Wednesday 21 November 2012

Like a Family a long, long time ago....

CBS - I am not one for abbreviations when a good old common multi syllabic words will do and Creaky Bone Syndrome fits the bill. I am poorly as poorly as a person can be without visiting A&E, when every move or jerk deserves a round of applause. I am creaking worst than an empty, cold house on Halloween in a B-Movie Horror pic. I am deserving of lurve, more love than a loverheart message can give.

My teenagers do not give lurve, but a commentary that I knew that I am growing old, always was growing older than I care to think, I knew that this happens, that it was going to happen, get used to it appears as ripe a phrase as a Teenager wishes to suggest.

A phone rings, a daughter answers as she knows it is for her. It is. She discusses things.

She shouts at the poorly one - can I, the poorly person, give her a lift to somewhere, where things are going down. I give a look that says I am a poorly person and this look I believe is not too far a call for a teenager to guess I am saying a big fat no.

She gives me a look that used to be a puppy-please look, when toddlers could run around little fingers, until bigger fingers had reached in a wallet and a cuddly toy was king for a day and retired in three.

To cut a long story short her sympathy look has as much going for it as cardboard box of forgotten cuddly toys. She knew it was going to happen that when a toddler ages, body parts grow, cuteness disappears like fairy dust.. She is not a toddler no more, so no spells no.

She is now upping her game, she is a teenager, she is bringing out the Stare.

We are entering a new age of a Galaxy, a long long time ago........ where prequels became episodes and animated cartoons became clones.

In my world, here tonight the role of  Darth Vader transforms into the Daughtinator and I am Puke Pub-Crawler, for historical reasons that make me appear interesting at least in the past tense. We will duel in a Pryce equivalence of laser swords - the eyeballed-powered death-bitch-stare. Our eyes positively hum with antagonism, our pupils radiate with anti-matter that could re-define modern physics. The silence burns.

I am too old for staring, as well as running it appears. I will lose, like an aging Obi Wan that is now known as Ben.

I retreat to a higher plane, the Force is with me, guiding me to the toilet.

A daughter takes a bus.


Wednesday 7 November 2012

Naturally Occuring Poetry

It started as good schoolday evening after a hard day at the coal face called racing that rat and coming second and hoping that the drug tests proves top rat may not be reliably consistent in his defence of accidental inhaling of herbal tea extract.

Daughter has done good, well..... bloody brilliant really.

After reading a poem out in class which is in itself embarrassing by definition, then to heap embarrassment on embarrassment. Teacher gobsmackingly, as they sometimes do,  said it was brilliant. If there's one thing being worst than being a teacher's pet, its to be a teacher's pet in poetry. Then miracles of miracles the kids applauded in "gettin' down in the Project" sort of way. Parental pride knew no bounds.

So plaudits all round, except there started the claim of inheritace of the gene.... yes the poet gene...was it a mummy thing ...or  a Daddy thing...eeny meeny miney mo was not settling this, coin tosses were not going to establish a winner, random luck was not in this equation because history knows the Pryce family can rhyme it with the best of  it. Paternal and Maternal bonds knew the bounds

If there was God-like genius in this Pryce family then  the parents were keen to place direct responsibility with a family or families as case may be, his and hers.

In an innocent aside, Pa Pryce forgot his manhood and beer drinking prowess credential, reeling off various schoolboy poems that were rated 8 out of 10, a mistake by Pa Pryce, I knew it as soon as ey-eight passed out of my mouth, as if it had two syllables. In between 8 and 10 is nine,...... and guess what? Ma Pryce laid claim to 9. Oh yeah. Minor squabbling over the source of genius was about to start as if we were....well teenagers.

Ma Pryce Grandmother was as near a Poet laureate without actually being a Poet laureate that any non Poet laureate could be. Oh Yeah. She had apparently won competitions with published magazines.  I had an opinion, not wanted, but given freely, but not really appreciated as a gift to the art of debating. I had seen the pictures and the words "Farmers Gazette" in the magazine title was in my opinion a give away that rhyming 'cow' with 'how' was not a sign of genius, but a lack of milking knowledge.

For my part, I let it be known that Pa Pryce Grandfather suddenly read books without pictures and with  a few rhyming couplets . Accusations were about to fly.  Threats were about to be thrown as if marriage was a javalin competition. A mixture of nouns and verbs, not normally associated with threats, are suddenly made into a threat by intonation of a voice and a willpower to overcome any Y chromosome deficiency, a condemnation of all things Pryce...... "I've met your family" is heard mockingly. Divorce is a likely option.

Now things were moving into larger families circles, Pa Pryce claims of distant relatives being that close to being Booker prize winners, cheated of their rightful place in literati  by a biased judge and resentful ink industry that jointly did not understand the beauty of crayons as the true combination of  art and writing form.

Ma Pryce claims to have  an extended family that suddenly included the non-mentionable black sheep, as if by virtue of a successful poetry recital were now cast in grey. It was, she implied by the medium of the the death-bitch-stare, a family that are such bookworms that early bookbirds probably have eaten them.

Desperation may have crept in as Pa Pryce quoting historical  family trees. Family trees that proved beyond all reasonable scientific credibility that Pa Pryce's family was linked inherently and genetically to poetic-ness, so incredible that it must be true. It was said in family folk-lore and probably just an internet search away was the paternal proof of a link to Beass ap FitzPreyce the Poet. Bayess or whatever his unpronounceable name was, was a Romantic poet heroes of the Early Ages, whose script would adorn scrolls that may now be dead and near a sea, and these scrolls rhymed too...in that they may be red and near a tree. Look, its a naturally occuring poetry.

A daughter surmises, a judge and jury and possibly practising her best parent, the maternal bond is strong,  she is thankful she is genetically a girl since the only likely DNA footprint I have passed on is hairloss to her brother.



I feel a need to admit there may be some poetic licence in the latter paragraphs, bar the last one, above.

Saturday 3 November 2012

Turning back the clocks

So the clocks went back and time stood more than still, but reality is that turning back time is for the fiction writers and the mad scientist types. Regrets are there and there is more than a few of why's and what's amongst the why not's and what if's, so call me the pessimist, but I know that I cannot turn back the clock, erase and re-wind, and soft focus the wrinkles and pick-up a toddler on shoulders.

So a large part of my time is gone, its there to be seen  in the out-sized belly, the greying hair, and not to be seen in the creaking bones and the forgetting the what's it my call it. So it is my time to advise the sharers of part of my DNA that life is for living. Make mistakes, and know they are mistakes, it happens, get it right next time, regret it enough, but not to try again.

Today I have a knowledge to be passed on whilst a daughter is having a rough time at school, for no particular reason than its another Monday not liked or is it Friday in love, or is it the colour of an eye-shadow, or a branded bag that others do not have, or is it a boy without a shine in his eye, or the embarrassment not shared with an older generation. Advice is as wanted as as a poster needs to list the support act. I am to be a bystander at this point in a life. And I stand by wanting the call, like  a sprinter awaiting a gun in danger of false starting.

I am to wait and watch as things go by and mistakes are to be made without my knowing. And regrets, we hope are few.