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I woke up battered by life and a big metal door, with the prospect of a day off at last.
My head doesn't hurt too much though, as I think my body has used up all available pain in its supply.
We had a parent teacher meeting this afternoon in our kids' primary school which is a bit more religious than we are. We didn't have to pretend to be religious to get in there - they welcome all faiths apparently - but I am not sure how much they'd welcome someone quite as faithless as me. Even though having no faith is a kind of faith. It is the way I do it anyway.
Both kids have slotted in to the new school very well and were praised for not being phased by the turmoil to their lives. Both of them, it was pointed out, are very good at making the rest of the class laugh. Ernie doesn't really have to do anything and the kids are laughing at him, which I think was meant in a positive way. But I am glad that my indoctrination of these innocents on the altar of comedy has had some early good results. I only need one of them to succeed in the business, win all the comedy prizes and shout "This is for my dad who was cruelly overlooked by you monsters" at the judges. "May he finally rest in peace and stop haunting us."
Phoebe was praised for her writing particularly, though the teacher also asked if we were a particularly religious household as her discussions of other faiths was very in depth. I acknowledged that we weren't really, but were interested in the subject -Should I send her a copy of Christ on a Bike to prove it? Catie tried to rescue things by saying her mum was brought up religiously, but had lapsed.... that didn't really rescue it. Were we about to be thrown out and aybe even cast into Hell a little bit early?
We read some of the kids' work and I really liked a play that Phoebe had written about Abraham and God in which God said he'd set up a covenant with Abraham and Abraham said "OK" and then God and Abraham said together "The end". A little wink through the fourth wall from the pair, acknowledging that they're both fictional.
In my childhood we were a little pressurised to excel academically, something that was unsurprisingly important to my headmaster father. It was OK for me and my brother who did well at school subjects, but tougher for my sister who wasn't particularly interested, though who is by far the best of us, a social and outgoing person who is loved by everyone she meets. You can see that and A in A level pure maths was more important than that.
My dad was disappointed in us when we failed. I have said this before but one of my memories (that sounds like something out of Roald Dahl or Harry Potter so might be an invention) is sitting in the cupboard under the stairs desperately trying to write a figure 8 in one stroke, rather than building it like a snowman. I was 28 years old.
I also remember his disdain when I was unable to do some mental arithmetic and him saying "He should be able to do this at his age." I turned out to be OK at maths, but the fear of disappointing my dad resonates down the decades. He once praised Miles Kington for his amazing skill of writing five witty columns a week in the Independent.... is this why I've written a blog every day for 22 years?
He was and is a wonderful dad, though now tries to downplay the importance of academia (but unconvincingly) and had many strong moral influences on my life (so imagine how bad I'd be without him). Watch the Headmaster's Son if you want to know more about that.
https://www.gofasterstripe.com/cgi-bin/w.cgi?showfull=7372Anyway, I don't want to push my kids too much at school, so it's great to hear that they are doing well and enjoying themselves (though they make out they hate school and that they do nothing there). Of course I am blind to the fact that I might be subconsciously pushing them towards comedy rather than academia and that they might be hurt when I say their stuff is hack and they might very well sit in a cupboard trying to write effective pull-back and reveal jokes. And they they get off the bus. The cupboard was on a bus all along.
They muck you up your mum and dad.
I said this to Phoebe the other day and she delighted in the fact that she could think of a better word than muck. She is 9.
I've done a great job as a parent. She also thinks that there's a swear word for every alternate letter of the alphabet so B-word, D-word, F-word. So at least she doesn't know the c-word yet. I can rest easy. Dad of the year.
And in a worrying development Phoebe googled me today. There is a world of horror awaiting her out there, not least this blog which she is now capable of reading. Today she wanted to see
my wikipedia entry as someone at her school had told her that she was mentioned in it (though not by name). Luckily her main attention was on herself, though when she got to the personal life section she said to Catie, "Oooh, mummy, daddy's been cheating on you." It's hard for kids to understand their parents had a life before they met, though wikipedia does make it look like I had quite a life - and it doesn't know the half of it! It's weird that someone feels the need to collate this stuff, weirder still that it isn't me.
At bedtime I told her how proud I was of her for the amazing things her teacher said (I told Ernie too, but he's clearly not as good) and she rewarded me by doing my hair for me. The first attempt she classified as sticking up too much. So I will adopt the more conservative look for my new stage persona.
