ANIMALS

Here's another amusing coversation that I had with my daughters one day:-

ME: What is your favourite animal?

LOTTIE: I like all animals.

ME: What, even wasps?

LOTTIE: Wasps aren't animals.

ME: Really? How do you know they aren't?

LOTTIE: They don't have any fur.

ME: But what about elephants? They aren't furry.

LOTTIE: Animals have eyes.

ME: Does that mean that a worm isn't an animal?

ERIN: Anyway, we have eyes and we aren't animals.

ME: We aren't? Why do you think we aren't animals?

ERIN: We just aren't! We're us.

ME: Why not? I think we might be animals.

ERIN: Animals have four legs and we have 2.

ME: What about chickens?

We continued in this fashion for some time. At the end of it, I don't think there was any firm conclusion about how one decides what is an animal and what isn't. Please leave your suggestions in a comment.

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YELLOW

One day a few months ago I was talking to my youngest daughter Lottie (three years old at the time). The conversation went something like this:-

DADDY:
What is your favourite colour, Lottie?

LOTTIE:
Yellow.

DADDY:
Still yellow? You haven't changed your mind?

LOTTIE:
No. Sometimes I wish the whole world was yellow.

DADDY:
If the whole world was yellow, how would you find your bananas?

LOTTIE:
You would look for the black bit on the end.

DADDY:
But if the whole world was yellow, then the black bits on the end of bananas would be yellow too.

LOTTIE:
Oh, well. Then you would just have to sniff them out.


Genius!

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OBLONG

When I was at Primary School we learned all about shapes. Circles, triangles, squares, diamonds, stars, and oblongs.

Some years later shapes became geometry, diamonds became rhombuses, oblongs became rectangles and the subject became much, much more dull. The transition from a childhood full of fun and laughter to an adulthood often full of stress and boredom often seemed to be marked by such sudden changes. Why do they have to occur?

Oblong is so clearly the better word for me. There is something cuddly about the word. Rectangle is harsh and clinical and dull.

Another example which sticks clearly in my mind is that the dinosaur which for many years was known affectionately to a young lad fascinated by dinosaurs as a diplodocus, suddenly started to be called a diplodocus by all the teachers. I don't know what it is about it. But that saddens me.

I have a fairly serious point to make here. Above are just little examples which stick in my mind. Somewhere between early childhood and adulthood, most people forget what it is like to just have fun, to be interested in everything. To have that Friday feeling every single day of every single week because the world is a wonderful place to be savoured.

Now you may argue that this is because kids have no responsibilities and in adult life we are overwhelmed by things that we have to think about so we don't have time for the things we want to think about. Is that really the case in our affluent modern world? If you have so much responsibility, how have you got time to find and read this?

I would argue that the education system I remember is responsible for systematically squeezing all the fun out of children until they reach adulthood drained of all creativity and free thought, ready to be 'good citizens'. Don't think for yourself, learn how to pass exams. Don't question the teacher or the text book. Just repeat what they say at the end of the year.

Thankfully, there are some exceptional and remarkable teachers who understand how the retention of an eager, questioning mind is crucial for a successful and happy adult life. These heroes stand out like beacons, in spite of the constraints of an ever increasingly bureaucratic education system. Like lifeguards plucking beautiful minds from a sea of mediocrity and sending them out into the world to light the way and give us hope.

It is a shame that this is necessary. It is a terrible shame that all children are not encouraged to retain their child-like enthusiasm. I think that humanity would be in a much better place if they were.

But life is as it is. To the heroic lifeguards: I salute you. To any parents reading, teach your beautiful children to swim against the tide.

That there is a diplodocus.

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JUSTICE

A couple of years ago the activist group Fathers For Justice were making regular headline news in the UK. At that time I was having particular difficulty maintaining a regular relationship with my daughters myself and felt a strong affinity for the heroes in daft costumes.

I might have joined the group had it not been for the fact that having not yet sold the house I had shared with their mother and having to rent somewhere else at the same time meant that I was literally starving and had a choice between paying the subscription fee and buying some more food.

Despite that, I have never missed a maintenance payment and have always made it clear that I want to see my daughters whenever I am not working, which usually amounts to every weekend. However, to this day their mother still contrives to prevent me from seeing them as regularly as I would like to while pretending to anyone who is still gullible enough to believe her that I am a terribly irresponsible absent father who doesn't want to see his children.

Last summer the tables were turned when she got first very ill and was then reported to Social Services by one of her friends for being drunk whilst looking after the girls. I had the children with me for about 3 months full time. How I could have easily sunk to her level, but I stuck to my principles and drove the children to see her every week during this time.

After the drinking incident I had a lot of contact with Social Services who had initially called me and advised me that I should not take the children back to their mother, but if she came to get them I must not do anything to prevent her. They advised me to call them straight away should this happen so that they could arrange to go and assess her. I asked her to voluntarily give me main carer status at this time, but she refused and eventually did come to take the children back. If I had refused, I could have been arrested for kidnap.

As soon as the children were back with their mother, I called Social Services as advised. Unfortunately, they called me back a couple of weeks later to tell me that she refused all contact with them, including when they just turned up at her door, and that unless one of the children presented physical signs of abuse or neglect they could do nothing to make her cooperate.

Isn't that GREAT? You have to wait until your children are actually harmed before anything can be done.

My point in relaying the story is that although the 2004 Children Act has improved the situation for unmarried fathers (and well done to F4J and others for precipitating this), if your children happen to have been born before that and their mother is uncooperative, you are pretty much f**ked.

My children's mother could emigrate with them without my consent and there is nothing I can do about it. I have almost no legal rights whatsoever, and the fact that I am by far the more responsible parent counts for nothing unless my children are actually harmed by their mother.

You might be able to imagine how frustrating that can be for a man who wants to protect his beautiful daughters.

Having said that, the law was made that way for a reason. I happen to have quite a few friends who are single mothers.

(I got my idea from Hugh Grant in About A Boy ;-) )

I have heard quite a few tales of irresponsible absent fathers who don't pay maintenance and don't try to see their children. Although I take these tales with a pinch of salt at first (knowing that my daughters' mother is probably telling the same ones about me), I have no doubt that some of my good friends are telling the truth about their less than responsible ex-partners.

I HATE THESE MEN WITH A BURNING PASSION. Not only because to shirk the responsibility of providing love and financial support for your children is despicable and cowardly, but because it is because of these CUNTS that the law was made how it is to protect mothers and their children.

When it comes to the legal system, I am tarred with the same brush as the fucking pathetic wimps.

Once I was sat in the pub. It was Christmas, shortly after I had been forced to move out of our family home. I hadn't seen my daughters for some time and wasn't all that happy about it. A chap noticed that I wasn't looking all that chipper for Christmas Eve and came to talk to me. Nice gesture I thought and I explained to him why I wasn't all that over the moon at the time.

Shortly after that, the fellow bought me a drink and started to explain to me how I could avoid paying maintenance for my children by declaring myself self-employed and hiring my services to the company I worked for at the time on a contract basis. That way I could pay myself a small salary and the rest of the money I earned could be 'ploughed back into the business'.

"Can I just stop you there, mate?" I said at this point.

"Yes, of course. What is it?"

"You, mate, are a TOTAL CUNT and I suggest you go very quickly a long way away from me or you won't be enjoying your Christmas Eve as much as you had expected either."



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