David Trent

LEICESTER>CAN I PLEASE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION

2012-02-06T20:34:00.000Z

Dates

2012-01-29T15:06:00.000Z

A CONCERTED EFFORT

2011-07-14T15:04:00.000Z

Some Content

2011-03-11T00:46:00.001Z

"Can I have another one?"

2010-03-19T18:06:00.002Z

"Can I have another one?" Elly is eating Mentos.

"Yeah, of course you can. Elly, they're your Mentos. You can have whatever you want, but just try to be sensible, don't be like me and go out of control and get all fat..."

"Yeah, like don't eat like 50 at a time," she says.

I walk into the kitchen and wonder if she really thinks I eat 50 mentos at a time.

Very very funny

2009-08-15T09:32:00.002Z

This is brilliant.

(that is a hyperlink)

"Do you know Dad?"

2009-08-14T17:30:00.003Z

I am dysoning.

Mick appears at the door, he is really excited. His eyes are wide and he has an enormous grin on his face and his toungue is hanging out.

"Do you know Dad?" he shouts.

I switch off the dyson.

"Do you know Dad?" he shouts again.

"What Mick?" I say.

"The paddling pool is actually a toilet."

"Did you wee in the paddling pool?" I say, but he has legged it off.

I consider the possibility that he has legged it off in order to take a shit in the paddling pool.

I switch on the dyson.

I continue to dyson.

I don't want to have to buy a flipping music cd.

2009-06-30T06:17:00.003Z

It is Elly's birthday next Tuesday. She will be seven.

"Have you thought about any presents?" I say.

"Hee Hee. Yes." she says.

"What do you want?"

"Ummm, a CD please."

"A music CD?"

"Yes please."

I am really pissed off. I don't want to have to buy a flipping music cd.

"Alright then, by who?"

"Pavement please."

I run to the computer and order every Pavement album on CD.

Lazy, lowest common denominator blogging.

2009-06-20T13:24:00.001Z

Someone else thought this was funny. 1.16 is my favourite bit.

Polly is watching David Cameron escorting Boris down a red carpet.

2009-06-09T21:07:00.005Z

"Is that Piers Morgan? No, hang on, Alistair Campbell? No, no, not him, it's the Tory guy, what's the Tory guy's name? David, David are you listening to me, God, you're worse than Mick you are, hang on, are you blogging this?"

My wife is an observational genius.

Amaretti

2009-01-20T22:54:00.002Z

"Daddy, Mick has thrown sunflower seeds at my head and everywhere else."

I am cooking dinner.

They are watching telly.

I walk through to the living room.

Mick has thrown sunflower seeds all over the room, coating everything in Sunflower seeds.

I get the hoover, switch it on, hand him the extendable hose, and say "Clean it up."

He cleans it up.

End of story.

Happy Christmas

2008-12-22T13:14:00.004Z

"Dad, the polar bears are going, look," says Elly.

On the telly there are two polar bears. They swim off a block of ice that's about as big as them.

"It's sad isn't it?" I say.

"Yeah." says Elly.

"They're beautiful aren't they?"

"Yeah." says Elly.

The telly is saying "Adopt a polar bear, for only £2.00..."

I think "Elly likes polar bears."

I turn back to my laptop. I am surfing a kitchen website, trying to find edible glitter and chocolate stars and chocolate covered coffee beans in order to prevent my Christmas day from being RUINED.

I see "50 disposable icing bags," and think to myself "Eggy the polar bears, I could get some icing bags that I don't need to wash up, yes, much better than polar bears," and reflect how brilliant my impenetrable wall of resistance is.

I look up and there are three bears all sitting around together, like we are on the sofa. The telly says "Help to save these bears, before it's too late."

I suddenly feel overwhelmed with helplessness and have to really concentrate on not crying.

Happy Christmas.

How many more minutes until you're coming home?

2008-12-12T18:32:00.002Z

I really hate fish pie.

2008-12-07T21:54:00.006Z

I think it is anticlimactic, like the emperors new clothes, but everyone goes "mmm, fish pie, deLICIOUS," as if it is the most brilliant thing ever. It is not. It is not a computer. It is some fish in a milky sauce with some mashed potato on the top. Big deal.

If you said "Hey, come round for some fish in a milky sauce with mashed potato on top," people would say "Really? No thanks I think I'll just eat some noodles or a baked potato" but say "Fish pie?" and people are all supposed to swoon and go into paroxyms of ecstacy "Oh, Fish Pie," they say "Mmmm, fish pie, yummy, delicious, uh uh uh, fish pie, oh, I've just...have you got a tissue?"

Once my friend Jon made a fish pie for us when we went round to his house for dinner. I was so dissapointed that I wanted to cry. Part of me wanted to say "Right, joke's over, where's the real food now Jon? Where's the meat?" but throughout the meal it dawned on me with a horrible realism that I was experiencing the punchline of the evening instead of the setup.

I was a bit embarrassed and frustrated, I wanted him to have made some meat and roast potatoes. Instead I went "mmm, fish pie, deLICIOUS, yummy, fish pie, so much nicer than meat and roast potatoes, such a nice change, god, I'd NEVER cook this myself, it's so lovely..." and pretended to be interested in how easy it was to make and even rang him up a bit later to ask him for the recipe. (I certainly didn't take the piss out of him every time I went to his house to eat, ringing him up and saying "Hey, Jon, I fancy coming over to have some FISH PIE." like he does every time he comes round to my house to eat because I once made some salads - really well thought out, meticulously sourced and put together salads. Obviously he doesn't say the bit about fish pie, but he always says how much he'd like to come over for a salad.)

Today I made a fish pie.

To make the fish pie, I first had to go out to get a newspaper and some milk.

I got back from that trip, read the newspaper, had my breakfast and realised I'd forgotten the milk.

I went out and got some milk and some onions to make the milk infusion for the sauce.

Then I went to the fridge to get the eggs but there weren't any so I had to go back out to get some eggs.

Then I came home and made the fish pie. I used 5 saucepans. I used a sieve. I used 2 bowls. I used 3 measuring jugs. I used a whisk and an electric whisk. I used the colander. I used some scissors and 2 sharp knives. I used the chopper. I used the lemon juicer. I used an icing bag and a nozzle.

I skinned 2 pieces of white fish and 4 pieces of salmon and put all the skin in a pan with milk over it and onions and carrots and parsley stems, then I strained the infusion and made a white sauce, chopping the parsley heads into it, then I mixed in the fish and some lemon juice.

I pricked three of the eggs and boiled them and then peeled them and added them to the pie.

I also boiled the potatoes and drained them and returned them to the pan and added heated milk and butter and then whipped them until they were pureed. Then I tried to put them in the icing bag to pipe them but the bag was split so instead I spooned them onto the top of the pie with a spatula. Then I made a forky pattern all over the fish pie.

Then I put the pie in the oven, then I took it out of the oven because I hadn't placed it on a baking tray and then I put it back into the oven.

Then I realised that we hadn't put the dishwasher on last night so I had to do all the washing up by hand.

Then I went to the freezer to get some frozen peas out and discovered that there weren't any frozen peas.

Then the doorbell went and I shouted to Polly (who had gone out with Topsy the kids) "Hey Polly, I tried to ring you, we need some frozen peas," and Topsy said to me "You get them then, we're exhausted."

And I thought to myself

"I really hate fish pie."

Look at me everybody, I have a phd.

2008-11-10T16:54:00.003Z

Today we went to return an external hard drive that wouldn't format properly.

On the way out of the shop Mick became indignant that we'd gone to John Lewis' house, but John Lewis hadn't come to say hello.

He expressed this by grumbling "But I didn't get to see John Lewis" all the way to the car.

Also, something cool happened in the lift.

Level 2 and a total Cambridge head said "Which level is this?"

"It's level 2," said his daughter.

"Well how can we tell?" said the man, in an exasperated voice.

"Well Dad, it says "Level 2" right next to your head, and also if you look on the wall in front of us, see those words that say "Level 2"? They mean that we're on Level 2."

The man looks at the Level 2 on the wall then looks around the lift.

He takes in the fact that we are all smirking at his daughter's withering explanation and says "You see? Having a phd is useless."

I thought "Not if you have a phd in lifts," but not quickly enough to make it seem as if I hadn't been thinking it up so I had to stand in torturous silence for the remainder of the lift journey, thinking "Damn, it's too late, no hang on, I could probably get away with it, no, I couldn't. I could. I couldn't. I really couldn't now anyway, it's far too late. Say it. Say it. NO."

Also, in his case, I should have said "Don't say that, Your phd is very useful for making you look like a smug twit."

Only in Cambridge could a man think that saying "Look at me everybody, I have a phd" makes you sound like less of a cock.

I went out to the garage and pushed her bike as hard as I could at the freezer / garage door.

2008-10-21T17:44:00.004Z

I had a brilliant row with Polly today. My favourite bit was when I went out to the garage and pushed her bike as hard as I could at the freezer / garage door.

For those of you wondering "How hard would that be?" the answer is quite hard. As soon as I let go of the bike I thought "Oh shit, that was really dumb, now I will have to add breaking the freezer to the list of things we are having a brilliant row about."

Luckily though the freezer didn't break.

To add to the futility of the gesture I did it alone, whilst she was in the hall getting Mick's coat on.

I went over and picked the bike up and got even more angry that her stupid basket had fallen off the front of her bike and her stupid lock had fallen out of her stupid basket and her stupid bike things that you strap around your trousers to stop the trousers going in the chain were on the floor.

My anger was inspired by being asked to do "jobs" today, as I hadn't got any work.

This is SO UNFAIR. I have to do ALL THE SHIT JOBS. Doesn't she realise that when I don't get work I need to spend my day watching heroes, then playing grand theft auto and then having a sleep? Doesn't she realise that when people hear that I work as a supply so I can spend more time at home they say "cool" and that cutting the hedge and putting the tent in the loft and booking the hyundai in for a service are REALLY NOT COOL?

Well she will do now, because I threw her bike at the freezer without her knowing about it. That'll definitely teach her.

Is it serious glue?

2008-09-30T17:15:00.003Z

"Let's get some glue Mick,"

"Yes Dad, let's get some glue."

(Brilliant exposition of character there - so subtle you may not have noticed it if I hadn't pointed it out really crassly here)

"Shall we get that glue Mick?"

"Is it serious glue?"

"Yes Mick, It's serious glue."

"Ohhhh, I don't want serious glue. Is it serious glue?"

"Well Mick, it's fairly serious but it does have a playful side. If you tell it a joke per se it won't laugh but it does appreciate sarcasm and irony."

"Irony? And do we have irony at home?"

The girl next to us who is touching different types of A4 refill pad smirks. My job is done.

"Yes Mick, we have an infinite supply of irony at home."

He's a cheater, he cheats, he cheated.

2008-09-09T18:47:00.003Z

It's a close call. Both number threes whizz into their positions on the floor. Blue three is slightly ahead of Red three.

"Cheater, cheater, cheater, you're cheating, you're a cheater, he's cheating, he's a cheater" says the boy with the glasses. He is in red team.

"Excuse me?" I say.

The boy with the glasses says nothing.

"Were you calling him a cheat?"

"Yes." says the boy with the glasses.

"Can you remember what I warned you about at the beginning of the game?"

"Yes." says the boy with the glasses.

"Can you remind me what I said please?"

"You said that calling people cheat or accusing people of cheating was against your rules."

"That's right. I don't want to hear any more of it. It's only a game."

"Ok."

The boy with the glasses turns to his friend. "He's a cheater, he cheats, he cheated."

"O.K. I asked you not to say that. If you can't play without conjugating the word "to cheat" you'll have to sit out and nobody wants that."

"O.K, sorry."

He stops calling the kid a cheat. I mentally congratulate myself for keeping everything in perspective and shout "SIX"

I knew instinctively that this would be my rake

2008-09-07T19:21:00.008Z

This morning I got Mick dressed and we drove to B and Q to buy a new rake.

Hanging up in the garden section were many Leaf Rakes and Garden Rakes.

Leaf rakes are mainly for gathering leaves and garden rakes are for levelling soil. I intended to mainly gather leaves and branches and apples, not to level soil.

None of the rakes were cheap so buying one of each was not an option. Well, not an option I could afford.

I didn't know what to do so I rang Polly up and she said "Just get one rake, a leaf rake." (This is paraphrasing. She said other things too like "Hello, hello, hello" because the answering machine kicked in before she picked up)

I looked at all the leaf rakes on their hangers. There was an excellent choice of rakes.

First I considered B and Q's own make of rake. It was retailing at £11.98. It had quite a narrow head, but other than this I was happy with it.

Then I looked at the other rakess. They were all retailing at £19.98. This suddenly threw new light upon the price of B and Q's own make of rake. Why were all the other rakes retailing at £19.98? What was wrong with B and Q's own make of rake that it only cost £11.98?

I went to B and Q's own rake and touched it with my hand. I lifted it out of it's hanging hooks but was suddenly overwhelmed with the possibility that a rake for only £11.98 would be a false economy when compared to a rake for £19.98.

I did a couple of rake tests. First of all I kind of jiggled it up and down in my hand, probably three times. Then I touched the end of the handle on the floor. I touched it once, then twice. Then I touched the end of the tines with my finger. I then put it back.

My tests had been pretty thorough and confirmed exactly what I had suspected - an £11.98 rake simply would not do.

I decided to investigate the rakes that cost £19.98. I took the widest one available off of the shelf and looked at it. The tines were made of plastic. This put me off. I thought it looked as if it would break very quickly. I put it straight back on the shelf. No further tests.

Then I looked at the rake that I was to purchase.

I knew instinctively that this would be my rake for three important reasons:

1) The rake was made by Wilkinson Sword, a company who are famous for making products that are brilliant at scraping. I didn't know that they made rakes too, but I was pleased to see a rake with a brand that I recognized.

2) The rake had a handle made of FSC certified wood and a sticker on it which said "10 year guarantee."

3) The rake was a rake that I liked.

I then looked at another Wilkinson Sword rake which had a carbon steel handle. I decided that I preferred wood because it was more natural and looked better - qualities that I was discovering were essential for me in a rake.

I then saw a rake for £4.98. It was an adjustable rake. It had a very short handle and one of the rakes was lying on the floor as if a customer had taken it off the shelf and thrown it down in disgust.

I reached for the Wilkinson Sword rake with a wooden handle, turned around to Mick, said "We'll get this rake," and picked the Wilkinson Sword rake with a wooden handle off the hanger.

As I picked it off the shelf I pitched it slightly up in the air whilst twisting my wrist to make the rake do a one hundred and eighty degree turn before catching it.

Cool moves, cool rake, cool guy.

As I walked off I spotted an enormous garden rake that I'd not noticed before. It was very wide - maybe 50cm wide - but in the shape of a garden rake. It was so gigantic that it stopped me in my tracks. I walked back to it and stood in front of it, staring. It was called a "landscaping rake". There was only one on the shelf. I looked at it in enchantment, thinking "that is a very very wide rake, probably the widest rake I've ever seen, maybe I should buy that rake then I will own the widest rake I've ever seen, and I will feel total rake happiness and fulfillment in a way I've never felt before." Unfortunately one of the tines was bent. As there were no other landscaping rakes available I decided to settle for my Wilkinson Sword rake with a wooden handle.

It now strkes me that I spent a very long time standing on a floor staring up at rakes this morning in a way that was reminiscent of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters. Except with rakes.

It was raining when I arrived at home so instead of cutting the hedges I raked up all the windfall apples on our lawn. I made them into two piles on the garden.

As I raked I noticed that I liked everything about the rake apart from the way it felt as I raked and the way it raked things up.

I was suprised by this. Then I remembered that I don't really like raking.

After gathering up the apples in piles I put the rake back in the shed. It seemed very new and smooth against the darker, more weary woods of the older spades and hoes.

Different types of flavours of crisps

2008-09-06T19:24:00.003Z

If it wasn't for people wanting to know about different types of flavours of crisps, this blog would be dead.

However, loads of people want to know about the different types of flavours of crisps.

Here, for those people, they are. If you don't want to know about the different types of flavours of crisps, for your own sake, go somewhere else.

The different types of flavours of crisps are:

Salt and vinegar
Prawn Cock
Disgusting

I GOT A PINK ONE, I GOT A PINK ONE, A PINK ONE, A PINK ONE, I GOT A PINK ONE!

2008-06-24T21:14:00.006Z

We are at my parents. We are staying over. Polly and I are unfolding the kids bed and having a good argument.

"Can you pull the bed out 1cm?" says Polly.

"No, do you think you could possibly perhaps maybe just put the fucking sheet on the fucking bed without doing a strategical reorganisation of the bedroom?" I say not unreasonably. Or charmingly.

Meanwhile Mum and Dad have arrived in the bedroom. It's quite a small bedroom - just about big enough for a double bed once it's pulled out - with a very low ceiling.

"Is it too warm?" shouts Mum.

"I don't think so, do you think it's too warm?" says Dad

"I don't know, it might be too warm, but I'm not too sure, what do you think?" says Polly

"I don't know if it's too warm. Look, can we just focus on these sheets for fuck's sake?" I say.

"David," shouts Mum

"Don't say that David," says Dad.

"I'm sorry, I'm just a bit too hot," I say.

"It is hot in here, isn't it, maybe it's too hot?" says Mum.

"I don't think it's too hot, do you think it's too hot?" asks Polly.

"WHY IS EVERYONE ASKING IF IT'S TOO HOT? I DON'T UNDERSTAND, WHY DOESN'T SOMEONE JUST TURN DOWN THE SODDING RADIATOR," I shout.

Everyone starts shouting at once.

"DAVID, STOP IT,"

"ROS, TURN IT DOWN, IT'S TOO HOT,"

"IS IT TOO HOT? IS THE RADIATOR TOO HOT? IS IT TOO HOT? DO WE NEED TO TURN IT DOWN?"

"TURN IT DOWN, JUST TURN IT DOWN,"

"THE SHEET, JUST GET THE SHEET ON,"

Just at the point that I think I am actually going to die from a haemmorrhage brought on by the sheer mental challenge of trying to work out if we should turn down the radiator, the door crashes open and Mick comes running into the room.

"I GOT A PINK ONE, I GOT A PINK ONE, A PINK ONE, A PINK ONE, I GOT A PINK ONE!"

He is holding a pink one above his head.

As one, we all turn and look at Mick, grin and chorus..

"Have you got a pink one Mick?"

Today

2008-06-24T17:22:00.004Z

1) I decided that when nothing really happens like a story I will just do boring blogs like this one.

2) I drove to school and got very worried that I was going to be late as the traffic was quite slow on the A14. I was supposed to be on playground duty at 8.30 but I was still sitting on the A14 at 8.22. I got very very anxious and thought about ringing people at school to warn them but the traffic was still moving and I didn't want to break the law or die in a crash so I just sat tight, looking at the clock every 20 seconds and composing excuses and scenarios for when I was late.

Luckily though the traffic sped up and I got into school at 8.30, so the moral is if you are feeling worried about something, don't worry about it because it definitely won't happen. This is now my new philosophy in life.

3) I taught a very interesting lesson where we looked at leaflets and listed all the different features that are common in leaflets and wrote them into our books. So, if you've been worried about the future sparcity of leaflet writers, don't. It's covered.

4) I taught about fractions. Some fractions equal other fractions, and when you add one fraction to another fraction you get a different fraction. Sometimes fractions can be simplified. Fractions are more difficult to learn than they are to teach.

5) I ate a very small ham sandwich with some lettuce and some avocado. It was ok. Then I surfed the internet for games that we could play in the hall this afternoon, as our normal games lesson was off due to the infant sports day. I got about 10 really good games off of the internet and printed them all out. It took me about twenty minutes. I was pretty stoked about this and excited about our fun afternoon.

6) I went into the staffroom to drink a cup of coffee but there wasn't any so I had a cup of water. It was ok. It was cold and tasted like water. I then overheard a teacher saying "We're in the hall all afternoon" and I said "Are you in the hall all afternoon?" and they said "Yes." and I said "O.k. then I won't do PE in the hall all afternoon I guess." and they said "Sorry" and I said "No problem," and did loads of thumbs ups and smiling to indicate that it wasn't a problem, but it was a problem as it meant that I'd just wasted 20 minutes finding games on the internet and printing them all out.

This taught me that if you don't worry about something and relax and look forward to it, it will all turn to dust around your fingertips, so never get excited or anticipate anything being any good ever. I have revised my earlier philosophy to include this learning.

7) We played the games I had planned for the hall in the playground. It was OK. Only one child was bleeding by the end of the afternoon.

8) I drove home and cooked some salmon and courgettes and pasta for the children's supper. I was pretty stoked about having been so organised.

9) The kids came home and said "I don't want to eat tea, I want to watch TV." then ate about 1 mouthful of the food I cooked them and then watched TV.

See, that was a wicked day of fun wasn't it? Now I'm going to put the children to bed and cook supper.

It is more exciting than being dead.

There are fifty different types of crisps.

2008-06-12T19:08:00.007Z

"Have you got anything?" Elly says.

I look at her and think "Oh shit, I haven't got anything. The next 17 minutes of my life are going to be fairly challenging. Try to distract her."

"Look here, can you see in this picture? It's you, Shellfish and Ipod when you were all in Reception!"

I've been flicking through a book of "Early Years Photographs" that are on the table outside the school hall where I wait for Elly to finish Drama club. I am dissapointed to find loads of photographs of Elly thus shattering the illusion I've bitterly created that nobody at the school realises that Elly is alive.

"Daddy, look at ME Daddy, Daddy, have you got anything?" she asks.

"Umm, look, I've got something to tell you. I've left your box of smarties at home. We'll have to pop in at home on the way to collect Mick,"

"Don't do a joke Daddy, It's not funny." says Elly.

"It's not a joke," I say.

Elly's bottom lip immediately starts to quiver.

"Stop that. We're going straight home to get your Smarties, unless you kick up a massive fuss, in which case there'll be nothing."

I am Superdad. Or a cock. You decide.

"O.K." she shoves her thumb into her mouth and starts stamping towards the car, each footstep drilling a message of hatred towards me through the concrete.

"No, you don't walk like that, you walk normally, otherwise no smarties."

"O.K." she takes my hand and we walk to the car. As I open the car up I notice 2p on the seat and say "Elly, I've got 2p. Shall we go to the shop and buy a 2p sweet or two 1p sweets and skip the Smarties?"

"YES, Oh yes Daddy, 2p. A 2p sweet. Or two 1p sweets. They've got 1p sweets and they've got 2p sweets. I don't know what to get." Elly is giggling and skipping towards the sweet shop.

This is brilliant. I really am not a cock. I really am a Superdad. Instead of a big box of Smarties Elly is going to have just 2 little milk bottles which will fool her into contentedness . I am doing my two favourite things - buying sweets and conning my daughter.

I truly am the shit.

Emphasis on the am.

Notice use of "the" and not "a"

We walk into the sweetshop and turn to where the wall of 1p and 2p sweets are.

It is full of crisps. There are fifty different types of crisps.

When did crisps become so diverse? It's as if the shop has some kind of equal opportunities policy that's been extended to the world of crisps. "Here at Mace we believe that every crisp flavour should have an equal opportunity to reach it's full market potential,"

Seems a bit ethnic cleansing to do it at the expense of the 1p and 2p sweets though.

