Hackney Holiday

Wobbly teeth

2012-02-02T11:57:00.000+01:00

Our eldest started complaining the other day that one of his teeth was wobbly. He's quite an imaginative child, so I didn't take that much notice at first (bad dad). But sure enough, he's correct. The upper left incisor shows distinct signs of movement.

This perplexes me as it seems too early. He is four and a bit years old, and according to a cursory search, teeth do not usually start to fall out until about six. [Newsflash. Somebody else says they can drop from about four - he's not a freak.]

At the moment he seems quite unbothered by it, which is good. However I feel guilty that we haven't got him registered with a dentist, and that we've been pandering to a growing sweet tooth of late (he takes after me in that respect).

He does brush his teeth every day, which is good, but I'm now worried that he'll end up looking like a gummy lad who comes from a deprived household where your five a day is boiled sweets, biscuits, cakes, crisps and pop.

Growing up, I had cousins like that. They drank nothing but fizzy drink when growing up (according to my completely non-judgemental mother) and chomped on sweeties like it was the end of rationing. The result, I remember quite clearly was that they had gaping, rot infested cake holes for a good part of their childhoods until their adult teeth came in. Funnily enough now they look like the Osmonds, such is their toothiness, but at the time they were a cautionary tale about the perils of not looking after your teeth.

Coming from the Central Belt of Scotland, where tooth decay was a rite of passage, I'm rather aware of how important this is. In my extended family false teeth were the norm. It was partly a generational thing. People routinely has their teeth removed as dentures were considered to be less trouble. I'm currently reading a biography of Clash frontman Joe Strummer, who had appalling teeth, and apparently he refused to brush his teeth while at boarding school as a lad, so they would fall out and he could have fake ones like his dad.

Mind you I'm not surprised that people neglected their teeth in the Seventies as a visit to the dentist was quite a horrible experience. That's certainly how I remember it as a child. I can still conjure up the taste of the gas that they gave me for extractions. I don't think this completely knocked me out as I have a vivid image of spooky cartoon like figures dancing about in front of me, only to wake up soon after feeling really nauseous with a sore mouth. I'd leave the dentists clutching a blood stained hankie to my mouth, probably to be rewarded with a bar of Highland Toffee.

For years I didn't go to the dentist. I kidded myself that this was because of my semi-itinerant lifestyle as a student and in the post university years, but really I think it was because I was scared of going. About eight years back I noticed that my teeth were quite discoloured and I eventually plucked up courage to go back thinking that I was bound to have a backlog of dental work waiting.

Amazingly, after almost 20 years absence, I only needed a bit of a clean. Since then I've tried to be a bit more conscientious with regular check ups.

I don't want to pass on my phobias to the kids, but was not sure when the right time to start taking them to the dentist was. The answer is probably 'before now' but the wobbly tooth incident has forced my hand and we'll have to get them both registered as soon as. I'm sure dentists have become a bit more child friendly over the years, so and I'm on the lookout for a good one in Colchester - suggestions please.

On a broader note, the toothy episode is a poignant reminder how kids keep growing. They don't stay little for long. I was giving J his night time cuddle a few days ago and told him that I'd have to make the most of this as soon he probably wouldn't want a cuddle (or a schnuggle to give it the rather icky name I created).

"Don't worry daddy, I'll always have a schnuggle for you," he replied.

[Heart breaks!]

The cost of bringing up children

2012-01-26T22:16:00.000+01:00

Kerching: prices are rising

An interesting survey today puts the cost of raising a child until the age of 21 at £218,000. This staggering sum is produced by an insurance company, so there is an agenda here of getting parents to think more carefully about finance.

Initially the sum seemed way over the top to me, but on closer inspection, they are not that outlandish. The biggest two elements - making up more than 60 per cent of the total - are education and childcare. The education element assumes a child is going to college and the parents are picking up the tab, which may or may not be the case. For childcare, a large chunk of the £62,099 racked up over 21 years is accounted for by the assumption that your child is in full time nursery care from six months until they go to school. For many parents, this is simply not the case. One or both of them, may take shorter hours to spent more time with their child, so childcare expenditure is lower.

Elsewhere the costs assumed for items such as food, clothing and leisure do not seem unrealistic. That's not to say that many parents don't spend less on them. Clothing costs tumble when you have older siblings to pass on from, and not everybody has an annual holiday (here the annual allowance of £740 for your child does seem a little generous to me, especially if you're having a camping holiday in Norfolk, for example).

Cheap holidays: a day by the seaside won't break the bank

Overall though it's quite a sobering picture. All parents get to know how expensive children can be, but having it presented in this way is rather stark.

It goes without saying that this economic approach does not reflect the 'payback' that parents get from their children. You can't really tally this up in pounds and pence, and it sounds mushy to even talk about it, but what you get back from children is a very tangible thing. It lifts you when you are down, it makes you laugh harder than a ticket to the latest comic sensation, and it provides a sense of purpose that can seem lacking in the daily grind. I often feel skint, but I rarely find myself blaming my children for that. When you are a family, you really are all in it together.

Predictably a lot of comments on blogs and newspapers today are from the militantly 'child free' who leap upon these stories as a way to berate parents. "It's your life style choice, so don't moan about it," they say.

As opposed to the lifestyle choice of being an intolerant prick I suppose.

Fit dad

2012-01-19T22:02:00.000+01:00

Since having child number two I don't think I've done any real exercise. He's 21 months now, so that's quite a long time without breaking sweat.

I used to be pretty fit before we had the kids - I ran, went to the gym, played five a side every week. I think I was in pretty good shape.

But when our first son came along it quickly became apparent that there weren't enough hours in the day to do what I wanted to do. Something had to give.

(It does make me chortle to myself when I hear from mums and dads to be who can't comprehend what time thieves babies are and grandly announce that they'll use the early 'quiet' months for a spot of self improvement - to learn a new language or to start making their own jewellery. I'm sure I was the same and thought I'd be able to tap out my long-awaited first novel with one hand while rocking the cot with the other.)

Anyway, it wasn't just the great Hackney novel that went by the wayside, but also any sense of myself as a person who had time to attend to his physique.

Initially you're just too tired to go for that run, or to hit the gym. It also quickly becomes apparent that such self-indulgences take second place to the needs of the new kid in town. To be fair to Mrs Holiday, she was more into the idea of me going off jogging than jogging down to the pub to wet the baby's head. I can still remember the first time I went out with a mate for a couple of pints after J was born. It was probably a few more than a couple, but I was only out for a few hours, however the put down I got when I got back in still sends shivers down my spine.

That was an early lesson in how things had changed. Suddenly you have to think of other people. Not just the nipper, but also the put upon mother who also wouldn't mind getting out for a couple of drinks thank you very much.

However with just the one child, there was the occasional opportunity to disappear for a run. The gym membership quickly became surplus to requirements though as there was no way I could justify being away from my station for that amount of time.

When the second child came along, even the odd low level workout became pretty much impossible. Not only was there so much more to do, but the tiredness was cranked up another level. You also start to notice the toll that kids take on your health. Knees and backs come in for a real pounding with all the kneeling down and bending over you have to do. On the other hand, I've always thought that your arms get a pretty good work hoisting babies and toddlers - check these guns! They're better than any dumbbells with the added benefit that you get a smile as you're working out.

Now after ages of moaning about not having the time to do anything I've committed myself to getting off my butt and doing some exercise. Last night I went for my first run in a long time. It wasn't a marathon, but it was a start. The good thing was that I didn't simply keel over with exhaustion. Hopefully it's the start of getting back into some sort of shape before my two boys are pushing me around in a wheelchair.

Speak like a child

2012-01-13T23:38:00.000+01:00

I've been looking after our youngest for a day a week for a few months now. He has turned 21 months and his language is really starting to develop.

There was a lovely moment today when he looked at me and said "Daddy kind."

It would have brought tears to my eyes if it wasn't for the fact that I was cleaning his bottom at the time. He'd just squeezed out the sort of mega poo, which is about as close as men get to giving birth, so I'm not surprised that he thought I was being kind.

What did surprise me was that he knew the word in the first place and had an idea of its context.

I had been at a stay and play earlier where one of the mums told me that a health visitor had told her that her 18 month old daughter should be able to say 50 words by now. That seemed a lot to me, and although it was only a few months ago for KidA, I'm not sure he would have made the target.

He's been a bit slower developing language than his big brother, or so it seems (memory plays tricks on you. I thought his brother was a walking, talking genius at roughly the same age until videos proved that he wasn't quite the prodigy I remembered.) One of the things about young 'un was that he had a highly developed sense of grunting which was quite expressive and got him a long way for a long time.

Recently I suppose he's discovered that grunting has its limits and is being more adventurous with his speech. It's quite a magical time and there's something new every day, some of it rather poignant.

From quite young he has referred to himself as 'you', which is understandable, as that's what everybody else calls him. But the other day he started using 'me'. It was a bittersweet moment - a little more clarity in communication, but a cute idiosyncrasy lost.

The whole language thing is fairly amazing when you think of it. Even children brought up in the most intellectually and emotionally deprived circumstances will develop speech beyond the abilities of any other animal. Kids just play with the building blocks of language until they find something that makes sense or amuses them.

At the moment KidA is starting to string together two and three words. It's still simple stuff, but it's the start of big changes.

Why don't more bands play Essex?

2012-01-11T23:26:00.000+01:00

One of the things I miss since moving from London is the opportunity to see bands. Not that this was an opportunity I've been able to avail myself of very often since the kids came along, but at least the option was always there. Most weeks in London it was possible to find a few decent gigs that I would kid myself I could get along to.

Since moving to Colchester I've found it rather odd that a town that is so obviously musical, is so off the map for touring bands. I'm not thinking here of Odeon-filling acts - the town doesn't have that sort of venue, and with a 'mere' 100,000 inhabitants, it's probably a little small. But what about the sort of up and coming bands that you can see night in, night out in London, and plenty of other towns around the UK? The sort of acts who are on their way up, but who are still 'paying their dues' (crikey, does that show my age?)

It's not just Colchester. The nearest large towns, Ipswich and Norwich (okay, not that near, but I'm struggling here!) are not especially well-served either. Why is East Anglia on so few touring schedules?

I noticed this today when Graham Coxon's tour dates were released. As a lad who grew up in Colchester, you could just about hope that he might play the town. Okay, no surprises that he's not, but what about the rest of the East of England? Nope, the nearest place to see him is Cambridge - or London of course.

And it's not just bands. Stewart Lee is one of my favourite comedians, and he is taking his latest show around just about every fleapit in the UK, but as far as I can see, there are no gigs anywhere in Essex, Suffolk or Norfolk. What gives? Our money not good enough for you?

As a relative newcomer here, I'm amazed by how much local music there is in Colchester. There's barely a night where there isn't a handful of live acts to choose from around town, and at weekends there are a huge amount of acts playing and no shortage of venues. There are also about four or five musical instrument shops and umpteen free listings mags.

So it wouldn't seem that there is a lack of appetite for music. Colchester is also a university town. Student Unions were awash with bands when I were a lad, but there doesn't seem to be much occurring on Wivenhoe Campus. Are students too engrossed in their books to want to see bands these days? I find that hard to believe.

It wasn't always thus as this clip of a young AC/DC playing at Essex University shows from 1978. Would this happen today?

There are honourable exceptions to my generalisations of course. Colchester Arts Centre has a varied schedule, but I'm sure there's room for a few more acts heading east and saving us from the trek up the A12 to London. Come on Essex promoters, let's get a few bigger names out here.

Christmas tree time

2011-12-11T12:45:00.000+01:00

I dug the Christmas decorations out of the loft and we spent last night putting the tree up. I'm not sure whether this is a bit early - there are surprisingly few homes in our neck of Colchester with decorations yet. In Hackney they used to appear from mid-November.

Still, I'm thoroughly Christmas seasoned already. I've had three encounters with Father Christmas, been to two kids parties, and been on the Thomas Santa special at the nearby East Anglian Railway Museum. It's all kicking off.

Putting up the tree is one of those things that we're trying to turn into a bit of a tradition. I can't remember ever really helping put up the tree when I was a kid. Maybe I just wasn't interested. Mind you, we had a fairly uninspiring small, silvery fake tree that was wheeled out once a year.

Ever since I've had a place of my own, we've always opted for a real tree. Most years I find myself wondering why I bother. Transporting them in pre-car London was always a pain. You either had to carry it on your shoulder for a couple of miles, or risk the wrath of bus-users as you scratched past them. At least with a walk there was always the option of stopping for a livener at the local - I wonder how many trees are orphaned in pubs by over-festive owners.

Getting them home is only the start of things though as the annual fight to get it in the house, remove the netting and get the damn thing to fit into the holder and stand upright. Cue saw, lots of sweating and bad language at unaccustomed labour as you trim the trunk to fit.

Anyway, that done, said tree - £35 of Homebase Norwegian spruce, thanks for asking - wobbled atop a coffee table in our bay window.

The kids love dressing the tree, although their exuberance does tend to leave it looking a bit like the box of decorations has been thrown at it. Elder brother is also notoriously bossy, so within minutes the veto that no one would be decorating the tree if behaviour didn't improve, was brandished. This seemed to have the desired effect, and our tree was garishly clad. The promise of a tree party picnic of many 'bad' treats, also helped speed us along.

The final result - after mummy has redistributed some of the tinsel, baubles and bells - is surprisingly tasteful. Our accumulated decorations are anything but coordinated, but somehow it works. My wife tells me that she now understands how her mum was driven to distraction by not being allowed to throw away any of the old decorations by her and her siblings. But I think that's better than a designer, colour coordinated offering which lacks the personal touch.

Family life is all about small, and not so small compromises. Every year I want to sling out our old decorations and start afresh, but I know I never will. Some day I will pass on the baubles bearing the teeth marks made by younger son, along with the threadbare tinsel and distressed fairy. And then they can throw them out!

Parental bonding second time round

2011-12-09T19:40:00.001+01:00

We've been in Colchester for almost exactly a year now. In many ways we've settled in really well. We all like the town. Our neighbours have been really welcoming. And we've met lots of new people. More than I anticipated we would actually.

Coming from London where everyone is a lot more insular, it has been a breath of fresh air how open Colchester folk seem to be.

However in recent weeks I've felt myself a bit of an outsider again. I've been looking after our second born for a day a week now that Mrs Holiday is working a couple of days a week. As such, I've been back on the parenting circuit. Having looked after Number One Son for a good part of his early days, it's not an unusual experience, but it is definitely different this time around.

With our eldest I really threw myself into the whole 'stay at home dad' role. (This is actually a bit of a misnomer as most of the stay at home dads I knew were anything but. There was a well beaten track around Children Centres, stay and plays, singing clubs and child friendly cafes, so we were mostly everywhere but at home). As most of the people I met were first time parents like me, there was a puppyish level of enthusiasm and a sense of all being in it together.

What I'm finding with my second time as a caring dad is that it's a bit harder to break into the established groups and cliques. As soon as people have more than one child, they are a bit more set in their ways, and I plead guilty to this myself.

At any rate in recent weeks, I've noticed a bit more that everybody seems to know everybody else, and I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself as Billy No Mates. Well, not quite no mates, but very few, so that when they disappear to chat to one of their other acquaintances, there is that an awkward sense of being alone in a crowd.

Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. Maybe I'm not around enough - one day a week isn't really enough to get yourself known. Maybe I'm going to the wrong places in the first place. Maybe I'm imagining the whole thing.

Whatever it is, I think I need a plan B to try and get over this feeling that I'm missing out. As J gets nearer to school age, there is a mild, yet creeping panic concerning the power of the school gate Mafia. We're already damned by geography to be banished from the sharp-elbowed parent's local school of choice. And with that I fear a whole round of birthday parties, play dates, and Masonic preferential treatment from the Colchestratti. (Not to mention dad's nights out - yeah, what about me!)

I'd hate to think that I've blighted the lives of our two young innocents by not getting my A into G. One thing is for sure, it's only going to get tougher from here onwards.

Guising

2011-10-31T22:19:00.000+01:00

... or Happy Hallowe'en as you might say in the beautiful South.

When I was a kid in Scotland, Hallowe'en was a big deal for kids, but it was slightly harder work than Trick or Treaters have today. The idea was that you had to sort of sing for your supper, or tell a joke, do an impression, or a dance. Basically you had to do a turn before being gifted a handful of monkey nuts or an apple. I can't remember much in the way of sweeties. Nuts were definitely the makeweight in my day in exchange for the ritual humiliation of our performances.

I'm struggling to think what my star turn was, and am blushing slightly that it may well have been a Frank Spencer, by way of Mike Yarwood impression - doggy doing a whoopsy on the carpet and all.

The balance has definitely shifted in favour of the Guisers (it comes from 'disguise') these days, but to be fair to them, the amount of effort and expense that they go to is a lot more than in my day when a bin bag over your snorkel parka was often as inventive as it got. Today's costumes, wigs, masks and make-up are in a different league.

This year is the first time we've done anything for Hallowe'en. The kids were a bit younger when we lived in Hackney, and if truth be told, the prospect of opening your door at a godforsaken hour 'round our old manor did not appeal that much. Luckily our doorbell worked only intermittently and the kids were not patient enough for us to descend from the first floor flat to the front door having decided that, yes, there was somebody at the door.

Round here there is more of a system. If you have a lantern on show then you are open to a knock on the door.

We had our rudimentary pumpkin lantern flickering on the window sill for a a couple of hours after the lights went down. It was put to shame by the altogether more artistic efforts of the guy a few doors down - point noted for next year. The Essex massive definitely take Hallowe'en seriously.

We had a bowl of sweeties for the kids who came to the door, who were very polite and well behaved with no surly behaviour or demands for cash, that you hear about. Our two initially came to the door to see the assorted ghouls and ghosties, but were soon freaked out by some of the more realistic costumes.

They were definitely up for Hallowe'en this year though, with the eldest demanding 'spooky toast' for breakfast. Cue quickly carved piece of bread in the shape of a pumpkin - I couldn't do a vampire.

After that they had a Hallowe'en themed stay and play session at another child's house and then back here for some apple bobbing and donut munching. I'm not sure how traditional that is, but it went down very well.

Hallowe'en is now done. Bring on bonfire night.

Dipdap at Firstsite

2011-10-25T20:54:00.000+01:00

I know there was a massive fuss about the new Colchester arts centre, Firstsite. It cost too much, it took too long to build, it shouldn't be in Colchester... er it cost too much. Well, I love it.

Addressing the cost issue first, I think that £26m for such an iconic building, which will put Colchester on the map, is a snip. That wouldn't have got you the wet changing area at the Olympics site, and most of the facilities there will be mothballed for a couple of years pending works required for their post-Games function. I actually think the Olympics is a great thing for London, and indeed Britain anyway, but in comparison Firstsite is great value.

I've been there a few times since it opened. Amid all the things I like about it: the design, the cafe, the way it has opened up the bottom end of the town, and the way the people of Colchester seem to be warming to it, I particularly like its child-centricity.

Today I attended a half-term event in the theatre where the animator and producer of a children's TV programme called Dipdap were showing the kids some films, demonstrating how Dipdap is drawn (basically he's a stick man, so that didn't take long) and then letting the kids loose with a load of felt tip pens on a massive sheet of white paper taped to the floor.

Floored genius: let the kid art commence

This was the best bit for the kids, obviously, and for the parents, who could sit back and let their offspring get on with it. I particularly liked how unprescriptive it was. I was at the opening of Firstsite and had a bit of a giggle at the expense of one of the artists who must have been brought in to create an immersive artistic experience for children. There were a few too many rules and the kids had basically just grabbed it and created their own game with it. The poor, harassed man was being comforted by a colleague who was assuring him that it would all be a bit better on subsequent days when the kids were less excitable.

As if that ever happens.

Anyway, back to Dipdap. It was a great show - a few cartoons, a quick bit of 'what would you like Steve to draw?' and then unleash the mayhem.

Well done Firstsite. Keep it coming.

Hackney in the Fall

2011-10-19T12:44:00.001+01:00

London Fields: looking golden

Yesterday I had cause to pass through Hackney, for possibly the first time since I left and certainly the first time since the disturbances.

I had to come into 'Town' (as we country mice call it) for work. Usually I let the train take the strain, but there were one hour delays reported, so I was forced to jump in the car and hammer down the A12.

My mental map of the capital is so hard-wired around Hackney that I almost had to come through there to get to where I was heading - Hammersmith. I know how to get to Hammersmith from Hackney having driven the route many times. I just couldn't picture another route - I am a satnav-less driver by choice and like to think that I can get anywhere by innate road sense and judicious use of a map.

Anyway, my chosen route took my right past the end of our old road. What would you do? I couldn't resist driving past our former flat, feeling guilty in case anybody spotted me in the car.

Despite reports that it is now London's, or possibly the world's coolest street, Wilton Way was reassuringly scruffy, and had parking issues that I don't remember from when I lived there. So it's not just our street in Colchester where you move your vehicle at peril of ever regaining a parking slot.

The street, and Hackney did look lovely in the autumn sunlight. And I was particularly pleased that the buyers of our flat hadn't done much to the exterior. It's not that it was a monument to our exemplary taste or renovation skills, more the fact that after living there for more than 10 years, I was slightly embarrassed that I'd never got round to fixing the dodgy doorstep or replacing the battered front door.

And neither have they.

