13 Lucky for some.......

I bring you belated yuletide tidings and confess this blog will get a litle more occasional as the teens are young adults deserving better than to be called teens.
And touch wood seem to be making a fine forrest for me to touch. I am afraid I am in danger of suffering Proud Dad Syndrome, perhaps its always been there, dormant.

Maybe one day I will remember and write that 13 is a lucky age for grandparents. We will see.

Mojo Risin'

There is a line that some parents say that goes "I hope my children do not grow up like me", for me I hope they grow up better.

There were times they needed me for reasons as obvious as the oxygen we breathe. And the time will come soon that they will leave the nest and it will be me that needs them. But I will stay silent and hope they visit me sometimes.

And I will remember the old times, in between  my tea-time coffee and bedtime coffee and readying the hot water bottle.  I will remember schoolnight looks of homework despair, weekend chats about things important and not so important, and the unconvincing explanations why the jacket smells of smoke, but its probably my nose is old and infested. But I will stay silent and hope they phone me once in a while.

I fear my silence is a sacrifice to the greater good, for I know that they will have lives to lead, I hope. So I imagine there is  real  silence, a lack of noise, exuberance,  energy, the silence will not only be mine.
Turning the telly on will be no substitute for a boy shut in the room and the annoying ungrateful murmurings of a 'bad'-'sick'-'dope' drum-base beat competing with a telly, my telly. A kettle boiling contentedly will not replace a daughter remonstrations of child labour slavery and that she cannot make a cup of tea because she has despairing homework to do.

I will deep down be happy in my silence, that touch wood, touch my brain and touch my heart, they will be good in the future. I hope they will have followed my good points, the better things I said, the timely jokes that caused a smile of weepy face, good advice on bully posturing that made tomorrow ok, an acceptance that all kids canot get straight 'A's, a cheering to the heavens when a kid gets an 'A', making a nice of cuppa tea to help with the homework that she should have made for me by all things a tea-drinking adult needs by reasons of age and wisdom.
On the otherhand, I hope they have also laid bare my bad and forgiven my odd bad call, or to be honest calls. The days when the wisdom seemed witless, my being human sometimes meant getting it wrong. And I hope silently they forgive me a little and forget a lot.

And when their time comes to be the best Mum and Dad, they will do it better than me and my grandkids, perhaps, do it better than they.

A long time ago, my father of modest means and modest manner, boasted of me to a friend, a colleague, a man walking down a street; I was the boy with a brain, his boy with a brain, about to enter the hallowed turf of a University, see, and he embarrassed me so.

Afterwards I asked why the bloody hell? or perhaps even in less appropriate words.

And he explained it.... I somehow proved he was not that dull boy that became a dull man, that his labourer's hands had suggested and that his friend, colleague, and man in the street had mocked, as labourers do over a tea, a tea break once too often, a pint, a pint too many.

I forgave, hiding the dust in my eyes, grown men don't cry, because I thought he was the best dad that could ever be.

Time to pass on the mojo torch to the next generation.

Mojo Fallin'

I am in danger of losing my Daddy mojo, my Iggy lust for life, my animo, my wait for a pop art 15 minutes of fame that is still not quite here and I confess I am in fear of it not coming. I am apparently neither over the moon or  over the rainbow and its autumn of my life..... I am getting on a bit.

I have an elbow that kickstarts a day with a crick that is reached by achieving warp factor one-ish, by movement measured in degress of  motion that saps the energy and challenges the mental bravery. Bending is becoming a sort of torture of  the soul. Once cricked, the elbow can flex kinda normally for a good 12 hours before  resettting itself to frozen during the night as if by some black magic voodoo doll curse. I am no doctor, but I suspect this is not good.

I have kids that beat me at things, it gets worst, its happening lots of time, my superiority in height was over months ago, my superiority in general knowledge is down to historical events over twenty years ago, my superiority in being clever is losing out to Master Clever and Miss Cleverest, my top comic genius is being is reduced to being the lowest form of wit.

I have diseases that my father had.
I have growths that have suddenely metamorphasised to launch acting careers and are auditioning for parts in a Hobbit movie.
I have a girth that proverbs about belt and braces was made for.
I  have glasses that either see far away or see near up, my eyes appear to see a very strict radius of focus that makes reading uncomfortable or at the other extreme bloody dangerous for passengers and pedestrians alike.

My kids now doing the screwing of screws, and the unscrewing of bottle caps that have been factory closed to be middle age proof, as a revenge for those days as a functioning adult I was called upon to flex the non crickety elbow to open the child proof tops.

My kids put tunes on my ipod as if the electronical digital world is beyond my IQ range or at least below my enthusiasm level

I am becoming more feeble that weeble that wobbles and does fall down.

I am entering the manopause.

Its time to keep calm and carry on eating the chocolate.

