Blokes

Whilst sitting pleasantly comatosed in front of the TV last night one of those shiny happy femininely positive fashion shows came on and neither Karen nor I had the gumption or the energy to reach for the remote. This particular one was called Twiggy’s Frock Swap and was basically just a televised version of that newest of trends to hit the UK’s Bingo halls and beauty parlours... the clothes swap party.

Premise: get a group of glamorous ladies of assorted ages and sizes together in a warehouse with cartloads of their old clothes and cast-offs and let them swap their clothes in a vaguely entertaining fashion conscious eco-friendly way. The clarion calls runs along the lines of: ladies of Britain recycle your clothes don’t bin them (or send them to starving children in Africa) – it’ll save you money if not wardrobe space!

It was slightly more interesting than the cushion whose soft woolly surface my face was half submerged into.

But while I listened to the glorious voice of Lauren Laverne wash over me like a warm Geordie breeze I had the thought: why don’t they make programmes like this for men?

And the answer hit me almost straight away.

Picture the scene: Gok Wan cakewalks around a group of Weatherspoon’s throw-outs in his high heeled diamante winkle pickers.

“C’mon guys let’s get swapping those g-strings and string vests! Woohoo!”

One shambolic hoody steps forward offering up a pair of torn and faded baggy-arsed Levi’s. “Er. Yeah. I got these to swap.”

Some nerdy looking sci-fi junkie steps hesitantly forward. “Yeah. Cool. Er... I’ll give you a couple of Playstation games for them if you want... Grand Theft Auto and Halo...” He shrugs noncommittally.

Hoody, nodding Noel Gallagher style: “Yeah nice one. Done mate.”

Goods are exchanged. Silence reigns. The men nod mutely among themselves and fidget uncomfortably before the camera.

In the background Gok tears out his hair in long thin oily strips and collapses sobbing to the floor – obviously overcome with the intensely broiling testosterone. The producers meanwhile tear up the series contract and head out to the pub.

Blokes, you see, we’d just be too damned sensible to be entertaining.

Anger Management

Anger is a funny thing. Or at least Griff Rhys Jones had always assumed it was until he discovered differently during “Losing It” last night, a BBC documentary and personal exploration into his own and the world’s anger.

Jones has always struck me as “a decent bloke to work with”. I don’t know why I formed that opinion because I’ve never ever met the man, I guess, like everybody else you get pulled in and gulled by the TV persona. Now, after watching this astonishingly honest programme I’d have to say that, while I still think he’s an eminently decent bloke, he’d be absolute hell to work with. And worse to live with.

By his own admission he is a grumpy old git. And at first he staunchly defended his right to be so. Everybody gets angry, he said. Everybody feels anger. Even a psychologist friend confirmed that if he ever met someone who was calm and serene all the time he would be deeply suspicious of them. It is not natural to not get angry. Anger is a natural response to stress and let’s face it the modern world goes out of its way to create stress for all of us.

But as Jones interviewed friends, family and work associates a picture soon formed that he was something beyond the modest proportions of just “a grumpy old git”.

One of his agents recalled the first time she met Griff. He’d burst into the office in a foul mood about something and promptly kicked a hole in the office door in his rage.

“I did what?” Griff’s iron-heavy jaw dropped. “I don’t remember doing that!”

This became a pattern. People recalling some of Griff’s more flamboyant expressions of anger and Griff having no recollection of them whatsoever. For Griff, you see, once the anger was out it was dealt with and forgotten about. For Griff, looking back, circumstances weren’t as bad as maybe his anger portrayed it. For Griff there was even a chance to giggle at his mad antics whilst mad once he was calm again.

Unfortunately nobody else had this luxury. As his agent pointed out, having to constantly mop up these spillages of anger was a “heavy burden for anyone”.

Griff looked pole-axed. For the first time taking on board that maybe his tantrums weren’t as lightweight and inconsequential and natural as he’d at first thought. They affected people. They hurt people. They were not nice to deal with. As he said of his agent: “I kept waiting for her to add that ‘despite all this we had a great laugh and a good time’ but... she never said it. Not even when I fished for it.”

Sober barely covered it.

Next week Griff will be looking at various ways in which he can deal with and manage his anger and I shall certainly be tuning in because – admission time, folks – I have noticed that over the past couple of years I too have been experiencing anger. More than is usual for me.

During my teens I just didn’t have the confidence to be angry. I was small, weedy, under developed, shy and awkward socially. Expressing anger – no matter how justified – was just not permissible for me. I wanted people to like me. I was desperate for it. So I suppressed my anger. I was too small and weak to be angry. Showing anger when you’re a teen – and perhaps also when you’re an adult – seems to be tied into physical strength. You need to be able to back up and defend your anger. I mean what would I have done if someone had got angry back? Run away very quickly I suspect and then apologise profusely.

In time I forgot how to be angry.

But weirdly, with a 7 year old in the house who is showing classic signs of having an angry personality rather like Griff (i.e. gets furious whenever things happen that are outside of his control) I am finding that I am rediscovering my own anger. For the first time since I myself was a child I shout. I bang about. I swear under my breath. I walk around with my teeth clenched (ah – Dr Hassan, I think I’ve discovered the cause of my worn down teeth). I seethe below the surface.

Is this good? Is this bad? Do I have a right to express this anger? I guess it all depends on how I go about it. Certainly I have a right to own it. Certainly it proves to be useful occasionally when it stops me being pushed around at work or in the street. But do I want to be angry with my family? Is that right? Griff’s (I’m not going to say long suffering because I don’t think she is) wife admitted that when Griff is “off on one” she tends to walk away and let him get it out of his system. Do I really want Karen to react like that with me? Not, I hasten to add, that I’m in anywhere near Griff’s league... but the worrying this is, Griff didn’t think he was in that league either until he scratched below the surface...

Now that I’m holding my hands up and owning my anger... is it time for me to start managing it?

Saved By The Taxman

I must admit I’ve been feeling rather bleak of late. All down to interminable financial strain... not enough money to cover all our necessary outgoings and my attempts to alleviate this situation by acquiring a second job have all failed miserably.