"First they came for the 1p and 2p sweets,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't particularly fond of 1p and 2p sweets,"

Good. I can use that bit for stand up. And then have to make a joke about how I knew all along that it wasn't particularly funny when nobody laughs. On with the story...

"Oh look Elly, they've got crisps where the 2p and 1p sweets used to be."

"OH NO, NO DADDY, NO," Elly's thumb shoots into her mouth and she starts trembling silently.

"Come on, we'll go straight home and get the smarties from there.

We walk out of the shop and she begins crying a crescendo of misery until her body is wracked with sobs. After about 10metres she stops walking and screams "I CAN'T WAIT FOR MY SMARTIES THOUGH DADDY, I JUST CAN'T WAIT...I HATE YOU, I REALLY REALLY HATE YOU."

I stand and look at her. This is really so unfair. I was trying to do something nice, I was totally up for spending the 2p on sweets, it was going to be brilliant. Who exactly are these idiots who demand fifty different types of crisps? Where are the 1p and 2p sweets? Why can't there be any consistency in this shit world? Can't a shopkeeper show some commitment to the sanity of people like me who make blind yet not unreasonable promises to their kids? Is that really too much to request?

Yes.

In my head I summarise the situation.

Elly is screaming.

Elly wants some Smarties.

I intended originally to give her some Smarties.

I have no Smarties.

I only have 2p.

Summarising in my head isn't really helping Elly to stop screaming.

I approach Elly, kneel down opposite her, reach out to her shoulders and look deeply into her eyes. Then I say to her, very gently...

"Elly, listen, I really want to get you some sweets but I haven't got any money so this is what I'm going to do," I glance from side to side up and down the street and then look back into her eyes and whisper "I'm going to go into that shop and I'm going to steal you some Smarties."

"What?"

"Don't tell anybody, ever, but I know how to do it. I can just go in there Elly and I can steal some sweets. If the shopkeeper catches me I could get into a lot of trouble with the police, but I really need to get you some sweets and I haven't got any money, so let's go and do this."

"No Daddy, no, you can't steal."

"Why not?"

"It's wrong."

"I know, but come on," I pull her towards the shop. "You really need these Smarties, I can see that because you're so sad. I've never done it before but I'm sure I could get away with it. If I get in trouble I don't care. As long as your happy. Let's go."

Elly looks at me, with an expression on her face that I've never seen before. It dawns on me that it is pity. My six year old is pitying me.

"Daddy, no, it's wrong to steal Smarties. Let's go and get some from home."

As I drive off she says to me "Daddy, I know you were joking about doing the stealing. Now put your seatbelt on."

We're all having a lovely laugh.

2008-05-25T22:22:00.004Z

"Daddy, we have to take a drink into school."

"What?"

"We have to take a drink into school. For the summer fete."

"What kind of drink? Do you have to take alcohol or normal drinks?"

"I don't know."

"O.K, I'll ask Mrs Winston." I say. It wouldn't do to take in a drink of barley water if everyone else was bringing in a bottle of wine. The shame of it would be too apalling, and the last thing I want is to feel embarrassed, ever.

"Hello Mrs Winston,"

"Hello Elly's Dad."

"Hello Mrs Winston's parent helper,"

"Hello Elly's Dad."

"Now, Mrs Winston, this summer fete, Elly tells me that you need a bottle of drink, but we're very worried about the contents of said bottle."

"Oh, don't worry, it can be anything."

"Anything?" I ask.

"Absoutely anything as long as it's liquid" says Mrs Winston, laughing a little.

"Absoutely anything as long as it's liquid?" I ask, incredulously. This is too good a setup to waste.

Mrs Winston laughs properly.

Mrs Winston's parent helper laughs too.

This is great. We're all having a lovely laugh.

"That's great. I've got a lovely big bottle of Rohypnol at home. I'll bring that in shall I?"

The laughter stops. Instantly.

"Ok. Thanks a lot. Say thank-you Mick," I say and leave the classroom.

When was the last time you had a nice glass of barley water?

Please come round the side,

2008-05-08T20:06:00.005Z

We had supper on the patio last night. On the table on the patio. Not on the patio. I didn't throw the food on the patio and shout "Polly, we're going to eat on the patio tonight, like dogs. Dogs who eat aubergine and chickpeas and granary bread."

Anyway, that would be eating off the patio.

We ate off plates whilst sitting at the patio table last night. A woman was coming over to pick up our underbed boxes that we had put on Cambridge Freecycle. Worried that I wouldn't hear the bell I scribbled a quick note for the front door.

It read

"We are in the garden, please come round the side.

Unless you are a burglar.

If you are a burglar, please fuck off.

Thankyou."

I was torn between this and "If you are a burglar, try next door, they've got a Lexus and everything."

OK

2008-04-03T21:23:00.005Z

Really quickly, because I want to read my book, but I also really want to tell all one of you this hilarious story.

On Tuesday we all went swimming. When we change we pair up. I changed with Mick this time and Elly changed with Polly.

When Mick and I finished getting changed we walked out to see Elly sitting in the Cafe. This is the council swimming pool and it has the mandatory council swimming pool cafe which sells Jacket Potatoes and has two packets of crisps in a bowl by the till and has a banana and and apple and an orange all sitting in a "display" on top of the hot food display cabinet. Look at the beautiful picture I paint with merely a few words.

The cafe is busy. It's half term and there's loads of kids and mums around.

Elly is sitting all alone at the table. She is sitting up as straight as she can, being "a very good girl," She is being such a very good girl that she's trembling with happiness at being a good girl. If you could read her brains they would probably be saying something about being as good as a princess or a ballerina.

My first thought is "Polly must be dead." It's my default interpretation for the unexpectedly missing matriachal figure. I always used to look for Mum's car on my way home from school and if Mum's car wasn't there I'd think "Nana Minnie must be dead, great excuse," and then I'd get in to find a note saying "I am at John Lewis, bad luck, you'll only have your horrifcally adolescent obsession with sexual intercourse to blame for getting C C E in your A levels,"

Then I think "No, Polly is probably not dead. She must be buying some food," I look towards the food counter but Polly isn't there.

I approach Elly and say "I can't see Mummy anywhere Elly,"

Elly sits up very straight and says "Mummy is at the toilet."

I look around and think "That's really bad Polly, you can't leave Elly sitting all alone in a public place, this just isn't responsible parenting."

I think this for 4 seconds, before I suddenly think "BRILLIANT OPPORTUNITY."

"Elly, quick, get your coat, let's all go and hide,"

Elly looks at me, lowers her eyes, smiles condescendingly and says

"I'm not allowed."

"What? What do you mean you're not allowed?"

"Mummy said that when you said that we should go and I hide I have to say that I'm not allowed."

Sometimes it's as if my wife knows me.

Affluenza by Oliver James is the most important book ever written.

2008-03-28T17:35:00.004Z

Yes. I got a new computer. When I plug things in it works straight away. Unlike the acer aspire 3662 that I used to have. That was a really bad computer. It never worked.

I am in Brighton. It is good. We have no children with us and we're not missing them.

Check out this ironic photograph.

Let's count the ways of Irony.

1) It is ironic because the book is called affluenza yet the sticker is encouraging me to buy more than one book.

2) It is ironic because I took it on my brand new mobile phone which isn't really that much better than my perfectly good old mobile phone.

3) It is ironic because the function of a mobile phone is primarily to communicate with people through the medium of phone call. In that case I may as well carry around a little stick and call that a mobile phone. I'd probably use it to make more calls. At least then I'd only have to speak to imaginary people.

4) It is ironic because this is my second brand new mobile phone in two weeks as I threw my last mobile phone into my toilet. I wish I had done a poo in the toilet first, but I hadn't, so the story is pretty futile. It goes like this "I was walking into the toilet. It was 5.45 in the morning. I pressed the email icon on the screen then lost my grip on the phone. It dropped into the toilet. I fished it out. I dried it on a tea towel. I put the tea towel in the dirty washing. I went back to bed. I phoned my insurance. I went into town and got another phone." If only I'd done a poo. It would be a much more entertaining story then because I could add the words "I had to put my hand into the poo. I had to wipe the poo off using some toilet paper," That would be a blast.

5) It is ironic because I really wanted to buy the book although I didn't need it.

6) It is ironic because the font is double spaced with massive amount of white space all around it so it is twice as big as it needs to be.

7) It is ironic because as soon as I saw the front cover I went and purchased a white suit and a briefcase and a shirt with coloured splodges on it and then I forced Polly buy a white suit and a green scarf.

8) And Polly cut all her hair off and I brought a wig. We look like dicks but we feel as if we did the right thing.

9) It is ironic because the title encapsulates the entire book and probably says everything you need to know about the subject, thus rendering the entire book obsolete.

10) It is ironic because Influenza is an illness where you lie on a couch and stare at the ceiling, often wearing no clothes and crying a little bit, whereas Affluenza is not an illness, it is a made up word, made up by Oliver James in order to make his book sound zeitgeisty and cutting edge and therefore to sell his ideas to us.

11) It is ironic because I haven't read the book yet I am slagging it off, which is the sort of habit I disapprove of. Unless I'm doing it. Then it is HILARIOUS.

12) It is ironic because by the very nature of me writing "Affluenza" and "Oliver James" again and again I will end up advertising the book and perhaps selling a copy or two.

13) It is ironic because Oliver James will probably google himself and see this blog and then he will write a new book called "Ironyfluenza" and it will be all about me and he will make loads of money. Out of me.

13) It is ironic because I purchased it.

Once I have read this book I will write the following review:

"Affluenza by Oliver James is the most important book ever written. YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK. And then you must buy a copy of this book for everyone you know and tell them to buy a copy of the book for everyone you know. And then you must buy this book again and leave it lying around your house. Especially when they reprint it in another format or with a new cover. "

(I didn't buy it. I might get it out of the library. It's non-fiction so I should be able to get it held and sent to my local branch)

I drive home.

2008-03-05T21:23:00.005Z

"We've got to book the holiday David," says Polly to me as we drive back from Thetford forest.

Elly has spent the last hour howling with despair because the 43p she brought with her wasn't enough to buy anything at the shop. She's been really screaming and it's been pretty much totally embarrassing and unbearable.

Screaming like this has a kind of mind searing effect which wrenches any fun that's been had previously in the day out of your soul and replaces it with blind and furious hatred of everything in the world. Ever.

Elly sobs from the back of the car.

"Yeah, that'll be right Polly. That's definitely what I want to do. I want to do this, every day, for ten days and spend one thousand three hundred pounds doing it."

Suddenly the car jerks forward. Polly has slammed her foot on the accelerator and is driving like Gene Hunt. I really am quite scared.

"Polly, please don't kill us all."

"WELL I MAY AS WELL, I TRY TO SAY SOMETHING POSITIVE AND ALL YOU DO IS BE REALLY NEGATIVE, I MAY AS WELL KILL US ALL THAN LIVE LIKE THIS,"

Polly is incredibly angry. She's really shouting this at the top of her voice. The last time she shouted at me like this was six years ago and we had to go and buy new crockery. I think there is a 24% chance that she will kill us all.

"Well Polly, if you're going to do it could you try to do it just on your side? Or wait until we get that brilliant insurance policy we were talking about the other night?"

Polly pulls over, gets out of the car and leans against a fence.

I go over and stand next to her. I poke her on the shoulder with my index finger. This is definitely the most comforting of all gestures.

We look back into the car. Elly is bent over in her car seat, wracking with sobs.

She says "Why does she do it?"

I say "Probably because she's five years old."

We sigh and giggle a bit.

I drive home.

(Theives threw a brick though my window last night and stole my laptop and my ipod, hence the lack of pictures)

Bow down to the master of distraction, suckers.

2008-02-05T18:39:00.000Z

"Put the number 3 back and take a small one," says Polly.

"No, my is giving the number 3 for Daddy," says Mick, proffering the number 3 shaped biscuit at me.

"I don't want it, put it back please," I say.

Mick walks up to the cooling rack and puts the small biscuit that we gave him permission to eat back. He keeps the enormous number 3 biscuit that he's been specifically forbidden from eating in his hand. He's got a look on his face which says "I fooled you all. Now I shall eat the massive number 3 biscuit and none of you will notice. Bow down to the master of distraction, suckers."

I walk over to take the number 3 biscuit out of his hand. As he sees me coming he grabs it so tight that the biscuit explodes. He crumples to the floor and starts crying in humiliated despair.

"Ha Ha Mick," says Elly.

I walk over to Elly who has her own biscuit, take the remaining biscuit out of her hand and put it back on the cooling rack.

"No, Daddy, I'm sorry, please give me back the biscuit." she whimpers.

I feel terrible because she's only had pancakes at after school club plus two pancakes with golden syrup once she got home plus half a 3 biscuit.

Poor kid.

"No, you shouldn't say "Ha Ha Mick," to Mick when he's crying. It's really cruel."

She moans a defeated "Oh,", walks into the hall and sits on the stairs.

Five minutes later we hear her start to cry.

"Oh, I can't do anything, I can't even play on Cbeebies."

"Oh, I can't do anything, I can't even play on Cbeebies."

"Oh, I can't do anything, I can't even..."

"Yeah, I can hear you," I say.

"Daddy, please can I play on Cbeebies?" she says, although because she's crying so much it sounds like "Da had ad ad eee eee eee, ple hease ca haan I play hay eh hay eh hay or hon sea bee hee bees?"

"No Elly, No,"

"Why not Daddy?"

I rack my brains for a way out. I consider "It's O.K. with me, but you'll have to run it past Mum first" which I learnt from Polly the other day, but decide against it.

"Wait here, I just need to get the instruction manual for how to look after you that they gave us when you were born," I say, jumping up to find a childcare manual.

"Polly, have you seen the instruction manual for the children?" I say.

"Which one?" she asks.

"Oh, it doesn't matter, I found it," I say, pulling down the NCT Complete Book of Unrealistic Expectation and opening it at random.

"O.K. Elly, lets see what the instruction manual says, let's see - ah here it is, listen to this - "If your child is crying whilst asking for something you must never give it to her. If you do, you will break your child."

Elly fixes me with a helpless look. She suspects that I'm lying to her but that she also understands that she has no way of verifying this.

She sighs, stops crying, turns away in disgust and walks off.

I look down at the book in my hands. The page says "Remember, you are the adult, you owe it to your child to treat her with love and, most importantly, honesty."

I made that last bit up. The book really said "If the object is sharp or quite large, call your doctor for advice." but that doesn't really resonate as harmoniously.

I am a cycle pistol.

2008-02-04T21:47:00.000Z

“Where are you going?” says Polly.

I am turning left on autopilot from Hills Road into Cherry Hinton Road on my bicycle, really enjoying the concrete cycle filter which even has it’s own traffic light just for bicycles. The light is green so I am luxuriating in my unimpeded and enhanced cycling experience until Polly shouts at me and I remember that we had discussed earlier the necessary route of cycling along Hills Road instead of going down Cherry Hinton Road because Cherry Hinton Road can be rather congested and dangerous, especially with the kids on the back of the bike.

“Shit, I am going the wrong way,” I say.

I slow down and watch Polly cycle off into the distance. I’m trapped in the filter and try to work out how to get out of it. Mick is on the back of the bike so I can’t bump up and down the kerb. I don’t want to push the bike backwards because the extra weight of Mick tends to make the bike behave in odd ways. The safest way is to continue forwards and try to cycle back round into the main road without killing myself or my child.

Before I can divert, a woman with blond hair and shades steps in front of my bike. She doesn’t notice me because she is focused entirely upon her mobile phone. She’s so engrossed that she’s not realised that the bike traffic light is green, that she is standing on the road or that I am about to cycle into her leg and arm and head.

Her boyfriend shouts at her to be careful. She looks up, notices me, shrugs then looks back down at her phone and carries on walking. No apology, no skip run, absolutely no reaction to indicate that she’s sorry for walking in front of me even though I’m on a green light.

I try to think of some really clever things to shout and come up with the following options:

“Excuse me, unless you are texting “I am standing in front of a bike even though there is a green light for bikes” then your text is very inappropriate.”

“Hey, See that green light, it has a picture of a bike, not an idiot doing texting on a mobile phone,”

“Thanks a lot, the prospect of having to start my bike again from standing for no real reason other than that you’re crossing the road whilst doing a text has helped me to appreciate just how brilliant momentum really is.”

None of these seem snappy or bitchy enough so I weigh up the following possibility…

“FUCK OFF,”

When this one pops into my head I get very excited. It seems to me that this is one of those rare occaisions in life where I have a completely legitimate case for being allowed to shout fuck off at a person.

My weighing up process goes like this.

I am on a bike (plus)

I have a toddler on the bike (plus)

I am on a bike lane especially designed for bikes (plus)

The bike traffic light is on green (plus)

The woman is standing in the bike lane even though it is a green light (plus)

The woman hasn’t apologised or made any effort to accept that she is in the wrong and I am in the right (plus)

I calculate this to be six plus points to no minus points. As far as I can see there is absolutely no reason at all why I shouldn’t shout fuck off at this woman. I am totally elated. I pull back my shoulders and inflate my lungs, but suddenly a strange kind of calmness washes over me and a voice inside my head says “This woman is a total idiot, but you have a chance not to be. Why don’t you just try not shouting fuck off at the woman and see what happens?”

The voice in my head is right. Reluctantly I acquiese to it’s suggestion. I stare after the woman and watch her boyfriend shake his head.

The road is now clear but the bike traffic light has gone red so I have to wait. Every second I wait is a second that I berate myself “David, you should have shouted “FUCK OFF,” at her. You would have been so cool, shouting “FUCK OFF,” at her. You would have been just like the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy. That would have really taught her a lesson. Oh why didn’t you shout “FUCK OFF,” at her? No wonder you were never in the Sex Pistols - you don’t know how to indiscriminately shout “FUCK OFF,” at people do you? You great big loser.”

Eventually the light goes green and I find my way back to my route. I cycle towards Polly along Hills Road cycle path, which is an small section of the road with a painted line and an icon of a bicycle painted on it. She is waiting for me just opposite Hills Road College.

As I cycle towards her she shouts “BE CAREFUL DAVID,”

She is shouting “BE CAREFUL DAVID,” because a Jaguar is pulling out of it’s drive and has nosed forward across the pavement and into the cycle lane just ahead of me.

I look at the Jaguar and pretend to be confused.

I slow down to a pathetic wobble, and then at the point where my bike is central to the Jaguar’s bonnet I pretend that I am concentrating so hard on trying to stay in the cycle path that I have to put my foot down on the floor in order to retain my balance.

I really ham it up, pointing my tongue out of my mouth in concentration, and putting my hand out to apologise to the Jaguar, mouthing “Sorry,” at the driver, but the driver is ignoring my performance.

I figure that the God of cycling has given me the Jaguar as a reward for my good behaviour towards the idiot woman so I simply stop my bike and wait for him to look at me, and then I point at the road mouthing “You’ve stopped over the cycle lane,”

He looks at me and mouths “I know,” as if he is really bored, but I can see that despite his insouciant air he is a beaten shell of an old man.

I am a cycle pistol.

Oh! (pretending to be surprised in the hope he won't get eyes rolled in a heartbreakingly irritated way at him)

2008-01-31T18:28:00.001Z

Tonight's evening meal went like a dream.

That dream when you wake up in the morning and think to yourself "Oh my God, I killed all my family in my dream," and all day long you feel terrible anxiety and trauma but you can't remember why. Then you remember that you killed your family and you shudder with grief. Then you remember that you didn't actually kill your family, that it was only a dream and you sigh in relief only for the whole thing to repeat itself about thirty minutes later, all day long.

When I picked Mick up from Nursery he had six peppermint creams on a plate. I said "Lovely Mick, look at those lovely peppermint creams, thank God you finally moved out of that rubbish old room into a room where they do good stuff."

(I feel strange about typing God because I know my mum will be reading this and she hates it if you write "God" on a piece of paper because you are supposed to write G-d in case you destroy the paper and you destroy God's name. What about this then? Are these pixels real? Do you destroy God's name if you navigate away from this page? Perhaps you'd better just leave this page open forever, just in case.)

Martine said "Ha Ha Ha,"

I said "Are you going to share those Mick?"

"No, not share them," Mick says.

"Ha Ha Ha," says Martine.

"Ha Ha Ha, Yum Yum, Lovely Peppermint Creams!" I say, thinking to myself "I wish I could throw those peppermint creams in the bin. Those peppermint creams are absolutely the worst things that have ever been made ever."

I arranged for Polly to pick up Fish and Chips on the way home because we're out of food and I can't be bothered to cook tonight. Nigel says that's alright in "Appetite" where he writes a rule of "Don't cook every single day," although his latest book probably says "A day without cooking is a day without joy." or a more porno version of that (hello peverets doing searches for porno, I can see you through my stats).

Halfway through the meal it all kicks off because Elly really wants a desert but hates fish and chips and everyone else likes their meal but she doesn't. Mick meanwhile is remembering that the peppermint creams are his desert and he doesn't want to share them with anyone.

At this point I spot my dictaphone and hit "record" thinking it will make a good blog.

Elly: We're going to have two each, one for you one for me, one for you and one for me.

Mick: (pouting) No

Polly: Right, I tell you what Mick, because you've got a letter "M" there... (points to the cream in the shape of the letter M)

Mick: (shouting) No...

Polly: (voice raising an octave in brave enthusiasm) Oooh, you've got an M and a T.

Mick: No, I want, I want to eat 'em all, (with increasing anger) eat 'em all, eat 'em all.

(Polly distributes the peppermint creams between the two children)

Mick: (crying in outrage) No, NO!!!

Polly: Right Mick, yours go in the bin.

(Polly walks out of the room with the two plates of creams in her hand.)

Elly: (crying, as if a horse she loves has died) Mick's got more than me I don't even...

Mick: No, No, (crying) u huugh u huugh, waaaugh, No, (Screaming) I'm not. Put it out the bin, I want them.

Elly: Waaaagh, ahaaagh, ahaaagh, kehugh, ahaaagh,

Mick: Ugh huugh, ugh huugh,

Polly: (walking back into the room with the plates) Are you ready to start sharing them?

Mick: (mournfully) I'm not.

Polly: Ok, well then I'm going to put them in the bin.

Elly: Ahaaaagh, eeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh, errrrrrgh.

Mick: I want one.

Polly: Are you stopping crying Elly? Do you want one rather than none?

(Elly nods her head and starts eating her peppermint creams)

Mick: (standing up on his chair and grabbing helplessly at the air in front of him) Uuuuuuuuuuur huuuuuuuuur, no, ho those are mine, ho, (proper, full blown screaming) aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh, aaaaaaaaaaagh, no, no, no give me back Elly, no, give me back, no, give me back, I want you to give me back, no, no, give me back Daddy...

David: You need to share your food.

Mick: No, Don't.

David: Yeah, you do,

Mick, No, don't, aaaeeeaaaggh, aaaeeeaaagh, aaaeeeaaaggh, aaaaeeeaaagh... (this continues rhythmically every half second through the rest of the dialogue)

Polly: (spotting the dictaphone) What's going on with this? Why's it on?

