So what I am I doing now?

Its been a few years so I'm adding a blog entry just to say I'm now 36, the kids are in nursery and school - Ani is only doing half days and things are okay. The business lollopps from strength to strength and we get better at what we do.

I'm thinking that we might start a how to make films with a tiny budget sort of blog soon.

Our new web site goes live on friday its: www.enormousfilms.co.uk

My poet friend Tony 'the people's poet' Chestnut gave me this poem for me birthday, I've nowhere else to stick it so here it is:

He who has an eye with 24 frames a second
Captures and creates,
Turning the intangible
Into reality
Modern media magician
King of the pub quiz
36
The future is his
To turn the wrongs all right
Add colour and add light
Or to simply step aside of all the shite
He who's far more than alright
In fact he's fucking Enormous

Tesco Really Is Shit

No it is.

They have a group income of something like 146 billion pounds and they can't get it together to deliver a tin of fucking beans. Christ alive, if I had that much power I'd reward all of my workers with jet packs. Or at least solar powered bionic goat hooves so they could spring about merrily the isles.

But it seems Monsignor Leahy and his corporate monkeys have decided to spend the money on replacing the brains of their home shopping crew with the circuit boards from a 1980's Tandy home computer.

Today the Tesco van broke down. Fair enough, things break down.

The shopping didn't arrive. I did not panic, their vans never arrive on time. Well, hardly ever. I checked the answer phone messages. There was one from the driver saying that if I wanted my shopping, I should call 1471 and call him back.

He is a fuckwit.

Perhaps he might realise that if a phone goes straight to answer phone then they are more than likely on the phone therefore there is a 50% chance that the last person to call would be the person that they are phone to. Also, as they are currently speaking to someone, they might be the sort of person that gets more than one call a week and therefore leaving a number might be a good fucking idea.

The people in the call centre are fuckwits. Just useless fuckwits who follow scripts and procedures slavishly. People who will get to the end of their tiny lives and realise that they have wasted every single minute of their sorry pathetic existence on the phone, speaking to strangers about cabbages.

The home shopping manager in the Old Swan branch is rubbish: Unable to act or think laterally because her computer has been programmed by someone else.

So here we are, Tesco have all our money for the next 3-5 working days. They cannot deliver our shopping - because the computer won't let them. They cannot let us pick it up - the procedure doesn't work that way. They won't even just pick the items themselves and stick them in a taxi - so are kid can eat in the next 5-7 days (it is the weekend).

We are skint. It is my daughter birthday tomorrow.

Thanks Tesco.*

* Here is a picture of Sir Terry Leahy getting sucked off by a man while a monkey keeps dixie.

Dignity Dawg

Today I lost some dignity.

This is not unusual.

No. Not for me. My life is beset by minor indignities.

These are the sort of occurrences that shouldn't actually happen to people more than once per century. For instance, last week I lost my credit card - just moments after finding my wallet. This just seems like a minor, slightly ironic everyday event, I admit. But this morning, after waiting a week for the bugger to arrive, I hastily ripped open the envelope only to watch my new card fall out, magically float through the air, flutter around a bit and, almost intelligently, slip through a narrow crack between the floorboards into the dark space below the house where the bears and witches live.

But this is not the indignity I am talking about.

Also today, my business partner and fellow fuckwit decided, against my advice, that it would be wise to drive a hundred miles off route on the way to a meeting with a major client, making us an hour-and-a-half late. This wouldn't have been so embarrassing if last time we had done a job for them he hadn't got frustrated and ended up accidentally sending out a hundred DVD copies of a children’s theatre event that displayed the word BOLLOCKS when inserted into a computer.

But that isn't the massive crushing embarrassment I am talking about. Oh no.

Was it when The Lady snapped commands in front of friends today - and I obediently followed on, looking for all the world like her bitch?

Nah, that happens all the time. I'm a dad now and my own personality and capacity to make my own decisions has been gently badgered away and replaced with a clockwork timer, installed, owned and operated by The Lady.

No, no, it was none of these. It was... Let me set the scene for you:

I'd been in the car all day: attending meetings (late) and sorting out a new strand for the company (incomplete). We'd been stuck in traffic (boring) and had grabbed sausage rolls, bacon butties and Snicker bars when we could (bulky). Trundling back into Liverpool (monotonous) in a diesel engined Fiesta Classic (rumbling) then picking up the kids (grumbling). We took them to restaurant/adventure play area/pub/industrial unit and ate sizeable portions of pubgrubmuck (fudgy). By the time we got back to the house things were stirring.

Lets just say there was about to be an eruption, possibly a tsunami, in the region of the world I like to refer to as the "Specific Rim".

