Friday 26 April 2013

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

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