The Joys and Dangers of The Great British Seaside Holiday (Part 1)

I have just celebrated my 12th wedding anniversary. I say celebrated: we spent the weekend in a permanent caravan on the South Coast of England in one of the worst Spring weekends for weather on memory.

We have been to this park* a number of times before. It all started when the wife and her sisters got codes for cheap weekends away at such establishments although we’ve only been at the same time as one sister one time. We did find however that this particular place had a lot to do that Boy loved so we booked up this weekend as soon as we left last years. This was our first mistake. Last year Boy was not at school. This year he was and we therefore had to beg him a day off. Really we only got this because we had a) already paid for him and b) he has only missed one or two days all year. We realise this is naughty and won’t happen again.

What we did not realise is that caravans are potential death traps. Or at least they are with an 18 month old bent on destruction and investigation of every object in the room. I worry sometimes that our house is less than toddler-proof. Never again. We walked in to be greeted by a large, fake, gas fireplace. There was no fire-guard. There were stones  - golf ball sized (read easily chucked by a toddler sized) stones in the front of it. Baby made a beeline for them. Luckily it was mid afternoon and the only warm day so the fire had not been on but ‘prevention of stone checking’ was another job added to our parental responsibilities. Stones found, she moved on to the kitchen where, as we quickly unpacked her bags, she realised she could play a game of ‘move the dial’ with the gas cooker’s hob controls. On went the gas. Off went the gas. On went the gas on a REALLY HIGH setting. On went another. Eventually she was rumbled but it was a good thing it was daylight in a non-smoking household. And that she missed the ignition switch.

The party piece was to come after we had all unpacked though. Boy had just gone to point Percy at the Porcelain. Baby had calmed down. Then he came back in and she did a disappearing act. Boy does not always flush. Boy does not always close the lid. When we couldn’t see her I went in search and eventually found her in the Kermit. She was navigating the Yellow River using her hands as the boat. And then licking them. I screamed, grabbed her, turned on the tap, used half a hand soap bottle on her hands and dried them on a towel I thought we probably wouldn’t miss if it ended up being confiscated by a Haz Mat team. And now it was time for dinner.

Now fixed caravan parks are all good fun but they are not centres of  haut cuisine. We found the pub. The kids had heated up stuff with beans. I had a peri peri chicken that was drier than Emo Phillips. In the midst of trying to chomp our way through it ‘If You Tolerate This’ by The Manics came on and the local irony club drank a toast. Pudding was better however. Boy had a banana split that he proclaimed ‘yummy’. I had a fairly decent white chocolate cheesecake (you’d have to REALLY fuck up white chocolate cheesecake before I thought it any less than decent mind you)  Wife had an average brownie (she had only got a couple of badges and Brown Owl could never remember her name). Baby did not have anything specific. Instead we ALL gave her spoonfuls of ours.

On arrival back at the caravan we chilled for a short while then I put Baby to bed.With a night bottle. Which she drained. 20 minutes later there was a deafening toddler scream and a noise not unlike Vesuvius erupting. When I got in to the room, Baby, the bed, her bed-rail and two walls were covered in vomit of the most foul smelling awfulness. I nearly went too. I showered a protesting Baby. Wife cleared up the bed. I dressed like the guy in the picture at the top and did the bed rail. Then we put her back down and hoped for some sleep.

*Length dictates I write this in 2 parts at least. I will reveal the place’s name at the end as they ended up doing rather well.

Musical Meme-ories

A TAG HAS COME IN TO MY TWEET BOX!

The smashing bloke that is

Not Just Another Blogger

has tagged me in a music meme. I loves music I do. The hardest part was actually remembering the answers because of the kids, y’know, STEALING ALL MY BRAINCELLS THROUGH LACK OF SLEEP.

Sorry, I’m a bit shouty at the moment. It’s been a long day. Anyway rules. a) link back b) answer same 7 questions c) tag dudes and dudesses (is that even a word?). GO!

1) What was the first 7 inch single you bought?

I can vividly remember being at Primary School and having a massive crush on a blond girl called Julie Francis. I got a kiss off her a couple of times and she smelled of strawberries. She was madly in to Adam and the Ants and so, of course, I was madly in to Adam and the Ants. I saved up all my pocket money for an Adam and the Ants single – any single – and the one that came out when I had enough was Deutscher Girls in a double A side with Plastic Surgery (on re-release)  It was from their punk days when they used to hang out with Derek Jarman. I think my parents would have preferred it if I’d got Prince Charming.