Given that they seemed to be young, trendy things, with a design background, I was also delighted to see that they had rather ugly Venetian blinds hanging in the front windows. I know it's sad that I noticed these things. At least I got round to hanging curtains, and put up the curtain rails that would have allowed them to do the same. Maybe curtains, like carpet, are a sign of getting old man!

On the way back I also popped along to London Field to use the facilities - it's a long drive back to Essex. Navigating by public loos is quite a skill too - call it satlav if you like.

The park, as always, looked lovely, and was full of the usual mix of dog walkers, late lunchers, parents with kids, and fixed wheel cyclists. I don't know what I expected really. It was the same old Hackney. Maybe I was anticipating some scars following the riots, but there were no obvious dents in the borough. It's so careworn generally, that it is hard to notice any. Plate glass has been replaced, bus stops rebuilt, paving slabs replaced and life goes on.

Scooter power

2011-10-18T21:21:00.000+01:00

Hackney Holiday doesn't do sponsored advertorial, but if it did, it would go something like this...

Although I'm a journalist, I've never been a great blagger. There are people who see absolutely no shame in it. I remember a colleague telling me once how she'd been bought a leather coat on one lavish press trip after expressing an interest in it.

"Oh, I couldn't accept it."

"Go on. We'll put it on the client's bill anyway."

"Alright then. Hmmm, nice fit."

I'm really not in that league, and frankly find the whole thing a bit embarrassing, not to say rather compromising. It's particularly cloying in the blog arena where there is a whole school of uncritical authors of PR puff, happy to receive stuff for free and witter on about how great the products are.

So, cards on the table. My son has a Micro scooter, which we bought, and have subsequently bought spares and accessories for. Recently it started to get a bit shuddery and I noticed that the back wheel was actually square through excessive braking over the two years he's had it.

The square wheel: once they were all like this

As I'd recently written about the company for a small piece, I'd been in contact with the PR, so I did something I don't usually do. I dropped her a line and asked if the company would send me a spare wheel. I admitted that I knew this was a bit cheeky and that she could tell me to sling my hook, but hey, there was no harm in asking.

She said it was no problem and that she'd get them to pop one in the post, which duely arrived this morning and is now on the scooter.

Here comes the puff part.

I wouldn't have done this if I didn't think that the scooter was a great product. I'm actually amazed that a company that sells a product some would see as 'disposable' actually sells spare parts anyway. It costs around £50, which isn't cheap, but compared to the price of some kids toys that don't stand being tested to destruction, the Micro is good value I think. You can basically replace every part and reconstruct them in different colour combinations, plus add lots of funky accessories. I ony wish they did an adult version - oh, they do!

HackneyBoy's scooter has been a real boon since he got it. Not only is it great fun for him to zip about, but it saves us from having to lug him around. They are supposed to be for three year olds and upwards, but he's been on his since he was two after another Hackney parent let him have a go on his daughter's. He is really quite adept on his scooter and I think it has given him a bit of an insight into dealing with traffic as well as a bit of independence.

I also love the fact that Micro are so near here, in Mersea. We've popped into the office/warehouse for spares in the past, so there is a local connection.

On one such visit I noticed they had a letter from No 10 on display. The PM and his wife were thanking the company for the scooters - the kids loved them.

Hmmm! I'm betting Dave didn't pay for them. I hope they were declared. Suddenly I'm not feeling so bad for being a blagger.

I wish I was a better dad

2011-09-30T22:39:00.000+01:00

God, it's exhausting sometimes.

I love my two boys, but there are times when my patience and my ability to reason are exhausted. I'm talking here about our eldest, who is almost four. He's our first child, so I probably love him more than the younger one at the moment, because we have more history.

Not that this cuts any ice when it comes to one of the day's most stressful points - bath time.

Every night it becomes a battle of wills. He doesn't want a bath, he doesn't want one with his brother, he only wants to wash his hands, face and teeth, he doesn't want his hair washed... every night. We're all tired and fractious by this point, so it's not a great advert for happy families.

Tonight he was being particularly irksome. Kids get more manic the more tired they are and at this stage J gets hitty, bitey and a bit verbally abusive. It sounds awful typing this, because he's still only three, but it's still not very pleasant to be called stupid daddy constantly and told that you're hated and that there is a special lotion he will rub on you that will kill you (where did that come from?)

Anyway tonight I snapped. Not in a 'feel the back of my hand' way, but I was a bit rough, dragging him to the bathroom and dumping him in the bath where he received a thorough wash including a hair wash, which he wasn't due for tonight. Strangely he was a subdued after this - maybe he was in shock. He came out of the bath chatty. I combed his hair into a blonde quiff, which he thought was funny. It was like he was a different boy.

This now makes me feel awful for reacting in such an over the top way. He's already forgotten what went on and tomorrow is another day. (Except that at some point he will lay a little morality line on me about how we shouldn't be rough with each other, which is what I tell him and is what I should practise.)

And he's right. I knew this while I was grabbing him and being rough with him. I knew it was wrong and that it was self defeating because it's just showing him that might is right - not a message I want to convey when he has a younger brother.

It's hard to be consistent with children. There are times when you feel a complete failure no matter what you do. And there are times when you just want them to obey you... just once, without it turning into a junior version of the debating society. "Why? Because I say so."

I dread to think what he'll be like when he's older because at times he seems beyond my limited powers of rationalisation already. Again, I realise how ludicrous this sounds when levelled at a three year old, but he's a smart child and I'm already wondering how he's going to make me feel when he's a cocky, sneering teenager.

Maybe I should just disinherit him now.

It's a zoo in there

2011-09-21T13:51:00.000+01:00

Since moving to Essex, one of the kids' favourite places to hang has become Colchester Zoo. It's so expensive to go once that most parents who live locally seem to opt for the annual ticket deal which allows unlimited visits. It pays for itself in about three visits.

Meerkats: resisting a caption that uses 'Simples'

My wife has taken our two monkeys there on lots of occasions since she got membership back in March. It's about five to ten minutes drive from our house, and you can also get a bus there (although due to the ubiquity of Dad Cabs, they haven't tested that one yet).

I hadn't been myself until last week, when she was off for a spa day and I was looking after the boys. The elder one J has been going on about when I'm going to take them to the zoo, so it seemed like a good time to do it.

To be honest, like anyone who's seen too many animals in distress documentaries, I'm a bit ambivalent about zoos. I appreciate that they do a lot of work in studying animals, as well as breeding them and reintroducing them to the wild. Some animals are now so rare, that zoos may well be their last hope of survival.

However, there is something infinitely sad about seeing any living creature behind bars, especially when it's passed off as entertainment. I remember going to zoos as a child and being struck by the dichotomy of the animals I saw on nature documentaries like Survival - running free on the savannah, and killing and eating their neighbours - and those I saw in places like Calderpark Zoo in Glasgow, which was a slightly depressing place, and is now closed.

I have visited zoos since, with nephews and the like, but they've never really intrigued me. But I have to say that I was quite impressed by Colchester Zoo.

Zoos have definitely changed. One of the things that struck me was the size of the enclosures that the animals were in. Not only were they a decent size, but there has obviously been an attempt to provide stimulation for animals as much as possible, and to replicate something of the routine in the wild.This extends to 'starvation days' for many of them, mimicking the fact that in nature food isn't delivered daily on a plate.

This, and quite a few other facts I learned from the staff who were knowledgeable and enthusiastic. I don't know how many local kids work at the zoo, but I reckon our two would love to have part time jobs there one day, if we're still living here.

Other highlights were the flying displays where large predatory birds pluck large chunks of meat from just above the heads of aghast spectators, the impressively huge tigers, and the ever popular meerkats. Truth be told though, there was a lot we didn't see as, in true Radio Times fashion, there's so much in it.

Which is just as well as I've got 15 months' worth of membership (due to a promotion when I bought my Gold card) and visiting ahead. In an ideal world, I suppose the best place for these animals would be in the wild, but it's not an ideal world, and with that in mind I'm giving Colchester Zoo a qualified thumbs up.

Tears for Hackney

2011-08-09T14:07:00.002+01:00

We moved from London in December and I periodically find myself getting wistful about our previous life in lovely London Fields. The seemingly endless pieces about how our old road, Wilton Way, is an increasingly hip hangout, combined with the excitement of the coming Olympics, and the sheer variety and dynamism of Hackney, make me pine for what we had there.

The pictures from yesterday are so shocking, it's almost as if they were from another country. Yet it's one that I'm strangely familiar with after 11 years of living there. Mare Street was a stone's throw away - probably not the most appropriate description in the circumstances.

Clarence Road, where the evening's standoff took place, was near my son's nursery. We'd often come walking back from Pembury Nursery down that road to go to the shops in the Narrow Way. It was one of the poorest shopping streets in a poor borough - mainly second hand and cheap stores. The grocers that was looted was probably the biggest business along there. There was also a second hand book shop run by a local lady who supplied the nursery with any children's books that came her way.

Did many of these businesses have insurance? I doubt it. If the book lady's shop window was put in, I can't see how she'll get up and running again.

Ironically, given its image as an underprivileged area, the Pembury Estate, which seemed to be the centre of things yesterday, has benefitted from a great deal of investment in recent years. It is by no means a sink estate, and consists of tidy and quite appealing looking flats. It is also round the corner from Mossbourne Academy, one of the most successful academy initiatives in the country, and a non-selective school that many hard working local children attend. A large swathe of un-used land is slated for a major housing and retail developent - Pembury Circus.

Of course, that's not the whole picture. Pembury Estate was raided by drugs police a few weeks ago as part of a major swoop on dealers in the area. The surrounding streets have also seen the deaths of too many young men in recent years.

Hackney has always enjoyed an edgy reputation, but in all the time I lived there, I don't think I ever felt as if I was living in a scary area. I doubt I'd feel that now, especially with two young children. How must parents in the area be explaining to their children what's going on, and when it's all going to stop.

If all of this makes me sound like one of those people who suddenly 'disses' London as soon as they leave, that's not the intention. I loved living in the capital and might do again one day. It really is one of the most exciting cities in the world, and it is full of the people of the world. And Hackney, in some ways, is like a miniature version of London.

What has happened seems to sad and pointless. I don't know why it happened, and I don't know what will make it stop. There are plenty of theories flying around - it's the bankers, it's the cuts, they're just criminals, it's family breakdown, it's all down to the police ... I'm sure we've all got our own pet favourites, but do any of us really know?

Answers on a postcard please.

Look at my Dinky

2011-07-18T20:36:00.001+01:00

Sweeney mobile: Corgi Jaguar Mark X Saloon

A visit to my mum's this weekend produced a bag of treasure and nostalgia aplenty.

"Do you want these?" she asked, handing me a sack that she'd ferreted from the garage.

Inside were about 20 old Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox toy cars and trucks. I could only dimly remember most of them from my childhood. I suspect this is because they were second-hand even then, having been passed on by older cousins. As kids are more impressed by new stuff (well, I was), I suspect that I didn't actually play with them that much.

What impresses me now about them now is how well made they are. All are proudly stamped 'Made in Britain' or 'Made in England'. I suspect some will have been produced at the Lesney factory which was located in Hackney for many years and was only recently levelled for a housing development.

The cars and trucks are solid diecast pieces, which is probably why they've survived three or four generations of rough play by a host of young boys. The scuff marks tell a tale and show their age, but I think they are scars that add to their character. Given the weight of them, I'm sure that they could have produced a few scars of their own when hurled at annoying friends or younger brothers.

They also possess a host of lovely details such as opening doors, boots and bonnets, and a tipping trailer in the case of the ERF truck. They really are lovely things, with so much more character than the plastic tat that so many modern toys seem to be (old git alert).

Strangely they are not as valuable as I thought they might be. A quick check on Ebay reveals that you can pick up many of these for a fiver plus postage, often in mint condition and with a box to match. It almost makes you feel sorrow for a toy that's never been played with, especially as it hasn't turned out to be an alternative pension plan. These things were produced in their thousands, and they are so indestructible that there must be thousands of them left, even if they are a little worn.

Postscript: I am now beginning to understand the desire to conserve. Having survived more than 40 years of rough play, our youngest has managed to eat the tyres off one of the cars within a day. They are now being packed away until our two turn 40 and then they might be entrusted with them.

Keep on truckin': ERF tipper

Flat ERF: look at that detail

Welcome back Lollibop... but not to Hackney

2011-06-07T17:40:00.000+01:00

It looks as if last year's Lollibop Festival was enough of a success to run it for a second year. This time however it will shift from Stoke Newington's Clissold Park to the more high profile Regents Park.
I'm interested to hear that Lollibop has 'outgrown' its old home, as one of the things I liked about it last year was the fact that it was pleasantly uncrowded. There would have been scope to grow the event in Hackney. Rather, I suspect that the push this year will be for the organisers to scale things up a bit to get closer to break even or even into profit, which they probably didn't do in 2010. I'm guessing here, but it was the first year, so set up costs would have been high. It wasn't particularly well marketed, hence the low attendance. However it must have been enough of a success to take a punt at putting on a bigger version this time round.
The website indicates bigger acts and more potential for TV tie ins this year with mentions of Dick and Dom, Cerrie from Cbeebies, and the all conquering Rastamouse. Ticket prices are up accordingly. Last year, a family ticket for four on the day was £53. This year it is more than double at £108, and the early bird tickets are reportedly already sold out.
We recently went to a country fayre in Colchester Castle Park where it was a £6 for adults and under fives free. It's an unfair (pardon the pun) comparison in some ways as the target audiences, content and location were so different. However the bottom line is that we had great fun there ferret racing, shire horses, real ale tasting and all.
If this seems like so much carping, I have to 'fess up that I didn't even pay for my tickets last year, having won entry through a local website, for which I supplied a review. The tickets seem a bit pricey this time, but the organiser's costs must be up considerably this year.
Last year's event was lots of fun and a great day out. I hope it works for them this year and that they haven't miscalculated on pricing.

Two wheels good

2011-06-03T16:42:00.000+01:00

Mr Halford gives Colchester the thumbs up

Last night the Tour of Britain came to town. In my youth this was known as the Milk Race as it was sponsored by the Milk Marketing Board. However, this was abolished in 2002 and the Tour is currently sponsored by Halfords, the bike people.
Milk or no milk, it was the most exciting thing to hit Colchester since the severe winter snap. The town centre was closed to traffic to create a circular route up the High Street, down Head Street, along St John Street and up Queen Street.
The riders headed off at 7pm for an hour of cycling. Usually this timing would have ruled out my seeing it, but our young 'un had a massive unscheduled kip just before bed time, so there was no way he was going to sleep on time. His brother, by contrast, was shattered and practically crawled to bed.
This coincidence meant I was able to walk the five minutes to town with Baby A in his buggy. There was a decent crowd lining the streets on a beautiful, T-shirt wearing evening. (It has to be said that after a crap winter, the summer is shaping up to be lovely - end of long range forecast).
While the ToB as I believe it's called by fans, doesn't quite match the Tour de France as a spectacle, it wasn't half bad. The fact that the 40-50 cyclists were racing round a tight, street circuit, helped. They were whooshing past about every minute once the leaders had lost the peloton, so there was plenty to see.
Mr Halford was there for photo opportunities and various cheerleaders were handing out flags promoting prostate cancer awareness, and inflatable Halfords' hands (I didn't get one of these unfortunately).
There was a cracking sound system on the high street, keeping the crowd buzzed with fast beats (not sure if that is the proper term for the toons. Young people, please help!), and a helpful MC informing us who was doing well. I can't remember any names, apart from one chap from Holland, who was almost obligatorily labelled the Flying Dutchman. Not to be confused with mobile chippy that frequents my old home town - the Frying Dutchman.
Little 'un loved it and was spontaneously applauding the riders as they whizzed by. And after all that excitement, I'd like to say that he was as shattered as his brother and slept like a log.
I'd like to say it, but unfortunately he was his usual screamy, wakeful self, and had me up by 5.30am.
Beside that, a good evening was had by all. Come back to Colchester soon ToB!

Strictly come cycling

My Royal Wedding Mercy Dash

2011-04-30T16:30:00.000+01:00

I was really looking forward to the Royal Wedding. Not as an event or even as the multimedia spectacular that it was. No, my interest in it was as a theme for kids activities - a way to keep eldest son's fertile imagination fed. Unfortunately for me, I was beaten to the punch by his nursery, which had royal puppet shows, crown making and the like, and my wife, who got on with the bunting making first.

Maybe I overestimated the ability of the events of yesterday to hold his attention anyway. Come the day, he was as wriggly and bored by the whole affair as I suspect any other three year was. I can't blame him really. You've seen one Philip Treacy fascinator, you've seen them all. Which was a bit annoying for my wife in particular as she wanted to see the wedding through without a whiny, running commentary - HackneyBoy, not me. "Where is the carriage with the window? Will the Queen be on the balcony? Why is this so long? Turn it off. Play with me. No one is looking after me!"

When he started complaining about sore legs, it seemed at first just another attempt to steal Wills' and Kate's day by the Attention Fynder General. However after a while, my wife became concerned so I took him to the local walk in centre at Colchester Hospital. I have to admit, I thought he was laying it on a bit thick and that I'd be send home with the usual Calpol and fluids advice.

The doctor will see you

As it was the congregation of symptoms he had made them refer us straight to the Paediatric Assessment Unit. This proved to be quite a long drawn out affair and it quickly become apparent to me that we would possibly be there for the night or the wee, small hours at least. He had to had an X-ray and blood tests, and although all of the people we saw stressed that there was only a small chance that he might have the worst case scenario, they wanted to be absolutely sure he was okay.

It was quite sobering - and I hadn't even been drinking. With health matters, my default assumption is that there's nothing to worry about. Which is fine when it's me - I usually get better from most things with minimum intervention, which is my favoured, doctor-phobic male way of dealing with health stuff. Hey, it hasn't failed me yet - I'm still here.

With kids it is different, and my wife is much better than I am at spotting when there's something to worry about. She's more likely to call the doctor and make the appointment, or reach for the meds than I am. Last night taught me that I have to be a bit more alert about these things, and more prepared to get them checked out.

As it happens, J is fine, although he was kept in overnight for observation. I'm glad I was there with him. In a strange way, it was a bonding experience. We're close anyway, but I'm glad it was me who had to distract him while he was getting stuck with a needle for blood samples, and having his knee X-rayed, and just being there with him in a strange place. Those are the kinds of things that dads are for after all. My wife gave me some good advice before we went. "Make it an adventure for him," which was genius. As uncomfortable as some of it was for him, it's amazing how quickly fear and pain get overridden by the desire to go on and explore a strange building in the middle of the night. Boys love it. Hell, I loved it!

As usual, when dealing with the NHS, the experience left me grateful that we have access to such a great institution. It's not perfect - what is - but imagine what it must be like in countries like the States where every health decision is conflicted by the ability, or non-ability to pay. Would I have had a check up for something that I was sure was nothing? What if I was on minimum wage?

Here, we were seen by paediatricians, bone doctors (what are they called?), haematologists and X-ray professionals, as well as being looked after by caring staff who are really good with kids - they brought us books and toys and had a great manner with children. They even found a bed for me.

The next time I moan about hospital parking fees... well, I won't!

(Although £10 was a bit steep.)

Not squeamish

2011-04-15T13:42:00.000+01:00

Flexible friend

This morning while watering a house plant we found this little fella asleep in the mulch. Well, he was asleep until I drenched him in ice cold water. Can caterpillars suffer from shock?
This one seems to have faired okay and was equally unbothered to be handed to J who delighted in the beastie crawling over his hand and up his sleeve.
I don't know if I'd have been as cool as him at his age. I was a bit of a feartie when it came to creepy crawlies - still am if truth be told. J on the other hand thought his little friend was great fun and was thoughtful enough to keep him at arm's length from baby brother, who he correctly surmised would probably squish him.
After this great adventure we took Mr Caterpillar out into the garden where, after dropping him on the slabs a few times we managed to release him on to a tulip. I don't know if caterpillars are fond of tulips. Unfortunately for him we had no apples, plums, pears, strawberries or oranges to hand. Let alone slices of chocolate cake, Swiss cheese, cherry pie, watermelon etc.
Given the looks he was attracting from the local birds, I'm dubious of his chances of making butterfly.
Still, it will have made for a great tale at nursery this morning.

Just a nice green leaf for me please

Long time, no blog...

2011-04-12T18:25:00.000+01:00

I hate those entries that start something like "Sorry it's been so long since I last blogged, the house burned/I've had a breakdown/the dog ate my laptop..." like some penitent pleading for forgiveness from the great digital god. I'm under no illusions that people are waiting for my words of wisdom, but I do feel bad at not having been very diligent with my entries.

It has been really busy recently what with work and the incessant demands of our two boys, plus there are so many things around the new house that I feel I should do. I wish my head was bluetoothed up some times and I could simply transfer my thoughts straight to page without hammering away on the keyboard. I expect this will arrive at some point in the next five years, although by then we will simply bypass Blogger and Wordpress for the new B2B blogging tool - that's brain to brain blogging. No sooner have you had a thought, than it will drop into the inbox of your subscribed brains. It should do wonders for road traffic accidents.

