proud to say that as I sat there with the pain subsiding, the whole situation became a bit overwhelming, and I suddenly found myself having a bit of a cry. This made me spill tea in my lap, which in turn (because my emotions were all over the shop) made me start laughing slightly hysterically. A nurse appeared and approached me gingerly.

"Are you okay?"

Now, I'm British - and that means certain rules apply. It means I apologise when someone stands on my foot. It means that there is no greater fear than following someone through a series of doors and trying to find a new word for "Thanks" every time they hold one open. It means that I turned to her, tears running down my face, eyes bloodshot, laughing like a loon and said

"I'm fine, thanks." 

And then gestured to tea she'd made me and said

"Lovely."

Since then I've had to lie on my right side for a week, which sounds awesome but is, in fact, bullshit. Particularly as it means my "good" eye is buried in a pillow most of the time so I can't. On the bright side, when you have a bubble in your eye, you always know which way up you are.

And now things seem relatively stable. So, lets move on from this shall we? I rather wish you hadn't brought it up.

Eye Eye!

About a month ago I saw a shooting star, which was a particularly strange occurrence given the level of light pollution in my area and the fact my eyes were shut. The light was fairly bright and travelled down the right side of my left eye and then vanished. Naturally I did what most people do these days and googled it to find;

Flashes and floaters happen because of changes in the vitreous, the clear, jelly-like substance that fills the inside of your eyeball.  The vitreous jelly shrinks as you get older, and slowly pulls away from the inside surface of the eye.  This shrinking and separation or detachment of the vitreous from the retina is a common phenomenon, particularly in people over 50 years of age, and causes no retinal damage in nine out of 10 patients.  It is known as a posterior vitreous detachment.

Bleurgh, I thought and focused on the "nine out of ten" bit and went to sleep.

The next day in the afternoon I was talking to the Wife when I realised that I could see my left eyebrow. This is far less unusual than the shooting star thing, because since my early thirties my body had taken up sprouting hair from a wide and radical array of places. I'm still trying to work out what I'm going to encounter later on in life that will require the white hair that grows from my left ear lobe to deal with it. 

It turns out, you will not be surprised to learn, that it wasn't my eyebrow that I could see, but a blind spot in the top of my vision. So, as any sensible person would do, I tried to ignore it. I managed that for all of about ten minutes before panicking and rushing off to the doctor, who shone a small torch in my eye, and told me to see an optician. This I also felt was best dealt with by panic, so I rushed off to Accident and Emergency (the Emergency Ward, for my colonial brethren).

On entering A&E I was promptly called a four eyed prick, which happens fairly regularly to me on account of my personality (and glasses), but rarely before I've managed to speak. The gentleman in question turned out to have Tourette's syndrome which is clearly no laughing matter. However... this particular chap was describing every person to walk in through the doors. I sat in that ward for over four hours, and I have to say he was spot on every time. How I didn’t lose a lung when he yelled “MASSIVE BANGWANGS!” I don’t know.

Eventually I was told I needed to go to the Eye Clinic downstairs, so bade farewell to “SPOON FACE!”, “SWEAT FLAPS!”  and “CAMEL TOE THUNDERCUNT!” and went off to have a light shone in my eyes for forty-five minutes.

“Hmm. I can see what the problem is. Let me make a quick phone call... Hello, Dr Kesh? Hello. I have a patient here who’s presenting with retinoschisis. Is it usual to see holes in the retina? I see. Yes, yes... I can see the veins bulging over. Ok. Goodbye, Dr Kesh...."

He turned back to me.

"Why are you lying on the floor?" 

"Nnnngggg..." I replied.

"You have unilateral retinoschiIsis which is where the layers of the retina separate and you can lose some of your vision.”

“Right. So, what is the treatment?”

“There isn’t any treatment.”

“Is this blind spot permanent then?”

“Oh yes.”

“Well, that was quite casual... Er. So what’s the prognosis?”  I asked, not actually knowing what the word “prognosis” means, but also not wanting to sound like an amateur.

“Well, it’s usually bilateral.”

He looked at my expression.

“That means in both eyes.”

“Which means I'll lose some vision in the other eye?”

“Quite possibly.”

“Also quite casual... Er... Right. Er...”

So let’s cut to the chase, three weeks later, a lot of sleepless nights and some significant panic attacks later I was called back for an examination. This time a different doctor looked in my eyes, then went off, called in a colleague who looked in my eyes, then had a brief conversation and told me they didn’t know what was wrong with me.

