THE UBIQUITY OF SANTA AND POOR BRAND MANAGEMENT

Why is Santa everywhere this time of year? Stop! Don’t say what you are about to say. Sure it is ‘his moment’ and he ‘owns Christmas’ and yes he should be doing the odd public appearance – but really the guy is on deadline. If my boss saw me gallivanting in a shameless self-promotional charabanc across the globe when in actual fact I had to deliver – in all senses of the word – I would be out of the door quicker than you could say ‘Santa Claus is coming to town, again and again and will be appearing in person at various locations doing a variety of odd things....’

Who wins from this proliferation of public appearances? Surely nobody is paying Santa for these impromptu yet carefully scheduled pop-ups as we all know that he is a genuinely philanthropic individual. Also maybe he is a registered charity whose business cannot be bought in such a way and, besides, he is a pretty straight up and down fella who, if you attempted to give him cash, would certainly say ‘Ho ho ho – you don’t need to do that I have been ‘owning Christmas from the goodness of my heart for centuries.’ From a capitalist perspective I have never witnessed Santa opening the London Stock exchange and thought ‘Ooh I must buy some shares’ or watched him bungee jump from a bridge in Middle Earth and thought 'Ooh I must go to New Zealand'. His being as a money spinner for other ruptures the very core of the Santa brand. And that brand is benevolent old man who does good things for kids. Which is a brand, I think you will agree, that needs protecting given recent developments.

Santa, all this dashing around is making you
a little ruddy. Have you had your cholesterol
checked lately?

This week alone Santa has appeared in Hungary getting a flu jab (I guess he is in the high risk category), cuddling lions at a safari park (this is a little too high risk this close the big night), numerous appearances around many capital cities on public transport either talking absolute drunken rot or throwing up (you need to up your game a bit here Santa – you are a brand that is respected), Reindeer racing in many Scandinavian countries (Santa this is blatant cheating - one world in one night by reindeer and they even let you submit an entry form?), numerous simultaneous incarcerations in Asian prisons (I hope you have a good lawyer, tick-tock tick-tock – it took Andy Dufresne 20 years to tunnel out of Shawshank – you have.. like.. just over a week),  then there is the abseiling, the skinny-dipping, the obligatory Santa Mankini appearance on Bondai, the slow moving procession round the streets of the UK on the back of a crappy looking van with numerous Rotary Clubs appearances, Santa getting married, Santa doing a marathon, Santa selling the Big Issue (who are you kidding Santa – the North Pole is your address, use it), Santa driving buses, Santa skateboarding, Santa turning on Obama’s Christmas tree lights (Hey Santa! He is the President of America – he’s got people who can do that shit for him!), Santa Scuba diving, Santa on several roller coasters, Santa surfing, Santa on the front line with troops (I appreciate the message of peace here Santa – but your brand palette is red – nobody’s troops are engaged in an area where red works as camouflage!), Santa sat forlornly in every department store in the world smelling slightly of dust and children’s sick – basically Santa you are doing too much!

NO! THIS SHOULD
NEVER HAVE HAPPENED!

 

If you contrast this with the popular belief that nobody actually sees Santa deliver the presents, all we are left with is reindeer poo on the front doorstep, sooty footprints (that are not all that easy to clean up) and some half eaten food – you wonder what Santa is trying to do here. He is humility personified surely? He doesn’t go out there giving it the Big I AM, he isn't The Lord Sugar or the other guy in the states with the datf hair, he quietly reads letters checks up on the iffy kids – packages and delivers with all efficiency of a tax paying benevolent Amazon.

I found this on the ES site under
'Before They Were Famous'

 

So my point is. Santa stop it with public appearances. Much like our politicians, it is sometimes better to be out of sight as it demonstrates you are doing the job you have been selected for. Stop getting in my Christmas media grill at every opportunity, not only are you damaging your brand you are also making my kids doubt your sincerity and you know what happens to fairies when kids stop believing.

I only want to see evidence of you on Christmas Eve.

Happy Christmas though!

Clear up after yourself Santa - or get one
of your elves to finish your food

 

 

WATCHES

Amid all the excitement of snow this morning, during which we checked in regularly with Mrs M to make sure the train line to London was fully operational (which sadly it was), came a wonderful pre-Christmas exchange from our younglings.

We were making breakfast when this occurred:

Blondie: Daddy – can I have an Ice Watch for Christmas?

Me: No way!
Blondie: Why not?
Me: Do you have any comprehension how much they cost and you can’t even tell the time.
Blondie: I can.
Me: OK (pointing at the kitchen clock adopting a high risk strategy) tell me what time it is and I will buy you one.
Blondie: (looks slightly panicked – whispers to Ginger – who whispers back) It is 8.30
Me: Ha. See! It is 7.30. Bad luck.
Blondie: (to Ginger) Why did you tell me the wrong time?
Ginger: So that Mummy and Daddy spend the money on me instead.
Blondie: (clearly pissed off, stomps out of the kitchen and shouts back) I’ll never learn if I don’t have a watch. And that is your fault Daddy.


I like her style.

MAY CONTAIN INSECTS

Last Friday I bumped into two of my neighbours stood outside their adjoining properties (next-door-but-one) engaged in nocturnal chatter and they were feverishly excited about something. No, unbelievably, it isn’t the news that next week is Samantha Mumba week on X-Factor, it is a situation far more desperate than that – hard to believe I know. They were stood gesticulating at each other alternating between tiny ‘O’s made by their thumb and index finger to child head-sized orb shapes sculpted out of the air in a kind of David Copperfield levitation motion. A quick nod of recognition was exchanged – I took in a couple of bags of shopping, Mrs M took in a couple of bags of shopping, the girls pissed around in the leaves that for some reason only gather in-front of our house.

Somewhere behind this is our house.

I kid you not, every weekend I have to shovel a streets-worth of dead leaves from our frontage, this, coupled with sweet wrappers, a flattened silver foil platter and some impressively neat hobo’s collection of empty beer cans tied in a double bag situation. The first bag that contained the five empty Red Stripes and one empty bottle of Malvern water (I know!) was a Tesco one, but this had started to split so an additional and more robust Waitrose bag had been employed to secure the bundle. This tells me that our local street drinkers are both responsible with hydration while they drink but also lucid enough, possibly due to the hydration, to be neat and tidy with their rubbish. I won’t lie – I would prefer them to go the extra mile to the recycling centre instead of our front stoop but beggars can’t be choosers (see what I did there?).