Taking the pledge

Perhaps its time for a thought for a day.......Abstinence  can be a good thing from a liver-kidney perspective, on the otherhand  when the lubrication is causing a fair degree of mirth then well... I am all for otherhands like  Hindu goddesses.

And so perhaps for another day another thought......being a nominated driver is a duty to be shared.

Two days make a weekend and thoughts collide in what is probably the vacuum of middle aged brain.

So as a parent I am somewhat in world of forced abstinence and 24/7 commitment to chauffering  as nominated by a shared DNA. Perhaps I exaggerate, but this thought merging-collision- fusion can be dangerous....I am getting critical in my old age. Grumpiness appears to inescapably linked to my middle age girth. Not a good thing.

I have time to think....... sitting in a car, when he is late on promises to be here sitting in a passenger seat, because of his friends are no doubt enjoying the pa..aaart-ee and he too. Biding my time waiting in Grumpiness and  somehow hoping one giant leap for teenage kind is not really a leap to Granpa-ness before my time.

And  my friends are probably drinking possibly a pint or two and laughing at jokes shared. I fear I am not the perfect serenity of parenthood that I should be - I am Teetotal by Teenager.

I will wait. He will be safe, my liver will be relieved a little and soon I can pay for driving lessons with the beer money saved. Every cloud has a .....

The Four Elements of Teenage

There are certain things in life which brings a universal balance and others which do not. Raging hormones, I fear are not balance-equilibrium- world  peace thing bringers. But teenage years go by;  we,  or really they, are hopefully getting there. I am getting philosophical here which is probably not a good sign in my parenting.

As a firm believer in  that I probably know more than my teenagers because I am by any definition older than they are. I am more fire and brimstone than fire extinguishers and stoney-rocky things that do not brim, but maybe I need to consider other concepts.......

I have been active in my studies of the teenagers and took a healthy interest in their development and now I am passive observer as they considered my interest as intrusion.

I am not really one for all this earth wind, water and fire, the "four elements" apparently, although I may be wrong and should have checked with Wiki.

However I am now in a position to break the mould with my ground-breaking paradigm from my ongoing study of teenager-parent- paper-scissors-stone trials of parenthood...I present to you the "Four Elements of Teenage". I say to you -  Blood, water, stoney-rock thing, and hard place.

My theory is based on undoubtable logic of the teenage maelstrom, unless you wish quibble over stones and rocks not being the same thing. I am adult I can change it to 'Five' for hair-splitters, or if one is an older adult thinning hair splitters.

So to explain...

As a parent I gotta be there for them as blood is thicker than water,  so I stand in silence remembrance as communication is like getting blood from a stone, which leaves me between a rock and hard place, wanting to help and being unwanted.

On the other hand, I think I may be reading too many  books about cliches to compensate for these in-penetratable silences.

The Human Alarm Clock

I am off to foreign climes, where the sun does shine, to earn the Yankee dollar and sit in meeting rooms where the sun does not shine. This calls upon me to get-up an ungodly hour to face the taxi drive to a nearest airport.

My son on the otherhand is not getting up at ungodly hour because he will already be up at an ungodly hour. He has announced his intention to party in some home somewhere and return sometime in the night that may be morning. Initially described as a home, under interrogation it becomes a house, but under further interrogation it is apparently a building, occasionally occupied by a club and therefore perfect for rock'n' roll or as hip-hop rave or something. We are grateful  for his announcement, albeit with so many caveats it probably needs a legal review. It would have been nice to have been asked, but this still should be seen as a positive that we were still in the circle of trust to at least be informed.

We can still worry, but at least we know what we are worrying about. I think.

He says he may be late.

I feel our ships in the night that becomes morning may cross, my breakfast will be his supper. No need for an alarm clock for me then.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Imagination

In my day and age is a phrase that seems to crop up a little too often in a life still not over, but the reality check is that I say it and Easter-time is no different.

Easter meant an easter egg in a mug and a stomach-ache from eating a tad too fast; and perhaps a few larger-size creme eggs, or perhaps my hands were smaller back then. Now in this modern day and age, I am apparently called upon to offer Easter presents, let alone Easter eggs. Now as far as I recall on Jesus birth you gave presents on Jesus death and resurrection you got an egg, and be thankful about it

So now that I am of a certain age, I am called upon to be inventive in my present giving. As I remember the days of metal coat-hangers, glitter and sticky-back plastic that could make ordinary household items into a frightening pseudo-present that was gratefully received as homemade, as apple pie, or not as the case  amy be and was invariably found to be, or if truth be told, found in a rubbish bin some days or months later, but hey its the thought that counts.

So in true "Blue Peter"  fashion, I have perfected a three stage imaginative gift bearing process, which I recently explained to a family member, imagine...think of an egg... a big chocolate egg in  shiney wrapping, now  step two think ... think of the wrapping alone around a hollow shell. Step three , now don't even imagine the wrapping.

