Tag: Kids

Interrupt Driven

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

There are many scientific studies postulating the theory that men cannot multi-task. I am here to tell you today they are absolutely right. But you can keep your expensive research and large group studies, because they are not needed to illustrate this essential truth. All that is required is to ask a bloke to perform a simple task, and then continue to interrupt him until he explodes.

All that stood between me and something far more interesting was schlepping a few barrowloads of earth from one end of the garden to the other. I was ignorant of the logic behind such soil redistribution, but happily so – engaged in that manly, physical act of the rude mechanical.

However I had barely turned my spade in anger, before being informed my selection of soil was from the wrong pile. Since our garden currently has the landscaped aspect of a set from “attack of the giant killer voles“, this is an easy mistake to make. So moving onto a second pile of brownish, parched dry, rock hard ground – that looked EXACTLY THE SAME as the one I’d be shooed away from – I applied some pent up energy to the job.

Half way through the first barrow, no.1 daughter sidles up and wonders if progress can be made on the “Menace Sledge“. A quick review of the languished project signals some creative work required before further painting can commence. Verbal is dispatched to the barn to do her worst with a roll of masking tape and a copy of my last appraisal.*

Barely a further spade had been turned before no.2 child demands some bike based action. Grumpily downing tools, I release the ickle pink one – steady – from its’ hooked prison, furnish Random with gloves and helmet and wheel her out into the garden.

Believing now that nothing can divert me from my primary task, I attack the pile with gusto only to be told that in fact it is stones that we need, not soil. So – grumbling darkly – I upend the soil back from whence it came and begin to replace it with rocks strewn into our garden’s moonscape. On presenting these, I find they are the wrong type of stone.

Beginning to sizzle gently, I am not even allowed to correct my mistake because suddenly a sledgehammer, some nails, long bits of wood and an owl** were now gazumped onto the critical path. Now as a bloke, I can deal with multiple tasks, but only in serial form. Whereas this kind of multi-threaded scenario turns me into a cross between a headless chicken and one of the extras from the movie Scanners.

Finally I’m back where I belong on the barrow. For about two seconds before Verbal wants me to approve the paint template – which I hurriedly do -before declaring that she’s been promised a pound if she washes Carol’s car. Fine, just get on with it. Oh you can’t? No, because muggins here is suddenly 2nd Helper assigned to hosepipe duties.

Deep sweary sigh. Drop Spade. Find hosepipe. Find bucket. Fill Bucket. Send child to turn on hosepipe. Stomp around garden looking for spraying attachment. Receive admonishment regarding lack of correct soil/rock/hammer/owl. Begin to rotate on spot in manner of organic drill turned up to 11.

At which point smallest child demands some satisfaction on bike related problem. Deciding this is a job only I can do and so be freed from minutiae of family life, grab spanners and skulk in workshop cursing the non linear world I live in. Fix bike, feel the happy, blokey glow of finishing something before being drawn back outside by sound of swearing.

Verbal is one of only two people in the world who can make Carol swear publicly***. She’s a bright kid, but sometimes has the legendary stubbornness of a mule crossed with a camel. Convinced she cannot actually turn the hose off – having turned it on some ten minutes earlier – a cross garden debate ensues focusing on exactly which way anti clockwise is.

The last couplet went something like this: Wails” I don’t have a watch” Shouts: “Oh for FUCKS SAKE“. I decide to step in before social services to, only to find myself involved in another maelstrom of requests. I very nearly put both kids in the barrow, threw the bike on top, chucked in the hammer, nails and wood, filled the lot up with dead birds and wheel them outside to the cry of “FOR GOD’S SAKE I AM A BLOKE, ARE YOU TRYING TO DRIVE ME MENTAL?”

I remember watching those endless sitcoms where hen-pecked middle aged men would listen wearily to the incessant requests from their spouse, and answer only “Yes Dear“. I used to think this was spineless and stupid. Now I’m seeing it as some kind of coping strategy.

