Dear Dave

  So near

Dear Dave,

Although Father's Day was a long time ago, the saga of the flood had already begun. I was really hoping it would have ended last week. A plumber and a joiner were supposed to come out and stop a pipe from rattling every time anyone went past. It never rattled before we had all the work done, so the insurers agreed to get it sorted ages ago. It's the equivalent pipe of the one next door which fractured and caused all the problems in the first place, so I'd really like it sorted and, after a couple of months of dragging their heels, the workmen were supposed to be here on Thursday.

Their firm went bust the previous Monday.

We're back to square one. It will probably be weeks now before the insurers find someone else to do it. In the meantime, whenever a child bounces along the hall and the nearest radiator makes a noise like it's been struck by a hammer (Gu-DONK!), I have visions of some poorly-welded joint under the floorboards finally giving up the ghost and the beginnings of another nine months of tradesmen and loss adjusters.

It's not good for my health.

I've tried to convince the children to tread lightly in the area. Unfortunately, Lewis has the stealth capabilities of a small elephant. He thunders down the stairs and thuds along towards the front door like Dumbo after a peanut. Gu-DONK!

Frequently, Fraser tells him off. "Don't jump on this bit of floor." He indicates the exact location by standing on it. Gu-DONK!

"I heard the pipe go Gu-DONK!" says Marie, running out of the kitchen and along the hall. Gu-DONK! "See!"

"I wasn't jumping," says Lewis. "I was running like this." Gu-DONK! Of course, then he has to go back along the hall to get to where he really wanted to be. Gu-DONK! And Marie has to return to the kitchen. Gu-DONK! They sprint into each other and fall over.

Thud. Gu-DONK! Gu-DONK!

Fraser runs for help... Gu-DONK! ...but trips over the other two. Gu-DONK! They all jump up. Gu-DONK! Gu-DONK! Gu-DONK!

Then they decide to dance.

I thunder down the stairs to shout at them and arrive on the scene with a thud. GU-DONNNNNK!

Before I can say anything, they all tell me off for not being careful and then make a big show of tip-toeing away from the scene.

That distant thudding sound you can hear - it's me banging my head off a wall...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: flood

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Catching up

Dear Dave,

You're right, I haven't really told you what happened in the end about all the repairs from the flood damage. I was waiting until the tradesmen were finished. They've been almost finished for a month now, however.

All they have to do is make the towel rail in the bathroom work again, except they've had to 'order a part over the internet from a foreign gas supplier'. I should really phone them and chase it up but, after months of chaos, it's nice not having tradesmen in the house. Also, although it's getting pretty chilly stepping out of the shower in the morning, I'm nervous of what else they might break in trying to fix the problem. There's something to be said for quitting while you're not too far behind.

Our insurers cheered us up the other day, however. Seemingly unaware that we're already their customers, they sent us some junk mail encouraging us to sign up with them. Their big selling point was that their call-centre staff are polite, professional and always phone back when they say they will.

How we laughed...

At least the decorating is done and, after much effort, most of our furniture and stuff is back where it should be. My safe place is reinstated, the replacement Xbox 360 is set up and I managed to trade-in my temporary one for pretty much what I paid for it. Result. Thanks to all the sorting out, I haven't had much time to actually spend in the safe place, but it's good to know it's there.

On another happy note, the mice have mysteriously gone away. No more have leapt at me out of household appliances. One day they were high-diving down the stairs and hiding amongst shoes, the next day they had vanished. There was that dopey one I caught a week later but, since then, I haven't spotted any evidence of them. Not a sign. Maybe they were coming in from next door and the repairs there blocked up the access hole. Or maybe, as soon as I'd closed down the toaster buffet, they simply had no reason to come to our house.

The second explanation begs the question of how often they'd been snacking in the crumb tray before I caught one in the act.

Excuse me a moment whilst I go scrub the worktops with bleach one last time...

Anyway, we bought a new toaster and we're going through twice as much sliced bread as normal thanks to the novelty value of being able to slightly char it again. I keep a lid on the toaster when we're not using it, though.

Marie went with Sarah on the shopping trip to buy the toaster and was very excited when they got back. "We bought a toaster!" she shrieked, showing me the box. "This one didn't have mice in." She seemed to believe that the other ones in the shop came with the mice presupplied. I didn't correct her. After all, I'm now a man who keeps a lid on his toaster and views open toasters with paranoid suspicion. Who am I to judge what's crazy?

Speaking of paranoia, I did find a mouse dropping in the middle of the lounge carpet a couple of days ago. I assume it came out from under the TV cabinet when I was faffing with wires to try and fix our wireless router (oh, the irony) but it did cause me to panic at the prospect that there had been some fresh scouting by the rodents. Our stricter than normal hygiene rules will remain for a while longer yet. I suspect they will continue to be ignored, though:

Marie and I were sitting upstairs in the lounge the other evening and she suddenly went, 'A crumb!" and picked something off her sleeve. It had been a little while since tea and I didn't get a good look at whatever it was so I was going to tell her not to eat it. But, of course, I was too late. She popped it in her mouth and smiled happily. I shrugged. What can you do? I was going to give her a lecture but then I looked down and noticed a crumb on my own shirt. Without thinking, I picked it up, popped it in my mouth and smiled happily. I think it was toast but I didn't really take a good look at it. You know, it had been a while since tea, and I was feeling a little hungry, and it was probably toast and...

I decided to hold off on the lecture. I felt I'd lost the moral high ground.

There's only so much conflict that I can take, anyway. Earlier in the day she'd asked to watch some Winnie the Pooh. Now, we have Bob the Builder, Tweenies, Teletubbies, Bagpuss, most of Pixar's ouput, Tom & Jerry, Numberjacks, Scooby-Doo, Fimbles, Thomas the Tank-Engine, Barney, Shrek, the adventures of various Disney princesses, Mr Men and goodness knows what else but we don't have any Winnie the Pooh.

"We don't have any Winnie the Pooh," I said. "What do you want to watch instead."

"I want watch Winnie the Pooh instead," she said excitedly.

"We don't have any. You can't watch something we haven't got. You'll have to watch something else. How about Tweenies? Do you want to watch Tweenies?"

She pulled a face. "No! I don't want watch Tweenies."

"How about Bob?" I suggested. "Would you like to watch Bob the Builder?"

"No. I not like that."

"OK. How about...?" I made various suggestions. She refused all of them. Things went on like this for some time.

"How about Little Mermaid?" I asked finally, approaching the end of my tether.

"No," she said emphatically

I gave up. "OK. Tell me what you want to watch then."

"I want to watch..." She paused, knowing I might not take kindly to her asking for Winnie the Pooh again. Then she had an idea. "I want watch something we don't have."

I wasn't fooled. This was obviously just a way of informing me she wanted the bear of very little brain without actually saying the name. "How's that going to work?" I snapped. "Tell me something that we have that you want to watch."

It was too late.

"I want watch something we don't have," she said again but she now seemed quite taken by the concept. At that point, I knew that even if I suddenly found some Winnie the Pooh, it would no longer suffice. I was sure that the moment I produced 'something that we didn't have', it would become something else - it would become 'something we hadn't had until recently'. That wasn't going to cut it. She had her heart set on a logical impossibility. She wanted to not have her cake and eat it.

So, of course, she got nothing. She got to sit and glumly stare at a blank screen for an hour, every so often whining miserably, "I want something we don't have."

It wasn't much fun for anyone but eventually she said, "I want Party Rings now. They make me happy." I gave her the biscuits and, sure enough, she was happy again.

If only that worked on adults...