I believe my popularity has waned.


For those of a younger dispostition, Blue Peter was an educational children's programme that besides talking about historical characters, providing gardening tips, age-group related painting competitions, also fashioned things from household items for the kids to repeat at home. Retro-austerity if you wish.

Man on a Doomed Mission

I am a man on a mission.

There is a favourite T-shirt missing. It is black, it is classic. I look good in it and that is not the case with many a T-shirt.

There are two usual suspect to be harangued. Its a dirty job haranguing, but when there is haranguing to be done by the Laws of the Daddydom, I will do it.

Son refers me to daughter.

Dauughter refers to son.

Dad finds evidence, by a search of assorted laundry items, otherwise what was once called the floor of a toddler bedroom, I find a T-shirt, my T-shirt, my  favourite T-shirt, it is  somewhat trampled  by teenage daughter feet. I am not happy.

J'accuse.

A stirrong defence is mounted by the daughter with an air of being a victim of unwanted and unnecessary accusations, that it was delivered by a Mother. How was she to know a non-descript black T-shirt was mine. Eh Voila.

Then she adds with a confident air of admission  and a smile that  a thought may have passed between brain cells, that it may have been her fault after all.

'Sorry I should have checked the XXXL label and I would have known it was yours.'

There was no need for that extra X.

Talk to the Hand

There are confessions to be made, things to be put out there.

In between Sci Fi and Sci bore is the nerd glass floor..

I have touched the nerd gene and about to share it with the world. So to confess, I like Dr Who ( a world famous British sci-fi series, that is classic)......... and this long intro is to talk about the "Ood".

The Ood are a kindly "Dr Who" monster created or modified by some zany nasty evil person and damned to forever carry a light bulb thing, its as pure evil as you can get outside of having a Lava lamp as a fashion item.  Anyway what has this to do with teenagers....well.......I am talking about the secret love child of the Ood and the human race. Somehow, somehwere there has been an evolution to my....my boy. Truth is stranger than fiction and fiction has become fact. He is the new generation mutant, non-pedigree cross breed "I-pood", with all undue respect to boasts and triumphs in the toilet department.

He sits on a sofa looking at a palm, he gets up and walks about looking at his palm. The palm carries a non-organic, as if it is as vital to his well being as a heart should be. It is like an external pacemeker keeping a rhythm to a teenage existence. The palm is lit like a lightbulb, a torch to the teenage world outside. Sometimes he chuckles at the palm, sometimes he ''tuts, sometimes he apparently 'likes',  this is 21st century art of conversation, talk to the hand has gone digital.

I think he goes to the toilet with the palm not helping in things necessary for cleanliness. But let's not go to toilet humour again, because that hand- lightbulb configuration is surely not a zip-friendly thing that evolution intended, it is functioning like a toilet lid, no stool shall pass because its only got three limbs.

He is now as one-armed as a bandit, that seldom gives out money. Table manners are forfeited as fork and knife have a single hand to share. Typing speed is reduced by 50%; clapping is a dissappointing hi-five style with landing lights; catching things is a lottery, unless we are talking about a computer virus.

It is as if this is the next step of evolution is here, the man-machine human interface has got too intimate. I am living with the embodiment of a Trekkers' Borg, Stargates' Replicators, Battlestar's Toasters, I am afraid, its a case of keep my teenager close and my circuit breaker closer.

Vanity in Vain

Out on a school night , trusting the teenagers at home alone they will survive without my parental guiding hand. I feel secure in the knowledge of there is a packet of popcorn available and low calorie drinks to be had.

We are at a Jazz concert where the good, the old and the mighty of this town gather to show they are still cutting it, despite the onset of podginess abounding.

It is time to watch my fellow citizens dressed to their nines, whereas perhaps size  10 or 12 would have been a better fit.

And there is a choice, a ready  plethora of mutton dressed as lamb, and by degrees, there is mutton dressed as lamb from a forgotten age.

She looked ok from the rear in a kind of a 50's debutante might look with a dodgy knee and crocked hip and gammy leg. Then she rolled on her heels and revealed that ageing was not kind above the neck line either, the beehive stood there adding feet to a stature that badly needed height that high heels could probably not provide any more, due to a replacement hip or something.

It as if a new paradigm, it was as if a beehive dressed as honey. I had passed judgement, condemned without forethought, even giggled, as easily as it was to catch myself in a mirror. Yes a mirror.

And perhaps I thought there was a little old lady looking at a man who was wearing trousers that were not designed to be seated in anymore, shirts of an older vintage, shoes that had the feeling that they were last seen in a black and white photograph.

Perhaps this is the real reason that the teenagers prefer not to walk with their own version of the living dead, if not attached to a credit card. I am afraid to ask. Because by damn, my heart knows, I am age appropriate with edge.

