I’ve written meta poems before
Though I’ve never met this one I’m sure
For if this poem were a person
Meeting it could only worsen
My antipathy towards this verse
Although I’ve probably written worse
Personification of a rhyme
As bad as this might be a crime
So I’ll never meet my poetry
Why I write it is a mystery

Prior to becoming a parent, I had no idea what ‘soft play’ was. Indeed for quite some time after becoming a parent I was only really notionally aware of ‘soft play’. I knew it was a thing but mainly it was a thing that happened to other parents. Occasionally Mrs Proclaims mentioned taking Little Proclaims to a soft play centre, but my interest was rarely piqued beyond a perfunctory level of curiosity, which was pitched at the level required to fulfil marital obligations but was never at a high enough level for me to glean any meaningful knowledge about the activity itself.

When I was a father of one child, I mainly fulfilled my paternal duties by taking Little Proclaims to activities that Mrs Proclaims had little to no interest in, such as swimming, to the play park or to outdoor spaces where Little Proclaims could run around uninhibited.

Being a parent of two children, with a nearly 4-year age gap, has changed things a little, particularly since Mini Proclaims has become mobile. Keeping one child safe in a large outdoor space is very much within my skillset, but keeping two children safe, particularly when they operate at different speeds is more challenging.

And so in October 2023 I tentatively experimented with soft play. And I haven’t looked back. It’s not especially cheap, but as a way of entertaining and (crucially) exhausting my offspring, it really does provide a one-size-fits-all solution. Over the Christmas holidays, I took my daughters to our local soft-play centre no less than six times in a fortnight. And while I generally found it excruciatingly dull, neither Little nor Mini Proclaims showed any signs that they were becoming bored of the experience.

Post Christmas it has been harder to find the time, because I work during the week and Little Proclaims is not lacking in other activities on the weekends (see last week’s post for example). But this weekend we were away, in Eastbourne, celebrating a milestone birthday with our extended family. It was a fun-filled but fairly intense weekend – when Little Proclaims gets together with her cousins, a very real chaos ensues. Mini Proclaims rather does her own thing, but generally makes the most of being the centre of attention of her adoring relatives. By the time Sunday morning rolled around, a lot of energy had been expended, but it seemed like there was still plenty left in the tank. For the kids. The adults, to a person, while all in agreement that it had been a delightful weekend, were quite ready to return to normality and basque in pleasant memories.

It was felt that the young’uns could do with one last hurrah. A local soft-play centre was mooted. Along with extensive cushioned child-friendly fun it purported to offer a parent friendly cafe. And so to soft play we headed. And as far as that went, it was a success. All children burned off their post-party highs in an hour of brightly coloured foamy fun and accompanying adults enjoyed a much needed caffeine injection. But Eastbourne soft play was different to Reading soft play in that the car park was not free. This is perfectly reasonable. Our local Reading soft play is in a leisure centre with adequate parking and no other nearby attractions. Eastbourne soft play is on the sea front. It’s fairly customary to expect to pay for parking if you park along the sea front in a coastal town. And in fairness, the car park charges were pretty reasonable.

So far so good. I had no complaints.

Until I tried to pay for parking.

Because in 2024 I generally operate in a fairly ‘cashless’ existence. Most things can be paid for by card these days, and it’s generally more convenient to do so. I can even buy a coffee in work on my debit card and I work in a state-maintained secondary school, which are hardly institutions renowned for their cutting edge approach to anything.

Most car parks I use on a regular basis offer the facility to pay via credit or debit card. Indeed many offer a ‘contactless’ approach to such payments. But occasionally one does come across a car park which insists on payment using cash. And not just cash, in fact, but specifically coins. I never have coins on my person so this is always a problem. However, such places do often offer an alternative of sorts.

Which is the ‘parking app’.

I don’t mind an ‘app’. I was not exactly an early adopter of the smart phone but the technology has insinuated its way into my life over the years and now, like many people, I am a slave to my devices. But the parking app seems a fairly unnecessary invention. I wouldn’t object to the concept in itself, but as I am able to use a multitude of parking facilities without ever having to resort to the app, it’s hard to see it as anything other than an inconvenience. And when I do find myself needing to download a parking app, it never seems to be the same app. I’m all for open and fair competition in the market place but there seems to be a veritable plethora of companies operating in this field. Which generally means that when I do need to avail myself of their services, I find myself needing to set up a new account every time. Which makes the whole process rather time-consuming. Assuming I can even get a signal on my phone to download the app in the first place. Which I often can’t as the issue only ever seems to crop up in remote coastal towns where mobile phone signals are often a rare commodity.

Eastbourne, however, though coastal, did offer a fairly robust signal so I was able to download the app. And go through the lengthy process of setting up a new account. Only to find out (once I’d entered the ‘verification’ code that had to be sent to me in order to complete the set-up) that I apparently had used this app at least once in my life before and therefore was directed to log in to my existing account. I attempted to do this, guessing my previously used password far too easily (I am a fraudster’s dream when it comes to account passwords, if only I had an identity worth stealing). Once I’d entered my second verification code of the morning, it transpired that when I had last used the app I had done so with a different car. Which dates my last usage to over two years ago, but it could have been longer. Anyway the app did not like my current car’s registration number and so suggested that I could not proceed further but could, if I wished to pay for parking that day, delete my old account and set up a new one, much as I had attempted to do at the outset. A third attempt (and verification code) later, I finally had paid for parking. It was not, as advertised, a more convenient way of doing things. The whole process took ten minutes, which I think is at least nine minutes longer than it should take to pay for parking. It was cold. I had soft-play bound children with me who were not entirely understanding about why daddy was taking so long to get them inside to the joys of ball pits, slides and squishy things. And for the privilege of using the parking app, I also had to pay 30p more than if I’d had cash on my person.

I think it’s fair to say I was not an ‘appy customer.

This poem
Is not that poem

It’s a different verse
Neither better nor worse
It’s just not the same
And it doesn’t claim
To be that poem

To be exact
It is in fact
This poem

Which is fine
It’s not a sign
Of things amiss
To be this
And not that
Or a cat
Or a hat
Or a bat

It’s this poem
Which is not that poem

In all likelihood this will be the last thing I post in January 2024 because January 2024 is almost over. As Januaries go, this has not been as eternal as some have felt in the past, which is possibly due to the fact that, as a result of some strange quirk in the UK school calendar this academic year, I didn’t return to work from the Christmas break until the 8th, when a sizeable chunk of January was already behind me.

