The Fear

There appear to be a lot of perfect children out there. I regularly hear parents proudly detailing the expert ability of their four year old to read, or write, or solve quadratic equations. This used to annoy me when I was training to be a teacher. 

"He reads very well at home. When will he move onto the next reading set?"

"Well, at this point we're still focussing on trying to get him to disregard his own faeces. One step at a time, eh?"

I can understand why parents extol the dazzling brilliance of their kids. It comes out of a mix of love and pride. But it also comes from a little kernel of desperation that lurks in the back of every parent's mind. I think if you're parenting right (which obviously I am, the evidence in this blog alone speaks volumes) you find yourself pleading in the bleak hours of the night; "Don't let my children grow up to be bat shit mentalists."

I'm as guilty of this as the next person. Regardless of his idiosyncrasies, I harbour the not-so-secret belief that the Boy will stop singing songs about his bum and write an opera. The Girl will no doubt win a Noble Prize for her imminent discovery of cold fusion, just as soon as she stops lying under the table screaming because the cat won't fetch. It's just a matter of time.

This clearly runs against the vast wealth of experience I've had in the past six years of parenthood.

"You're meant to be getting changed, Boy. Stop getting distracted."

"YOU distract me, baby!"

This was accompanied by a series of dance moves starting with Gangnam style (AGAIN) horse riding and followed by the more disturbing pelvic thrust, whilst chanting;

"Nadgers, nadgers, nadgers.. oh yeah.."

Downstairs the Girl finally finished her dinner, a titanic blood-letting experience that she dragged out for over an hour. She gets this from my Ma, I think - who has been known to finish breakfast shortly after lunchtime. I suspect this is because my Ma is from Spain, a nation that sees nothing wrong with having dinner at midnight.

Exasperated, the Wife told her to go and get some grapes from the fridge for dessert. The Girl ran from room, returned ten seconds later with an empty bowl, sat at the table, looked at the bowl and said;

"Er... Oh..."

Funnily enough, this does nothing to ease my worries.

The Sounds of Silence

I may be quite close to losing my marbles. Only yesterday I posted a load of pictures of a camping trip the family and I had been on. I titled the pictures "Edmonston, Essex" only to be told by my chortling Wife that we hadn't been in Edmonston or Essex , because that place doesn't exist. We'd been in Edwardstone. In Suffolk.

I don't feel bad about this for two reasons. Firstly because I once spent four days in Amsterdam with a friend who thought he was in Copenhagen the whole time (which at least clarified why he thought bacon was the Dutch national dish and kept constantly asking where the statue of the little mermaid was "because she's hot.")

Secondly; have you seen the shit I deal with? Take today, for instance...

A rare and wondrous thing happened when I got home fromon work today. When I opened the door instead of entering a screaming whirlpool of entropy, I was greeted with silence. The purest absence of sound. It felt like the start of your average apocalypse movie, as I wandered around the land marks of my house boggling at the vacuum the lack of my Kids created.

It was freaking brilliant. Right up until I looked up the stairs and saw this.

Is it...looking...right at me...?

I backed away slowly and went to the sofa. My arse had barely kissed the seat when there was a hammering noise on the front door, which promptly opened and vomited the Girl and Boy hollering into the quiet of the house. The Girl ran up to me, yelled ;

"Daddeeeeeee!"

And, wielding a bottle of water hit me squarely in the penis. I took this manfully by saying "Oof!" and slowly curling up into a ball before falling off the sofa. At this point the Boy arrived.

"Dad, I learnt what a baby swan is called today."

"Nnnngg..."

I replied. Unfazed, the Boy continued.

"It's called a maggot."

"...no...isn't..."

The Boy face palmed.

"Aw, man. I got it wrong! It's called a magnet."

So lets be clear on this. I have yet to write my name on the wall in my own excrement yet, and for that I should be commended.

The Other New Normal

There's a story about the late French Premier Charles De Gaulle's wife that goes like this;

Lunching with English friends at the time of her husband's retirement, Madame de Gaulle was asked what she was looking forward to in the years ahead. Without hesitation she replied;

"A penis."

There was a pause before her host said;

"I think the English don't pronounce the word quite like that. It's happiness.'"

Now, I don't know how true that is (and yes, I checked Snopes) but it appeals to me because - to put it mildly - happiness messes with my mojo. Not my happiness, I'm not Eeyore for crying out loud. Other people's happiness.  It's not that I don't like people to be happy, I just don't trust it. I have a paranoid voice that pipes up when people laugh that likes to tell me people are laughing at me. Partly based on the fact that people laugh at me a lot.

Actually, that's a lie. I don't like it when people are happy. When I was at university there was a women in one of my classes that would always greet me with beaming cheery smile and the words;

"Morning, sausage!"

Which made me want to headbutt her. In fact, I roundly ignored her. Mainly because I'd come to the conclusion that to be that cheery every day she had to be either mentally ill or on a similar self-medication regime as Keith Richards. Turned out she was just a happy person. The bitch.

So yesterday really creeped me out as I cycled home and fell off my bike in front of a BMW. Being 40, bespectacled and rotund, I generate a moderate level of attention cycling through town, and regularly draw comments from people I pass. Most commonly that comment is;

"PEDAL, YOU FAT C**T!"

So on any other day the person driving the BMW I'd liberally spread myself under would have run me over. I know this because he was driving a BMW, and the only way he could have been a bigger arsehole would have been if he was driving a 4x4. However, as I clambered out from under his front bumper I saw the driver jumping out of his car with a look of concern.

"You alright, mate?" He asked. I nodded, not wanting to admit that I'd hurt my bum because I didn't want to sound like I was five. I cycled off somewhat baffled that someone I'd judged solely on the car they drove had been wrong to do so. I thought about this for some time and came to the only conclusion a right thinking individual could think; he'd clearly stolen the car.

As I was thinking this I passed a group of thirteen or fourteen-year-olds who yelled;

"Hello!"

Once again, taken aback that they hadn't held me up with a pair of scissors, marched me to an off-licence and made me buy them cider, I replied hesitatingly;

"Uh... Hello."

"Hope you have a nice day!"

We're through the looking glass here, people. This sort of thing doesn't happen to me. Ever. Clearly "Hope you have a nice day"  was some coded teen-speak meaning; "I'm going to stab you up" so I ignored them and cycled as fast as I could.

But as I've said many times in the past, home is my little castle of normalcy. As I walked through the door the Girl ran up and cuddled me.

"Daddeeee! I love you!"

"Thanks..."

"I want to be like you when I grow up."

To which the Boy said;

"What, fat?"

Later that evening, after tucking the Kids into bed, I went out to our shed to get something from the freezer to eat. As I was about to walk back into the house I heard the Girl's voice say;

"Does anyone want any fairy dust?"

I looked up to see her peering out of her bedroom window between the curtains, holding something.

"You should be asleep."

"Here's your fairy dust."

she said, ignoring me. And then dropped a can of hair spray straight into my upturned face.

It's things like this that keep me on an even keel. As strange as it is to say, it's the weirdness and abuse I encounter at the hands of my spawn that gives me comfort in an uncertain world where people say hello to you, and expect you to be cheerful. The main happiness I get is that thus far neither of my Kids have slit my throat in my sleep. Why do I say that? Well, because that same evening they did this;

That IS what you think it is and no, I didn't make it

The reason the Boy isn't in this photo is because he was making a Lego "mincing machine". 

I didn't ask. I was happy to be normal again.

Help!

