Party on Dad

Crowding round, like punters at a dogfight, me and the other parents overlook the small party table, each egging a child on to have another crisp, a sausage, or piece of cake. We should just roll all of the above into a pastry jacket and have done with it. God knows what Poz is going to be like when all the salt, fat and sugar collide in his gut, in the great tummy rumble of Eva’s fourth birthday. 

The windows of Snakes and Ladders perspire in empathy with the overwrought excitement of a hundred howling toddlers. It’s the last place on earth any half-sane adult with a threadbare constitution would choose to spend Saturday lunchtime and yet here we all are – to celebrate a little one’s rite of passage through toddlerhood.

For my part, a rough week at work punctuated by short periods of fitful sleep and backlit by a pervasive feeling of guilt for not delivering on any of the KPIs pertinent to a parent or employee, or partner, has driven me close to the edge. Yes, Close to the Edge...of alcoholism. 

The mortgage company have denied us the chance to extend the period of our loan to bring the monthly payments into the realm of the affordable and then made it clear that, guess what? Our affordability is borderline, doh! The lesson is enshrined in the clown, Tommy Cooper’s, joke; “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this (lifts an arm, or leg).” “Well, don’t do it then.” comes the doctor's immortal reply.

Of course, we couldn't afford to buy a house without the lenders help for which we will pay £1.95 for each pound borrowed, so I don't think gratitude is an appropriate reaction, exactly. There are also the inevitable penalties should we get so lucky as to be able to afford to pay off the loan early. So, once we sign up, the profits to the lender are pretty much guaranteed. We're putting a third down, so even on repossession, the auction value only needs to be technically two thirds of the original purchase price to pay off the base debt.

Talk about loading the dice in their favour and all the set up fees, searches, surveys and ancillary insurance products keeps a whole support industry in coppers. If gratitude were appropriate, one would be inclined to think it flowed the other way, although I'm not going to hold my breath waiting.

Twit's End

Autumn has crept up on us like the mysterious jelly in the bottom of the toothbrush holder. The kids are busy with growing up, as are we with intermittent attempts to scrabble back some shreds of human decency. Any adult not stumbling about in a shell-shocked state, with a curious absence of snot epaulettes, is suspect of mechanisation. There are robots among us - surely it is the only way they stay so clean and un-creased.

Yesterday, on all fours in the dining room, inspecting the gaps in the floorboards which have been usefully caulked by Liza’s food mess, she staggers past with a surprised expression. “Watch me daddy, I’m falling and catching myself with these crazy legs, falling and catching myself, falling and catching...” In the end it’s more like falling than catching but you blink and you miss it and it makes you want to cry along with her, for your own unintelligible reasons.

It’s a good thing too. Poz is out of favour for being an aggressive and unrepentant little twat - it’s so much worse when they remind you of you. All we can think, as we hit wit’s end and shout at him (yep, showing him how it’s done) is that this will pass and harmony will return. Love conquers all, right? Love conquers all.

Golf Awareness

Golf is practically the family religion. Forget god, unless the godhead resides on the green. In it's purest form it's like meditation. To play perfect golf, simply achieve perfection and then just do what comes naturally. Like deep meditation, this takes an awful lot of practice. When you finally see the light you have to let it all go and become one with the course, the club and the conditions. The ego falls away and the strike becomes simply a moment in time - no ball, no club, just a gesture.

I’m not sure Poz has this in him, although it’s a bit too early to say for sure. He’s standing next to me having already brushed his teeth and therefore won the getting-ready-to-go race. He doesn't lack in competitiveness and like most kids his age he's a terrible loser.

“I’ll stand on this and see how old I am.” He says emphatically, jumping on the bathroom scales. He peers at the numbers and says slowly, “three...and a half” mimicking an adult reading off a fluctuating scale.

“That’s right Poz, you’re three and a half and soon you’ll be four.” I burble, past my toothbrush.

“I’ll be four tomorrow,” he says with stentorian splendour, “for it is my birthday.”

“Not quite,” I say, rinsing my brush, “but soon.”

Chances are little Liza will take up the cudgels under the expert tuition of Auntie Gilly, like our mother once was, she is the hottest golf property in the south west. If Poz is anything like me, he will be too easily distracted for the rigorous mindset of golf and already Liza shows more focussed determination in pursuit of anything that takes her fancy, such as the TV remote. Once she’s got a bead on it, she’s after it, like a missile on lock, albeit a damp and pinchy wobble-winder.

Like many males, Poz’s typical recourse when under pressure, like when Liza touches his stuff, is physical. “She will learn from you,” I tell him sternly, “if you snatch stuff off her she’ll do the same to you, when she’s bigger, I’d watch it if I were you.” This advice does not compute, yet, and by the time it does  Liza will have had her day and poor old Poz will be left somewhat bewildered in her wake.

Dropping the boy at nursery, I notice a scooter in the corner of the play garden with a stop end missing from the handlebar. It could be the one that cookie cut his eyebrow not so long ago and I’m pretty pissed off to see it still in service. I repress my instinct to accuse the nearest employee of wilful negligence and talk to his key worker about it. If I see it in there again next week, it’ll be a more formal complaint. I hate complaining but it’s important, it could have olive pitt his eye out which would stuff his ability to gauge distance and might even wreck his game.

