I just took a quiz online entitled 'Do you hate Phil Collins?' This was the result:
Do you hate Phil Collins?
Congratulations! You hate Phil Collins. You blame him for every mishap that occurs during your everyday life, and with good reason! Pat yourself on the back, you're a good person. Take this quiz!
This doesn't actually do justice to how much I hate that smug, dreary, ugly, Tory, arrogant, dumping-by-fax, scumsucking, Dairy-Milk-ad-ruining, criminally-overrated shiny-headed twat. I hate hate hate him and can't believe that he's undergoing a minor resurgence. Why? What has happened to the world? It's worse than global warming. In fact, Phil is probably responsible for global warming. It's all the methane he produces. I've despised him since I first saw him on TOTP with a pot of paint on his piano 'singing' that turgid dull-fest piece of shit so-called song 'In the Air Tonight', actually the worst record of all time. Closely followed by 'Easy Lover'.
I hate Phil Collins even more than I hate Margaret Thatcher.
This morning, as I padded to the loo (I like to think of myself 'padding', rather than 'staggering' or 'groping my way', both of which are actually more accurate) for my first number one of the day, Buffy cried out "It's snowing."
And so it was. Poppy was very excited as we ran out into the garden to show her the virgin whiteness. Well, excited in the same way you are when you watch a really nasty horror film or go to a job interview or are forced to eat the jellied bit off the edge of a pork pie, the last of which hasn't happened to me since my childhood but I still remember it, oh yes. I honestly thought Pops would be excited by the snow, but she really hated it. 'Get me back indoors, now,' she cried, rather than lying down and precociously creating a snow angel. Shame. I tried to tell her that by the time she's old enough to appreciate snow, global warmng would have transformed Britain into a tropical resort over-run by giant scorpions, but she didn't listen. Just wait till I show her this blog (as soon as she's learned to read).
I just broke off from this post to cut Poppy's fingernails, to prevent the nursery from writing "Can you please cut Poppy's fingernails please" in her book, which they do every week. I hope the neighbours didn't hear all the screaming and call the police.
Poor Pops has had a rough week, what with having bronchitis and not being able to go to nursery. This meant that Sara had to take most of the week off work. And what with all that stress and the added trauma of me having to go to sleep every night with olive oil in my ears (which is another story) I would describe this week as 'pretty shit', except for one super duper event:
I got my new iMac. 20", 2.0Ghz, 250MB HD, superdrive, in case you're interested in that techie stuff. More importantly, it's so so so beautiful. The screen shines like a giant diamond that's fallen into a vat of Mr Sheen. It's well lovely.
Sara loves it too, mainly because it has a new version of Photobooth on it with even more special effects and video. I know, it's just too exciting. Here are just a few of the hundreds of photos we've taken in the last few days.
The snow has all gone now. Damn, my hopes of school being closed in the morning are dashed.
Welcome to the new look Roost. Granted, not as new-look as the new look Sara Sizzle, which really does look new. I've just stuck a picture at the top of the page which almost exactly represents my life. Except for the absence of a pint-sized tyrant called Poppy, who was just a twinkle in my winkle when this pic was taken.
The best piece of advice I received this week was from a Samuel L Jackson lookalike (if Samuel L lived on a pension in West Norwood) in the doctors' waiting room.
"Let me give you some advice, son," he said, shaking his head ruefully. "Never get old. When you get old your wife just puts you in the corner and..." He waved his hand in an impersonation of a woman gesturing dismissively at her once-proud husband, who now spends his days on the sofa moaning about his bad knee and his cataracts. Or sitting in the doctors' waiting room moaning about his bad knee and his cataracts to strangers.
I don't want to get old. As I've mentioned before, having a younger girlfriend helps, but then someone kindly left a comment telling me that Sara will probably run off with a younger man in ten years, as "there are many interesting young men in their 20s who like older women", thus leaving me alone with my male pattern baldness and my bad knee, wishing I had a wife to put me in the corner and wave dismissively at me.
I wouldn't be feeling so bad if the clocks hadn't gone forward last night, thus robbing me of an hour of my life. "You'll get it back in six months," I hear you cry. But what if I die in the next six months? That's an hour I could have spent doing something important like, er, playing Super Mario Galaxy or buying towels in the Croydon branch of Primark.
Happy Easter, dear readers. There's a snow blizzard outside, Buffy is making fake bacon sarnies and Poppy is playing with a Kinder egg and a box of Ferrero Rocher ('With this gift, I am spoiling Sara.')
