A bit of a stitch-up...

I am sitting in my favourite armchair by the window, reading the paper while sipping tea and grimacing.
The reasons for the grimace are twofold: firstly the newspaper has done its best to assure me that the world in general (and the country in particular) is slipping slowly but inexorably into financial meltdown, and secondly because my tea contains artificial sweeteners instead of sugar, and therefore tastes just like a good cup of tea that has been ruined with a teaspoonful of shite.
I have been trying to wean myself off the good stuff and onto a low-calorie alternative for some time, but I have found it surprisingly difficult - none of the products I have tried have met their manufacturers promise of tasting 'just like the real thing'; instead each has had a peculiar tang which seems to have been custom-designed by scientists to render tea undrinkable. All the sweeteners I have tried have seemed unpleasantly chemical, almost metallic, giving a taste which I have come to mentally associate with drinking from a robots shoe - an image which does nothing to contribute to any enjoyment I might take out of the process.
In the background I can hear the hum of a sewing machine, accompanied by the low mutter of conversation and the occasional giggle: my wife is clearly doing some craft project or other with the children that has them enthralled. I have just turned to the sport pages, to read of a shocking recent performance by Arsenal FC that does nothing to lift my mood, when Youngest appears at the door with a message for me:
"Daddy, Mummy says do you want her to fix your floppy willy?"
I look at her. She looks back at me. She doesn't appear to be joking.
"Pardon?" I ask, after the longest pause.
"Mummy wants to know if you want her to stop your willy flopping?" she reiterates.
There is another, longer pause. She looks at me expectantly throughout, while I look at her as if she has just landed from Mars.
"No, she doesn't..." I decide, having mentally worked through as many possible scenarios that could have led to this statement, and finding none that can explain it.
"She does. She has her sewing machine out. She says she can fix it now."
That sounds both implausible and also quite eye-watering. I put down the paper and rise from the chair to investigate. Youngest takes this as a sign that I am willing to participate in....well, whatever it is that my wife has in mind, and runs off ahead, calling over her shoulder: "Go and fetch your pyjamas..."
This is sounding really ominous now. I enter the dining room with some trepidation.
"Where are they, then?" asks my wife as I enter. I notice that the craft project she has been doing is making bunting, but I am not sure that we have much to celebrate. It all seems very incongruous.
"Where are my what?" I ask
"Your pyjamas. The ones with the big hole in the seam at the crotch" she explains.
"That your willy might flop out of, if you wear them again..." clarifies Eldest.
"Oh..." I say.
"Nobody wants to see that..." adds my Wife.
"No!" chorus both girls in unison.
"Um..." I say, usefully.
"Go and get them, while I have the sewing machine out," says my wife. "And get that other pair as well, they look like they're going in the same place, I've no idea why - what is it that you do that seems to destroy pyjamas from the crotch outward?"
"Er..." I reply, by way of explanation.
"They are upstairs" she says, pointedly, with unmasked impatience.
"Upstairs, Daddy..." echoes Youngest.
"In your drawer," adds Eldest, as if dealing with a simpleton.
I go upstairs and find my pyjamas with the torn crotch, then return them to the cabal huddled around the sewing machine. My wife holds up my pyjamas, thrusts her hand through the hole and 'tuts' noisily. My children look at me as if I have committed some kind of hate crime. I back out of the room, feeling inexplicably diminished by the whole experience.
I sit back down in the armchair, and take another gulp of tea. It really does taste bitter.

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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Nude sausage rolls and little needy bunny rabbits

We are all sitting at a table in a small bakery on the high street, enjoying a lunch of freshly baked pastry goods.
I say 'enjoying', but in fact I have to eat while deliberately staring at the wall, because both of my children are eating sausage rolls, which always make me faintly nauseous. I find the process deeply unpleasant to watch: both of them are in the habit of 'peeling' the sausage roll in layers, eating all the flaky pastry and then leaving a hideous tumescent pink worm of sausage-meat on the plate, which they may eat, or may simply just wave around like a fleshy light-sabre. The sight always reminds me, unbidden and unwelcome, of my grandparents Golden Retriever, which often had to be discouraged from cleaning its intimate areas while sitting in full view of the dining table. I have a vivid memory of my Nan slapping it across the muzzle with a rolled up copy of the Daily Express, and telling it loudly to "Put your lipstick away while we're eating."
Looking through the window, I can see the cashpoint over the road. I decide that rather than watch them eat, I'll go and find out if I have been paid yet for the month.
"I'll be back in a minute," I say to my wife. "I just need to check my balance."
"What?" she asks.
"My balance. I need to check it."
"Why?" she asks "Are you thinking of doing a tightrope walk? Hahaha!"
I look at her uncomprehendingly.
"Balance!" she says. "Checking your balance. To see if you can balance...."
She does a little mime of a tightrope walker, arms flailing. Other customers in the shop look on with interest.
"Ah" I say, flatly.
"Ha ha ha!" laughs my wife, much too loudly. "Ha ha ha!"
I give a grim little nod to indicate that yes, I have understood, but to my mind the joke is now firmly over.

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Dog, Car, Camera, Car, Road, Rabbit, Tree.