Rascal

Poz chooses to wear his jeans with the fly round the back. I try a mainstream tactic, "Do you want to wear your trousers like that, or like daddy (pointing), with the button round the front?" But he’s adamant, so I leave it. I’m unshaven, got odd socks on and there’s a button missing from my top, so it seems churlish to press the point.

Things seem to be getting tougher and the edges are fraying a little more than before. One child to two adults was a good ratio, two on two effectively means we’re out-gunned. They have youth on their side and they operate guilt and alcohol free to boot. We chose to have them, they didn’t choose to have us, so I cut Poz some slack.

He rides to nursery with me in the front, without a seatbelt, drumming on the dash, sticking his head out of the window like a dog. When I shout ‘Police’ he jumps giggling into the footwell. It’s a laugh because it’s a small village road, he waves at people as we go and tells me how he’s not going to touch the door lever, only the window button.

“If we pull this, dad, we could fall out and be made dead under the wheels,” he says reassuringly. I press the central locking all the same. When we pull into the nursery the other parents, who come from further afield, frown at us for giving their brats bad ideas. Poz and I don’t care, we’re just lucky and loving it, having a cool ride in.

It’s a rod for my back this morning, though, as we’re going into town.

“You have to get in your seat today, Poz, as we’re going on the fast road.”

“I’m going to sit with you, in the front,” says Poz.

“You sit in the back, today, I sit in the front, because we’re going to the shops and the Police will shout at me if they see you in the front. You don’t want daddy to get in trouble do you?”

“Aww” he pouts, unconvinced, and kicks the ground.

I feel a bit limp reasoning this way, and reneging on our thing, but if everybody did just as they liked, like we like to, some kids would surely fall out and be made dead under the wheels. It’s a fine line and wherever a fine line exists attitudes and outcomes will tend to fall on either side of it.

Dizzee Rascal says, “Think about life cause there ain’t no re run, no dvd, no second season.” This made me laugh, it’s a crude rhyme but he’s a charmer so it doesn't matter.

Later that evening, I give little Liza her milk and she konks out on my chest, rubbing her fluffy little head on my sternum. It's a precious moment as I hold her and she snuggles up to me and, for a moment, I'm glad for the missing button on my top, right where her face is.

Bad Signs

Roadside weeds wave wildly as I tuck in behind a truck for a cheeky tow up the hill. As I wait in his dirty wake, a crumby bumper sticker tells me that, ‘Without Trucks You Get Nothing’. Now I know who to blame for all the stuff in our lives. At the crest of the hill I check my mirror, swing out and push gently through his bow wave. For a brief moment, as I break free of the turbulence, I wonder where drag equals gravity and how much gas I’m saving by accelerating down a gradient. Christ, arterial routes are so dull, if I don’t find something else to think about I’ll soon be window shopping for my next car. I think about listening to music but most of the stuff I’ve got loaded into the changer is pretty charged and I need to stay focussed for this meeting. Over bright, deserted fields of monoculture a farm building wavers. What’s that? It has a banner on the side of it; “Beautiful Countryside, c/o British Farming”. This makes me wonder what it looked like before all the trees were cut down. The mood is plainly not good when you find idiocy in everything. Even the electronic traffic signs try my patience; ‘Plan your journey and arrive on time.’ What the fuck does that mean? It’s some kind of uber non-statement. I never plan my journey, I just drive around in circles until the muse takes me somewhere. What are they thinking of? In the space of fifteen minutes, cocooned in this steel box, three probably well-meaning but immovably partisan points of view have made an attempt on my sensibilities. There’s nothing in this for you or me but distraction. This kind of information is noise, litter on the landscape. I can do without it. Eventually I get to Portsmouth Naval Base where I collect my passes and make my way to the Mary Rose Museum, which recently failed its air leakage test. It’s not nice when one of your projects falls short but you can’t be part of it without accepting some degree of accountability, and today I must account for my part in it. When a building passes, everyone is your friend, things only get screwy around a failure and then you have to watch your step. On this occasion, failure has come from different directions and got us all surrounded. The designers and the builders messed up and I might have messed up too, by not being sufficiently robust in my comments. I was straight with them, but perhaps not hard or loud enough when it mattered. I feel sorry for them but it’s ultimately not my problem and today I’ve got to keep it not being my problem. That’s why I’m a bit twitchy, I can’t help but be affected by it, like everyone else, and I’m late into the bargain.

