When it was just the two of us:
Now we are four & they are two:
Get the picture?
For The Crumby Mummy’s ‘Terrible Twosday’ blog hop. Click the pic for more!
So MusoDad is a ‘session blogger’ now – brilliant!
He’s started a musicky meme for which the equally terrific slightlysuburbandad has tagged me.
Like him I’m delighted to have been tagged as I love music & spend a lot of my time listening to it, blogging about it & tweeting it. And yes, I do have a “not-so-secret music sock puppet on Twitter”.
The meme is very simple: name your first / worst / best / last / dream gig, and select a song from each act to add to Musodad’s Spotify playlist. And I’m incorporating it into my regular Music Monday post, so I hope nobody minds my sticking some music vids on here as well.
First gig: Split Enz, Christchurch, New Zealand
I’m not entirely sure about this one, but I think my first gig was probably Split Enz in a small indoor venue in my home town of Christchurch, New Zealand. For those who don’t know Split Enz were a NZ art-rock band known for their glitzy outfits & quirky style. I loved them then & still do now. Their main man was Tim Finn, older brother of fellow band-member Neil who went on to form the more well-known Crowded House. The gig was televised & my main memory of it is watching myself leave at the end in my favourite & I thought oh-so-cool shiny brown vinyl jacket. Thankfully there are no photos.
Track added: My Mistake. I’m pretty sure they played it there, & it’s a great, odd little song.
My first big gig was probably the great Mr David Bowie at Christchurch’s QEII Stadium. It remains one of my all-time favourite gigs. At the time major international acts on a world tour would gig in Australia & if we were lucky do a night in Auckland, both of which were out of my young reach. Bowie – & he was huge at the time - was one of the few to venture south to smaller NZ cities & for this he will forever have my love.
Worst gig: Zero 7, Brighton Pavilion Dome Theatre
I struggled with this one. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a gig I would call bad. I adore Zero 7 & their music & they played beautifully here, from what I could hear. And there’s the problem: it was totally spoilt for us by massed ranks of drunken kids who did nothing but shout through the whole thing as if they were down the pub. Zero 7′s music is mostly quiet, slow, chilled, wonderfully relaxing & scintillating beautiful. It’s the very last sort of music that you don’t listen to & shout at your mates over. I really don’t know what the hell they were doing there. I asked the bloke behind me, actually quite politely, if they could be a bit quieter & I heard them plotting to ‘get me’ at the end. We asked to be moved but it was the same in the new seats. A gig my wife & I had been so looking forward to was utterly ruined for us.
Track added: The Space Between, 1 of my all-time favourite songs
Best gig: U2, Wembley Stadium
Yes, I know: U2, Bono, probably loved & hated in equal measure. They just happen to be my all-time favourite band, & I plan a post sometime about how they helped keep me sane in the 90s. I love their passion! So I guess this makes me very uncool – which is good as I’ve never tried to be cool. Apart from wearing haute-couture shiny brown vinyl jackets, obviously.
For me live music will never get better than this, & I will never go to a gig that rivals this one: this was once-in-a-lifetime, a dream come true. It was at the height of their Zooropa / Zoo TV tour, following on from the success of their great album ‘Achtung Baby!’. The opening acts Aztec Camera & PJ Harvey were worth the ticket price alone, & the set was astonishing. Huge, overwhelming light displays synched to the music. Massed banks of screens, many of which were screening live random TV, which Bono used during the show & which allowed a virtual duet with Lou Reed on ‘Satellite of Love’. A massive catwalk for Bono & the boys to prance around on & which was used for the more intimate, acoustic songs. Naomi Campbell guest-starring & filming with a hand-held vidcam linked to 1 of the big screens. A ‘phone call to Salman Rushdie soon after he had received his fatwa, who then answered from within the crowd. Fantastic, overwhelming, a concept gig! But most importantly, of course, the music. U2 are simply the best live act I’ve ever seen, & for me can’t be rivalled. If I had to choose 1 day to take to my grave with me – up until the birth of my twins – this would be it.
Track added: Where the Streets Have No Name. Probably the gig’s highpoint (along with ‘One’), & another of my all-time favourite songs.
Last gig: Faithless, Birmingham NIA
Still the only gig I’ve gone to since becoming a Dad, & a fantastic one, one of the best. Faithless are one of my favourite bands, & I had heard they were terrific live. So when I saw that they were gigging in nearby Birmingham I knew I had to try & go see them, even though the twins were only 9 months old. I did, & I wasn’t disappointed – they were fantastic. I did a rather gushy, slightly drunken review of the gig on my other blog, including scratchy live audio of most of it. I really should try to get out more!
