Men at Arms

The boy announced this week that he is going to joining the school army cadet force much to my horror. I practice utter respect for the professionalism of our armed forces, but cannot understand why anyone would (potentially) lay their life down for a dusty corner of a godforesaken corner of the globe fighting poeple who will never have the ability to launch attacks with just 40 minutes warning.

Young boys all seem to have a fascination with weapons of any sort and the boy is no different. I've never really known how to deal with this...when he was younger I let him play with cheap and nasty toys of war in the hope that if they broke quickly (which they did) he would lose interest (which he didn't). No doubt his enthusiasm is fuelled by any number of Playstation games that involve death and violence to an unnecessary degree.

Of course, there is a large degree of hypocrisy on my part, as I too was in the Cadets, albeit air focused rather than ground focused. My argument that in those days we were never at war with anyone, doesn't wash with me let alone him. I could simply say no, but that seems equally unreasonable...but any thoughts of a career in her majesty's forces would be severely frowned on. I think I'm over-reacting...after all, most of what they do seems to be little more than an extended outward-bound course...in fact the outdoor skills, the discipline that they teach are pretty useful...and (selfishly) the camps will occasionally give me a nice little break.

So into uniform he will go, hopefully playing nothing more than toy soldiers as boys (and indeed girls) do. But woe be tide if he takes it too seriously.

Splish, splash, vroom, vroom

Hoorah!
It was finally sunny for the first time this summer in Brighton at the weekend. With nothing planned, it meant that on Saturday we dusted off the kayaks which we keep at Brighton Watersports and went for a paddle.

The kayaks were bought some four years ago when I had my arm twisted by the boy and was emotionally blackmailed by The Wicked Witch of the West (aka Grandma in Wales)..."the money's here, it would be a shame if he didn't get one, etc etc". We'd been to the Boat Show, and he'd got all excited...naturally enough...five minute wonders are like that. The problem was that living in a top floor flat, there was no where for the kayaks. Fortunately, if you're down on Brighton beach the watersports shop that will rent out kayaks to passing punters will also store those belonging to people daft enough to buy but not be able to look after their craft.

We have had some fun in them over the years...my favourite was catching a fish....it is a soft fluffy one which was a pier prize that had been cast aside...I still have it. You also get great views of Brighton, and the West Pier that you wouldn't otherwise - if I could work out how to safely take my camera out to sea without the danger of it getting wet, or find itself in Davey Jones locker I'd take a picture or two. I've always been the strongest paddler, but this weekend showed that the boy now has arm muscles that a tennis player would be proud of...so most of the two hours was spent with me huffing and puffing trying to keep up with him.

Sunday and it was time for Brighton to be overwhelmed with motorbikes...it was the annual (I think) Ace Cafe Reunion/Brighton Burn up. So once roused from our slumbers by a friend who gave us just half an hour to get up and meet her for a coffee on the sea front (we didn't make it) we stumbled down to Madeira Drive to gape open mouthed at all the different machinery on display. I think initial enthusiam turned into a degree of boredom after five hours of walking up and down the Drive in the unexpected heat...which is good news because much as I like bikes and I want one (to supercede my much-loved Vespa), I don't want the boy having one before he's at least thirty five...I've told him so on many an occasion, but I suspect it's falling on deaf ears. So I'm hoping that if he gets bored, then he'll decide that once he's seventeen, a nice little Fiat will do him...nicely...

Keeping secrets

We all have secrets from our parents. Some are simply there because there's no reason to tell Mum and Dad everything, some because they're embarassing so best avoided...and for some people I guess there are deep, dark secrets that nobody should know about. I suspect we all have at least one of those.

So it was with a certain sense of nervousness that I decided to let the boy's grandmother be privy to this little blog. So "Hello Mum" as they say on TV.

I do also occassionally let the boy have a read too...selectively though.

Grandma in Cyprus as she is now known (as opposed to Grandma in Wales) moved to sunnier climes eighteen months ago with step father and two Jack Russell terriers. The planning for the move took long enough that for about a year she was known as 'Grandma not in Cyprus'. She's 76 and since moving, they've got a nice little business going taxiing holiday makers from the airport to their hotels and villas, and also a little car rental business. All done with ex-pat friends. Impressively enough, they've just bought a scooter to buzz around on when a car isn't needed.

