Present tense

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Why's there a cat in the silver spoon?
Is the spoon big or is it a tiny cat?
Either way sounds unhygienic.

Beautiful song there about the passage of time and not prioritising stuff correctly. Also about the way kids interfere with your work ethic, but mainly is a lyrical introduction to today's theme, that most mysterious, all encompassing and unpredictably life-affecting phenomenon - spoons. And changes.

Mostly changes, to be honest.

I've just been cleaning up some of the bloggage on The Gravel Farm. Before my hiatus to attend to my other life in that strange, possibly three dimensional realm we assume is reality, I followed a lot of great blogs. It was strange looking at them now, eighteen months later, and seeing how many had been abandoned, or taken over by advertising robots.

As I selected a few of them that hadn't been updated for years, I actually felt a pang of nostalgia, which is unusual for me as I'm not one to hold on to the past. There's always other stuff more useful to think about. Stuff that hasn't happened yet. When the time inevitably comes that everything you need to think about is in the past, then it's probably too late to worry about it anyway.

So I nodded a respectful adios to those blogs that had kept me entertained over the last few years, and thought about the past and the future.

I do that even more since having kids. Probably natural. You're always wondering how things are going to turn out for them, what obstacles will be in their way, what tools you can give them to help overcome problems and deal with their mistakes. Self-confidence maybe, a sense of humility perhaps, a healthy appreciation of humour and a decent work ethic. A well honed axe.

My son is now heading towards being eight, and likes . . . absolutely everything. Rock climbing, swimming, hoss wrangling, bikes, monster trucks, maths, sparrows, ceilings, books, Minecraft, wrassling, piano, Nerf guns, hot weather, cold weather, wet weather, snowy weather, whatever. He has a very admirable 'I presume I'll like it" point of view.

After having a daughter happen to me, it turns out that attitude, a current favourite trait lauded by modern urban cogna senti, isn't particularly hard to imbue. In fact, it would appear pretty much intrinsic to a four and half year old girl. Bonobo survives on hot chocolate and carbs, and she is out there. She can't be bargained with. She can't be reasoned with. She doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop, ever.

 

That picture had better be flattering Father.

So my world drifts away from doing what I like, when I like to providing entertainment and some sort of control to those little forces of nature I like to call children. It's a full time job. One that makes my employment seem like a nice little break, and explains the the lack of blog entries, I s'pose.

Still, I wouldn't change more than fifty percent of it, so I'm very lucky.

And from considering past and future, I shall now move on to presents! Aha! Did you see that? Presents, because it's chrizmuz. Yeah, I know. That segue will be all over the internet in an hour, you mark my words

Anyway I'm working all over the yule period and the new year, which further limits blogging opportunities to wish you all a happy xmas. Let me just say I hope you all  have one exactly as you want it, with as much or as little time to yourself as you desire.

Regards

The Jules
 

Jog on, nature.

A new thing I do since I last blogged frequently is running.

Honest.

Hitting your early forties, having kids, realising you're overweight and on a collision course with people adding the precursor 'jolly' to your name brings home certain inescapable conclusions.

You gonna die buddy.

Well, obviously. It's irritating to me that death looks pretty much unavoidable, and that the best one can do is prolong the good bit in between the eternities of oblivion. Other than giving up now and reaching for the head-blender, this means taking care of the soggy protein-based machine that houses what I like to think of as me.

I'm not talking about going vegan, tee-total and existing on seventeen mushroom-based calories a day though, because that would in itself be a type of living death, but a sort of sensible, achievable level of exercise which I could maintain and, hopefully, come to enjoy.

Believe it or not I have actually come to that place, and now run a few times a week, just small distances usually, and not very fast, but enough for me to think of myself as someone who runs.

A bit.

The school run finished, both my spawn are now somebody else's responsibility for a few hours, and I have no excuse not to exercise. I put on my man tights and top, then my running shorts over the lycra because no-one wants to see that, or at least I don't want to meet the sort of person that does want to see that, and out I go.

Today, a cheeky 5 kilometre trot along the canal should be enough to soothe the inner turmoil of modern living, and I soon get into my stride. I like the transition from the first couple of hundred metres when you think "why is this so hard" to suddenly breathing easily and finding you can now enjoy the scenery without wanting to spit, as the body wakes up to the fact that it is being required to run and activates various processes and abilities to achieve that. It feels natural. I am natural. I am at one with nature.

I smile benevolently at my fellow natural creatures, dragonflies a-swoop, birds on the wing and beasts on the . . . leg. A female duck swims quickly out from some reeds, honking with sheer joie de vivre. I watch for a moment, her wake a gentle rippling arrow fanning out behind like the cloak of a fantasy water princess with access to great CGI. We are both taken by surprise a moment later when she is pounced upon by three drakes, all pecking her head and half-drowning her in a brutal attempt at copulation. 

"Oi! Leave it out!" I yell, lobbing the head of a bullrush at the anatidaen rape scene, suddenly feeling less than at one with ducks as they scatter noisily and she escapes into the reeds.

I continue, breathing in the scent of . . . a large, quivering Labrador cross, pushing out something that looks like a seal foetus, it's owner standing by with a small plastic bag that I feel will be tested to its limits, should the dog survive this bowel movement.

Eyes watering, I go under a bridge to the picturesque locks, recently refurbished, that mark the half way point of my run and turn round for the return journey. A heron, bolder than most, stands it's place and watches me for a moment before snapping its head into the water, emerging a fraction of a second later with a wriggling thing which it wolfs down. Or maybe herons down.