The other thing I hate on catch up blogs is when people try and recount everything that has happened in the last month, year, decade since their last entry. This quickly becomes tiresome for all concerned, so the tendency is to resort to a list, especially if you are a man. Actually, I quite like lists, and as blog entries they probably have quite a lot going for them. Let's give it a try:

- baby brother has started to walk
- had first birthday party for baby brother
- local cat has taken up residence in our front garden
- assembled a Homebase barbecue and had first BBQ of the Spring
- went to the seaside (Frinton)
- thoughtless neighbour has scratched the bumper of the car
- mate visited from so we enjoyed a night out in Colchester (mate is now convinced that The Only Way is Essex is factual)
- work is piling up
- visited Guernsey and Ireland with work
- off to Amsterdam in a few weeks with work
- wife and I enjoyed our third or fourth night out of the past year
- kids nipping my head
- still only have four TV channels
- mustn't grumble...

What a fascinating insight into my life. I must do this more often.

About a Boy

2011-03-13T00:17:00.000+01:00

After the last entry's exercise in navel gazing, normalish service is resumed.

We've just got back from a visit to that London to see a lovely production based on Oliver Jeffers Boy books.

Bandits at 11 o'clock

It was the first time that we'd taken J to see anything like this and I wasn't sure that his patience would last the course, even though he's a fan of the books.

How wrong could I be. He, and his friends, were rapt. As were the three babies, who are all under a year. Well done Big Wooden Horse.

Afterwards we had a mostly pleasant lunch at a nearby Italian, where J had a meltdown which I didn't handle especially well. However, all was well that ended well, after ice cream all round. Then we headed for a local adventure playground, which seemed like a lawsuit waiting to happen. It's not a good idea for two guys, slightly the better of a good Italian lunch to try and shepherd three full of beans kids around a splinter infested deathtrap. Still, we didn't lose too many fingers.

Then it was home again, home again, on the not very fast InterCity service and straight to bed for two very tired, but hopefully happy kids.

Being a dad

2011-03-12T00:03:00.000+01:00

I was recently asked to contribute to a feature on what it's like to be a dad in these modern times. The feature itself isn't due to be printed for several months, and as a journalist myself, I doubt they'll use much of what I provided. Hardly surprising as I got a bit over-excited and came up with a screed of self righteous copy about what a great father I am. It was particularly ironic as the day after submitting it I proved my fathering skills by letting our three year old tip over on his scooter on to his face resulting in a fat lip, grazed nose and lots of blood.

Anyway, I was asked to comment on a few areas, and on the basis that I don't necessarily practice what I preach, this is what I said.

ON DADS' DEPRESSION

Luckily for me I didn't experience anything that I would call depression, although I know somebody who did.
I think it is something that many dads are not even aware of. We're all primed to look out for symptoms in our wives and partners, but don't really consider it among ourselves.
Becoming a parent is harder than many of us imagine. Nothing you are told can really prepare you for the lack of sleep, worry about doing things properly, and frustration when things don't go right (the baby won't feed, won't sleep, won't stop crying). The first few weeks in particular are like baby boot camp.
It's a real eye opener and the wonder is that more men don't crack up. You're trying to be the strong, capable male role model you've read about and seen on TV, and often combining this with work. It's like having two jobs at once.
I got through it the first time by just getting on with it. I expected it to be a challenge and it definitely was, but it does get better eventually. And because it's all new, there is a sense of discovery and joy as the child develops which overcomes the bad times. The slightest thing, like a smile, can turn a really crappy morning around.
Funnily enough I found the birth of our second son tougher, because I underestimated how hard it would be with two kids. I thought that having done it once before, it would be a walk in the park, which is definitely wasn't.
Kid A was a worse sleeper than his brother, and suffered really bad colic when he was very young. Both my wife and I had this rose tinted idea that as our first son had been such a bad sleeper, we would be blessed with a sleeping scond son, and it was almost like a slap in the face when it didn't work out like that. There was almost a sense, of "Here we go again!" this time round. You've also got the other child demanding your attention, so it's a real plate spinning challenge.
I've definitely been less stoical this time round, and more grumpy at times. It probably made it a bit harder to bond with A if I'm honest, although that has passed and I love him to bits now. It does strain your relationship unless you talk about it. Both parties inevitably think that they are getting the rougher end of the deal and that neither understands the other. Just being open about how you feel is a great release, as is humour. There are times when it gets so bad that it's hard not to laugh - perhaps a bit hysterically.

ON DADS' ROLE IN THE FAMILY

I always assumed that I'd have a central role in bringing up our children. As much as things break down along gender lines to a certain extent, we try and have equal roles. Obviously I can't breast feed and my wife can't assemble flat pack furniture, but we try and do the same things for the boys, whether it's cooking, playing, reading bedtime stories or bathing them (although this is something that I've found that I do, mainly because my wife was nervous about doing it when they were young).
I've never been a man that thinks it's beneath him to change a nappy. As far as I'm concerned, if you want a full role in your child's upbringing, then you need the full range of skills.
And they are skills. Very little we do with our children is completely innate. You have to pick stuff up by trial and error. You need to be able to soothe your child when they are upset and not just think that mummy will do it. She's not always there!
My dad died when I was 13, but my memories of him are of a family man, and that's what I wanted to be.
So, right from the start I've thrown myself in and got involved. In the early days I would even wake up in the night when my wife was breastfeeding as I felt I should be doing something. It seems like madness now, but at the time I think I felt I was being supportive by not getting any sleep as well - duh!
I don't think I've ever felt excluded, even when the boys have preferred to go to mum. It's understandable that they have a closer relationship with her in the early days, and I've never felt threatened by that. They quickly become individuals and you realise that even quite early on you will have your own relationship with them. As they get older (ours are 3 and 11 months at the moment), I'm probably the go to guy for boisterous play, which I absolutely adore.
My relationship with my wife has changed because we have less time for each other. We can both be irritable with each other because of tiredness and perceived lack of empathy from the other person. It can get like the Monty Python four Yorkshiremen sketch in the "I'm more tired than you" stakes. But at the same time we're closer than ever because of what we have in common. I don't think either of us truly wishes for our pre-children lives back. (Although a bit more time for personal interests would be lovely).
I didn't join any dad's groups as there wasn't one where I used to live in East London. However I did spend about 18 months working part time and looking after our first son, when my wife went back to work. During that time I gravitated to a number of dads that were doing the same thing. As much as the mums I met were lovely, I think there is something about the dad experience that makes you want to share it with other blokes. It was fun to hang out with them. Dads groups definitely have a role though. I'm quite confident about my role as a dad and wouldn't have a problem going to a class or group where I was the only man there. But I know that some men don't feel that and value an exclusively male group. It probably makes it easier to ask some of the many dumb questions that occur to us all. We're probably less worried about feeling silly in front of other men. And how can you feel intimidated by a hulking bloke who is carrying round a pink dolly and pastel shades changing bag.

ON PATERNITY LEAVE AND RIGHTS

I'm a freelancer, so I didn't have any paternity rights. At the same time, I have more flexible time, so I knew I would be able to spend as much time as required or desired at home.
Having said that, the nature of my work is feast or famine, and some work came up about a week after J's birth that I felt I had to take. It was just beginning to sink in how hard it was all going to be, so at the time I was a bit guilty about leaving the house knowing I was making my escape from the crying fury that was our baby. Then I'd come back to a wife in floods of tears who would thrust him into my arms and disappear upstairs for a break. Tough times.
I'm used to being around, so I think I would have found it hard to be content with just a couple of weeks paid paternity leave. My temptation would have been to set aside some money and sound out my employer about the possibility of taking a sabbatical from work to spend more time with the child. The benefits are obvious: you're a help at home, you can bond with your child, and it gives you a bit of perspective on your career - what are you working for in the first place?
Would I like to see better paternity rights? Probably I would, although I can appreciate the concerns of small companies especially who worry about all the new fathers suddenly wanting six months to spend with their child. Not everybody wants this, but I think the option should be there.
In a wider sense I hope that Sure Start doesn't get broken up. Both my wife and I found the Sure Start groups in our area a great resource and a great way of meeting other parents. It would be a real shame if they suddenly became unavailable to a few parents.

As I said, it's pretty self righteous stuff, but it's a snapshot of how I feel that in a few years time may be a handy reminder.

More light-hearted posts to follow.

Forever friends

2011-02-22T13:03:00.000+01:00

Formerly HackneyBoy is very excited today as his friend, LondonBoy is paying a visit to us in Colchester. They are both just over three years old and as the only boys in our small group of NCT-accredited parents, they bond quite quickly as youngsters.

This manifest itself in the rumbustious nature of their play. Whether it's nature or nurture, boy's playtime is definitely more physical, in my experience. Admittedly, my experience is of having two boys, and all of their cousins are boys too.

Anyway, both also share a boys' love of trains and Thomas the Tank Engine. (Before becoming a parent, I don't think I had any appreciation of how big a franchise T the T is. I doubt I've met a parent of boys whose son wasn't obsessed with trains from about two onwards. Sod the pension, plough your savings into HiT Entertainments. It's hard to see how it's a passing fad after 65 years. Incidentally, it seems that the uber-commercialisation of T the T is relatively recent. My elderly uncle [and another model train nut] visited us a few months back and was telling me how it was more of a cottage industry in his day. The Rev Awdry, who wrote the books, was quite a feature at train preservation societies in his time, but it was far from the global brand it has become.)

Trains: not just for boys

Anyway, I digress...

HackneyBoy and LondonBoy both disappeared upstairs as soon as they arrived at the house. They are playing HB's newest game, Deliveries. This involves trains (of course) and the delivery of sundry items, and in a new twist invented by mummy last night, messages. He has some Brio wooden track and a battery powered engine to pull the carriages. The track is laid out along the floor and shuttles backwards and forwards with the deliveries. This can go on for hours, so I am particularly glad at LB's appearance today.

But I'm more glad that they still seem to be friends. They are only young and friendships are fragile things, so it wouldn't be surprising if their camaraderie gradually whithered over time. For now though, it seems strong. HB gave LB a big hug when they got into the house, and LB reciprocated by helping HB remove his shoes.

And I haven't heard crashes or crying yet!

Night out

2011-02-12T11:09:00.000+01:00

Last night my wife and I wandered into town for a night out - the first we've had together since HackneyBaby was born ten months ago. Praise be to nanny and grandad for babysitting, especially as the little fella is teething at the moment, so was a bit of a handful.

It's quite a strange sensation being childless, even if it is for only a few hours. Mind you, as the main topic of conversation was kids - ours and other people's - we were never truly alone.

The Missus delighted in dragging me round the pubs of her youth, particularly the Hole in the Wall, which was the Goth pub of Colchester she informs me. Not that she was a Goth. In fact,she says that she used to get stared at for being too shiny and not wearing regulation black. Last night we probably got looked at for looking old or because I looked rather like an off duty policeman.

The other pubs we tried were:
- the Hospital Arms, which was rammed and is definitely one to revisit - nice ales, and the homemade bar snacks sounded good
- the Kings Arms - also very busy, but with a more officey crowd, so we didn't stop. Probably nicer for a relaxing daytime pint
- the Fat Cat, which is ostensibly my local. It has a very impressive ale selection, although the locals seem a little cliquey on the evidence of my few visits (apart from my very first visit, when the barman regaled with "Hello, I haven't seen you for a while!" Or ever in fact). I have a suspicion that the Cat is the Coppers local as it is very near the Police station, so I'm a bit surprised I wasn't greeted more warmly this time. Perhaps I failed to give the proper Masonic greeting as I palmed my change.

Anyway, the morning after I am slightly paying for this debauched evening as it was my turn to get up with the kids. However I was rewarded by seeing HackneyBaby's (or should he be ColchesterBaby now?) first steps. Onwards and upwards.

Tributes

2011-02-11T15:24:00.001+01:00

When we lived in Hackney, it was sadly not uncommon to come across moving, makeshift floral tributes on the streets. Often these were for the victims of violent crime, such as Jahmal Mason-Blair, stabbed in a fight he was trying to break up, Edward Thompson, shot by mistake, and Shaquille Smith, stabbed by a gang as he played outside his home.

When Jahmal died there was an incredible shrine that sprung up under a railway bridge that I used to pass when dropping my son at nursery. Like many young boys, he had aspirations of being a footballer, and was considered by Tottenham Hotspur. His shrine was made up of flowers, pictures, candles, football shirts, poems and pictures from friends and people who probably didn't even know him. It was a touching sight, and I remember the care that local road sweepers used to take in tidying around it.

Yesterday I came across something similar in Colchester. It was to commemorate Cassie McCord, a 16 year old schoolgirl who was killed when a car mounted the pavement on Monday. Again, the flowers were piled up on the pavement. Schoolchildren stood around crying and comforting each other. Another tragic waste of life.

It's easy to see these sorts of tributes as a bit mawkish and another example of how our famed stiff upper lip has given way to Diana-ish public displays of emotion, but I think that they serve a useful purpose. They remind us of the inevitability and the sometimes arbitrary nature of death. As we live longer, death is something that we don't encounter very often, and we don't always know how to react to it.

The first funeral I ever attended was my father's when I was 13. The formality of the occasion and the ceremony was something I didn't know how to react to. I can still recall the shock of being pushed forward at the graveside to be one of the first to throw some soil on the coffin lid. The finality of the gesture hit me like a hammer. I've never really liked visiting his grave since then. It just doesn't feel like the best place to remember him.

An interesting take on the role of the grave was shown on Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Wedding programme this week. A father, Paddy, was shown visiting the grave of his first son, who had died in a car crash. Rather than being an overly sombre occasion, it was a time for remembrance and celebration of the boy's short life. CDs were played loudly and beer was drunk by the assembled crowd, who came every year on the anniversary of his death. In a programme that has been labelled as rather voyeuristic and mocking, it was extremely touching and a demonstration of the different ways we have of remembering those we love.

Another non-conventional tribute is the 'ghost bike'. These painted white bicycles appear to mark the spot where a cyclist has been killed in traffic. In Hackney, they are becoming almost as common as floral tributes to young people. The latest is for Dan Cox, who was knocked over at Dalston Junction. The bikes are a reminder of the individual and a somewhat chilling warning of accident black spots.

One uplifting element to the sad story of Cassie McCord is that she carried a donor card and her family agreed that her organs could be used. In this way, she will be remembered by many more people in future.

Cooking with kids

2011-02-04T00:23:00.000+01:00

First catch your child...

I do most of the cooking in our house. It's something I really enjoy and I think I'm not bad at it, but this evening's effort brought home to me how degraded my skills have become.

The thing about cooking for children is that there is little appreciation for your efforts and little discernment. A carefully crafted, nutritious, homemade meal could inevitably be trumped by a turkey twizzler and chips. Kids don't really care about provenance or how long it took to make. They care about having something that they recognise and having it now, or five minutes ago.

This relentless drive to get food on the table at an allotted time is what makes cooking drudgery, and it's why women of my mother's generation turned to convenience foods as their saviours. I can well remember as a child the close correlation between what was advertised on TV one week and what appeared on your plate the next. Crispy pancakes, chicken nuggets, and my particular favourite crispy batter fish fingers. I loved these so much that I'm sure I had them every day for a week until I was completely sick of them.

Anyway, I'm enough of guilty Jamie and Hugh disciple to try and go down a different route (as well as being a hypocrite for denying my children the tasty treats I so enjoyed). By and large we cook meals from scratch, try and use fresh vegetables as much as possible. However this can take so long that inevitably you end up eating the same as the kids. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. It's good for the family to eat together. The problem is that I don't always feel like eating at 5.30 when the kids do. And the lack of seasoning and adult flavourings like chili, does result in slightly bland fare.

The upshot is that I'm falling, ever so slightly out of love with cooking. I don't get many chances to indulge my love of cheffy touches these days. It's a bit more of a bish, bash, bosh approach. Hence tonight's meal, which was a hurried Annabel Karmel salmon tagliatelle, albeit with a few ingredients missing. It just looked a bit of a mess to me, and I cooked it.

Of course, the kids loved it!

Today we drink!

2011-02-01T13:14:00.001+01:00

Reaches the parts other gassy liquids can't

Or at least we could if there was a reason beyond the sheer love of alcohol. For today is the first of February and the end of January's self imposed no drinking rule.

And yet it seems such an anti-climax. Probably because it is a doddle for me these days. I've been doing no-drink Januaries for years and it definitely gets easier with practice. Last year I went for a couple of months without drinking in (enforced) solidarity with my wife after the birth of our second son. It was only supposed to be two weeks, but I felt a little aggrieved about being reminded of the promise I'd made to not booze in those tough early days. I grumpily took this to be a slur, so to speak, on by fathering abilities. Surely I could switch seamlessly from glass in hand to wipes and nappy. So, to demonstrate to my wife what an uncaring woman she was, and how lucky she was to have such a self-sacrificing other half, I stayed dry for eight weeks or so.

That showed her!

Actually, it was probably a good thing that I did lay off the ale, as HackneyBaby was not, and indeed, is not, a good sleeper. There is nothing that erases the pleasure had from a few convivial evening drinks quite like a screaming baby. Early morning soothing sessions are better faced with a clear head. Firstly, you're less likely to drop the child. Secondly, any relaxing effect those drinks will have had, are now gone.

So, here I am again, ready to reenter the world of drink. In the past, this has been a day I have been counting down to, whereas this year it's a bit of a 'so what' moment. As I say, it's too easy these days. I feel like an old lag keeping his head down and doing his time quietly.

So, in the spirit of disruption and personal challenge, I'm setting out to do something that will be infinitely tougher for me.

February is designated sugar free. Apart from fruit and unavoidable added sugar, I'm going to try and avoid the sweet stuff. No chocolate, no biscuits, no cakes, no soft drinks, no fruit juice, no jam on toast. I have a massive sweet tooth and am starting to worry that my predilection will be passed on to my boys. It's hard to deny HackneyChild a chocolate digestive when I'm happily ploughing through half a packet with a cup of tea. If they are not around - or perhaps replaced with something more child friendly for the odd treat - then that has to be a good thing.

It's a good job there are only 28 days though as I'm rattling already. And I might need a few drinks to complete it.

Rubbish entry

2011-01-27T23:10:00.000+01:00

It's been ages since I posted, and the longer you leave it, the harder it gets - ooer!

I keep coming up with ideas for posts and then not writing them, or playing around with them in my mind until the fancy has gone. So I'm not promising any great shakes with this post. It's just to get me back into the habit.

One of the reasons I haven't posted for so long is that we finally moved house just before Christmas. We've swapped Hackney for Colchester and a two-bed flat for a three to five bed Victorian semi with garden. I'm just coming to the realisation that a house this size is almost like having another child in terms of the demands it places on your time. Never mind keeping it clean - we haven't even got it clean yet after the state the previous owners left it in - everywhere I look I see a job to be done. Painting, decorating, shelving, carpeting, gardening... the list just goes on an on. Now I know what people mean by a project.

Although we've only been here a month, it does seem like home already. This despite the fact that the house is absolutely freezing and holds heat like a sieve does water. The kids love it and as well as having their own bizarrely decorated rooms, they have a play room for all their toys and lots of other rooms to spread their toys about in. They don't understand compartmentalisation.

It's nice though. We can see lots of possibilities here for the future and the neighbours seem nice, if a little less exotic than our Hackney neighbours. We miss our London friends, but they're just down the line, and in the next week or so we will have a guest room for their - hopefully frequent - visits. Just remember to bring long johns.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

More autumn fun

2010-11-24T12:10:00.000+01:00

Is there anything more fun for a young boy at this time of year than kicking rustling piles of leaves? Well, yes, there probably are, and it depends on the youth of the boy where he gets his kicks, but it has to be in the top five. Especially when dad sanctions throwing armfuls of them in the air too.

Ready, steady...

Wheeee!

How sad am I?

2010-11-20T22:36:00.000+01:00

It's been a tough week. HackneyBaby is not sleeping very well so we've been up at all hours through the night. To make matter worse, just as his big brother is discovering the joy of a lie in, he has taken over the 6am - or earlier - shift.

I've been feeling a bit low recently. I've only just managed to shake off a cough that has been lingering for weeks. It didn't really develop into a full blown cold or flu, but just left me feeling a bit crap. Combined with my sore foot and the lack of sleep, I haven't been the happiest of bunnies.

This week has been especially wearing as we've been trying to get HB to stay in his cot when he kicks off. Up until now we've been walking him about, taking him downstairs to stop him waking his brother. Anyway, we've decided to stop that because:
a) it doesn't really work, and
b) he's getting too heavy to cart around in the middle of the night, and possibly...
c) because his brother scared the bejeezus out of me the other night by appearing silently by my side in the darkened front room and loudly asking "What are you doing?"

So this week we've been trying to keep him in our room and his cot. On one hand this has been easier for me as my wife has been dealing with him when he wakes up. However the unspoken quid pro quo has been that I've been getting up with him in the morning. We used to take it in turns to do this, so by the end of this week I was shattered.

My wife is not an unfeeling woman and she offered to take the kids out today and let me have some down time. (They went to the St Joseph's hospice Christmas bazaar, where Barbara Windsor was there to open things up and was, by all accounts a real sweetheart.)

This left me free to do whatever my heart desired - go back to bed, go to the cinema, head for the pub... whatever I fancied. In the event I found it really hard to think of anything to do. I eventually went for a walk and found myself looking at all the weekend dads out with their kids on bikes, playing and having fun. Although I was only divorced from mine for a couple of hours I felt an irrational envy, almost a separation anxiety, as I wondered what my two lads were doing.

It's crazy. I see them every day and for a lot longer than many fathers do. As much as I sometimes think that they have completely taken over my life, it is obvious that they now are my life.

