Saturday 27 April 2013

The Taking of the Clever Biscuit

There are times to share my knowledge with the little ones.

There are other times to shuttup in the face of vitriolic abuse, that I am a patronising patriach of the not-so-little ones.

It s a difficult call these days.

I am an Educator. I explain useful things and at times not so useful things.This is one of my purposes in life.
Somehow this is translated as an overbearing nurturing by the fat one. Apparently being an Educator is not all what I thought it was cracked up to be.

Today I explain that if she looks up "Sweet Child of Mine" on Google that it is in fact "Sweet Child O' Mine". The "f" has been dropped as in twelve o'clock.

She ~ Madam Teenager ~ knows that there is no "f" in "Sweet Child O' Mine". Apparently this discussion is a sure-fire sign, that I think she is Stupid as in "Do you think I am Stooop-Id?"

There is so much emphasis in the air that the oxygen is getting thinner/

Ho hum.

I decide to test the stupidity level, simultaneously raising the bar and also lowering the tone "Then ......Sod O".  In the last word of cleverness, the Clever Biscuit, I think you agree, has been taken.

She laughs, then she looks at me as a token sad person in her life. She corrects me, in my brain is so much younger and quicker than yours way. She emphasises with a teenage skill in pronounciation aimed at reducing me to toddler status :
 "Oh Touche ...Sod of....". Ho hum and double Ho hums. The last letter in cleverness is eating my biscuit, so to speak.

I am getting too old for this bar raising malarchy.


Saturday 20 April 2013

The Wife Must Not Die

There are days that from the early days of cradling a baby one knew would come, but one puts it to the back of one's head, a minor blip on the horizon of life, a distant day so far in the future that it would not raise an eyebrow. And raising of eyebrows was only half the issue, because it was the raising of eyes that was the problem.

So the First Day came where a son looked down at me, despite my defence of  a certain gelled hairstyle was causing a visual paradox worthy of illusion and smoking mirrors. I was not prepared to take this genetic next generation improvement lying down, unless it meant father and son were on equal eyeballing terms and actually lying down.

A month or so later and the boy's forehead followed gelled hair to new heights and I tweaked a neck at the boy no longer a boy. I was forced to face reality with as much bad grace as an adult could muster slurping his cornflakes and blaming Darwin for being too clever for his own good. So I said what had to be said and admitted to the family that finally the teenager was bigger than me

And now that Second Day has come that I look at the daughter's make up'd eye-lids from an angle that tweaks the neck. In the absence of gelled hair, it is time to...Ready the cornflakes, ready the badass confession.

I am a heartbeat  away from being the shortass of the family. The wife cannot die. Ready the defibrillators.

Sunday 7 April 2013

Sins of the Father, Guilt and Confessions

I need to confess my sins.

An old friend writes a few updates to me on Facebook on  family life some years after our legendary drinking sessions  meant we were BFFs forever. His kids are doing rather well in a mixture of words involving straight A's and A stars-pluses, cross country county representation, cup winning photographs and who knows what, its a good thing. It may seem less of a good thing that my kids seem somewhat a distant competitor on whose are best. If I write back of the daughter achieving a 10m swimming badge, it seems to lack the necessary gravitas.

But to confess my sins that once I cared deeply that Oxbridge was not a made-up word like Camford; but and double but, a destiny. But and triple but, now I have changed my tune, I dance to a new fiddler,  my kids are doing ok, or more than ok really, on the ways of this world, and if so by damn, then I am doing ok.

They seem happy, despite all my life has thrown at them.

We were chasing the euro dollar to avoid austerity measures, long before austerity measures entered common parlance as not a good thing. I was trying hard to put that elusive bread on a plate and buttering up a greasy pole of a career that could flatline better than a British economy. It was successful on the bread front, possibly less so on the complimentary butter. And I confess somewhat less successful on the continuity of houses and/ or apartments, stability of friendships and sadly the academic development of little ones becoming not so little ones. Like it or not changing schools is not a good thing.

So the kids have had to turn-up to unknown teachers, unknown classroom walls, unknown strangers that may hopefully become future friends and try to get on. The kids have had to stand too often looking at the sky in a 'why me' way, looking at the ground in 'why dad' way, looking gormless in the schoolyard a few times too often, before gormlessness was passed over by degrees on their own. They did it and are different human beings for the experience, perhaps a tad nicer, a tad better methinks. I celebrate their survival as my old friend celebrates straight A's and Oxbridge. It makes me feel less guilty.

Touching so much wood,  that I wish there was an Amazonian forest was close to hand, they are happy kids, and as if to make me still happier, they laugh at my jokes. What more can a Dad ask for outside "world peace" and a wooly-pully that can hide a belly no middling aged man should have without a scaffolding expert in attendance.