"Please, will you just just stop shouting? Stop shouting. Stop shouting. STOP SHOUTING!"
"But you are shouting..."
"I am shouting because you can't even hear me asking you to stop shouting over the noise you are making. That's better. Thank you."
"I am bored..."
"Shh, now. Daddy is concentrating on driving."
"Can we have a song on?
"Song on! Song on! Puffamagicdwagon!"
"No, no songs."
"Puffamagicdwagon!"
"No, no more 'Puff the magic dragon'. Not again. Let's play a game instead."
"I-spy! I-spy! I-SPY!"
"I said stop shouting!"
"Yes, yes, good idea - we can play I-spy."
"Me first! Me first!"
"Me first! Me first!"
"No: me first."
"Stop shouting. Please, will you just stop shouting? How many more times?"
"I tell you what, I'll go first. Are you ready? I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with 'D'..."
"Dog?"
"Doggie?"
"No."
"It is 'dog', mummy - there was a dog just there."
"Yes, I saw. There was a dog. But that wasn't what I chose."
"Doggie?"
"Why not? You should choose 'dog'. It is a waste if you don't choose 'dog'."
"It is not 'dog'. Any other guesses?"
"Is it 'death in a huge fireball, because the driver can't concentrate'?"
"No. Play properly."
"Is it 'despair'?
"No. Try again."
"Is it 'dog'?"
"Ha ha. Very funny..."
"Doggie?"
"It should be 'dog'..."
"Fine. Fine. Let's say it was 'dog' after all. Well done, all of you..."
"Me next! Me next! My turn!"
"OK, your turn. Off you go."
"I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with 'red'."
"With red? What do you mean, red? 'Red' is not a letter..."
"Car?"
"You can pick a colour or a letter. It's allowed."
"Is it? Since when?"
"Since forever."
"Car?"
"Well, nothing can 'begin with red'. You can't begin with a colour, so you would say, 'something that is coloured red...'
"Just drive, will you? She is five. It is a kids game, not a grammar test. Nobody is scoring her on sentence construction..."
"Car?"
"Yes. It was 'car'. That one in front of us."
"Very good. OK, little one, your turn..."
"Nooo! I want another go."
"But your sister has guessed it...it's her turn."
"That was too short! I made it too easy! I want another go - it will be longer..."
"Yes! Another go!"
"Stop shouting..."
"Okay, well, if you are both happy..."
"I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'C'..."
"Car?"
"No."
"Caravan?"
"No."
"Cat?"
"No."
"Hmmm, are you sure it's not 'car'?"
"No, Daddy, it is not 'car'. I already said so."
"Car?"
"I'm only asking, because last time we played, you said it wasn't 'car', and then at the end you told me it actually was a car, just 'not the one that you meant'..."
"Which was news that Daddy didn't take very well, if I recall..."
"It is not 'car'. We already had 'car' last time. Do you give up?"
"Cloud?"
"No."
"Car?"
"No. Stop saying that. It is not 'car'!"
"OK, we give up."
"It is 'camera'."
"Camera? Camera? Really?"
"Oh, well done. That's an excellent word, sweetheart."
"Where was there a camera?"
"At home."
"Oh, for the love of..."
"Shhh, now. It's your turn."
"I don't want a turn. I'm driving."
"Get on with it."
"Something beginning with 'C'..."
"Car?"
"Oh, come on, say it properly..."
"Oh, for Heavens sake! Fine. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'C'..."
"Car?"
"Yes. Well done. Your turn."
"You can't do that! We had 'car' already. That is cheating."
"Cheating? You think I'm cheating...? When you just had 'camera'?"
"Do another one!"
"Unbelievable..."
"Yes, play properly."
"God. Okay, okay..I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'R'..."
"Rabbit?"
"Rabbit? No. There's no rabbits here..."
"Rhinoceros?"
"Rhinoceros? Rhinoceros? Can you actually see a rhinoceros?"
"Is it 'road'?"
"Yes. Well done."
"I'm seeing a pattern here. Are you just saying the first thing you can see immediately in front of you?"
"No, because then 'R' would be 'red mist', wouldn't it?"
"You're not really trying very hard..."
"That's right, and do you know why? Because I'm driving. I don't know if you've noticed, but in front of me is this sort of wheel, that I keep turning left and right, and what's actually happening is that it's making the car go where I point it..."
"I swear, sometimes it's all I can do to not to slap you upside the head..."
"I'm driving. I have to concentrate."
"The light is red. We're stationary at the moment..."
"Is 'R' for red light, Daddy?"
"Rabbit?"
"Yes, fine, OK, turns out it was 'rabbit' after all. One just magically appeared in the footwell. Well done. Your go."
"Where? Where is there a rabbit? I can't see a rabbit..."
"It's your sisters turn now, darling..."
"But I want to see the rabbit..."
"Shhh, now. Let's just play. Come on sweetie, your turn..."
"I spy...little eye...something beginning with...tree."
"Tree? Beginning with 'tree?'.."
"Yes, tree."
"Is it 'tree'?"
"Yes! Tree! It is 'tree'! Well done."
"That's not right! It can't start with the thing it is! That's CHEATING!"
"Will. You. Please. STOP. SHOUTING!"

(I've wanted to do a post that was 'dialogue only' for a while now, but my apologies to those reading via email subscription, who I suspect have no highlight colours to help them determine who's who...though it may well read better that way, I can't tell...)

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...

Stupid things that I have bought

In a rare moment of uncharacteristic consistency, here's the followup and matching counterpart to a previous post where I discussed the various foolish things my wife has wasted our hard-earned cash on. This time, as promised, why don't we examine a few ill thought-out purchases of my own?

1) A Curious George bathtime bubble-blower.
This was a present for our youngest this past Christmas. She is not really one for communicating her hobbies and interests, so you have to kind of extrapolate from observed behaviour. On that premise, her hobbies seem to consist of casual violence and wanton destruction, and much as I am sure she would appreciate a claw hammer and big bag of marbles for throwing, they did seem somewhat inappropriate for a two-year old. But she has also been known to sit still for literally minutes on end while the Curious George DVD is playing, so a 'bubble blowing' bathtime doll of her favourite cartoon monkey seemed a good bet.
I could not have been more wrong: she loathes it.
The Curious George bubble-blower is a foot-high plastic monkey that you can take into the bath. When filled with bubble mixture, he blows bubbles when squeezed - at least, that is what he is supposed to do. However, in practise, what he actually does when squeezed is puke a sickly white foam out of his mouth, like the last shuddering death throes of a rabid dog. His chest cavity then wheezes dramatically as it sucks in air, which is very unsettling. Couple that with the fact that he has a horrible 'skin-like' rubbery surface and the cold dead eyes of a serial killer and you have the stuff of childhood nightmares - and that's before you consider that, in order to fill him with bubble mixture in the first place, you have to open a slot in the back of his head and inject it into his cranium using a special syringe specifically supplied for this purpose, like a kind of 'My first vivisection' doll.
She screams when she sees it. An epic failure on many levels, although I think my purchase is not quite as large a failing as whoever commissioned it in the first place and then subsequently greenlit production. Here's a handy tip for any toy manufacturers reading this: any child's toy that requires you to insert a syringe into a monkey's head is almost certainly in need of a rethink.

2) An umbrella from Poundland
Yes, yes, I know; I was asking for it. It's the pound shop, right? They only sell things for a pound. Even before the world economy came crashing down and sterling went into freefall, you couldn't buy much for a pound. And there's so much that can go wrong with a cheap umbrella: it can fail to deploy, the spindles can break, the fabric can tear: it's very clearly an unwise object to only spend a pound on. And yet, here's my defence: it was raining, and I didn't have an umbrella - but I did have a pound. And I only needed it to last for 30 minutes.
It lasted twenty. Then a sudden gust of wind not only blew it inside out, but blew all the fabric clean off the frame, which whirled away like a giant bat - leaving me forlornly holding an umbrella skeleton in a torrential downpour, much to the amusement of a whole busload of passing commuters.

3) Battery operated toothbrushes.
I buy them, at great expense. I successfully clean my teeth with them that night, and the following morning. Then, while I am work the next day, my youngest daughter picks them up, turns them on, and leaves them in bath, because she likes the buzzing noise that makes. When I get home that night that batteries are flat, and I find that I am left with what is effectively a standard toothbrush that I have paid 6-7 times over the odds for.

