Being Awake

Sleep is a strange thing, or at least getting to sleep is. I used to think it was just the case of jumping over some hurdle that separates consciousness from unconsciousness, but I've since found out the brain slowly descends through a steady series of different conscious states; it's not simply a case of falling asleep.

Last night, my brain folded its arms and stamped its feet and refused to alter from any state other than fully awake. So I experienced that sort of netherworld that goes on when the time at night switches to single digits. It's amazing how much you become perspectively aware of all those tiny little noises that normally you'd just not hear.

And when, you're having difficulties in sleeping, do you get the voices? No - not the ones telling you to unleash havoc upon humankind with an AK47 and an egg-wisk. I don't hear those anymore, not since I gave up smoking dope, which was now a lifetime ago, even consigned to the pre-Poppy days. I am kidding. Poppy was my supplier. No, I am kidding. My sleep-deprived brain does not seem to be working properly, so all this may not make much sense. Back to those voices - they're sort of mumbling voices that never say anything intelligible or that you can make out clearly. Like listening to a party that's happening in a room several rooms separated from the one you're in. Not that I get invited to may parties these days. But the voices - I think I'm drifting off to sleep and these voices make me feel all warm and cuddly but there's something about them that means I can never completely concede to the comforting darkness of slumber. I wonder what they are? Perhaps, I hear dead people. I don't think so.

I've always had this insomnia thing, but like the career of Take That it comes and goes. I first suffered in my teens; night after night I'd lay thoroughly awake in bed. I can remember more four in the mornings around that time that I perhaps ought to. Strange, isn't it? When you're a youngster the day stops at around ten and then starts again around seven. Only when you're older do you become aware of those silly little hours, especially the totally useless ones of three and four in the morning. Three in the morning is the hour most people die. Which proves its uselessness, really.

The one gloriously failure of sleep I can remember was one damn bloody awful night that began one Tuesday and ended on Bonfire Night. I was going through a teenage angsty stage in my fictional tastes and was gorging on horror tome upon horror tome. Stephen King's, James Herbert's, Clive Barker's. Anything suitably dark and nasty and bloody and gutsy. My current read at the time was The Rats. Which is about some rats. Who are dark and nasty and bloody and gutsy. Although I was quite happy to read the book, I would not have it in my room, just in case (and I am not kidding here) The Rats someone escaped the pages of the story during the night and feasted on my ample boy-flesh. Honestly, I am not kidding. I think I was fourteen.

I was about two-thirds through The Rats when my dad informed me my bed was now the place for me to be, so I abandon the book in the lounge, climbed into my pjs then snuggled into my bed, thoroughly expecting a decent night's experience of delicate slumber. Five minutes into the night my dad exploded into my room, informed me that I'd left some $hit downstairs, and dumped Mr Herbet's supernatural, rattus rattus musings on my chest of drawers. Of course, for the rest of the night I was forced to stay awake, as staying awake easily thwarts all those entities with supernatural leanings. I'd certainly no wish to end up as several thousand pellets of rat pooh.

The next day I raced through to the end (and that horrible ending scene of some unlucky dude being nibbled to death by millions of the hirsute little buggers), and secreted the book in my schoolbag in readiness for its return to the school library.

Despite this experience, it took be a further six years before I realised I ought not to be reading horror stories as I did not perhaps possess a suitable temperament.

Plus, I eventually realised how ridiculous my fears were concerning a razor-toothed death by thousands of fictitious and over-carniverous rats. It didn't matter that the book was in my bedroom - the rats could easily gnaw through my bedroom door and devour me anyway, so what was the point of my worrying. Bizarre.

Last night I think I got to sleep around five and awoke around half past eight. So most of the today I have felt utter knackered, having flown my spaceship to a completely different planet. Urgh.

Colin is not helping. I expected me phoning the lady Sarah would stop him badgering me about phoning her. It has, but now he is badgering me about the "date". Did I require any refreshers on the ladyfolk? Do I know all the tricks, such as getting the lady to talk about herself as that is (apparently) what ladies like to do (my experiences of Sarah suggest this may not be an insurmountable hurdle by any measure) ? I've told Colin that I've no concerns over my chatty-uppy technique - not that I have such ulterior motives. I'm only meeting Sarah as she does seem inexplicably keen to expand our acquaintance beyond that initial eight minute fault. Besides, I like to consider myself the gentleman, and if a lady expresses an interest in my good self, then who am I to refuse?

But that's in the future, albeit an intermediate one. Tonight I am taking my son and his newly-confirmed girlfriend to a very informal meal at a decent Thai restaurant I know. Does this sound strange? I don't know. But it seems a nice thing to do, so I'm doing it. Seems reason enough to me.

I'm in a mood

Why is it, when you say 'I'm in a mood', is it automatically assumed it's a mood with a negative connatation? Does it say something, or anything, about the human psyche? 'He's in a mood' or 'She's in one of her moods' or 'he's a bit of a moody git?' - all mean *bad* moods. But it's a Humpty-Dumpty conundrum:

Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again

So where, in that rhyme, does it mention Humpty-Dumpty being some freakish egg-human hybrid? Nowhere, and with good reason as Humpty-Dumpty was a cannon (according to some, others say the rhyme is a riddle, to which the answer is, an egg). So when it is said someone is in a mood, why does it have to be a bad mood? Surely, probablity-wise, someone is more likely to be in a good mood? Ah, that may be it then. As good moods are more frequent than bad ones, a mood is only noticed when it is a bad one?

Anyway, I'm in a mood.

There's this boy in our house. I've really no idea who he is, although he suspiciously resembles Gabriel, my middle son (who is fourteen in three weeks). But here's the thing: Gabriel spends most of his time stomping around the place, keeping himself largely to himself, hiding in his bedroom doddling and scribbling and embarking on extensive art projects that never quite get finished (he has a fetchingly decent collage of a tiger on the wall to the side of his bed; or rather half a tiger as whilst the top half is painstakingly realised in 1cm squares of coloured card, the bottom half dwindles out into basic pencil strokes) whilst listening to stuff like The Offspring and Sum 41 and Bowling for Soup.

But this Gabe-doppelganger positively struts around the place, a warming smile upon his face, a song in his heart for any weary soul he may encounter, and a trio of tiny cartoon birds circling his head and alighting upon his meaty shoulders. This creature even made me a cup of coffee this morning.

So why this transformation?

Gabe & Lian, sitting in a tree.
K. I. S. S. I. N. G.
First comes love.
Then comes co-habitation.
Then comes a little half Myanmarese-baby in a baby-carriage.

It is now official. Gabriel and Lian are boyfriend and girlfriend. Even though they had previously exchanged Valentine's Day gifts and Christmas gifts, Lian would never acknowledge that their friendship seemed to have elevated beyond really good friends. But now a further exchange - that of saliva - seems to have done the trick.

To commemorate this, I'm taking them both out for a very informal dinner tomorrow evening; just a local pub or something. I've asked Gabriel as to the description of Lian's favourite type of eatery, but he had no idea. Hopeless.

Speaking of which...

I finally got to ringing that number Colin had foisted upon me, if only to stop him pestering me about it on a half-hourly basis. I didn't really know what to expect, and what I was going to say (or rather, how I was going to say I wasn't going to pursue the matter, but thank you caller for your interest).

The lady who answered my call seemed very perky upon hearing my voice, which instantly surprised me as of course, I had not made one single favourable impression during my moribund speed-dating experience (nor had I received one). She said that she was wondering if I would call at all, then slightly chastised me in not mentioning to her at the time I had a brother. She certainly could gas: Before I'd even had chance to return her opening gambit, she'd apologised for getting my home phone number and she hoped she didn't come across as a stalker.

I didn't even know her name. Now it was my turn to apologise - I said to her, thinking quickly and tactfully, that I was sorry but I'd met quite a few people that evening and I couldn't place her from the sound of her voice. She did soundly ever-so-slightly offended by that (or it may just have been my imagination) but she did tell me her name was Sarah, which helpethed not.

She was up in my area over the course of next week, working just south of Nottingham, and wondered whether I'd be interested in meeting up for a drink and catching up?

Catching up? I'd only met this person (and for about eight minutes) a week ago, and they wanted to catch up? This whole exchange was beginning to freak me out a little, and I almost put the phone down there and then. But then she has my number. So I guess I was cornered.

So I had one of those moments where my brain and mouth dis-engage and words fall from my lips without my brain having any say in the matter. The words were: Yeah, okay. That sounds good to me.

Sarah - remaining suspiciously enthusiastic - said that obviously she'd leave the arrangements up to me as I knew the area (and she doesn't?), and that Tuesday night would probably be the best night for her as she'd obviously be a bit tired on Monday due to the drive (?). She then made a joke about me obviously not picking a nightclub as the rendevous point as she knew how I felt about dancing (???).

So I promised I'd ring her over the weekend and we said our goodbyes.

I told Colin I'd rung the number and he asked what happened. When I told him I'd gained a potential date he smiled like Jack Nicholson and slapped me too hard on the back. Nice one, big bro, he added. When I told him I was a little unsure as Sarah sounded as though she was far too familiar with my life, he just shrugged it off and told me to take it as a positive pointer towards some genuine interest in me.

Perhaps he's right. A date's a date, and I haven't had one of those for far, far too long. And the more I think about it the more enthusiastic about it I become.

Then the kisses seemed to ... merge

It's finally official: I labour under the threat of redundancy. Cleverly, the company I work for used the smokescreen of the massive, mind-buggering losses announced by a certain Really Big Sounding bank to announce its own, sizeable losses (but not anywhere in the region of those massive banking losses) out into the public domain, causing barely a murmur on the Richter scale of fiscal calamity, but of course several San-Francisco-raizing earthquakes amongst the workforce. We've had most of the post-mortems already, and endless water-cooler discussions (even though we have no water coolers) as to who will be first out of the door.

The reality is we don't really know what exactly is going to happen and we are unlikely to for some time. Our whole business is going to be analysed and steps will be taken to ensure redundancies will be kept to a minimum and only where absolutely there is no alternative. Plus they will be voluntary in the first instance. We shall see.