David: (pretending to be surprised in the hope he won't get eyes rolled in a heartbreakingly irritated way at him) Oh!

Polly: Are you recording all this?

David: Yes

Polly: Why?

David: (guiltily shrugging) Make a good blog?

Polly: For fuck's sake, would you turn it off?

It was a brilliant day.

2008-01-30T20:36:00.000Z

I woke up at 5.20 and pretended I couldn't hear Mick crying until Polly got up to get him.

Then I remembered that I am reading Jpod at the moment so I jumped out of bed, scooped Mick out of her arms saying "It's O.K. Polly, I'll get up with him, you get to sleep," and generally behaved as if I was the best dad in the world for about 10 seconds, then took Mick downstairs, put the telly on, lay on the sofa and read Jpod.

Then I went to work at a school I've never worked at before.

I taught that decimal fractions are really difficult to teach. Then I taught that the general concept of fractions can be made into really boring posters. Then I taught that Alcohol is really bad.

This third thing was my favourite thing to teach. On the notes it said "Describe some of the bad effects of alcohol (impairs driving, double vision, reduced inhibition)"

Stay away from that booze kids, you might do something you really want to do and end up a bit happier.

At lunchtime I read Jpod again.

Then I did some more teaching.

I taught that it's really hard to read a book that's too difficult for you to read, then I taught that it is frustrating to devise and rehearse a choral glockenspiel piece with percussion in a room full of other children who are also devising and rehearsing choral glockenspiel pieces, then I taught that the nrich maths website has hundreds of really challenging activities on it but tic tac toe and noughts and crosses are the best.

It was a brilliant day.

Then I came home and put some Jacket Potatoes in the oven, read Jpod again and went to pick up Mick from his nursery.

I made an excellent joke at Nursery. This is how it went.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello" said the Playleader in Mick's room. Let's call her Martine, which is her name.

"Did he have a good day?" I said.

"Yes," said Martine.

"Did Polly tell you about his hospital appointment on Monday?" I said.

"Yes," said Martine.

(Don't worry if you don't find all this hilarious, the joke is about to happen. You will know when it happens because you'll laugh your ass off)

"Mick did that today," said Martine, gesturing at a wall display of people made out of card and paper plates with a guitar made out of a cardboard box and strings.

"All by himself?" I said.

"No, other children helped him," said Martine.

"Oh. Please don't let other children work with him, he is a very gifted child, they probably ruined that work." I said (that is the first brilliant joke)

"Ha Ha Ha," said Martine.

"Did he do that one too?" I said, pointing to an alligator on the wall made out of egg boxes "You have to watch out leaving stuff about like that, he's awfully prodigious," (that is the second brilliant joke)

"Ha Ha Ha," said Martine.

"What about those computers? Did he build those for you? Mick, have you been upgrading the CPU for the Flamingos? Did you reconfigure the motherboards?" (Flamingos is the name of the room he is in. This is the third absolutely brilliant joke)

"I pity this child," said Martine.

Then I went to pick Elly up from her ballet class. That was also really hilarious because when I went to pick her up the people I went to pick her up from thought that they had lost her, but they hadn't, there was just a communication gap. Whilst I knew that they hadn't lost her the person in charge where I went to pick her up from didn't and she turned white and started shaking.

It was very funny, but also very terrible for the person who thought they had got my daughter kidnapped so I didn't laugh out loud. Instead I said "Don't worry, I've only come to get her coat, I know where she is, she's O.K." and generally acted like a mature thirty six year old, for about the second time in my life.

Then Mick and I picked Elly up and put her in the car and drove home.

Then Elly and Mick watched In the Night Garden and I read Jpod until I had finished reading the book.

Then Elly ate her Jacket Potato as if she was eating the most delicious meal in the world, groaning and closing her eyes with pleasure as she ate. I had to keep trying not to cry because a) the night before I'd made her pan fried fillets of mackerel with peas and new potatoes and she hated it, but tonight I threw a potato in the oven and she thought I was Gordon Ramsay b) it was really late thanks to me mis-timing the potatoes and c) I had been up since 5.30 and was beginning to feel tired.

Then I put them to bed.

Then I wrote "Bouncy Castles, Bouncy Castles, Bouncy fucking Castles..." in preparation for a stand up routine about bouncy castles.

Then Polly came home.

If it's any consolation, I hate the faux naive convention of starting a disproportionate number of paragraphs with the word "then" even more than you do.

Daddy, we're going to Pizza Express for a school trip.

2008-01-29T20:31:00.000Z

"What?"

"We're going to Pizza Express for a school trip."

"To Pizza Express?"

"Yes Daddy,"

"For a school trip?"

"Yes Daddy,"

"Is this the form?"

"Yes Daddy,"

"I'll fill it out today and you can take it in tomorrow."

"Oh, thankyou Daddy."

I am playing

2008-01-23T22:04:00.000Z

Nanaca Crash!

Hence lack of blog action.

Today I ate too much spaghetti bolognese. I ate my adult portion. Then I ate another adult portion. Then I ate Elly's leftovers. Then I put some more meat sauce in the bowl and ate that. Then I ate two wooden spoonfuls of meat sauce whilst standing over the pan.

After this I took the kids up to get them ready for bed. They ambushed me at the top of the stairs, jumped on me and rode me as if I was their donkey bitch.

I was so full of spaghetti bolognese that I couldn't do anything except giggle in a high pitched effeminate way and cry out "NO, PLEASE STOP" repeatedly. At times my back was hurting, not in an achy way but in a sharp painful way like something was seriously wrong.

I was genuinely overpowered by their donkey riding mania and I thought to myself "There is a very real possibility that my children are going to kill me in the next five minutes."

Eventually I stopped crying out and merely concentrated on trying not to puke.

I saved myself by shouting "Who wants to watch In The Night Garden?"

While we watched In The Night Garden Mick jumped on my stomach 14 times.

It was a lot of fun.

What an enigmatic search term.

2008-01-20T20:08:00.001Z

Some days I don't have anything to post and I think all day "What am I going to post?"

Other days I check my stats and someone does a search like this.

What an enigmatic search term.

I think it means that a man, lets call him Terry, had a friend ("Which friend was that Terry?" "The black one," "Oh yeah, your black friend. Is that my black friend too?" "Yeah, that's the one,") and Terry's friend fucked Terry's wife and now she is pregnant.

It could also be read as a tempting invitation "My black friend, fuck my wife now, she is pregnant."

What light was Terry expecting to find at the end of the tunnel?

I hope that my writing on the brilliant film "Notting Hill" (which, for those of you who haven't been paying attention, is an excellent treatise on how difficult it is to make love to the most beautiful (if slightly bad tempered) woman in the world, especially if you have a history of being caught getting blowjobs from prostitutes in LA, but if you persevere you will almost certainly be able to get her pregnant and even be successful enough to afford a paperback novel about a Greek man) helped Terry through his time of need.

If, Terry, you need a black friend to fuck your wife now that she is pregnant though, I cannot help, for two reasons.

Firstly, I am not your friend. Secondly, and seemingly quite importantly to you, I am not black, despite my mum's vaguely racist story that when I was born her black midwife said to her "That one's got black blood in him." (I can't think why the nurse would have said that to her, other than if she was some sort of clairvoyant and could see my massive future jewfro?)

Thanks for the invitation though.

I want to read my book in bed, but it's so dark that I can tell I'm not going to be able to read my book in bed.

2008-01-17T19:59:00.000Z

It's dark.

The kitchen light is off. The back kitchen light is off. The living room light is off. The lounge light is off. The hall light is off. All the lights are off.

That's because it's bedtime.

I suddenly feel very angry. I want to read my book in bed, but it's so dark that I can tell I'm not going to be able to read my book in bed. This is for two reasons:

1) Polly has gone to sleep. Just because she is tired. That means it's too dark for me to read. What a selfish woman. I absolutely hate her.

2) Polly has stolen and hidden my head torch. In order to find it I will need to wake her up and ask her where she's put it, then she'll tell me off for waking her up. GOD, she is SO SELFISH. I hate her even more.

I climb up the stairs. As I get to the top of the stairs I see a fragile shard of light cast itself across the landing through a crack in our bedroom door.

Polly is awake. And she is reading.

My mood instantly changes. Everything is BRILLIANT. I can lie next to my wife who I love and read my book.

I brush my teeth, grab my book from the toilet, run into the bedroom, lie down, sigh in deep satisfaction and say "Where the fuck is my head torch Polly?"

Today I taught a girl whose name was Tuesday

2008-01-17T19:36:00.000Z

Today I taught a girl whose name was Tuesday.

That is the end of my blog for today.

I can count backwards, what do you think of that?

2008-01-16T20:54:00.000Z

"If this is a romcom, kill the director,"

We like The Wombats.

I like Kill The Director a lot. A shameful amount. On Friday night I drove from Cambridge to Borough and listened to it on repeat all the way.

Last night on my way to a gig I spent twenty minutes playing the first sixteen bars of it repeatedly screaming the following amazing rap over the top of it:

"10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,1,
I can count backwards,
What do you think of that?
I'm very very very clever,
Yes really,
That's because I've got a really big beardy."

For the duration of this breathtaking rapping experience I genuinely convinced myself that I had invented a new rapping style with a unique flow that could take over the nation. In my imagination this new sensation could only be improved by my friend Jon playing some blues guitar over the top.

After about sixteen minutes the inevitable crushing moment of realisation hit. I was not the new Mike Skinner, I was, in fact, a fuzzy headed, dirty bearded, fat, lonely old mental man shouting desperately at himself in the car.

Even worse, I began to entertain the possibility that, just maybe, my rap wasn't very good.

I continued doing the rap for another four minutes after this moment of enlightenment with decreasing enthusiasm and mounting embarrassment.

Finally I stopped the stereo and drove in silence. Alone. In the dark.

The main reason I love "Kill The Director" is because it reminds me of my favourite film ever in the world where Hugh Grant manages, after only two and a bit hours, to impregnate the beautiful, down to earth (although she does have a little bit of a temper but you probably would too if you were in her position) (that position being the most famous film star in the entire world) woman Julia Roberts.

This is the first song that I've really managed to infect Mick with. He's developed a Pavlovian response to it. We listen to it on the school run. Every time we get to the chorus he starts babbling in tongues.

"The director help, help, help the man in the swimming, in the man, in the swimming, the man in the water, the director help him, help him, him, him, him do swimming in the water..."

"Daddy, what is a director?" asks Elly.

Good. A chance to explain something.

"Good question Elly. This song is about a man who is in love with a woman. He loves her so much that she makes him feel seasick,"

"Sea, inna sea, the director helping the man swimming inna sea," says Mick.

"I know that, but what is a director Daddy?"

"I'm getting to that. He feels nervous and sick because he loves the woman so much, but it makes him behave in a silly way, which means he can't make the woman he loves lie on a bench with him while she is pregnant and he is reading a book so he says "If this is a romcom, kill the director,"

"Yes, but Daddy, what is a director?" Elly is getting a bit angry.

"Right, well a romcom means a romantic comedy. It's a comedy where a man and a woman fall in love but find it impossible to be in love for lots of funny reasons for about two hours and everyone laughs and then feels happy because they fall in love and she will be pregnant at the end and he will read a best selling paperback of the time,"

"Daddy..."

"Hang on. Now, to make the film, the actors don't know what they should do, so the director is the man who makes the actors what to do. So the singer is saying "If my life is a film, then can someone kill the director, then my life might stop being such a tragic joke and I can get on with being in love without all these terrible things happening. So that's what a director is,"

"NO, THAT NOT THE DIRECTOR, THE DIRECTOR HELPING THE MAN INNA WATER SWIMMING INNA WATER, SWIMMING, INNA WATER," screams Mick, incensed.

"NO MICK, NO, THAT'S NOT A DIRECTOR, THE DIRECTOR IS THE MAN WHO IS TELLING THE ACTORS WHAT TO DO IN THE FILM," screams Elly, incensed back.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NOT A DIRECTOR," screams Mick. hurling a cement mixer at Elly's head.

"MICK, DON'T DO THAT," I shout as the cement mixer ricochets off the rear window into the back of my chair.

"MIIIIIIICK, DAAAAAAAAAADY," cries Elly. She is hitting him over and over again with her bookbag.

"THAT'S ENOUGH, STOP IT," I bellow in my best furious bellow.

I've twisted round in my seat to make eye contact with Mick. Mick can't see me because he is holding one hand over his face and blindly hitting back at his sister's book bag with the other. They are both shouting furious abuse at each other.

I can't really see an end to this one. They've forgotten their original dispute and are now just channeling pure aggression. I've tried my one and only child management strategy (fearsome bellowing) so I start weighing up the pros and cons of crashing the car. Pros: The argument will stop, we will all die, it will be quiet and peaceful. Cons: None.

"If this is a romcom, kill the director, please," repeats the song.

I consider whether or not to turn down the frenzied orgy of distortion that's roaring out of the speakers.

The guitars drop out on the song.

After only two bars of bass drum and hi-hat, the car has fallen miraculously silent with gleeful anticipation, then, in unison, we all start shouting...

"This is no Bridget Jones. This is no. Bridget. Bridget.

This is no Bridget Jones. This is no. Bridget. Bridget.

This is no Bridget Jones. This is no. Bridget. Bridget.

This is no Bridget Jones. This is no. Bridget. Bridget."

This continues for another twenty eight seconds, at which point I reach my arm behind me shout "High Five" and grin as little hands start slapping mine and then each others.

"AGAIN, AGAIN" shouts Elly.

"AGAIN, AGAIN," shouts Mick.

"No, we're there now," I say, and press mute.

Can you guess who I've been being inside my head for increasing periods of time over the last four days?

2008-01-14T20:00:00.000Z

"Hello Polly,"

"Hello David,"

"I am reading a book in bed."

"Yes, I can see that through my eyes as I am getting changed for bed."

"Aren't we speaking formally to each other considering we've been married for two years, have two children and have lived together for nine years?"

"Yes, we are, but it certainly established the scene, the players and the relationships quickly."

"Yes. You are right. It's almost as if we never actually had this part of the conversation.

"I agree. Did you have something to say?" asks Polly.

"Can you guess who I've been being inside my head for increasing periods of time over the last four days?" I ask.

"Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall." sighs Polly, pulling her nightie on over her head.

(Erotic detail there for my peveret fanbase)

I'm a bit disappointed as I only just realised that I've been being him in my head all day, particularly for the last few hours where I have been living out the 3 meals from one bird scene from "Chicken Nightmares", yet Polly didn't even have to guess.

"Oh, how did you know?"

"Well I'm not sure what it was that gave it away.

It might have been that you went on and on all throughout eating the chicken about how you weren't sure 'whether this chicken is, as I originally thought, free range or whether it was, disappointingly, a barn chicken because, when I read it the label only said "farm fresh" chicken so I better check with the butchers next time I go.'

Or it might have been because you then ignored the children at bedtime and ran over to the chicken to remove all the meat from the carcass.

Or it might have been because when I came back downstairs from putting the children to bed you gestured towards the pressure cooker as if you were some sort of magician and kept saying "Stock...stock...stock," until I said "Yes David, Well done, stock."

Or it might have been because you then spent the next thirty minutes saying 'I don't know why I never made stock before, it's so easy and so rewarding, we should definitely make it all the time from now on.' You didn't just say it once, you said it six times. That's once every five minutes.

Or it might have been because you then started going on about the surprising amount of meat you had left over from the meal in exactly the same way that Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall said it on the program we watched on Tuesday.

Or it might have been because you then started talking about making a chicken risotto for tomorrow evenings dinner. The only risotto you've ever made is that prawn one.

Or it might have been because you spent most of the time that we spent watching Louis Theroux staring at your Fish book and touching it like you did with your ipod when you first got that."

"So it was really obvious then?"

"Well actually, for you, it was pretty low key. The only time that alarm bells really started ringing were when I came home from Ely and you opened the door to me and instead of saying 'Hello, did you have a nice time? How's your dad?' you said 'POLLY - DID YOU KNOW THERE'S A WOMAN WHO RESCUES BATTERY CHICKENS AND THEY CAN LAY EGGS FOR ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS AFTER THEY'VE BEEN SAVED AND IF WE GOT A CHICKEN WE COULD STOP BUYING INTO THE EGG INDUSTRY AND WOULDN'T HAVE TO KILL ANY MALE CHICKS, THEY GAS THEM AT BIRTH, WE COULD HAVE IT IN THE GARDEN, IT'D MAKE A GOOD PET, I WILL TAKE TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT AND LOOK AFTER IT ALL BY MYSELF, YOU COULD DO JUST THE BITS YOU WANTED TO, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS WE COULD PROBABLY KILL IT AND EAT IT AND THEN GET ANOTHER ONE AFTER WE GET BACK...' and I thought 'Oh fuck, he's going to stop doing comedy and try to start a fucking chicken farm,'

I put my head in my hands and start laughing. Then I pick my book back up.

"Polly, did you know that eels have to swim all the way to the Sargasso Sea to mate? It really is fascinating, I love eels. I always have. We should definitely be eating more fish Polly, except not eels, that's not ethical, they've got an MSC rating of 5 which is don't eat, it's so brilliant because when it says '5' on the little box here Hugh also writes 'don't eat' oh, he's so brilliant isn't he?"

The Acer Aspire 3660

2008-01-13T15:47:00.000Z

THE ACER ASPIRE 3660 IS THE SHITTEST COMPUTER THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE.

I will continue to pepper this throughout my blog.

Hopefully people will put "Acer Aspire" or "Acer" or "Acer Aspire 3660" or "Are Acer's any good?" or "Acer Aspire review" or "Acer's are SHIT" into google and get this web page.

If you are considering buying one, especially a refurbished one from Morgan DO NOT.

REPEAT.

DO NOT BUY A REFURBISHED ACER ASPIRE 3660 FROM MORGAN.

I have written a good blog about Mick and Elly and I and The Wombats but I wanted to upload some footage of them singing and dancing before I blogged it.

This morning I took Elly swimming via Maplin to buy an PCMIA IEEE1394 card so that I could plug my camera in. It took me forty five minutes of not cooking Elly's lunch to realise (NO BLOGGER REALISE IS NOT SPELT REALIZE YOU STUPID TOSSER) that I should give up and not try to get the card to work any more.

Every 2 seconds when I try to install something it says "Cannot find driver. You need your WINDOWS XP MEDIA EDITION DISK 2 DISC"

That'd be fine, well, it'd be fine if you liked spending an inordinate amount of your life locating cds and putting them into the computer every time you wanted to "plug and play" so actually NOT FUCKING FINE AT ALL but when I tried to make my Windows XP Media Edition discs this ACER ASPIRE 3660 that I brought REFURBISHED FROM MORGAN ELECTRONICS had a heart attack and died and then came back to life never to let me make the discs so I've always had to add .sys files individually, one by one, downloading them off the internet.

I also got involved in a $20.00 scam from these fuckers, who take your money then say "WE WILL EMAIL YOU THE DRIVER IN THE NEXT 24 HOURS."

What? I thought it would be an immediate access to your library? OH NO APPARENTLY NOT, APPARENTLY THAT'S IT, $20 FOR ONE LOUSY NON EXISTENT DRIVER.

I drove BACK to Maplin to get my money back then went to PC world to get a Belkin card.

This worked - I only had to download 4 .sys files to get it going.

Then I plugged my video camera in and it went mental. I had to find and add at least 20 .sys files by hand, after which it said "Cannot recognise (NO BLOGGER, RECOGNISE IS NOT SPELT RECOGNIZE YOU STUPID TOSSER AGAIN) your A/V device."

Today it has been a great big windy day. The kites are in the hall.

The kids, however, are sitting in front of the other computer playing on the "LEARN TO WATCH TV" website while I've been trying to get the camera to work for the last four fucking hours.

I just shouted "Who wants to go fly a kite?" and the only repsonse was Polly saying "What time is it David? What are we doing about dinner, Do you know what, I think it might be, how much are you gunning for it?"

"Not much,"

"Right, well..."

FUCK EVERYTHING. INCLUDING DRAWING STUPID FUCKING SCRIBBLES ON POST IT NOTES AND THEN HAVING TO RESTART THIS STUPID FUCKING COMPUTER AND THEN SCAN ALL THE STUPID FUCKING SCRIBBLES INTO A FOLDER AND THEN EDITING WITH THEM ON PHOTOSHOP AND THEN UPLOADING AND LINKING THEM ACROSS TO THIS BLOG THAT NO-ONE EVER READS.

I am nearly crying.

So, if you are considering buying a refurbished Acer Aspire 3660 and you like crying, you are making the right choice.

What's so special about today?

2008-01-08T19:36:00.000Z

"I like you now Daddy," says Elly to me as I close the car door.

I think about what she's just said as I walk around to my seat.

"What did you just say?" I say.

"I like you now Daddy," she says.

"Now? Did you not like me before?" I ask.

"No, I didn't used to like you, but now I like you," she says.

"Oh,"

I sit and think for a little while. I've suspected that she didn't like me for a long time - about two years - but have always assured myself with the fact that she's too young to have any control over her emotions. It now appears as if I need to re-assess this assumption.

"Elly?"

"Yes Daddy?"

"When did you decide that you like me?" I ask.

"Today," she says.

"Oh."

I wonder what's so special about today. What have I done for the first time today that I haven't done before? Granted, I am being fairly attentive at the moment, have driven in to collect her early and don't even intend to surf the internet aimlessly when we get home whilst ignoring her like I usually do, but she can't read my intentions, so what is so special about today?

"What's so special about today?" I ask.

"Today I can see your head while you drive the car. I've never been able to see it before so I didn't like you, but now that I can see your head while you drive the car I really, really, really like you." she says.

Of course.

Basically, I ate quite a lot of pork and became a bit sweaty and anxious.

2008-01-07T19:23:00.000Z

Polly had a birthday so we all thought it'd be a good idea to drive up to Walberswick beach.

We spent most of the day in the car, then at a cafe in Walberswick where Polly ate a normal adult sized bite of Elly's shortbread which led to Elly having a full blown nervous breakdown.

I took her out of the cafe to lovingly talk her down.

She perfomed such a convincingly tearjerking rendition of inconsolable innocence that another diner came over to give her (Elly) all the cream and chocolate flake bits from her (other diner) dessert, saying "Be happy now," to her.

We then went to fly our kites on the beach for the forty remaining minutes of sunlight left in the day.

First of all I smashed my powerkite into a beach hut.

Then Polly tangled all the strings up because when I tugged the strings meaning "Drop the strings" she thought I was meant "Really tangle the strings up worse than they have ever been tangled up"

Finally we got lost on the beach and ended up wandering backwards and forwards in the dark trying to find the way back to the car.

Polly likes this kind of thing though. Once in Nepal we climbed up a mountain using a footpath and "explored" our way down which eventually involved aiming at a tree and hurling ourselves down the 1:2 incline, blindly hoping that the tree would withstand the impact and stop us from falling all the way down the mountain.

Then we drove to Southwold to the fish and chip shop. (Not after we got down the mountain in Nepal, that would've been an interminably long drive, after we got back to the car at Walberswick.)

It was closed. We drove home.