But yesterday help came through the post from a very unexpected quarter.

It seems the tax office have calculated our child care benefit at a very reasonable £100 a week. This effectively covers the shortfall that we were experiencing due to Tom’s nursery fees.

Cue mega sighs of relief. We’re saved! At least for this year... Of course Karen and I can hardly believe our luck and are sure that the tax office must have miscalculated somehow... that they’re going to demand it all back at some unspecified and inconvenient point in the future.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to bite their hands off accepting the money now. I can assure you it’s certainly much needed.

Mr Taxman, sir, you're a gent – I salute you.

Dave Prowse Isn’t Dead

Over the weekend, after plotting various bank heists and the ultimate downfall of the Government, Karen and I decided to relax by watching “Bring Back...” hosted by fat, friendly, fun Bristolian Justin Lee Collins.

The premise of the show is simple. Mr Lee Collins picks a programme or film from yesteryear and attempts to get the original cast members back together for a brief televised reunion. It’s sort of like Friends Reunited for rich has-been celebs who all hate each other... Not particularly edifying I must admit but Justin’s targets this time were the original cast of Star Wars and naturally, being a fully paid up member of the Star Wars generation (original motion picture trilogy) it was an absolute must-see.

Now the show only works because Justin is so charming. Which is quite inexplicable given that he looks like an overweight foreign exchange student from Sweden. Too much hair. Too much beard. Too much gut. And yet Justin has undoubtedly got “it” – whatever “it” is. You can’t help but like the guy.

So. Justin draws up his hit list – Princess Leia, Luke, Han, Chewie, Darth Vadar, the droids – even Boba Fett. The air is momentarily heavy with anticipation... if he could actually do this it would be truly amazing. But despite Justin’s initial success charming his way into not only Carrie’s Fisher’s house but also her bathroom, reality, out of the blue, suddenly bites.

And it bites hard and on the arse.

Mark Hamill refuses to do it. Or rather his agent refuses on his behalf to do it unless Justin can come up with $50,000. Hmm. Methinks Luke to the dark side has turned... so Skywalker bites the dust. Harrison Ford you just know from the outset is unattainable. There’s no point even trying and Justin knows it. Han gets scrapped. Justin manages to collar Leia, Lando and Chewie – they all agree to interviews but not to the reunion. Close but no cigar. It’s all looking a bit ropey.

Typically – in the end – it’s only the Brits who are up for it.

Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), Kenny Baker (R2D2) and most amazing of all, Dave Prowse (Darth Vadar) all appear for the considerably downsized reunion.

Now I must confess when Justin first drew up his hit list my first comment to Karen was “well snugglebun, he can forget Dave Prowse – he’s dead.”

And I genuinely thought he was.

I’m sure I remember reading a news report about Dave Prowse popping his enormous clogs years and years ago. Did I dream it? Did I just imagine it? I must have ‘cos there he was larger than life on the small screen. Or rather smaller than life. Poor bloke. The years have not been kind... but at least he bothered to turn up (unlike the big walking carpet and Leia in her metal bikini). Other than that though it was a case of Star Wars without the actual stars... Oh well, nice try Justin.

The only other highlight of the show for me was witnessing what a complete and utter arsehole Anthony Daniels (C3PO) is. Pretentious. Arrogant. Haughty. And, aside from his “golden rod” role, a complete failure as an actor. The man was totally irredeemable. Civil but politely sneery and awfully condescending. I didn’t like him at all. And to make matters worse he was, by all accounts, really nasty to Kenny Baker throughout the filming of all three films, refusing to talk to him most of the time and obviously seeing dear old Ken as being well beneath him.

No dwarf jokes please. You just don’t do that to Artoo.

Funniest moment of all was Justin showing old Tone a very rare Top Trumps card featuring an enhanced image of Threepee-o. It seems that a malicious graphic artist had endowed the golden one with an appendage of humungous eye-watering length. Any normal person would have laughed nay chortled at such ribald naughtiness. But not our Tony. He articulated at length how unfunny he found it as he considered C3PO to be a very dear friend to whom he felt a good deal of unswerving loyalty towards. Tosser. He finished by pointing out (in case we hadn’t yet sussed it) that “Of course, I don’t have a wonderful sense of humour...” Really? You don’t say.

What could Justin do but wave the offending card beneath Tony’s nose one more time and make the inevitable comment “Anthony, I’ve looked at this long and hard...”

Needless to say Anthony Daniels chose not to attend the reunion. Who needs a protocol droid that doesn’t understand common courtesy anyway?

Big Brother Aside

I can't say that Big Brother has at all gripped me this year but with Karen wanting to watch the occasional episode it's been near impossible not to get a little bit sucked in...

This season had been remarkably unnoteworthy apart from the following:

The Good Points:

1) Rachel Rice is the winner. I'm genuinely pleased that for once an ordinary, decent, pleasant, nice, unaffected kid without any bizarre idiosyncrasies has won the show. Let's hear it for normalcy!

The Bad Points:

1) Rex: the man is a nasty, bullying, smug, control freak. When he came out he looked like Bryan Adams dressed as Freddie Mercury. The only good line he ever came out with was "I'd swap you for Scrabble." However as it was directed at the lovely Rachel he loses any kudos points that he might have accrued.

2) Mikey's voice: he sounded like an dying elephant trying to fart a speculum sideways out of its prolapsed anus. Sorry for the grossness but I just couldnae tek nae more!

3) Mo: just what was the point of Mo? Anyone?

The Worst Point Of All:

1) Mario's tea-based sexual innuendo directed toward his partner, Lisa. "I'm just dipping this custard cream into this cup of hot... juicy tea..." Oh please! Somebody should have pointed out to him that his custard cream didn't even touch the sides...

Sigh. I'm going back to bed.

Unforgivably Foul

I have been, it has to be said, unforgivably foul of late.

