What just happened?

Well, that was weird. Twice in the past two weeks the Boy and Girl have managed to verbally back me into a corner. Then tonight...  Well, we'll come to that in a moment.

First of all was the Boy,  who came out with this nugget about Armistice Day;

"So you're saying that a lot of soldiers died so that we're free to say whatever we want, and to remember them we're not allowed to speak for two minutes? Well that makes sense."

Then, in an effort to get the Girl to call me Fiona again, I asked her in front of some friends;

"Girl, if you were a dog, and I was the person that owned you, what would you call me?"

*As if to an imbecile* "Woof."

Well, that told me.

So just as I'm starting to think the Kids are becoming rational little people, we come to that point on a Friday when they're both tired and emotional. As they were getting changed into their pyjamas the Girl - up until this point quite cheery - suddenly burst into tears.

"Waaaaaaaaah!"

"What's the matter Girl?"

"I'm going to miss you when you're dead!"

"Whu-? You what?"

"Your going to die in a hundred years and I'm going to miss you! "

"I'm not going to love for another hundred years, Girl..."

"WAAAAAAAAH!"

"Well, that was the wrong thing to say, eh, Boy? WHY ARE YOU CRYING? "

"Because you're going to die soon!"

"Soon?"

I mean honestly, what the hell?

Effin and Jeffin

About five million years ago, humans invented thumbs. Initially we used them to thumb our noses a "lower" species and say, in a series of grunts and whistles;

"Look! I'm Fonzi! Eeeeeyyyyyyy"

Then we realised that opposable thumbs were very useful (save for Millwall fans, who thought they looked poncy, and members of the Westboro Baptist Church who thought they were made from Satan's nipples). We used them to make tools. Tools, it turned out, were very useful things as well, as you can tell by their name; "tools" which is derived from the Latin word "Toolus" meaning "tool" (I'm a bit out of my depth here).

Since then we've used our thumbs and our tools to invent all manner of excellent things, such as neutron bombs and turkey twirlers. So you'd think the Girl would be a little more grateful than to say,  as we travelled to her swimming lesson;

"I don't like thumbs. They're like fingers only shorter, fatter and rubbish. "

"What do you like then?"

She shrugged, noncomittally and replied;

"Eyebrows are alright."

"I like winkles!"

"Shut up, Boy. "

The swimming lesson was its usual blend of sweating, trying to find a seat and narrowly avoiding falling in the pool. The Boy went first, swam well for ten minutes and then, having put on a pair of flippers, raced the length of the pool, crashed into the side and sank without trace. He returned a moment later, grinning and blearily yelling;

"That was OSSOME!"

Meanwhile the Girl have me a running list of reasons of why she didn't want to have her swimming lesson which included; "Fish poo" and "I've got burps."

Eventually the Kids switched places and once the Boy had got dressed twice-

"Take your pants off your head and FOR GOD'S SAKE STOP FIDDLING WITH THAT!"

-I have him my phone so he could play Bad Piggies.

"Oh,  man!"

"What?"

"I can't get off this level."

I took the phone off him, and spent five minutes comprehensively falling to beat the bloody thing.

"I give up. You have it."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. I'm not very good at that game. "

"Yeah, you fucking loser."

There was a very, very long pause.

"What. Did. You. Say?"

The Boy showed his usual ability to read the time of a situation and said;

"That you're a fucking loser."

Without looking up from the phone.

"A-abuh.. Buh.. Buh... Whu-"

I said, which improved the situation immeasurably. Eventually I manged to regain enough composure to give him the talk about that word.

"Where did you learn that word?"

"In school."

"I'm not convinced its on the curriculum, kiddo. Who taught you it? "

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to kill the little shit. "

Braaaaaains

Bloody zombies. They get everywhere.

Regular readers (hello, mum!) will be aware as part of my burgeoning mid life crisis I've taken up running. Specifically, running away from zombies. Yesterday, I got home from work to find the Wife and Kids were out. Torn between going out for a run or having my first poo in peace for seven years I came to the conclusion that running was better choice.

I was about five minutes into the run when my phone ran. It was the Wife.

