Share-Housing vs Parenting

Things I learned From Share-Housing That Prepared Me For Parenting

• Nothing that has ever happened in a diaper is anywhere near as repulsive and disgusting as the stuff that accumulated in the sink at my first flat. Or my second. Or the third.
• Food remains edible a lot longer than the manufacturers would like you to think.
• Sleep is less important than most people believe.
• The refrigerator will not clean itself.
• Not everything that is green in the refrigerator is fit to eat.
• Stocking toilet paper? Plan ahead. A long, long way ahead.
• Potatoes abandoned in dark places for too long become...unacceptable. Ergo, they are not good playthings for children.
• Screaming does not necessarily mean something bad is happening. It's all about the tone and pitch.
• A pile of salt on a red wine spill will help remove the stain from a carpet. On the other hand, the goddam carpet is going to get stained sooner or later, so why bother? Polished hardwood floors and cheap throw-rugs rule!
• It is entirely possible to play cricket in the hallway.
• But it's best to use a foam rubber ball, and to make sure your girlfriend (wife) doesn't catch you doing it.
• Never, ever assume the bedroom door is locked. Or the toilet door, for that matter.
• Just because the toilet door is only half closed, there's no reason to assume the place is unoccupied.
• Silence indicates grave danger, unless you are alone in the house.
• You can disguise almost anything into edibility with enough cheese, tomato paste and pizza crust.
• Always leave at least one adult person sober enough to answer a fire alarm.
• Riding in large commercial driers is enormous fun. Putting other people in them is even more fun. Small children, therefore, cannot be trusted alone with the lesser version in your laundry.
• Shouting louder than the other person is not a viable method of winning an argument.
• Eating things that fell on the floor is a lot less fatal than your mother always said.
• Hide the TV remote before someone else does. That way you'll be able to find it. That's the only way you'll be able to find it.
• They won't go to bed of their own accord. Sooner or later, someone has to announce that the party is over.
• And no: they will never, ever put away their toys by themselves.
• Being the only grown-up sucks donkey balls. You really need somebody to share the job.

"Princess" Syndrome

I think I've already expressed my vast contempt for the school of thought, arising mostly from deeply wrong-headed garble-science of the 70s, which says that little boys and little girls raised in an identical fashion will show no discernible forms of gender bias. But if I haven't please allow me to wax eloquent about the pinheaded buffoonery of this position... at least, as based on the mighty population sample presented by my children (and those of a whole bunch of other long-suffering parents I know.)

Most of the parent-types of my cohort have absorbed at least basic ideas of gender equality. We're not out there buying pink for girls, blue for boys. We tend to think Barbie is a particularly nasty form of consumer manipulation, and we're well aware that a large cardboard box is probably the finest plaything any child can ever have. In short, we don't pander to the old stereotypes about kids, but we're too lazy (and possibly well-informed, having ourselves been children in an experimental era) to go all rigidly PC on our kids either.

Mostly, the kids get to choose their own path. We just try to make sure they've got lots of interesting choices available to them.

Now, for my two boys, the path-choosing thing led to both of them building guns out of lego before they could actually talk. Seriously. The first thing Elder Son ever built, when we got him his own bucket of that clunky, over-sized toddler-lego stuff, was a stack of eight short blocks, with one long block sticking over the top. He ran around the house pointing it at everybody, making pssk-chew! and pyew! pyew! noises, and there was no bloody mistaking the fact that we were being blown to bitty pieces by his ray-gun, or whatever weapon it was meant to be.

I quite liked that. Particularly because Natalie had been solidly adamant on her "no toy guns" rule. I did tell her that I thought it was a waste of time, but she didn't believe me... right up until the kid who could barely say "mum" and "dad" shot her full of imaginary death-beams with his Lego blaster. After that, she kinda caved in. And a good thing too, or I couldn't now indulge in the supreme joy of massacreing my offspring with a super-sized waterblaster every summer...

In other words, the boys did Boy Things. Sure, they also played with all kinds of 'dolls' (including wine corks, cutlery, pieces of food...) They both like music, and both spent a lot of time dancing happily when they were small. The Younger Son quite likes to get involved with the cooking. But fundamentally, they did Boy stuff.

The Mau-Mau... well, we had a houseful of leftover toddler toys for her. And heaps of toddler clothing. All of it was for boys, more or less, insofar as toddler stuff is ever differentiated... but we didn't figure that mattered at all. And so, in her early days, the Mau-Mau wore -- pretty much what the boys wore. And she played with the things the boys used to play with, yep.