We had a great 40 minutes on the beach, but it seemed like a bit of a long drive to achieve it. I didn’t have a very good drive down either.

On Saturday I'd decided that we would have Roast Loin Of Pork for dinner. I'm a big fan of Pork, in spite of, or maybe because of the being Jewish thing.

When people come over to our house to eat for the first time they'll often, absolutely hilariously, say something like "Will we be having Pork?" expecting me to react in some sort of negative way.

I thought a Roast Loin of Pork would be a great end to the post Christmas binge eating festival that's been running at our house.

We ate lots of pork and watched that lovely film where Hugh Grant gets very anxious about whether or not he will fuck Julia Roberts and then he does fuck her (romantically) and looks at her tits too (in a really amusing way) only to get chucked, and then get back together with her and make her pregnant so she can lie pregnantly on a bench with him while he reads Captain Correlli’s Mandolin. It was superb.

It was really lovely for me to imagine Julia Roberts having Hugh Grant’s baby – the actual birth.

We decided to save some Pork for the next day’s sandwiches. Well, Polly said “David, you should probably stop eating the Pork at some point,” and I said “Can we have it in sandwiches tomorrow?” and she said “O.K.”

Whilst I was cutting up the pork for sandwiches the next day I was reminded of the following line in "Real Cooking" by Nigel Slater where he, somewhat irresponsibly, writes "And I cannot be the only person who tears a strip of crackling off a cold roast to chew while I read the paper,"

Firstly you should never ever start a sentence with the word “and”. And secondly you shouldn’t encourage someone as greedy as me to eat more crackling the next day.

Despite it’s recklessness, I've always liked this notion and this being the first time I'd ever had a cold piece of roast pork with crackling on I thought this would be a chance for me to finally live out the fantasy only without the newspaper or the reading or the general relaxed scenario that Slater lazily conjures up, preferring to stand desperately over a work surface covered with discarded packed lunch prep detritus, shoving it into my mouth as fast as I can before being caught in the act by my wife.

(“Really? That’s the only time you’ve done that in your whole life?” says Polly.

”I only started roasting Pork about a year ago, before then I was always a bit scared of doing it” I say.

Polly looks at me with amused incredulity “You’ve certainly made up for it.” she says.)

So, living the dream, I ate up all the left over crackling from the night before while I cut the pork into bite sized pieces to put into a tupperware box. It wasn’t that good to be honest, but I thought I had to keep doing it because that’s what Nigel wanted.

Obviously I also ate up a few of the bite sized pieces of pork just to see what they tasted like cold (nice, in case you are wondering).

I didn’t mention that as it was Polly's birthday we'd had bacon and eggs for breakfast. I had 3 rashers of bacon.

Twenty minutes into the journey to Walberswick Mick said he didn't want his ham sandwich so I scoffed that too.

Five minutes after the ham scoffing I realised that I’d eaten myself into a full blown porkadose.

I started feeling really nauseous and burping up horrific pork burps which sent me into another spasm of Nausea. This got progressively worse throughout the journey, climaxing with an exquisite twenty minute depression which ended with me shouting "I need to visit the toilet NOW," the second we arrived in Walberswick, then sitting in the toilet with my head in the hands counting the ways in which I was a failure then realising that if I didn’t stop counting it’d be dark then walking around in the freezing cold with just my jumper on for 20 minutes until the sweating stopped.

Basically, I ate quite a lot of pork and became a bit sweaty and anxious. Maybe I should have just written this one line. Would that be a better blog?

I resolved not to eat any more pork ever again.

When I got home that evening I had Pork in Pitta Bread.

This lunchtime I had the left over left over Pork with noodles, and this evening I sucked the meat off the Pork Bones that I used to flavour our curry.

Casillero Del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

2008-01-05T20:05:00.000Z

"Berries, some sort of berries," I say

I watched Sideways and I watched one episode of "Jame's May's scripted to fuckery arguments with Oz Clarke"

I think James May is a fuckhead.

I spent the last half an hour telling myself "Don't blog how much you hate Adele because it'll just make you look like a "hater" - picking on celebrities in a blog is just so tawdry - the world will have to go without your "I mean, that's not even a name, that's a computer" observation"

Then I sat down and almost immediately typed "James May is a fuckhead"

He's the sort of fuckhead who, at the age of 45, is basing a really successful TV career around the persona of "Boys are better than girls,"

Or, perhaps more acurately, "Boys are totally and utterly better than girls,"

Wanker.

"Go on" says Polly.

Since we watched these two wine based shows we have secretly stuck our noses into every glass of wine that we open at home, then try to guess what it says on the back of the bottle.

We don't do this in public, and we don't get out a book and write down our observations, just sometimes I remember to do it.

"Not berries, Cherries." I say.

Polly has already sipped the wine so she isn't allowed to play. (I must re-iterate, there's not like a list of rules, typed out, that she refers to, this is an informal game) She reads the back of the bottle while I say things.

"Anything else?" says Polly.

"Chocolate." I say.

"A smooth Cabernet Savuignon full of cassis and black cherries complimented by hints of mocha and dark chocolate, Well done," says Polly. She is really impressed.

She's probably becoming fairly aroused by my intelligence now. If I observe her carefully I can see the tell tale signs of arousal in her constant yawning, looking at the clock, and reading things out of the paper at me when they interest her until I have to say "Polly, for gods sake, please, I am trying to blog, I don't want you to read every single article out from the paper at me."

I always says cherries and I always say chocolate.

All wines that cost £3.99 smell of cherries. And chocolate.

Polly just said to me "John Lewis are doing really well despite everyone else doing absolutely crap. On the high street"

That "On the high street," was obviously added just in case I didn't realise John Lewis was a shop.

The best food shop in the whole of Cambridge

2008-01-03T19:32:00.000Z

Today I went shopping on my own in Cambridge for the first time in a long time. I went to buy Polly's birthday present.

I walked past the alley where the Cambridge Cheese Shop is. This is the best food shop in the whole of Cambridge.

I imagine Nigel Slater returning home after a morning at the Cambridge Cheese Shop, scribbling a blushingly rhapsodic love letter to it's charms before falling asleep, deliriously spent, face down on a kitchen table littered with freshly discarded specialty cheese wrap.

This was the second time since moving to Cambridge that I've had the time and inclination to visit the Cambridge Cheese shop without the pressure of children or health regime to restrict me. The first time was about 3 years ago but I didn't buy anything.

I walked into the intimate cheese shop and said "Hello."

The man behind the counter said "Hello."

A massive, all engulfing blanket of hateful silence filled the shop.

I looked briefly at the cheeses, long enough to register how brilliant they were but not long enough to invite a conversation with the shopkeeper.

I turned to look at the olives for a little while. They were opposite the counter, giving me an excuse to avoid the gaze of the shopkeeper.

The only possible conversation I could have had would go like this:

ME: How much are these olives?

SHOPKEEPER: Those olives are £27.33 per kilo.

ME: Ok, and how much is this piece of cheese?

SHOPKEEPER: This piece of cheese is £16.

ME: O.K. Thanks very much. Bye.

SHOPKEEPER: Bye... (almost imperceptibly, as I walk out of the door) waste my time.

I looked up at the shelves of the shop, not even registering what was on them, thinking "OK. In about 10 seconds I will leave this shop and I'll feel really disturbed by the experience," then I stumbled, choking on my humiliation, out of the shop.

This is what going to the best food shop in Cambridge is like.

It'll probably be gone soon.

Can you drive a train then?

2007-12-31T15:26:00.001Z

Mick and I rode on a steam train today.

I was concerned when we arrived at the station because nothing had gone wrong.

Luckily as soon as we got out of the car I dropped my rucksack onto the sodden ground, instantly coating the part of the sack that fits against your back with a glossy layer of mud meaning that I couldn't put it against my ruck so I had to instead negotiate a handbag and an over excited two year old running at the trains as if he was on a mission. A mission of suicide. (For anyone who hates Mick - he did not die at any point during the day, you can stop reading now.)

It was like going on a normal train, only much slower and more uncomfortable and with no point to the journey and with a high proportion of men who look like this on the train, grasping protectively at their K1000's and looking scornfully at my 20D.

I plonked Mick in front of the steaming train and ran off to take a quick photo of him, hoping that he wouldn't fall down the tracks. I couldn't get the lens cap off the camera because I'd dropped it in the rucksack and bent the lens. Brilliant. I had a few seconds of blind panic and then managed to realign it by carefully pushing it really really hard with my fingers.

Upon boarding the train we were greeted by the sound of a three year old boy crying and crying and crying and crying and crying.

I looked over at another Dad with his three year old and we smiled at each other as if to say "Thank fuck it's not my turn to be humiliated publicly to the point of tears," (at least that was what I was thinking. He could have been thinking "I really want to kill my wife's new partner." for all I know) and said things to our children like "Can you see the Thomas engine?" every time there was a break in the incessant mantra of "I WANT THE THOMAS, I WANT THE THOMAS,"

I got talking to the other Dad when Mick and his child started playing Hide and Seek. As we watched the engine change over he told me that this was a bit of a busman's holiday for him because he works on the railways and that he was divorced.

To stop the kids from running back and forth and stamping all over the heritage leather seats I suggested that we sat together on the way back.

He explained that he had a new partner. I asked if his wife had a new partner too and he said "Yeah, that's why we split up." I did embarrassed laughing. He did well rehearsed eye rolling and humiliated yet accepting shoulder shrugging.

While I was nervously trying to think of what to say next he looked pointedly at me from the corners of his eyes and said "Every dog has his day."

I wan't sure what he meant. The only other person I have ever heard say "Every dog has his day," was Al Pacino in Scarface who said it just before trying to get off with his sister then inadvertently killing her then running around with a bazooka and a machine gun then being gunned down off a balcony into a fountain. (If you are doing a dissertation on Scarface and have found this information whilst doing research then it is an entirely accurate plot summary for Scarface. In fact, you don't need to bother referring to the film from now on, just cite this article.)

I did a bit of fake nose laughing and nodding then did looking over his right shoulder, out of the right hand window and across at my son, causing him to say "Every dog has his day. He's only 19. Bless him,"

I wanted him to stop saying "Every dog has his day," now because I wasn't sure what he meant.

I should have said "Do you mean you are going to kill your ex wife's lover or do you mean you are going to take loads of coke, try to get off with your sister then inadvertantly kill her then run around with a bazooka and a machine gun and get gunned down off a balcony into a fountain?"

Instead I just kept doing laughing and shrugging and looking at the children playing and thinking "Oh dear, I'm really not sure what every dog has his day means but I think it carries quite violent and bitter associations and I don't really know you well enough to be able to ask you to clarify things. I wish that I could use another dog based idiom to respond to you but I'm not sure that "Walkies!" would be appropriate in this situation."

Then he said to me "Are you married?"

I said "Yes."

He said "Yes."

I said "My wife and I get on quite well though. Sorry."

We both had a little laugh at that.

Then he said "Yeah, me and my ex-wife get on quite well too."

"That's good." I said. "What about him? Do you get on ok with him?"

I don't know what the matter is with me. I should have said something like "Can you drive a train then?"

"No, not really. not at all actually, in fact I nearly killed him once." He said.

"Oh dear," I said.

"Yeah, if it hadn't been for my son walking into the room, he would have been a dead man," He said.

"Can you drive a train then?" I said.

Say What?

2007-12-30T19:25:00.000Z

These signs can be seen on the A10 to Ely.

I got home and typed "Say no to Mereham," into Google and found this brilliant explanation.

After reading this I have become very, very, very anxious x 100.

Obviously it is a disastrous idea for any housing to be developed around here because it will cause lots of accidents. Millions and millions of terrible accidents. In cars. On roads.

Whilst no-one in their right mind could ever argue against the wisdom of preventing any hateful outsiders from moving here, the sign is obscure, not to mention dangerous.

What if I suffered from imperative autistic disorder and lost control of my car in my helpless panic unable to process or fulfill such a vague command?

The sign itself would then be causing an accident.

I propose that the Mereham Anti Progress (in a good, safe way obviously) Committee adopt my revised poster campaign.

Another poster said "SAY NO TO MEREHAM, 12,000 MORE CARS."

That's loads of cars and don't forget, these aren't just any cars, these will be DANGEROUS cars.

However, some idiots will intentionally disobey very reasonable instructions just because they say "No" in them, so let's go for a loop of positivity - I think that this'll do the trick.

I'm ashamed that this post has taken me 1hr and 15 minutes of my life to write. What a terrible waste.

I could be watching the world's strongest man.

Happy New Year.

As if I won't spend tomorrow night blogging about ~~how desperately lonely and self hating I am~~ how much I hate New Year's Eve.

If you’re reading this, I hope it doesn’t make you get old school.

2007-12-29T21:17:00.000Z

I am standing in Borders.

Mick is shouting “GO UPSTAIRS, I WANT YOU TO BUY ME A BOOK,” only he is doing it in his new psycho voice where he screams so loudly that he has three separate voices, one from his stomach, one from his throat and one through his nose.

People are looking and not smiling.

I’m whispering “It’s OK Mick, please stop shouting, I just need to choose a calendar,”

I’ve been looking for twenty minutes which could be something to do with Mick’s explosive behaviour.

I am holding a calendar called “Tuscany” and seriously considering it because it has a nice picture of a Sunflower on it. Something inside me says “Definitely not cool,” so I head for the Beatles calendar, which is a much cooler calendar. The coolest of all calendars.

What kind of guy am I? The kind of guy who has a really cool calendar. How cool is that? Well, we’ve got the Beatles, who are cool, and then on top of that we’ve got efficient time management, the coolest thing ever, so add them together and you get me - double cool.

Last time I went Calendar shopping I got the Cheeky Girls calendar which Polly threw in the bin.

Mick has stopped screaming and is just sobbing mournfully now so I head over to the lift to take him to the kids section when I see the Cliff Richard calendar.

My heart stops beating. It looks perfect. I turn it over and see the most erotic photograph ever…

It IS perfect. Then I look at the size allocated for writing on it. TOO SMALL. I am gutted. These days I can’t afford to do a joke for half of £7.99. A little part of me dies. How many more little parts of me can die before old me is dead? And will I notice when the last part of old me does die? And is it a sadness or a relief?

I go upstairs and refuse to buy Mick a book. I say to him “Mick, we can’t afford Cliff, we can’t afford a book. I’m sorry Mick,”

He looks at me and nods his head sagely. “Go home Daddy. On the bus,” he says.

I pay for the cool Beatles calendar and push Mick to the bus stop.

As we wait for the bus I wonder what the next explosive tantrum will be, and at what point it stops being “He’s three years old,” and starts being

“Thanks for coming to see us about Mick today Mister Trent, please take seat.

Mr Trent, Have you ever heard of something called the Autistic Spectrum?

Mr Trent, Here’s a leaflet that explains it to you. in an easy to understand cartoon.

Of a boy.

As you can see Mr Trent, he is crying his eyes out and saying "My trains must all be standing up before you switch off the light,"

As you can also see Mr Trent he has 327 trains.

As you can also see Mr Trent they all have stickers with their names on them.

As you can also see Mr Trent, his father is slamming the door of the room and shouting at his wife that "WE'VE GOT TO PUT OUR FOOT DOWN AT SOME POINT.

As you can also see Mr Trent, his mother is crying."

Possible flashpoints whilst waiting for the bus include:

A bus arrives – This, apparently, is a perfectly good reason to act as if every human right has been forcibly removed from you. It doesn’t matter what sort of bus. If it is a double decker then it should have been a single decker and vice versa. If it arrives quickly it’s too fast. If it’s late it’s too slow. Why are we going on a bus anyway? I want to go on a train…

A blue bus arrives to take us home, not a red bus - This is a particularly cunning flashpoint as no red buses go anywhere near our house.

The concept of sitting upstairs - It doesn’t matter that Mick has never sat downstairs on a double decker, if a double decker approaches it is perfectly acceptable for him to scream “I want to sit upstairs,” over and over again in ever escalating anxiety until he is actually sitting upstairs.

We get on the bus. We go upstairs. Empty top deck. Result. We get the best seats (front, right hand Aisle). I sit next to Mick – this is another flashpoint – “NO, IF YOU SIT NEXT TO ME THEN I WILL CRY, I WILL CRY, NO, YOU CAN’T SIT NEXT TO ME, I HAVE TO CRY IF YOU SIT NEXT TO ME,”

Nothing happens. Mick is as obviously traumatised by the loss of erotic Cliff Richard this year as I am. I give him a cuddle to try and make it up to him.

At the train station four “Youth” get on. I hear footsteps and then a female voice shouts “SAMMY, MIA, MIA, MIA,”

“WHERE ARE YA?” shouts “Sammy”

“MIA,” shouts the woman whose name isn’t Mia. She is saying “I am here,”

I am really terrified by their loutish and loud behaviour. I don’t experience this as fear though, I experience it as prejudice and hatred.

“ALRYEJEWAVAGOOKRISMAS?” shouts a youth.

“YAIRBRIRRIYANSEEKAFRINTAYT?” responds another youth.

“HAHAHAHAHA” they all laugh.

They are harmless and I think to myself “How nice, they are actually all really pleased to see each other and just having really really loud chat. Maybe it’s good that these uneducated youth are going to grow up to rule the country, it means that maybe people will start communicating with each other without embarrasment and hushed voices. Good for you youth. Maybe I’ll turn around and give you a validatory smile. Oh, you’re saying “Fuck” quite a lot - maybe I’ll just try to appreciate you quietly and hope none of you notice that I am on the bus.”

One of their mobile phones goes off. Except it’s not going off. It’s just playing a song.

Dizzee Rascal is repeatedly requesting that I don’t make him get old school. He is doing this over an old school hip hop beat therefore making his request rather redundant.

Dizzee, if you’re reading this, I hope it doesn’t make you get old school. I’m not sure exactly what would make you get old school anyway though, you’ve not specified that in your song – perhaps you could release a song listing very clearly the things that make you get old school.

If “Riding on a bus with your child sitting next to you, becoming increasingly embittered by a twunt playing my song out of a mobile phone,” is on the list then may I wholeheartedly express my apologies, but I’m afraid you will have to get old school.

The twunt only has a 30 second attention span, as the music then changes to somebody getting very excited about me watching him “crank it like a hoe”. I don’t like gardening at the best of times. This is utterly preposterous.

I don’t know what to do. I want to tell them to turn the phone off. I’ve been brave twice before in the face of anti social behaviour. The first time ended up with my suspicion that I may be a fat man who resembles a woman’s reproductive organs being repeatedly confirmed by 14 youth who then waited for me to leave the cinema until the police turned up to escort me to my car, and the second time led to this.

I decide not to turn around and say “I’m sorry, I think your phone is ringing, perhaps you should answer it?” Instead I make an effort to appear as if I am wholly focused on Mick who is demanding a move of seats.

When the bus stops we move across to the seats on the left hand aisle. As we move across I bravely glance at the youth for about two fifths of a second. They look a bit older than I remembered. I sit next to Mick.

“No, No Daddy, don’t sit next to me, no, no NO, NO DADDY, NO, DON’T SIT NEXT TO ME, GO AWAY DADDY, GO OVER THERE, I HAVE TO CRY, I HAVE TO CRY DADDY, NO, NO, NO”

“Sorry Mick,” I say, very calmly, staring straight ahead, “I have to sit next to you or you’ll hit your head.”

Mick goes into full blown psycho mode for the next 10 minutes.

I worry so much about upsetting our fellow passengers that I break into a sweat.

Sick Mick

2007-12-28T16:01:00.000Z

"Come away from the telly Mick,"

"No,"

"Come away from the telly Mick,"

"No,"

"Come away from the telly Mick,"

"No,"

Mick is standing about 4 inches away from the telly and is using two hands to excavate his arsecrack. He’s quite bored. He’s watched TV since nine this morning. It’s now ten to five.

Mick is sick. He has a temperature of 38 degrees. He spent last night in bed with me, heavy breathing through his nose like a peveret, hitting me and saying "I want to drink water please," every half an hour from eleven o’ clock last night until half past six this morning.

From half six until to half eight he added whispering the lyrics to "Ride a Cock Horse" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to his repertoire.

I said "If you don't stop talking Mick, you'll go in your own bed," sixty three times.

I wonder at which point he thought "Right mate, you say you'll put me in my own bed, but so far you've said that to me eleven times and not actually managed to lift your head off your pilllow. I reckon that's a pretty empty threat, now would you stop interrupting me, I'm trying to remember the words from the Iggle Piggle song to whisper in order to interrupt your sleep. You mug,"

Whilst I didn't get any sleep I enjoyed the experience because it made me feel like that man in the Athena poster from the 1986 called Man and Boy.

I always loved that poster and tried to get loads of girls pregnant in 1986 in order to recreate it, but sadly it never happened for me.

This was mainly because my seduction technique consisted of stealing £2.99 from my Mum’s purse and buying the picture disc of either “West End Girls” by the Pet Shop Boys, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by the Communards or “The Edge of Heaven” by Wham, then giving it to Vanessa King or Kimberley Myers or Sarah Bayliss at lunchtime before inviting them to come with me to watch Luke Gale do “flobbing” into the biology pond.

And because I looked like this.

The Number 100

2007-04-04T15:53:00.000Z

"100," says Elly.

"What are you having?" I say.

"I don't know. I'm not hungry. I knew we shouldn't have had those cakes," Polly says.

"100," says Elly.

"What are you having?" says Polly.

"Steak and Kidney Pie," I say.

I feel sick. We have arrived at the garden centre restaurant directly from cakes and coffee at the bakery, but there's no way I'm backing down.

We planned to get the children's feet checked out at the shoeshop, then to go to the garden centre to buy seeds and have lunch, and that's exactly what we will do regardless of the fact that we added "Go to the bakers and eat a Chelsea Bun / Giant Gingerbread Man / Easter Basket" to the plan in a spontaneous moment.

A plan is a plan and anyway, I am going on an 8 week liquid diet from next Wednesday and this is part of my grand farewell to food.

"100, 100 Daddy, 100," says Elly.

"What are you having?" I say to Polly.

"I'm not sure," says Polly.

This is typical. We are in a queue. There are at least 32 people behind us. The queue has come to a standstill. The queue is hungry. It is a rumbling, ill tempered, slightly anxious queue, the type of queue where everyone seems to be under the impression that rationing is still the system by which everyday transactions occur.

"Come on Polly, there's a queue, what do you want?"

Polly frowns. I feel guilty.

"100," says Elly.

"What?" I say

"100." says Elly, pointing at the number 100 on the counter. It is in amongst all the other numbers, 24, 80, 78, 10, 100 14, waiting to be assigned as a table number so the harrassed teenager behind the counter knows which table to throw the gloop at.

"Yes, 100. What do you want to eat?" I say.

"100 Daddy, 100."

"Yes, you can read 100, you are a very special, beautiful, clever princess. Well done. I love you. What would you like to eat?"

"Ummm, Tomato soup please Daddy. Daddy?"

"Yes,"

"Can we have the number 100?"

"Of course," I say.

"Polly?" I say.