“It might be retinoschisis, or it might be a retinal detachment.”

Retinal detachment is not a phrase you usually want to hear. On the scale of “fuck that” it scores quite a long way below “malignant brain tumour” but significantly higher than “I have tickets to Barbara Streisand.” However, since retinal detachment can be treated, it was actually a better diagnosis than retinoschisis.

The next day I went to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, where I spent a very large part of the day having lights shone in my eyes. It was a bit like being beamed up to a mothership.

“Well it’s definitely a retinal detachment.”

“That’s good.”

“So we’re going to operate.”

It’s funny how your priorities can change. I can imagine that, sitting there reading this with your hopefully fully functioning and healthy eyes, the thought of an eye operation might be curling your toes right now (and if not, wait for it). Ordinarily, I would probably have reacted by manfully passing out and flopping on the floor like a landed carp. Instead I said;

“Jolly good.”

“So we’re going to do is called a Viterectomy. Which involves removing the gel from inside your eye and replacing it with a gas bubble.”

“Jolly good.” I said, less convincingly.

“It’s done under local anesthetic.”

“FUCK THAT!!” I replied, very convincingly.

“Well, we can do it under general anesthetic if you think it’s going to be torture for you...”

“What part of ‘sucking the juice out of your eye and blowing a bubble into it’ sounds like it’s NOT torture?”

“...but most people find local sufficient.”

"You mean I'm being a bit of a girl's blouse?"

"Yes, petal."

Some good news for both of us here. In the end, I didn’t have this operation, I had a ScleralBuckle and a Cryotherapy Retinopexy, which were conducted under general anesthetic. Which means I can’t describe what happened to me. I’m sure you’re very upset.

You may be wondering how all of this occurred, by the way. I know I was. A little later the surgeon said to me

“When did you take the blow to the head?”

“Er, I haven’t taken a blow to the head. I'm always like this.”

“There’s a scar on your retina, which looks like it has been there for some time. Have you ever taken a blow to the head?”

“I think the last time was in the Sex Museum in Amsterdam.”

She looked up from her paperwork.

“I’m sorry?”

“There was... this big penis, you see...” I rather bizarrely decided to continue. In my defence it was true, and my mum said you shouldn’t lie to doctors.

At this point she decided she needed a better look at my retina (possibly to make me stop talking).

“You see, the eye is like a keyhole. It’s easy to see the back, but you can’t see the sides very well.”

“I see, this is very interesting, tell me more...”

“So to see the edges we have to distort the eyeball.”

“Stop talking.”

“By pressing on it...”

“WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

Now I have to say, all of this sounds awful. But in actual fact it wasn’t and I’m exaggerating for comic effect. Or just exaggerating depending on how funny you find this. The treatment that I had was first class, the care the best you could hope for. I haven’t had much pain, the staff at Moorfields were all kind, and considerate and utterly brilliant. If you find yourself with flashing lights in your eyes, don’t mess about, go straight to your eye doctor and cling to their leg until they treat you. The treatment is a breeze – the anxiety and worry about not knowing what is wrong with you is just awful

I had my op a week ago, and I’m still recovering. At the moment I haven’t had any more flashing lights which means the retina now stable. I still have the dark patch, and that may or may not go away. But it’s in the periphery of my vision and even if it stays, it won’t impact on my life. Plus the Boy now thinks that I’m super-awesome because I have a “zombie eye.” He keeps yelling

“Roll up, roll up! See the zombie eyed freak”

Whenever I pick him up from school, the little bastard.

This is for everyone that took time for me. Thank you all.

Woof

With two warped children, a cat, a horse, a pair of demanding full time jobs, a house that needs more work than Donald Trump's hair and a mortgage so large it could save Tokyo from Godzilla we decided our lives weren't busy enough. So we got a dog.

With the Boy aged nine and the Girl aged seven we hadn't had the thrill of collecting someone else's shit for some time, and some things are just hard to quit.

The Dog (as it will hereafter be known) was named by the children, which is why she regales in the name Lily Barcelona Long Legs Von Schtupp Van Dog For Christ's Sake Stop Pissing Under The Table. Technically the last bit isn't her name it, just gets said a lot.

The Kids are naturally over the moon. One more animal for the Girl to patronise, and for once the Boy seems to have noticed one of the pets.

"I'm starting a dogging club at school."

"DOG club. A club for dogs."

