I suppose every generation is destined to lead the hard way about bad company.
Phew, just as anticipated, the Incredible Hulk has been disarmed with pizza. The comedian returns.
Friday night, and the youngun is comprising his role as tough man, squaring up to us as if we’re his opponents on the street. He’s learned to swell up his chest, looking down on us as he shoots past, dishing out threats. He’s giving us an ultimatum. We just laugh back, and carry on preparing …
One benefit of raising teenagers is that it throws perspective on our own youth. It reassures us that we weren’t unique in being complete jerks. No, it seems to come with the territory.
Ah, the kids have diagnosed me: the reason for the sickness that has consumed me since my return from Bath on Sunday afternoon. “It’s because you never go out,” they tell me, “so your immune system can’t cope with mixing with people suddenly.” Could be. Or it could be just poor decisions consuming too much …
Out of the blue, my wife looks at me seriously. “I know you think you’re worthless,” she says sternly, “but you’re wrong. YOU’RE WRONG.” I’m taken aback. Is she a mindreader now, scanning my innermost thoughts? The trouble is, I know my own self better than anyone, both the hidden and the known, the inner …
On our way back from tuition on the eve of his mocks, our lad declares, “I don’t need GCSES. I’m getting an iPhone anyway.” The promise of a shiny smartphone was supposed to serve as motivation, to give him something to aim for. This worked for his sister, as the promise of a HiFi or …
Climbing into the car, my kids castigate me: “You are so socially unaware!” I’m being told off for chatting with a West Indian chap in the doorway of the grocers, while collecting the shopping. “They were shoplifters,” my daughter growls at me. “And how would I know that?” I ask, “He said he hadn’t seen …
I’m the kind of person who tries to make everybody happy, and ends up upsetting everyone.
It seems that we’ve completely failed to articulate what it is that we believe, and why.
It’s true: we cannot be fair, caught in the middle of these sibling rivalries. If we try to encourage one of them, we are unfair to the other. If we tell one off, we are unfair again. On and on it goes. He said, she said. She did, he did. If that was me… Yes, …
“Careful or he’ll be after you.” Erm, well, not really. I wasn’t after anybody. True, there was somebody I liked, though they’d never know it because I kept that to myself. Yes, these are my gardening ruminations. The delayed reaction to events long gone, forced to the forefront of my mind by the monotony of …
It’s amusing to think what a quiet life I could have had when I was my daughter’s age, if only I had understood what my best mate was on. True, I would still have had to contend with reactions to my nerdy face and form, forever a source of derision. That was inescapable. But had …
Time definitely compresses as we age. My youth looms as an epoch in my mind, still occupying me all these years on. Recent decades, by contrast, just feel like minutes and days. Between us, we share recollections of those early days of marriage in west London, returning often as if it was the neighbourhood which …
