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.