The fall of King Hubkin

We are sitting at a shady table in a cafe near the beach. Our youngest is asleep in her pushchair, presumably quite worn out from all the shouting, and a pleasant peace has descended. My wife is flicking through a book, and I am watching the world go by and idly pondering the cryptic crossword. (14 Down: My downfall is I twist with shrub (6))
"Shall I draw you a picture, Daddy?" asks our eldest, Biro at the ready. She is turning into quite the prolific little artist, having discovered a love for drawing and painting that she has inherited from her mother, and which I have found can readily be exploited: the provision of a scribble pad and a ballpoint pen buys me enough peace to read the paper.
"Yes, please." I say.
"I will draw a picture of you" she announces.
"Sounds good..." I say, sipping on my drink
There is a period of companionable quiet. Pages turn, and pen scratches on cheap paper. Our youngest snuffles in her sleep and gives a smile of triumph, perhaps having dreamt of taking gold in the World Under-Three Olympics screeching event.
"There we go." announces Eldest. "It's a picture of you."
I study it critically. Her drawing is really coming along.
"It's excellent" I say. "Fit for a king."
She smiles broadly.
"In fact, you should make me into a king" I add. There is an audible 'tut' from behind the pages of my wife's chick-lit, but I ignore it,
"Can you give me a crown?" I ask.
There is some dutiful editing. A crown appears.
"There we go" she says. "Now you are King Daddy."
"King Hubkin..." snorts my wife.
(That remark will need further explanation, and requires a glimpse into the workings of my marriage that some readers may find disturbing. I have a large number of names that I can call my wife if I want to annoy her - not rude names, you understand, just little nicknames that absolutely infuriate her, as she finds them demeaning. Personal favourites include 'The Breadknife' or 'The Long-Haired General', and recently I have been experimenting with the phrase 'wifelet' after reading that it was the term the Marquess of Bath used to describe his many, many partners. She, in turn, has been testing out a wide range of retaliatory phrases to annoy me with, the most successful of which has been 'Hubkin' as a derivative of 'husband' - the diminutive, cutesy nature of the word sets my teeth on edge. With use, the meaning of the phrase has since changed slightly, and it is now the term she uses to describe me when I am being a pain in the arse, e.g "Cut it out, you are being a total hubkin.")
"King Daddy, I think you'll find she said..." I correct loftily.
"King Hubkin" she insists.
"Er, I am the one with the crown around here.." I say pointing at the pad. Our daughter looks at us with wide eyes.
"I can draw Mummy with a crown too?" she suggests.
"Good idea..." says her mother.
"Meh.." I say, and go back to the Cryptic. (23 across: Lost power when hurled too far? (10))
There is much scribbling, for an extended length of time.
"Ta da!" our daughter finally announces. We crane over to get a good look.
"Oh, that is very good, sweetheart..." her delighted mother says.
"Hmmm." I say, less effusively. "Tell me, why did you turn the paper round like that?"
"I wanted more room to draw Mummy."
"Yes, but because Mummy is drawn sideways to Daddy, now it looks like I am lying at her feet. It looks like she is standing on me..."
"I really like it..." says my wife.
"Also, her crown is much bigger, I can't help but notice."
"Yes, I had more room to draw it" explains the artist.
"What are those dots you have drawn on her?"
"Sparkles. Mummy is sparkly."
"I see. And you have also given her fairy wings. And what's that you've drawn on my face?"
"Eyelashes."
"They look like tears..." I say.
"This is the best picture ever. We should keep this picture on the fridge" announces my wife. "In fact, we should frame it." I cannot bear to look at her, but there is no real need: she is radiating glee.
"Can we do that, Daddy?"
"Yes, maybe..." I say sadly.
"I know!" says her mother. "Even better - perhaps Daddy can scan it, and put it on his blog!"
My daughters face lights up. She looks ecstatic.
"Oh can you, Daddy? Please? Please?"
There's no way I can let her down. Her mother knows that.
"Yes..." I say in tiny voice, and go back to the crossword. (31 down: Pecan, cop and emu collude for a fitting end, (11))