2) What was the first full album you bought ? (Any format)

Albums took much more time to save up for and I had other stuff to buy so I think I got my first one by myself quite late on. I can remember listening to Introducing The Hardline According to Terrence Trent D’Arby, Gracelands by Paul Simon and Picture Book by Simply Red, all on vinyl on my Dad’s stereo. Based purely on release date I’m guessing Picture Book was my first.

3) What album do you own that you are most embarrassed to own up to?

Oh fark. Errrr……*thinks hard*…….

As an indie kid who turned in to a dance kid I made avoiding anything in the charts an absolute policy so I don’t really have any one album wonders or truly embarrassing bands in my collection. That’s not to say I don’t have quite a bit of dreadful music of course. *Looks in collection* The below is actually pretty dreadful. My wife has Roxette’s greatest hits though. Fucking awful but at least it only lasts 3 minutes.

4) What was the last album you bought?

The Ting Tings – Sounds from Nowhereville. I got it on Amazon and it only came last week so I haven’t listened to it properly. Sorry for such a dull answer. B-. Can do better.

5) What is your most favourite album of all time?

It’s between The Stone Roses by The Stone Roses, Loaded by Primal Scream, Innervisions by Stevie Wonder and The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow. Don’t make me choose. I could sit on this particular fence until the splinters worked their way in to my body through my bum-skin and back out of my mouth again. And to compensate for that horrible mental image have a track

6) What is your favourite song of all time?

Someone asked me this on another meme and I said Open Arms by Elbow but I have had a rethink (again this is something I rethink often). My current thinking is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Musically it’s still one of the most complex singles ever made. The lyrics are mental and EVERYONE knows them. It’s one of those songs you and all your mates sing along to when you’re tipsy with your arms round each other. And Freddie is possibly the greatest showman ever. I haven’t got a lot of Queen but I could listen to this over and over again.

7) If you could use 3 words to describe your musical tastes what would they be?

Eclectic but outdated.

Erm, tags onwards.

Comfort In Sounds

Mother Venting (because it’s been AGES since I tried to make her do anything like this)

First Time Daddy

You are it should you so choose.

Family Sunday Ruined by the EDL

Baby loves swimming. I have been taking her for baby swimming lessons since she was 3 months old and these lessons have always been on a Sunday. She was due one this afternoon.

However today I won’t. Today in Brighton there is a ‘March for England’ and having checked with the Police a minute ago they are due to finish and march back to the station on the same route I would use at the same time I would head back home. I simply cannot risk taking her especially as there is a counter demo planned according to the local paper.

One of the things I did to check the route was look at the March For England facbook page. It is a sickening parody of right-wing Englishness, bigotry dressed up as patriotism. They may go to pains to explain they’re NOT the EDL but they most certainly are. And they’re promoting it as a ‘Family Day’.

Spending a day in cheap Burberry and tracksuits, singing ‘no surrender’ and spouting vile Islamophobia and paranoid creeping Sharia is not my idea of a family day out. It may be their democratic right to demonstrate. It’s mine to call them a bunch of mindless, Neanderthal, fascist cunts.

A theme of this blog is not to judge other parents but I’ll make an exception here. Anyone who takes their child to this event knowing the threat of violence, and who inculcates such mindless unthinking bigotry in their children should expect a visit from Social Services sooner rather than later.

Thanks for ruining an 18-month-old’s usual treat you brainless wankers.

Family Summer Outings

On Saturday the football season finishes. Well not really. In fact, all you football haters out there will be disappointed to know that the Championship (which Brighton are in) has another week after this Saturday. It’s just that we’re away so I’m not going. Then the Premiership finishes a bit later and we have the FA Cup Final, the Champions League final and the playoffs. Then it’s Euro 2012 which will go on for some considerable time though not if you’re an England fan or player. Then there’s football in the Olympics. I think there will be friendlies in July and then, in August, the domestic season will start again.

So you see, the season never really stops. What I mean about this coming Saturday is that it will stop for ME. It will be the last time I go to the Amex and watch my beloved Super Seagulls and cheer and drink Harvey’s and fart a lot until August. Except the farting bit. I’ll still probably do that.

This frees up each and every weekend for Family Time.

OH………….MY…………GOD

We didn’t do much “going out” family time last summer what with Baby being still very small and us being still very knackered. We’re still knackered but she’s bigger. I vaguely remember the boy at this age and if my memory serves me correctly you need to be equipped roughly like this to cope with all eventualities

Even that may not be enough eyes and arms. Baby, as I may have mentioned is just a teeny bit more adventurous than the Boy was.

