Saturday 24 December 2011

Smells like....Sees like Teen Spirit

My daughter has changed in ways, her sense of smell has gone, her sense of vision is impaired.

I may be an over anxious father but hey thats fatherhood...... from the days long ago, when I kissed a baby' forehead and was thankful that I had calculated methodically that one arm plus one arm counted two... result!.....one,two, three... ten toes ... result! and on and on......
and one smile,......... it was a smile, that may have been soon a burp,........ but for me it was a smile...... a confirmation of how father/daughter hood would be....... and then silently and possibly immediately I started planning a University education.

Soon she too could count quite quickly her fingers and toes and more, she could read too how many fingers and toes the biology books said; soon those bright eyes would adorn a photograph, I was sure some day, wearing cap and gown.

Today she could frighten children as a Halloweeen version of traffic lights...apparently red, green and amber are "in". The smile could well be called a snarl. The arms and legs, I hope are still counting two, because the present style is baggy, next week it may be clinging.

Perfume is splattered liberally and randomly, that she may have a following of stray cats if she walks the back alleys.

And I am funding these dramatic shifts in top model-r-us.

She is finding her way, .....they say..... have patience ...they say...and I am now not planning, but praying the way may pass a University.

Friday 5 August 2011

Like Chocolate

I am at a loss. This may be a recurring theme in my future fathering.

I am being held responsible for childhood obesity. How I hear you ask. How indeed. I the guilty parent undertook the crime of committing the act of buying chocolate. The chocolate was thendeliberatlely left visible to a teenage daughter. I am a bad father.

How could she maintain her weight, let alone actually lose weight, whilst I shamefully taunted her with delicious choccy in a fridge,

Chocolate decision making resistance is not to be left to the inner determination of a teenager apparently. If I wish to buy and eat chocolate, apparently I should discreetly eat in the privacy of my own room.

I must guess what other decisions I must make for her and which decisions I should respectfully leave to he as an adult- in- waiting that should be respected as having a mind of her own. She is not a child I am regularly advised as a pink pullover with a horsey motif is no longer princess cool.

I feel this line I tread is smaller than my boot size.

Friday 6 May 2011

Now the end is nigh

So I've done my bit of Dad-on-dad getting jiggy with it, and its time to face the "Do the limp" as hamstrings have gone to Muscle heaven.

This blog is going to get less regular than a morning constitutional. It may re-appear occasionally to document future unprecedented events of a fully grown adult's survival against the teenage odds, I must be brave.

But first to confess my past sins. All past posts were more-or-less true and based on an "incident", however I may have exaggerated for comic effect, or perhaps just for effect depending on your taste.

For the record, my kids are damn nice inbetween the odd tear strained tantrum. I must stop this weeping.



And I love'em to bits. I hope they like me a little bit too.

Tuesday 26 April 2011

Survival of the ........

Darwin, I suggest may re-write his theory of evolution given the right circumstancial evidence and the Pryce family is just about as circumstancial as one can get this side of a dodo.

I am keen to communicate, I welcome conversation. I am one to enjoy the rise and fall of an accent. Today I am abandoned to more monosyllables than one man should get after saying "I do. My teenagers speak in words unfortunately one at a time. Minutes may pass before another is cursed into the air.

By darn, my inner calm is being tested, because my outer calm has gome walkabout big time.... its doin' a bloody marathon. This is dumb, because it can't be dumber, its got two syllables.

A battle wits of my sardonic eloquence against the one word resistance of the verbally challenged teen.

I know I am losing as the Teenagers smile. Monosyllabic to non syllabic. Darn them.

Lessons in staying cool are brewed from years of deep freezing. I am reaching boiling point.

Time for the big guns. Its time to refer to the zits, there may be tears. Tears have no syllables.

