Mid-life crisis? Middle-aged men buying BIKES, not sportscars | Mail Online
August 10th, 2010 · Uncategorized
Mid-life crisis? Middle-aged men buying BIKES, not sportscars | Mail Online.
Nonsense! Nonsense I tell you!
Although the cartoon at the bottom is, sadly, spot on!
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The new bike
August 9th, 2010 · Uncategorized
When I moved to this blog from my old one, I explained that it would include more than just stuff relating to my role as a father in the narrow sense, but would be about me more generally, because I want my kids to see more about who I am. So activities previously captured in other blogs would now live here. In adherenece to this policy, prepare yourself for a post about mountain biking.
Anyone following me on Twitter will know I have been injecting excited comments about my new bike, a Boardman HT Pro.
Well yesterday I finally took it out for a proper ride with plenty of off-road climbs and descents. I drove to the historic village of Eyam in Derbyshire. It is a very picturesque spot, doubly so for me as it is a little further afield than my usual cycling haunts, so both the riding and the scenery have a fresh feel to them.
I took a pre-planned route and a little map of the area. You can see the route here.
In all I covered over 20 miles in around 3 hours with a top speed of 34mph and an average speed of 10mph. Before you tell me I can’t do the math, my cycle computer also told me at the end that I had been moving for a little over 2 hours. In other words I spent about a third of the ride gasping for breath at the top of a climb and/or staring at the map trying not to get lost (again). Oh and taking in the beautiful scenery, yeah, that’ll be it.
Oh, the bike. Well (as I tweeted earlier), it was rocket-fast and super-assured, which was handy as its rider was neither. Seriously though, it is so light it made me want to ride fast and I completed climbs in a higher gear than I would have expected. It descends rocky and loose terrain well and would climb like the proverbial goat if I were just a little fitter. In any case it climbed well for the first few yards of any climb before I ran out of steam. In other words, this bike is basically too good for me! But man, it made me grin all afternoon.
And to be honest there IS a fatherhood related point to all this. I so rarely get time to go out on a long, hilly ride on a sunny day, that yesterday was an enormously liberating and uplifting experience. I love being with my family but I also love some things they can’t (or wouldn’t want to) share in. There’s no way I could take my kids over the sort of terrain I rode yesterday! My only slight sadness on the ride was that I missed having Hayley there, as she used to ride in that area with me. But I’m sure I can get her out there again at some point. In any case, it refreshed me and recharged my batteries in a way that few things can. And that can’t be bad for me or my family.
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Saturday Snap
August 7th, 2010 · Uncategorized
It’s fair to say that Lucy’s single-mindedness manifests itself in a very individual fashion sense.
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Saturday so far
August 7th, 2010 · Uncategorized
It’s only 2pm but already it’s been a noteworthy day. Oliver has declared today “Sports Candy” day. Viewers of Lazytown will grasp his intentions here, but in summary “sports candy” is fruit and vegetables which you can eat in place of sweets/candy.
In recognotion of “Sports Candy” Day, Lucy and I went shopping and bought apples, bananas, strawberries, clementines and a grapefruit. Also some celery sticks that the kids like.
After lunch, both kids requested clementines. I showed them how to peel them and break them into segments which they enjoyed. Then Lucy ate two and Oliver ate four. Strawberries were then requested so we had a few of those each. This time Oliver again had four, but despite my guidance he ate them whole, complete with leaves and storks. On the third he laughed and said they tasted like grass. On the fourth he ate for a while but then pulled a face and took my advice to spit out the leafy residue.
Appetite sated, Oliver declared that Sportacus would be very proud of him and excused himself from the table.
Lucy also decided she’d had enough at this point, which was hardly surprising as she and I had eaten half the strawberries on the way home in the car before lunch.
The sun is just starting to peep out from behind the clouds after a deluge just before lunch. Next stop: the park.
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/steventownley/4869499778/” title=”IMAG0624 by Steven Townley, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4080/4869499778_f42ed873db.jpg” width=”500″ height=”299″ alt=”IMAG0624″ /></a>
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Simply inexpressible
August 1st, 2010 · Uncategorized
This evening I needed to pop to the shop for breakfast cereals and a few other bits. The kids were playing happily together but rather than sneak out I thought I’d invite them along. Oliver declined, choosing to play on alone, but Lucy sprang at the chance to come, especially when I said she could use her scooter.
But then the British weather intervened with a good dose of rain. No problem. I picked up my black brolly, Lucy picked up her green frog brolly complete with frog eyes sticking out of the top and we set off.
It was a blissful little stroll. She perfected her umbrella handling as she walked, learning to not let it rest on her head and to keep hold of it in gusts of wind.
At the shop we rolled them up then went in, whereupon she helped me choose our purchases.
It’s hard to say what was so great about our little trip, except that she was happy, chatty and cheery… just plain great company. She was dressed in a pretty yellow dress with raa raa skirt and just looked so cute.
As we walked home I was filled with the most certain feeling that this was one of the happiest moments of my life. And I’m sure I was right, even though there are many such wonderful moments, if that doesn’t sound too contradictory.
