Have your cards already been taken from the shelf? Has that special bottle of beer they bought you been used by your wife to bait the slug trap? Have the children (dependent upon age) returned to vomiting down your work shirt; poking you in the eye with a spoon; throwing everything out of the shopping trolley faster than you can throw it in; slamming the bedroom door so fiercely that next door have to rearrange every photo they have hanging on their walls; reminding you that whatever you have said or done it is simply ‘just not fair’?
Don’t despair, it will be ok. By the time they go to Uni they will be talking to you; by the time they are in their thirties they will quite like you and by the time you reach sixty they may even have forgiven you for embarrassing them at their wedding. Parenthood is meant to be challenging – it stops contentment seeping in – and fatherhood is particularly so because you can’t even fall back on the ‘You should be grateful. I carried you for nine months. I protected you. I gave birth to you!’ All you’ve got is ‘I assembled the drawers in your bedroom’ which doesn’t have quite the same impact. Kids are a challenge that parents have to face up to, as parents are a challenge to kids – mind you, there’s only ever going to be one winner and it ain’t gonna be you, so you might as well suck that one in here and now.
Have you ever wondered why your stroppy, moody, needy, semi-bi-polar teenager seems ok to everybody else? It’s because they are. It’s not always easy to remember when they’re demonstrating what a crap parent you are, but realising that ‘JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!!!’ probably means ‘Give me five minutes’ is a good place to start. And don’t think for a second that I think I know the answers: I am no perfect dad. I scraped through, the same as everybody else. I’ve had my own moments of total irrationality; my own moments of knowing that I just got it all terribly wrong; my own moments of howling at the moon, but somehow we all came through it.
It is my experience that most young people are actually good people – they want to do the right thing. Of course, there are a few little shits – I fear I could have been one myself – but most emerge from pubescence as decent honest people and most of them will make the world a better place in which to live.
I have two beautiful daughters and just one single piece of advice to offer: stick at it dads. Unless you really screw it up, they will grow to like you (they’ll always love you – even when they hate you) and, in the end, you’ll all be much the better for it.
Oh, and by the way, find out where the cards have gone and store them carefully away. One day, when you’re not at your best, you will find them when you’re not looking and they will make you smile…
My Father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic. – Spike Milligan
I’m not certain just how I expected this to turn out when I started it, but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t quite so Pam Ayres. I was thinking about how, as you get older, your children turn to their partners for support rather than you (quite rightly, of course). Realising that you are no longer their Superman is quite jolting (even if the grandkids still think you’re cool). I remember feeling super-human when I was younger – indestructible – these days if I don’t watch myself I become increasingly anxious. This, I have decided, is stupid and I rail against it. My children do still call me when they want help. My superhuman cape no longer makes me feel invincible, but I still have my moments of being adequate. I can’t stop a speeding bullet, but I can still hang a shelf. I may no longer be Superman, but I’m still in there giving it a go. Watch out Lex Luthor, I’m limping towards you!
Superman
It’s no fun being Superman when your rheumatics are playing you up
And your hairline is receding and your teeth are in a cup.
When just changing in a phone box gives excruciating pain
And you wish you could get back to being just Clark Kent again.
It’s no fun being Superman when you’re not quite what you were
And you wish had a leotard, thermal lined with lots of fur.
When you stomach, like the crime wave, is spreading much too fast
And you realise your exploits are all stories from the past.
It’s no fun being Superman when your x-ray sight has failed
And you find you need bifocals just to read what’s in the mail.
When you find that where you flew one time at supersonic speed
You now can’t race the budgie ‘til he gives you five yards lead.
It’s no fun being Superman when the quiff’s gone from your hair;
When you try to flex your muscles, but you find there’s nothing there.
When a gentle, modest amble has replaced the supersonic
And the only super-strength you have is in your gin & tonic
It’s no fun being Superman when you’d rather run and hide
And your rippling thighs and biceps have now gone out with the tide.
When you wrap your cape around you just to keep you from the cold
And you’re not as scared of Kryptonite as you are of growing old.
It’s no fun being Superman when, as former man of steel,
You discover your whole being is just one Achilles heel
And your super-human body is just human flesh and bone:
It’s no fun being Superman when your super-days have flown.
