Tag: Childhood

7 Reasons That I Was Wrong About Children

Hello! Marc here. I have a confession to make. I’ve been really wrong for a long time about something really fundamental. When I was growing up, my stepfather would tell me that it “takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong”. Usually before admitting he was wrong. Well I’ve been very, very wrong. Wrong enough to make me a giant. Because I used to think that having a child would be among the worst things that could happen to anyone. But now that I’ve been the owner of a child for the past six months (he turned half last Saturday) I realise that it isn’t. In fact, having a child is bloody amazing. Here are seven reasons that I was wrong about children.

1. It’s Not Difficult. I used to imagine that being a parent was hard, but it isn’t. When you have a child, you’ll soon discover that you’re playing all the time. It’s amazing fun and it’s not at all difficult to do (in fact, it’s child’s play). Everything you do in your life with your child is a fun game. Teaching them to eat; teaching them to walk; introducing them to new colours and textures; changing a nappy, everything – however mundane – is a wondrous and fascinating experience for them, which makes it an intensely rewarding experience for you. Earlier today, my son and I spent half an hour banging on a window from opposite sides at each other. Half an hour! It was great.

2. It Doesn’t Age You. I previously thought that having a child was an experience that must surely prematurely age people as a result of the lack of sleep and the heavy burden of responsibility. But it turns out that the opposite is true. Spending most of your life with a creature to whom everything is new and exciting is a liberation. It’s an opportunity to view anything and everything without the burden of your own experiences and prejudices. It’s like seeing everything through a new pair of eyes. If anything, I would have to say that fatherhood has made me feel and act younger. Impossible as it may seem to anyone that knows me, I believe that having a child has made me more childlike than I was before.

3. Having Children Isn’t A Serious Business. I used to think that having a baby around wouldn’t be much fun, but it is. And even when babies aren’t being very entertaining, you can still have fun with them. Earlier today, my wife left our (not yet mobile) son unattended in the living room for thirty seconds, so I snuck in and moved him to the other side of his play-mat. “He’s moved!” She shrieked as she returned to the room while I dissolved into a fit of the giggles. Once she realised that this was not the case, she laughed too. Having a child around just makes our lives more fun. It’s made us more fun people.

4. Having Children Is A Very Social Business. I used to believe that having a child would hamper my social life: That a child would have a similar effect on my social life to the one that the iceberg had on the progress of the Titanic. But I was wrong. Because we didn’t know many of our neighbours before, but now we know almost all of them. And their many children. We share toys, baby accessories and childhood diseases with them and our children go to play-group together. If anything, our social life has been improved by having a child. It turns out that he’s not an iceberg, he’s an ice-breaker.

5. Having Children Makes You Less Selfish. I used to believe that having children would make me more selfish. That I would resent the intrusion that a child would make on my time and would guard it jealously. But it turns out that the opposite is true. When I went to bed at 2am last Saturday morning and my son saw me and decided that he wanted to play, I didn’t mind a bit. We played for two hours and it was great fun. Then I put him into his cot and he rolled around and barked like a dog for a bit. My wife and I just lay there listening to him and laughing. I had to be up at 7am to climb a mountain. Did I mind the unexpected impingement on my time and the weariness the next day? Not a bit.

6. Having A Child Does Not Make You Housebound. I used to think that having a child would mean that I’d get to go out less. But the opposite has happened. I’m out all the time! Weather permitting, we take our son to the park every day. I’ve spent more time in parks in the last six months than I had in my entire life before we had a child. I pretty much live in the park; I’m almost a part-time tramp. As my son and I were playing on our mat the other day, a woman came up to us and said “It’s so nice to see a father spending time playing with his son.” I smiled and told her that it was no chore. And it wasn’t. I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather have been or anything I’d rather have been doing than playing with my son in the park at that moment. I’m always out these days.

