The war on turds

The househusband is weary of writing about househusbanding, it is true. He still feels you should be reading Columbo’s Dog instead. But… write about what you know, “they” say, and:

• childcare is what I do most of the time
• culture is something I do when I have time.

Ergo: I shall write about parenthood, taking in a bit of not altogether high culture on the way.

(I looked up ‘ergo’, just to be sure, and Chambers says it’s “used to introduce the conclusion of a syllogism”, so then I had to look up ‘syllogism’. “A logical argument in three propositions, two premises and a conclusion that follows necessarily from them”, thankfully, so I used it right, but I had to look both of them up again in order to quote the dictionary properly, which rather answers the question “why do I never get anything done when the little buggers are out/asleep?”)

The househusband’s most recent activities – outside the routine ones of loading and unloading the machines that clean things, cooking and bellowing at children to be quiet – have centred around faeces.

There is dog shit on every available space of pavement, every grass verge, every playground, probably. (This is an exaggeration, but only just.) Did I not notice it in London, spending most of my life there without children to steer round it? I venture not, having a distinct memory of treading in one in the pitch black on the way home once (full of scotch, as it happens), and being transformed in an instant into a Daily Mail reader. You know: how dare they? Something must be done! There are laws against this kind of thing! All accompanied by a purpling of the face, steam emerging from each ear and monocle popping out.

I finally snapped out here in the sticks, too, and have taken to printing out stickers reading “If it’s your dog’s, pick it up” (all in large capitals, of course, and accompanied by a suitable no-dog-plop graphic) and slapping them on lamp-posts. (The council’s making cutbacks, and dog turd laws are impossible to enforce, so I’m simply being civic-minded – part of David Cameron’s big society.)

So far, this has caused:

• a car to slow down so the driver could observe what I was doing. I half expected a Daily Mail reader to roll down the window and remonstrate with me about fly-posting.
• someone else on the school run (behind me) to wonder what I was doing and stop to look at one of said lamp-posts, thereby running her buggy through some shit. I think that’s what they call the law of unintended consequences.
• someone killing time at a bus stop to write on one sticker, under the line “if it’s your dog’s” the words “enormous steaming shit (or your own)”, suggesting that, while a haven for selfish fuckwit dog-owners, Essex is clearly also home to some witty and grammatically correct graffitists. (‘Graffitists’ is a word, apparently – no wiggly red line underneath, anyway.)

Since this happened – a week or so ago – several more turds have appeared, which suggests the time has come to take to the streets with a gun and just shoot the little bastards when they do it (and then their dogs, too. Ah ha ha ha. Ha.) And someone drew a penis on the bollard on the traffic island. Thankfully, daughter hasn’t yet asked what the word ‘spunker’ means, and I have resisted the temptation to stop and write underneath, “Shown actual size, allegedly”.

Don’t read this

The househusband has decided that to do childcare and then to write about it as well is more than flesh and blood can stand. He respectfully suggests that you read a blog called Columbo’s Dog instead. It’s funny, but it’s about culture, rather than children – and is therefore, by definition, more interesting. If I sound grumpy, that’s because I’m sleep-deprived. Thank you, and good night (and may your cod go with you).

Pooh and Proust

The househusband plucks his eyebrows. There’s a confession for you. When a child not old enough to say the word ‘eyebrow’ is looking at one of those ‘That’s not my monster’ books and the mouse says “his eyebrows are too shaggy”, said child turns to his father and pokes his eyebrows, it’s time for action. Since I fear the barber trimming them with his scissors, and making the damn things grow back even more Denis Healey-like, tweezers are the only way. There are those (friends of mine, in fact, to whom I have confessed this before) who believe plucking is a step too far on the road to metrosexuality. In my defence, though, I would like to point out that if you want to question my manliness, you try it. Especially if you do your nose hairs, too. Christ, that makes your eyes water.

This wasn’t my most appalling and unpleasant act in the bathroom this weekend, though. (Anybody read that sentence and worry about where this is headed?) I spent most of Sunday afternoon with my arm halfway round the u-bend. Daughter had made a deposit which wasn’t keen to leave the building. How does someone so skinny and delicate manage to produce such vast turds? Sometimes you go in there and it’s like she’s shat one of her own legs. There doesn’t appear to be room in her body to store something of that size. Mind you, it does go some way to explaining how happy she is to be rid of it, which translates into great pride at the fact that it won’t flush away.