And yes, I realise how icky that sounds.

Autumn gold

2010-11-12T00:10:00.000+01:00

It's been a downpour today, but it was glorious yesterday. Even mucky old Hackney looks quite nice in the sunshine, especially when we're having such a glorious autumn for leaf colours.
Back in the day, before we had kids, we'd be heading out to Suffolk at about this time of year for an autumn break in the lovely seaside town of Southwold. Invariably we'd drive through beautiful golds, reds and yellows which would make me wonder why New England in the Fall is such a big deal when we have such wonderful scenes in our own country.
Plus, I doubt you can get real ale like Adnams in New England. Nor find a boozer like the Lord Nelson.
These pictures aren't great, but I just wanted to capture how lovely the leaves look at the minute in case there are no more sunny days before they all drop.

Clay man

2010-11-10T15:49:00.000+01:00

He sits... and waits... for a 38 bus

Not a great picture I know, but I had to climb on to somebody's wall and lean out to get this shot of the mysterious clay man. As he is looking away from me it is impossible to tell what look he has, or if he has any features at all. I'm thinking that he is perhaps Hackney's answer to Anthony Gormley's Event Horizon statues.

More bus stop top art

2010-11-09T23:27:00.001+01:00

Following on from the under the radar success of the space potatoes and the wooden clacker things, the guerrilla artists of Hackney are at it again. Last night I noticed a small clay figure on top of the bus stop at the top of Graham Road. From my vantage point on the top deck of the 277, through the rain and condensation smeared windows, I could just about make him out. He seems to be sitting on an armchair as if watching an invisible TV.

It reminded me that I'd spotted another miniature figure on Kingsland Road a few weeks back. He also seemed to be made from unpainted clay, like his chair bound brother. However he was standing atop a wall with a life belt round his midriff. Poignant it was!

Unfortunately lifebelt man he has now gone as I tried to find him later to get a picture. But I wonder where the next clay man or woman might crop up and what they'll be doing.

This hurts

2010-10-22T23:04:00.000+01:00

I have just discovered I've got a bunion. I don't know if this is good news or bad as I thought I'd broken my foot somehow or maybe developed gout. Which is worst?

All I know is that it bloody hurts at the moment - throb, throb, throb. I am currently self-medicating with Kronenbourg, which I don't think conflicts with the anti-inflammatories I'm on. For now though I'm a hobbling, limping fool and I don't like it. This really makes me feel like the old dad I am. I can't descend the stairs with any ease. I can't actually walk very far at the moment. It's a real pisser.

Our two boys are so physically demanding that I feel like a bit of a spare part at the moment. I'm only marginally more mobile than the six month old, who is already hauling himself up on things and standing gummily grinning at us: "Look what I've done."

CRUNCH!

2010-10-17T16:44:00.000+01:00

Advanced Police driving course - failed

We were sitting in the house yesterday when there was an almighty crash on what sounded like Graham Road. Being, like most people, nosey by nature, I halted what I was doing at the time - dressing down J over something or other - and rushed out to see what was going on.

A crowd of other rubber neckers had gathered on the corner of Graham Road and Navarino Road, where a couple of rather embarrassed PCs were surveying the scene. By all accounts they'd tried to undertake a car that was already turning into the side road, completely misjudged and kerrunch!

Although this tableau provided no little amusement, particularly for the guys who frequent the nearby bookies, it was extremely fortunate there was nobody on the pavement at the time as the results would have been terrible. Perhaps the police drivers wouldn't have been so foolhardy if there had been pedestrians, but this was the spot where Arina Romanova was knocked from her bike and killed a couple of months ago. Navarino Road is heavily used by parents and kids going to and from London Fields. On a lovely sunny, Saturday afternoon, it could have been much worse.

They knead the bread

2010-10-10T21:01:00.002+01:00

I yield to no one in my love of a nice spelt sourdough, but it's getting so you can't move around here for artisan bakers. Maybe they are the new plumbers. A couple of years back there was the idea that the middle classes were chucking their jobs in the City, accountancy and law to make their millions fitting U-bends and Armitage Shanks three pieces. Given the price of the average pain de campagne, perhaps dough is going that way.

The latest addition is the E5 Bakehouse, which is located in a railway arch just off London Fields. We stumbled upon it this morning, after stumbling upon it on Facebook. We bought some rather rich, but fantastically yummy muffins for £1.50-1.75 each, which although pricey is still cheaper than Violet. The USP seems to be the organic nature of the goods on sale. They are to be very into the provenance of the flour and such like. But ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the chocolate and cherry, and carrot cake muffins we tried were fantastic.

(Not E5's yummy muffins. These cakes are for display purposes only)

Bread is their big thing though and there was a baker hard at it on Sunday. Apparently they will be making bread every day, which opens up the fantastic opportunity of strolling up there of a morning and picking up a still steaming round of bread. Or going for a run and dropping in for a baguette on the way back. Jeez, I love Hackney!

They are also running baking classes, which sound like fun. For £65 you undergo a full day course which will show you how to make the perfect sourdough. As a bit of an amateur baker, this sounds very interesting. I kept a sourdough starter for four or five years, but recently gave up on it as I was making bread with it so infrequently. Partly this was due to the fact that I have so little time for indulgences like baking what with the kids' demands. But another was the fact that I could never get the same taste that I would buy on Broadway Market from Degustibus, whose Californian sourdough is the Holy Grail. Maybe I can perfect my crumb and crust with some tuition.

I worked in an industrial bakery when I was younger - summer holiday job. Oddly it never left me with a desire to make, or even eat bread. Probably because the process was so deskilled. You basically did one small part of the process - classic assembly line stuff - so you couldn't really feel much ownership of the final product, which wasn't much to write home about anyway.

Getting your hands into the dough is a completely different matter.

The 6.30 Club

2010-10-09T07:33:00.000+01:00

In which Dad tries to do some surreptitious blogging while keeping an ear out for the almost crawling baby behind him.

Baby A is what you would call an early riser - 6.30 is a bit of a lie in. My wife and I tend to take it in turns to do the early shift with him. By rights I should probably get up with him every morning as she feeds him in the night, which is usually a drawn out affair. However, for the past week or so I've been getting up with him as well. He's been sleeping so badly that it's almost like a return to the baby boot camp of the early weeks. It seems as if he's been waking up every hour, although in my sleep deprived state I can't be sure of anything. Yesterday I mentioned to Mrs Holiday that he seemed to have slept well only to be met with a withering rebuke that I'd slept through the worst of it.

Not that it's usually possible to sleep through and most nights I end up pacing the living room with him. At the moment he's still in our room as we've only got a two-bed flat until we move to our Essex mansion. So, when he wakes, if he won't go back to sleep quickly we take him downstairs so he doesn't disturb his brother.

It's a funny thing. Even when he's bawling his eyes out, he is often asleep in my arms by the time we get down the stairs and into this room. Maybe he finds the peculiar odour relaxing. Here I will walk him or rock him, which can be for anything between 10 minutes (hooray!) and an hour (lots of inward swearing at this point). He seems to be thriving on it though - he's a happy little chap when he wakes up. For us, it's sleep deprivation torture and leaves us zombified for the rest of the day.

For now, we're waiting for the day when we can put him in his own room and not hear his every whimper, which is probably part of the problem at the minute. His brother was similarly restless, although in a different way. We used to have to lie beside his cot and hold his hand, but at least you got a rest. With Baby A it's a full body work out in the small hours with no warm up.

Reinforcements have now arrived in the shape of big brother who is currently keeping A occupied by distributing various toys to him. One thing to be thankful for is the fact that they generally get on well at the moment. I hope that remains the same as little brother's crawling progresses. J already finds it annoying when he wrecks his carefully constructed train layouts. Will I be an early morning peacekeeper in the months ahead?

Anxious times

2010-10-06T23:14:00.000+01:00

As we get closer to moving to Essex, I'm getting steadily more nervous. Not just because of the usual worries about leaving the little corner of East London that has been home for the past 11 years.

I'm starting to worry about everything really. The buildings report on the house we are buying came in today. Overall there's not a lot to worry about - it's not going to fall down the week after we move in. However, seeing in black and white what you are buying, and seeing all of its little blemishes highlighted is quite sobering - we're buying THIS! Mind you, I'd hate to see the report on our current property.

A bigger concern is the school catchment we are in. We specifically bid on the new place, and dropped another property because of the school we thought it was nearest to. I consulted with the local education authority about this as finding out catchment areas is like trying to uncover the recipe for Coca-Cola - there are a lot of pretenders out there, but you're never sure what's the real deal. Surely the council would know.

Apparently not. In my original conversations with the LEA, I was talked through a map of where the boundaries were by a lady in the schools team - "Up this road, down that one...." It all seemed very thorough so we went ahead and put in our bid on the house which, fro her information was in the catchment of the school we wanted.

Weeks later, by which time we were up to our ears in costs of moving, the surveyor, of all people, mentioned that we might not be in the catchment we thought we were in. I checked again. This time the process seemed a little more robust. The guy I spoke to said he had to access a computer programme to get the definitive answer. Except it wasn't initially definitive. Firstly he said that we were in catchment - cue huge relief and air punching - then he added "Unless you are in Road X". Since this was our prospective road and the basis of our entire conversation to this point, I felt a little like the beauty queen who was announced as winner only to have the crown pinched from her head seconds later due to the announcer giving the wrong name.

We've missed out by one street, which is rather galling. One of the reasons that we are moving is that some schools in Hackney are not great (although not the one that J would probably have gone to had we stayed - Gayhurst gets decent reviews). We're now in the odd position of escaping from inner city London, with all its perceived problems, to leafy Colchester, where it's possible our son will go to a worse school than he would have had we stayed here. As my wife pointed out, we are possibly the most crap, pointy elbowed parents.

We did think briefly about pulling the whole deal, but we're so far down the line that it was a bit too scary to more than contemplate. Maybe the sink school will have pulled its socks up in a couple of years time.

Another worry is work. Specifically will there be any? It's still very quiet in my line these days and I'll be at the end of a very long line should I need to get back into the Smoke. I haven't yet identified the media quarter of our new home. Surely there is one!

So really I've got to keep accentuating the positives: bigger house; garden; closer to the seaside; near to family; nice town... Phew, it's good to know there are still reasons to cheerful.

Easy rider

2010-10-02T20:36:00.000+01:00

I finally got round to testing the Boris bikes today. The nearest ones to Hackney aren't actually that near so it meant a trip down Kingsland Road to the Geffrye Museum where there is a rack in nearby Falkirk Street.

First impressions were favourable. There were plenty of bikes to choose from and they all seemed to be in good condition. Rightly or wrongly I'd expected that they would already be showing the signs of unwanted attention from vandals and drunkards, but the docking station itself was well kept and the bikes looked very impressive in their serried ranks. These ones hadn't been stickered either.

The process of obtaining one was pretty straightforward too. You just insert your key into the docking station, wait for a green light and you're away. The bikes are pretty robust but not uncomfortable. The seat is easy to adjust to the required height, the chain is enclosed so your trousers won't get caught in it, and the seat is padded and sufficiently wide to accommodate most bottoms. They also have built in lights which flash funkily as you ride along, drum brakes which were efficient without throwing you over the handlebars, and a 'basket' at the front for strapping in a bag or coat. They also have a stand.

There are three gears which ranged from the hilariously frenzied - ideal for getting off at lights - to a decent third which made me feel I could actually get the beast moving at a decent pace. I was actually able to overtake a few people on their own bikes. They were probably in a more leisurely frame of mind than me as I raced to the next docking station to ensure I stayed within the 30 minute free window. It's actually remarkably easy to do as the stations are thick on the ground in central London. There were also plenty of bikes at all stations apart from Clerkenwell Road where only two were left. Maybe this is due to the difficulty of hiring the bikes. Unless you have a key (not that difficult to apply for and they only cost £3) you still can't use the bikes. I'm sure the casual use scheme will be up and running by summer and by then I can't imagine it will be so easy to get hold of a bike, on a sunny Sunday afternoon for example.

I did go a bit bananas on the first leg with the result that when I descended the bike my legs were as jellyish as Simon Pegg's character in Run Fat Boy Run (filmed partly in Dalston actually) after his first spinning class. I took it easier after that and cycled from Kingsland Road to Borough Market, then on to the Royal Festival Hall for lunch before heading back through the West End, Bloomsbury, Old Street and back to Falkirk Street.

The overriding sensation was how being on a bike really shrinks the city. It was Saturday so traffic was probably lighter, but I was getting around much quicker than I would have done on any other mode of transport. Also, although the bike is hardly a design classic, I didn't feel as much of a plonker as I thought I would, and saw lots of other people on Boris bikes.

Overall, I can't think of much negative to say, apart from the fact that they don't extend very far into East London. If Boris really does intend to be a mayor of the whole city and not just the West part, I hope that this changes very quickly. There should already be a stream of them leading up to the Olympic site to get people used to the idea of visiting what is for many a strange part of town. Let's be 'aving 'em!

The Spurstowe in a former life

2010-09-20T11:28:00.002+01:00

I came across this ad today, which I remember being shot at the Spurstowe on Wilton Way about five or six years ago. At the time it was still an old man's boozer, complete with the stripey wallpaper that you can just about make out in the picture.

Now, it's on its second incarnation as a trendy gastropub/cool hangout. So cool in fact that it doesn't even have a name. The current owners took down the name when they were redecorating and said that they were looking to rename it. I suggested they have a competition, but it looks as if nothing came of it.

My own suggestion is the Hotchip and Mumford, in celebration of the major sartorial influences for the drinkers... and the fact that they serve chips.

It is amazing how the fame of the this particular area has spread. First with Grazia dubbing London Fields the coolest park in London. Then the New York Times alighted on Wilton Way to number its charms. I did wonder if the backpacker parked outside our door yesterday had cabbed it straight from Heathrow to soak up the Wilton vibe.

But of course, what goes up, must inevitably come down, and it seems the backlash has already started. It has to be said that although there are a lot of dickheads about, they are mostly polite middle class youths who do add a certain vibrancy to the area and some comic appeal. There was a decidedly Nathan Barley-ish picnic going on outside the Lido on Saturday, complete with a DJ working a sound system from the back of a shopping trolley.

Sweet.

Bankers

2010-08-28T08:58:00.000+01:00

It's not an original observation, but they really are a bunch of bankers aren't they?

I'm currently looking for a new mortgage as we're moving house so I've been surfing finance sites for longer than is healthy. My current mortgage is with Gnat West (the Frank Bank - Unemployed? No money? Then f--- off! Thank you Viz) and they recently sent me a reminder that my current deal is nearly over. I've just been rereading their kind offer and see that the two year fixed deal they have offered me - a customer of 10 years plus - is more than 2% higher than an offer open to any old Joe, on their website.

They can't even claim that the web offer is new as I spoke to one of their call centre staff yesterday and he said it had been around since the time that my reminder was sent. And my muggins offer comes with a £199 arrangement fee, compared with no fee for the one on the website.

The sad and bad thing is that there will be people out there who have taken them up on this and be overpaying by hundreds of pounds a month. Customer loyalty really does only cut one way it seems.

Advice for Dave

2010-08-25T15:20:00.000+01:00

I was recently interviewed for an article on the BBC website about being a dad to tie in with the birth of David and Samantha Cameron's latest child. It came a bit earlier than expected, but luckily they managed to get it up in time.

As a journalist myself, I can't complain about being misquoted. I did pretty much say all of that stuff, but because of the brief, I didn't get much of a chance to talk about the joy of being a dad. And there are lots of joyous aspects to it.

However, it's fair to say that I found our second child tougher than our first. Partly this was because of the mismatch between expectation and reality. Despite being told by enough people that two or more kids were a lot tougher than one, it went in one ear and out the other. I thought that by the time number two was on the way, we had this parenting lark down pat. More fool me. Like lots of aspects of parenthood, you really have to experience things yourself and find your own way through.

I particularly struggled with drawing a boundary between family and work time. Because I work from home mainly, it was all too easy to be dragged into domestic crises - children crying, wife crying, poomageddon etc. Combined with the inevitable lack of sleep (well, not inevitable I suppose. Our second has proved not to be the placid balance to his energetic brother, but more of the same), the first few months turned out to be a not very productive time for me work wise. It was just as well that we were in a freelance recession!

I can't imagine what it will be like for the PM to try and stay on top of his workload while being a thoroughly modern dad at the same time. Of course he's already had three children, including one disabled child, so he's probably more disciplined than I'll ever be. With Samantha laid up after her section, there will be plenty for him to - and not just making tea and toast as he joked yesterday. It's lucky for him that he has Nick Clegg to hold the fort while he holds the baby.

It's going to be tough for them though with Sam having given up her job and the freezing of child benefit - thanks George! Family friendly government? We'll see.

Oh and the joyous bits. Well, the early days don't last for ever, do they?

To do list

2010-08-24T11:55:00.000+01:00

After a few weeks of frantic searching, we have found a house in Essex which, if everything goes according to plan, we should move into in a couple of months. Which means that our Hackney holiday may become a permanent vacation.

Now that the move is imminent, I'm mentally listing things that we'll have to try and do before we leave here. Some of them are things that I've always meant to do but haven't got round to. Others are favourite activities that we'll miss when we move home. In no particular order:

* a meal at Buen Ayre on Broadway Market for a proper Argentinian steak. Window table please, as frequented by David Byrne a couple of months back.
* an afternoon at the Museum of Childhood with the kids. It's been my home from home for the past couple of years and the saviour of many rainy days.
* a morning swim at London Fields Lido - apparently the US swim team are eyeing it up for the 'Lympics.
* a few cheeky pints at the Wenlock Tavern, one of the few spit and spit pubs that haven't been gastro-ed up. They do blinding doorstop sandwiches to soak up the ale.
* go for a run along the canal past Victoria Park.
* complete a few more legs of the London Loop. Kids have put a stop on our efforts as most of the legs are a fair few miles and not particularly buggy friendly. It's a great walk though.
* late night bagels from Brick Lane. Preferably eaten slightly squiffy on a nightbus home to Hackney.
* cycle across London for free on the Boris Bikes. Although I've registered I still haven't tried them.
* ask to busk alongside Mikey at Dalston shopping centre.
* visit the Horniman museum. (I'm putting this down mainly because there's a good chance that we'll do it this weekend.)
* go to a ukulele night, such as the one in Stoke Newington's Lion pub.
* take a trip along the Thames on a boat.

There are plenty of other things, but that's a good start.

Poltergeists

2010-08-18T11:58:00.000+01:00

In some cultures it's thought that when you die you are presented with all the things you have lost 'on the other side'. That's a lifetime of single socks, dropped coins, mislaid keys and mobile phones collected in the great lost property office in the sky.

I'm expecting that moving house is somewhat similar and that we will start to unearth lost treasures from behind furniture and the foot of drawers that have been unopened for years. Since having children, the rate at which things go missing has increased exponentially. It's not just the obvious stuff like kids socks, although they do seem to have a life of their own, or hats and dummies (ditto). Stuff just seems to disappear into thin air to the extent that you begin to suspect a malevolent presence.

Toys are another candidate for missing in action status. This particularly infuriates me as I have something of the quartermaster about me - a place for everything and everything in its place. It drives me nuts when I can't find the last piece of a jigsaw, the final action figure for a particular toy, or the piece of track that completes the railway line. Where are they?

I suspect that some of them ended up posted in the bin when J was younger. Other items might possibly have been left at his nursery or tossed from his buggy. It's not even that this stuff is valuable. It's the not knowing where it is that annoys me.

At times of greatest exasperation my wife nods sagely and says, "I'm sure it will turn up." This drives me even more bonkers. Does she know where it is? Is it some kind of elaborate game that she has devised with the kids - "Let's watch daddy lose it, shall we. Hide his phone in the freezer." Mainly however it's because I suspect her of being the architect of many of our losses. She is very scatty, with a slack attitude to her own possessions which she is passing on to our offspring.*

The latest loss is a whole bucket full of toy dinosaurs. One or two of their number going missing is just about excusable, but the extinction of the whole pack (hmm, collective noun for dinosaurs?) is mind boggling. It's right up there with the mystery of the mini guitar amp. This isn't a particularly small item and we don't live in a particularly large flat, so where the flip can it be?

I'm beginning to think that there is only one solution to the problem - throw away half of everything you own. At least that way if something turns up later you will feel blessed.

* Sorry darling, but it's true!

Why the long face?

2010-08-10T13:34:00.000+01:00

The overriding memory I have of my mum when I was growing up is that she always seemed grumpy, usually with me. Our house was a whole world of 'no'.

Now, of course, the boot is on the other foot, and I can see that what I took for her unfair crabbiness was probably just plain exhaustion at bringing up two kids on her own. This combined with the ongoing repetition of house rules and regulations designed to prevent your offspring killing or maiming themselves or each other.

This is particularly brought home to me now we have two children. To a certain extent it was easy to be fun-loving, easy going dad when we just had Number One Son. Now with his four-month old brother in tow, I frequently find myself in the role of bad cop, relaying all the many ways he is letting us down with his inconsiderate behaviour.

He is two years old. I am 43.

I think he can see it coming now. His face creases up into a mask of misery and he implores me: "Don't be annoyed with me."