I don't like adverts. I don't like them because they lie to us. I don't mean that they sell products that don't work (although I will admit those pills I bought off the Internet didn't have desired effect and turned my pee an alarming shade of Prussian blue...) What I mean is they sell us a life that doesn't exist outside a copywriters deluded brain storm.

Take for instance the staple advert where a mum in perfect make up, with a body suspiciously bereft of the ravages of child birth, cheerily makes rice pop chocolate cakes with her charming children. It's all laughter and sunshine and perfect results.

Just the other day the Wife took the Kids into the kitchen to bake flapjacks and within minutes I had to restrain her her from taking a cheese grater to their faces. I ended up locking them in the cupboard under the stairs, thereby successfully transforming myself into Harry Potter's uncle.

Alternatively there is the the creeping dread that accompanies Father's Day when I pick the Girl up from school and she yells ecstatically;

"I've made you a cake!"

Before handing me something that is part mummified dog turd, part blood clot. 

The depressing reality that few things run their fingernails down the chalkboard of your fragile nerves than having your children help you in any task. I enjoy DIY. I really do. As feeble as it sounds, it appeals to the very centre of my brain, the bit that was around when we lived in caves and hunted mammoths and drew on the walls in our excrement. One of the greatest moments of my life occurred when I legitimately had cause to sharpen an axe and spray something with WD40 on the same day. It makes me feel like a man. If I hadn't chipped a nail, that day would have been perfect.

But the last thing you want to hear when you say;

"I'm just going to fit the new shower."

Is a five year old pipe up;

"I'll help!"

The descent to madness is swift and inevitable and goes along the lines of;

"Right, can you hand me the rawlplug... Uh, the brown thing... no... no that's a screwdriver. The rawlplug. The brown thing... to the left. No, the other left. The BROWN thing. Where are you going? Where-? That's a vacuum cleaner attachment. That. THAT. THAT BROWN THING. That's it! TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR NOSE!"

Or;

"Ask your mum if she's switched the electricity off."

"MUM HAVE YOU SWITCHED THE TRINECITY OFF?"

*Distantly* "What?"

"Mum says 'yes'."

BZZZZZT.

Or they decide to start a random conversation with you.

"Dad, you remember that girl at swimming?"

"I'm. Trying. To. Reach. The. Valve. Boy. Bit. Busy."

"You know the girl that jumped in the pool and you said that she looked like an Arctic Convoy depth charging a U-boat?"

"Did I say that?"

"Yes. You know what her name is?"

"No. What?"

"Donkey Kong."

"No it isn't."

"It should be. She's huge..." *Pause* "Er. Dad... you've broken that."

"I'm. Going. To. Kill. You."

The worst case scenario is what happened with the Wife and the flapjacks - when you go from being a cookery teacher to the U.N. Security Council.

"Right, Boy - you mix that up."

"What am I going to mix up?"

"Er... well nothing else needs mixing up. You can put the dirty spoon in the washing up bowl."

"I want to mix."

"I'M mixing."

"He ALWAYS gets to mix! I NEVER get to mix!"

"Alright, Boy - let the Girl mix for a bit."

"No!"

*Girl attempts to tip bowl on the Boy*

"I'll hit her with the blender!"

That advert (probably for a male grooming product) where the father and son smile cloyingly at each other whilst they work on a push bike never ends with the father swinging at the child with a torque wrench. In fact, the absolute best you can hope for is to ask for a tool and be greeted by silence because your beloved child has got bored, buggered off and played "horse jenga."

Fractal Buckaroo

Moving

The other day the Boy asked me what a mortgage is. After ten minutes of trying to explain it to him there was a long pause and he said;

"Right. I think I get it. It's like a unicycle."

I think this adequately displays why I didn't pursue a career in teaching. The point of this conversation is that we're selling our house. Due to the careful efficiency of my Wife's accounting and the... er... fact that I work, we've found ourselves in a position where we can buy a bigger house. Clearly this is a good thing, bigger house, better location, closer to the Boy's school and the faint possibility that if our next door neighbours decide to have sex, regardless the volume or gusto we won't be able to work out what position they're in. Or who finishes first.

However, it is tinged with sadness. When we moved into this house, there wasn't a recession. In fact, the price of houses crashed THE MONTH AFTER WE BOUGHT THE HOUSE. We moved in with a very small Boy, and a pregnant Wife. The Girl was actually born in this house. On the Wife's side of the bed. Intentionally, I should add.

This was the house where the Boy learnt to speak, to our lingering regret. This is where the Girl learnt to the throw tantrums, how to aim a punch to the genitals, and how to insert spoons into cat rectums. 

The Boy has not taken this lightly, and we've had a few fits of crying because;

"I'm going to miss my bedroom."

Not the first time the Boy has forged an emotional link with an inanimate object. Last time it was his bed. Which he still talks about like it betrayed him. So in an effort to cheer us all up, we went to Colchester Zoo. Since it's March, getting out in the spring air seemed like a good idea. 

Spring unsprung

It was freaking freezing. Only the penguins and sea lions seemed happy. The non-sea-lions looked really pissed off. Especially when I managed to catch the reflection of my hat in the picture I took of them.

Send us victorious

Most of the animals had vanished to the back of their enclosures. At one point we were standing by the sun bear enclosure when one of the bears wandered to the doorway, stepped out, clearly thought the words "Screw this" and high tailed it back out. We went from one empty enclosure to the next and every time we went outside it was like being dipped in liquid nitrogen. 

No you don't.

The Kid's loved it. The only disappointment for the Boy was that he didn't get to see the rhino urinate (which, I'll admit, is always impressive to watch). Despite the cold, the wind and complete absence of any animals at the zoo, they had a lovely time. And then a duck got raped, and ruined everything.

We were walking past the duck pond when three ducks, two males and a female, flew out of a hedge. One of the males grabbed the female by the beak and held her down whilst the other one had his happy town. The Boy and Girl watched silently for a minute, whilst the Wife and I tried to hustle them along.

"What are they doing?"

The Boy asked.

"They're playing motorbikes. The one at the back is trying to kick-start the other one." 

I replied. The Girl mulled this over, nodded and said;

"Brilliant."

Why I Haven't Killed Anyone...Yet...

If my life was a television channel it would entirely been comprised of an endlessly looping advert for sanitary towels, where the mother of a family effortlessly juggles a thousand tasks. All the while safe in the knowledge that patented technology was keeping her clear of unsightly stains caused by - bizarrely - blue liquids.

Last Friday I spent the morning painting the Girl's room. In the process I also managed to paint every square inch of myself, most of the floor, the stool I was using, the bath and the cat because it looked at me funny. I finished just in time to pick up the Boy, take him to a party and have balls thrown at me for two hours. 

I'll admit that the balls in the face was a surprise. When we arrived at the party the Boy dumped the present he'd brought on a table, stripped to the waist and ran screaming into the hall where he proceeded to dance impressively to Gangnam Style. It speaks of the information age that my son most commonly sings in South Korean. In school even the hot French teacher couldn't teach me to say anything other than "Je suis le vaisseau spatial Enterprise"*. Make some geezer in sunglasses sing on the toilet whilst dancing like he's riding a horse, and my son turns into Ban Ki-Moon.

I was a bit surprised when we arrived that there wasn't a bouncy castle. I've mentioned about my hatred of bouncy castles here (not that it stopped us from hiring one for our kids party). Instead, there was bloke in sportswear and a lot of cones. A few other parents and myself grabbed some chairs and sat against the wall chatting. Cups of tea, vodka and cyanide pills were handed out. Some poor fool started a conversation with me, using the words "Doesn't your wife have a horse?"  and I embarked on a long and detailed explanation of my unending hatred of all things equine.