I feel I may be losing the Dad of the Year Award, that I used to win annually without trying. I have the cups to prove it, washed to ceramic in the dish washer, over the years the words have been erased. Perhaps more than the words have been erased. The meaning of the words once perceived for the gullible toddler buying public, now an empty sign of the effort poured in to earn the right to be put on this pedastal . A pedastal not sought but welcome.

We used to walk in the park, I used to carry her on the shoulders of the Giant growing smaller with the years. We used to ....

Its time to roll back the years to come back to a balance,........sorry.

Friday 22 April 2011

Teenage Tantrums thru the night

In my day and age of teenage kicks, we knew how to rock'n'roll without a digital tampering sample dub or words to that effect.

The weather is hot and the Teenager is un-nerved in a cold digital world. There is something wrong, my spidey sense is in the redddening zone.
I may need some subterfuge; I may need persuasion, this is a tough call, but I'm doing it for the kids. Breaking the silence may need more than wind.

Today I have to decode the teenage dna, we walk together in the park. This may be groundbreaking in more senses than earthquake. I am about to enter the teenage zone of reasons why it is hard to be a teenager in a modern cruel world. I am about to receive the key to understanding teenage kicks throughout the night in a New Millenium.I understand the modern cruel world is roughly translated as me, as in Dad, as in embarassing Dad syndrome. Apparently I can be embarrassing, ....Moi.......me......as a parent, I am apparently not a teenage asset. I am am being asked to parent in the shadows.

In my age, you could get to cool via nerd by excelling as a super nerd. Super nerds were cool because they made left-of-centre positively so off centre that falling over was a necessity with or without alocohol.

However this middle-aged super nerd apparently has returned to nerd with or without alocohol. Apparently, if this boy-father-son-hobbit thing is only going to work, if I give up the skull and cross bones t-shirt. Or as his teenage compromise, and he believes it is a major concession, at least not wearing the "garment" outside the house.

Apparently sacrifices are being called for.


Thursday 21 April 2011

Poor parenting made esay

I have more bags under my arms than under my eyes. This is a long way of saying that I have a lot of bags. Bags in all shapes and sizes, I am a connoisseur, a suitacse buff of necessity........Hardcase - soft case, 24 hours case, the lightweight emergency one, the mega expandable multi-zip, the "two dayer" (business) as opposed to the "weekender" (pleasure), the "week", the "overnighter", the laptop carrier in versions small, medium, large and large with wheels and to wrap it up the British Expeditionay Force Trunk.

It is all a symptom, a sign like a burning bush without the smoke, it all means I am away a lot.

I am remote parenting and feeling guilty.

I am single parenting the kids as a byproduct of earning the family crust. Life was not meant to be this way when I was a teeanger. I was going to be...... a proper Dad.

I appear to be a "the Visiting rights" bloke who looks a bit like the foto on the walland without the court papers. I may be the man putting Diss in Dysfunctional.

School interviews missed, the footie game foregone, the serious talk over ciggy mis-used unsaid, the laughter over the family legends not re-told and the years are gone.

Time to turn new leaves before the autumnal years.

Saturday 9 April 2011

Yipes...mirror mirror on the wall tells all

Zits, thank God, for zits.

Thank God for mirrors. This adult-in-waiting can see the visible signs, we can see the visible signs, boys can see visible signs, the world will have to wait before this girl goes prematurely to the Prom. She has to wait a tad longer before thinking she is a grown-up.

There is a zit, a zit that says hormones are a-charging and you are younger than you may like to think. And thankfully a zit makes you look as young as you are with all the best makeover creams in the world cannot quite make that zitless look.

One or two zits just enough to slow the race to illicit things that I leave it to my wife to navigate.

But she is not happy. Another lesson in the life's teenage tapestry.

Retro to Go II

A hole in a T-shirt can give street cred where all that was before was a geek seeking non-nerd statehood, but with a do-not-pass-go card that makes three brass monkeys dumber than one primate on the path to evolution.