It is a mask of course. He's well sneaky and knows that I find it hard to be hard on him. Unless like last night I'd been up all night, due to brother's sniffles, including a 2am trip to Tesco for Calpol which he only succeeded in dribbling down his front anyway. When his elder brother started complaining that he couldn't sleep in his bed due to wasps, it really was the final straw!

"Get in that bed NOW, and go to sleep. If I hear one more word from you I'll... " (tries unsuccessfully to think of a suitable sanction for a two year old. I had started to remove his favourite toys when he misbehaved, but when he said, "What shall we take away next?" it was apparent that my punishment regime had been turned into a game by him. You can't win.)

Eventually he did go to sleep, although not before complaining of more wasps and telling me where I should sleep (on the landing, outside his door). It's suffice to say that none of us are fresh as a daisy today - well, he is, but his parents are looking more haggard than usual.

Meanwhile, my dear old mum has turned into a doting and fun grandma. Enjoy your rest mum. You've earned it.

Househunting

2010-08-08T21:12:00.000+01:00

The shiny-suited ones have done us proud and managed to sell our humble abode for an anything but humble price. I'm almost ashamed at what we're getting for it (subject to contract) - almost but not quite.

It was all over relatively quickly - about five weeks to sell, during which time we were absent for many of the showings. This wasn't on purpose - we simply have the kind of fun-packed social lives that require us to vacate the Capital at weekends. I'm glad we weren't around though. If there is one thing more dispiriting than having someone do the tour of your house in about two minutes flat (that's a no then!), it's half-hearing the muted discussions as they tear apart what's still standing of your little castle.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it's us who are the moneyed interlopers, traipsing through people's lives, guffawing at their taste in decor, and rubbishing their houses. Actually, I'm not that rude. Not even about the one really horrible house we've seen recently. (A big clue should have been the requirement to remove shoes at the door). Even here I oohed and aahed and commented favourably on the room sizes - sometimes it's the only thing you have left in your armoury of compliments.

I haven't househunted for more than 11 years, and then it took me months and I probably saw about 30-40 properties before falling in love with the ample proportions of my current des res. Then it was a backwater street in a backwater part of town. Now it's a newly hip quarter of an Olympic borough, which is probably why it has done so well on the market. From a two-bed flat in Hackney, we're now looking at four-bed detatcheds in Essex. How does that work?

Not that our new-found paper wealth is making the process any easier. After sifting through properties on-line for ages, we had a shortlist of about ten properties, and surprise, surprise, none of them is quite right. Nice location but bedrooms are too small, loads of rooms but the garden is tiny, fantastic space, but it's in the middle of nowhere, amazing space, but it's right next to a car park... and so on. Then there's the different tastes and priorities of me and the missus.

I can't deny that househunting is great for the nosey though. It's a great insight into how other people live, and estate agents are such gossips. I love the way that they let slip with enough of the backstory to pull you in - "they've split up - such a shame. I think they'd take an offer!"

Hopefully everyone is open to an offer at the moment, as our initial plan of cutting our outgoings seems to be going to pot as we have exhausted the cheaper properties in our range and are now looking towards, and maybe beyond out notional maximum budget. Then again, this may be a once in a lifetime to get ourselves a pukka Essex mansion.

Sweet!

On my bike

2010-07-30T07:09:00.000+01:00

I have just registered for the new London bike hire scheme, which launches today. I was spurred on as I noticed several docking points while driving (whoops! Not very green) through Islington yesterday. There seemed to be a mass last minute exercise going on to 'bike up' all the docking points with the rather clunky looking machines that we will soon be able to ride.

Style should be the least of your worries when riding a bike, however of late it has become an activity that you need to be seen doing round these parts, preferably on a modish single speed bike or retro granny model. No need for bicycle clips either as trousers as worn drainpipe tight this year.

I doubt the Barclays machines will go down particularly well with the London Fields massive as you will look as cool as a Tory on a bike. However, I was excited enough to register at about 11 last night, and am now waiting anxiously for my access key to arrive.

The scheme works by allowing you to pick up one of thousands of bikes from docking stations around the capital. You pay £3 for the key, rather like your Oyster card and then pay as you go. The first 30 minutes are free, so it may be possible to cross London by planning your route carefully and swapping bikes as you go. However the scheme is cheap enough at £1 per day, although there is higher rate if you don't have credit in your account. A full year's membership costs £45, which you'd struggle to buy a bike for anywhere - even in the thief's market of Brick Lane.

It is as yet unclear where all of the docking stations are. The website promises to locate them on a map, but they weren't there last night when I looked - not even the ones I spotted off Pentonville Road and next to Islington Sainsbury's. It will be something of an own goal if we don't have them in the Olympic boroughs as part of the bid has been about a green transport policy for visitors - as long as you are not a member of the IOC, which seems intent on traffic free carriage to the Lea Valley in special lanes.

For me, it will be an opportunity to get back on two wheels. I haven't had a bike for ages as there is not really room to store it in the flat. The only problem is that I doubt they come with kids seats. Maybe some enterprising sort will develop a quick release version that can used with hire bikes.

These sorts of schemes have been in action for a while in many European cities, such as Paris and Frankfurt. The key to their success, according to my sources, is speedy reallocation of bikes so they don't simply disappear from high traffic sites, such as railway stations to the periphery of the scheme. That, and removal and repair of any duff machines. I suspect there will be plenty of need in the early days as cycling novices, such as me, and local vandals put them through their paces. Overall though, what's not to like?

In depth report coming soon.

Sugar Sugar

2010-07-22T22:21:00.000+01:00

Like many first time parents, we did a lot of things by the (smug middle class parent's) book: breast feeding for a year (not me, obviously); weaning on nutritious pulped food; avoiding exposure to TV; no sweets. Jeez, we were smug.

The no sweets thing was something that I was particularly keen on, having seen the havoc that the introduction of 'treats' can have on a healthy eating regime. Mainly to myself actually. As a Scottish child of the Seventies, I was raised on the newly available convenience foods and sweeties.

(My mum was, and remains a marketing man's dream. My sister and I used to be able to accurately guage what we'd be having for dinner by checking out what new ads were breaking that week. You could guarantee that mum would trial any new innovations as soon as they hit the shelves.)

So when it came to HackneyChild, I was determined that he should be given the best dietary start. In this I was helped by my wife, who had a completely different upbringing to mine, in that she was deprived of sweets to such an extent in the early days that the first time some kindly soul gave her jelly babies, she started playing with them, thinking they were dolls.

That story always stuck in my mind. To this day I have a massively sweet tooth, brought on in no small part by the kind of food my old Scottish grannie thought suitable for growing laddies - treacle and syrup sandwiches for example. White bread, natch! Or just a straight up sugar sandwich. I didn't stand a chance.

Anyway, I thought we'd done pretty well keeping J's exposure to the white stuff to a minimum. I used to weed out the nasties from the birthday bags he was given at his nursery, but really it seems to have been all in vain. After a delayed start, he has taken to all sorts of sweet things like a demon - cakes, ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, are his 'favourite thing' as he terms it.

I know there is some debate about how bad sugar is for kids and whether it really does turn them bonkers, but today's evidence look daming. After being particularly good, his mum bought him an ice cream which he liked lots thank you very much. After that, it seemed as if he had been swapped for an evil twin. He wanted to chop off his brother's head and kick him downstairs, he wanted to SHOOOUUUT, wouldn't have an afternoon nap despite being very tired, he was crying and stumbling about like a miniature drunk.

Being the good and consistent parents we are, we have told him that he is NEVER having ice cream again. That should sort him out.

Thumbs up for Lollibop

2010-07-19T11:21:00.004+01:00

Children and festivals don’t mix. It’s a fact that some parents choose to ignore in the relentless pursuit of those hazy, lazy, carefree pre-children days. Give it up guys – they’re never coming back.

Maybe the organisers of Lollibop are on to something. The event, which was held for the first time on 17-18 July in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington, offered a decent day’s entertainment that kept both ankle biters and their minders entertained.

Billed as the Big Bash for Little People, a telling addition might have been (and harassed parents). Yet the overall feeling of the event was that it was fun, lively and safe, and those attending looked pretty relaxed. It helped that Sunday was a glorious day, but the whole tone of the event was designed to put visitors at ease. Arriving just after noon I heard the security guys on the gate telling some curious onlookers that only adults with children could come in. The wrist bands for children and reminder to write on their name and phone number was a nice touch, and made it feel more like a school outing.

Indeed Lollibop had a pleasantly home made feel to it, which is not bad for a festival put together by a professional events company – I hope I’m not damning Continental Drifts with faint praise, it’s meant to be a compliment. The old Stoke Newington festival was gloriously uncommercial and a great example of community involvement. I’m sure it’s a touchstone for these kind of events.

The site was pretty big but pleasantly not too crowded. Not such good news for the organisers I’m sure, but great for parents and children who were able to take advantage of the activities without waiting for too long.

There was plenty to get excited about (if you were four years old) and to be thankful for if you were a bit older. A small petting zoo complete with pony, goats, sheep, stoat, and er goslings (help me here), was a big hit. As were the obligatory bouncy castles and craft activities. I loved the clean loos (complete with loo paper and a flower) and baby changing and feeding facilities.

Mums and dads could also enjoy a crafty pint from the ‘adult crèche’ located near to the music stage. My highlight of the day was the Bikini Beach Band, whose surf rock version of Popcorn is still playing in my head. Another nice touch was the opportunity to purchase ear defenders for youngsters. It wasn’t that loud, but it showed consideration for the audience.

Other highlights included walkabout entertainment such as a scrap yard challenge horse, stilted fairies, a troll and Alice in Wonderland characters. You could also head to the Miniscule of Sound, mini niteclub, watch some Babyoke (baby karaoke), see the bubble man, dance to a Latin beat, enjoy some comedy, dress up or take part in a sports day. And, as they say, much, much more.

As a paying event, the big question has to be, was it worth it? I didn’t pay for my ticket, and would probably have baulked at the £53 on the day cost of family entry. However, compared to an afternoon at the cinema, bowling or even swimming, it was competitively priced, and positively cheap compared to taking the kids to see Arsenal at the nearby Emirates.

The problem for the organisers is that Hackney is blessed with so many great free events during summer. I had seen elements of the show, such as the Albion pirate ship and soft play area at recent free events in London Fields for example. The nearest comparison with Lollibop is probably Paradise Gardens in Victoria Park, which was completely free. Of course, it was largely funded by the local authority and it may be that there as the council looks to make savings, it is less able to fund such feel good activities.

Will enough people pay for Lollibop to make it viable in future? Only time will tell. We certainly felt it was a great day and would welcome it back next year, even if we had to spring for the tickets this time.

The Secret Garden

2010-07-17T23:18:00.002+01:00

Actually, it's not that secret, but today I paid my first visit to the funkily named Dalston Eastern Curve Garden. This is a two-year project to create a community garden in a neglected urban space.

Despite sounding like a dance move of years gone by, the Dalston Eastern Curve was in fact a junction link for the recently reopened rail line at Dalston Junction. For years, it's been a forgotten slice of land tucked away between derelict buildings, a faceless shopping complex and a congested thoroughfare.

That started to change last year with an arty project called Dalston Mill. It had quite lofty aims - I'm not really sure if I understood them, but it made a fascinating place to visit with an inquisitive toddler. Behind these anonymous black fence posts they are growing wheat - behold and marvel!

You couldn't actually eat the wheat due to contamination caused by fly tipping over the years, but it was an interesting project in many ways.

Leap forward a year and the DECG (could that catch on as an acronym?) is almost up and running. I popped in there this afternoon and found a group of lovely people who seemed very excited by the prospects. Speaking to one lady, she said how they hoped to get schools involved, wanted people to come along and plant things, to have semi outdoor events and solicited my advice on what toddlers might want to do in such a space.

J was in kid heaven just being let loose with the hosepipe. Can he do that every day? It was like our bedtime Magic Garden stories (copyright Dad) brought to life.

I hope it works out. It's such a great idea - and one that I hope is not seriously being linked to Cameron's vacuous Big Society notion, as here. My cynical side wonders if it will end up being nothing more than a nice hideaway for the local drunks. I'm sure that won't happen, especially if they get a little cafe in there - parents of Hackney will come flocking.

Winner!

2010-07-14T14:58:00.000+01:00

Maybe it's these austere times, but I've found myself entering a lot of competitions recently. I lack the dedication of the full time comper - the person with a house full of toasters and tea towels, three cars in the drive and the promise of four foreign holidays a year. All because they are on first name terms with lady luck and have a punning way with 10 words or less tiebreakers.

Having spoken to a few compers in my time, I realise that it's practically a full time job for some (the retired mainly). But I also know from past experience that many competitions don't attract that many entries. I worked on a magazine once that had a monthly prize draw for a travel prize. The prizes were pretty decent - spa weekends, hotel breaks, travel vouchers, tickets to sporting events - yet regularly failed to get into double figures of entries. At the same time, we had several regulars who would enter every month and sent in elaborate hand made postcards to increase their chance of being pulled from the presumably bulging postbag. My favourite was one entrant whose postcards were in the shape of teddy bear's heads, complete with fake fur, beady eyes and a sound chip in the nose that played the Teddy Bear's Picnic when squeezed. She never won!

But I have, thanks to my good friends at Hackney Hive. We will be attending this weekend's Lollibop, a big outdoor event for kids in lovely Clissold Park. I'm not quite sure what to expect, but the lineup looks good, so if the weather holds - Sunday looks the better bet - it should be great.

Now all I need is to find a local website that's running a competition for High Voltage.

Carry on regardless

2010-07-11T23:45:00.000+01:00

In certain cultures it is customary that babies are not put on the ground for the first year of their life. Trust me on this - I'm a bit shaky on the details, but I have Metro-level knowledge it happens in Bali. Maybe it works in extended families, but three months into Hackney_Child 2.0's life, it is getting pretty wearing for the distinctly nuclear Holiday family.

He is a pretty massive wee thing and doesn't take that kindly to being put down. This can mean carrying his impressive bulk around for hours on end while he dribbles down your aching left arm (I favour that side). I fear I will end up like one of those lopsided crabs that develops a massive claw to compensate for the loss of the other one.

As well as refusing to be put down, he also doesn't see why you should sit down on duty. What difference it makes to him I cannot tell, but the moment bum touches seat, his back starts to arch and he squirms and squeaks until you resume the upright jiggling position. It's like handling a large and chubby eel. I remember when I was a kid my dad told me that the only way to stop an eel wriggling was to make a cross in the ground and lay it on the axis. As I recall it didn't really work that well on the elver we'd caught, but the thought remains.

It's beginning to affect me physically. Today I found myself jiggling involuntarily when he started crying even though I wasn't carrying him. People look. I'm also developing a rather splay footed dad walk that is partly designed to rock the bairn and partly aimed at slowing down my progress as Number One Son is usually dawdling some distance behind complaining of having 'empty legs'. This means swapping lumpen baby for his older sibling, who usually regains his energy levels once perched on my shoulders and commences to try and compress my neck into my chest by bouncing up and down on it. The only compensation is that they are both growing at such a rate that one day soon, they will be carrying me.

Cherries!

2010-07-07T23:30:00.000+01:00

On my way to the pub I noticed a lady picking fruit from a tree in the local playground. I stopped to chat. She was eating cherries, which seem to have arrived at a perfect state of ripeness today. They tasted lovely - sweet, yet slightly tart and smaller than the supermarket offerings

Returning home later, I noticed another tree heavy with fruit where some of the local kids were handing out scrumped cherries from a Tesco bag. Everyone seemed happy and relaxed at this shared bounty. It reminded me of the time I discovered some edible chestnut trees in Victoria Park. I was running along the canal side one evening and spotted a Chinese lady filling bags with something. The next day I revisited the spot with my son and we were given a bag of chessies by a fellow forager.

I had great plans for them - some sort of cake - but unfortunately I left them sitting in a bag in the lobby and they went mouldy.

It's nice to know that even in the heart of London, you can still get a bit Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I'm going back for more tomorrow. They'll be gone by the weekend.

If you don't want to know the score, look away now...

2010-07-07T23:10:00.000+01:00

I watched my first World Cup game in a bar tonight. It's been nigh on impossible to sneak a visit to the boozer for 7.30 kick offs as it's smack in the middle of bath time. Tonight, thanks to the beneficence of Mrs Holiday, I was able to watch the Spain v Germany at one of my locals. She put both of the children to bed tonight, which was beyond kindness.

Back at the pub, it was standing room only. This didn't completely surprise me as I'd passed by during the Germany v Argentina quarter final on Saturday and it was hopping. Now Hackney is a very cosmopolitan area, but there was big love going out towards Deutschland - it was as if they were the home team. Which they may well have been - I suspect there are more Germans in the borough than Argentinians (although possibly not Brazilians, as we have a Brazilian butcher on Mare Street).

In fact there are some interesting Germanic links in Hackney. The German Hospital, just up the road from us is a reminder of an early wave of immigration to London. More recently, as Iain Sinclair's Hackney history reminds us, the borough has been a haven for political extremists such as Baader Meinhoff member Astrid Proll. She worked for a while at the Lesneys Matchbox factory in Homerton.

I'm not sure of Spanish links, but there seemed to be plenty of 'Viva Espana's' in the air tonight. Of course, many of these may have been coming from locals. There was a great atmosphere, which was probably because it was not an England game and there was no need to gnaw your fingernails to the bone. Not that I would - I'm Scottish. I've no fingernails left.

Anyway 1-0 to Spain seems to set up a cracking final on Sunday. Whether I'll be allowed out to play or not is another matter.

Splash it all over

2010-07-03T14:40:00.002+01:00

This has been a fantastic week of weather although I've been fretting about work enough not to enjoy it. Yesterday however, Mrs Holiday and I went to Greenwich for the afternoon with the two kids and a friend and her two. The plan was to take in lovely Greenwich Park, let the boys stretch their legs and then have lunch in a bar in the grounds of the Naval College.

As it happened, we didn't get much beyond the first patch of grass. This was being watered with an array of sprinklers, which J's pal Other J (let's call him OJ for short) headed for like iron filings to a magnet. J swiftly followed and it quickly became apparent we wouldn't get much further for a while. The two of them stripped off and swooped and hollered around the sprinklers for the best part of the next hour before a reluctant break for lunch and then back for more running around in their pants and getting soaked. All to the soundtrack of soloists practising in the Trinity College of Music which overlooks the garden.

It reminded me a bit of the films we see of New York kids playing in water hydrant spray - the nearest they get to the seaside perhaps (although Coney Island isn't that far away). It also reminded me how good children are at coming up with their own entertainment and that perhaps parents are sometimes guilty of trying too hard to entertain them. Mind you, that was before they started to daub themselves with mud, at which point the laissez faire approach ceased.

Both J and OJ had smiles a mile wide playing in the spray, as did most of the people who wandered past. It was so hot I'm sure that a few of them wouldn't have minded a cooling drench themselves. When we get a garden I think I'll have to invest in a hose and sprinkler pretty quickly - here's hoping for hosepipe ban free summers.

Actually, I've just remembered another water feature that would be well worth a visit. This has been outside the Royal Festival Hall for the past few years. Wonder if it's there this year.

The new Space Potatoes

2010-06-30T22:55:00.000+01:00

A couple of years ago there was a strange phenomenon of objects being left on the top of East London bus stops. Space Potatoes, as nobody but me called them were small objects d'art made from spuds wrapped in foil, cotton buds and wooden skewers. They seemed t have no discernible purpose other than to intrigue, and as far as I know, nobody was ever sure who produced them.

Now these objects seem to have street art successors, on a road near me at least. The new mystery objects are coloured blocks of wood with words such as 'POWER' 'TAX' and 'MONEY' printed on them. They are connected together with string and slung over telegraph wires. So far I have spotted a small clutch of them at the top of Eleanor Road, E8. What does it all mean?

Dad and lad day

2010-06-30T16:01:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I had J for the day while his mum took the little one off to meet her work colleagues. It was a nice reminder of what it was like when I looked after him more often, and also an indicator of how much he has progressed.

We didn't really do anything that different to our old routine - London Fields playground, Museum of Childhood, Hackney Library - but at two and three quarters, he is so much more independent than he ever used to be. I have always been in the habit of asking him if he wants to do whatever it is I think we should do. Now, more often than not, the answer is, "No! I don't want to do that!" unless I have presented him with an illusion of choice to direct his response (even then, there's every chance he'll see through my flimsy plan.)

Before we left the Museum, he was playing on his scooter on the area outside. I took the opportunity for a sit down while he whizzed about - he is very adept on it - and after going up and down the slope a few times, he settled into a conversation with one of the staff. I couldn't actually hear what was being said, but by the looks of his hand gestures and facial expressions, he was holding up his end of the conversation. I had this sudden pang of regret, recognising that he no longer needs me for everything and is on the way to developing his own life.

(Actually, after a while I did sidle up to the lady and muscle in on the conversation in the manner of Billy No Mates at a party. They were talking about the seaside as it happens and he was describing how the tide was in on a recent trip to the seaside, resulting in no beach. However when the tide turned, the beach was very big - well observed!)

An area where I'm quite thankful he needs me less is in the toilet department. As he's now potty trained (apart from a few night time accidents) I don't have to lug around the changing kit of old - nappies, wipes, mat, spare clothes, etc. My duties are now relegated to holding the potty for him, agreeing that, yes, it is a big wee, and helping out when he has to use big toilets. While doing this at the Museum, I had the misfortune of seeing my sunglasses fall into the toilet bowl as I positioned him. What's a dad to do? Well, they were £16 from Boots, so what do you think I did?