The first day of Lent passed successfully, in neither that alcohol nor flesh nor fowl passed my lips. Breakfast was a cheese sandwich and a can of red bull purchased from the beguilingly odd man at the petrol station nearest my (current - ha!) place of work. I couldn't be bothered with lunch, just a packet of those baked crisps and a diet coke. Once home, I chiselled some quorn mince out of the freezer, stuck it in a pan with a splash of water until it had de-frosted, then chucked in onion, kidney beans, mushrooms and a sprinkle of chopped chillies, then a jar of sweet chilli cooking sauce. The results were blissful.

Shared my meal with the house's other vegetarian, and as I've now returned to the land where people speak more than cordially to each with my eldest, I gauged it not too risky to broach something that had been simmering at the back of my mind for a few weeks now. So I said to Andrew I'm sorry to bring this up but it's something that's still annoys me and I'd like to talk about it. Andrew pulled his dinner a little closer to him, and asked what.

So in I jumped again: It's about you telling Mr Aldridge that I was violent towards you, I said. Andrew immediately reddened - and not because of the spicy quality of his food, obviously. He mumbled something about not wanting to talk about it. But I persisted. You do realise how much that hurt me, don't you?

Andrew stopped eating and instead started toying, folding kidney beans into the mince with his fork. He gave an almost imperceptible few nods. Silent mode engaged!

Well, I said, feeling it wasn't worth labouring the point. As long as you realise what you did wasn't at all fair, I'll try to put it aside. Fearing silent mode may be on permanent mode, I switched tact and asked how his love life was going.

Andrew semi-jerked, almost as though I'd slapped him. He frowned and asked what I meant, his face now matching his meal for the quality of its red hues. I said, nothing - I just know you're happier when you've that special someone in your life.

Andrew picked out a mushroom and bit it in half. If anything happens, it happens, he said, his cheeks still radiating. I'm not chasing it, I've more important things to think about.

Have you considered going back to Scouts? I suggested. You did jack it in rather abruptly when Kevin appeared on the scene. It was something you always used to enjoy.

Andrew shook his head. I think that door's closed, he said, now I'm [pause] out. I'd prefer to spend as little time amongst people my age as I can until everyone else has learnt to grow up.

I couldn't help but notice the slightly melancholy aspect his voice adopted as he said those words. He finished his meal and imprisoned his bowl within the dishwasher. As he left the kitchen he stopped a foot shy of the door and turned around. He said: Thanks dad. I asked for what, and he said for being my dad. You didn't deserve that $hit I made up about you. I was a $hit to do that.

I told him it was okay, and he went upstairs.

This exchange put me in a good mood. Which lasted about ten minutes until Gabriel came home, walking brazenly into the house, almost thrusting the horseshoe-shaped earring that dangled from his reddened right earlobe straight in my face. Hi dad! He said, very brightly. I said Don't you Hi dad me you cheeky git.

We stood, eye-to-eye (except that to be eye-to-eye with Gabe I'd have to be sitting, and I was) for a few charged moments, then the telepathy thing happened, Gabriel's face turned into that of a ghost and his hand involuntarily rose to his right ear.

$hit, he whispered.

Who, and when? I asked.

Gabe swallowed. Lian's mum, about two hours ago, he said. But it's not my fault! I was bribed!

How, exactly, were you bribed? I asked, disdainfully. Gabriel's face regained its colour. Pretty violently as well; it was surprising his cheeks didn't pop.

Lian, he began. She said if I let her mum do it, she'd let me...

His voice trailed off and I wondered what was coming.

...kiss her.

Oh, the wicked whiley ways of woman-folk. I said, you've been with Lian a couple of months now, surely you've kissed her before now? But Gabriel shook his head. I said, didn't I? he said. We're just friends. Or we were. It's complicated.

So, she did let you kiss her? I said. I didn't want to think my son had been bribed under false pretensions. Judging by the way the sun exploded from behind his eyes, I guessed that wasn't the case. More than once, as it turned out, he said, eager to share his good news. Then the kisses seemed to ... merge.

I told him I was upset he hadn't waited as I had asked, then sent him on his way. Who am I to ruin a blissful moment such as this?

Thought about ringing Lian's mother to complain about her puncturing my little boy, but thought better of it. As Colin will no doubt tell you, I'm crap at ringing woman.

Colin The Relationship Counsellor

Last night I incurred the wrath of Gabe. I'd promised to take him to town on Saturday and get his ear pierced. Apparently I'd forgotten. This is untrue, and I told Gabriel this - I had been thoroughly willing to take him to have a needle punched through his ear on the day in question, but he wasn't around for most of the day and when I rang his mobile I heard it buzz and vibrate and sound off from the general direction of his room.

This understandably got me nowhere, in the eyes and mind of Middle-Son anyway. Lian has taken the non-appearance of a dangling horse-shoe-thingie from Gabriel's right ear personally, apparently. It is an obvious sign of his lack of commitment towards their developing relationship. Gabriel's perceived unwillingness to have a hole ripped into the soft flesh of his ear-lobe displays that he doesn't like her that much. And it's all my fault.

So I took the hit, apologised, and said I'd definitely, positively take him this Saturday. This did little to placate him, and he demanded to be taken now, although exactly where at ten to six in the evening I had no idea. When I re-iterated my decision of Saturday, Gabriel tried the tact that Lian's mother had offered to do it for him. This still failed to wash with me, so Gabriel backed-down and acquiesced.

This conversation happened within earshot of Colin, who was sat at the kitchen table wolfing done one of those weight-watcher's meals - a tuna pasta bake, I think. The fact he was washing it down with one of those over-sized cans of Stella and supplementing it with two chunky slabs of bread coated with an inch or so of Clover did not escape my notice. Nor did it my unspoken disdain.

Firstly, Colin offered to sort the earring issue himself with a needle, a pair of pliers and the stove (to heat the needle, one suspects), and secondly - once Gabe had declined option a - and most unexpectedly, he agreed with me.

In fact, I am going to record the very words here for posterity: Your dad's right, Gabe.

And what's more, he continued: You're letting Lian twist your melon a bit too much, Gabe. She's walking all over you.

Gabriel frowned and asked Colin what he meant, so Colin asked a very pertinent question: If Lian was not part of your life, would you even consider, for one moment, wearing an earring? Especially a dangling one that looks like a horse-shoe that may or may not be the Burmese- sorry, Myanmarese syllable *gay*?

Gabe thought about that, then admitted, probably not.

There's the point, continued Colin accelerating easily into full flow. She's persuading you to do things that you wouldn't normally do. Now, in this case, it isn't much of an issue, as it's only an earring, which I bet you can't even wear at school, right?

Not allowed earrings, mumbled Gabe, which was news to me. I really must pay more attention.

Colin went on: However, the real issue here is not that she's persuading you to have your ears pierced, but the fact she's pressuring you to do it on her terms - when *she* says, and she's using a little emotional blackmail on you to push you that bit further. It's good for you to wait a bit, to show her she can't just snap her fingers and you jump.

It's just an earring, said Gabe.

It's a woman, Gabe, said Colin. It's never *just* anything. What do you tell her if she says next week it's a Myanmarese tradition to have your nipples chained together? Or your head shaved and a picture of Buddha tattoed on your skull?

I'd tell her to get lost, said Gabe. But Colin didn't seem convinced. He said I bet you wouldn't. Do you love her, or are you more interested in what she keeps under her clothes?

I- blurted out Gabe, his face reddening. I raised my alertness levels, as I thought Gabe might be on the verge of tipping over into tornado mode, but the winds quickly subsided. I dunno, Gabe eventually said. I like her. I like her quite a bit.

Just be careful, is all I'm saying, concluded Colin. She isn't going to respect you if she thinks you're a pushover. Do what she says, but make sure it's done on your terms, okay?

Okay, said Gabriel.

I made an observation: You realise, Gabe, you're taking relationship advice from someone whose marriage has recently broken up?

I sort of regretted the words as soon as they left my lips, wondering how Colin would react.

But he just laughed. Well, he said, I guess your advice to Gabe would be to run away and hide somewhere and never have anything to do with woman again, ever.

And it would be good advice, I added. Colin just shook his head. He asked me if I'd rung that number yet. I told him I had not. He shook his head again. He went back to his paltry meal, and Gabe went upstairs.

Andrew appears to be extremely enthusiastic over my temporary move to vegetarianism. Even if it is purely temporary. And doesn't include Sundays as Sundays do not form part of Lent (I've checked). He claims that a month or so of an almost exclusively herbiverous diet will work wonders for me and I'll be educated upon the errors of my blood-lusting ways. I tend to think a month or so on an almost exclusively non-alcoholic diet is more likely to work the wonders for me. I've left half a bottle of Glen Ord next to the George Formby just to tempt me. If I cannot resist its single malt charms for a month than perhaps I have to consider I might have a bit of a problem.

Andrew cooked me a quorn curry for my dinner, which was perfectly nourishing but hardly a new experience for me as I've eaten quorn countless times before. Then much later we dusted off the old chess board and did a little father-son bonding over the chequered squares. And Andrew beat me for the first time ever, although the last time I played him he was about eight. In fact he beat me in all three games we played, all with interesting knight moves. I could never keep a grip on those perishing little buggers.

Shrove Tuesday

Finally, along comes a holiday I don't instantly turn my nose up at: Shrove Tuesday, which means pancake day. I'm fond of pancakes, even though I'm hopeless in making them as they always turn out a bit rubbery and stringy. My mother was the queen of pancakes, as was Poppy. Must be one of those special female knacks. Like finding something crucial and interesting - to them - to yap about just as I'm settling down to watch a film. My mother would only permit one 'filling' - a thin layer of castor sugar over which a halved orange would be squeezed. Took me beyond puberty to fathom that alternatives are possible, or even legal. I still eschew 'savoury' fillings, though. Gabriel is an advocate of sliced sausage, chunks of bacon, scrambled egg and tomato sauce - the mere thought of such gets me tasting stomach acid at the back of my throat. My favourite is peanut butter, banana and honey.