Hang on, maybe it does work. Things aren't so bad now but there's no harm in doing a little experimentation in preparation for the next time the house falls apart. Excuse me while I head over to the biscuit tin to conduct some research...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, flood, mice

  9:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Mice, yaks, tradesmen and a shovel

Dear Dave,

If there's one thing I hate about this job, then it's dealing with tradesmen. Honestly, I'd rather clean up vomit.

Erm, not that I'm making a direct comparison here. You know, like they both smell bad and leave a mess on your carpet. All I mean is that both things are on my list of normal duties and, if you arranged the list by ordered of preference, then dealing with tradesmen is at the bottom. Thus, there are any number of things I'd rather do, from making packed-lunches to standing outside school in the rain to watching the same episode of the Tweenies over and over again until their irritating voices buzz constantly inside my head and I feel the urge to take a large magnet to their animatronics while rubbing chewing gum into their fur. Heck, I'd probably even rather buy clothes than deal with tradesmen.

Considering I only have one pair of shoes and I still regularly wear a shirt I bought when I was at secondary school, that's saying something.

The problem is, I'm just no good at it. I can't seem to get them to turn up on the day they've promised, persuade them to do the work exactly as I want or inspire them to ever entirely finish the job to my satisfaction. Any tradesman I've found who I have managed to bend to my will has gone bust before I need their services again. (That or been replaced by their Porsche driving offspring who do a job that's not quite as good for twice as much money). Coordinating repairs to the flood damage from next door has gone particularly badly because it's my insurers who are paying for the work to be done so I have absolutely no hold over the company doing the work at all. If I have a complaint, I phone the insurers. After three days of trying, I get through to the person in charge of my case. He emails the plumbers. The plumbers don't reply. My radiators remain upside down. I have to go murder some Tweenies to vent my frustration and then I phone the insurers again. The cycle continues...

Things are finally progressing, however, albeit slowly. The other morning, a decorator was busily re-painting a ceiling on the top floor (the damage was on the ground floor of our three storey house) while refusing to touch up the skirting board on the first flight of stairs (mere inches from where a big patch of plaster had had to be replaced). Meanwhile, a plumber was happily removing parts of the central heating (again) but wasn't really committing to a definite timeframe for putting them back. He was also fairly reticent on whether they'd be the right way up.

Hey, at least something was happening, which made a change.

The doorbell rang in the midst of the chaos. It was Steve, Sarah's manager, and I was taken by surprise. We hadn't arranged to meet up and get the kids together. He didn't even have his kids with him. He was dressed for work but, obviously, he wasn't at work. He was neither being Useless Dad nor Clueless Manager and, thus, he was dangerously out of context. I stood and gaped at him.

"Is this a good time?" he said.

"Erm..." I had two tradesmen in the house, Marie was having a strop and I had a live mouse in my hands. I couldn't help feeling that this was stretching the definition of 'a good time.' As if to emphasise the point, there was a clang behind me, the sound of liquid escaping under pressure and muttered swearing. There was an almost desperate, pleading look in Steve's eyes, however. "Erm..." I repeated.

"Good God, what's that?" said Steve, suddenly noticing what I was carrying.

"It's a mouse." It was crouched under a glass bowl which I was pressing down on a thin sheet of cardboard. "I caught it."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Well, when I catch spiders like this, I normally chuck them out the window. They're less squishy, though. Want to take it home for your cat?"

"Not really."

"Thought not. That leaves three options: let it go to die a lingering death from the poison it's almost certainly eaten, leave it under the bowl and watch it die a lingering death from the poison it's almost certainly eaten, or hit it over the head with a shovel."

"The first two don't sound that good."

"Shovel it is, then." I stepped out on the driveway, put my impromptu trap down and fetched a heavy digging implement. "Right, you lift the bowl and I'll whack it."

"That's a very big shovel for a very small mouse," said Steve, not entirely sure.

"It's the only shovel I have," I replied, losing it slightly. "They don't sell them in sets like they do with knives - you know, big shovel for allotments, medium shovel for flowerbeds, little shovel for window boxes and miniature shovel for mouse whacking. I have one shovel for all eventualities. What do you want me to do? Brain it with a teaspoon?"

"This isn't a very good time, is it?"

"No, it's not. Now lift the bowl so I can put Mickey out of his misery."

"All right." He very gingerly lifted the bowl. The mouse didn't move. "Are you sure it isn't dead alr..." He jumped back as I swung the shovel down with a thunk. "OK, it's really dead now."

I peered at it closely. "Yep, it's definitely not going to re-route its internal circuitry to its secondary power source and relentlessly hunt us down through a metal-pressing factory."

Steve looked at me blankly.

"Er, never mind," I said. I scooped the mouse into a plastic bag and binned it. Ridding the house of at least one rodent had eased some of my frustration. I felt able to deal with tradesmen once more. It had even been something of a bonding experience with Steve. "Sorry I was a bit short with you just now - it's been a difficult week. Want to come in for a coffee?"

"If you're sure...?"

"It'll be fine. Just try not to trip over the remains of the heating."

I led him through to the kitchen. The boys were at school but Marie was face down on the floor, screaming, because I'd mixed her yogurt in with her Rice Crispies for her. I'd then tried to make things better by offering to eat the Crispies myself and get her fresh ingredients but no - she wanted the same Crispies and yogurt, not similar ones. She wanted me to miraculously unmix them, solely in order for her to mix them herself. Strangely, I'd refused. She'd been crying for an hour. I guess she's just reached that stage... I motioned for Steve to ignore her and take a seat at the table. I washed my hands two or three times and then made refreshments.

"Now, what can I do for you?" I said to Steve, plonking his coffee down in front of him.

He looked uncertainly at Marie. "Is she all right?"

"She'll get over it." I picked up her bowl and offered it to Steve. "Would you like some Rice Crispies and yogurt?"

"No!" Marie screamed. "They mine! They mine! He not eat them!"

"Well, you'd better eat them quickly then, Marie, before he does."

"OK!" She leapt up from the floor and hurried to her seat in a panic, brushing her hair out of her face as she went. She snatched her bowl from my hand and hugged it close. "My Crispies... Mine."

I put on her favourite Scooby Doo episode with the sound down low and turned back to Steve. "Yeah, so what can I do for you?"

"Scott's been re-assigned," he said, dejectedly.

I was taken by surprise again. Being Steve's manager, Scott was pretty senior and so there weren't many opportunities for lateral movement in the org chart. Also, having met him a couple of times, I couldn't imagine which division of LBO would actually want him. "Where have they re-assigned him to? Pensions? Life Assurance?"

"Ulan Bator."

"Oohh..." I sucked in air between my teeth. "Do they play rugby in Mongolia? He can't be happy."

"They called him in, late yesterday, and told him to pack his suitcase. Didn't give him a chance to appeal. They said that, after careful consideration, he was the best man to explore new business opportunities in an expanding financial market that required hard-nosed negotiation and the ability to wrestle a yak. They didn't even give him time to tell anyone. He's on the plane already and I only found out because his replacement wants to see me."

My worst fears were calmed. For an awful few seconds, I thought he was going to say that he'd been promoted to fill Scott's parking space. No wonder he was upset - being Scott's favourite sycophantic minion had all but assured Steve's immunity to the job cuts and restructuring. "Who's his replacement then?"

"Morag Chandler. She's an awful woman. She's not even from the Communications Division. She's from IT! She got called in at the last minute a couple of weeks ago to arbitrate at one of the redundancy consultations, argued with everything Scott said and suddenly thinks she can do better. I'd heard she'd gone to the board to complain but I can't believe they even listened to her. It was only by chance she was at the meeting and now she's in charge. I don't understand it."

