Hey look, it's the missus...

I am upstairs staring down at the toilet bowl.
It is clear from the evidence in front of me that I am not the first to visit this smallest room today, and that one (indeed, possibly both) of my children have made use of the facilities before me. We have a (haha) backlog situation.
There are two distinct camps when it comes to talking about impending fatherhood: on the one hand you have the whole "That's it, mate - your life is over" hard-drinking school of mock manly despair, and allied against them you have the whole hippy-trippy life-affirming "best thing that will ever happen to you" crowd. For my money, I could have used a more useful, practical assessment of the road ahead, so let me pass this on to impending fathers: when your kids are small, you will spend lot of time wandering around behind them, turning off the lights and running taps that they have left on, stepping on discarded Lego bricks in your bare feet, and flushing toilets.
There will certainly be moments of despair, even anguish- and yes, also wonderful golden soaring moments when your chest threatens to burst with swelling love and pride - but between these moments you will encounter a lot of food mashed into the carpet, pick up a lot of strewn clothes and watch a great many sub par Disney films. You will fruitlessly search toy shops for items that have long sold out. You will inevitably learn, through some unsought and unwanted osmosis, some of the lyrics to High School Musical, and the names of about thirty Pokemon. And for a period of about two years, you will find every toilet in your house has been mysteriously pre-used, and will contain a vile tobacco-coloured liquid that will occasionally not flush away due to the huge volume of toilet paper wedged into the U-bend.
That's the road ahead, fella - my gift to you. Pay it forward.
Of course, everyone has different mechanisms to cope with these trials: I myself like to idly imagine the death, in a huge multi-car fireball, of many of my fellow commuters on the M1 at 8.10 each morning, and I also write this blog. Which brings me, finally to the point of this post: even as I was bending a coat hanger into a suitable shape for clearing blocked sanitaryware, I could hear the tap tap tap of a keyboard downstairs.
This is because my wife now also blogs, but if you were to visit her site you would never believe (a) that we lived in the same house or (b) that she remained married to me.
This is because her blog is chock-full of nice things: of soft furnishings and ribbons, and colour swatches and LOTS of cake. She one did a post about fabric, and a woman in a trendy New York loft commented how much she liked her typeface selection. This is clearly not a world I either know or understand, but as she continually directs site traffic over here (very few visitors stick around, it must be said) it's high time I returned the favour: why not go and see what the woman who married the troll thinks about life? You can find her over here. (Warning: site may contain pictures of cushions, and also people being nice to each other)
Please tell her I sent you. I always need the brownie points...

Beardwatch: two weeks of whiskers

Days 1-3: These don't really count, as any beard growth during these days is both minimal and simply a result of laziness. At any given point I normally have a light dusting of grimy whiskers, which are due entirely to an ongoing lack of interest in my own personal appearance, rather than in any attempt at facial styling.
Day 3: Have the dawning realisation that my chin now makes a faint scratching noise when rubbed. As a result I spend several happy minutes sitting alone at the dining table, absent-mindedly stroking my nascent whiskers with the back of a teaspoon in order to listen to the variations in whispering tone the different parts of my face now produce. This experiment is rudely interrupted by The Wife, who tartly requests that I make sure I put the teaspoon straight in the dishwasher when I have finished.
I decide I will let the whiskers grow for bit, and see what happens. At this point, I am officially 'growing a beard' and Beardwatch 2010 has formally commenced.
Day 4: My whiskers are thickening in a really strange pattern. From a distance, it looks as if my face has been cupped lovingly in the hands of a chimney sweep who has some missing fingers.

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Dead pandas and Christmas trees

I am driving Eldest back from her swimming lesson, en route to pick up T'wife and Youngest for a day out in London. We are going to the British Museum, which I have some misgivings about: there are some great things to see there if you are at all interested in history, or culture, or anthropology - but none of those subjects feature highly on either of my daughters 'must see' list. However, as there are no Museums dedicated to either Bella Sara, My Little Pony or 'wiping bogies on your sister', it will have to do. For her part, my wife (whose idea this trip is) is certain it will be great, because their website says there is a 'Children's trail'. I am far less convinced, because unless this 'Children's trail' winds it's way through a display of Hello Kitty! merchandise, I can't see it holding their interest. (From personal recollection there are an awful lot of ancient clay pots in the British Museum. You can call it a 'Children's trail' all you like, but it's still clay pots in display cases, even if you give them a free colouring book...)
Nonetheless, I feel it my duty to instill some kind of anticipation for the day's forthcoming events in Eldest.
"So, are you excited?" I ask. "About going to the museum today?"
Eldest signs theatrically and gazes out of the window. "I have been to the museum before..." she says, in a voice that suggests that any discussion on so mundane a topic fills her with world-weariness..
"Not this museum, you haven't" I say.
"Yes, I have. It has a dead panda in it."

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