"Yeah, I'm going to call it 'Woofters'"

"Er..."

Which is not always a good thing.

"BOY!"

"Yeah, yeah. I know. 'No twerking in front of the Dog.'"

(Not to leave the Girl out of the ridiculous conversations, the following was about her godfather

"You know Uncle Andy is a waitress on a plane? Does he have to wear lipstick? "

Bless.)

And whilst there are some up sides to having a dog, there are some downsides. Such as having a squirrel in your sofa.

The other day I was sitting on the sofa with the back door open whilst the Dog was outside. As I sat there something hurtled into the room and flung itself into the air directly at my head. I have a vivid mental image of a squirrel, eyes wide, limbs splayed out, mouth almost forming the the same word I said as I ducked:

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

It crashed into the window as the Dog came bounding into the house with a goofy look that said "Where'd my friend go?"

Having composed myself I quickly opened the windows and went to the kitchen to find a broom because apparently I live in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I then flipped the sofa over and... nothing. It had gone. Probably via the open window.

Or so we thought until two days later when the Dog went loopy trying to get under the sofa, and then found squirrel poo on the floor next to it. Obviously we checked inside it (half expecting a crazed and now carnivorous squirrel to go into a berserk rage) but it had left the sofa, and spent a day living in the kitchen knocking everything off the windowsills. I think it has now left, but we can't be sure.

Looks like we've got another pet.

Pop

When I was about fourteen my dad decided it was time to have a conversation about sex. Being the forward thinking type, he started this conversation on the way to my nan's house. Whilst she was in the back of the car.

 

I can't remember exactly what prompted him, but the conversation went:

 

"Now you're a teenager you're going to have times when you feel randy. "

"Randy? What? No..."

"That's quite normal. As long as it's about girls."

"Oh my god, stop."

"You're probably starting to touch yourself - "

 

At this point I made a lunge for the steering, prompted mainly by my nan who was cackling like a witch. My dad deftly reached over and prodded me in the testicles with his index finger. I deflated like an old football.

 

"I guess that'll postpone this conversation for a week or so. "

 

We never had that conversation in the end. The closest we came was when, whilst I was watching Hawaii 5-0 he stood in the doorway of the living room and said:

 

"Alright, Boy?"

"Huh? Yeah. "

"You're not gay, are you?"

"What? No."

"Righto."

 

And off he went.

 

Not that he was particularly helpful when I finally brought a girl home.

 

"Ah, you're the girl he keeps talking about! Nice to meet you, come into the house, Claire. "

*Through gritted teeth* "Her name is Rachel."

"Richard?"

"I f**king hate you."

 

He was an unreconstructed male, my old man - part of the sixties mod scene, somewhat in the mold of Alfie, but without the dress sense.

 

Exhibit #1

So on occasion his opinions were a bit stuck in time. But as a father he couldn't be faulted. Except the time I woke him up an hour after he'd got back from a night shift and he threw my Action Man down the stairs.

 

I was always a bit of weed as a kid, but despite his exasperation at my lack of gumption he was fiercely proud of me and my brother.

 

"Get in the water you big Jessie."

Later in life we worked together at the same place, a race track in the south of England. At one point I was even his boss, which wasn't always the easiest relationship to have.

 

"Chief Marshal to John..."

"What did you call me? "

"Er... John?"

"What, are we on first name terms, now? "

"Well, I..."

"I AM your dad."

"Yeah,  but..."

"I'm not answering unless you call me dad."

"Look, John..."

"I can't HEAR you!"

*Sigh* "Chief Marshal to dad?"

*Chuckling* "You loser."

 

But he was always there in an emergency.

 

"Er, Dad... I've got a bit of a problem."

"We've know that for a long time, Boy. You just have to accept that it won't get bigger than that."

"Can you just... not, for a minute. I've just had a car crash."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Good."

*Pause*

"Also, you're a dickhead."

"That's not helpful. "

"I was aiming for the truth more than being helpful. Where are you?"

"Trumpington. "

"Bwah hah hah ha! Brilliant!"

 

I have a thousand memories I could bore you with: him racing me home from work,  rounding a corner to find me sheepishly reversing out of a hedgerow. Or the time he came with me when I drove two hundred miles to see Stone Henge on New Years Eve and discovered it was shut ("You," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "are a moron.") Or the time I asked him how many commandments there were in the Ten Commandments which he never let me forget. He taught most of my friends to drive, and they still talk about him like he was a legend. Which he was.

