FOOTBALL TALK

Footballers. Don’t you just love ‘em? I have very little opinions on football in general, there have been professional footballers or nearly pro footballers in my family (Spurs and Rangers by all accounts) and likewise in my wife’s family (Spurs being the cross-over here). Anyway, this is a short retelling of a chance meeting that still tickles me today. Mrs M and I were in a swanky (for the real meaning of the word just remove the S) bar in the East side of London. This was several years ago – you know the time when there were actually bars so hip that people were prepared to queue to get in or you had to do a complicated act of subterfuge pretending to be the PA to someone relatively famous booking a table to chaperone them for an interview only for them not to turn up but the fact that the interviewer seemed to be a really close friend who also brought someone with them who you knew was never rumbled. Aah the Met Bar. What foolish youth we were filling our empty martini glasses with a cocktail of hubris and ennui. 20 years later we slip on the free frames of hindsight and George Bernard Shaw is proven prophetic once again.

So. Mrs M and I are in a bar area, with some other friends and a footballer of some note wanders in with his entourage. The cliché collection of James 20 bellies and the like. I can’t judge them – friends are friends, none of them were offensive in any way, perhaps a bit loud, but I suspect we were as well. I won’t name the footballer, but he played for Spurs and England (I think he was recovering from injury – which I am told has been his standard position for most of his career). We ended up, in the general bar melee that is the ebb and flow of people waving £20 pound notes folded lengthways over their middle fingers, occupying the same space at the end of the bar like social driftwood nudging each other in the artificially formed lentic of our evening.

 

I had one of these. Yeah I know, me with a football is like Liberace with an attack dog

We decided to chat to the footballer. Age is important here. The footballer is one year older than us, we were about 27 at the time. Not wishing to do a disservice to footballers we imagined that if we were going to talk we needed to talk football. This goes for most professions, it is not a slur on the individual, if you are introduced to a doctor your opening gambit is probably going to be something medically related (although not a demand for an impromptu health check – that is frowned upon) in fact here are a few opening conversation scuds that you could employ if you ever find yourself in a mano-a-mano situation with a ‘professional’ stranger:

Jockey: What about those horses eh?
Butcher: What about those horses eh? (cheap but topical joke about a month ago)
Doctors: What about those hospitals eh?
Teachers: What about those politicians eh?
Musicians: What about those recording rights eh? (be very careful at the outset of this conversation that you establish whether this conversation is part of a performance or not and ensure that you don’t go over three hours as this will cost you dearly)
Actors: What about you eh?

I know, incredibly useful wasn’t it? So, between us Mrs M and I can probably carry off a 10 minute conversation about football before we look like complete idiots. That is 10 whole minutes of football knowledge based on our own families’ successes in the arena. This is roughly how it went – hang on before I start, he was on crutches so the fact he wasn’t playing was visually obvious, not something we had prior intelligence on:

Mrs M: Hello, you are Footy McFootball aren’t you? (obviously this wasn't his name)
FMcF: Hi yes I am. (very pleasant response – something he was throughout the short conversation)
Me: Hello, nasty to be on crutches – have you done something bad?
FMcF: Yeah not nice, my Achilles.
Mrs M: Does it hurt?
FMcF: Not now, just have to keep my wait (sic) off it.
Me: How long are you going to be off for?

Look – I know this isn’t the most exciting conversation. Secretly Footy McFootball was probably enjoying talking to some people who weren’t giving him a Saint and Greavsie (I know this football equivalent to Morcambe and Wise purely through the fact that I had to watch it at my best friend’s house whilst waiting for him and his brother to finish lunch before we could go out on our bikes) style grilling.