We speak often enough, but phone calls tend to be relatively time-limited, so hopefully Man and Boy will add some colour and flavour to our conversations and bridge the geographic distance. And equally, should anything so incredibly embarassing be worth recording here, Grandma will avert her eyes.

Food for thought

Last night we had a minor meal disaster. On the menu was pork steaks in a mustard and honey sauce, new potatoes, and broccoli tips. The sauce, by the way, was out of a tub from Waitrose. We were running late as I'd finally decided I couldn't avoid the supermarket trip any longer...I'd love to have the weekly shop delivered, but have always found the task of making the online shopping list just too much...so £150 out of pocket, we were aiming to eat by 9ish.

At the witching hour, a quick prod with the fork...and disappointingly the 'tats hadn't even started to cook. A return match ten minutes later revealed a soggy lump of disintegrated potato at the bottom of the saucepan. Somewhat deflated, I scooped it onto the plate and then went to add the pork. err the near raw pork. So we ate French style - vegetables first, meat half an hour later (I don't believe I've ever come across a French person that does this...but I was told once upon a time so it must be true.

Cooking has been a constant challenge over the last four years...too often a dry piece of meat and a couple of soggy veg have been my best attempt...inspite of in the distant past being able to tackle student favourites like chilli con carne, pizza (from scratch I must add defensively) and so on. Most recently we've been buying sauces to liven up otherwise dull meals and have made a concerted effort to broaden our culinary horizons...but I guess there'll always be the occasional set-back.

My biggest worry is that come university, the boy will not even be able to reach the heady peaks of cheese on toast....it's a shame his mother is not here to help him along...she was rather clever in the kitchen turning out any number of delicious dishes, although sometimes I wondered whether she was right in trying to turn all and every left over into soup.

The honeymoon is over, over

Last week saw the return to school...I'm not sure why it was last week, as the rest of the private schools didn't return until this week...in fact neither did most of the state schools as they enjoyed the benefit of inset days (I prefer to think of them as insect days as the boy used to refer to them when he was knee-high to a grass hopper).

But after much excited anticipation, it seems we are currently being educationally-challenged. He returned after day one with a VERY GLUM look...his decision to plump for music as one of his options was a 'mistake' and he didn't know why he'd done it. He done it because he loves playing the guitar, so music was a wise choice. And the alternative was electronics which would have involved the use of maths. Which is not a strength, It would have been a poor choice. My offer to ring the school and try and make a change was dismissed out of hand. YOU CANT CHANGE NOW.

And now EVERYTHING is wrong...even having the history teacher who thinks he walks on water is bad because ...errr...err because. I swear she has a crush on him...but as she often brings her girlfriend to events...I don't worry. And there's a substitute teacher for another subject and she's horrible. But the proper teacher (who he's never been taught by) would be excellent. And he's not (yet) in this year's rugby team inspite of expensive new boots 'because I'm not good enough'. And he's got lots of homework.

There's an unwritten agenda here which will no doubt pop out.....soon(ish)

Traditional sports

This week we indulged in some traditional sports. I know many people feel that these should be banned, and are completely inappropriate in a modern civilised society, but my view is that they've been around for centuries, and British society is built on tradition...abandon that, and the Ravens will flee the tower. Further, traditional sports are a humane way of controlling something that otherwise would be a nuisance and I think there are enough aggravations without adding to them.

The traditional sport we chose this weekend was hair cut baiting. This involved weeks of saying 'your hair needs trimming' whilst the boy did his best to avoid the inevitable. He did well, managing to out fox me all summer long...often going to ground when I thought I was closing in on the final cut. But his resistance couldn't last forever, and on Saturday I managed to corner him in the Turkish? Greek? Cypriot? barbers in Hove. His resistance was short-lived and he emerged with his hair cropped to a 'sensible' length.