4) Mister Kart.
My wife maintains this is indicative of just how little I actually understand her, and still cites it now, over a decade later, as an example of how crass I am. I still maintain this was a sound purchase and that she needs to get over herself. Why don't you be the judge?
There was a time, before I wore down her defences though an intensive programme of unsubtle psychological attrition, when my wife was 'just' my girlfriend (I hope this lays to rest the scandalous rumour that the only reason she is married to me is that she was purchased over the Internet). Back then, I used to make a bit more effort and try to go out of my way to impress her, which I now realise was a cruel mistake, because all I did was set her expectations waaaaay too high, and she has been on a downer ever since. But during that time (what she would describe as "the golden days", when I was prepared to suppress my farts in her presence and to at least pretend to be prepared to talk about 'feelings') she lived in London, and worked as a fashion textile designer. When she visited me at weekends she would often bring work back with her, which meant my dining room soon started to fill up with paint, pastels, sketches of flowers, etc. This artistic detritus began to interfere with my own usage of the room during the week (largely the storage of pizza boxes and the long term collection of dust) so, in a moment of shining altruism, I decide to invest in a storage solution for it all.
"What's this?" she asked, looking horrified when she saw it.
"That is Mister Kart" I explained, pointing to where the name had been injection-moulded into the black, shiny polypropylene surface in a distant Chinese sweatshop.
"I see. And what is Mister Kart for, exactly?"
"He is a three-drawer storage solution, useful for..." I began.
"Mister Kart," she interrupted icily, "is a plastic vegetable rack. For keeping potatoes and carrots in."
"That is just one suggested usage. Mister Kart is versatile. Mister Kart, can also, for example, be used to store paintbrushes. Or pastels. Or..."
"That is the ugliest, cheapest piece of shit I have ever seen in my life, and if you think I am storing my art supplies in it, you are mental."
A short pause.
"I bought if for you," I explained, slightly hurt. "It's a gift."
"You don't understand me at all, do you?"
A much lengthier pause. In retrospect, it was a key moment in our relationship. I suspect, had I played things differently, that I would not now be married with kids.
"You don't have to use it." I said weakly.
When we moved out of the house, some two years later, I found the still unused Mister Kart under the stairs. I went to put it on the removal van, but my new wife gave me a look like thunder and so I left it in the kitchen for the new house owners. I hope they loved and appreciated it more than the woman it was bought for....

Quackerjack Jones, duck detective

Saturday, mid-afternoon, on one of the weekends in the middle of the so-called British 'Summer'. True to the spirit of the nation, it has been raining biblically now for nine days solid; a constant soul-embittering torrent of misery that has lashed down at us from beneath a grim sky painted the colour of bruised fruit. The continual rain has meant that the children have largely been trapped indoors, and have spent the last week or so dividing their time between yanking all the damp washing off of the radiators, and screeching like banshees. Everyone's nerves are more that a little frayed - Nini, in particular, does not have the respite of sitting in an air-conditioned office during working hours, and is rapidly developing the thousand-yard stare of the seriously combat fatigued. I decide we will go the Walter Rothschild museum in Tring, because on previous visits their extensive collection of stuffed animals has calmed both girls down. Apparently there's something about Victorian display cases full of frozen endangered species, their mouths open in a permanent snarl, glass eyes staring out at you, that can usefully drive even the most fractious toddler into a mood of nervous calm - even if they don't sleep so well that night.
Sadly, when we get there it transpires that the main gallery - where all the really nasty looking beasts are, those which normally cause Neve to shrink back against my legs - is closed for refurbishment. Nonetheless, the girls defy expectations and behave very well, and in a moment of uncharacteristic largesse I announce that they can each choose a toy animal from the gift shop.
The range of toy animals is, as you might imagine, immense. There are some truly exotic animals to choose from - I see ocelots, flying squirrels, star-nosed moles, armadillos, anteaters...this will be great fun for them, I think - what exciting and exotic creature will they choose as a souvenir?
Both girls return within about 15 seconds, each clutching identical soft toy ducks. Boring, bland, yellow ducks. I look at them with unmasked disappointment.
"Those are ducks", I say, somewhat unnecessarily.
"Yes," agrees Amelie.
"Ducks!" adds Neve.
"You've already got soft toy ducks at home"
"We like ducks' says Amelie.
"Ducks!", her sister confirms.
"Look, there's all of these to choose from. " I say, with a grandiose sweep of the hand to indicate row upon row of cuddly wildlife. "You can have a....a mandrill. Or a cheetah. Or a lobster. Or a wild boar, with tusks..."
"They want ducks." says Nini, in a carefully selected tone of voice that manages to confer an entirely different message, that being: "I want a fruit scone in the tea room, and whatever it is you are doing is likely to delay that, so I would very much like you to stop."
"We want ducks," agrees Amelie. I press on, ever the patron saint of lost causes.
"Look, a zebra. Or a parakeet...octopus....snake...or this, look, I don't even know what this is.....ah, a frilled lizard. Isn't that great? A cuddly frilled lizard? Wouldn't you like that?"
Amelie looks at the frilled lizard dubiously - as well she might, it is the single most unpleasant looking soft toy in the history of the world and not helping my campaign in any way.
"We really want ducks" she says finally.
"Ducks!" says a voice at knee height.
I sigh, and head to the counter with the ducks.

Later, in the team room, Nini explains 'what my problem is'.
I do so enjoy it when she takes it upon herself, unasked, to do this - these little chats are always a delight, and I am apparently lucky enough to have great many faults/problems, so it looks like I'll be enjoying the benefit of her corrective wisdom for many years to come. I don't resent these little diatribes in any way, oh no, not me...
"What your problem is," she tells me, waving her scone expansively and showering me with crumbs, "...is that you project too much on the girls. Just because you think something is brilliant, it doesn't mean they will too. They are different to you by over 30 years and a full chromosome. They don't like the same things that you do, and they probably never will."
"Hmmmm, how fascinating, please do go on..." I reply politely, meaning exactly the opposite and using the force of my contained rage to tie a teaspoon into a serviceable reef knot under the table.
Fortunately, at this point, we are interrupted by Amelie.
"Daddy," she asks "what shall I call my duck?"
I ponder this for a second.
"Quacky? Quackers?" I suggest.
She looks unimpressed.
"Mr. Quack? Or maybe Jack Quack?"
"Those names are silly..."
"Wait, wait, I've got it! Quackerjack! Quackerjack Jones!"
"Quackerjack?"
"Quackerjack Jones! Duck detective!"
"What?"
"He is a detective, but also a duck!" I say. "He can have adventures. He can solve crimes!"
"Projecting again..." says Nini from across the table.
"Ssshhhh!" I hiss. "We can make up stories about him. He can investigate fowl play!"
"What is 'crimes'?" asks Amelie.
"Why can't it just be a duck?" asks Nini wearily. "This is exactly what I was talking about. Why does every soft toy have to have a backstory with you?"
This is sadly true: previous soft toys that fall into this category include 'Mitch Brannon, Oil bear' (Teddy bear that worked the oil rigs), Nelly Trunkado (Operatic elephant) and Pierre le Bear (Aristocratic French teddy bear, once an amorous ladies bear but who lost an eye in a duel and is now seeking out the rival that scarred him and also stole his one true love).
In each and every case my children have been singularly unimpressed with the wild tales I have made up for them about 'what your toys did before you got them' and have then further snubbed me by refusing to call these toys by the names I have given them, choosing instead to name them 'Brown bear', 'Elephant', and 'Winky' respectively (sadly, he really has lost an eye).
But Nini's suggestion has come too late - I am already running away with myself. In my minds eye, 'Quackerjack Jones, Duck detective' is already a hugely successful range of children's stories, and the movie rights have just been sold for a million.
"He can have a catchphrase, Amelie!" I shriek. "When he catches the villain, he can say 'Another case quacked!'"
Amelie looks at me wide-eyed.
"I think," she says, after a pause,"I will call him Ducky."
There is a longer, sadder pause, during which I deflate visibly.
"Oh." I say "OK. That's a good name too."
I brighten, and turn to Neve. "What about your duck, Nevey? Shall we call him Quackerjack?"
"No."
"No? Why not? What is he called, then?"
"Duck."
"Just 'Duck'?"
"Ess. Called 'Duck'."
"Fine" I say sourly. "Good. Nice name. That way he will match the other 3 ducks you already have..."
"Ess. Duck."
I stir my tea sadly.
"The gift shop is probably still open if you want to buy a duck of your own?" suggests Nini.