 

And then in 2002 he got cancer. Towards the end, in early June we were sitting in the garden whilst he smoked a Silk Cut ("Why did you get me Silk Cut? It's not like it makes a difference, you tit!") in his pyjamas. We'd both been silent for a while when he asked me

 

"What are you thinking, Boy?"

"I'm trying not to smile when I think about the inheritance."

 

He grinned at me, told me he'd never liked me. It's the last good memory I have of him. He fought very hard for another week and then he was gone. He was fifty seven.

 

Thirteen years have gone past, I got married, had kids, am lurching into my mid life crisis. My world is completely different to then, but I think about my old man all the time.

 

Except when I'm having sex.

Oops!

Thursdays are a ball ache. In particular because I have to take the Kids to their swimming lesson, which appears to be run by the last surviving concentration camp guards dressed as a bunch of menopausal women.

For a refreshing change of pace the Boy's swimming teacher has stopped swimming alongside the Kids whilst criticising their lack of Olympic potential. Now she sits in (or more precisely - wears) a chair and hectors them loudly from the side of the pool. So it appears even buoyancy isn't a requirement for a swimming teacher these days.

This makes me quite ragey, so today I decided to deal with it by staring angrily at the back of her head and not saying anything. It's a good job she didn't turn around because I'd have had to look somewhere else.

Exiting the swimming pool then became an intricate rage inducing maze of bovine parents with vacuous expressions standing in doorways. The Boy then turned getting changed into something akin to pushing an eel into a balloon. While every other kid in the place left fully dressed he failed to negotiate his way into a pair of pants. So I did the parent-wanting-to-shout-at-child-in-public thing by giving him a wide eyed silent snarl that promised lots of shouting later. This would have worked admirably if he'd been paying bloody attention.

So the shouting happened outside. I stomped off to the car, the Kids dawdling in my furious wake. Instead of getting in the car, they started having a fight.

Dear reader, I'm not proud of what happened next for reasons that will become immediately obvious. I must have been thinking of Withnail and I when an emotional ketchup burst came out and I yelled;

"GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN!"

Several points to make here.

1. I have a car
2. I was standing next to a school
3. There was, on the other side of the road,  a man mowing the lawn who actually stopped to look at me
4. The Girl burst into tears and then, crucially, cried:

"I WANT MY MUMMY!"

On the up side I managed to get a wheel spin out of my twelve year old diesel dustbin. Plus the Girl (who is vegetarian) dropped her guts* in the car so pungently I nearly hit a lamp post.

* farted

Clarse

I'm writing this during the Kids interminable Saturday morning athletics class in an effort to have somewhere to put my eyes. I rue the invention of Lycra, particularly because the athletics instructors fit into one of two categories: very fit or bizarrely immense. Either way, when they start demonstrating squat thrusts or lunges right in front of me the effect is the same -  my eyes try to get out of my ear.

Athletics is only one of many extracurricular activities the Kids are signed up for. Earlier this week the Boy had a social engagement for which I was his designated driver. Last year he joined the cubs, which strangely he seems to enjoy in a totally unqualified manner. I say "strangely" because you often find him saying things like;

"I love playing Lego, but I wonder if it might be a bit dangerous. "

"Yes, it's right up there with using a rectal thermometer on a crocodile."

Anyway, his social engagment was something called a "Gang Show", which I assume wasn't run by the Bush Boys.  I dropped him off outside the local theatre and was chatting with Akela when he notice that I had a lot of blood on my thumb.

"Industrial injury? "

Now, I could have said that I'd cut myself building a log cabin, or that I'd caught it on my lathe, or that it was a shark attack. Because as a man I will occasionally be sparse with the truth if I think it might postpone someone's inevitable realisation that I am, when all is said and done, a complete tool. However, I went with;

"I was zesting a lemon. "

Which is about the most middle class injury you can get aside from getting a paper cut from your copy of the English Language version of Le Monde Diplomatique.

Plus - I've never zested a lemon in my life. I actually did it grating a carrot whilst making coleslaw. And why was I making coleslaw? Because we're too cheapskate to buy it from the supermarket.

Naturally the response to my reply was a long silence, followed by:

"Oh."

I don't know why I'm trying to convince people I'm middle class. I'm about as middle class as a string vest or a pack of 20 Rothmans. I'm sitting in a sports hall in the rougher end of town and my Kids are the least well dressed here. In fact they look like they're going to tarmac someone's drive. And there's nothing wrong with that. I should embrace my working class heritage. So I will do that back by sitting back and reading the paper.