Unlike fox hunting though, that was not the end of the matter and I was given a fair degree of grief for the rest of the weekend. The cut was far too short and everyone at school would laugh at him. It was my fault. It's always my fault because I always tell the hair dresser to chop off more than the boy says. There wasn't much point in me saying that the reason people notice he gets his hair choppped is because he leaves it too long between trims. How unreasonable of me. Of course, this is the boy that took his hair paste (not wax, not gel) camping even though the need for a shower necver seemed paramount.

And this is the father who grew up in the days when long-haired rockers such as Led Zep, Slade and The Sweet ruled.

Time for a new alarm clock

For the last thirteen years I've enjoyed the benefit of an organic alarm clock. Unfailingly it went off and arose me gently from my slumbers. Admittedly in the early years, reliability was not a strong feature, sometimes causing me to rise several times a night. However, particularly in the last two years, the organic alarm clock has been fabulous, particularly on weekdays. Going off at exactly the right time, descending to the bathroom, allowing me an extra five or ten minutes snooze time.
But now it's all gone wrong.

The boy has decided that his early rising merely means that he gets into to school fifteen minutes before anyone else, so other than kicking his heels, he's got nothing to do. So he is going to take an extra fifteen minutes in bed. There are many downsides to this. Not least of which is that as I still have to trek to the office at the same time, I have to get up first, switching on the lights and organising everything. Not only that, our bathroom times now clash...especially if I need breakfast before a shower...so it's a bit of a race to get in first. And finally, it's made me nervous that we're on the slippery slope to teenage angst and the need to do significant cajoling to raise the boy from bed.

Kids they're so unreliable.

Long way round

As the boy’s mother always said, ‘a mother’s place is in the wrong.’ And so it was at the start of our great adventure from one end of the A5 to the other. According to the boy, I chose the wrong place to have our pre-drive breakfast (The Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch…and yes it was phenomenally expensive at £18.95 each and yes it was served in a room more akin to a chamber in a Siberian salt mine and yes it was certainly not up to British Rail standards…although we could have had ‘Arab breakfast’…whatever that is.) I won’t go back again. And I shouldn’t have chosen the Hundred House Hotel, as it was too far off the A5. I’m not sure having a swing in the bedroom made up for it, nor did the most delicious lamb ever for dinner. But I would go back…it’s brilliant. And I shouldn’t have booked Bryn Gloch campsite. Again too far off the A5…and full of other kids, families and their caravans…chosen out of the Cool Camping book, it was anything but ‘cool’, but was certainly family-friendly and with good amenities…but not part of an ‘adventure’. My excuse was that in high season it would be daft to travel without somewhere to stay. But I wouldn’t go back again.

Fortunately I didn’t stay in the doghouse all week…although the start of our week was certainly strained. Not helped by the boy ‘forgetting’ to bring any pocket money with him and leaving his glasses behind…and his initial reluctance to map read. My comment that he wasn’t pulling his weight didn’t help matters in the way it should or was meant to. Oops...

A nasty stomach bug the day before we left and a sleepless night meant that I was less than 100% as the car pulled out of the drive in the morning…but I was as excited as a school boy in the tuck shop.

Driving the length of the A5 in a swanky BMW might not have the same challenge as going round the world on a bicycle (Mark Beaumont) or on a motorcycle (Charlie Boorman and Ewan MacGregor)…but it did have it’s moments. Not least because modern route planners have built numerous by-passes which claim the title A5, even though the original road goes a different way…as far as possible we stayed to the old road. Highlights included ‘Shoot-up Hill’ in north London (presumably long before this was a drugs reference) and just outside Milton Keynes another Loughton like the town which forms the second corner of the WAG’s triangle of which we are the first. We learnt that most English market towns were completely interchangeable long before the multiples gave every high street the same set of shops…but up towards Bedfordshire there were an awful lot of very closed shops indeed.

We stopped for the night in Shropshire and discovered the very delightful Bridgnorth as well as enjoying Ironbridge and associated gorge. Telford seems to have matured into quite a reasonable town too…and most importantly we managed at last to acquire the very vital Campingaz gas that we needed for our camp cooking.

