Useful for those moments at the school gates when I have a complete blank and have lost my voice. A wonderful gift from a wonderful little girl. She was so very excited about my birthday. It’s quite strange really, because usually I don’t get excited at all about the annual plus one to the age. But ever since Molly’s been old enough to grasp the idea of other people’s birthdays it’s been really joyous. She enjoys getting presents more of course, but she still really enjoys handing them out.
What a lovely day!
As I expected, awoken early by a noisy bundle of excited energy jumping on me and carrying a big carrier bag of presents…….
These are they. Obviously I knew about the ipod speakers, after all I did order them and help pay for them. But the photo frame, door hanger, badge and card were all her own work. And it was really lovely. If I hadn’t been so bloody tired I may have cried.
(Dear My Lovely Daddy – that’s bad grammar, but a gorgeous sentiment)
(My badge and the door hanger – specially adapted to read: “On the computer”)After pressies, it was breakfast and relaxing. And then more relaxing, which somehow led to more relaxing. Relaxing is nice. I should do it more often it seems.
In fact, we relaxed our way to tonight’s treat, a meal out at our local Italian Pane e Vino followed by Doctor Who.
This has been a truly lovely weekend capped off by a great day.
All through it I’ve been reminded just why she’s so very special and why I’m very, very lucky to be known as Daddy.
Thank you molly. x.
Instead of heading off to the Bristol International Comics Expo, this weekend I went off to watch several teddy bears fly down a zipline from the top of All Saint’s Church in Pocklington.
It was the 4th annual Flying Man Festival. This is Pocklington’s own little festival, one of those things that strated out as the church having a little fund raiser and now, 4 years later, has developed into an entire weekend of events based around the flying man of Pocklington: Thomas Pelling.
The Flying Man of Pocklington
There is a large church (All Saints) just off the town square in Pocklington whose foundations were laid by the Norman’s and was (still is) imposing enough to be known as the cathedral of the wolds. Its large square bell tower stands over 100 feet high and it was from this lofty vantage point that Thomas, in front of a large incredulous audience, would fly down a rope to the Star Inn, where he no doubt hoped to have a pint. The Star Inn used to be located in Market Square, unfortunately long since demolished.
Now, the exact details of the rigging of Thomas’s ropeway have been lost in time but it involved a windlass, a lot of rope, a secure anchorage point and several men. The time came for Thomas to fly, so with a short briefing to his men, which proved later to be totally inadequate, he climbed the bell tower stairs and out through the hatch on to the tower roof. He waved down to the crowds, climbed over the parapet, tied himself to the ropeway, gave the signal to his assistants and launched himself into the wide blue yonder!
Thomas didn’t make the pub; he didn’t even clear the church, due to a ‘misunderstanding’ with the men working the windlass, who could possibly have already been sampling the wares of The Star Inn! The ropeway became slack and Thomas was allowed to fly too fast and too low. With a sickening thud he flew straight into the battlements of the choir end wall and with a fractured skull he fell to his death!
Thomas Pelling “The celebrated Flying Man of Pocklington” was buried where he had fallen at the East End of the church on the 16th April 1733, a wall mounted plaque celebrates his memory.
The man was quite obviously an idiot, but we celebrate his idiocy every year now with children giving their bears over to the church, taken up to the top of the tower and flown down a zipline. Luckily, no bears are hurt in this endeavour since the technology has come a long way since Thomas tried it.
Saturday night saw balloons filling the skies of Pocklington as part of the celebrations, absolutely beautiful in the perfect summer dusk:
And then we woke up this morning to a blazing hot Sunday. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and as we headed for the church for the Flying Man Festival the big surprise was that the balloons were back; moored in the high street:
As usual, the highlight of the day was at All Saint’s Church where the flying bears were launched off the top of the church at regular intervals. Molly spent a long time this morning trying to decide which of the 65 (yes 65!) cuddly toys she was going to launch into the air and there was even a spot of timely humour at the bear departure lounge:
Well, Molly pushed all the right buttons tonight. We read Paddington and then she quite deliberately chose two books we both loved from when she was a little baby just to put me in a better mood.