Am I rambling so to cut a long story short, we all evolve and he ~ the teenager ~ needs my t-shirt to accelerate his adulthood because my t-shirt is cool and is an instant pass to the cool kids. Or so he says in an ineloquent mix of ums, dohs, wannas, heys, as he makes a short story long, as he exercises my rapidly ageing brain cells, the teen translator is near bust.

My T-shirt is faded by time and a star moodily stares out, a star that has survived to be iconic to a new generation. The iconic look has not dated, unlike the cotton it sits on. So to exaggerate for poetic effect I am asked like Pharoah letting my people go, I let my T-shirt go. I make the sacrifice of an inheritance worth more than the cotton picking moment it was bought.

But and double but a holed t-shirt is cool. A holed sock is cotton picking not. My sock of which I have unnecessarily close relationship based on it fits quite nicely thank you very much. My sock is holed like a torpedo called a big toe ~the teenager big toe. My sock is so uncool it traverses the metaphor, it breaks the metaphor, I could get a bloody cold big toe.

So today like many other days, I am facing the executive grilling looking superficially office smart cool, as smart as pink tie on pink shirt can look cool without blushing to give the full pink on pink on pink full effect. Today not like other days, I know I am one shoe removal away from being an embarassment to the VIP Business lounge at an airport. I have a teenager not only stealing my socks, but damaging them. Ho hum. Hobbit boy needs to learn to darn. Darn it.

This is sock abuse. Sock abuse is what this parent needs like a hole in the head, with the notable exceptions of mouth, nostrils and a couple of ear drums. The latter holes being fairly valuable holes in the head, methinks. I have a university education and all that.

This is not on.

And to double whammy my "not on"- us. A T-shirt is returned. I say T-shirt. A T-shirt carefully loved over a decade, gently nursed through fading years, here now it is somewhat ripped, a little cigarette burned perhaps. An icon has a hole in the head that is not where a nostril should be.

It now in fact not a t-shirt, but a oil cloth for the car, today I feel a full body adult tantrum coming on and by damn I deserve it. I may take Mr Scissors to more than a toenail.

Friday 8 April 2011

Sleep deprivation and bruising

Sleeping with the toddler was an overnight experience of duvet empire-building that Victoria would have been proud of. It was won by a cart wheeling toddler marking out a perimeter that left parents in danger of getting out on the wrong side of the bed too early and indeed by the previously un-used technique of falling.

Actually I lie, we never fell, we tottered and under a REM induced feats of balance survived on the mattress rim like a circus artist without a clown to laugh at us. Thank God that the sleeping brain has power to awake the dozing mind that the ribbon of the mattress was what was left of my bed-time empire by early morning. Toddlers should not sleep with parents.

The Teenager should not sleep with Pa either. But in a time warp chasm in the facric of the Pryce universe, time has reverted. Due to painting bedroom, partners have changed. By some luck of being too old to argue anymore, the boy and me share a bed.

Ok it sounded sensible at supper-time. It was a logical conclusion, it was fair play, it was family, it was a mistake that the diamonds of time will convert into sand.

Ok he did not like it. I did not like it but it was the sensible option at suppertime. An hour is a long time in parenting and eight hours is a lifetime.

Minutes to midnight the cartwheeler has returned but he is bionic now, he is elongated, he has muscles that have been trained on a school football field. The sleeping brain may be marvelous but a cantilvered kick by giraffe boy is catapulting me to another space-time-continuum. This is not empire building by nudges but a fully trumped up charge at the paternal defences. Hobbit foot is leaving more than a duvet trapped gaseous carbon footprint, he is leaving a bruising footprint on the Pa Pryce butt.

His married life may involve some bruising for a poor soul.

Friday 11 March 2011

Let us....take time out

Remember me I am your father. Here have a photo

We are like ships in the night destined to meet by accident in the darkness of the shadows, time for a light switch methinks. I could grow a beard and shave it off before I am recognised as a person of influence in the teenage life. I appear to be a passing tourist in the journey to adulthood of my boy.

