Normalcy, And The Search For Comedy

I don’t feel greatly inspired to write Kids, And Why You Shouldn’t Eat More Than One For Breakfast at the moment. Maybe it’s the general gloom of midwinter, albeit this is a very half-hearted winter, as if Mother Nature just can’t muster up the fight to have a go at global warming, having put in such a sterling performance last February when it didn’t rise above minus ten the whole month. Maybe I’m getting too involved in writing the latest Barney Thomson adventure. It’s tough to switch lightly between anecdotal comedy about your children, and writing a scene where an old woman gets her head brutally panned in by a guy in a ninja outfit. Actually, maybe it’s not too hard.

So, I think the most likely reason is two-fold. Firstly, the kids aren’t really doing anything funny at the moment. I keep saying to them, do something wacky and daft, or say some really cute kid-type thing that I can write about, but they’re just not doing it. They just sit there and shrug, or look at me like I’m really sad and say, ‘Like, whatever gramps, just because you’ve lost your mojo, don’t expect us to compensate for your total lack of artistic talent. Why don’t you just make stuff up anyway, that’s what you usually do?’

Every now and again the Wee Man comes out with some Nietzschian-level little statement of great profundity, and there are obviously occasions when I include these in the blog, though usually just the ones about my swearing. However, I don’t want to slide into that thing where I write about every little cute remark the kid makes which I think is brilliant because he’s My Kid, when out of context and out of family, everyone else is just going to be bored rigid. The school has a newsletter every week which has a piece entitled From the Mouths of Babes, where they print all the wacky and amusingly insightful snippets from the four and five year-olds. It’s, well, rubbish. They don’t even attribute the lines, so you never get to think, ‘How cute is my kid!’ You just read it every week and think that those kids could do with a new scriptwriter. I try not to fall into the same trap.

Secondly, we’re all getting on quite well at the moment, and there’s only so much humour in normalcy. They’re settled in school, they’ve got their after-school clubs, they occasionally have friends over or go round to their friend’s houses. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re happy, but they’re not fighting much, and more or less doing what is asked of them. The pre-school bunfight has become this smoothly oiled machine, rather than the totally chaotic, frenzied warzone of a year ago. We don’t even need Jack Johnson anymore, anyone will do. I’m even getting away with listening to Dylan. Suddenly an hour seems like an age, endless minutes into which we can easily fit everything that needs to be done. This time last year an hour had appeared to be this trivial little sliver of time, a mere fragment, during which everything was conducted at a frenetic pace, with shouting and arguments, quarrels and squabbles, endless disputes left unresolved as the cornflakes flew. For the moment it’s like an episode of the Waltons.

There is occasional wrangling over spelling words, but it’s like the teachers have decided to be kind leading up to the mid-term break, and even they have been fairly straightforward for the past couple of weeks. And so, consequently, child tears and parental shouting are running at significantly lower than normal levels. (This is not withstanding the apocalyptic row between One of Two and TPCKAM last night over cleaning out the rabbit cage. Two of Two and I sat in the other room looking awkwardly at each other, shrugging a lot and making comments about how weird and unfathomable women are. When things didn’t come to a swift conclusion, we hunkered down in the basement with a torch, a couple of blankets and three months supply of tinned vegetables and bottled water.)

We play bingo a lot. There’s fun. Kids love playing bingo, because there’s no ability involved and therefore they have a chance at genuinely beating you. One game of bingo every now and again is ok. Three or four a night is stretching it a little. And when your kid wakes you up at 3:37am to ask you if you’d like to shout Two Fat Ladies! while he and sister mark off numbers, your reply tends to be less than sympathetic.

There I go, making stuff up, although it is based on hearing the wee man creep down the stairs at 12.30 in the middle of the night to play the interactive Scooby Doo game on Boomerang. He at least had the decency to look embarrassed when his plans were thwarted. Not that it stopped him making another attempt at 5.30. Fortunately that time I was sleeping just inside the door, armed with a comedy baseball bat and a Freddy Kreuger mask.

Making stuff up again.

It was a Jason mask.

Next week: How it all went wrong…

The Third 'Snow' Test

Scenes from the tense final afternoon of the decisive 3rd Warsaw Test Match, which some commentators have started calling the 'Snow Test'.

Some people wouldn't play cricket in the snow when it's -8 degreees centigrade. But kids, they're usually up for anything. Especially when they don't have to leave their own back garden, and there's hot chocolate at the end of it all.