The oddest thing was that the process of clearing the blockage didn’t just make me sweaty and the whole room fragrant in a way none of us could have wanted, it also gave me writer envy. Because cleaning up afterwards involved a whole lot of Dettol, diluted for washing surfaces and hands with. And the simple act of dropping a capful of disinfectant into a sink, turning on the tap and inhaling transported me back at least 30 years. Proust had his madeleines, carrying him back to his aunt on Sunday mornings at Combray. I have Dettol.

Whenever I was ill in bed, and even faintly likely to throw up, my Mum would put a bucket by the bed with a Dettol solution at the bottom. It’s not a pleasant odour, really, and might even induce vomiting in those with sensitive nasal passages, but I suppose it was masked by the wafts of vapour coming off the mug of Bovril on the bedside table. Frankly, I’d rather have drunk the bucket.

Now, 24 hours later, my fingers still smell of Dettol (which is at least better than the alternative). And the only challenge left to us is to find a long-term solution to the problem of getting enough vegetables and fluids into Daughter to give her a regular bowel, rather than one that empties approximately once a week. Answers on a postcard, please…

The househusband’s lament

A friend from university texted last week. He’s now a fellow househusband, and the message read:

I never thought I’d hear myself saying, “Ow! Be careful with your fairy wand, you just hit Daddy on the hand!”

It was funny because, well, it’s funny. But it’s also eloquent of changed expectations. (When we were at university, he was something of an alpha – the one who went on quickest and most successfully to the career he wanted. We did drama degrees, so getting anywhere at all was remarkable.)

This is the crux of the matter for the househusband. Life is not what you expected. Of course, it never is, for anybody, but boys still grow up with the idea that they’ll be in charge of something, that they’ll be the breadwinner – no matter how ludicrous that idea has become. We still think we should be making enough so that our partners don’t have to work and can do the childcare – because, apparently, it’s supposed to be that way round. Intellectually, the househusband knows this is silly, but letting go of the idea remains a challenge. Even someone like me feels this – someone with about as much interest in being the alpha in a group as I have in what’s happening in The Archers (seriously, what’s the fucking point of that programme?)

Well, so what, you may think. Why should househusbands feel sorry for themselves? Anyone who’s got to 40 or more and found themselves doing what they wanted or expected in life, raise your hands. Exactly. But it makes us uncomfortable because it’s pretty unlikely that our partners – feeling similar social expectations – want to be the main earner. (They don’t necessarily want to be at home full time, either. You don’t have to enjoy childcare to feel that you should be doing more of it.)

All this imagined pressure is very odd. I feel I have to get things ‘right’. It’s partly the old OCD (in that the washing up has to be stacked correctly – obviously), and partly parental guilt. I feel I have to get the children ‘right’. Which essentially means that I think I’ve failed when I shout at them. (Which means I think I fail several times a day.) But, really: what balls. Perhaps there are those serene enough to rise above the provocation that children so effortlessly provide, but I haven’t time in the day for the chanting and meditation necessary – and part of me still suspects that serene is just another synonym for dull. And, of course, in memory of dear old Tony Curtis, I should remember that nobody’s perfect.

And, while we’re doing quotations, “Take no thought for the morrow, sufficient unto each day is the evil thereof”. (Yes, I know what I said last week. I still know bits of the bible, though. Very useful for crosswords, sometimes, a religious upbringing.) What I mean is, I should take my own advice and relax. Stop worrying about what I want to achieve in life, and think more about today. Or as Samuel Beckett put it. “Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

The house of god

There are two church playgroups, one where you don’t have to sing about god or pay for your tea, and one where you do (both things). At the second, last week, the Reverend stood up (as he does) at the front, led the singing and did his new thing: talking to the audience with a hand puppet. (It wears a t-shirt which has the letters G, A and P on it. Not a Gap t-shirt, but one which underneath bears the legend, ‘God Answers Prayers’.)

So, if those of you who believe (and those of you who think I’m shooting fish in a barrel) will forgive me, let’s look at the facts here.

His address was based on an alleged list of the most common questions asked on the internet. These were all, of course, ‘Why are we here’ and ‘Is there a god’, rather than ‘where are the dirty pictures at?’ (because, as Trekkie Monster in Avenue Q explains, The Internet is for Porn. If you haven’t seen Avenue Q, I recommend it, not least for another song, Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.) The only faintly likely question on the list was ‘Do blondes really have more fun?’ (No prizes for guessing who was singled out for laughing at the back.)