I made excuses about having to take some medicine and headed off up to the thunderbox. I'll spare you the details, but lets just say I didn't have to work too hard to achieve quite impressive results. I relaxed for a moment to read my current bog-book - one about the history of film editing when...

...When the door flew open and there stood, neatly framed in the doorway, was my family. My beautiful lady and my two adorable little girls all stood frozen, watching me mid-crap, legs apart with a book in my hands.

I stared back.

They stared harder.

I raised a quizzical eyebrow.

They raised six.

A pause.

I mumbled incoherently about not thinking it was bathtime just yet.

No reply.

Another mumble about there being no lock.

More silence.

I tried a wry smile.

Nothing.

"Hello Daddy!" Mali, our cute little two-year-old had ended the standoff.

I blinked.

They sniffed and wrinkled their noses.

"Mali, please close the door." I said evenly.

"No," she stated firmly, sitting down on the step, "I want to watch."

After that, I didn't really have the will to finish the job off. She sat staring intently whilst I tried to discretely wipe. When I had finished, she turned to The Lady and Ani, our baby, and declared:

"Daddy done a poo."

A truly beautiful moment.

Mr Moonlight

This actually happened:

Three in the morning , the babies are tucked up safely in bed. I am writing a silly little screenplay about zombies. It's going well. I don't think I'll ever produce it, but it's a nice little writing exercise. it's funny, it's a bit scary. I reminds me of all my favourite zombie films. But then:

Knock knock.

On the window.

What the fuck is that? It's gone three.

Knock knock knock.

Shit.

I gingerly approach the door.

Tap tap.

Who could it be at this hour?

Bang bang.

Alright alright. I grab the door handle fustrated that they'll wake the babies. Not thinking now. I let it fly open.

What?

And he's there, standing over me. He's six-foot four. His skin is blacker than the night. His hair sticks up from his head in short, crimson-tipped dreads . His eyes are also red. The whites. Red.

It is a nightmare.

He stands for a while staring at me with emploring eyes. Please, he says, please help me.

Is he the devil? I think. He's the devil.

Please help me. Please.

What? How?

I don't know where I am. Its raining I'm cold please help.

I don't have any money in the house. How do I help? What do I do? I don't know.

Let me in. Please let me in.

No. I say no - but am I being racist in this decision? He's in need. No, he's six-foot-four. Its the dead of night. Besides he's the devil. I know this, I've seen him in films.

Please let me in. I'm lost. I'm from Uganda.

This changes matters. The devil is not from Uganda. I'm fairly sure of this matter. I read it somewhere.

Please let me sleep on your floor.

What.

Sleep. I need sleep. Let me sleep on your floor.

I can't the babies are asleep. My partner is in bed. Besides, I like my surround sound system very much.

I'm lost. Nobody cares. No one will help. It's raining. I'm cold please help me. No one will help. Who do I turn to.

I'm starting to think I am in a parable. I could be the bad Samaritan or the stupid dick who got his stuff nicked when he invited the devil into his home.

Please.

He is shivering. Is it an act?

Please...

What...

I'm cold.

I...

Please...

All I can offer you is this coat. I'm sorry. I cannot invite you in however this will keep you warm. Take it. It's yours. I'm sorry I cannot offer anything else. I am not in a position to help further. Take this though, it is warm. I'm sorry.

Thank you. Thank you. There are good people. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I close the door, have another drink and continue writing.



Ten minutes later:

Knock knock.

What now?

It doesn't fit!

Sizzle

Christ Riding a Monkey! It's Fucking Hot!

I'll paint the image for you - a fat boy sitting under perpetual fans, bleeding lymphatic juice from every orifice. Unable to sleep, even a coma-inducing fiddle seems like too much effort. Cocoa is too hot and the leather couch draws a sticky puddle of ooze that dampens his already moist pants and has The Lady standing by with a Detol-soaked sponge.

I have commandeered all the ice-pops from the freezer and gaffa-taped them to my hairy chest. They melted three hours ago, but I am now too frightened to remove them.

I pulled a pube out once and it hurt.

The only thing I can think of doing to pass the time is to revive the old weblog.

I didn't post for ages because The Lady has been on maternity leave for a year. But since I last did, I've left my job at the theatre, resigned as a director of the old film company and set up an amazing, new, witty little company called "Enormous". We are brilliant - using film as a fun, creative tool rather than as a "perfect medium" we do viral campaigns, educational projects, low-budget docs and hardcore terrapin-porn.*

In a few weeks though, I'll have to take over the old house-husband duties again. I do this with a little bit of trepidation.

I’ve kind of got used to being only my own boss.