(I tried, repeatedly, to give this a ‘redemptive’ last verse, but I couldn’t do it. And then I realised that the reason I couldn’t do it, is that it wouldn’t have been right. As long as you realise that not even Superman will be Superman forever, it doesn’t matter. Pour yourself a long one and enjoy the sunshine.)
As a parent, you are far too close to the action to feel any degree of child-rearing proficiency with your kids – there is a nagging suspicion eating away in the corner of your brain that you might well be about to fail your elementary parenting badge. You have all the pressure and responsibility that comes with producing the next generation of mature adults: you know you have to be strong at times, you have to set rules and you have to govern the observance of those rules. I remember how much I resented many of the rules set by my own parents, and I remember that I went on to set many of the same rules myself. Good parenting seems to be the art of doing all of the things you hated your own parents doing, without ever realising that you are doing them. I know that my own memories of my children’s childhoods will be different to theirs: I remember camping in the garden, drinking hot chocolate together and eating toasted marshmallows; I remember dancing madly around the house to Led Zeppelin on a Saturday evening before bedtime and the subsequent battle to stay awake longer than they did; I remember getting up very early on Christmas Day and sneaking downstairs to eat chocolate with them before breakfast. I remember the pure delight they brought (and still bring) into my life. Unfortunately, I fear that they remember the time that I got angry about something really trivial; the time I wouldn’t let them do something that they really wanted to; the time I wouldn’t let them have something they really wanted; the time I really embarrassed them in front of their friends. That’s the way it works…
As a grandad you have no such responsibility. As it is probably the last truly important thing you will ever do in your life, you are under some pressure not to screw it up, but, as a grandparent you are expected to spoil the grandkids, to encourage them to break the rules just a little. Grandads are meant to be silly. Grandads are meant to get into trouble with their own children. I have been overwhelmed by the sheer joy that my grandchildren have brought into my life. They give me far more than I will ever be able to give them. They have so much life, so much to look forward to – as long as we don’t bugger it up before they get there. They flood me with what forty years of work and worry has drained out of me: hope and optimism and fun. I never feel tired when I have the grandkids ‘round. When they’ve gone home however, that’s a very different story… As a grandparent you want to relish every second you get to spend with your grandkids, and that does mean that you become just a little bit like a puppy trying to please its owner: ‘You’ll only go to bed if you can jump up and down on me for ten minutes first? Ok, but try to avoid my dodgy knees…’ Sadly, grandads do damage fairly easily. But grandads will do all the voices when they are reading the bedtime story. They will swallow the ‘I need a drink. I need a wee,’ procrastination at bedtime. They will chat at 5am, provided it is in a whisper. Grandads are also allowed to tear a little hole into the time/space continuum every now and then. A half hour can stretch out quite a long way if you’re all having fun. Generally, there is not such a level of fuss when you all come home covered in mud if you’ve been out with grandad….
Being grandad is not something that you consciously prepare for, but it is a privilege to be embraced. I feel that I was born to be grandad. Give me a heavy shopping bag to carry and I’m done after ten minutes. Give me a squirming grandchild and I’m in for the day. Being grandad has consumed my former personality: when I am in grandad mode, everybody, including my wife and daughters, calls me grandad. I call myself grandad. I have discovered my superpower: I am Grandadman. Now, don’t get me wrong. I do realise – I’m not that stupid – that there will come a time when visiting grandad becomes a chore: when I tell the same old stories interminably, make the same old embarrassing jokes and always smell faintly of wee… Oh, hang on… It’s just all the more reason to enjoy it now.
One of my grandads died when I was very young and I have few memories of him (although I do, bizarrely, remember very clearly the day he died). My dad told me that he was a great man and I believed him. Why would I not? I have tried so hard to remember him, but I can’t. I know him, through photographs, but I can’t remember his voice, his smile, his jokes and I feel that loss even now. My other grandad was my childhood hero and I was aware, even as a young boy, of the need to spend as much time as possible with him while I could. He let me bang about tunelessly on his piano; he taught me to paint; he slipped a tot of rum into my half-time tea at a cold winter’s football match. Clumping around, doing ‘stuff’ with grandad always made me feel very grown up and I knew, for fact, that I could never come to any harm while I was with him. Everybody called him Pop. Pop, too, died much too soon. Both of my own children’s grandads did the same – although, thankfully they do have happy memories of them. In the end, that’s all we have to leave.