Buffy bought me a Dr Who egg and, excitingly, a David Tennant/Doctor Who figure. Very macho. He even has his own handbag. Now I need to get a Billie Piper/Rose so they I can make them kiss and stuff.
We visited Croydon yesterday. I know, I know, life doesn't get any more exciting. Actually, it does: we went to Primark and bought some towels. This was because I put our white towels in a black wash and you can guess what colour they came out.
I spend a large part of my waking hours at the moment fighting two consumer desires. One is for Guitar Hero III on the Wii. The other is for an iPhone. My Orange contract expires next week so now would be the perfect time to switch. But...but... It's so expensive. And I'm so skint. And if I got one, Sara would steal it and use it to take endless photos with as well as checking out her millions of friends on Facebook. So I'm going to resist. Resist, resist... Must.... resist...
Poppy, at not quite 10 months, has a more fully-developed personality than most adults I meet. Here are some things I've learned so far over this Easter Weekend.
1. Poppy doesn't like men who wear glasses
All was well, though Poppy appeared a little consternated.
Daddy, there's something on your face.
Gimme!
Don't fight me, Daddy - I always win
Mwahahaha - that's better!
2. Crisps are a source of great joy and despair
Baby-rearing rule No 324: Don't eat crisps in the same room as your baby. One whiff of a crisp and Poppy turns into a potato-snack-scoffing monster, who will scream and scream until she has a soggy bit of crisp in one corner of her mouth, a glass-sharp shard jabbing her throat and choking her, causing a cycle of laughing and crying that Gary Lineker never warned us about. I have this terrifying image of Poppy turning into one of those children you see on the bus, podgy orange-tinged fingers stuffed into a bag of Wotsits, E-numbered up to their eyeballs. We won't allow this, of course. Poppy will be a fan of organic fruit snacks if it kills us.
3. Chocolate is even nicer than crisps
4. 'Can't Speak French' by Girls Aloud is the best video in the world, ever
There's something about the sight of Britain's second most popular girl band prancing saucily in full Regency get-up, coupled with the jaunty nursery rhyme tune, that sends Pops into paroxysms of delight. Me too. Except for the fact that Nicola, normally my favourite girl aloud, looks pretty awful in this vid.
By the way, her second favourite video is Nickelback's 'Rock Star', although the look in her eye as she stares at the endless parade of stars, playboy bunnies and Nickelback fans is one of transfixed fear rather than pleasure. Especially when she spies the massively fat girl in the front row of the concert at the end.
5. The less permitted Poppy is to play with something, the more she wants it
This morning I came into the room to find Poppy sitting on her mat. With the Playstation. Somehow she had wrestled it from the shelf and had it on her lap, with the controller in her hand. She hadn't quite worked out how to switch the TV channel and start playing a game. I give her two weeks.
Right now, she is pulling nappy sacks out of their packet and scattering them across the floor; also playing with a (closed) tub of Sudocrem, and eyeing up a set of knives, a box of matches and a chainsaw. Ooh, that little scamp.
6. Mummy is the best person in the world
When Sara walks into the room, Poppy smiles so wide that I fear her face will split. She pants with excitement. She just loves loves loves her mummy.
I often have revelations on the journey from Wolverhampton, on the occasions when we go up to visit Buffy's family, to our flat in south-east London. The train part is usually okay. (Although today we got delayed because someone selfishly had a seizure and had to be carted off at Coventry. Tut.) Last time, while on the bus, fighting the voices in my head that go 'Kill kill', I realised that I don't want to live in London much longer. Today's journey made me think I don't want to live much longer.
Either that or I need to learn to drive.
Buffy and I had Poppy in her buggy and more baggage than the donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem, most of which I was carrying. In one of the bags was Poppy's latest toy, a lamb puppet which sings 'Mary had a little lamb' in the most irritating squeaky American accent I've ever heard, the kind of voice that bores into you like a dentist's drill into an unanaesthetised nerve. Every other step, the bounce of the bag against my leg set the lamb off.
"Mary had a little lamb."
Bump.
"Little lamb."
Bump.
"Little lamb"
We carried Poppy's buggy down the escalators and queued up to buy our tickets.
"Mary had a little lamb."
I should point out that I am quitting smoking and hadn't had any soothing, lovely nicotine all day. I ground my teeth. Sara exclaimed that she would be very happy if I was able to remain calm (unlike her) in these situation. The vein in my temple throbbed. The lamb bleated its satanic bleat.
"It's fleece was white as snoooooow."