"Mmmm, yeah," I said, chewing my lip. I was slightly miffed that he didn't remember that it was my wife's redundancy consultation that Morag had attended. He seemed to have forgotten that he'd put her job forward for the chop and that, thanks to him, her career still hung in the balance. I resisted pointing out my lack of sympathy, however, since it might have accidentally emerged that I was more than a little responsible for Morag entering his life. "Any idea what she wants to talk to you about? I mean, presumably she just wants you to get her up to speed on everything that's happening in your department."

"Most of my network access has stopped working and my company credit card just got refused."

"Ah."

"What am I going to do?"

"I, erm..." Something about the situation began to trouble me. "Does Deborah know?"

"No, I haven't told anyone yet. I don't know what to do."

My suspicion was confirmed. Somewhere between helping him change a nappy and inviting him round to play Wii Sports, I'd been promoted to close friend. I was possibly his only friend outside of work and of the network of business contacts he had attained playing golf and squash. If he lost his job, those other friends might disappear and there was no way that Deborah was going to let him mooch around their flat. I might become his only friend, full stop, and he was bound to turn up at my house every day to do his mooching, probably with his kids along so I could 'help' take care of them.

After a couple of years of wishing a 'career readjustment' on him, I unexpectedly found myself not so sure. I knew it would be pleasant for Sarah to get a manager with more of a clue and that that would have trickle-down pleasantness effects for me but...

I sighed. Maybe I was jumping too far ahead. Maybe he wasn't going to lose his job. Maybe...

I offered him a consoling chocolate digestive. For the first time, I took in how abnormally crumpled and defeated he appeared. In his mind, there was no maybe. He had the look of a doomed man and, suddenly, I couldn't help thinking that he'd stolen it from me. I knew I was going to have to start buying biscuits in double quantities.

"It's not so bad," I said. "I hear Deborah's interior design work is really getting going again."

He shook his head. "There's plenty of interest but she doesn't have the time."

"But if she didn't have to look after the children..."

"Once you've taken into account the cost of childcare, she wouldn't make enough for us to live on. Do you know how much nurseries cost?"

"Well, erm, if you did happen to, er, not be working, you could look after Ophelia and Josquin."

"Me? But..." Fear crossed his face. "All the time?"

"Yeah."

"But wouldn't they need fed and..." He seemed to ponder what else children might require but came up blank. "...things."

"Yep, they'd definitely need fed and, erm, 'things', but you could do that."

"I don't have the..." He indicated his chest. "...things."

"Ophelia's nearly four. Those things are no longer a feeding requirement. Fresh fruit, cheese sandwiches and sausages should keep her going, though. You could probably manage that."

"Every day?"

"You might want to vary the menu on occasion but I'm sure you could manage every day, yes. You can make cheese sandwiches, right?"

He was staring into space. "Deborah normally makes my sandwiches."

I decided to lay off on my housedad evangelism. He didn't appear ready to consider the future carefully. He just needed a little reassurance. "I tell you what - go into work and chat to Morag and find out what the score really is. Maybe there's been a misunderstanding or there's some kind of challenging new opportunity waiting to develop your career that she hasn't told you about. You never know. If the worst comes to the worst, though, you can polish up your CV and start phoning round your contacts. There's a long way to go yet."

He didn't seem to hear me. "Maybe..." he muttered and then looked at his watch. "Is that the time? I've got to get to work to see Morag. Maybe I can convince her to let me help Scott in Ulan Bator. I could learn to wrestle yaks."

"Sure you can," I said and handed him his coat. "It's getting the yak into the spandex that's the tricky part."

He definitely wasn't listening. "Yes," he said, slightly vacantly. "Yes, there's a long way to go yet..." I showed him to the door.

"Are you going to be all right?" I asked, somewhat concerned. He really wasn't all there.

"Mmmm? Yes, I'll be fine. Everything's going to be fine."

"OK. Well, take care. Bye."

He'd already wandered off down the drive in a daze. I watched him along the street for a while, just to make sure he didn't walk into a lamp post or anything, and then I went back to the kitchen.

Marie had cheered up. "I eat all my Crispies. I have dessert now!"

"You don't get dessert at breakfast," I said.

"Awwww," she whined. "I want chocolate biscuit." She pointed at the open packet on the table. "You eat nine."

"I had more like three."

"You eat nine!" She folded her arms and hung her head stubbornly. Another tantrum seemed on the cards.

"Whatever," I said. She had a fair comment in there somewhere and teaching her to count using chocolate biscuits wasn't a route I wanted to follow. I relented. "Would you like one?"

"Yes!" She snatched it from me and grinned. "Thanks!"

I had another myself and we settled down to watch some Scooby Doo. The plumber broke a couple more things and left. The decorator went off to buy a paper and sit in his van doing sudoku while he worked up an appetite for lunch. I was past caring.

Half an hour later, I discovered Steve had left his briefcase behind. On checking, however, I found that it contained nothing but a couple of pens and his sandwiches. Either that was all he normally had in his briefcase or he had left home with it out of habit despite knowing his fate. Both options were slightly depressing.

While I was cheering myself up by eating the sandwiches, Sarah phoned. Steve had been made redundant. On the plus side (or, from Sarah's perspective, on the other plus side) she'd been promoted to take his place. (Technically, of course, this meant Steve was being summarily fired rather being made redundant but they'd offered him a settlement to go quietly). A pay rise, added benefits and the freedom to do the job properly - Sarah was ecstatic. I wasn't quite as enthusiastic as she'd expected so I had to explain about Steve's visit. She did her best to understand but, to be honest, her heart wasn't in it. Can't say I blame her - his management had made her life a misery on occasion.

We agreed to meet up for lunch to talk it over and celebrate.

As I gathered up coats and tried to get my head back on straight, I noticed that the painter had touched up the woodwork in the end. Oddly, this felt like the best news I'd had all day. My spirits immediately lifted. In some small way, I'd got a tradesman to do what I wanted. Even if Steve did start turning up every morning, at least the house was nearly fixed. I could cope.

I put Marie's shoes on her and we set off along the street. Sarah's promotion finally sank in - more money, more holiday and a happy wife. That had to be good. There were all kinds of possibilities...

Pretty soon, I was so busy dreaming of big tellies, I walked into a lamp post.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: corporate madness, flood, mice, Useless Dad

  11:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  I'm sure my underwear is around here somewhere

Dear Dave,

Glad to hear you've finally started getting stuff out the loft. Hey, no rush - it's not like the baby's due today or anything...

Have you remembered everything? I was trying to think of what you'll need but the whole experience of dealing with a newborn is beginning to blur. Let's see: pram, carseat, biohazard suit, cottonwool, baby bath, crib (good luck putting that back together again, by the way), more cottonwool, baby clothes, steriliser, industrial-sized tin of coffee, yet more cottonwool, playpen, little blankets, even more cottonwool than that, mittens, buckets, large vat of disinfectant... The list goes on. There's probably a stack of stuff I've forgotten. (Did I mention cottonwool?) I have the full list here, somewhere, but I think I'm too scared of flashbacks to take a proper look.

I saw a small baby at parent and toddler the other day being wrapped up for going outside and it took me back. It was sunny but the kid was being kitted out with a padded coat, mittens and the cutest little pink hat ever. I'd forgotten about the little hats. It was so sweet.

Then again, I was a good ten feet from the little slug and reasonably safe from any stray bodily fluids. At that range, there wasn't even an odour. Just the thought of going back to nappies and middle-of-the-night feeds and regularly wearing banana porridge makes me feel... tired. In some ways, another child or two would be nice, but I just don't have the mental or physical energy for it. I'm looking forward to the point where I can sit reading a book while the kids run around outside entertaining themselves. (Well, I can dream. At the very least, it will be nice to interact with Fraser without having to constantly deal with/fight off a toddler). Relatively soon, Marie will start nursery and I'll have a couple of hours a day to myself. Some semblance of freedom approaches. I'll be able to...