FMcF: Not sure.
Me: My granddad was about to sign for Spurs at the start of WWII. And my great Uncle played for Rangers, I think. (Not only have I shown scant knowledge of my family and who they actually played for thus exposing my true apathy to the sport but I have also shot all my meagre canons in one salvo thus leaving me empty of conversation beyond this point).
FMcF: Oh right.
Me: Mmmm. Yeah. (awkward hiatus in conversation)
Mrs M: My Dad had a try out for Spurs.
FMcF: Did he?
Mrs M: Yeah, he was quite good I think. My brother has just finished playing in America. They won the college cup.
FMcF: Who does he play for?
Mrs M: I’m not sure what they were called (Mrs M fast approaching the conversational roadblock I was left at a few moments ago).
FMcF: Oh.
Mrs M: Is it a good life being a footballer? (nice work there Mrs M)
FMcF: I can’t complain. Do you want me to sign something for your Dad?
Mrs M: (scrabbling in bag trying not to look impolite because quite frankly we are not 10 anymore and collecting autographs has long since left our weekly ‘to do’ list) OK, how about this? (produces a scrap of paper)
FMcF: What is your Dad’s name?
Mrs M: (insert name of Mrs M’ father here)
FMcF: There you go. Have to get back to the guys now, nice talking to you.
Mrs M: You too, thanks. I’m sure my Dad will be thrilled with this (possible white lie)
Me: (thin echo) Nice meeting you…..

So we finished our drinks. We said goodbye to our friends and headed back to the station to go home. Sat on the train Mrs M pulls out the autograph and written on the paper is:

 

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR SPURS TRIAL MRS M’S DAD

FOOTIE McFOOTBALL

XX

That’s right. Mrs M’s 50 year old father, referred to as Dad several times by her and Footie McFootball was apparently trying out for Spurs. Bless him though. He was lovely, professional and his friends didn’t let him down so I am not criticising. Besides he wasn’t employed as a footballer for his analytical conversation skills.

 

OVER EXPLAINED - WAY OVER EXPLAINED

I am guilty of over explaining things to my children. Where a simple answer can be given to a simple question I fail on an epic scale. Our youngest once asked me, ‘What is real?’ How easy it should have been to adopt my wife’s superior ability to look at the age of the child assess the depth of answer required and simply reply, ‘the stuff around you darling the things you can touch see, hear and smell are all real.’  Any 6 year old child would have been placated by this informative yet succinct explanation.

All books used to descibe what a fish was.

But 10 minutes prior to my wife explaining the basics of reality in terms that could be comprehended by one so young – I had embarked on a road of such explanatory excess that in comparative terms both the Old Testament and New Testament would have shared brevity with a haiku. This is how it went:

Blondie: What is real?Me: That is a good question. Do you mean what is real as in what is alive? Or what exists? Or what is real to you? Or real as in true?B: Just what is real?M: There are lots of different ways we can look at this. If you think real as true, then real is me saying that you have blonde hair.B: I know I have blonde hair.M: or what is real to you – this could mean that you are taught something that will help you at school at the moment like the Prime Minister is a good person who is in charge of the country which is true to a certain extent, but when you get older you will learn that it isn’t just him in charge and that maybe some of his ideas on running a country might not be quite as good as you are told now. So you have been taught something that is real and you will believe it is real but maybe it isn’t as real as you think it is because there are levels of real.B: So what is real?

BAM! Right there I manage to tell a 6 year old she is being taught a pack of lies at school and the Prime Minister /or the person in charge of the country she lives in is not a good person. I am not even sure how this actually relates to the question of what is real….. I have already talked myself into a cul-de-sac.

M: So let’s look at this another way. Look at the street around us. Everything around us is real.

There – recovered – gone for the simple answer. Which would have worked, had I not cast doubt on her education moments before.

B: How do I know it is real?

If only I had a time machine – scrolled forward and plucked my wife’s answer from her lips and rebooted the conversation I could have avoided what came next. But why stick to the tangible when I can call upon Plato’s Parable of the Cave to really screw up my daughter’s grasp of the world around her, after all I have her doubting her teachers so why not go the whole hog and drive a very large splinter of doubt into her own conscious recognition of the world.

