Dear Dave

  In Bruges

Dear Dave,

Shoot first, sightsee later...

For some reason, as I fought my way along a cobbled pavement through a coach-load of Italian teenagers going in the opposite direction, the tag-line to the film In Bruges kept springing to mind.

With hindsight, it was probably because I was actually in Bruges at the time. Still, it would have been sensible advice in any other over-priced, medieval European city.

With one hand I clasped a waffle and with the other I clung to Lewis as he told me in great, yet unintelligible, detail about level 3-6 of Mario vs Donkey Kong 2. "...and then you jump this way and go up past the thing and then the other thing comes down next to the platform on the other side of the purple bit..." We pressed forward through the other tourists.

The waffle had cost slightly more than half our normal daily family food budget. It was going soggy from the rain.

I gritted my teeth. We were on holiday. We were having a cultural experience. We were going to enjoy it.

"Are we lost?" asked Fraser from somewhere behind us.

"No," I replied. "We know where we are, we... just don't know where we're going."

"We're never going to get back to the holiday house!" said Lewis, sounding genuinely concerned.

"My socks are wet," squealed Marie.

"We'll get back soon," I said, "and we'll get dry and we'll eat our waffles."

"Do we have to go out tomorrow?" asked Fraser.

"Yes."

"Awwww," he moaned. "Why?"

"Because we're on holiday," I snapped. "We haven't travelled hundreds of miles to sit on a sofa with the curtains drawn and play computer games."

"Why not?" said Lewis.

"Er... because we could have done that at home."

"Why didn't we just stay home?" asked Fraser.

I shook my head in despair. I didn't entirely have a good answer for that. "At least we're not being forced to listen to Max Bygraves tapes by a crazy Spanish sea-captain," I muttered to no one in particular.

"What?" said Lewis, Fraser, Sarah, Marie and a handful of fifteen-year-old Italians in unison.

I took a deep breath. "Well," I began, "when I was small, we were on the top deck of a ferry and it started to chuck it down and..." I launched into an account of various family holidays I'd endured as a boy. It kept the children entertained as we plodded on. There was a strange symmetry to distracting my kids from getting soaked in a foreign land by recalling tales of getting soaked in a foreign land as a kid. Deep down, I knew I'd turned into my parents, though. Both of them. What were we doing?

It had all begun several days earlier on a cold, wet beach in Zeebrugge...

We'd taken the ferry overnight from Rosyth and stepped out boldly to explore. We could have caught a coach directly from the ferry port to Bruges but the boys get bus sick very easily so we thought we'd catch a train. This involved exploring Zeebrugge on foot.

We won't be doing that again.

We were travelling remarkably light for a family of five but Sarah and I still had an enormous rucksack each and the boys both had a small backpack. We'd left the buggy behind and so Marie was forced to walk. This made life interesting as we blundered our way along the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway, searching for civilisation while a gale whipped sand and rain into our eyes. The nearest railway station was closed. There were no shops, only a row of job centres and temp agencies. The boys started to complain that 'abroad' was very cold and they didn't like it.

We trudged a mile into town and found another station. The building was being renovated so we had to stand on the platform in the rain to eat our sandwiches. We did manage to get a train, however, and we didn't have to pay for the kids, so that cheered us up a little. We got to Bruges and ate waffles. This cheered us up some more. Then we hunted out the self-catering house we'd rented for the week. The rain bucketed down as we went.

When we eventually dripped our way inside, it was surprisingly nice. Rather too nice, in fact. It was packed with antique furniture that we had to immediately tell the children not to drip on. The owner very proudly told us that Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson had stayed there during the filming of In Bruges. Since I'd only heard of the movie thirty minutes beforehand thanks to a poster in the Tourist Information Centre, I maybe wasn't as impressed as I should have been. Still, I searched the house later for toenail clippings to eBay.

The place was very different from our own home, adding to the adventure of the holiday. The only real issue was the stairs:



No not those stairs. Admittedly they had gaps in the banisters big enough for an adult to fall through, forced me to duck, were slippy and wobbled worryingly but it's the next flight I'm really talking about:



Not the kind of obstacle you want between a three-year-old and the toilet, first thing in the morning.

Marie simply wasn't allowed to go up and down on her own.

The next day, once we'd dried off, we started doing the usual tourist things. We went on a boat trip on the canals and took a horse-drawn carriage ride round the old town, we went for walks, searched out swing-parks and hit the shops. We avoided buying lace souvenirs but we did stock up on chocolate. We only got soaked through a couple more times...

There were a few instances where it was an effort trying to herd the children but everything was so much easier than it would have been even a year ago. Once we'd got the kids down the stairs in the morning, they could amuse themselves while we slept on. We even went a whole week without a buggy or changing bag or a packet of wipes.

Actually, no, we managed without the buggy and a change of clothes for Marie but we only went a day without a packet of wipes before we realised our mistake. The kids had some candy floss at the circus, got it all over themselves and then tried licking it off. For the rest of the afternoon, everything they passed stuck to them - dirt, leaves, small dogs, other people's wallets, historic monuments, buses and each other. It was a disaster. We ended up rolling half the town into a big, sticky ball just trying to get home. The locals weren't pleased. We may be just about done with changing bags and buggies but I suspect that I'll still be carrying around a packet of wipes with me on the day I help Marie transport all her stuff to university. (I'll probably still be telling her not to lose her gloves and to say 'please' and 'thank you' as well, but that's another story.)