Communication difficulties

Lost in translation: Neve and the pigeons
It is 6.45 a.m. Neve and I are watching Teletubbies together. A long, tedious segment about a boy feeding some pigeons has just finished (which seemed to just go on forever: what is there to say about feeding pigeons? You throw some grain on the floor. That's it. It barely deserves a sentence, much less a short film, but apparently the Tubbies found it both educational and entertaining and demanded that it be played 'Again! Again!", making the rest of us suffer, the big dumb stupid screen-bellied idiots) when Neve turns to me, and asks with a furrowed brow:
"Where's the business sausage?"
I gape at her. Recently her random garbling has seemed a lot more like proper English words, but as you can see that doesn't necessarily mean that they actually make any sense.
"What? Business sausage?"
She nods firmly.
"Do you actually mean 'sausage', or am I hearing things?" I ask
She gestures at the screen (where the Teletubbies insistence on repeating their educational VT segments has seen a major breakthrough: the birds appear to have remembered that they can eat grain by means of putting it their beaks) and continues to frown.
"Sausage" she says, "Business sausage."
"Right. I have no idea what you mean. What about this 'business sausage'?
"We wiped it."
"What?" I goggle at her incredulously.
"It kicked. It kicked, so we wiped it" she explains patiently.
There is a pause, throughout which she stares at me expectantly.
"I am sorry, but I really have no idea what you are talking about" I say, with a helpless shrug.
She nods, as if satisfied, and turns her attention back to the TV.

If anyone has the slightest idea what she may have meant, then please let me know.

Pride comes before a fall: Amelie and Mario Kart
I am playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo with Amelie. Actually, that is a slight exaggeration - what is actually happening is that I am playing Mario Kart, and she is sitting next to me holding the (disconnected) plastic steering wheel and pretending to drive. She is also pointing out glaringly obvious things that happen onscreen to me (such as "That man has overtaken you", or "The road turns around a corner here", or even "You need to go faster to win") in a way that I find eerily reminiscent of her mother 'helping' me when I drive our real car. As the next race starts, she also decides to add a little bit of race commentary:
"And they're off! They're really tearing up the road!" she says.
I laugh out loud at this remark, which encourages her further.
"You are the coolest driver in the race, Daddy" she shouts.
I gasp. It is all I can do to not drop the controller and punch the air in triumph. My little girl thinks I am cool! I have been waiting for her to say something like that for, oooh, maybe 4 years 2 months and twenty days (if I had to make a rough guess).
I complete another half lap, glowing with paternal pride. Then I remember she is only four, and as I think about what she has said the doubt sets in.
"Amelie, where did you learn to say 'tearing up the road'?" I ask suspiciously
"On my Hello Kitty DVD. They have a race in that, and the rabbit with the flag says it."
"Hmm. Do you know what it means?"
"No. You just say it when you see races."
"Ah." I say. I fear I know the answer already, but have to ask: "Does he say anything else?"
"Yes, he tells Kitty that she is the coolest driver in the race."
"Uh-huh. And do you know what that means?"
"No."
"Right." I say sadly, feeling my previous elation gently dribble away into the carpet.
There is a pause.
"You are not winning Daddy, you need to try harder" she says helpfully.

Feigning it: Nini and Winter vegetables.
We are lying in bed. Nini is reading an article about Gordon Ramsey, and his recent outburst on the sole use of ingredients that are in season.
"Bloody Gordon Ramsey" she tuts. "I mean he's got a point, but it isn't him who'll have to feed my kids kale and beetroot all throughout the Winter."
"Uhuh" I say, which is the vaguely affirmative noise I make when I am not really interested but want to indicate that nonetheless I do appreciate, on some level, the one-sided effort that is being put into the 'conversation'.
"I can just see me giving Amelie a bowl of turnip when she wants strawberries. 'Sorry love', I'll say, 'Gordon says it's root vegetables only until May...'"
"Uhuh" I say, wittily.
She puts the magazine down and turns to me, her eyes bright and her face animated.
"What do you think?" she asks.
"Uh-h...what?"
"What do you think? About only eating vegetables in season."
I decide to come clean. "I wasn't listening properly."
"Why not?"
"You're talking about vegetables."
"Yes?"
"I can't even feign interest in it."
This enrages her.
"Why not? You always say that! I ask about something, and you say you can't even feign interest in it. It's like a stock phrase for you. Do you ever actually try to feign interest?"
I have a little think about this.
"Uhuh" I say, earnestly.
"You do? When? Give me an example."
I am aware there is no good answer to this question. Silence here would be as damning as owning up to anything. It is an exquisite, classic piece of 'husband entrapment' that will award her the moral high ground regardless of my reply.
"You can't, can you? Come on, name one conversation that we have had today where you, on my behalf, actually tried and feigned interest in it?"
I decide that, as I'm going down, I may as well go in style.
"This one?" I offer.