For a start she considers herself a mermaid and any body of water she sees as a bath for her to dive in to. She has to be variously chided, reigned in or scooped up every time we go to the beach before she embarks on a world record attempt for toddler-swimming the Channel. One of our local attractions is Drusillas and they have an open air penguin pool. That’s off the list then. I am not rescuing her from a giant bath full of penguin poo.

She’s also learning to talk at the moment. Quite well really. However one word she struggles with is ‘horse’ which is a shame as she’s aces at recognising them. Specifically she points at them and yells ‘WHORE!” at the top of her voice. So farms are probably out.

Then there’s the Brighton Pier . Ooops. Water again. *imagines Baby tombstoning*

Maybe the Brighton Wheel? Nope. She’s a fantastic climber. Bound to be seen as a challenge that. *imagines buying tiny toddler size crampons*

Pub lunches? I wouldn’t put it past her to outdrink the visiting Bikers and start a fight.

In fact the safest place for her might just be the football. Roll on August.

(N.B. not really of course. I’m sure we will visit all these places and more during the summer, Sussex in the summer is actually my favourite place ever in the world and there’s loads and loads to do. But I will miss the football just a teensy bit.)

Saturday Night Telly

(Or Jaz v Jazz)

One of the things I do a lot more of as a parent than I ever did before is watch Saturday night television. Saturday used to be my night out but now it is, almost unchangingly, spent indoors, kids upstairs, telly on downstairs. This was not a change I was looking forward to for when I was a lad Saturday night television was unremittingly dreadful. Here’s what you got:

• White men boot polished up to look like black men singing Al Jolson un-ironically
• Relatives who always looked a little too much like lovers dressing in Swiss national costume and yodelling in order that they could win a teddy bear off a conveyor belt
• Contestants trying to work out the world most difficult riddles ever in order to win a car rather than a dustbin (that one even came with impossible hand signals).
• Contestants trying to work out the most obvious clues ever while being told ‘say what you see’
• Jim Davidson – after Hitler perhaps the most loathsome man to have regularly appeared in the media – doing a snooker / “comedy” crossover show
• Noel Edmuds killing people

And my Dad sat through every minute of every episode, can of Websters Yorkshire Bitter in hand, the fucking rotter*
Now I’m the Dad and I’m stuck in on a Saturday and it still drives me up the wall. There is such a lack of originality, shows that barely even bother to conceal the fact they’re ripping off the last big success. Dance shows. Dancing shows. Dancing on Ice shows. Shows talking about dancing and dancing on ice. And then on ITV there’s the smug wankathon that is Simon Cowell taking over the world. Smugger than Billy ‘Billionairre’ McSmug at a Smug convention in L.A. Not my cup of tea.

This weekend however I did get to choose for myself and that mean the front room was No Cowell Zone. The wife was out with her NCT chums and the telly was MINE! Bruce Springsteen used to sing about 57 Channels and Nothing On. Well this was more like 250 channels and nothing on. The football didn’t start for an hour or more and the porn doesn’t get good till after 10pm BBC4 schedule wasn’t to my taste.

Eventually I found a man making a chorizo (which I am addicted to) and egg pie on a cookery channel and then by chance stumbled across a Jazz legends documentary on PBS. Bird. Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman. Great soundtrack, interesting documentary. Then the wife came back early and we put on Million Pound Drop instead for she hates pretentious documentaries like I hate Crystal Palace.

And so to my actual point *takes actual point and embraces it like an old friend much to the relief of my reader*
Her being out meant we had Sky Plused The Voice. The Voice started life as A Program I Was Never Going To Watch mainly because of it’s elements of ripping off the X Factor which is a program I Will Never Watch Again. However she has been watching it with Boy and I have started to slowly pay attention. I still don’t find the idea of a talent show on a Saturday night that original but at least judging the contestants purely on voice gives it a slightly more interesting dimension. I also like the fact that there’s no ‘laughing at chavvy mental patients’ element that so cloud the Cowell shows.

So we watched The Voice off the Sky box and I paid attention. Boy made it more entertaining by facing away from the telly and using Gymbo The Clown as a buzzer to turn himself round and it was all mildly entertaining till the end. At that point there was one place left and 2 singers fighting for it. Now, cynical me thinks this could have been staged, certainly it was cleverly edited but it turned out that penultimate bloke had a pretty OK voice but was not chosen.