I'll need to remember not to nibble on the arms from now on.

The countdown starts

2010-06-10T20:38:00.000+01:00

I could put it off no longer. More than two months after number two son's arrival I called in the estate agents this week. I really have been putting it off, partly due to a dislike of shiny-suited spivvery in all its forms, and also through reticence at the prospect of kicking off the process.

This week I've seen three estate agents, and although they are all... well, estate agents, they weren't as bad as the ones I remember from the last time. Especially the one who sold me my current gaff, who was a slimey creep. This lot were almost human. I admit that it's hard to feel a sense of loathing to someone who tells you your flat is worth more than four times what you paid for it - you want to kiss them actually.

Of course it's all paper money, and no sooner had I got used to my notional new wealth than it seemed to be slipping away. There's an issue with the lease - it's too short - so I have to go cap in hand to the bloke who owns the freehold and negotiate an extension. I say negotiate - it feels like he's got me over a barrel, so it may be a bit of a one sided conversation. Basically I'm going to get stiffed.

There are also issues with the various elements of the flat that I feel give it its character, but that others may think are a sign that it's about to collapse. I had a builder round today to give me a quote on some plastering and he started raising the possibility of subsidence. Gloom!

Luckily, this is where I'm hoping my new found friends the slimey east eight estate agents will come into their own. If they really think this place is worth what they say it is, then I don't doubt they can shift it. The number of tight-trousered trustafarians walking around these days gives me hope that I'm in the right place at the right time. Where we'll be in six months time, I couldn't say.

The kids World Cup

2010-06-02T11:38:00.000+01:00

The last time the World Cup rolled round I was child free. Come to think of it, I wasn't married either - truly young, free and single (well two out or three, maybe). This time I have two kids and a lovely wife to consider before the quadrennial soccer fest kicks off.

Usually the World Cup period involves a certain level of selective social hibernation as I avoid fellow human beings, pour over the pre and post match build up, gossip and analysis, and only come out for the big matches. These are usually taken in at the pub, or at somebody's house with a crate of ale.

Hmm, it's not so simple this time. Pubs aren't the most welcoming place for kids full stop, and even if they were, the idea that a two year old will sit still for 90 minutes (realistically two and a half to three hours by the time you've blagged an early seat, stayed after to celebrate/commiserate... and don't even mention penalities!) is a fantasy.

So I've started wondering if there are child-friendly places to watch some of the games. I know that some pubs have areas you can hire, which might be suitable, and some cinemas are showing the matches on big screen, but are there are any events that fully cater for the harassed dad who wants to zone out for a few hours knowing that his offspring are being catered for?

We will fight them on the cakestands...

2010-06-01T20:30:00.000+01:00

I recently received an email about proposed cuts to Hackney nurseries. The website explains what is going on a lot more coherently than I could. It also seems to be a very fluid situation, so watch this (or that space).

We went to the park to find out more about how local people are trying to fight the cuts. In some ways, it seems a similar story to the recent cause celebre of the Hackney Arts Club. This is a very popular club run by volunteers with a small grant from the the local Sure Start. However because of a change in priorities, its funding was cut and money reallocated elsewhere.

It's hard to argue if scarce funds are being used for people who are in greater need than yourself. In the new era of Sure Start, I'm probably not a key target (although as a male, primary carer I did seem to tick a few boxes and staff got quite excited when I turned up). However the problem in both of these cases is that it's difficult to know if funds are being reallocated or simply becoming 'efficiency savings'.

It's a case often made that services designed for the poor are poor services. It's kind of ironic that middle class users of Sure Start can be characterised as undeserving spongers by a government predominantly elected by the middle classes. Hey ho!

One of the great things about Hackney is that there is a real sense of 'something must be done' activism when stuff like this happens. It was great to see at the Fun Day in the park that facepainting and cakemaking have a role to play in the fight ahead. There's a meeting tomorrow to determine the next steps.

A week is a long time in parenthood

2010-05-16T11:42:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting in a quiet, still house for the first time in six weeks. Mrs Holiday took the kids to her mum's for the weekend so I could get some work done.

It has been a tough time for all of us since Baby A came along. I don't think we appreciated how taxing it was going to be. Unfortunately, our hopes of having a placid second child as a counterbalance to the screaming, non-sleeping, dervish that was number one son, were dashed. Number two may be a slightly better sleeper, but he can emit body shaking screeches for hours on end, and refuses to be put down to give his long-suffering parents a break. Consequently you end up with his screaming head closer to your ears than is strictly advisable. It's like psychological torture and I'm sure the top end of my hearing has gone. Ipods come with volume warnings now - what about bairns?

On Monday it all became a bit much for mum, who was reduced to tears by this state of affairs. I had to step in and give her a break, which meant I wasn't getting much work done. It's a real dilemma. On the one hand, I'm the bread winner and should be getting my head down whenever there is work to be done. On the other, it's nigh impossible to to ignore the situation downstairs when an extra pair of hands is called for. It has been really hard to work.

I find it difficult to collect my thoughts and there is always the possibility of J bursting into the room with a question when mummy is otherwise engaged, feeding his brother, and I'm on the phone to someone. It's not the worst thing in the world - lots of people understand the freelance set up and I've conducted many interviews at home to the soundtrack of babies crying, toddlers questioning and/or dogs barking - but it throws you off course at a time when you are trying to be professional and focused.

Anyway, Monday was really bad. The rest of the week was better, although there were a few nights of little sleep for either of us. Baby can be up for a while between feeds and his elder brother has regressed a little in staying in his own room, so there has been a lot of bed-hopping during the night. However, like the weather, things have improved slightly as the week went on. I knew Mrs H was going away for the weekend, so I was probably slightly demob happy at the prospect of some light relief. But Baby A has started to smile more, so by Friday or Saturday it was hard to connect the cutey beaming up at you with the screw-faced demon of a few days ago. Nature, doing it's work again and brainwashing us of the bad vibes.

So what did I do with my 24 hours of freedom? Well I worked until about eight last night, hoovered, did some laundry and some dishes. Basically tried to return my world to how I like it, in readiness for the madness to recommence.

We've reached the six week mark today, which is one of the mental milestones you look out for. After this, it gets better, we say. It's the end of baby boot camp. Although from what I recall, there is no step change so much as a gradual easing of the load. "Wait until three months/six months/the first year," we tell ourselves. Although the danger of focusing on the horizon is that we we miss the gems of experience at our feet along the way.

Ugh! That was yucky, but I can't help it. I am a naturally quite soppy, as my reaction to a series of pictures of Gordon Brown's last moments in Downing Street revealed. It wasn't so much the end of an era realisation as the little details that showed him as a fundamentally decent man.

The real killer was the shot of him and his previously sheltered sons. Suddenly you had a completely different image of the former PM as a doting dad, and one who feels great love for his boys. There was a great feature about this picture by Ian Jack which explained why the image was so touching. For me, it's an easy connection - dad + two sons equals waterworks.

Explaining politics to two year olds

2010-05-08T15:30:00.001+01:00

It was the election on Thursday and a gorgeous sunny day. Having finished some work in the morning, I arranged to meet Mrs HH in the park where she had taken the kids. The plan was to vote and then visit the new cake shop for a treat. J was obviously more excited about the cupcakes than voting, but he showed an interest in the proceedings. "What is vote?" he asked.

Er, that's quite a tough one to answer I'm afraid. I waffled some nonsense about drawing an X in a box to choose the person you liked most. (In retrospect, this may have made more sense to him than I realised at the time, as he associates Xs with kisses. So you figuratively kiss the candidate of your choice. What a lovely/disturbing image. I 'vote' Caroline Flint, but David Blunkett's wispy beard does not appeal.). I then hurried him along before he could come up withe any supplementaries - "What is candidate? Where is government? What is hung parliament?"

On the last question I'm not the only one in the dark it seems. It's surprising that given the likelihood of a hung parliament, the country seems so surprised and befuddled by it. As we are now being told, they are common on the continent, and many councils have no overall control, but the prospect of handing over power to more than one political group seems to worry many people. Which is illogical in a way, as political parties are far from homogeneous. The Labour and Conservative Parties are both extremely broad churches containing a whole swathe of differing and conflicting opinions. These are largely held in check by party discipline, but not always - look at John Major's problems with Eurosceptics and Tony Blair's with opponents of tuition fees and the Iraq war.

Given the prospect of handing over the future of our country to David Cameron and his cabal, I think it's no bad thing than there might be someone to hold him in check. On the other option open to Nick Clegg, although I'm more naturally sympathetic to a progressive solution, the idea of a rainbow coalition of parties holding the Tories off doesn't seem right. Firstly it would be hugely unwieldy. I also fear that the price exacted by the more fringe parties in block grants would antagonise further the Tory heartlands of the South East who already show signs of feeling robbed. Finally, despite the fact that a coalition of the second and third placed parties is constitutionally acceptable, there is something about it that seems to go against natural justice. I know that first past the post is discredited, but it's the rulebook we play by at the minute.

On the other hand, and to use a tortuous sporting analogy, nobody complains (too much) when their team goes out on away goals in a cup competition, even though the aggregate result is really a draw.

Er, does that make sense? I'm not sure I really know, and I wouldn't want to be in Nick Clegg's shoes (or Cameron's or Brown's for that matter). Whatever the outcome, you really can't please all of the people all of the time. I could never be in politics - my skin is too thin. I get upset if my wife doesn't notice I've hoovered up, never mind berating me for the state I've left the country (or bathroom) in.

After making my electoral choice, the toughest decision I had to make was which of Violet's delicious cupcakes flavours to opt for. It was a close run thing, but the will of this person at least was satisfied.

Let us eat cake

2010-04-29T19:58:00.000+01:00

Sugar lovers will be delighted to learn that a new cake shop is due to open on Wilton Way. I say, a new one, as if the road is a concentration of patisserie. At the moment, you can pick up a Mr Kiplings from Costcutter, and that's about it. However, from this Saturday, Violet will be dispensing posh cup cakes, teas and coffees from the strange blocky building about half way along the street. This brings to two the number of cafes on the road, and if I remember rightly from Phil and Kirstie, the appearance of such outlets is a sure sign that the area is on the up. Mind you, it was starting from a low base. It's not so long ago that Wilton Way was the area's dumping ground for stolen cars - I wonder where they're left now. Currently Violet sells its cakes on Broadway Market, so it should be interesting to see if it can become a through the week destination for cake lovers. I shall certainly check them out, if only to see if I can pinch their icing recipe.

(Please note, the pictured cupcakes are for display purposes only and are not indicative of the merchandise that is likely to be sold at Violet. These were from a school fete and cost 30p each. Violet's are about £2.50 each, a price that would have Mrs Holiday's mum and dad needing a sit down. I think we'll be sticking to the Mr Kipling's with them.)

I'm a FOB

2010-04-23T12:55:00.002+01:00

... father of boys that is. At least I think that's how I should now refer to myself as Mrs Holiday informs me that she is mother of boys or MOB in Mumsnet speak. (As an aside, who delegated Mumsnet to the role of spokessite for all parents? Lazy journos I'm guessing).

Our latest Hackney addition was born on Easter Sunday in Homerton Hospital's new birthing centre. This is a shiny, sparkly set up with lots of space and every conceivable (pardon the pun) mod con. Well, maybe that's stretching it a bit, but we were afforded a large room with a double bed, bouncy ball, ensuite bathroom and a strange labour chair/multigym. The midwife was really good, even though my heart sank slightly when she introduced herself as an agency worker. However Penny was encouraging, informative and just plain nice, even if she was a little scatterbrained.

Which may account for the loss of our labour notes. This was a big negative, firstly because of the obvious shabbiness of the processes that allowed it to happen - how the flip can you lose something like that? But also because it delayed us getting out and home, which is all anybody wants, especially a second time mum with another child plaintively asking for her to come home when he visits.

Anyway, it seems a long time ago now, even though it's less than three weeks. The time since then has been ups and downs. New Hackneybaby is sleeping better than his brother did, but has developed colic, which is never fun. Having an older brother adds a new layer of complexity to things as well. You don't want to neglect the older sibling, although he suddenly seems so much older and more able in comparison. Big brother is being pretty good so far, expressing his love for the baby constantly, although I suspect it is more to do with the fact that he's cottoned on to what we want to hear than any abiding sibling love.

Having said that, I think they will be great together. I'm conscious of not wishing the time away, but it will be great when us boys can do a bit more together. For now, inbetween the screams and projectile liquids (don't ask), it's nice, and the pace of everything has slowed right down. And as the spring beds in and we get a few nicer days, I think it's going to be a great summer.

Play time in Hackney

2010-03-16T15:28:00.001+01:00

One of the unexpected consequences of the demise of Woolworths just over a year ago has been the effect on independent toy shops.Woolies was once the biggest retailer of toys in the UK and that gap has to be filled somehow.

Luckily for those of us who like to see our high streets filled with something other than identikit chain stores, local toy shops seem to be flourishing in Hackney. Three in particular come to mind:

Buggies and Bikes in Broadway Market

The Toybox in Victoria Park

Three Potato Four in Newington Green

The great thing about these shops is that they all have a character of their own. Without wanting to sound too poncey about it, the owners seem to care about toys and almost curate their stock rather than simply ordering from a giant toy catalogue. The selection of toys is individual to each, so you don't get that sense of deja vu when you walk in the door.

I remember how magical I found toy shops when I was a child. There was a great sense of the importance of every purchase - carefully weighing up what you could afford, whether it was going to impress your friends, and whether your parents would let you buy it. (Mine had a thing against 'plastic rubbish' which was quite odd as my dad was foreman in a plastic injection moulding factory that made a lot of Fisher Price toys. These were not classed as rubbish, but the competition inevitably was.)

The Toybox is probably our favourite as it is the shop we visit most often. My son loves a little table of Wow trucks and lorries that is a honeypot for all the children who visit. Wow toys themselves are quite expensive, but the shop has lots of great pocket money purchases, including a range of collectable wooden fruit and vegetables that are displayed in a cute greengrocer's rack. Overall the shop appeals to children's imaginations with toys that will stand the test of time.

Another interesting aspect of these new toys shops is that they are not just toy shops. Partly out of economic necessity I suppose, they have added other aspects to their business models. With Toybox and Three Potato Four, it's children's hairdressing. Buggies and Bikes runs a range of classes and activities for parents and kids that makes it more of a destination for parents.

Another shop that is worth a visit is Merry Go Round in Clarence Road. Not strictly a toy shop, it stocks second hand children's items from clothes and buggies to books and toys. It's amazing to see how much you can save by picking up something nearly new. Somebody's trash can be your treasure.

Play is an important part of childhood and it's not all about buying stuff. A visit to a great toy shop can be a stimulating experience in its own right to a two year old.

No coincidences in Sinclair world

2010-03-09T20:45:00.008+01:00

Local author Iain Sinclair was signing the paperback copy of his book Hackney, That Red Rose Empire outside our local bookshop at the weekend. However I missed it due to an antenatal class at Homerton hospital. Well, my wife attended the class, while I walked the corridors of the spookily empty hospital explaining to our two year old the various things we saw.

(We're at the endless questions stage. "What's that daddy?"
"It's a chair."
"But what is it daddy?"
"Well, it's a chair actually."
"What does it do?"
Etc)

Actually, come to think of it, the experience was quite Sinclairian.

It was a shame to miss it though. Firstly, I wanted to see if he actually made it, or was blocked from Broadway Market by the council's henchmen. Apparently they took offence at his dim view of the Olympics and barred him from speaking in council venues when the book came out in hardback. They took a dim view of a lengthy piece he'd written in the London Review of Books voicing his concerns about the 'Lympics.

Secondly, having read the book I feel like I'm sort of stalking Iain, or he's stalking me. It's an odd sensation to have your stomping ground mapped so assiduously. My history in Hackney is just over ten years, whereas Iain's dates back to the Sixties or Seventies. We've both seen changes.

This was brought home to me the other week when I was browsing a book of photos of Hackney from the early Eighties. One of the black and white shots was of the playground next to the Pub on the Park. This is a favourite of ours and somewhere I've seen Iain Sinclair a couple of times with his wife and grandchild (I told you this post was stalkerish. In my defence, he mentions his grandchildren in the book, and their birth in Homerton Hospital. He is also highly visible in Hackney as he walks constantly around the borough).

Anyway, the playground in the picture was a rather depressing and bare place with a slide and some swings on a patch of scruffy grass. See Iain, some things do get better over time.

I suppose the point I'm working towards is that there are no coincidences in Sinclair world, so it was probably just as well that I didn't make it to the book signing. Who knows what might have happened. The earth might have folded in on itself or something.

The book itself is fascinating, although being so familiar with the area, I found that his slightly dyspeptic view of the borough didn't chime with my own. This hasn't been the case when I've read his other books - it's his unique perspective that I enjoy. But if his philosophy is about anything, it's about how we relate to our surroundings, and I guess I'm a bit of a happy, clappy Hackney champion. Hell, I even think the Olympics will be great. Yes the Lea Valley will have lost an urban wilderness, but it would have been developed sometime and somehow. At least with 2012 there is something of a grand plan in place, and I'm a sucker for those.

Maybe I'm too literal in how I think of psychogeography, but I was surprised that he didn't mention the effect of the borough's murder rate on Hackneyites. In the relatively short time that I've lived here I'm struck by the number of places that I now associate with death. Within a few hundred yards of here in any direction there are places where, usually young men have died. In front of the town hall, London Fields, Dalston Shopping Centre, Amhurst Road...

As I walk the borough I find it hard to dissociate myself from this violence, and yet I remain a great fan of Hackney and its people. It's a complex place.

How musical bumps saved me from the recession

2010-03-02T20:55:00.007+01:00

I've been slightly distracted over the past 18 months, what with bringing up baby and being a semi-stay at home dad. In an earlier post, I'd predicted that it was maybe a good time to ease back on work commitments, as there wasn't much of it about anyway. Hmmm, that one's come back to bite me on the bum.

The thing I've found about trying to combine childcare and work is that you have to be careful that you don't end up shortchanging both. There have been times when I was crying out for somebody to take J off my hands for a little while (and I was lucky enough to have a friend who did just that on a few occasions - thanks Alecia. Unfortunately she's gone back to Australia).

You can end up rushing work, or not giving it the mythical 110 per cent. Sometimes that doesn't matter - good enough can be good enough. At other times, I wonder if I've put myself back in the pecking order, or completely dropped off people's radar. It's not a good time for that to happen.

Splitting your loyalties means that you sometimes end up resenting your child because you can't devote extra time to a project, but it has also been a great release valve. As work slowed down, I found that the days when I was full time dadding were very calming. I came to realise (and was told in no uncertain terms by my wife) that that was my priority. There's no point sitting around feeling sorry for yourself when you have a toddler to entertain. It's a lot easier for everyone if you just leave your work baggage at the door of musical bumps, or whatever class, playgroup or kiddie event you are attending and just get on with it.

It seems counter intuitive, but I'm sure that I would have been a lot more stressed if I didn't have a child as I watched work drain away during the recession. I've always felt that I was doing something worthwhile, even if the pay was lousy.

Now, however I'm back to being available five days a week, and my wife is on maternity leave with pay that will not last forever. I really have to pick up the slack. Luckily, I feel slightly tempered to the new reality of work. There's really no point getting uptight, especially with another one on the way. That will be stress enough.

Going potty

2010-02-27T22:54:00.006+01:00

I had been dreading this period of bringing up baby (although J no longer seems like a baby, or even a toddler. More a premature stroppy teenager).
You hear such horror stories about potty training. People say they are chained to the house, their children initiate dirty protests*, or they simply scream in horror at the sight of a potty and refuse to entertain the idea of sitting on this alien throne.
We've either been extremely lucky or we're just 'king brilliant parents because (touch wood) it has been a relatively untroublesome affair. We've had a potty kicking about the house since J was just over one. The thinking was that if he got used to it then come the dreaded time, he wouldn't be afraid of it's awesome power. And so it proved to be. He has variously used it as a hat, a store for his toys, and a comfy seat for his teddy. I don't think he has eaten out of it, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
The only problem with the potty was that, even at a relatively young age, it seemed too small for his baby bum. I bristle at the idea that he's a lard bucket - he really isn't and seems perfectly formed to biased old me - but I don't understand how his dimensions are so out of whack with the design of this particular poe (John Lewis one with a car on it, thanks for asking).
When we got serious about training, my wife invested in a Mothercare one with removable bowl, for easy washing, which initially looked a much better option. But even this seems to have been designed for a different shaped child. Perhaps he has rugby player's thighs and it makes it difficult for him to sit down and point percy at the porcelain (or injection moulded plastic in this case - maybe really posh kids have Armitage Shanks poes). We have had liquids squirting in all directions. There's definitely a gap in the market for a potty that works - Dragons Den here I come.
The good news is that all this fiddliness hasn't put him off - pee in the pot - Yes; poo in the pot - Yes; stand in the pot after first two - er... There have been few accidents so far, certainly fewer than I was anticipating (the floaters in the bath the other night were comical rather than anything, and there has been no repeat yet). He has even woken up in the night asking for a wee wee, rather than wet the nappy that we still put him in for sleeping.
Proud? You betcha. I only hope that the arrival of Alfie (as imminent newbie has been christened by big brother) doesn't cause a backward step.