As I was getting to the bit about shotguns and petrol strimmers, I looked up and realised that the bloke in the sportswear had lined all the kids up to play a game of dodge ball  With us in the line of fire. Before we had time to teach our kids any new expletives, there was a blizzard of misdirected balls. In which respect it was a little like my wedding night. Cue an orgy of flying coffee, spectacles and glassware. It was awesome.

After two hours a bunch of exhausted parents led their children, frothing and spiral eyed from E numbers and sugar, back to their cars. I all but hammered the Boy into his seat and rushed off to pick up the Girl, who greeted me with the line;

"I love you, daddy!"

Before poking me in the stomach and following this up with;

"Because you're so SQUISHY!"

Days like this are not rare. Most days are like the tampon advert, but without the terrible music or impressive absorbency. Due to the irritating necessity of having to pay mortgages, both the Wife and I work, which means some days we pass each other at the front door with barely enough time to say; "The Girl cleaned the laptop keyboard with yoghurt."

Today the Wife was on a course, so I had to rush out of work early, pick the Girl up from pre-school, the Boy from school, rush home, get the Boy changed, take him swimming, not kill anyone at the swimming pool (and I really, REALLY wanted to) and come back to cook dinner, bath them, shout at them and then put them to bed. 

Not that I'm expecting sympathy, but it does rather explain why most parents you meet have a tolerance for bullshit approximate to that of an american border guard. Which in my experience, is zero. What prevents both the Wife and I from picking up a sniper's rifle, scaling the roof and picking off kittens with precise head shots is those moments when the Kids do something that makes you realise why you did all of this in the first place.

A while back the Wife came back from picking the Girl up from school. It had been another one of those insane, scheduled-to-the-minute days. She was stressed, so when the Girl said something from the back seat she wasn't quite paying attention.

"What?"

"I said; 'take this, mummy.'"

The Wife took the imaginary object from the Girl, pretended to pop it in her mouth, chew and swallow it.

"Mmm... delicious."

For a moment there was no sound, so she turned around to see the Girl staring at her with a look of abject horror.

"What's the matter?"

The Wife asked.

"That was MY PRETEND CAT!"

* "I am the starship Enterprise"

Ask A Stupid Question

The other day I asked the Girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. Usually the answer to this is;

"A vet."

Sometimes with the caveat;

"A cat vet."

However, she seems to have changed her mind because this time she said;

"A man."

And the Boy served only to compound the issue by saying;

"Like Julia Donaldson?"

Ironically enough a friend of mine recently posted on Twitter that she'd received spam from a doctor that claimed he would help make her a man. That struck me as a rather niche form of clientele to be targeting via spam, but given the Girl's answer, the demand is clearly bigger than I had given credit for.

The moral of these loose ramblings is that asking your kids questions is at best futile;

"What did you do at school today, Boy?"

"Dunno."

"What do you want for dinner?"

*Shrug*

"What's YOUR NAME?"

"Er... Mummy?"

Or fraught with misunderstanding;

"School want you to draw something that goes up and down in a playground. What are you going to draw, Girl?"

"Knickers!"

Clearly a progressive school...

Most often though, you just get an answer that makes you wish you hadn't asked the question in the first place.

"Dad, I need some cream."

"Are you itchy, Girl?"

"Yes. On my noo noo."

Not that I mind, it's all a bit of a cabaret. Especially when you compare it to the Boy dancing naked on the landing, spanking his bare arse and singing "Should I stay or should I go" by the Clash. Or shooting my glasses off my face with a Nerf gun from the other side of the house. Three times in a row.

You've Never Had It So Good

Tonight the Boy told me that his life is rubbish. It started like this;

"Sometimes, when you tell me off I don't like you very much."

"Right."

And then his voice went all earnest and wobbly and he said;

"My life is rubbish. And if the start of your life is rubbish, then the rest of your life will be rubbish too and I want to have a life that isn't rubbish."

Bless him, I nearly booked the flight to Disneyland there and then. Never underestimate your children's ability to emotionally blackmail you without actually knowing what emotional blackmail is.

"Why is your life rubbish?"

"You never let me watch telly..."

Let me tell you about how much television the Boy watches. Last week he asked me if I'd ever had an accident at work that wasn't my fault. Earlier on in the day he was trying to convince the Wife to buy Cillit Bang. He's done this enough times to make us wonder if he's on commission. And if it's not adverts, it's quotes from cartoons that, out of context, lead to near-aneurysm-experiences;

"I'm the shaginator!"

"You're freaking what???"

"Like Shaggy from Scooby Doo..."

Anyway, back to tonight.

"You've literally just switched the telly off."

"You never let me play your iPod..."

Except for the other week when he was playing Jetpack Joyride and posting his high scores on my Twitter Feed.

"You were playing my iPod while you were watching telly."

"You never let me stay up late...."

"IT'S HALF AND HOUR PAST YOUR BED TIME!!!"

Bloody liberty! Only a couple of weeks before the Wife had taken the Girl to see some family in Poland, leaving the Boy and I to have some time to ourselves. This largely involved wandering around in our underpants, staying up late, eating chips and watching Return of the Jedi. The Boy had been asking to watch it, and was quite enjoying it until the middle section when he turned to me and said;

"I wish Yoda would hurry up and die, he's taking ages."

It's all about the next explosion for the Boy. Anyway, I let him stay up three hours past his bedtime, and even when I finally tucked him in he was still up half an hour later. Admittedly it was because he was crying because of the monster in the film. When I went up to see him he was so disconsolate he couldn't speak. It took ten minutes to calm him down.

"Why are you crying?"

"Because of the monster."

"It's okay, Luke Skywalker killed it."

"I KNOW! I DIDN'T want it to die, it was REALLY COOL..."

John Shaft, according to the Boy

And with that he dissolved into tears again.

I'm dammed if I let him stay up, dammed if I don't. I think I'd rather take getting told off by him than the weird emotional roller coaster of crying over dead monsters that look like a condom stuffed with walnuts. Or making Lego hearses with transparent coffins containing dismembered Minifigs

Seems unlikely to take off as the new standard in funerals

Which look rather like me...

My hair isn't as neat as this though

That's normal, right? I mean, that's not weird, is it? Its not as weird or worrying as when the Wife asked the Girl;

"Your teacher wants you to draw a picture of something that goes up and down. What do you want to draw?"

"Pants."

Toys

Well, don't we all need a bit of cheering up? Christmas has come and gone, the piles of wrapping paper swept away, the toy boxes turned into cars, or trains, then stabbed with pencils, jumped on and left out for the bin men. No more threats that Father Christmas will pass by our house if the Kids don't stop shouting, jumping off the sofas or running sophisticated phishing scams on the Internet. All is back to its humdrum mundanity.

Except, of course, in my household.

The Girl got a baby for Christmas. Not a real one, obviously. She's not the Virgin Mary. Although saying that, she has a baby, there was no conception and

"What are you going to call your baby, darling?"

"Jesus."

Naturally.

I am quite petrified of this new addition to the household. It's a bit realistic. You can feed it water, it can cry "real tears" (if your tears are made of tap water) and it urinates. Most commonly on me.

"Ha ha! The Girl's baby wee-d on dad again! Make it wee on his head."

It's not enough my children have pissed on me. Now their toys are doing it too. Fortunately for me, it can't vomit.