But... the way she played was different. And her first word - it wasn't "Mum," or "Dad". It was "shoe". Followed very quickly by the plural, "shoes". And as soon as she got old enough to express a preference, she wanted pink stuff. Lots and lots of pink stuff.

She's nearly four now, and the trend has not abated. In fact, it's reaching something of an ugly crisis point. The Mau-Mau is a cute little creature, but she's smaller than her brothers, and being unable to use force to get her own way, she's resorting to emotional manipulation.

This is extremely unpleasant. The boys both went through brief stages of crap like "I'm not your friend any more", and the Younger Son has delivered the inevitable "I hate you!" line in a fit of temper. Elder Son had massive tanties from age two through to age four.

But in both cases, it's been unsubtle, and not particularly well orchestrated or planned, and with patience and firmness and solid boundaries, we got through it all. The boys are open about what they want. If they don't get it, they might grizzle, but that's about it. And if/when they get angry - fine, they get angry. If they overdo it, they get sent away to cool off. Then they come back. So much for that.

The Mau-Mau... yeah.

Neither Natalie nor myself likes emotional manipulation. And to see it becoming a mainstream approach from the daughter is disquieting. To an extent, I'm sure it's being reinforced through her interactions at daycare with other little ones. But how is it becoming her go-to position?

The slightest bump or injury... sometimes they're nothing at all, as it should be. But if she's in the mood, that tiny bump can become a gigantic trauma, with the full range of tears and horrors and wails. Any perceived slight from a brother becomes the greatest outrage of all time, and she performs to the peak of her ability in the hopes that someone will visit punishments upon the brother in question. Natalie and I are now literally at the point where first instinct, when the Mau-Mau howls, is to disregard it completely. (Fortunately, the parental ear is a finely tuned thing. If she really had cause to howl, we'd hear it and know.)

A performance of "but I don't WANT to eat my dinner and your cruelty in insisting that I must is only matched by the viciousness of the Spanish Inquisition, you heartless filth!" includes streams of very real tears, and howls, subsiding quickly into a very prolonged wordless whimpering -- the sort of thing you'd expect from a beaten dog, licking its wounds -- and accusing stares that can last anywhere up to half an hour. That is, unless either parent loses patience and sends her off to calm down, which is the usual result.

And that's the thing, isn't it? We're not reinforcing this shit. It gets ignored as long as humanly possible, and at best, it results in temporary banishment. It doesn't get her out of anything. It doesn't gain her anything.

It isn't as though she doesn't get positive reinforcement elsewhere. She gets her cuddles, and her quality time. She gets books read to her, and we make things together, and do all kinds of stuff. When her behaviour is good, she gets rewarded immediately and clearly.

And yet the awful, manipulative stuff continues.

Then there's the clothing thing. We've tried exposing her to the positive girl image stuff. She's got Dora the Explorer. She's got all kinds of gender-neutral Doctor Seuss. But you know what sticks with her? The fucking princess bullshit, of course.

She has one 'princess' Wii game. She has one pink 'magic mirror' that says princessy stuff when you press a button. There are some pink foofy dresses, yes. And I suspect she's seen some princessy crap here and there at daycare, and at other houses, etc. But the magic word 'princess' is astonishingly powerful, and the clothing...

... I hurried her dressing the other morning. Looked into her room, found her shimmying into a feather-weight pink summer dress with thin shoulder straps. Outside, it was 2C. (That's about 36F). So I told her she needed leggings, and a warm jumper.

The Mau-Mau instantly burst into tears. "But I want to be beautiful," she howled, clutching her totally inappropriate non-winter frock.

Fuck me. Where did that come from?

Naturally, I told her she was beautiful no matter what she wore. (And if there's a man alive who doesn't recognize where this situation is leading to the grown-up version of the Mau-Mau, then he's gayer than Tom Cruise and more clueless than Stephen Conroy) And I pointed out how cold it was, etc... but the damage was done.

When did she decide "beautiful" was something to aspire to? She's not even four years old yet, for fuck's sake. Who told her that "beautiful" had any fucking relationship to the clothing she wears? Half her gear is still hand-me-down rough-and-tumble toddler-wear!

I'm unspeakably furious about this, and I'm not sure I should be. I can accept that girls and boys differ on a fundamental level. I accept that they think differently. And yet this seems to me such an invasive, unpleasant piece of mind-control: someone, somehow has convinced my tiny, lovely daughter that she needs to be 'beautiful'. and that in order to be 'beautiful' she has to wear very specific kinds of clothing.