Bad tempered. Grumpy. Short fused. Liable to erupt into immense fireworks at the drop of a hat. I believe I’ve been attributed the nickname “Bird’s Nest” as a direct result of this.

Undoubtedly it’s all down to stress. Overworked. Underpaid. Pressure left right and centre. There’s nothing going on but the mortgage, food bills, energy bills, credit card bills, utility bills, child care bills... and Christmas is coming.

With typical good timing my web design business seems to be slacking of too. Work is drying up. Belts are being tightened everywhere I guess. And my efforts to find an extra part time job to beef up our income to a level somewhere above the bread-line have so far fallen on barren ground. See, things are so bad I’m even mixing my metaphors.

And should I even succeed in acquiring an extra job where on earth am I going to find the energy to actually do it? Gaah!

I’ve responded to this maelstrom of financial down-turns in a typical man-like way. Recalcitrant. Taciturn. Head down. Transferring my frustrations onto other less deserving targets – Karen, the kids, faulty household appliances, cold callers and anyone else who steps into my sights. With the exception of cold callers nobody has really deserved the amount of spleen I’ve been venting.

And I do dearly apologise.

Things have just got a bit much and the hill ahead seems somehow steeper than it used to be. I can feel my hair turning white and my mouth turning to ash...

It’s not a good look.

But anyway, the conclusion to this morning’s confessional is this: I’ve realized / remembered that the trick to surviving bad times is to focus on and preserve the good. Because the good remains and is always there. You’ve just got to keep seeing it. Karen, the kids, our home, our friends, etc...

But not the cold callers.

Never the cold callers.

One Foot Out Of The Nest

Karen’s maternity leave officially ends next Tuesday. After a year of being a full-time mum and house-frau she’s returning to work (part-time) with more than a little ambivalence.

Re-embracing the politics and work ethics of your place of employment is never a joyous occasion when you’ve been away for any length of time but this reunion is going to be even harder as it necessitates sending Tom – now 11 months old – to nursery 5 days a week.

I must admit Karen and I are finding the concept difficult to accept. But he’s so tiny... and so cute! He’s too lovely to be out on his own in the big bad world! Even though some parents (I won’t say quite happily) farm their kids out to nurseries from as early an age as 3 months...

It’s all been rather emotional. Tom has now had four “tester” sessions at the nursery over the last 2 weeks to help get him acclimatized to the new environment and to bond with his carer. And to be honest he’s doing ok. A few tears here and there but never for very long and he’s been relaxed enough to eat their strange food and even to nod off for a nap or two...

But despite his easy compliance Karen and I feel like we’re packing him off to Gordonstoun or abandoning him at a train station with a load of other evacuees... each gripping brown suitcases containing their favourite toy and a bottle of Calpol, wondering if the people at the farm will treat them nicely and when will they ever see their dear old mum and dad again?

Tom is developing quite a taste for Vera Lynn.

At the end of the day though Tom seems to be taking it all in his stride. I guess kids are very adaptable. It’s Karen and me who are taking it the hardest. Letting him go. Watching him stumble a few branches away from the nest before we snatch him back into the safety of our arms once more.

Growing up is so difficult. Certainly as a participant but definitely as a spectator...

Hairy Cakes

Apart from Gary Rhodes TV chefs don’t as a rule annoy me.

Mainly because I find there’s something pleasantly soporific about watching someone cook. I guess it harkens back to the days when, as a boy, I’d watch my gran makes cakes and pies in her 1970’s deluxe kitchen. Even now, watching a Victoria sponge being lightly dusted with icing sugar just puts me in a good mood for the entire day and relaxes me into a state of goodwill to all men.

So a TV chef has to go a long way then to fully upset my apple cart.

Cue Simon King and David Myers, the two halves of which don’t quite comprise a whole in the shape of the BBC’s Hairy Bikers.

I’m gritting my teeth at the mere thought of them.

Their shtick seems to be that they’re hairy. They ride bikes. They’re Geordies. And they cook.

In that order.

Inscrutably, Karen likes them (hence this is how they find their way onto my HD-unready telly). And on the face of it they’re inoffensive enough. But for some unspecifiable reason they irritate the colon out of me.

They are essentially The Chuckle Brothers with beards and bikes. A male version of the Two Fat Ladies (and let’s face it, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson were practically bearded anyway).

They’re cooking isn’t particularly stunning in my opinion. It’s all a bit... pedestrian (which is very ironic given that they spend most of their time with their be-leathered thighs wrapped around the throbbing engines of their gleaming hogs).

It’s all a bit “blokey” and “roadie” and not expertly enough “chefy”.

But maybe that’s the point? Maybe they’re trying to get more blokey blokes to cook? An admirable campaign if ever there was one but there’s something ineffably flat and wishy-washy about the pair of them. And yes that is a deliberate pantomime reference. The pair of them could don dresses and it wouldn’t look at all weird. Unattractive. But not weird.

Hmm. I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen the Hairy Bikers and the Two Fat Ladies in the same room together at the same time... though of course Jennifer Paterson’s death in 1998 shoots a rather large hairy hole in that theory.

I guess my biggest complaint about the hairy bikers is quite simply... the hair. Their jaw-lines and top lips are just too hirsute to make their food at all palatable. And this is from someone who is himself bearded. It’s very off-putting to watch them sinking their molars into a double crust yak and leek pastie and then try and sing it’s praises to the camera as flakes and shards of pastry and meat hang loosely in their beards and moustaches like miniature trapeze artists trying to escape from a Russian circus.

The inside of their helmets must look and taste like a Subway deli counter.

Oh please, people. A double entendre was not intended...

Belatedly Batman

A week ago, as part of the spectacular birthday celebration that heralded my 39th birthday (apologies if the fireworks kept you awake) Karen took me to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. I’d quite enjoyed Batman Begins – as superhero movies go it was nice ‘n’ dark, gritty and packed a hard hitting punch or two. But for me the story was too fragmented, too intent on ticking as many bat-boxes as possible within the classic Batman framework... it tried to do too much and felt frustrated and frustrating. So despite the hype it was with some trepidation that I settled into my seat to watch The Dark Knight.