If I lived on Sesame Street my neighbours might have looked
like this. But I don't. So they don't. But enjoy the fluffy fuzzy
felt niceness of this picture because the words to follow won't
be as cute.

 Back to our neighbours, they had now stopped using the international language of SCUBA and were hands on hips shaking their heads. Intrigued, I went over. ‘We are infested’ said neighbour 1; ‘hundreds of them’ said neighbour 2. ‘All over my wood pile and in my loft’ said neighbour 1. ‘All over our house too and in our shed’ said neighbour 2. And then they started shining their torches at their houses leaving me hanging to their metaphorical cliff….

I live in the South East of England. Infestations do not overly concern me. Well that is a lie, they kind of do.  When it comes to insect type things I actually have a pathological fear of infestations. In the first summer of our current house I was having a pee in our downstairs loo when I noticed a couple of ants being playful around a bit of loose grouting behind the cistern. Mid pee I decided it would be a good idea to tap the tile that had the loose grouting. I tapped. The tile fell off the wall. What happened next lives with me six years later in such 3-D vivid Technicolor that it is a little tricky to write. My shoulders are tensed up, I am shivering tiny afraid muscle spasms and my body hairs are all stood to attention. Thousands, and I do not jest, thousands of ants poured out from this newly vacated space on the wall. If you want to get an idea of how it looked, and I mean how it actually looked as opposed to my histrionic pumped memory, but in actual ant fact, Google The Mummy Returns for the scene near the end when the undead army of dog people sweep across the desert – it is no exaggeration to say that this unfolded in-front of me. I screamed. I possibly peed on a few of them in my haste to step away from the horror and fell over into the shower wailing like a child and kicking back in an attempt to punch myself through the wall and into freedom. I was trapped as the ants swarmed out of every crevice up and round the door frame, across the floor and towards me. Ants, it seems, can smell fear like cats. I may have started to cry, I may not have, but it is true to say I may have.

Pants. They rhyme with ants. But nobody
 really wants to see ants do they?

It took about a month of ant warfare with regular sorties and skirmishes involving spray and sugary poison drops to cure the room. Our downstairs loo has remained untouched ever since, with half the tiles ripped from the walls and the door frame chipped away to virtually nothing mainly because I am too scared to redecorate it. The thought lingers with me that if I am to retile the room I must first chip away any more tiles to get started. Tiles that will uncover a human sized ant with red eyes and snipping mandibles dripping with insect saliva ready to tear me limb from limb. I have sealed every access point I can find – but I know this just means they are trapped in the walls waiting for me. Whispering in their little ant voices. Mocking me. Clicking their little mouths. Laughing and waiting for the day that they will finish what they started.

This isn’t film of my ant swarm – but it is here merely as a guide. Times this by 100 and have them coming at you up the walls and over the ceiling screaming a battle cry as they advance – WARNING: MAY CONTAIN ANTS!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dprn6LAGVoE

I suspect I have gone a bit off-story. My neighbours were shining torches on their houses looking at tiny pockets of fluff hanging in corners then tutting and shaking their heads. ‘So what is it?’ I try to sound as nonchalant in my question as (hu)manly possible despite the race between fear and panic to own my body. ‘Oh yeah’ says neighbour 1, ‘we’ve got a False Widow infestation’. I literally felt my reproductive organs retreat to their pre-birth status. ‘Hundreds of them’ chirps neighbour 2. ‘My kids love things like that, always picking them up, so I’m having to spray the place. You need this stuff that they can’t escape, leaves a residue so all their little mates die as well.’

OHMY F*****G GOD! Little mates? WIDOW? Hundreds? WIDOW? The words form like words clouds hovering in front of my consciousness.

 

A

I can't bring myself to put a picture of the nasty little creatures up here.

At this point I have pretty much picked the kids up and thrown them into the house by-passing our spider-ridden porch and leaf pile with speed and altitude, telling them to go straight upstairs. Ringing in my ears is neighbour 2’s last comment:

‘They aren’t that dangerous, just nasty and aggressive, it is like a bee sting and people don’t really die from those. Anyway, you will probably have them too so keep an eye out!’

Peas. They are not Bees.

 I have Googled how many people were killed by bee stings last year – it varies from 20 to a hundred and there have been upwards of 800 people admitted for medical treatment as a result of stings. Now something tells me if I have a whole citadel of False Widows are living next door it is only a matter of time….. Mrs M and I now have cricks in our necks from walking into a room and casually gazing at the ceiling for tell-take signs. I feel permanently itchy and completely disinterested in any form of gardening or leaf clearance whatsoever. For the spring and summer I will mostly be dressed in a John Goodman Arachnophobia tribute outfit. It can’t snow quick enough for my liking. Snow and minus 20 temperatures that’s what we need. Although I will have to go out and get logs… from by our shed…. Behind all the leaves…. To quote Edward Woodward. ‘Oh, God! Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, my God! Christ! No, no, dear God!’

Children Are The Future... If Only They Had One

As Mrs M and I sat in the garden watching the younglings engage in yet another deeply intense role playing game of inter species marriage, adventure, war-come-musical, scientific innovation and epic screenplay  between Draculaura, a couple of Moshies, about 28 Barbies, one Ken and several Trash Packs , all conducted with excellent American accents, an occasional Scottish one (the release of Brave cannot come quick enough for Ginger) and some really raw Essex vowel use, we thought, ‘Blimey, we need to stop watching quite so much telly!’  But this thought was quickly replaced by concerns for their future and the future of the current generation emerging from school.

Ginger and good at fighting. Genius.