Pass me the sarong.

A Day in the Decade of Joe Ex-teen

As Confuscious  may say my name is not a confusing anagram.

To confuse or not to confuse, I sometimes explain how it was to my kids  and how it is now, to give a benchmark, much as my parents  monetary system counted in twelves and stuff, and I, thank the good Lord, counted in tens. I try to show the teenagers where they came from and in some way where they should go, without defining how they should get there, but hopefully avoiding my mistakes. Things change, sometimes for good reason,. I explain things, they may see I confuse things. They see things through modern dynamic eyes, and I through grey tinted spectacles.

My kids measure time in days, and I in decades. A 10% of my life is a third of theirs, give or take a short month in my book and a long month in their Kindle.

Like other things, I measure things on a different gauge to their view of standard
I measure hair in shades of grey and they in inches.
I measure growth in a buckle in a belt-hole and they on my eyeline and extent of my neck-ache
I judge armpit hair in degrees of density and they in "Yes or No"
I measure nasal hair on their escape velocity to moustache dashes and they with a torch
They measure fashion in S and M and I measure in a lottery of Xs.
I measure pimples counts in singular and they zits in plural.

These are examples of how things have changed for me over the years

And in the same way I can  look around at a home that resembles a quantum leap in technology and stuff from my teens: phones without cords, televisions that are flat, microwaves that have moved on from a joke about a hand gently quivering, computers are not a major piece of furniture. I remember records that were black, wood that was formica, glasses that were NHS.

And they remember a little of nothing as nappies were changed, schools were visited and children deposited in tears and then retrieved with smiles hopefully, footballs  that were kicked in between acrobatic falls. I remember these days, they kind of don't. They believe my stories of old from photographs and videos. Now they remember each day, a new day, each weekend to do things that I am not to be told. They see a canvas, and I see a canvas in a frame with paint-by-numbers guidance provided by moi, they see no boundaries, they see a blank canvas.

And so it should be.... but when I lie on the sofa amidst my middle age crisises and feel that a cup of tea is not going to calm the staying powers of carrying on, do I feel the need for a happy pill .... I say thrice no, not when there's Cadbury Chocolate bar to eat. When all else, hair, dyes, bellies, belts, hair, rashes, nostrils, snobs, trousers, flares, fails there is chocolate.....aah.
And this explains the metal in my teeth, whilst their teeth are only caged in metal.

And the morale of this tale is, as aging progresses and the Age progresses and as Confuscious may say ~I no Scofu ~ which is not really an angram either, more an unnecessary confusion, so its time to go with the flow and perhaps occasionally steer the boat to calmer waters if the boundaries are a waterfall.

Restricted Comfort Zones

In a world of middling age, my world. A world in that I am more comfortable with "I paid" rather than I-pad, I-pod; and no doubt probably to be followed by I-ped, I-pid and I-pud, if the law of diminishing vowels is anything to do with it.

I still feel young, vibrant, dynamic, as cutting edge as one can get this side of a Sunday Roast knife, but like that roasting knife, the cutting edge is let down by a handle that knows it takes two to tango and it ain't dancing to any sharp jig no more.

I face the mirror where reality dawns, if I turn on the light. Hair loss cannot be hidden  by ruffling and curling to increase surface coverage, any more. Jowls cannot be explained away as a hiding place for a pickle or two, on the point of causing indigestion. Chins are not even looking better in bad lighting. I am facing the face of an older man.

Whilst the youngsters are there, not seeing that this one day, is their destiny. They swagger at times, they shuffle at others, they jump and they slump, they are young. Slouching to a couch, bouncing to a disco.

But thankfully they have homework which I do not, hooray for mathematics, howah for history.  I can take my coffee, in quiet time, my time. I can take my biscuits or two, I have jowls and chins to feed, I can sit in front of the telly and lounge. I am adult not in need of learning no more.

But as if my world in the comfort zone is also not mine, they know, they know I am ripe to be prodded into dynamism. The teenagers own me 24 hours apparently. There is a demand, there is a sigh of teenage helplessness. I am called to assist. I am called to move creaking bones and be brainy, to roll back the algebra years, to re-visit the algorithms, to recognise symbols that may be of Greek origin and are designed to cause me a crisis. I am questioned on kings as if I know history like the back of my hand, "What king did..?" is being roughly stuttered in the older cerebral mind as "What 'kin king did what ...?", and I call this adult thinking. I am called upon to advise on political discourse but my covering up skills are one up on a Pledge to be brainy and one down on the Pleb that I am.

I-pad or not, there is a coffee that may not have my name on it, but it damn well should have my lips on it. So first my lips need to be patient for there are but a few words to say, so I say 'I do not think, therefore I am pointing to Wiki, Go! Wiki!'. Wiki knows all. Back to the Comfort Zone.