The '109th post' special: Self-indulgent navel gazing

Isn't the Internet wonderful, though? I mean, really, isn't it?
It's like a vast swirling ocean of mystery. The things you can find out there sometimes make your hair stand on end, particularly if you venture into the uncharted waters of what gets returned with Googles 'moderate safe search off'. (Note to my wife: As promised, I never do that, as it is all just porn and fake Rolexes - at least, that's what I'm told. By the way, for my birthday I'd like a new watch, this new one I bought is rubbish...)
But the best thing about the Net is that for every slightly weird, off-centre or marginalised search term, there's still a set of returned results. Which means that for every blogger who checks their Google Analytics regularly, desperate for the ego-feed of knowing that six people visited their site yesterday (i.e every blogger, ever) there is a list of strange, sometimes compelling 'referring links' that show you exactly what phrase your visitors typed into their search box which then led them to your site.
Which means, by extension, that for a blogger struggling for inspiration (someone who, let's say, normally writes caustically about family life, but who has not been belittled by his wife recently and whose children have been remarkably well behaved of late, and so is lacking in source material) there is the chance to examine these 'referring links' and try to desperately mine some low-grade comedy out of them, in a hideous act of navel-gazing that both shames them as a writer and deters return visits by regular readers.

I hope by now that you can see where this is headed.

Here then, for your (carefully enclosed in quotes) 'enjoyment' are some of the recent search terms that drew poor, unsuspecting saps to this corner or the web. Pity these people - they didn't deserve this. I have linked the phrase they searched on in each case to the post they were taken to. All are 100% genuine, and for me each paints a delicious little picture in the mind. I am only sorry I have no opportunity to contact them to ask further questions...

1) "What does it mean if a man offers wife tea?"
What, indeed?
I like the ambiguity of this one, as I can picture two scenarios. In the first, a bitter, disgruntled misogynist has, after many years of marriage, accidentally prepared his wife a hot beverage and is now questioning his masculinity as a result.
In the second (which I slightly prefer) a married couple visit a single male friend who offers them both a cuppa, and the husband is suspicious that the phrase 'Do you take sugar?' is a coded message for "Do you want to pop round sometime while your old man is out at work, and get it on?"

2) "Does Kirsten Dunst put out?"
A much less ambiguous query. I have no first-hand experience I can draw on here (oh, if only...) and her Facebook profile mysteriously lacks any useful clarification on the subject, but I still feel I can assist: Yes, I think she probably does, to the right person - which, I suspect, is almost certainly not the kind of person who types "Does Kirsten Dunst put out?" into a search engine.

3) "Marriage Guidance Hong Kong"
This is my own stupid fault. Last time I went trawling through the 'referring site' links I ended up writing a jokey post about a site visitor from Hong Kong who had erroneously been directed by the term 'marriage guidance' to a page I wrote of some of the worst marital advice you could ever imagine. What I didn't realise at the time was that by writing about it, this site would then feature even more prominently in the search results of the next person who searched for 'Hong Kong marriage guidance' - who would click on the link, thus reinforcing Google's belief that this was a useful resource on the topic, so making it appear for the next persons, and so on, and so on...
As a result I now get at least a couple of visitors a week from Hong Kong whose marriages are crumbling and are seeking help, and all they find is a cheap joke about Heather Mills.
(Sudden thought: dammit, by writing this I have just made it worse...)

4) "Things a wife should know"
Here's what I like to think happened: there's this very young, very sweet, recently married wife, and she's worried that she isn't doing everything she could to endear herself to her new husband - thing seem a little rocky already. So she goes on to the Internet, types "things a wife should know" into a search engine, and discovers that all she has to do to keep her husband happy is never buy square mugs, disposable breast pads or 'Spirit of Christmas' room freshener. With this new-found wisdom, and confident in the knowledge that expert help is only a few clicks away, she casts aside all of her self-doubt and goes on to enjoy a long, fulfilling happy marriage. (Many years later, after decades of searching, her eternally grateful husband tracks me down to thank me in person and inform me that their first-born son was named in my honour).
Yeah. That's what happened.

