Biker Muppet From Planet Senility

Last week I referred to the kid’s tv show, Biker Mice From Mars, which wasn’t a fault in itself. I didn’t actually slag it off, because I’ve never seen it before, but I mentioned it in the sort of way that old people talk about the internet as being this new fangled thing that most people haven’t heard of yet. Someone kindly wrote to point out that it’s currently the most popular kids show in the UK and was first aired in the 90's.

This is one of the problems with living abroad. Cultural references pass you by. You miss things. You catch most stuff on the internet, on whatever tv channels you can get, or by picking up a newspaper on your visits home, but some things end up slipping under the radar.

Not that this is all bad. For example, whilst residing in West Africa for three years – pre-internet and without tv – we missed the Spice Girls. (And if one of them hadn’t married some guy who plays football or something – apparently he’s with a Spanish team now – we might never even have known they existed.) And while I don’t care that I’ve missed Biker Mice From Mars all my life, I really ought not to mention it, because I end up sounding like some sad old loser, only one step away from writing a column in the Daily Mail, and saying, ‘Everyone is suddenly talking about e-mails these days, but I haven’t the faintest trace of an idea what they’re on about. It’ll never take off.’

Maybe I’m just hiding behind the excuse that I’ve lived overseas for ten out of the last fourteen years. Maybe I’m just really pathetic and middle-aged. We were watching tv last night and an advert came on for one of those awful CD’s of pre-Christmas mince, by Peter Andre and Katie Price. ‘Who’s Katie Price?’ I asked TPCKAM, and she choked on her coffee and put a call through to the Home for the Terminally Sad in the Trossachs that she’s got me lined up for.

It all augurs badly for my future in the family as ‘Dad’. Not yet of course, because the kids are still young enough to not care that they’re dad’s hopelessly un-cool. At the moment, if they mention something that’s entirely alien to me, they start yacking on about it with enthusiasm, rather than looking at me with complete disdain before leaning over and wiping away the drool from my chin with a tissue. Give it a few years, however, and I’m screwed.

Seven years from now, I’ll have two teenagers and be nearly fifty. I haven’t a chance. They’ll be listening to the mince music of the day, playing with the latest electronic gadgetry, and I’ll be looking at them with total horror and disgust, saying things like, ‘But can you whistle it?’ and ‘In my day we had a wooden train set, if we were lucky,’ and, ‘Bananas? They were a treat when I was young, if we could find a place in the cardboard box we called home to put them in a bowl. Not that we had a bowl.’

You want your kids to respect you and to think you’re cool, but really you haven’t a chance. You hang on to both as long as possible, make your choice, and hope you can manage at least one out of two, while reasonably anticipating neither.

The greatest inevitability of them all is that at some stage I’m going to mention Top Of The Pops, and they’re going to fall about laughing and start calling me grandad, and I’ll sulk off, thinking that my kids are from another planet. Mars for example.

Christmas...

The kids have been compiling their Christmas lists. In fact, I think they’ve been doing it since about September. Last week their work was finally deemed complete. One of Two put both lists in envelopes and addressed them to:
 
Santa Claus
1 The North Pole
House Number 1
 
I suggested she add Finland to the bottom of the address, and she wrote Findland. Then she gave them to me to take to the Post Office. Three days later, when the envelopes were still lying around the house, she gave them to the babysitter and asked him to take them to the Post Office. Such trust in her dad. Unbeknownst to her, the babysitter then gave them back to me that night. I do intend posting them, but since there’s a kind of de facto relationship between me and the mystery bearded figure known as ‘Claus’, it’s not really too important that they end up attached to a stamp.
 