Of course Ash Wednesday follows Shrove Tuesday, signifying the start of Lent. Despite being as much of a Christian as Woody Allen I've decided I'm giving up both alcohol and meat for Lent. Nothing of course to commemorate Jesus' forty days in the wilderness, or Noah's fanciful forty days on a boat (just how *did* he find a male and a female from all 350,000 species of beetle in the middle east?); just that I (a) desperately need to lose some weight, as I'm siddling up to that dreaded fifteen-stone mark once again and (b) I'm drinking far, far too much. Just for a change. My fat cells and liver need a holiday. If I keep this up someone'll typing "liver disease", "heart disease" or "stomach cancer" into the obituary I'll never earn. And within a few years to boot.

Colin's bravado has been blown. Took a phone call for him late yesterday afternoon from the local police station. Initially there was some confusion until I cleared up the fact that yes I was Mr [T] but I was Mr Bryn [T] and not Mr Colin [T]; once I'd established I was Mr Colin [T]'s next-of-kin and that Mr Colin [T] was not present to take the call (I had no idea where he was as he wasn't at 'home' and hadn't left any details of his plans or potential whereabouts) the message was relayed to me to relay to him that 'the other party has decided not to press charges and we shall be making no further enquiries therefore we consider the matter closed.'

So I immediately set about wondering whether Colin's sleeping arrangements on Saturday evening involved a police cell.

Cooked a mild curry for dinner (nothing to elongate my culinary skills though - just fry some chicken, lob in a jar of orange gunk and simmer for fifteen minutes) for two as just me and Lukas were the only carnivores about. Sightings of Gabriel post-school seem to be becoming increasingly infrequent. I asked Lukas how his day had been and he said Miserable. With touching irony, the activity-in-vogue for his Monday P.E. lesson is to be basketball. Which of course he cannot do for a further month as a precautionary measure following his broken arm. Instead, he got to run laps around the athletic track for forty minutes whilst another couple of boys (set the same task as a punishment) sat in the long-jump sand-pit, smoked and hurled sand and abuse at him once per lap.

Colin came home around half six, blustering into the house with not-at-all disguised vigour and enthusiam. I enquired as to where he had been all day, but he just said Oh, this and that. So I delved a little more finitely and asked how the job-hunting and accomodation-hunting was jogging along. He said, to be honest Bryn, it's not looking good at all - looks as if I've made a real c0ck up of things. I've only managed to get even one semi-serious offer and that's in Bonn and I don't really fancy re-acquainting myself with our teutonic cousins. If I'm becoming a burden in any way, Bryn, just tell me to leave and I'll go, honestly.

I told him that that was not the case at all. Then I informed him of the good news - that whoever was going to press charges for whatever reason was now not going to press charges. For whatever reason. Colin looked as if taken aback for a second or two then said Cheeky Bl00dy B@stard!

So I asked for details but Colin said it was nothing, just a bit of banter than got a little out of hand, you know what it's like. I told him I didn't, and asked why the Police became involved and whether he'd seen the inside of a police cell Saturday night. Colin denied this, and said "the Police" was one of those plastic coppers i.e. Community Support Officer who was obviously a bit bored and cold and fancied a excuse to spend half-an-hour or so inside a station. It was nothing at all.

He asked me if I had phoned the number he had given me, so I said of course I hadn't. Colin asked why not and I said as far as I could remember not one single woman I'd met on our speed-dating extravaganza had made even the minimalest dent in my impressions, so I could not think of any reason why I'd ever want to see any single one of them every again.

My brother became quite animated at this. He began a(nother) monologue about my problems and my desire not to be happy. He claimed I've been unhappy for so long that I'm now frightened of the prospect of actually being happy. This was a ridiculous thing to say, and I told him so. So he said prove me wrong, ring the number. I said but I don't think ringing one of the woman I'd met on Saturday night would make me any happier, to which Colin virtually screamed: IT MIGHT!

Later, whilst thinking about this exchange, I asked myself a question. If I honestly didn't want to meet any of the woman from Saturday night, why had I kept the number?

Slumdog-Tired (And Not A Millionaire)

Today I shall mostly be knackered. Because I stayed up for most of the night watching the Oscars. I wanted Slumdog Millionaire to triumph spectacularily for no other reason than the British connection. Although I can hear Sanjeev Bhaskar's Goodness Gracious Me character insisting: Of course Slumdog Millionaire is a brilliant film! It's Indian!

This sadly is the first year I can remember since I was a twenty-something where I have not managed to see a single film of the six that were nominated. Another indicator that I ought to get out more, but I find it hard to come to terms with the 'sad b@st@rd' association of going to the cinema alone, plus the omnipresent nature of mobiles (and the selfish nature of some people who own them and think they cannot get through a ninety-minute film without someone in their lives having to contact them really, really urgently) and the loss of respect towards others (I am one of those people who gets really, really wound up if people talk during films. Not wound up enough to actually do something about it, but wound up enough to sit there seething throughout the remainder of the film. It has come to the stage now where I just don't like going to the cinema, which is a real showstopper for someone who considers himself quite the movie buff. I tend to operate on a short delay, waiting the few weeks (as it seems now) between cinema release and DVD release. Thank God I no longer have to rely on terrestial TV - "Happy New Year and welcome to 2009. And now on BBC1 - the television premiere of Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring".

Experienced a slight revenge on two of my boys for their unsympathetic response to my thumping skull experienced of Sunday morning, as half term is spend and education has returned, beckoning its skeletal fingers. This only really disheartens two of my brood, as Andrew was awake, washed, breakfasted and conservatively but not unfashionably attired by a bizarrely uncalled-for hour. Lukas and Gabriel had to be dragged like cowards to the gallows from their lovely snuggly beds, both of them shocked that for what would have be the first time ever Sunday had not been followed by another Sunday, but instead by Monday. For Lukas, it was a frenetic search for abandoned elements of P.E. kit as he has not done P.E. for almost three months, and indeed cannot do much until his arm rebuilds a bit of muscle.

A very pale Gabriel came down half-scrubbed and shabbily dressed and sat at the kitchen table staring at blank piece of lined A4 within a folder with a biro held poised - a position he didn't shift from for three whole minutes although he became increasingly fidgety. I asked him what was up and said he was supposed to do a report on the novel he had read over half term for English and he didn't know where to start. I suggested opening with a synopsis of the plot, but when Gabriel asked what a synopsis was I knew a different tactic may be in order. So I explained I thought he ought to condense the plot of the novel into about half a page. Then Gabriel said I wasn't understanding him - he hadn't even read a novel over half term. I told him he was in his own boat and I was jumping ship. I went upstairs to shave and when I came back down Gabe was on the PC hurriedly scribbling down the IMDB plot summary for Stormbreaker. I quite admired his resourcefulness.

I took the warming relations between myself and Andrew as a chance to mention the idea of a week or so's holiday in Germany around Easter for all of us. Andrew said Where's this idea come from? So I explained it was at the suggestion of Colin, which of course instantly initiated Andrew's negativity towards such a notion. He said he'd prefer a holiday where Colin failed to number amongst the participants, so would be keener on staying home. So I said this may be the last chance for all four of us to spend some quality time together, and that I expected Colin to be busy sorting out the detritous of his marriage and spending time with his girls. When this seemed to be doing nothing to sway him, I added that I'd like this to happen, so I was asking him to put himself out for a week or so for me. Andrew said Ah, the old emotional blackmail, which I thought a trifle unfair, but I think he was jesting by fifty percent. I added that perhaps he might find Cologne has a fantastic gay scene, but I think by Andrew's expression I'd just blundered away whatever scant ground I'd just gained. He concluded the discussion by declaring that he'd give it due consideration.

I packed all my boys off, said my goodbyes to Colin (who had slumbered through the morning on the sofa) and ventured to work for another morning of hearing the rumours of redundancies gathering credibilty. We have been promised an official communication on Thursday.

Ah yes, Colin. The happy wanderer returned yesterday in the middle of the afternoon. He was wearing the same jacket, jumper and jeans combination I'd last seen him in, although the mischievous and slightly triumphant smile was a new addition. After half an hour of him strutting around the house like Danny Boyle with an Oscar I told him if he didn't stop waggling his eyebrows they might drop off. This gave him an unfortunate opportunity for a response as he told me if one part of his anatomy was likely to drop off it wasn't going to be his eyebrows. He then asked where I disappeared to and I explained that I was getting nothing out of the evening so I went home. He said then you've got your little brother to thank as he pulled a scrap of paper out of his jeans and passed it to me. On it was written a telephone number. I looked at him for an explanation and he said I think you made an impression on someone.

Hmm.

Paralytic Android

Sometimes my greatest talent is the amount of amusement I provide for my three sons. And boy are they having a laugh this morning; because they're all (relatively) teetotal and hardly ever ever drink (Andrew never; Gabriel very occasionally; Lukas twice - to my knowledge anyway) and so never have hangovers so have no idea what a killer razor-blades-in-the-brain hangover feels like so have no empathy towards the situation. So they have absolutely no empathy towards their ancient and creaky dad this morning, as he blunders about the house like C3-P0 suffering a devastating electromagnetic overload. With someone having dropped several hundred ball-bearings on the floor of every room.

The problem was I didn't get drunk enough. I know some people swear two pints of water before bed is enough to keep the upchuck reflex demons at bay, but my tactic is to get so deliciously, evilly drunk that eight hours (or so) of kip doesn't give my battered body enough to process all the poisons so I wake up nicely tipsy. I know when - during the evening - I have reached this sufficient limit as I lose the ability to walk upright, and typically my night ends with me crawling up the stairs on all fours and slithering into bed, completing the serpent analogy by shedding my clothes on the journey.