Oh, bollocks. 

Buffoon

Once again I'm away from the family on a business trip. This time I'm at an international conference at which I'm due to give a presentation to delegates from Europe, Africa and North America on a very weighty subject. This seems remarkably foolhardy on the part of my employers as only yesterday I found myself utterly foozled by the simple fact that the Wife has the same surname as me.

We are all, at heart, the children we once were. I suspect that even Stalin wondered how he'd got from a small boy in Georgia to the most feared man in the world. Shortly before polishing Hitler's skull no doubt

I realise I've just compared myself to Stalin.

Moving on...

It doesn't feel like thirty years since I was asking questions like this,  from the Girl:

"Mummy, when are we going to  Denmark?"

"What? "

"When are we going to Denmark? No, not Denmark. Where did you say we were going?"

"Southend. *"

Or, as my Dad always like to recall, the day I asked:

"How many commandments are there in the Ten Commandments? "

The correct answer is eleven, by the way. The last one is the most important: Thoult Shall Not Get Caught.

Still, at least he only told everyone he met about that. He didn't, say, put it on the Internet.

You see, whilst the Kids can be excused their eccentricity because they're kids, my penchant for rampant buffoonery isn't as easy to shake off. I still deal with the world on the level of a six year old, so my life is a constant battle with social ineptitude.

Many years ago I was talking about this with a deeply religious friend, who in turn told me that she felt incredibly awkward talking about sex with her boyfriend because it made her feel dirty.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you're a bit odd."

She said, not unkindly.

"And I won't tell anyone you're frigid. "

I replied in a similar tone.

Apparently that's a no-no. She used words which rhymed with " truck" and "bunt". To this day I'm still a bit baffled about her reaction. And the reaction of everyone I've told about this (normally a whistling inhale of breath and a look of disdain).

She's a nun now, by the way.

Even today I've been crippled with the fear that I'm going to look odd carrying around a packet of chocolate digestives at this conference (I'm a mad man for chocolate digestives). It's only that, by pure luck and that I found the hotel have supplied a little paper bag for such an eventuality.

And it's apparently a "sanitary" bag. So that's good.

* For those of you that live outside of the UK, Southend is like Las Vegas, only with less commitment.

Wisdom Truth

OK,  I'm going  to be honest,  we got Netflix and frankly Breaking Bad is a bit addictive. But hey,  don't have a pop at me,  when did you last write to me, eh?   EH?

Exactly.

Recently a friend of mine wrote quite movingly about the experiences he'd had over the course of his life so far, and how he hoped to have the opportunity to pass on his knowledge. Naturally I couldn't miss an opportunity to piss on someone's barbecue. I made the point that I'd been passing on my "wisdom" for eight years with the net result being I now had to share my house with two raving maniacs.

"Daddy? "

*With due sense if dread and resignation* "Yes?"

"Have you ever worn girls clothes?"

"Nope."

"You'd look nice in a dress."

"Thanks, Girl. "

"When we get home you could put on mummy's wedding dress and then she'd laugh when you answered the door."

"She probably wouldn't laugh."

"YOUR BOOBS WOULDN'T FIT! "

"Shut up,  Boy."

For the benefit of posterity, I would look fabulous in the Wife's wedding dress. I have a lovely turn of ankle. However I'm a gentleman and it doesn't do to look better than your wife.

Last week the Boy (in his typically unwitting way) confused a friend of the mother in law  to the point of apoplexy just by telling her his middle name.

"That's a nice name. "

"Yeah,  it's my dad's dad's name."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah, it's quite sad really,  we don't get to see him much any more."

"That's a shame,  why? "

"He died before I was born."

There was a time when I could come home from work put my feet up and watch some telly before the Wife came in and pointed out the washing up needed doing, the laundry was getting rained on and the house was on fire. These days I have to brace myself to ask the question

"How are the Kids?"

"The Girl is climbing the walls."

"Oh god,  what is it now? Did you confiscate her throwing knives?"

"No.  She's literally climbing the walls. Look."

In the living room the Girl had removed her socks and was scaling the wood surround on the wall. She climbed all the way to the ceiling, before throwing herself backwards onto the sofa. Since the Girl has the bone density of hardened steel,  this ejected the cat from the sofa, who exited the room at close to light speed. It also made me have an aneurysm. Since then I've been trying to source Kryptonite on eBay.