The animal call-screening service

I am at work, trying to recall which week it was that we agreed we would go on holiday this year, so that I can book the required time off. I have done my best to keep track of this and make the process run as smoothly and painlessly as possible using my special patented three-point memory reinforcement programme. You may not be familiar with my technique, so I'll explain it for you: I have covered all the bases by (a) writing the date on a piece of paper (that I have subsequently lost), (b) entering the date in my Palm Pilot (which I have subsequently allowed to run completely out of battery power to the point where it will no longer turn on) and finally (c) writing the date on the back of my hand (which I have then subsequently washed off).
All else having failed, it is time to phone back to basecamp and check in with The Keeper of the Family Diary as to when the proposed holiday date is. This is not a phonecall I am relishing because, well, I have asked her three times already and there is a strong chance she will rightly lambast me for being an idiot. What I don't realise, however, is that The Keeper of the Family Diary is wily. She has taken special measures to protect herself from idiot husbands interrupting her during the day - she has installed a unique telephone receptionist who has taken it upon herself to screen all incoming calls on her employers behalf, in the most surreal manner possible, as follows:
(Phone rings for a lengthy period, and then is picked up a fraction of a second before it would go to answerphone)
"Hello?"
"Hello, is that Amelie?"
"No."
There is a short pause, while I have a bit of a think.
"Yes, it is."
"No."
"It is, though, isn't it? I recognise your voice."
"No. It is Daddy."
"No, I am Daddy. You are Amelie."
"No, I'm Amelie."
I sigh, envisioning a lengthy 'No, I am Spartacus' type conversation. I decide to change tactics.
"Hello sweetheart, what are you up to today?"
"I am on the phone. To Daddy."
"Yes, I know. I meant before that."
"I was listening to the phone. It was ringing."
"Yes...yes, I know how the phone works. Look, is Mummy there?"
"Oink!"
"Pardon?"
"Oink! It is not Amelie any more!" (said playfully, as if joyously announcing the start of the best, most fun game in the world)
"It...isn't?"
"No! It is a little pig!"
Another pause. It is early, and I am only halfway through my first coffee so my brain is not yet firing on all cylinders. I scratch my chin and stab idly at some blu-tac with a paperclip while I think what to say next.
"Um...well, hello there, little pig. Is Mummy there?"
"Miaow!"
"Um....little cat?"
"No!"
"No?"
"No! I am a little puppy!"
"But...but...but puppies don't go 'miaow'! They go 'woof'.."
"Woof!"
"Amelie, I need to talk to Mummy."
"Woof!"
"Amelie!"
"Baa! Baaa! Baaaa!"
"Amelie, stop making animal noises, and please go and get Mummy for me."
The phone goes quiet. I listen for a few minutes to the hammering of a keyboard and the sounds of 'Tux Paint', a drawing program for children that I have installed on our home PC for Amelie to play with. I know it is Tux Paint because it features a series of 'animal stamps' that can be pasted onto the page, and each time you use one it plays a recording of the animals' call, followed by an American woman saying its name - so I can hear a steady stream of whoops, chirps and guttural growls punctuated with words like 'orca' and 'pelican' and 'beaver'.
"Amelie?" I call
"Cricket. Hen. Hen. Penguin." says Tux Paint.
"Amelie?" I say, a lot louder
"Penguin. Beaver. Duck" says Tux Paint.
"AMELIE!" I shout, causing people in my office to look around.
The phone is picked up again.
"Hello, who is it?"
"It. Is. Your. DADDY!" I seethe.
"Hello! Hello, Daddy!
"Amelie, please fetch Mummy for me."
"But Mummy is busy. She is cleaning the bathroom."
"That's OK. Let me talk to her anyway."
"OK, Daddy!" she says brightly, and hangs up.
I listen to the dialtone and stare sadly at the wall.
Sod it, I think. We'll just not go on holiday this year.

Little Miss Chatterbox

Neve is 'talking' now - at least, that's what her Mother would have you believe - but I am not sure it's any language that I recognise. There are certainly smatterings of recognisable words in her near constant stream of babble, but I am not sure they are ever intended or in the right context. Here's a typical example:
"Hello, Nevey"
"ullo, Da-deee"
"Are you being a good girl?"
"Husha-fusha-bubble. Isha bisha duck, Da-dee"
"Right, I see. A duck. OK. Sounds good."
"Yasha basha. Telephone."
"Pardon?"
"Telephone. Duck."
"What? What did you say?"
"Isha boosha yasha shak...Duck. Telephone. Petrol!"

...which must have meant something important to her, but clearly not what it suggested to me (which, for the record, was: "Daddy, there is a duck on the telephone. He is calling about some petrol." Obviously wrong: I checked, and there was nobody there.)
These exchanges leave me completely bemused and her completely enraged; you can tell by her reddening face and whitening knuckles that her inability to make herself understood fills her with absolute fury.
I understand from the experts (by which what I actually mean is: my wife read it out loud to me from 'Parenting' magazine while I was doing the crossword and not listening properly) that children find this a terribly difficult phase because they desperately want to communicate, but have yet to realise that the strings of sounds they produce don't really make much sense to anybody else. I can certainly relate to that (Ive been similarly affected myself when drunk, and I've also worked with a few people who appeared to be unwittingly afflicted well into their adulthood) but I wish it didn't make her so angry - partly because I don't like to see her getting so upset, and partly because, well, she hits me. In the face, if she can reach.
This issue is exacerbated if what she says is inadvertently amusing. One of her favourite books at the moment is 'Maisys Rainbow Dream', in which Maisy the mouse falls asleep and travels through a (slightly hallucinatory) educational dreamscape while learning about colours. Each page is dominated by a random object in a primary hue, so Maisy watches a RED ladybird and finds a GREEN leaf, etc. The problem comes with Maisys BLUE clock, which Neve (a) likes, and so wants to discuss and (b) cannot pronounce, unfailingly dropping the 'l'. So we end up with the following scenario, when Daddy has not been awake for very long on a Sunday morning and is hence bleary-eyed and not very sensible:
"Ooh, look Nevey, what has Maisie found now? A yellow butterfly!"
"Bubberfy. Lellow."
"Uhuh, very good. And look: a blue clock."
"Blue cock."
"Clock."
"Cock."
"Clock. Cl-ock."
"Cock. Blue cock."
..repeat until I start giggling, at which point she gets angry, and hits me.
Nini hears a lot more sense in what Neve says than I do, though I do think she is guilty of hearing what she wants to hear (i.e "She's talking so early! She's a child genius!" just because she said 'chicken'). In the last week, this has caused some conflict:
"Guess what? Nevey said 'I love you' to me today!" said Nini, eyes sparkling with pride.
"I bet she didn't. I bet she said 'uh-wuh-moo', or something".
"She didn't. You are soooo cynical. It was very clear. I said 'Goodnight Nevey, I love you', and she said 'I love you' back..."
"Hmmmm..."
Despite my disbelief, it didn't stop me trying to get her to say the same to me. After following her round the house for 30 minutes, going "Nevey! Nevey, I love you" and getting nothing back, Amelie's curiosity was piqued:
"Daddy, why are you telling Neve you love her all the time?"
"I want to hear if she knows how to say it back, Ami."
"Oh, she can. But she won't say it to you, Daddy."
"Why not?"
"Because she loves Mummy."