M: Well basically you don’t know what is real or not. Nobody does. There was a man from Ancient Greece…B: I am not doing Greece as a topic… I am doing the Tudors.M: I know you are (shame Plato wasn’t a Tudor, this might have gone a bit easier). But this guy was from Ancient Greece. He was called Pluto. He was a philosopher. Do you know what a philosopher is?B: Its in Harry Potter 1.M: A philosopher is a person who is really clever who thinks up reasons for why things are like they are.B: OK. Does he make stuff up?M: Umm… sort of – but it is generally to help us understand things.B: so it isn’t real?M: Well this person, Plato, was really good at helping us see things. He said imagine if you were in a cave, all your life…

I am pretty sure this is what Blondie thinks Plato looks like

I need to say – I paraphrase heavily from this point – basically missing a lot of the nuance of the parable. My inner voice is telling me to shut up – begging me to cease in this pointless part recollected theoretical rant on the perception of reality. Blondie has long since lost interest in the answer to her question – we are now filling time as we wait for Ginger and Mrs M to get back from the other end of the High Street.. But stupidly I plough on determined (probably through my own vanity) to deliver a wise sermon to my youngest child.

M: …..and all you could see were shadows on the cave wall in front of you. And voices talking about stuff so that you think they are telling you what the shadows are. Then those shadows would be the real things to you – and you would think those things were what you heard…

I am failing badly here. I have lost my way and even my point and I am now relying on a 6 year old to pick apart my pathetic attempt at philosophical teaching to find the answer she yearns for.

M: ……But if you were suddenly set free and you saw what was making the shadows (I am making stuff up now) then you would see what was actually real and you would learn that what was once real to you was real but you have now learnt a new more real real.

I think I need to repeat what I have just said. This is my actual answer to a 6 year old’s question – What is real? Just let that sit for a while - soak it up.

IF YOU WERE SUDDENLY SET FREE AND YOU SAW WHAT WAS MAKING THE SHADOWS THEN YOU WOULD SEE WHAT WAS ACTUALLY REAL AND YOU WOULD LEARN THAT WHAT WAS ONCE REAL TO YOU WAS REAL BUT YOU HAVE NOW LEARNT A NEW MORE REAL REAL.

The teaching profession must really be kicking itself that it was unable to persuade me to join their ranks.

Blondie, to her credit, took this on-board. Rolled it around her head for a short while. Then came back with:

B: so shadows aren’t real?M: There are real. B: So what is real then?M: Oh look, here’s Mummy…..

This morning the girls were dressing in 80s clothes for school, presumably it was decided that the 80s was our funniest decade and thus most suitable for Comic Relief. Anyhow, Ginger was wearing an old t-shirt of mine that sports the Atari logo; she asked why it was 80s. I resisted the strong temptation to take her on a journey that started with Binatone console, visited the ZX Spectrum, bounced on a Commodore 64 and ended with BBC Lynx all by way of explaining why we went to the arcade to play ‘video games’. I just said, ‘it was a bit like a Wii we I was a kid.’

I am learning. My kids are probably learning even more as a result.

MUTTON MAN

Is there a term that can be applied to males that sums up the desperation and lack of sartorial self-awareness as acutely as ‘mutton’ does for females? If so, I may need to apply it to myself. Whilst out strolling with Mrs M after dropping Ginger and Blondie in their Saturday morning future career training course (drama) – I say future career training course – it is in actual fact us trying to develop a late pension for ourselves as Ginger has all the love of theatre without the desire to actually perform so her life is mapped to jump from school to St Martin’s to become a designer, her ability to team colour schemes occupies the fine spectrum of maverick to genius and even her most simple doodles carry all the personality and nuance of curious Picasso and Caravaggio hybrid. As for Blondie, she is currently cast in two different shows as well as a concert and is now displaying the acting talent that most RADA graduates would weep at (I know, drama students are supposed to cry but work with me here), with all the subtlety and depth of an actor four times her age she can make you believe you are sharing a room with Will Ferrell as Mugatu. We see Sylvia Young looming large. The fact that there is a sibling discount at the drama group is obviously neither here nor there and that it gets them out of our faces for just a short while is purely coincidental. *

There is no end to our pride when our children perform sections
of Zoolander to strangers. Really.