* This phrase always reminds me of my uncle's description of my dad's journey into modern art/modish interior decor. When we first moved to England from Scotland, he decided to mark the break from the auld country with a rediscovered artistic streak. Quite literally in this case as he decorated the master bedroom with a poo brown surrealistic swirl that went round all four walls and was visible to bemused passers by on our estate. Oh dad, how I miss you and how you'd love our little man.

Number twos

2010-02-15T20:39:00.004+01:00

It's six weeks to go before our second child is born. The difference between this pregnancy and the last one has been quite marked. The first time round it seemed as if we lived every day of experience in detail marking off the various milestones - scans, midwife visits, antenatal and NCT classes - one at a time and revelling in the newness of it all. This time, it only seems like yesterday that we found out we were expecting again, and suddenly we are here. I keep feeling as if I haven't been paying attention or that there are huge gaps in our preparation. Shouldn't we be doing more stuff?
If truth be told, this time round we are fairly relaxed about everything, whereas last time the whole experience was couched in slightly negative terms. What if something went wrong? How would we cope? It was almost as if we didn't want to get too complacent about having a child in case we jinxed the process. I'm sure it's superstition that is common to a lot of first time parents. There's a slight nagging in the back of your mind - "What if something bad happens?"
Of course, as with the majority of pregnancies nothing bad did happen and we had a beautiful and healthy baby boy.
I don't know if our relaxed nature this time is because we have supreme faith in the medical community and our own procreational abilities, or because we don't have the energy for the emotional rollercoaster ride of the first time round. It's not that we don't care as much, but it's certainly hard to live at such at heightened pitch when you have a two year old toddler at your side.
Especially one you are trying to potty train before his sibling arrives.

Party bags

2010-02-08T19:35:00.005+01:00

One thing I won't miss from nursery are the bags of goodies (or should I say baddies) that the children get when it's somebody's birthday. It's a very sweet gesture (in more ways that one) but it is a real headache trying to hide this dietary WMD from J as he pesters me for it on the way home.
All the usual offenders are there - sweets, crisps, soft drinks. It's not that I'm a snob (oh, okay. Guilty), but most of this stuff I wouldn't eat myself and I've got a taste for trash. So why should I let him eat it?
This evening's offering was something called Calypso Spring Water Drink, which sounded relatively healthy, so I popped the straw through the foil lid and took a sip before giving it to him. Big mistake! It tasted like liquid saccharin - disgusting. Unfortunately by this point I was committed to handing it over to an expectant toddler, which I did, feeling a bit like Dr Crippin. As it was, the drink was so horrible that even J couldn't manage more than a few sips.
At least it makes me feel less bad about his preference for OJ over good old fashioned water. Of course, he only gets watered down OJ...

The end of the road

2010-02-08T12:48:00.005+01:00

This is my last week as Mr Mum.
My wife is seven and a half months pregnant with our second child (I can't remember if I've mentioned this!) and finishes work on Friday. J will also stop going to nursery at this time. Two reasons: financial constraints of surviving on one salary, and a chance for mum to assuage her guilt about him being cared for by someone else in the first place.
As for me, I'll have to get cracking and hope that I can now fill my five days with paid activity, which certainly hasn't been the case of late. I've had the slight excuse of looking after our son for two days and being tied to the nursery drop and collect schedule for the other three - now that's gone. With the missus in the house, I'll also have to look active rather than avoiding work.
I shall miss our time together though. When we started doing it, he wasn't walking, had a handful of words and was very clingy to mummy. Now he's running and jumping, can have a fairly sophisticated conversation, and is a lot more independent. It really has happened very quickly, and I've been privileged to have a front seat on events.

How much?

2010-02-01T21:11:00.003+01:00

I suppose we all eventually become our parents, and one area where I am definitely my mother's son is in my attitude to money. Becoming a parent has led to me imagining her old refrain "Do you think I'm made of money?"on many occasions, not least when you are having to cough up an exorbitant sum for children's food.
A case in point was a trip on Saturday to the Natural History Museum. As is often the case, we actually had a packed lunch prepared for J so didn't have to buy him anything. However we were going to get lunch for ourselves. Nothing fancy, just a sandwich, or a bagel... HOW MUCH????!!!
This time, I don't think I was just showing my age, not at £7.95 for a bleedin' oversized Cheerio with a bit of chicken and salad. The upshot was that we just bought a hot beverage each and sat there smuggling bites of his ham sandwich under the watchful eye of the food police. Actually, my wife was quite brazen about eating hers. She had a sort of mad look in her eye that almost dared the waiter to confront her - unleash hell!
What was really galling was that the cafe in question was run by the same company that has the franchise for the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, where prices are very reasonable, the food is excellent, and consequently many parents spend their hard-earned there.
So in future, it will be smuggled sandwiches for all of us, and we'll save the money for a sticky bun from Greggs on the way home. You're never far away from one.

Trolleys

2010-01-29T16:45:00.004+01:00

For some time now I've noticed that there seems to be a large number of people who travel round the borough pulling trolley suitcases. As far as I know, Hackney is not a major transit point for travellers - we don't even have a Tube station. Who are they? Where do they come from? And more importantly, where do they go?
Maybe there's a particularly big itinerant population sofa surfing and forced to spend their days walking the cold and mean streets in search of warmth.
(If so, I'd try the library).

IT Hackney style

2010-01-28T18:50:00.004+01:00

I'm not much of an IT guy, so whenever anything goes wrong with my kit, I'm pretty much in the same position as a maiden aunt taking her Polo to the garage. I've basically got 'Fleece me' on my forehead.
My other laptop went on the blink recently, so I decided that rather than take it to PC World, as I did last time for a very expensive mother board replacement - whatever that means! - I'd try the dodgy looking PC and Mac Doctor nearby. It was a bit of an eye opener. The guy claimed that he wasn't that busy, but for the next 20 minutes I was in there, there was a succession of picaresque characters with various queries and requests, from the hardcore IT geeks to the more naive than me.
My favourite was an East End geezer who was doing his best Ray Winston impression.
Slaps hand on counter. "I wanna buy a laptop. Cheapest one you've got."
IT guy: "Cash?"
EEG: "Don't make me open that bag." Points laughingly to a large, suspicious looking holdall and mimes holding a shotgun. "I'll 'ave to shoot ya!"
ITG: "This is the cheapest I've got at the moment."
EEG: "Thinkpad. Sweet! £299. It's not worth that. I'll give you a monkey..."
Etc...
Anyway, the owner seemed alright and more straight up than other IT shops I've dealt with - as if I'd really know the difference. He also confirmed that the HP machine I have is a pile of crap. That's the last time I buy on looks. Give me functionality and the streamline appeal of a breeze block in future.
And speaking of form over function, it will be interesting to see how the world reacts to Apple latest offering, the iPad (I can't believe I went back to cap that P). I'm surely not the first person to snigger over it's vaguely sanitary towel name. Maybe they should get Clare Rayner to endorse it. It does strike me that after years of everything electrical getting smaller, clunky is now the new black. Still, at least you could wallop somebody with it if they tried to purloin it.
I wonder who will be the first person I see at our local trendy coffee shop with one.

The Long Goodbye

2010-01-27T19:50:00.002+01:00

I've lived in Hackney for more than ten years, but there's a good chance that I won't be here at this time next year. My wife is expecting our second child in a couple of months time. We're just recovering from the space thief that is number one son, so the prospect of this one (son or daughter) arriving wanting to know where it will park its kit means we will be house hunting soon.
It looks likely that we won't be able to afford the kind of place that we need or want within the bounds of 'London's most happening borough'. Which is kind of ironic considering that I moved here at first because it was the only place I could afford after being cruelly dumped by my ex - I'm not bitter, even though it was only about 12 years ago.
Right from the off however, I realised that I had lucked out - which was very fortunate as I'd only ever seen the flat I'd bought, and its surrounds in the dark. Rather than hiding a multitude of sins, the dark concealed some great features. I'm within walking distance of one lovely park, which in the absence of a garden, is my green space, and there are two other large parks and innumerable smaller ones nearby. There are some great runs for my periodic attempts to get fit, and there were some fantastic boozers for the times when I couldn't be bothered. A lot of these have changed - some for the better, some less so - as Hackney has too. It has the Empire, although for how much longer, we don't know.
Without wishing to sound too corny, the thing I hadn't reckoned on was how vibrant an area it is to live in. Hardly surprising given the culture clash round here - traditional East End/Vietnamese/Caribbean/new East European arrivals/Hassidic Jews/Bangladeshi/Africans/Turks/Irish and quite a few Germans it always seems to me. Which is odd given their historical relationship with this part of the Great Wen.
Of course, it's the newest arrivals - people like me unfortunately - who have been responsible for the kind of changes that will probably now drive me out. As Hackney has become a byword for hip, arty, vibrant (sorry, I don't have my thesaurus handy) urban living, the house prices have shot up. There are a lot of people who will have made a packet in property round here. I've done alright, I reckon, but I shall miss living here, and although we could be here for another year yet, I'm missing it already.

The snow is back

2010-01-08T13:39:00.002+01:00

They're calling it the New Ice Age round these parts. Well they might be if they weren't sliding all over the place in inappropriate footwear. That's one of the things I love about London - how unprepared everybody is for bad weather. You're more likely to see somebody with a copy of Metro over their head than a brolly when it rains. And even though it's like a ice rink out there, the high heels, open toed sandals and canvas trainers are still being sported (wo)manfully.
It doesn't stop Hackney folk from enjoying the weather though. London Fields is filling up nicely with ice sculptures that pay tribute to the aristic bent of locals. My personal favourite was a large ice squirrel smoking a pipe. Genius.
My own rather vanilla snowman paled in comparison, but J enjoyed helping me make it. He's two years old now and quite the little artistic director while yours truly did all of the work. I did have a bit of assistance from a truanting 12 year old who was looking for a somebody to have a snowball fight with. I eventually had to oblige as he had such a hangdog expression that I felt guilty. At any rate I must have been great fun as afterwards he was pestering me for details about when I was coming out to play again. He even offered to give me his mobile phone number! Don't parents have the talk with their kids any more?

A little bit of paradise in Hackney

2009-06-21T11:54:00.002+01:00

... well actually Tower Hamlets. The annual Paradise Gardens fete in Victoria Park has come round again. We're off to meet lots of parents and their offspring.
Hoping the London Elvises are there.

Bob Crow is a dude

2009-06-20T19:37:00.005+01:00

There is a certain type of person who is ready to applaud the pluck of the French for standing up for what they believe in - blocking channel ports, dumping sheep carcasses on the doorsteps of government departments, smashing up McDonald's, and so on.
Why oh why can't we be a bit more like them, they whinge. Why are the British so compliant?
But when we get an honest to goodness show of power from a group of British workers looking to exercise their rights, it's suddenly a different matter.
Well you can't have it both ways. I know that the recent Tube strike is a massive inconvenience to thousands of Londoners, including my wife, who doubled the time her usual journey to work took. But I've got to admit a sneaking respect for the RMT and boss Bob Crow for being being able to do it.
There's a great profile of him here which only increases my admiration for him. I particularly like the way he is unapologetic about the fact that some of his members seem to be paid quite well already. (The strike wasn't simply about money anyway).
The implication, which he swats away like Obama did his fly, is that nobody can seriously believe that a working class oik needs £40K for driving a train. Surely they'll only spend it on Sky, Rothmans and Lambrini.
Divide and rule brothers. 'Twas ever thus.
There is a particularly irksome comment on this that always pokes its chinless head up whenever there is industrial action. I can only assume that Paul Weller wants to twat these seabirds. Biting satire it aint.
I realise that everything I've written is slightly undermined by the fact that I live in Tube-free Hackney, and work from home... but power to the workers anyway.

"We hate kids..."

2009-06-16T11:47:00.005+01:00

I read a couple of articles recently that made me think, and also depressed me a bit.

The first is this one by Polly Vernon, who doesn't seem to be allowed to go a month without writing about how put upon she feels by society's insistence that everybody should have kids. The other is by Jon Ronson and relates the tale of how he had to leave a restaurant that refused to allow his 10-year old son in.

What is quite depressing about both is the feedback from readers who seem largely (70 per cent?) hostile to the notion of children and quite freely band about stereotypes of parents who are immune to the havoc their marauding ankle biters wreck on the lives of the childfree. They also perpetuate the myth that anybody with kids is so blissfully smug about their fecundity that they are incapable of being aware of anybody else's feelings, or simply not caring.

In my experience of parenthood - 19 months and counting - that's the last thing that most parents are. You become hyper aware of your place in the scheme of things, and also that not everybody is as besotted by your offspring as you occasionally are. Spending months wheeling a tank-sized buggy around quickly gets you enough looks to make you realise that you are a problem to some people.

I just don't recognise this idea that parents impose their world view on everybody else - did I think that before we had J? I honestly can't remember. Obviously we have him now, so my attitude is coloured by that, but I don't think I have ever thought that everybody should have children, let alone question somebody's motives for not wanting children. It's possibly the hardest thing I've ever done, because it is so unrelenting and you feel the stakes of messing up are so high. It really isn't for everybody. In some ways I feel that we've given up a lot in terms of personal freedoms to have a family - not particularly in financial terms, but in the time you lose that could have been frittered away so pleasantly. Now I cherish every spare half hour that I have to myself. That time has been given greater value because we have family commitments.

Thankfully, such online comments don't really reflect my experience of being a parent. By and large people in London, and Hackney especially, are remarkably considerate and helpful to parents. I've lost count of the number of times I've received some small, unsolicited kindness from a stranger who sees me struggling along with my load of childstuff. It's not unappreciated.

It does help that we have the world's cutest child though... aaaargh! Smug alert....

Chatterbox

2009-06-07T17:11:00.002+01:00

The words are coming think and fast now from Jamie. He's turned into a fantastic little mimic and it's easy to forget that he's all ears. I believe he has already said one of the lesser swear words after hearing it from a responsible adult - not on my shift guv.
It all seems to have happened quite quickly. A month or so ago he was only saying individual words, and now he is threading them together in rudimentary sentences. He's only 18 months, and he wasn't saying that much at one, despite our parental pride in what seemed like wordiness at the time.
Now he can tell us, not only that he had had a poo, but how big it is (usually big poo), and that it is mummy, not him that is a beautiful boy, and that another portion of Shreddies is his favourite breakfast, thank you for asking.
He's also getting quite opinionated in a 'black is white' way. He will happily argue that this is the case and gets rather irate when contradicted. It's all getting very interesting.

Days like these

2009-05-16T10:52:00.005+01:00

There are times when I wonder what I'm doing as a part time dad. When I'm pushing the buggy along the road and somebody - a shiny-suited Apprentice wannabe frinstance - catches my eye, and there's a momentary look that says 'Get a job'. At which point, I want to stop and say "You don't know anything about me. I could be a high flyer. I could wear a shiny suit." But I don't obviously - say it, or wear a shiny suit (usually fraying dockers and a stained T-shirt actually).
Actually, it's hardly surprising that I get that look as some days I do feel like a member of the long-term unemployed - not to mention looking like one, courtesy of my week long stubble. It's not that I don't do anything (see below), it's more that there is a feeling of being adrift from mainstream society when you are looking after a child. You keep different hours. You hang out in different places. You do different things. It's a whole subculture out there that I never knew existed. It's a world where lawyers and journalists mix with electrical engineers, shop workers and the real unemployed at strange little gatherings where you sit banging plastic instruments and singing out of tune songs about animals with strange anthropomorphic qualities. Who writes this stuff?
I often have this feeling that I should be doing something more worthwhile. That I should be working harder, climbing the ladder of success, and wearing that shiny suit with pride. But as my wife continually points out, I'm doing the most important job in some ways. In know she's right, and I know she would swap roles with me in a second, but I suppose that I'm as conditioned as the next man about what my role should be - trad dad breadwinner.
Again, I have to emphasise that I enjoy this new life I have. It's a secret life, and in some ways it does seem like a holiday of sorts when I'm looking after J. The problem is that the real world keeps intruding into our little Hackney Holiday world. There are always deadlines threatening, people chasing, and people to chase. It's the juggling that's the hardest part, and that's probably why I have this sense of dislocation. Because I have a foot in both camps, I'm never completely at ease in either.
I wouldn't change it though. This will end at some point and I'll be back to my five days a week routine and forgeting the songs about elephants scrubbing their clothes, and the glockenspiel tunes, and how much fun it can be.

What I do

Woken up by Jamie
Give him milk
Change nappy - Jamie's, not mine
Breakfast time
Playtime
Get him dressed
Try to have a shower - no shave
Walkies - get the bag ready
Leave the house
Go back to the house to collect forgotten stuff
Find a place to give Jamie his dinner
Nappy time
Grab a cuppa
Shop for food
Swings
Back home
Make dinner for Jamie
Story time
Play
Mummy home...
Get bedtime stuff ready
Run bath
Kiss Jamie goodnight
Make dinner while mummy puts J to bed
Do dishes
Me time!

What have I done?

2009-04-25T19:52:00.003+01:00

It was an odd Friday.
I was summoned to the Midlands by one of the companies I do a bit of work for. I started working for them at the beginning of the year after a sudden downturn in paying gigs being offered. The company had actually been pursuing me during the summer, but I didn't fancy it, despite the immortal line from the desperate middle manager doing the pursuing that it was "money for old rope".
How can you refuse an offer like that? Well, I did for a bit. But a worryingly quiet December had me beating a path to their door with my tail between my legs begging for work, which was still available. Phew!
It hasn't all been plain sailing though. The work isn't that interesting and there have been issues with the project - namely how long-term it was likely to be (my feeling is that it's going to be pulled at some point).
So anyway, I approached the meeting with a certain degree of ambivalence. I knew that there were a few changes in the offing as one of the main people in the team was leaving. So I ended up in a meeting where the manager was effectively saying could I take on more responsibility.
Before I knew what I was saying I'd effectively talked myself out of a job, saying that I wasn't currently able to take on more work from them (true), that I didn't really agree with that they were trying to do and presenting a withering critique of their corporate culture, which I think is too navel gazing.
The lady I was meeting with actually seemed a bit stunned, although she thanked me for my candour. It now seems that they will look for somebody else to take on the work, and I'll be let go.
As I headed home on the train I was reading ever more gloomy economic predictions for the next few years which brought on a sense of panic. Suddenly I was mentally pulling the emergency stop cord and running back up the line to let them know it was all a terrible mistake. This feeling has stayed with me for most of the weekend, despite my wife pointing out that I've got more work than I can handle at the moment, that I didn't want to do it in the first place, and that I'm always moaning about it.
I guess such periods of self doubt are the curse of the freelancer. The old saying is that it is either famine or feast, and there seems to have been more of the former than the latter of late. Will I live to regret this decision? Time will tell.

Choo choo!

2009-04-22T15:17:00.003+01:00

What is it with boys and trains? J has taken a massive liking to toy trains, especially wooden ones like this. His cousin has some and so has a new friend of his, Kai. Unluckily - or maybe luckily - for Kai, he is only 12 months old so is less possessive about his toys than J is with his (and other people's). So when J starts playing with the trains, it's cool with Kai.
Anyway, this Easter, his granny got him his very own train set, which has probably turned out to be the best gift ever! It's the first thing he wants to play with every day. He was overjoyed to receive it and since there is a steam railway line where she lives, we thought we'd take him to see the real thing.
It almost didn't happen as he was asleep by the time we had taken the soggy walk to the local park where the train starts. After a cursory look around, we decided that he needed his nap more than a sight of the locomotives, so started off back home. At this stage he did wake up and with the train about to leave in a couple of minutes I rushed him back on to the platform in time for him to see that Choo choos really exist. It really was quite a wonderful moment and I was very touched by it. It was another of those gushy moments that make you realise how great it is to be a parent, no matter what Rachel Cook says (about mums).

Here comes summer

2009-04-03T19:38:00.002+01:00

The past couple of days have been seasonally clement for the time of year. (Excuse the Radio 2-isms but the wife keeps channel switching in the morning, so I'm currently being hit by a double whammy of Sarah Kennedy and Terry frickin' Wogan and they are gradually realigning my thought processes. All those Middle England witticisms and chummy texts and emails from the TOGs are doing my head in. Never mind the aural torture of playing the Birdy Song, or whatever, to terror suspects. Why not just give them a blast of this inane drivel and they'd be begging to tell their interogators anything.)
Anyway, the weather has been very sunny over the past couple of days, which really does lead to a Hackney Holiday feeling in the air. I was in the playground with J the other day and there were a couple of other mums availing themselves of the facilities by quaffing a bottle of cream-based liqueur and having a big spliff while their kids careered around. I have to say that the one in possession of the doobie did have the good grace to try and waft the fumes away from her as J started towards her. We made our excuses and left.
Hackney in summer is great though. We live near London Fields park and people treat it as their garden, so on sunny days, it is a fantastic place to hang out. There are amateur barbecue-ists, football players and frisbee-ers, folk reading the papers, punk picnics, rampaging dogs, the Hoxton trendies, kids dunking each other in the paddling pool, the obligatory men with guitars, impromtu cricket, young guys strutting around with their tops off and young girls looking studiedly unimpressed. It's just a great vibe, and we've got months of it to come, which is especially great for me as I have two days a week of dadding when I have carte blanche to have fun, as long as his nibs is into it as well.

