Provoke elastic ad lib jiggery
The weekend races by like any other. Snow has no chance to settle here and I think that it’s because the planet is spinning too damn fast. I leap into the air to click my heels as I walk out of my office on a Friday and somehow, whilst in mid air, the planet spins 2-point-something times and I land on Monday morning, turn around and drag myself back in.
Still, at least my early-week work-daydreams reflect that which I was able to experience whilst airborne. Somewhere in there I took Sophie for a swim at Coventry splash pool. Swimming seems to be quite a father/daughter Saturday sensation as I count dozens of men putting on their best caring and sensitive faces for the handful of women present. I imagine that FHM advised them to take their kids swimming if they want to hook up, and boy do they swallow any tiny snippet of advise from Dr Lad Mag. 99% of fathers at the splash pool are normal dad material and, as the wild youth chemicals have transferred all their energy into the production of excess fat, they’re the normal dad shape too. Unlike me.
The pool is full of strong, resourceful looking fathers who tower over their children like mutant bodyguards. Then there’s me, a few inches taller than most of them, but about a third of the width, sporting the golden ‘curve-to-skinniness-ratio’ that catwalk model agents dream of discovering... in their female hopefuls. Cue self loathing. It doesn’t help that, when wet, my shorts are completely transparent, bar the triangle of dignity normally enjoyed by the bikini clad. Self loathing aside, it’s fascinating to watch the flirtatious behaviour of parents at a children’s swimming pool and of course, there’s always teaching Soph to swim, which is why I’m actually there right?
After swimming, I dropped Soph to her mums and then spent ten minutes desperately trying to beat a few hundred grams of butter from a solid into a cream. When I’d got as close to thiquid as I was going to I threw in a load of demerera sugar, some porridge oats and a liberal helping of ground weed. I slopped the resulting mix into a tin and baked it for twenty minutes until the loose crumbs on top became crunchy. Ten minutes after leaving the oven, they were gone, working their way around the digestive systems of the cottage collective. Memories from the rest of the weekend take on a hazy fuzz but can be summed up by bullet point:
[!] Pink T-shirt glints with a hundred skull and crossbones
[*] Franco Saint De Bakker sings ‘No One Knows’ in a vat of water
[#] We form a queue at the dealer’s window
[£] The Big Train comes in
[?] A nail creeps up through the carpet, rejected by the wooden floor
[~] The Go! Team poke my ribs, provoke elastic ad lib jiggery
[&] Vonnegut returns
[%] A mallard struggles against the current, performs a drive by quack attack.
[@] Words leak, pen to paper, tiny user interface
This week I’ll work and work and work. I’ll have nothing to show at the end of it, but somewhere along the line I’ll have earned my keep, and another weekend. Wouldn’t it be nice if the free world we live in didn’t require us to spend most of our time enslaved in the pursuit of money just for it to function?
Still, at least my early-week work-daydreams reflect that which I was able to experience whilst airborne. Somewhere in there I took Sophie for a swim at Coventry splash pool. Swimming seems to be quite a father/daughter Saturday sensation as I count dozens of men putting on their best caring and sensitive faces for the handful of women present. I imagine that FHM advised them to take their kids swimming if they want to hook up, and boy do they swallow any tiny snippet of advise from Dr Lad Mag. 99% of fathers at the splash pool are normal dad material and, as the wild youth chemicals have transferred all their energy into the production of excess fat, they’re the normal dad shape too. Unlike me.
The pool is full of strong, resourceful looking fathers who tower over their children like mutant bodyguards. Then there’s me, a few inches taller than most of them, but about a third of the width, sporting the golden ‘curve-to-skinniness-ratio’ that catwalk model agents dream of discovering... in their female hopefuls. Cue self loathing. It doesn’t help that, when wet, my shorts are completely transparent, bar the triangle of dignity normally enjoyed by the bikini clad. Self loathing aside, it’s fascinating to watch the flirtatious behaviour of parents at a children’s swimming pool and of course, there’s always teaching Soph to swim, which is why I’m actually there right?
After swimming, I dropped Soph to her mums and then spent ten minutes desperately trying to beat a few hundred grams of butter from a solid into a cream. When I’d got as close to thiquid as I was going to I threw in a load of demerera sugar, some porridge oats and a liberal helping of ground weed. I slopped the resulting mix into a tin and baked it for twenty minutes until the loose crumbs on top became crunchy. Ten minutes after leaving the oven, they were gone, working their way around the digestive systems of the cottage collective. Memories from the rest of the weekend take on a hazy fuzz but can be summed up by bullet point:
[!] Pink T-shirt glints with a hundred skull and crossbones
[*] Franco Saint De Bakker sings ‘No One Knows’ in a vat of water
[#] We form a queue at the dealer’s window
[£] The Big Train comes in
[?] A nail creeps up through the carpet, rejected by the wooden floor
[~] The Go! Team poke my ribs, provoke elastic ad lib jiggery
[&] Vonnegut returns
[%] A mallard struggles against the current, performs a drive by quack attack.
[@] Words leak, pen to paper, tiny user interface
This week I’ll work and work and work. I’ll have nothing to show at the end of it, but somewhere along the line I’ll have earned my keep, and another weekend. Wouldn’t it be nice if the free world we live in didn’t require us to spend most of our time enslaved in the pursuit of money just for it to function?