I may have taken a different tangent to the one I began. Mrs M and I were strolling with purpose towards our local yet over-familiar coffee shop, which is lovely, don’t get me wrong.  The coffee is excellent, the cakes are superb and the staff worthy of all the hyperbole available to them, it is just that I don’t necessarily feel the need to share my name with them in order to have it used as a sentence filler in conversation. It feels like I am being verbally bludgeoned into submission with my own name, all I want is to sit down, eat their supremely moist carrot cake, sip the rich creamy flat white with the pretty leaf pattern in the top and chat with Mrs M about all the stuff we need to do in our house but are very unlikely to get round to doing. Instead we are subjected to a conversation, harmless in itself, where we hear our names so often that we are frankly embarrassed that our parents chose to label us such and I end up shuffling from foot to foot staring at anything but the server like teenager struggling to be polite at a funeral.

I attempted this design once at home. It ended up
looking like a merkin.

So we were strolling, with purpose, when we were distracted by the one sign that, in these straightened times, can stop a parent that is so used to channelling any spare cash into the lives of their offspring (our choice, I am not complaining) CLOSING DOWN SALE! Like, clothes that are normally expensive, ermm, quite cheap. We literally galloped into the shop and started rummaging. And found two pairs of trousers, trousers that once upon a time would have been a respectable if not colourful choice for a gentleman of my age. They were bought, I felt smug that I had some new trousers that could be described as fashionable.

In my head I am seeing this. But maybe with
my eyes open, and a little less energetic.

This is where the problem lies. The collective male yoof of today have subverted fashion. They have cruelly adopted ‘respectable’ as their tribe style. Look at them all, crowding on street corners with their clean trainers, their brightly coloured slacks, neatly ironed tops and jackets too! They are wearing fitted jackets! They are the very vision of how my Mum wanted me to dress in the 80s when all I wanted to do was wear some ripped up jeans, muddy my Vans and slip on a denim jacket with rock bands written all over it in marker pen. So now, as a mature male who has finally come round to my mother’s way of thinking, wanting to buy clothes that have personality yet say I am mature enough to raise children, I do it only to realise that I am now basically dressing as a teenage boy. Damn you teen boys and your subversive fashions. I now look like I am trying to slip under the age radar and hang out with One Direction or Olly Murs’s Dad attempting to be as cool as his son. (I have no real knowledge of Olly Murs or his Dad – I am sure his Dad is great).

What I may have achieved.

 

My colleagues were kind to me when I turned up at work in my new trousers. Some would say overly kind. I could see in their eyes that most of them thought ‘Really?!’ but I suppose it was a talking point. Actually, as I was walking to workI turned a corner only for a stranger to physically recoil at the sight of my slacks whilst gasping 'Woah!' a little too loud for my liking.

But what really rings in my ears is what Blondie said to me as I left for work, ‘Hey Mister, we need to talk about your jeans…. Carrot Man.’ This was accompanied by a look of… well I can’t really describe the look… but it wasn’t pride. Then Ginger went through all of the things I could team the trousers up with, rejecting each one and finally deciding that they, 'don't really go with much Dad.'

So my lesson learnt here are that my children are now of an age where what I wear matters to them and they are likely to vet any outfit I put on from now. I could have fun with this. Wait until they see my aubergine pantaloons.

All said an done it could be much worse, I could be wearing Super Dry.

 

* Please note that all references to our children’s talents are subject to the usual narrow view of a parent.

BBC OR ITV

I notice that CITV finally leaves its 20s this weekend., this was rather a like a slap in the face with the old stick. This got me to musing on my youth as seen through the square eyed boy that I was. There is a common myth that when growing up you were either a BBC kid or a (C)ITV kid, this is as false as my wife’s continued assumption that my parents banned me from watching ITV kids programmes. For the record, they didn’t, how could they, they were at work, I remember with great fondness letting myself in from school and climbing up onto the kitchen surface to help myself to a packet of Skydivers and a Cherry Coke then settling down to watch Sons and Daughters in one of our totally cool egg shaped swivel chairs.

It was basically this but with a heady whiff
of 70s channelled through the eye scorchingly
palette of orange.