I’m not generally a huge fan of January, which is not really the fault of January itself. It’s unfair to blame an arbitrary measurement of time for anything, but January, as well as having the tough act of following Christmas, is also, in the UK at least, beset by inclement weather and very little in the way of daylight. And lots of fads, which are theoretically designed to make people healthier but, unless healthy and miserable are synonyms, mainly fail on this score.

January 2024 has not been too bad on a personal level. Mini Proclaims has introduced me to several fruit-based flavours of vomit (blueberry being somewhat less pleasant than strawberry). These have increasingly consolidated a vaguely unpleasant aroma in the back seat of my car, which even the most industrious of unicorn-themed air fresheners has struggled to combat (Little Proclaims is quite insistent on the unicorn theme – I once purchased an alpaca-themed air freshener and the resulting outrage was palpable). However, I would not define my initial foray into 2024 as being predominantly centered around vomit.

I’m not sure how I would define it. I’m not certain a definition is even required. It’s been quite tolerable though. Even pleasant in parts. Being a parent of two small children often means that one day seems much like any other, and nothing much that goes on in my life would seem particularly exciting to others. I don’t think the younger incarnations of me would necessarily regard my current existence as something be desired. But I somehow feel that future versions of me might look back on this time as a golden era.

My career is not as successful as I might like it to be, but far more successful than I probably deserve it to be. My eternal struggles to not be overweight are mitigated somewhat by the fact that I am as fit as I have ever been at any time in my life. My house, while in need of much renovation and an industrious spring clean, is full of the kind of clutter that reminds me that it is lived in by people that I love.

It’s early on Sunday morning as I write this, and my wife and children are still sleeping. ‘Me-time’ is hard to come by in a small terraced house full of people. I had a similar moment on Saturday morning, until it was punctuated by the sound of Little Proclaims singing to her giggling sister. I enjoy having time to myself, but there is always a part of me that looks forward to the beginning of the morning song and the resulting chaos that will ensue.

As we said goodbye to January
And associated fads
Such as Veganuary
(In which I did not participate
Out of sympathy to vegetarians
Who surely must feel a level
Of antipathy towards vegans
Who have rather stolen their thunder)
I reflected on whether I might ever
Adopt a specific dietary practice
And adhere to it faithfully

Because I could see the benefits
Of being a little healthier in that regard
But I feel I lack the requisite willpower
To ever truly commit to such a lifestyle

I worry too that a certain tendency
Towards pedantry
Might also hold me back
After all, I am married
To a pescatarian
And I quite like fish
So should not find it too hard
To make the switch
To a sea food diet
And replace my amusingly homophonic
‘See food’ diet

But I would always be concerned
About certain details
Such as whether or not
A pescatarian
Would truly be a pescatarian
If they ever ate a shark

When I was a child, TV in the UK consisted of four channels. In England that would have been BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4. In Wales, where I grew up, there was no Channel 4. We had S4C. Which was entirely in Welsh. I don’t really speak Welsh, although I did learn a bit in school and somehow managed to get a grade B at GCSE. But S4C was mainly useless to me (apart from as a cunning ruse when I pretended to revise for the aforementioned GCSE), so I grew up with three channels. Channel 5 didn’t really arrive until I was already an adult and, although additional channels might notionally have been available via the installation of a satellite dish, my parents never subscribed to such services because I think they were quite expensive. And they probably felt that three channels was enough.

We also only had one TV to be shared between the whole family and the internet wasn’t really a thing as far as the general public was concerned. We didn’t even have VHS player in the early years. If you wanted to watch TV, you watched what was on the TV. As a child, it meant I knew the schedules pretty well. My time was late afternoons and weekend mornings. Cartoon time. Long time readers may recall my homage to the cartoons of the 80s and 90s but might also note some clear omissions. Like BraveStarr, the animated Space Western that would definitely have been my cup of tea. If I drank tea at that age. Which I didn’t. Although I think I did drink coffee. Which, on reflection, seems wrong for an primary-school-aged child. But I digress. I never watched BraveStarr, because it was on at the same time as something else I liked on a different channel. Possibly He-Man.

Back in the day we had to make some hard choices.

These days there are hundreds of channels available in the UK, many of them accessible without subscribing to any particular service. But if you like having access to the internet, which I do, then in all likelihood you’ll have subscribed to some multimedia provider that throws in a load of extra TV channels as part of your internet/phone package. Most of them are awful, and largely if I watch TV in the traditional sense, then I’d probably watch something on one of BBC1, BBC2, ITV or Channel 4. Not S4C though because I now live in England and have no intention of sitting any more exams in Welsh. Actually sometimes S4C because they occasionally show rugby and football matches involving teams I grew up with and it’s worth putting up with Welsh language commentary to watch those games. But largely it’s the ‘big 4’ if I watch TV. Which I mainly don’t these days.

Because another thing that comes with having the internet is access to subscribable streaming services, and I subscribe to a few. I’m not sure if I can really afford to subscribe to them, but once the direct debit is set up, it’s quite hard to equate those services with the total lack of money in my bank account at the end of every month. And I do use most of them, more so than my gym subscription for example. Which is wrong on multiple levels. I might need to review my priorities a little. Perhaps I’ll do that later with a cold beer and calorific snack.

As a household we still only have one TV. And even that is probably more than we need, because these days you can access moving images via a whole host of devices. But we do have a TV. It’s on as I write this. I’m not watching it. Little Proclaims is notionally watching it. Although being the whirlwind that she is, she’s also multi-tasking and has produced no less than seven drawings of cats in the last 15 minutes. My daughters do enjoy a whole host of cartoons, which are available on demand via the various streaming services. And they do demand to watch them a lot. Of course Mrs Proclaims and I feel a tad guilty about letting them just sit and watch TV, but I could hardly produce exquisite prose like this if I didn’t let the TV do a little of the heavy lifting vis-a-vis childcare. The magic of the modern world is such that we are able to ease our guilt a little by insisting that they watch their cartoons in French. Because that is an option. So it’s sort of educational and not lazy parenting at all.

I do wonder how my children might have coped with the limitations of the 80s and 90s, but I also know that my childhood would have been equally incomprensible to my parents and the stuff of science fiction to the generations that preceded them. Was it better then or is it better now? There’s nothing quite like the good old days of course. Not even, as it turns out, the reality of the good old days.

But at least my parents got to watch what they wanted some of the time, simply due to the lack of cartoons at certain times of day. Mrs Proclaims and I rarely sit down together to watch anything much. Except on Friday evenings.

Friday is pizza night. This mainly entails Little and Mini eating the cheapest supermarket pizza available, as soon as Little returns from school. I would feel guilty about this, but we’ve tried offering them more expensive pizza in the past and Little is very clear that she prefers the cheap ones. Mini Proclaims doesn’t articulate her preferences as such but does like to let you know of her distaste for gourmet pizza through a sound, which might be best described as “bleurgh!”