"Can I have the ciabatta with mozarella and tomato?" she says. "And get the number 100,"

I tense my shoulders. That is such a bad choice. This is a garden centre. They are renowned throughout the county for great big stodgy meals that fill their customers to the point that they can no longer move. Rioting and anarchy at the tills are cleverly avoided by using the restaurant to create hordes of glassy eyed balding middle agers swaying, burping up tiny bits of gravy flavoured sick and gently wincing it back down.

I also feel as if Polly is taking the moral highground by her food choice. The only possible reason that she has chosen a fancy ciabatta with vegetables and no meat is to show me that my food choice is dangerous and immoral. I refuse to be defeated though.

"Hi, Can I get (since holidaying in Nepal with Anna Wolton I have always said "Can I get..." instead of "Can I have..." because it sounds very cool) a ciabatta with mozerella and tomatoes, a steak and kidney pie and a tomato and red pepper soup with two bowls," I say.

Elly is grinning at me, and pointing at the number 100. "100, 100, 100," she is saying.

"Sorry, we don't have the ciabatta with mozerella and tomatoes, we only have sausage and cheese ciabatta or chicken and bacon ciabatta,"

I am vindicated. This place can't even shift a single mozerella and tomato ciabatta. It is just on the board as a smokescreen for their cholestrol based crimes against the human condition.

I take one look at Polly's face and am filled with a deep fear. She has a look of disgust etched into her which says "I knew we shouldn't have come here for lunch, I knew it wouldn't work," Suddenly my vindication shatters to reveal the true nature of my position - terror. My lunch will be ruined. Polly is about to take the ultimate moral highground. I can feel an impending doom but I'm not sure what form it will take today I brace myself. I huddle my shoulders in anticipation. Here it comes...

"I won't have anything then," she says.

Oh no. This is a disaster. This is the worst thing that could possibly occur. What should I do? Polly doesn't want anything. This can only mean that she hates me.

I've been excited about this lunch since we first considered coming here on Wednesday night, it's the highlight of my weekend, that one landmark that has pulled me through the last few days of work, the 6 a.m. wake ups, the early nights, the bowls of cereal thrown across the kitchen, the rolling around the floor screaming "mooor tubbies, mooor tubbies, mooor tubbies," all this has been made bearable by the thought of this meal shining like a beacon, like a finish line, after which a new plan, a new goal, a new hope would have to be constructed.

This plate of food has been my comfort blankey. And now my comfort blankey is being pooed upon. By my wife. In front of at least 32 people.

"Oh please," I mutter.

"It's OK, David, just get your food, I'll have a filter coffee with cold milk, get the number 100,"

I know Polly has cold milk in her filter coffee, as many many times I have had to sit opposite her shaking gently and saying "Sorry, I forgot, are you sure you won't drink it, here, have mine, here, here's a knife, poke my eye out, here, here's a gun, please shoot my head off, anything, please don't leave me over hot milk."

"O.k. I've got it. Sorry, please can I just have the Steak and Kidney pie and the Tomato Soup."

The teenager taking my order at the counter looks at me as if I am her mum.

"Anyfing else?"

This is the point at which I should say "Yes, please could I have the number 100?"

Elly is beaming at me and pointing at the number 100.

Polly is holding Mick and pointing at the number 100. Mick has made her hair go in seven different directions and she has gone a bit red. Her face is saying "I knew this would be a fucking disaster."

I feel sad, angry, frustrated, humiliated, comprimised. All I want to do is make everyone happy.

The girl behind the counter is waiting for an answer. There is a look of pure scorn scrawled across her features.

This is where I'm supposed to smile ingratiatingly and say "Yes, one thing, I know this sounds a bit silly, but could I have the number 100?"

Instead I choose this moment to assert my independence and dignity, say "Nope, that's it," and I start to do Derren Brown mind control to influence her into picking the number 100. It works like this, in my head I repeat to myself

"Please give me the number 100,

Please give me the number 100,

Please give me the number 100..."

I watch her hand hover over all the numbers

"Please give me the number 100,

Please give me the number."

Her hand lowers towards the numbers,

"Please give me the number 100,

Please give me the numb.."

She grabs hold of a number, writes the number on the order, drops the number onto the tray and humphs off to the kitchen to put the order in.

Elly looks at me. Her lower lip juts out.

"It's nearly 100 Elly, look, it's a 10 - that's like a number 100," I say.

"Didn't you ask for the number 100?" Polly asks.

I cannot reply. What can I say? Yes? That's a lie. No? That's a death sentence. I just say "Wha?" and stare desperately at the doorway that the teenager has disappeared into.

Elly is crying. As if she had a pet pony and I have just killed it. She is sobbing.

I pick her up. She howls.

I look back at Polly.

Behind Polly at least 32 people look at me as if to say "You, are the worst father we have ever seen in our lives, not just a bad father, but also an overeater and a terrible human being. We all hate your guts. You are an idiot."

I know what I have to do. I do that varigated inbreath that holds back the tears and hold it until the sullen teenager gets back. She looks at me. The look in her eyes says "What the fuck are you still doing here? I've got at least 32 people to serve."

I grit my teeth and grin,

"Hi, could you possibly change this number for the number 100?" I say.

"The number 100?" she says. She is incredulous, then furious.

She looks at me, at my screaming child, at my harrassed wife, and back at me. Her lips dissapear. Her eyes narrow and she shakes her head almost imperceptibly. She reaches over for the number 100, slams it on my tray and walks back to the kitchen without a word.

I look back towards Polly. She is walking off towards the tables with Mick and shaking her head in embarrasment.

At least 32 people are all gesturing at me, gesturing at my family and shaking their heads in disgust.

I feel utterly alone.

I look at Elly. Her cheeks are decorated with perfectly formed tears. She looks at the number 100. She bites her bottom lip and smiles at me.

"Thank you Daddy," she says.

She cuddles me tightly around my neck and whispers into my ear...

"I love the number 100."

10 games to play that make you look idiotic but actually you aren't the idiot...

2007-03-27T15:37:00.000Z

I lied about ten games, but putting "2 games to play that make you look idiotic but actually you aren't the idiot..." wouldn't be very exciting. That is what this post should really be called though. Sorry if you feel cheated.

1) This game is called "I expect a riot"

When something unpopular is being announced at work say "I expect a riot," and then really grin and nod as if you have made a cultural pop reference.

Wait for the person to say "predict". If they do you win.

If they say "actually" you win more.

If you can make eye contact, say "yeah, that's what I meant," not laugh and walk away without giggling you are a superwinner.

2) This game is called "expresso"

Walk into a coffee shop and say "Hello, I would like an expresso please," Keep repeating "expresso," as in "Yeah, so that's one super skinny latte, one cappucino and one expresso, actually make that a double expresso,"

Every time the barista says "espresso?" make sure you say "Yeah, an expresso please."

This game can be devastatingly effective when played with a partner who also says "are you sure you want an expresso? "

"Yeah, I love expresso,"

"But expresso makes you do too much wee,"

etc. etc.

You win if the barista smirks, frowns or makes any type of involuntary gesture when you say "expresso"

POP

2007-03-26T18:51:00.000Z

I am going to make my blog pop. Here is an interview with a key person from my niche.

Polly XXXX is a woman. She is married to me. She lives in a room in my house. She sleeps in a bed next to me. She keeps all her clothes in a cupboard on the left hand side of the room if you are sitting on the bed and facing the wall. She is quite good at computers and goes to work every day in an office. She wears smarter clothes at work than she wears at home.

I am in italics.

Sorry, can you repeat that please?

Can you take that lump out of your beard please?

Lump of what?

I think it is tomato.

Ok. Um, can you pass me a tissue please? OK Polly XXXX

I don't want my full name used in the blog

Why?

I'm a bit reserved about my identity being plastered all over the internet.

OK. Um, Polly X,

Dearest wife...

No, Polly X, Mick is crying again.

I thnk he wants you to go and give him a cuddle. He was shouting for Daddy.

OK...(goes off to get Mick to go back to sleep) (Arriving back) Night Night...(Massive burp to see what Polly will say. Polly just wrinkles nose and pulls a disgusted face) OK, ready for your questions Polly XXXX?

Umm hmm

Hello Polly, welcome to my blog, David Trent. Good. I would just like to ask you some questions.

I don't think it's going to hear you over there.

It will hear me. I would just like to ask you some questions. Is that OK with you?

Alright

If you feel uncomfortable with any of the questions I ask you, bad luck. First question...Is my blog probably the best blog on the internet?

Apart from Fenella's

What do you mean apart from Fenella's? Is that a joke?

I like Fenella's. I like yours.

But which one is best?

If I said yours then I'd be accused of being biased because I'm your wife.

Yeah, but which one is best?

Usually yours

Good. Why is my blog better than Fenella's?

Funnier.

Did you say my blog is the funniest blog you have ever read?

Probably, but I've only read 2 blogs.

Out of those 2, was it the funniest blog ever?

Yeah

Good. Well thankyou for being interviewed for David Trent's blogspace. It has been a pleasure interviewing you and I hope to do it again some time soon.

Is that it?

It was just a happening...

2007-03-13T20:06:00.000Z

I hate teaching Dance. It is my least favourite lesson.

Except for History. I hate that too. History, Geography and Dance.

And Games.

And Art.

And ICT – that’s not really fair, I love teaching ICT when it works, but our ICT suite is still totally unreliable so lessons inevitably starts off great as in “Right, today you’re all going to learn how to use publisher to make your own cartoons” (“HOORAY,”) and ends up shit as in “Right, what did we learn today about computers class?”

“We learnt today that the when clip art manager freezes for the 27^th time, Myrtle and Andrew start crying,”

“Correct,”

Oh God, I nearly forgot. I hate teaching RE too.

However, dance is the worst of all because the dances develop into a scrum of 30 children running round and around the hall flapping their hands like John Inman on speed. For example,

“OK, listen to the tambourine, and imagine each time I tap it, you feel a little bit of rain, got it? Good. Off you go,”

The children walk around tentatively, then at the very first tiny shake from the tambourine their hands raise to shoulder level, the eyes release a pent up frenzy and they all, as one, flap deliriously round and around the hall.

“Good, excellent try, but we all seem to be over-reacting a little bit to the tiniest amount of rain. Do you think we could possibly try again, only this time, when you hear the rain, try not to go running round and around the hall flapping your arms, that’d make a nice change. OK, ready?”

They start walking around the hall.

One tap on the tambourine – they all stop and look at each other, faces go red and screw up, their bodies tense up, they start shaking with the effort to hold it in.

Another tap and WHOOOOOSH, they’re off again, legging it round and round the hall, flapping and flapping, screaming, laughing, shouting “I’m getting wet, I’m getting wet,” and nodding their heads from side to side with their mouths open and their tongues hanging out.

Today was session 2 of our dance lesson.

Before we started, I shook the tambourine a few times then continued shaking it. This went on until I sensed the children had cottoned on to the fact that there was no hidden meaning to me shaking the tambourine, that I was just shaking the tambourine and seeing how long I could hold the children’s attention for before they got bored of me shaking the tambourine.

Enrique had given it a good go though, standing up straight to attention for a bit, waving at the others to do the same, grinning at me for affirmation that this was the hidden message I was sending them by my tambourine shaking, receiving none and disappointedly sitting back down.

Just before I stopped shaking the tambourine, Mark sneezed.

“Good,” I said. “My magic spell worked,”

“What magic spell?” shouted Enrique, slightly inappropriately.

“Good question Enrique, but I wish you to raise your hand before you ask, so I am unable to answer you. Class, I know magic and I just cast a magic spell to make Mark sneeze. “Mark, did it work?”

Mark’s eyes are nearly popping out of his head.

“Yes, it did work,” Mark says.

The rest of the class are muttering “No it didn’t,” and “That’s not true,”

”It is true,” I say, “Mark, did you need to have a sneeze before I started waving the tambourine?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t,” Mark says, shaking his head in disbelief like a punter at a Derren Brown gig.

“And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, for no reason, you suddenly did a sneeze – don’t you think that’s a bit strange?” I ask him.

“Yes, it is,” Mark says.

“Exactly Mark, I made you have that sneeze, by my magic…” I say, raising my voice and doing over the top hand gestures and spinning around on one leg.

Jamelia has her hand up.

“Yes?”

“It was just a happening,” says Jamelia.

“Do you mean a co-incidence?” I ask.

“Yes, it just happened at the same time as you were playing the tambourine,” she says.

“How dare you? I have Magic Powers,” I say, mock indignantly.

“No you don’t,” she says.

“I do,” I say, genuinely feeling smug at my excellent plan that has fallen into my head, “I shall prove it to you,” I address the whole class,

“Stand up everyone” I say.

Now, I didn’t for one moment think that they would ever disobey me.

Obviously, I am an idiot.

“O.k. listen, I’m serious now, stand up,”

“NO, YOUR MAGIC IS NOT GOING TO WORK ON US!” shouts Karen.

“Ummm, no, I’m the teacher, and you all have to do it, everyone, stand up,”

They all sit down and grin at me.

“Ok. If you don’t get up, I’ll put you in 12.30,”

2 or 3 children jump up, the rest are seated, a couple are springing up in the air like those rubber suction pad ladybirds. The class burst into excited chatter –

"He's just suggesting," someone says.

"He's trying to influence us," says another child and I am surprised by her sudden articulacy.

"It's just pretending," someone else says.

"He can't make us do it" someone else says.

Enrique is running around whispering in everyone’s ears and Myrtle is dancing anxiously from one foot to another.

I seem to have started a full scale mutiny.

I glance at my watch. It is now 2.17. We only have 30 minutes left to go and we’ve got lots to do.

“Right everyone, joking aside, we’ve got to all get up,” I say.

“NO, NO, HE’S TRYING TO TRICK US!” shouts Karen.

This is all my own fault. I glance over at my teaching assistant. She looks back at me, shrugs her shoulders, sneers and starts laughing.

The door to the hall swings open and the deputy head starts walking across, head thankfully buried in her clipboard.

“OK, so we are going to be looking at rain again today children, doing another…”

The opposite door to the hall swings shut.

“Look, will you all just get up, please, please get up, I really need to teach the lesson,”

“No, you aren’t magic,” says Lottie.

”I know, I’m not magic, I’ve got no magic powers, shhh, shhh, listen everyone, I don’t have any magic powers and I’m not doing any magic on you whatsoever. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d really like to teach you the dance lesson that I’ve got planned, so could you please all stand up for me, please” I am pleading.

They all stand up.

I smirk. I open my mouth, but something in my brain says “Don’t do it, DO NOT SAY “SEE, I TOLD YOU I WAS MAGIC,”

“OK, everyone. I want you to all walk around the hall as if it has just started raining very gently.” I say.

Everyone hurtles around the hall and flaps as if their hands are on fire. Except for one child who approaches me tentatively…

“I’m confused, I don’t understand. You said you weren’t going to do any magic on us,” says Lottie.

"Don’t worry Lottie, I'm not doing any more magic. Now, I wonder if you can do what all the others are doing?"

She runs off.

Magic.

I was only joking...

2007-03-09T18:07:00.000Z

It’s too early to get up.

Polly gets up and I lie guiltily in bed. It is Friday. I wonder whether staying in bed today will mean I’ll have to get up early on Saturday. I calculate the possibilities and conclude that it probably does, but I am too tired to care.

I can hear Polly speaking to Elly as she changes Mick’s nappy. She is saying “Phoooar, stinky Mick, have you done a big poo? What Elly? Is he? Really? Did he really say that? A treat?”

I shudder.

Yesterday afternoon I picked Elly up from school and her very first words to me were “I’m hungry, I want something to eat,”

She says “something” with slow emphasis. When she says it like this it means “Buy me chocolate,”

“O.K, you can have a snack when we get home,” I say.

“No Daddy, I don’t want a snack, I want something from the shop,”

There is a corner shop with two walls of sweets just outside the school.

“Elly, I’ll get you a treat tomorrow, because tomorrow is Friday, but I’m not going to get you anything from the shop tonight,” I say.

“O.K. Daddy,” Elly says, and we go home.

Polly doesn’t like me to buy Elly chocolate or treats, because when I give her chocolate or treats they are bad for her. I have rebelled against this recently, but it has been a secret Friday afternoon rebellion.

However, thanks to my daughter’s lack of diplomacy my insurgency has been revealed.

“Elly, come here,” I call.

Elly jumps into my bed.

“Elly,” I whisper, “Mummy doesn’t like Daddy giving you chocolate, so we need to keep this secret. Go back and tell Mummy that you were only joking,”

“O.K. Daddy,” Elly whispers, nodding her head enthusiastically.

She runs out of my bedroom.

“Mummy, Mummy,” Elly says.

“Yes?” says Polly.

“I was only joking,” Elly says, with a convincing rising cadence in her voice.

“What?” says Polly.

“I was only joking about the treat,” she says, expertly emphasising the words “joking” and “treat” – the “treat” turns into a smiley giggly sound. She is very good at this.

“Right Elly,” says Polly, who is concentrating on keeping her hands clean.

Elly appears at the bedroom door with a smirk on her four year old mouth, then climbs onto the bed raises her hand.

“Daddy,” she says.

“What?” I say.

“High Five,” she says.

I am shocked. Elly appears to understand that lying successfully to her mother to protect our collaboration is a cause for celebration. What a genius.

We high five.

It is now 5.55 p.m.

Elly is colouring in a rainbow sunflower that we’ve been making for the last hour.

Mick is wearing Elly’s rabbit ears and running back and forth between the door and the chair with a look of intense concentration on his face.

I look over at Elly bent over her colouring.

“How were the chocolate buttons Elly?”

She turns round to look at me and smiles widely,

“Great,” she says.

For two seconds everything is perfect...

2007-03-08T17:49:00.000Z

"Polly, I am going to get Fish and Chips. Please don't ask why, just listen..."

"Fish and Chips? Why?" says Polly.

“Look Polly, I’ve only just walked in the door and we’re supposed to be going out in an hour and I’ve been driving backwards and forwards in the car since 3 o’ clock and there’s absolutely nothing to eat in the house and we’ve got to go out in an hour and I didn’t want to have to explain everything to you and I am extremely irritated and I did say please don’t ask me why and now you have and I don’t want to have to justify everything I ever ask you. All I asked is if you wanted fish and chips and all I want to know is do you want any fish and chips and what fish and chips do you want if you do want it and we’re going out in an hour and that’s it…”

There is a silence.

I'm really anxious and over excited about going out. It's the first time Polly and I have been able to go out together for ages and we're going to go to the comedy club at the Portland Arms.

I am excited for many reasons – Andy Zaltzman is headlining and I have heard him making jokes on a Daniel Kitson bootleg and he is a mate of Daniel Kitson so he will be absolutely BRILLIANT. Caroline Mabey is compering. She is my new favourite comedian and I've never seen her compere. I am meeting Steve Rosier for the first time, who is a local based comedian. Hannah Dunleavy who I run Basement Cracks with is also going to be there and she's going to bring the flier for this month’s club, so it's a big ol' comedy fest and I am anxious to be able to enjoy every single second of it.

"Oh. Can't we go to the Comfort Café?"

"Comfort Café is miles away Polly, I just want an easy evening, I know fish and chips is shit but I can't be bothered, we need to get the kids into bed and anyway we're going out in an hour and I just wanted to know if you wanted to have fish and chips. I just want to have fish and chips so what fish and chips do you want, if you do want fish and chips. Do you want fish and chips? Please? HELLO?"

I am totally manic.

"Just get me fish and chips," Polly says.

As I run around the house putting shoes and coats on the children, the phone rings.

"And Mushy Peas," Polly says.

"Yes, I know," I say and press the green button quite a bit harder than I usually do to switch the phone off. That'll teach her to patronise me, despite the fact that I've just rung her up and gone through a very agressive permission seeking scenario which would suggest that on a subconcious level I very much seek patronage.

I wrestle the children in to the car, drive straight to Polly's work and get her receptionist to call her. She can't be found so they page her. I always laugh when they page Polly Page.

Eventually she shows up.

"Come on, we're going to Comfort Café," I say.

"Great," she grins, and runs off to get her coat.

"I thought you were going to get Fish and Chips?" she says as she gets into the car.

"I was, but then I couldn't be bothered and thought I'd just do what you suggested for a change," I say. "Anyway, if it is a hideous disaster, I can just blame you for it for months and months and use it as ammunition against having to do anything you suggest ever again, not to mention that if your idea does fuck up, when I next want to buy fish and chips I can say to you "remember the comfort café?" and you will instantly back down and let me buy fish and chips."

"Delightful," says Polly.

"WHO WANTS TO GO TO THE COMFORT CAFÉ?" I shout.

"MEEEEEEEEEEE," shout the kids.

Halfway up Lime Kiln Road I screw up my face and say to Polly “Mmmm, what will you have to eat at Comfort Café? I don’t really know what I’ll have to eat there.”

“I was thinking of their pie,” says Polly.

“Oh yeah, you said about their pie, I’m going to have that then,” I say, and drive silently, thinking about the Comfort Café Pie.

The Comfort Café is probably the best café in Cambridge. This doesn’t mean it’s an excellent café. It is not an excellent café. It just means the rest of the cafés in Cambridge are SHIT.

We used to have an amazing café at the end of the road in Peckham. It did massive portions of greasy food for about £3.00. Polly and I often bemoan the lack of decent fry uppery in Cambridge.

The Comfort Café does a similar standard of fry up as the amazing café at the end of our road in Peckham, but it charges double the price, which, according to café logic, means that it drops in status from amazing to quite poor value for money.

Anyway, Polly sometimes takes Elly there for lunch if the two of them are going to the hospital for some skin wrapping advice. Last time she was there she came back raving about the steak and kidney pie. She said it was massive and delicious and real. This pie was so good that strangers were eyeing it up and walking over to her and saying “What’s that you got there?” and then saying to their partners “I’m having that for lunch,” whilst smiling the smile that is only ever smiled by those basking in the satisfied security of a truly comfortable decision.

Now, Polly does know her steak and kidney pie, but I still can’t believe that this café, which comes in as slightly above mediocre when placed in context of the price of their food, can possibly deliver the goods, but once again I am comforted by the fact that if the Steak and Kidney pie is shit I can blame it all on Polly and right now I am in need of that kind of assurance.

As we pull off the A1307 Polly starts to chant…

“What if it’s not open?”

The sliproad from the A1307 to the comfort café is about 200m long, but by the time we get to the entrance of the café we have made and rejected 4 contingency plans for what to do in the event of the café not being open.

We will not go to Burger King.

We will not go to McDonald’s.

We will not go to Little Chef.

We will not go to the Three Tuns in Abington.

If the comfort café is closed, we will go to the fish and chip shop on Wulfstan Way.

The comfort café is open.

“Hooray, it’s open,” I shout.

“Hooray,” shouts Polly.

“Hooray,” shouts Elly.

“Raaaaaaayyyyyy,” shouts Mick.

We all bundle out of the car and into the café.

This is brilliant – there are about 3 other people here. This is too good to be true. They must be closing. “What time to you close?” I say.

“8.30,” says the counter woman.

“Wow,” I say.

Polly orders while I take Elly to the toilet and we sit down at a table for 8. Mick has a massive shouting episode about where to put the high chair at the table and insists that we have two high chairs, but it doesn’t matter because no-one is bothered, everyone’s expectations are very, very low.

Mick starts pushing highchairs around the restaurant. It doesn’t matter. No-one bats an eyelid.