A friend turned to me and said “Is this for the children?” – a question the Rev answered himself by remarking “There’s a fight going on behind me.” Two toddlers were, indeed, playing somewhat vociferously. Obviously. The real audience here has an average age of 2 and you are, to employ the technical term, boring the shit out of them.

This strikes me as remarkable because the other church playgroup is so low key – and they claim to be evangelical, yet they’re the ones who seem most traditionally British in their approach to their religion (i.e. embarrassed. This is a nation that can sing Jerusalem in a desultory manner.) Clearly, there are two schools of thought:

1. captive audience; talk to them about the big man upstairs
2. captive audience; give them tea and space and maybe they’ll come to a service, or some of our gentle Christian goodness will rub off on them.

If you ask me, neither works – and option 1 has the added effect of pissing people off.

What really stands out, though, is that on the slideshow for the words to ‘God Made Me’, the illustration (for the benefit of the kids) is an animated gif of an ape, waving. This is another entry in the Define Irony stakes, clearly. One week, the Rev expounded the theory that god made the five little ducks who went swimming one day, against a backdrop of a primate who may as well carry a sign saying ‘Darwin! Darwin!’

I bought a Flying Spaghetti Monster t-shirt last week (off the internet – it does have its legitimate uses), and resolved not to wear it to church playgroups for fear of offending. I’ve since decided on another approach: fuck it. Wear it and explain it in full when anyone asks.

Old now

Recovering from a cold takes so much longer when you reach 40, and recovering from a hangover doesn’t bear thinking about. Recovering from a hangover caused by an excess of paracetamol, codeine and red wine made me A Very Bad Househusband Indeed, grouching about for most of the weekend, and making the children thank god for their mother, probably. It’s my own fault, I know. You don’t get to middle age without learning that. Still, it was a very nice restaurant opening, and the free food was good, and I shall certainly go back there just as soon as we’ve got some cash and free evenings. So, in about 20 years time (when there are no steaks because cows have farted the world to death.)

The real reason I’ve been pondering the ageing process, though, is a conversation with a mother at playgroup. We got on to the whole thing of children walking to school or going out to play on their own, and how terribly frightening it is now that every street in every town everywhere in the world is crawling with predatory paedophiles lurking with intent to… Well, I pointed out that there are no more children (per head of population) being done in by strangers now than there were in the 1970s. The reply came that we all know that intellectually, but the emotional response isn’t something we can control. Absurdly, it’s true. You don’t want to take the risk in case your child is one of those statistics. It’s odd how we struggle and frequently fail to reconcile these two sides of ourselves (on many other subjects besides this one).

We know the chances are infinitesimal, and we know that children are massively more likely to come to harm in the home, within the family, than anywhere else. But the hysterical media and our innate fear of the unknown make us not simply dismiss what we know but do something that goes directly against it.

In the 70s, I would simply announce to my mother that I was going out on my go-kart and disappear. She let me, perhaps because the green space was directly opposite the house. But I was still out of sight. Wife lived in a village, near woodland, and once left a note which simply read, “Gone somewhere, back later”. (Admittedly, Mother-in-law was a little freaked at the time.)

Life wasn’t some risk-free idyll then. I got bullied in the park by some twat from down the road whose tennis-playing standards I didn’t come up to (obviously). It wasn’t all lying on your back looking at the shapes the clouds made. But getting older makes us nostalgic. If you’ve never read Michael Bywater’s Lost Worlds, run out and buy a copy right now, because he writes brilliantly about this idea of a golden age. We reason, he says, that “if we deteriorate as we age, then so must the world”.

I think we should be realistic about our own childhoods. Being more aware of the nature of a danger doesn’t make that nature greater – or smaller. It makes it better understood.

Tis the season…

…of gluts, so I’ve been making plum jam this week. Being a househusband means taking over the traditional roles, you see. I slave over a hot stove, and what thanks do I get? Well, to be fair, I get a lot of thanks from Wife, who enjoys coming home to chicken pies, lamb curries, toad in the hole and the like, and even seems to appreciate the creative use of leftovers. (I’m sure there’s a book in the latter, catering to the student and other low-income cooks market…)

No appreciation from the children, of course. Son still devours a fair amount of what’s in front of him, but with a whole lot more cutlery and table abuse than before. Daughter still refuses to eat anything other than fish fingers and sweet corn. Whether she can keep this up for her father’s record-breaking seven years is a matter for conjecture. (I may open up a rather different sort of book on that one, in fact, and it will probably be more lucrative than the cookbook plan.)