In the middle of the week, we took a train to Brussels to have a look round there. We found a decent swing-park, more rain and the hugely ostentatious town square. If there was much else to see, we didn't stumble across it. By that point, I'd run out of first-hand stories of holiday mishaps and was resorting to tales that my grandparents had told me to keep me distracted on cramped, three-day car journeys to Spain. I wandered around saying things like, "Look at that statue and did you know that your great-grandparents once got locked in a church with General Franco?"

We spotted the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier but both the boys thought it was rather a waste using up so much space to bury one person that nobody knew. Then we found a shop selling Pokemon merchandise and they were happy.

On our final day in Bruges, the boys and I sat in the main square while Sarah and Marie went shopping. An old local came over, looking for a chat. He asked where we were from and then told us that the only way Bruges has to make money is to rob tourists blind. He then pointed out that half the ancient-looking buildings around us were erected in the twentieth century. When I mentioned that we'd been to Brussels, he said, "The town square's wonderful but there's nothing else to see."

I suspect that he didn't work for the Belgian Tourist Board.

A different elderly man (I just seem to attract these guys) accosted us the following morning as we were preparing to get off the ferry. He'd been visiting friends in Holland and they'd suggested he cycle from the port. Because of the bad weather, he'd left his bike at home and had attempted to take public transport. He'd apparently ended up following us as we desperately searched for a means of escape from Zeebrugge. He, too, had been glad to make it out alive before nightfall... If he goes back, he's going to catch the bus directly to Bruges and find his way from there.

I nodded sagely. It was the only sensible course of action. I only wished I'd known that a week earlier.

Next time I go anywhere, I'm going to go stand in the queue to leave as soon as I get there and wait for an elderly gentleman to give me the inside scoop on the place. It will save so much time.

We survived. The kids got to see somewhere foreign where the buildings are strange, the money is different and slightly fewer people than normal speak English. They also got to bag a whole heap of Pokemon tack. Could have been worse. Lewis is keen to go back again, despite not wanting to go in the first place and kicking up a fuss every time we tried to leave the house when we were there. Marie's happy because she got to buy a pink, sparkly necklace. Fraser's just pleased that he's no longer the only kid in his class who hasn't been to another country. He was pretty miserable at the start of the holiday, though. He didn't want to go and then acted like it was the end of the world when Lewis accidentally stood on his hand in the soft-play on the ferry.

I took him back to the cabin to put a plaster on his finger and calm him down. He slumped dejectedly on his bunk.

"You don't really want to be here, do you?" I said. "Would you rather have stayed at home?"

He looked sheepish. He clearly wanted to agree but was worried he might get into trouble for telling the truth.

"Do you want to hear a secret?" I asked. "You have to promise not to tell it to anyone. Do you promise?"

He looked interested. "OK."

"Well," I said, "I'd rather have stayed at home too."

"Really?" he said, perking up like a housedad who's just spotted another man entering the room for parent and toddler.

"Yes, but Mummy really wants to go on this holiday and I love Mummy very much, so we're going and we're going to have a good time. Do you understand?"

He nodded.

"Do you love Mummy very much, too?" I asked.

"Yes," said Fraser.

"Then stop being so grumpy, please."

"All right," he said. "Can I play my DS now?"

"When we get back down to the others."

He made as if to complain that he wanted to stay in the cabin but then stopped. We shared a grin and headed downstairs. The holiday went much more smoothly after that. We even had a pretty good time...

Hope everyone's well and that you had an excellent Easter.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Lewis felt sick on the ferry journey home. I told him to hurry to the toilet. Dutifully, he went through, but he'd misunderstood. Rather than stick his head in it and throw up, he sat down to pee.

Then he threw up.

Fraser started feeling ill. I gave him a travel pill. He threw up in the sink. The output was the colour of the travel pill. Marie was delighted. She spent the rest of the day running up to strangers and yelling, "Fraser was sick! It was pink!"

Charming.

PPS When we finally reached home, I watched the trailer for In Bruges and fell about laughing.

Labels: sickness, travel

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Nobody expects the Spanish I/O error

Dear Dave,

Some things didn't really change when I became a housedad. Bringing up kids is very like running an IT project - for some reason, I'm always behind schedule.

With IT projects, the difficulty is that there are always unexpected snags. Typical issues range from a logical inconsistency in the specification (i.e. you've been asked to do the impossible) to a discovery that the highly paid contractor brought in to handle the tough stuff was bluffing all along and has spent six months playing Minesweeper. If you're really unlucky, the project will simply open up a vortex in the very fabric of nature that sucks in time and money and dumps them out beyond the galactic rim. (That's never good).

Obviously, it's possible to figure some leeway into the production timetable but, if you don't know what the problem is going to be, it's difficult to know how much time to allow for solving it. Maybe it will only require someone nipping to Curry's for a cable. Maybe it will send the whole project back to the drawing board. Who knows? Probably best to allow twice as long as you're really hoping, though.