I was going to be Pop too, but when my grandson started to speak, he had other plans and as soon as he was able, he started to call me GraGra. Pretty soon everybody called me GraGra – except for my grandson, who had by then moved on and had taken the unilateral decision to start calling me grandad, which he did, and still does. Everyone, including my granddaughters, now call me grandad. Grandad is who I am and I am very happy with that. Being grandad is what I was born to be and I will be grandad until I die…
P.S. the photo is of stuff from my office that looks kind of grandad-y. I bang about (tunelessly) on the guitar, I wear the hat for thinking, and I do the crosswords when I’m on holiday. The stick and the car are just a representation of the junk I have about me as I write…
When I first saw the six word stories of PoojaG and Tetiana Aleksina/Tony Single I was, to say the least, intrigued. I am by nature an old windbag. I find it hard to stop myself before I have slopped six thousand words around the screen, never mind six. When I start, I seldom know where I’m heading until I get there. When I begin a piece I seldom have any idea of where I’m going to stop, until I hit the buffers.
So, what you have at the head of this page is my very own six word story. I was in some doubt as to whether what I had written actually qualified as a ‘story’, but when I looked it over it had a beginning, a middle and a definite end. It also had intrigue: it invited audience participation. (BTW, if you believe you know the answer, you are one of the lucky ones, don’t question your knowledge. Me? I struggle to understand the question.) It had, subject to your own imagination, the potential to encapsulate every possible plot device you can think of. I was quite pleased with it.
…And then my mind, as it does, skipped on. If I was to write an ‘average’ book-worth of such stories, it would contain ten thousand separate tales. Could any other author produce such an anthology? And if each story had a title? What if each title also included six words? A mere five thousand yarns in my collection. Not quite such an impressive tome perhaps, but still the source of a tale a day for within a whisker of fourteen years (allowing for bank holidays). More intriguingly, I could instead go for writing two blogs per hour, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, at my current output. (Obviously just one per hour with a six word title.)
But there is only so much one can take of a good thing, and God knows where that leaves me with just the fair-to-middling to offer.
I considered, briefly, the possibility of writing my blogs as I do now, before taking the scissors to them, à la David Bowie, and chopping out pithy six-word sections that would stand proud and profound in isolation. That, of course, threw up (or possibly down) yet another stumbling block: he was a genius, he could do that. I, in contrast, would probably end up with something that more closely resembled the contents of a six year old’s Scrabble board. Neither proud nor profound and probably, except in the most insubstantial of ways, not even a story.
And so, despite the manifold attractions of the six word way forward, I decided to return to the sort of claptrap that I am capable of producing, and to leave the six word stories to those who can do them, whilst I remain:
My granddaughter’s cot, it transpired, was in the wrong part of the room. When she came to visit it was fine: easily accessible, not too close to radiator or window, but when she was not around it was in the way. It needed to be in the corner, where the heavy cupboard was. I tried to move the cupboard – I really tried – but so immovable did it prove that I had to check behind it, to be sure that I had not, in a previous fit of pique, nailed it to the wall. I had not. The cupboard was not rendered fast by any manner of amateurishly applied anchor; it was made steadfast by the sheer weight of its contents. The path was simple: in order to reposition the cupboard, and thus the cot, I had to first disgorge its innards.
I opened the door and, with some trepidation, peered inside. There were piles of books – actually albums – all filled with the accumulated photographs that catalogued my life. Not just my own life, but that of my wife, her family, my family and our family. Six generations in that cupboard. No wonder it was a bugger to shift.
Now, the presence of the photographs meant that what was essentially a five minute job expanded to fill an entire afternoon. Photographs bring memories flooding back like nothing else. Memories of long-ago days by the seaside; memories of being a new, excited and just a teensy bit overwhelmed-by-it-all new parent; memories of events that the photographs suggest you almost certainly can’t actually remember (received memories I think they are called). Other things strike you: the realisation that you look just like your father; that your wife looks like her mother; that your children look both like you and their own children. And then you start to map out your own time-line in photographs and you begin to realise what sixty years have done to you. A chubby baby in a crocheted gown became a skinny child in a sleeveless Fairisle jumper, became an even skinnier youth in a tank-top and shades, became a three-piece-suited newly-wed, a shell-shocked bespectacled dad, a matching-suited father-of-the-bride and a T-shirted grandad. All of this with no perceptible change in what’s going on between the ears.