"Hello. We're just about to come home. Be back about half five. The Girl is being non compliant. If I put you on speaker phone can you ask her what she wants for dinner and see if you can get her out of the tantrum?"

"I'm, like, being chased by a zombie at the moment."

*Distantly* "Girl, Dad's on the phone. He wants to know what you want for dinner."

Boy: "Spaghetti!"

The Girl said;

"HULK SMASH PUNY HUMANS!" 

Or words to that effect.

"What do you want for dinner, Girl?"

"I AM GODZILLA! YOU ARE TOKYO!"

Or similar.

"Are you a bit grumpy?"

"REDRUM! REDRUM!"

"It's not working, love."

*rrrrrrrrrrrrrr*

I sighed, and started running again. I  hadn't got very far (because I'm fat) before I got a text message.

Just got Girl out of tantrum by running over a pheasant.

Because there's nothing like an avian suicide to perk up a four year old girl.

The rest of the run was relatively uneventful save for a couple of zombie attacks and the fact that, for reasons I don't quite comprehend, the app kept making me skip. Not, like, boxing skipping.

Like; "tra-la-la!" skipping.

This turned out to be rather liberating right up until a truck driver yelled a word that sounded suspiciously like "BUNT!" at me.

I returned home to find a Girl beaming from ear to ear, with no trace of the previous Satanic possession.

"FIONA!"

She yelled, and pointed at me.

"Look, Boy! It's Fiona!"

"Who's Fiona?"

"You are!"

"Why are you calling me Fiona?"

"Duh! Because you own us!"

"What? That makes no- oh, wait... THE OWNER."

"That's what I said! We're zombies and you own us!"

"Zombies don't normally have own - "

"Braaaaains!"

"Get off! Stop biting me! "

In effort to distract them I decided to ask about their encounter with the pheasant.

"We were driving along and he crashed into my window and he died."

The Girl said, with wide eyed earnestness.

"Poor Lucky died!"

"Lucky?"

"The birdie. That's what we called him. "

"Of course you did."

"Braaaaains!"

"STOP DOING THAT!"

"Look, dad!"

Said the Boy, holding my cycling head torch to his forehead.

"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! I AM A GARLIC. "

"No, you're an idiot."

I said.

There was a brief interlude into this insanity whilst we had dinner. During which I said to the Boy (jokingly) ;

"I'm grumpy, Boy. Would you mind if I hit you?"

On hearing this the Girl flung a protective arm across her brother and yelled;

"DON'T YOU DARE! "

"Oh, ok. Can I hit the Girl instead?"

The Boy replied (without looking away from his dinner)

"Go for it."

What a little darling.

Pointless

"Parenting," you often hear parents say,  "is a thankless task." Parents often say stupid things, such as;

"How many times have I told you not to do that?"

"What's that sock doing on the floor? "

And my personal favourite;

"Do you want to tidy your room?"

Of course parenting is thankless. You're looking after psychotic egomaniacs. And now, in the spirit of gleeful hypocrisy, here's what drives me batshit nutty bonkers.

Ironing

No one in the history of humankind has ever reached the end of their life and said;

"I may not have lead an interesting life. I may not have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but I'm glad I did all that ironing. "

And when it  comes to kid's clothes you can bet your arse you've entered a world of futility. The scientific definition of a femtosecond is the time between a six year old putting on a perfectly ironed school shirt and it looking like it's been fed to a giraffe.

"The" Instead of "Fuh"

Childhood speech impediments can be very sweet. For instance the Boy said "Ephalent" instead of Elephant for years and I never got bored of it. I still occasionally say "Par cark" instead car park, and chicks really dig that.

However, the Girl is made of nails and pig iron, and as such her speech impediment is more... robust. She has proved completely impervious to any attempt to convince her to say "the" instead of "fuh". Mostly this gives her a bit of a Basildon twang, the sort you hear from seventeen year old women pushing their six children in a single pram whilst they take their pit bull for a walk to the tattoo parlour.

However, on occasion it causes fairly dramatic misunderstandings. Such as when she was regaling my mum with the story of when she saw a man dressed as Scooby Doo queueing to board an EasyJet flight.