We had it quite easy really. Work hard and you will get a good job. That was pretty much it. There were friends who were going to be academic, there were friends who were savvy but not hugely intelligent who were destined to be go-getting successes and there were friends who were plain and simply grafters. There was a set of rules we abided by; only spend what you have, save up for something you want and don’t expect everything straight away. Educationally, we were told that Universities were the places that quaternary and high level tertiary occupations were forged, Polytechnics were the places that secondary occupations were forged and jumping into the wide beyond straight from school was the fast track to the primary sector. Important to note that of my particular group, if you had aspirations of quinary you had to enter the army as an officer or go to Oxbridge. I considered one of these – the other didn’t consider me at all, what lofty ambitions the teen me had, the reality is so far short of this the Hubble Telescope would have difficulty covering the distance.

My career, as seen from space.

So what is there for our kids? Let us start with the nostalgic meddling of Professor Gove. What’s that? He isn’t actually a Professor? He has no real professional understanding of the education system other than he went to school once? You surprise me! He is on a path to turn every school he comes across into a Free School. My basic understanding of this is a school funded by the tax payer through the council? (but to a lesser extent to that of a regular school – I could be wrong here) but without that local education authority having any say at all in how the school operates. The school then has to seek sponsors (see middle-class parents wishing to donate or local and/or national companies that want to sponsor it). So what happens when there are enough like-minded individual donors for a school that threaten to withdraw their funding because they want their children taught in a specific way? The school is held to ransom by parents who may know what is best for their child but not what is best for all the other children. Or maybe we look at the results driven perspective of the company that sponsors the school. Say, for a reason of cycles, there are a few concurrent years where the kids attending the school just aren’t high achievers for no fault of their own or their parents, results take a bit of dip, the school doesn’t fly high on the league table. Does the sponsors act responsibly and say – well let us look at this long term, or do they just say, ‘We are sponsoring a failing school; we should get out before Ofsted get involved.’ Are these unnecessary pressures that are being forced on schools and on teachers who should just be concentrating on the shaping of children’s lives? Shouldn’t the schools be protected from the harshness of capitalism, this kind of exposure to a world of cold statistical decision making surely at worst will only harm them and at best distract them from what they do best?

A G(l)ove

But Gove isn’t finished there either. Exams. Yuk! I had an inability to revise, GCSEs helped me because it wasn’t all revision based. I like GCSEs. Had you held a gun to my head, sure I would have revised, but in most schools we try not to do that. Gove once again is reaching back into hazy halcyon past, maybe one where he sat in field of long grass and recited Amo Amas Amat just because he could. He wants us to have two tier examinations again. I buy into his assertion that there should be one examining board and therefore one benchmark for achievement; it seems nonsensical that there are so many different boards asking so many different things of the examinees and as a result raising doubts around the legitimacy of one child’s achievements over another. But to force teachers to decide the future of student’s entire life at 14 by putting them on a path of qualifications that could become a barrier to further training and/or learning in later life is daft. Gove has prattled on about level playing fields in education for some time, yet every change he makes is another contour in the ever increasingly hilly topography of UK education.

So, our children have scraped together some qualifications, probably in spite of the system they are in. What now? Well they are all now expected to go to a University or straight into employment. A hangover from a previous administration that means many spurious courses were created fulfil some dodgy course quota to secure funding, resulting in thousands of students being promised a life of security wealth and work, and every single one of them being spat out of the system having wasted money and three years of their lives with a meaningless qualification that only harms their employment chances. But the main thing with this was the demonization of other centres of learning, vocational learning, apprenticeships. The opportunity to go into further education should be there for every child, but there should be a range of realistic opportunities that suit the abilities and aspirations of the individual. And that individual should be able to hold their head high while pursuing their course in life.  It is complicated, GCSEs and the merger of into Universities happened at more or less at the same time, one was a good move and the other could have been handled better,  if we adopt a two tier education system (too early in my view) and do not alter the University system at the same time to allow for this we will have a huge, and I mean colossal, chunk of society that is demeaned, and degraded because they are prevented from being able to enter into further education and adulthood with any prospects or self-respect.

Nothing like a literal visual aid.

On top of all of this, our children will pay for all of this, and continue paying for it. Parents too will undoubtedly pay for it as well as no parent with the means available will want to see their child burdened with debt as they enter an employment market with so few job opportunities as we have now. Our children will be competing with us for jobs as we will certainly never be in the position where we can retire. Will our children inherit our debts that have been built up over the decades in an attempt to cushion their early lives from these traumas? Will they be able to get mortgages, or even just credit? Will they even understand the value of money as it ceases to be a tangible currency and becomes something that it only a password away spending on an App?

And then it struck us. All the political posturing of day, from all three main parties, that states that our generation is working hard to give a secure world for future generations is nothing but guff. Our children are going to pay a very very heavy default sum on our political apathy.  We could have done something, we could have held our government to account. Sadly I think we are all noticing this too late. The ruling class has its feet under the table and are changing the menu in such a fast and deep way that we will probably be 30 years away from any hope of sensible non-profit orientated community minded change.

For now, our two are oblivious and happily marrying two Barbies with an American master of ceremonies that is a rubberised thumbnail of vomit – but soon to be blown away by some singing ninja Moshies from Arbroath.

Trash Packs have released a Prime Minister series.

CHILDREN'S PARTIES

Last night we began the final preparation for our next Street Party, which, whether you are a Royalist or not is purely and simply a celebration of community, a shared desire in our avenue of life in which we live to just down tools, eat food in the middle of the road, let our children run like packs of tiny sun-kissed feral dogs in and out of each other’s houses and to have some fun with pointless and joy-filled games ranging from ‘dress your pet as a historical villain’, ‘men dressed as Queens’,  ‘egg and spoon’, ‘welly chucking’, ‘Dads on Kids' bike race’…. the list goes on. Sending our two out on a letter posting relay race up and down the road and seeing the smiles and looks of excitement on both adults and children’s faces as they realise it is just around the corner was the start of a small bus trip down memory lane. The lane is called Childhood Memories of the late 70s and early 80s with the next stop this time being A Child’s View of a Party that involves Adults.