7. Children Do Not Make Everything Messy. I used to dread the effect that a child would have on the interior of my house. I thought that all of the gaudily-coloured accessories and accoutrements that are needed for children would clutter up my house and make it a (more) horrid place to be. But they’ve improved it. We’ve got owls on the walls and windmills in the garden. In fact, we’ve got owls everywhere. But I like owls. Now I get to buy really fun and interesting things to decorate the house with instead of sobre and tasteful grown-up stuff. Our house is much nicer now and we’ve got a crocodile on the upstairs landing! Who wouldn’t want one of those?!

September 30, 2011
7 Reasons Blackout Blinds Are Surprisingly Effective

My wife and I are trying to train our child to recognise the difference between day and night at the moment and the latest weapon in our armoury is a blackout blind: a blind which prevents any light coming through the window. This, we not unreasonably thought, would prevent our six-week old son waking up at 5am when sunlight streams through our East facing bedroom window and would help him get into a settled routine of sleeping at night. So far, it has proved effective (after a fashion).

1. Fitting. As the member of the 7 Reasons team that is competent at DIY I envisaged that there would be no problems installing our blind, and I was almost correct. It was incredibly simple to fit, with only a bit of light drilling required. And it was simple right up until the moment – while I was balanced precariously atop a step-ladder – that everything went dark. Not just dim, you should understand, but dark. Preternaturally dark. Darker than spending a dark night in the darkest room of the Prince of Darkness wearing a sleeping mask. Darker than anything ever. There was no light. “Help!” “Help!” I called until my wife came up the stairs and opened the door, flooding the room with light from the hallway. “It all went dark”, I explained to a sceptical wife who couldn’t comprehend – or didn’t believe – that something as insubstantial as a piece of material could block out all light. I climbed down from the ladder with my reputation for DIY prowess, if not my dignity, intact.

2. Baby’s Bedtime. In the evening our son fell asleep before we expected him to and, rather than look a gift horse (or a sleeping baby, which is a very similar creature to a gift horse) in the mouth, we decided we would put him to bed right then. We gingerly carried him up the stairs and swaddled him in his cot. We began to sneak out of the room and paused to close the blind on the way. Everything went black. We couldn’t see a thing. We partially raised the blind again so that we could find the light switch and turned on the light so that we could see the door and find our way out. This woke the baby. Bugger.

3. Mummy’s Bedtime. Eventually, we were able to get our son back to sleep and, quite soon after, my wife snuck up to bed. I have little idea what happened, but after a couple of minutes, from my position in the room below, I heard a loud bang, followed about thirty seconds later by the noise of the baby crying. Then I heard the sound of my wife trying to placate the crying baby with a cuddly toy, before my parental selective deafness kicked in and I returned to what I was doing.

4. Daddy’s Bedtime. Eventually, the baby became quiet again and, having spent the remainder of a fascinating evening reconfiguring the 7 Reasons W3 Total Cache plugin and our email servers*, it was time for me to go to bed. I went up the stairs and changed in another room, so as not to disturb anyone. Then I snuck across the landing into the bedroom and closed the door noiselessly behind me. Where once there would have had been some residual light filtering through the blind to aid my navigation across the room, now there was none. I knew roughly where the bed was though, and I took several tentative steps toward it before stumbling over something and letting out an involuntary scream as I lost my balance and landed in a heap on the bed.

5. “AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” Shrieked a lump in the bed from beneath me as, in the pitch darkness, a screaming and unknown assailant pounced on her. I groped around for the switch to the bedside light and, finding it quickly, turned it on. I looked behind me to see what was on the floor. “Are you drunk?”, the now slightly calmer lump in the bed enquired. “I fell over an owl,” I replied.

6. “WWWWAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!” Said a tiny voice from the other side of the room reacting to the sudden light. Eventually we were able to get him back to sleep.