I did eventually – in case you’re even slightly interested – finish the task I’d started some hours before. At which point I locked myself in the barn and muttered my way through some pointless tasks. All of which I lined up behind a large mug of tea and in an order that could be quickly and simply worked through. At no point did I think “tell you what, I’ll put this bolt down and go and refelt the roof“.

I’m coming to the conclusion that men, like life, are simple. It’s the women that make things complicated. My next step is to try and explain this to them, for which I’ll need to understand them first. I’m 42 years old, and I’ve no idea where to start on that one.

* it got off lightly. I had it earmarked for chicken shitting duties.

** I made that up. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if such a request had been followed by “Oh come on, I’ve TOLD you why we need the owl loads of times”

*** Obviously I am the other one.

This is not my fault!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding8 Comments

I know, I know it never is. But this time, It really isn’t. After giving up the opportunity for two great rides this weekend, so as to have a go at this “proper parenting” phenomenon I’ve heard about, it became clear my pesky kids continue to sprout upwards in the manner of a certain pantomime beanstalk.

A woodsy ride – in which I must say both offspring showed the kind of skilled riding and lack of blubbing that suggests a paternity check may be in order – demonstrated Random’s 20 inch wheels have turned her into a BMX monster, and lanky Verbal is now too talk for the 24inch upgrade she’s been riding for a while.

So in that well trodden upgrade shuffle, Random is happy to have her sister’s cast off, and off to the shops we go for a new full size one. My purchasing rationale is based on frame size, engineering quality, component options and other such important stuff. Verbal cares not for such things, and wants only for it to be black. Or red. Or preferably both.

Frankly the options are bewildering, and I’m a bit out of the game since my pantheon of never ending new frames came to a dead stop last year. I’m over all that you see, have everything I need, no marketing guy is getting one over me. Oh no.

And then I saw that frame and started making excuses. Love hardtails, but the old lower back is giving me a bit of grief. Short travel full suss would do almost everything for me now, since the big away trips to scary places look unlikely to be repeated. A spot of middle age cosseting would not seem unreasonable for a man whose feeling a bit Bike-Mojo-Lite lately.

And then do them in custom colours. But like I say this isn’t my fault, I wasn’t looking for a new frame and I certainly won’t be buying one. I think we can look at my unblemished history in this area, and all agree on that at least.

The menace sledge

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

A few points of order before we start. The sledge in question is not finished, so descriptive language and a few choice lies shall paint the pictures that this post is so sorely lacking. And before you ask, with understandable incredulation, why I am sweating over a hot powertool on a beautiful, warm blue sky day entirely lacking in snow, let me shunt your line of questioning onto the branch marked “Children”.

I’m not sure I’ve ever owned a proper sledge. Even back in the middle ages when I was a lad and six foot snowdrifts mocked global warming for at least three months a year, winter sliding was done on old tyres, black bags and other random stuff nailed together*

Although my dad made us a sledge once. Being both a proper Yorkshireman and half decent engineer, he acquired a pair of two inch thick metal runners and grafted on top a downhill tank with no time for that sissy-Santa look of graceful arcs and elegant lines. No, this long slung snow shark combined ship thick steel with no nonsense 4×4 hardwood, topped off with Boadicea tribute outrunners that’d reduce a shop sled to splinters without any discernible loss of velocity.

It was properly mental. Obviously we called it “Killer” and it became the terror of the local slopes, with at least five confirmed kills and a number of additional blood injuries to be taken into consideration. In our defence, even with three kids on board, steering was all but impossible, and once it had ruddered onto the hill’s fall line nothing could stop it. We should have renamed it “The Lumberjack“.

I know it outlasted our childhood, and can only assume it was finally destroyed in a controlled explosion after it ate through a log cabin or something. Anyway these are the kind of design cues that stay with a boy, so when Verbal announced she’d like a “Menace Sledge“, I was soon on the hunt for a couple of bridge supports to get us started.