A little something before I carry on. To my mother, who is only just really turning the corner on her recovery from some major and unpleasant surgery and is quite literally on the first days of a new beginning, what you are about to read is written purely with affection and fondness (also a small amount of bemusement). There will be the odd thing that you think, ‘my goodness, we didn’t do that did we?’ But those were innocent times. The same times when it was acceptable that a child was kicked out of the house on a Saturday morning, knowing he would forage for food at lunchtime and re-appear in time to watch Metal Mickey or the Fraggles and have one of your excellent Saturday teas. Rest easy, I and millions of adults my age are still alive and unmolested. The fact we don’t offer the same freedoms to our own kids reflects only on our neurosis.

Scotland – the early years

Like trying to watch Sapphire and Steel on an old black and white, dial-tuner TV, the early years are an idealised romantic haze of the glory we chose to remember over the harsh crackle of reality. The Silver Jubilee, Torrance 1977. I would have been 4. And yet what freedom I had as 4 year old. This freedom was brought about by having an older sister and living on a new build estate outside Glasgow where a community looks out for its younglings. Dressed as something, possibly a burglar, or a cat – or a cat burglar – I remember a short stint in tartan – I also remember some pretty tight denim shorts, a lot of roll-necks and a proliferation of horizontal stripe tops – maybe I wore them all on the day. I was quite an affected young thing even back then. Abiding memories, as soon as the adults had paraded us in the fancy dress competition, we scarpered, setting up camp on the wreckage of bricks, breeze blocks and cement that was waiting to be assembled into the rest of the estate. It was, I believe, on this day that I lost my sandals to a pile of cement that one of the older kids had been pouring water on. I think I may have been told off about this. We all drank fizzy coloured pop from glass bottles in the sun. We didn’t break a single one, mainly because the Fizzy Pop Truck would give us 10p if we returned all our bottles on collection day.

Torrance, like when I was little.
That shop next to the Esso garage used to sell stuff.

There were other party days, The Highland games where we all trooped to some place in the Highlands to watch men in kilts chuck heavy things around a field, the smell of cooking meat in the air hanging with the sound of ABBA on the PA system, kagools furled and packed into their own little bum bags always at the ready. Not just for the rain you understand. You get down on the side of a loch in the summer and Scotia’s very own species of piranha attack you. The midge can only be held at bay by a child sweating unnaturally in hooded kagool.  Scotland was a great place to grow up. There was always something to do, and it was always fun. Except from the times that weren’t, they usually resulted in a trip to Stobhill Hospital.

South East London – the early years

There were a couple of years of accent related isolation when we moved to London. This aside, the parties got stranger. There was a period of time when we went to a lot of Round Table events. I lament the passing of the popularity of the Round Table. I have no idea who or what they are/were, but they did parties that involved discos for kids on caravan sites. What is more fun for a child than a buffet, and sliding on your knees through a group of crinoline wearing adults dancing to Bucks Fizz? Then giddy with that speed-like rush of excitement and fear as you and 30 other kids laugh scream and chase each other round a campsite for no good reason other than you could. Today we would round up children enjoying themselves, slap ASBOS on them and return them to parents threatening them with jail terms for allowing their child to socially interact with two or more other children in a public place.

Soon came the age when you were no longer the young child who had to accompany your parents and be allowed the freedom of a party designed to accommodate the wee ones, but the slightly older one that was banished upstairs with your sibling and forced to sit in a bedroom with the kids of your parents friends who, to be perfectly honest, were not your friends. The only upside to these ‘dos’ is that invariably the ‘other’ kids had toys you didn’t. Turning society up-side-down, all around the country were kids being very polite to each other, making small talk with other kids, not making faux-pas or rocking any boats and discussing their favourite films whilst in contrast, downstairs are rooms filled with our fathers looking like Keith Lemon (always one or two of them wearing fake plastic boobs – why? I will never know) and our mothers rocking every kind of maxi-dress ever created. These were good times. These were the times when we had to sneak down to steal food and drink and smuggle it back up to the room. In retrospect, we probably didn’t have to creep. We were probably free to go and get what we wanted, we probably didn’t have to stay in the room either. Like disapproving 10 year olds we had created our child-based apartheid and put ourselves on the sharp end of it. But do you know what? These were fun times. We played on Commodore 64s (I am middle-class after all), we actually just kicked back and had a laugh with these strangers with one eye on the clock watching the hands tick ever closer to teen awkwardness but still firmly holding the hand of childhood simplicity.

Heady days. This is what we had to do to print something, kids today have it easy:
> PRINT ?W% : REM PRINT the byte pointed TO by W%; equivalent of 'PRINT PEEK(W%)'

South East London – the teen years

Now this is painful. A teenager, too young to be trusted alone, too old to see what possible joy could be gleamed from a party involving parents, add to that the gender split, it is a recipe for shit parties. In my experience, just to torment you further, your parents would ensure that somehow you were sat next to an elderly relative. Something that you didn’t appreciate back then, but now I know they were the most fun kids in the room, all correctness out of the window you could actually have a great time with them as they told you what they really thought of all the others around you. The other aspect of being the teen at a gathering is that you become the unpaid babysitter. Sure – you expect it with kids you are related to – but then come the little bastards that you aren’t related to. They are the ones who grab hold of an older child’s modelling knife and slice through his guitar strings or cut their hands to ribbons with it, or draw on a painting or wall, smash glasses and punch the other youngsters. You, as the teen, are responsible, but they, as Rosemary’s baby, couldn’t give a flying bowl of rice with peas about your failed authority. This is when parties ceased to be fun.

If this wasn't at your 80s party - you weren't going to
 the right parties.

South East London - The late teen years

As if I am going to put anything in this blog about those years. Mum, the house was always cleaned, the dog was never harmed.

Thank God my parents didn't own anything
that need a french polisher.

Essex – the now years

Our two little ones love a party so much it bursts our hearts. We know they will have the best time ever during our street party. Playing with friends, grazing from a buffet and eventually flaking out. We are so lucky that all our friends have the loveliest children who all look out for each other from the serious and responsible mid teen to cheeky and thinks she is older than she really is four year old. They will hopefully have the best memories and not realise that we curtailed their freedom to roam so much in comparison to our childhood that they essentially exist in a permanent curfew.

So much fun.

We will be entering our two hamsters into the pets as villains competition dressed as Hitler and Mussolini.