5) "Single testicle humiliation"
Oh, look, you don't need me to describe the scenario I have in my head here, right?
But I will say this: Mum, you remember when I started writing this blog, and you generally liked it, except you thought it had far too many references to testicles?
Do you understand now, that there is a need out there for this kind of stuff?
Can you now see that this blog is a valuable resource to the Single Testicle Humiliation Community?
Bet you feel foolish now, eh? I wasn't just talking 'a load of ball', as some of my funnier friends in the STHC like to say.

And there we have it. I have been informed, since I started this post, that when a blogger starts writing about their referral links, it is the beginning of the end. I prefer to think of it as the end of the beginning, and perhaps I can move on to new era of thoughtful, mature analysis and insightful writing...
Next week: my spam folder, and an examination of the many ways you can spell 'Viagra' by artfully deploying accented characters and mixing upper and lower case.

Podge, buns, whales and a doughnut.

It is my turn to give the girls their breakfast.
This is long overdue; I have somehow managed to evade this responsibility for weeks on end, but my wife made a specific point of asking me the night before if I would get up and give the girls their breakfast in the morning. She also made a point of interpreting the noncommittal grunting noise I made in reply (I kind of said "Hnngh?" with a deliberate upward, questioning inflection, so it could really have meant anything) as complete acquiescence to her request, and has selfishly gone off to shower herself - which is how I come to find myself standing in the dining room wearing ill-fitting pyjama bottoms and a concerned frown.
Both of my children are sitting at the table, looking at me with a kind of surly, barely repressed rage - this is because the only way I could achieve the miraculous feat of getting them up to the table to eat was by turning the television off and threatening to throw the remote control out of the window if they didn't sit down, right now, immediately, STOP whining.
The little one looks particularly mutinous. She glares directly at me while drumming on the table with her 'Rupert the Bear' teaspoon, saying nothing, but thumping out an angry irregular rhythm that suggests approaching war. BaddabaddaBAP. BaddabaddaBAP.
"What do you want for breakfast, then, my little rays of morning sunshine?" I ask (because I strongly feel you are never too young to learn to appreciate sarcasm).
"Television", says the eldest, showing that the sarcasm is in fact coming along nicely.
"Television is not a foodstuff" I clarify.
"Hot cross bun, then..." she says, looking mournfully out the window and refusing to turn her head, in a way that suggests her day is already shaping up to be full of disappointment, and it is only 7.15.a.m...
"OK, a hot cross bun..." I say, with a remorseful sigh. The sigh is because I have prepared hot cross buns for her before, and it is a lengthy, hateful process. Despite my best efforts, I am still not entirely sure of the arcane acceptance criteria that she applies to determine whether said bun is suitable for consumption. I think the rules that apply are as follows:

1. The bun can be eaten hot or cold, but no preference will be expressed as to the required temperature on any given occasion until serving time, whereupon if you have guessed incorrectly she will simply refuse to eat it.
   
2. Fortunately, if her preference is for a cold hot cross bun (yes, serving food to my daughter involves oxymorons) it must be served uncut and unbuttered, so you can start off by simply taking one out of the packet and handing it to her, and she will then either eat it without complaint or throw it back in disgust.
   
3. If it is the latter reaction, it's because on this occasion she desires a hot hot cross bun. The next ten minute could therefore be very trying, so at this point it is wise to refamiliarise yourself with the handy 'hot-cross-bun-preparation flowchart' that is taped to the wall next to the toaster.
   
4. The bun must be sliced horizontally and toasted on setting 3 (all other settings will render the bun inedible) with the newly exposed bun innards facing outward, towards the toaster's heating elements (any other toasting position will render the bun inedible).
   
5. The bun must be buttered, but quickly - if you are too tardy with the buttering, the bun will lose too much heat and will not fully melt the butter (and if any butter remains unmelted at the time of serving the bun is rendered inedible).
   