"I saw Scooby Doo! "

"Really? Where? "

"Fuh queue!"

Hair

Washing hair is a bit of a chore. At one point the Girl had hair about the length you normally see on a concert cellist. It was so long you had to erect scaffolding before you could start to wash it. So it took about forty five minutes to wash, condition, comb and dry. And since I'm a man, whenever I try to plait her hair she ends up looking like a scarecrow. As for the Boy, regardless of how we cut his hair I'm unable to dry it without making him look like Hitler. Bath night in our house generally resembles a rather dark version of the Wizard of Oz.

Batteries

Everything these days takes batteries. The Boy got a wooden train set for Christmas one year and even that took batteries. And they never take standard size batteries, they all take tiny ones with serial numbers for names that you can only buy from specialist retailers and which cost the soul of your first born child.

We invested in rechargeable batteries, which saves a fair amount of money but comes with the disadvantage of having to hold a "battery amnesty" every two weeks to charge the bloody things up. This involves opening every single toy, normally with a screwdriver. Because if you don't, creepy shit happens. We were bought a musical table (yes, you read that right) that, when the batteries were low, would suddenly switch itself on and play music eerily out of key. Usually at three in the morning. Which meant I'd wake up thinking Freddy Kruger was coming for me.

Monopoly

I'm not a fan of board games, but Monopoly holds a special place on my mantelpiece of hate. Aside from the fact that you win the game by aggressive land purchases and uncompromising rental contracts (and if that doesn't scream fun for all the family I don't know what does) there's the fact that the result is normally a forgone conclusion within twenty minutes but you're forced to grind on with the game for another four hours. Even the "quick" version takes at least two hours. That's not a game, that's a job.

But mostly I don't like it because I've never won, regardless of how hard I try. In the past week I've played the Boy twice. He beat me both times. I cheated the second time and kept stealing money from the bank when he wasn't looking (I'm not proud). He still beat me. When we finished he slapped his forehead and said;

"Oh, man. I was trying to let you win. "

So I got the Girl to tell him where she saw Scooby Doo.

Skool Daze

Well, now we find ourselves with two children in school. It seems like only yesterday that we were dealing with incessant crying, sore bums and wall to wall poo. Actually, it was only yesterday and its probably better we move on.

The Girl's first day at school was relatively smooth sailing. Especially given the Boy's pep talk in the car.

"You'll really like school, Girl. My favourite thing is play time and golden time. "

"*Ahem* The LESSONS are really good too, aren't they, Boy? "

"Not really. Especially maths and English. They're rubbish."

"I don't want to go to school! "

"Brilliant. Thanks, Boy. "

And so the Girl went into school knuckling the tears from her eyes. Her teacher, a kindly and well meaning sort, took her hand and said;

"Come on, let's go and find some girls to play with."

Not realising the Girl doesn't like girls and, when cornered, acts like a wounded wolverine. Fortunately, thus far there haven't been any a fatalities, which is a blessing because we wouldn't want the Girl impacting on the school's OFSTED rating. The people in the village might get a bit churlish. And the lack of homicide is all the more surprising since the Girl told me tonight that her friend and future husband told her today that he wants to marry another girl, called Molly.

"No one wants to marry me. "

She said, forlornly. My initial reaction to this was to go over to Molly's house and shout through the letterbox;

"Keep your hands off my daughter's boyfriend!"

And then use weed killer on her lawn to write the word "SLUT".

But, once again it turns out that what (to any right minded person) is a perfectly rational reaction, society at large deems "not socially acceptable" and "criminal damage"

All of this has led to the inevitable parents evening. Last night was my turn. Naturally I'd completely forgotten about this, so the Wife greeted me with this information as we passed each other on the doorstep, me returning from work, her on her way out.

I have a lot of time for teachers.  I've mentioned before that I spent a short time teaching in primary schools and am well experienced in the buffoonary and grade A arseholery of some parents. So I have no problem going to parents evening. At least I didn't right up until the Wife said;

"You have to be there for six fifteen. "

"Ok."

"It finishes a half past eight. "

"Ok.. Wait... You mean half six, right? I mean... ha, ha, ha... I'm not going to... TWO HOURS?"

