Nature, Not Nurture
You know that thing where a baby cries and cries and cries for ages and then… He stops. It’s quiet. Oh, thank Christ. He’s asleep, finally asleep. Your shoulders slowly relax. Your jaw unclenches. Then he starts crying again. He was toying with you. Cruelty is innate. On the other hand, yesterday, New Kid broke wind [...]
Enter New Kid
So, in childbirth news, this thing on the left arrived a week ago. This is New Kid. He’s a boy and, added to our six-year old girl, he completes the set. Sadly, he has no beard – even at a week and a day, he’s already a disappointment to his father. Puberty seems a long [...]
Ten Minutes To Wapner
Daughter just asked about a touristy, medieval-village thing we visited about a year ago. She’d like to go again as she’s sad we didn’t get to go inside Number 8, ‘where they did the knitting’ but she did enjoy having lunch in Number 10. She’s referring to the numbers on the visitor’s map we used [...]
Gandhi Goes To The Naughty Corner
My daughter, who is now five and a half (definitely not five), has discovered non-violent protest. When she’s aggrieved about something – or possibly just stropy – she now walks really, really slowly. And, clever girl that she is, she tends to engage in this disruptive behaviour when we need to actually go somewhere – [...]
Antsy
For the last two and a half weeks, I have been family guy. I’ve been spending even more time with my little girl to keep her reassured during the lead-up to starting big school. She actually started this morning and it all went remarkably smoothly – there were no tears from her and even my [...]
Surviving Walt
Made it through my second Disneyland Paris tour of duty. You can forget about firemen or soldiers fighting wars – until you can face down a huge, trundling, simpleton of a woman trying to push her way through the crowds to be at the front for when Pooh Bear’s float goes by, you don’t know [...]
The place where dreams are manufactured
As long as they’re plastic dreams, wrapped in sparkly cynicism and tied with a big, money-grasping, bow. Yes, I’m off to Disneyland Paris. Four glorious days of that rictus rodent gurning and waving with his podgy, gloved hands at me. Four days of Heston Blumenthal prices for sub-fairground fast food. Four days of educationally sub-normal [...]
B-U-S-T-E-D
Last night, my daughter, now four, asked me, “why do you and mum sometimes talk with letters and not words?” The jig’s up. She might not be able to spell, but she knows that something’s going on and gets all watchful and sneaky. A new system is required. I’m for Pig-Latin. Afty-cray ittle-lay rat-bay. Ix-nay [...]
The stuff of nightmares
My daughter owns a weird, decapitated head. Its purpose is to provide a blank canvas for all sorts of girlie make-up application practices. It has played this part for the last year or so and has worn many a combination of maquillage although, as a manly man, I am unsure of the exact classification of [...]
A nascent talent
My daughters turned four the other day – a baby no more. She celebrated in fine style with much merriment and sugary treats. She also drew a splendid picture of me. A fine likeness (not that most of you know) and one that now holds pride of place on the fridge door. She’s captured me, [...]
keep looking »Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and debase my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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