We parents are most renowned for rather superficial, perhaps embarrassed, soundbites about how much we get out of having kids. “The best thing that ever happened to me.” I even read it tonight in Ozzy Osbourne’s auto-biography. And it must sound to some rather too vague and insubstantial. But the truth is that we utter such glib generalities because of the mountain of such perfect, tiny, inexpressible moments. That and because we’re too sleep-deprived to muster either sufficient recall or the requisite linguistic skills to offer something more eloquent.
Fortunately, no matter how sub-standard the description, simply being a parent is probably enough to understand. Which also explains why parents can seem like a race apart to those without kids. But that’s a whole other post!
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Schools admissions – a quick update
July 30th, 2010 · Uncategorized
I’ve written a more detailed post on this for a less public audience, but this is just a quick update on the issue of having our children very probably end up going to different schools thanks to the proposed new schools admissions policy in our area.
We have now submitted our objection to the local authority, jointly with about 30 or 40 other families. Watch this space to see what happens.
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The end of an era
July 28th, 2010 · education, nursery, oliver, play, report, school
Today was Oliver’s last day of nursery. His pre-school days are effectively over.
I felt rather sad last night when I realised. I considered taking him there for the last time this morning, as I mentally counted the pitifully few times I had had the pleasure of escorting him. Once I walked with him as he rode his bike. Perhaps a handful of other times I drove him. His nursery hours this last academic year also meant I almost never picked him up either (unlike his first nursery where I collected him almost every Friday). But in the end I thought of Oliver’s own outlook when I had asked him if he was sad it was to be his last day. “Noooooo!” he said in a dismissive tone, as if I had just suggested he might want to watch paint dry.
He brought home his “Achievements Book”, a scrap book assembled through the year. We last saw it at Christmas and we were surprised at some of the things he had done and not mentioned, such as the visiting snake! We were also taken aback at some of his drawings, as rarely can he be persuaded to draw at home.
Perhaps most surprising, his report said how competent he was with a computer mouse. Doubtful about this, as he never uses it at home, Hayley put up the CBeebies website and told him to choose something for himself. At first he protested she should do it, but when left to his own devices, sure enough he swiftly selected something for himself. I do think he lets us do a lot for him that in truth he’s quite capable of doing himself. Perhaps it’s a boy thing. A friend told us recently she was getting her son dressed in the morning until he was eight!
So in a little over a month he will start his school life. And when he does he will have a few familiar faces around, as several of his nursery group are going to the same school. In fact he has already had one 90 minute visit to his future classroom to meet his teachers and some classmates-to-be. I dropped him off there quite happy with a couple of his (non-nursery) friends and he seemed to have enjoyed it when I picked him up later. Nothing much phases Oliver.
And I find that very reassuring. It is one thing that stands out from his end of pre-school report: he seems to be a happy and sociable boy. One phrase stood out for me: “he values the thoughts and feelings of others”. Frankly, as he enters an academic world overly focussed on tests and league tables, I can’t think of a more important outcome from his time as a pre-schooler.
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Last call for Hadrian’s Walk
July 27th, 2010 · Uncategorized
As regular readers will know there was a little stroll that took place earlier this month. It involved a small hoard of bloggers and other ne’erdowells dragging their carcasses an impressive 84 miles across the country from one end of Hadrian’s Wall to the other.
And if you’ve laid eyes on some of them you’ll know this was a small miracle.
More importantly they raised a whopping £26,000 for The Joseph Salmon Trust.
Like most others in any way linked to the walk I have already suggested enough times that readers might want to donate so this is the last reminder that you can give via the Justgiving page or even set up a small regular donation via the Trust’s website.
Congratulations to all those who took part but especially to Dan over at All That Comes With It, without whom it would never have happened. He won’t be opening his big mouth with any more ideas like that for a while I’ll bet. Bravo, sir!
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The law of unintended consequences
July 24th, 2010 · Uncategorized
Oliver has now reached a size where he is able to assert his indomitable right to a ritual known to all men and loathed by many women. Yes, he’s tall enough to easily stand up to pee into the toilet bowl and then (unintentionally you understand) forget to put the seat back down. Not that I encourage that latter part of course, amusing though it might be.
Unfortunately both the toilets in our house have had maladjusted seats that wouldn’t stand up unaided. So I rectified this yesterday and then encouraged Oliver to step up to the, erm, bowl, so to speak. I saw him successfully accomplish the operation without impact on carpet or other surrounding furniture and thereafter thought nothing of it.
Cut to this evening. Lucy has gone upstairs to the loo and finds the toilet seat left up. “No problem”, she must have thought, “I’ve seen how Oliver does it when it’s like this” and proceeds to hitch up her skirt and stand at the bowl attempting to pee. The result was predictable. Bless her. “I did it like Oliver”, she explained when I found the large damp patch in front of the bowl.
I have always told people “that girl would jump in the river if she saw Oliver do it”. It turns out there was a better example all along.
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