It can poop, however. Not a joke. It came with it's own supply of "porridge" (honestly, I'm not making this up) which you feed to it, and when you put it on it's potty and press it's belly button, it poops. I have omitted to inform the Girl of this.

Furthermore, it's interactive. We bought a horse for it (since no baby is complete without a horse) and when the baby gets near to it, it neighs and makes carrot crunching noises or (bizarrely) sings the name of the manufacturer. Checking the brochure, you can also buy a "magic potty" (two words that rarely go together in my experience) and a moped.

Drink that in for a moment. A moped. For a baby. I'm guessing someone was on crystal meth when they pitched that one.

The Boy got a Nintendo DS. Because we're tight arses, he's playing my old GBA games on it - his favourite of which is Tony Hawks Underground. Although the Boy is a bit confused and keeps referring to it as

"Steven Hawking underground."

Which would make a rather different and somewhat more disturbing game I feel. Still, you can understand the confusion. One may be a skateboarder and the other a theoretical astrophysicist, but they're both on wheels.

I was quite glad he liked that. I was pleased that he wasn't playing something more violent (although admittedly the most extreme violence you get in Nintendo games is Super Smash Bros). I felt this way right up until I heard him say to the Girl;

"And if I do this he falls over and leaks blood... I'll do it again.... Hahahahahahaha!"

So somehow he's managed to turn a skateboarding game into Faces of Death.

To top off the toy based weirdness, the Girl had a muttered conversation on a toy mobile phone today and when I asked who she'd been speaking to she said;

"The baby-our-Lord-Jesus' mummy."

Now, as I've mentioned before, we're not particularly churchy in my Family, so this was a bit odd.

"The baby Jesus' mummy?"

"The baby-OUR-LORD-Jesus' mummy."

"Oh. Right-o. What were you talking about?"

"My baby is having a sleepover at the baby-our-Lord-Jesus' house."

"I see. Your doll has a play-date with Jesus?"

"Yes."

"Where does he live?"

"Spain."

Brilliant. So she's come out of the psychotic phase and now become a religious zealot.

This sort of thing doesn't appear to happen to other people.

Merry Bloody Christmas

Last month I foolishly turned forty. Forty has a level of gravitas previous decades don't have. People in their thirties go clubbing, people in their forties buy Volvo's  Ignoring the fact that I never liked going clubbing and I've recently found myself eyeing up the latest Volvo with an envious eye, I'm still in denial. Why? Because in ten years time I'll be fifty, and that doesn't bear thinking about.

Hence my recent silence on the blog, because in spite of the Wife organising a surprise party and then whisking me off to Edinburgh* I've been lingering in a month long temper tantrum about it. Fortunately my family can always be relied upon to give me the get up and go to hide under the duvet  and cry.

So, just to cheer everyone up, along comes Christmas. This year we swerved the Christingle service as my skills in juggling burning fruit have not improved since I last spoke to you about this (http://todaymyboysaid.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/christingle.html). It was a close run thing though. I took the Kids along to see the church Christmas tree lights switched on which was just before the Christingle service. We stood around in the dark four half an hour, then an old man dressed as a sex offender dressed as Father Christmas turned up in a tractor (obviously), handed out sweets for ten minutes and then switched the lights on. To get an idea of how impressive this was get up and switch on the light in the room you're in. It wasn't that good.

I was quite keen to scarpa at this point, but in a typically-slightly-dodgy move, the local church had an elf on stand-by - with a box of sweets, trying to lure the Kids into the church. Now, I went to church in the seventies and eighties, and I know what a trail of sweets into the church leads to. So the Kids and I had another role reversal, where they insisted we went into the church, and I told them I didn't want to go. For once, I won. By offering them sweets. 

When we got home the Boy raced upstairs and I went and got the jacket potatoes I'd left cooking from the oven. This, as it always does, set off our smoke alarm - which is set off by steam, but not smoke. So as long as our house catches fire during a flood, we're all good. As I went over to wave a tea-towel under it I heard the Boy yell;

"Sorry! That was me! I farted!"

To which I replied;

"If they're strong enough to set off the smoke alarm, you're moving out."

A few days later, the Wife and I went to the Boy's nativity play. I may have been expecting a bit much, but here's my review.

The acting was appalling, the sub-plot was just tacked on (it started with aliens landing in Bethlehem - which I'm pretty sure didn't happen), the chemistry between the characters was non-existent, the music was badly chosen, there was casual violence (when the Virgin Mary placed the baby Jesus into the manger by throwing Him from the other side of the stage) and the set looked like it had been designed by a five year old. I made this last comment as a joke to my Wife, who smiled thinly until the Head Teacher thanked the 50-something art teacher for "building such a wonderful set single handedly" and I felt a bit guilty. Honestly, it looked like an explosion in an aluminium foil factory. 

The Boy did well though. He managed to keep his fingers out of his nose for the whole thing.

The Girl's performance in her nativity play was a great success in comparison to last year, where her only line was "I NEED A WEE!" This year she got to play a shepherd, so the Wife sent her along with a cuddly sheep toy we had lying around the house.

On that, I'm pretty sure we have a cuddly version of every animal that ever walked, crawled or slithered on it's belly. We've got a cuddly velociraptor, for crying out loud. And it's not like we buy them. People just give them to us. There must be something about my family that says; "Crap attractor."

Anyway... The Girl's nativity play was called "Father Christmas needs a wee" and was, as you can guess, massively traditional. The Girl said her line well, then instantly got bored, dropped the sheep on the floor, kicked it a bit, picked it up and then repeatedly beat herself in the head with it for the next five minutes. Then she got a bit distracted, and her teacher had to go to the front of the stage and tell her to bugger off down the back. Fortunately the Virgin Mary took the attention off the Girl by dropping the baby Jesus on the floor and pushing Him into centre stage with her foot. Baby Jesus eventually exited stage left after a fairly decent pass from the Virgin Mary to one of the three Kings. And since no one lost an eye, I thought it was a great success.

Tonight the Wife and Kids decorated the Christmas tree with chocolates - a tradition from her side of the family. My family ate chocolates. But then we also got up, opened all our presents, had crisps for breakfast and did our best not to talk to each other until Christmas dinner. Then the Queen would come on telly, my dad would shout at her and then fall asleep in front of "The Dirty Dozen". So the Wife's traditions are probably preferable.

The Girl did a sterling job of hanging the chocolates, with the small issue that she put all of them on one branch. The Wife tried to point out the error of her ways, but the Girl said;

"I did that so they don't get lonely."

Awwww, you're thinking. How sweet. Except she's put them all on the bottom of the tree - so she can reach them. I tell you, she's a conniving little sod that Girl. 

Since they'd done such a good job I decided to take a picture of them, which I thought was rather lovely until I looked at the Girl and discovered that to spice up the photo she'd put a toy horse in her mouth.

For Christ's sake.

Have a very merry Christmas, people. Love from Me, The Wife, Boy and Girl. 

Child's Play

This morning, as every bloody morning, the Kids woke up early. Startlingly, the Girl is rather considerate in the dirty hours of the morning and does her best to be as quiet as possible. The Boy on the other hand is the definition of that quote from Not Your Average Dictionary;

Boy - n. A noise with dirt on it.

To fully understand the whole variety, pageant and volume of his noisiness you have to imagine the noise an elephant makes if you push a pineapple up its arse. And to understand what it's like waking up to this every morning, imagine you're the pineapple. 