I needn’t have worried. It totally blew me away.

The sets, the backdrops, the stunts, the action... all on target. The story – despite the length of the film – felt tight and compact (like a well defined six-pack). And the humour... ah the humour was so dark it felt beyond black. I actually felt a twinge of regret when it was all over.

Michael Caine was a joy to watch and I’d at last fully accepted the bat-voice without wondering at what point in the movie Bruce Wayne had smoked a hundred Columbian cigars... Gary Oldman too was effortlessly believable as Gordon. The man is such a chameleon – he manages to change his physicality in every film I’ve ever seen him. How else can he go from the emaciated Goth cool of Sirius Black to the fustiness of Gordon and yet still look like himself?

But all this is just the nuts and bolts of the movie, the framework – the skeleton – albeit a very impressive one. The flesh, the heart, however is The Joker. Was Heath Ledger as good as the hype? For me: yes. Definitely. All the clichés are at least meaningful and fresh – a commanding performance, hypnotic, mesmerizing. In any scene where he didn’t appear I found myself pining for him to pop up in front of the camera.

I liked the fact his performance doffed its cap to the classic Joker and yet also managed to contemporize it so fully. The lies, the tricks, the surety that he will always, always play you false, the certainty that even the truth from his lips will inevitably be a lie. My favourite part of the film was The Joker’s self-deprecating speech to Harvey Dent: he dismisses himself as a mad dog, too chaotic to plan, to organize, he merely acts on his every whim, it’s not personal... it is the police, Batman, the authorities who plan and plot, who connive and conspire.

It is of course another delicious lie but one that hints at an interesting subtext of the movie. The Joker is the most organized agent in the story. To tell a good joke, to perform an effective trick takes eons of planning, post production, preparation... It is The Joker who connives and conspires more effectively than anyone. The Joker allows himself to be captured by the police or at least plans ahead for it – how else explain his henchman with the bomb-phone sewn into his guts?

The mad dog, the man who acts on his whims is, of course, Harvey Dent. Stripped of his suit and tie, the façade of law and order, he merely becomes another one of the Joker’s slathering canines, maddened, hungry, blindly animalistic but leashed and very carefully directed. Controlled completely by The Joker.

But isn’t Batman himself also a creature of instinct and whim? Isn’t Batman too something of a mad dog? He reacts emotionally, personally to all of The Joker’s plots and machinations. He considers giving up his Bat alter ego on an emotional whim and returns to it without a second’s regret. His explosions of violence match those of The Joker and he is just as apt to change the rules of engagement to suit his current requirements... The Joker was correct when he told Batman that he completed him (though it was a corny line). The correlation between these two characters is intriguing and gives the film its distinctive resonance.

Where they go from here in the regretful absence of Heath Ledger is a mystery but I’m awaiting the next film with a pleasurable amount of excitement. Just what kind of morning will follow this dark night? I can’t wait to find out.

Happy Holidays

Sometimes you just have to ad lib. Run with the ball so to speak.

Despite Holiday Plan A being abandoned due to poor weather and most of Holiday Plan B being dropped due to ill health we have nevertheless managed to enjoy a pretty special holiday week.

And it’s all the more enjoyable because I still have 3 days of it left – I don’t actually return to work until Tuesday.

Although we had to scale down some of our more grandiose plans (we never made it The British Museum as planned – sorry OC) we still managed to take in a small smattering of choice culture:

• The hologram exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum – great for kids and grown ups alike.


• The Dark Knight at the Coventry Showcase – superb. Deserves a post all of its own (which I may or may not write).


• Visited my friend Anna and her new baby, Lila, in glorious Nailsworth – a really beautiful part of the world (t’other side of Stroud) and has got Karen and I fantasising about how lovely it would be to live there ourselves.


• Visited my friend Annie and her family in Weston-super-Mare – just a terrific day catching up with good friends.

Doesn’t sound a lot compared to what we’d planned to do but it’s been just the break that Karen and I needed. So much so I’m beginning to think things worked out perfectly in the end after all. Karen and I needed a proper restful holiday – and camping is never that. Being ill at the beginning of the week kind of forced us to stop and rest and we’re all the better for it. Tom took longer to recover but today finally is back fully to his old self and firing on all cylinders and his nappies are no longer quite as scary as they were a few days ago... It also means he’s far more mobile so we’re hoping to do something exciting with the few holiday days left to us…

Parachuting, abseiling, military manoeuvres in Northern Afghanistan… who knows, but we’re ready for it.

Unhappiness Is A Warm Lavatory Seat

Yes. The holiday has got off to a terrific start. Tom was sick and has produced copious diarrhea since Saturday morning. Karen, Ben and I came down with it yesterday evening. I was awoken at 10.30 last night to the splashing noises of Ben being sick over the side of his bunk bed.

It sounded like someone up-ending a rather large bowl of porridge.

It's uncanny that each time we've attempted to enjoy a holiday this year sickness has swept through the house like... well, like a plague, actually. Albeit a very geographically specific one. Is life trying to tell us something? I'm beginning to wonder.

Ben recovered very quickly and though Tom still has a "runny bum" (yes, that is the correct medical term) he's doing fine. Karen is still in bed having been hit the worst and I'm holding the fort like a gut cramping, sickie-burping soldier.

All plans for today are off.

This is not quite the start to the holiday that we had planned...

Summertime And The Leaving Ain’t Easy

I’m off from work for 10 whole days after today... and the original plan was to head west tomorrow morning at first light, journey for approximately 4 hours and then pitch our humungous 900 berth tent in the land of green valleys, male voice choirs and sheep.

Alas the weather reports for the week ahead are not good. They’re absolutely dire in fact. And though we are not usually put off by crap weather (being hardy English folk) our camping experiences in June left us rather indisposed to attempt camping once again in Monsoon conditions with a 7 year old and a young baby in tow.

So much as we love Wales, Wales is out.