Two things went wrong immediately. Firstly I left Verbal responsible for the design process which eventually spat out two paint cans, a not very scale drawing on the back of an envelope and a hopeful smile**. Secondly I’m not half the engineer my old man was, and the only thing I’ve built of note in the last twenty years is a wobbly workshop table. And I’d not be keen to race that downhill.

Did this deter us? It did not. We did, however, lose the envelope so dropped back to the standard “rapid prototyping” model which sees me manically powersaw random lengths of wood, which Verbal attempts to create something sledge like with the offcuts. It’ll not be a surprise to you, that this has led to some compromises.

Firstly the track is too narrow, the ski(wheel?)base too short and the seat too high. It’s built from project off cuts which are neither square nor light. It’s also been hand finished by a girl who’s never had a spray can in her hand before. Being a “Dennis The Menace” tribute, the colours are red and black, and the best I can say of the brooding carcus before me is it resembles the cleaning up operation after a pretty heavy crucifixion.

Assuming it ever hits the slopes, I’m fairly sure things shall not improve. Although I’ll chamfer*** the skis so it doesn’t pitch our first born head first into a nearby snowbank, I’m don’t feel this is necessarily a good thing. Because if it ever does reach a fast slither, there will be no way to steer it, or – and some would say this is even more important – to stop it. I expect it to be both insanely fast and desperately twitchy based on the weight/materials/geometry.

In fact, it may well be the first equipment in the entire history of winter sports to be fitted with an airbag. Still three months to refine the design before the ignominy of the inevitable rubbishness of its’ first run.

Tell you one thing though, I’ll not be testing it.

* for about as long as it took to say “no, you have the first go, I know exactly how it was built”. Generally five seconds was reckoned to be the median time for such creations to return to their component parts. Funny for us builders, relatively terrifying and occasionally limb breaking for the maiden pilots.

** In our family, this passes as a pretty qualified design brief.

*** A fine woodworking term, someone demeaned when it is being performed with a jigsaw.

Staycation…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff5 Comments

… is usurping “stiction” as my favourite bridged bit of alliteration. This mix of “Stay” and “Vacation” is a timely reminder of what it means to be a Yorkshireman. “Ah well, tha knows, could’ve got to foreign parts, but they’ll speak funny and there’s nowt to be found of basic staples such as burnt-whippet-surprise*. Anyroad up, God’s country is right tha, so why would you want to risk bloody frenchies y’soft lad?”

So this week, surrounded as we are by sparkies, plumbers and the like – serious men sporting eared pencils under beetling brows – we’re holidaying right here at ground zero of the previously cherished budget. So far this has involved much the same activity as one would undertake somewhere rather more expensive, although I’ll concede with more floors, foreign parts

Swimming, cakes, exploring muddy forests, cake, swapping depressing rain for amusing films**, eating out, eating more cake, wine, sofa and TV following tired kids heading bedwards, and much more of the same tomorrow.

Which in a further cost cutting move, I’ve decided that£50+ for four of us to drown in the fast running Wye is money for nothing. I’ll merely re-cast one of the old baths into a makeshift kayak, and head off downstream onto what used to be the road outside. Stunning idea I thought, typically British man with own shed thinking outside the tub, and providing decent, low cost family entertainment.

Three pairs of rolling eyes tells me I am alone in my love of the idea – even the dog looked sceptical and he’ll try anything once. Honestly it’s not until you’ve seen a Labrador eat a spider – with apparent relish – that you realise quite how hungry they must be ALL THE TIME. He’s even had a nibble of one of my biking socks of doom which are essentially lethal to any land going mammal from ten feet or less.

Talking of bikes, of course there has to be some of that later in the week. Parental care morphs to parental abandonment as I attempt to impress a man I’ve never met with my riding skills. That’ll not take long then – probably all the time a crash-bang-wallop plunge down the vertical trails recently discovered on the scary side of the forest.

