A Boozy Do

This little blog is supposed to be about family life, which for the past few weeks, I've not had an awful lot of.

The Lady went away with the two babies for a week or so. She often does this when I have a play in its final weeks of rehearsal. It saves her the bother of living with someone who wakes up in the middle of the night bellowing stage directions and sweating, of having to do that monotonous supportive-spouse thing or of having to go to the theatre where it's hot, dark and boring. *

When The Lady goes away I tend to revert back to the behaviour I exhibited as a single bloke.**

It's quite crazy really, I usually live the life of average family guy. My social life now consists of four pints drunk once a week in my local. I participate in the same old conversations with my best friend, my co-writer and a business partner. These are all unfortunately the same person.

We continually repeat ourselves, but don't point this out to each other as we enjoy the ritual. Often, I will stop him in the middle of a story to remind him that he has missed a bit. This doesn't seem odd to either of us. If we have company, we will jointly recount stories - swapping over the role of first person effortlessly. At these times the stories are always about how wild we were before we became fathers. We are, I fear, becoming old farts.

But when The Lady goes away, people don't stop calling me. Somebody must send up a flare or something, or perhaps there's an announcement on local radio: "Jake Ryan who was missing, presumed familied away, was tonight let out on reprieve for a few days. All those who would like to buy him beer should call his mobile now. You should, however, be warned that he will smoke all your fags because he has now 'given up'."

I always intend to have a quiet few nights in but as soon as I get snuggled on the couch up with a mug of tea, intending to watch a japanese film, the phone rings as I take my first sip.

"I can't leave you sitting in by yourself, I'll be along in a taxi in five minutes - we'll have a few." This without doubt means many. I jump at the chance - anything to avoid watching a three hour long, black and white japanese film. This cycle is repeated night after night for a full week. The film gradually becoming a hollow excuse for continual debauchery.

Hangovers are supposed to get worse as you get older - but the ones I used to get in my mid-twenties were really bloody awful. They would be an unrelenting eight-hour roller-coaster of vomiting, headache, paranoia and dry heaves, all accompanied by an deepening sense of mortality and a good slug of existentialist angst.

These days its more like I become a pensioner for a while. I feel fuzzy headed and full of ache. I need frequent naps and milky drinks. Now they last for about a week. I expect they will get longer and longer until I finally do become a pensioner and just stay that way.

The Lady and the babies came back last week expecting a nice bit family time over the half term break. Unfortunately, I totally forgot that I was running a performance project all week. This messed up all the schedules timetables and routines that she holds dear. It caused all sorts of problems. She had to take Ani to have her jabs by herself. A planned family day out was ruined. Tempers were tested, words were spoken.

I forgot to cancel my driving lesson as well.

What came over me?

How could I forget about a week-long project?

Oh, that's right...

... I was quite hungover.



* Besides, there's something a bit uncool, maybe a bit amateur about having all your family and friends turn up to a show when you're thirty-three. It takes you straight back to that awful moment after a school play where you emerge front-of-house to wallow in a puddle of parental approval. Even at the time it felt a bit awkward, quite a shallow experience - particularly as my dad had already pissed off down the pub.


** I say single - in fact as a desperate serial monogamist, the longest I have ever been without a girlfriend since I was nineteen is three weeks. Rubbish I know. I can't help it.
I am actually referring to the times when I had my own place and several friends who were over the age of two.

Still Waters

I'm feeling very calm at the moment.

"Oh, good for you!" you might say to me.

But the thing is, calm is not a state I am accustomed to. It's not something that feels natural. Harassed, stressed, lost, bemused, angry, befuddled, distracted and moody are all things I do on a daily basis. But not C-A-L-M.