But talking of shadows, I wondered what that shadow that cast a mean moody magnificence to the youngster's face and wondered if the mood lighting was working.

His bumfluff is migrating to stubble, and I as you common old garden middling-stepping-on-the-business-ladder exec without a safety net, means I feel I am missing out, I have hardly discussed shaving techniques. My role as the great Educator is superfluous to the adequate Provider.

There appears a thousand and one urgent business related deadline things to do, rather than compliment his facial fungus or even criticise it or even smirk in a proud to know a sign of a maturity in action....my boy.

He is growing older and I am growing old. Business meetings should wait a while, if the .....but the...while the .....and who pays for the Playstation 3.



Friday 4 March 2011

Black is black I want my T-shirt Back

Goth is Goth, Emo is Emo. emu is emu which is a strange introduction to how things were and whatever happened to the likely lads, I am learning a new trick or two.

And I can remember when Billy Connolly threatened to break Emu's neck and by coincidence a certain puppet master's arm.

I can remember phones that trilled, and our family hardly passed for modern, because ours phone did not trill. Our phone provided exercise for the digits as dialling was instigated by navigation of its circle of numbers

A phone was as mobile as far as the chord let it stretch.

TV was unknowingly only terrestial, satellite was still a NASA only zone.

CDs were still letters of an alphabet, as tapes and vinyl dominated the slang album, record, 45; our music had two sides.

Food was heated slowly as a microwave was still unseen.

There were video games that were the size of the average suitcase and heavier than the average dumbell, it was cutting edge in its picasso like in imagery.

Things have moved on and smaller.

When my daughter became wired for sound it was not to a Walkman . She was Ipodded to the beat. When I forced myself to upgrade I went for sale quality hardware and an MP3 player. It was so small and I bought a protective cover which sometimes begs the question why buy something because it is impressively small and then I make it robustly larger. Maybe its a sign of age that things need to propotionate to my belly.

I stay a little younger than my middle age spreading belly, by any stretch of my imagination, suggests because I am keeping up with the younger generations bring new fangled things into my circle of interest. I learn new tricks by staying in touch with the younger generation.

The kids want modernity in all its peer group competitve forms and they are slowly indulged by parents worn down by athritus as much as the perils of the economic crisis; but there is a line to be drawn in the charity of parenthood.....my T-shirt is not modern and I want it back thank you very much.


Friday 25 February 2011

I had chills...

John Travolta was not an actor, he was a singer trailing number ones across a Top of the Pops video.

I was in a queue to the cinema about to get my fill of Summer Lovin', with other teens. I was getting chills amongst a peer group of both male and female equation and a charge of hormones were getting hot.
Now my chills, as the decades passsed, are calmed by a hot water bottle and a cup of cocoa.

My boy is Goth, son of D&D of the tribe Emo. My teenager is blazing a trail in the darkness to the sound track of jingly jangly chains, although "jingly jangly" is not exactly an Emo friendly word like "Thor" - God of the Underworld that we call Thunder.

Call me a Seer but my boy is unlikely to get chills unless its Halloween, it is a full moon and the neck looks a likely source of blood to be sucked by a vampire and the radiator has an air lock.

But I am wrong there are Fee-Goths, daughter of D&D of the tribe Fee-Emo and by Thor himself, very pretty under the makeup. And by Thor himself is that a hicky from the Vampire-ette.

By the rock Gods of my youth, I am wrong.

Sunday 13 February 2011

The Candle burns at Both ends

Smoking....please don't.

The peer group, its the way it is, the experimentation, the adult stylie, the cigarette burns fast, the cancer is slow, the package warning is for reading in regret..... years later.

They are young, they will do what they or their girlfriend want. The cigarette burns and the candle of life burns at the other end.

The other end I will face, athritic, bed ridden, dribbling, incoherent in parts, a burden on a global society maybe, 5 minutes off that life..... is it worth the "cool" ....the popularity.....the centre of the western universe gravitates to teen .