Track added: Insomnia, 1 of their great dance anthems &, for me, the gig’s highlight
Dream gig: Pink Floyd
For this I mostly thought of regrets: gigs I should have gone to, or at least tried to get to, & didn’t: Dylan in 2010, Led Zep when they reformed for the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert, Massive Attack when they gigged in Brighton & I somehow didn’t know about it. But the one that really got away & is still achievable, although sadly with a different drummer, is Pink Floyd, musical heroes since my youth. There’s never been anyone like the Floyd & never will be, another of the great live acts.
Track added: The Great Gig in the Sky. Well it had to be really, eh Musodad? The electrifying ‘song without words’, the last track of side one (yes, I had the vinyl LP!) of ’The Dark Side of the Moon’.
This is the bit where I’m supposed to tag a few people to do the meme, but to be honest I wouldn’t know where to start – except I’m going to see if I can once again tempt the terrific Daddacool to break his meme ban! So whoever is reading this then consider yourself tagged, OK?
It was all planned out very carefully.
The Mummy has been commuting 2/3 days a week to work in Wales from the Midlands & was sick of it. The plan has been to sell our home there & buy in Wales but we had made no progress in getting the place ready to sell nor in finding somewhere there. So we decided to move in to a small place we had been renting out while we sort everything out from there, renting out our old home at a reduced rate.
We’d been over to measure up, & had selected & paid for all but the stairs & landing to be refloored. We’d ordered & arranged delivery of a small washer-dryer & a small fridge-freezer. We’d selected a moving company & given them a list of what we were moving. The in-laws had come over to help with packing.
The flooring was being done on Tuesday April 3rd, & I was to spend the day before cleaning there. So I had grabbed what I needed for a week or 2, stuffed it all in the little car without the child seats & zoomed off to Wales on Sunday night, leaving behind a list of what to pack for when the Mummy & the twins joined me on Wednesday.
I should have known something was afoot, & not just that – as you may have noticed – I was driving over on April Fools’ Day. A month earlier I had ‘phoned Sky to tell them we were moving our TV, ‘phone & broadband. They told me that they couldn’t take moving calls until 2 weeks before the move. Their Engineers are so efficient! I was surprised but dutifully ‘phoned back 2 weeks later. I was then told that we couldn’t have ‘phone & broadband in Wales until April 11th – a week after our move! It appears that our earlier Operative was only thinking about our TV contract. Probably didn’t have room for more than 1 thought at a time I expect. I couldn’t understand why such a delay, they insisted that ‘according to their records’ an Engineer needed to attend to install the line. I pointed out that there was already a working BT line there, that the tenant had used it & so had we when we stayed there earlier. But what would I know? I’d only lived there, after all; I didn’t have The Records.
On March 28th, I got a letter saying that our ‘phone & broadband would stop at our present address on the 29th – tomorrow! After another frantic, & frankly really quite cross, ‘phone call they graciously allowed us to keep them until we actually left the house.
Serve me right for giving money to Murdoch’s Evil Empire I guess. Not for much longer I hope.
So how did the move go? Well…
Sunday April 1st, evening: Driving through Brum where the M6 meets the M5 & the car is losing speed rapidly. I manage to exit to a truck service & transport police depot before grinding to a halt. Coincidentally I’d broken down in almost the same place 3 years before except I had to go from the outside lane where the 2 motorways merged & just made it to the hard shoulder, on a corner. The AA arrives 40 minutes later & can’t fix it on the spot (clutch: same as before) so I have to be towed. Wife isn’t answering the ‘phone, she & the in-laws are enjoying a last drink & the phone is upstairs. The AA man suggests towing me to a 24-hour secure garage & having my wife pick me up, but when she eventually hears the ‘phone she tells me she’s a bit too tipsy to drive. So I get towed home. Stressometer: 5
Monday April 2nd: The car is towed to our local garage but they can’t fix it today as it also needs a new gear something or other. I decide to take the carseat-equipped Astra to the garage, transfer my stuff there & drive to Wales in it, coming back for the children to move on Wednesday. What the garage didn’t tell me is that the Ka is suspended, & we had to unpack it by a big ladder. I only had to go back once. I could also have done without the smart-arse jibes about my driving. Stressometer: 6
I make good time & reach our new home in the early evening. I discover that the only mobile I have has no signal in the house & I have to cross the road & stand under a lamppost to make calls. It’s very cold & so am I. No ‘phone & no internet while trying to organise moving my family to a different country. Great. I’m still sane, but cracking a little. Stressometer: 7
Tuesday 3rd, early morning: The carpet people refuse to start until they’re paid in cash - which I’m fairly sure is illegal – saying it’s because we don’t own the house. We do but - oddly enough – I haven’t packed the title deeds & can’t prove it. I thought it was all paid for, & so does the Mummy when I ‘phone her. From around the corner now as the signal area has moved. CarpetWrong confirmed this so I have to find & drive off to an atm before work can start. They’re sneaky & won’t take the cash ’til they finish. I’m fitting in my cleaning around them as they work. They manage to leave the only downstairs door so that it won’t shut & the explanation they give me, which of course they leave until they’ve finished, doesn’t make sense. By now it’s already late & I have to drive back so I don’t have the option of standing around & arguing. Another good drive, fish’n'chips for dinner, & I’m straight to bed in some old clothes as all my PJs are in Wales. Despite this I sleep long & well. Stressometer: 6
Wednesday 4th, Moving Day. I’ve forgotten that the Sky TV bloke is due at 8 so the Mummy had ‘phoned to postpone ’til Saturday. I’ve also overlooked that we have an all-day delivery slot for the washer-dryer, starting from 8, so I zoom off in the now-fixed Ka with a few more supplies. I’m held up in English traffic though & am quite late in arriving. Luckily I haven’t missed the delivery.