Of course, putting vast amounts of blank space in the schedule 'just in case' gives a bad impression, so it doesn't usually happen. Then, halfway through the project, someone leaves the team or the customer suddenly needs the product in a hurry and management has to cut corners in order to get the job done. The easiest thing to do is remove from the schedule the time and manpower set aside for contingencies. Voila! The whole project is back on track... as long as nothing goes wrong. Management may argue that this is the kind of emergency that all the padding in the schedule was for, but the truth is that these are management problems that should have had padding of their very own. In reality, what's gone is all the time required to cope when it turns out that the software you've bought in from another company doesn't do all the things the salesman said it would, doesn't work at all or has manuals that are written entirely in Danish (apart from the bits in Braille).

Somehow, management is surprised when the project over-runs...

Maybe it's an unwinnable battle. If, by some quirk of fate, a project did ever come in early, the customers would simply start trying to think of 'little' bits to add on. These would almost certainly involve starting again from scratch and the project would end up over-running anyway.

Similarly, with children, being late can be inevitable. If, on a good day, it takes ten minutes to get everyone's shoes on and get them out of the house for school, there are going to be other days where it takes twenty. Setting aside twenty minutes is asking for trouble, though. You don't want to be waiting outside the school for ten minutes in the rain. Equally, you don't want to be hanging around at home for ten minutes - the kids will complain loudly about being bored, take their shoes off again and then lose them. They will arrive very late for school, wearing their slippers. Yep, leaving too much time for a task can make you later than leaving too little. You'd be better off allowing fifteen minutes on a regular basis and simply accepting the fact that you're going to be five minutes late on any day that one of the children gets distracted and tips his milk into his ear rather than his mouth.

That said, with a little knowledge and planning, it's possible to avoid being horrendously late all the time. Bearing this in mind, here are a few tasks that I've found unexpectedly hard in the past. You've probably encountered most of them yourself already but they may not have seemed like that big a deal. Please remember, however, that the time taken to solve these issues is proportional to the square of the number of children you have. Thus, now you have two, you need to allow four times as much space in the schedule for:

• Getting them to wear appropriate clothing. I tell my kids that it’s raining and they’ll need to put their raincoats on.
  
  Without looking out a window, they say, ‘No, it’s not.’
  
  I argue for a bit, they don’t put their raincoats on and we step out of the door. They immediately start screaming that it’s raining and run around in a panic like they’re the Wicked Witch of the West and someone’s just dumped a bucket of water on them.
  
  I say, ‘It’s almost stopped. You’ll be fine.’
  
  They argue for a bit and demand their raincoats. Eventually, I give up and they go in and put their raincoats on.
  
  The rain stops, the sun comes out and they complain it’s too hot in their raincoats.
  
  They refuse to take them off.
  
  When we eventually arrive at our destination, people wonder why we’re wet, late and sweaty. I just shake my head and sigh…
• Getting them to do stuff for themselves. Marie kicks up a huge fuss about drying her own hands. She's currently lying on the hall floor yelling for help because a small part of her lower arm is still wet. She's actually holding the towel in her other hand but wants me to go through and combine the towel and arm with some gentle rubbing action. Suffice to say, she'll be yelling a while longer - probably for several minutes after the water has evaporated of its own accord.
• Getting gloves on a toddler. Their fingers go everywhere apart from the right place.
• Getting them to stop doing stuff for themselves. Of course, if we're in a big hurry and I pro-actively decide to dry Marie's hands for her, she'll absolutely insist on doing it on her own... Really... really... slowly...
• Going to the shops to buy milk. Between getting them dressed, toileted (including the washing and drying of hands) and actually persuading them to leave the house, going to buy milk can take longer to organise than a trip to Paris without children.
• Going to Paris with children. Like going to buy milk but with added luggage.
• Keeping gloves on a toddler. It doesn't matter that it's freezing and you've just spent five minutes getting the things on, the kid wants to see her fingers...
• Feeding them five portions of fruit and veg a day. It's not so much getting them to eat it, it's supplying it:
  
  
  Why I have to go to the shops so often: 5 family members x 5 portions per day x 2 days = 50 portions. We also require around 8 pints of milk and a loaf and a half of bread. Hang on a minute while I just nip to Tesco again...
• Cheering up a toddler whose hands are cold. If you can just get them to calm down for a minute, you might be able to get those gloves back on. (Briefly).
• Working out when they're ill. When my kids were small, it was easy to tell how ill they were from the number and amount of toxic substances oozing out of them. These days there's usually less to go on. They'll complain of aches and pains, cough a couple of times and then sneeze. Questioning them uncovers that they've been feeling 'not that great' for 'a bit'. Taking their temperature reveals that one ear has a mild fever and the other is dead. (Repeated attempts cause the symptoms to swap randomly between ears. Shaking the electronic thermometer produces a rattling sound).
  
  Since I've now spent nearly eight years clearing up toxic substances despite having had various strains of plague myself, I'm low on sympathy for minor cases of the snuffles. Still, I don't want them going rapidly downhill the second they leave the house. I can do without being summoned to school halfway through the morning to explain why I sent in my highly contagious child. (Teachers are scary).
  