HOW TO WIN A QUIZ NIGHT WITH STYLE

So…. we are a competitive bunch, it seems. A few weeks ago it was announced that the next school quiz night would be on St Patrick’s Day. First item on the agenda for our merry team of 10 people was the name. Many were floated, few were deemed acceptable. Of the list of rejected team names the following ranked highly; The Dirty Protests, The Real PTA, The H-Block Massive and my personal favourite, The Kneecaps. The collective plumped for 'The Feckin Eejiots'.



Saturday was, as with many others I am sure, a whir of Mother’s Day gift preparation. In our house we had been rehearsing the Muppets song ‘The Happy Song' all week to be performed at the highest possible decibel to a possibly hung-over mother in bed, some old picture frames needed rubbing down and repainted and new pictures of Ginger and Blondie riding their bikes – both WITHOUT stabilisers – needed printing and insertion, the house had to be cleaned from top to bottom, washing done, along with the hamsters *spits* to ensure no domestic duties were required on Sunday and Mrs M got to enjoy the day in the peace serenity that she deserves. Preparation for the Mother’s Day lunch started with the labour intensive creation of a pea soup that requires two hours of flipping sieving to get it as smooth and tasty as possible – a quick bike ride with Ginger to buy some daffodils that were supposed to be hidden till Sunday morning, but instead were presented the second we got back from the shops in a fit of lovely exuberance and then the start of the Gaelic feast to be taken with us to the quiz.



What is there to hate about a potato?
Nothing. But I didn't use them for my feast
that would have been obvious.


I decided to make my only dish that I can produce that doesn’t involve mince, pizzas. Obviously pizza isn’t a renowned Irish dish. However, in a recent conversation with my cousin we did recognise that Northern Ireland benefited from the hapless Italian Diaspora (hapless as we have assumed that they got off the boat by mistake before it headed over to the US as swapping sun drenched poverty for just drenched poverty in post 1860 Ulster might not have been their aim) – I digress, what have the Italians ever done for us? Well, bringing with them many of our favourite culinary treats such as The Fish Supper, fish with chips; a 'poke', ice cream in a cone; and 'sliders', a slab of ice cream between two wafers, are pretty much top of any ‘great things’ list. As a child (and an adult) I am still amazed that my uncle(s) had actual accounts at ice cream parlours in Belfast where they could pull up the car, get the frozen ambrosia, get back in the car, drive away and not have to pay until the invoice hits the mat. So I made pizza, Irish pizza that looks a lot like..... pizza.



This Irish Chocolate Pizza seems to be
the entire rainbow of wrong.


We assembled in our living room, ten eager adults all up for the sheer joy of quizzing, certain team members being banned from writing the answers after the last debacle of the ‘we lost by 3 points all because XX didn’t write the answer we gave him/her’, possible rounds were carved up between us (important to note here that I was not allocated a round), a few beverages were consumed and off we went to the school laden with fizz, stout, ale and wine to lubricate the mind and a Bacchus-like buffet to graze through in-between questions. Our neighbours and fellow teammates had created dim-sum, spiced bread things, Parmesan fingers, a manchego and olive platter… the list goes on.



We sat down. We set out our food, XX was not given the pen and answer sheets. We began. Rounds one and two were good rounds, Irish people in the picture round (we failed to spot Iris Murdoch but this was counterbalanced by picking out Michael Collins). To be completely honest, yes there was a buzz, a tangible fizz about us that thought we could win, but this was tempered greatly by the need to just enjoy the evening, roll with each punch, and, at one end of the table, doodle the most offensive doodles imaginable on the answer sheets. The balaclava, raised fist and slogan ‘We Know Where You Live’ aimed at the quiz master was a delightful touch.



I am pretty sure that the 'Troubles' wouldn't have been
the same if certain people had worn this kind of balaclava.


The first two rounds put us within one point of the leading team and, I believe, set the rest of the teams adrift by around five points. There were 20 teams in the room with 10 people per team that is 190 people who were not on our side. It got just a little bit more serious. We had two great rounds, Irish literature was stormed, Irish general knowledge was general but knowledgeable - in one of these we accomplished the full 10 points the other 10 points plus a bonus, due to a Steward's Enquiry on one of the answers this bonus was also awarded to the entire quizzing fraternity/sorority. This bonus point will become important later on.



This is a bonus point. It is also an extra free parking space.


Picture round - on Irish things, Comedy round - Irish of course, more Irish general knowledge and Irish Music - by Irish-ish bands threw up some some surprises on our team. Debs (a relative newcomer) pulled some significant answers from the ether and this was coupled with Sarah’s deal-breaking knowledge of some quite frankly obscure answers. We were getting more and more sober and focused. This was a team effort in the truest sense, no answer was deemed a bad one (unless it was) there was democracy at work as we all separately scribbled our answers on our paper and they were handed to Red Headed Vicky to decide whether they were good enough or not to be submitted.

As the final scores were being ‘Excelled’ we were treated to the best of the worst raffle by our sublime MC and wife (a quiz pairing of unparallelled wit and warmth), including a half drunk bottle of Jameson’s and a stick-on moustache (rumour has it these prizes alone raised £1K for the school). The scores were ready. We had to sit through 18 team names before the words 'The Feckin Eejiots' drifted balefully across a room inhabited by slightly perspiring and inebriated parents. This was it. There was a tie for first place. In most other quizzes a tie is settled by a sudden death question, or a best of three, five, seven (keep going, odd numbers are best for this). But this is Essex. When a room fills with parents that have an average age of somewhere between 35 and 45 there is only one way to decide a winner. Ooh, remember that bonus point that everybody got due to the Steward's Enquiry? Yeah, us too.

A DANCE-OFF.

And with this, I was able to contribute to the team.

The rules were simple. House of Pain’s Jump Around was to be played, in keeping with the Irish theme (them being from California, which we all know is a suburb of Cork). The nominated members of the two teams (me and a guy from theirs) were to take to the floor and dance, when the chorus struck the dancer who generated the most air in the pursuit of lyrical and dance literality was to be declared the winner. The 198 strong crowd were to vote with their lungs, much like Take Me Out but without the studio, lights, contestants or Paddy.