What is there to talk about at a four year old's parents evening?

"Our learning goals for this term are for the Girl to; keep her arse in her trousers for longer than five minutes and to stop yelling 'I'M PUNCHING MYSELF IN THE NOO-NOO!' "

It turns out it was a forum to discuss how the school, the governors and the parents could improve the school. This was all done (but too frigging long). Annoyingly, they served wine and Is bloody well driven down there, as getting slaughtered would have made the whole thing more bareable. More annoyingly, the elderly governer I was on a table with pounded five glasses in the first half hour and spent the rest of the evening alternating between sleeping and dribbling.

Meanwhile the Boy remains completely unchanged by his return to school.

"Why haven't you put your trousers away? You got distracted, didn't you?"

"OOH! ANT!"

Still, his drawing is coming along nicely. Here's a picture of his mum.

That's a saucepan, by the way.

It's not a penis.

Really, it isn't.

Antisocial Services

On the way home today I had to swerve to avoid a young mum who was busily pushing her newborn child into traffic whilst looking in the wrong direction and chatting on the phone. In gratitude for not crashing into her, she swore at me in her best estuary foghorn while the car behind me also swerved extravagantly around her. This served as a neat reminder that whilst it's easy to be a good parent, it's even easier to be a shit one.

When I first became a parent whenever the Boy would cry at night I'd make the generic gag about the neighbours calling social services. Because, of course, you never imagine you're going to be put in a situation where someone might call social services. Or the Police.

A situation, for instance, like when your daughter throws a tantrum in the middle of a busy shopping centre and, as a change from the monotony of yelling "No!"  over and over, she starts yelling;

"I want daddy! I want my daddy! "

And none of the passersby seem convinced as you hiss;

"I AM your daddy! "

Or the situation where your son, on a crowded beach, announces to the assembled throng;

"My dad doesn't like to be naked in public. "

Which wouldn't be weird if it weren't for the fact that no one had asked.

Or the situation where your children start calling each other "Mummy" and "Daddy" whilst having a sword fight (because, apparently, that's how we roll) and when your son attacks your daughter she yells (loud enough to be heard in an adjoining county);

"No, daddy! DON'T HURT ME! WHY, DADDY? WHY? "

Or the situation (and forgive me if I've mentioned this before) when your daughter tries to call the cat in by standing at the back door whilst staring at your burly next door neighbour and yelling" Pussy! " at him.

And yet, in the pyramid scheme that is my life, my Kids are firmly at the top and that, I think is the key.

Whilst I may moan about people giving their kids ridiculous names that are nothing more than a random collection of vowels and consonants, or intentionally misspelt traditional names (Alyx, Kris etc.) that doesn't mean they're bad parents.

It means they have a lack of class or are borderline illiterate.

Outside of the extreme cases of child abuse, the really bad parents are the ones who put themselves first. Because if you didn't want to spend time with your kids, you shouldn't have had them in the first place, you selfish arsehole.

And I'm not saying I'm perfect. The Boy has become obsessed with Nintendogs, and when he proudly showed me his dogs I noted he has; a miniature schnauzer, a toy poodle and a pug - which is the sort of menagerie you would expect a drag queen or Liberace to have. But I try to be open minded, and if he wants to call his dogs Raul, Talula and Joan Collins, that's fine with me.

However, if you're the sort of person that is more interested in talking on the phone than ensuring the safety of your child, might I suggest you get your shit in order?

Thanks.

For the person I spoke to first thing this morning.

19th Nervous Breakdown

And so, the summer holidays which went so well last year we decided to do exactly the same thing again. Mainly because we wanted to bring back a motherlode of cheap vin. This meant another mammoth drive the length of France.

Sadly, the Car was not in great shape, having a bit of a wobble which our local garage inspected, shrugged over and said;

"Might be alright."

So being sensible people, we decided to drive 2200 kilometres in an iffy motor. As we drove around the periferique in Paris, we crossed the Seine where we saw a sign I believe I have translated correctly as;

FERK YEW! NUR ROAD MARKINGS FUR YEW, STUPID ENGLEESH.