  Coming to a decision always takes forever.
• Explaining the difference between live-action TV drama, cartoons, documentary footage, the news, CGI and real life. As for theatre, well: 'Yes, those are real people pretending to be the real people who normally pretend to be the pretend people in Lazy Town but if that one falls off the ladder it will really hurt. And, yes, it is just a story, but vegetables really are good for you.'
• Avoiding drowning in Fimbles. Soft toys. Everywhere. Stuck now. Can't... make... it... to... the... door...
• Being understanding. This takes a surprising amount of effort. What I really want to say is, 'I told you you'd get cold hands.'

There we go. Hopefully, with this knowledge, you should be able to leave enough time (but not too much) to achieve most goals. I wouldn't count on it, though. The kids are bound to find some new way to slow you down.

At least you can take consolation from the fact that you're not in charge of the software for the government's ID card scheme. I hear that's created a vortex that's spitting stuff out. They're having to deal with giant space spiders, unicorns and sudden downpours of odd socks.

Whatever happens, we're never going to be as late as them.

Probably.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, corporate madness, IT, sickness

  10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 6 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Bleargh

Dear Dave,

We're all suffering from one illness or another, the mice are back and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 was unexpectedly rubbish. I'm pretty fed up.

I've been coughing for three weeks and I'd just like to feel better, thank you very much. Fraser has some kind of virus that's making him tired, achy and argumentative. (Well, more argumentative than usual). I don't think he'll be at school tomorrow. As I write this, it's late at night and, over the baby listener, I can hear Marie sounding pretty choked up. This could be a long one...

Still, on a positive note, Marie has a place at nursery after Christmas. I can hardly believe it - it's even a morning one. I'll have two and a half hours each weekday where I won't have any children to look after (during term-time, at least). The possibilities seem endless. It's not a case of not knowing what to do with myself. It's a case of not knowing what to do first. I hardly dare imagine it.

Interestingly, Marie can't imagine it.

"What should I do once you're at nursery?" I asked her.

"Come and collect me," she said.

"Yes, I'll collect you from nursery but what should I do all the time you're there?"

She looked blank. "Play with me?" she ventured.

"No, I'll be somewhere else."

She considered the thought that I exist when she isn't there and seemed to reluctantly accept it.

I asked her again. "So what should I do?"

She laughed. "Go to work!"

I wasn't impressed.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: housedad, nursery, sickness

  12:30 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  All I can remember is Jeremy Clarkson

Dear Dave,

Sorry to hear the sleeping has gone out of the window again. I've rarely had to deal with children playing tag-team parent waking so I don't entirely know what to suggest. Daisy's so young that there probably isn't much you can do - if she wants to wake up in the middle of the night, she will. (Controlled crying is always worth a try, though). At least Sam's at an age where you can threaten him with reprisals if he doesn't ignore her and go back to sleep - I find that turning off Marie's night-light for a few minutes is usually enough to get her to settle down.

You've got my sympathy. I've had plenty of experience of sleepless children. I refer you back to the tricks I've learnt. Probably the most important is to have a DVD you want to watch in the player ready to go. That way, if worst comes to worst, you won't be stuck watching phone-in quizzes as you while away the small hours of the morning with a grumbly baby. It's worth making sure the DVD has subtitles so you can still follow what's going on above the whining and crying. Other options include web-surfing using a Wii, Teletext and MTV. Personally, I have many memories of semi-consciously watching repeats of Top Gear I'd recorded on TiVo. It was amusing and it didn't matter if I missed dialogue here and there thanks to a screaming baby or if I 'rested my eyes' for entire sections.

Actually, there are parts of Marie's early life where I remember more about three nutters destroying caravans in entertaining ways than I do about much else. Sleep deprivation addles your brain. I got to a point where I was functioning on autopilot most of the time. The boys were up from half seven in the morning until eight at night. Marie woke at eight in the morning and was up until eleven at night with only an hours nap in the middle. I stayed up until half past midnight to get some time to myself to help stave off insanity. Frequently, Marie then woke up at three for an hour or two of crying.

In retrospect, this was pretty horrendous but, at the time, I was cocooned in a hazy mist of zombie-dom. With one child at school, one at morning nursery and another needing regular feeds, bottles and nappies, my timetable was always laid out before me. It wasn't so much that we had a routine, it was more that there was only one way to fit everything that needed to be done around everything which had to be done. I could muddle though the day without much thought. I don't actually recall wandering around with my arms stretched out, muttering 'Brains... Brains....' but, then again, I don't actually recall very much at all.

I do have a very strong recollection of Richard Hammond trying to make an amphibious vehicle out of a camper van, however.

Strangely, that's more useful than you might imagine. By concentrating on that memory, I can make other recollections surface. I can bring back thoughts, feelings and experiences that would otherwise be forgotten. It doesn't just work for Top Gear, either - by thinking about a book I've read, a film I've watched or a computer game I've played, I can remember something of what life was like at the time and possibly even specific events from that period. Little else jogs my memory so well, apart from thinking back over times when I've been ill or exhausted. I can remember those occasions very clearly too.

This means that many of my most vivid memories are of multimedia delirium, where illness and entertainment have coincided.