 

There are some hard and fast facts about the eclectic diet of children’s TV that are universal. Grab hold of any child in their late thirties, apply a Chinese burn or a chicken scratch and they will confess to the following:

Blue Peter

Blue Peter was never good. It does not have a hold on our childhood hearts one little bit. Sure there was the occasional moment when children’s presenter maverick Simon Groom cracked a funny, or they tried to burn some Cubs with a camp fire or Sarah Greene looked slightly hot. And yes I did enter a design competition for a new Peter Duncan suit – but here is the rub – there was nothing else on in this time slot! In the early days I am pretty sure BBC2 was all Ceefax or test card, ITV had gone to the news prematurely and that was it. We were not watching it out of choice; we were watching it because well-meaning parents up and down the country were using it as a televisual Ritalin to calm us before tea. They never watched it with us because the producers were wise to the fact that if parents saw how trite the programme was they would worry for our collective sanity, so every week ‘Mums and Aunts or Dads and Uncles and Grandparents’ were ‘sent out of the room’ so that we could make stuff for them. Total genius smokescreen, but it was the children who suffered. How many house fires were started by candles attached to wire coat hangers shrouded in highly flammable tinsel? The fact it is still going is one of life's great secrets.

This was not a phone-in. This was three presenters calling their
agents. I like these three despite everything else though.

The Smurfs and Super Gran

The Smurfs was the only child friendly bit of TV immediately after Sunday Lunch. This was designed to make youths up and down our  Sceptred Isle wash up the carnage of the roast in double quick time. In our house we would do this – my sister and I – arguing about who would wash and who would dry. Soaking never seemed to be an option as this would look as though we hadn’t completed the job – so the loser would always wash and boil their little hands in the volcanic temperature of the water. The hairs never grew back on my hands. Still The Smurfs were OK. I would credit them as highly as a diversion, there was singing, bright colours and terrible stories in a kind of Snow White/Hobbit mash-up with blue food dye kind of way. It served a purpose. Later that Sunday, after everyone had been napping, homework had been grudgingly done (for grudgingly please read ‘half-arsed attempt’) came Super Gran. I hated this programme. It personified cheap and British patronising TV dreamed up in such a way that a foetus would feel intellectually superior. The scripts were so poor it made Worzel Gummidge look like Pushkin. Anybody who tells you that this truly bizarre Tam o'Shanter wearing aggressive octogenarian was a force for good is not of sane mind. She should have known better! Taking her grandson into battle with local organised crime is punishable by prison these days. It was an on screen migraine of accents and plot lines (this coming from a once resident of Caledonia) so the people who awarded it an Emmy simply must have been on acid during the voting period. It had so many big names attached to it from Billy Connolly’s theme tune to Spike Milligan and George Best I just cannot fathom how it ended up so awful.

Really? I mean REALLY George?!

 

ThunderCats

One word, GENIUS. ‘Got to reach sword of omens’, ‘ThunderCats Ho!’. The creators’ clever use of cat breed as a racial signifier to suggest to all children that we can co-exist in harmony was ground-breaking.  It also taught us that Mummies were a little bit iffy. I have yet to see the current re-boot of the franchise, I am sure it doesn’t hold a candle to the feline original, but I am sure it is still pretty cracking. Thursdays I believe, just before we went swimming, followed by a giant cookie from Waitrose.

The eternal question, 'What kind of pet would a cat have?'
was finally answered.

 

The Pink Panther and Snoopy

Unusual bedfellows I hear you say. But not really. Apart from the regular slot on a Saturday after that bizarre football scores programme front by David Icke, the Pink Panther went onto a random scheduling life much the same as Snoopy. These cartoons were a bit like Easter, you knew it was coming, you knew you would get and egg of some sort but when it was handed to you the joy of feeling its weight, filled with Smarties was almost overwhelming. And that is the thing with these cartoons, you knew a cartoon was coming but when you heard it was one of these you had a full-fat cartoon, a cartoon with add-ons, in the Panther show you got not just one Panther but sometimes two, a dragonfly or an aardvark and perhaps a French detective. In the Schultz corner, pretty much always a double hitter, some comedy mime where a dog and bird pretend to be fighter pilots, a miskicked football and some wisdom. These were rare and treasured times. The Pink Panther once made me cry when he was homeless on Christmas Eve and it started to snow. Charlie Brown also managed this with A Charlie Brown Christmas. We have never had a shit Christmas Tree as a result of this. These would be weekday during a holiday period, mid-afternoon, accompanied by some sort of luxury snack, macadamias perhaps or even a stolen liqueur.