Last night I warmed up for my initial and in all likelihood final speed-dating experience with a very stiff scotch, then during the experience I downed three pints of Kronenbourg, then once home I attacked the Glen Ord with relish and extreme vigour whilst watching an Argumental marathon (the miserablist tendencies of Margus Brigstocke naturally appeal to my sensibilities - plus I can never shake the amazing John Sargeant/Jo Brand looki-likey conundrum). No clue what time I went to bed but I must have thought I'd acquired the appropriate number of sheets to the wind as I left a quarter of an inch of Glen Ord in my tumbler which is quite unlike me. However, given the state of my head (mouth and stomach) this morning I'd hopelessly miscalculated.

This a.m. Andrew was first up as usual, and as usual just beating the sun in peeping over the horizon. Lukas and Gabriel both usually favour a lie-in, but with exact irony this would be the one morning they both felt up to a spot of embracing the day early doors, which they did so by remarkably finding something worth watching on the TV at stupid o'clock on a Sunday. And something suitably mirthsome judging by the screams of amusement echoing from below me. I too am not one for staying in bed once awake - or rather awoken, so I blundered downstairs in the search of black coffee and alka-selzer. The source of my youngest two's amusement was some horribly-acted Power Rangers type thing. Is there any other kind of Power Rangers type thing than horribly acted?

Andrew was in the Kitchen munching on toast and pretending to be much older than his tenderish years by reading a serious bit of The Observer. He looked up at me, then back down at the paper, and then back up at me; he seemed to be calculating as to whether the slowly recovering relationship between us warranted him making a spoken observation. His calculations complete, the answer I got was You look really terrible dad. I replied that that was fine, as I felt terrible as well.

He then asked me where Colin was. This struck me as a strange thing as Colin was in Germany; but no, he was not, he was kipping on my sofa whilst he made steps to recover his life after the descending and gradual break-up of his marriage; but no, he was not. Then where was he? I could remember last night my repeated requests to catch a taxi home as we both wandered around a grotty and depressing function room at a quite respectable-looking pub, bumping into people we'd barely gotten to know but then again had gotten to know well enough that we were not likely at all to be plotting a hectic social calendar together at any stage. Colin repeatedly claimed he'd made quite an impression on one of his speed-dates, but unfortunately couldn't exactly remember which lucky lady (out of a possible shortlist of three) whom he'd most succeeded in colouring their evening. And so he became a man on a mission, bouncing around the room in a hopeful search for his thorn-less rose. I too became a man on a mission, wanting to get the hell out of there. I could have left Colin there (and indeed it looked like, eventually, that is precisely what I succeeding in doing) but I felt it my duty to see he came to no harm; as some of the men-folk had begun to regard him suspiciously, as he apparently saw nothing wrong in interjecting into a few quickly-established pairings as he searched for his alleged Mrs Right, butting in and evaluating the female side of such equations in case he had found the one.

I did make one friend though during the evening (and not the organiser, who insisted in purloining £15 out of my wallet before he'd even let me into the event). I got to know the barman pretty well.

In my case, each brief eight-minute date followed the same lines:

Her: Hi, I'm [name]
Me: Hi, I'm Bryn.
Her: Well, tell me something about yourself, then.
Me: Not much to tell really. Work in IT. Three boys.
Her: [becoming guarded] You've kids? How wonderful. How old?
Me: 12, 13 and 15.
Her: [becoming more guarded] I bet your house is a madhouse with all that testosterone flying about. I take it you're divorced.
Me: No, I'm a widower. My wife died several years ago.
Her: [now more interested] Oh - that must have been terrible for you. And your boys! Oh dear, how awful. Can I ask how she died?
Me: She walked out in front of a bus one morning.
Her: [pause] Well. I'm sorry to do this during our slot, but I really need to nip to the loo. All this booze! Do you mind?
Me: No, of course not.
Her: I'll just be a minute.
[six minutes pass]
Her: Hi, sorry I took so long. Oh, is our time up? Nice meeting you Brian.
Me: Bryn.
Her: Oops! [laughs. Thinks: What a loser]. See you around.

The only positive thing is I didn't bother buying a fresh box of condoms. So at least I saved a little bit of money. You have to take these small victories, you know.

Lukas and the Case of the Stolen Condom

I've had my far more than my fair share of teenage horror situations of late, so to hear my twelve-year-old might be sexually active - inevitable? Especially as only this week I've been talking about Alfie Patten's premature parentage status. I don't want to be a grand-dad just yet, thank you - even though I've heard claims that Alfie Patten's (alleged) pregnancy-producing preteen penis may earn him as much as half a million quid in media rights. The whole thing just makes me queasy; the way something that a couple of decades ago would have been shamefully hushed up is now so openly washed in the public eye for the titilation of those who think nothing of blurring that fading line between fact and fiction.

Thankfully, Lukas and the Case of the Stolen Condom has not added to my woes.

On my brother's tip-off I searched out the ancient and largely forgotten box of condoms that I once kept in hope in the little cupboard next to my bed. I still keep them there, but habit has long replaced hope. Actually, I have to change the tense - kept them there as they are now in the bin as the 'perish' date was embarrassing and told too much of a story. I might get some new ones - see what Colin has persuaded me to consider later on - but I can't quite see the necessity. If I get queues of beautiful ladies outside my house I'm last in the likely list of whom they'd be queueing to see. I think I'd even be behind Andrew; I'm sure his good looks would be enough to persuade a few girls to try and nudge him from his chosen path of homosexuality.

Lukas was - just for a change - shooting innocents on the PS2. I waltzed past him and into the empty kitchen (Colin and Gabe out; Andrew in room; Ripley doesn't count), sat down at the table and shouted him to join me at an opportune moment. After fifteen minutes it was clear my idea of an opportune moment and Lukas' idea of the same did not share a bed, so I ordered him in.

He came in looking disgruntled, and not bothering to hide an expression that told me he was unlikely to be interested in anything I might have to say to him. He sat down, leaning on his elbows with one hand over his mouth, and looked at everything in the kitchen except the person about to talk to him.

With Lukas, there's never any point in edging up to things, so I jumped straight in:

Can I have my condoms back, please?

And it's just as difficult to ruffle him:

Well, you can have one of them back. I've used the other one.

And of course, it's quite easy to ruffle me. And Lukas succeeded in that with just one sentence. I did manage to keep my cool, however. I asked him to explain exactly what he meant by I've used the other one. And he did: He said he tried one on because he was wondering what it would feel like. And I asked him what it felt like and he said Yukky.

I asked him if he knew what condoms are for and he gave me a disbelieving expression and said of course. I ask him to confirm that for me and he said To catch your jizz when you're having sex.

Sometimes I wish I had a more uniform relationship with my boys; then I wouldn't have to hear them talking about Jizz and sex. But hey ho.

I asked Lukas about the whereabouts of the other one and he said it was in his wallet; and upon asking why he just shrugged and said everyone's got one. I think he knew where I was going with this: He went on to say Don't worry dad, I'm not likely to getting any girls pregnant just yet, as I'm not that into them (adding with concrete sincerity that he was NOT like Andrew). So I asked why the condom and he said because if you don't have one, you get called gay. It's just the thing at the moment, Lukas continued. Billy Swannington came to school last week and showed us he had one and now everyone's got to have one.

And here endeth any affinity with or understanding of twelve-year-old boys.

So I explained the perishable nature of said prophylactics and told him that whilst it okay for him to have one in his possession he was not to use it for its intended purpose as there was a high possibility of failure; and if he was to get a newer version he was not to use if for its intended purpose either, nor have any dealings with such intended purposes as it was my opinion he was far to young to delve into what can be at times a decidedly murky area.

Lukas had one final question for me before he ended the discussion. He asked me why some condoms were flavoured. I said they were just novelty condoms and were not to be used for actual lovemaking. Lukas said that's not what Billy Swannington says. I told to him to refer to Billy Swannington for further clarification as I didn't want to talk about it.

Later on, Colin asked me how I felt about speed-dating. I asked him whether for him or me and he said both. I said I couldn't think of a more terrible way to spend an evening, except perhaps sitting through any box set of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. This pushed Colin into immediate disparaging mode, admonishing me for my lack of a sense of fun, which is becoming a recurring theme. He'd been searching the internet and found a local(ish) pub that hosted a speed-dating night once a month, and Saturday night was *the night* and we should go as (a) it would get us both out of the house and (b) it might be enjoyable. I said what about (c). Colin said we would cross that bridge if we should happen to come to it. And I told him I was certainly not giving up my bed.

I might go. It might be fun. But I have my doubts on both fronts.

A.I. to Zulu

We're the least dynamic family in the world. At least that's the opinion of my current lodger and brother. And mostly, he's welcome to it. Plus I can suggest a few places where he can place this opinion. And all of them are anatomical.

It began with criticisms of me and my life. I am dull and boring, according to Colin. I have become introverted and misanthropic. I am a non-gregarious hermit who needs to get out more. I need to find a nice lady who would like to do interesting things to my genitalia. And who would do all the cooking, cleaning and ironing for me and the lads.

Well, maybe he has a point. And then again maybe he hasn't as I rather like being me, in a number of different ways. Okay, so I'm not one hundred percent satisfied with the way my life has evolved, as I have hinted on many previous occasions, but that doesn't make me any different from the overwhelming percentage of people on the planet?

I tried to point out to Colin that running a household of four males (and currently five - although so far Colin cannot be criticised for not pulling his weight around the place) of various ages is rather time-consuming, leaving me but scant moments in which to pursue any social opportunities. But Colin would not accept this as an excuse. He said when coming here he thoroughly expected the place to be a pigsty; and by some measure he was rather hoping it might be. You try living in Germany, he said, if you set the table and the placemats are not exactly parallel to the edge of the table and the knives and forks are not accurately perpendicular and the plates are not exactly centred upon the mats you bring shame upon your family that will last for generations. I was looking forwards to chaos and mess and all boys mucking in together and above all, a bit of a laugh.

But - he continued - your place is so anal I feel you going to give me a right b*llocking if I don't put the breakfast cereals back in alphabetical order. I mean, it took me ages to fathom out your DVD collection. I thought for once you've done what normal people do and just lob them on your shelf as they come and not worry about it. But then I noticed A Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey and The Shining were all together, then later down the line you had Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Schindler's List. So I worked it out - your DVDs are grouped by director, in alphabetical order by the director's surname, then in release order within the group. Good God, Bryn, do you realise how anal that is?