The last bloke was called Jaz. Jaz had a voice like honey and treacle and heaven and soul and long days out at the seaside and nights in sweaty clubs and Gospel Choirs and sunshine and medium rare steak. He was pretty fucking good in other words. And Jessie J asked him to sing again just for the hell of it. So he did. A-Cappella. Then the band joined in, taking their time from him, improvising and it was a magical musical moment, as pure jazz as Miles and Ornette the night before.

Damn it. I think I’m a convert.

*he’s not really a rotter. Merely doing what I am now before the age of digital tellys and taste.

Saturday is Caption Day 14/4 #satcap

Saturday is caption day at http://mammasaurus.co.uk/

You know the routine. Add a caption then post your own and link up! Here’s mine…….

A Nasty Thing Happened On The Way From The Spice Shop

Rewind to Easter Monday. It’s chucking it down with rain. Boy decides he wants to paint and draw all day. I decide I want to cook a big Thai curry. Only I’m missing galangal, lemongrass and green chillies which are fairly essential to the making of the curry paste. Chillies I could get from the local Tescos but they do not do galangal and lemongrass. In fact I’d be willing to stake quite a bit of cash they wouldn’t know what they are. This means one thing; a visit to my local Asian grocer.

I say local. I mean a decent drive or bus ride away. I decide to take Baby with me and go by bus, being as I’m not the biggest fan ever of driving. I learned relatively late in life and while I have a full, clean driving licence I tend not to actually make use of it. In the time I didn’t drive I took public transport everywhere and got used to it. This may be about to change however……

An uneventful journey in. So far so good. We get in to the shop and Baby realises that being strapped in to a harness and covered in a rain cover is preventing her from doing stuff like picking up Bird’s Eye Chillis and eating them neat. The diverting smells and banging Bhangra beats that are enhancing my general shopping experience appear to be grating on her like a large cat descending a blackboard , nails first. She starts squealing. I find my galangal and my lemongrass and my chillies, pay and take my leave. Then I head to the bus stop.

It’s pissing down. It’s wetter than Wendy Craig narrating Mills and Boon. Now Baby is glad of her rain cover. We get to the bus stop but there are none in sight. A woman in front in the queue apologises for being in the way (she wasn’t) in a broad Scottish accent. Then she smiles at Baby and gets her sex right and says how sensible I am for using a rain cover and I warm to her instantly. I should know by now this is normally a mistake. The bus is taking ages. Longer than Jimmy Five Bellies running a marathon. More time than it takes to stew a goat. Ages. As it’s a Bank Holiday I’m guessing we’re on Sunday service and the bus is going to be packed with shoppers.

When it finally turns up the Scottish voiced lady lets me and Baby go in front of her even though I arrived after. The bus is busier than a teenagers fashion sense. I ask the driver if I can get the buggy on to which he indicates a group of people standing in the one spare buggy space. However before I can get to them I will have to negotiate two large gentlemen with several bags of shopping who happen to have black skin. This is important or I wouldn’t have mentioned it.

The buggy space occupiers move back a bit. The gentlemen with shopping start to make way but Scottish voiced woman has now paid and got on and is looking daggers at the pair of them. “WE DON’T HAVE THAT MUCH SHOPPING ON BUSES!” she shrieks. “WE’RE ENGLISH!”. Where do I start? That the only thing indicating to her they may not be English is their skin colour (they could be from Brighton, Birmingham or Bolton as far as she or any of the rest of us actually know)? That this is pretty fucking funny delivered in a Scottish accent? That Baby has noticed there is conflict afoot and has gone back in to full meltdown? Any way up the formerly lovely lady has gone, in my mind, from

this

to this

I’m now trying to wedge the buggy in to it’s space without breaking any ankles. The shopping gents are looking confused. My former friend is looking murderous. And then I hear another comment from the back somewhere.

“FUCKING PRAMS!”

Now what do I do? Confront Scots voiced woman for her casual racism? Look for the perpetrator of this latest intolerance? Soothe 500 decibel Baby? Obviously soothe her though it’s difficult as I can’t sit next to her. I’m wedged in under an armpit and all I really want to do is scream “what kind of sweet hell is THIS?” before dishing out a few rabbit punches.

There’s a vaguely serious point here. Brighton and Hove Council is now run by the Green Party and they are trying to promote sustainable transport, including public transport by making parking expensive and adding cycle lanes. Meanwhile central Government is cutting subsidies to transport companies and privatising anything that moves. As a result the bus ticket I bought for my oh-so pleasure filled journey is about to go up by 10% utterly defeating the parking charges increase.