Finally something goes right! Simply Removals are great: the 2 Romanian chappies are quick, efficient & extremely polite, the only issue being just slightly wonky closet doors. The washer-dryer arrives while they are unloading. I pay them in cash as arranged, having grabbed some more money on the way to the chippie last night.
I run the washer-dryer (an Indesit) through a test cycle as instructed, seems OK but a little water is left in it. It drains away on the drain cycle but the timer stays on 1 minute. Hmmm. Good enough to use, & I really need some clean clothes so I put on a load. It doesn’t drain. I discover this when I open the door & the (new) kitchen floor becomes a lake. Managing to shut the door before the flood spread, I run every cycle I can find but still no drainage. I ‘phone Appliances Direct but they are shut so I can’t arrange a repair or replacement.
Then I remember that my wedding ring is (probably) in the pocket of my jeans in the wash. I take it off often as it’s a bit uncomfortable, & if we weren’t moving it would be on its usual spot on my desk. So I have the choice of flooding the new flooring or leaving the clothes possibly including my ring in there to rot & worrying about it.
I have to spend about half an hour standing out in the freezing cold listening to messages & making ‘phone calls. The Mummy & Jallie arrive late evening, & are soon in bed & asleep. I sleep badly. Stressometer: 8
Thursday 5th. There’s a mixup as to which of the 2 bedrooms is for adults & which is for children, so while the Mummy & Jallie go shopping I swap all the furniture between the 2 rooms. It’s not easy. In the day’s chaos I forget to ‘phone up about the washer-dryer.
The fridge-freezer is due sometime today & when it doesn’t turn up at 4 I ‘phone them up to check all is well. The signal area has moved away from me again so I have to walk a couple of blocks this time. They helpfully explain: ‘We sent an email to confirm & you didn’t reply so delivery has been cancelled’. I had specified delivery for today when I ordered, & had explained that I was moving house & wouldn’t have internet access! As I’m was trying to rearrange delivery, with comic timing, the ‘phone batteries run out. And of course we can’t find the charger. We manage to impose upon a childminder we know there to use her ‘phone: they can’t redeliver for a week. A week without a washing machine & dryer having just moved with twin 2-year-olds? NOOOO! We cancelled. I thank Jade Technologies for being so helpful. I’m being sarcastic. A vein in my forehead is beginning to make its presence felt. Stressometer: 9
While out shopping the Mummy had noticed that the Co-Op sells ‘fridges, so off we trot. We buy a brand we don’t recognise but a salesman who seems trustworthy assures us it’s reliable, & it has the features we want. Most importantly they can deliver tomorrow – Good Friday! I don’t think the salesman was expecting a big sloppy kiss. Especially with tongue. I like the Co-Op. Stressometer: 7
Friday 6th: The Co-Op delivered as promised, & the fridge-freezer seems to be working well. We mostly stand around waiting for something bad to happen. We find the ‘phone charger in the car, & I manage to drag out a crappy old PAYG with no credits but on a network that has coverage in the house. I eventually find its charger & figure out how to top it up. We use most of the £10 top-up in a ‘phone call to Mum-in-law as we pushed the wrong button & didn’t end the call.