The abject failure of 'The Naughty Bag'

A few years ago I recall having a conversation with another parent about the 'terrible twos'; that phase in a childs development when they hit 24 months and suddenly it seems that all they have learnt how to say is 'no', and all they want to do is shriek and/or pummel you.
"If you think the 'terrible twos' are bad...," they replied, in the weary tone of parent who has realised the fight is endless, and that heavy personal losses are inevitable, "...just wait until you hit the 'f**king awful fours'..."
Amelie is four now - perhaps you can see where this is heading?
It's not that she is physically spending any more time being naughty now than she was back then, its that there is greater spite and sophistication in how she goes about doing it. She can choose to deploy, at any moment, any one of a number of increasingly sophisticated techniques for increasing blood pressure/rage levels in her father, such as:
- Protracted sulking: proper 'thunderclouds-overhead, bottom-lip-jutting-out' sulking, combined with painstaking efforts to make sure I know at all times how unhappy I have made her (achieved by doing her level best to remain constantly in my field of vision, even if doing so involves following me from room to room; if I escape to the toilet I half expect to hear a ladder at the window and her face appear in silent admonition, pressed against the frosted glass).
- Whispered backchat: for example: "...no Daddy, in fact you are the naughty girl..." Always delivered on the cusp of hearing with her face turned away from me, so that when I demand "What was that?" she can reply "Nothing" and I can't be sure if she is telling the truth or not.
- The old 'Divide and Conquer' routine: "But Mummy lets me..."
- Anguished howling and flailing: including throwing herself bodily to the floor, kicking until her shoes come off, face reddening etc. When she does it in public (which is fortunately very rarely), I am always slightly concerned that anyone passing by will think she is having some kind of seizure and call the paramedics. It would be hugely embarrassing having to explain to the emergency services that no, all that's actually wrong with her is that she's been denied a 'Hello Kitty!" chocolate egg.
- Straightforward lying: Perhaps the best example here being the seminal classic "Neve did it."

...all of which make me pine for simpler times, when all she used to do was smash me in the face with a fistful of Duplo.
Nini is surprisingly unsympathetic over the whole affair, primarily because she firmly believes that all this behaviour is entirely my fault on a genetic level, i.e the 'lying', 'sulking' and 'tantrum' genes are exclusive to my genetic makeup and have been passed on from father to daughter. This impression has been reinforced by my own mother, who on more than one occasion has provided my wife with a 'top ten' list of examples of my own childhood misdemeanours. In fact, so firmly does Nini hold this conviction that when presented with a child in full-on tantrum mode, she will turn and scowl menacingly at me, jabbing a finger at me and mouthing "All your fault - your crappy genes".
As the scope of Amelies possible 'naughtiness' expands, so must our corresponding disciplinary measures. Let's be frank, the 'naughty step' is simply not cutting it any more. She no longer fears the naughty step. In fact, she kind of likes the naughty step, as she can lean back on the stairgate and kick repeatedly at my keys (which hang on a hook nearby) and thus drive me absolutely crazy - every jangle and tinkle from the hall says defiance. Unfortunately, none of the extra measures we have tried out have worked that well yet: take the following example of 'The Naughty Bag'...
The scene: as punishment for some misdemeanour Amelie has been sent to her room, where she is lying on the bed maintaining a carefully pitched repetitive whine/sob. (By means of experimental tiptoeing I have discovered she only makes this noise when she knows you can hear her: she starts as soon as she can hear your footsteps and doesn't waste any energy doing it while you are out of earshot). I decide today is the day I will put the naughty bag into operation, and so march into her room, holding it aloft.
"Do you know what this?" I ask. She looks at it sullenly.
"A shopping bag" she replies.
"No" I say, which clearly confuses her, probably because it actually is a shopping bag (not a plastic carrier bag, mind, this is a black fold-up shopping bag from Wilkinsons that I bought in an uncharacteristically eco-friendly moment when I was shopping for cheap Easter eggs)
"It looks like a shopping bag..." she says.
"Never mind what it looks like. It is not a shopping bag. It is...The Naughty Bag." I announce.
There is a pause. She sits up and looks interested.
"Why? What has it done?"
"It hasn't done anything" I say, with the sad awareness that we are only 10 seconds in and things are already going badly. "It is for when you have been naughty."
"Why? What do I do with it?"
"You don't - look, just listen and stop asking questions, will you? - you don't do anything with it. I do. It is a bag where Daddy might put your toys when you are naughty." I leave this point hanging, so the full weight of this dire consequence can be appreciated. Sadly, the point goes completely over her head.
"But I have got a toy bag already."
"This is not a toy bag. This is The Naughty Bag!"
She looks at me as if I have gone mad. I decide to press on. "If you are naughty, Daddy will take away a toy and put it in The Naughty Bag, and you can only have it back if you are good." I wait for a reaction. None comes.
"The toy will be gone" I explain.
"Forever?"
"No, of course not. You can have it back the next day. If you are good."
There is a long pause. She looks at both the bag, and me holding it, with mild suspicion. It is very clear that she does not consider 'The Naughty Bag' to be a punishment in any way. She just thinks it is odd, and possibly stupid.
We'll see, I think, how she feels when we actually have to use it. That'll teach her.
Later that day, when she misbehaves again, I confiscate one of her teddy bears and tell her it is going in The Naughty Bag. She immediately cheers up, gets very excited and asks if she can put him in herself. I refuse, at which point she gets tearful and howls, as if I have denied her a treat. Through her sobs she complains to her mother that "Daddy is not sharing The Naughty Bag". Nini laughs into the back of her hand and I stalk off downstairs in a rage.
The next day, just before bathtime, I fetch the The Naughty Bag and tell Amelie that as she has been good all day, she can have her teddy back. I ceremoniously upend the bag to release the bear, and out he falls - along with a toy lamb, a Barbie, a wad of tissues and a plastic teacup.
It transpires that Amelie added the lamb and the Barbie to keep the bear company, and the tissues are for him to make a bed. The teacup is in case he felt thirsty. Nini quickly stands and leaves the room, so that her poorly-disguised laughter does not further undermine my crumbling parental authority.

We have not used The Naughty Bag since.