Flatpack magic

I am sitting alone in my car in the car park at Ikea, drumming my fingers on the dashboard in frustration.
Not, as you might perhaps have expected, because of my location - in fact I have come to terms with the fact that Ikea and I are in a long-term relationship. I simply cannot see any way in which the Swedish pine-peddlers will not be enjoying my custom for the foreseeable future, because my family are growing (in physical size, that is - not in number), whereas my budget for new furniture has remained fairly constant for many years at around 'nil'. Seeing as my children continue to (a) grow, thus requiring new beds and the like, (b) almost casually break the furniture we already have and (c) find myriad other ways for me to spend any 'spare' money we might accrue, it's clear I will be offering up the meagre contents of wallet to the Temple of the Allen Key for several years to come. Need for new furniture + lack of funds = Ikea.
No, my issue is with something that been a cause of frustration in my life for much longer than trips to blue and yellow prefabricated warehouses at the edge of major towns: namely, my mother. She is 'helping' with our Ikea trip by driving my wife and children to the store in her car, so that my own vehicle is free to transport home any furniture we buy. And she has gone missing.
I last saw her about half an hour ago, as I crested a hill. As I glanced in my rear view mirror I could see her car in the distance, doing her customary 37 miles an hour. As the speed limit on the road was 60, and it was a single track road, I could also see the enormous tailback of traffic behind her, which stretched off to the horizon. I could also faintly hear the hooting and shouting.
In the intervening thirty minutes and eight miles - which are essentially a straight road - she has somehow gotten lost. That, or somebody has rammed her off the road in frustration.
I call my wife's mobile. She answers the phone with a very detectable air of resignation, which is not surprising, as I have been calling her regular intervals to complain about the speed my mother is driving at. She has thus been placed in the excruciating position of being asked to pass on a series of increasingly rude comments to her mother-in-law, which she has politely declined to do. Wise to this, I have taken to shouting my messages at the handset so that my mother can hear anyway. I suspect my wife has not enjoyed this situation one little bit.
"Where are you?" I snap.
"We are a bit lost..." she says, after a pause
"How? I mean, seriously, how? It's basically a straight road. It's not like you were going too fast to read the roadsigns, is it?"
"We followed the wrong car..."
"What?"
"We saw another Ford Focus in the distance, so we followed that. It wasn't you. It didn't go to Ikea."
"You followed another car without ever drawing up close enough to see if it was the car you wanted?"
"It was going a bit fast for your mum to catch..."
"God. Where are you now?"
"Not sure.."
"Give me a description of what you can see..."
She does so. It becomes immediately clear that they have driven some ten miles further on from the correct turning. I give fresh directions, adding (at volume) my opinion on the optimum speed they should travel at in order to get to the store before it closes, and ring off.
However, I still feel I need to vent some frustration. I decide to call the one person in the world who probably knows exactly how I feel.
"Hello?" says my sister.
"How do you stand it?" I ask without preamble. "How do you not go stark staring mad and leap out of the vehicle, screaming?"
There is a short pause, but it doesn't take her long to catch on.
"Is it her driving, or has she lost her sunglasses again?" she asks.
"It's the driving. I have toenails that grow faster then she drives."
"It's the glasses that annoy me the most at the moment. I think her record was six times in one day. She takes them off, and then can't see well enough to find them again."
"Can she see well enough to drive?"
"Only very, very slowly, apparently..."

Some time later, my family arrive. My children seem very pleased to see me, which is good, because in the time they were gone I was starting to worry they may have forgotten what I looked like. My mother gives a disarming smile and a shrug, and my wife looks mutinous, a look I clearly interpret as saying 'We will discuss your phone calls later.' But the rest of the Ikea trip proves to be very easy: the store is very quiet, doubtless because most shoppers who drive at normal road speeds have been and gone long before we arrived. We don't even have to queue for the traditional Ikea lunch in the cafe:
"These meatballs are very nice," says my mother. "I wish I could take some home"
"They sell them in packets for the freezer..." adds my wife, helpfully.
"Will they keep? For the journey home? Won't they melt?"
"At the speed you drive, I think that's a certainty" I reply. "In fact, I think there's a fighting chance the polar ice caps might have melted by the time you get home,...
"Oh, hush now, and eat your meatballs. Your Daddy is a grumpy Daddy, isn't he, girls? Grumpy...."

Later at home (which I arrive at far enough ahead of the others to have a cup of tea, a shower, a chat with my neighbours and a lengthy read of the paper before they limp into view), I try and assemble the new bed for our youngest daughter. It becomes clear that one of the pieces supplied is incorrect: on the supplied instructions it has two holes milled in it that are mysteriously absent on the actual article - though to compensate for this I have been supplied with an extra inch-long length of dowel that serves no purpose whatsoever. I resort to checking my eldest daughters bed, which is meant to be the same model, and which features correctly milled pieces. From this I can deduce that in the two years between the purchase of each bed, the model has slightly changed - and what I have in fact been supplied is the new model of bed, only with the instructions for the old model, and a bag of fixings that do not quite match either. Taking it back is not an option, as my daughter needs a bed to sleep in that night, so I persevere with a fixing solution of my own design using the large bag of spare Ikea fixings I have accumulated over the years. This is not a complete success, it must be said, and my mother comes in to check on progress just as I realise that I have broken a second piece of the bed by hammering a dowel into a promising-looking hole that turned out to be too small for it. As a result I am indulging it a bit of imaginative swearing, which she generously chooses not to hear.
I look at her sadly. She is waiting (very patiently) for me to assemble this bed, so that I can then disassemble the cot my daughter previously slept in, which she can then take home with her to give to my sister. I realise that, in an exquisitely unpleasant turn of events, not only are two small children now dependent on me to provide a bed for them that night, but after day of griping at her, its actually my mother who is now waiting for me.
I decide extreme measures are called for. I fetch my tube of industrial adhesive, suitable for gluing chunks of concrete together, and apply it liberally. Sixty seconds later, as promised by the manufacturer, the undrilled piece is firmly glued in position to it's neighbour - but as a side effect both seem to be stuck to the floor.
"That's doesn't look so good..." she observes.
"It's probably because you've lost your glasses..."
Even she smiles at this. It's good to have a mum like mine.