But I am chasing "cool" as I am wearing t-shirts like a mutton. I am forcing an aging body to the rigours of youth in a fitness centre that can be reclassified as a middle age chamber of pain, in order to achieve what my teenagers have already. And the mirror still says I am losing the battle but not weight, until the light switch allows me to return to the dream. I am looking to turn back the years to cool.

But still I say white lines don't do it.




Destiny Planning

I admit it, I had expectations from an age long gone, when walking ivolved a lot of falling, where the teenagers hardly could spell apple let alone University. Teenagers were toddlers and I was University dreaming. Now teenagers are teenagers and the kids may be alright, but are not exactly threatening to add a variant, a paradigm, a corollary of any scientific conundrum, or to put it another way, there is no challenge to Einstein in the Pryce household to adding the odd vowel or consonant to E=mc squared.

Perhaps I am pushing too hard, perhaps I am too pre-occupied with work to spend that 5 minutes helping that could save them an hour stressing. I want my teenagers to follow me, to spend 12/6 working in a 24/7 world. Am I doing things wrong.

Maybe E=Mc cubed is not worth the theorising in a mathematical world, maybe its I who needs the changing C=Me perhaps.

Friday 11 February 2011

i need a tall hat

How dare he be taller than me.

I can accept evolution. I can accept survival of the fittest, I can accept the natural order of the world, but by darn there is an exception to my kindly demeanour, I ~Pa Pryce ~ am the tallest in this family. I am an adult, by all things decent in the modern world.

And by damn and all things patriarchical in the world order, he is taller than me with or without high heels. Albeit that hairgel is adding more spikes than an athlete's foot and exaggerating his prowess. But this neck crick is not going to go away.

I am the wearer of trousers in this house and trousers should not be worn without socks.

So there is one thing of this being taller malarchy, at least I get my socks back from Mr Hobbit.

Thursday 3 February 2011

its a case of......growing old

Perspectives.....

In my day and age remembering the star with perfect cheekbones, perfectness in all, captured for eternity by a photograph, an icon and now some years later an orbituary with a latter-day foto that shows make-up has limitations.
It causes a pause in my daily 24~7~365~366 life, what is it all about this existence. A beauty once held as an icon, has gone. It reflects on my age.

There is a television obituary that a star of old has gone, the footage shows a wrinkly hobbling somewhere. I comment on an icon with an affection of knowing what once was, a sympathetic note aired to all and that all happened to be my teenagers. I sit recalling a personality that sparked, I remember an age where ambition was sparked and the fireworks soared to middle age. And now the night is darker. My teenagers see an old person. An unknown taking up minutes before the weather. And the old person is by sorts of teenage measurement a reflection me.

An icon to the teenagers has to be under 18 and sport a ridiculous hairstyle. My icons do not connect with the teenage mind. I talk of cheekbones, she talks of wrinkles. I talk of a spark they see the ashes. I talk of the spirit of the age, they talk of the spirit of their age.

I am growing old.






Friday 28 January 2011

Are you a Hobbit?

If you can't call the Teenager a Hobbit who can you call.

I am no doctor, but a fact is a fact. Apparently according to a long forgotten documentary-educational promo- in strange but true telly progs ~ extremities go first for the extra inches and grow larger than other body parts first.

Let us not get smutty, when it is enough to say, if the Teenager has a ring around his neck and thinks Middle Earth is a recognisable location for a holiday destination, this theory has my blessing based on the physical evidence before me.

Big Foot has landed, my boy is a Hobbit.

Sadly this obviously funny rant is getting scant regard by the youth of today, in fact I will go as far to say there is not respect for scientific thoery. He thinks he deserves to be treated as a fully fledged adult-in-waiting. But he is from a sock-stealing hobbit tribe. He is a Hobbit.