Failing the tealight test

Here's the scene: A bright breezy weekday morning. Neve is snoring away in her cot, enjoying her morning nap. Amelie is at school. Nini is doing some spring cleaning and tidying in the front room. In the loft, two floors above her, I am 'seizing the day' and addressing the pressing problem of my unemployment by trying to beat my highscore on Geometry Wars on the Wii.
I decide that, though my skills at alien genocide are undoubtedly awesome, I just need a little energy boost to ensure that the galaxy is safe under my care. A cup of tea and a few slices of toast should do it - seems like a small price to pay for continuing galactic peace. I head to the kitchen, feeling relatively chipper, and humming to myself, when I pass the door to the living room and Nini asks: "Paul, do you still want these?"
Nini and have been together for a long time, and although it seems like an innocuous query, I know better: my spider-sense is tingling. There is no doubt that this is in some way a loaded question...
I peer cautiously into the lounge. Nini has cleared all the shelves and drawers and is sorting through all the ornaments and knick-knacks they contained - on the floor is a large cardboard box she is filling for the charity shop. She is also waving a couple of unidentifiable objects at me, one in each hand. "Do you still want these?" she asks again.
At this point I need to make a small digression: despite the impression you may have gotten from reading previous entries here, vis a vis my continuing de-masculation and forthcoming complete mental collapse at the hands of my nearest and dearest, I am still a man. As such, my interest in soft furnishings and household ornaments is very, very low. When we sit on the sofa, Nini is aesthetically aware of the carefully constructed arrangements of photographs and treasured mementos on each shelf, what each represent, the memories associated with them, how they look together as a collection, etc, etc. By contrast I am merely aware that we have shelves, and there is stuff on the shelves that makes it hard to park my cup of tea there - so to my mind, we either have too much stuff or need more shelves.
I focus on the gently waving objects. "What are they?" I ask.
She tuts faintly. I am immediately aware that on some level I have already 'failed' this conversation, and all that follows will just be an exercise in damage limitation.
"They are tealight holders" she says. "They are your tealight holders."
I find this hard to believe. It is inconceivable to me that I own tealight holders, as they are not something I would ever have bought for myself, nor can I see me adding them to my Christmas wish list. I take the first one from her and turn it over in my hands.
"Where the hell did this come from?" I ask
"I think", she says iciliy, "that it was given to you by some other girl..."And she pulls a disgusted face, as if to suggest that by seeing other girls in the 26 years of my life before I met her I have somehow let myself down, and that my unwittingly keeping household ornaments from them is an act of the deepest treachery.
Ah, I think, that's what this is about.
I clear my throat. "Well, obviously," I say, "that can go. I don't want that any more."
"Mmph" she sniffs haughtily.
I decide to press on and try and win back some brownie points.
"I mean, who would buy me a tealight holder? They clearly didn't know me very well, eh?"
Her face is unreadable. I take the second tealight holder from her hand and examine that.
"Yuk. That's not even as nice as the first one", I joke breezily. "I've no clue where that one's from either..."
"I bought it for you when we started going out. It was one of the first things I ever gave you, for your first house, when you didn't really have much furniture."
There is a pause. In no way could it be described as pleasant.
"Oh" I say.
"Right" I say.
"Well..." I begin "Now that I look more closely at it..."
"Get back in the loft" she says, and off I go. I think it best - after all, the galaxy won't save itself...

Seize the throne, sisters.

A weekday evening. Nini is glued to some ghastly 'alternate docu-tainment' TV drama about a fictional English royal family, which I am kind of semi-watching while attempting to use the laptop to list items for sale on EBay. I am feeling fairly irritated, firstly because I think the TV programme (which Nini appears to be showing every sign of enjoying enormously) is truly dire, and secondly because my mouse pointer is doing that infuriating thing whereby, if left alone, it will wander off to the top left corner of the screen. This means I have to constantly wrestle with the mouse, in the manner of a sailing skipper fighting to maintain the helm in heavy seas, just to tick the 'PayPal accepted' checkbox.
The TV programme breaks for adverts. "Are you enjoying this show?" I ask Nini, hoping she will say "No" so that I can watch something else, even if its the home shopping channel, or the static screen that says 'CBeebies will return at 7 a.m' - or even Channel 5, if there was no other choice...
"Yes, I am, apart from the stupid storyline about the Princess."
I have not really been paying attention, and this has passed me by. Nini is swift to bring me up to speed:
"It has this storyline where the King had died, and his eldest son takes the throne. Even though the King had a daughter, who was older still."
I wait expectantly for the punchline. There clearly isn't one coming. "Right...?" I ask.
"Well it wouldn't happen nowadays, would it? So it's all a bit stupid."
"I think the whole programme is a bit stupid, but what do you mean, specifically? What wouldn't happen nowadays?"
"The prince getting the throne. It would just go the the princess, as she's older."
There is a short pause. Somewhere deep in my mind, a warning siren sounds, and a little voice says "Leave it. Leave it well alone. No good can come of this conversation, so just agree with her, and get back on EBay". Sadly, I have been ignoring that little voice all my life, and do so again:
"It wouldn't. The crown always passes to the oldest son, unless there are no other descendants."
"Not any more, surely? Not these days"
"What do you mean 'not any more'? Of course it does."
Nini sits very still and looks at me long and hard, in the manner of a tree frog watching an insect and thinking about lunch. I realise she is trying to determine if I am telling the truth or trying to wind her up.
"It's true," I say. "Tradition and all that."
There is another short pause. The air has that feeling of pressure about to be violently released, akin to the moment after you've seen the lightning flash but not yet heard the thunder. On my laptop, the unattended mouse pointer sneaks into the top left corner of the screen and pushes insistently against it, as if trying to hide.
"Kings. Sons. Crowns." I babble, helpfully.
"You. Are. Kidding. Me", she says quietly, with distinct menace.
"No."
"If we had a King, and he died, and his eldest child was a daughter, she wouldn't get the throne?"
I shrug. "No"
"What if she was an only child?"
"Yes. Oh, actually, no - not if the king had a brother. His brother would get it instead, I think..."
"WHAT? Still? In this day and age?"
It is clear that Nini is working up a good head of steam on this one. I suspect she may soon starting ranting, which feels a bit odd as that's usually my department. I decide, on balance, that it's probably best not to ask the question I desperately want answered, which is: "Nini, you went to school. You've got a degree. How can you not know this?"
"That is outrageous," she continues. "That is completely unacceptable."
I scratch at my chin and say nothing. This is partly because I am not sure what to say, and partly because once false comment from me and I can easily see myself being held personally responsible for thousand of years of British royal succession.
"Don't you think it's outrageous?" she asks
Even I recognize this as one of those occasions when the truth ("No, actually I've never even given it a single seconds thought before now -and in the brief time we've been discussing it, I've come to realise I simply don't care") although technically the correct response, is not the right response. Instead, I try to calm the situation:
"Yes, it's awful", I nod, not entirely convincingly. She looks briefly mollified.
"But you do have the right to vote now", I add unnecessarily. This does not have quite the soothing affect I had hoped for.
"DAMN RIGHT!"
"Oh look," I say, pointing hopefully at the TV. "It's starting again..."
She picks up the remote control and pauses the live broadcast, and for the first time ever I start to think that the modern entertainment miracle of set-top-boxes is a stupid idea.
"If this happened in real life..." Nini hisses, pointing at me with the remote and carefully enunciating each word. "....people would march. They would march on Westminster."
There is another pause. It is clear I am expected to fill it with some kind of affirmative statement.
"Well", I say slowly. "I think women would march..."
Nini looks outraged. "Men would march, too. You would march, surely?" she asks.
Ah, I think. Here it comes.
"Well..." I say, "No. Probably not."
"No? Why not? You think it's right that men should automatically get the throne, do you?"
"No, its not that. I just...don't really care."
"You don't care? About equality? You are a father of two daughters and you don't care?"
I make a vague shrug. "Nini, it's just a rich family who live in a lot of big houses. Does it really matter who has the master bedroom...?"
Nini actually balls her fists in fury. "Well", she says "I would march. And I would take the girls with me. Your girls."
"OK..."
"But you would just sit here at home, being a man, would you? Doing man things."
"Um.... yeah?" I offer.
"You'd just sit there, on the sofa, farting and cupping yourself in front of Top Gear, would you?"
"No!"
"What if it were your daughters who missed out on the throne?" she asks angrily. I stop and think about this.
"Well, that would make me the King, surely?" I point out.
She turns away and unpauses the TV, muttering under her breath. I can't hear what she's saying but it sounds a bit like "King of bastards, maybe..."
An uneasy silence descends. I notice the mouse pointer is still flickering away, and for a wistful second think back to when we wrestled together over my Ebay listing, in what now seem like happier times...