Oh, hang on... Maybe you're not really the one I should be telling this too.

Yes, erm, stuff. I was talking about stuff. Our house is still a tip at the moment because of the repair work that's going on. We've had to empty out a couple of rooms and stash the contents in other parts of the house. Actually, 'stash' is a little optimistic. All the cupboards were already full beforehand. The beds are jacked up so we can fit more stuff underneath. Even the loft is full. We would have piled all the refugee stuff in the middle of the lounge carpet but what would we have done with the the big pile of stuff which normally lives in the middle of the lounge carpet?

We're having to pick our way through teetering stacks of printers and books and towels just to find clean clothes. I've given the kids each a hat with a flag on the top so I don't lose them amidst the clutter. It's kind of like living in the version of the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts where everybody hides junk. You just never know what you'll find if you go poking around. What will it be? The other shoe you're looking for? Fresh underwear? One end of a cable which could be attached to almost anything? Lord Lucan? Or Scabbers the rat?

It's always worth keeping something blunt and heavy handy just in case.

This chaos is a bit of a shame because I had been hoping we'd reached the high-tide mark of stuff a few months ago. Marie is at the stage where we don't need much of the specialised baby equipment any more and she has even out-grown plenty of toys. We've finally been able to off-load boxes and boxes of baby gear. Before, whenever one child was done with something, we had to put it in storage for the next one. More often than not, we just left the thing out - the minimal time before we needed it again meant it wasn't worth searching for a space in the loft. Meanwhile, as Fraser got older, we had to buy more stuff. Pokemon got mixed in with shape-sorters; a beanbag got plopped beside the bouncy chair. Cupboards overflowed, the carpet disappeared and I had to build a bigger shed. We began to sink beneath a sea of toddler artwork and strange constructions made from cereal cartons and yogurt pots.

I remember, when Fraser was on the way, being offered all kinds of useful second-hand items by various total strangers. At first, I tended to find their generosity heart-warming. Then I'd become disturbed by their manic insistence that I take some bulky item of well-worn and smelly baby paraphernalia. By the time they'd dragged me into their home and started piling my arms with junk, I was usually pretty scared. Fortunately, it was always fairly easy to sneak away as they ran round the house opening drawers and tipping the contents into black bin-liners for me.

Now I'm one of those people.

We packaged up lots of baby stuff recently, hired a van and drove it to relatives. With hindsight, maybe we should have asked if they wanted it before popping round while they were on holiday and dumping it all in their front room. But, hey, at least we watered their plants - they can't complain too much. We were just desperate to clear some space in our house.

The initial results were disappointing. There was still no room in our cupboards - it was merely possible to open them without being deluged in bibs and mitts and babygros. We had to do a second trip. Sarah's cousin was apparently very surprised when he got back from Tenerife, opened his garage door and nearly drowned in babywear.

We had slightly more space after that, though. We even revealed patches of floor that I'd forgotten we had.

When Fraser was small, I used to pack away his toys neatly at night, sorting them into the correct boxes and tubs. When Lewis was young, I got the boys to help me tidy the stuff into a corner and I checked that favourite toys still had all their pieces. When Marie was tiny, I bought a spade and just shoveled the stuff into the corner. Once she was a little older and never went to sleep, I even gave up on that. I simply cleared narrow paths between the door, the sofa and the telly and left the rest to geology. Over time, erosion and sedimentation from a steady flow of children caused interesting toy formations to take shape. The Teletubbies fossilised.

It was nice to finally clear some of the stuff out and have a little room to breathe again. Maybe soon, things will be that way again. The decorators are supposed to be coming this week and, once they're finished, we can set the house to rights. We could even take the opportunity to sift some of our belongings and fill a few bags for the charity shop. More likely, we'll just bung everything back where it came from as quickly as possible and leave the sifting until next decade but it's worth a thought. You never know, we might have the time, energy and inclination all at once...

That's still something to look forward to, however - we can't do much until the house is fixed. In the meantime, I'm reduced to smuggling small piles of toddler artwork out of the house in my trousers while whistling the theme tune to The Great Escape. If I can dispose of enough without the kids catching me and throwing a tantrum, I should have tunnelled my way to the biscuit tin in another couple of days.

It better not be empty.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Good luck. Hope it all goes relatively smoothly. Don't forget to pack your sandwiches.

Labels: children, flood, stuff

  10:11 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  One-dimensional eating habits

Dear Dave,

Thanks for the sympathy over all the things that aren't going entirely to plan just now. I know you have enough on your own plate to worry about at the moment. (Have you decided on any names!?) Sorry to hear Sam's acting up and refusing to eat anything which isn't long and thin. This does give you plenty of scope for nutrition, however - breadsticks, Cheestrings, carrots, chocolate fingers, crayons... There's a fairly long list of readily available foodstuffs and plenty of other things aren't too hard to cut into linear snacks. Obviously, you're going to be struggling with items like baked beans and peas and cake but I'm sure there must be ways round it. Mashing them up and squishing them together might work. Maybe not all at once but, you know, depends how much time you have...

Marie had a phase where she'd only eat doughnut-shaped food. This was much more awkward to accommodate. For a while she was made of Cheerios, Hula Hoops and Party Rings.

I should maybe just have given her the doughnuts and called her Homer.

Her Simpson-esque traits became even more apparent the other evening at the point I was getting her ready for bed. She was just annoyed and acting up about everything and I asked her if she was tired.

"No," she said, fighting her pyjamas as I tried to get them on her.

I wrestled one arm into her top. "Do you want to go to bed?"

"No!" she said, taking it off again.

"Are you sure?" I said, forcing the garment back over her head. "I think you need to lie down and get some sleep."

"NO!" she screamed and started to cry. She obviously and desperately needed some sleep but wasn't having any of it.

I was exasperated, frustrated and tired. I made the mistake of being sarcastic with a two-year-old. "What do you want to do then? Stay up all night and drink beer?"

She stopped. She looked at me. She jumped up and down excitedly. "Yes!"

"Er... I didn't really..."

"I not go to bed," she yelled, her body quivering with anticipation at the prospect of a six-pack, a sofa and a marathon of late night cable TV. "I not sleep. I drink beer!"

At which point Fraser and Lewis appeared from nowhere. "How come Marie's getting beer?" said Fraser.

"We want beer, too," said Lewis.

"Yes, can we have beer?" said Fraser.

Marie started running backwards and forwards, the length of the landing. "Want beeeeeeeeeeer! Want beeeeeeeeeer!" Then the boys joined in.

Needless to say, they didn't get any. But, by the time I'd finally got the whinging chancers off to bed, I did have a peculiar craving for a can of Tennents. Funny, that...

Anyway, as you've probably realised, I'm just avoiding talking about the stress in hand.

The mouse situation, at least, seems to be a little more under control now. I haven't actually seen any sign of one for a few days so it's possible they've gone away. Of course, I thought that with the ants, and you'll remember how that turned out. There's every chance that I've just managed to kill the stupid ones and that I'm using natural selection to breed a race of super rodents who will be able to avoid traps, open tins and steal the fridge. At the point they work out how to sell my stuff on ebay, I'm moving house.

The plumbing saga continues. Apparently out pipework is quite 'unusual'. (Translation: It was designed and implemented by a gibbon). The heating is now 88% fixed. Making it 100% fixed, however, may involve demolishing the bathroom.

As for Sarah... Well, things didn't go so well on Friday. LBO are laying people off left, right and centre. Branches are closing, work is being out-sourced, the final salary pension scheme is no more, services are facing the axe and the directors' bonuses have been linked to how much money they can lop off the operating budget. Not good.