Now the plan is to wing it. Day trips out to Legoland, The Heights Of Abraham, The Hadrian Exhibition at The British Museum among others. Plus drop-in visits to various family and friends who are scattered up and down the length and breadth of the country. I think Karen (my lovely wife) is also arranging a trip to see the new Batman movie at the cinema on my birthday next Wednesday too and possibly a slap-up meal while the kids are securely corralled by a babysitter.

So all in all, it’s not going to be a proper holiday this year. But as “not a proper holiday’s” go, it should be a good one.

Let’s hope so anyway...

The Magnum Ritual

Fear not good people this is not a reference to Tom Selleck and his magnificently furred top lip but a paean to that king of stick-mounted ice cream otherwise known as the Magnum.

Since the sun started beating down on the UK like a blast furnace it has become a daily habit of mine to abscond from the office sometime after lunch and hotfoot it round the corner to the nearest newsagent there to rifle through the ice encrusted glories that are kept well stocked within the grubby looking chest freezer in the corner.

The lady who owns the shop – a pleasant Asian woman who is inevitably talking very loudly to a family member on her mobile when it comes time to serve me – runs a mighty fine line in Magnums.

She must have every variety known to man – the classic, the double choc, the caramel and my personal favourite, the Ecuador. Not quite sure why it’s called the Ecuador as I’ve never ever found a line of coke in it... But anyway, simply put, the Ecuador is pure white vanilla ice cream surrounded very licentiously by thick plain chocolate and is a veritable delight unto the tongue.

And they’re a whopping £1.40 a go.

Now it’s hardly a heinous financial crime but I really can’t afford to be spending that amount of money every day on chocolate frippery. I need to be saving my money. Shoving it into a post office account or an ISA in preparation for the long dark slog through the recession ahead. But I just can’t stop myself.

I’m addicted.

My Magnum is the only thing getting me through the terminally dull afternoons at work. They’re practically medicinal. I ought to have them on prescription. I can’t not have one.

And yet I feel like I’m taking food off the table that is meant for my wife and kids. I’m denying them £1.40 a day in bread or milk or bacon or some other staple food. After I’ve finished my Magnum I can see their small emaciated fingers pointing to their wide open mouths crying we’re starving, we’re starving...!

Sigh. My Magnum addiction is evil. It’s selfish. It’s ego-centric. And I’m just off to buy another one.

Would you like me to get you anything while I’m there?

The Birds

Just to prove that amongst all the financial angst and budgetary gloom it is possible to have a good time without spending too much money... Karen and I, as part of our 3rd wedding anniversary celebrations last Wednesday, took the kids to Moreton-in-Marsh and visited a lovely falconry centre and arboretum whose exact name and location (somewhere outside M-in-M) temporarily escape me.

If you’re a fan of birds of prey then this is the place to be. If talons and vicious beakery give you the heebie-jeebies then perhaps you’d be better of spending a day at ‘the mall’...

As for me, I was making like Alfred Hitchcock. And here are a few pics to prove it.

(Click on the pics to see a larger version...)

The day was rounded off with a kindly babysitter to take care of the kids while Karen and I headed off to Warwick and The Saxon Mill for a gorgeous anniversary meal. Naturally, given the theme of the day, I selected yet another bird from the Mill’s superlative menu – not an endangered one I hasten to add (though I doubt it had felt particularly safe at the moment of termination) – a spit roasted chicken. It was very satisfying...

Please keep any filthy comment to yourselves. This is a family show.

A Bigger Grindstone

Define poverty.

Living on the streets?

Starving, having to steal food to survive?

Dying, having to sell your body to live?

Or just not earning enough money to be able to live decently?

Karen and I don’t particularly lead a profligate lifestyle. We’re not out partying every night (in fact although we went out for a meal Wednesday night to celebrate out wedding anniversary it was the first time we’d been out together in over 5 months). We don’t hit the shops every weekend in wild shopping splurges.

And yet, doing some sums and some short range financial forecasts we discovered that we’re pretty close to being in the crap. Karen needs to return to work in September as we simply can’t afford to have only one of us working indefinitely. This means paying for child care for Tom. Even if Karen only works school hours to try and relieve the burden of this we still need to find an extra £400 a month to cover the nursery costs.

We just do not have this money.

It’s ridiculous. We can’t afford to work. But can’t afford not to work. What are we supposed to do?

We only have three options.

1) Give up the rat race, claim benefits and hope we don’t lose our house as a consequence. Neither of us fancies this kind of lifestyle. This option is definitely out.

2) Bite the bullet and accept that over the next 4 years or so until Tom starts school we are going to slide inexorably into debt. Well. Not so much slide as bullet-train into debt.

3) Bite a bigger bullet and do all we can do slow that inexorable slide right down to a more manageable level. This means me getting an extra part-time job to bring in extra money to cover some of the child care costs. A morning or evening cleaning job most likely.

Karen isn’t happy about it (and I’m not exactly ecstatic) as she doesn’t want to see me flogging myself along the rocky road to a heart attack. But the alternative is a sizable debt that could totally destabilize us and take us decades to pay off. With the economy so shaky at the moment it seems to me some extra money coming into the house would not be a bad thing at all.

So. I am now officially looking for work. Even though I already have plenty. Full-time job. Part-time web design business. Novel on the go. One more year at University. Maintaining a wonderful home life.

Busy busy busy.

Sigh.

So does all this mean that I’m poor? Or just not poor enough?

Who knows? But at least I’m not sewing Nikes in a Kolkata sweat shop... or selling my body in an Essex lay-by.

Faces

Tom is now just over 10 months old and everybody who sees him says exactly the same thing.

My God, but he looks so like Karen.

Then as an after thought they look me up and down, frown a bit and add apologetically, oh but we can see a bit of you in him as well.

I’m actually becoming grateful for this small concession.

However, a recent visit to my granddad last week brought Karen into contact with some very old photographs of yours truly as a baby. There’s a particular one of me and my sister (also confusingly called Karen) when we were both wee toddlers, obviously taken in a photographer’s studio, where I’m holding a rubber duck with the kind of passion that only an 2 year old muster.