Things I may have done in this dance-off:

• Attempted to intimidate my fellow contestant by dancing round him at groin level
• Attempted to intimidate my fellow contestant by chest bumping him during my jumps
• Considered pulling a back-spin into headstand but deciding I was 15 years too late for that shiz
• Lapped up the baying from the crowd like Robbie Williams in the late 90s
• Put my back out
• Won

This.....

And possibly this as well.......

(NB: I didn't actually place my foot on the wall, it just looks like I did)

Yes. That is correct. It was a dance-off, of course I won. As a caveat to this win, I should point out two major facts. My fellow contestant said he was from Leeds, he was never going to beat the home team on its own turf, but he gets my salute for being and absolute star for going for it and throwing his all into what was a magnificent show of men of a certain age dancing. The second point is that 'The Feckin Eejiots' won because of our team effort, every one of us played our part with dignity and style, and some would even escalate that style to panache.

Remember, there is no ‘i' in Team, in fact there is no ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘f’, ‘g’, ‘h’, ‘j’, ‘k’, ‘l’, ‘n’, ‘o’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘u’, ‘v’, ‘w’, ‘x’, ‘y’ or ‘z’ either.

THE SEASIDE THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD

Not sure how my six year old can spell 'features' and not 'shells' but hey. These are important reasons for living by the seaside encapsulated in a poem.

Is there a child Poet Laureate position available?

RHETORIC…. IS IT USEFUL? (THAT ISN’T RHETORICAL)

So…. @BBCQT is broadcast to our TV. This is the normal viewing process in our house: we sit and marvel at Dimbleby’s tie, we gaze at the Edwardian floral cornicing that has lovingly been preserved in the regional venue of choice or, equally we could, sit mouths gaping like basking sharks at the late 90’s faux utilitarian municipal meeting space thinking, ‘who on earth got paid to design that?’. We wonder who is going to be sat in the ‘Right Wing Reactionary Chair’ also known under a number of more adjectival terms, we wonder who the excitable child is that we have never heard of because we don’t read that newspaper or political agenda publications. We play guess the location based purely on the accents of the audience because we missed Dimbleby’s intro (sometimes this is harder than it sounds, stick a QT on national border and allsorts turn up to question the panel. Posh sounding audiences are also tricky; it took me 30 mins to decide that Carlisle was a person last night and not the venue). Sometimes, even when we know where the programme is being broadcast from we play guess the location, Sorry Dewsbury, I am sure you are an incredibly important town but until last night our lives had not crossed paths. We look forward to the one nonsense topical question about something ridiculous to break the tension of the serious work of debate that has preceded. We hunger for controversial figures to permit us to turn our valves and release our own vitriol and hate of their hate onto the internet. And deep deep down we long for everyone on the panel to say what they think and not take up a posture of polar opposition while not saying anything of any worth to anyone.

David Starkey never fully recovered from the
Harry Potter casting rejection.

Last night was a yet another example of this programme offering the panellists a platform for political vagueness and that holy of holy things, rhetoric. I like a bit of rhetoric, and sure on a programme called BBC Rhetoric Time it would be fine. Pontificating politicians attempting to woo us with beautifully crafted speeches where they pretend to understand what is like to be a citizen of this country battered around the head daily by pretend policies that are cooked up to divert attention from very real policies designed to either absolve the government of any responsibility or create an economically based society where only things that are able to be measured in wealth are of any worth.

The extent of Cameron's Big Society was
to introduce a no taller than 5' 7" policy
for the Cabinet.

However, Dimbleby does not host BBC Rhetoric Time, he hosts BBC Question Time, a programme where the public are allowed to ask a question of a politician and expect and answer. I know I am being a little simplistic about this, but it isn’t such a hard thing to do is it?

Let us look at the NHS and how the panel responded last night to questioning. They all pretty much swatted away the issue with yet another mantra on their party’s stance. Where are politicians who give their own opinions? They way it is headed, they may as well just send statements in and sit poor old Dimbleby amongst at stack of papers, each to be read out in response to any question asked, prefaced with ‘I hear what you are saying, but the real issue here is…..’

This is Nick Clegg's policy statement.
Well he has written down all his own
policies that have survived the Coalition

On the subject of the NHS reforms, whether you agree with the proposed changes in the NHS Bill or not, we have all been sold a common enemy – the NHS Manager. A feature of just about everyone’s rhetoric last night. Nurse good, Doctors (except GPs if you except Starkey’s view) good, Managers bad. And by using this triumvirate as the only model for the NHS in all their per-prepared posturing we fail to address any questions. The NHS is not just Doctors and Nurses sharing a basket with the bad apple of ‘manager’. This is of course utter rubbish and some kind of Toy Town view of the world that politicians are too scared confront should it highlight any lack of knowledge on their part and that the media are too cliché to acknowledge. Who actually wants a Doctor or a Nurse who has been given medical training having to be the carer of admin and management? Managers can do that job and can do it very effectively. Managers are not bad, bad managers are bad in the same sense that bad doctors are bad, bad parents are bad, bad politicians are bad – nobody is advocating that we get rid of the latter three though.

See if you can spot the Michael Jackson of the apple world.

Back to BBC Rhetoric Time. The olds skool politicians, Heseltine, Prescott et al, they all have the strength of their convictions and will happily opine on them, but for now, the greasy, uninformed ragtag bunch that keep being tested out on the public through this programme need to be pressed harder by Dimbleby to actually answer a question.

Important note here is that the producers are currently messing with out heads as they have started to mix it up a bit more these days with their seating plan – the left is on the right, the right is on the left, the comedy celebrity panellist is anywhere and the Lib Dems are as always nowhere in particular. I think I quite like this.

David and his ties. Rarrggh!

And where does Dimbleby get his ties from? We love his ties.

FUNERALS ARE FUNNY OLD THINGS

Sometimes conversation emerge that aren't the usual, such a what was your first funeral like? This led me to thinking about the sheer number of funerals I have been to over the years. Our mother, that is the mother of my sister and me, not our Holy Mother, took the pair of us to every available funeral as we grew up. The reason for this macabre pursuit was to prepare us for the death of someone we cared about with little sorties or trial runs at others we kinda knew or we pretended to know. My mother’s first proper funeral was her own Grandmother’s, Grandot to us* (I think? I could be wrong) , she was so unprepared for it, something that she didn’t want to happen to us, and Mum if you are reading this, I certainly appreciate it.