Christmas seems to linger like a bad fart in a lift.
You can take your decorations down now everyone.

 

Dramarama

I pretended to like this. All my friends pretended to like this. Most people still probably pretend to have liked it.  It was in fact a child star vehicle filled with bumptious people being squeezed out of the unholy child acting sausage factories that are Sylvia Young, Italia Conti and Arts Ed. Watched on a Wednesday, I would normally be unwashed from ‘Games’ and possibly eating a sneaky cheese sandwich ahead of my Mum getting back from work and making tea. OK, do you know what, it wasn’t that bad. It was no Jossy’s Giants but should be filed under missable but watch it if you are in.

80s graphics. Love em.

 

Saturday Morning TV

Tiswas was great, it can’t be denied. I attached myself briefly to the tail end of this anarchy. I had no idea what I was watching. Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, the tantalising thought that the really crap birthday or Christmas present was one phone call away from being swapped for something you actually needed was almost toxic. This early version of children only EBay was something to be marvelled at. To this day I know the phone number off by heart 01 811 8055 the same way that I know the old post code too, W12 8QT. I am not sure how I reconciled riding the streets on my Grifter with watching this programme – I clearly managed it somehow. I left Saturday morning TV only to return twice more, Going Live as it was a diversion from proper secondary school homework and What’s Up Doc on ITV as it coincided with University and the omnipresent Saturday morning hangover.

The finest day was when a child successfully swapped their parents
for a slinky.

The Cult Programme

There are many other shows on both sides of the TV divide that we love and/or hate;  Super Ted, Bananaman, Count Duckula, Orm and Cheap, Wizbit, Willow the Wisp, Pipkins, the Flumps, Pinky and the Brain, Battle of the Planets, Top Cat (Boss Cat), Captain Caveman, The Box of Delights, Rentaghost, The Children of Greene Knowe, The Fraggles, Press Gang, Chocky’s Children, Rugrats, Newsround (John Craven’s and otherwise) but there is one programme universally devoured by us kids and that is the story of the city dwelling gay civil servant, who, at the weekends loved nothing more that stepping out of the closet and indulging in any number of fantasies. Mr Benn. What child didn’t want to live in Festive Road where the kids run feral, where, even in the early 70s, a man is not outed in a local tabloid or driven from his home by an angry mob for the crime of living a singular life shrouded in weekend mystery. There are only 14 episodes, yet everyone seems as if new as a shiny pin every time it is viewed. So crammed with detail from games of the kids on Festive Road through the camp shopkeeper’s shop to the tiny trinkets Benn brings home, I continue to spot something new even 39 years later. The true heart of Mr Benn lies in the soothing narration by the velvet tonsils of Ray Brooks, listening to him tell the story was like having your eardrums massaged (in a good way – am not sure if there is a bad way – but even if there was – this is the good way – not the bad). I watched this the lunchtime that I went home and ate an entire family sized tin of rhubarb and rather unsurprisingly threw it all up again in Mrs Bhatt’s poetry class in year two of the juniors. Subsequent episodes were usually accompanied by eating a Trio.

Off to G-A-Y again.

 

So there it is. A rambling mismatch of some of the great and poor progs from our youth. I appreciate I have left out some TV gold, Why Don’t You for example, a kids show wrapped so tightly in its own irony is eventually asphyxiated itself. Play Away, the training boards for one our greatest thesps who then went on to make films as closely linked as Deadringers, Damage and Lolita. Or perhaps least memorably Rude Dog and the Dweebs aka cartoon faecal matter. I don't hold to this era too tightly, I have no intention of being the kind of Dad that moans about the quality of the contemporary as you just get a blank stare back, as I received during Back to the Future where I had to describe what things were in the current as well as the past. The fact that the Future young Michael J Fox yearns for so longingly is actually a pre-birth past of some 27 years for my daughters hit me like a fast moving continent. Enough of this I have to go and watch X-Men.

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.