We’re finding it difficult moving to such a small place. We keep falling over small persons running around & are having trouble finding anywhere to put stuff that won’t be grabbed by little hands & played-with to destruction. In the evening, with no ‘net, phone or TV, I rediscover an old Wii sci-fi shooter called Metroid Prime 3. Stressometer: 6
Saturday 7th: I top-up my ‘phone again & try to ‘phone about the washer-dryer. They’re closed, of course. Something to do with bunnies & chocolate. The Sky TV man comes along & plugs us in. He seems like a very decent bloke & he lives just around the corner, & he told us just to knock on his door if we have any problems. Stressometer: 6
Sunday 8th, Monday 9th: I show Jake Metroid Prime 3 in an area where there are no bad guys to shoot, explaining that it’s like Tree-Fu magic. Despite this he calls it the “bang bang!”, although personally I think it’s more of a whirrzzzhaa-chow! He becomes addicted. A few days later he sees a gun, points to it & says “bang bang!” & I realise that I’ve made a mistake & once again have underestimated him.
We spend our time looking around, settling in & waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Stressometer: 5
Tuesday 10th: I arrange for the washer-dryer to be serviced on Thursday. Wanting to find my wedding ring before the serviceman does I open the door & drain the water into a recycling bin. Which turns out to have holes in it. Cue another flood. I use a big bucket instead & manage to extricate my clothes. No sign of my ring. I hang the clothes on the rotary line & it collapses & breaks. I’m really quite grumpy now. Stressometer: 8
Wednesday 11th: In the light of the fridge-freezer delivery debacle I ‘phone Sky to get a time for when their Engineer is due. “Oh, we don’t need to send an Engineer as you already have a BT line. It’s already switched on.” The stupid &*%! seemed to expect me to be grateful. When I asked them why in Fs name they couldn’t have done this a week ago they didn’t seem to understand the question.
Ever feel like hitting someone? On the nose? Really, really hard?
Still at least we have a ‘phone line. Then we notice that we forgot to pack a ‘phone.
I go into to town & buy a ‘phone. And a washing line.
We also need an urgent prescription repeat as Jake has had an eye infection, now both Ellie & the Mummy have caught it & we’re out of drops. Ellie woke up with 1 eye closed & the other barely open. We haven’t registered anywhere & the town’s only surgery is shut. I find the emergency doctor’s office & they don’t want to do it, telling me to come back tomorrow morning & fill out some forms. My old PAYG mobile keeps cutting out. I show heroic restraint in not shouting or swearing even once. After using words like “duty of care” I eventually get them to do it, & get the prescriptions at 5pm. It’s cold & it’s raining & I don’t have an umbrella. Stressometer: 7
Thursday 12th: The ‘phone doesn’t work; it has a loose connection & keeps cutting out. We still don’t have the internet as we forgot to pack the necessary dongles with the router.
The Indesit bloke turns up, fiddles about & fixes the washer-dryer. No sign of my ring; we’d wondered if it was blocking the outlet. The explanation he gives doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sadly I suspect our theory was right & that he may have pocketted it on 1 of the many times I was distracted by having to supervise Jake & Ellie.
I get a new ‘phone &, after a lot of bother as this is not a high-tech town, manage to get a couple of broadband dongles. Stressometer: A steady, resigned-to-my-fate 6
Now: So we now finally have a landline, Internet, TV, washing line & a washing machine, dryer, fridge & freezer that work. I’m still worried about my ring though; I’m now hoping that either I left it behind or that it fell in the long grass as I was hanging the clothes on the line. Which I haven’t been able to mow as I couldn’t find my Flymo.
Good. So how was your week?
Got a witty, profound or just plain silly caption for this picture? Then leave it in the comments below!
Then click on the little boy’s head here & you will be magically transported to the funsome Mammasaurus’ blog for many more pictures crying out for a witty / pithy #satcap caption. Have fun, I know I do 
Got a witty, profound or just plain silly caption for this picture? Then leave it in the comments below!
Then click on the little boy’s head here & you will be magically transported to the funsome Mammasaurus’ blog for many more pictures crying out for a witty / pithy #satcap caption. Have fun, I know I do
Remember a few days ago, when we had ‘Sun’ & ‘warmth’? It seems like a long time ago now.
It had a been a lovely warm day & we’d spent much of it playing in the garden, having a great time. So I decided we could have dinner outside. It went well but it was closing in a bit & there was a chilly breeze brewing.
Ellie: “I cold”
Me: “You’re cold?”
Ellie: “Yes. Too windy”
Not exactly Shakespeare, but not bad for a 2-year-old. She’s a good little talker!