7. Sleep. I was unaware of what occurred during the remainder of the night. I have since been told that the usual cycle of the baby waking up and requiring feeding and changing carried on unaltered by the loss of the light. I was told that this morning when, after what I can only describe as the most blissfully tranquil sleep of my life, my rather tired looking wife shook me awake and informed me it was 11am and that we were going to be late for our lunch appointment. “But it can’t be”, I replied, “It’s still pitch black”.

So there you have it. Blackout blinds do work, and you can use them to lull the unsuspecting into sleeping longer and later. They just don’t work on babies.

*I had hoped to watch a couple of episodes of Bergerac. We sacrifice a lot for 7 Reasons.

May 11, 2011
7 Reasons to Ignore What People Tell You About Babies*

Either I’m missing something or our six day old baby is defective. I was brought up to believe that parenthood was a living hell and that newborn babies were the worst things in all of existence. But, so far, and I hope I’m not tempting fate here, it isn’t and he isn’t. Doubtless there’ll be times when he’s poorly – or we are – and the going is really tough, but the babygeddon that I was led to believe I should expect as a new father has yet to materialise. I’m beginning to suspect that people have been lying to us.

It isn’t like this.

1. “It’s hard, it’s really hard. It’s awful. You won’t sleep for the first three years and then when you do, he’ll wake you up within five minutes just to spite you.” Blimey. Okay, so we need to feed and change him regularly day and night, but we seem to be getting loads of sleep. I actually feel guilty. I’ve begun stretching and pretending to yawn to make other parents feel better. “Oh, it’s absolute hell” I tell them in agreement, while wondering what all the fuss is about. Will it be possible for my wife and I to survive on only eight hours sleep per day each? Only time will tell.

2. “He’ll scream for hours for no reason.” No, there is a reason. In the case of the changing-table-screaming, it’s because he doesn’t want two giants tearing all his warm, protective layers off and attacking his bits with cotton wool every time he smells funny. I wouldn’t like it either. Nor would you. Fortunately we have worked out that we can distract him with the Poo Donkey; which is the donkey that comes and takes away the baby poo. (Not related to the father that takes the piss). Thank you, Poo Donkey, if it weren’t for you, the baby would still be screaming every changing time. Babies do scream for a reason. It just takes a bit of working out what it is.

All hail the Poo Donkey!

3. “You’ll never be able to go anywhere ever again.” Yes we can, and we have; every day. We’ve mostly been to Boots, Mothercare and the doctor’s surgery and we have to take a bit more stuff and it takes us a little longer to get ready, but we’ve been perfectly mobile. Okay, we get a few minutes of pushchair screaming which we don’t have a donkey to sort for us yet, but, with a bit of determination and preparation, a tiny child seems to be no obstacle to doing anything. I sense that only our own inertia would be.

4. “Boys will wee absolutely everywhere, on everything.” Yes, and babies are the same. Fortunately though, fast-hands can protect you from this. Yes, my nephew (also a baby) has managed to wee in my sister’s mouth and eye on more than one occasion, but this – I am sure – can be attributed to her having the spatial awareness and lightning reactions of a morphine-addled sloth listening to a tuba (throughout my sister’s childhood, the cry of “catch” was almost always followed by a sharp and unexpected blow to her forehead). For those of us with superhuman awareness and reactions (or even with human awareness and reactions) it is not difficult to place a hand between the source of the wee and the thing you want to protect from it. Sadly, my wife’s coat (on the back of a door several feet away) was sacrificed in the learning of this. But so far, we have not drowned in wee.

5. “There’s poo everywhere and you’ll spend your entire life cleaning it up.” No there isn’t, it’s conveniently contained within nappies, which – at this early stage – are not unpleasant to change (even for someone as squeamish as myself). Let’s say he does six poos per day and it takes five minutes each time to clean and change him. That’s only half an hour per day. The BBC have just axed My Family, so there’s half an hour. Now all we need is for them to axe EastEnders and Holby City and that’s a week we can spend dealing with shit, rather than watching it. Or we can just turn it off (the television, not the poo). Half an hour is not difficult to find. Half an hour is not all day, and half an hour every day is not an entire lifetime. For some people it’s not even an entire lunchtime.