I protested, saying it was just a way of knowing where a DVD was when I wanted to watch it. Colin admitted perhaps he was being a little harsh, as he'd noticed I'd gotten Pulp Fiction *before* Reservoir Dogs in the Tarantino section. I was in the lounge and checking that this was *not* the case before realising I'd be gullibly duped. I returned sheepishly to the kitchen, trying to remain oblivious to Colin's triumphant expression.

Look, I began, it's just the way we like things around here. We like order and knowing where things are and not having to worry about all the inconsequential stuff. If you look after all the little things, then you've more time to concentrate on the bigger things in life.

Which are? Said Colin.

Well, for Andrew it's his education, for Gabriel it's Lian and for Lukas it's his basketball.

No, corrected Colin. For Andrew it's the pride of being the bastian of everything that is squeaky clean, holy and pure and righteous. For Gabriel it's chasing some quarter-interested piece of Burmese skirt just because half of his brain and most of his loins are suddenly over-flowing with testosterone. And for Lukas it's sitting on his skinny ass all day shooting computer sprites whilst dodging pixelated bullets.

I left a heavy pause swelling between us, giving my brother a bit of a menacing look. Continue, I said, eventually.

He said what do you mean?

I said well I am sure there is one further member of this household who's going to benefit from your observational wisdom.

Colin said okay, the cat's schizophrenic. But I told him to stop pi$$ing about.

So he said: I don't know what to make of you Bryn. There doesn't seem to be anyone there. You get up, go to work, come home, cook dinner, do some housework, watch TV, have a drink, then go to bed. What else is there? That's not living.

That's not living in *your* opinion, I protested, stickin up for myself (well, no one else was going to, at that present time).

Yeah, said Colin, it's just *my* opinion. I've got lots of opinions about you, most of them gathered quite recently. I'm sorry Bryn, but we hadn't seen each other for years then I suddenly announce I'm coming over with my girls to potentially wreck your Christmas and you just fall down and let us all walk all over you. Where's your backbone? What sort of person allows that to happen?

A nice person? I venture.

Colin started to speak, then thought better of it. Then he said: Look Bryn, I'm not having a go (you could have fooled me) at you, I just think you need a bit more of a spark to your life. You need to stop worrying about how fresh the towels in the bathroom are and start worrying about how far past their sell-by date the condoms in your bedside cupboard are.

Okay, I said. I'll think about it as long as we can stop talking about it, okay?

Colin nodded. He said - smiling - I've got an idea for the weekend.

But I didn't like the smile. I also didn't like what he said next, which was I ought to keep a count of how many condoms I've got, as I might find a couple missing. I made the obvious sum and told Colin to go and buy his own but he said being vasectomised made it none of his concern, and that I ought instead to be asking Lukas.

LUKAS?!?!?!

Buttering Me Up

Came down to breakfast this morning to find Colin perched at the table, looking ashen and discontented, rubbing his back and pulling extravagent faces of pain. I can't take much more of your sofa, he explained, stretching his back which snapped and crackled like a bag of popcorn rotating in the microwave. Last time I spent a night on the sofa dinosaurs still roamed the streets, but as someone who can only claim victory in uncovering a good night's sleep on a mattress with sheets and duvets and pillows and four bedroom walls surrounding him I could succinctly sympathise. Colin continued: I've got to sort something out, I can't live like this. I did say I was only staying one night, didn't I? Has it been a fortnight, yet? I replied Not yet, adding that he was not to worry about it. He said Yeah, well just kick me out when you've had enough of me. I've already turned one nephew against me, only a matter of time before I pi$$ the other two off, and I don't think your cat's my number one fan either.

So I told Colin I'd managed to have a wafer-thin breakthrough with Andrew last night (which, finally, I had) and that he might begin to cheer up a bit around the place. Really? said Colin, well does that mean he's going to stop trying to kill me via the power of the stare every time he sees me? I replied not necessarily. When Andrew scribbles your name into his bad book it takes a lot to get it scribbled out again. Colin snorted. Do you know what he bought yesterday? he said. Soya Milk. He poured it into a plastic bottle and he's written 'Andrew's Milk' on it. I told him he ought to see a doctor if he's lactating but he didn't get it. (Not necessarily - if Andrew ever writes a lonely hearts ad for himself, GSOH will not feature amongst the acronyms). Colin continued: I've got a cracker lined up when he gets a box and writes 'Andrew's Cheese' on it. Though I notice he still eats 'normal' cheese. Or at least the plastic crud you buy. Ha! Cracker. Cheese. I'm a natural.

I asked Colin not to ram home the link between milk and cheese to Andrew when he saw him, then showered and dressed for another day of dollar-gathering. As I left, Colin told me he was going to phone our father as it had been a while since he last spoke to him, and would it be okay to do it on the land-line as obviously it would be significantly cheaper than a mobile. I thought for a moment, and said yes, it would be okay. Colin moved on to ask if it was okay for him to tell dad he was temporarily living here, as long as he didn't actually say where here was - geographically at least. Again, I gave that a moment's consideration and nodded. I semi-expected Colin perhaps to start with a slight emotional blackmail along the lines of me and dad never talking and the poor old bloke having five grand-children and never having seen a single one of them, but he didn't, and I left.

Last night, whilst cooking a very healthy stir-fry (Chicken Satay with mange tout, sugar snap peas and babycorn) a tall, spindly, shirtless boy I initially didn't recognise brushed past me on the way to the fridge. If it wasn't for the recognisably complex constellation of moles on his back I might have swiped him with the wok and painted most of the kitchen with chicken and chunks of half-fried veg. It was Andrew, but an Andrew shorned of his tumbling brown locks, and instead sporting a very conservative and functional haircut.

Good grief, Andrew, I said, I didn't recognise you. What have you done to your hair?

Andrew gathered a few items from *his* shelf in the fridge and, without acknowledging my presence in the kitchen with his eyes at all, told me he'd had his hair cut. Well, duh. He moved over to the working surface and began to construct himself a sandwich. Only slightly daunted, I pressed on; I said A bit radical, isn't it?

I got ignored. Totally.

I wasn't in the mood for an argument. So I put the stir-fry off the hob-ring, took two steps over to my eldest son, wrapped my arms around him (ignoring the sudden rigor-mortis I felt in him) and kissed the back of his head.

I told him: I did the right thing, Andrew. I did the right thing and you're punishing me and your punishing your brothers and your uncle by not talking to any of us, and it's not fair. I know what you're like Andrew, I know you like to keep your emotions in check because you don't feel a need to have them, but when they do they come out they are centred on one person because that's the way you are and it's how you're comfortable in being; you don't like to spread yourself too thinly. And I know Kevin left a big hole in your life and you need someone to replace him but you went looking in the wrong place. Trust me, you went looking in the wrong place and I did the right thing in interfering and putting a stop to things before they had chance to develop because there's no telling where we all could have ended up. I did what I did for you and for David and it was right and I want you to stop punishing us all for it, because you're not being fair.

Andrew didn't say anything, but I felt his muscles slacken slightly and his chest was rising and falling with a greater velocity. So I let him go.

I went back to the stir-fry and Andrew went back to sandwich constructing. I hoped for some response but heard nothing, except my son's footsteps as he left the kitchen without speaking. My gloom became enhanced once I noticed he'd left the Clover out on the worktop, without even replacing the lid. But then as I picked it up with the intention of returning it to the fridge I noticed he'd carved SORRY into the butter.

I just hope he wasn't apologising to the butter for eating it.

Y Viva Alemania

I few weeks ago I mentioned my desire to have a holiday this year; maybe one final chance for real quality time with the boys before they firmly and inevitably decide I'm someone they've no desire in spending one single second with, but such a notion has managed to sneak off my radar since then. But now an opportunity has sprung from the dimension of the unexpected and after some initial misgivings I've decided to grasp it firmly with both hands, tie it around my waist and cling on to it until my ear-drums pop and I bite off my tongue.

The opportunity has presented itself via Colin, who asked me last night if we all fancied coming to Germany with him over Easter. Apparently he'd been speaking to Maria (on my phone, I assume. A hefty contribution to the next phone bill may be wilfully demanded, methinks) who's agreed to allow him to pop back to der fatherland to tie up some trailing ends and to spend some time with Holly and Amber. I said I thought you were of the view that Holly and Amber should be allowed to get on with their lives without you? Colin replied that surely I've realised that much of what he says by now is b*llocks and that was amongst the biggest load of b*llocks that's had ever tumbled from his lips. I'm not going to fight Maria for custody or anything, he went on to explain, but I had a long think and I don't want the pair of them to just skedaddle out of my life. I expressed my reservation of how difficult that may be with them living in a different country, but Colin just shrugged and said he'll see how things go.

I asked Colin what was his thinking about inviting us to Germany with him but again he just shrugged and said he didn't know really, he just thought we might appreciate a break. He said he concedes Cologne doesn't normally get the juices flowing on the list of potential holiday destinations, but he does know a few nice places around, and Cologne is adequately within driving distance of Holland, France and Luxembourg so we could make a bit of a tour of it, if we felt like it.

Not quite what I had in mind when my original notion of taking a holiday (as I don't like hot weather, nor the sea, not sitting around swimming pools reading Dan Brown or John Grisham tomes, nor holiday hot-spot night life, nor being bored in the evenings because there's no English-speaking channels on the TV. Actually, now I come to think about it, I've no idea what my preferred holiday would be. Two weeks at home without having to go to work, I think) but there's quite a measure of attraction in the offer. I think the old bank balance might just hold up to such a notion, unless the redundancies threatened at work materialise and plonk squarely on yours truly's bonce. My usual end-of-finanicial year bonus would have nicely covered it but it was announced yesterday at work that in line with the current precariously unique financial atmosphere all bonuses have been cancelled and all salaries across the company have been frozen. I'm sure the unions'll create a slight pong (not that I'm a member of one) but it's either that or an increase in job-losses so I guess they're handcuffed.