Because at that point the road markings vanished. This had no effect on the native French drivers, since they weren't bloody following them anyway. However, we were, and our journey rapidly disintegrated into a maelstrom of stress and blaming each other until we came out the other side.

However, this and a crazy French man playing "Who's lane is it anyway?" aside, we arrived at our beautiful gite unscathed and only slightly disturbed to find the front of the building was held up by three acroprops. A lovely large house, big enough for two families as well as a large number of flies, silverfish and enormous bees that looked like little flying Darth Vaders.

I shall not dwell on the pleasant aspects of the holiday, such as the company of the friends staying with us, or the food or wine or relaxation - since you don't make readers laugh with "had a lovely time, nothing went wrong." The reader friendly highlights involved;

Going to the beach (or, as they call it in French,  "Le ashtray") and the Boy and his friend standing in the sea, eating baguettes and eyeing up two women in bikinis in the least subtle manner possible. (Also, the Boy's friend's sotto voiced "Dad, some of these ladies aren't wearing tops! " as if we hadn't noticed. Which we had. Several times.)

An attempt at a car based game that went;

"Can you say four words that rhyme with: tree? "
Boy "Wee. Me. Three."
Girl "Bibble? Is it bibble?"
"No"
Girl "Ooh! Ooh! Is it whore?"

The moment when, after bravely assisting a family that had driven into a ditch I realised I'd been wearing the Wife's pink sandals.

The Boy in the supermarche pointing at a pack of Tena  for men and asking me if I needed them.

The Boy trying to get out of the way of a car by running in three different directions at once.

But it was the Girl who stole the limelight. We were sitting around the dinner table when, in the style of a Jane Austen protagonist  she suddenly piped up;

"I've got to tell you something. "

We all turned to look at her, and once she gauged all attention was on her she announced;

"I'm preglant."

And potato came out of my nose.

By the time we started the return journey after two weeks the Car  was wobbling like an actress accepting an Oscar. At a service station somewhere near Dijon the Wife and I discussed the likelihood of the car finishing the journey (low), breaking down after we'd got the ferry over to Blighty (even) or keeling over just outside Calais (you bet your sweet arse). This had a fairly dramatic effect on my need for the toilet, so I went off to find the loo.

Initially signs seemed good. Literally. The sign for the men's toilets was this;

Bowel movements! Yay!

Which suggested that either it was going to be the best crap of my life, or a warning about cottaging. It turned out neither of these were true as this was one of those peculiarly French loos which is fundamentally two footmarks and a hole. Now, I love the French, but if after several thousand years your sanitation system still consists of crouching over a hole and praying your aim is good (especially in a country that considers the flip flop it's national footwear), I refuse to accept it as a civilised society.

About two hundred kilometres from Calais the Car started making a WOM WOM WOM that had the word "terminal" written through it like a stick of rock. For nearly two hours we dealt with this by turning the radio up and singing loudly. At one point we were singing Simon and Garfunkel, it was that bad. Somehow we limped onto the ferry and an hour later breathed a sigh relief as the ferry doors opened onto the white cliffs of Dover. The relief was palpable right up until we drove off the ferry into the worst rain storm I have ever seen. It was like someone has turned the sea sideways. On seeing this the Boy collapsed into hysterical laughter and told us it was the funniest rain he had ever seen.

Long story short, we made it back. Two weeks of relaxation totally erased by the journey back. When my Mum asked the Kids what they liked best about their holiday the Boy said;

"Teaching my dog to roll over in Nintendogs."

Whereas the Girl insisted she didn't like France based on the fact that;

"They have pips in their grapes. "

Money well spent, I'm sure you'll agree.

Fit to Drop

So I've been out running a lot recently. Those of you that know me will realise that in previous years I would have been more likely to say "So I've been taking the rough edge of a pineapple to myself"  but hey, times change and life insurance doesn't get cheaper.

What makes the pain and effort worth it is that I get to come home to the bosom of my family where my aching bones will be met by the Wife's loving and sympathetic;

"Aw... Have you got a hurty knee? MAN UP, PRINCESS! "

The other night I returned from a run to find the rest of the family sitting outside waiting to see if they could see any bats.

"Is that a bat?"