Jake is still somewhat obsessed with CBeebies’ Tree Fu Tom. So he, with me of course joining in, very helpfully did a Tree-Fu ‘warming’ spell on Ellie (that we made up). She played along, saying that it had worked & that she was feeling warmer. Unfortunately the effects seem to have been short-lived as she soon became cold again. So we did the spell again: easy!
Then we went inside.
Jake was also using Tree-Fu magic to help the ‘planes overhead fly, but they didn’t tell us whether or not it had worked. They didn’t fall out of the sky, & that was good enough for us.
Now if only we could find that Tree-Fu spell for ‘Making Daddy’s Cough Go Away’…
This is for Chris’ ’Things They Say & Do’ blog hop at her ‘Thinly Spread’ blog. Why not have a look at the other posts there, it’s always a good read!
At our activity group at the Nursery this morning there was lots of lively music & dancing, they banged on a proper snare drum with proper drumsticks, they rattled, they tambourined. Often sitting around looking a bit tired while aiming encouraging words at our young charges, today even the grown-ups were joining in. The ‘Funky Monkey’ dance was especially popular.
There were bananas, raisins, toast & drinks + teas & coffees for the grown-ups, then we all trotted out to the wonderful new garden there, funded by Lottery money. We first sat around on tree stumps & rugs while the host read ‘We’re on a Bear-Hunt’. Then we then walked around the garden enacting the story.
Back inside for more music, then we had an enactment of ‘The Gruffalo’ read on CD by Imelda Staunton with a backdrop & puppets. Jake’s performance in the role of ‘Fox’ was masterly & he did an especially good job in the running away scene. And he showed extraordinary versatility in swapping roles when later running around the room scaring everyone as ‘The Gruffalo’ itself.
More music, dancing & playing, then we sang some action songs, old favourites like ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’, ‘Incey Wincey Spider’. And finally the goodbye song, addressed individually to each child.
They had an especially great time, but it was sad. Probably because it was our last ever activity / playgroup there. There were a lot of goodbyes. I wonder if the twins might have picked up on some of this as we’ve had a difficult afternoon & evening; they’ve been very grizzly, possibly unsettled.
They’ve been at these groups since they were babies, from about 6 months I think. That’s most of their lives. The staff there have watched them grow & develop, & some I think have come quite attached to them. There are some terrific & very able people there, & we’ll all miss them. Losing all this, & for we parents too losing the regular contact with other Mums & Dads, will be a huge wrench.
I hope the staff there enjoyed their chocolates.
Just to be clear: Tuesday’s post where I questioned whether men should take their partners with them to football matches was intended as satire.
It was a direct riposte to this article on ParentDish which questioned whether women should have their partners with them when they give birth, suggesting that men “just don’t get it”.* I used it is as a template, & just reversed gender roles where I could. It was a bit tricky trying to think of an aspect of male life that is as exclusive to our gender as childbirth is to women: there isn’t one really. Football was the best I could come up with.
The ParentDish article used (presumably accurate) examples of a few men – who seem, quite frankly, to be really quite unusually stupid – who couldn’t seem to understand pregnancy & birth. Guys: you don’t need to be a Cambridge Professor of Biology to get that growing a human being in your belly for nine months then, after it’s got quite big (that’s the B-U-M-P), shoving it out of a very small exit might just be a little bit inconvenient. And maybe cause a few changes in diet & mood?
The article then goes on to imply that these cultured geniuses are representative of all men, & that women are therefore better off without the lot of us.
“Sexism: … behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex” Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Big Tick. My post was meant to be sexist.** Because the article it’s satirising is.
So let me be clear here: telling a man that he shouldn’t be present at the birth of his children is just obscene, disgusting, a disgrace.
For me, holding my new-born children for the first time was & always will be the greatest moment of my life. And I know that very many fathers feel just the same way. What right has anyone to take that away from us? To tell us that we shouldn’t be there? Purely on the basis of our gender?
This is just plain wrong.
And not because we’re men. Because we’re human beings.
And that’s really what this is all about. Whether we’re male, female, not sure, black, white, purple, whatever our lifestyle choices – we’re all entitled to be judged equally as human beings, not through the jaundiced eyes of personal prejudice & stereotype.
And sadly there are still people who “just don’t get it”.
* Best response I’ve yet read to this: “if you feel you can’t have him there at the birth should you really be having a baby with him?!” .
** Although perhaps not sexist enough. Several people, not all of them men, took it at face value, one even thinking that the post might be a blog-hop where others are invited to link up their own stories of going to the footy with their partners. Interesting!