If that's true -- if there's been some kind of social act, some sort of indoctrination, inculcation and conditioning, then I genuinely want to go postal.

But what if it's not that? I trust the daycare situation. The woman who runs it is amazing, wonderful, fabulous. She's looked after both boys, and now the girl, and all three of them idolize her. I'm sure, of course, that like Natalie and I she's prone to using the word 'beautiful' when the Mau-Mau primps and poses, yes. But I'm equally sure that she would never permit or encourage this fetishizing of the concept of 'beautiful', nor imprint on any of her charges the idea that 'beautiful' came from the clothing they wear. And obviously, as I trust the daycare situation, the home situation is even more free of this stuff. I mean, for fuck's sake: I'm the dad who's proud of his Godzilla-loving daughter, right?

So... what if it isn't socialisation at all? What if this is down deeper, closer to the genetic stuff? What if my response to this sort of thing from my daughter is as ridiculous as Natalie's feelings towards the boys and their toy guns?

There's heresy for you. Naomi Wolf created a huge stir with The Beauty Myth, which (in its early versions) came nearly paranoid-close to positing an outright conspiracy among men to foster the 'myth of beauty', and to use it as a means of controlling women. (She modified some of the more paranoiac lines from the introduction in later editions; I know this because I got into a load of trouble quoting from the introduction to the 2nd edition - the copy I own - in an argument with a bunch of True Believer Feministas from the US.) Wolf offered nearly three hundred pages to argue that the whole concept of beauty was a social construct, and a deliberate imposition.

And while I didn't accept the 'conspiracy' thesis, I did accept the idea that beauty is socially constructed, and the effect of that construction on women is disempowering, and negative.

So now what? I mean, really -- now what?

This morning, I lost patience as we walked out to the car. The Mau-Mau had suffered some imaginary slight in the process of getting ready to leave, and she'd begun the Great Whimper, complete with tears and bottom lip and foot-dragging. I didn't have time for it, so as I passed her, I said: "Princesses don't cry, do they?"

There was a pause. I stopped, and caught her eye.

She slowly shook her head.

"Good," I said. "If princesses don't cry, what are you doing?"

She straightened up, and climbed into the car without another word.

I think I hate myself.

D'you Ever Feel Like This?

...because I sure as hell do.

Cartoon snarfed from here: http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/Tweeting/images/heller.jpg

The "Nigger Problem"...

...is definitely NOT what you might think!

No, it's actually a fascinating insight into the persistence of memes. You see, the Mau-Mau has been in two separate day-care spots now. And at one of them, somehow, she's picked up an old, old rhyme. I'm sure you know it:

Eenie meanie minie mo

Catch a nigger by the toe

If he squeals let him go

Eenie meanie minie mo

The first time Natalie and I heard that from the Mau-Mau, we both nearly choked. First, of course, neither of us uses the word 'nigger'. But second... it's really not part of the Australian vocabulary to any real extent. We've got plenty of racist terms of our own: "coon", "boong", "abo", "road-patch"... dozens more. 'Nigger' is a very rare part of the vernacular here, and it's never had the same pejorative qualities, the same explosive power that it does in the US. You can go a damned long time without seeing or hearing it here.

So... where the blazes did the Mau-Mau get it?

Of course, that wasn't our first thought. The first reaction was: how can we get her to change that without making a big fuss? She's three years old. She doesn't have any ability to understand the sort of thing she's saying, so innocently. But she's a cranky, rebellious three - and if we make a big to-do out of the word, she will save it up and start using it when she's angry, and wants to insult someone... and that's exactly what we don't want.

We've been gently urging her towards the "tiger" version of the rhyme -- simply interrupting her when she says "nigger", and telling her she got it wrong. Of course, she's been trying to tell us that we've got it wrong, and that her friend Xxxxxx who taught it to her (and who happens to be about six years old) definitely said "nigger". So we're telling her that Xxxxxx and the others have got it wrong too... and we'll keep on with that tactic until the Mau-Mau is old enough to understand concepts like racism.

But in the meantime... isn't it amazing that a thing like this rhyme lives on? It's not a rhyme adults teach their kids. It's a thing that goes from kid to kid to kid, sidling between generations a year at a time in schoolyards and kindergartens and playgroups. I've heard both my sons bring home from school stupid little rhymes that I recall from my childhood, and it continues to amaze and surprise me. The implication is that there's this... culture of childhood, this collection of verbal and somatic artifacts that travels between children, and pretty much only children, and it can persist more or less unchanged for decades. Maybe even longer.

