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.