The Stay At Home Dad

I decided to write this Bloggetty thing as of today. Well, its been building up within me for some time. The need to vent my spleen, convey my frustrations and have a bloody good moan.

Moaning incidentally, is what the English excel at. Not directly complaining, because that runs the risk of "making a show" of one's self. We would willingly face a firing squad rather than speak out of turn. In fact several Englishmen were shot by mistake during the first world war because they didn't want to embarrass themselves by speaking out of turn and "making a show" and cause the whole execution rota to have to be re-jigged etc.*

No, we moan. We moan insipidly, like grey rain. Not to the waiter who has served us up a turd when we asked for the sirloin, or the mechanic who has just charged us £100 for pissing in the oil tank, no. That would be too direct. We wheedle away at the poor bastard next to us on the bus or our partners or workmates or the people down the pub. Particularly in the pub. In fact the English public house is founded on the national character of negativity. Nobody walks in to a boozer with a wide smile on their face and declares how wonderful the weather is, that they love their wife and that the system of local public transport actually tip-top. They would be forcibly ejected by a throng of curmudgeons (or at least moaned about when they had gone).

The only people on Earth who can moan more than the English are the Welsh** and they are moaning about us..

I don't, on the face of it, have an awful lot to complain about. I have a beautiful girlfriend, an adorable one year-old daughter and another little monkey on the way.***

Apart from the fact that this year I gave up work to look after my daughter.

When I say gave up, I mean going part time. When I say work I mean playing silly games and going to parties for a living (I am a youth theatre leader and filmmaker) And when I say look after, I mean roll about on the floor singing a selection of songs from Ballamory. (Though I occasionally make room for a ditty penned by a Fimble)

The thing is, English people only settle down and have children when we have run out other things to harp on about. When we have driven away all those who would listen, if only we could stop moaning for a second. When other humans get sick of us, we simply make our own. Children are our captive audience and, strangely, the only people who we don't mind complaining to or making a show of ourselves in front of.

You know what?

They could be our salvation.


*Not actually true.
**Completely true.
*** That is a turn of phase that I have used to mean baby. Not a real monkey. I have repeatedly asked for one those and the answer from my girlfriend is always no.