I usually wake from a fitful, snorey, asthmatic sleep-like state, often after dreaming that I have been beset by zombies,* and stumble downstairs to flop on to the couch. The Lady and the babies dance around me in a flurry of breakfast, whilst I grunt and watch a random news channel through one rheum-encrusted eye. The Lady then brings me tea, not because I prefer it to coffee, but because she has had all the coffee - every last drop - and is now jumping through flaming hoops, reciting Welsh poetry and polishing the light-bulbs. Incapable of lifting the cup, I wait for it to become luke-warm before tipping it down my snore-battered gullet in one slosh. I then precede to sneeze repeatedly, twice a second, for the next fifteen minutes until I am completely worn out and ready for bed.

It's at that point I realise that I have to write a report, arrange a rehearsal, take the babies to the park, return DVD's that are attracting punishing late fines, have a driving lesson and spend three hours on public transport to travel to a two hour workshop in order to earn some money to give to the student loans company.

It is also at this point that I consider giving up entirely, putting the children into care, selling the missus on eBay and having myself committed to a home for the gently bewildered.

When every day starts this gleefully its difficult not to laugh (hysterically and for hours).

But now I feel C-A-L-M.

Calm just feels wrong, it's like everything is just so easy, my brain is functioning, rational decisions are being made in seconds, witty comments are coming out on cue. If this is how normal people feel all the time, its like they have been cheating at life - taking a cheery shortcut and heading me off at the pass, whilst I have struggled uphill under the weight of a metaphorical backpack filled with angst and recrimination.

Usually my mind is traversing a different time-zone but right now I am entirely present. I feel so controlled, so happy. Like the Buddha perhaps - or at least a cheery postman, one that always whistles, even when the dogs are after him.

But it is not right. Not normal. I keep on catching myself and thinking, "God I feel calm." That in it's self is alien. Plus, I'm worried that much of my creative output is dependent on a sense of unresolved guilt and self loathing and that all I'll be left with is this C-A-L-M.

I'm hoping it might go away of it's own accord.

Is it possible to get something for it? "Doctor, for the past eight years I have been suffering from Generalised Anxiety Disorder. It left without saying goodbye. I miss it."

If not, I may have to go out out and drink eight pints of Stella Artois and be insulting to everybody I respect and admire. It's worked before...

The thing is, I don't even fancy a drink at the moment. It's like my soul has spent a couple of months in the Priory without informing me. I might have reached a great spiritual epiphany but nobody has let me know about it. Maybe it was a prize from Readers Digest, but I threw the envelope away.

It's quite disconcerting. Worrying in fact. Perhaps its a genetic illness, my grandfather was manic-depressive. He spent a lot of time on mental wards making strange noises. Maybe it's a chemical imbalance, something caused by a small tumour on a gland somewhere. It could even be something terrible growing in my head. Oh god, what's happening to me? I feel terrible! I can't breathe. Oh god I feel anxious!

Ahhh, that's better.

It' good to be back.

*On average I have about two zombie dreams a month. I don't know why. Lately I have started to quite enjoy them.

Soft Play, Hard Lessons.

This is my daughter Mali.

I swore when she was born that I wouldn't become one of those strange, overprotective odd dads that scream at other peoples children and shout in the faces of sheepish mums and dads who's children have just spilt milk on my child's new shellsuit.

I have never in my life felt violent towards a child.

Lord knows, I've had the opportunity. I've worked as a youth worker, a play-group leader, a children's theatre facilitator and museum re-enactor (dressed as a dapper Edwardian Sailor, tying knots on the dockside). I have been severely tested over the years: By abusive kids from hard areas of Liverpool whose dads would smash your knees for confiscating their home-made knife; With whole classrooms stacked to the gills with statemented 'behavioural disorder" kids press-ganged into a drama workshop by a teacher who surrendered to drudgery years before; And most bizarrely a group Orthodox Jewish kids, in the full Hassidic regalia, surrounding me on the dockside and chanting "YOU ARE A SOFTY, YOU ARE A SOFTY! *

But yesterday I felt like kicking a four-year-old's head in.

Don't call social services yet, I have my reasons.

We took the babies to a 'soft play area'. You know the type of place - the whole thing is like a spongy climbing frame that serves chicken nuggets. Children run feral in socks while mothers gather together in quacks** wearing badly fitting, practical clothes and showing obvious signs of nicotine withdrawal.