For instance, I know I had gastric flu a couple of weeks after Final Fantasy VII came out. I clearly remember where I'd got to, how I felt and what our old lounge looked like from that combination of gaming and vomit. Going from that, I can also work out the time of year, how my job was going and any number of other little details. When I felt too ill to even play a game (which is very ill, by the way), I sent Sarah to the video store to find a film with explosions. She came back with Die Hard with a Vengeance - proof, if ever I needed it, that I married the right woman.

Similarly, the fifties version of Day of the Triffids is linked inescapably in my mind with the first week of my chickenpox eruption, the second week is brought back by thoughts of playing Fable on Xbox. Mention of the forthcoming Fable 2 just makes me feel queasy.

The Hellboy movie recalls a cough so bad that I had to chain-suck Lockets and sleep sitting upright in an armchair.

My one experience of sleeping rough is all the clearer in my mind because I bought West of Eden by Harry Harrison the next day. The memory of trying to keep warm while lying in a binbag on a hillside in Derbyshire is made sharper by the memory of reading about horny, humanoid dinosaurs while very, very tired.

Other people's recollections seem to be triggered by different things. Sarah's memory is jogged by smells. My mum's is organised around food. It's like she uses what people ate as some kind of mental hook. She'll tell me news she's read in the paper about an old school friend of mine that I don't even remember and, when I look blank, she'll say something along the lines of, 'You went round to his house once. You had chicken.' I'm not sure whether I find it more weird that she remembers what I had to eat or that she thinks I'll remember it too.

Quite what this tells us about any of the people involved, I've no idea, but I've been trying to work out how my kids best remember things.

Thinking about it, the descriptions they came up with to differentiate between the parent and toddler groups they went to when they were small are telling. Fraser referred to his as, "The pink one, the one downstairs and the one near John Lewis." It was an aspect of the location which stuck in his head. Marie talks about, "The one with Craig, the leaving one and the snack one." It's the most significant event of each one that makes hers memorable, whether it's the attention of a particular helper, the quality of the snack or me slinking off for three-quarters of an hour while someone else takes over.

Lewis' preferences are harder to remember (the irony!) because most of the time he just copied Fraser. Probably, given free rein, he described them with phrases like, "The one with jigsaws." He differentiates places by what's there because he has a good memory for what things contain. We keep trying to make a little more space for him in his bed but he always knows when something has been removed.


There's a bed under there somewhere...

Maybe there's some way I can use this knowledge to get them all to remember to wipe their feet when entering the house. If only I could work it out...

Ach, the scary thing is, even if I did work out a theory, I'd probably forget it unless I caught a cold and then watched a movie.

Ho well, maybe you can mull it over while you're watching Pirates of the Caribbean at three in the morning. Let me know if you come up with anything.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Marie has a frighteningly good memory, actually. She was watching Laura's Star on DVD the other day. She hadn't seen it for a while but she was quoting the script with ease. The film got to one bit and Marie described what was happening and followed it up by saying what was going to happen next. "And then Laura goes up to the roof and she meets a robot cat and she says, 'Hello, little cat, how are you?'"

Sarah was freaked. "How do you remember that?"

Marie just smiled. "It's a good thing to say to a robot cat if you find one on the roof."

Sarah found that kind of hard to argue with. They went back to watching the film.

Labels: children, sickness, sleep

  10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  eBay comes to us all

Dear Dave,

"They want fireworks?"

"Yep," said Rob, sitting across the table from me. "And not just a couple of rockets and a sparkler. They want our names written in flame."

"Oh, goodness." As his best man, I'd gone round to his flat for the evening to chat about the impending celebrations while his fiancee, Kate, was at my house, receiving wedding wisdom from Sarah. "Are you going to arrive in a vintage car to the sound of bagpipes and then be ushered in for caviar nibbles and the gentle melody of a string quartet?"

"Something like that. Kate's parents have pretty much given up on her brother ever settling down, so this is their one chance at wedding glory. Money's no object and it's all going crazy. Have a look at this catalogue."

He handed me a glossy brochure which was at least half an inch thick and I began to flick through it.

I glanced at my stopwatch. "You've only got a minute left, by the way."

"I'm thinking."

"Don't think too long," I said, "or I'll rip your arms off and feed them to you."

"OK, OK, I'm a little out-numbered here. You won't be laughing so hard when it's my turn to play the Genestealers."

"We'll see. Forty-five seconds."

Well, we told the women-folk we were going to chat about the wedding but the table wasn't exactly spread with seating planners. It was covered with squared, cardboard tiles representing the interior layout of a derelict spaceship. Up one corner, a handful of little plastic figures marked where Rob's space marines were cowering in fear from an imminent assault by my encroaching horde of four-armed, slobbering aliens. We were playing Space Hulk. Littered amongst the bits of board were counters, dice, snacks and beer.

I didn't feel too bad, though. We'd mentioned the wedding on occasion and at least I was looking at a catalogue. It appeared to be entirely full of outlandish cakes, however. Each was oddly evocative of a three-way collision between a fairground ride, a flower arrangement and a confectionery shop.

"Gah," said Rob in frustration. "I'll move this guy here and put him on overwatch. And move flamer guy along..."

"Thirty seconds."

"And then my last guy will panic and shoot blindly down this corridor while swearing loudly."

"Fine," I said, handing him some dice. "You need a six."

He rolled a five. "Do I get any bonuses for the swearing?"