You see, the evidence is clear (indeed photographic): I have grown, I have changed, I have aged, but I don’t feel any different. Well, maybe just a little bit. Maybe I’m not quite as idealistic; a little more realistic, bordering on the fatalistic; definitely a little more jaded. Pessimistic/optimistic? Well, that depends: pessimistic about the planet’s future, but optimistic because it has my children to shape it and my grandchildren to live in it.
Anyway, I moved the cupboard and I moved the cot and then I packed my life away again and later, when my wife asked me what I’d been doing with my day, I couldn’t tell her that I’d just been moving the cupboard – because it took me sixty years to do it…
When I was much, much younger, I walked around a room accompanied by a lady with a clipboard and picked out my favourite gas fire. For my efforts, I was awarded with a Mars Bar and I can confidently state that that was the very last survey in which I ever willingly took part. However, based almost entirely on the basis that Inkbiotic finds me funny (I don’t know if anybody makes expandable hat bands, but if they don’t, I will suggest it to Marks & Spencer) and after the shortest of pauses which allowed me to look up ‘metaphor’, I decided, sort of, to take this one on in the best way I can…
So, What recurring dream do you have?Do you know why? Well, I have actually discussed the subject of dreams myself in my early blog and it would have to be the one where I suddenly realise that I am naked whilst walking to school. It’s a very common dream I think. (Please tell me that it is.) The only rational explanation that I can give for having this dream is that I am asleep.
If you could choose any name for yourself, what would you choose? Sexy would be a good one wouldn’t it? Not because it would suit me (Dog-Eared would do that much better) but it would just be such fun studying the faces of school teachers, employers, bank staff as they had to greet you with ‘Hello Sexy’. It would almost be worth the humiliation of constantly having it pointed out to you that you are not. In Junior School (I’m not sure that such a thing even exists now. Ages 7-11.) I wanted to be my best mate and I would have gladly taken his name. I think that by the time you are sixty, nominative determination has well and truly kicked in and so, I fear, I am now thoroughly Colin (Child in Gaelic) and that I shall remain.
What’s the weirdest fact you know? That’s a difficult one because my head is full of them, although the weirdest thing about most of them is that I know them in the first place. My dad had a friend who was ‘addicted’ to nature programmes on the TV and he told us once that he’d seen a documentary about a snake that, when hungry, slowly ate itself. My dad pointed out that if it did that, it would simply turn itself inside out, to which Charlie (real name) simply replied ‘It’s a fact!’ Now, whilst I am prepared to bow to such logic, I am pretty certain that it is not verifiable, so I am going to offer you something that, I believe, is: if spread out, the surface area of the human lungs would cover a tennis court (and, presumably, make breathing very difficult).
What’s a secret about you that no-one would ever guess? Easy. Am I telling the truth?
Do you prefer to stride or amble? Why? Stride. The most annoying thing in the whole world is a pavement blocked by an entire family of young, fit amblers.
Name a small thing that made you smile today. Photo’s of my grandkids always hit the button. Mind you, so do photo’s of Donald Trump’s hair in the wind. And Melania’s face whenever she’s with him. And the fact that Boris Johnson might one day be our Prime Minister – no wait, that’s not a smile: it’s a nervous tic.
What made you want to write or keep a blog? I have always written. I used to write for numerous humour magazines that no longer exist (worryingly, I appear to be the only thing that they had in common). Initially my blogs were basically magazine articles on a single, unified theme. Slowly they have evolved (although I do still like to throw in the odd old-school ‘skit’ from time to time.) Over the time that my blog has been going, I think that I have become a little more reflective and have probably revealed more about myself than anyone would ever want to know. You are my psychoanalyst! Get your notebooks out, we could be here for some time.
What was your best decision ever? Well, my wife reads this from time to time – if there’s nothing on the telly – so, I have to say that except for getting married it would be growing a beard. I have a very fair skin and, pre-beard, it was always sore. After shaving, I resembled an inside out pig. Now, I no longer feel sore, although I do still look like an inside out pig, just with a beard.
