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.