Elly sings “I’m going to pinch your bummy,” at the top of her voice, a song that she and I made up a while ago, but instead of singing “I’m going to pinch your bummy,” she is singing “I’m going to pinch your WILLY,” and laughing a lot. It doesn’t matter. No-one bats an eyelid.

We are in a restaurant, we are with the children and Polly and I are relaxed. It’s both exhilarating and shatteringly depressing at the same time.

Then the pie comes over.

It is EXACTLY as Polly described it. A massive brick of a portion - thick pastry, huge chunks of meat and gravy and veg and boiled potatoes.

The kids are happy. The food matches the expectation perfectly. Polly is relaxed. I am very excited about my food.

For two seconds everything is perfect.

I look at Polly. This was a brilliant idea of hers. I’m delighted that we’re here and not eating disgusting fish and chips around our dinner table. I’m amazed that the pie is so fantastic. That she has got it so right.

I open my mouth and say “How come you get to have mashed potato and I have to have these rubbish boiled potatoes?”

The power of NOW

2007-03-04T21:27:00.001Z

The door slams against the wall. Polly is standing in the doorway with an angry looking Mick on her arm. He is wailing. The sound of Elly sobbing from her bedroom is also apparent. Light floods into my bedroom.

“I need some help, please,” says Polly.

She is seething.

We passed each other on the stairs this morning at 9.30 and I said “Good morning, I’m going back to bed.”

I then lay in bed listening to the drama unfold.

The dull thud of Now That’s What I Call Fucking Annoying Children’s Music Vol. 237 penetrates the floorboards as soon as I hit the matress. It is really loud, and the children start screaming with excitement.

I lie in bed and think about the words to Knees Up Mother Brown, and wonder who Mother Brown’s son was? Some kind of psychotic, Norman Bates character – witness the following lyrics - “Knees Up Mother Brown, Under the table you must go, If I catch you bending I’ll cut your legs right off,”

The music suddenly stops and I can hear the children crying.

“Come on, upstairs, I’ll get you dressed,” I hear Polly saying, and they all stomp up the stairs.

I close my eyes and drift off for a couple of seconds, but soon wake up to hear Polly saying “No Elly, No Treats, No Chocolate, No Magazine, I’m not buying you ANYTHING,” and then Mick starts HOWLING.

I open my eyes, stare at the ceiling, hold my breath and count the steps as they approach the bedroom

The door slams against the wall.

“I need some help, please,” says Polly.

The “please” is venomous.

I am in very big trouble.

I lie in bed and watch Polly hurl the curtains open.

“Ok. You are in charge. What do you want to do?” I say.

“Choose anything you want. Whatever you would like to do, choose it and we will do it,” I say.

“We could drag the screaming children around the fucking park for an hour and then come home,” Polly says. She is in quite a bad mood.

I get up and walk into Elly’s room. She is sitting in just her pants and crying.

“Stop this ridiculous crying,” I say.

Polly comes in and starts reasoning with her.

I walk out into the hall.

I listen for a while. Elly is just crying on purpose now and every time Polly says something Elly turns up the volume.

“Polly, come here,” I say.

These are Polly’s favourite words. She doesn’t come here, she gets Mick dressed and then starts reasoning with Elly again, except she is just getting dragged back into an argument about how she never does anything Elly wants and how it is Elly’s worst day and how no-one ever wants to play with Elly and how Polly has ruined everything.

Eventually I walk into the bedroom, grab Polly’s arm, say “Come with me,” and pull her out of the argument and into our bedroom.

“Don’t grab my arm David, don’t pull me about in front of the children,”

“Polly, just let her cry. Let her cry for an hour if she wants to do that, but just let her do it and don’t keep trying to stop her,”

Polly sits down on the bed.

I have an idea. I go running off into Elly’s bedroom and grab four toys from the floor.

“Look Polly, this is Me, and this is You and these are the kids,”

“Fuck off David,”

“No, listen, it’s good, come on, this is me and this,”

“No, I’m not doing it,”

I pick up a horsey.

“I’m sorry that I went back to bed, I didn’t mean to annoy you,”

Polly looks at the teddy and says “You didn’t even put their fucking clothes on and you just went straight back to bed and you did nothing at all with the kids and you waited until they were right on the edge and they weren’t ready to do anything at all and you went straight back to bed and left me to look after them…”

“Get the bear to say it to the horsey Polly,”

Polly starts punching the horsey again and again.

This is very good.

I pick up the horsey.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t think to get the children dressed when you were sleeping in bed until 9.30 this morning. It was unforgiveable of me. And I’m sorry that I have no enthusiasm for anything and that I’m tired all the time and that I just want to go back to bed. I am so fat at the moment and just want to sleep all the time and feel terrible and sad all the time because I put on three stone in weight and can’t bear myself or what I’ve let happen to me and just want to lie in bed all the time and sleep and not have to face up to the work I’ve got to do to get back in shape,” says the horsey.

Polly looks at me and picks up the teddy bear.

“Oh, I didn’t realise you were feeling so shit, I’m sorry,” says the teddy bear.

“And these two are pissing me off too,” says the horsey, and he throws the other two toys on the floor.

Polly laughs. She is clearly no longer in a mood. This is brilliant. By being a vulnerable horsey, I have won. HOOOOOORAAAAY.

Polly takes the children downstairs.

I am on fire. I have the power. I should be a life coach. Live every breath. Say what you feel. There is nothing on earth that can’t be solved by communicating and I am an expert communicator. I’ve had an excellent idea. I run downstairs and grab the phone.

“What are you doing?” says Polly.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got everything sorted,” I say.

I run upstairs to ring my friends Jon and Jo. Honesty and openness will save the day. Their voicemail kicks in. I know that they will pick up today though, because today I have the power, the power of the present, of the moment, the power of NOW.

I say “hello” in a variety of stupid ways until Jon picks the phone up, as I knew he would. I squeeze myself inside the moment, seize it and positively mould it to my will with my newfound clarity and enlightenment.

“Jon, we’re bored out of our fucking skulls here, can we come over for lunch?”

“Sorry Dave, we’re going round to my parents for lunch,”

“No Jon, I think you mean “Yes, we’d love to have you over,”

“Ummm, No, sorry Dave, we’re going over to my parents. For lunch. They’ve got rib of beef,”

Oh.

Never mind though, because I hear Polly shout up “It’s alright David, I’ve got a plan, we’re cooking down here,”

“Oh, don’t worry Jon, we’re cooking this morning anyway. Everything’s going to be O.K.”

“Right Dave,” says Jon.

“Right, yeah, everything’s going to be GREAT,” I say

"Good Dave…”

“BYE JON,” I shout

I bound downstairs.

“I was just phoning Jon,” I shout to Polly, putting the phone on the reciever thingy in the living room, “I thought we could go round for lunch, but they’re going to Jon’s Mum and Dad’s, anyway it doesn’t matter because you’ve got a brilliant plan now, you’re doing…”

I walk into the kitchen.

Two chairs have been organised around the work surface.

I see Elly walking from the toilet towards her chair.

I see Mick glance at Elly, then scramble off his chair, run and lurch towards her chair just at the same moment she runs towards it and screams “Oh MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCKKK”

He reaches towards her, grabs a fistful of her hair and pulls.

Simultaneous cries of outrage fill the kitchen. The sound is invasive, palpable.

I look at Polly’s face. She looks exhausted.

“…cooking,” I say.

I am holding my breath.

2007-03-02T21:52:00.000Z

"Mummy, I have wiped the milk off my face, can I whisper something to you now?" says Elly.

Elly is eating breakfast. Polly is drinking a cup of tea from her red cup.

10 minutes ago Polly refused to let Elly whisper to her because her face was covered with milk.

"O.K." says Polly.

Polly walks across the kitchen, bends over and puts her ear to Elly's mouth.

Elly does an explosive burp and then squeals with laughter.

My heart swells but a terrible moment of panic hits me.

What if she's been influenced by someone else?

What if there's someone funnier than me at her school?

"That was brilliant Elly, well done," I say.

"Yes, it's very funny," Elly says.

"That's right, burping is always funny," I say.

"By the way, who taught you to do that?" I affect an air of casual enquiry but I am holding my breath.

"You did."

I breathe out.

It’s at Cheeky Monkeys

2007-02-25T21:00:00.000Z

January 4^th 2007

“Are you sure?” Polly says.

“Yes. It’s fine. No problem,” I say.

“Are you listening?” Polly says.

“WHAT?” I am trying to read Jon Ronson’s column.

“Stop reading the paper and listen,” says Polly.

I close the paper dramatically, sigh, sit up in my chair, sigh, say “Right Polly, What?” and sigh.

“Are you sure that it’s O.K. for Elly to go to the party?”

“Yes, it’s fine,”

“I won’t be here,”

“I know,”

“It’s at Cheeky Monkeys,”

“I know, look, Polly, I don’t know why you’re going on and on about this. I said it’s fine, I just have to drop her off at three thirty and pick her up at five thirty yeah?”

“Yes,” says Polly.

“Definitely definitely?”

“Yes,” says Polly

“Because remember?” I say.

Last time I took Elly to a party I came home fuming and went into a fit about how come I was the only man at the party and how come I had to go and look at the heavy metal oldest son’s guitar and drumkit and how come none of the other adults at the party spoke to me and how come I keep having to do this shit?

Then I saw some photos of me at the Party. I thought I’d done well at the party, pretending to have a good time, doing my best false smiles.

I looked suicidal.

Upon seeing myself in these pictures I said “That’s IT, I am NEVER, EVER, EVER going to another party with Elly again in my life, YOU are THE MUM, YOU can go, I’m going to stay at home and be A PROPER MAN.”

“I’ll email them to check,” says Polly.

February 2^nd 2007

Polly calls me “I’ve left you a note on the table, don’t forget the party, Tomorrow, three…”

“Yes yes, I know, three thirty ‘till five thirty, Cheeky Monkeys, I just take her and drop her off, that’s definite isn’t it?”

“I emailed them,” says Polly.

“O.K. Bye then,” I say, quite agressively. I am pissed off with Polly. I am pissed off for 2 reasons.

Reason 1 - Polly didn’t listen to my interesting thing that I had to tell her at breakfast all about how brilliantly I performed in a conversation with another person.

It is so unfair.

How can getting the children fed, washed, dressed, eczema creamed, medicated and homeworked be as interesting as hearing the exact things I said to Jim Smallman and the exact things he said back to me?

Doesn’t she realise that she should be saying “Wow, that sounds like an excellent 10 minute chat you had with Jim Smallman, I am sure that this chat you had with Jim Smallman will one day mean that you will be equal in comedy skills to Jim Smallman,” instead of saying “Can you just hold Mick a second?”

She is well out of order.

Reason 2 – Polly laid a guilt trip on me for, saying that I am pissed off because she is going away for 3 days and leaving me with the kids.

This is totally unfair.

It is true, but it is totally unfair for her to mention it.

She is supposed to pretend that my explosive intolerance isn’t happening and that I am the easy going relaxed ideal husband that I like to picture myself as when I grit my teeth and say “That’s fine Polly,” after she says “Do you mind if I go walking with my sister in the Peak District for 3 days?”

“Hope you cheer up soon, see you on Sunday,” Polly says.

“Shut up,” I say, but only after I have put the phone down.

I pick up Elly from school and she starts crying straight away.

“OH DADDY, FLY WAS IN MUMMY’S CAR AND MUMMY HAS DRIVED AWAY WITH HER AND I WANT FLY PLEASE DADDY PLEASE YOU HAVE TO PHONE MUMMY, YOU HAVE TO GET FLY BACK, PLEASE,”

Fly is Elly’s toy sheepdog.

“But Elly, Mummy can’t come back tonight, she’s gone far away for the weekend with Auntie Sam, It’s OK, Fly will have a nice holiday and then come home on Sunday,”

“NO DADDY, NO, PLEASE PHONE HER AND TELL HER TO SEND FLY BACK TO ME, DADDY, I MISS FLY,”

I am absolutely livid. How could Polly have driven off with Fly in the car? What an absolute idiot. This is untenable. I can’t believe Polly has deliberately set me up to have a shit weekend with the children. I hate her.

After 5 hours of intensive counselling Elly and Mick fall asleep and I fume in front of the computer until my bedtime, which is about 10 minutes after their bed time.

Saturday arrives. I buy a new dalmation dog for Elly, I buy loads of meat but the cooker breaks, we go to Mcdonalds and Nandos and then we get ready for the party.

“Daddy, I want to wear my dress for the party, my pink dress, my beautiful pink dress, OK?”

“Ummm, Elly, the party is at Cheeky Monkeys – you can’t really wear a dress at Cheeky Monkeys, they don’t let people in the cage with dresses on,”

“OHHHHHHHHHHHH DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDDYYYY,”

Elly’s thumb is in her mouth and once again she is crying and crying and crying, but I insist.

I’m tense but keep telling myself it’s O.K. because soon she’ll be off my hands for a couple of hours and I can stand next to a slide and watch Mick climb up it and slide down it for 2 hours. Life isn’t all tedium.

“OK Elly, I’m going to drop you off at the party and then pick you up later, OK?”

“Yes Daddy,”

We jump in the car.

We drive to Cheeky Monkeys.

Lots of other cars pull up. They are all Renault Picassos or Jeeps or BMW’s or Audis. We have a Hyundai atoz. All the other kids jump out with presents wrapped in shiny paper. Elly’s presents are wrapped in a copy of the Guardian.

I stroll towards Cheeky Monkeys and consider saying to one of the other parents “So how does this work, we just dump ‘em and pick ‘em up in a couple of hours yeah?” but think better of it because no-one is making eye contact with me. I feel a bit anxious and insecure because I’ve not managed to get onto speaking terms with any of the mums in the playground and the lack of eye contact or tight but friendly smiles confirms my lack of schoolyard popularity. I often stand in the playground waiting for Elly and feel sad and isolated.

We walk slowly across the gravel drive towards Cheeky Monkeys and I take care not to fall into step with any of the other mother / child combos walking across the drive so as not to have to converse with anyone. I am successful and Mick, Elly and I arrive at the door as a neatly segregated unit.

I turn the handle on the door of Cheeky Monkeys and pull. Nothing happens. The door is locked. I look at the door and notice another handle up at head level.

My heart sinks.

I suddenly realise that this place has to employ really strict safety measures. That on one occaision I saw the manager running around with a child shouting “They’ve just left him here, they’ve just left him,” and then really telling the child off because his parents aren’t allowed to leave him there.

That you have to sign a register when you come in.

That there are locks everywhere and signs telling you what to do and how to behave.

There is no way that I’m going to be dropping Elly here and coming back in a couple of hours.

I start to panic. I want to cry. I think I am actually going to cry.

“CHEEKY MONKEYS, CHEEKY MONKEYS,” Elly says.

“CHEEE MAYS, CHEEE MAYS,” Mick says.

Oh god.

I hate Cheeky Monkeys.

The child who is having a birthday is called Alex. Alex’s mum greets me with the following words,

“Hello, it’s an hour and a half free play and then we go to eat some tea in the barn out the back. Meanwhile take a seat,”

She points at a table where all the people who I’ve never spoken to in the playground are all sitting in silence, staring at the cage of childly fun things and avoiding eye contact with each other despite the fact that they are all sitting uncomfortably close to each other.

I want to be sick.

I am overwhelmingly aware that I haven’t even brushed my teeth today.

We go and get our shoes off and I ask Elly to go into the cage of “fun”. Cheeky Monkeys is basically a big old converted barn which has a massive cage in the middle of it. The cage is padded and has loads of different ways for children to hurt each other or to hurt themselves in. It is really really loud and really really hot. In front of the cage are about 20 tables where exhausted, dead eyed parents silently sit with thousand yard stares while they wait for their child to emerge from the pandemonium of the cage.

Elly refuses to go into the cage. She wants to come and sit with me. I take her and Mick to the more sedate “toddler” part of the ball park. I put Mick down and he instantly falls to his knees and starts crying.

Three seven year old girls with lollies in their mouths instantly appear from no-where. “Why’s he crying?” they ask.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because he can feel every second of his life trickling away as he approaches the inevitable moment of his death?” I say.

“Oh,” they say and run off.

Everywhere I look my gaze is met by low cut tops exposing pairs of elongated mammaries. I try to avoid them but they are EVERYWHERE. I am confused and appalled. This truly is the seventh ring of hell.

I plonk Mick into the ball pond, sit back and watch him for a while. Elly joins him in the pond and they start to have fun. I am leaning against the cage, and try to focus on the toddler ball pond in the vain hope that I can tune out the absolute mayhem of the cage.

All of a sudden a child pops up from the ball pool, stares at me with a malevolent grin and smashes a ball into my face.

“Ha Ha,” I say.

“Ha ha,” he laughs hysterically. Within two minutes all the kids in the ball pool are smashing balls in my face, pointing at me and laughing over and over again. This includes Mick and Elly.

“FUCK OFF,” I think.

“I HATE EVERYONE ELSE’S CHILDREN,” I think.

“Ha Ha,” I say.

I look off into the distance and catch a woman sitting at a table with her arms folded around her stomach, rocking.

At 3.56 I look at my watch and notice that I have another hour and a half to go before I can go home. I can’t believe it. I try to start a conversation with another parent.

“Hi, Are you Kiera’s Mum?” I say.

“No, I am Michael’s Mum.” She says.

“Oh, sorry. Is Michael in Elly’s class? Or, I guess from your perspective, is Elly in Michael’s class?” I say

“Ha ha ha, yes, Elly is in Michael’s class,” She says.

“Ok. Great!” I say.

I smile and nod.

She smiles and nod.

We both look at our children.

We glance at each other but there is nothing else to say.

Another mum smiles and nods at both of us.

I really really really want to kill myself.

“WHO WANTS TO GO OUTSIDE?” I shout at my kids.

“MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” they both shout.

“We’re going outside,” I say, but Michael’s mum now has her back turned to me.

Outside there is a big Combine Harvester. I spot a couple of kids who I teach. Mick plays on the combine harvester and I go and sit with the mothers of the children who I teach so as not to feel so lonely. Elly plays with Mick.

After about 30 minutes I look up from where I’m sitting and see Mick standing at the edge of the combine harvester. It is a straight drop down. I am about 25 metres away from him. This horrific noise comes out of my mouth, the same noise I made as I watched Mick’s pushchair roll towards the River Wye when my friend Jo let go of it to pick up some leaves 2 years ago on new years day.

It is a really loud, powerful scream of protection.

The playground goes silent.

Everyone stares at me except for Mick, who shouts “SLY, SLY, SLY,” and waddles back into the middle of the combine harvester to play on the slide that has been built into it.

I am utterly humiliated.

This is the worst day of my life.

“I think it’s nearly tea time, come on,” I say, and drag the children inside to the “barn” where the tea is being served.

I gatecrash a place at the table for Mick, even though he hasn’t been invited, and I stand at the edge of the room with the rest of the adults. The children eat their crisps and sandwiches and there is an explosion of digital flashlights as all the other parents run around the room capturing every possible nuance of their children shoving food into their gobs. I am momentarily proud of myself for not having a camera, then glance at Mick and notice that MICK IS POSING FOR PHOTOS.

He is looking at cameras and screwing up his face to smile. A flash explodes in his face and he drops his sandwich on his plate.

The lights dim and the birthday cake comes out. We all start singing happy birthday. I am a great believer in singing happy birthday really loudly as a role model to my children.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR ALEX,” I sing.

At this point though, everyone else is singing “DEAR WILLIAM”

I laugh. Apparently Elly’s friend is not called Alex. He is called William.

I am laughing alone. All the other parents look at me as if I am disgusting.

Later, as we walk to the car I shout goodbye to another parent who is climbing into her car.

She just slams her door.

“Daddy,” says Elly as we climb into the car.

“Yes Elly,” I say. My forehead is bruning in the way that it does when I've been supressing the urge to cry for a long time like when I watched "A Beautiful Mind". I am very, very weary.

“We had a lovely party at Cheeky Monkeys didn’t we?”

“Yes Elly,” I say.

“Can we go back to Cheeky Monkeys for a party another day?” says Elly.

“Yes Elly,” I say.

Here's the People

2007-02-19T21:21:00.001Z

Elly made up her first joke today.

She said “Daddy, I’m going to do a comedian to you now, I made a comedian, I mean a joke.”

I said “Great,” and thought “Oh no. I want to be a good audience, but the pressure’s on,”

Then she said “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple” and did the stuff with her hands that children do.

Then she said “Open the doors, and here’s the people.”

She opened her hands to show me just the palms of her hands.

I looked at her and frowned a bit and thought “That’s a bit of a shit joke there Elly, First of all it’s not really a joke, it’s a rhyme, secondly you didn’t really make it up, so that makes you a 4 year old gag thief and thirdly you've done your hands the wrong way round so the fingers weren’t even wriggling when they were supposed to be representing the people, so to add insult to embarrasment you've fucked up what is already quite a low key punchline,”

I smiled in a way that I thought was kind and said “Elly, that's really funny but where are the people?”

At that point Elly went mental, laughing hysterically, shaking with excitement and shouting in a demented voice that I'd never heard before “That’s the joke Daddy, there aren’t any people, but I said to you “here’s the people,”

I think she may be a comedy genius.

I stand up next to a mountain...

2007-02-19T21:20:00.001Z

I'm worried about Mick.

Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix just came on the radio and Mick gave me a terrified look. His little face screwed up and he looked as if he was going to cry. Then he looked towards me, put his hands over his ears, extended his neck, lowered his chin and said “Lur-owwww”

(that’s a lur and then an owwww like “owww I just hurt myself” rather than an owwww like oboe, but I feel as if I made that perfectly clear – the lur and the owwww slurred together.

I’m trying to convey that he was saying the word loud without the –d sound on the end, just imagine the word loud without the –d sound on the end and you have the sound that he made, to indicate to me that the intro of Voodo Chile was too loud.)

It was more the look on his face that worried me. It was really serious as if he was trying to say “Dad, the power of this guitar is dangerous to your ears, please Dad, for your own protection, please cover them up,”

He kept taking his hands off his ears and then doing it again “Lur –owwww, Lur-owwww,”

The really worrying thing was that the radio was really quiet at the time. I would say it was at comfortable to talk over volume, as opposed to begin talking to your wife and then realise you are feeling really irritated with everything and your shoulders are rising up and your head is getting screwed up and then your wife says “Can we turn it down a bit David?” (if you are called David) and you say “Please do,” and it is a relief.

It certainly wasn’t at rocking out with a sharp knife in your hand and a chicken on a chopping board volume.

Elly never complained of anything being “Lur-owwwww, Lur-owwwww,” In fact, she used to get furious with me that it wasn’t loud enough.

I really hope I’m never in the room with Mick and then Norah Jones comes on the radio and he looks at me and says “nyyyyy, nyyyyy, nyyyyyy,”

(which would be the sound of the word “nice” without the “s” sound at the end.)

Because then my child would be the kind of person who likes Norah Jones.

Then again, all of this may be a little over the top, as I don’t like Jimi Hendrix either. In fact I detest Jimi Hendrix and having to listen to people who like him say “but Dave, he was a fucking geeeeeeeeenius – listen to THIS,” and then look at me and stare at me and get annoyed with me when after the intro I say “Yes, I am now bored of this excessively histrionic virtuoso guitar playing.”