When I say my own boss – I mean of course being at the constant beck and call of the Lady.

Soon, she will go back to work and I’ll have no one to show me how to live.

She really is bloody brilliant actually, she has an infinite supply of energy and a very limited puddle of patience. This has the effect of putting a firecracker up the arse of everyone who comes into contact with her.

She has organised the babies into a routine that’s so regular they actually float to bed on a magic rug every night at precisely 6.45pm; She’s structured and managed the Enormous marketing campaign so we now actually work on a regular basis; She’s persuaded my incredibly creative yet somewhat laisser-faire business partner to spring into furious action and do stuff; Shes cooked home-made organic meals every day for the babies; Got me to give up booze and to live healthily and has discovered a new method of turning findus crispy pancakes into a form of pure copper sulphite.**

Me, well I’m still very good at lounging. I also do a great line of staring agog, into space. I’m good at agog. I tend to trance at the slightest thing. Just seeing a bright colour can wipe my mind and leave me frozen in the same position for up to a month.*** My energy isn’t to good either. I tend to get tired just being in the company of The Lady. It starts with a sore throat and a bit of an itchy eye. The next moment I am laid flat out in front of daytime telly, with a fuzzy mind.

She says I’m lazy.

I protest. “It’s the heat,” I say. “Its too hot.”

“Get out of the freezer,” she replies “You’ll defrost the organic baby food”

Its too late though, some of the ice-pops have now burst . They have refrozen and welded me to the sides.

Christ on a mountain gorilla! It really is cold in here. Still, I don’t think I could bear to detach the gaffa-tape.

Help! Lady! Help!

It may be a while before I blog again.




* The porn bit is not true at all. I did once lightly spank a tortoise though. It’s okay – I shot it first (through the shell), so it didn’t feel a thing.

** They actually taste a lot better that way.

***I’m very much like an old P.C. while she is like a new Mac.****

**** By that I mean computers – not ancient policemen and shiny overcoats.

On Hold

This little blog is supposed to reflect my time as a stay at home daddy.

At the moment The Lady is on maternity leave and I have accepted freelance theatre work and am I setting up a new media company.

So there's no bewildered rants for the time being.

I'm sorry about that. I was enjoying it greatly but there's no time.

I'll be back in April. During that time I'll try to fit in the occasional post.

Regards,

Nappyfever.

Yeast

Our youngest little monkey has gone on "nursing strike".

She has given up feeding.

I would have thought that being ten weeks old would preclude you from any sort of industrial action - but she is a Liverpool girl after all.

The original cause of the strike was a nasty little yeast infection in her mouth. After a little jaunt to our local (and absolutely fantastic) children's hospital, the infection has been quashed.

However, being a Scouser, the original event is remembered by her with feelings of anger, injustice and resentment. The pain is held dearly as a prize of embittered existence at the hands of a repressive state. Our neighbours have banded together to launch a campaign against such future infections and have demanded a full inquest as to who was to blame. A whole swathe of floral memorials have been laid outside our house. Local florists have bought new cars. Micky Starke and Jerry Marsden have staged a two-day Mersey Ferry vigil and my friend Pete Wylie has released the charity single "Mouth As Big As The Mersey".

I myself have embarked upon staging a community play called "Yeast" loosely based on the "typically scouse" characters from Carla Lane's "Bread". I hope to cast Louis Emmeric in the lead role as the down-trodden father "Tommy Boswellox" who can't get the alcoholic, middle-class, Tory doctor to stop flogging his servants and write a prescription with a steady hand.

Ani has been disseminating pamphlets to other babies and the strike action is likely to spread nationwide. Already 'dribbling pickets' have been sighted as far north as Southport and a number of direct action events involving chucked nappies and bum-stuff have occurred in the picturesque North-Wales town of Rhyl.

Our very own royal, Ricky Tomlinson, joined the hunger strike this afternoon. However, by late evening he was seen going out for chips.

This is how we actually live in Liverpool.

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!

Chalk and Cheese

We've never spent that much time together, me and The Lady. Since we've met, we've always been pretty much stuck fast upon that old treadmill of work.

In the last six years I've directed, written or devised forty-four plays and short films. All of them, bar three or four stinkers, have been really quite good, have hit their deadlines* and have generally been lovely and touched with a sort of befuddled genius. Of course, I've blown all the goodwill you get from doing excellent work by being rubbish at paperwork, forgetting meetings and not paying people on time because I've lost their invoices, forgotten their names and accidentally set fire to them.**

The Lady has been more productive, she has got a proper job with a proper company and been promoted and earned real money. Her role is to organise things, plan projects stringently, inform people of their roles and ensure that jobs are done in the correct order to the relevant time-scale on the right day of the week. She is very good at this sort of thing. Frighteningly good.