What could have gone wrong today, but didn’t? My life is a minefield: I could have ricked my neck getting out of bed; stubbed my toe getting into the shower; washed my hair with bleach-based toilet cleaner; put both contact lenses into the same eye; fallen down the stairs or, worst of all, put my pants on back to front – all of which are in my armoury, but none of which I have actually done today. I haven’t tripped over a kerb, crashed my shin against a coffee table, dribbled my lunch down my shirt nor my coffee down my trousers. Also, I haven’t spent the last hour staring blankly at the computer screen wondering what I was going to say.
For a week you can have any job you want and be good and successful at it, what do you choose? When I was young I used to read a comic strip called The Perishers and it had a character called Marlon. He could never decide whether he wanted to be a world-famous brain surgeon or a man that went down sewers in big wellies. I feel a bit the same and, despite the lure of Chief Taster at Cadbury, I have decided to think big. I would be Prime Minister of the UK of course. In my lifetime, I don’t remember anybody else ever doing that job successfully for a week. Of course, without the guarantee of success, it would be the last job on Earth I would ever want. Imagine being the person who believes they know better than everybody else. Imagine the people you would have to spend your days with. However, time it right and you could eradicate poverty, sort out the education and health services and totally outlaw savoury ice-cream. Why is that even a thing? It is for people who have lost all joy from their lives. Ice-cream has to be sweet. It should be drizzled in syrup and covered in sprinkles. It should have a Flake. It should form rivulets along the sides of the cornet and a puddle in your crotch. It should leave your fingers sticky for a minimum of twenty-four hours. It should not taste of snail and anchovy.
What’s the most inexplicable thing that’s ever happened to you? I cannot begin to explain… Honestly, the most inexplicable thing that ever really happens to me is that people put up with me. I would love to tell you that I have seen a ghost or met an alien, but I have not. I have, however, seen the future so, don’t worry, you will forgive me in time…
As for blogs I would recommend, well, Inkbiotic is my daily ‘go to’ and – I have had this independently verified – the best thing since sliced bread. I also love Tony Self’s The Self-Talk Show, which is a scattergun of mad ideas and V’s MILLENNIALLIFECRISIS which poses all sorts of questions and offers all sorts of insights, but there are many others.
P.S. The questions answered by Inkbiotic were posed by Land Manatee (who I am just about to check out) but I have just inadvertently brought up a photo of a real manatee. Now, all I know about this creature is that it is what the ancient mariners believed to be a mermaid. Well, I cannot tell you how these guys were passing their time, but something was making them blind…
I have written before about not knowing what to write about – it’s what I write about when I don’t know what to write about. It happens surprisingly often. Most days I get home with pockets full of scraps of scribbled-on paper which, when laid out on my desk somehow coalesce into something coherent. Or at least as close to coherent as I ever get. I write pretty much every day and I write twice as much as I need. I have a computer full of ‘Just in case I can’t think of what to write about’ pieces and I do raid them every now and then. I could publish twice the number of blogs I actually do, but I do not do so for two very good reasons:
1. I realise that I already skate upon the perilously thin ice of boring you to death, and doing so on an even more regular basis could very well be terminal for both of us, and…
2. Well, it’s tempting fate isn’t it? I know my brain. The very second I let it into my little secret ‘Listen, we’re easily writing enough waffle to get us through six blogs a week. I think I’m going to go for it.’ It will seize like an outdoor padlock and no amount of WD40 will get it open again.
This is the state into which my cerebrum has currently descended. It does so maybe once a fortnight. It hitches up its drawers and lurches off into its dark corner, pulling the door tight behind it, where it rocks gently back and forth, sucking its thumb and screaming for silence – I hate silence. Sometimes I leave it alone, knowing that by tomorrow it will be back to its old self and spewing out more tripe than I know what to do with, but other times I fear that its hermit days might become permanent and I need to face it out.
Shaping up to the content of one’s own head is not always straightforward. For a start, if it doesn’t want to come out to play, it isn’t always easy to make it. Coffee will sometimes drag it out; chocolate or whisky (all three if it is being unusually intransigent) but flushing the bloody thing out into the open isn’t guaranteed to make it co-operate. Sometimes it sulks like a five-year old child, swallowing its Lego so that it can’t possibly eat broccoli, sometimes it just stares at the wall. And you have to be particularly careful about where the confrontation takes place. What happens inside your head can quite often spill out of your mouth, and that seldom looks good on the bus.