So they eat their cheap pizza and then Mrs Proclaims gets them ready for bed. I’m usually home a little later on a Friday because I do a thrice weekly martial arts class. It’s pretty much the only thing I do that isn’t work or childcare, and I’m confident that any middleclass person who came at me with a set of pre-choreographed moves would soon find that I could provide some more-than-adequate choregraphed responses. When I return, there is usually time for me to participate in Little Proclaims extensive and elaborate bedtime routine and then Mrs Proclaims and I settle down to enjoy a slightly pricier supermarket pizza and an episode of a show we both like. Or if we’re feeling really extravagant, possibly a whole film. Mini Proclaims will usually join us for this somewhat underwhelming attempt at a ‘date-night’ but only having 50% of our children present is about as close as we ever get to spending quality time with each other.

Until recently Mini Proclaims had not been too vociferous in her objections to us not watching one of her cartoons of preference. Little Proclaims would afford us no such clemency, which is why it is really important that we get her bedtime routine right. Little Proclaims believes the TV was invented solely for her amusement and cannot fathom a world where her parents might also enjoy the moving pictures.

This Friday just gone, I missed my martial arts class, due to the fact that I was recovering from a cold. I didn’t miss a day of work (which on reflection my colleagues may not be thankful for) but I didn’t feel quite well enough to pretend to punch and kick people for an hour. However, I still didn’t get out of work that early, so the children were already munching on their cheap pizza by the time I arrived home. It was considerably earlier than my normal Friday return, so there seemed little point in Mrs Proclaims and I delaying our pizza/TV extravaganza until Little Proclaims went to bed.

Or so we thought.

In fairness Little Proclaims did not object to Mummy and Daddy watching something on TV that wasn’t something she wanted to watch. But she equally saw no need not to talk incessantly throughout the show. She was, however, placated by having the dining table to herself to do an activity that she likes to call ‘creating’. ‘Creating’ mainly seems to consist of sticking stuff (usually stuff found in the recycling bin) to other stuff. Historically her main medium has been sellotape, but recently she’s been experimenting with Pritt stick.

We relaxed. The main source of distraction had been resolved and the issue of attempting to return her creations to the recycling bin without her noticing was a problem for another day. But we’d let our guard down. Mini Proclaims is normally well-marshalled on ‘quasi-date-night’. But with her sister diverting our attention, Mini Proclaims was free to roam. And roam she did. Right up to the TV unit. The first casualty was the DVD player, which she unceremoniously pushed onto the floor. We don’t use it that much, but on balance we’d prefer it not to be treated in quite such an irreverent manner. Still, it survived so no harm done.

Her next trick was to switch off ‘the box’. ‘The box’ is the thing that the internet/telephone company provides customers in order to access all the digital content they offer. This included the show we were attempting to watch, which was instantly cut short without ceremony.

Mini Proclaims looked at us.

And said “oops”.

It was pretty cute.

We all laughed.

I turned the box back on, found the show we had been watching and pressed ‘play’.

Mini Proclaims walked up to the box again.

And switched it off.

And said “oops”.

We didn’t laugh quite as much the second time.

It is February half term in the UK, and being an employee of an institution that allegedly provides education to young people, I have the week off work.

In theory at least.

In actual fact I have a backlog of paperwork that is, in some cases, embarrassingly overdue, and I really should spend this week catching up on it.

I won’t be doing that however, because I am also a father of two young children. The mother of said children is working towards a PhD and generally views school holidays (and weekends) as times when she can offload all parenting responsibility on to me and get on with studying the works of a long dead French writer so that one day she can correct people who greet her as ‘Mrs Proclaims’ by explaining that “it’s doctor actually’.

I’m sure she has other reasons for pursuing her studies but if I ever decide to try my hand at a similar endeavor, it will be solely for the title and associated smugness.

This morning, however, Soon-To-Be-Dr Proclaims did allow herself the luxury of spending a little time with us, and we went on a family trip to Henley-On-Thames. Henley is quite a nice place. It’s the sort of place we could only dream of being able to afford to live, but as we live in the slightly less desirable Reading (also on Thames albeit not in name), which is quite close to Henley, we often enjoy the sights and sounds of our upmarket neighbour without the associated costs of actually living there.

We usually go for breakfast in a pub, which is located in the centre of the town. It is part of a national chain of pubs known for their very reasonable prices. We mainly go there because it opens quite early in the morning, which tends to suit our purposes. We’re quite early risers Chez Proclaims. Not often out of choice, but early mornings have become something of a staple since Little Proclaims arrived in 2018. The appearance of Mini Proclaims in 2022 merely compounded the prompt start to most days.

Reasonable prices are always welcome though. As is the fact that the pub tends to attract the kind of clientele that don’t really mind loud children. Indeed it’s very much the kind of place that Mrs Proclaims and I avoided prior to becoming parents, when we had more disposable cash, and a judgemental attitude towards the kind of beleaguered mothers and fathers who couldn’t control their noisy offspring. The kind of people that we have subsequently become.

These days a trip to an inexpensive hostelry in a pleasant river-themed town is as good as it gets for the Proclaims family. The bottomless coffee, in particular, is very welcome and often quite necessary.

These little outings were quite common ventures when Little Proclaims was…erm…littler. But she is quite busy with activities most weekends nowadays, and I am equally busy as her chauffeur. So Henley tends to be somewhere we only visit during the school holidays. After breakfast has been consumed (or in some cases vociferously rejected by one or both children) we tend to wander along the river and make use of one of the large play parks that sits on the river bank, so that Little and Mini can expend as much energy as possible.

Today was no exception. Both girls ate their affordable breakfasts. Little Proclaims was delightful company. Mini Proclaims was not as enthusiastic about the venture, but a tag team effort between Mrs Proclaims and I sufficed to ensure she did not leave the pub hungry and we were able to contain her well enough to enjoy our own food.

All in all it was a pleasant morning.

It was rendered more so by a timely interjection on my part with Little Proclaims.

My eldest daughter is five and a long time alumna of the toilet training academy. But she can sometimes lack a little awareness that she needs to use the facilities until the situation has become quite desperate. So a little reminder before we head away from nearby water closets is often a good idea.

At the conclusion of breakfast, I asked her if she needed to use the toilet before we headed to the park. Her answer was very much in the negative. But I know my daughter. So I insisted she accompany me to the restroom.

We were gone for some time.

When we returned to find Mrs Proclaims entertaining Mini at our table with some crayons, Little Proclaims felt she should explain our extended absence.