One of Two’s list runs to thirty-nine items. That’s a lot of disappointment she’s setting herself up for. There are three main categories of present she’s looking for. There are the ones where she was thinking about what she would really really want in her life. e.g. a rabbit. Rabbit is number one on the list. She’s been told that Santa doesn’t do livestock, but she’s pressing ahead with the claim. Actually, with the honourable exception of mince pies, a rabbit is the only item in this particular category, until we get to number thirty-eight, where she’s asked for a rabbit cage. Santa does do rabbit cages, but that’d be pretty cruel. “Here’s your rabbit cage, sweetheart, but Santa ain’t bringin’ no stinkin’ rabbit…” Even Billy Bob wouldn’t have stooped that low in Bad Santa. Finally in item thirty-nine she seems to accept the inevitable by asking for a FurReal Rabbit, a more realistic aim. A FurReal Rabbit is more or less the same as an actual rabbit, except for the removal of the option of eating it for your dinner once the kids have got bored looking after it.
 
Category number two is for items which she thought of when she had some sort of moral ethicator fitted to her brain. This category contains things like a new school bag, pencils, school shoes, a jumper and work books. It also contains the critical entry, Vitamins, A, C, D & E. What stocking would be complete without them?
 
The third, and largest category, are toys and games which she’s seen advertised on Boomerang, and has hurriedly written down as the adverts piled quickly up, one on top of the other. Consequently there are a lot of spelling mistakes. Or, at least, one hopes there are. A sawing kit for example would seem an unlikely thing to be advertised on a kid’s channel.
 
Fed up with your Mum & Dad? Too many rules and regulations? Not enough fun? Worried that if you have to kill them you won’t be able to get rid of their bodies? With this All-New Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too Sawing Kit, you’ll never need to worry about parental body disposal ever again.
 
I’m similarly hoping that Bratz Fukky Fashion is a slip of the pen on her part. Otherwise those dolls for the under-10’s are getting way too advanced.
 
Two of Two’s list is in two parts, one that his sister wrote with sixteen items – clearly she has a lot fewer ambitions for her brother – and the one he wrote himself with nine items. His lists are much more one dimensional, full of the kinds of things you’d expect from a little boy. Star Wars figures, a goal post, boxing gloves, Biker Mice From Mars etc. (Non-parents might just have read that and thought, Biker Mice From Mars???, but sadly Biker Mice From Mars are a thing, and while he’s written his list and proven himself unable to spell pirates, football or hot wheels, he’s nailed Biker Mice From Mars perfectly.) He’s also looking for a figure of Dr Who’s clueless cousin, Dr How. “What’s happening Doctor?” “How the **** should I know.”
 
Of course, they didn’t make a duplicate of their lists, and since they think the babysitter posted them, I can’t now take a duplicate and give it to them, so that they can crosscheck the lists against what they receive on Christmas morning. That might seem like the kind of thing that Gordon Brown will do with his kids, but when One of Two stands looking distraught at six a.m. on the morning of the 25th, clutching nothing but school shoes, pencils, work books and a bottle of vitamins, it’d be handy to be able to show her what she wrote.
 
Last year Two of Two asked Santa for a toy bat. Where are we going to find a toy bat, we thought, and then went off and made no actual effort to find a toy bat. The week before Christmas we were out without the spawn, strolling contentedly through the local shopping mall, when a ray of light suddenly shone on a toy bat sitting on a shelf on a toy stand on the floor below us. We felt some strange sense of elation at being able to get an item from the list that we hadn’t thought likely. It wasn’t that big a deal, but it was nice.
 
Christmas morning Two of Two opened up the toy bat, took one look at it and, as he threw it into the corner never to touch it again, he said, ‘Why did Santa get me a bat?’
 
We should have kept the stupid list. Not that it would have made any difference to the amount of playing time used on the toy bat.
 
And so Christmas is in full swing, slightly later than normal this year. The kids are practicing carols at home, Silent Night is being butchered on a regular basis, and Bing Crosby is already crooning his way through meal times.
 
‘Tis the season to be jolly…apparently. Pass the coffee and the pumpkin pie.

Fashion...

Yesterday we went clothes shopping. It happens around this time every year. Two of Two is in shorts from about early April, all through the summer into autumn. Then the weather starts to get a bit colder, the wee man hangs on to his pantaloons of choice as long as possible, and then some time around the beginning of November he has to capitulate and get back into the long trousers. And, of course, since he’s wellying back eight hundred bowls of breakfast cereal every morning and growing up faster than Le Beanstalk de Jacques, his long trousers are all about six inches too short for him.
 