At least if I’d taken the car I’d have been dry. I’d have been listening to my CDs or Radio 4. I wouldn’t have had to listen to baby intolerance and casual racism. It wouldn’t have taken me 2 fucking hours door to door to get three essential spice paste items. Baby might even have slept. I consider us to be reasonably environmentally friendly as a family and yet if the car is just as cheap and more convenient and sat in the same traffic jam as the bus where’s the incentive to be green?

Some Tweets You May Have Missed Over Easter

I took a tweet break. Not a break at work where I tweet instead of smoking. Not the full 14 day social media starvation diet recently attempted by @musodad and @himupnorth either.
It’s just that I had 4 days off and I wanted to spend them with the children and not be distracted by thinking about tweeting and this here blog.
I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it except for the fact that my first day in self imposed twitter jail was a Friday and that’s a pretty bad day to choose. It’s when follower shout outs get sent using the follow Friday #ff hashtag. If I’m ever lucky enough to get one I like to acknowledge it as soon as I can and I also like to attempt a few of my own. In this way I often end up in conversations which can last quite a while and this is great but not on Good Friday when the weather’s lovely and you have 2 little ones to play with.

The thing I did notice though was that weirdly, at times, I thought in tweets anyway. And so here are some I might have posted had I not been otherwise engaged.

Friday 10.00: I am cheating in a water fight with a 5-year-old. #winning

As I didn’t have the laptop open and as it was nice we opened up the garden, filled up the water pistols and went out for a water fight. I may have shot Boy while he was unarmed. He may have shot me point blank in the face because I didn’t move when I could have. Meanwhile Baby charged round with a grip on her gun that was tighter than Geoff Boycott at a race night. We had fun. More fun than I’ve had in a very long time in fact.

Friday 15.30: Oh do come along you Brighton chaps #bhafc
Friday 16.30: Shut it Cottee you dwarf #bhafc
Friday 16.55: ****

My beloved football team did not cover themselves in glory on Friday. Worse I was watching the show that you watch to watch other people watching people watching football. The person doing the Brighton game was Tony Cottee. Tony Cottee does not like Brighton. We lost so I would definitely sworn at the end. Just not sure which swear I’d have used.

I did however cover myself in glory. We went to our good friend’s house for a short but lovely afternoon and I didn’t ruin it by constantly pulling out my iPhone. Except once. Just, y’know, to check the score.

Saturday 11.00: I am reading Mr Gum to Boy, I’m not sure which of us is laughing more.

So on Saturday the wife went shopping. All day. With money. She broke this up by coming home for lunch and giving Boy a new book, You’re A Bad Man Mr Gum by Andy Stanton. It has taken over as our favourite children’s book ever (or at least this week) and I am recommending it purely because I found it hard to read out loud what with all the laughing.

Sunday 17:00 knackered

That would’ve been all I could manage. We spent a great day swimming with the kids then doing an Easter Egg hunt for them at a friends where we also had lunch. I was out on my feet by early evening and we were the guests not the hosts.

But what about Monday I hear you ask? That’s a bank holiday and you’ve tweeted and now you’re writing THIS aren’t you? Don’t worry. The kids got up and changed out of their PJs and then I locked them in a dungeon with nothing to eat but Smash while I opened a bottle of Krug and tweeted the fuck out of Gary Barlow. Er, I mean we were on Skype to my Dad and I had a sneaky look and saw I had #ff that needed replying to and then I saw @babberblog had become a Dad and I couldn’t ignore that. But after 3 days of doing stuff as a family it was pissing with rain so Wife crafted with Boy while I took Baby out to buy some spices and meet some mad racist bitch on the bus. But that as they say is another story.

Hello. My name is slightlysuburbandad and I am a tweet and blog addict.

The Great Gig Meme In The Sky

So the great ex-blogger @musodad is actually a session blogger now! He has started a gig meme and I have been tagged by the wonderful and also very musical Not Just Another Blogger. You can see his post here and musodad’s guest meme session post type thing here.

When I read the original I was thinking ‘please tag me, please tag me’. I love lots of music and spent much of my twenties at gigs and clubs listening to bands and dancing to DJ sets. However that was then and this is now and writing this has made me realise it has been far too long since I’ve been to one and that, these days I would likely be mistaken for a bouncer or backstage manager. Anyway, I digress, here’s what you need to do to complete the meme.

- name your first / worst / best / last / dream gig

- drag in your 5 favourite songs from the 5 bands in to the Spotify playlist Musodad created (or tweet him to add if you’re not on Spotify)

Here we go.