The dreaded rain descended as we reached Snowdonia, depriving us until the end of the week of the tops of the hills, let alone the mountains. We managed to erect the tent in a gale with the boy hanging on for dear lif as I hammered in the pegs (note to self…don’t forget the rubber mallet next time as rocks are not always going to be at hand)…and then began our daily excursions to copper mines, slate mines, hydro-electric power stations, castles (2), and The Prisoner village which kept us mostly dry and mainly amused. Note to everyone – if you go to Portmeirion look out for the signs on the beach which say ‘Dangerous currents and quicksand’ as they’re quite important.

We chose the middle of the week to finnish off the A5 as our campsite was somewhat short of the distance…and it felt like a real achievement..and a moment to be treasured. And the sun came out.

Our other achievement was hiking up Snowdon..it’s a long haul…but as I get a bit giddy at heights, it was probably for the best that the peak was shrouded in clouds.

So was it father/son bonding time – yes…probably. I said to the boy that with the beauty of hindsight I’d have done some things differently (taken a chance on finding somewhere to sleep, a few more activities such as kayaking, etc)…and hopefully he appreciates that the more you contribute, the more you’ll get out of something. I so much appreciate his energy, enthusiasm and carefree-ness….and hopefully he understands my ‘fatherlyness’. We certainly had a memorable time…and it’s a holiday that will improve with age I think…and I hope we have more road trips to plan.

Personal time and space

A topic dear to my heart...but to date beyond the comprehension of the boy. However, a week in Brighton seems to have stirred some changes. The Boy had a Friend to stay for the week...a blessing for me as this was my week of working from home. In the past when Friends have descended, it's been a case of seeing how many can cram into onne bedroom...silent acceptance on my part that boy conversations will continue long into the night after my eyes have closed for the day. However the bedroom arrangements were different...each boy having their own room - their choice not mine It seemed to work well.

For me, hopefully this will mean that I will be able to recapture some of my own personal space. When the boy was younger, my personal time was those three of four precious hours after he had gone to bed. Four hours was good...I enjoy my own company. But as he has grown, the time has been whittled away until now, I'm generally gently snoozing on the sofa after supper long before he feels the need to ascend the stairs...so my time alone is a groggy never land of semi-consciousness switching off the TV and lights some unspecified time later.

I rarely have personal space in the bathroom, as there's always existed an open door policy...so my own fault really. When I'm working, the journey in on the scooter is good personal space and time...my favourite time of day.

So the next week will be interesting...our first 'Road trip'...from one end of the A5 to the other to camp in the middle of Snowdonia. Apart from a first night spent in the Hundred House Hotel near Ironbridge, the others will be under canvas. For me there is a certain movie romance to this and we've been looking forward to/planning it for months...let's hope the close proximity of being in the tent whilst the forecast monsoon comes down outside will help us both appreciate space and time....

When did your child stop holding your hand?

I don't know, but I suspect if you have a girl, the answer is "never", if it's a boy if your lucky, may be six, probably younger...it's the first sign of independence. In The Boy's case, I think if my shaky memory is right it was thirteen. That's not entirely fair...it stopped when he was six and a half, but this weekend was very much a hand holding weekend.

We went off to our first Festival (a right of passage for both of us)...V Festival in Stafford...frustratingly we had not been able to get Chelmsford which is just fifteen miles away. The Boy's first concert was Turin Brakes at Somerset house when he was eight...the ideal first concert and they have remained a firm favourite ever since...perhaps the inspiration for him learning the guitar now. But the festival is all-new...as is camping.

Some observations:

1. Pissed blokes - drinking starts at 8 in the morning and carries on until well probably 3 or 4 in the morning. Unlike Brighton on a Saturday night, getting drunk doesn't involve starting a fight...boisterous behaviour, yes but generally very good humoured. The Pissed blokes category also includes pissed women...