Is it my fault, I honestly ask you, if his feet are causing a bigger footprint than is absolutely necessary from a torso-leg-foot ratio proportional scenario. He considers I am insensitive.

I am welcoming a changeling hobbit into my family as a son, how sensitive does he want me to be?

Saturday 22 January 2011

Nays and Pots

Socialist principles were once my foundation stones of my teenage idealism. Now I am a parent of teenagers facing the career choices - now is the time for the beast to be revealed, the inner Tory will out.

And to my former ideals of the far fields of level playing, the fondest for survival of the fittest and the natural order of the modern world. To this I say thrice nay and pots and ism. This is a matter that blood is thicker than water and this is my pension plan, I want a payback, when my bed-wetting days return and the commode is my new throne. I want a son or daughter running about when I am three score and something large, wondering if the old fella remembers a name or two and congratulating me on my lack of dribbling.

For this "start them young" ladder-climbing viz-a-viz XXL nappy changing equation - I would overcome teenage academic ambivalence by having words in the ears of the social network called contacts in middling management.

My boy will have a paper round and my taxes will have to compensate for guilt lapses.

Well I never...a bread winning Avenger

Well I never.....

I return from a business trip with a feeling that while the cats away the mice will leave the sinking ship and find another big cheese to milk or something like that.

I would like to pretend it was a cold dark night as an authentic note of creative non fiction poetic licence. At least it looked dark inside the ancestral hovel, and the refridgerator was probably cold at a guess. To confirm the guess entry was to be made. The apartment is deserted, but at least entry has been made to the inner sanctum of the altar to the Plasma God. This is a comfort that at least the locks have not been changed and that my trust was well placed in leaving family heirlooms in a position that teenagers could long-term borrow.

Are Teenagers playing hide and seek - surely not, I fear not a surprise birthday party some months too late or too early....surely not.

I have a small note adorning a fridge ~ wedged under a magnetic gravity defying miniature reminder of an otherwise long forgotten cathedral somewhere on this beautiful planet; but as welcomes go, I may as well have been thankful that at least the front door mat still said "Welcome" under the mud.

So there is the note and the family ~sans Pater~ have gone to buy a new pair of young adult trousers because the former trousers are knee high to a very tall grasshopper ~ dinner is not mentioned as either in the frodge or oven. My role in this family apparently has moved on from hunter-gatherer-family-crust-earner and also taken on board cook.

This growing thing is costing me too much in trousers and not enough in lard dripping sausages methinks. Can't teenage fashion migrate to shin high trousers and pretty quick about it please.

The note mentions they will probably have a budget meal at Subways , KFCs or some such pleasure-dome. I am the family hunter-gatherer-bread-winner and why am I about to feast on beans on toast, or perhaps beans on burnt toast, if Pa Pryce culinary skills are a victim of post traumatic inner arsonist..... the bread at least will suffer .. well just beans then.

I will reclaim the house and I will be thankful I can pray to the Plasma God alone in the interrupted silence of the beans. May the Remote be with me.

They've hidden the Remote.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Socks were just the start

Where's my socks was only the start. I am a elderly victim of sock-stealing teenagers and now they are taking liberties.

Where's my vintage sunglasses and its not even sunny.

I will rant if I want to, because my boy is putting the die, before the ball, before the ill, before the call and spelling diabolical. I do not want to hear the call of death with or without an illness, just yet.

And as a living person still, I want not only my socks, I want my sunglasses, the heritance will have to wait

Saturday 15 January 2011

W.E. stands for.....

The Pryce family ethic is work hard, work harder and if push comes to shove work hardest until the defribilator fuses and the life support flatlines and the Stand Clear instructions of the para medics are a distant whisper. There are no frills attached to this executive lifestyle that occasionally means a photograph is needed to cross reference there is a Daddy at the door and not a stranger.