Not being Dynamic Action Parents, we didn’t dash out at the first opportunity and buy him new trousers for the winter. The lad has been displaying a lot of sockage at school for the past two weeks. There have been mornings when some demonic members of the Mum Collective have been looking at me in dark ways, thinking that I’m a bad parent because I’m still putting my kid in shorts. Well I’ve got news for your girlfriends, if you must know, I’m a bad parent because I’m kicking my kid out the front door in last winter’s long trousers. Totally different.
 
So we’re in the local kid’s store. In Poland it’s called Smyk. Toys and clothes. There are potential downfalls to this combination, obviously, but in general it works well. You shop, they run around asking if they can buy every single toy in the store, you say no, every now and again you drag them into the changing room and forcibly stick a (insert item of clothing) on them.
 
The day was progressing normally. The shop was quite busy, the usual bustle of kids and parents, arguments and entreaties. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day was being piped happily around the shopping centre. Somewhere a car screeched to a halt. On the next floor up a child wailed. A clock ticked.
 
And then, just as we were thinking that the day couldn’t be any more normal, we were looking through this year’s trouser collection for little boys when we discovered them… Trousers with in-built fake underpants.
 
[Let that sink in a second. Now, if you’ve just read that and thought, oh yeah, whatever, all trousers have in-built fake underpants these days, don’t be such a DAD, then you’d probably be best just to skip to the end. However, I’ve never seen in-built fake underpants before, so I’m still aghast and feel the need to exorcise the horror. If, like me, you are shocked by the concept of in-built fake underpants, then read on…]
 
In-built fake underpants are like those in-built fake t-shirts you get on jumpers. You know the thing, grey jumper, bit of white cotton at the top to make it look like you’re wearing a t-shirt underneath. It’s an odd enough fashion concept in itself really.
 
Someone, somewhere, probably Milan or New York, has taken this idea and applied it to trousers. Perhaps there are also trouser lines with in-built fake socks, but I didn’t see any sign of them. These trousers had fake underpants sewn in around the waist, to make it look as if the trousers themselves were hanging down below the line of the underpants, so that a uniform line of underpantage was on display.
 
I don’t want to sound old – you know, I’m only forty-two, which doesn’t seem too decrepit, not yet – but why would you do that? I’m familiar enough with the concept of letting your underpants show above your breeks, in this twisted day and age. Each to their own. If you want people to see your underpants, then on you go. But what exactly is the idea of faking the pants? With the fake white t-shirt, you’re basically saving yourself the need to wear a t-shirt. So are fake underpants supposed to stop you having to wear underpants?
 
All right, adults will as adults do, but it’s just different, isn’t it? Adults have some measure of control over their bottoms, for example, and so can probably be trusted to get through a day without underpants. But wee boys? Seriously? You’re going to stick your kid in a pair of trousers with no pants in them? Why on earth would you do that?
 
The other possibility is that you intend that your kid wears actual underpants to complement the hygiene predicament inherent in the trousers with in-built fake underpants situation. But at the start of the day, that’s just going to set up so many arguments.
 
“Put your underpants on!” you shout, in the midst of the daily Pre-School Rebellion.
 
“No!’ replies your six year-old wee nipper. “These trousers have got their own underpants! They’re in-built!”
 
‘They’re fake!”
 
“What d’you mean they’re fake? There’s no such thing as fake underpants! That’s stupid!”
 
And you know, he’d have you there.
 
And let’s say you manage to get your kid to wear his own Actual Underpants, beneath his trousers with in-built fake underpants. Like your kid is going to need help looking untidy? Give him five minutes on the hoof, his trousers will be dishevelled and probably falling down, and his Actual Underpants are going to be showing above his in-built fake ones. Older kids in school are going to be staring at him and saying, ‘Look at the dumb kid, he’s got two pairs of underpants on.’
 
But then, I’m forty-two, I know nothing of fashion. Maybe the two-pairs-of-underpants look is in, even for wee boys.
 