The Girl asked, pointing at a pigeon.

"No. It's a pigeon. "

"What's it doing?"

"Flapping. "

"I'm scared of flaps."

And since the Wife and I have got the same level of maturity as a 13 year old school boy we both collapsed into laughter until the Girl kicked me in the shin.

Similarly today I cycled home from work - and allow to digress a moment - during which I had the most civil disagreement of my entire life. I was cycling on,  and I can't emphasise this enough, A CYCLE PATH where a delightful elderly couple were walking their dog in such a way they took up the whole path. I gave a gentle ding on my bell twice to no avail and only when my brakes started squealing as I stopped did they turn around. I gave them a cheery smile, and the lovely elderly lady said, with a voice like Hyacinth Bucket;

"You could ring your bell, you know. "

I smiled again.

"I did,"

I said, politely,

"I'm afraid it's not very loud. "

"Well maybe you should get a louder one, "

she suggested, not unkindly. I stopped and turned around.

"Could I ask a question? "

"Yes?"

"Would you walk along a busy road and expect cars to toot at you so you could get out of the way? "

Clearly seeing where I was going with this, she bristled and testily said;

"I might!"

"Well, then it's a pleasant surprise for you that you haven't been weeded out of the gene pool by natural selection. The unfortunate consequence for society is that there's just that little bit more stupid in the world. "

And then I finished with -  and I'm not kidding -

"I bid you good day, madam."

Which I've never said before in my life.

That was when she called me a prick.

Anyway, when I returned home it was the Boy who supplied the entertainment. A friend dropped by to drop off some shorts for the Wife. We're off on our holibobs tomorrow, you see. Whilst chatting to our friend I mentioned that it took going on a two week holiday for me to realise I only have seven pairs of underwear. And no, they don't have the days of the week on them. My socks do though. My friend replied jokingly;

"You could borrow my other half's pants. He's still got some in the plastic. "

"My pants were in plastic until this morning. Look, "

the Boy said,  strolling over and pulling his strides down.

"Boy! Not cool! "

Deftly ignoring me he continued;

"I like these one's because they've got a pee hole. Look."

"Noooooooooo! "

Man Plans, God Laughs

So we went camping, and everything went brilliantly. For the first time in six years we went out into the wide world and no one lost an eye, I didn't explode into a vast and impotent rage and (due to the Girl's metaphorical toys remaining in her metaphorical pram) the High Street of Cromer didn't come to a standstill. It was a sterling success.

Almost.

We'd managed to go three days without mishap or mayhem. Three days of sunshine, beaches, ice cream and lashings and lashings of waiting-until-the-Kids-went to-bed-and-then-drinking-ourselves-unconscious. On the last day we found ourselves standing by our cars, neatly packed with our camping accouterments, the picture of parental smugness. We were just patting ourselves on the back for getting our tents back into their bags without a) swearing or b) splitting the bag and disgorging a pile of canvas and poles into the grass when our friend's youngest child casually strolled over and said;

"The Boy just did a poo in the secret toilet."

"Er... What?"

"Yeah. He did a poo in the secret toilet and then I covered it up and did a wee on it."

With look of anxious hope I turned to his dad and said;

"Heh. Fertile imagination your boy's got there."

"I don't think he's joking."

Bollocks.

I turned and marched over to the children's playground where the Boy was sitting on a swing looking like the cat that got the cream and then took a shit on a secret toilet. He beamed at me as I walked over.

"Boy. Did you do a poo?"

He nodded, grinning.

"WHERE did you do a poo?"

Still grinning, he pointed to his right at a hollowed out tree stump.

"You didn't."

Of course he did.

This prompted a slightly frantic conversation during which I extolled the virtues of getting in the cars, lighting up the tyres and making a run for the border. Based on this, the general consensus was that I had to go and clean it up.

So with a heavy heart and a Sainsbury's carrier bag, I walked back to the scene of the crime and... well it was a bit like this

Except that when I scooped I realised that either the Boy had eaten a cow, or he wasn't the first to use the secret toilet. So there you go; man plans, God laughs and your Boy takes a shit in a tree when you're not paying attention. It's a lesson for life, my friends.