God forbid I bother asking the Kids what they did at school. Last time I did it the Boy appeared to go into Factory Reset. We had to teach him to walk all over again.

It doesn't help that over the "festive period" I've been battling manfully with tooth ache caused by a broken wisdom tooth. Battling manfully is defined by crying in the car park outside the dentist surgery, I should add.

Dealing with my Kids when I'm happy is tough enough. Let alone when I feel like someone is hitting me in the face with a rusty shovel. I've been a bit shouty of late. The up side is that because it's tooth ache,  no one can understand what I'm shouting about. So for most of Christmas the Kids treated me like that bloke at the local supermarket who shouts at the cheese. Wary incomprehension.

Still, after an emergency tooth extraction and having three fillings  (one of which was so deep the dentist had to tie a rope to his feet to get back out again)  I'm back to being the usual reasonable person that everybody expects me to be. Now bugger off, it's the season 4 finale.

Pandemonium

It turns out that both my children have birthdays, and as a consequence of this we had to go through the hell of having a second birthday party within a month. Sucks to be me.

Since the Girl shares her birthday with one of her friends, we decided to have a joint party and invite their entire class. Which led to me trying to entertain about 25 five and six year old's. With that volume of potential lawlessness there's quite a lot of pressure. Especially when their parents are present. Ever seen the dads on the touchline of a school football match? You'd think lives were riding on it, which sadly they occasionally are. Even something as innocent as a game of musical statues is too much responsibility for me. I mean, there's just so much riding on it.

A friend of mine booked his daughter's birthday party in June, when I last spoke to him he looked like he'd just got back from Helmand. Apparently they'd had a game of sleeping lions that continued for nearly an hour. He didn't quite have the bottle to pick anyone to be out because it kept turning into a bloodbath whenever he even looked at one of the children.

 Still, as the person people volunteer for such things because "he loves kids" (note: I don't), it fell to me. It took approximately all of my life to get through the bloody thing. We then foolishly embarked on a game of pass the parcel during which I kept forgetting who I'd stopped at before. This culminated in stopping the music on someone who had apparently cheated. And it wasn't just the kids that pointed this out to me. At one point I heard one of the parents mutter "This is rigged."

We muddled through in the end, largely by bribing the children with sweets. I think I managed to get through the whole thing without risking too many death threats. I announced that everyone was a winner, there was a cheer and it was very clear that whilst everyone was a winner, I was definitely the loser.

There's no way you can have any level of interaction with a group of kids that doesn't make you look like a moron at some point.

Yeah. That's me on the right. That's exactly what I look like. So, you know, say hello when you see me in the street,

Overall the party was a success, and led to a haul of booty for the Girl that ranked just below the Brinx-Mat job. She got Frozen loom bands, Frozen puzzles, Frozen coloring books and a set of twin overhead cams for a 2006 Ford Focus with Elsa and Olaf on them. There was a time where not everything had been merchandised by Frozen, but I don't remember it clearly. That's probably due to the heavy alcohol abuse.

 The unfortunate side effect of the party (and therefore her birthday) being over was that she didn't have anything to look forward to (except, like, Christmas). This has become an issue, because of late she's been struggling to get to sleep for a variety of weird and wonderful reasons.

 Which can lead to the odd misunderstanding in the middle of the night when she appears in the doorway of our bedroom at three in the morning.

She sure loves Jesus, that Girl.

Dirty Weekend

I have seen hell, and it looks like an eight year old's birthday party. 

Kids birthday parties are the battleground on which competitive parenting are fought. I say this from the viewpoint of the World's Least Competitive Man (don't even try to disagree - I've got you all beat hands down on this one). I don't see the virtue of spending hundreds of pounds for other people's children to vomit cheesy puffs on the floor of the village hall. Nor for that matter does the Wife - who came up with the plan of taking a handful of the Boy's friends out for the day. We plumped for the British Superbikes at Brands Hatch, partly because both the Wife and I love a bit of motorsport, but mainly because we could make it cheap. Very cheap.

This is how we found ourselves sitting in a borrowed Ford Galaxy with five seven year old boys. The Girl was in a separate car being driven by the parents of one of the Boy's friends. It was a godsend that they decided to come along. For a start, you couldn't put the Girl in a car with five boys. She would have dug out the tyre iron and opened a can of arse kicking before we'd got out of the driveway. Also, by the time we were five minutes into the journey, we realised we were had absolutely no control over the group whatsoever. Cue an hour long journey during which flatulence became sole preoccupation of the majority of the occupants of the car. We hadn't reached the M25 before someone dropped their guts with such gusto the windscreen started to run.

