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...)

More seasonal retail misery

(A belated post, started some weeks ago, but only finished now)

What with the Christmas shopping, and then the January Sales, I've recently had plenty of opportunity (much as I did about this time last year), to remind myself just how hateful the retail experience can be. This time around, my children are bigger, more aware of what's going on, and hence more vocal about their own feelings on the process. These feelings appear to be crystallised: when looking at Barbie Princess dolls they are very much pro the modern commercial Christmas, whereas whilst shopping for anything else they whine incessantly without pausing to draw breath. My soundtrack for the 2008/2009 Yuletide Retail Hellhole Experience would be the endless looped repetition of Christmas music but with the lyrics drowned out by children howling atonally that they are tired/hungry/have done a poo.
Our Christmas 'big food shop' (AKA "let's give Tesco all of our hard-earned money for way too much food that we won't eat and will ultimately throw away") warrants further discussion, starting with the truly bizarre idea my wife had about it: she thought it would be 'fun'.
"Fun?" I asked, genuinely taken aback. "Fun?"
"Yes - fun. If you let it, it could be fun. You know - picking out special treats, getting caught up in the festive mood..."
"Ugh. It won't be fun. It will be Hell, only with boxes of dates and tins and Quality Street.."
Of course, it wasn't fun. It was dire. Shopping in supermarket is always dire, but during the holidays it's far, far worse: not only are the stores crammed to capacity, but many of the extra seasonal visitors are people like me, who have been dragged there against there will. This means the crowds are not only unusually large, but also overly resentful - and it only takes a small incident, like somebody else picking up the bag of satsumas that you had your eye on, for things to turn really ugly...
My own experience was not improved by my youngest daughter, who discovered that when seated in the child seat at the front of a trolley that I was pushing, she could easily reach up and gather in her tiny fist both of the drawstrings for the hood on my sweatshirt. She could then suddenly tug hard on these, which would collapse the hood into a tight, painful viewing-port centred around my nose. If the drawstrings were then yanked harder, she could physically drag my hooded face down onto the handle of trolley, forcing me into a bent-double position that enabled her to repeatedly kick me in the chest while I flailed blindly at her. She found this hilarious, (as in fact did many onlookers), though it must be said I got tired of it pretty quickly...
When we finally got into the checkout queue and were told that the average waiting time in the line was approaching an hour, all three of us - both of the children and me - turned mutinous. Sensing a possible impending 'incident', my wife sent me and my charges to the cafe to buy a hot drink and a snack, while she stayed and nobly queued. Sadly, this brilliant plan of distraction failed on two counts: firstly the queue at the cafe was so long and slow-moving that my youngest actually fell asleep in the line while sitting on my feet and leaning on my shins, and secondly, just as we had finally sat down with our drinks, my wife appeared looking flustered, to announce that the shopping had all been rung up on the checkout but she has forgotten her credit card, so could I drop everything and come back and pay? Quickly? Only she had noticed that the people in the queue behind her weren't taking the delay that well...
When we got back to checkout, the man waiting in the queue behind us gave me such a filthy look that I felt compelled to draw out the payment process for as long as possible just to spite him: 'forgetting' my PIN for two attempts, changing the card I used at the last minute, suddenly remembering my loyalty card, pointing out a random item that I decided we hadn't actually put in the trolley and asking for it to be taken off the bill - that sort of thing. He looked apoplectic by the end. I was tempted to smile and nod, and wish him a Merry Christmas as we left, but it seemed a bit much...

A fête worse than death?

A week of torrential rain, gently building up towards Saturday and Amelie's first ever school fête. Nini kept a steady eye on the weather all week, tutting occasionally and wishing aloud for sunshine on Saturday, probably because a school fête is not the best place to take your caustic, misanthropic husband on the best of days, and even less so when it's pissing down...
"It will be fun" she said.
"It won't", I replied, in a leaden voice of doom. (I do a nice line in 'leaden voice of doom' - my wife has remarked before that I have an amazing capacity to suck every last ounce of joy or happiness out of a social occasion for her by simply complaining bitterly about it beforehand. She is sadly correct, though I have chosen to omit it from the 'Skills' section of my CV.)
"The kids will love it" she bravely continued,
"No. Not if it's raining"
"There will be a lot of nice people there"
"I don't like nice people..."
That last statement is unfortunately true, and it's something I have only realised quite recently: I really don't like truly nice people - possibly because I have very little in common with them. I struggle to know what to say and have to constantly fight the urge to come out with something shocking and horrendous just to see their faces recoil in horror. Yes, I do realise that this is in fact a desperately unpleasant character flaw, but over the years I have developed a number of techniques that successfully mask this: false smiles, feigned interest and a library of small talk that I can access on autopilot. Maintaining all that is quite a lot of effort, but fortunately I am now married to a woman who is kind, enthusiastic and approachable enough for two people combined. This is lucky, as it means that when we meet other people I don't even have to pretend to try, and yet together we somehow give the overall impression of a fairly normal couple. I much prefer people with some kind of edge: folks with a tragic emotional blockage, or a deeply inappropriate sense of humour, or an inability to recognise social boundaries - these are my people, and I'm much more comfortable around them.
This does, of course, mean that if you are reading this and consider yourself on friendly terms with me, it's probably because on some unconscious level I have seen an echo of one of my many, many character flaws in you, or you are in some way clearly damaged. I hope that makes you feel both special and appreciated (but I'm guessing not)....
Anyway, I digress - the school fête. I have to admit it went pretty well, because of three wonderful unexpected factors:
a) The sun came out. In fact, in defiance of all my glum predictions, the weather was glorious.
b) Neve 'dancejacked' the display area at one point: while a polite crowd of parents watched their children run through a High School Musical dance routine, she brazenly wandered onto centre stage and started 'dancing' for herself. As Nini wasn't around to stop her and it amused me enormously she got to run through a full interpretive dance performance (lots of stamping, some spinning, occasional toppling over), which I enjoyed almost as much as the disapproving 'tuts' of other parents who felt she shouldn't be there stealing the limelight...
c) The man who was in charge of the music had neglected to bring any CD's with him. I presume he had to resort to using whatever was in the CD changer in his car, as that can be the only explanation for the deeply inappropriate soundtrack for the occasion: in essence he played Chris Rea's 'Road to Hell' on loop throughout the entire afternoon. I understand that attendance was down on last year...
Perhaps I'm not the misanthropist I thought I was after all: it seems that all it takes is some sunshine, the sight of my daughter dancing, and the haunting sound of a nineties AOR musician screeching 'You must be evil' (track 3) coming from a Tombola stand to cheer me right up...

On the other hand, Amelie bought a pink plastic pony. We will return to that later...