Luxury

Punctured, paused, projects popped, work brings in money but nothing else gets done. Nothing else gets done, it’s depressing but maybe I shouldn’t drink more than the recommended three small glasses of wine a week, then I’ll have more energy and more time. At least my car doesn’t breathalyse me, yet. The radio says this is coming and, thinking about it, this may be the answer. “Sorry, I can’t drive in to work this morning, the car won’t start. I had half a bottle of wine with dinner last night and, whoops, can you believe it? I failed the breath test.” Oh, the irony of it. Sadly, the truth is that discipline in private is, or will become, part of your job. You’ll never be truly off duty. If you like the odd drink you may have to wait until you’re on holiday, then you’ll have to hammer it hard to make up for lost time. Or time gained, in this instance. Make up for time gained, it’s so confusing. I sometimes wonder what I’m really saving for? That's money, time...or the environment, even. Where has fun gone? Messages are mixed. I suppose it depends where you start. It becomes easier if you do it, whatever it is, for your kids, or something like that. An external driver that you believe in - something like god. Business can’t do it alone, can you imagine, staying sober for business’ sake? I offer my sobriety to my boss, so that he may be able to live in luxury and splendour. It just doesn’t wash. But business sets its own rules and you either play by them or you don’t, you get ahead or you don’t. You become a boss before you get to wash your lunch down with a glass of claret. Again, this is irony, bosses probably can’t drink even more than the rest of us. One boss on the radio recently said that he valued a clear mind more than a good time – in fact, a clear mind was his good time. It’s an interesting point of view. Probably the best anti drink driver I can think of. A clear mind helps in all areas. In this scenario, work just happens to be included. But if I do it, it’s for clarity’s sake, not for profit, let’s just get that straight. This is one of those moments when I defeat myself, making my head spin with my own reasoning. I suppose it’s the difference between shoring up a bunch of familiar, if threadbare values and growing up in synergy with the zeitgeist. And let’s face it, in most of the rest of the world it’s a form of luxury to even have the time and space to posit the question. What is work doing to me? I mean, am I really doomed to be cash rich but culturally and spiritually impoverished? Jeez...pint? Anyone?

Just An Old Fashioned Lady

Thank god, I lean into the chiller cabinet and this makes me feel better. It was hot and dusty on site and close as hell in the dell, where I lost my virginity. The small shop in Goring where I stand staring at cold sausage rolls, provides an odd moment of relief to a crazy morning. I didn’t drive through that village and past the house where I had my first sexual encounter on purpose – I know this because the satnav had thrown me a dummy and I’d been gloriously lost for half an hour, touring single track lanes in blazing sunshine – but suddenly there I was.

The house was like the one in The Time Machine at 100 years from ‘present’, boarded up with broken windows to the upper floors. A large fir tree had collapsed onto the lawn which had overgrown the shingle drive. I saw the boarded opening to the basement where this boy became a man and, no one coming, I stuffed the brakes on. Whatever was going to happen next, this place was on the verge of changing beyond recognition so I did what anyone would and reached for my camera. Nothing wrong with a couple of snaps, a small memento of a very special time.

Stupid camera, I thought, focusing on the twigs in the hedge instead of the house beyond. The drive used to be up here a bit, a gap in the hedge, there was a stone with the house number on it and a gate...oh, no gate. Heck, no one about, I’ll just step into the garden and get a good shot of the old place.

I loved this house, I still think of some aspects of layout and design when I plan the house I’d like to live in one day. I first visited when the double height extension had just been built, with the double garage undercroft. You still had to step over a radiator marking the old external wall to get into the new bit, it was zany, I was in love, and I loved it.

Once in the garden, a legitimate boundary had been crossed, the hairs stood up on my arms, despite the heat, and the blood started to whoosh in my ears. Here is the strange lamp post, like Narnia, and over there the monkey puzzle tree where we sat having tea shortly before setting off in our Landrover, for Africa. Over by the garage there was an inspection pit, where my girlfriend’s brother played mechanic under his little Lancia and there was the back door. There was the back door...

Stepping through the back door into the kitchen, I was no longer really sane. The past erupted out of the walls and up through the floor leaving unrecognisable detritus everywhere. A strange pile of what looked like sawdust but could be puke, or a giant fungus, occupied the centre of the floor. The coloured glass window through to the dining room was missing but the poppy painted tiles and red ceramic sinks were just as they were thirty years ago.

Through the opening to the dining room I could see the 1970s silver wall paper. I sat staring at this while my girlfriend’s moody mother once interrogated us, “I can see that you’re both unhappy,” she said. She was supposedly a child psychologist, I was dumbfounded.

Drawn into all of this, seemingly without a say, and remembering that all was not unadulterated happiness in this house – once her mother said the dell, which was a quarry, gave her headaches because it collected positive ions – I stayed put in the kitchen.

I gave her daughter a baby which had to be taken out, because we were too young. Then this house became a forbidden place to me and now, out of the blue, I was back in it, and for a moment in the shuttered dark it was all mine. I had become exhilarated but quickly choked with sadness and found that I couldn’t go any further. I have two beautiful children and for forever I’ve wanted to make amends for the un-amendable. This knife is only whetted by becoming a father.

A last look around, in a vain attempt to reignite the happiness, I turn to leave and see something on the counter, amongst the junk mail, I have it with me now. It looks like a list of song titles written in the hand of an old person, all wobbly capitals. “I’m just an old fashioned lady” it says at the top. She would be old by now, the mum, and I have no idea where they’ve all gone.

When my mother died she left a poignant note, scribbled in the same wobbly hand on the back of a birthday card. It reads, Poz, come and get me before the storms, I’ll wait for you.