All this ran through my head in the first fifteen seconds after laying my eyes on the trousers with in-built fake underpants. Fortunately Two of Two was off in the games area and never saw them, so he couldn’t be tempted. I walked away from the site of the in-built fake underpant discovery, feeling old and depressed and out of touch. Life, I thought, does not get much worse than this.
 
And then Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime started up.
 
“Ah well,” I thought, “that’s another five pence for Heather.”

Stress Is As Stress Does

or A Theory On Life, Stress, Children and Robots…
 
One of Two had a sleepover the other night. TPCKAM doesn’t approve of mid-week, school night sleepovers because of their disruptive element, but I like to work to the principle that as long as it’s at someone else’s house, and they’re mad enough to make the offer, they can take the disruption.
 
Two of Two instantly changes personality when his sister is off out for the night. You can tell he loves the chance to get his parents to himself. He comes home and kind of snuggles down into the entire house, knowing that his sister isn’t going to be around to bug him and that he’s not going to have to perform his own bugging duties for another twenty-four hours. One of Two, however, hates it when her brother is on a sleepover and she’s not. Like she’s offended at having to spend time with her dull old parents by herself.
 
The minute she comes home and the wee man’s not there, she starts mooching around saying, ‘Why can’t I have a sleepover with someone? How come he has all the sleepovers. I never have a sleepover with anyone.’ Give it an hour or two, and she’ll be leaning out the window shouting at passers-by, ‘Excuse me! Can I come to yours for the night, my parents are really boring?’ One of Two would rather spend the night with a tribe of feral goatherders in sub-zero temperatures in a yurt on the Russian steppe under a cloud of chemical waste, than actually spend time alone with her parents. Sleepovers are her holy grail, and she will rarely let an occasion pass without inviting herself to someone’s house. The phrase, ‘you have to wait to be invited,’ is as alien to her as ‘do your homework early and get it out of the way.’
 
We like to think of this as a sign of how secure she is at home…
 
At the end of school on Tuesday, prior to One of Two heading off for the sleepover, I was discussing with the other mum the small print of the contract – more particularly, who would provide her snack for the next day. I was saying I’d do it, the other mum said, no bother, I’ll make her a ham sandwich. One of Two hates ham sandwiches. On those mornings when I’m foraging painfully round the kitchen trying to find something, anything, to put in their snack boxes – where’s your show about that Ray Mears? – should the words ‘ham sandwich’ pass my lips, the pair of them will immediately start hyperventilating and will allow their heads to pitch forward into their Cookie Crisp. So, the words, ‘One of Two doesn’t like ham sandwiches’ were on the very tip of my tongue, they were there poised to tumble out over the precipice, when One of Two herself, on hearing mention of a ham sandwich started leaping up and down in celebration, punching the air, crying, ‘Yes! Yes! A ham sandwich! I am emancipated and have been re-born, my path that has been dull is now aglow, as was the road to Damascus for the blessed St. Paul. At last I am free from the tyranny of Dad making my snack, even if only for one day! Rejoice! Rejoice!’
 
‘That’s great,’ I said to the mum, ‘she loves ham.’
 
The pace of life is different with one kid. Slower. Suddenly there’s not just less stress, there’s no stress. No arguments over the tv or the computer. Two of Two can do his homework without her butting in and telling him the answers, because it’s easier than doing her own homework. There are none of those ridiculous fights which begin, ‘It’s mine!’ and descend quickly into complete anarchy. Suddenly you walk around your house, aware that there is still an underage presence, just not as you know it.. One which is accompanied by choirs of angels singing soothing songs of tranquillity and calm.
 
Yesterday morning we awoke to the peaceful sounds of Two of Two playing himself at chess. I pottered around making one packed lunch, doing a few chores, enjoying the pre-school peace. Think about it…’pre-school peace’. How often can you say that without choking on your muesli? Then, for some reason, TPCKAM arrived downstairs and within thirty seconds the two of them were having a Nescafé argument. Hot, instant and not very satisfying.
 