Tom and I could be identical twins. The likeness is uncanny. My first thought was to show this photograph to everybody obliquely mentioned above accompanied by the words: see, I did make a major contribution to the genetic make-up of this child!

My second thought was if everybody thinks Tom looks like Karen but he also looks the spit of me as a child... is the theory that people fall in love with partners who look most like them true?

I mean there are similarities between Karen and me but I don’t think they’re blazingly obvious... though Karen has commented before that we have many likenesses...

Is this true of everybody though?

Is there something secretly narcissistic going on that I don’t know about?

If there is I may have to stop dressing up in Karen’s clothes...

Who’s The Daddy?

As some of you will be aware, in addition to my full-time local authority job (which I’m currently underpaid for – see my previous post) I also run my own part-time web design business.

It’s just a small concern – hardly a global corporation or liable to give Bill Gates any sleepless nights – but it’s all mine.

When I started it three years ago I did so with a glad and excited heart. No more working for idiots and gits, I thought to myself. I’ll be my own boss. I can do what I like and tell the twats to get lost.

Of course that isn’t the case at all. You still end up working for idiots and gits. Anybody who’ll pay you for the work basically. And while you’re producing work on their behalf the idiots and gits are still, technically, your boss.

Sigh. I never did like Status Quo.

However, after a while you begin to sort out the good clients from the bad and you start to develop a long memory and good instincts.

How does that help?

Well, I had trouble about a year ago with a real a-hole who gave me months and months of grief and hassle and actually managed to make my life a complete misery. However, I persevered and managed to build him a tiptop web site. Once it went live, however, he started being awkward about paying my invoice and quibbled over the price we’d agreed upon months in advance. This was at a time when I just did not need the extra hassle – Karen was having a difficult pregnancy and I needed my time and energies to be directed elsewhere, not chasing welshers.

Things got nasty and I came within an inch of taking him to the small claims court. But in the end, he coughed up. He paid. And he even attempted a little humility.

Yeah like whatever.

Then this week, out of the blue, he got back in touch with me. A real begging email. Seems he has loads of updates that he needs putting onto his web site but nobody wants to do the work for him.

Oh really? I wonder why?

At last, being my own boss finally came into its own. I owed him nothing. I was holding all the cards (aces naturally). And there was only one barrel and it wasn’t me that was over it.

I told him no.

Effing marvellous!

It’s a sensation that can only be matched by being the filling in a Kirstie Allsopp* and Michelle Ryan* sandwich.

*Please feel free to insert the “bread” of your choice though I don’t recommend anything too crusty...

Strike!

I’m off work for the next two days. Not for reasons of illness or a need to swing the lead, you understand, but because I am throwing my weight behind a noble cause.

I am on strike.

I – along with my staunch union colleagues – have decided to take a stand against the appalling pay offer that the current Government has thrown at us like crumbs from their wine drenched table.

Pah! We laugh at your miserable 2.45% offer when the price of even the most basic of foods is slowly rocketing skywards!

We’ve essentially taken a pay cut for the last three years running and now enough is enough.

Do I think we’ll actually get the 6% demanded by our union executives?

Not a cat in hell’s chance.

But if we don’t ask (or in this case, demand) we don’t have a hope of getting any more.

I realize there are inflationary pressures holding the Government back – nobody wants to see the country spiralling into recession – but we’ve all got to be able to afford to live. And at the moment I’m as close to the wire as I’d like to come. And that’s even with taking in extra work at home.

I don’t even have a problem with food prices going up. Farmers have had a crap deal for years and years and most, despite the image most people have of them, have made loss after loss for so long that many have gone under. What we’re now seeing is a readjustment that has been a long time coming. Ironically if we’d valued our farmers more in the first place and had allowed them to make a decent living I’m sure these food price hikes would have been felt less sharply.

There are global readjustments too – the global economy is in a huge state of flux. This isn’t Gordon Brown’s fault by any means and I don’t hold him personally responsible.

But I do blame him for not allowing me to bring home a decent wage.

Don’t tell me how not to waste food, Gordon. Karen and I already make every meal stretch into two. Just throw some more moolah my way so I can pay the ruddy mortgage!

On The HP

The definition of a good book: you don’t want it ever to end but you’re unable to stop yourself racing through at breakneck speed to the final page...

I completed Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows over the weekend and I feel quite bereft now that it’s all over.

It sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? It’s just a kid’s book for Christ’s sake! And years ago I was one of those people who steered myself away from the HP books with an avidity that now seems ridiculous. There’s too much hype, I thought. Too much hysteria. Too many people rave about it therefore the books can’t possibly be any good.

That kind of thing.

Then I got into the movies.

I confess, I love them. They get better and better and I’m already excited about the new one that is currently in production. I’m a HP movie devotee.

But even up until the last film – The Order Of The Phoenix – I still refused to read the books. In fact on this here very blog I proudly pronounced that I would not read the books until the film franchise was fully completed.

What rot!

Once I spied the books on Amazon – the complete 7 in a nice embossed boxed set – I had to own them. And once I owned them... well. What’s the point of having books sitting around the house and not reading them?

So a number of weeks ago I pitched in with the first and kept at it until the final page of the final book...

And it’s been great. It’s been wonderful. Yes, they’re kid’s books but they’re not just kid’s books. They work on many different levels. I’m amazed at how deeply I was sucked into them. How intense the journey has been. Maybe I need to get out more but a series of books hasn’t gripped me like this since I was a teenager. I gave myself willingly to the entire HP world and was happy to lose myself there.

My respect for J.K. Rowling is immense. Speaking as someone who is three quarters of their way through their first novel I take my hat off to someone who can plot 7 so deftly and so completely and still keep the reader hanging on until the very end. It might not be Shakespeare. It might not be Rushdie. It might not be the stuff of a lot of “worthier”, more intellectual writers but you know what? I don’t care. There’s a lot to be said for a good story written so well that you actually wish it were real. For characters that you become emotionally attached to.