6. “Newborn babies are really cute and their tiny little hands and feet are gorgeous. Awww. Sssswwwweeeeeettttt ickle babies. Do do do do do do do”. No they’re not. Our child has feet almost as large as his mother’s and fingers so long that he could probably play the piano if he could reach it. Or if we had a piano. Our son also has a hairier arse than most builders. Not all babies have tiny hands and feet.

7. “The baby will take over your life.” Yes – okay I have to concede that there may be a point there – and 7 Reasons apparently**. Expect us to have wrested some of it back from his evil clutches by next week though. Jon and I can take a baby in a fight. We’re not scared. Bring it on, you big baby!

*Don’t listen to me either, I expect that everyone’s experiences of parenthood are just different and we shouldn’t imagine that what we have undergone will be universally the same for others.

**We will be putting the baby away soon and normal service – rambling on about biscuits and France – will resume shortly.

March 30, 2011
7 Reasons That You Can’t Revisit Your Childhood

It’s day five of the week in which the 7 Reasons team revisit their childhoods – and now the pope has arrived in the UK – so you can’t say that we don’t live dangerously. But, over the course of the week, it’s become clear that revisiting your childhood isn’t easy. In fact, it can’t be done. I needed to find a way to demonstrate that adulthood is impossible to free yourself from and I have chosen the medium of Top Trumps.

1. Environment.

As an adult, your environment is – usually – substantially different to that of your childhood years. I spent a huge proportion of my childhood sailing. I couldn’t do that now though. I don’t live next to the sea. There are other distractions here. And girls. And beer. And anyway, I probably wouldn’t be able to spend every waking hour sailing now because of…

2. Biology.

Biology precludes revisiting your childhood. You can’t spend all day running around the park playing tag/tig/it/whatever-the-hell-it-was-called-where-you-lived, as you won’t have as much energy as you did when you were a child. And you can’t just stop running for a bit and have a breather on the swings and slides because you’re 6’2″ and you have a beard. No, that’s me. I really need to shave (something else that I didn’t have to do as a child). Anyway, one of the reasons that you don’t have as much energy is…

3. Sleep.When you’re a child you sleep for hours and hours and hours. As a child, I must have been a dream for my parents. They could just send me to bed and then – eventually – when they realised they hadn’t seen me for a couple of days, they could just wander up to my room and find me there, still sleeping. But adults can’t sleep like that, because they have…

4. Responsibilities.

Instead of spending most of their days playing, adults have to do things that are really, really dull. You may have noticed that the picture of my ten-year-old self is really blurry. This is because our scanner just broke and I can’t scan a picture of my childhood self in. Instead, I had to find a picture of myself on the internet. And, when I’ve finished writing this, I have to fix the scanner. And make dinner. And find out where the council have taken our glass recycling bin to. And do some washing. And shave. And…I’ll stop now, this is only helpful for me. I’m sure you get the picture. You just don’t have time to revisit your childhood. And even if you did, it would be a weird alternate universe, because of…

5. Events.

Our child and adult selves are also shaped by events. To revisit your childhood successfully, you’d have to erase the key events that had shaped you as an adult. I’m sure there are some things that we’d like to forget: That time I pressed the wrong button on the remote control and accidentally saw ITV, for example. But there are other events that are important and very dear to us; events that shaped our personalities. Events that we wouldn’t ever want to forget. Events that we want to retain in our memories. Events crucial to the formation of our character. Events that…yes, okay, I can’t remember any events to use as an example. This is because of my lack of…

6. Aptitude.

Your capabilities as an adult and as a child are different. As a child, you can remember things clearly (usually when adults don’t want you to), and as an adult you can walk in a straight line and look where you’re going without inconveniencing other pavement users (hopefully). But if you revisited your childhood you’d have to lose whatever skills you’d learned in the intervening years. And that’ll happen anyway if you live long enough. And why would you want to return to childhood in the first place? When you’re a child you’re an…

7. Idiot.

I used to hate nice food and drink when I was a child. I used to eat Angel Delight. I didn’t eat Arctic Roll though: No one was going to convince me that ice cream in a raspberry sponge cylinder wasn’t the devil’s work. But I wouldn’t eat decent cheese. And cheese is amazing. This is because I was stupid and ignorant and didn’t know any better. Because I was a child. Why would anyone want to return to a state of ignorance? That’s why you can’t revisit your childhood. And also why you shouldn’t burn books.