Lullaby

2009-02-18T14:10:00.003+01:00

It must be great being able, indeed expected, to sleep during the day. I am trying to type very quietly while J sleeps on the sofa. He did just wake up a minute ago, stood up and then lay back down on his other side. Amazing. I don't think he even realised he was awake.
Baby sleep is a strange thing. You spend half your life imploring them to get their heads down, and the other half trying to keep them awake so that they can sleep at the properly appointed times. Not that they ever do.
Other parents obsess about it almost as much as you do. It is a badge of some honour to have a baby or toddler that 'sleeps well'. Jeez! As if we have anything to do with it. They sleep when and where they like.
J has never been what you would call a great sleeper. When he was younger, he would sleep all day and be awake all night. That's how it seemed anyway. I can vaguely recall pacing the front room in the wee small hours singing Blackbird, Stairway to Heaven or some made up song for hundreds of verses. I actually thought that this would be a great way for me to imprint the lyrics to some of my favourite songs into my memory, which is terrible for such things. What I didn't realise was that at three in the morning, your brain is mainly concerned with ensuring that you don't drop the baby or stop breathing. So my recitations would be like a badly scratched record - sing first two lines of first verse, switch to last two lines of third verse, attempt half of chorus, and repeat from the beginning. Now these addled versions are indelibly imprinted on my mind never to be shifted.
Altogether now... Hello darkness, hello friend...

It sleeps

2009-01-08T16:29:00.002+01:00

The bairn is having a lie down and is now one and a half hours into an afternoon kip. Which is great, apart from the fact that he is sleeping through the remaining daylight and I still haven't been out of the house today. Unless he gets up in about the next five to 10 minutes, it's unlikely I will get outside today. Wake up!!!

Can we have that again?

2009-01-05T15:46:00.004+01:00

I feel robbed of the festive experience. Everything started really well with some lovely days at the in-laws and Christmas dinner produced by the sis-in-law. It was all looking good for a week of excess and laziness when Jamie came down with something on the day after Boxing Day. It seems to have been some sort of virus and manifest itself with lots of vomiting and increasing listlessness.
He is normally really robust and active, so it was quite disturbing to see him so low. All he wanted to do was sit on his mum's knee - funny how she's the first port of call in troubled times. He didn't eat much and wasn't drinking a lot either, so we were quite worried about dehydration. We took him to an out of hours service where the paediatrician squeezed his fingers, poked and prodded him, before pronouncing he would get over it himself. There wasn't really much else we could do, but it was reassuring to hear he was going ot be okay. At the time it seemed as if he would never get better. I dread to think what's it's like dealing with long term illness in a child.
As luck would have it, he started doing an Uncle Albert and came across as the picture of health as soon as he encountered a doctor, painting us as a couple of paranoid time wasters. Cheers Jamie.
The next day, he was on his way to being more like his old self, but has not gone to nursery today to give him a chance to get back his old strength. Having spent to past week rinsing sick out of clothes, bedding and carpets, I am glad to have him back.

Ho Ho Ho!

2008-12-20T21:22:00.003+01:00

Christmas is almost upon us. We are on the road again this year, something that I learned to really appreciate last year when we were knackered first time parents. It is really comforting to be among family and loved ones at this time of the year, and crucially not to have to do any of the legwork. Well, that's not strictly true. I will wash the odd wine glass or 20 over the next week I'm sure. However the real hard working of hosting Christmas is the preparation. Deciding what you want to cook, buying all the ingredients, planning the day with military precision, ensuring you have entertainment planned, etc. We will just have to turn up, look thankful and tuck in. And I can't wait...

Cat!

2008-12-06T20:48:00.005+01:00

I exposed Jamie to some art this week. We met up with a friend of mine at Tate Modern for lunch. He was very well behaved and the staff in the cafe get a big thumbs up for child friendliness. They brought over a high chair, swept the buggy away to a less crowded part of the restaurant, brought him some crayons, and even heated up the soup I had brought for him. Well done the Tate!
As usual, Jamie was insatiable, so as well as wolfing down a whole banana, a clementine (or satsuma - at any rate, his fruit of choice at the moment), a yogurt, and his soup, he started begging for food from my plate. I feel bad about giving him chips, but at least they were fat chips, which are healthier, right?
After my friend had gone back to work, I thought it was probably a good idea that he worked off some of his dinner so I took him to the turbine hall, where the large exhibits are held. The last time he was here, he was still a babe and slept all the way through Shibboleth, as the massive crack in the floor was known. I took some fantastic video of him sleeping through this which I keep meaning to put to suitably atmospheric music - one of my pending projects alongside more pressing ones such as fixing the stair gate at the top of the stairs, and putting up shelves in the living room, and... oh, don't start me.
This time round he was a lot more lively and loved the space that the Tate affords and the glass walls that separate the turbine hall from the main body of the museum. The main installation was particularly interesting. The hall was screened off with opaque, coloured plastic strips which he loved pushing through into a hall filled with lots of yellow and blue bunk beds - a bit like an Ikea warehouse. His favourite exhibit however was a large scale (about 20 times actual size) skeleton of a cat. After he'd noted this he ran around like a small, demented robot, shouting "Cat! Cat!" which was particularly amusing as there was a group of arty types being given a lecture on its meaning. Well, it was obvious wasn't it, it was a massive cat!
Personally I thought his analysis was particularly insightful.

Klutz mum

2008-11-26T18:51:00.002+01:00

Whenever I'm with the other mums I always seem to end up feeling like the least able to handle my child, at least in the effortless style that they do it. I sort of manage to do everything that has to be done, but in the manner of the 20 stone guy who finishes the marathon in seven hours, sweating profusely and with bleeding nipples. Mission accomplished, but he's hardly going to worry Paula Radcliffe.
Today we met for lunch in the City near where two of the working mums are based. I was about half an hour late due to bus problems and heavy traffic rather than my own ineptitude. I had planned to walk it, but was running a little too late for that. Or so I thought. I reckon I would still have walked there quicker.
So by the time I got there, everybody else had their children under control, ordered lunch and was chatting away happily. I barged in late, tried to wedge the buggy under the bar and seemed incapable of speech for several minutes. Jamie woke up and started squawking and had to be held by me and nobody else, so I wasn't able to get his nutritious lunch out and he filled his face with chips from somebody else's plate. Even with baby food smeared on her shoulder, one mum looked more in control than me.
Maybe women are born to it.

New wheels

2008-11-24T13:35:00.004+01:00

Jamie is a lot better now after what seemed to be an early dose of the norovirus. That's my diagnosis anyway as both mummy and me came down with it. Hopefully that's our lot for this winter.
To celebrate, we bought him a new buggy. He has needed one for a little while as he's outgrown the Bugaboo. It's a strange experience driving him to nursery this morning in his new Maclaren. The Bugaboo is like the Humvee of buggies. It's like a bleeding tank and feels as if you are driving something that commands respect, and pavement space. People almost have to leap out of the way.
The new buggy is an altogether flimsier item, but it is a bit more manoeuvrable - with the Bugaboo you need a three point turn to get it in and out of tight situations. Jamie seemed to like it anyway, even though he is facing the 'wrong way'.
The recent research into the effect of forward facing buggies on child speech is all very interesting, but it's actually quite difficult to get a buggy for older kids that can be switched round. Personally, I'd feel like a paranoid parent pushing a one year about in one, as if I couldn't inflict the madness of the world on them. They're inquisitive little things and want to see what is going on in the world rather than just gazing adoringly at mater/pater's haggard, sleep-deprived visage all day. Give them a break!
We went to a rather lovely birthday party yesterday for one of Jamie's little friends. As this one was on a Sunday, there were more adults around that at the other one I wrote about. Consequently, there was lots of lovely food and drink. The parents are Italian so the spread was great, as was mine by the end of it - lovely lasagne, succulent chicken and gorgeous sweetmeats. Jamie was enjoying munching his way through this feast but eventually succumbed to a bit of a meltdown as he hadn't slept more than about 20 minutes that day.
Now that the birthday season is almost over, bring on the Christmas parties.

Not well

2008-11-19T11:14:00.002+01:00

Jamie is quite sick at the moment. It started after his afternoon nap at the nursery yesterday when he started throwing up and rapidly went through all of his clothes and a few others they had dug out for him. He was being given a sponge bath when I arrived and was in a bit of a state, but soon calmed down. Unfortunately it continued back here, so we just bathed him and put him to bed. The little munchkin was so tired he fell asleep in my arms as I was puttng on his sleeping clothes. He woke in the night and I tried to give him some water, but he threw that all up. Charlotte fed him and we brought him in with us.
He slept through until about seven, although I didn't as he manages to expand to fill the biggest possible space for such a small chap. I ended up clinging on the edge of the bed with a scrap of duvet. He's sleeping again now so we'll play it by ear. He didn't keep the little breakfast he ate down either. Bizarrely he seems okay as soon as he's emptied his stomach, and is not being especially clingy, which you might expect.
It's scuppered our plans for singing class today, which is a shame, but he's probably not up to it, and it would be unfair to inflict him on other children in his predicament.
Mum is down this weekend, so has seen him walk, which is lovely for her. I'll need to try and shoot some video of him walking as we don't have any yet. I need to get him while he's still relatively unsteady and before he becomes a total expert.

Up and running

2008-11-17T20:27:00.005+01:00

Well, almost...
This weekend has seen Jamie crack the walking. He has been gearing up to it for the past week, but somehow everything has just clicked into place over the last few days. He is suddenly really confident on his feet and opts for walking as often as he does crawling. Four limbed travel still has the edge when speed is required, but it can only be a matter of time before he has worked up a bit more speed on two pins.
At the moment he has a sort of zombie gait where he waddles towards you with arms outstretched above his head. He is so cute when he does it as he inevitably has a massive grin on his face. I don't think he can quite believe he can do it yet. Nursery was really impressed by his new found skill, and they are very complimentary about him generally. He eats well, lets them know what his needs are (usually food), says his words and does his animal noises, and mixes with the other children. This morning, Souleymane, one of the children who has just moved from the baby room to the toddlers group, came running up to me as I brought him to nursery and went "Hello Jamie!" Jamie already has his own social circle it seems.

Balancing act

2008-11-14T16:59:00.002+01:00

I picked Jamie up from nursery this afternoon. Fridays are always really nice as Charlotte works from home, so she is only about 10-15 minutes away. He has been a lot more at ease this week. No tantrums when I leave him in the morning, which is the point when he has been a bit clingy in the past. This morning he was beaming as I dropped him off, gave me a little kiss and waved goodbye. Off you go daddy!
He has been walking more this week and has been showing off a bit today as his newfound ability was commented on. All the kids were wearing pyjamas for Children in Need and had brought in their favourite teddies, or in Jamie's case, a cuddly cow. I walked him along the corridor when we left and the nursery manager and deputy manager both commented on what a good day he had had and how well he has settled in. "He's such a well balanced little boy," said the manager, which made me feel really good. I don't think she was talking about his walking.
This week has been a bit stressful for me as business has been quite slow. Then there was news of redundancies and closures at Haymarket, where a lot of my work comes from. This really set alarm bells ringing as I started to envisage meltdown of the household finances. As it happened, that day saw the delivery of a batch of prints I had ordered for a photo album of Jamie's last three months. Looking at them made me think how little I had to worry about and how much I have to be thankful for. We're never going to be financially strapped, so all I was worrying about was the extras, and if it comes to it, we can trim our sails for a bit.

Nice day

2008-11-05T22:53:00.003+01:00

Jamie and I had a lovely day. We started at singing class at 11am where he is starting to look worryingly large compared with the other children. Stephanie, who takes the class, asked if he was walking yet. It sometimes looks like he might be as he is very steady on his feet and can even bounce on his legs and do a little dance. When I replied that he couldn't she showed me an amazing trick where she stood him against a wall and then moved away from him. This seems to put his posture in the walking position and he then totters formward towards your open arms. It's fantastic and so simple. Why has nobody ever told me this before? Is it some sort of secret?
After that, me and some of the mums went to the local cafe and chatted frantically. Well the others did. They seem to be a bit newer on the scene and anxious to make contacts. I wasn't being aloof, more trying to keep hungry bird from grabbing red hot teapots and pouring them over himself while I tried ot prepare his lunch. The younger babies were supping gingerly on pulped vegetable matter, while Jamie was attempting to scoff anything that wasn't nailed to the table. They all seemed very nice though and I now have a new potential group of friends, even if they're only once a week friends.
After this we went to the Museum of Childhood to meet up with a longer standing baby friend. Jamie slept for a whole two hours before practising his new walking technique at a local children's centre. Stephanie said he'll be walking by next week.

Dummies!

2008-11-04T21:29:00.005+01:00

Before we had Jamie I held what is probably quite a common attitude to dummies in that I thought they were quite common. We resisted giving them to him for a couple of months, despite what the text books call his "strong sucking reflex". This basically means that he could just about dislocate one of your fingers if he got hold of it.
Dummies are, after all, only for parents who can't control or minister to the needs of their children and we wouldn't be like that. Oh no. However it's amazing what night after night of sleep deprivation torture will do to you. Eventually after trying lots of things, such as... er, I can't remember any of the alternative strategies. But it wasn't like we just gave in.
When we eventually gave in and presented his little screaming mouth with this plastic and latex construction, it was like Armistice Day. The incessant noise stopped, and was replaced by the sounds of birds singing outside and the whoosh of air as he sucked away on his teet. He really did become a lot calmer. It seemed to help his colic, made him sleep better, aided his digestion, and actually seemed to make him more intelligent. Okay, I made the last bit up, but the difference was so great that we have since wondered why we didn't do it earlier. At least we had tried dummy free living.
Not that this has stopped me slightly embarrassed about them. None of his little friends seem to have them, and neither do any of the nice middle class babies at his singing class. Of course, it is quite difficult to sing with a piece of rubber stuck between your lips. I don't think I have ever whipped it out of his mouth when I have spotted somebody I know approaching, but it is the sort of thing I probably would do.
I sometimes wonder if he is too wedded to it. He can get in huge paddies if it isn't there, and it is a bit too easy to stick it in him if he is playing up, which he can do in spectacular fashion. It actually looks quite cute on a one year old, but if it's still his mouthwear of choice in a couple of years time, I'll be worried. However, until he reaches an age at which we can reason with him, I don't think there's much we can do about it. Unless he just gives up on it himself.
Maybe the name is part of the problem. Last week I was taking him to the singing class and knew I would be out all day. However I forgot his dummy and was worried that without it he wouldn't sleep. So I dived into a nearby pharmacy and breathlessly asked if they had any dummies. I'd obviously intruded on some private joke as they started snorting into their tea and giggling uncontrollably. Lucky I didn't need incontinence pants.
Sod's Law meant that he was asleep within a couple of minutes of leaving the shop, and he slumbered soundly for a couple of hours. Maybe I need it more than he does.
'Dummy' does sound so, well dumb. Other people call them soothers or comforters, but that sounds a bit affected to me. Let's call a dummy a dummy.
And I have discovered, they needn't lack style. You can get them in lots of lovely designs - pirates, kittens, etc - and you can even have them personalised. However at nearly £3 each, there's probably only one world for people who buy them - suckers!

Clumsy me

2008-11-03T16:07:00.002+01:00

One thing they never tell you about in parent skool are the talons. Babies' nails grow really quickly, and by the time they are Jamie's age, they're quite sharp and rather offensive weapons. When they are little, the nails are so soft that you are supposed to be able to just peel them off. This route never appealed to me as I envisaged trying to peel off a slither of nail and taking the whole nail bed out. Consequently I've opted for clippers.
The problem here is that their fingers are so small that it's quite difficult to see what you're doing. That and the fact that they are quite wriggly at times means it is easy to nick them.
Jamie's nursery had a message up on Friday about keeping nails clipped as they can be quite scratchy. This I know from personal experience of Jamie Scissorhands, who has been known to lash out in the manner of a cornered alley cat. He also has quite a sore nip on him and has lain waste to my arms in the past to the extent that I look like a junkie or a battered husband.
So I thought I'd better sort out his nails this morning before nursery. He's actually a lot better at this than he used to be and will sit quietly on my knee and observe proceedings quite calmly. This didn't stop me cutting into the top of his right index finger this morning. After an initial yelp, he seemed to find it funny, squeezing his hand to make the blood pulse out quicker. I don't think there has been any lasting damage - it's not as if I've turned him into Tony Iommi - but it was sickener when it happened, especially as it's not the first time I've maimed him like this. Maybe we can have him declawed like a cat. It would be better for us all in the long run.

Walkies

2008-10-31T16:19:00.004+01:00

Jamie is now 12 and a half months old and still not walking. This wouldn't be worth commenting on if it wasn't for the fact that he promised so much, so early. Almost two months ago he seemed on the verge of breaking into a trot. He managed two or three steps at a time unsupported, and one memorable morning about a month ago he walked about two metres to me, taking about ten steps in the process. I say it was memorable, but such has been his reluctance to walk since then that I'm starting to wonder if I imagined it.
People say you should rearrange the furniture in such a way that babies are forced to go outside of their comfort zone to get to them. One of the problems with that, for a champion crawler like Jamie, is that there is always an easier four-limbed option. Maybe there is some way of callibrating the optimum distance that will make the idea of two-legged travel more desirable than a crawl.
I guess I should be careful what I wish for. We're already having to move more and more stuff out of harm's way. Yesterday he pulled over my electric guitar and the shelves in the bathroom - sorry I didn't tell you Charlotte. It's a good job you're such an avid reader of HH!

walking a more desirable

Party time

2008-10-30T19:05:00.003+01:00

Today was another of the NCT babies' birthday parties. C was the latest to reach the ripe old age of one and I attended her bash representing the Derrick-Goddard contingent. Apart from C's dad, I was the only other man there. This will be the way of things from now on I think. I have entered a predominantly female environment, and one, which I am somewhat ashamed to say, I have not fully paid tribute to in the past.
Since taking over more of the childcare duties I have become humbled by the recognition of the work that Charlotte did before me. It's exhausting in a different way to work. I'm with Jamie all day, which is great, but it really is all encompassing. Unless he's asleep or tied into his high chair (not really tied, but harnessed...) you are really limited in what you can do. Charlotte nods sagely when I pronounce this revelation, like she didn't tell me a hundred times. It's another of those pieces of wisdom about 'having children' that sort of goes in one ear and out the other until you are struck by the reality of it. For example, everybody tells you that you won't get much sleep, and you think, "A bit less sleep. So what!" But it's not like having a few too many on a school night and having to soldier on the next day at work. When you have kids, that sleep is never coming back. There is no lie in at the end of the rainbow.
Anyway, back at the party, when I wasn't bonding with my newfound sisters, I was eating almost as much party food as Jamie. He has been insatiable today, and was thrilled to be offered pitta, fish balls, cake and jelly in quantity. Amazingly he is still having dinner this evening, despite a mammoth lunch today as well. I was running out of things to feed him.
C's parents' present to themselves is a night out, which I wish Charlotte and I could have done for Jamie's. I am slightly envious of their curry, even though they could be falling asleep in their starters after organising and running today's events. As always, the host has to appear as unflustered as possible and look like nothing was any trouble at all, when the reality is slightly different as we all know. I think I'd rather got to a party than hold one - even a children's one. Especially a children's one! C's gran said it gets even worse when they are old enough to need proper entertaining. At her son's fourth party she tells how her carefully planned games, activities and diversions were exhausted in about 20 minutes leaving an afternoon of unplanned mayhem ahead.
At least these days we have Cbeebies I suppose.

Jamie eats...

2008-10-28T11:29:00.006+01:00

It's strange, and quite amazing to think that Jamie ate nothing for the first six months of his life. He subsisted entirely on milk. Since then he has revealed quite an appetite, which isn't surprising really after such a prolonged liquid diet. Starting with rather bland baby rice, he quickly began to wolf stuff down, despite the supposed tiny size of his stomach. While other babies were quite picky about what they ate, he seemed to devour everything, and in quantity. Early favourites were lovely lentils (from the sainted Annabel Karmel's baby recipe book), rice and peas, and banana mush. Now as he moves on to more challenging foods, it's not quite as easy, and some of the old favourites - notably the lentils - seem to have gone by the wayside.
I can't say I blame him on red lentils, which for me always conjure up a foul muck called lentil soup that was very popular when I was growing up - although not with me. Jamie's response to something which is not to his taste is to allow it mouthspace before squidging it out and down his chin. We still make the majority of his food, and the sight of some lovingly created dish being received this way has driven me to despair. I suppose though it's just a case of working with him. We have very little to complain about compared with some children who seem to eat next to nothing.
At nursery he is being exposed to lots of new flavours. Menus are culturally appropriate to the children who attend. As this is multicultural Hackney, that means lots of new flavours, including plantain on his first day - I think that got the squidge treatment. Yesterday it was fish fingers and beans, which he loved apparently. So much for our tutoring of his taste buds with organic, seasonal produce, and avoidance of processed foods. That will be his Scottish roots showing through I guess - deep fried, salty and sugary? Bring it on.
Actually, that's a little unfair on the nursery, which cooks all the food on site and does seem to work hard at getting the children to eat, which with his nibs at the moment is sometimes not easy.
And yet! Yesterday's report of his eating was that he was insatiable, so I was surprised when he got home he polished off an apple, a peach, a plate of pasta and a sandwich. He would probably have still been eating if we hadn't insisted on bath. As it was, he seemed to gaze down on his round little tum with some pride in the bath.