Art for Arseache

It's been a normal kind of week in our household. The cat has found a new career ethnically cleansing the local area of wildlife. So, the Wife put a bell on him. This has had two effects; firstly, he plays a lovely tune whilst he snacks on small birds and secondly, I keep waking up in middle of night convinced we are being burgled by a morris dancer

.

Meanwhile, the Boy has been writing a newspaper. Allow me to broaden the readership of his first issue.

This is the front cover, advertising a food and drink festival with the tempting offer of a free bag of sticks. Ironically though, dogs aren't allowed.

Here is the aforementioned bag of sticks.

These are, quite clearly, bad people. The gentleman on the top right is "sicking up blood" whilst his accomplice to the bottom left is "sicking up hair." Which marks them out as bad people.

The headline on this page reads; "The Danger in Japan"

This chap unwisely posed for a photograph whilst holding a knife. 

It is a knife.

He's not giving you the finger.

There's nothing I can say that will explain this.

So, um... that's the news.

Learning to Fly

The single best thing about today is that I didn't shit myself.

Ordinarily I consider the sort of day where I fail to disgrace myself as the status quo. But it's Wednesday, and I've never quite got the hang of Wednesdays.

Regular readers (hello, mum!) may feel that I have a bit of a poo fixation, but the truth of the matter is that yeah, alright, I have. However the events of the last 24 hours have done nothing to convince me I'm wrong.

To prevent this from becoming too graphic, I'm going to use a metaphor at this point. Ordinarily I'm as regular as a railway time table. Most days three trains leave the station. However, for the past two days there's been a signal failure and to put it mildly the passengers are revolting.

So last night I took something that would fix the signal problem. Unfortunately, in an uncharacteristic move, I slightly overdid it. As such I awoke this morning to find the station rumbling away, threatening the possibility of an express train. However, by the time I was ready to go to work the line was still blocked.

This was the background to my morning commute to work by bike. I cycled along merrily enough, confident that short of a disaster I would make it to work without expelling something awful.

Disaster inevitably struck as I was cycling by the river and spied a chap riding slowly in front of me.

"Out of my way, fatty!"

I thought, swerving  brilliantly onto the grass to go round him, expertly standing up and deftly pedalling straight into a massive hole. The bike took this badly, went base over apex and ejected me a full eight feet across the field.

I was in the air long enough to think

"This'll hurt."

Followed by

"I'm going to poop when I hit the g-"

At which point, I hit the ground. But did not poop.

"Fatty" meanwhile was kind enough to help me to my feet, pick up the broken remnants of my bike and ask if I was okay. To which I replied

"I think so. At least I didn't shit myself!"

Heroic.

The Parallax View

There's a common cliche in science fiction stories about a protagonist who travels to a parallel universe where ALL IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS. And so, dear reader, by virtue of moving into someone else's house, I have become such a protagonist.

You see, in my own home I know where things are. Well, most things. For instance, I don't know where the tampons are. In fact, on occasion I find tampons and, since I'm not really familiar with such things, think they're Nerf gun darts.  In my own defence this has only happen maybe six or seven times.

 Anyway, aside from tampons, in my own house I know where to find, for instance, a knife in the cutlery drawer. Because right minded people keep their cutlery in the following order from left to right; spoons, forks, knives. And then below these in the little horizontal bit, are the tea spoons.

No so here. Here the order of the cutlery draw is; knives, forks, spoons. However, the spoons are tea spoons, and the dessert spoons are down below.

This simply will not do. Things like this mess with my mojo, and given the nature of my freaky-deaky offspring, I need my shit unmessed. I was bemoaning this fact the other day to my brother-in-law, father-in-law and evil-step-mother-in-law whilst trying to find the charcoal for a barbeque I was meant to be cooking. Mainly I was bemoaning this because I couldn't find the charcoal until my father-in-law said;

"Found it. The charcoal's in the rabbit hutch."

Of course it is. That's where sane people keep their charcoal. I found the firelighters on a small island in the middle of the point.

Fortunately the Kids have made the transition into a new house relatively easily. Admittedly over the weekend the Boy said;

"I feel homesick for our old house."

"Well, I miss our old house too."