September 17, 2010
7 Reasons Playing With A Cuddly Toy 2010 Was Not A Let Down

Hello it’s Jon again. I know you weren’t expecting me again today – I wasn’t expecting me again today – but here I am. In my third and final attempt at reliving my childhood, I have decided to go all the way back to 1983. The year of my birth. On Christmas Day 1983, I was given a bear. Humbear. (He was the official bear of the Humber Bridge. Obviously). For many years he never left my side. So, in a bid to recreate the joys I once had, I am going to spend a day in the company of a cuddly toy. Unfortunately, Humbear isn’t with me. He’s at my parent’s house. So I have had to substitute him. And into Humbear’s place comes my girlfriend’s lamb, Lamb. (This is not his official name). Lamb and I spent a whole twenty-four hours together. And it was great. Truly great.

1. Lamb Can Fly. One of the things I have always regretted, is that Humbear always landed on his head whenever he slid down the handrail. Lamb doesn’t. Lamb bounces. Off his rather rotund chest. And then he sits upright. Ready for another go.

2. Lamb Can Dance. I learnt all my dance moves from Humbear, which explains a lot. Mostly why I prefer to do all my dancing sitting down ignoring the dance floor. If I had had Lamb on Christmas Day 1983, I dare say no one would credit the moonwalk to Michael Jackson. No matter what comes on the radio, Lamb does know how to have a good old bop. I did question his moves to Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, but I shouldn’t have done. If we all liked the same things the world would be very boring.

3. Lamb Can Play Cricket. Not matter how much I coached him, Humbear was quite a poor cricketer. He never seemed to learn and sadly had to retire from the game in circa 1989 after he was called for chucking a record 347 times in a row. Lamb though, well he’s quite a different character. Rather wonderfully, he doesn’t have much stuffing under his arms and so they actually move. A full 360 degrees at the shoulder. As a result he is quite rapid. Even if he does suffer from Harmison-itis.

4. Lamb Doesn’t Get Bored. Humbear, despite all the epic adventures he shared with me, always had a habit of looking very bored. Whether this was actually the case or whether it was just because the person whole made him stitched his mouth on upside down, I never discovered. Thankfully, Lamb comes with a positive attitude to life. He just sits there, watching me work, loving every minute of it. Whenever I look up, he is there, smiling away. It makes one very proud of the little fella.

5. Lamb Doesn’t Eat Biscuits. To this day, I am still convinced it was my Dad who stole the biscuit and implicated Humbear in the whole affair. Though, at the time, I may have believed him. Thankfully, Lamb doesn’t like biscuits. He just sits there, watching me, munching away. And he seems to enjoy the spectacle. So I have another one to entertain him.

6. Lamb Is Happy To Sleep On The Floor. I was always too scared to let Humbear sleep on the floor. I thought he may run away in the night, torn up inside by my rejection of him. As a result, he always slept in my bed. And to this day, he still does. At least he does when I’m not there. Lamb is very different. We came to an agreement. Whoever won the pillow fight, got to sleep in the bed. It wasn’t a long fight.

7. Lamb Doesn’t Miss Me. I always felt incredibly guilty about leaving Humbear alone if I had to go to school or play in the garden or hide him under the bed if a friend came round to play pirates. Thankfully, I don’t feel a shred of guilt about leaving Lamb alone when I go to play pirates with my friends. I say friends. They are more local school children. And I like to roar at them from behind bushes. Still good fun though. Anyway, Lamb is very happy not coming with me. He stays in bed with Big Bear and Strong Yoghurt. Again, not their official names.