"No, but you've got two more shots and fifteen seconds to take them."

"OK," he said. "Give me the dice."

"I just gave you the dice."

"No, you didn't. Give me the dice."

"You just rolled one of them. Look. Here." I picked two dice off the table where he'd put them and handed them to him again. "Three seconds." He flung them down and they ricocheted off a tub of Pringles, bounced and flew up in the air. One landed in a jar of salsa dip and the other danced off the table and disappeared under the sofa.

The stopwatch beeped.

We looked at each other and then both leaned forward and peered into the jar. "Chunky," I said. The dice was beginning to sink but it clearly showed a two. "Better go find the other one. You need a four."

"You were rushing me," he muttered as he got down on his hands and knees and started poking around under the furniture. "Did you see where it went?"

"The dice are your responsibility during your go." I turned my attention back to the catalogue. "There really isn't anything in here but cakes... Oh, my mistake, here are some swans."

"Technically, it's now your go," he said, his voice somewhat muffled from beneath the table. "Want to come help me look under here?"

I munched on some Pringles and sucked spicy tomato from a numbered cube. "It's not my go until that shot is resolved. Is there anything in this catalogue other than cakes and swans?"

"The swans are cakes, too," Rob said, emerging somewhat dustily from his search and handing me another, even glossier, brochure. "THIS catalogue is for the nuptial livestock."

"You're kidding..." I took the book from him. "You're not kidding. Tell me you're not planning a release of live butterflies."

"Nah. I was thinking more along the lines of some white doves. Someone lets a couple go every so often and that's our cue to pull out a pair of Uzis and shoot at each other in slow motion while various bits of scenery explode."

"A John Woo theme," I said, rubbing my chin. "Interesting. How's that sitting with Kate's parents?"

"They're not so keen. Mike's up for it, though."

"He's just humouring you. When it comes to the actual day, you'd better be taking things seriously. You've picked the wrong minister to mess with. Any sign of doves and he'd whip a shotgun out of his robes and fill them with buckshot before we got a chance to move. Then he'd get on with the service as if nothing had happened. You know it's true."

Rob considered this for a moment. "It is, isn't it?" he said, slightly nervously.

"Uh-huh," I nodded. "And don't think you're done when the wedding's over. He'll grab you by the shoulder every few months, look you in the eye and ask you if you're keeping your vows. It's part of the on-going customer service."

"He'll get on well with my future mother-in-law... Are you going to have your turn?"

"Oh, yeah." I'd forgotten about the game. Rob's under-the-sofa shot had hit (allegedly) but I was still in a strong position. As the alien player, I also didn't have to race against the clock. I took my time. "I'm going to move this slavering monster with big teeth up the corridor while your guy shoots at it..." Rob rolled some dice and then swore. "...until his gun jams. Then these other slavering monsters with big teeth..." I moved a counter into his marine's line of sight, flipped it over and replaced it with three plastic figures. "...are going to use their enormous claws to turn him into mince." I rolled some dice. Rob rolled some dice. I banged my head on the table.

Rob smirked as he removed my three Genestealers from the board. "What are the chances of you rolling a total of eleven on nine six-sided dice?"

"I don't want to think about it," I said, in between bangs. "Tell me what you're expecting me to do for the wedding."

"You're best man. You've got to organise the stag night for starters."

I moved some more little plastic aliens. They all got shot or flambeed. "Are you sure that's wise?" I replied. "My idea of a good evening is going to the cinema, having a couple of drinks and then grabbing a bag of chips on the way home."

"I was thinking more of a weekend than an evening," said Rob, starting his go. I reset the stopwatch.

"See. I'm just bound to get it wrong. If I'm in charge of a weekend, we'll end up knitting."

Rob wasn't having any of it. "Take us go-karting, or something. Come on. A weekend away from the kids! Must be tempting."

I contemplated a couple of days with a group of younger, salaried blokes whom I didn't know very well. It's the kind of situation I cope with much better if I have my three small human shields running round me. I couldn't really say no, though. "OK, I'll look into it," I sighed. "When's the wedding going to be, anyway?"

Rob shrugged. "Not sure. After the baby's born, definitely. Kate's getting big already and she doesn't want to look like a fairy that's swallowed a blimp in the photos." He paused in the middle of moving one of his pieces and looked worried. "Just don't tell her I put it like that, all right?"

"Wouldn't dream of it..."

My mobile rang and I answered it. "No, this isn't Kevin... Nope, I don't know anyone called Kevin. You've got the wrong number." I hung up. "That's the third time today. It's different people phoning up to offer this guy job interviews. I've had a couple of texts as well."

"Don't think I'd hire someone who got his phone number wrong on his CV," said Rob without glancing up from the board.

"Tell me about it. Two minutes left." He continued dithering over his marines. My eyes wandered around the room. The walls were stacked floor to ceiling with books, games and objects of geeky desire. It was like a rift in space and time had opened and half the stock of the local Forbidden Planet had fallen through. "It's a shame your study's going to have to go," I said. "What are you going to do with all this stuff?"

Rob looked at me blankly.

"Er..." I said. "This flat currently only has one bedroom. You're going to need two bedrooms. You have four available options: the kitchen, the bathroom, the lounge and this room. I would advise against the kitchen or the bathroom and your big telly is in the lounge. If, however, you were to replace the desk over there that's covered in computer equipment with a bed, this room would make quite a nice bedroom."