As I said, I'm *almost* sold, but it really depended on the boys (and all three of them) coming with me. So I decided to give it a go, as in two-thirds of the cases I'm significantly on the up (balanced sadly by Andrew's current opinion of me).

Lukas needed no persuasion, and expressed an instant affirmative. But then currently I think if I asked Lukas to climb up the side of the house dressed as Tinkerbell and clear the guttering of decaying leaves with a cocktail-stick held between his teeth I think he'd say yes. And why? Because the cast is off, everything is super-duper and progressing brilliantly and he'll back stealing basketballs from the sweaty paws of dwarfing boys in about a month. His de-cast-ed arm looked terrible - alien and translucent, as thin as a whip and with a snakeskin-sheath of dead skin, most of which he had raked off with his fingernails within the first ten minutes. He spent most of the evening scratching at his freshly-released skin with a euphoric, faraway look twinkling in his blue eyes.

So Lukas, he say Da!

Also into the surprisingly easy to convince arena stepped Gabriel. I explained what Colin had suggested and he mulled it over whilst trying to pretend that his dinner that evening did not contain any vegetables that I would later request consumed despite his protest that he was full ('Gabriel Sated' is now a standard English GCSE-syllabus example of an oxymoron). He was not too keen on the Holly and Amber part of things as he'd found them frustrating and annoying during their scant week over here around Christmas/New Year. But the prospect of breaking his foreign-realms virginity overwhelmed this and he chucked his hat in.

So, Gabriel, he say Da!

But Andrew, he keep schtum!

Which is not a response to any enquiry from me regarding a proposed holiday to Germany, but a continued concrete attitude to everything and everyone. Of course when Andrew decides upon a course of action to be undertaken in reaction to some event it's almost impossible to persuade him there might be a different approach he has not considered. I suspect - following Colin's attempt to educate him on how milk is produced - my brother dropped several million places down Andrew's list of favoured folk so getting Colin back up there is going to require a lot of shoving from all of us, although the fact Andrew is not known for holding grudges gives us hope.

I need a lengthy chat with Andrew. He needs to recover a lot of his life that he lost when Kevin sucked up all his emotional and physical needs. I'm not in the mood *just* yet.

Spent the evening filling out online passport applications for my younger pair (Andrew already has one). I'm tingling with excitement like a pancake watching somone take the lemon juice out of the fridge about all this, and you can stick me in a cannon and fire me over the moon if Andrew says da as well.

It's Not A Horse Shoe

Gabe came to me yesterday evening wearing one of those sheepish expressions that can only be a signal he wanted to impart something to me that he's pretty sure I will not approve of. I *did* (for once) actually have some paperwork I was catching up on, so was sitting at the table armed with my laptop and a small measure of Gledfiddich, with Colin sat opposite me scanning the Telegraph (never thought Colin would be a Telegraph man - my guess would have been the Mail) and gulping Stella. I looked at Gabriel and it immediately sprang to mind how lovely it would be if just once one of my sons came up to me with a teeth-flashing smile and told me something that would warm my very soul instead of dumping more effluence onto my rounded shoulders. Last time that happened was when Lukas informed me of his selection for the basketball team, and that of course ended in adversity and a breakage rather than triumph (although the cast in now off! Yeah!).

Gabe continued to hesitate, flicking his eyes over to Colin. I asked him what the problem was. Colin looked up from the paper, and acknowledged the presence of his nephew for the first time.

So middle son began, with stumbling words: He'd gotten Lian a Valentine's Day card and a present but wondered if he should give it to her as he wouldn't now how she would react as she's only just started being really friendly again so he decided not too but then *she* gave *him* a card and a present and it was a bit of a shock to be honest and everything and it's all a bit confusing but I gave her her present in the end and she really liked it and can I have my ear pierced?

So (after the necessary pause) I asked why do you want your ear pierced? To which Gabriel magicked from his back pocket a very small dark-blue cardboard box. Upon opening the lid he took out a small, horse-shoe shaped earring. I offered my palm and he placed it into my hand. I poked a finger at it - although what for, I've no idea as I've not the slightest clue about nor interest in shiny, dangling things, so I handed it back. Colin grunted his wish for a similar spot of perusing, and Gabriel allowed him such. Colin poked at it a bit then returned it Gabriel, complete with an opinion of 'Platinum'. I asked where Lian had gotten something a little bespoke, and he said her mother made jewelery as a bit of a hobby.

I asked why a horse-shoe? For luck, perhaps? Gabriel told me it wasn't a horse-shoe, it was the Myanarese letter 'G' - for Gabriel, he further explained, as though I was the sort of dude who found Sesame Street a mite taxing.

So was it all right if he got his ear pierced, he asked. And I said yes, of course it would be okay, it's your body.

But Colin did not approve. He said Hold on a minute here, I don't think you've thought this through. I was about to protest this was really not a matter for his consideration as I alone law down the law as far as my children are concerned, but noticed he was talking to Gabe, not me.

Gabriel said What?

So Colin explained. I don't know how to speak Myanmarese, he said, but I'd take a guess it's like all the other oriental languages. They don't spell words letter by letter. They spell words syllable by syllable. Unless it's Chinese then it's one character per word.

This wasn't getting through to Gabriel. So Colin gave an example: Kawasaki, he said. Eight letters over here, but in Japanese only four. Ka. Wa. Sa. Ki. Get it?

(Actually I looked it up on the net later and he's wrong but the general gist is correct).

Gabriel wasn't getting it. So what? he said.

So, said Colin, if you wear this you could be going around with the Myanmarese character for the first syllable of your name stuck on your ear. Which is...

(Which showed a blustering lack of tact, given the sexual orientation of Middle Son's elder brother, but I let it pass)

And so Gabriel put two and two together. And dismissed the answer. He said: She wouldn't do that to me. Then turned back to me and confirmed I would be happy in him getting his ear pierced, and I confirmed that I was. He asked if he could go with Lian to town tomorrow and get it done, and I said that no, that would not be okay. I said I would take him at the weekend. Gabriel frowned, asking me what the problem was and why I did not trust him, so I explained that there was a female involved, and I didn't want him coming home with a three-foot long tattoo of a red dragon on his back from the nape of his neck to the start of his @rse-crack just because Lian had told him such a thing would be likely to win her favour. Gabriel dismissed this as overkill, so I told him that three months ago if I suggested it likely for him to be asking me to have an ear pierced, he would have been equally dismissive of such a suggestion.

So, a slightly happier Gabriel departed from the room, and I went back to writing another pointless piece of documentation just because Peter Handyman had stipulated he felt a need for its existence.

Bit Odd, isn't it? suddenly piped up Colin. I asked what was odd and he said Gabriel's girlfriend getting him a Myanmarese character as an earring, a bit left field, isn't it? So I explained that Lian is (for a start, it appears, not officially Gabriel's girlfriend, although surely now Valentine's Day gifts and presents have been exchanged?) Myanmarese.

Colin told me: I thought that his girlfriend was Burmese? But I wasn't fooled. I told him to f*ck off and get back to reading his paper.

Let's Not Milk It

It was Colin who started it. He offered to make everyone bacon cobs for breakfast, even shouting upstairs for the boys' benefit, to which Gabe and Lukas confirmed their interest in the offer. Colin shouted three times for a reply from Andrew, but of course recieved nothing in return.

We were all munching down on dead pig and bread when Andrew made his first flounce of the day into the kitchen, making a frowning deal of having to fight through an atmosphere of cooked meat, and began to rummage in the cupboard for a suitable cereal (he's currently on one of his muesli-kicks).

Colin said Aye up Andy, didn't you hear me shout? 'fraid you've missed out on a bacon buttie, but there's some bacon left if you want one.

Lukas laughed, squirting ketchup out the side of his mouth, informing Colin that Andrew was a vegetarian. Colin frowned for a moment as though processing this information, then his features cleared. Oh yeah, he said. I'd forgotten, chap. Sorry. I thought this might be the end of it but Colin added: But it's a bit nuts, if you ask me.

Andrew responded by slamming the box of muesli down on the counter. We all jumped a little, with Colin making a play of going wide-eyed with a 'was it something I said?' look aimed at my younger pair, who both giggled. I know what Colin was doing - he was playing using Andrew as a tool to enhance his status with Gabe and Lukas; and I did not approve. Again, I hoped this was going to be the end of things, but it wasn't.

Andrew moved over the fridge, took out the milk and doused his muesli in it. Colin snorted, then looked down at his plate.

And so Andrew punctured the air with the first word any of us had heard him utter for nearly three days, and in a voice spilling over with wrath:

What?

Colin looked up again, and shook his head. And said It's nothing.

But Andrew insisted. No, he said. If you've something to say, just say it.

So Colin launched: You're a vegetarian, but you drink milk?

And Andrew countered, yeah, I drink milk. What's the problem? You don't kill a cow to get milk from it, do you?

Colin continued, stifling a giggle: That is so like people of your age. You have your oh-so-important agendas but you never think things through. To give milk, a dairy cow has to be kept pregnant? Right? Have you thought of that?

Andrew stumbled out, so? I could tell by his voice he knew he was likely to be out-smarted here; a bit like a dairy cow to the slaughter...

Colin: So want do you think happens? Is Daisy allowed to roam freely around the hills and dales until she bumps into the bull she can call her one true love, or does a farmer take a huge metal syringe full of bull-spunk and shove it up her vagina?

I perhaps should have interjected at this point, but I was quite interested in what Colin was saying, and I thought it may serve a purpose for Andrew to hear this. So I kept quiet - as did Andrew, although we was growing paler by the second.

Colin: And when Daisy has her calf what do you think happens to it? Any moo-cow-mother-baby bonding? Nope - Junior gets taken away the instant he is born, more often than to become veal. But then at least that's quick, poor mummy spends her entire life in a tiny pen with the milking machine stuck to her udder. To get more milk, the farmer uses artificial light to shorten the day and screw up their body clocks. Then when their udders are old and wizened and there ain't no more milk coming out of them it's a bolt through the head and Ermantrude's dead. But you keep dousing your corn flakes in milk, Andy, and keep giving me dirty looks because I do what comes natural to me and eat meat. And I have milk in my coffee, I eat cheese and spread my toast with butter and I am deluded enough to think I look good in leather.