Nat and I will eventually convince the Mau-Mau that there's no good in using the word "nigger" in her little rhyme. But by that time, more kids will have heard it, and memorised it, and passed it on to still more... and I suppose there will probably be small children trying to "catch a nigger by the toe" long after I'm dead.

Which is a weird thought.

Now... if you've noticed that posts around here are a bit infrequent these days, just take it that I'm flat out. Because it's true. I'm stealing time right now... should be cleaning, laundering, working with the boys, reading to the Mau-Mau, prepping dinner, practicing sword technique... Oh, yes, that last one: I've been upgraded to a live sword now. No more iaito work for me. I'm practising with a full length, full-weight, viciously sharp battlefield-style sword. Scary, but good fun as long as I stay well away from the kids and the dog. Zombies, beware!

Where was I? Oh yes. Sword practice. Writing -- half a dozen projects on the boil. And other stuff. Exercise. Paperwork. Endless. No time for much of anything. So I post here when I can.

In other news? Admire this cute image:

Note the hyper-trendy footwear. I found some cheap-ass dinosaur slippers at the local crapola store. Bought 'em, brought 'em home, told the Mau-Mau they were her new Godzilla Slippers. Instant response = one superdelighted child. She's been stomping around, roaring and destroying Tokyo ever since. Best four or five bucks I've spent in months...

Day On The Town

Finally! The first free Saturday (mostly) for the family in what seems like six months. Probably no more than eight to ten weeks, really, but it feels longer.

It wasn't entirely free, of course. Had a bloke deliver a load of firewood in the morning, so we had to be home for that. I simply can't keep up, using the chainsaw -- it's so rare to get any time without children underfoot, and I find that children + chainsaw is a really poor mix. Particularly as I'm careful to wear hearing protection, so I have exactly zero chance of monitoring the little bastards while I'm trying to disassemble a deadfall for the family firewood heap...

And since we had to stick around for Firewood Guy, I ducked down to Scottsdale to get some cash, and remembered we were out of bread and milk. Oh, and when I got home it was time to run the pump. And feed the chickens, which meant tying up the dog, which was good because he was still tied up when Firewood Guy arrived, so he didn't try to 'help' us unload the firewood... stupid dog. You'd think after the first five-kilo lump of seasoned eucalypt bounced off his scone he'd figure out that trying to catch flying billets of firewood is a mug's game. Stupid dog.

Anyway, after that we launched the Mighty Earth King, loaded the whole family aboard, and headed for the bright lights of Launceston. By the way: that's pronounced "Laun-cess-ton", for those of you with enough Brit culture to think it might be "launston". And in any case, the point is moot because Tasmanians are just like mainlanders in terms of nicknaming things: it's "Lonnie".

...and in short order, we stopped. Threw Elder Son out of the car. Made him wait on the roadside in the rain until I conferred with Younger Son to ascertain exactly what it was Elder Son was doing that made him repeatedly scream "STOP IT!" Sent Younger Son into the very back seat of the Earth King (an option Younger Son loves) so that Elder Son could be isolated on an edge seat in the middle, out of reach of any siblings.

Fuck, I hate that shit. What is it about being a kid that makes it necessary to find ways to piss off the sibling next to you? I should take to carrying shoes in the front of the car just so I can heave them over my shoulder at appropriate intervals.

Anyway. We made it to Lonnie. Rainy, cold, dark day -- and the legendary "Launceston Mist" was in place. Launceston is at the bottom of the Tamar River Valley, and in winter, for whatever reason, air quality plummets. When you come over the crest of the hills around the town, you can see this long, low cloud lying upon the place. Sometimes it's largely fog. Yesterday, from the bluish tint, there was a metric shitload of woodsmoke in it. The Council is perpetually trying to battle winter wood-heaters: with smoke inspectors, and wood-stove buybacks, and plans to cushion the cost of installing electric stuff, and rules about insulation and so forth. Meanwhile, the wood heater afficionados point the finger at Forestry Tasmania and various burn-offs around the place.

Whoever is to blame: in winter, you can just about cut the air around Launceston with a cheese fork.