Maybe “Lur-owwwwww Lur-owwwwww” doesn’t mean “Loud, Loud” – maybe it just means “Switch this shit off dad, I hate Hendrix, he sucks.”

Good old Mick.

Lie In

2007-02-13T22:53:00.001Z

I woke up at 3.15. I was a bit anxious that I wouldn't fall asleep. Then I remembered that it was my turn for a lie in.

I said a lie in.

I was so excited about having a lie in that I lay awake until the children woke up thinking about having a lie in.

When they woke up Polly told me I could still have my lie in, but that I had to get up to put on the tape recorder for them.

That spoilt my lie in.

Yes / No (part 3)

2007-02-12T18:39:00.000Z

Part 1

Part 2

The story so far: After school on Friday afternoon, I have promised Stuart, a child in my class, that I will go to a performance he is doing. I have no intention of going.

The school is silent and still. Without the children, the air in the school shimmers, the whole building takes respite before the sugar frosted onslaught of 440 feet, 440 hands and 220 mouths. It feels like when you watch some sort of olympic profile or tennis competition and the BBC have made a black and white film of a sportsman looking down at the floor and thinking deeply, in preparation for a violently explosive performance.

I went to the staff room as I always do in the morning and looked on the whiteboard, searching desperately for the words “David Out Of Class: JP” JP being the initals of the supply teacher who does most of the supply teaching at our school. Sometimes these words miraculously appear on the board if a very urgent and important task needs doing – for example somebody may need to download an excel spreadsheet from the internet, a mail merge document may need preparing or somebody may have some photos that need uploading onto a machine.

These words weren’t on the board, so I took solace in the words “David PPA: JP” which appeared on Wednesday morning, reading them over and over again. PPA stands for Personal Preparation and Drinking Coffee - I think.

I make my first very strong coffee of the day. I use a heaped tablespoon of coffee in a single serving cafetiere. I walk through to my empty classroom, sit down at my desk, boot up the computer and perform the most important task of the day – making sure everything on my desk is lining up parallel. This is quite difficult as I have quite a few items on my desk.

Anything that doesn’t have a straight line has to be hidden in my drawer, anything that is cylindrical has to be placed exactly central on something square. I need to get this done before my teaching assistants come in, because their first job is to come over to my desk and slightly nudge everything until I am furious.

Eventually my desk is perfect. I open my inbox and delete the mail from local secrets saying “DAVID TRENT – Cambridge and All Around x – xth xxxxuary”. I look at the messages that have turned my gmail labels bold and resist the urge to click on them all to make the bolds go away and reset the screen to it’s default uniformity. I take a sip of coffee, slightly adjust the objects on my desk and start clicking at bold gmail labels.

I re-check the clock, see that it is 8:35 and fly into a frenzy of activity that will get me ready for the morning. I switch on my interactive whiteboard, switch on my class computer, type in my username and password, press ctrl + f7 3 times to toggle the monior through until both the class computer and the interactive whiteboard show the desktop, load “daily desktop.psd” change all the lessons listed on the right of the graphic and the date at the top, save as .jpg, open with windows picture and fax viewer, right click and save as desktop. I suddenly remember that I have to give out the Maths homework today, choose something related to last week’s maths unit, jump up from my desk, glance at the clock on the wall – 8.37 – and fly towards the door.

There, in the doorway, like the midwich cuckoos, stand Stuart and Karen, staring at me. Stuart is deadly serious. Karen has a massive grin on her face. Behind them stands Stuart and Karen’s Mum.

It all comes flooding back. The promise I’d made. Why’s he brought his MUM though? Suddenly I want it to be the weekend again, very, very badly.

2007-02-07T19:15:00.001Z

“First of all Alex Wolf, um, a great response as you can imagine, all sorts of suggestions, a lot of people wanting a better explanation of the classical world, many people talking about, broadly speaking, the development of democracy in this country, all kinds of themes, what would your three be?”

I’ve just had a shower and I’m getting ready for school. I am looking sadly at my adidas t-shirt and trying to find any stains that might mean I’d have to wear something else, checking over my jogging bottoms for greasy patches (Elly’s skin is bad at the moment and we have to put on a cream called fifty fifty which is so greasy that once she’s got it on she slips out of your hands if you try to pick her up) and listening to the Today programme with James Naughtie.

I’m looking sadly because I know that the end of being allowed to wear my tracksuit to school is nigh, thanks to the new No Jeans manifesto of the shool. My teaching assistant was asked not to wear her black jeans to school again and she reacted by saying “Yeah, so I’m not allowed to wear these, but it’s fine for me to wear a scruffy old pair of jogging bottoms is it?” to which she was told that no, this was also going to be addressed soon.

It’s lucky though, because whenever I wear my jogging bottoms my teaching is definitely more shit than when I wear my trousers. I think it’s the lack of testicular constriction.

Yesterday on Today, Alex Wolf, a history lecturer at Ambridge university sent in an email suggesting that the readers should nominate 3 periods or themes that should be taught.

Obviously, the Today programme readership have had a total brainspunk over this idea as he’s been invited on this morning to talk about it, together with Tristram Hunt, Lecturer of modern British History at Queen Mary University of London.

James Naughtie has given Alex Wolf a really great 41 second intro which culminates with the above question. I shall reproduce it here along with the reply.

James Naughtie: First of all Alex Wolf, um, a great response as you can imagine, all sorts of suggestions, a lot of people wanting a better explanation of the classical world, many people talking about, broadly speaking, the development of democracy in this country, all kinds of themes, what would your three be?

Alex Wolf: Well, I mean, I set the question so I’m not going to give you an answer.

I piss myself laughing. James Naughtie is audibly breathtaken and laughs in frustrated bewilderment and Tristram Hunt chuckles like a good ‘un and James Naughtie turns the interview to Tristram Hunt in a bit of a huff, allowing him to speak for 3 minutes solid and ignoring Alex Wolf for being such a pompous twit.

After 3 minutes and 18 seconds James Naughtie returns to Alex Wolf with the words “If you don’t want to name the three things, because you’re not allowed to answer your own question, a pretty pedantic position to adopt I think, but anyway…”

Tristram Hunt is cracking up as soon as James Naughtie says “question,”

It’s one of those great moments on Today. Spontaneous barely controlled vindictiveness and hilarity. I instantly feel refreshed and dash down the stairs to relay the events to Polly.

I open the door to the kitchen and shout “Hello!”

“Hello Daddy,” says Elly.

“Maw Maw Maw” says Mick, brandishing a wheetabix at me.

“Hello,” says Polly.

I look at the kitchen table. It has a box of branflakes, a box of rice crispies, a box of wheetabix, a cup of tea, an empty 2 pint milk carton, an 8 pint milk carton, a butter dish, a pink bowl, an Observer magazine, two stuffed toy dogs and a pink and purple flip lid bowl which Mick is obsessively opening and closing, yelping in release each time he opens it.

I’m a bit of an autist and I quite like everything to be ordered – I spend most of the day lining things up on my desk at work and I can’t start a lesson until my desk is tidy, so this scene slightly makes me want to take a knife and plunge it into my belly and shout “is this what you wanted?” over and over again, but the urge to tell Polly about the funny thing that happened on the radio is greater so I ignore the mess and start to tell Polly about the interview…

“Hello Polly, I was just listening to the Radio and there was this bloke on it and he was saying yesterday how he thought history should be taught in a more specialised way, deeper instead of wider, or more breadth and less depth, anyway, and only three subjects, so loads of people liked it so today called them back and he said “You wanted to choose only three subjects…”

“I’ve got a star,” says Elly.

“So which do you think the three subjects should be?”

“Daddy, I’ve got a star…” says Elly.

She is holding a blue star in her hand that she’s had for ages. It’s not a new star. She didn’t get it for being good or anything, she’s just found it on the floor, that’s all.

“Right, good Elly,” I am starting to get a bit hectic now.

“Was it the interviewer or the guy?” says Polly

“What?” I ask.

“Was it the interviewer or the guy who said “You wanted to choose only three subjects...”

I am exasperated.

“It was the interviewer,”

“Oh, I thought it was the guy,” says Polly.

“No, right, I’ll start again, there was this bloke on the radio, on the Today programme and this lecturer was saying that yesterday how he thought history should be taught in a more specialised way, deeper instead of wider, or more breadth and less depth, anyway, and only three subjects, so loads of people liked it so today called them back and he said “You wanted to choose only three subjects…”

“John Humphries called him back?” says Polly.

“Yes, OK, John Humphries, yes,” I say.

It’s not John Humphries but I think that it will become too depressing to divert into a conversation about why James Naughtie is doing the interview and not John Humphries and where John Humphries might be. “Anyway, John Humphries rings this guy and he says to him “You wanted to choose three subjects for history…”

“NA NA NA,” Shouts Mick furiously. He is holding half a wheetabix. This means “I have finished with this half a wheetabix and I want a new wheetabix. I don’t like eating the whole of the wheetabix. It disgusts me.”

“What do you want Mick?” asks Polly.

“He wants a new wheetabix Polly, leave him, he can’t have a new wheetabix every time he gets halfway through one, he’ll just have to wait, anyway, John Humphries rings up this bloke and says to him “You wanted to choose three subjects to study for history in greater…”

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” shouts Elly.

“What?” I say

“Rice Krispies!” she says. Like an angel.

“Very good Elly,” I say. Mick is now standing up in his high chair, raising his fists above his head.

“No Mick, sit down.” I say.

“Mick, sit down,” Polly says.

“Miiick, sit down,” Elly says.

“Anyway, right, he phones this bloke up and he says to him,”

“I can see smoke and you can’t, you can’t see smoke, I can” Elly is giggling.

I do mental eyes and shake my head and say

“RIGHT, EVERYONE, LISTEN TO ME NOW, I’M GOING TO TRY AND FINISH THIS STORY,”

I clench my fists and breathe really deeply.

Suddenly I feel exhausted. Totally beaten. I screw my face up, hold it in my hands, bend over and say

“I can’t do it. It’s just too much of a physical effort. It’s impossible to focus.”

I look up.

Polly is laughing.

Elly is laughing. Mick is laughing.

I start to laugh too.

I guess I don’t need to finish the story.

"Will it be an electric toy Daddy?"

2007-02-04T19:27:00.000Z

My oven broke. This is a shame.

Polly went walking with her sister Sam this weekend, and a weekend without Polly is usually a weekend without eating vegetables.

This weekend was to be no different.

Elly's ballet lesson was followed by an immediate and urgent visit to the butcher where I purchased Calves Liver, Oxtail and Pork Loin. A veritable murder of food.

The drive home was spent mulling over how I was going to fit such a lot of meat into such a short time, having brought 3 meals worth of meat but only having 2 meals worth of time left before Polly's return.

I pondered and cogitated and deliberated and worried until I got home, whereupon I thought "Fuck it, I shall simply not have the vegetable curry I have planned for this evening in my head, I will have the oxtail then. I will braise it slowly thoughout the afternoon and Yea, it shall be delicious."

I looked up a recipe in Appetite by Nigel Slater which seemed utterly delectable and spoke of meat melting off the bone in a manner reminiscent of the way those porno mags that Dad used to have in his cupboard above his suits until Mum realised that I had been reading them spoke of encounters between the milk man and the lonely housewife.

(I was always more of a story conniseur as opposed to a photo letch, although an image of a lady who decorated her pudenda with a pair of sunglasses still haunts me and I dare say my father to this very day)

I turned the oven on but there was no noisy hum as there usually is. I didn't notice initially but then there was a horrible smell of heat so I opened the door and realised that the fan wasn't working.

As Polly wasn't around I wasn't even able to take solace in the satisfaction of a good old rant. I simply switched the oven off, then switched it on. I opened the door. I stared at the fan. I closed the door. I switched the oven off, then switched it on again. I repeated this about 1000 times and then I said out loud "Oh, Elly, the oven is broken"

"Never mind," Elly said.

No, I thought to myself, never mind indeed, for this is the perfect excuse to take binge eating to the next level.

"Elly, let's all go and get fish and chips," I say.

"And tomato ketchup?"

"Yes Elly, and tomato ketchup,"

"Yes please Daddy,"

Then I say something terrible.

"Hang on Elly, how do you fancy going to ...MCDONALD'S?"

What did I just say?

"No thank you Daddy, just fish and chips," Elly says.

"But Elly, at MCDONALD'S they give you a free toy," I say.

Why did I say that? What is the matter with me?

"Oh Daddy, yes, great, let's go to MACDONALD'S"

The second the word is out of her mouth I realise what I've done and feel desperate and awful.

"Will it be an electric toy Daddy?" Elly says, and I begin to panic.

"Let's look at the fish and chip shop first shall we?" I say.

"No Daddy, No, I want Mcdonald's, Macdonald's, Macdonald's."

Elly has never even said the word Mcdonald's before.

All the way to Cherry Hinton I try to make an argument for fish and chips and Elly just keeps saying "No thankyou Daddy, just Mcdonald's please, will it be an electric toy?"

The fish and chip shop is closed. I carry on towards Mcdonald's. As we pull into the carpark Elly is giggling. There is a massive picture of Scooby Doo in the window. Should we eat in or do the drive through? The drive through would be some sort of damage limitation.

"Shall we pick up the food and eat it at home or shall we sit in the restaurant?" I say.

Why did I even ask?

"Oh Daddy, please can we go and sit in the restaurant?"

Elly skips down the path towards the doors shouting "I'm going to have a burger and chips and tomato ketchup and A TOY,"

Mick is clapping and squealing.

I open the door.

The queue is forever.

There is no-where to sit.

"There is no-where to sit," I say and await the inevitable double tantrum

"O.k. Daddy, let's go to the other cafe."

"Really?" I say.

"Yes, as long as we can eat in the cafe I don't mind," says Elly.

"Shall we go to the cafe where you can eat as much ice-cream as you like?" I ask Elly.

"Yes, yes, yes," Elly shouts.

"Creee, Creee, Creee," Mick shouts.

We go to Nando's.

They eat so much frozen yoghurt that they are both sick.

I am a good father.

2007-02-03T20:23:00.000Z

I am getting loads of hits at the moment because of my internet and real life buddy ponyintheair whose long awaited return has returned. Visit her site. Unless you just came from it.

If you just came from it, visit this site, because it's good.

I'm working on an epic at the mo, but I wanted to share my favourite search term of the week with you.

My favourite search term of the week is this:

make a man then fight man on the computer

I am the number one google result for this term.

How cool is that?

Oh, and my oven is broken.

OH OH OH OH OH

and for all those of you who are related or who know me in real life or who care, my real life son called Mick is now off the antibiotics and no longer has a tube running up his arm and into his chest and if you say to him "Mick, where's your back brace?" he raises both his arms and says

"All gone."

Cake

2007-01-30T21:50:00.000Z

Mick has finished his tea. He is stuck in his highchair and is veering from side to side shouting “KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY” and doing his best impression of someone having a brain haemmorrage.

“What is it Mick?” says Polly.

I am getting cross. I am trying to read the paper.

“KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY,” He screams.

“Do you want a piece of cake Mick?” says Polly, walking towards him with the blue cake tin that houses the remains of his second birthday cake.

“KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY KAY,” Mick is punching the air, shaking his head, gurning and crying his eyes out. Polly starts to walk away with the cake tin.

“Polly, open the tin and show him the cake, I think he wants a piece,” I say.

Polly opens the tin. Mick continues screaming but opens his eyes and sees the cake halfway through a “KAY”. He stops dead, beams with total satisfaction, points at the cake, looks proudly at Polly, then to me, then to Elly, then back to Polly and says with a happy lilt

“kay.”

Polly takes the cake over to the side to cut a piece from it and Mick instantly roars into another tantrum.

“Right, that’s it, I’m taking him up to bed,” I say.

I tuck Mick under my arm and he cries “KAY” over and over again all the way up the stairs, into his bedroom, whilst I take his clothes off, his nappy off.

At some point everything becomes unbearable and the only way I can think of getting through this is by timing him to see how long it actually takes for him to stop screaming “KAY”.

It takes 1 minute 55 seconds. That’s as long as Tame by the Pixies.

Ironically, if you listen to Tame by the Pixies from 1.43 onwards, that’s the noise Mick was making.

Maybe nowadays Frank Black can have cake whenever he wishes.

I hurl myself down, but I sense that something is wrong.

2007-01-29T21:44:00.000Z

It is lunchtime.

I want to do a poo.

I walk into the toilet.

I turn around.

I drop my trousers.

I hurl myself down, but I sense that something is wrong.

I look between my legs and realise, too late, that the seat is up.

I try to stop but I’m moving too fast.

I trip.

I reach out my arms to balance.

I stumble.

I fall down the toilet.

My knees are up by my chin.

My arms are flailing helplessly at my side.

It hurts.

I push myself out of the toilet.

I stand up.

I pull down the seat.

I sit down.

I don’t want to do a poo any more.

Low Flying Plane

2007-01-25T19:03:00.000Z

On the way to the station on Tuesday night I saw a REALLY low flying plane. REALLY REALLY REALLY low flying. So low flying that I thought it was going to crash into my house.

I thought how terrible it would be if the plane crashed into my house.

I kept looking into the sky thinking "God, that plane is REALLY low, and it is heading towards my house."

I got quite anxious. Where would I sleep? What would happen to my guitars? My laptop?

My laptop was in the car with me, so I relaxed a little.

I opened the window to listen out in case I could hear a crash.

I couldn't hear a crash.

I turned on the radio but there was nothing about a plane having just crashed.

When I got home my house was still there. The plane had not crashed into it.

But if it had, it would have been a bit like this.

Go to sleep David

2007-01-22T21:27:00.000Z

I am ironing my shirt and listening to the radio via the computer. I am listening to my favourite Radio 4 show called “Down the Line” and giggling at Felix Dexter’s grotesque exaggerations. I finish ironing my shirt. It is about 9.00 p.m. I am being organised. I run upstairs to get my other shirt. I come back down and click on “popurls”.

Something catches my eye. I click, then I click again, once more and suddenly, before you can say “Paypal” the shirt is forgotten and I am salivating over my next essential, life enhancing product.

“It’s a life coaching system,” boasts the title bar.

“energy and stress, health and fitness,” it entices.

“hypnosis, NLP, uk” it adds, but I try to ignore that bit.

I am a bit scared of some of the NLP disciples I’ve met.

It always freaks me out when, after having talked to someone for a while and felt remarkably comfortable with them as if I have known them all my life they suddenly say “something, something else, yeah, something 67% according to NLP” and I say to them “Oh, do you do NLP?” and they say

“Oh, I’ve just done a couple of courses,”

and I say

“Have you walked over hot coals then?”

and they say

“Yeah, it was brilliant,”

and I look at them and they are standing with a terrible slumped posture and I realise “THAT’S MY POSTURE, YUCK” and then I notice they are repeating the words that I use most frequently back to me and I think “OH OH OH IAMSUFFOCATINGIMUSTESCAPE,” and I say “Uh, I’ve just realised I’ve got go and stand over there for a little while.”

Despite this, the website makes a claim that I can’t ignore.

It says it will give me sleep. It will make me feel rested. It will make me feel energised.

I would love to feel awake again. To feel clear. I'm about 3 hours less sleep away from Tyler Durden.

I suddenly go into a clicking, downloading and password frenzy.

Click Reviews, read the buzzy headlines, click download, click trial, enter email, click download trial, click back to buzzy headlines, before download of trial is complete decide I can’t possibly live another minute without the full version of this product, click “full version”, click paypal, enter username, password, click, click, click, yes have as much as you want just give me sleep sleep sleep yes, click, yes, click click click.

Within 10 minutes I have the full version on my desktop, am generating my own 20 minute sleep programme to download onto my iPod shuffle and wondering how much $50 is in real money.

My iPod shuffle. Where’s my iPod shuffle?

“WHERE’S MY IPOD SHUFFLE? WHERE’S MY FUCKING IPOD SHUFFLE?”

“I’m not sure. Have you looked on the shelf?”

“It’s not there…” I am slamming through the bureau drawers. “SHIT, where is it. Are you sure you haven’t seen it anywhere Polly?”

“I saw Mick with it the other da..”

“MICK? DON’T YOU THINK THAT MAYBE YOU COULD STOP ENCOURAGING MICK TO PLAY WITH MY FUCKING IPOD SHUFFLE?”

“Well, when Mick was playing with it the other day I took it…”

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, IT’S NOT A FUCKING TOY, WHY CAN’T YOU JUST ST...Oh, here it is Polly,”

“..and put it on the shelf,” says Polly. Luckily she is grinning at me, albeit in a “you really are a prick,” kind of way.

“Anyway, why do you suddenly need your iPod shuffle?” Polly says.

“I just downloaded this amazing thing off the internet. It makes a sound file which will send you to sleep and which will guide you through a power nap. It is apparently all NLP,” I say, surprised at myself for openly loving NLP all of a sudden.

“Oh. Is it free?” Polly says.

I run out of the room and shout “I can’t wait to try it, it is excellent,”

I spend another frantic 3 minutes trying to export the file directly to the iPod shuffle, which doesn’t work properly so I have to spend 7 minutes on a workaround.

Eventually I am lying in bed, iPod shuffle next to the bed, Sennheisers in hand.

“Now Polly, listen, please don’t hit me or poke me or try to wake me up when I’m doing this, I really want to try it out properly”

“Of course not David,” says Polly.

“Really Polly, please don’t wait until I’ve started it and then try to start talking to me about Mick or Elly,”

“I won’t,”

“No, really, really, really don’t OK? I really want to see if this works. Please respect me. Please respect this. I really want to try this out properly,”

“I know,” says Polly.

“Ok. Please.” I say.

“Ok. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Please. Respect. Please. Goodnight. Please don’t.”

I turn off the light. We kiss. I hold the iPod shuffle and press play. I am very excited.

Calming music which reminds me a bit of hed phone sex by Funki Porcini (which is the greatest of all Ninja Tunes – breaking my rules tonight by mentioning brands and records, but it really is great) except there is a nice man saying things like “now, releasing more and more into peace and dreams,” every few minutes instead of women screaming and grunting all the time.

After about 2 minutes I start laughing.

After about 4 minutes I get really paranoid that I like it and I am turning into some sort of “fixed” person. I have visions of halls full of people plugging into headphones and blissfully zoning out of real life, like an aural prozac.

After about 6 minutes I have stopped worrying about this.

After about 8 minutes I am worrying again. What if this helps me to feel a bit happier? Isn’t that bad? Surely the only thing that should make me happy ever is “my own resources?”

After about 10 minutes I realise I am still counting the minutes.

After that I start

falling into a deeper

and deeper

sleep.

Suddenly I am woken up by the nice man saying “Now, you’ve chosen to devote this time to sleep.”

See, the iPod shuffle, which I’ve been very careful to specify as the model I am using, has the unique function of always repeating so I am back to the beginning of the sleep programme and starting again.