“Mummy, I just did two huge poos,” she announced loudly to the whole establishment.

There was audible laughter from the other customers.

It’s that kind of place and that’s why we like it.

Most weekdays I’m not involved in the process of feeding my children. By the time I get home from work, Mrs Proclaims has taken care of the evening meal for them and herself. She hands over parental responsibility to me at that point and disappears into the world of her doctoral studies and I then attempt to multitask by preparing my own repast while simultaneously (and unsuccessfully) trying to stop my children from destroying my home before I can legitimately pack them off to bed and pretend to have some ‘me time’ as I fall asleep in front of the telly.

Weekends are different. On weekends I take care of everyone’s food. Lunch is generally based around the concept of bread, salad, cheese and/or cold meats. Saturday and Sunday evenings I usually do a cooked meal for everyone, which is generally underpinned by roast potatoes, which I do quite well and which everyone enjoys.

During the school holidays though, I do tend to take responsibility for my daughters’ food intake on a daily basis and evening meals can be tricky. I’ll tend to make something along the lines of pasta or curry for Mrs Proclaims and I on the weeknights of the school hols. I know from the outset that neither of my daughters will entertain the notion of eating my home-made tomato-based sauces. This is not because the sauces are bad – far from it. I am nothing if not a gourmand and because I enjoy eating nice food, I have become quite good at making it.

But children tend to have simpler palates and although my daughters are both fairly adventurous for their age, there are limits to how far I can push them out of their comfort zone. And I reason that as long as what they’ve eaten constitutes a balanced meal, then it doesn’t need to be overly complex.

The trick seems to be to feed them in stages. If all the key components are presented at the same time then both will devour the carbs and be less inclined to consume the protein and the veg. But if the components are presented over three smaller courses, then protein and veg will generally be received without too much resistance. By the time Mrs Proclaims and I sit down to eat our spicy/herby sauce based meal, the girls can join us with a plate each of easily accessible carbs and the whole experience can be fairly pleasant.

The carbs take on different forms depending on what I’ve cooked for us – if we have pasta or rice then the girls will have the same. But sometimes Mrs Proclaims and I might opt for a naan bread as we did one night last week. In this case all bets are off and some kind of processed potato produce from the freezer might be the ‘go-to’ for the children. I generally find such things unappetizing but Little Proclaims quite enjoys them and Mini Proclaims can barely contain her glee when presented with potato waffles, oven chips or, as was the case last week, alpha bites.

Little Proclaims was initially a little nonplussed. Her frozen potato product of choice would be the oven chip. So while Mini Proclaims shoved upper-case spuds into her mouth without so much a pause for breath, Little Proclaims was more circumspect in her approach. But, once she’d overcome her disappointment at receiving the wrong kind of beige food, she did look on the bright side. For Little Proclaims is now at a stage in her education whereby she can read and write. And spell fairly accurately too. And she saw the letters on her plate and realised she could make a word. The letters she had were C,T,N,O, and E.

“I can almost make the word ‘cute’,” she said.

Then she bit of the top of the ‘O’ and effectively turned it into a ‘U’.

The letters on her plate were now C,T,N,U, and E.

She spelled the word ‘cute’.

The she rearranged the letters and incorporated the previously unused ‘N’.

She made a few different words.

Well they were mainly ‘non-words’.

She laughed as she made the various combinations and read them aloud.

Mrs Proclaims looked at me. I looked at Mrs Proclaims. We both looked at the letters.

C,T,N,U, and E.

There was a possible combination that our daughter had not yet hit upon.

Our youngest had already eaten almost all of her potato letters.

I played to Little’s competitive instincts and desire for instant gratification.

“You don’t want your sister to finish before you,” I said, “come on, eat up and then you can have some dessert.”

Little Proclaims took the bait. The ‘N’ disappeared into her mouth.

Crisis averted.

As if oft the case, it is Saturday afternoon as I write this. Little Proclaims and I are sitting at the dining table, while Mrs Proclaims and Mini Proclaims are upstairs. Mrs is writing her thesis and Mini is taking a much needed nap (I’m not sure it was Mini herself who needed the nap so much as the rest of us who needed her to have one).

Little Proclaims is playing with some brightly coloured pipe cleaners, which have never been used for cleaning pipes, and which will, by the end of the day, be different types of ‘ceremonial’ headgear and/or what Little Proclaims likes to refer to as ‘decorations’. They will festoon our living quarters for several days, until sufficient time has passed that they can be discarded or returned to the craft box from whence they came.

Since writing that last paragraph, Little Proclaims has used some of the pipe cleaners to fashion a kind of ‘elephant mask’ and she is now running around the room saying ‘moo’. I don’t believe that elephants are traditionally associated with the sound ‘moo’, but I’m not sure it matters too much. I’m assuming, in the absence of any meaningful reference points, that this constitutes normal behaviour for a five-year-old. In any case, it’s something of a relief to see Little Proclaims with so much energy as she has been somewhat under the weather in recent days. It’s never nice to see your children unwell, albeit the lack of running around could be viewed as a silver lining of that particular cloud.

Because of her illness, Little Proclaims missed out on Friday night pizza and is very keen that we re-arrange pizza night for tonight. As I usually cook a proper meal on a Saturday, which takes a fair amount of time and effort, I’m happy to acquiesce to her demands. I missed out on pizza too, as I had to work late on Friday, which is entirely unacceptable for someone who works in a school. Early finishes on a Friday and lots of holidays are the main benefits of working in a school. Some will have you believe it’s the satisfaction of helping to shape future generations, but take away the early Friday finishes and the holidays and just see how many people stick around in the profession.

This Friday, I was asked by another school to attend a complaints panel as an ‘expert’. I have never thought of myself as an expert in anything, so I was quite surprised that the world might see me as such. I will be remunerated for my time, but there is not normally any fee that would get me to agree to give up my Friday evening. Flattery, as it turns out, will get me to agree to most things though. And it seems, having attended the panel, that I do seem to know my stuff, which rather undermines my daily efforts to seem like an irreverent slacker. It turns out that the only thing I’m slacking at is being a slacker.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. When did I become someone who can meaningfully contribute to my chosen profession? And how did this happen?

I am not, by nature, a hardworking person. Quite the contrary. I’m someone who craves an easy life. I think I accidently became good at my job through the realisation that people would leave me alone if I appeared to be competent and the only way I could achieve the appearance of competence was to actually be, y’know, competent. And this is, apparently, a slippery slope towards becoming a notional ‘expert’.