Steve's still sitting pretty, as he predicted. Rob's department is gone but he's been shifted elsewhere. Technically, in terms of leadership and responsibility, it's a promotion. In terms of his annual salary, he's even had a pay rise. He was pretty pleased about that until I pointed out that the changes they've made to his holidays and working week mean his hourly rate has gone down. He's been sulking ever since.

Sarah has been made provisionally redundant. This means she has a couple of weeks to prepare and then she has to argue her case to be kept on with a special committee set up to give the impression that there has been some consultation with staff over all of this. It's already being called The Inquisition. Handily, each person will be interrogated by their manager and their manager's manager - i.e. the people instrumental in picking them for the chop in the first place. There will be an 'independent' member of senior management there from another division as well but I don't imagine that will be much comfort in most cases. Sarah's going to have to pull something pretty impressive out of the bag to make Steve and Scott perform a U-turn. (I'm thinking a bazooka would do it).

Ach, well, it isn't the first occasion something like this has happened and almost certainly won't be the last. We're coping as best we can. At least she isn't on maternity leave this time.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Mmmmmmm... Doughnuts...

Labels: children, corporate madness, discrimination, flood, mice

  10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  A rough week

Dear Dave,

There is a scene in the first episode of Desperate Housewives where the one with the riot of small children (Lynette) runs into a former colleague while attempting to buy groceries. This other woman asks Lynette how things are going and how she's finding being a housemom. Lynette has spent the last few minutes shouting at her children and behind her they are demolishing what little remains of the store. She obviously wants to reach over, grab the woman by the shoulders and shake her, screaming, "I can't take it any more. They're driving me insane! Please, help me! Please..." Instead, she forces a smile, says, "Best job I've ever had," and beats a hasty retreat.

There's a lot of truth there. It can be hard for parents to admit that they're not enjoying themselves. I know I have all kinds of fears - fear of being judged, of seeming ungrateful, of betraying my family or of being reported to social services (or, worse, to the wife). Maybe in my case there's even the fear of being pitied for being a man in a 'woman's job'. ("Well, what did you expect...")

This is, of course, nonsense. Whatever the job, we all have days, weeks and even years where the going is tough. It's perfectly fine to get some sympathy and support.

I am lucky enough to be able to honestly say that being a housedad is the best job I've ever had. Having said it, however, I have to admit that it's been a rough week.

We're back in our house but nothing much has been fixed. Despite moving us out for a week to a fancy apartment, the insurance company failed to authorise the contractors to actually do the work. The contractors agreed to get started as best they could anyway but weren't entirely sure what they were supposed to be doing. They decided the best thing to do was remove all the plumbing under the stairs. This allowed them to check more thoroughly for damp patches from the flood and to replace six floorboards which got destroyed during the many fruitless attempts to find the leak. Then they put the plumbing back.

Well, half of it.

The plumber broke something in the heating system and reckoned he needed to take it to a blacksmith for repairs. We got moved back because at least the cold water was on again and there was hot water from a ancient and very dubious immersion heater. Several days passed, however, and the plumber did not return. Then I noticed a bad smell from under the stairs.

Waste water was leaking liberally every time we flushed a toilet or emptied a sink. Gah!

I phoned the contractors and they sent round a different plumber. He fixed the leak but I've had to bail out my house again. As it happens, the first plumber had already been 'let go' before I phoned. The company had no idea our heating wasn't working. They should have a part by next week but, for crying out loud... And all for six floorboards. None of the plastering or redecorating's been done. We've missed our slot for the tradesmen now, so it will be a month before they can start but we've already cleared out the rooms involved.

Besides half the house falling apart and the other half being crammed full of stuff, the mice are taking up tap dancing behind the cooker. One did a double flip with twist past me down the stairs. I gave it an 8.5. I would have given it more but its landing was terrible. I just found another in the toaster. We've taken to shaking out our shoes before putting them on.

With all the disruption, Marie has gone from barely having a toilet accident to needing five pairs of pants a day. She also constantly refuses to do anything she's told.

All this, and Sarah's job uncertainty is getting to me too.

It's a little much.

I've had depression before. I know some of the warning signs. I haven't been sleeping well and I've been abnormally crotchety and lacking in energy. I started feeling drawn and just plain debilitated the other day. If you want to know what I mean, stand up, hold one arm straight out to the side and think happy thoughts for thirty seconds. Get someone to try and pull down your arm. Then do it again with the other arm but think about something which stresses you and gets you upset instead. You'll notice a difference. That's how I've been feeling for a couple of days.

Unexpectedly, the thing which really got to me was my dead Xbox 360. It was annoying it broke but Microsoft agreed to fix it for free and it should be back in a month or so. It shouldn't be a big deal. After all, I have other games machines to play and more games to play than I have time. It's an inconvenience, not a disaster.

But I found myself obsessing over it and ways to replace it. Could I borrow one? Hire one? Buy another one and trade it in later? Could I upgrade to an Elite version or find a really good deal on a Core? It was crazy. It wasn't even that I felt the need to play it. I just needed it to be in its normal place, ready to be played.

It was like I was going insane. I knew whatever plan I came up with was going to be a waste of money but I couldn't put the idea out of my head. According to any logical reasoning, buying another 360 was crazy. Somehow, though, I knew it would make me feel better in a way which went beyond fleeting retail therapy. Sarah saw a bargain in the window of a second-hand shop and I went and had a look, knowing full well I'd be unable to resist. My head swimming, I handed over my credit card, and then hurried home with my prize.

I've had the old one set up in a boxroom for over a year. I used to have a small table wedged in the corner next to the end of the changing unit (the head end, naturally) with a monitor on top and the Xbox underneath. The room has become the office more recently with a bit more space but everything's been cleared out of there for a couple of weeks to allow the repairs to be made.

As I moved the table back into place and started to set up the 'new' Xbox I began to feel happier and I realised what the problem had really been. I was missing my safe place. That little corner of the house is as far from everyone else as I can possibly get. It's cosy. It's always been free of mice. I've often gone there to play games and wind down late at night. It's my place to not worry. My place to hide. Putting it back together made me smile.

The weird thing is, I don't actually have to be in the safe place to feel better. I just need to know it's there. I got everything working, played a three minute game of Geometry Wars and then set about tidying the house. Everywhere is still in a state because of the water damage but it's tidier than it was. I can live with it and that's helped me feel better too.

Yep, it's been a rough week but I feel like I'm coping again. Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to admit you're a little crazy (whatever anyone else might think).

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS One of the great things about this job is that, even in the worst weeks, there's bound to be something to make you smile:

As we went down the vegetable aisle in the supermarket, Marie suddenly screamed, "I want broccoli!"

"We have broccoli at home," I replied.

"I want MORE broccoli!" she yelled.

"Er, OK," I said, hastily grabbing some and giving it to her.

She hugged the bag to her chest like a favourite teddy, rocking it. Then she sank back in the buggy and relaxed. "That's better," she sighed in relief.

Other parents looked on in awe as their children clutched packets of sweets. How on earth, they wondered, had I managed to raise a two-year-old who had a tantrum when not given green vegetables? For a brief moment, I was Super Dad.

I didn't make such a good impression, however, when the Primary 1 class emerged from school the other day, proudly carrying their first pieces of artwork. Lewis had produced this nice elephant:



Except, as he marched out, holding it high above his head and waving it, he had it the other way up:



"Which one's yours?" asked another parent whom I'd only just met. The answer was most of the way out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

"The one with the enormous green... erm... thing."

It was all just a little unfortunate...