Big day in town:

• new fiddle for the Younger Son, much to his delight. He's been putting in the hard yards in practise, and he's done a little growing, so he's earned an upgrade and an upsize. Must say, the new fiddle sounds much nicer.
• Visit to the secondhand bookstore. Why am I constitutionally incapable of just handing old books over to the Salvos? I don't need more books, do I? Ahhh, who am I kidding? I always need more books.
• Groceries
• Obscure batteries for a range of offbeat devices, including the dog-collar and its remote.
• minor odds and sods of clothing...
• new music for me -- something from Marrakech that looked interesting
• new Wii game for Nat: Wii Music, which seems to fit her recent gameplay

...and the great treat of the day: Ice Age 3. In 3d.

Oh, lucky me.

Actually, it wasn't as dire as I expected, even though the theatre was packed with families and munchkins. (Something to do with the rain and the cold, I expect.) I admit, I'd thought that the Potterflick would siphon away some of that action, but I guess I was wrong. It wasn't too awful, anyhow. Simon Pegg's "Buck Weasel" character was good for a few laughs, and it was interesting seeing this new 3d process up close and personal.

Truth? I don't really give a f__k about the 3d thing. It doesn't add anything significant to my filmgoing experience. I don't much like wearing the stoopid glasses (and they kept falling off the Mau-Mau's button nose) and the novelty of a sense of depth on the screen doesn't really keep my interest for very long. I can't see a reason why this wave of 3d mania should last any longer than the previous ones... but then, I'm an appalling judge of what people will like, especially when it comes to fundamentally stupid memes, fads and crazes. Who knows? Maybe we'll be stuck seeing everything through Clark Kent-ish 3d specs from now on.

So, we finished our marvelous movie experience, and shambled off through the rain to the Mighty Earth King. This time I just separated the kids from the outset, and we made it home just fine.

Rain, wood fire... new books to read... new game for Nat... tired kids... sometimes winter evenings are cosy. This one wasn't bad. I made gourmet burgers for dinner, with spinach and rocket and ripe tomatoes and cheese, and seasoned mince burgers and bacon (and a chili/lime/salt marinated chicken fillet for Natalie) on toasted hunks of ciabatta... all good. Then the kids went off to bed, and Natalie and I opened a bottle of wine and sat down to watch the rest of the new Torchwood mini-series thing.

I've had worse days.

Small Steps

Right. Well, I've had the meeting with the psychologist who carried out Elder Son's 'Formal Assessment' at the behest of the school and the Ed Dept. No great surprises: he's very high in verbal, in abstract reasoning, perceptual stuff, not quite so high in other aspects - and a little slow in what they call 'processing speed'. I'm assured that's not uncommon in kids at the sharp end: essentially, he's a deep thinker, not a fast thinker. That would reflect his mother more than me; I've met people who are faster thinkers than I am, definitely, but not every day.

So the prognosis is that yes, he's a clever cookie and yes, the Ed Dept and the school have to start thinking of ways to work with him on that basis. And that's a good thing, sure.

But -- it's not like the school is overloaded with resources and available people. So whatever we work out, it's unlikely to take a whole lot of workload off my shoulders.

I must say, the assessing officer was a piece of work. She's very smart, highly articulate, and extremely passionate about what she does. It was a genuine relief to talk with her. I never wanted to be the kind of 'in-your-face' parent who insists the kid is a little genius and demands special consideration... but it was heartbreaking watching the boy's face drop every morning at school time, and it was depressing to see the books he brought home as assigned reading.

There was one morning... we'd been reading Tennyson, I think. Just to enjoy it this time. But he turned to me with this puzzled look in his eyes and said "Why do you think they're still teaching about the 'magic E that makes the vowel say its name?"

I said: "Well, because it's useful to help people read."

And he said, without any kind of rancour or condescension: "Yes, but they've been teaching it to us for three years now. Don't they realise we know?"

And at that point, I had to scratch around for a diplomatic way of saying that no, not every kid in your class has worked it out yet, nor will.

I settled for a sports analogy: reminded him that he's not the fastest runner nor the best football kicker in his class. Told him how some kids are better at some things than others, and it didn't make them better or worse as people. And I was lucky: he didn't point out that the fast kids are allowed to run just as fast as they want, and he didn't point out that the sporting kids are allowed to join teams and play games with the bigger kids... he just accepted the idea and left it there.

But obviously, I didn't forget.

Primary schooling for me was a miserable exercise in painful fucking time-wasting. So, for that matter, was most of secondary school. Natalie had much the same experience. Worse: even though they noticed and knew that I was good -- really, really good -- with language, nobody really paid attention to that until I was in year twelve, and even then...