*Many thanks to Claire for the loan (albeit unknown) of Lamb.

September 16, 2010
7 Reasons Blue Peter 2010 Let Me Down

Hello, it’s me again. I’m still reliving my youth. I am sure it won’t come as much surprise to you, but instead of Grange Hill and Byker Grove, my childhood programme of choice was Blue Peter. Yesterday, I decided to watch it for the first time in twenty years.* I wish I hadn’t. What has happened to it?

Blue Peter Presenters: Joel (muppet), Andy (made to look a muppet) & Helen (female muppet)

1. The Opening Credits. What the bloody hell has happened to the Blue Peter theme? It sounds like the 1988 version has been put through a blender, drowned in the bath, driven over by a monster truck and spent a night in Jo Brand’s bed. Something like that. It isn’t good anyway.

2. The Presenters. I grew up with Caron Keating, Mark Curry and Yvette Fielding. Yesterday, I grew old with Helen, Andy and Joel. Muppets. All three of them. I remember Caron, Mark and Yvette being informative. The only thing Helen, Andy and Joel informed me was that they were idiots and that once upon a time some git had told them they were funny**.

3. Pronunciation. Within five minutes, Helen, has already baffled me with unfathomable English. “No rords with cors,” she said. If she hadn’t been reporting about a recent trip to Venice I will no doubt have been wondering why she felt it necessary to tell us that cows do not roar. As for telling me that there are no cars in Venice due to the lack of roads, yes, thanks for that.

4. Pets. In the good old days, a holiday for the tortoise was being put in a box with a load of straw and placed on a very high shelf. These days though, apparently she goes off to India, Paris and Egypt to get away from it all. Photoshop has a lot to answer for. I suspect when the tortoise finally snuffs it, instead of having Yvette solemnly breaking the news to us, Joel will try and convince us that he has gone on a round-the-world trip. The tortoise I mean, not Joel. Though that would be preferable.

5. Practical Demonstrations. What a shame that Helen has never heard of a ruler, that way she may have been able to demonstrate how high a three metre diving board is. Instead, she decided to use a balloon on a string. Outside. Where there’s quite a lot of wind. “Imagine if it was straight up,” she says, desperately trying to get the balloon above a 45 degree angle. Yes, Helen, I could have done that without the poxy balloons. Next time, why not just show us a picture of a diving board?

6. Vogue Bambini. Helen is in Milan. Which, while good news for us, isn’t good for the children of Italy. Especially as she has just encouraged everyone to pick up a copy of Vogue Bambini to look for the supermodels of the future. This I wouldn’t be so alarmed about, if Vogue Bambini wasn’t devoted to fashion for very young children. Unfortunately, it gets worse. Helen, Andy and Joel are going to photograph children. And, under the instruction of Vogue Bambini editor, Giuliana Parabiago, they have to be funny with the children. Joel’s face lights up. I don’t think I can bear to watch. Where are you Mark Curry?!

7. Joel. Yes, I know I have already talked about the presenters, but this clown needs a reason all to himself. Apart from annoying me with his unnecessarily silly antics throughout the show, he is now interviewing an eleven year-old male model. “I always thought modeling would be well hard.” No you didn’t Joel. You thought, ‘Modeling could be difficult at times’. “Come on Andy! Bring it like your mama gave it!” I despair. I really despair.

*Alright, fifteen.

**I have decided that Andy is actually quite good. He has just been brought down to the Joel/Helen level. My advice would be to get out before it’s too late.