By the time we got to Brixton and staggered out into the rain and headed off towards the bus stop, having gone up and down about a thousand escalators - I'm not even going to mention the point where I stepped onto the escalator at the exact point Buffy decided it was too scary on the escalator, so I then had to walk up 100 steps to help her carry the buggy down the same 100 steps, the lamb shrieking about how following Mary to school is against the rules; oops I already have - we were both fantasising about how easy life would be if we could drive.
So why don't we drive? The simple answer is that we can't afford it. Despite having pretty good jobs, we are as poor as church mice. This is all Poppy's fault. Or rather, our lax approach to contraception's fault. The joy Poppy brings us is worth millions a month, but unfortunately we can't spend joy on driving lessons and car tax, or on clearing our overdrafts.
The more complex answer about driving is that neither of really want to drive. I had driving lessons a couple of years ago. Apparently I had good clutch control but poor steering. The idea of actually being in control of a powerful killing machine makes me tremble. I can barely walk from the living room to the kitchen without knocking something over.
And I fear that putting Buffy in charge of a car would be even more dangerous. An example: whenever we are walking along the road and she sees a pigeon anywhere near the road, she curls up into a foetal ball and hides in a doorway until she knows the pigeon is safe and hasn't been squashed. You should see what she does when there's a cat near the road. I can just imagine her driving along, one eye on the road, the other fixed on the pigeons perched on nearby rooftops, gripped with terror in case one swoops into the road.
So I think we have two options: put ourselves through the public transport hell periodically. Or never ever leave the flat.
When we got home, I put my vegetarian principles aside for a moment.
I've spent this weekend of glorious-yet-slightly-freakish London sunshine doing dad stuff, including doing something that could hardly be more daddish: going to the father and baby club in Brockwell Park. Dads' Club is a kind of drop-in centre for cast-out fathers who are tired of wandering the streets, a haven for middle-class nappy valley dwellers with wives and girlfriends who need a bit of time to themselves. (Buffy spends said time doing housework and rearranging furniture, her favourite hobby, not sitting in the bath eating chocolates which is what I'd do if I were her.) There are toys and little wheely things and free coffee and fruit: imagine a village hall full of babies crawling and running around, and their balding paunchy fathers trying to look sensitive yet manly.
I'm quite a shy person who finds it hard to go up to strangers and talk to them, so I had been wary of attending Dads' Club. What if they all ignored me? What if everyone else knew each other and muttered 'we don't like strangers' in menacing accents when Poppy and I arrived? However, Poppy makes a great prop, either to hide behind (metaphorically; she's not that big yet) or to use as a conversation starter. 'How old is he? How old is she? Oh, I've memorised The Gruffalo too.' That kind of thing. Most of the blokes there were talking about rugby, which I hate. But I did actually have a whole conversation with someone. I'm a bit worried though because I told him my name but he didn't reciprocate. Is that a snub?
I think I'll go back though. Poppy really enjoyed it. She's a lot more sociable than me (she takes after her mother).
It's been a strange week. I went to my Grandad's funeral and saw my cousins and uncle and aunt who I haven't seen since Little Jimmy Osmond was in the charts. We're a close-knot family. Everyone looked so old, which made me feel old. Talk about the ravages of time. It was like staring into the future and not liking what you see. Because Buffy is so much younger than me, I can kid myself that I'm young and vibrant. My laughter lines are just because I laugh a lot. The grey hairs are a trick of the light. I wonder how many years I have left before I start to look haggard and jowly? Will my much-younger girlfriend still need me - will she still feed me - when I'm 64...and she's still a sexy young thing of 52? My god, I'm making myself worry now.
I would also like to publically state that I don't want 'You raise me up' either by Westlife or Daniel O'Donnell, played at my funeral. Even if it is a guaranteed tear-jerker.
My friend Sarah emailed me the other day. She's editing a magazine which is being published to coincide with Paris Fashion Week, whenever that is, and is going to use one of my stories in it. Exciting. I haven't written anything new since Pops was born. I'm too busy hanging out at Dads' Club. Although I do have an idea for a novel/film: a group of blokes meet at Dads' Club - one's divorced, one's unemployed, one is a recent immigrant, one has a sick child - and become bezzy mates. Hilarity and lots of sentimentality ensues, and Dads' Club gives each of the men a new sense of belonging. Then the council threatens to close down the club... Guaranteed bestseller, I reckon. Now if I only I could get motivated to write it...
I live in south London with Sara Sizzle and our gorgeous daughter, Poppy. My other daughter, Ellie, lives in Australia. I work as an online manager for a publisher but dream of being a bestselling novelist. Have been accused of having a Peter Pan Complex; working hard on my gravitas. Am happiest when lying in bed with Sara Sizzle or dancing and singing with Poppy.
