Ask Amy what her favorite part of the holiday then nine times out of ten she’ll say the Toddler Disco. Ask me and I’ll my favorite part was being bitten by a swan, but I’m a bit funny that way.
Archive for May, 2007 Page 2 of 5
Romantic ideas we held in our childhoods are often wrecked on the rocks of adult drudgery. For example: I never developed super powers, I don’t own a pet shop, and Mr T never came to my birthday party. One of the most disappointing interjection of reality I’ve experienced however is Sherwood Forest.
As a boy I was borderline obsessed by the legend of Robin Hood. I used to spend hours in the wood behind my house fashioning bows and arrows from twigs and making quarterstaffs by laboriously cutting off branches with my Dad’s metalworking saws (sorry Dad). Even back then I knew I was never destined for greatness, so I always pretended to be Little John rather than Robin himself - feeling more comfortable with sidekick status than main protagonist.
I also had an old Robin Hood hardback book that I’m guessing was printed in the 1950’s but which I treated with the reverence of an original copy of the doomsday book. What particularly excited me was that it claimed that Robin originated from near where I lived. In fact it is claimed that he is buried about 5 miles away from our house (” I shot an arrow in the air, it fell to earth somewhere near Mirfield, you know, next to the Three Nuns pub”).
As you can imagine then, Sherwood Forrest has always held an attraction for me. I imagined mile after mile of oak and beech trees, casting dappled shadows over roe deer peacefully grazing in the woodland glades. The reality however doesn’t quite live up to the myth. Centuries of the civilization’s encroachment has reduced it to basically three trees and a bush.
Despite this there still exists a glimmer of the romance of my youth within me, and so I am still getting a thrill about the fact that I’m going to be spending the next five days underneath Sherwood’s canopy. Kerry’s parents have very generously invited us to share a lodge at Centerparcs with them, and we are packing to go as I type.
For those of you don’t know, Centerparcs is a sort of Butlins for people who eat couscous. Of course people who don’t know what Centerparcs is probably don’t know what Butlins is either, but that’s not my problem is it. Stupid bloody Americans, expect you to do everything for them.
So, while there may not be many opportunities for us to steal from the rich and give to the poor wile we are there, with any luck we might be able to manage stealing from the upper middle class and giving to the lower middle class.
I’m taking my laptop with me (the alternative would be to spend time talking to my wife and my in-laws in the evenings *shudder*), but I don’t know if I’m going to have internet access. So this could be the last you hear from me for a few days.
I’ll make sure I say hello to Robin for you.
U2-3D. A feature length concert film of U2’s tour of South Africa which will be released in cinemas shortly. It will be a crime against humanity if the 3D glasses given to the audience aren’t in the style of Bono’s sunglasses.
Amy fell down the stairs today. Twice. The second time was more serious. We were on an escalator in Habitat and by a complicated series of events her feet were carried off one way and her upper body the other. She ended up tumbling down three or four steps and taking the skin off her shin. On the bright side however I got to run down an up escalator, which has been one of my ambitions since I was about eight.
It took about fifteen minutes of sitting on overpriced display furniture and admiring her bravery and battle scars before she felt ready to move on from the experience. I was tempted to ask a member of staff for a first aid kit, but it’s doubtful that they would have had plasters with Winnie the Pooh on them. Like many children Amy is reluctant to have faith in the medicinal prowess of any bandage that is not tied in with a major merchandising franchise. I hope her generation are able to grow out of this attitude or else we are going to eventually have to invent Bob the Builder heart pacemakers and Dora the Explorer hip replacements.
Hopefully her accidents today will not have dented her confidence too much. Amy has always been a cautious child, ever mindful of the potential to slip, fall, or stumble. She’s always approached new physical experiences with the risk aversion attitudes of a veteran of a bomb disposal squad. This can be both reassuring and frustrating. Reassuring because you can generally trust her not to fling herself off the edge of a cliff to see if she can fly, but frustrating because you frequently witness her missing out on things because she is afraid to give them a go. To be honest she probably takes after me in that regards. For example, since I was around eight I’ve wanted to run down the up escalator, but it’s only now at the age of thirty one I plucked up the courage to do it.
