As a Man of a Certain Age, one of the most significant events for me in recent years was obviously the release of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD. I was particularly pleased by this cinematic landmark because Hannah and Lauren had, until that point, only seen the new episodes, and I was growing increasingly anxious that they might come to accept them as The Star Wars Films, with the originals seen as some kind of quaint curiosity for old duffers. When I think back to my parents commenting that Tom Baker wasn’t the real Doctor Who, it still seems like a lot of fuss about nothing. But if I just change a few of the words - change it to me, for example, insisting to obliviously shrugging daughters that Ewan McGregor isn’t the real Obi Wan Kenobi - the situation suddenly takes on a horrible gravity, of the kind that could keep me awake at night.
So, it was clear the girls needed to be correctly indoctrinated as soon as possible. Well in advance, I alerted them to the fact that the DVDs would be released shortly, and managed to arouse some kind of passing interest, albeit in the arrival of what they called “a new R2-D2 film”. Clearly there was no time to lose.
On the day the DVDs arrived I came home as early as I could from work and the girls and I sat down, with an appropriate sense of ceremony, in front of the telly. By about half an hour later, any thought of educational progress had been abandoned and I would happily have chewed my own leg off for just a few hours on my own with my DVDs, my memories, and a kitchen foil tube for a light sabre. Here’s what happened.
As you can see from the picture on the right, Hannah and Lauren have lovely long blonde hair. Part of my routine every morning is to comb this and tie it back into a pony-tail. (Well, two pony-tails - one each. But I digress.) The purpose of doing so is supposedly to keep their hair clean throughout the rigours of the school day. And yet despite this, the combing process is invariably a tearful one due to the presence of foreign matter in their hair. After years of painstaking analysis I am yet to positively identify the nature of this foreign matter, although I have reduced the list of candidates to the following shortlist: congealed treacle; tree sap; an unidentified school dining hall substance; epoxy resin.
Every morning, then, we go through the same basic conversation:
H/L: Ow Daddy! Ow! Ow! It’s hurting!
Me: Keep still! I’ll be finished soon! [combs faster]
H/L: OW-WUH! [starts crying]
Me: Nearly done. How do you get all this sticky stuff in your hair anyway?
H/L: [tearful] I don’t know, Daddy!
L/H: [i.e. sister of the combee] I didn’t do it…
Me: Well girls, if you want to have such lovely hair you’ve got to keep it away from sticky things, OK?
H/L: [through sniffs] OK, Daddy.
Me: Because if you’ve got lovely hair we need to comb it to keep it clean. If you don’t want to have your hair combed, you’d need to have short hair like me.
H/L: OK, Daddy, I promise.
Me: Good girl. And then there’ll be no tears tomorrow.
[Repeat on daily basis]
I was trying to get the girls out of the house this morning for school. It’s a mission at the best of times, but today it’s snowing which means (a) they’re extra-excited, and (b) they need more layers applying before we can leave. As I was trying to get their woolly hats on without disturbing their hair bobbles, and guide twenty wriggly fingers into four pairs of over-sized gloves, they fell effortlessly into one of those modes where one of them does something perfectly harmless just to piss the other one off.
Picture the scene: the hall of our house is approximately 2m square and contains two doorways, a cupboard, a wooden chest, the bottom of a flight of stairs, me, two small girls and around 300 pairs of shoes. I’m stumbling around trying to zip up coats, apply hats etc. Lauren, now fully equipped and ready to go, is standing right in front of Hannah, wearing a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression and bobbing up and down holding her skirt. Hannah, who I am trying to get ready, is ignoring all my barked commands because she’s too busy stamping her foot and shouting “LAUREN! STOP CURTSYING!!!”
The only thing that gets me through moments like this without having to go for a nice lie down is the fact that I know Simon and I were just the same, if not much worse, when we were that age. We’d use anything to annoy each other, and it was always something innocuous so that the one doing the annoying could shrug innocently at Mum and Dad when it came to the hour of reckoning. I’m just disappointed at our lack of range that we never thought of curtsying.
Hence this blog. It’s therapy, really. Please bear with me.