Thursday 30 May 2013

Survival of the fattest

In my day and age, when we talked "six pack", it was macho talk of beer cans to be drunk to get drunk. Now my son talks of getting a "six pack" and means he seeks the carved stomach muscles to look good for the ladies.

I like to think that he is trying to emulate his old man, except my proof of a six pack is hiding under a few carbohydrate layers. I normally care not to realise this - my name is Bass Pryce and I am fat - Fatties Anonymous can do without my very large presence for a while. I consider deception is not always a bad thing, especially when facing a bar of choccy temptation. "Yes Go On"  is a positive set of words methinks.

Mirrors I see now are an invention of the devil.

Sadly my belly is giving gravity a large enough mass to probably change the rotation of the earth on its axis and a contributory reason to earth-moon collision course in a million years  or so. However today my belly is not all that is falling down.
As I face an eyetest  that resembles a humiliation in guessing the difference between Z and F and being told it was a Y. Unless the optician was asking 'why I was there?' with 20:20, perhaps not.

As my eyesight deteriorates it has one of the advantages that I need not remove all mirrors in the house  because I need only place glasses on forehead and view a blur that, I think, may have a six pack after all.

And as if to prove every action has a reaction the lanky fella is not so lanky and is filling out  a tad. Although to be fair his sudden wish for a tank top may be premature.

I need to explain for the older reader that a 'tank top' is not a no-sleeve wooly pully of 70's fashion vintage, but what I would call  a vest. Except by calling it a tank top, it can now be sold at thrice the price and a teenager is happy for 2 minutes or so. This Tank Top, aka vest, is worn without a shirt, pullover, cardigan or whatever. In terms of fashion statements, my view which is not universally accepted in the household, is that silence is golden.

He wants a vest to show off the bicep arcs that define an iron pumped rep-definition of a muscle, except there is a way to go before the boy will be starring in "Terminator 21".  But try telling him 'way to go', is a mistake I know, but......, but I fear my advice is second to an inevitable  humiliation on a parkbench amongst his friends who may smirk  a tad. I can tell him don't do it, do not wear the vest in public,  and silence is rusting iron.

Lessons to be learnt, unless..... I am wrong perhaps, its the new look .....non-hero-in chic




Saturday 25 May 2013

The Beautiful Game

There comes a time in every man's life when the football skills that once was as artistic as any real man comes to dancing - a shoulder drop... accelerate... left-right foot shuffle and a gently caressing the ball passed a defender flumoxed in mid bamboozlement and  inappropriate cursing at the attacker, and I am pleased to say a defender plainly  made to look silly by yours truly. The defender was several times my boy. Nowadays the shoulder drop - accelerate resembles a stumbling over a  round ball that seems to have rectangular bits, if not a down right falling over.

Creaking bones forced for one last effort of daddy glory on a lazy Sunday afternoon sunshine, is not exactly inspiring the next generation that life starts at forty plus. I look to the heavens and unsteadily push the knees skywards, as athritus is being blamed for a slight hiccup in the grand plan of making him look silly on the hallowed turf of the garden.

I am afraid I am that age when my memories of "doing" the boy is so much in the past tense that I am reliant on videos and a little boy kicking grass in frustration for the ball has disappeared with Daddy. His ball. Today I kick the grass and then pretend I didn't. I am after all an adult.

The good thing with all this and my lack of good grace in defeat,  is that he still wants to play footie with old fella.


Thursday 9 May 2013

The Hovering

I am in a groove  or what olympic athletes might call "the zone". Perhaps I have painted a picture of a sporty dad, whereas my olympic training was interrupted  by an age-appropriate athritic knee and the bread-on the-table thang called work. My zones are more akin to traffic wardens and arguments if a limp constitutes a handicap.

I am on the world wide web  and away with the Wiki-fairies, I am in blog-overdrive-heaven, a seed of teenage angst is being formed into an idea. I am in a zone where comedic genius forms words, which  flow across the page like a syrup slowly knock-knocking its way to the edge.

A veritable delight of double entendres that could yet reach the mythical "triple". Except I know this is all in my mind and perhaps not on the written page; as readability is equivalent to undecipheravility, as I make so many typos that I should be writing tippos to maintain my consistency.

My fingers appears to be typing so many words so quick, so that mere mortals are wishing qwerty was the only known word in the universe to compete. Although to be fair I probably would spell it 'qwerz'.

Then like a dripping fear, a feeling is about me. I am aware of an unknown presence. It is with me. I feel the presence, ghostly, wanting to connect with me to a virtual world.

There is gathering of teenage-ness on my shoulder, there is the smell  of the general grumpiness hovering about me like a cloak of idle curiosity manifest as interest in what I do. This is as rare as a school report with  A+'s. There is a  reading over my shoulder going on, as if to prove  the 'C-' was a figment of a teacher imagination. There is an invasion of  my laptop centred exclusion zone. My personal space is being shared. I am in unknown territory.

In a month of sundays, the teenager would not express a mild note of keeness in my life, but tip-tapping on a computer is obviously a magnet to the teenage brain. It is breaking  down the walls of filial communication..

Hells bells, he probably thinks I am writing about him.

Ooops....Thank God for the typos.