This thrice a year jaunt to a funeral was to become something that I would come to enjoy, not least because I love buffet. From a very early age I have enjoyed observing people, their mannerisms, their cultural differences, their speech patterns and how they behaved in these formal social gatherings. This may be attributed to transplanting a young child from a village on the outskirts of Glasgow to South East London, in the late 70s, these, even for a child, were wildly different places and I had to learn the ways of my peers quite quickly if I was to be part of the gang and my lunchtimes were often robbed of me by sitting in the staff room having elocution lessons just so the teachers could understand me.


My First Funeral
Like my mother, Granny’s funeral was my first. Recollections glare and fade through the haze of time, but do I remember a pair of navy blue Farah’s with a centre crease that could slice concrete easier than piano wire through mozzarella. I was eight. The funeral was at St John’s on Royal Black Heath Standard, I thought this was very grand, I still do if I am honest. Very large shiny black limousines delivered us all, My Mother and Granddad in theirs me my sister and my Dad (I think) in ours. Traffic stopped. Traffic actually stopped. The impression of traffic stopping for your dead Granny on a small child is one of overwhelming pride. She must be important; she must have known everyone and they all liked her. The church was very full, another swell of pride, a warmth of generosity of spirit washed over me, I wouldn’t have described it that way back then, back then it was a feeling of comfort and safety. I knew people were invited back to the house, and I had been given a duty back at the house. I was happy to be given a duty, it was useful. Schooners of sherry, red and white sherry 15 to a tray, cleft neatly down the middle, the odd numbered overspill going to the white side as there were more women. I had my sales patter, ‘Hello, sweet or dry?’ Many many years passed with me wondering why I didn’t say red or white…. Many years, and to this day I am perplexed on the answer, is white sherry dry and red sweet? The colouring not being used as a signpost to drink selection also gave rise to the question, ‘how can a drink be dry?’

aah... who doesn't love a schooner
with its hips and shoulders and cute tinyness?

I carefully picked my way through the remains of the congregation, flicking cigarette ash without care into elaborate ashtrays supported on wooden pedestals that later that day I would grip between my legs and pretend were steering columns from a formula 1 car. Carrying a tray of schooners through a gregarious group of adults from predominantly the East end and South East of London without spilling a drop was, if I may be immodest, a bloody marvel. I am not sure how many of them knew me, probably most, but I do remember being constantly baffled by their apology to me,

THEM: Sorry about Dawn (turn to their left or right and in a raised voice repeated to a more senior member of their micro-clan)  DAWN’S BOY
OLDER PERSON: (the inevitable reply) Dawn hasn’t got a boy, she’s got a girl, she’s over there (points with surprisingly rapid stick movement, nearly knocking my beloved tray of schooners out of my hand)
THEM:  NO… GRANDSON, DAWN’S GRANDSON
OP: I know who he is, here Simon, I'll have another sweet sherry, you’re doing ever such a good job

I would smile let my hair be ruffled by a firm but trembling hand, look at the cress that had taken up residence on their chin and move to the next huddled group. It is a personal view of me – and what I did, I have to say to my shame, I don’t recall what my sister did on this day, I don’t remember how my Mum coped, or how my Dad helped my Mum cope, the only conversation that has registered and stayed over the years was a brief exchange with my Granddad as he ate a banana just outside his kitchen door, eyes looking rheumy and staring at nothing,

GRANDDAD: Thanks Simon, you’ve done a really good job. It is a sad day isn’t it?
ME:  (I nod).
GRANDDAD: Thank you.

a banana. Just in case.. well...
you know.. just in case you didn't
know what a banana looked like.

Not a long conversation, not a great deal of depth in our shared moment. And back in he went to work the room. When I was little, it was MY Granny that had died, not my Mum’s Mum, not my Granddad’s wife, not the cousin, friend or sister-in-law that had died, but the woman who had a sweet tin, the woman who had a video machine and let me use it for a video party when all the other kids in the road didn’t have a video, the woman who threatened to throw a glass of squash over me if I didn’t drink it because I had pestered her so much for it in the first place, the woman I pushed in her wheelchair all the way round a castle grounds leaving my arms aching beyond belief but letting me feel satisfaction in my trusted contribution to the family. Does this narrow view leave you as you get older?

Age and multiple funerals certainly give you a greater wisdom I think. They also give you rare insights to people's lives, who knew my Uncle Sid had been travelling to India regularly through his life to set up charities to help the blind (well most people except me but hey, I didn't know), or that, despite being 30 years his junior, half a foot taller and possessing a beard that he, to this day, has never had, I could very easily be passed off as my Dad at a family funeral that he was unable to attend. Or that it is possible to eat raw chicken drumsticks given to you by the widow of the deceased so as not to offend and not be doubled up in crippling salmonella induced agony. Or that my Aunt would react so strongly as to kick a wreath made of silk flowers and not real ones away from my Grandpop's grave with the power and accuracy of Pelé. Or it is possible to sit through the wrong person's cremation without being rumbled passing on your condolences and simply stay in your seat for the next and correct one. Or that funerals are so formal and polite that nobody will say a word when the Vicar goes through an entire service referring to the recently departed by a totally different name to the one that they had been assigned at birth. I have never seen a coffin dropped, I have never seen a fight at a wake, but on the other hand that would be a cruel comedy to draw on, and not nearly as funny as watching a hearse pull up with a wreath on one side of the coffin saying DAD and the wreath on the other saying PEGGY.

See? A silk wreath is only good for football.