6. Putting the bun in the microwave for ten seconds to melt any unmelted butter is considered cheating, and will render the bun inedible.
7. It must be presented on a plate (serving it in a bowl will render it inedible), but it must be the right choice of plate (plate choice will change daily, on a random basis, and the incorrect choice of plate will render the bun inedible).
8. The final hurdle is bun presentation. Toss a coin to decide if today she would like the halves of the bun stacked one on top of each other, or left sitting side-by side. The wrong choice here will, naturally, render the bun inedible...

...hence the despondent sigh at her choice. Frankly, when preparing hot cross buns for breakfast for my five-year old, it really is anybodies guess as to which runs out first: the hot cross buns or my patience. I turn to my youngest daughter.
"And what about you? What would you like?"
"Podge" she says.
"Pardon?"
"Podge."
I involuntarily suck in my stomach. This appears to be an exciting new low in parent/daughter relations.
"Don't call me that, it's rude."
"Podge."
"Stop it! Just tell me what you want for breakfast!"
"Podge! Podge. Podge!"
Her sister turns back from her contemplation of the garden. "She means 'porridge'..." she explains.
"Yes, podge!" insists the little one.
"Ah." I say.
"She is too little to say 'porridge' properly."
"Yes, yes, I understand that. I thought she meant something else. I thought she was being rude."
"Why?"
"Doesn't matter. You cannot have any porridge" I announce.
"No podge? Why?"
"Because we haven't got any", I lie (the truth being that I loathe the stuff and can't stand making it).
"Want Daddy's crunchy breakfast" she immediately decides instead.
This is the price I pay for my deceit. 'Daddy's crunchy breakfast' is a costly, sultana-packed cereal full of honey-soaked nut clusters. I am very partial to it and dislike sharing - primarily because it seems that whenever I want some, all that is left in the packet is a sad yellow sultana-free dust because my children have eaten all the good stuff. Nonetheless, it is a reasonable price to pay for not having to make porridge.
A short while later, we are all enjoying our breakfast: Eldest has deigned to eat the second of the hot cross buns I toasted for her, while I have settled with eating the one she first rejected. Youngest is cheerfully scattering my special, high-end, expensive breakfast cereal around her chair and across the table while I bite back my resentment. Peace reigns. It is short-lived.
"Daddy, have you heard about the whales?" asks the eldest.
"Whales?"
"They are beautiful creatures..." she says, in the manner of someone reciting a script.
"Mm-hmm" I say
"But they are all going to come up on the land soon."
"What?"
"The whales. They are going to come and get us. The ice will melt and they will come on the land instead. So we have to turn the lights off to stop that happening."
"To stop the whales?"
"Yes. We have to keep them in the sea, or they will come and get us."
"By...by turning the lights off?"
"Yes. And the red light on the television."
"Who told you this, sweetheart?"
"Mrs. Brown."
This takes some thinking about. It appears that the eco-message she learnt at school about the melting icecaps and the resulting threat that poses to sea life has somehow transmuted in her head from 'how to save the planet' into 'how to prevent the menace of whale invasion'. I am not quite sure how to reset her expectations here, and decide it is too early in the morning to try.
"Well," I say lamely. "We'll just turn the lights out every day then."
"Oh no, just for one day is enough. Just for Eco-day. That will keep them in the sea."
"No, I think we have to do it every day."
"Every day?
"Yes. Every day. All the time. Just one day is not enough. If the ice melts and the planet floods..."
"...then the whales will come? The whales will come and get us?"
"No, no. Look, the thing about the whales, what I think Mrs Brown meant was ..."
"Turn the light out! TURN THE LIGHT OUT!"
At this point, the little one decides she has had enough breakfast, and it's time get down to the serious business of picking fights. She points at me with her spoon.
"Daddy," she says in the voice of someone making an important announcement. "You are a doughnut."
I sigh.
God, I think, she's really taking her time in that shower...