"Don't be daft," he said, concentrating once more on his marines. "A bed wouldn't fit in that space."

"True. You'd need to move the bookcase full of Deep Space Nine videos, the Lego Star Destroyer and the life-size cut-out of Lara Croft to fit a bed in, but you wouldn't need quite so much space for a cot. You might want to leave a decent splatter radius, though. Cleaning vomit out of Lego is a real pain - you have to use a toothbrush. One minute."

I was hoping I'd distracted him enough but he made sure to finish moving before he replied. His surviving marines had almost escaped and had thrown up a wall of flame behind them. My remaining Genestealer turned into a pile of ash and teeth.

"Hadn't really thought about it," he said. "Won't the cot be in our room?"

"For six months or so. Maybe longer. Depends whether you ever want a sound night's sleep again... or if you're planning any more."

Rob choked on his beer. "Give us a chance. It's months before the first one arrives."

"Three months. Might be less. It'll take you that long to off-load all this stuff on eBay." He looked horrified but I pressed on. "You could always move house instead but that's going to take time as well and, if you're faffing with mortgages, you're going to need to consider how much of the next few years Kate is going to be on limited pay. Or if she's going to be off for as little time as possible and you're going to be home. Or if you're both going to work and you have a wadge of nursery fees to find. How many children you're intending to have will affect all the calculations. Better start thinking."

The shutters of denial went down behind Rob's eyes. "I thought we were supposed to be discussing the wedding. Your go."

I shook my head for any number of reasons. "You've as good as won," I said. "Set things up for a re-match while I go to the toilet. We can talk kilts when I get back. But just because you can fob me off, don't think you can do the same with Squirtle. He, she or it isn't going to go back in for a few days while you get round to auctioning off your Magic: The Gathering cards and Bobba Fett lunchbox."

Rob grinned. "You're just jealous I have them."

"Well, yeah," I said, heading out the door, "but that's not the point."

I left him to it. As I was washing my hands, I caught the distant but unmistakeable sound of an electronic rendition of The Ride of the Valkyries turned up loud enough to hear above traffic and three wittering children.

"Did my phone go?" I asked when I returned to the room.

"Yeah," said Rob, putting the last of the plastic figures into place. "It was for Kevin. I told the woman I was his parole officer and that I was wondering where he'd got to, too. I don't think she'll be bothering you again."

"Cheers." I sat down and reached for my beer and a pile of dice. "Now it's time to snack on fiery death, big-teethed alien scum." I went for a warm-up roll. I got five ones and a splattering of salsa.

"Or maybe not..." I added.

* * *

Hope you're keeping well, Dave. Everyone I meet at the moment seems to be suffering from something. Lewis is croaky from a sore throat, Fraser has an infection (don't ask where), Marie's been exposed to chickenpox and Sarah has come into contact with scarlet fever.

I'm just feeling nervous.

If we all get through this week without seeing a doctor, I'll be amazed...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: blokesnight, marriage, sickness, stuff

  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

  What do you mean we're out of wipes?

Dear Dave,

We had a family day on Saturday.

Yes, that's right, that's one of those occasions where we drag the kids kicking and screaming away from the TV and computer and force them to have an exciting trip to somewhere cold and wet. This lasts from the moment they've finished their breakfasts until a time well after they were supposed to be in bed and long since they have ceased to be civil. The trauma helps us bond together as a unit and is a good excuse to drink a bottle of wine when it's all over.

On this particular occasion there was a deal where we could buy a special train ticket to Glasgow and then go to lots of attractions for free once we got there. Being cheapskates, this appealed to us and we set off early in order to visit as many places - and thus save as much money - as we possibly could. Of course some of the most expensive things in life are free, and our pockets were steadily drained of cash by cafeterias and giftshops thoughout the day. Still, we saw plenty of things we would never have got round to otherwise.

We ended up at the Science Centre. (The home of Nina and the Neurons, CBeebies fans!)
This is a fantastic place full of hands-on experiments and exhibits but our first concern was grabbing lunch. It was pretty decent. Marie refused everything apart from milk and Hula Hoops but the rest of us tucked in. As usual, though, the boys finished their food before drinking their drinks - their vast, brimming cups of chocolate milk. There are only so many times I can say, "Drink your drinks before they get spilled," without giving up in despair, however. That's something I need to work on. Quite how Fraser managed to launch his beverage container a foot into the air while still creating enough rotational motion to splatter all of us is a mystery.

After we'd cleaned up the mess, I went and got Fraser another chocolate milk and I picked up some fruit for later. He gulped it down and we headed to the vast hall full of wonders. Sarah let the younger kids press buttons until they were bored and then pointed them in the direction of something else. I vainly attempted to explain to Fraser the polarity of magnets, the fundamentals of flight and the propagation of sound. He ignored me, pressed buttons until he was bored and then ran off to find something else. I gave up. I taught him to do a Towers of Hanoi puzzle, added a couple of extra rings made from a key fob and a wrist strap, and sat down for a long rest. A very long rest.