Soon my children will be of an age when they too can accompany us, Ginger, just like me, loves a buffet and Blondie is always on hand to goof around when moments are awkward. Funerals are celebrations of the lives that have gone before and to this end should be enjoyed as well as marking the passing of a loved one. And more than anything I want my girls to be able to turn and smile at each other when my wicker coffin lowers into the furnace to merry sounds of 5ive singing 'Keep on Movin'.†




* I appreciate that may appear a facile description to you but some people call their Grandparents lots of different things, Grapsmap, Noona, Schnippaliebersnacht** and in some rural and isolated areas of Europe, Brother. Further to this (what is the generation above Granny called? oh and that we had two Grannies, simply referred to as Granny and Granny. They were separated by the Irish Sea and most of the UK up to Blackheath so confusion rarely raised its head.

** German is not my native tongue so I hope this made-up word is not offensive***

***Although when I say offensive I have reallise that some people teach their kids to refer to certain things as a Noona, so maybe that should be read as Noni****

**** Is Noni***** offensive?

***** Please insert your own non-offensive name for your Grandmother here so as not to cause offence.

† 'Keep on Movin' was the 16th biggest selling boyband single of the 1990s in the UK, selling 421,700 copies. This is nothing if not an imformative blog.

HAMSTERS EAT MEAT

These are the words of prophecy displayed upon an unjustly expensive packet of hamster food, given its tiny dimensions which are like a shrinky dinky in miniature. But let us not read this blog in the style of Billy Pilgrim’s life giving away the punch line in the first paragraph, darting from Dresden to Tralfamadore and back to Ilium quicker than you can say postmodern metafictional novel (or the full title of the book). Scroll with me, if you will, back to the beginning.

the carcass of an animal downed by feral hamsters

A while ago we promised our children hamsters. We attempted to buy some from ‘a lady who doesn’t give her name and will only sell them from a car park if you give her the secret code’, and failed. Fortunately we found somebody who breeds them in a happy and clean environment. Nearly 3 months ago we purchased them. They are neither Russian nor Syrian, what they are is open to debate……….


Day one: The petrol burned in the trip to and from the hamsters’ birthplace had a greater value than the collective cost of all the equipment needed, food and RRP of the hamsters. This should have been the first warning sign.

Hamsters were named. Put into their separate boxes. Driven home. Blondie has the cutely named Harriet ‘The’ Hamster and Ginger has plumped for the more culinary moniker, Pumpkin. They girls handled them, handling them regularly is the key to a symbiotic rather than parasitic relationship. They were popped into their lovely clean, scented sawdust carpeted, Guardian Newspaper lined homes, complete with big tube to scamper through and strawberry huts to sleep in. They were then put in Ginger’s room.


Day two: All good. Although the upset of moving seemed to have given Harriet ‘The’ Hamster a bout of dysentery. But we have all been there haven’t we. Sadly – this case of the hamster squits occurred as she ran through her tube – leaving a lovely brown stinky trail across the top of the set of drawers. The cat wandered in to take a look, was screamed at by the girls and exited rapidly with the words ‘Tabs you are banned from my room’ ringing in her ears.


Day three, four and five: Nothing too much happened here, except the two adorable little rodents refused to be handled – they hid, jumped and skittered away from any attempt at human contact. Pumpkin then seemed to spend the next week stuck in her tube.


Day six: Or halfway through the night of day five. Ginger and Blondie climb into bed with us, weary and teary from the inability to sleep through the Harriet ‘The’ Hamster and Pumpkin’s nocturnal routines.


Day seven to fourteen: A repeat of three, four, five and six, with some cage cleaning. Girls are losing interest in them rapidly. My wife and I are feeding and watering them. I am cleaning out the cages and flinging the windows open in an attempt to rid the room of the putrid smell of hamster.


Day fifteen: We buy some new hamster food that has ‘I EAT MEAT’ emblazoned on it. My wife discovered this to her great discomfort, first hand. Whilst reaching that ‘first hand’ into Pumpkin’s cage clutching a tray of the new hamster meat, the vicious little shit launches itself at her in an American Werehamster in Leigh, John Woo slow-mo style. Claws out, eyes rolled back, teeth bared and ready to sink themselves deep into her hand, fur rippling in the eddies of its our airstreams. I think someone had crossed-bred this creature with a mosquito because the bleeding would not stop. It was only 24 hours later that the tiny yet significant wound ceased bubbling forth; blood only to be replaced with bruising.


Days sixteen and onward until last week: The girls have moved out of the bedroom (the largest bedroom we have) and moved into the box room (a room so small that Her Majesty’s Prison Service would refuse to use it). The girls are also not even looking at them for fear they will somehow enter their minds and telepathically persuade them to set them free and subsequently get eaten alive. We continue to clean and feed them, our reluctance to do so growing daily.

Day, just before last Sunday: Blondie screeched out, 'Daddy, come in in here! There is something really important you have to see! This is really serious DAD! REALLY SERIOUS! COME NOW. JUST GET OUT OF THE BATH AND COME HERE - IT IS SO SERIOUS!' I arrived in the room, towelled up, to find a daughter in tears and Harriet 'The' Hamster's cage bust open and no fat little rodent in there. Tabs was prowling the room no doubt thinking, 'It isn't only hamsters that eat meat you know'. Cat ejected, door shut, and so began a day of listening on hands and knees for rustling. At one point I was wearing an Early Learning Centre doctor's stethoscope listening like an expert safe-cracker to the base of various wardrobes and chest of drawers. Giving up on stealth I purchased a long seaside fishing net and just started scooping at all the dark parts of the room that my arms could not reach. In ten minutes I had caught the rotund rodent and I think it actually swore at me. It certainly eyeballed me. And yes I was wearing gardening gloves the whole time.

Day, last Sunday: Fed up with everything we embarked on a gigantic clear-out of our kitchen and utility room (laughably name as the end of our kitchen which houses the washing machine and fridge) about 20 bags of crap that has been collect over the years, I use the term collected as a clear alternative to the words ‘not thrown out’, the hamsters now live above the washing machine. Tabs guards them as closely as Kevin Costner guarded Whitney Houston, the smell is expelled by a simple wafting of the back door, the girls can sleep in their rooms again. We continue to feed and water and clean them. Nobody, to date, has attempted to handle them.

Run little rodent run, your mortality depends upon
your ability to entertain your owners, and at the moment,
you ain't that funny.

Such is our warmth towards these rodents; we are now creating a doomsday clock for them. They are already hitting the snooze button.