I’ve been writing for many years: sometimes moderately successfully, sometimes less so, but always writing. I was taught long ago that writer’s block does not exist and, although I know very well that it does, I adhere to this mantra. What I was taught to do was to write – it doesn’t matter what – that the very act of writing will spur the brain into action and, after a little cough to clear its throat, it will start to drip gold onto the paper. I know people who routinely throw away the first thousand words they write every day because they know it will be junk. There are days when I would willingly go through their bins. There are many days when the first thousand words I write are the only thousand words I write and, junk or no junk, they are kept for future reference. It’s a bit like being bored to death by a 0-0 draw, but keeping the game on the recorder just in case you somehow missed a goal, despite the fact that you know the final score.
Now, I must ask you to indulge me here, I am not prone to navel gazing: it has never really helped me and anyway, I can’t do it without a mirror these days. What I am currently gazing at is (are?) my finger nails. Don’t worry, I have not pulled them out in a fit of pique: they remain attached firmly to my digits. A little too firmly in fact. You see, I have a nail which routinely splits along its length. (Yes, I would love to know why.) It drives me mad, so I have taken to superglueing it together. And, yes, I know you are miles ahead of me, what I am currently looking at is a handful of glistening finger nails, attached to fingers with which I dare not pick up anything. I cannot decide what to do with them. I cannot, for instance, type into Google ‘What should I do with a handful of superglue?’ knowing that I will get no further than ‘W’… and I do not want to become any more firmly attached to the keyboard than I already am. I dare not run them under the tap, as I’m pretty certain that it will just set my fingers in such a manner that to separate them will mean that I have to succeed where Al Capone failed; by removing my own fingerprints. I have no idea of the depth of skin on a finger, but I’m pretty certain that set superglue goes deeper. Anyway, what I am currently doing is watching it as it dries and typing, as best I can, with my one unaffected pinkie.
Ah yes, and there is one more thing you need to know. I am wearing a hat. It is my thinking hat. It didn’t start off as my thinking hat, you understand. It started off as my hat. I have a head that is generally unsuited to titfers, but I found this one last year and I liked it: my wife didn’t object too strongly and only one of my children refused to be seen with me whilst I was wearing it. So I wore it. However, spring has now unfurled into summer and a much lighter hat has become de rigueur. My grey felt hat has taken up residence in my office and I have developed a habit of wearing it whenever I am searching for an idea. Due to the finger-issue I have been unable to remove it. I do not want to take it with me wherever I go, so, on my head it remains until my fingers have dried. Still, it’s not all bad. It has given me the germ of an idea…
I am no longer chastised for not changing the toilet roll when it is empty. Indeed, so assiduous have I become in my dispenser reloading that I now often change the roll before it has reached its full potential (cardboard tube) and I have to search for somewhere to put it until it has run out. In fact, my greatest concern these days is whether I’m hanging the roll the wrong way round. (I have no idea what constitutes the right way round and I am certainly not about to ask.) In twenty years (should I live that long) it will become an art I have mastered.
My brain has great difficulty in accommodating the mundane. In fact, the more routinely an act is performed, the less my grey matter can be bothered with it. Consequently, actions that should become routine take forever to become engrained. Once they do, however, I am able to stop doing them only by sheer force of will.
Now, I have spent most of my life as ‘class clown’ – I am aware that most people grow out of that before they leave school, but it never quite happened for me. My brain has become so accustomed to the smart-arse remark that I often cannot help myself. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a filter that stops me being rude, offensive or inconsiderate, but it doesn’t seem to work so well when confronted with the right thing/wrong time conundrum: something said triggers a response that would be perfectly acceptable at any time, other than a funeral…
What has brought this all home to me at this particular time was that the other day a fellow blogger and first time reader was kind enough to spare the time to post a comment to say that he had enjoyed my most recent post. I replied in my normal flippant manner, and regretted it immediately. I realised, the very second that I pressed the ‘send’ button, that it was not the correct response. The correct response was, of course, as you will know, ‘Thank you very much,’ but I couldn’t resist the joke. I thought it would raise a smile, but instead, what it probably raised was hackles. What I need to do is wait a second. This is a lesson that I have to learn and I cannot wait for endless repetition to sort it out.