Blundering out of bed with one eye just about open I heard the Boy making a weird, high pitched noise from the Girl's room. Grumpily I hissed "SHH!" at them as I struggled to find my glasses (hidden, once again, under the bed courtesy of the glasses goblin). There was a brief lull and then a loud slap followed by the Boy again making that weird high pitched noise. So, stepping up a gear, I burst into the Girl's room.

"Right! Will you... what the hell are you doing?"

The Boy was on all fours on the Girl's bed. The Girl was spanking him.

"He's a bad doggie!"

"I cannot deal with this at... where's my watch? FOR CHRISSAKES, ITS NOT A COLLAR!"

This sort of thing is not particularly unusual. Well the spanking is a bit weird, I'll grant you. But, they play dog and cats quite a lot. Yesterday they found a child harness and started using it as a lead, one walking the other around the house. To be honest, it's quite nice that the harness is getting some use. We bought it a couple of years ago to protect pedestrians when we took the Girl out. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to use it much because getting her into the thing was like feeding a cat into a garden strimmer, and the situation came to a head when she made me cry so we gave up.

Mind you, since the Girl has started coming out of her three year psychotic episode she's become even more maternal than before. Naturally this has brought out the worst in the Boy. Tonight on his return from his football lesson the Boy strode into the living room and in a Homer-Simpson-esque moment, took of his trousers and threw them on the floor. The Girl picked them up, put them in the wash bin and brought him a blanket. Frankly, his wife is going to have a lot to deal with. Then, whilst sitting on the sofa watching cartoons he said (without deigning to bother with eye contact)

"What's for dinner?"

"I'm not your staff, Boy."

"What stuff?"

"Staff."

"I don't know what you mean and I'm trying to watch telly."

Not that the Girl has completely lost her edge. 

"Dad, I drew a picture of you!"

"Oh, wow. Thanks! I like how you've drawn my hair."

"That's not your hair, stupid. You're on fire."

"Of course I am."

The Boy came round in the end, as he always does (sometimes with a judicious application of behavioral modification technique I like to call "shouting incoherently"). He claimed the other day that he wanted to be more like me, which led to the Wife's eyebrows raising at such an alarming rate they nearly came clear off her head. Yesterday he started his "being like dad" lifestyle choice by telling me off.

"Come upstairs, it's bathtime!"
"A-HEM! What about the ice cream?"
"What about it?"
"You haven't put it away. Don't you think you should?"
"I'll do it later, Boy."
"No... you'll do it now."

I'll give him this, it worked. I stomped down the stairs like a stroppy teenager, put the ice cream back in the freezer and returned with the words;

"THERE! Happy now?"

By this evening - by virtue of having the attention span of a stobe-lit goldfish - I'd forgotten about his new plan. After our little argument about him treating me like a slave this afternoon he became more contrite, and when it got to bed time he asked me very politely.

"Could I have a poo before bed?"
"Of course, Boy. You don't have to ask."
"I'll do it as fast as I can. I just need to get it out of me."
"That's lovely. Go to the loo then."

He duly did so. I went to help the Girl clean her teeth because she'd "forgotten how to" again and as I did so I became aware of this noise coming from the toilet;

"Nnngggngnnngggg...."
"Why are you making that noise?"
"You always make this noise in here."
"Stop trying to be like me. I mean it."
*Plop*
"Ahhhh... that's better...."
"Boy, stop giving me a running commentary about your toilet antics."
"But..."
"STOP BEING LIKE ME OR I'LL FLUSH YOU DOWN THE TOILET!!"

Fireworks

It's been a busy few weeks in our household, with Hallowe'en, Guy Fawkes night and two birthdays in the middle. So our normally ramshackle, chaotic house has been turned into something like the seventh circle of hell.

First there was the Boy's birthday, which included the usual highlights of screaming children, masses of toys with teeny, tiny parts that vanish neatly up a vacuum cleaner and, of course, cake crumbs. Everywhere. At one point I found cake crumbs under my eyelids.

As with last year the Boy entered into the spirit of things by greeting each new arrival at the house with the word;

"Present?"

In a resigned "you've-been-at-the-door-for-nearly-two-whole-seconds-why-haven't-I-been-given-a-motorbike" tone of voice.

Then, because we feel that our lives are just too damn stress-free, we threw a party for both Kids between their birthdays. I have dealt with kid's parties on numerous occasions in this blog, so I won't go into details. However, I would like to make two points;

First of all, if someone suggests playing musical statues, punch them firmly in the eye and drop the F-bomb on them. Even if they're elderly. Because I'll guarantee whoever suggests it won't be the one that has to pick whoever is "out" when the music stops.

"Er... the little girl dressed as a zombie. Sorry, darling you're out."

"No I'm not."

"Er... you are, I'm afraid."

"Mum, he said I'm out. I'm not out."

"She didn't move as much as that boy."

"Um... okay. The little boy dressed as Harold Shipman. You're out."

"YOU SAID SHE'S OUT!"

And then, of course, I weakened.

"Okay. We'll start over."

Fatal. We had about six rounds where no one was out. Frankly we'd still be there now if we hadn't just randomly thrown the prize into a scrum of kids and let them fight it out.

Secondly, if you have a bouncy castle, you'll want to deflate it while they eat. This is a completely sensible move as; whilst the bouncy castle is wipe clean, most of the rest of the hall won't be. However it comes with a sting in the tail. When the kids have all finished eating and you switch the generator back on the kids will go i.n.s.a.n.e.

IN-friggin'-SANE.

I suspect the Romans during the last minutes at Pompei had more decorum than these kids. They let out a scream that stripped the wallpaper and then started chanting. Seriously. Chanting.

I don't know what they were chanting, but they were all chanting the same thing. It sounded a bit like "Kill! Kill! Kill!" The adults in the room went white. I turned to the Wife and she was mouthing;

"What the fu-?"

We were one step away from human sacrifice and cannibalism in that hall, I shit you not. I consider myself lucky to have my life and sanity.

For once my Kids were paragons of virtue, and were extremely well behaved right up until the Boy disgraced himself at bath time by clouting the Girl whilst I wasn't looking, causing the Girl to say in an offended voice;

"Oi! Dad! The Boy just punched me in the nunni."

Embarrassingly I had to look up what "nunni" meant. I was quite shocked.

Guy Fawkes night was a lesson in going from the sublime to the ridiculous. On the Friday before we took the Kids to the local police headquarters for their yearly free firework display - which involves lots of confiscated fireworks being set off for charity. I can thoroughly recommend it because it was very spectacular. Mainly because it didn't quite go to plan. About ten minutes in they set off a firework that sent up a steady stream of rockets. Initially it all went well, the first rocket went straight up and exploded and the crowd went;

"OOH!"

The next firework went up at about a forty five degree angle and burst just over the crowd's collective heads. The crowd went;

"UH?"

Then the third one went off parallel to the ground and the crowd went;

"AIEEEEE!"

After this things got a little duller, as everything went to plan. Right up until the big finale when a very large rocket lifted a whole three feet off the ground before exploding in a gigantic shower of sparks, sending people in fluorescent jackets swearing and running pell-mell in every direction. The Boy thoroughly approved.

"That... was... AWESOME! Tell them to do it again! THAT MAN'S ON FIRE!!! BRILLIANT!!!!"

Then, a week later, we had fireworks night at Grandma's. This was a very different experience as it involved my mother-in-law tipping her cardboard recycling on the lawn and setting light to it.  In all honesty it lacked a certain razamatazz.