Then lots of cuddles and snuggling down to sleep. An hour later, both of us fast asleep in her bed and I’m feeling better. No doubt tomorrow will be shit and I’ll be stressing out like crazy again, but right now all is, if not good, then at least okay with the world.
Molly’s been a joy tonight though.
Sadly, she’s beginning to recognise when I’m down and becomes the best nurse in the world.
Currently she’s in the bath.
Louise is out at church having holy communion lessons or something like that.
It’s Molly’s holy communion year this year and it involves Louise taking lessons of some sort in preparation. No idea what it entails. And don’t really care.
Belief in God as a child is about as useful and valid as a belief in Santa or the Tooth Fairy to my mind and nothing I’ve experienced so far proves otherwise.
Of course, one benefit, particularly in inner city Birmingham where she started school, is a much better class of Primary School. And given the choice of the other primary schools or a bit of brainwashing courtesy of the catholic church I know which I’d choose.
Of course, in a year or so, when she starts asking the difficult questions, I’ve already warned Louise that all bets are off and I get to tell her the truth.
Time to get her out the bath.
Parenting, the best job in the world.
Raining today. So no going out from Bruton mansions.
Instead we finally got out the Meccano set that mom and dad found in the cupboard at their house and brought up to us last week.
It was a huge Army Construction kit from way, way back when I was a little boy. Molly was really looking forward to it and had been pestering about it since mom and dad left. We proceeded to pick our model and started to build. And then I realised exactly why I never really bothered to make all of the models in the kit that I could. Because building Meccano is dull. Sorry, but it is.
I think Molly soon realised this but carried on just because we were playing and she enjoys that whatever we do.
But I ended up making far more of it than Molly did, all the time wondering if everyone my age thought the same of their Meccano sets they had as a child. Meccano may have been wonderful before things like plastic and television were invented but to be honest it just doesn’t cut it in the modern day it seems.
However, after making her Army lorry, Molly found a perfect use for it:
Have been thinking recently about Molly growing up in this big, wonderful world and how wonderful it is.
Also been thinking about the recent Cutting Edge on Cotton Wool Kids shown on Channel 4 last week. And then found a link (via Boing Boing) to a new weblog called Free Range Kids which is all about battling the idea that every child needs round the clock protection and is constantly at risk from the evils of the world.
From the blog:
Do you ever…
..let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting.
Of course, Molly’s coming 9 this year. Which means we’re getting to that stage when she starts wanting to do stuff for herself. And although I don’t think we’re quite at the stage of letting her venture alone into a major city with just bus fare, I certainly wouldn’t want to be on the other side of the debate where moms and dads are terrified to let the children out of their sight. Terrified to the extent that they brainwash their children into saying things like this:
“I like going shopping with my mum. Gotta stay close to her though. Because you never know who’s out there.”
Very shocking and desperately sad. We’re careful to warn Molly about some things that she may encounter but this level of scare mongering just damages your child.
And the worst thing about it all: it’s really not necessary. Do you really believe more children are abducted, abused or killed now than 20 years ago?
Or maybe it’s just become another media crusade driven to new heights of sensationalism by competition to get the scariest message across.
To emotionally abuse a child to the point of psychologically scarring them merely to make them terrified of an event that’s far, far less likely to happen than dying in a car crash. That’s
just stupid.
Molly’s off to bed when she asks me to charge up her DS overnight.
Sure thing darling, where’s the charger?
Don’t know says darling little daughter.
Cue an hour of turning the house upside down. No DS charger to be found.
Tomorrow morning we’ll be looking in her room again.
Mommy and Daddy not happy. Molly not too happy either. Could be worse of course, could be the bloody DS rather than a £5 charger. But the point is the same.