I’m not sure I am truly an expert, in spite of recent evidence. But I am thinking of buying a t-shirt with the word ‘expert’ emblazoned across it. I may not possess the requisite qualities to be an irreverent slacker, but I certainly intend to be an irreverent expert. I owe that much to myself.

Anyway, thanks to my eldest daughter’s illness and my apparent professional expertise, for one week only Saturday will be pizza night at Proclaims Towers.

Mini Proclaims will be especially pleased about this when she wakes up. Being in fairly robust health, she did get to enjoy Friday night pizza and will now get to do ‘the double’.

And if that wasn’t good enough, Saturday night pizza won’t be your common or garden supermarket pizza. Little Proclaims’ convalescence meant that we cancelled her usual Saturday morning activities, and when she woke this morning, seemingly on the mend, the Proclaims family used the bonus time to pop into town, whereupon I purchased some new trousers for work (to reflect my new status as resident expert) and we all enjoyed a cake in an overpriced cafe. We then popped into Marks and Spencer no less, to purchase the pizzas. That’s correct, at Chez Proclaims tonight, we’ll be enjoying M&S pizza, and we’ll be following that up with M&S profiteroles.

Does life get any better?

Yesterday was Mothering Sunday in the UK (and quite possibly in some other countries too). It was also Mother’s Day, which is, I think, an entirely different thing, albeit one was born of the other.

Mothering Sunday, as I understand it (and I rarely understand very much at all) is less about mothers and more about churches. Mother’s Day is very much about mothers.

At one time, it was, for me, all about my mother. Then, because I got married, it was all about my mother and Mrs Proclaims’ mother. Now, because I have children, Mrs Proclaims gets to enjoy a piece of the action.

And this is, of course, how it should be. I have no objections. All three are more than worthy of the acclaim and recognition for their roles as mothers and in the case of two of them, as grandmothers.

My children have not, in previous years, brought a great deal to the table in terms of celebrating their own mother. It’s not their fault really, they are quite young. Mini Proclaims is still too young to make a special effort on Mother’s Day. But as she makes it clear all year round that Mrs Proclaims is her preferred parent then perhaps she doesn’t need a special day. It is true that my youngest child has warmed to me in recent months and is now, at times, capable of showing me something approximating affection, but I am definitely only her second favourite adult and she’s quick to put me back in my place should I get ideas above my station.

My eldest daughter, Little Proclaims, has always been a fan of my work. She loves Mrs Proclaims, of that there is no doubt, but she is more likely to demonstrate her less admirable qualities on Mrs Proclaims’ watch than on mine. I think it’s because mother and daughter have very similar personalities and this can, at times, lead to clashes. And Little Proclaims has definitely acquired some of her mother’s precociousness too, so they can be quite articulate clashes.

But Little Proclaims does love her mummy and was very excited about this year’s Mother’s Day and an opportunity to make it special. Over the last year or so, she has learned to read and write to an acceptable standard for a five-year-old and was therefore well-equipped to take care of making and writing her own Mother’s Day card.

Which she did.

She was very proud of her efforts, as well she might be.

The card contained a charming message of filial love in beautiful handwriting, with very accurate spelling.

For the most part.

Little Proclaims is only five years old. She knew the day was all about celebrating her mother. But she calls Mrs Proclaims ‘mummy’, not ‘mother’. She never uses the word ‘mother’.

So the card read: 

Happy Muvod’s Day

Which, as far as Little Proclaims was concerned, was the correct spelling.

I’m not sure what year it was that Mrs Proclaims started buying me a giant birthday cookie in lieu of a birthday cake. I’d guess it would’ve been around 2014, which would have been the first birthday I celebrated in my current abode, which is within walking distance of the shop which sells the cookies in question. Certainly it was a birthday tradition for quite a few years and a welcome one at that. I always enjoyed my giant birthday cookie, even on the years when my birthday was slightly ruined by falling on a work day (one of the perks of working in education is that my birthday should always fall during the Easter holidays and, as it turns out, this has not been quite as regular a perk as I would’ve hoped or expected since taking on my chosen profession).

Alas the birthday cookie ceased to be quite as feasible from 2020, first interrupted by the pandemic, which temporarily closed the cookie selling establishment and then by the fact that children made the walk to the cookie shop somewhat less easy for Mrs Proclaims to fit in and she had to settle, instead, for a nearby supermarket to buy me a cake. The cakes were all very nice – the nearest supermarket to our house is a Waitrose, so I have hardly been shortchanged in recent years. But I did really like having the birthday cookie and in comparison even the nicest of cakes would aways be a little bittersweet (in an emotive sense – the cakes themselves were always very sweet in fairness)

This year an early Easter has meant my birthday has fallen very much within the holidays and so I was able to offer sufficient childcare for Mrs Proclaims to take on the cookie shop commute once more. I am, once again, the proud and happy owner of a giant birthday cookie as pictured above. I am a temporary owner of course, because it is not possible to have your birthday cookie and eat it, and I fully intend to eat it. It won’t last as long as in previous years because I now have additional helpers in the form of my two daughters to ensure the thing is polished off fairly quickly. Little Proclaims has already made short work of a very generous slice. Mini Proclaims is a little under the weather but I’m sure she’ll rally in time to ensure she claims her fair share.

Birthdays are strange affairs as you get older. I’m happy to acknowledge the fact I’ve survived another year on the planet, which always seems to be no small achievement, but the older I get, the less getting older seems like a thing I actively want to celebrate. On the other hand, it’s hard to live in the same house as a five-year-old and not consider birthdays to be the greatest thing ever. Little Proclaims is mostly interested in her own birthday, but, given that she can only celebrate that particular event once a year, she’s determined to enjoy everyone else’s birthday too and whether I felt a sense of occasion when I woke up this morning (or rather was woken by my ailing and unhappy toddler), it has been party central since Little Proclaims woke up and not an hour has gone by without my eldest daughter wishing me happy birthday. Mini Proclaims is less aware of what is going on, but as a birthday treat she appears to have rallied against her virus and is more cheerful than she has been for the last 48 hours.

I have received an abundance of presents, most of which will contribute to my waistline in the next few days. I will mainly be spending the day with my wife and children, although I was afforded a little time to myself earlier on (a rare and precious commodity when you are the parent to a five-year-old and an almost-two-year-old) and I went to a morning showing of the new Ghostbusters film in our local multiplex. It has not received especially good reviews but I quite liked it.

I’m back with my loved ones now and sat at the dining table writing this, while my children play with a large carboard box. I have some cold beers in the fridge, which were given to me by Little Proclaims this morning, albeit I think it unlikely that she purchased them herself despite her claims. It’s still a little early to crack them open, but I shall enjoy at least one of them before bedtime.