Labels: children, depression, flood, housedad, mice

  10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Of mice and Mario

Dear Dave,

Most places it rains water. A few places it rains frogs. Very occasionally, in the American Midwest, it rains cows. We should be so lucky. There's a short season in Edinburgh - it only lasts from late July to the end of August - where local conditions combine with a light headwind to produce a most disconcerting meteorological phenomenon. It rains acrobats. It wouldn't be so bad but they're usually carrying sharp knives, flaming sticks or each other. Somebody's going to get hurt one of these days and, let's face it, it's probably going to be me. I'm usually so busy picking my way through the traders and tourists that I don't see the Super Mario Brothers tumbling towards me, and I can't hear them cursing each other in Italian because of yet another bagpipe rendition of Flower of Scotland blaring away right next to me. So I always end up getting a slice of experimental street-theatre in the face.

The Festival, don't you just love it?

Normally we're far enough from the centre of town for me to be able to avoid the worst of things but we've been moved out of the house while the flood damage is repaired. The insurance have put us in an apartment right next to the Parliament, close to the epicentre of the mayhem. We have to wade through a sea of foreign teenagers and people handing out flyers to get anywhere. It's madness.

(Other locals seem quite adept at phasing it out, however. You know it's the Festival when someone gets mugged despite carrying a broadsword).

The apartment that the insurance company have laid on for us is very swish but not enormously child-friendly. Everything is made of glass. Glass-topped dining tables are not much fun with children. The one here has sharp corners, clatters every time a piece of cutlery is moved and gets mucky the moment a child even looks at it. The only advantage is that when a kid drops some food, you can see exactly where it's gone. At least, you can until the view is obscured by all the fingerprints (and, as it turns out, footprints) on the under side of the table.

On the plus side, cleaners come in every day. This means the table doesn't get too grotty but having the toilet cleaned five times a week can't be good for our immune systems.

It is actually quite nice being away from home. Someone came round to our house and sprayed Something Really Nasty to get rid of the insects but, after the flood and the swarm of ants, our current plague is an infestation of mice. There was a small amount of evidence we had a problem when we came home from my parents, so I put out a couple of traps. Nothing happened for a few days. Then I caught the scrawniest mouse you have ever seen. There was much jubilation. I've never caught a mouse before - they usually just nick the cheese and do a runner. Using a bit of Mars bar as bait seemed to have done the trick. I was delighted.

I was less delighted when I caught another. Catching one mouse gives hope that the problem is solved. Catching two within an hour suggests that the problem is much bigger than first imagined. I've since caught another two. There's still skittering. All the food is in high cupboards or in tins so I'm not too worried but it's disconcerting sitting in the kitchen waiting for the little critters to sniff out one of my deadly surprises. Unfortunately, I can't use our office because all the furniture has been moved out to allow the walls to be repaired and decorated. So I sit typing at the table, surrounded by teetering piles of junk that have nowhere else to go, and wait for the SNAP! of a rodent needing burial.

I'm not desperate to get back.

On top of everything else, my Xbox 360 has been smited with the three red lights of death. I tried dusting it and letting it cool down and things like that but it's not just resting - it is an ex-console. Microsoft have agreed to fix it for free and emailed me a shipping slip but I have no idea when I'll get it back. Sarah has been reassuring me that she's certain Bill Gates is personally waiting with a soldering iron to receive my parcel from UPS and that I'll have my baby back soon. I, however, am aware of how many 360s have been going wrong. You know that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the crate is wheeled into an endless warehouse filled with about a million very similar crates? That's more along the lines of what I'm thinking...

Ho, well, maybe things will be looking up next week - the kids are back at school and we should all have returned to our normal routines. There's going to be a big meeting at LBO, though, and there are mutterings of redundancies. Not good.

Right, the P1 class is only in until lunchtimes for the first few weeks, so I should wade off through the street performers to collect Lewis. I was late yesterday because Marie and I got ambushed by some very persistent mimes. Today, however, we should make better time.

I've fitted scythes to the buggy.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: ants, Festival, flood, mice

  11:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  One beer too many...

Dear Dave,

I had a drink during the day last week.

I don't normally do that unless it's some kind of special occasion or a family get-together. Still, there were exceptional circumstances:

For starters, we were all staying at my parents, so there were three other adults around to help look after the children. Granted, one of those adults was napping, one was reading Harry Potter and the other was napping while reading Harry Potter and somewhat deaf, but there was unlikely to be any emergency we couldn't deal with between us.

The reason I felt the need for a beer, however, was a very taxing phone call I'd just had. I was returning a call from the contractors the insurance people hired to fix the damage caused to our house by the leak from next door's central heating. Everything is now dry at last, the air blowers are gone and we're being moved out soon so all the plumbing under our stairs can be ripped out and the walls around it re-plastered.

I arranged the dates with the insurers while we were still on holiday and the contractors were simply supposed to call me back on my mobile to confirm it all. Except they phoned my home number, of course. Luckily, I picked the message up remotely from the answering machine and phoned them back. They denied all knowledge. Then they remembered who I was... but couldn't find my file. They also thought they were removing the boiler rather than the hot water tank.

None of this was very reassuring.

They did, however, agree they were coming on the day the insurers had said and they took down my mobile number. Since they had already lost my file, I can only imagine what they then did with this information. I suspect they scribbled it on the back of an envelope and then posted it.

Somewhat stressed after that conversation, I decided to sit down with a beer and relax for a few minutes. It was nearly teatime anyway. The grandparents were dozing, Sarah was reading and the kids were amusing themselves. It was the perfect opportunity to flop in an armchair and catch up on the news. I took a swig of my beer, opened the paper and was confronted by the headline story that the summer holidays are driving mums to drink.

I nearly spilled my beer.

Apparently, the stress of having to entertain children for weeks on end causes a spike in the number of mums being admitted for alcoholism treatment.

(At least, that's what some private chain of rehab clinics was saying. Since the story gave them front page publicity and the chance to hand out a list of the tell-tale signs of an alcoholic primary carer, it could be argued that there was a certain amount of touting for business going on. I'd lay off the cooking sherry for a couple of weeks, in case anyone tries to shop you...)

One of the common signs of a problem is the evening glass of wine turning into a bottle. Certainly, I can see the temptation of that slippery slope - it's much easier resisting a second can of beer after a difficult day than holding back on another helping from a bottle that's already uncorked.

Still, there's no harm in looking forward to a little drink at the end of a day spent chasing children. I can see, however, how the holidays might cause problems and lead to a not-so-little drink at lunchtime. Obviously, if parents are struggling to maintain a balance between family life and their careers, then suddenly having the little blighters out of educational daycare for several weeks is bound to add extra pressure.

Am I the only parent, however, who actually looks forward to the holidays? I'm already in charge of Marie all the time as it is. Lewis only spends two and a half hours a day at nursery. Fraser is old enough to entertain himself and he's relatively low maintenance even when he's not at school. The holidays mean I have more children around more of the day but they also mean that I don't have all the hassle of getting those children out the door in time for school or of needing to be back in time to collect them. There's no racing to swimming lessons or hanging about in the rain waiting for drama class to end. More than that, the summer holidays mean lazing about and then heading to the swing-park. They're an opportunity for Sarah to take some vacation and for us all to visit the grandparents.

When else do I get the chance to sit down with a beer and look at the paper?

I sipped guiltily on my beer and continued to read. Inside was an opinion piece written by a mum who did, indeed, find the summer holidays quite hard work. Her three children were being very demanding. They were needing lots of attention. Entertaining them was very expensive. They hadn't really enjoyed their basket-weaving class. They were complaining because she'd hidden their PlayStation. Being teenagers, they were...

Eh? What?

I checked more closely. Yep, her kids were all teenagers and she'd hidden their PlayStation. My sympathy waned somewhat. Last summer, Marie was going to bed at eleven o'clock at night, she was waking to cry for two hours at about three in the morning and then the boys were getting up at seven thirty. That was three children being demanding. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure having teenagers will be difficult in its own way but, honestly...