By now, each and every capillary on Andrew's face had squeezed all the blood away. As we all sat uncomfortably in the crystal-clear silence, Andrew quietly put the milk down on the counter and without even replacing the top, glided out of the room, abandoning his muesli.

Colin broke the spreading silence by declaring he was going to visit the local driving range and would anyone like to come with him? Lukas jumped at the chance before remembering his arm was still in cast (which - hurrah - is scheduled to come off on Tuesday), but I told him he could go along and watch at least. Gabe was less enthusiastic, so I persuaded him a bit of fresh air would do him good. Colin said the invitation extended to me, but I lied and said I had a lot of office work to catch up on.

Once the house was free of Colin and his two biggest fans, I crept upstairs to see how Andrew was. I knocked on his door but got no answer, so broke a golden rule (again!) and stepped into the room. Andrew was lying on his bed, his face to the wall. I sat down on the end of the bed, placing one hand on his right calf and giving it a gentle squeeze, to which he didn't respond. I really wanted to say something to him, but my mind remained a complete blank, and I couldn't think of any opening gambit that would have been suitable. So I just sat like that for a good five minutes, before I got up and left his room.

I didn't see Colin, Lukas or Gabriel until the early afternoon, with Colin moaning that one the last swing he did he succeeded in popping his shoulder out for half-a-second, which had hurt 'worse than having the Lord's Prayer tattooed onto your scrotum'. I don't believe in karma nor cosmic ordering. Or at least I don't most of the time.

There Will Be Oddly-Shaped Balls

One of the unforeseen side-effects of having my brother staying with us is that Rugby Union appeared on our TV yesterday evening. This caused slight ructions and protests from Lukas and Gabriel (more Lukas than Gabriel) as it clashed with the Saturday tea-time routine of the Harry Hill hour (or the Harry Hill ninety minutes as the schedules tantalisingly expanded to yesterday). I'm not his hugest fan but he does afford the occasional chuckle and I'm certainly not so far up myself that I cannot concede a fat bloke in speedoes falling from a white plastic chair into a swimming pool will never cease being chucklesome.

Still, I'm more of a Harry Hill fan than I have ever been a Rugby fan or am ever likely to be. I'm not about to launch into a fierce diatribe about why it is The Sport That Has Always Left Me Cold, it's just that there's nothing in it at all that would encourage me to watch it. I've only ever watched one full game - the World Cup Final when England beat Australia in 2003 - and apart from the opportunity to be partisan (for England, of course) I wondered why I stuck with it for all eighty minutes. All that constant up and down the field by doing the same thing over and over again. I much preferred the US version - at least they could bomb the ball forwards once per play plus they tried different tricks and tactics so they could get to do a silly dance in the end zone. No silly dances in Rugby Union, of course. Oh, wait a minute...

I let Colin win this one on the promise that Lukas (and Danny, who was round) and Gabe could watch TV Burp on ITV+1 once the game was over, only to find that such a channel does not exist - at least on Freeview. So I said they could watch it online on my laptop, only to find that you can't watch TV Burp on the altogether-useless ITV player. So for a while I was in all three of my son's bad books. My discovery that it's repeated on Wednesday at 11pm saw me salvage a little of my reputation, with added kudos for telling them they can stay up that late, with it being half-term. Once I added the news we would visit the chippie for tea I think I was back firmly in favour, especially with Gabriel whose happiness is always assured with the promise of a battered sausage. I myself stick with tradition with genuine fish 'n' chips - and the chippie we visit does fantastic battered haddock; enormous things, I have to have a special plate just to cope with the length. Lukas just crams chips into a buttie, whilst Danny usually has a beef-and-onion pie but just eats the top crust and filling. Colin selected a saveloy; obviously still trying to shake those Teutonic influences. In a half-joke I apologised for having no sauerkraut. Colin said he'd met enough sour krauts to last him a lifetime.

A little unexpectedly, having Colin around is having a positive influence on all of us. He's certainly warming to my children (except Andrew, although that is not Colin's fault whatsoever) and they are warming to him. They've certainly stopped regarding him as just another in the beguiling sequence of temporary lodgers I've foisted upon them over the years, and are actually counting him as an uncle deserves to be counted, even though he's been almost totally absent from all of their lives. It's nice for me to have someone around of my age; someone else who cannot remember what their genitals looked like before pubic hair made an appearance. He does drink my beer though, but my spirits are safe as he eschews them. He explained: If spirits are the only thing that gets you pissed, then God's telling you you're drinking too much. Hmm. He doesn't share my cinematic tastes either, we were half-an-hour into the indescribably fabulous There Will Be Blood when he announced For christ's sake Bryn, wake me up when this film actually f*cking starts, will you?

So (apart from Andrew) we're one big, happy family. Just like the family of the too-young dad I mentioned yesterday, although currently slightly less happy. To tie all their relationships together and keep track of things you'd have to fill all the walls of a meeting room in complicated wall-charts with colour-coded push-pins and bits of string everywhere. Good grief. I see the lad now wants to take a DNA test to prove the baby is his as no less than four other young lads have come forwards saying they've played hide-the-pink-oboe with the baby's mother. Plus I've also heard he has a sister who is thirteen and is already a mother herself. Again, good grief, if it is true. Have these people never heard of TV, or board games, or books, or a thousand and one other ways you can find to fill your free-time without resorting to the construction of the beast-with-two-backs? Without I hope sounding like a dreadful snob, I quote Jarvis Cocker's Common People:

You'll never watch your life slide out of view
and then dance and drink and screw
'because there's nothing else to do

Absent from all of this family camaraderie is Andrew, of course, which is a real shame, although he can't really blame anyone but himself for that. I do wonder how long he's going to be able to keep this uncommunicative stance up. We are on stage two now, which is complete silence. No hellos, goodbyes, pleases or thank yous. If you ask him to talk to you or accuse him of being pathetic or plead with him it makes no difference. You could try every tactic you could possibly imagine and still end up with the same result. He'll snap out of it eventually, of course. It's just the waiting that becomes uncomfortable.

Valentine's Day (As If I Care)

Last night I had one of my weirdest dreams ever. It was one of those when you kind of notice that things are not quite right; or are actually significantly wrong, but the processes that alert you to the realisation that you're dreaming never quite kick in. I used to have incredibly lucid dreams as a child, to the point where I had to devise a tactic of waking myself up (spinning on the spot like a whirling dervish), and even that sometimes didn't work. But as an adult, as soon as I realise I am dreaming, I wake up.

Anyhow, lasts night's dream was even weirder than that picture of the thirteen-year-old dad who looks like an eight-year-old and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend who looks like she's thirty. Can't quite get my head around this situation. As his girlfriend went into labour did he ask if the hospital had a creche? And when told his new-born baby would of course be too young for a creche did he reply no, not for her, for me! And how, is his daughter likely to view those opening pictures of her life? Will she ask if that is her brother? And when she asks if where her grand-dad was will she be told he couldn't make it as he was doing his work experience? Will the lad be awoken in the night when it's his turn to change the baby – and will he moan: 'Aw, I was 'aving an ace dream about doing skillage wheelies on the recce an' all...'

Well, good luck to them. I have to admit he's certainly managed to lose his lovin' L-plates a great deal sooner than I did, almost a decade I am slightly embarrassed to confess. When I was that age I would not even have comprehended intercourse as having any basis in reality in my life. Girls were odd, hostile things that gathered in packs and belittled you. You pretended you liked them so not to appear queer but if the choice came to a spot of rumpy-pumpy or a kick-about on the abandoned tennis courts the footie'd win every time. Of course it was known that a certain girl would pop your willy into her mouth for 10p, but I always spent my spare cash on Panini Football Stickers rather than mildly-distracting blow-jobs.

Enough meandering, back to the dream. Myself and my friend Mark were present at an open-air comedy performance. I seemed aware that it was still winter and that it should have been very cold but it was warm enough for all of our to sit outside without our coats and not feel chilly. I should have really noticed something was really not quite right then and there, but we just sat and waited for the support act to come on. I think the main attraction was Richard Herring. But then the support act came on and it was Saddam Hussain. And – despite the disability in him being dead – he went down extremely well, involving myself and Mark in the act and generating a hugely positive response.

Just goes to show how fragile the choices you may in life can be. Instead of promoting his comedic talents, Hussain chose a career as a barbaric, loathsome, abhorrent and inhuman despot. If only Frankie Boyle had made the same choice.

The dream petered out into the usual nonsense and eventually, after an unspecified period of further unconsciousness, I woke up.

Valentine's Day. Nothing in the post for any of us, which was not totally unexpected. I have little time nor inclination for romance in my life at present, something that has become a theme for such a long time now since Poppy died. I shouldn't rule out any such of loving future for me, but to even contemplate an evening of carnality I'd have to hire Tony Robinson and his minions to dig deep in the search for my libido. I really cannot be bothered to re-enter all that dating nonsense and do-you-like-me-like-I-like-you toing and froing and emotional shadow boxing and reading signs and playing guessing games. Even just thinking about it is chilling my insides.

So, nothing for any of my sons, or at least nothing I'm aware of (and in Andrew's case, there better have been no card-sending unless it was to someone I can finally approve of instead of either someone I have to tolerate or something I will not tolerate at all), although Gabriel remains chipper with his lot. We continue to have the pleasant version of middle-son with us and I don't miss much about the down-beat side of his personality. I kind of miss the clumps of blooded toilet tissue in the sink most mornings, but the hornet-like buzz of his electric razor does serve as a useful sign that Gabriel has finally lumbered out of bed. Lukas I think remains too young and dis-interested in the female form to be bothered with romance. But as noted above, you never can tell. I'm certainly not ready to be a grand-dad. I'm only forty-six after all. And this is one of the few times I can feel justified in putting 'only' in front of 'forty-six' when it comes to admitting my age.