And now we are both at home together while she takes her maternity leave. Working together to look after two babies. Of course it's going so well, I mean our working methods are so similar....

I've always boasted to friends that we don't really argue, we talk through things rationally. What usually happens is this:

1) I state my case.

2) She pulls off a simple trick of emotional blackmail.

3) I apologise and cook supper.

This has worked for us for years. There is no point actually entering into an argument with The Lady anyway. She is convinced that she 100% right 110% of the time. Once, when she had left a broken glass in the sink and I cut my hand cleaning dinner-detritus out of the plug-hole, she asserted that it was my fault for (and I quote) "Cooking food with too many bits in."

As she will not take the blame for anything, I've developed a thick skin and selective deafness over the years. This has helped us both deal with what I regard as her minor mental illness.

But lately, what with two babies to take care of, a house to keep clean and time on our hands, we've just become hyper-sensitive to each other. Conversations now seem to go like this:

Lady: Pass me my glasses.

Me: What?

Lady: Don't you ever listen? God. PASS ME MY GLASSES

Me: Okay, where are they? Did you leave them upstairs? Are they in the car?

Lady: THEY'RE THERE! JESUS! I ONLY ASKED YOU TO PASS MY GLASSES!

Me: WELL, I ONLY ASKED WHERE THEY WHERE... Come on lets calm down a bit, you seem quite stressed.

Lady: WILL YOU STOP SAYING I'M STRESSED.

Me: Well, you are coming over a bit stressed.

Lady: WILL YOU STOP SAYING THAT. IT'S YOU THAT'S STRESSED!

Me: No, I fine.

Lady: YOU ARE. EVERYTHING YOU SAY SEEMS AGGRESSIVE AND SARCASTIC

Me: Like yeh,

Lady: THERE YOU GO AGAIN! FULL OF STRESS.

Me: I'm not.

Lady: STRESS...

Me: LOOK, WILL YOU STOP SAYING I'M STRESSED. I'M FINE. I'M NOT STRESSED. IT'S YOU THAT'S STRESSED. CAN'T YOU SEE, IT'S YOU... YOU'RE PROJECTING YOUR STRESS ON TO ME. GOD, THIS IS FRUSTRATING GRRRRRRRRRR. ANNNGGGHHH. BAHHHHHH.

Lady: Will you calm down Jake.

Then I apologise and make supper.



* Oh apart from that breakthrough commission three years ago - where I got writers block and went to the pub for six months.

** Actually only one person, and it was a small fire.

An Anthology of Infant Turds

What a shitty few weeks we have just had.

A new baby at home, a toddler with a stinking case of the wild shites, not to mention my own forays into the world of demi-vegetarian irritable bowels. It's the stress, you see.

This home has been host to the 2005 shit-olympics. Main events include arse*- wiping, mopping, gagging, bagging, retching and slam dunking the little cornish-pastie** shaped nappies*** into the bin. Not to mention the most important event of all - shirking. Finding exactly the right time to leave the room: which is just as two pre-school botties blow a-blast, leaving your partner to deal with the whole debacle.

The prolonged direct contact with cack has instigated my scientific mind to categorise the various substances I have discovered lurking deep within a baby's underwear.

I proudly present to you: An Anthology of Infant Turds

1) Meconium
This is the Nosferatu of all shits. It's the default, factory-setting poo that comes ready installed in your baby before you get it out of the box. An intense black blob that strangely emits a luminous yellow juice. It is best avoided. If you do come into contact with it, the blob is viscous enough to be craned away with a single cotton bud. However, the juice is all-pervasive and can only be removed with an orbital-sander.

2) Shit-Tsunami
A 'normal' shit will fill a nappy. The Shit-Tsunami fills the room, or at least the baby-grow. How the hell does a two-week-old baby produce enough muck to reach the arm-pits? By sheer willpower? I don't know, but I am considering moving house.

3) Whole-Grain Mustard
Speckled yellow filth. Do not spread on frankfurters.

4) The Stinking Walnut
Has the baby just done a poo? You check the nappy: No it must have just been a fart. But why does the smell not dissipate? Half an hour later you discover the Stinking Walnut lurking guiltily, deep within the nappy.

5) The Odorless Pat.
This is the exact opposite of the walnut. No smell whatsoever. A pound and a half of fresh manure awaits casual inspection. Often goes undetected for hours, if not days. It may need chipping off with a chisel.