Once Fraser reaches adolescence I'm expecting him to lose the power of speech and spend all his time in his room. Our conversations will be conducted through the closed door and I imagine the scene will run something like this:

Me (hammering on the door): Are you up?
Fraser: Ungh.
Me: Was that a 'yes'?
Fraser: Uuungh.
Me: Have you cleaned your room?
Fraser: Ungh-ungh.
Me: Well, have you got any laundry to be done? You haven't put any in the tub for a week.
Fraser: Ungh. (The door opens slightly and a single pair of underpants are dropped on my feet. The door is quickly closed again).
Me: Thanks. Want to go on an exciting trip to see an historic collection of belt buckles?
Fraser: Nurghhh!
Me: Well, just remember if you can't think of anything to do then...
Fraser: Ugh wah!
Me: OK, see you at feeding time. (I kick the underpants out an open window into the waiting wheelie-bin below and then walk away, whistling to myself).

Certainly, if any of my kids claim to be bored as teenagers I will send them to live with my parents in rural Norfolk and let them watch corn grow for a fortnight. That'll teach them. If all else fails, and they still complain there's nothing to do, they can learn to clean the bathroom. That way, at least, they will really have something to moan about and I'll have more time to sit around drinking beer.

Oh no, hang on...

Well, one beer the other day didn't hurt.

Not much, anyway:

I ended up playing a game with Marie soon afterwards which mostly consisted of us wandering around the house jumping off steps in interesting and varied ways. After a few jumps, however, she started holding her bottom with both hands. I asked why she was doing it. She told me and insisted I do the same.

We continued the game, waddling through the kitchen and into the dining room. I felt a small hand on my buttock. "Are you holding my bottom now?" I said loudly. "In case it falls off?"

Marie nodded happily.

We were passing granny at this point. She was on the phone to the minister. She suddenly looked a mixture of embarrassed and cross.

"Waddle for your life!" I whispered to Marie. We made a break for it, leaving a trail of giggling behind us but, fortunately, not our bottoms.

With hindsight, I think I'll hold off on the beer till the evening in future...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS The contractors phoned my home number again a couple of days later, still wanting to confirm the date to come and remove the plumbing.

I wasn't entirely surprised.

Labels: flood, housedad

  8:00 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  And they crawled upon the earth...

Dear Dave,

OK, now it's getting Biblical...

The flood from next door has been followed by a plague of insects. What's next? Hail? No, hang on, we had hail in June. Must be frogs. Any moment now a colony of frogs is going to leap out of a toilet and croak at me. If I'm really unlucky, Paul McCartney will be with them. Actually, forget the frogs, a plague of ageing popstars would be worse - they'd land their private jets in the garden and then moan constantly about climate change. I can't be bothered with that. Bring on the locusts!

Let me explain:

The holiday didn't go entirely as planned. The grandparents had a last-minute realisation of what looking after three grandchildren might entail, so things have been postponed until they've made a few more preparations, such as hiding valuables, nailing down furniture and covering their entire house with plastic sheeting. They're even trying to get in shape with a little aerobics. The mother-in-law has threatened to send me photos if I pass any comment whatsoever.

I'm saying nothing.

Anyway, Sarah and I decided to take the kids to St Andrews for a week instead. This, of course, wasn't as restful as having the house to ourselves but it did get us away from the giant airblowers drying out our walls. If you want to appreciate how pleasant this was, switch your TV to a station which is only showing static, turn the volume up and then go about your daily life. For the full effect, mix a bowl of Pollyfilla and go and sniff it occasionally. A few hours later, turn off the TV and marvel at the silence - that's what the holiday was like.

Unfortunately, upon returning, we discovered that the damp had bred some ants. When we've had ants in before it's been at the level of a score of them making a nuisance of themselves near the back door. This was hundreds. They were coming up through the floor underneath the kitchen cupboards and under the stairs. The neighbours had looked in and gone postal with some insect spray which had contained the problem but the floor was crunchy with the victims. I set to work hoovering up but then discovered a stretch of wet wall in the coat cupboard where a two inch high strip just above the skirting board was black and wriggling. The neighbours kindly gave me their spare bottle of chemical death. I went into battle.

Some of the ants got squished, most got sprayed, one or two got hoovered alive. I wiped out all I could and then squirted a poisonous barrier around the source of the infestation. I was tempted to pour boiling water under the floorboards because, hey, what the heck! But I resisted. In the morning there were no ants to be seen. I felt safe behind my toxic Maginot Line.

As the day drew on, there continued to be no more ants. It was peace in our time. I picked up the phone to let Sarah know. There was an ant on the phone.

This was not good.

I peered around nervously. There was always a chance that it was a lone soldier lost on the battlefield and that... The time was 13:32 precisely. The ants swarmed.

Dozens of ants suddenly charged out from under the cupboards, throwing themselves at the line, searching out a gap. Most died convulsing but a few broke through. Marie pointed to every single one and squealed delightedly, "It's an ant!" This kept her busy. The boys remembered an important computer game they had to play and sprinted for the door. I moved to start squishing.

Then the defenses fell apart. More ants appeared. These ones had wings. They flew over the line as unimpeded as tanks driving through Belgium.

It was war.

I removed Marie from the room and closed the door. I calmly pulled on my bright yellow rubber gloves, pushed my glasses firmly into place and carefully surveyed the swarm before me. Then I turned a giant airblower on the little blighters and cackled like a madman. They tumbled from the sky. My victory was only a matter of time.

Still, it was an impressive attack. I don't know if they were lurking under the floorboards planning their assault all morning or whether they'd merely slept in but I was thankful once again for my bottle of insect doom. After twenty minutes all the invaders were dead and no children had been carried off. This time, anyway... Who knows what they're planning for tomorrow? If I was Marie, I'd be trying to look big about now.

Then again, it might be some entirely different threat tomorrow. Just to be on the safe side, I think I'd better go check the toilets for frogs and Beatles...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS While I was looking up the proper collective noun for frogs (How sad am I?), I discovered an entertaining website to scroll through while ignoring the children. It's called Fun with Words. (Again, how sad am I?) Try this for a palindrome: 'No sir -- away! A papaya war is on.'

Labels: ants, flood

  3:00 PM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  All I want for Father's Day is...

Dear Dave,

What are you doing for Father's Day?

I keep getting junk email advertising all kinds of bloke-oriented toys and gizmos that I might want my family to buy me as tokens of their appreciation for my very existence. Remote control items seem to be the thing this year - cars, helicopters, dragonflies, boats, you name it. There are plenty of other bits and bobs on offer as well, from Sat Navs to football playing robots to little fridges to keep beer in. Bizarrely, one company even thinks I might find some digital calipers useful. Even more bizarrely, the only use I can think of for digital calipers is to measure the internal diameter of my nostrils. (I've spent so long around small children, I suspect I'm going native).

Besides gifts, I've also had suggestions for special Father's Day trips I might fancy. There's a deal on at the zoo, for instance, giving a slightly reduced entry fee for families if you eat at the restaurant. Big whoop.

The problem is that none of this advertising really seems to speak to our situation. It's all along the lines of 'Remember to take time out from work. Relax, play and celebrate your family. Spend some quality time with them. Oh, and drink some beer.'

I get to play with toys all the time, however. We have at least three remote control cars in the house already - one only turns right, one is supposed to turn both ways but only turns right and the other is broken and doesn't turn at all but is a model of Mario on a kart so we can't get rid of it. I already have small children to watch play football badly. I don't care what temperature my beer is. None of the stuff really appeals. (Although I might be tempted by some remote control, football playing beer. I still wouldn't care what temperature it was, though).

As for taking the kids for an exciting day out to the zoo... That would be rewarding hard work with more hard work.

