Good news....

Hooray! I have regained control of my blog from the evil googlemonster!

Surrealism at home - 3

A lithe Oriental lady of my close acquaintance and I frequently start the day with a conversation that runs broadly along these lines.

"Have you finished in the shower, my darling?"

"I'll be out in a moment, dearest."

"Can you mind the freshly-fed Guthlac while I perform my ablutions, Precious Jewel of the Orient?"

"I am already running late, Thruthelthrolth son of Ethelbreth. What you ask is impossible."

"But as to the young Guthlac, Most Favoured Daughter of the Yellow Emperor?"

"You'll have to take him into the bathroom with you, lord of the semi-detached mead-hall."

"But that is - and I freely admit my shortcomings in this area O Glowing Lantern of the Huaren - beyond my powers."

"You are in this respect a typical man, he of whose DIY and garden-related incompetence the bards sing extended comic lays, in that you find multi-tasking beyond your pitiful handful of so-called competencies."

"So are you in fact telling me, Paragon of Wifely Control of the Nansha, that you are better at multi-tasking than I, a fact which I am more than ready to grant you?"

"That is undeniable, O ring-loser and sword bender."

"Then why can't you have Guthlac in the bathroom with you?"

"Stop talking now."

Just a quick shout....

... for the Roaming Trail event. I'll be there if I can...

Surrealism at home - 2

The other day, I was out in the garden viewing - with considerable sadness - the latest attempt by the foxes to excavate a major development underneath the decking.

Guthlac had come out with me, and was dancing around on the lawn waving a plastic mattock (part of a set of child's gardening tools which a well-meaning friend had given him in the vain and naive hope that he would employ them for honest horticultural labour rather than whacking his sister on the kneecaps) and chanting "Working together, we get the job done! Working together, we get the job done!"

In an attempt to enter his cultural world, I asked him "Are you being Bob the Builder?"

"No, I'm a axer."

"You're an axeman?"

"Yes. I'm a axeman."

I believe one should work with one's children's enthusiasms. So I'm buying him a real axe and a fox identification guide.

The blog-life balance, and how to achieve it. Sort of. Sometimes.

Alert readers will doubtless have been wondering what I've been doing these past months. The short answer is "having a life", away from the keyboard.

"What is this 'life' of which you speak?" some of them doubtless wish to ask.

Well, today I had the following interaction with my offspring, Djangolina (12) and Guthlac (3).

"We have to eat up the leftovers that are in the fridge. There's one portion of burgers and pasta bake, one portion of rice and stir-fry, or the soup and a sandwich option. Guthlac?"

"Burger an' pasta bake, please."

"Certainly. Djangolina?"

"Hmng?"

"What would you like?"

"Same as him."

"By all the tuneless shriekings of Rkslthrlp, blind idiot god of swamp, fen and parts of Milton Keynes - what part of 'one portion' dost thou not understand, wench?" I explained, hurling my horned helmet to the rush-strewn flagstones of our semi-detached mead hall.

"Oh. Sorry. Chicken-and-leek soup and a sandwich then."

I relaxed my grip on the plaits of the visigothic handmaiden I had seized in my annoyance and lowered her back onto the mead-bench. "And would you prefer your sandwich cut into triangles or squares?"

"Triangles, please."

"Triangles it shall be. Pass the two-handed axe, there's a dear..."

Black Country wisdom

Last week - being the half-term break - saw us returning home to the Dudley area for a brief holiday. While there, we took Guthlac to the slightly shabby but nonetheless enjoyable Dudley Zoo, one of his favourite places.

While trekking round the reptile and creepy-crawlies house, we overheard the following dialogue:

Small girl (standing nervously in front of the tarantulas): Mummay! Iss freakin' me owt!
Mother (from round corner): Well doe look arrit then.

Sound common sense, as so often found in this so down-to-earth part of the country.

And widely applicable, I believe. Make someone called Aynuk UN secretary-general, and many of the sources of global angst would disappear.

"We are deeply offended by the blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)!"
"Well doe look at them then."

"We deeply oppose the idea of building a mosque in our beautiful, Christian city."
"Well doe look arrit then."

"This celebrity magazine has Katie Price on the cover."
"Doe look arrit then. In fact, bairn it. Bairn all celebrity magazines."

I'd vote for it.

Dungeons, Dragons and Ballpits

When I was a geeky teenager with bad hair, I and some similarly afflicted chums found solace from our socially disadvantaged state by retreating into the imaginary world of Dungeons and Dragons, where all fights could be sorted out by rolling several 20-sided dice and doing an immense amount of looking stuff up in tables, and all women were well-muscled, clad in skintight leather and entirely imaginary.

One of my pals in this undertaking - in fact the one who had introduced the rest of us to the pastime - was a particularly sadistic plump boy named Lucas. Lucas had a vicious streak and often acted as Dungeonmaster - nothing to do with naughty goings on in leather underwear (fortunately, as you'd agree if you'd seen him) - but rather the person who designed the virtual dungeon which the rest of us would explore in our alter-egos as Halfkutt the Barbarian Warrior, Thruthelthrolth the Wizard and Gimni the Dwarf or some such.

"There is a door on the right. What do you want to do?" Lucas would ask neutrally.
"We'll open it!"
[Consult tables, look at graph-paper, roll dice]
"A huge spiked steel ball on a chain has swung down out of the darkness."
[We throw dice against our dexterity scores]
"Your head has been smashed to pulp, splattering your brains 20 feet down the passageway and qualifying you for a job teaching classics at Wellington!" he would announce with an evil grin.

I often wonder what happened to him. Last Friday I found out - he's designing softplay areas for small kids. It was pouring with rain, so the usual Friday session at the park that Guthlac and I enjoy was off. A quick internet search revealed an appealing-looking softplay venue not too far away, so off we went.

For those without small kids, let me briefly outline what a softplay area is - it's basically a large industrial building (usually a converted warehouse) containing a few tables, a snackbar and a massive construction made of scaffolding covered in brightly coloured vinyl padding and containing a labyrinth of walkways, slides, rope ladders, tunnels and ball-pits. The basic idea is that parents take their kids along, post them into the labyrinth and then sit down for a cup of tea until the kids escape.

Except that Guthlac - a kindly and generous boy - wanted his hapless father to share the fun experience, having failed to register that all the tunnels, passageways etc were designed to small kid scale rather than overweight middle-aged man scale.

Worming my way uncomfortably after him, I suddenly heard in my mind's ear the sepulchral voice of Lucas saying "You have attempted to squeeze between two rollers and have become trapped halfway into the Death Ballpit of Nagoth-Rha. A bevy of evil goblins disguised as small children will now pelt your bald head with brightly-coloured plastic balls while you squeal like a pig, enhancing their enjoyment considerably."

I hope he goes bankrupt.