Assuming any sort of multi limbed survival, the next day is all mine to lead a glorious day long ride over the Long Mynd bathed in summer sunshine. Let’s examine that last sentence shall we for possible inaccuracies; basically it’s all of it – more likely I’ll be getting a few old friends lost in the rain for hours on end before a random trail source shall lead us to a pub. Where we shall stay.

Sounds good to me. The way things are going, we might rent out the garden to tourists 🙂

* in times of hardship, rat or ferret was substituted. The surprise wasn’t that it tasted like chicken, more it tasted like shit.

** Ice Age 3. Fully expected it to be a tired re-run of an exhausted franchise, but found myself giggling along with the kids. But the nut gag has really been done to death now.

Radio Ga Ga.

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

I’ve said before whoever smugly proclaimed that “”Honesty is the best policy” had clearly never tried it. However I am now forced to grudgingly acknowledge that the righteous tidy-mind may not be entirely wrong. Let me qualify that, he (and it wil be a he, with clipped hair, nails and accent, polished shoes, knitted jumper, humour bypass – you know the type) is wrong most of the time, because telling fibs greases those difficult parts when the truth will trigger a set of emotional explosions and a hard stare.

Sure you may have to fabricate exactly which band you were in at Live Aid, and play up a little your part in designing the Space Shuttle, but this is merely lexical liquid smoothing otherwise bumpy conversations. But occasionally telling the truth can save you from the kind of embarrassment that leaves you pleading for the world to catch fire, or some other significant event to stop everyone pointing and laughing.*

I nearly managed to lie my way out of an unfolding grubby spectacle when a large, earnest lady dressed in a sack, and carrying a microphone politely enquired if “these” were my children. Since “These” were essentially de-constructing some very expensive looking exhibits at the time during our visit to Techniquest, my first instinct was to go with the big whopper.

True to form, the kids dobbed me in it. Random declared she was indeed a much loved offspring, while verbal insisted it was her sister that had done it** before legging it. Sack-Woman was in fact reporter from Radio Wales on a mission to understand the difference between my generation (i.e. old and hard bitten) and our kids (i.e. young and pampered) when it came to entertainment.

Centre of attention? People clinging onto my every word? Chance to be on the radio? Would I do an interview? What d’you think? Anyway hardly was the question out, before I was describing – with great arcs of hand motion which must really work for radio – how my childhood was essentially hardship, graft and the odd lighter moment when we got to set fire to the Conservative Candidate for Sheffield South.

She gamely tried to get another question in, but I was not to be deterred “Played outside all the time in street, essentially feral coming in only for meals and birthdays. Our kids? Just the same, moved to the countryside, lots to do, riding bikes, long dog walks, playing in the tree house. Computers? No, hardly go near them, strictly rationed like the TV and the Internet”

She looked impressed at my vision of model parenting. But as I was readying myself for a Churchillian finale, she switched Leigh’s and bent to talk to little Random “So, what’s your favourite toy then?” Bit of a pause into which I inserted a desperate burst of telepathic suggestion offering generic outdoor activities and, specifically, not dropping your dad in the poo.

Larger Pause. I’m bricking it now because Random doesn’t really answer questions. She merely mainlines whatever oblique stream of consciousness is currently zapping across her wired-up-wrong brain. Don’t forget this is the child who wants to be a big house we can all live in when she grows up. Experience has taught me her interactions with strangers leaves them – at best – bewildered or just mentally unbalanced.

Sack Person leans forward and asks again “so what’s your favourite toy then?” Random leans my way and gives me THAT look. The one that I’ve come to dread because what follows is going to be no better than “A dead giraffe”, “the road” or “my alien friends“.

She finally proudly pipes up into the Microphone “My DS Lite”. I then receive what I can only describe as “an old fashioned look” from purple portly person, but I’m not really interested as I try to shunt Random into a mental siding labelled “mostly human”, but she’s off explaining – with great enthusiasm – all the different games she has been bought. By those parents that proudly dismiss the need for electronic stimuli to entertain their children.

