Saturday 21 February 2015

Buffoon

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

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

I realise I've just compared myself to Stalin.

Moving on...

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

"Mummy, when are we going to  Denmark?"

"What? "

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

"Southend. *"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She said, not unkindly.

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

I replied in a similar tone.

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

She's a nun now, by the way.

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

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

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

Monday 9 February 2015

Wisdom Truth

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

Exactly.

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

"Daddy? "

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

"Have you ever worn girls clothes?"

"Nope."

"You'd look nice in a dress."

"Thanks, Girl. "

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

"She probably wouldn't laugh."

"YOUR BOOBS WOULDN'T FIT! "

"Shut up,  Boy."

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

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

"That's a nice name. "

"Yeah,  it's my dad's dad's name."

"Oh really?"

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

"That's a shame,  why? "

"He died before I was born."

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

"How are the Kids?"

"The Girl is climbing the walls."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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