Tuesday 16 September 2014

Shed Heaven

What? Where the hell did the summer go? It was July just... Oh.

Well, I hope you all had a nice summer holiday. We, like most parents, spent the first morning of the school holidays trying to convince the Kids that they still had to go to school. Or stay in bed all day, or... anything other than come anywhere near us. When I think back to how I felt when the Boy went to school, all misty eyed about the fact that we were sending him into the wider world, and that he would be shaped by other people now, and how sad it would be not to get to spend all day with him. What a plonker I was. Now I react to a day with my Kids like I've just found a spider in my shoe.

The summer holidays are a bit like one of those family comedies from the nineties where the weird relative turns up to stay, and initially he turns the house into a maelstrom of chaos and everyone is all; "Oh no, he's weird and we don't like him" but then as the film progresses it turns out he has a heart of gold despite his weirdness and the family welcome him into their home. Except for the second bit. There's no sudden breakthrough of emotional connection in our house. It's all treading on Lego and shouting. The closest we come to an emotional connection is when we're all crying together because;

a) the Boy wouldn't play with the Girl
b) the Girl elbow-dropped the Boy
c) I JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE - IT'S LIKE LIVING WITH THE LOLLIPOP GUILD ON MESCALINE!!!!!

You get the idea.

 In an effort to give ourselves an excuse to avoid the Kids (oh, and because we needed somewhere to put all our crap) we bought a shed. Only its less of a shed and more of a temple to manhood. This is quite ironic given that it's mine and earlier today I was frowned at by my boss for singing show tunes in the office (even more so as I was singing "Suddenly Seymour" from Little Shop of Horrors). Anyhoo, we've managed to turn our shed into a shed-come-summer-house-come-brewery-come-I'm-hiding-from-the-Kids-leave-me-alone place. 

Surprisingly for something that I've been involved in the construction of, it went up surprisingly well. No major mistakes although we nearly forgot to put the doors and windows in, which might have had some minor consequences. Oh, and I forgot to stir the wood paint when I painted the shed and it's a range of different colours. And I made a bit of a pig's ear of the shingling. Aside from that, we're talking the Sistine Chapel here. The only real problem came whilst I was sitting on the roof nailing the shingles on. The Girl was watching me from a short distance, wearing an ethereal expression and singing "Ring a Ring a Roses" in a slightly off-key, threatening manner. 

"You alright, Girl?"

"How many times have you hit your thumb, Daddy?"

"Ha! About eighteen times!"

And then I hit my thumb. This was no gentle tap, dear reader. I flattened it. To celebrate my newly flat digit, I did a bit of rolling around on the roof for a moment and, to take my mind of the pain, said words like "NNNNNNnnnnnngggg!" and "FUCKRYINGOUTLOUD!!!"  

For her part, the Girl said;

"Nineteen!"

in a sing-song voice, and wandered away to push a penshioner under a dust cart, no doubt. This left me to woozily attempt a dismount from the roof of the shed which was punctuated with the following words;

"Whoaaaaaa-sheeeeeeeet!"

and

"Oof!"

And then the Wife kindly taped my thumb nail back on. The post-script to this story is that about a week later the tip of my thumb (which had gone black) fell off whilst I was in an RSPB reserve, and was consequently eaten by a bird. It was a chaffinch. I asked the woman behind the counter.

I don't think the Girl saw the bird eat the end of my thumb, but somewhere along the line she's developed a very suspicious view of them. For instance, at one point during the holidays I was driving down a country lane when four Peahens walked across the road in front of us. I say "walked", it was more of a saunter. They ambled over to someone's front garden and one-by-one, jumped over the garden gate.

"Why are they crossing the road?" 

The Girl asked.

"To get to the other side!"

The Boy and I replied, and then high-fived each other and went; "Yes!". Small things, eh?

"Why are they going in the garden?"

"Dunno, Girl. Maybe they're looking for food."

"Maybe they're murderers

"Well, they're birds. It seems unlikely."

 There was a brief pause, and then the Girl took a deep breath and screamed

"MURDERERS!"

at the top of her lungs. I lurched the car away rather swiftly, spinning the wheels (which, in my old POS takes some doing).

Still, my Kids are the one great constant in my life. In that they constantly drive me freaking nuts.The Boy is still doing all those things that other people tell me make him endearingly eccentric but in actuality are specifically designed to put me in one of those nice canvas jackets that button up the back. Such as when I trod on his last remaining pair of glasses because he'd left them on the floor in the middle of the living room "for safety".

 He's so easily distracted these days that he can't even remember what HE'S talking about most of the time;

(From the other side of the house) "Dad! Dad! DAD! DAD!"

"WHAT?"

*mumble mumble*

"WHAT?.... WHAT??? Oh, forget it, I'll come to you. What do you want?"

"What?"

"You called me."

"Did I?"

*Through gritted teeth* "Yes. You did."

"Oh."

"Why did you call me, Boy."

(Dismissively) "Oh, reasons probably."

 So trying to get him to remember to do something is a complete no goer.

"Boy, you're supposed to be getting into your pajamas."

"But I'm cold!

"You're dancing naked in front of the window, the next door neighbour has just mowed his flower bed because of you and you're complaining you're cold? What do you think this makes you?"

"An imbecile?"

I wouldn't mind, but he cheerily suggested this as if he was going to get a sweet if he was right.

There's none of this with the Girl. Instead we're treated with an endless stream of contrariness. She'll disagree with anything you say. This came to a head the other day when I stuck my head round her door the other night to find that she was zonko, using her duvet as a pillow and having climbed into her pillowcase like a sleeping bag.

Why? Screw you. That's why.