Harry Potter for kids? Pah! Why should kids get all the good stuff? It’s too good for ‘em I say.

For those of you who are still cynically resisting the lure of HP... give it a go. You will be surprised. For those of you who are already in the know. Well, just say hi and smile.

As for what I do now... well, I need to start prepping for my final Uni module next academic year. Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy” is next on my reading list. Karen tells me it is excellent.

And I’m sure it is.

But my heart is still at Hogwarts...

Another Slice Anyone?

In a fatigue-induced kitchen-based accident last night yours truly very nearly sliced off the top of his middle finger with a pair of scissors.

I say “very nearly” with a degree of exaggeration.

It’s not like I sliced down to the bone or spray painted the ceiling with a 30ft blood geyser.

But it was messy. And rather stupid.

How did I do it?

Well, I was doing my bit for recycling and was attempting to deconstruct a large cardboard box. As anybody knows a few swipes with the blade of a pair of scissors is great for parting glued or sellotaped edges.

However, not so great when you get your finger caught between the two blades one of which then jams in the cardboard and, the laws of physics being what they are, pulls its companion towards it.

Remarkably there was and still is no pain.

Just a slight numbness but this could be down to the tightness of the plaster expertly administered by my wife as I held my newly grooved digit over the washing up bowl.

Karen thinks there is the possibility that I have severed a nerve (possibly hers) but I fear this sounds far too glamorous to be true.

It’s just a cut.

Received in the battle to save our dying planet.

I’m a bloody hero, me.

Accounting For Taste

One good thing about our recent camping exhibition to Mid Wales is that Tom returned with two teeth and the ability to crawl. He now roams the house like a cute, podgy little bulldozer demolishing all in his way and getting his fists into as much trouble as possible. The VCR and PlayStation are all viable targets. As are the house plants – I caught him this morning with a goatee beard made of soil.

The only problem Tom had with camping was the food. As it was impractical to bring and hygienically maintain his normal fare of homemade food we had to resort to the bought kind that comes pre-prepared and processed in jars.

Tom didn’t like it. He absolutely hated the stuff.

Once we were back home though he tucked back into Karen’s homemade food once more with unalloyed gusto.

Karen was really chuffed. Vindication at last for all her sterling efforts to nourish Tom on only the best, organic produce that the UK has to offer. And Tom was clearly a boy who knew the good stuff from the mediocre.

Except a few days later we caught him munching on a dirty bib and my socks with as much abandon as he employs to attack his food.

I’m hoping this odd culinary experiment was purely down to teething...

Windy Billets

A 6 year old, a 7 month old baby, two adults developing colds and one sitting a major Uni exam in 7 day’s time holed up in a tent in the middle of tornado conditions in one of the wettest valleys in mid Wales... were we utterly mad?

Quite possibly.

It’s fair to say that the weather could have been better. High winds when we arrived had the farmer guffawing at our efforts to erect our Vango uber-tent in his camping field though I’m at pains to point out that Karen and I achieved this assignment so singularly that ours was one of the few tents in Wales not to be blown out into the middle of the North Atlantic by the end of the day.

When we asked the farmer what the forecast was like for the rest of the week he smiled and nonchalantly replied “first the wind, then the rain”.

And he wasn’t bloody wrong.

Anyone who’s ever sat in a tent while the wind howls around them outside knows how oppressive and claustrophobic such an experience can be. However, we could just about cope with that. The kids were fine and we were definitely getting lots of “fresh air”. The torrential rain on Monday evening however was the last straw. Karen and I were feeling decidedly rough by this point and just could not get warm. All our plans to walk the hills had gone for a burton and we just couldn’t face another few days sitting miserably on a plastic ground sheet listening to the deluge outside fall at a 33 degree angle in an attempt to perforate our tent defences.

We either had to find an emergency B&B or bite the bullet and head home.

Our one and only stroke of good fortune saw us locate possibly the last free B&B in the area – another de-camped family tried literally 5 minutes after us and were turned miserably away. I admit I took sadistic pleasure in their disappointment knowing that we had secured the one-and-only room for ourselves.

Ah. What can one say about a proper bed and a television? A sofa and an en suite bathroom? Cooked breakfast and no washing up? Such things are worth killing for. Honestly.

The rest of the holiday was alas a bit of a wash out – 2 of the museums we went to turned out to have closed down and the weather was still too inclement to risk a walk in the hills. So we mooched around Machynelleth, Corris and Betws-Y-Coed and took comfort in the fact that the weather was ineffably worse back at home in Leamington Spa.

Ho hum. Another Great British Holiday experience notched onto the old umbrella handle.

We got home Thursday afternoon and I then had to get my head around some last minute revision for my Uni exam on Saturday. Poetry In English Since 1945. And what a bitch it was too. One of the toughest exams I’ve ever sat. I had to answer 3 questions. Normally I run through the list of questions at the start and put an asterisk next to the ones I feel competent enough to answer. By the end of the list I’d earmarked just one.

Gulp.

I had to find 2 more. 2 more!?

Suddenly being stuck on a hillside in Wales with a tornado shredding my sleeping bag around my legs seemed a much healthier place to be...

Leaving The Shadows

Hi kids, Cliff here.

Me and Una are off on a week’s summer holiday tomorrow. We’re taking the sproglets somewhere where the sun shines brightly. Somewhere where the sea is blue. We’ve seen it in the movies and, to be honest, we just want to see if it’s true.

I’ve packed my small speakers, my tall speakers and my wall speakers. And I’m cruising around on my roller-skates as I type. Stereo into the breakfast show. Whoa-oh-oh-whoa-whoa-whoa.

It’s going to be really great, huh.

But there’s just one thing folks. While I’m away, if you see that guy from The Shadows – the one who dances funny while playing his guitar at nipple height – can you please tell him that I didn’t sleep with his missus.

And if I did it was only twice and it was so bad I have vowed never to do it again.

She was like a devil woman, ok, and me and God just can’t dig that.

Ciao for now.

Gardener’s World And Monkey Nuts

What a weekend!