Poppy disregarded Valentine's Day as a cynical marketing executive's wet dream, so for us – after the first few years of passion – it became just another 'special' day where we just exchanged cards and got on with normality. However, on the last one (not that I knew it was going to be the last one then, of course) I arranged Lukas to be baby-sat at a friends house, dressed Gabriel and Andrew up in white shirts and black trousers as waiters, set her a place at the table then cooked her a three-course meal (salmon, paella – a BrynT speciality, and banana cake and ice cream), served by her two eldest sons. It was the last time I actually remember her genuinely smiling.

Mykonos? My @rse.

Ever so often one of those songs comes along that lodges itself in your head, but not in a good way. It's not one of those that (like you joggers) goes round, and round, and round (fades). It's one of those that you loathe so much that every time you hear it you feel your tummy muscles contract and stomach acid beginning to bubble at the back of your throat. And if you're in an environment where you are not in control of the music you become edgy and fidgety, and you hasten out of there.

Or is it just me?

Songs that do this to me, off the top of my head: A Crazy Thing Called Love by Queen (and to only a slightly lesser extent, most of the output by Freddie Mercury and his poodle-haired buddy), Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? by Rod Stewart, You're Gorgeous by Whoever That Was By And I Can't Be @rsed To Look It Up, and that hip-hop rap-thing version of Every Breathe You Take. To name a few.

But, now, straight in at number one is a song so bloody awful it instantly sets my blood to simmer and I get to taste my dinner all over again. It took me ages to find out it's identity, which infuriated me as I kept aurally chancing upon it and the more I heard it the more I learnt to loathe it and it frustrated me that I couldn't identify it and by doing so heighten the chances of me avoiding it. All I knew it was by some heavily-reverbed hymnal folky types and the worse bit during the song is a 'we're about the sing something truly important' pause, followed by a bit that goes "Brother you don't need to turn me away, I was waiting down at the (something) gate".

Excuse me - I've just broken out into a cold sweat and need a drink of water. Hold on.

Eventually, I found out. It's called Mykonos by a band called Fleet Foxes. So now I knew. And me being me I've done a bit of wikiresearch and found them (with a fair degree of horror) to be from Seattle, Washington! The Home Of Grunge!! Of Mudhoney and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and of course Nirvana!!!

How magnificent is the human mind? Mine managed to identify some music it knew I may mildly dislike, but must have somehow subconsciously deduced that Fleet Foxes originate from a place musically dear to me, immediately and unconsciously enhancing my disdain towards them.

Or maybe they're just crap. Album of the Year, my @rse. Although I haven't heard it but if Mykonos is a definable example then I'm taking every step to avoid doing so.

Colin is back at Chez BrynT and on the sofa and feeling sorry for himself. So it's a good job I'm not feeling too doleful at the moment else we'd be brothers in the arms of misery. He was back here by the time I came home, looking gloomy and grey. He asked if we could go to the pub but I told him I had to take Gabe kick-boxing; before realising taking little bro' along and finding a pub would be preferable to an hour or so wasted in a chilly car or traipsing hopelessly around a supermarket in search of excuses to waste a few pennies.

So once Gabe was dropped off myself and Colin drove to the least-grim pub I'd found on my brief survey a few weeks back and ordered a couple of Carling Exports. We then ignored half-a-dozen puzzled looks as we made our way to the quietest part of the pub and sat down on significantly-slashed seats. This was hardly the place for a counselling session, but we soldiered on.

Colin jumped straight in and confessed how he thinks he has screwed up and in a spectacular fashion. He admitted that he thinks his marriage popped its clogs well over a year ago, and he's wasted several months running along the flat-line in the hope of tripping over the occasional beep. It eventually occurred to him that it wouldn't even have bothered him if he did find a beep, or even some electronic jazz-funk, he'd only be lashing Red Rum with a cat-o-nine-tails.

I asked him about Holly and Amber but he just shrugged. I'm not like you, Bryn, he said. I'm not the big daddy, I think most blokes aren't. When they came along my immediate thought was that I'm too young to be a father, and I still think that now, yet last birthday there were forty-four candles on my birthday cake. How the f*ck can someone who's forty-four say they're too young to be a father? So it occurred to me I just don't want to be a father - yeah it's too late now and yeah, I'm shirking a f*cking load of my responsibilities to the girls but they're young enough to forget me and think of the next bloke who comes along as daddy.

I almost threw my beer at him, thinking about how my three felt about Poppy. But I kept my cool and just allowed my breathing to quicken instead.

I asked what was happening with regards to his immediate plans but Colin said he didn't know, other than spending the next few days, weeks or months flowing down a very famous creek whilst searching for an elusive rowing implement. He confessed that he was royally f*cked. No job, no home, very few possessions and a dwindling amount of income. If he could have picked a time to have screwed up, he said, this would not have been that time.

We talked for a little while longer, becoming increasingly anxious about a few expressions being thrown in our definite direction, so gulped down the rest of our beer and left. I passed our glasses back to the landlord who, instead of saying thank you, looked at me as though myself and Colin has just spent the past twenty minutes in plain sight of everybody alternatively sodomizing each other.

We picked up sweaty but smiling middle-son and came home. And currently, it is *both* me and my brother's home.

How to win an argument

Winning arguments is easy. First of all, it's best to be on the right side. Some sides are simple to define, such as 'Hitler - commendable ideals if slightly flawed execution' - think you're onto a loser there. How about 'Eddie Murphy - as good now as he ever was' ? Hell - I wish you luck.

But how about 'Jonathan Ross - funny guy' ? On which side of the fence is the grass long and sticky, thistle-strewn and concealing dozens of broken beer bottles, and on which side are loads of elderly fat blokes rolling their oddly-shaped balls towards the jack? Obviously, there's something undeniably jocular about the foppish, slack-lipped one else he'd now be struggling to land a job stringing for the Framley Examiner after broadcasting claims that caused Manuel to say a little more than "Que?". I say obviously, but I can’t see it myself and aside from the very early years that helped introduce Vic & Bob and some of The Fast Show to the world I never have done.

So we have a clearly defined area of reasonable doubt. But this is a world mostly of absolutes - returning to Vic & Bob: Is it true, or is it false? Is Jonathan Ross funny, or is he not? Is he spectacularly mirthsome, or as amusing as a knicker-splattering fart during the eulogy at the funeral of a universally-adored uncle? Which side are you on? You must choose! You must choose NOW! CHOOSE NOW! RESISTENCE IS FUTILE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

You could always sit on the fence. But then expect people to don chicken costumes and do silly dances in front of you until you come down.

So - there you stand, on one side of the fence with your toes being tantalisingly tickled by the carpet of freshly-mown greenery. But wait - what's this? There are people standing on the other side of the fence? With creepy-crawlies inching their way up their jeans and having glances from hidden, starving tigers thrown at them? We must educate these wretched souls! They must come over here where everything is nice and lovely and there's free ice cream for everybody!

We must argue with them and fight with them and get them over here, pronto. And we do that by winning, and one easy way to win an argument is…

Take it away, Lulu!

WELL-ELL-ELL-ELL-ELL-LELELELE-ELL-ELL-ELLLLLLLLLLLLLL…

(you know you make me want to) SHOUT!
(kick my heels up and) SHOUT!
(throw my hands up and) SHOUT!
(throw my head back and) SHOUT!
(come on now) SHOUT!
Don't forget to belittle your opponent, yeah
Don't forget to ignore his counter-arguments by throwing fresh threads at him for him to have to defend because you got in first, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
(say you will)


For a further analogy, arguing is like a game of chess. Two armies equals two sides to each argument. Plonk Kasparov and Karpov down to play and take away Kasparov's Queen to signify he possesses the weaker argument. All bets are on Karpov, and he'll go and win every time under such starting conditions. And he'll do it slowly, carefully, methodically and logically. But start the game without that imbalance; with both sides equal as is meant to be in chess, and with two players of completely identical ability, and who's more likely to win? Statistically, White is more likely to win than Black. Out of every eleven games, white will win six, and black will win five, primarily and importantly because White makes the first move.

My place in all this is usually, on the fence. Or rather what I do is dig up the fence and sit down on that patch of grass that's perfectly fine, except that there's bit of crab-grass, a sharp-sided pebble or two and a party of red ants who have their map upside down. I like it there. Although I do lose a great deal more arguments than I win.

I also lose a great deal more chess games than I win. Like Michael Jackson says, it don't even matter if I'm black or white (although quite evidently it mattered to him). It's the Knights that always do me, everything else moves in straight lines but Knights move in perverse triangles without a care of what surrounds them or what they trample upon. But I haven't played chess in years. It's probably all changed now. They've probably added extra pieces and the board's ten squares by ten. We never seem to be able to leave anything alone these days. When I were a lad footie were played by real fellas called Jimmy or Dennis or Alan or Ray. Now they're all effeminate, long-haired ballet dancers called Jose or Fernando or Xavi or even worse, they've only got one name. There's only one player in the entire history of football who has earned the right to be known by one name. And it ain't Maradona.

I'm old and out of touch. Whilst typing that paragraph it's only just occurred to me that one of Villa's top current players shares the same first name as my middle son. That depresses me. I used to be the sort of guy who'd walk miles just to see one of Charlie Aitken's dirty socks. And if you ask me who Charlie Aitken is I'll probably start crying.

So I was shouted down in another argument this morning - no surprise there. But it was a painful one as it was to Peter Handyman and it was in front of far too many of my colleagues and peers i.e. almost all of them. It's a different approach to Alan, who'd normally take me to one side and have a quiet word, gently nudging me towards agreement with his view that one of my socks had drooped a little below acceptable guidelines. But this is not the Peter Handyman approach and it’s a change and it's certainly not a refreshing one. I can bear being shouted at - I just nod and get along with things. But being laughed at is a different matter, and being insulted (if only in a minor, 'you're a bit lardy' way) is as well. I known I'm a grown man, but it hurts.