An endless day of surprises


Again, I woke today to the sound of my children gambolled around our bedroom, and then studiously ignored them and slept some more. All the gin I necked last night formed some sort of insulation against the racket of girls squeaking at me.

This could never go on forever, so by 9:30 I was accompanying them downstairs, to my current favourite cafe, where I drank coffee and they ate biscuits. I’ve been contemplating what it means to be a good father, and my conclusion is that it’s just slightly more than taking your children somewhere where you with glassy-eyed, pontificating on civilisation while your progreny run riot. That’s right, other parents, you need to remember to take a colouring-in book with you.

The one they like is "Colouring For Boys" which reminds me how lucky it is that they can’t read and how curious it is that shoes, flying saucers and geckoes are an entirely masculine preserve. For goodness’ sake. This distracted them for an hour or so, after which my wife arrived and I took La Serpiente for a scooter ride (what *is* the correct verb for that activity?) to see some pigeons and back again.

Then, after a mistake where I drank a bulletproof coffee by accident (coffee with butter in it? What are you trying to prove?) I took the girls home and got them to nap by the handy expedient of reading Goldilocks and then ignoring them. Which gave me time to go climbing for an hour, some victory at least.

When I got back, I had to go to the library with them. La Serpiente was good and read books; Destroyer decided to go for a run and made it across the library, out of the door and as far as the lifts before I caught up. I told her I was displeased by this and she howled for her mother for half an hour. In the library. The best place for scremai g, obviously.

And thence home, where I deposited the girls before going to a party for my run I got club. This was in a Japanese restaurant where they’d negotiated a $70 cover charge for all the meat you could eat for three hours. As a vegetarian, I tried to make it back on beer, which is why I can’t see right now and don’t believe I’ll be in the office tomorrow. Being 41 is harder on the liver than I’d expected.

,

One response to “An endless day of surprises”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.