2. Glamorous Girls...yes inspite of the fact that they're caked in mud up to their ears, haven't washed for three days, they still insist on applying the lippy and a short skirt to match their decorated wellies. There are also Glamorous Guys...they simply wear whatever is the Festival Fashion...but certainly undertsand the need for a 'look'

3. Pissing Blokes...men will urinate anywhere even without eight pints down their throat. Fences are a favourite, but even in the middle of the crowd listening to the Kooks, nothing gets in the way of a man desperate enough to get his willy out. Having said that, it is the age of equality, and girls now seem free to go anywhere...sometimes with a friend holding a jacket infront of their lady parts to protect their modesty (!!!), sometimes not...my favourite was the girl who pissed against a wall...I think that's an achievement fraught with risk?

4. Festival toilets...oh I just can't think of that. Ever, ever again.

5. After the inevitable rainstorms and the end of the festival, the long lines of bedraggled festival goers resemble nothing more than a line of refugees...we are only one band away from the end of humanity.

6. Possibly my second favourite companion was the worm that had burrowed into the mud on my shoes...it was that deep...and thought he had found a rich seam in which to live. I gave him freedom!

We managed to be front of stage for The Stranglers, and next to 'Young People' who had never heard of Squeeze...sacrilege. Generally we were front of stage for most acts...perhaps my competitive streak means that I have to, have to be at the front. Good for most groups...but The Stereophonics it all got a bit too boisterous...hence the mutual hand-holding...it'll never happen again!

For the record - Muse were stunning, as was Lenny Kravitz, Amy Winehouse won't be around in five years, Duffy is a belter and it was good to see old favourites like Echo and the Bunnymen.

How long are the summer holidays?/I wish I was a mother

I'm sure I'm not alone in remembering the long hot school holidays of our youth. Days of eternal sunshine matched with endless forays into distant countryside on cycles and interspersed with dips in ponds until chased away by irate farmers. So how come The Boy's summer holiday is going on for an eternity of rain, wind and a wintry chill. Rather than meet up with friends, he'd rather spend his days on MSN...or sometimes more productively learning the next Stereophonics song to play on his guitar. Vague thoughts of coming into town with me to go to the climbing centre are long gone.

It does appear though that some of the mothers at the school are better at putting their kids together, and I hear the odd tale of children going on holidays with other families. So it seems that my joint role as mother and father is not quite as successful as it should be. From my lop-sided viewpoint I think that women are much better at building networks for both themselves and their offspring. Last year it all seemed to work better with holidays with two grandmothers and friends leaving just a week or so of down time...this year an unrelenting disaster. :-(

Flash the cash

I was reliably informed last week that we live at one corner of the Wags Triangle...which consists of Loughton, Chigwell and our very own Buckhurst Hill. Its a bit like the Bermuda Triangle but with a bit more gold, fake tan and bleached blonde hair. However the more I think about the more a fairly unpalatable image of living in a WAG's triangle sticks in my head. May be a therapist can sort me out.

Living where we do is like living in a cartoon as everybody is stereotypical Essex...right down to the white stiletto boots and fish-wife language spoken in Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney voice....

...and in the same way he always had a wad of cash, so too is it here. Up at Woodford Green, there's a tatty little Italian restaurant that always has (literally) two Bentley Continental GT Convertibles parked outside as well as various Porsches, Range Rovers and sparkly cars. It only takes cash...no cheques, no credit or debit cards. And the same is true of The Player, a very swanky restaurant down Buckhurst Hill High Street. As I never carry more than £100 cash at a time, we'll never be welcomed with open arms.

Just up the road, is the brand spanking new RS Lounge club, bar and restaurant...I think they might take cards, but the VIP tables have a 'minimum spend policy'...the opening night, to which we were not invited included numerous actors and actresses (apologies to the PC set) from East Enders, Coronation Street and the like...I didn't know who they were until I googled them. Fortunately I knew the DJ - Boy George, and I hope he was doing it with a twist of post-modern irony!

We love Essex we do...but methinks the boy and I will always be outsiders...the tan painfully gained by lying flat out on the pebbles of Brighton Beach for five hours a couple of weeks ago seems to agree by having peeled itself from by back, my front, my legs and arms leaving me rather blotchy rather than the smooth orange that marks a true born and bred Essex boy.