Task 1: Karen and I purchased and collected a brand spanking second-hand car trailer from Meriden – our latest acquisition from eBay. You know you’re going up in the world when you buy a car trailer. You know you’re going down in your own estimation when you start getting trailer envy on the journey hone... “Hmm, they’re trailer is a lot bigger than ours...”

Task 2: We spent practically the entire day on Saturday using the newly acquired car trailer to ship the mountain of junk, trash, garden waste and assorted detritus that we’d cleared out of the shed the previous Monday down to the local tip. Three round journeys of approximately 120 minutes each. By the end of it Ranulph Fiennes had stomped off to mountains new and I was covered in bruises, lacerations and puncture holes... but enough of Karen’s “incentivizing techniques”...

Task 3: Far more enjoyable. We took the kids to Twycross Zoo on Sunday. Tom isn’t old enough to really appreciate either the entertainment value or the dodgy politics of imprisoning animals from different habitats in big cages in the UK but seemed to enjoy the experience of new sights and new smells greatly. Ben quite enjoyed it too but Karen and I both suspect that his personal Holy Grail was the acquisition of an ice cream at the end of the visit. This was confirmed by his opinion that looking at the animals was “all very enjoyable but you wouldn’t want to spend all day doing it”.

Ah kids. If it’s not got a joy-pad attached to it, it just ain’t cool.

Twycross for me, at least, was something of a trip down memory lane. (Cue brass band music akin to that used in the Hovis adverts of old...) When I was a young nipper my Nan and Grandpa took me to Twycross Zoo with my sister and I had a great time looking at all the monkeys but my overriding memory is that of buying a rubber spider on a piece of elastic. It was quite a big spider as I recall and covered in small rubber spines that made it seem both furry and springy at the same time. The elastic meant I could also bounce it quite menacingly into the face of any adult female that came within range (I guarantee I didn’t get my face wiped with a spat-in hankie that particular day, no sirree). Anyway, boys being boys – and me being a boy – the spider was taken on many joyous trips to school where me and my best friend at the time, John McCrae, would throw it to each other as high as we could across the school yard. Such fun and larks lasted until the flying spider found itself at last flung over the school wall and into the garden of one of the houses that abutted the school grounds...

Never to be seen again.

I mourned that spider for a good week. They don’t make them like that anymore I can tell you (I know; I’ve looked).

But now I am a man. And I have a car trailer instead.

Growing up sucks.

Off The Cuff

I’m in a buoyant mood this afternoon.

Maybe it’s because I have the day off tomorrow.

Maybe it’s because the sun is shining and myself and my work colleagues spent an extended lunchbreak in the park eating ice cream – Flake 99’s no less – and pretended we were school kids once more bunking off for the afternoon. Though they (the Flake 99’s) cost considerably more than when I was a boy.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve managed some decent quality time on my novel this week (yes that old chestnut... I’m still writing it). A grand total of 125,262 words and still growing. I’m entering the final phase of the story now. The final third. It’s becoming something of a beast. Something I have to wrestle with and force to assume the submissive position beneath me each time I work on it. Who’s the daddy, eh? Who’s the daddy?

Er. Not sure if that analogy is entirely apposite. I mean, what I do with my Friday evenings is my business, right...? Ahem.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve booked a week off the end of May so that Mrs Bloggertropolis and I and our burgeoning little dynasty can head off into the glorious hills of Wales and partake of some much needed R&R time while the rest of the crazy rat-race we call life goes on without us.

Who knows?

Let’s just let the good times roll.

Shed Love

Karen and I spent the Bank Holiday clearing out the garden shed; an onerous task that we’ve been putting off for ooh about a year. Ever since we bought the old homestead in fact.

To fill you in: Karen and I rented our house for about 2 years before buying it (not a long story, just a boring one so I’m going to gloss over it) – the upshot being that there were parts of the shed from which we were denied access by our then landlord (yes our shed actually has 2 rooms inside it). This wasn’t a problem. We just figured it was full of personal stuff – homemade porno, the odd manacle, perhaps the entrance to a hidden dungeon – and therefore left well alone. We bought our own gardening equipment and stored it in the portion of the shed that we could use and that was that.

Quite literally in fact. I have to say our gardening equipment hasn’t seen much action since we bought it (about the same amount as Prince William in fact) but that’s the subject for another post.

Anyway, a year after buying the place lock, stock and dungeon we finally got round to clearing out both sides of the shed to fully appraise ourselves of what we now own.

No homemade porno. No dungeon entrance.

Just loads of gardening equipment, including a complete lawnmower. Basically duplicating what we’d already bought ourselves which is rather galling but hey, at least our stuff is brand new as opposed to pre-1985. We also found we were now the proud owners of several large tubs of paint, several rolls of wallpaper, 15 panes of glass (which we shall sell on eBay) and a rather large bumble bee.

The bee seems to have set up home in a plastic bag which contained of all things a woollen Christmas stocking – the kind used for hiding presents in as opposed to naughty lady’s leggies – and was determined not to be moved. Even after the bag and stocking were removed the bee kept returning resolutely to the shed hoping to find it. It was quite affecting in a mildly impinging way.

Bees aside the task is at last complete. We’ve kept the good stuff and freed up so much space in the shed that getting access to the tools is no longer a problem. This bodes well for garden based DIY type activity this summer.

And we’ve amassed a huge pile of junk and detritus in the garden that Sir Ranulph Fiennes would be honoured to climb. This bodes well for several laborious journeys to the local tip.

None of which is terribly exciting but I was moved to record it here by Inchy’s recent post about garden sheds... and I felt the need to join in. Sheds are traditionally a bit of a man thing but I know that several humans of a feminine persuasion are also into sheds, my wife included.

There is something ineffably great about owning a shed. A garden with a shed is like a Bugatti whereas a garden without one is like a... a... well, the crap car of your choice basically.

I’ve got a shed with 2 separate rooms in it. 0 to 90 in 8 seconds, dudes. Vroom vroom. They're getting a hospital bed ready for Richard Hammond even as I type...

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