It was a work of genius on the part of TPCKAM, plucking an argument out of thin air. Like Shane Warne conjuring up a screaming leg-break on a dead wicket, Thierry Henry producing a wonder strike with his back to the goal in a crowded penalty area, or Peyton Manning finding Marvin Harrison with an inch perfect pass through a swarm of cornerbacks while being chased to the sidelines by five 350lb behemoths, it was a sublime act of brilliance, creating anger and noise when before there had been calm. Clearly she’s been working for the British government too long.
 
However, unlike the mornings when there are two children at the breakfast table, the white squall quickly passed, and the rest of the pre-school period snuck quietly into the morning rain.
 
Sadly, of course, this is just an illustration of how everything is relative. Having one child around isn’t stress-free, not when you only ever have one child. For a while I used to look at stressed-parents-of-one and think, get a grip, for God’s sake. One kid? How hard is that, for crying out loud? Get a second, my stressed amigo, and then you’ll find out how awful it can be… And then I’d go off and be stressed with two.
 
But of course, everyone with three, four, five, six or more kids, would read my weekly stress-analysis and think the same thing. Get a life! Or more to the point, get some more kids, then you’ll know how hard it is. It’s all relative.
 
I have this theory. We were all created by robots. The robots programmed into everyone different levels of various emotions. So, for example, for me they put: Happiness 9.8/10, Gloominess 0.1/10, Stress w/o Kids 0/10, Stress w Kids 8.4/10 etc. We then just go along through our lives, applying those levels to each situation. So, with your constant levels of stress, if  you’re the type who gets stressed by kids, one kid will do it, and you won’t be that much more stressed even if you had another five. Your stress levels are what they are. If you’re not stressed by one, then more than likely you wouldn’t be stressed by having another two.
 
Being less stressed when one of your kids is away for the night, doesn’t really change the tenet, as you know that if you had just the one long term, it’d pretty quickly become stressful again.
 
It’s not a hard and fast psychological statement – particularly the bit about robots – and I’m not calling it Lindsay’s Law of Stress and looking for a mention in the New England Journal of Medicine, but I think it’s fairly accurate. If you have your doubts, then why not have another couple of children to test out the theory?
 
We got home last night after school clubs, the house back to its normal quotient of two kids. One of Two got out of the car and hid at the back of the garage. When her brother got out she jumped up and scared him. He burst into tears. She ran up stairs. He ran after her, they screamed at each other for a short burst, and then Two of Two concluded the argument in his usual manner by throwing a hard plastic toy at her and gubbing her in the face. One of Two burst into tears.
 
It had taken forty-three seconds from the time we arrived home...

A Question Of Logic

Another morning, another breakfast squabble. Jack Johnson has grown tired and old, the wheels have come off the smooth routine. The kids bickered pointlessly, somehow The Parent Currently Known As Mum (TPCKAM) and I stayed calm and negotiated our way through the morass, and we are now contemplating the children eating breakfast in shifts to put an end to the internecine warfare. However, breakfast in shifts demands more time and even more organisation.

This morning's squabble: One of Two, allegedly, took a drink from Two of Two's cup and then passed it back to him. Two of Two didn't appear to have actually witnessed this incident, but was making the assumption based on the facts known to him at the time. Therefore, he wouldn't drink the milk. It wasn't quite Not The Nine O'Clock News' John McEnroe at breakfast, but it was getting there. TPCKAM was called into the argument.

The facts of the case as presented by the Plaintive:

1. The milk was in an orange cup. He doesn't usually get the orange cup. He gets the blue or yellow, so it wasn’t even his own drink he was being asked to consume.
2. There was a spot of milk on the rim, suggesting that someone had already taken a drink from the cup.
3. One of Two was looking at him in a funny way.

A cut and dried case, more or less. You can see his point. Eschewing the possibility of bringing in high-priced legal aid, he decided to represent himself in the case, delivering his argument in a high-pitched bleating whine. The delivery grated with the judges it must be said and, as one of the judges, I have to confess that it coloured my judgement of the issue.