Heartstrings, hats and homosexuality

Sigh. Another week, another inevitable series of blows to my pride, like the pounding of tiny hammers. Let's just take a little look at the events that have served to gently erode my self-esteem in the last seven days, shall we?

1) We are all in the car, driving back from visiting my inlaws. Despite the lateness of the hour, our eldest is chattering away like a drunken monkey, filling the car a with a constant stream of good-natured gibberish:
"I love my Mummy," she sings. "And my sister".
"Ah, that's nice" says The Wife. "Anybody else?"
"Tatty Ratty" she says firmly, waving her revolting, dribble-stained toy rabbit.
"Aha. Any other people?" suggests TW, nodding in my direction in a way that she perhaps thinks is discreet, but is in fact anything but.
"No, I don't think so..."
"What about Daddy?"
"No...."
"No?
"No," she says airily. "I like Daddy. But I don't love him..."
I wince visibly. I imagine the snapping of paternal heartstrings can be heard even above the road noise.
"That is not very nice..." chides her mother.
She thinks about this for a while.
"I was only joking you" she announces. "I do love Daddy."
"Good."
"Just not as much as my Mummy and my sister..."

2) My wife and I are attending Parents Evening at the local school. I am delicately reversing the car into a parking space, when my wife suddenly notices the hat I am wearing. It is a knitted woolen hat, of the type favoured by snowboarders, skateboarders and The Youth in general, and in truth it has little business being on the head of a 37 year old man - but then, I am am not wearing it to be urban or edgy: I am wearing it because I am getting old and my head increasingly feels the cold. Sadly, it becomes apparent that I am also wearing it wrong, in some mysterious way:
"What the hell is up with your hat?"
"I'm parking the car dear, could you not shout at me until I've done that? Only the last time we hit a car in a car park it was a Porsche, and the repair bill was pretty costly..."
"You look ridiculous."
"It's a hat. You've seen it before. Many, many times."
"You don't wear it like that!"
"I'm not sure how else you can wear it? You just sort of put it on your head."
"No, no, no. You can't even dress yourself properly, can you? It should go over your ears."
This seems slightly unfair. It is, after all, my hat, along with my head, and indeed my ears. I feel that I have reached the age where I should be able to arrange these three things in a way that best suits me, without a Fashionista harpie shrieking at me (though I do inwardly concede that if my hat were pulled down further over my ears I would not be able to hear her, so there is some merit in the idea).
"Take it off," she commands.
"What?"
"Take it off, in case anybody I know sees you looking like that."
I put the handbrake on. It makes the same grinding noise as my teeth...
"What?" I ask
"There will be people in here that I know. The teachers, other parents..." And she rips the hat off my head, and confiscates it away into her handbag.
"But that is my hat..." I say, both pointlessly and helplessly.
"The way you wear it make you look like a mental patient" she informs me.

3) In a few days, I'm off for a long-planned weekend away with 'the lads', if such a term can be given to a group of men with an average age of 40, who are all married with kids. This trip has been discussed at some length, and my wife has prepared our children for my absence during the coming weekend by explaining that "Daddy is away with his friends", and that while he is "off with the boys" that Mummy and the girls will do lots of nice things together.
However, it appears our eldest has misunderstood the nature of my trip in one very significant way, as is proven when she meets me at the door when I come in from work.
"Come with me, Daddy", she says, taking my hand, and leading me to the dining room. Another five-year-old girl is sitting there, clearly her friend from school.
"This is my Daddy" announces my daughter.
"Hello..." I say
The other girl nods disinterestedly.
"My Daddy is going away at the weekend with his boyfriends..." adds my daughter.
"They are not my boyfriends" I correct her, perhaps a touch too quickly.
"They are..." she insists,
I close my eyes sadly. I can see the inevitable chain of events unfolding in my mind, whereby the visiting girl informs her parents (who in turn inform everybody else we know, and possibly post the news on the Internet) that I enjoy the odd weekend away with my boyfriends. This will make the school run next week a whole lot more interesting...