Rhinos and remorse: the Whipsnade Incident

As I've mentioned before, Whipsnade is a zoo not far from where we live. We go there a lot: the girls love it, as it has lots of animals for them to point at excitedly and a vast adventure playground, and we love it because annual membership is very cheap. Because we are such frequent visitors, it has also been the site of countless incidents of everyday family trauma. I still recall with horror the time the family (including my mother) took my 7-year old niece for a visit to see some 'real live' (i.e not on the television) wild animals, only for her to observe rather more 'animal conservation in action' than we had bargained for: the rhinos chose to celebrate our arrival at their enclosure by engaging in an astonishingly brutal bout of public lovemaking. I don't know if you have ever tried to tear a fascinated 7-year old away from the sight of a pair of bellowing black rhinos going at it, but I can tell you this: neither my wife or mother would have been any help to you whatsoever, because they would have been insensible with laughter.
But I digress: it's the most recent shameful incident at the zoo that I want to talk about....
Because Nini is a 'Friend of Whipsnade' (which just means that she has an annual membership card: it's turns out it's not actually that difficult to become Whipsnades 'friend'; you can buy your way into its affections for about £45 a year) she has been supplied with a discount card that gives her 10% off at the zoo shops and cafes. Almost without fail, she forgets to use it.
But on our last visit, we remembered to use our discount on the restaurant for our 'chipnic'. A chipnic, as the name maybe suggests, is a picnic with extra chips. It has a couple of advantages over the standard, run-of-the-mill picnic in that (a) you get to enjoy some delicious fried potatoes with vinegar and ketchup and (b) you have legitimately purchased food from the restaurant - which means that when the staff jobsworth comes over to your table and tries to tell you that indoor seating is for restaurant patrons only, and that there is plenty of picnic seating outside in the rain, you can triumphantly point at the plate and tell him to go and fetch a damn high chair because the little one needs her lunch...
So, in any case: we bought chips. I queued up to buy them, and used Ninis 'Friends of Whipsnade' card to save a full 42 pence on the asking price. Nini, Amelie and I ate our chips along with our sandwiches, Neve half-chewed her share, then threw the remnants at fellow diners - all was well in the world.
It was when we were packing up to leave that the trouble started. I was trying vainly to restore Neves appearance with a damp cloth, in the hope that she might look more like a little girl rather than some freakish ketchup monster, when I innocently said to Nini: "Don't forget to put your membership card away."
"You've still got it" she replied.
P: "I haven't. I gave it back."
N: "You didn't. I haven't got it..."
P: "I did. I put it down on the tray with the napkins when I brought the chips over."
N: "I don't think you did..."
P: "I did. I am certain. I remember putting it down..."
Nini looked dubious.
N: "Are you sure? You always do this. You are always losing things, and your memory is rubbish... "
P: "My memory is fine."
N: "...and then you insist you've checked, and that I'm wrong, and then it turns out that in fact you were wrong after all..."
P: "I am not wrong. I gave it back to you."
N: "...but by then we have turned the place upside-down, and I have wasted ages and doubted my sanity and you've made me feel like an idiot."
P: "Nini, I gave it back to you. Look!"
At this point my voice has risen, and people are looking over curiously. I made a triumphant tour of my jacket pockets, turning each one out theatrically, like a stage magician demonstrating the lack of objects up his sleeve, all the while muttering "Not there. Not there. Oh look, not there either..." and sneering unpleasantly when each pocket was revealed to be empty. Nini looked on with pursed lips.
N: "I bet you put it in your wallet."
I took my wallet from the back of my jeans, and fluttered it open in front of her, dramatically rifling through each note and receipt to prove that no, I haven't put it back in my wallet. I then turned around, thrust my buttocks in her direction like a baboon in mating season, and waggled my hands in each of my back pockets to show that they were also empty.
P: "See? I do not have your card. I have given you back your card. You have lost your card."
Nini sighed loudly, and start to unpack the picnic basket, picking through the rubbish and the munged up sandwich and yogurt that Neve had left behind. Amelie looked on, confused.
"Why is Mummy unpacking the chipnic again?", she asked.
"Mummy has lost something", I explained loftily. "She thinks maybe she has put it back in the picnic basket."
After a minute, in which Nini accidentally got pre-chewed food all up her sleeve, she turned back to me despondently.
N: "It's not here."
P: "Maybe you dropped it?"
We pushed all the chairs back to look on the floor. The place was busy, and I accidentally barged into the man sitting behind me. "Sorry - my wife has lost something," I explained, rolling my eyes in her direction.
Nini unhappily picked through the detritus on the floor. The card was not there.
"You must have put it in your bag", I said, knowingly.
The restaurant was busy. People had seen us get up, and assumed we are leaving, so were hovering nearby waiting for the table. Nini was rattled, so she strapped Neve into her pushchair, put the picnic basket in the bag, and headed outside to go through her bag. I briefly wrestles Amelie into her coat, and then led her after her mother.
Outside, Nini was emptying her bag onto the pavement, picking carefully through the wads of tissue, spare nappies, snacks for the girls, and notebooks that she carries around with her. She looked utterly miserable. Neve was sitting a few feet away, howling from her chair because she couldn't join in the fun.
"Huh", I thought, "It'll take her ages to find it, she carries so much crap around in that bag."
The wind picked up, blowing a slew of Ninis important papers across the picnic area. Amelie chased after them, helpfully stamping them into the mud to stop them escaping. The wind was chilly, and I thrust my hands into my jean pockets to keep them warm.
My left hand encountered something unexpected: a flexible plastic rectangle with rounded edges. There was no doubt at all about what it was.
I briefly, desperately, considered whether I could somehow slip it into Ninis bag while pretending to help her look for it, and then rejected the idea - shamefully not on the basis that it would be wrong, but rather on the basis that it was unlikely to work, and getting caught doing so was probably the only conceivable way I could make thing worse for myself.
I gazed sadly out over the lake, trying to savour the last bitter seconds of my presumed innocence. Dark clouds were forming on the horizon, and it looked like the weather was about to turn nasty. I shivered involuntarily, and looked back at my family scrabbling around on the ground.
Cold as it was, I knew it was just about to get a hell of a lot colder...