Sarah has a similar problem when Mother's Day rolls round. All the advertising involves children thanking their mum for the sweat and tears she's shed looking after them all year. It's a time for mums to put their feet up while someone else makes Sunday lunch. This just makes Sarah feel guilty for never making Sunday lunch. She'd just like a bit of appreciation for being her.

That's another story, however. The question is how to mark Father's Day. I'm not even wanting any games or DVDs - between renting and the ones I've got already, I've more entertainment available than I have time to fill. Which, I guess, pretty much suggests the solution. Even the kids managed to work it out without prompting. What I could really do with is some peace and quiet.

This Father's Day the children are going to show their gratitude for all I do by leaving me alone for a change. Sarah's going to take them to the zoo and I'm going to stay here and put my feet up. I'll take some time out from work. I'll relax, play and celebrate my family being somewhere else. I'll spend some quality time with the Xbox. Oh, and drink some beer.

Have a good one.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Three weeks and seven plumbers later, the leak is finally fixed. There's a good chance we'll have to move out while the damage to the walls is repaired but for now we've just got three large air-blowers cluttering the place and making the house sound and smell like a laundrette.


A big, blue, blowy thing.

I want to take one of these along to a convention of stylists and do a Crocodile Dundee. "That's not a hair-dryer. This is a hair-dryer."

Labels: father's day, flood, housedad

  10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Balamory, plumbing and vomit too!

Dear Dave,

Thanks for your letters of concern wondering where I'd got to. (Your list of poisonous creatures indigenous to South America was a nice touch. As were the instructions on how to rob a bank in Spanish which you cribbed from Butch Cassidy). As it turned it out, Sarah took the news of my meeting with Steve remarkably well and didn't feel the need to harm me. She was just glad he wasn't still here when she got home. As a result, I didn't have to sit on the naughty step for any great length of time. I did, however, get sent to Balamory as penance. This was a bit like being sent to Coventry but involved taking the entire family with me and having to endure much more singing.

No, really.

Tobermory (where Balamory was filmed) is only slightly easier to get to than the dark side of the moon. We spent most of Saturday travelling. We took the train to Glasgow, changed trains there for Oban, got the ferry to Craignure and then rode a fairly scary bus round the island to the land of PC Plum and Miss Hoolie.

The kids spent a lot of the journey arguing over whether we were going to Tobermory or Balamory. Fraser was for Tobermory, Marie was for Balamory and Lewis is at an age inbetween where he wasn't quite sure. He understood that they made Balamory in Tobermory but couldn't quite grasp why we didn't bump into Spencer during our stay. I think the whole trip messed with his head. Fraser struggled to recall the name of the island on which Tobermory is situated until be came up with a handy memory aid: Mull as in Mull-ti-player. (He's not addicted. No. No...)

There is a point an hour or so north of Glasgow on the train where the world ends. Houses become scattered, mobile phones give up and the sheep start walking around on their hind-legs because they think there's no one around to see them. The scenery is beautiful but sometimes desolate. The track becomes winding, hilly and overhung with trees. We were surprised when some branches caught the side of the train and sent wet leaves raining in through the open window. Marie looked on the bright side. "Salad!"

When we reached Oban I realised the low level of my expectation when I said with genuine excitement, "Look! There's a Woolworth's!" To be fair, there was also bowling next to the station but we didn't have time and went for a quick tour of the shops instead. Fraser scored a small stack of Pokemon books in Oxfam. In Blockbuster I noticed that they rent out entire DVD box-sets for between £5 and £7 for a week. I thought, 'Wow! Wish we had a Blockbuster near us.' Then I looked at an entire season of 24 sitting on the shelf. Twenty-four episodes in a week. That's more than three a day. That can't be healthy. Maybe it's a good thing there isn't a Blockbuster close by...

The short ferry trip across to Mull was fun and brought back memories of childhood. In particular, I was reminded of a sight-seeing ferry in Spain I went on with my family when I was about seven. On that occasion we were sitting on the top deck and it started to rain. Everyone else ran for cover. We, however, being British (or just hopelessly optimistic) put on our waterproofs and got steadily soaked. The captain took pity on us, invited us into his little control booth and played us Max Bygraves tapes. (I didn't say fond memories...)

The ferry to Mull had soft-play. It was more a padded cell with squishy shapes, really, but it was sufficient to keep the kids amused for half an hour. A couple of mums were having a conversation and, in a Twilight Zone moment, one of them mentioned how she'd rented an entire season of 24 for a week and gone slightly mad. Spooky.

Near the gangway of the ferry was a stack of leaflets giving advise on how to drive on single track roads. I should maybe have taken one for our bus driver. We had some 'entertaining' moments on the forty-five minute drive to Tobermory as we whizzed along the narrow, twisty, up-and-down road which frequently ran along beside water. At least we've found travel sickness pills which work on the boys, though. (They're called Joy-Rides).

As for Tobermory itself, it's pretty and there are plenty of restaurants but there's not much else to it. The whole place is built on an incredibly steep hill which made exploration difficult. We did find a small swing-park but we had to leave in search of plasters after Fraser went down the slide using his brother's head as a mat. There's a children's farm but that was too far out of town to be realistically walkable. Buses are few and far between. Even half the Balamory houses have changed colour.

We stayed three nights and any longer would have been stretching things. Waiting to catch the bus home, an old man chatted to us. In the middle of his life story he said, "What do you think of the place. Bit of a dump, eh?"

This was somewhat off-message compared with the official tourist leaflets which advertise a child-friendly town. Considering there's very little for children to do and there's a frequent lack of pavements, I'm not entirely sure what they were getting at. I guess 'Tobermory - child-friendly' sounds more appealing than 'Tobermory - usually free of ogres, witches, bear traps and Super Nanny'. Apparently, in the height of Balamory fever, the town was swamped with toddlers. Goodness knows what they all did. Tobermory certainly isn't a dump but it's more a place for wildlife spotters and hard-core OAP hillwalkers. It's not really somewhere you'd find yourself passing through, either. The locals must have been pretty bemused by a sudden influx of under-fives hoping to stalk Josie Jump. The toddlers' parents were probably equally bemused by the lack of locals. Our first meal was served by an Eastern European, there was a South African behind the till when we bought groceries and the Indian restaurant, although good, was somewhat surreal. Not what we'd expected.

After we'd discussed Tobermory, I told the old man at the bus stop that we'd taken the ferry across to Kilchoan for a day out.

"Did you go to the place where they sell teas?" he said. "It's quite nice."

This is akin to asking someone who has just come back from Niagra if they went to see the waterfall. In Kilchoan there are views, a few houses and the place that sells teas. It is, indeed, quite nice.

We returned to the gleaming metropolis of Oban - a place where it is possible to order three glasses of milk at the same the time without a waitress looking shifty and making excuses about the boat/bus/airdrop not arriving until four.

We had a while to wait for the train so we went and had lunch. There was no one else in the restaurant so they put us on display in the window to attract other customers. Unfortunately, Marie took one bite of her food and was promptly violently sick. This was probably not the kind of advertisement they were looking for. The manager didn't look impressed. I decided to distract him with a Spanish bank robbery. "Donde esta la caja?" I demanded. He didn't seem to want to tell us where the safe was, however. Sarah pointed a loaded toddler at him. "Manos arriba!" I said, raising my own hands in the air and making for the door. He was suitably confused. We beat a hasty retreat (and left a big tip).

We got home exhausted, only to discover water welling up from beneath the floor. Two days later and we still don't know where it's coming from. Marie is still ill as well and having very disturbed sleep which means I'm having disturbed sleep. I think it's some kind of test of parenthood. Correspondence may be intermittent for a few days.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: flood, Scotland, sickness

  6:15 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post