The Girl piped up.

"I miss our new house."

"How can you miss the new house?"

"Ignore her, dad." *Conspiratorialy* "It's the hormones."

But on the whole things are pretty much back to normal. As demonstrated when the Girl told the Wife;

"If you want, I can teach you to be naughty."

"Er...okay."

"Well, first you have to shout 'No, no, no!.' Then you have to cry loads and then you lay down on the floor and don't move."

"You haven't lost your touch then?"

The Girl then showed the Wife what she meant, and when the Wife told her it was time to pick up the Boy, the Girl followed her pretend tantrum with an actual tantrum.

Meanwhile, the Boy is still playing conversational twister by responding randomly to any statement.

"I'm wearing a shirt today because we have to go church for assembly and I want to look smart."

"Well, I think you look very smart."

"Ha ha! And when I went to the office the other day because of my breath* someone had been sick and they put cat litter on it."

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Look at those tits!"

I should point out, they were blue tits.

Best of all, however, was the moment that came when I was making a complete arse of myself attempting to fix the brakes on my bike. As I was persuading the brakes with a hammer I heard the noise of a low flying aircraft and looked up to see a B17 bomber loom over the horizon. I called the Boy and Girl who were having their dinner at the time. The Boy ran to the door with a spoon in one hand a a yoghurt in the other and gazed up at the bomber as it buzzed over the horizon.

"Cool."

"That's the Sally B. I think it's the last airworthy B17 in this country."
"What's a B17?"

"It's a bomber."

The Girl's, who was looking a bit bored, suddenly looked more interested.

"Is it going to bomb us?"

"No, darling. It doesn't have any bombs. It's a old bomber from World War II"

She looked at me disapprovingly, as if to say "Well, if I'm not going to see a bomb, what's the point?" The Boy decided to regain her attention by teaching her what he knew about World War II.

"You see, some really horrible people started a war with England."

"Why did they want a war with England?"

"Well, they had the First World War and they thought; 'That went well' so they decided to have another one."

* He had asthma. Not, like, halitosis or something.

Rule 34

A couple of months ago, whilst scrolling through a Facebook feed that seemed comprised of;

1. Photos of food
2. Trouser wettingly exciting statements such as; "It rained today and I got wet."
3. "Inspirational" bullshit written across black and white photo's of kittens
4. Covert racism
5. Irritating updates on whatever "funny" thing someone's kid said
6. Blog posts...
7. Wait... what's my point here?

I noticed someone had shared a status about how they'd grown up in the eighties and that being a kid was better back then. This is patently nonsense, things are vastly better now. For instance, teenage boys no longer have to get their porn from the boot of a burnt out car on some wasteland. Instead they simply type any two words into Google and Rule 34 will work it's magic.

Ok, not a great example.

However, the information revolution has made being a kid a lot more complicated. I'm not talking about things like social media here - the Boy and Girl have yet to enter that bear-pit of mundanity and drabness. But the internet is already having an affect on their lives. I've mentioned before that the Boy was posting crap on my Twitter feed, but things have moved on.

"Dad, what's our email address?"

"Hang on, Boy. I've just go in and I need to get changed."

The Boy was sat at the computer. Again. Since we moved a week ago I mostly see the Boy from behind, his head framed by the computer monitor and the Lego website clanging away. Since I cycle to work, and we've moved further away, I have been coming back from work looking like Swamp thing. So I stripped of my shirt and trousers. 

"Keep your pants on dad. No one wants to see that."

The Boy said, without looking away from the screen. I threw a pair of socks at him (which missed, went out of an open window and I had to retrieve later on), had a wash and sprawled out on the sofa, prompting the Girl to punch me in the stomach and then scale the side of me.

"I love you, daddy. But you've got bogies up your nose."

"Thanks, sweetheart."

"Dad, what's our email address."

"It's TMBSBLOG@GMAIL.COM"

"Ok...."

"Wait! Why?"

"Because WE'VE WON AN IPAD!!"

Now there's no way to convince a six year old that you haven't won an Ipad. You have in fact one the right to be bombarded by spam email about penis extensions and sex swings.

And frankly we have more than enough of those

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."