Open Farm Sunday. Sounds a pretty cool idea to me, but then again I am a bit of a sucker for the odd farm here and there.
I recently went to the Apple store in the Trafford Centre in order to get some more RAM put in my Macbook. Being a recent convert I have only ever been in one Apple store, and that was on our recent trip to Chicago. The assistants back then seemed pretty busy and on the whole ignored me. This time however the shop was virtually empty and pretty soon the entire staff were circling round me like sharks sensing blood.
I know that this analogy will only mean anything to a select few (namely geeky Englishmen who spent their youth in stuffy attics painting little metal men - Paul, I’m looking at you here), but the shop assistants at the Apple store were like slightly hipper versions of shop assistants at Games Workshop stores. They had that same maniacal enthusiasm and evangelical fervor, the same eagerness to please and unsettling overuse of prolonged eye contact. Fortunately they didn’t share the lack of personal hygiene and the shop wasn’t full of 12 year olds arguing about line-of-sight rules.
It is unfair of me to complain really. The assistants were genuinely helpful and they even fitted my RAM for free (although I did get a reproachful lecture about the amount of tiny bits of glitter that were clogging up the machine). I also bought a lead to connect my old PC monitor to the Macbook, so now I am able to have two screens on at the same time and move the mouse between them. Which is COOL!
So, anyway, here are my top ten reasons why my Mac is better than my PC.
- My Mac works, my PC doesn’t.
- I am depriving multi billionaire businessman Bill Gates of my hard earned money by giving it to multi billionaire businessman Steve Jobs instead.
- My Mac has not yet reduced me to tears because it doesn’t work.
- With my Macbook I can blog from the toilet (just like my hero).
- My Macbook has more uses than as a £1000 stool which Amy can stand on to reach high shelves.
- I’m not tempted to spend a fortune on cool exciting games, because there aren’t any cool exciting games.
- My Mac is covered in glitter that Amy spilled all over it. My PC is covered in dust, because it doesn’t work.
- My Mac is white, that means it is a goodie. My PC is black, just like Darth Vader.
- When my friends are sitting in the pub talking about their PCs, I am unable to join in and therefore gain valuable time in which to stare into my pint dejectedly.
- On my Mac I can have two screens on at the same time, and move the mouse between them. Which, as you know, is COOL! (I know you can do this on PCs too, but not my PC you can’t. Because it doesn’t bloody work).
A glittering prize of a freshly burned copy of the Now That’s what I Call Dan Imposing His Musical Taste On Other People: The Spring Collection CD goes to anyone who can identify what book Amy is reading.
See more Wordless Wednesday posts here.
Amy and I were talking about babies this evening after I had picked her up from nursery.
“When you are a grown up” I told her “You might have a baby of your very own”
Her eyes lit up. “My own?” she asked “Not Evan? A baby from my tummy?”
“Yes” I told her, and feeling this was a good a time as any - “Do you know how babies are made?”
“No”
“Well you are a girl, and so you would be a Mummy. And you find a boy who you think would be a good Daddy and you make a baby with him”.
“Oh” she said, and thought for a bit.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“I think you are a very good Daddy”
“Thank you sweetheart” I said, knowing that she will never know how much those words meant to me.
I had a day off work today and, as both kids are booked in to go to nursery on a Tuesday, my original intention was to sit around the house all day in my underwear and use my toenail cuttings to pick my teeth. Unfortunately Evan has been a little under the weather recently and so we decided that he’d be better off at home with me.
It’s pretty rare that Evan and I get chance to spend some one on one time without Amy wanting in on the action. Today was a good chance for a bit of male bonding, and I think we both made the most of it.
There was no particular place to go so we just pottered around, had a few naps together, gave him a leisurely bath, and went for a wander round the garden centre. I had been intending to pop down to the post office to send a couple of parcels that have been hanging around the house for a while, but didn’t get round to it (Sorry Dwayne and Americanmum, but they will be on their way soon I promise).
Time seems to be going much faster with Evan than it did with Amy, probably because I now have two children to share it between. It was good to slow things down a bit and drink in his babyhood for a while. He’s growing fast and soon he’ll be embarking on his toddlerhood. And, while that is a stage I’m greatly looking forward to, I know need to take some time to savor the baby version of my son before all that’s left are photos.
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