I live in hope that, one day, she will discover the magic ingredient her culinary life has been missing – as I did, at 10, when garlic seemed suddenly to be invented, or at least introduced to a previously ignorant Britain. I was converted overnight, or possibly over a lunchtime, in fact, into an omnivore who went out 20-odd years later on his stag night to the magnificent Franklins in East Dulwich and asked what this “chitterlings” thing on the menu was. On being told it was a bit of cow’s oesophagus, rolled in mustard and fried, I duly ordered it and bloody loved it. (Incidentally, Franklins is now the only reason to visit East Dulwich, taken over as it has been by ghastly overpaid people. Where’s Travis Bickle when you need him?)

At this stage, though, I don’t think there’s much hope (of my daughter becoming an omnivore, that is. I think the likelihood of someone going postal on all those BMW drivers increases with each passing day…) For someone who loves food, of course, this is most frustrating, and it’s incredibly difficult to say ‘whatever’, and let them develop their own relationship with food at their own pace, instead of what our parents did (‘eat it or go to bed!’)

I take heart from a feature in the Observer Food Magazine a couple of years ago about foodies and their fussy children. Some chef took his kid round a supermarket and tried to empower him by getting him to choose things, and he came out with four kinds of cheese (which was all he ate anyway). I tried it with Daughter, and she went for an extortionate make-your-own sandwich thing (ingredients about 30p, price £2-something), and then rejected the cheese string. I tried, really I did, but I couldn’t stop myself saying “It’s the most processed, flavourless cheese in the entire world, for Christ’s sake! What more could you want?”

Still, it means more chutney for me. Apple and chilli. Mmm…

Back to school

I saw a ‘back to school’ ad for Tesco in July. I was so incensed, I went on twitter (for about the third time in the year or two since I half-heartedly signed up) and told them to fuck off. I never saw the ad again, so I fondly hoped it had ‘trended’ and the corporate behemoth had taken notice. Sadly, I suspect the alternative – that I’ve watched only non-commercial channels since – is more likely (especially given my wife-frustrating enthusiasm for BBC4).

Anyway, the consensus in the playground seems to be ‘thank christ for the end of the holidays’, but the first week or so of term was almost more hellish. There has been a lot of screaming and bellowing in the last 10 days, and not all of it Daughter’s. I think she and I are both tired. Year 1 is rather more demanding than Foundation – and I routinely wake up with but one thought in my head: “When can I go back to sleep?” (This is an improvement, mind. In my early 20s, it was “What do I have to do today before I can have a drink?”)

This may account for the last two weeks of radio silence from the househusband. That and a bit of work (hurrah!) means I haven’t found time and motivation to witter about Life With Offspring. (Sounds like an Attenborough show, except you could watch a 4,077-part series about mine and still not begin to understand them.)

Also, I had a sudden crisis of confidence. I began wondering if I was Doing The Right Thing. Is it fair to blather about the blighters, even if they are anonymised? Am I (ghastly 21st-century media-y phrase) invading their privacy? But then I remembered reading a letter in the Guardian from some lunatic who suggested that we should all stop putting children in those t-shirts with slogans like ‘Mummy’s little monster’. “Twat!” I instantly thought. “They’re for toddlers and pre-schoolers – you do know they can’t read, don’t you?”

Still, what do other parent-bloggers think? Some post names and photos, but something makes me wonder if we should. Am I worrying about nothing, though? I’d trawl around a bit and ask, but I don’t have time (otherwise I’d have given you a link to that Guardian letter, too. To promote a blog, you’re supposed to visit other blogs and comment – leaving links in the process – but I don’t have time for that, either. Plus, it’s chutney season. I have some chilli and apple simmering right now, and have to keep stopping to go and stir. Tomorrow, I must buy ingredients for plum chutney, which I’ve never done before, but features allspice berries and tamarind. <Househusband makes Homer Simpson noises and drools a little.>)

News of my kitchen activities may also be an indication that inspiration is short… So, that question again: are you a parent? Who blogs? What do you think? Should we? (Or am I just being neurotic and middle class?)

Testosterone

I texted Wife the other day when I was in the park with Son and Daughter, to tell her that Son was now able to come down the helter skelter on his own. I was right behind him, obviously – he’s only 22 months – but the reply read: “Pls don’t tell me things like that”. My response – rather than tell her he was climbing something else precarious while I texted – was to suggest that this was an important rite of passage. If I had an iPhone, I’d probably have emailed her a hastily assembled mpeg of the proceedings to watch at work.