Typically the Boy has gone a bit obsessive over Guy Fawkes night, and only tonight was still going on about his attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament (Guy Fawkes I mean, not the Boy.)

"So why do you think he wanted to blow the Houses of Parliament up, Boy?"

"Because he was a bad man."

"And why do you think he was bad?"

"Because he was Catholic."

Right. That was a bit steep, I thought.

"Er, Boy... you know I'm Catholic, don't you?"

"Yup."

"Oh good. Well that clears that up then."

And then there was the Girl's birthday. This was not unlike the Boy's birthday, with the family coming round with presents, and tiny things vanishing up vacuum cleaners and the entire world being indelibly coated in cake crumbs again to the point that birds now attack me in the street. Since the Girl is a little bit older, she didn't throw a tantrum when we sang happy birthday to her this year, which was a blessed relief. She was unbelievably well behaved in fact and we were very proud of her because she's being going through a bit of a feral stage recently.

Unfortunately to counteract this "stress deficit" the Wife and I had unwisely said our Niece could stay over. Now, that sounds like I don't like my Niece, which isn't true. I'm very fond of her. She's very funny and sweet. But...

She's also, to put it mildly, rather high maintenance. To demonstrate this an hour after we'd got the three of them to bed she suddenly strode into the living room and with a no-nonsense look in her eye she looked at me and said;

"I'm hungry."

So an hour after she went to bed my Niece was eating a ham sandwich at the dinner table. As was the Girl who'd followed her down to see if she could get away with it too. Which - it turns out - she could. Meanwhile the Boy called me back upstairs to grumpily enquire;

"Seriously, do they have to sleep in my room?"

"Well, they aren't at the moment. They're eating dinner. Again."

The next morning became a battle of wills between my Niece and I. One which I constantly came out the loser. First she woke up with the Boy at five o'clock in the morning and had a long whispered conversation at the volume of a jet plane taking off. When the Wife went to go and "talk to them" (or, more accurately, shout "SHUT UP!") she discovered the Niece prodding the Girl who was still asleep.

This is not wise. In fact, on a scale of "things I don't intend to do" I would put it on a par with resting my genitals on the nose of a hungry wolverine. Fortunately the Wife intervened before the Girl woke up and discretely told our Niece not to prod the Girl. It was close. Someone could have lost an arm.

Scream

I'll be completely honest, I hate Hallowe'en.

Don't get me wrong, any excuse to dress like I used to in my gothic youth should be a good thing, and I love horror films. But let's be honest Hallowe'en is essentially a one night amnesty on doorstep robberies. It's as if just because it's All Hallows' Eve teenagers are allowed to demand money for menaces by virtue of standing on your doorstep wearing a sullen expression and a bin bag. The only time I've enjoyed Hallowe'en was the year I took to answering the front door with a baseball bat and; "TRICK, YOU BASTARDS!"

So when I got home and the Wife said;

"Get the Kids into their costumes. We're going trick or treating."

I was annoyed. We don't live in America, I'm not smuggling E.T. out of my bedroom, and jacking the Kids up on Haribo for the next week did not appeal at all. So I told the Wife who's boss by saying;

"Right-o, love."

Now it strikes me that if you're going to go trick or treating you should take things seriously and make an effort with your outfit. The Boy agreed with me and took careful stock of his dressing up outfits before choosing a skeleton (not skellington, I hasten to add) costume.

The Girl initially wanted to be a Pirate Cat. This, I explained to her, was not really what Hallowe'en was all about. in a breakthrough moment, for once she took some advice rather than simply yelling; "No."

Then she ignored my advice and dressed up as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. With fairy wings. And an axe.

Fortunately for me the Wife's idea of trick or treating was to drive over to friends and family's houses. A great idea because you avoid knocking on the door of the crazy cat lady up the road who hasn't got any sweets but has some "brown cat eggs" she insists you take. So we went over to see Grandma. Who wasn't in.

The four of us sat in the car, waiting for Grandma to turn up, in the pitch dark, listening to the wind. The Girl's wind. Bless her she'd been ill the night before and still wasn't herself. Eventually Grandma turned up from work, looking slightly flustered. Sportingly we let her go inside before we walked up to the front door and bellowed "Trick or treat!"

Sadly, the gusto with which the Girl yelled proved a bit much for her fragile digestive system, and there was a very suspect bubbling noise and a look of surprise that suggested something untoward had happened.

I'll admit, as a trick on Hallowe'en, shitting yourself it pretty radical. Meanwhile Grandma exercised her right to make a slightly weird situation very weird indeed.

"Trick"

She said, which made both Kids turn to look at the Wife and I with an anxious look that said; "We were promised sweets!"

"I haven't got any sweets. Why don't you take me to the local shop and I'll buy you some."

This was a rather strange thing to say since, as the Wife pointed out;

"You work in the local shop. And you've just finished work."

So, just another normal day with the Family...

*Sigh*

Death Again

"Dad?"

Said the Boy the other night as he was cleaning his teeth for bed.

"Yes?"
"What age are you when you die?"

Now that's not a question you want to have to answer when you've got to get the Kids into bed before you have a pizza. Still, I believe in answering most of the Boy's questions.

"Well, most people die in their seventies and eighties. Although some people die much younger, and some people live to be over a hundred. And then they get a telegram from the Queen."
"Which kills them off."
"Er. No."

The Boy hasn't asked many questions about this recently. The Girl however is still very much in the "Your Dads dead, isn't he dad?" phase. Which can be a bit brutal in it's matter-of-factness. So, to give the Girl some kind of background we took her and the Boy to my Father's grave this weekend. Not the whole weekend, mind. We did other things.

I hadn't been there for about four years, I'm not mad keen on revisiting my Father's grave site, but the Kids set about it like we were going to Centre Parcs for the day. This was fine save for the fact that they decided to pretend to be dogs for the first ten minutes kind of clashed with the atmosphere. A bit.

Still, my Ma and I introduced them to my Father's headstone, with the Boy looking less baffled than I would have expected him to. They both said hello, it was nice. Weird, but nice.

Then we took a stroll around the rest of the graveyard, while the Boy and Girl asked me a lot of questions about death. Eventually, we got back to the car, got in and as I was about to pull out of the graveyard the Girl said;

"I've got a shell!"
"Oh, right..."

And then I got a sinking feeling.

"Where did you get it from?"
"One of those."

And she pointed to a grave. And she couldn't remember which one. And she threw a wobbler when I said we had to take it back.

I mean, my Kids are many things, but I hadn't expected them to turn into grave robbers.

When we got back to my Mum's place we found two of her neighbours talking. It transpired that someone in the street they had known since I was seven had died. We made the right kind of sympathetic noises, and then the Boy said;

"We've just been to the graveyard! Which hole was he in?"

And then the Girl said;

"I've got a shell! I got -mumph!"

As I put my hand over her mouth.

Still all this chaos and mayhem has made me realise something.

I really miss my Dad.

Flamed

It's been a weird, bookended week of abuse in our household. It started on Monday when I got a text from the Wife about a conversation she had with the Boy.

"Mum?"
"Yes, Boy?"
"If everyone in the world was in one place..."
"Yes?"
"Would they be able to lift dad up?"

Now that's just plain rude. I've been carrying a bit of holiday weight, it's true. And admittedly that holiday was in 1996. And I have been referred to as a "chubby c***" by two separate people who'd never met before. But...

Aw, the hell with it. The Kid has got a point. Although I do feel that this contempt may have been caused by me. The day before we'd been in the car and, for want of anything sensible to say I asked him;

"If you were a building, Boy, what building would you be?"