I’m telling you this now, because the broadcast has already gone out, and – with it being Radio Wales – only 11 people will have been listening, four of which think it’s just another voice in their head. I dunno – maybe she’s getting her own back for the Sports Day thing.

Better go practice my dance moves then.

* Although having ridden with some quite “honest” people during my cycling career, I’ve become accustomed to such verbal cruelty.

** Doesn’t matter what. Toy left out. Sister. Dog abandoned somewhere. Sister. Suspicious crumbs in bottom of cake tin previously the site of large cake. Sister. Word Financial Crisis. Sister, with help from dog.

“Dad… you embaressed me”

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

You know it’s coming. When you’ve nurtured human shaped DNA clones from resembling a half eaten Mars Bar to a height close to their mums’, it’s only a matter of time before they cast you off for cooler things. And as a father there’s conflicted emotions polarised between a sense of sadness that they’ve escaped your parental orbit, and a naughty little voice shouting “C’MON, THAT’S WHAT WE WANT”

So it wasn’t unexpected, although the source was – it being the Random child who has only recently been rotated through eight planetary rotations*, and the jury is still out if she’s actually ever been made a member of this one. The venue for this perceived slight was the school Sports Day where – true to form – the cross country race saw our kids bringing up last, and second last place.

This is not only because they’ve inherited their father’s legendary athleticism, but almost as contributory is the phenomenal fitness of the other children. These genetically modified little humans clearly sprint twenty acres each day before a strength session juggling tractors. And that’s before breakfast.

Since our school refuses to saction the Dad’s race on the grounds it always ends up as mortal combat driven by fading testosterone and probable heart attacks, I channelled my competitive gland into encouraging my own offspring by running with them. On reflection, it seems that such fatherly concern for their welfare was deeply uncool, and downright embarrassing.

Although when I quizzed the Randomster on exactly what she meant, it became clear that her understanding of the word “embarrassed” was a little vague. I believe her third explanation somehow linked the emotion as being similar to a poorly lettuce. However, knowing her as I do, there’s probably some truth in there somewhere, hidden behind a view of the world which is as wonderful as it is exasperating.

Anyway, here it starts I guess. Skulking in shadows when their friends are in attendance, hiding behind lamposts on the taxi run, and being banished to a different room when a critical mass of not-so-smallness meets in the house.

I think NOT. There is much pleasure to be had embarrassing your kids. My only mistake was to put them in that situation accidentally. Now I’ve thought about it a little more, I see my opportunity as legion. So where’s that invite to the School Disco?

The time for the Dancing Trousers is upon us.

* I find Random’s eighth birthday was, in fact, some six months ago. I should worry less about my kids growing up, and spend significantly more time hunting down the time thief whose stolen half my year.

Kids Play

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Let’s be honest here – there is a bit of Competitive Dad inside all of us. And for some that’s because they had Competitive Dad outside for all their formative years, and never really worked out how to stop. Not for me, my old fella wasn’t so much hands off as completely disinterested. Which is something of a reason why I vacillate between total commitment and tired apathy with my own offspring.

But the parent I’ve never wanted to be is that one screaming from the sidelines, desperately striving to put the Victory into Vicarious. There’s always a positive stop between my frankly pervy love of mountain biking and forcing my kids to try and share something of that. Good reasons abound – they’re girls, they’re (still) not that big, MTB’ing is a tough sport, and they have variously preferred scooters, ex-board, walking and – well – anything else really when I’ve punted a spot of weekend dirt riding.

Today one of them mined the giggle-lode I so cherish, while the rest of the family had a damn fine go, before retiring slightly scared. Random (8, bonkers, untouched by reality) demonstrated a level of focus that made me wonder about alien abduction. She piloted her little 20inch Spesh Hardrock down trails the big boys ride, and showed a level of bravery making me wonder again – this time about adoption.