Or at least that is Pa Pryce work ethic, sharing this work ethic, implanting it on the kids as if it was a DNA marker was an objective in my touching Bass ethos of 80s cliche whilst running flags up poles to see which way the wind blows but always knowing that feet and ground should always be connected. I had taught my kids well....until the teenage storm blew the flag. Light breezes become tornados so easy recently.

I thought it was another success on my parenting technique......I was about to write the parenting book made esay, I was niaive, I was in an ivory tower about to be knocked down by an angry elephant. An elephant aged double digit and three. I did not expect that dull could be put in my idyllic.

My teachings are cast aside like a working class yoke that is out of step with the real world. I am by definition an unreal bloke as I encourage homework, brushing teeth and putting plates at least in the general vicinity of the kitchen area. I am probably considered quaint in my old fashioned ways.

Pass the liver salts and hot water bottle and look forward to drawing another breath. And make that another breath a "take a deep breath Mr Pryce" ~ the heart attack can wait until the teenagers not only think they can stand on their own two feet, becasuse Pa Pryce needs to know their feet are also connected to the ground. WE will survive.

Friday 7 January 2011

Tell me a Secret, James

Conspiracy theories have taken root and flourish like mushrooms in the dark. These are the teenage years and its a case of "for only young eyes only".

Like a daily dose of newspaper expose of all things bad in celebrity that we read for sake of a good gossip on a national scale, the Pryce family breakfast is cerealised in our failed unison. Cornflakes or rice crispies or jam nutella toast.....We are different animals these days. The radio is drowned by the regular sensation of decibel shouting tirades that we share in place of platitudes about the weather, squeezed out mid gulp, that masquerades as that which the Pryce family these days call a Breakfast chat.

Then there is the equivalent of a Burning Bush, as a phone trills happily to a teenage beat. The telephone is the Peacemaker.

We have a sign of secrets to be told, teenage secrets to be told in whisper. A miracle is heard, a teenage voice that normally cannot go lower than B Horror Movie sound track during a chase between innocence and impending violence, suddenly it whispers sweet nothings into a phone, a teenager standing just so far as to be unheard, by the stairwell.

It may be love, it may be a plot for the "my drug hell" kiss and tell serialised tabloid splash, or the "let's be truants together" heee-hee, or it could be laryngitus. Who knows, but ears are pricked, neck is bent and we are trying to find out, so that I know. I am that parent.

Body language is read and I can determine sweet nothing like a dyslexic with alphabet spagetti soup, I am slurping at the font of nkwoedlge. No offence to dyslexic people I hope, please call me Lardy if you wish.

The teenager squirms a smile, it is a sign, a head is turned, a smile is hidden with a brief, fleeting flash of the eyes towards me and a look - yes that look of this is "my" conversation. Yes daughter and a conversation "in my house".

A phone is zapped silent, a head is shaken in dissapointment, and a mind is stirred more than my tea, so a teenage mind is stirred quite a lot......a teenager is not happy. A head is shaken. No surprise there.

Phone tapping is legal in one's home. No court would convict.

Saturday 1 January 2011

Firsts - The Difference in generations

First time you went to a footie game, first day of school, first last day of school, first kiss with a proper girlfriend, first time you remember a historical moment, , first time to drink a real pint in real pub, first time to double digit, first time to be thirteen... a damn sight better than first time to forty and forty plus.....

My life is losing its firsts and I am aware I have not yet climbed Everest, I am happy to leave that to others, my big firsts will rest in my younger years.

My firsts are now the first time my boy scores at football U15's, the first time I watch a daughter go on a proper date, the first time I study a clock as it if was a TV, she will come home safely.

I am growing old and firstly I wish to grow happy, that means I have done my best against the wishes of the teenage brain. To do what I consider my best and they interpret as my worst and I hope secondly my reward comes in later years.

My bedpan will be washed by what were once teenage hands.

I know the ages change as my parents first historical moment was not brought by the first TV moment to implant a brain. And for my teenagers I hope their firsts are also not brought only by a digital electron.