I have considered putting a disclaimer at the foot of each post: ‘I’m sorry if I offended you – I didn’t mean to.’ But I don’t think I’m actually offensive, just stupid: socially inadequate. In truth, I am the butt of most of my own jokes, but I feel guilty about that as well as I’m such an easy target. Like a big game hunter who only shoots sloths, I can’t help thinking I should take on something a little more challenging. Something that will at least attempt to move whilst the gun is being reloaded.
Anyway, you must excuse me, I return to the toilet. What I do there is I tell myself each time I go in, before I go in, ‘Don’t forget, if the toilet roll is empty, then change it before you come out.’ It seems to work. I prime myself before entry and, somehow, I do not then forget. It is what I must do before I open ‘comments’: ‘Remember, be polite before you try to be funny.’ I’m sure that even I can manage that – at least on initial contact. So, my only problem now is that although I will almost certainly remember to think before I reply, I could well still manage to do it the wrong way…
P.S. If you want to comment, I would love to hear from you. I promise I will be very polite…
… and the diet starts today. It’s the time of the year to try to starve this sad lump of a body into some kind of shape (strange phrase that – it’s already in some kind of shape: an amorphous sort of blobby one). Now, I’m not the most sophisticated of dieters. There are no fancy recipes, no points to count: generally I reduce my alcohol consumption to feature weekends only (the weekend, I should point out, starts on Friday, obviously) and I eat less chocolate (probably less of a challenge for me than eating more chocolate – after all, there are only so many hours in a day) and… well, I have to be honest, that’s about it really.
I’ve never really understood calorie counting. If you’re that bored, you could try counting the spikes in the Artex to similar effect. I have a simple principle really: trousers are getting tight, either a) lose a bit of weight or b) buy some new trousers and I cannot tell you how much I hate clothes shopping. So, my waist being somewhat more malleable than my waistband, it is the obvious place to start.
I’m not hugely overweight (pounds rather than stones) – I would say rotund rather than obese – and I’m relatively fit: I walk a reasonable distance each day and I cycle during the summer (as I cannot function in the cold). I can get my arse out of the chair without becoming too breathless. I played football until I was well into my 50’s – hence the on-going battle to get my knees to bend in the morning – but I don’t take any kind of formal exercise; no gyms or classes or anything else where I am forced to look my porky age whilst others do not. Meeting new people leaves me rigid with fear. I have no idea what meeting a new group of people all dressed in lycra might do to me. And, whilst we’re here, I really do not like public swimming pools. I’m a very weak swimmer and, while I’m perfectly happy to bob around in the shallow end with the grandkids, I would look a bit weird without them.
Now, it was my intention to tell you my starting weight, but I can’t. The battery has gone in the bathroom scales so, unless I can find some means of perching on the kitchen scales, the diet will have to be postponed until I get a new one: what would be the point of losing weight without knowing it? It’s all about verification isn’t it? Tomorrow I will buy a new battery and I will weigh myself before I start to diet so that I am aware of every single gram that I lose. And, in a week or two, when my trousers have become too loose, I will be faced with another dilemma: buy new trousers or eat more chocolate. If you want my advice, buy shares in Cadbury now.
*The spring has sprung, the grass has ris I wonder where the birdy is Some people say the bird is on the wing But that’s absurd, for I would say the wing is on the bird.
(My mum’s favourite springtime quotation)
In addition to plants, bushes, stones, ants and cat-poo, the garden is also home to some slightly more ‘architectural’ features. In the final part of our little guide, we will take a look at things, other than your bedding plants, which do not grow…
Barbecue – What’s not to love about a summer barbecue? (Answers on a postcard please.) Metal or brick, charcoal or gas? Matters none: by next spring everything that is metal (including tongs, fish slices and those long, pointy forky things that you never quite got round to washing last year) will be rusted. Everything that is not rusted will be coated in a thick layer of congealed fat, soot and gristle. Last year’s charred leftover sausage and burgers will remain welded to the grill as not even the rats will eat them. If you really must eat charred meat and lukewarm potato salad, always do it in someone else’s garden – preferably with the St John’s Ambulance in attendance.