Schools have inched forward since then. When I was eight, the Qld dept of education assessed my reading and verbal comprehension as being off their charts. (The charts went to 'reading age 18'. There was nothing higher.) Then they sent me back to my Year 3 classroom to read picture-books in a circle. Now, even though it's taken over a year to get there -- at least there is a formal assessment system in place, and a recognition of the obligation of the school system to kids at the high end of the curve as well as the middle and the low.

The talk with the psychologist was a huge relief, a weight off my shoulders. I've felt bad about pushing the school. I know how undersupplied and underfunded schools are, and I know how damned hard teachers work. The last thing they need is an irritating parent demanding some kind of special treatment. But at least with this piece of paper in hand, the school now has the ammunition to ask the ed dept for help -- and I have a tangible justification for my attitude.

It's already improving. I've had the Elder Son learning to type here at home, and when he passed 20 words a minute, I decided he might as well do al his English and his writing that way. The school has been really good: he's been allowed to type there, too. Better still, the assessing officer tells me it's an excellent approach, allowing him to utilise his thinking skills instead of frustrating him with the trials of penmanship. (We're still going to work him through cursive script, of course. But for actual work, he can type. And that makes him happy, and produces more work which is also more accurate, detailed and thoughtful.)

There will be more. I have to meet with the school people again, and we have to try to construct some kind of effective programme for him on school time and school resources. This isn't going to be easy, or simple. But my kids are not going to spend their childhoods hating every day they have to set foot in school, bored beyond belief.

That is not going to happen.

Minor Miscalculation

Women and birthdays. Just... putting the two together like that is enough to make grown men shudder, if they have any sense at all.

Natalie has never been particularly sensitive about her age. But neither has she made much fuss of birthdays, and she's been kind of snarky about the big fuss made over things like 21sts and 30ths and so forth. In general, I arrange for the kids to find cards and presents for her, and she gets a bit of a lie-in and something nice for tea, and a bit of free time and a cake, and everybody goes away happy.

So. Natalie turned 40 in February. Very nicely, I might add. She still fits her wedding dress of fourteen years ago. Both of us have lines we didn't back then, and streaks of silver here and there, but on the other hand, as I mentioned quite forcefully to a friend just a few day ago, we have three children. Silver is a thing you can earn.

Anyway, I took a look at that whole '40' thing, and I thought long and hard. And in the end, I made a judgement call, and kept it all very low key indeed. Because I figured -- you know, she's not such a one for birthdays anyway, and if ever a birthday was going to give a woman pause, it would be the 40th.

Unfortunately, the judgement call was out. By quite a lot. Remember that Harmison first ball in the last Ashes series? Yeah, it was that far out. Second slip. Apparently, what I should have done was organise a large and thronging crowd for cocktails, music, barbecue, and roistering.

There's a thing, right there. As anybody who knows my wife will point out, cocktails and roistering, noise and crowds are not on the list of things she's likely to sing about when confronted by a family of Austrians trying to escape the Nazis. In fact, she rather goes out of her way to avoid such shenanigans. (And escaping Austrians - as does any sensible person.)

Thus it was that I have to profess myself extraordinarily grateful to Uphill Neighbour Mad Mike the Historian and his marvellous wife Eddy. They just sort of... decided... that there Would Be A Party. And be damned if it was July.

See, I could never have done that. If I'd tried, it would simply have been 'too late', as it is for every husband who gets the signals mixed up like that. And it would have been 'too late' for the next ten years or so, I reckon. But Mike is a man of Certain Energies, and so invitations were made, and food was prepared, and the very fine House Uphill was made ready...

... actually, it was a pretty decent party. Mike cooked his not inconsiderable arse off, providing a range of tasty Greek main courses. Anna the Wondermum brought her brood, and also provided the most amazingly beautiful Trad Swedish gingerbread house, complete with Trad Swedish M&M decorations, and there were desserts and lemon squares and kids underfoot and wine and bubbly, and all manner of good things. Of course, the weather was shabby which kept the Launceston musical contingent in check... but that just meant there was more tasty stuff to go around.

And yours truly prepared a remarkable array of toothsome hors d'ouevres, and has therefore hopefully redeemed himself to a degree.

Therein endeth the lesson, gentlemen: if you've screwed the pooch and missed a birthday you should have feted, best hope you have an emphatic, energetic Greek-cooking comrade to bail you out...