Later we went to the giftshop. It was crammed with brightly-coloured exciting looking things packed full of educational potential. I quickly tried to hide my wallet in my sock but Fraser was too fast. He grabbed a pack of plastic bobbly things.

"Can I get this?"

"What is it?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"How much does it cost?

"Five pounds."

"That's a little expensive for something when you don't even know what it is."

"How about this then?" he said, grabbing a smaller pack of different plastic bobbly things.

"What's that?"

"I don't know."

"How much is it?"

"One pound and fifty pence."

"OK," I sighed. "I guess that's more reasonable. Go and give the money to the man at the till." He went off happily just as Lewis approached, a board game clutched to his chest. From somewhere else in the shop I heard the familiar voice of a little girl scream, "You don't touch it! Pink dinosaur mine!" I sighed again.

We left as closing approached and caught the open-top tour bus (another part of the deal) for a scenic trip back to the station. We all piled upstairs and sat along the back. The boys were starting to wilt and I gave them the fruit to keep them going. This was a mistake. After they'd already gorged themselves, I bit into an apple and discovered it was quite sour. There was nothing wrong with it as such, it was just not very sweet in a way that suggested it might take some concentrated digestion. I suspected it was not really the thing to give two boys prone to travel sickness while they sat on a bus twisting and juddering its way through the Glasgow traffic.

"Are you feeling OK, Fraser?" I asked nervously.

"Yeah," he replied. "Why?"

"No reason," I said. "How about...?" I began turning to Lewis but I was already too late.

Everything happened at once.

My younger son leant over the back railing and spewed mightily, somewhat to the surprise of the cyclist directly behind us. I called down an apology but I had more immediate concerns: the sight and smell of Lewis' titanic chunder had started Fraser gagging. I grabbed the plastic bag containing our souvenirs, emptied it in Sarah's lap and then held it under Fraser's chin. I was barely in time to catch the geyser of chocolate milk which erupted from his mouth and just kept coming. There was so much, and it was under such high pressure, I expected it to spray out his ears at any moment. Then, finally, the seismic activity eased and I sighed in relief - I had caught every drop. I held the bag aloft in triumph.

Unfortunately, it had a hole in the bottom.

I stared at the hole, my eyes wide in horror, and time slowed. The trinkets falling at Sarah's feet hung in the air, I could hear my own heartbeat and I suddenly noticed the warm, damp feeling around my knees. Reality spun round my outstretched arm...

...then snapped back into place. I dumped the bag on the floor and hunted for the wipes. The previous chocolate milk incident had seriously depleted our supplies and a couple of nappy changes had left us very short indeed. We had one left. One wipe to last us nearly two hours. One wipe to see us through over three hundred and fifty child-minutes. That's not a lot of back up. I decided to save it in case of a real disaster and cleaned up as best I could with my scarf. By the time we reached our stop, Fraser and I looked nearly presentable.

We were left with that age-old dilemma of whether to leave the leaking bag of sick on the top deck of the bus or to carry it the full length of the bus, down the stairs and out the door, leaking a trail of sick behind us. Tricky. In the end, I put the bag inside my woolly hat and made a break for it. I hurtled to the door, leapt onto the pavement and barged my way to the nearest bin, the crowd parting before me like the Red Sea before Moses. (Though I doubt he yelled "Let me through! I have a hat full of sick!" to get the job done).

I was tempted to dump the hat with its contents but instead stowed it with my scarf in the net carrier under the buggy, as far from anything else as I could manage.

We cleaned up a bit more in the station and headed home. We'd had a pretty good day, even if some of us did smell faintly of curdled chocolate milk. Marie fell asleep on the way and the boys played with their new toys. I spent most of the journey rescuing multi-coloured bits of plastic from obscure crevices of ScotRail seating. Some of these little gaps were unpleasantly sticky but I did score a two pound coin, a return journey from Falkirk and a Lego Darth Vader complete with light-sabre. Result!

It was extremely chilly when we got back to Edinburgh and by the time we had walked half way home I was freezing. I peered under the buggy in an effort to see if my hat and scarf had gone crusty yet. Sarah rubbed her hands against the cold. "Don't even think about it," she said without even looking at me. Marie was snuggled cosily under a blanket so I stole her pink, fluffy pixie hat and jammed it down on my head. It's possible I may have looked like a lunatic but it's only a real lunatic who walks around with cold ears when they have other options.

It was late. We got home and bundled the kids into bed before putting on a load of washing and settling down in our pyjamas with a bottle of wine and the TiVo remote.

"You did well today," said Sarah as we cuddled up on the sofa.

"You did too."

"Want to go to Dundee next week? I got this leaflet in the Science Centre about... What?"

"More wine..." I muttered. "More wine..."

"Never mind." She kissed me and then poured me another glass. "I'll tell you tomorrow."

"Good idea," I said and reached for the remote. "Now which is it going to be - Vegas, New York or Miami?"

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, favourite, science, sickness

  10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Illness

Dear Dave,

I don't really remember my parents being ill when I was small. I know now that this is because I was the youngest of four and by the time I came along they had had EVERYTHING already.
Small children - you love them, you take care off them, you give them your energy and your youth. How do they repay you? They go out into the world and bring you back diseases, that's how.

Bleargh. I'm off to overdose on Lockets (again),

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, sickness

  3:08 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post