6) Poo-dini
The escapologist poo. Has many sub categories including The Runny Omelette, The Chocolate Football and my favourite: The Shitey Slingshot - employed by older babies with the necessary motor skills needed to flip bum-chutney using nappy-leverage.

7) Three Course Meal
During the second stage of weaning, food stays quite undigested. You can clearly identify individual meals, often within the same stripey stool. "Oh the apple pudding looks nice!" Bring a spoon. Waste not want not.

8) Kinder Surprise
Lets face it, every day has something new to offer the bemused and bewildered parent. A different variation every four hours. Something for everyone!

If anyone else was coming to stay in your house who continually shat themselves, screamed for food and was regularly sick upon your shoulder, you'd make polite excuses. But you put up with it gleefully for your progeny knowing full well that as soon as you enter a similar state, they'll stick the house on the market, bung you in a home and take an all inclusive holiday in the Caribbean on the proceedings.

Parenthood hey, all things considered,

it's mostly shit.


* For US readers: this is english for ass. Ass - meaning bottom, not asiatic mule or donkey. Arse is so much more of an expressive word. It's long vowels give much more room for manoeuvre of emphasis. Ass is over before its begun, it has too much assonance - making it sound a wee bit camp.

Speaking of bottoms, the Americans call them fannies, which is our term for front-bottom. It's time we got the whole pan-atlantic bum-thing sorted out for good!

** Or burrito perhaps in the USA.

*** If you are American, I mean diapers. But what's the point of speaking English if you keep on making your own words up? Come the next millennia, you'll have invented new words for absolutely everything and will have created an entirely new language based around requests for carbohydrates and animal fats - but by then it won't matter, the Chinese will rule the earth and will have requisitioned your fat arses to make char-sui dumplings.

Ani

I am proud to announce that our second daughter, Ani Fflur* was born on Friday 19th August at 1.30am.

She is beautiful and she is big. 9lb 12oz at birth to be precise. So big in fact that she could not be delivered in the normal manner. She was born by cesarian.

Its a bit being like ordering a sofa, only to find upon delivery that it's too large for the front door. There's a lot of humming and harring; huffing, puffing and head scratching. Finally, after a protracted struggle you realise that the front window will have to come out.

The Lady in her usual insurpressable manner is back home, running back and forwards, dancing with our one-year-old in the kitchen and vacuuming the floors, the walls, the celling and my face.**

Being a big baby, Ani is very settled. She is feeding well. In fact that is all she is doing: feeding.

This has caused me to ponder, "What would it be like to have an obese kid?" I mean, I'm not exactly svelte myself. I've put on a fair bit of pork since I heard the words, "Jake, I think I might be pregnant," and faced up to fact that I could no longer live my life in the manner of Keith Richards on a stag weekend.

But a big fat kid?

You do see them, don't you? Fat families. Pastie munching parents in wide corduroys, making lightsabre noises with their thighs; their arses - a strange undefined entity between their back-fat and leg-spread - gently swaying in the breeze; with junior in tow, pounding the pavements with his fat feet: a needy whine emanating from his chocolate stained gob, reiterating the fact that his brittle, under-exercised ankles are simply not up to the job carrying his gallumphing heft the full distance to the sweet shop. Come on, its bad enough a child having to grow up with the stigma of a massive dad and a fatty mum without force-feeding the bugger so he grows toffee-tits by the age of ten.

The other angle, I suppose, is the bloater amongst the sticklebacks. The fat kid in the thin family. How embarrassing would that be? "I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, Mary. Unfortunately, she is too fat and hideous to be seen in public, so instead I have brought a marionette of Chancellor Schroder to the christening. Look, I can make him dance..."

Yes, I know, I've been a bit cruel to the fatties. If we all become hideously distended and wobbly-boated in the future I probably deserve all I get. Who knows, next time I move house I might have have to remove the window just to get the bloody kids in.

One thing is for certain though, big or small, fat or thin, there's nothing like looking at your new-born daughter fast asleep in you arms and just trying to imagine just who that person will be.

Promise. Hope.

All just magical.

*Pronounced Annie Flee-ur. Fflur is the old Welsh word for flower.

** Well, I was foolish enough to eat musli.

Swept Up

Still no sign of the new baby.

Christ on a bike! What the hell do you have to do to get a birth around these parts?

Its six days overdue now.

This wouldn't be an issue if the lady's nesting instinct wasn't in overdrive. She's fastidious at the best of times. But now. Oh, heaven help us.. Carpets are being beaten. Wooden floors have been vacuumed, swept and mopped until the varnish has all but dissapeared. The brushed-steel stove is now smooth and shiny. Both myself and our daughter are covered in a thick crust of polish. Somebody stop her!