And of course there will be another helping or three of birthday cookie before the day draws to a close.

Quite a good birthday, all things considered.

I’m sitting in my garden as I write this. Little Proclaims is entertaining herself with a Paw Patrol themed football and a plastic tennis racket. Actually, in the time it took to write that sentence she has switched to riding her bicycle. Our garden isn’t really big enough to ride a bike in but Little Proclaims can’t really ride a bike so it’s a fairly moot point. She still has stabilisers and it’s a slight source of shame for me that I haven’t managed to take her out on more suitable terrain to practice since she acquired her mermaid-themed velocipede. Then again that is partly because I’m too busy ferrying her around to her other commitments or working hard to keep a roof over her head. It is, admittedly, a leaky roof but I’m working on that (which is to say I’m working on getting a roofer to turn up and fix it, which is apparently quite hard to do. It hasn’t actually leaked since January anyway so I’m quietly confident someone will show up before the next ‘event’ but no-one seems to be in a hurry to take my money at present).

Since I started that last sentence, Mini Proclaims has woken from her nap and has been deposited in the garden by her mother who then exited the scene rapidly and left me with oversight of both of my offspring. Little Proclaims has given up on the bike and is now sitting in a small garden chair that I purchased for her a few years back. She’s mainly sitting in it to prevent Mini Proclaims from claiming it as her own after I commented that it seemed to be a more suitable size for my youngest child than her older sister. Mini Proclaims is not especially interested in the seat anyway and has instead appropriated Little Proclaims’ unicorn-themed cycle helmet which she is struggling to put on her head on account of some bunny ears that she’s already wearing. Mini Proclaims is rarely without her bunny ears. We have tried removing them on occasion but Mini Proclaims is fully committed to living up to all the cliches associated with ‘the terrible twos’ and so we mainly let her keep them on.

In order to write this while sitting in the garden I’m using my phone. I was sceptical about attempting this but, while it’s harder to type than if I were using a computer, the predictive text does make it less slow than I had anticipated. The technology appears to have moved on since the last time I attempted to write a blog post on my phone, or perhaps I have become slightly less incompetent at using it.

When I started writing this, I was drinking a beer. I like drinking beer in the garden. It’s more than likely psychosomatic but I genuinely believe beer tastes better when consumed outdoors. If push comes to shove though, I’m not entirely averse to an indoor beer if it’s the only option available. I’ve now finished my beer and I’m debating whether or not to have a second. On the one hand I’m supervising two small children so should probably remain fairly sober. On the other hand, I’m supervising two small children and I need all the help I can get to survive the ordeal.

Mini Proclaims has given up on attempting to don the helmet and has instead insisted that I wear it. I imagine I look ridiculous but I’d rather that than enter into conflict with her. She is genuinely terrifying! I think the beer debate has been settled. I’m going to make a quick pilgrimage to the fridge.

I’m back in the garden, cold beer in hand. I dared to remove the headgear and Mini Proclaims quickly admonished me, so it is perched uncomfortably on my head once more. She was particularly persuasive as she had acquired the plastic tennis racket that Little Proclaims had discarded earlier in this narrative and was wielding it menacingly.

My garden has seen better days in truth. I don’t possess especially green fingers and indeed my lawn is not at all green at present, lacking even its usual covering of weeds. I’ve spread some grass seeds in the hope of a renaissance but I’m not overly optimistic.  It’s been a cruel winter apparently and summer has been a long time coming.

It does seem to be here though and my daughters and I shall hopefully enjoy many more sunny weekends in our little oasis of soil and weeds.

This whole ‘blogging on my phone’ experiment seems to have worked too so hopefully I’ll be a little less absent from the blogosphere in the coming weeks, as I’m rarely able to access my laptop these days but my phone is never too far away. Although my posts are likely to be on the theme of  garden-based parenting for the most part.

And will almost certainly involve beer.

As I continue my attempt to embrace the modern world by writing this on one electronic hand-held device, Little Proclaims is asking another electronic hand-held device to break wind.

I never previously envisaged a world in which writing a sentence like the preceding one would be possible. Nonetheless, that is very much the world I find myself occupying. As I hone my blog writing skills via the medium of smartphone, my eldest child is immersing herself in the world of voice-activated features on a device that she likes to refer to as ‘her tablet’.

It is indeed a tablet computer, though her claims to ownership are more by default than anything else.

The object in question was an impulse purchase by me a couple of years back, when an already fairly ‘budget’ device was made even more affordable by a promotional event held by a well-known virtual retailer. We were, at the time, a ‘tabletless’ household and I felt we should explore the benefits of embracing the zeitgeist. It has proven to be a fairly useless purchase to three quarters of my family. Mini Proclaims is still too young to show any significant interest in screens smaller than the TV (which is a medium she is worryingly devoted to). Mrs Proclaims and I find our information technology needs are generally satisfied by our laptops and phones. Conversely, Little Proclaim has been smitten by the allure of the ten-inch screen since day one, if largely inept at using it. Indeed, any parental guilt I might have experienced about occupying my daughter with excessive table time have been quickly assuaged. I ration her use of the machine with more diligence than I might have thought plausible. This is for less noble reasons than I might like to admit though. The main benefit to me of letting my child spend time using the device would be that she doesn’t need any input from me and I can get on with other things. In reality, Little Proclaims is significantly more demanding when equipped with the tablet than she is without it. She doesn’t so much use the device as commission me to use it on her behalf. She loves the idea of technology but lacks the patience to learn how to use it.

This weekend, though, we visited our extended family, and Little Proclaims discovered the joys of the voice controlled virtual assistant through her technologically more adept cousin.

Who taught her how to make the device ’fart’.

So Little Proclaim has been instructing our cheap (and probably out of date) tablet computer to make flatulent sounds for the last hour or so. It is quite annoying, but she is seemingly capable of carrying out this endeavour independently. I have endured the recurrent raspberries by using my own device to write this post and simultaneously play music through my well-worn blue-tooth headphones (I’m not a total technophobe – wireless headphones have been my salvation on more than one occasion in recent times) to drown out the noise.

Unfortunately, by zoning out the technological (and scatological) machinations of my eldest child, I’ve inadvertently also ignored the lo-tech endeavours of my youngest child. Mini Proclaims has just come to give me an impromptu hug, which would have been entirely welcome had she not been soaking wet, having spent much of the recent interlude emptying her water bottle on herself.

I love my children. Sometimes though, it is hard to articulate why.