First Gig / Worst Gig

These were one and the same. When I was 16 I did an exchange with a French student from Paris. I was over there at the same time as Madonna was doing a big open air gig ‘somewhere’ in Paris. What’s more they had got me tickets. This pissed me off no end. For one thing I was a mainstream indie kid listening at the time to The Smiths, The Cure and The The (I probably had some kind of rule that a band had to have ‘The’ in their name before I’d play them so ‘The The’ were a bonus). Madonna was not on my musical radar. The tickets were also exorbitantly expensive and my parents, being unaware of their purchase, had not equipped me with suitable Francage. We went anyway. Madonna was about 200 miles away, she mimed and all the French kids let off tear gas at the end. It is to this day the worst music event I have ever attended. The cheeky bastards even wrote to my Mum asking for the ticket money when I got home. Grrr

Track added – Madonna / Sorry (Green Velvet Remix Edit)

Best Gig

Let me take you back to the very early 90s. Primal Scream have just released the now classic album Screamadelica. They’re touring it and I have tickets for the Brighton Event. So does my brother. He’s going with his uber cool and trendy music friends and I’m going with some football fans of dubious reputation. The Orb warm up. The Scream are brilliant, tight , funky and bonkers. Andy Weatherall then DJs till 2 in the morning playing a mix of indie, hip-hop and early house. The trendies and the North Stand regulars end up dancing together. EVERYONE dances together. For a brief time the vibe is music and love and anything is possible.

Track added – Primal Scream / Loaded

Last Gig

Here’s where it gets embarrassing. We have not been to a gig since the kids were born and a bit more. My last gig was when we were still living abroad and I was working all over Asia Pacific. It was Bob Dylan and Ani Difranco in Sydney. Ani was mad and political. Bob was slurry and bluesy. The songs were unrecognisable. My wife was disappointed. Since then we HAVE been to CBeebies live (and the Tweenies), missed out on the Pulp gig that all our mates went to and I missed getting Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry tickets by about a day. I need to get out more.

Track added – Bob Dylan / Like a Rolling Stone

Dream Gig

Between Elbow or Terry Callier. I love both but have been too rubbish to see either live. Elbow just shade it because I’m a Dad blogger and it’s compulsory for us to like  Elbow.

Track added – Elbow / Open Arms

So now I have to tag people and they are:

The J Daddy - yes AGAIN. Yes I didn’t do your 12 question one and am still working on it’s sub-varient. But I know you have a not-so-secret music sock puppet on Twitter. So there.

mummyglitzer - revenge!

mutteringsofafool - because I haven’t in a while.

TAG!

Shouty Daddy

So I did the 10 things meme and one thing I tell myself regularly is not to shout at the kids. It can be hard work. There’s finding a balance needed. Shouting is acceptable if you ask me but only in emergencies.

It is not, admittedly, for when they are taking an extra blueberry or spending too long in front of Peppa Pig or inadvertently getting in the way. It IS for when they are about to walk under a car or pick up a knife or strangle each other. Shouting at the trivial gets you nowhere. Conversely saying very meekly “Boy, would you mind awfully not strangling your sister / walking under that 4 x 4 / stabbing yourself. There’s a good chap” won’t get you far either in my humble opinion. The shout should be restricted to emergencies and, too often lately I have used it in every day situations. This has not gone well. Time for a change of tactics.

Tonight I tried humour. I’m good at humour or at least the type a 5 year old can explain *points a gun at you all till you agree*. In my mind I’m 5 still. Poo, bodily functions and vegetables that look like wangers can have me giggling for days. Time to use my childish humour as a weapon.

Bath time. Boy outright refuses to go up for a bath despite the fact that, due to an Easter egg party at the local park he is face painted as Sonic the Hedgehog and has 7 different varieties of mud (at least I think it’s mud) wedged in to his earhole. Just a few days I might have yelled ‘ bath NOW!!!’. Like some caveman. Today I pretended to be a Dalek and exterminated him up the stairs (yes I used my arm on my head like a Dalek gun and did the voice). It worked.

Then at reward chart time he started messing around. I got him interested again by pretending to write his name on the top of the chart as ‘Pickle Pants’ and telling him there was a boy who lived over the road called Picklepants Johnson Mahoney. He engaged. We completed the chart in record time.  He did as he was told. He went up to bed nicely.

On his way the little fucker broke the stair gate off the wall. Hence I have come downstairs to write this.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.

*rends garment*