Bonfire – The only reason most men will ever willingly venture out into the garden. Everybody loves a good burn-up. It is advisable not to light a garden bonfire when neighbours have windows open or washing out. Burn at night: it will be seen for miles and every male in the neighbourhood will appear with something wooden to burn and a bottle of something warming to drink. Safety is paramount: always wear thick, flameproof gauntlets, a protective visor and non-flammable leggings – or don’t. Position the fire away from sheds, fences, trees and children. Always check beneath the fire for hedgehogs – preferably before lighting. Never start a bonfire with petrol – I don’t know why. In my experience, bonfires generally take about two hours to light and two weeks to extinguish.
Compost heap – In these days of ecological consciousness it is imperative that a garden has a compost heap on which to put vegetable peelings, dead plants and grass cuttings. It should be situated in an area behind the shed, preferably closer to your neighbour’s house than your own. The vegetable matter within the heap will decompose and form an evil-smelling brown slime that both looks and smells like nothing you have ever bought from a garden centre. Cover it with thick plastic sheeting and try to ignore the flies. Leave undisturbed until the neighbours complain – then move.
Fences and hedges – A useful method of promoting conversation between neighbours – often very loudly. The main thing to remember about fences is that they are never in the right place. When they fall over, they are always yours. Hedges, on the other hand, are unlikely to fall over, but their roots are much more likely to undermine next-door’s conservatory and block the drains of the entire neighbourhood.
Garden furniture – Plastic, wood or metal. In Spring and Summer, garden furniture will turn your garden into an open-air lounge/dining room. In winter it will turn it into a ‘how do we get all this lot down to the dump?’ conundrum.
Garden ornaments – Statues, birdbaths, sundials, unidentifiable chunks of rock – when installing a heavy garden ornament, rigorous preparation of the ground is essential to ensure that the ornament does not lean grotesquely and fall. Garden ornaments always lean grotesquely and fall eventually unless propped up with old spades and broom handles. Do not worry, it doesn’t matter. The sundial will, in any case, be orientated in such a way that it only gives an accurate time for Saigon. After fixing it in place, you will find that it is in permanent shade anyway. The birdbath will be full of something green and stagnant that not even thirsty birds will touch. Despite what the salesman may have told you, a large chunk of ugly rock will always be a large chunk of ugly rock, wherever you put it.
Greenhouse – Basically a see-through shed. During the summer the greenhouse will contain mildewed tomatoes, withered cucumbers and brown, slimy lettuces. During the winter it will contain all the rubbish that won’t fit in the shed. Greenhouses are the ideal environment in which to grow fruit and veg varieties that are not hardy enough for our fickle climate. In the greenhouse they will remain protected from frost and wind and will die within minutes if not watered continually. Three things you must always remember about the greenhouse:
1. It is not a house
2. It is seldom, if ever, green
3. It is glass. It will break in excessive heat; heavy rain; lying snow, and the presence of children.
It is possible to replace glass with polycarbonate panels which do not break. They do however turn a strange opaque yellow on being exposed to sunlight, shrink and fall out. In my experience, the average greenhouse will usually comprise a haphazard combination of glass, polycarbonate and black plastic bin-bags. It will be filled with dead plants, but will be better next year.
Shed – A dry, generally wooden, store in which to protect your gardening tools and to raise the local mouse population. The smell, when you open the door, is probably a putrefying toad. The content, by volume, of the average garden shed is generally far greater than the volume of the shed itself. (If you don’t believe me, just empty one out and then try to get it all back in.) A correctly maintained shed is much like Dr Who’s Tardis – except that where the Tardis contains an almost infinite variety of rooms, interconnected through a veritable labyrinth of dark-cornered corridors and secret passageways, the shed contains shit. Also the Tardis doesn’t leak. A shed, like its close cousins the loft and the cupboard-under-the-stairs, has an almost unrivalled capacity for the accumulation of ‘stuff’ for which you have no further use. The shed differs from a greenhouse in that things do grow in it. They should not be touched without thick rubber gloves and should be burned when the wind is blowing towards somebody else’s house. Remember that all electric equipment stored in the shed over winter will blow up the fuse board and melt the fillings in your teeth next spring.
Tools – Most gardening tools (hand or electric) secateurs, hedge-clippers, spades, forks, lawnmowers, negligently placed rakes – have the potential to remove chunks from the unwary user. Keep them as blunt as possible. Broken/rusted garden tools should never be thrown away nor, if possible, replaced. When anything electrical gives up the ghost, cut off the flex and store it in the back of the shed. Everyone does it. No-one knows why.
Getting On 