It’s Tuesday afternoon as I write this. Which is unusual. I haven’t been the most prolific blogger of late, but when I have managed to get around to writing anything, it has tended to be on a weekend, often with a view to posting on a Monday. Yesterday was Monday and I did post something about Little Proclaims asking her tablet to make fart noises. So this post might not make it onto the site until next Monday, because life with two kids and a wife working towards a PhD means that, without the onset of another pandemic, I’m unlikely to have the time for blogging I once did, and it’s better to have something ‘in the bank’ for next week than to post for two consecutive days and then disappear for several months.

The reason I am able to blog on a Tuesday is that it is half-term and I am blessed with a rare bit of downtime. Mini Proclaims is napping, and Little Proclaims, having tired of asking her tablet to break wind, is now using the device to watch Number Blocks. Which is entertaining and educational, so I can let her enjoy that without needing to curtail her screen time too much. Being an education professional, I do get to enjoy the benefits of the school holidays, but that has rarely translated to a prolific blogging schedule – there’s normally too much else to sort out during the holidays that I never have time to do during term time. And that is no different this half term. There is a lot I should be doing that I’m not at present. But I did take the girls out this morning. I’ve booked Little Proclaims into extra swimming lessons every morning, because she likes swimming and I like that it tires her out. Mini Proclaims always comes to watch. She’s not always the best behaved of toddlers in public, but she seems to find observing swimming lessons quite calming. After swimming, I took them both to soft play, which wore them out. Unfortunately it also wore me out because Mini Proclaims is slightly too small to make her way around the various foam based obstacles without me clambering over them with her.

So while one daughter is napping, and the other is enjoying some maths based cartoon fun, the only activity I felt physically able to do was to blog.

Unlike for my last two posts, I am using my laptop to write this. My most recent efforts have been put together on my phone, and I suspect that will be my method of choice for most posts moving forwards, as the opportunity to sit at my laptop, uninterrupted, is a rare thing these days and my phone lets me write ‘on the move’, which is a state of being I generally find myself in most of the time. Today the weather is not the best though. Today has chosen to embrace the stereotypical notion that it always rains in the UK. It does rain a lot in the UK, but I normally do get to use my garden quite a bit during the summer months and it is from there I suspected I would be writing the majority of my blog posts until September. Au contraire, the last time I was able to enjoy my weed infested grassless lawn was over two weeks ago when I wrote about it in this post.

I am hoping that the rain will at least help the grass seeds I scattered on my lawn recently to turn into, y’know, actual grass. Looking out the window, it all seems to still be quite brown at present, with the only green patches being the aforementioned weeds. It would still be nice to be out there though.

I think the greatest frustration is that, because of the inclement weather, I’ve yet to put up my recently purchased rotary washing line.

I was quite looking forward to putting up my new rotary washing line.

I never cared much about rotary washing lines before I became a dad. If I’d written a post about a rotary washing line before 2018, it would have been a missive steeped in irony.

But there is nothing ironic about my desire to use a rotary washing line in 2024. I even researched consumer websites to find the best rotary washing line to suit my needs.

I’m more interested in my rotary washing line than I am in the fact that the UK is currently in the build-up to a general election.

You could read between the lines and see that last statement as a clever satirical commentary on the current state of British politics. It might well be. On some level I hope it is.

I’d hate to be the kind of person who sees a rotary washing line as the highlight of his month. But I am genuinely worried that I have become that kind of person.

I think it’s time to wake Mini Proclaims from her nap and to remove the tablet from Little Proclaims. Small children don’t always provide the most intellectually stimulating conversation, but even they could produce better topics of conversation than a rotary washing line.

Sadly Mrs Proclaims can’t. She’s just appeared in the room as I’m writing this sentence but all she talks about these days is 19th century French literature. The rotary washing line is definitely more interesting than that.

Last Monday’s post was written on the preceding Tuesday when I was off work and trapped at home on a rainy day, with both of my children temporarily ‘out of action’. One was napping and the other was absorbed by a handheld device in a manner that suggests that I am potentially a much worse parent than I am. Not that I make any claims on being an especially good parent, but if I am a bad parent then getting a tablet to occupy my child so I can ignore her is not something I am often guilty of. I find that the TV does a sufficiently adequate job of occupying both children that I rarely even remember that I have the option of the tablet.

As I write this, both of my children are conscious and are watching the TV. It is, in fact, the same Tuesday as it was when I wrote my last post. Indeed, although a week will have passed between the two posts hitting the blogosphere, barely an hour has happened between me finishing the last one and starting this one. This is all part of my cunning plan to write enough posts in advance that I don’t allow the kind of absences from my blog that have pretty much been the hallmark of my site since the arrival of daughter number two in April 2022. Indeed, were it not for a pandemic-fuelled flurry of activity on these pages between March 2020 and March 2021, it would reasonable to accuse me of maintaining an irregular blogging schedule since the arrival of my first daughter in 2018.

But I am determined to be a better blogger moving forwards and if the only way to achieve that is by writing about the same, fairly boring ,rainy Tuesday afternoon then so be it.

In point of fact I’m not actually ignoring my children while I write this. I’m trying to ignore them, but they won’t let me. I’m wearing my beloved wireless headphones, listening to 90s rock music and staring at a computer screen, but they insist on interacting with me in spite of the antisocial signals I’m putting out there. Little Proclaims is ensconced in imaginary play, in which I think she is playing the part of a midwife to her stuffed toys. One of them (a toy dachshund) appears to have given birth to conjoined twins (two pugs wearing onesies, both of which have a kind of keyring attachment that she has used to link them together). It’s quite an intense game, and I appear to be playing the role of a consultant surgeon who she needs to update on the progress of the twins. The aloof indifference I am bringing to the role rather seems to fit the character I’ve been assigned.

Mini Proclaims is, meanwhile, raiding the art supplies of her older sister. I am aware that if I don’t monitor her that some part of my house will acquire an unexpected mural. I should definitely try and stop that from happening, but in some respects that ship has already sailed so many times that additional wall art is not going to make a huge amount of difference to the existing portfolio.

I am also cooking their evening meal as I write this, but as that meal consists of a baked potato for each of them, I am able to leave most of the heavy lifting to the oven.

In the background the TV is still playing. Occasionally one or both of my daughters will stop to acknowledge the moving images but neither of them are truly watching the show. If I dare to turn it off though, I will be subject to incandescent rage so I don’t dare even consider that move. Thanks to the marvels of the modern age, I am able to ensure that all the cartoons ignored by my children are played through the medium of French. I’ve previously mentioned the impact this has had on the linguistic development of my eldest child (who does seem to be very much bilingual at present) and it’s clear that Mini Proclaims formative language acquisition is more French than English, which should hopefully lead to her mastering both (the English takes care of itself by virtue of the fact we live in the UK). Of course some credit must go to my wife, who does generally converse with the children in French (she is not any more French than I am, but significantly more academically able), but I do think that TV has played a significant part.