And at this point I heard myself rattle off the same sorts of things that my Mom and Dad always used to about having some responsibility for your own things, how lucky you are to have so much, how you have to make sure you know where they are…….
Just scary really how the old adage is always true.
No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to avoid it you still come out with the same rubbish that they always did.
Now I just feel old and shit.
Above: This is the sort of thing a children’s bed should look like
Below: This most definitely isn’t
I almost crashed this morning laughing in incredulity over this on the BBC when I heard it on the radio. Woolworths have just withdrawn from sale a set of bedroom furniture branded with the name LolitaThis is just the sort of modern stupidity you’d expect really, after WHS selling Playboy branded stationary for school children and BHS selling a range of padded bras and Little Miss Naughty undies for the under 10s.
I despair of the whole sexualising the under 12s phenomenon that goes on. The pursuit of the pre-teen dollar means companies go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to market increasingly innapropriate material to boys and girls everywhere. And the cult of celebrity is so prevalent that these children see some noted children’s writer like Jordan and just start thinking it’s acceptable.
And all over the world, parents just too stupid to really be responsible for themselves never mind the upbringing of their ever increasing brood of ASBO collecting devil spawn keep buying the stuff. One day they’re down the town spending their hard-earned benefits of push up bras, crop tops and hot pants with “sexy” plastered over the backside and the next they’re shouting loudly about pedofiles after their kids. (That was the spelling of the word on a wall in Birmingham I saw once and it’s always struck me as indicative of the problem.)
But perhaps even worse is that it slipped by without notice. And the stupidity just gets worse from there: According to the Woolworths spokesman:
“What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.”
Alternatively they could have just looked on their own bloody website and found the movie for sale there. But someone, somewhere knew what it meant. After all it’s not the sort of thing that immediately comes to mind when naming a brand of children’s furniture is it?
When last I wrote about Christmas, I was all prepared to sneak into Molly’s room with the stocking and a couple of presents. Everything was planned, all the other presents were under the tree, I had waited until Molly had taken her regular toilet break at 2am and she was fast asleep.
Or so I thought.
3am. I picked up the stocking and the couple of presents and peered into her room. Wide awake. Eyes wide open.
Drop the stocking back into the other room, then try to explain where the stocking’s gone. My dubious possibilities were:
Maybe Santa’s taken it with him, or he’s moved it downstairs, or maybe he’s downstairs even as we speak.
It probably helped that Molly wasn’t completely awake because she seemed to buy these bloody awful excuses. But then she gets upset because she can’t get to sleep and maybe Santa wont come.
30 minutes later and she’s calmed down enough to try to get back to sleep
But of course, it’s now 3:30am and I’ve got to wait at least another 30 minutes before she goes to sleep deeply enough to sneak aback into her room with the stocking.
Of course, it’s not that easy and by now she’s far too excited to get to sleep no matter how much she wants to. 4am comes round. 4:30am.
I give up and put the bloody stocking down into the lounge.
I figured I’d tell Molly that Santa must have decided she wasn’t asleep enough but still wanted to leave her presents.
Come the morning and she’s finally asleep so Louise takes a chance and drops the stocking in.
5 minutes later she’s running into our room, unpacks her stocking with us and then leads her bleary eyed parents into the Lounge where she surveys the haul and tells us “that’s more than he’s ever brought me before!!!”
And later on that day she tells us that she thinks she saw Mummy dropping her stocking off. But how could that be, she ponders, when Mummy was in bed.
Despite this minor hiccup, we had a delightful, wonderful Christmas day.
But I have a feeling, a nagging worry, that this was a sign of things to come, that maybe she secretly knows that Santa isn’t real. By next year I have the horrible feeling that she’ll start asking far too many questions and not really believe the whole thing.
It’s all part of growing up and she surely seems to be growing up far too quickly. It’s something I realise that I don’t have a lot of control over. But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.
fictions 