After a brief telepathic discussion, the judges, who were also the jury - in this case not Twelve Angry Men, just One Angry Man & An Angry Woman - decided against the plaintive and he was ordered to drink his milk.

He accepted this readily and downed the entire cup in one quick, delighted gulp.

I'm kidding, of course he didn't. He decided to appeal the verdict, and in doing so chose to disregard the fact that one of the reasons he had lost the first crucial decision was because of his choice to substitute reasoned argument with abject wailing and hysteria. So he whined even more, the high pitched constant moan interrupted by a blubbing lip, so that he sounded like a prepubescent motor boat. The appeal process was long on brevity, and once more the panel of judges found against the Plaintive.

He pushed the milk away from him across the table, thus risking the chance of spillage and disaster. I was preparing snack boxes in the background, TPCKAM was sitting at the heart of the tornado. She was getting mad. She moved the drink back towards him and repeated her instructions in the Parent About To Explode voice - the one which you hope is going to carry some weight, because you remember your parents talking to you like that and it put the fear of God in you - which only served to heighten the wail, as this grave tone which was so useful for our parents has completely lost all effectiveness. It’s as if the cellular infectious lifeform that is Children has adapted to the antibiotic.

At this point, as I sensed the impending volcanic eruption from TPCKAM, I decided to intervene. By introducing logic... I know, I know, what was I thinking?

A couple of months ago, after the first day of school, I was taking the kids along to the local shopping mall to serve up a consolatory ice cream, a kind of sugar-filled, bittersweet farewell to the summer holiday. Just outside the entrance I met a friend and stood for a brief chat. The kids meandered around bored for a few seconds and then started playing in the dirt to keep themselves amused. I looked round to see Two of Two with a cigarette butt in his mouth. I leapt upon him like an unfettered eagle pouncing on the baby lamb of stupidity, swiped the butt from his lips, and left my friend standing in the dirt as I whisked the kids off, words of censure pouring from my mouth like the crashing of water over the Reichenbach Falls. (Returning to the shopping mall the following week, I found my friend still standing there waiting to finish the conversation.)

This little incident presented the basis of my logic, which I decided to bring into play on the third hearing of the case of Two of Two v The State of Despair. 'Why is it,' I said, 'that you can't drink from the same cup as your sister - if she did even drink from it at all, which m'learned friend has yet to prove to the satisfaction of the court - when you were fully prepared to stick a cigarette butt in your gob, a cigarette butt which had been in the mouth of God knows who, and which had been lying on the ground and stepped on by people with shit and who knows what else on their shoes?'

A perfectly reasonable point. Logical. Sadly, however, Two of Two is a six year-old wee boy and he laughs in the face of logic. Or, to be more precise, whines in the face of logic.

'But this has got One of Two's germs on it!' he wailed. I suppose he had his own logic. It didn't matter what unknown viruses or bugs had been attached to that cigarette, they couldn't possibly have been as bad as those associating themselves with his sister.

Two of Two lost the re-appeal. The case was closed. TPCKAM pressed ahead, ordering him once more to drink his milk. Two of Two held firm, the bottom lip creeping out another centimetre, the protesting wail growing louder. Impasse. Under such circumstances it's hard to find a way out. One doesn't want to cave in to the kind of absurd logical tangental thinking that kids thrive upon, however it seems completely insane to start the day off having a raging fight with your kid over something as trivial as a cup of milk.

I intervened again, this time not being so stupid as to introduce logic into the equation. I turfed Two of Two out of the kitchen, dispatching him to get dressed and clean his teeth. So, of course, the result of that was that he won, but at least it hadn't been TPCKAM - the parent at the centre of the storm - who had made the final capitulation, and neither did I pack him off with a pat on the head and a quiet word of sympathy. He retreated upstairs to blub some more, because at least the tone of the parental capitulation had been so harsh that he hadn't realised he'd won.

We all have to pick our fights, but sometimes you end up in the middle of one which you know you're not going to win, wish you hadn't started, which defies all logic and which is very difficult to get out of.

Hmm...that's reminding me of something, but I can't exactly think what it is.