I don't feel I am at one with eating stuff whilst it's still moving. Even live oysters have the decency to keep still. As if on cue, I inhale a midge, proving me wrong.

Coughing, but eventually succumbing to the inevitable and swallowing, I move on.

Two swans, both enormous cobs, are blocking the footpath, one on land the other on water. They have their wings curved back like ornate ceramic sails, chests puffed out and they both raise their bodies to display their own mass to the other.

A neat solution, I think, where two wild creatures assess one another and judge who might win a physical battle, and so can decide not to partake if the odds are too stacked against one, thus avoiding actual fighting and harm whilst achieving the same results. Nature often shows this excellent methodology; the parallel walking of red deer, for instance, or the chest thumping of silverback gorillas. Humans should do the same, I conclude in admiration.

Suddenly the two swans, both equal in size, start trying to tear lumps out of each other, hissing and gasping as they inelegantly but enthusiastically attempt to batter one other senseless, using tiny-brained heads like coshes and metre long wings like the worlds most exquisite bitch slappers.

I do not feel at one with swans as I detour around the splashy madness.

Nearly home now, and I am treated to the unusual sight of a grass snake swimming longitudinally along the canal. I slow down to a walk and watch for a good two minutes, a long time for such a shy creature. The snake, not me. Here is one of the benefits of running outside of a gym. Here I can see the way a creature like this beautiful reptile can exploit different substrates, using the same motion in water as on land, and I am inordinately pleased to be able to witness it for such a long while.

A coot leaves the pile of bent leaves it thinks of as a house and does that half-run, half-swim thing they do to stay along side it, and then proceeds to peck the snake's head over and over again. The snake, repeatedly dunked and possibly concussed, makes its way wearily into the reeds, only refraining from staggering because it hasn't got any legs.

I make it home, grab a drink and cogitate on the violence of the last half hour. There are probably many conclusions a behavioural ecologist could draw from these encounters, but I am not running to collect quantitative data or scientific evidence, I am simply running to develop myself. To that end, I realised that all species everywhere can be just as bad a bunch of dicks as humans.

And now I feel at one with nature again.

Ayyy!

Getting up at midday after finishing a couple of night shifts, nothing lightens the mood more than your goodladywife informing you that we must away to Cribbs Causeway shopping maul mall in Bristol to get the children some footwear more suited to Autumn and Winter than their current sandals.

After gnashing my teeth and considering opening an artery, I was placated by a bacon buttie and so opted for grinning and bearing it, for are not the happiest pebbles in the rough stream of life the smooth ones, allowing the troubled water to flow over them?

Who knows. They're pebbles. Their priorities are probably different from ours. More minerally.

Anyway, we parked in the underground section because  the boy M (aged 7) wanted to, and then got the lift up a single level because the girl, A (aged 4) wanted to. Then to John Lewis's shopping emporium to obtain footwear. Didn't see John himself, but someone else helped us. His nephew maybe. The choices were a tad lacking so we defaulted to middle class back up shop Clark's, and bought some there instead, with me handing over an actual bag of gold just to prevent my offsprings' feet from toughening up.

It was crowded, being a Sunday, and I could feel my usual aversion to crowds welling up like a geyser full of vitriol, so we made our way to the relative calm of Waterstone's for a ganzy at the books. People were waiting in a queue to see an author, but M and A were in too much of a hurry to see the aquarium they have in there to allow me to find out who it was.

I spent a few minutes looking at books, and explaining to A that she mustn't frighten the fish by smacking toy Orcas into the glass and shouting "Rah!" when I noted an American chap standing next to me, chatting to a young girl about a book.

It was, and I can't stress this enough, The Fonz.

I know!

Turns out Henry Winkler was doing the book signing. Me and a few similarly aged parents smiled at each other and raised eyebrows,but generally left him alone because, well, we're English. I bet a few of them wanted to point thumbs at themselves and say "Ayyyy!" though. Apart from me. I wouldn't even think that. He then proceeded to buy the little girl the book she wanted, which made her mum melt, before wandering off into the paper clad aisles.

I looked at the books he was there to promote, and asked the girl and her mum if they were any good, perhaps suitable for my son. They said yes, so I started flicking through them.

Henry walked past me, causing me to smile and nod. He then stopped, and we had a damn nice chat. He said he thought the books should be okay for a seven year old, and explained the premise behind a few of them, warm and enthusiastic at all times. Then he wandered off again to look at shelves of things. I took a Hank Zipzer book, the first one in the series I think, over to my son and we perused it, before he said yes he would like it. K (aged 42) gave me a monstrous hall'ow'e'e'n sticker book for A to buy as well, so she wouldn't tear the mall down in fury if we had the audacity to buy her brother something but not her.

At the till, Mr Winkler walked past me again.
"You've sold me." I said politely, indicating my purchase.
"Great." he said, and then "What's your son's name?"
I told him, and he wrote a personalised message in the front, then shook my hand. We cheerioed, and off he went to take his seat at the signing table, where the queue had become appropriately huge.

I'm not that bothered by celebrity, but that proper tickled me that did.

After that, we visited Pizza Express with vouchers because only the super elite who want to remember what it's like to worry about prices pay full whack for Pizza Express, where we watched A dance on the chairs, run round the table and talk loudly to the staff. A drive home saw A fall asleep so we put her to bed. M and I had a quick race on Wii MarioKart before he went off to bed and I am now eyeing up a bottle of red like an alcoholic lion spotting a pint of zebra.

Happy days.

Maybe, just maybe . . .

Hmm.

Might start looking at this again?

It was fun.

Yeah. maybe do it as a bit of a diary.