Turtle trouble: A postcard from Turkey

I've been away. Let me show you.
Imagine Europe, as pictured from above. Find the Aegean sea, and pan across a bit, to where Europe meets the East, in Turkey.
Zoom in a bit. Focus on the Southwest coast.
Zoom in a bit further. Picture the Muğla Province, rich in scattered ancient ruins and modern marble quarries.
Zoom in further. Find the coastal resort of Sarigerme.
Track SouthWest, until you find the 4-star First Choice holiday village. In the South corner, you will see a block of apartments. Head for that, observing as you do that the fine people of the Marriott hotel chain are building a 5-star luxury golf resort some 25 metres away.
At this juncture you can add a soundtrack, which will enable you to marvel at the scant respect the contractors have for local planning regulations that are meant to restrict building noise to reasonable working hours. (You can also feel a slight twinge of envy, if you like, because on this trip we're going four-star and the people next door will eventually be going five...)
You may also choose, at this point, to wonder aloud if this beautiful region of the world - which features a sparkling sea that laps a beach of tumbled gemstones (where protected turtle species lay their eggs) and a series of jaw-dropping 4000 year old tombs carved directly into the hills - will really be improved by the addition of a 18-hole golf course and another set of waterslides. Then remind yourself that the local economy relies almost entirely on tourism, and that you have contributed to the ecology problem by just being here - so in some tiny way, if the turtles all die, it's your fault...
But leave that aside for now. Continue zooming. Swoop down through two floors and find apartment 3011.
More specifically, find the bathroom. And that, my friend, is where you will find me.
On the toilet. At my lowest ebb all week.
(What, you thought I'd write about the good times on holiday? How little you know me...)
I have been sitting for some time, lamenting both the second chicken kebab with chili sauce that I ate the night before (and which I believe is responsible for my current situation), and my new swimming trunks, which were purchased in haste a few days before leaving for holiday. They feature a blue and white floral pattern and, in the the lengthy time I have had while seated to examine them puddled around my sunburnt lower shins, I have decided they make me look ridiculous.
But this is only one source of discomfort for me - leaving aside the first, most obvious and pressing issue, I am also not enjoying the fact that I am performing for an audience of three, as follows:
a) Myself, in a large mirror that runs across one full wall. This allows me to catch the occasional glimpse of my contorted, sun-reddened face, which is extremely disconcerting - because with one thing and another I am not really looking my best.
b) A large inflatable whale. This was purchased for my daughters to ride on in the swimming pool, and which they have decided in the meantime to store on the bathroom floor. This means that, by happy accident, it can 'observe' everything I am doing with its big cartoon eyes. Every 30 seconds I stare malevolently at its stupid painted smile and think about stabbing it with some nail scissors - but that would involve rising from my throne, which currently feels inadvisable.
c) My youngest daughter, who is outside the bathroom and whose short chubby legs, complete with pink sandals on each foot, I can clearly see through a louvred panel at the bottom of the door. She has been chatting amiably to me for some time, even though I have tried to explain that this is not strictly welcome right now, because Daddy is busy. Unfortunately, as she is currently enrolled in the School of Toilet Training herself (sadly, it appears, with graduation day still same way off), she clearly feels a kinship with me in my current position and has decided to share some some of the verbal encouragement she normally receives:
"How is your poo doing, Daddy?"
"It's...it's fine. Go away."
"Are you trying hard, Daddy?
"Go away. Please."
"Is it coming yet?"
"Go away. I'm begging you."
"You need to try hard, Daddy....."
"Go and see Mummy, will you?"
"You need to concentrate."
"Go away!"
"Concentrate, OK, Daddy? Concentrate and try..."
At this point I notice the absence of toilet paper. I recall with some sadness that I removed the last roll myself, in order to show my eldest daughter that if you draw something in wax crayon and then rub it hard with tissue paper the wax melts and soaks into the paper, leaving a translucent pattern. Even now she is in the other room, making a series of stained-glass window pictures to adorn the window, tearing up sheet after sheet of precious toilet roll and throwing it in the bin.
Outside the door, my youngest daughter discovers she can reach the bathroom light switches. As a result, both the main room light and the one above the mirror start going on and off intermittently.
"Keep trying, Daddy..." she calls through the door.
In the flickering light, the whale continues to smile at me. I swear it is laughing at my swimming trunks.
Zoom out now, and just keep going. Up through the apartment roof, up away from the turtle beach, higher and higher, until Turkey is spread below you, the planes heading for Dalaman are passing beneath your feet, and you can clearly see the curvature of the earth.
Now, listen.
I'm sure, even at this height, that you can hear me shouting for my wife...