He thought about it for a long moment and came up with what he clearly thought was a suitable answer.

"A hotel. So lots of people could live inside me. And then I could charge them money."
"Wouldn't it be better to be a bank?"
"Why?"
"Because then you'd have billions of pounds!"
"But I want people in me."
"Don't say that."
"What?"

And then there was an awkward silence. After a few minutes he said.

"Dad. Can I say something to you?"
"Sure, what?"
"I'm not talking to you."

And to prove it, he carried on talking to me about how he wasn't talking to me until I didn't want him to talk to me any more. Eventually, distracted by a passing car he suddenly said;


"I know what kind of car we drive."
"Really?"

I replied, glad we'd changed the subject. And as sure as eggs is unfertilised chicken ovum, he instantly made me regret it.

"Yeah. It's a Shitroen."
Girl: "What's a Shitroen?


Fortunately, the next day I was removed from the simmering anger of the Boy by the virtue of taking my Ma to the hospital. It was nothing serious, just a check up with her neurologist. I'm quite glad it was nothing serious because getting to the hospital, going to the appointment and getting back home took a total of nine hours all told. This was partly because I had an off-peak train ticket and wasn't about to pay an extra five quid to come home straight after the appointment. So, we sat in a coffee shop and talked for two hours. Weirdly we got to talking about my inability to attract women in my youth, which led to this beautiful moment between a mother and son.

"I spent three days in Amsterdam, everyone else had a great time and the only person I pulled was a mental German."
"A man?"

I mean, seriously. I'm married. I've got two Kids. When are my parents going to believe I'm not gay?

When I got back home I assumed (wrongly) that the Boy had forgiven me. Turns out, he hadn't.

"Boy, how about I teach you how to tell the time?"
"I'm trying to lick my foot at the moment."
"Wh-? Just... come here. Look at the clock."
*Sigh*
"So when the big hand is pointing at twelve and the little hand is pointing at six, what's the time?"
"Stupid o'clock."

I gave up at that point. The Boy, however did not give up. At the end of the week, as I picked him up from school he said;

"We're going to make you do lots of exercise when you get home, dad."
"Really? Why?"
"You don't get enough exercise."
"What? I cycle to work! I do about forty miles a week!"
"Yeah, but you haven't changed. You still look like that."
"What?"
*Singing* "Fatman! Fatman!"

Music

Parenthood is a learning journey. And what I learnt tonight was that my Kids are little shits.

Earlier on I picked up my guitar for the first time in a long time. I've been planning to learn a couple of new songs, so I checked the internet and started trying out an Ed Sheeran song. I pretty much got it nailed when the Boy and Girl walked into the living room. The Girl listened for a moment and then, rather melodramatically clapped her hands over her ears, gave an ear-slipping scream and ran hurly-burly from the room. The Boy looked at me disapprovingly and put his hands on his hips.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Are you playing the guitar again?"

"Er... yes."

"Don't."

I remonstrated with him for a moment.

"I wasn't singing!"

"Yeah. But you're playing guitar and the Girl's frightened."

"What's she frightened of?"

I haven't got a lot of pride, my Kids have largely removed what little I had. But what he said next nailed down the lid and planted it.

"She thinks you're hurting the guitar."

Distantly I heard the Girl, now upstairs, yell;

"Are you angry with the guitar, daddy?"

And then, just to really stick it in and break it off the Boy followed this up with;

"And we both think that song is rubbish."

The Boy has very particular taste in music. For instance, at the age of six he's become quite partial to his uncle's band. Which is thrash metal (and now I wait for a Facebook comment - written in bingo - along the lines of; "We R a death-thrash-garage-fusion, m8 wot R U thinkin?" - so my apologies up front). To put this in perspective, here's a link to his favourite track by his uncle's band 

http://crowuk.bandcamp.com/

I put this fairly unusual taste in music down to the fact that My Chemical Romance were number 1 when he was born. He's quite prone to sing "Five Little Ducks" and with the next breath break into a gusty rendition of "Sex on Fire." Sometimes in church. 

Still, at least his taste in music is similar to mine. The Girl was born when an X-Factor song was number one. So her taste in music is god-awful. When she first saw the Spice Girls her eyes went the size of saucers. She pretty much looked like this;

I luuuuuuurve the Spice Girls

She listens to the Spice Girls at every given opportunity.

She's got a bloody cheek criticising my music.

Best Laid Plans

The Wife and I are currently trying some behaviour modification on the Kids. The idea is to stop the Boy from moaning when we tell him to do his homework, and for the Girl to stop going f**king bonkers the second someone speaks to her, looks at her, doesn't look at her, tells her to do something, has ears she doesn't like, breathes after eleven o'clock or isn't dead. This might sound a bit... Clockwork Orange but it's nothing so sinister.

The Girl

We've created sticker charts. They get a sticker for every day they don't moan or throw a tantrum. When they get thirty stickers, the Boy will get a Mandalorian Battle Set and the Girl will get her knife collection back. I mean, er... we'll buy her a toy horse.

This has been fifty percent successful thus far. By which I mean, the Boy gets it and behaves, and the Girl... Well... the flaw in our plan is this - if she doesn't get a sticker because she's thrown a tantrum... she throws a tantrum.

Today I had to take the Boy swimming. I've mentioned his swimming lessons before and they haven't got any less aggravating. Since the Wife was going to work, I had to take the Girl with us. So, on returning home from work I checked how the Girl's mood had been with the Wife. She rolled her eyes, and told me a horror story that involved her Pre-School teachers having to team up to talk her into going into school. And then she wet herself. Twice. So, I went off to talk to the Girl, who curled up in a ball and started shouting "No" at me - which meant I had to come up with a plan to stop her going ape sh*t at the swimming lesson. It's something I have nightmares about - lots of people, slippery floors, a large quantity of water and an exploding child.

Therefore I came up with a plan. I grabbed the Girl's headphones and brought them along. The Boy got changed in the usual fashion.

"Get undressed."

*Blank look*

*Sigh* "Take your top off."

*Takes top off*

"Carry on."

*Blank look*

"Take your shorts off."

*Takes shorts off*

"And the rest."

*Blank look*

"TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF!"

This never gets dull. 

Once the Boy jumped in the water, I sat down, plugged the headphones into my phone and started searching for Spice Girls videos for the Girl to watch. The Girl loves the Spice Girls.

This seemed to work. The only small problem is that, like all small children listening to headphones,  she didn't understand that she DIDN'T HAVE TO YELL EVERY TIME SHE SPOKE.

"I LOVE THE SPICE GIRLS!"

I nodded, and after making sure she was settled down, watched the Boy and his friend spend the next ten minutes trying to drown each other. It was the first time I'd got to actually watch the Boy swim. Ordinarily I have to entertain a bored Girl. This time there was only the odd

"DAD. IT'S STOPPED."

"Right-o, watch this one."

I was quite impressed with the Boy's swimming. His back stroke was very fast and the only-

"DAD! FAIRIES!"

"Yeah. Great."

-thing slowing him down was his ears - which were sticking out like wing nuts because of his goggles. Would have been a bit nicer if he'd spent less time sneezing in the water on purpose, but you can't have everything. 

"LOOK AT HER BOOBIES! SHE'S GOT MASSIVE BOOBIES!"

In her defence, she was looking at Geri Halliwell, who did have massive boobies in the video. It did, however, look like she was pointing at one of the women teaching the swimming lesson. Who also had massive boobies.