The art of origami

Origami is a wonderful ancient art of turning something very dull into something remarkably interesting; something of little value into something that aesthetically is priceless. I wonder if all parents should learn origami so they can teach it to their offspring. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that if children knew the art of folding, then life would be less fraught. Examples where it could be applied are as follows:

towels in the bathroom - usually abandoned in the middle of the floor in a damp mound - but even when after some strong encouragement to put them on the rack, they still are just screwed up...evidently so long as they don't touch the floor then that is on a par with my own neatly folded and hung towel

laundry - extracted from the washing machine is either just stuffed into the airing cupboard...presumably on the assumption that because as it was washed on the reduced crease setting, then no matter how tightly crushed together the garments, they won't crease...or thrown over the rotating washing line (what is the proper word for one of those?). Last week saw the boy put his clothes on the line on Monday morning...well piled on top at least...and there they stayed through the rain on Monday night, into Tuesday and indeed Wednesday, before being hauled in on Thursday...and piled on top of the washing machine door. Well rinsed, and looking like crepe paper. I should mention that I was on strike, having been frustrated by the constant mess in his bedroom. Eventually I relented and folded the washing into the airing cupboard.

Ironed clothes...yes folded already...but regularly to be found scrunched up on the bedroom floor, or if they've made it into the drawer, stuffed in like a finger in a leaking dyke....


If all else fails there is always http://www.videojug.com/ where you can see a T-shirt being folded in a couple of seconds.

Can I have a pet?

We're currently being stalked by grasshoppers...I'm not sure what we've done to upset them. Last week a survey of the numerous spiderswebs which afflcit our house revealed a VERY LARGE bug with long feelers hiding on the coving of the sitting room. From where I stood, it could have been anything...but certainly didn't seem like the sort of creature that should be in joint residence with us.

Spiders are slightly different..they are just damned persistent, and it doesn't matter how often we sweep away the cobwebs, they just keep coming back...strange though, because there never seems to be any flies around for them to eat. But then perhaps that's why. None the less, if there are any spiders reading this I just want to say that I don't want another occasion of pulling back the bed covers to be faced with a spider scurrying down the underside of the duvet. Please.

Ants are different again - we have an annual invasion, first seen when the boy left a mostly eaten melon on the living room floor one evening. As I rose from the sofa to ascend to Bedford, I noticed that the melon had ceased to be entirely yellow, sporting rather fetching dotted black lines which moved in a slightly hypnotic fashion. Many cans of fly killer, ant killer and killer killer later, the earth was sporting a much larger hole in the ozone, but at least we were free from ants...inside the house at least. Since then it's been the Battle of the Somme...there's almost certainly a nest in the wall, but persuading a builder to come and remove enough bricks so we can nuke them has just elicited the response that "They'll only come back".

With a degree of trepidation I stood on a chair, reached up and managed to sweep the surprisingly docile creature into a glass. This operation was carried out rather more successfully than when we had a seagull fall down the chimney of the Brighton flat. He'd been there a few days before we came for the weekend, and had wreaked the sort of devastation that now makes my lip curl if anyone ever says it's lucky to have a bird crap on you. Jonthan Livingstone was removed eventually by throwing a large towel over him and then gently offering him up to an open window. Having captured our mini-beastie we decided, in the short term at least, to keep him as a pet called John (not my choice). He stayed long enough for us to decide that he was indeed a very lost grasshopper, although ex-girlfriend, our oft-called on entomologist unhelpfully claimed that he was 'gigantus green fliius'. As he was the size of my thumb, I suspect he is suffering the same cause of obesity that now afflicts the majority of the UK's population (am I wrong in my statistics there?).

Since then there's been a second one in the bathroom, in early stages of death, and now one behind my desk at work in the later stages of mumification. I swear I've never been so close to wildlife before.

We liked having a pet. But inspite of repeated requests, it's the only one we're ever likely to have...I grew up with many dogs, many more cats and a smattering of rabbits, guinea pigs and gerbils, not to mention a fish tank and loved each aned every one of them. But I know who will have to take the dog out for a walk every night, who'll have to go searching for a dead cat squashed by a car on the nearby road...and indeed who would look after creature when we holiday.