It got me thinking, though, about what are considered achievements in sons, especially by fathers. And watching Son this morning with a bunch of other boys disregarding the rule about not having more than one person on a trampoline made me ponder testosterone…

It affects all males, in different ways. For some, prowess on the field, for others: order in the shed. Either way, it’s about control over one’s own dominion – which is why they all spent the morning barging into each other, falling on each other and otherwise being boys. When they weren’t doing that, Son and one of the others fought over one of those sand trays so much they managed to yank a bit off it (which still thankfully fits on. Kind of.)

Then, of course, at some stage, they find anything even approximating the right shape and use it as a gun. For years – especially in the 70s, from what I remember – parents (especially mothers, in my experience) tried to stop boys being warlike. But I’m afraid it’s in the blood, in the form of that pesky hormone, and we’re not about to change. (On holiday, I found Nephew throwing stones at the sea shouting, “Die! Die!”)

Still, encouragement or discouragement of boysiness has changed over the years. Great Aunt bought Daughter a classic American children’s book, Harold and the Purple Crayon. Dating from 1955, it tells the story of a four-year-old (wearing a babygro) who, with his purple crayon, has the power to create a world of his own simply by drawing it.

I expect children to be freaked out and ask fearsome philosophical questions like “What is there before he starts?” and, “What does he stand on?” which only Stephen Hawking can answer. They accept it all, unblinkingly, of course, and certainly never speculate (as I do, having attended lectures at university on Freudian interpretations of English literature) exactly what that purple crayon is supposed to represent. You can tell me, if you like, that I shouldn’t be seeing phallic symbols in a children’s book, but I was told that Alice in Wonderland is, in part, about birth trauma (a child too big for the room it’s in, trying to get out through a door that’s too small, a room which fills with water…)

Harold seems to tell boys, that they have power over the universe just by possessing one of these, ahem, purple crayon things. That’s definitely something to discourage – and when he’s old enough, generations of girls raised like Daughter will do exactly that.

Musical differences

The day of my last post – about music and how (unfavourably) my children react to the stuff I like – I spent part of the afternoon in the kitchen making a pie. I had my pod in the speakers on shuffle. AC/DC came on, and Son suddenly started dancing. Admittedly, he was really just bouncing up and down a bit, but when I started pretending to bang my head, he joined in. This, it’s true, consisted of bending almost double very slowly until his forehead was about to touch the floor, but still. I was watching a 22-month-old head-banging. A 22-month-old, incidentally, with a big, silly grin on, and white-blond hair like a miniature, Spy-from-U.N.C.L.E.-era David McCallum.

It got me pondering what people always tell you: your kids will have completely different personalities. Of course, you think, ‘I won’t forget that, I’ll keep it in mind, I’ll make sure I accept them for who they are’. And one day you realise how different they are, and it takes you entirely by surprise.

To say that Daughter is strong-willed is akin to suggesting that Oliver Reed quite liked the odd pint, or that the universe seems on the large side. She argues everything – negotiation if she’s in a good mood, a full Janis Joplin of a screaming fit if she’s not. She puts her fingers in her ears and says ‘la, la, la’ if you ask her to do something she objects to. She kicks at you if you’re in her way, or trying to stop her slamming a door at the height of her frenzy. The other day, she was trying to climb up something in a playground, and simply turned to me with a face on her like a teenager’s and said, “Some help?”

Son shrieks, too, because he’s not talking yet, and can’t explain that his car is stuck because he’s been trying to ram it into a space which is far too small. Frustrating, but – generally – if you fix the problem, he stops. Fix Daughter’s problem and she bellows at you for not listening until she’s finished explaining it.

This is a little unfair. For a start, I bear some guilt in provoking Daughter’s moods, because my own fuse is so short. It’s partly inherited, then, and partly a reaction to my being grumpy. And there are times – many of them – when she’s affectionate, thoughtful, unselfish… and it seems so odd when, as now, she’s out of the house, and all is quiet.

Still, I think her personality will serve her well in life. One day, she’ll be running something big and important, and terrifying the people who work for her. And sometimes I fear that Son – increasingly independent of mind though he seems – might be too laid-back for his own good. Ridiculous, I know. I’m clearly worrying about my own under-achievement here. His contentment could well be his secret weapon. I can picture him living happily on a beach somewhere. While his sister takes no shit, maybe he just won’t give a shit.