September 15, 2010
7 Reasons That Revisiting My Childhood Has Been Difficult

At 7 Reasons (.org) this week, we’re reliving our childhoods. Jon, my friend, colleague and collaborator, suggested it as a theme for the week and it seemed like a good idea. I can do that, I thought, and I decided to spend last Sunday engaged in childish pursuits. But it wasn’t a brilliant success. In fact, reliving my childhood has been bloody difficult. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Cycling. I cycled a lot as a child and decided to relive my boyhood by going for a ride. I straddled my bicycle and began to pedal and, after a few pedal-strokes, I found the old technique beginning to return. As I cruised along the riverside, the wind tousled my hair and the sunlight dappled through the trees and caused me to squint, and it soon began to feel as if it were only yesterday when I had last ridden a bicycle. But it wasn’t yesterday. It was the day before yesterday. So I wasn’t really revisiting my childhood at all. I was revisiting Friday. And I didn’t enjoy Friday very much the first time around. And the spectre of having to eat the mushroom omelette for dinner again was ghastly. I realised I’d have to do something else to relive my childhood. Hmmm. What else did I do a lot of as a boy?

2. Reading. I knew that reading would go well. Obviously I had to select my book carefully; I couldn’t just pick up any old book. I had to find a book that I’d read and enjoyed during my childhood. I spent many minutes scouring my shelves and then, in the twentieth century military history section, I saw it: The well-worn creased black dustcover with the red gothic lettering and the prominent swastika. A book that I’d loved when I was fourteen: William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich. All 1245 pages of it. I settled down with a glass of ginger beer and began to read. It was all there: The spare, matter-of-fact prose style; the meticulous attention to detail; the sharp, insightful analysis. In fact, it took me back in time. Way, way back. Back to the autumn of 2009 when I had read William L. Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic. But I didn’t want to relive October 2009 as I’d have to hear about Balloon Boy again. And I wasn’t trying to write 7 Reasons to Revisit 2009. I’d have to try something else. And then I had an idea. I would…

3. Play A Practical Joke. Barely a day went by during my childhood that I wasn’t tormenting my immediate family with practical japery and I decided to reprise my favourite ever practical joke. And it worked. The reaction of the tearful angry shouting woman to the joke transported me back to an earlier time. A time when, approximately a month earlier, I’d played a different practical joke on her and had substituted beer for tea in her mug. She’d shouted then too. I had to clean up the mess and get her more tea. It was slightly different with this joke – I had to mop the bathroom floor and buy a new roll of cling-film – but it wasn’t different enough to take me back to my childhood. So I put my thinking-cap on again and decided to…

4. Follow The Cat. When I was a very small boy we had an active, adventurous cat and, if I had risen before my parents, I used to let the cat in to the house and play Follow The Cat. The game is simple: Take one cat, and follow it wherever it goes. Always make sure that you’re about two feet behind it. Certain that playing Follow The Cat would help me to relive the early mornings of my childhood I went downstairs and stood behind our cat. After two hours he moved, and I followed. We walked down the hallway, through the kitchen and into the utility room. Then he exited the utility room through the cat-flap. This was a turn of events that I hadn’t anticipated: We didn’t have a cat-flap in my childhood home. It didn’t take me very long to conclude that I was too big to fit through the cat-flap and, looking down at the tiny portal, I felt very large indeed. In fact, I hadn’t felt as large as that since my ill-considered purchase of a lycra cycling jersey four months previously. I abandoned Follow The Cat and decided to do something else. Then I had the idea to top them all. It was time to unleash…

5. The Space-Hopper. I spent years bouncing around on them as a kid and a go on one would surely be the ideal way to relive my infancy. I went up into the loft to get my space-hopper and excitedly inflated it with my bicycle pump. Then, somewhat less excitedly, I deflated it and brought it down through the loft hatch. Once I had re-inflated it – though quite tired now – I decided to ride it down the hallway. I mounted the gaudy bulbous wind-sack and, with as much power as my legs could muster, propelled myself forward and upward. I achieved quite a height and, as my graceful arc turned to descent, I braced myself and prepared to bounce. And I did bounce. I bounced ninety degrees to the right. And, as I lay groaning on the hallway floor, having unexpectedly shoulder-charged the living room wall, I was reminded of an earlier, simpler time. Christmas. Christmas 2005, when my wife had brought me a space-hopper and I, having injured my shoulder bouncing in the hallway, had deflated it and put it into the loft. There was nothing for it. I’d have to try…