Fortunately for me, the swimming teacher didn't hear, only the people sitting either side of me did. One found it hilarious. The other less so, and looked at me like I'd just urinated in her pocket. As if I'd said it.

Once we got home I took the phone off her, told her she'd been a good girl and just for good measure, she threw another tantrum. 

I'm now considering this;

The Wrong Side of the Road (Part 2)

Despite the sun playing peek-a-boo most of our first full day in France, I managed to get sunburn. Not sunburn in any normal, conventional sense. No. In my finite wisdom, I decided to put factor thirty on my tattoo and my mole and then, being distracted by the Girl shouting at wasps, forgot to put any other sunscreen on. When I get sunburnt I find it's very binary in nature. I either don't have it, or my skin turns the colour of red wine and then sloughs off in great quantities for weeks on end. Plus, it creeps up on me. So I didn't notice how burnt I was until I got home, had a shower and started screaming. When I got out of the shower a gibbering, scarlet wreck I glanced in the mirror to discover I was glowing red save for a neat circle around my tattoo and another around my mole. I looked, in short, like the flag of Japan in reverse. 

The next day it was cloudy and grey, so someone (an idiot) came up with the grand plan of going to the local caves. As you may recall, I deal with tunnels in the same way small children deal with a cold, clammy hand grabbing their ankle as they climb into bed. The same is said for caves. So it was a surprise even to myself that I was the idiot that suggested going to the caves. I suggested it for two reasons;

1. it would be cool in there
2. they are called La Grotte Clamouse - which makes me laugh (it sounds like someone crapped on your dessert)

The Kids loved the Grotte, and to anyone not concentrating on the billions of tonnes of rock just waiting to collapse on their head, it is very beautiful. Unfortunately, for me it was like being suspended by a single cotton thread over a ravine filled with crocodiles armed with chainsaws. Whilst on fire. For two hours.

"Daddy's saying 'ship' a lot."

On and on and on it went, with our guide taking pains to explain how the caves were first discovered, and when this seventy tonne stalactite came crashing down, oh, and how the caves fill up with water in seconds during a rain storm. Lovely. Next time we're on holiday I'm going to suggest train surfing.

"And 'ere we aff a tank wiz ze fish zat aff no eyes..."

I turned to the Boy and said (in a noticeably quavering voice)

"Boy! What do you call a fish with no eyes?"

"No eye deer!"

He replied, and cracked up at his own joke. Tosser.

Eventually we got out, only avoiding being crushed to death by the piffling fact the cave didn't collapse whilst we were in it.

"That... was... AWESOME!"

The Boy yelled, and we took him and Girl to the shop where they eschewed buying anything cave related and instead bought the worlds most disgusting sweets. They consisted of little plastic fire extinguishers that sprayed cola flavoured hydrochloric acid in your mouth. Naturally, the pair of them redecorated the interior of the car with them, smearing the windows and creating a large, mobile wasp magnet.

The next day we went to the local market. Now I have failed to mention up until now that we were with family. Brother-In-Law, Sister-In-Law, Father-In-Law, Step-Mother-In-Law, Step-Brothers-In-Law and their respective girlfriends. The group of us went to the local market, wandered around acquiring all manner of tat and then took a seat at a bar in the town square to enjoy the particularly awful service. After forty minutes of waiting we moved to another bar where we waited forty minutes to be told it would be forty minutes before they would serve us. This made the Girl grumpy. To compound matters, the Wife had volunteered to take one of the Brother-In-Law's girlfriends to the local tattoo parlour to help her book an appointment. The Girl wanted to go. We disagreed, 

Thus was lit the fuse on the worst tantrum she's thrown in recent years. We waited for the Girl to look the other way and I hissed "Run!" at the Wife. This gave me about thirty seconds of peace before the Girl looked back round, saw what had happened and went a funny colour.

Interestingly the French have a different way of dealing with the sudden appearance of a satanic, screaming infant in their midst than the English. In England, everyone pretends not to have noticed. In France they treat it like a form of street theatre, and pull up chairs next to you to watch.  So, with approximately two-hundred people looking at me, I tried to deal with the Girl. Since she was blocking the door of the bar and I was getting "that look" from the staff, I braced myself and  picked her up. My plan was to take her to the other side of the road, where she couldn't get in anyone's way. I imagine it was a similar experience to cuddling a wolverine. She screamed blue murder, kicked and fought and then ran her fingernails across my sunburnt shoulders.

Ouch.

This made me let go, at which point she tried to run out into the road. In a moment of panicked reflex I managed to grab the back of her dress and yank her out of the path of a car before we both ended up in a pile by the side of the road. What felt like a month passed and, just as she was calming down a little old lady with a zimmer frame came over, smiled at me and before I could say; "Non!" started talking to the Girl - who reacted with such volume and bile the old dear literally ran away. And queue another god-knows-how-long of; "No! No! No!" Eventually I managed to distract her by showing her a statue of a lion and in a blink of an eye the whole storm passed like it had never happened. The assembled throng of French market goers looked disappointed, turned back to their drinks and went back to ignoring us.

The next day we went straight to the lake, as this didn't appear to cause the Girl to melt down. I like the lake, it's very peaceful save for the Girl yelling;

"SHUT UP! WE'VE GOT TO BE QUIET!!"

We swam a lot. The Boy insisted, at one point yelling at one of the Step-Brothers-In-Law;

"GET IN THE WATER, YOU JESSIE!"

Before more kindly pointing out;

"It's okay once it's over your nuts."

We inflated the Kids dinghy, tied it to my foot and swam out across the lake, looking for fish and dragonflies. When it was time to come back in I turned around and made for the bank again.

"Did you tie that on properly?"

The Wife asked. I sagely nodded, and explained my expertise with knots.

"Are you still attached Kids?"

"Yes!"

I gave the Wife a "told-you-so" look and swam on laughing about how funny it would be if we turned around and found they were a dot on the horizon.

"Dad."

A small voice said.

"We're not attached any more."

And we turned to discover they were, in fact, a dot on the horizon. Took me a quarter of an hour to catch up with them. By the time I got back I was shattered, and the Girl was geographically disadvantaged;

"Are we in England?"

The rest of the holiday passed relatively uneventfully. The Boy found a level of humour I couldn't have imagined when I explained what happened to the French monarchy;

"Ha ha! Heads cut off! Brilliant!"

And before we knew it, we were having a meal out to celebrate our last night on holiday - where I had the single best pizza of my life. The Girl, clearly enjoying the bonhomie of our last night, pole danced gratuitously for us, around a tree growing up through the middle of the restaurant.

Dear god, no.

Once she finished she sat on the floor in the middle of the restaurant, legs akimbo, skirt hoicked up, and graphically scratched her bits and pieces - thereby putting everyone off their food.

And then, at the end of it all, something weird happened. On the journey home we stopped at some services in the middle of the night so the Kids could go to the loo. The Wife took the Girl to the lady's, whilst I took the Boy to the men's. As the Boy and I walked back out into the warm night I realised I'd had the first real family holiday abroad that we would all remember - and I came over a bit wobbly. I picked the Boy, gave him a cuddle and told him how much I loved him. He smiled, looked at me and said;

"You're the best dad in the world."

And then;

"Heads cut off! I love it!"

P.S. I mentioned the murder thing, didn't I? Funny thing - we were in the South of France, four people got murdered in the Alps and I got bombarded by people asking "Was it near you?" I've come to the conclusion people were rather hoping I'd been shot. Which is just plain mean, you rotters.