Party bags

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

... 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

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..."

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

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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?

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!

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!

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.