In fairness, if I was in a car with four of my mates farting would still be the mainstay of both our conversation and activity. The difference is, we would have been funny.

It wasn't all bad. The one thing you can say about five boys is that they're easy to wind up.

"Right... Are you all aware of where we're going?"

*Chorus at ear splitting volume* "YES!"

"No need to shout. So - first up we're going pony trekking, then you all get your own princess dress, and finally you're going to have your toenails painted whatever colours you want."

Say whaaaaaaa?

One said;

"I've already had my fingernails painted. Loads of times."
"He's well gay!"

And this led us to the gay conversation, which was as well thought out and urbane as the farting conversation.During this the Boy's excitement reached critical mass and his voice went to a pitch that only dogs can hear.

Eventually we got to Brands, parked, got in and as we walked towards the circuit the Boy said;

"Look! They've got a park with slides and swings. Can we go in the park?"

"What? There are motorbikes racing! We've come here to see cool motorbikes racing, right?"

"Yeah. We can go to the park, and if we get time, we can watch some racing afterwards."

"I have not driven you halfway across the south of England and brought you to a racetrack so you can go on a swing, Boy."

By the time we found somewhere to sit down, at least two of the boys were starting to gnaw on the others out of hunger. So we opened the picnic and were regaled with.

"What have you got to drink?"

"Well, we've got orange..."

"Don't like orange."

"Or apple..."

"Don't like apple."

"Or blackcurrent..."

"Don't li-"

"Blood? Would you like some blood? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT??? MY BLOOD???"

The Wife made me sit in the shade for a ten minute time out. When I came back she and the other adults were awash in crumbs, muddy picnic rugs and discarded packets of Capri Sun. They were surrounded by a pack of rabid boys battering each other with sausage rolls and a lot of really annoyed spectators who just-wanted-to-watch-the-bloody-racing-thank-you-very-much. I nearly didn't go back. Fortunately, someone brought me a drink. So I drank it and pretended I was single with no dependants. It was bloody lovely. Then;

"We want to go to the park."

"We're not going to the park. We're here to-"

Spin forward five minutes later as we sat in the park wondering what the hell we'd done. Eventually, we made our way to another part of the track where the Wife and the other mum enhanced their parenting with wine.

"You can drive home."

"Thanks, love."

I spent the rest of the trip split between watching the racing and counting how many children we still had sight of whilst they dug a hole in the side of a bank of earth with some sticks. I suppose that's kind of the point. You can spend all the money in the world on your kid's party, but if you give them a pile of mud and a stick they'll be equally happy. Although they do need the loo a lot.

"I need the loo."

"Ok... er... the loos are at the top of the hill. Can you just, er... go in that bush over there."

"No."

"Really? Are you shy?"

"I need to poo."

"Right. Good call. Lets go."

We walked towards the toilet, at which point one of the other boys started following us.

"You need the loo as well?"

"Sure. Why not?"

After a couple of moments the second boy stopped.

"Where are we going?"

"The loo. It's at the top of the hill."

"Ech. Can't be bothered with that. I'm going back."

"Right. Well, we'll have to follow you back then."

We followed him back, then I turned to walk back up the hill with the first boy again. He didn't follow.

"Er... are you coming?"

"Where to?"

"The loo?"

"Oh. Right. I think I'll just go in that bush."

"But you needed a poo."

"Yeah. I changed my mind about the poo."

It was about this time that blood started to run out of my ears, I think. By the time the last race finished and I was rounding the children up with a cheery;

"Back to the car, I'm sick of the sight of you."

most of them looked like a half sucked chocolate biscuit. Especially the Girl who had gone from looking sweet and earnest to John Rambo. The trip home was, surprisingly, even less enjoyable than the trip there. At one point I considered driving into oncoming traffic. 

The day started at 10am and ended just after half past seven in the evening. That has to be the longest eight year old's birthday party on record. After I'd dropped the last of the boys off we got home, put the Kids to bed and the Wife and I slipped into a torpor which lasted a day and a half.

I was considering getting the Boy a divorce for his next birthday, but then he redeemed himself when my sister-in-law came round to drop off his birthday present.

"Happy birthday, Boy!"

"Say it in French or you can't come in."