That’s not her in the photo. Verbal shares her Mum’s terror of hills and my oft repeated maxim that “your brakes control the speed, not the hill” failed to unlock tight muscle or deflate the scary gland. But she had a proper try even though it was apparent the only thing more scared in the entire forest was probably Carol.

Who – having narrowly avoided plunging into a dangerous ditch – rode bridges she hated, survived downhill trails that offered nothing but fear, and a truly, scary off camber bend that gives me the heebies before retiring with eldest daughter to the safety of the fireroads. I was properly proud of them for giving it a go without the hint of a whinge, and riding stuff that was clearly shitting-the-bed scary.

My kids don’t ride much and I don’t push them to do so. I’m always amazed how quickly they pick it up again, and while I was picking up my lovely old Kona having helped Random over a nasty log bridge, it became apparent she wasn’t going to stop. A cocktail of roots, dips and little drops were mastered with nothing more than youthful bravado and a happy chuckle.

I watched her ride it – having stopped talking since she clearly needed no coaching – with a lump in my throat. Where do they learn that shit? Even when she was properly gorse bushed at the trail end, she just picked herself up and got on with it. Well sort of, I had to push her home but she’s desperate to get out again. I may have found myself a sleeper 🙂

On returning home, the hound was walked by bicycle and suddenly these two wheeled transportation devices are the best thing since… the last great thing, but I’m happy with that. We then jumped our fence and went exploring in the stream at the bottom of the garden. Which was way more fun that it probably sounds.

There are times when kids are bloody difficult. Anyone who tells you different is on strong medication or telling lies. This was not one of those days.

Jumps’n’Bumps

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff, Photography3 Comments

The feeling of mental limbo never really left me this weekend. There was this great big HONC sized hole into which I kept throwing stuff; yet while my body was amusing itself with adequate distractions, my mind was still wheeling away in the Cotswolds.

And while I did consider a 48 hour full on sulk and grump, it seemed a shame to waste two days of fine weather, and a family that’s not seen me as much as it probably should lately. Although on Saturday I abandoned them again to wind out mental tension in big hills while crashing small gliders.

I even manged to fly the new, fast one which, being German designed, had a perfectly logical build process as long as one remembered to adopt the correct “installation position“. Being English, I’d wandered off the precise instructions to practice the art of wingtip painting. Practice being what I needed, as everyone within a five mile blast radius of the spray tin is now calling me “Mr Overspray“.

The tail – especially bad – looks as if I’ve spatchcocked a gerbil, such was the red splatter effect of the over enthusiastic paint dribbler. It still flew very well – even if I didn’t – although the last landing crash ripped the nose off. An arrival I am now thinking of as “The Michael Jackson”

The obstacle course I built for the kids on Sunday lasted all the time it took for them to become bored with it. So ten minutes later, I harvested some wood for my now insulated timbered erection*, and built an eight inch lip for the pair of them to roll over.

Abi not quite sure Committed

Which they both did rather well although Verbal decided – as she is nearly 10 and therefore knows everything – that she’d ignore my patient instruction to stand up, pedals level as she dropped off. Still at the end of an hour, it was her with the sore bottom and me with the knowing smile. Random just nicked her sisters’ bike and mosied on over with a look of not oft seen concentration.

Abi on the edge Testing the jump

I had to have a go. Obviously. Normally any photo of me riding clashes terribly with my own internal image of trail God. This one bucks the trend in no way whatsoever, but at least I’m looking quite thin. And that’s not just on top.

Whether that will continue after the scary Physio tells me off this evening, I’ll let you know. I’m so desperate to ride right now, I’m even considering commuting in the pissing rain tomorrow. One year, I’ll get injured in the Winter and not feel as if another summer will be lost to encroaching fat and decreasing fitness. I am very much hoping it will be this year.

* I am unlikely to get bored of this joke. Sorry.