6. Music. I would listen to the first album I ever purchased. The Specials’ eponymous debut album. That would take me back. As I put the CD on, and the opening bars of A Message to You, Rudy began to emerge from the speakers, I was taken back to another time time. Back…to Wednesday evening when I’d heard A Message to You, Rudy on a bloody Next television advert and had become astonishingly cross about the commercial exploitation of a track that was very dear to me. In fact, just thinking about it annoyed me again and so, as I was tired and my shoulder hurt, and as my day of reliving my childhood had gone so abjectly wrong and recognising that I was, by now, in a foul mood that was unlikely to improve and would cause me to irritate others I…

7. Sent Myself To Bed Without Any Tea. And so it was that I finally discovered a way of reliving my childhood. By being quite grown-up, ironically.

September 14, 2010
7 Reasons International Cricket Captain 2010 Let Me Down

This week, one half of the 7 Reasons team will be revisiting their childhood. (The other half may or may not join in. We like living on the edge). Today we start off by looking back to the summer of 1998. As a 15 year-old, I spent much of my summer holiday playing, watching and indulging in cricket. Part of this indulging was many hours spent on International Cricket Captain. A PC game that does for cricket what Championship Manager does for football. Except that Championship Manager was good. Anyway, International Cricket Captain 2010 is out these days. It’s bound to have got better. At least that’s what I thought.

1. Run The Bat In! As a young cricketer you are told to run the bat in. Usually, this involves running the bat along the ground. Whoever designed this game obviously thinks it’s okay to run the bat in, in mid-air. And because of that, Ricky Ponting was given not out on 23, 54, 73, 75, 89, 101, 108, 11o, 118 and 122. He went on to score a match-winning 133 and the Ashes were gone. Despite Andrew Strauss’ 13* in England’s second innings. The one where we were bowled out for 46. Chasing 467.

2. Slip Positions. I don’t know about you, but I like my slips close together. If the ball goes wide of third slip, well so be it. It’s better than it flying between first and second. International Cricket Captain 2010 evidently likes a slightly more spread field. So spread in fact that I could probably drive a combine harvester between keeper and slip. If only the game had that option.

3. Aggers. I would say Jonathan Agnew is back for another stint as commentator, but I actually think it’s exactly the same utterances as he recorded 12 years ago. The only reason I hesitate in stating this as fact is because he sounds slightly more bored than I remember. I didn’t even think that was possible at the time.

4. Geoffrey Boycott’s Grandmother. If anyone has ever wondered just how good she is, I can’t help you. If anyone has ever wondered what her stance looks like, buy International Cricket Captain 2010. The batsmen – and they all have exactly the same set up – are clearly based on little old ladies.

5. Lord’s Media Centre. It looks like a hedge. Probably because it is.

6. Training. One of the things that really annoyed me about the original International Cricket Captain was that you could only train eight players at anyone time. Supposedly the rest of the squad just arsed around in the changing room playing poker and watching Trisha. I would have hoped that in the twelve years that have passed, this would have changed to accurately portray the professional era. Has it? No. I am still only allowed to coach eight players. And quite frankly, I don’t think Ian Bell listened to a word I said.

7. Attack! When a batsmen is at the crease you are supposed to be able to influence his attacking mentality. Unfortunately, some of the players seem to have a mind of their own and do whatever they bloody well like. An uninjured Flintoff deciding to block out the 19th over of a T20 against Australia for instance. I initially thought this was because I hadn’t earned his respect. That would be a nice little addition to the game and give it a sense of realism. Ten minutes after trying to work out whether this was the case, I exited the game without saving. Why did I think it would be a good idea to relive my childhood again?

September 13, 2010