I am surprised at how brilliantly relaxing the experience was, but frustrated that I couldn’t use it to sleep for the whole night because of this fatal flaw of the iPod shuffle. SHIT. I am now in overdrive, panicing, thinking through all the possible solutions:

1) order an iPod nano NOW

2) order some other sort of music player

3) use a mobile phone

4) burn the nap soundtrack onto a cd player

5) put it onto my normal iPod.

Number 5 is the obvious answer. I’ll do that. I’ll use my normal iPod to do that. I’ll plug it into my laptop. I’ll do that next time I want to go to sleep. I’ll do that right now. No I won’t, that’s stupid, I’ll go to sleep, hang on, if I’m going to sleep I need to listen to the thingy again. I’ll wake Polly, I DON’T CARE. I do care. Don’t get out of bed. GET UP NOW. YES YES YES- I’ll do it RIGHT NOW.

Silently, stealthily I get out of bed, unplug the laptop and sneak it to the door of the bedroom.

“What are you doing?” says Polly.

“Go back to sleep,” I say. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Now I’m totally hyper. I go into the kitchen, jump on a chair, to access the plug on the kitchen iPod station. I turn on my desktop. I have my laptop on. I plug the iPod into the computer. It is out of battery. I am going to have to plug the iPod into the wall. This is all a disaster. The iPod won’t work. It has absolutely zero battery power. It can only work when it’s plugged in. What am I going to do? Run an extention lead? There must be an alternative…

Use the laptop. Of course. I set the system alerts to silent, tell the monitor to power down after 1 minute and generate a sleep programme. I enjoyed the whole thing so much last time I decide to go for a one hour programme this time. I go upstairs with a torch and the computer.

The computer is so bright that it instantly wakes Polly up.

“David, what are you doing?” she says. She is a bit irritated.

“It’s O.K. I’ll explain it in the morning. I’ve set it up so that the screen will switch off in one minute. Don’t worry. It won’t wake you up,” I say.

“For fuck’s sake David,” she says.

“Sorry Polly, but I really want to have a go of this,” I say.

“What’s the time David?” she says.

“It’s 11.47.” I say.

“It’s 11.47,” she says.

“I know, I know. Just go back to sleep.” I say.

“…” Polly makes a noise of disgust and pulls the covers over her head.

I think I have annoyed her.

I put the nap programme on, lie in bed and listen to the nice man saying nice things. I wait for the monitor to power down then I can relax.

After three minutes the monitor is still on. The room is still lit. Polly is still awake.

“What’s going on?” she says.

“It’s ok. Hang on,” I say. I find a setting that says “Disable sleep and screen savers during live naps” and untick this.

“OK, it’ll just be one more minute now,” I say.

Five minutes later I am leaning out of the bed, very uncomfortably, trying to download a monitor control system that’ll let me control the screen. To pick up the laptop and lay it on my lap to do all this would be tempting a real bollocking so I am leaning onto the floor from my bed to do all this, only there is a chest of drawers that I have to twist around. My back and my shoulder are hurting.

“David…”

“Nearly there, just a minute,” I say.

I install the app. and find the option to switch off the monitor.

“Right Polly. Here we go. Goodnight.”

“For fuck’s sake,”

I stretch one last time, press play on my nap player and CTRL T to shut off the screen.

The lovely man is talking to me.

The screen goes black.

I lie back.

Polly breathes out.

Then suddenly the screen is strobing. Our bedroom looks like footage from an early Velvet Underground show.

“Oh, hang on, sorry, sorry,” I say.

Polly has stopped talking to me.

I try again.

More strobes. This is definitely not relaxing.

Then I hit on an idea. If I change the power settings to “When I close the lid of the computer DO NOTHING” then I can switch the screen off and listen in darkness.

“Polly, It’s OK. If I change the screen settings to…”

“SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP,” Polly says.

It works.

It is pitch black.

The man is talking to me.

Bells are ringing.

Theta waves are theta-ing.

Everything is working.

It’s going great.

Except instead of feeling sleepy, I’m now starting to feel a bit annoyed. I want to go to sleep now, I’m really tired, but the headphones are clamped to my head and I can’t drop off.

“now, releasing more and more into peace and dreams,”

Shut up.

“Dongggggggg”

For fuck’s sake.

“Now, sleeping more deeply, more peacefully,”

I’m not.

“Look after yourself and those you love in all ways.”

Shut up. SHUT UP. SHUT THE FUCK UP.

I throw my headphones to the floor in disgust

I hit the button on my clock. It is 12.49. I want to cry.

“Go to sleep David,” says Polly.

I go to sleep.

Yes? No? (Part Two)

2007-01-19T20:10:00.000Z

Part 1

The story so far: Stuart has tried many ways of persuading me to go to a concert that he and Karen are doing. I have tried to avoid him. I have begun to consider whether I should go...

It was at this point that I thought maybe Stuart deserved to be put out of his misery. I could say I’d go, ask him for the dates, time and venue then not show up.

I thought of my recent experience at West Road Concert Hall watching an excreble Christopher Biggins performance.

I had been thrilled for weeks in advance to be going to watch Biggins in performance, had even perfected a routine of ringing up my friends to break the news which went like this…

“Guess who I’m going to see?” I would say.

“Who?” my friend would say.

“Have a guess,” I would say.

“I don’t know, the Arctic Monkeys?” my friend would say.

“No, imagine the best thing you could ever go and see, ever, ever, ever, ever?” I would say.

“Well, I guess going to see Tom Waits in a dusty little bar in Texas would be pretty cool,” my friend would say.

“Yes, well stop being a knob because that wouldn’t be good, try to think of something actually good,” I would say.

“Ummm, something actually good, oh I don’t know Dave, some comedian in a really intimate venue?”

“Cold”

“The Who? The Jam? I really can’t guess Dave,”

And then I would say,

“No, you are going to be gutted when you hear this. I have got tickets…to see…” I would say, pausing for effect here,

“CHRISTOPHER BIGGINS DOING CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS”

This was a sweet opportunity for two reasons. Firstly, during my time at University I wore a series of ridiculous glasses frames and was portly which prompted my friends to call me Biggins.

I was also pretty sure that they called me Biggins to insinuate that I was some sort of a sex letch which made me cross with them when they called me Biggins, which, in turn, prompted them to call me Biggins even more.

To this day I still harbour the suspicion that when they talk about me and I’m not there they refer to me as Biggins, even as they drive home from my house after a weekend of hospitality I imagine them saying things like “Biggins was on form wasn’t he?” and “It was good to see Biggins again wasn’t it?” and “We should see Biggins more often really,”

They are probably ringing each other right now and saying “Hey, have you read Biggins’ blog?” and having a good old laugh.

I was also excited about the concert because I had seen Johnny Morris doing Carnival of the Animals as a teenager, and it was the last truly magical experience I think I ever had.

Falling in love and watching elephants processing along a street followed by hundreds of singing women and children painted red and petals flying everywhere whilst drinking tea with my future wife, having two children and getting married were all good, but Johnny Morris – fuckin’ magic.

I remember sneering in my seat as I waited for Morris to hit the stage, thinking “This is going to be a load of shit, Mum, you wanker,” and then probably saying “This is going to be a load of shit, Mum, you wanker,” but then Morris hit the stage and the hour and a half he was on the stage slipped by in a second. He was brilliant. Funny, lovely and magic.

It was the last time I remember being happy to be entertained as if I were a child.

So I thought Biggins doing Carnival of the Animals might be a bit magical too.

But it was a steaming heap of dog poo.

A heap of dog poo through which someone had trodden and subsequently walked into a carpet.

In a specialist infant school.

For children with allergies to dog poo.

Biggins was a self indulgent idiot, who belted his way through the readings with the charm and wit of the builder who “did” my bathroom.

He didn’t even have the grace to wear glasses.

It was a truly dreadful show, interesting only in its capacity to slow time down to a standstill.

When Polly and I wake up we seem to blink and then it’s bed time again, so it was particularly galling that all of a sudden an hour seemed to feel like a million ketamine lifetimes.

We had taken Elly’s friend Flora with us, and our friend Roger, Flora’s dad, was playing the timpani in the concert. When Roger came out to play he peered out over his huge brass kettles into the audience to see if he could see us, and had we not stood up and waved frantically at him, he would have squinted and craned his neck for the entire ten minutes up to the point that he had to begin playing without spotting us.

I figured that if Roger couldn’t find his daughter at such an event, my pupil Stuart would have an even tougher time finding me once his show had started. The potential to blow out this gig was high. I felt safe to make a false commitment. To a seven year old.

At the end of Friday afternoon as I bent to place my laptop in my bag I said “Stuart, I believe you are doing some sort of a show…”

“Yes Mr Trent?” he said, his eyes moistening.

“Yes, now, I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot Stuart and I think that I would very much like to come and see it and to bring Elly. Do you think it is the sort of show that she would like?”

“Yes Mr Trent, It’s at…”

“Uh Uh Uh Stuart, no, I won’t remember where it is at if you merely tell me. I should like you to find out exactly where the show is this weekend, write down the details for me and bring them here, to this desk, in this classroom, in this school on Monday morning. If, and only if you do this, shall I make subsequent arrangements to attend,” I said, then walked off to face the weekend...

I hate

2007-01-18T17:28:00.001Z

sending friends an email at roughly going home time.

Look at my belly, Look at my belly, Look at my belly,

2007-01-17T19:26:00.000Z

As I approach her, I can see that Elly has a huge grin on her face. She is the last to be picked up, but she's really, really pleased to see me. This is a relief because the playground has been the scene of many intense and embarrasing battles between the two of us.

I've got a peeled mandarin orange in my hand and a fantasy of the two of us sharing an orange and shooting the breeze on the way back to the car. In my head Elly is saying to me "Gosh Daddy, these mandarins are remarkably sweet aren't they?" and other parents are looking at me slightly jealously.

I walk towards her, proudly segmenting my orange.

"Daddy, I'm so glad you're here," says Elly.

"Great," I say and bend down to give her a kiss.

She sticks her fist in my face "I can't open this myself" she says.

She is holding a Twix.

"You eat a bit of this and I'll open that for you," I say, a desperate thumb in the dyke of my dream.

"No Daddy, I just want the chocolate," says Elly.

"You eat a bit of this and I'll open that for you," I say, waiting for the outburst.

"But DAAADDDY, we had ORRRRAAAANGE this afternoon," says Elly.

"You eat a bit of this and I'll open that for you," I say, my lips drawing thin.

"OK Daddy," says Elly, watching me like a hawk. She pops the segment of mandarin into her mouth, does an exaggerated retch then swallows it as if she is completing a bushtucker challenge.

"Daddy, the school orange was much nicer than this one," she says.

"Here's your Twix. Whose birthday was it?" I ask.

I can't remember whose birthday it was. I am tempted to go and wake her up to find out.

As we climb into the car I tell her to save a small piece of her Twix for Mick.

"No," says Elly.

"OK then, I'll throw the Twix away," I say.

"No Daddy, I'll save a bit for Mick."

There is a thoughtful silence as I pull out of my parking space, turn the car around in the pub car park (there is a sign at the entrance of the car park saying "PRIVATE CAR PARK, NO TURNING" but I don't care. To be honest, I don't notice the sign until I've pulled into the car park and then I only notice it out of the corner of my eye and it nags at me so that as I pull out I strain my neck back just to make sure that it says "PRIVATE CAR PARK, NO TURNING" which it does and then I vow never to use the car park for turning again) and turn left onto the main road to Mick's childminder.

"Daddy, next time I get chocolate at school, I don't want to save a bit for Mick," says Elly.

"That's fine. You don't have to. I'll just give it back to your teacher as we leave." I say.

"NO DADDY," she whines in a mancunian accent which she has developed for the sole purpose of expressing extreme dissapointment. It is a pitch perfect recreation of her cousins accent.

"Well then you need to always share your chocolate with Mick," I say.

"OK Daddy," she says, sounding disconsolate.

I am hit by a massive pang of guilt. What a burden for her never to be able to sink her teeth into a bar of chocolate and enjoy every last crumb. What a horrible Dad. I need to throw her a life line.

"Well, Elly, you can have a complete bar of chocolate if you are both given a bar of chocolate, you don't have to share your chocolate with Mick if you both have chocolate, but if just you have a bar of chocolate then you need to share it with Mick,"

I am suddenly worried that she'll go to her teacher and say "My Dad says that I need a bar of chocolate for my brother Mick too or else I can't have the chocolate," so I add "If you are ever given chocolate outside of school or until Mick starts coming to school because when he comes to school he will get chocolate too..." I've stopped making sense now so I stop talking.

There is a long silence.

"But Daddy, I don't want to give Mick some chocolate," Elly says.

"Listen Elly, If you just save Mick a tiny tiny bit of chocolate and give it to him, how do you think he will feel?" I say.

"Happy,"

"Right. And if you make Mick feel happy, I like to see that and how do you think that makes me feel when I see you give Mick some chocolate and make him happy?" I say.

"Happy,"

"Right. And when Lisa sees you give Mick chocolate she'll be very pleased too and how will that make Lisa feel?"

"Happy,"

"Right. And when Mummy comes home tonight and I tell her that you made Mick happy and Lisa happy and Daddy happy, how do you think Mummy will feel?"

"Happy!" Elly says. She's now giggling with the anticipation of such a spiral of happines.

"RIGHT!" I shout jubilantly. "And, Elly, when you have given Mick a piece of chocolate and made Mick happy and Lisa happy and Mummy happy and Daddy happy and everyone is feeling happy, how will you feel about having given Mick just a tiny little piece of chocolate?"

"Sad," Elly says.

I give up and think about writing this tonight. Then I remember something that happened last night and start laughing to myself.

Elly was having a bath and she splashed water all over Mick. We are supposed to be keeping the bandage that wraps up his IV line clean so Polly suggested, by telling me that I had to go and do it, to go and change Mick's clothes so as to keep the bandage from getting soaked.

Mick trotted happily into Elly's room, but when I tried to pull his jumper off he put his head on her pillow like a wounded sparrow, windmilled his arm at me and screamed "GOWAY GOWAY" at me. This means "go away"

I had to use all my powers of thinking.

I took my shirt own off, played tummy bongos and said "Mickey, Mickey, look at Daddy's tummy,"

Instantly Mick started cooing and nodding and screaming incoherent affirmation sounds, lifting his hands over and over his head as if taking off the t-shirt and using his magic "moor" sound to mean "take this shirt off Daddy, I want to get my tummy out too,"

I took his t-shirt off and we bumped bellies delightedly for a bit, then I ran around the top of the house like a fat Liam Gallagher shouting "look at my belly, look at my belly, look at my belly," with Mick in tow shouting "loooooka beyyye, loooooka beyyye, loooooka beyyye,"

Together we ran into the bathroom and entertained the ladies of the house with our funny routine - they both laughed and clapped and cheered.

I was very excited and ran back into the kids room with Mick to prepare for part two of the performance.

Apparently though, running around shouting "look at my penis, look at my penis, look at my penis," is not funny.

Nor is it funny shouting "loooooka peeeeeis, loooooka peeeeeis, loooooka peeeeeis,"

The memory of this in the car makes me start laughing out loud.

"What are you laughing at Daddy?" says Elly.

"Do you remember last night when Mick and I ran around shouting 'look at my belly, look at my belly, look at my belly,' ?" I say.

"Yes," she says, smiling through the thumb in her mouth. This is obviously still funny.

"And do you remember last night when Mick and I ran around shouting 'look at my penis, look at my penis, look at my penis' ?" I say.

Elly takes her thumb out of her mouth. "Yes," she says, "I didn't like that. That was not funny," This is obviously still not funny.

"Why wasn't it funny?" I say.

"Because I don't like looking at penises or vaginas..." Elly says, then after a pause, "or bums,"

We arrive at Lisa's house. I love picking Mick up from Lisa's for two reasons. Firstly it is great to see Mick's great big grin - tonight he is sitting playing with a steering wheel and all the other children are sitting around him staring at him in awe as if he is Nigel Mansell - and secondly it is always great to see Lisa's hilarious son Ollie.

Ollie is now a year 7 at secondary school and he is absoutely brilliant. He is just at the stage where he says something really cool and then undermines it with a really childish motivation. This evening I look up the stairs to see him standing there in just his pants.

"Whoo Whoo," I shout,

Ollie ducks down the hall.

"Hunky," I shout,

Ollie apears back at the top of the stairs and starts pulling muscle man poses. Lisa tells me he has been a very naughty boy because he rode back through Cherry Hinton park and got his bike all muddy.

"Why did you go through the park Ollie? Did you want to see the little Duckies?" I ask him.

"NO," Ollie says with a massive sneer on his face as if I've asked him if he loves Danny from McFly.

"Abi, wheel my bike round for me, I'll pay ya," he shouts from the top of the stairs where he is now sitting, clad only in his pants opening and closing his legs like an absentminded, male, pre-adolescent Madonna.

"What with?" says Lisa.

"With the money Dad gives me," says Ollie. He is now showing off and shouting a bit too loudly and coming across as a bit too big for his boots.

"Hey you cheeky... don't speak to your mummy like that, as soon as I leave here she's going to kill you," I say to him.

"That's right David," Lisa says.

"Come on Mum, move my bike," Ollie says.

"Ollie, you could kill two birds with one stone here," I say. "Why don't you just go outside and move the bike yourself, but do it dressed just in your pants - that way you'll get the bike sorted and you'll really annoy your mum at the same time,"

Ollie instantly sees the horror in Lisa's face and the delight in mine.

Now Lisa is screaming at Ollie "DON'T LISTEN TO HIM OLLIE, NO, NO OLLIE, NO, YOU ARE NOT DOING THAT, OLLIE, COME BACK IN, OLLIE, DAVID NO, OH MY GOD,"

Ollie is standing in the middle of the street shouting "Look at me everyone, I'm just wearing my pants look at me,"

Abi is wheeling his bike around the back.

Lisa is wrestling him back into the house. As he goes back inside I say to him "Ollie, that was very stupid, I am in no way proud of you, I don't find it funny and I certainly won't be writing about it and posting it on the internet tonight."

Pulling away I glance back to see the door handle jolting up and down as as Lisa battles to keep her semi naked son inside the house.

We go home for pancakes.

Yes? No? (Part One)

2007-01-16T20:41:00.000Z

I have a child in my class called Stuart. Stuart is a uniquely intense child.

Sometimes Stuart goes into a trance, lying back on his chair, balancing a pencil between his upper lip and his nose and staring blankly up at the ceiling as if he’s in the throes of some sort of enveloping, opiated ecstacy.

“Stuart?” I say.

“Stuart,” I say.

“STUART, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Stuart jerks back into the classroom and stares at me as if I am totally mad.

“I’m t h i n k i n g…” he says, as if speaking to a very rude policeman.

I mentioned this to his parents at parents evening and they laughed, looked at each other, shook their heads and said “Yes, that’s Stuart, we’re not sure if he’s very deep or…not,”

About three weeks ago I crouched down to put my laptop away in my rucksack at the end of the day when I felt a presence. I turned around and looked over my shoulder to see Stuart staring down at me, a look of determination and courage on his face.

“Can I help you Stuart?” I said.

“Me and Karen are doing a show. Do you want to come?” said Stuart.

“Karen and I. Hmmm, that sounds interesting Stuart, let me think about it,” I said.

Obviously, this means “No. I don’t want to come to a show. I don’t want to do anything in my spare time that has anything to do with any of you. I like you all at school. Quite a lot. But I am not yours to play with at the weekends too.”

“Ok,” said Stuart.

“Ok.” I said.

“Is there anything else Stuart?” I said.

“No,” said Stuart.

“Ok.” I said.

“Ok.” said Stuart.

“Goodnight Stuart, I’ve got to go and pick Elly up now.”

“Ok.” said Stuart.

“Ok.” I said.

“Goodnight Mr Trent,” said Stuart.

“Goodnight Stuart,” I said.

Most children would have left it at that. Most children would have given up.

At the end of the next day Stuart was back at my desk, same intense look, same questions, same protracted farewell.

My responses began to vary a little, to include the following…

“I’m terribly sorry Stuart, but I’ve got to dash…”

“Let me think about it Stuart.”

“Stuart, just go away, I’m very busy,”

“Could you take this to Mr Corpe please Stuart?”

“NO, NO, NO, NOT NOW STUART, BYE”

He tried asking me at the beginning of the day, He tried asking me as the children lined up for assembly, he tried asking me as the children came back from assembly and settled down for literacy. He tried asking me at the beginning of break time, at the end of breaktime, at the beginning of lunch time, at the end of lunchtime, at the beginning of the afternoon, at fruit break and at the end of the day.

Little notes saying things like “Mr Trent, will you come to Karen and me’s show, tick the box, Yes? No?” began appearing everywhere – on my desk, on my chair, in my pigeon hole, on the windcreen of my car and once, rather spectacularly, on the exact spot on the wall where I balance my coffee cup every Friday morning during play time duty.

It was at this point that I thought maybe Stuart deserved to be put out of his misery. I could say I’d go, ask him for the dates, time and venue then not show up...

"Daddy fell down the stairs..."

2007-01-11T20:03:00.000Z

It is 5.40. Polly is about to phone home to tell me she is leaving. The phone rings. Mick points up at the phone and shouts "ooooh, ooooh, ooooh," which means "the phone is ringing". I hoist him onto my waist, pick up the phone and give it straight to him.

"Hello?" says Polly.

"Hello," says Mick.

"Hello..Mick?" says Polly.

"Hello," says Mick.

Polly thinks Mick has picked up the phone by himself. Mick is now making various grunts and Polly is repeating "Mick?".

This is too good an opportunity to waste. I pop the phone on speaker, hand it to Elly and whisper into her ear "Say Daddy has fallen down the stairs,"

"Mummy, Daddy has fallen down the stairs," says Elly.

There is a moment of silence.

"Elly, has Daddy really fallen down the stairs?" says Polly. Her voice is very calm and measured.

"No, he is joking," says Elly. She sounds delighted.

Tonight I have learnt that this is not funny and that normal people don't make jokes like this.

“Wow, My Dad was really brilliant,”

2007-01-09T22:24:00.000Z

“So if you had a magic fork which meant you could do whatever you liked, what would you do?” I say to Elly.

We are eating supper together. Mick and Polly are at the hospital.

I have cut little pieces of lamb and potato and arranged it in a spiral around the plate. It looks really brilliant, not like a kiddy meal, but like a pretentious restaurant meal.

In my head I'm saying “The first time I really felt that I’d cooked was when I made the spiral lamb and potato for my daughter, I was just playing around really, but suddenly it all just clicked really, and here I am today, with 3 michelin stars for children’s food.”

I consider taking a photo of the plate so that in 20 years time Elly looks at it and says “Wow, My Dad was really brilliant,”

"Elly?" I say

"What?" says Elly.

"I said, if you had a magic fork which meant you could do whatever you liked, what would you do?” I say.

“I would get a new Dad,” says Elly.

Peverets welcome

2007-01-03T21:55:00.000Z

The only person who read my blog tonight was a peveret.

He typed "like to see my girl friend be fucked" into yahoo.uk.

My website is the number 1 hit off this search. Obviously.

"Do you know it's a he?" said Polly when I typed the second sentence of tonight's blog.

"No," I said.

"Then you better put 'they' "

"Ok."

They typed "like to see my girl friend be fucked" into yahoo.uk