The only other male who was there approached me sheepishly with the opening gambit, "I can think of better ways of spending a saturday." I smiled, but when he asked the question, "Have you heard any of the footy scores?" I was forced to admit that I don't follow football, which in Liverpool is tantamount to admitting to enjoying dressing as the late queen-mother and going out to tickle policemen. He turned away in disgust.

Ani, our little newborn babba, is too little to enjoy the delights of the play-zone. Or should I say too young. She really is growing very fast. The other day, she put on 4oz overnight*** She is on the 98th percentile of development and although she is only six weeks-old, she has already grown out of three-month baby clothes.

Mali, who is sixteen months old, took to the toddler area like a true pro. Chubbling up the ramps, squeaking down the slides, getting stuck in the pipes and generally just being the cutest, smiliest little monster you ever did see. I was so proud to see her her take on such challenges as the 'big step', 'the steep ramp' and 'the throng of babies'. But then it all went a bit sour...

She was the littlest one in there, you see, and unfortunately, there are some small boys who like to pick on the littlest people they can. It is my theory that little boys like this, unchecked, grow up to be politicians, policemen and driving instructors.****

There is a new, more sensible, social theory being banded about right now that you can spot signs of criminal behaviour in children as young as two. If that is the case, then this little four year-old is going to grow into a fully-fledged twat. The little ginger sod just wouldn't let Mali alone. Every time she went to climb up a ramp or slide down a slope, he was there, doing kung-fu kicks in the air directly in front of face and side-swiping her off the slide.

I smiled and told him that "she's only a little baby," and that he should play with children his own age. To my surprise he fixed me with a hard stare, daring me to challenge him further.

I had hardened his resolve. Deep inside, I started to suspect he had beaten me.

I moved into the play area to protect Mali, eying the boy feverishly, waiting for him to make his move.

He struck.

It was at that point I realised that he really had won. Mali burst into tears and I began to comprehend that there was not much I could do without hurting the child or becoming so angry I terrified him into floods of tears. The latter option was starting to seem tempting when The Lady summoned us both out of the toddler zone, admonishing me with the entirely correct advice that "you shouldn't get into the business of telling other people's children off".

As we left, the little sod stood triumphant, in the middle of the pen, his arms folded insolently across his chest. He had won.

We went home and shared a bag of jelly sweets (vegetarian, of course).

I couldn't stop thinking about it though. I had been beaten by a four year-old.

My eyes filled with tears as I bathed Mali that evening. My baby daughter had suffered her first bout of bullying - and he got away with it.

Until Ani puts on a bit more bulk and can fight on behalf of us all, does anyone know of any seven year-old hitmen? Ones that can give a really nasty Chinese burn?

Thought not.

You bunch of softies.


* I've never told anyone this before but several of the children were also chanting "My father's richer than you." I've selectively edited out this bit of the story for years, being a liberal softy who doesn't wish to perpetuate stereotypes. See, they were right about the softy thing and the fact that their fathers were richer than me - I mean, their dads weren't hanging around a dockside dressed like a clipperty-clop-nobhead for £5.50 an hour, where they?

** I can't find a collective noun for parents. I mean there's some great ones about - a wunch of bankers, a thicket of idiots, a shuffle of bureaucrats, a hangout of nudists and an ambush of widows. No parent noun I'm afraid. I've made up the term 'a quack of parents' after the noise they make just trying to be heard.

*** Or maybe she was just harbouring a massive turd.

**** I will accept my own driving instructor from this distinction as despite being misguidedly right wing, he is mostly okay and was obviously bullied as a child.

How Does This Look?

I've been creating this site on a mac using Safari. It seems fine on that - but I've just had a look using Explorer - not too good at all.

If things look askew from your perspective, could you leave a comment - so I can figure out what's going wrong.

*I've republished with a new blogskin. I hope that this has sorted out all the difficulties.

Lordy, I just want to write funny stuff, not dabble with html!