And if nothing else, playing the cartoons in French would certainly make me feel less guilty about ignoring them. If only they would let me…

What a difference a day makes. It might well be a week since last I posted anything but it’s merely a day since I wrote last week’s post (and indeed the post of the week before). It is Wednesday 29^th May as I write this and I’m sat on a bench in a park that is but a few minutes walk from Proclaims Towers, enjoying weather that seemed unthinkable yesterday. Little Proclaims is sat next to me happily eating an ice-cream purchased from a conveniently located ice-cream van that is doing a roaring trade. Indeed, it is this very purveyor of frozen treats that has lured my eldest daughter away from her flatulent tablet and into the park for a second helping of outdoor fun today.

Little Proclaims has made short work of the ice-cream in the time it took me to write that first paragraph, and we’re heading into the play park, which is predictably popular considering the sunshine.

Earlier on I was in the same place with both of my children facilitating a morning of feeding ducks, picking daisies (before said daisies were deposited in my pocket, where they continue to reside) and lots of fun aided by swings, slides and roundabouts.

Mini Proclaims gave it her all in the morning session and is now enjoying a well-deserved nap at home while Mrs Proclaims eschews the fine weather and works tirelessly on her PhD.

Little Proclaims also enjoyed her trip out this morning and might well have described the sojourn as perfect but for the slight disappointment that ensued when I refused to buy her an ice-cream on the way home. My refusal was predicated on the fact that we were going home to eat lunch and I felt the best way to ruin lunch would’ve been to feed my children with ice cream prior to attempting to convince them to eat salad. Also, had I bought an ice cream for Little Proclaims, I would have been obliged to buy one for Mini Proclaims and few things distress me more than watching my two year old attempt to eat ice cream.

Little Proclaims took the refusal well and has on the whole been a good girl today, including a very committed effort in her morning swimming lesson so, given the proximity of the park to my house, and the wonderful weather, I felt a second trip out was merited. Particularly as, with only my eldest child to look after, my workload is significantly lower than when I have to supervise both children.

Indeed, Little Proclaims largely looks after herself. When I’m out in public with both children my attention is nearly always exclusively directed towards my younger daughter, while supervision of the older child is generally making sure I can see her with sufficient regularity to be certain she is still roughly in the same proximity as me. When it’s just the two of us, it really is quite an easy gig as parenting goes. So much so that writing a blog post on my phone is entirely possible and arguably easier than when I attempt the same exercise in my garden. In the garden, Little Proclaims is fairly inclined to want my attention. In the park she only wants me as a purchaser of ice cream and a useful repository for any artefacts she doesn’t currently have need of.

Occasionally she likes me to push her on the swings, but I am so well practiced at swing-pushing that I am doing that at present, with my left hand while continuing to write this with my right hand. Multi-tasking at it’s finest.

I don’t think I yet possess the requisite skills to write blog posts while supervising a two-year old in a play park. That might constitute bad parenting. Supervising a near six year old on the other hand seems like a tailor made situation for writing prose. Little Proclaims does not seem to be enjoying the trip out any less than she would with my undivided attention and for my part, it’s made what can be an excruciatingly dull activity far more palatable. As long as the weather holds this could be template for how me and Little Proclaims navigate holiday afternoons for the foreseeable future.

At least until Mini Proclaims gets too old for naps and ruins the accord.

Last week’s post celebrated a glorious sunny day during half-term, which I’d hoped would be the start of summer after an inauspicious few days, in which the main meteorological offer was precipitation. Today’s post, written only a day after its predecessor, finds me once again attempting to entertain my children with a return to the drizzle and therefore little on offer in the way of playparks and ice-cream.

There was a brief attempt at a playpark, this morning after Little Proclaims’ swimming lesson, when the rain was clearly en route but had not yet arrived. It was overcast and slightly chilly but my daughters made the best of what was available and the lack of sunshine appeared to have kept the crowds away, so they pretty much had the run of the place. Which was good, as both my children like to run. And shout. And a play park is a great place for that.

A slightly less ideal place for children to run and shout is IKEA, which was our next stop. Neither of my offspring felt in any way restricted though and viewed IKEA as an ideal sequel to their earlier fun, with display sofas and divans serving as ideal apparatus for bouncy fun. I played the part of a harassed father trying to curtail the delinquency of my daughters, but, truth be told, I had elected on the Swedish furniture store as the ideal location for rainy day fun with my children. They absolutely love it, and, a few irritated flat-pack enthusiasts aside, I can’t see too much harm is done by letting my children run amok in the Scandinavian superstore. I could clearly see other parents doing exactly the same thing, while pretending, like me, to be in the market for bedroom furniture.

Mini Proclaims, in particular, was unhinged. She was literally squealing with delight as she bounced on mattresses, hid in wardrobes and giggled at her own reflection in multiple mirrors. Little Proclaims was a tad more circumspect, and while she too enjoyed some tactile fun with home furnishings, she was wise to the opportunities on offer to acquire more stuff. Little Proclaims very much enjoys acquiring stuff and often puts forward compelling arguments as to why I should part with my wages to provide her with stuff. She caught me on a good day. IKEA is not only the world’s foremost purveyor of ‘build-it-yourself’ furniture. It also boasts a range of other delights, which includes a selection of toys and activities. Activities are, of course, always good, and anything that can keep Little Proclaims occupied on a rainy day is alright by me. And so as I write this, and as Mini Proclaims naps away her morning’s exuberance, Little Proclaims is making ‘art’ out of beads. IKEA calls them Pyssla beads, but they may have another name if purchased elsewhere. All I know is they’re keeping a five-year-old quiet and have done so for more than an hour. Which means that they have already paid for themselves.

I did, at one point, entertain the idea of trying to do some serious shopping in IKEA. There are no shortage of home improvements that could happen at Proclaims Towers, and while the economic conditions are not right for any big jobs (the economic conditions being a distinct lack of disposable cash at present), there is perhaps scope for some minor acquisitions. I was, for a moment, taken with the idea of buying some new net curtains (which was almost as exciting as my recent foray into rotary washing lines), but, though I had taken the appropriate window measurements before setting out, it turns out that net-curtain buying requires more concentration than can reasonably be afforded to someone attempting to supervise a lively five-year-old and a, frankly, feral two-year-old.

So I bought a 600g packet of ginger biscuits instead. Which I didn’t need, but which IKEA do sell. Little Proclaims alerted my attention to them as we were leaving with her other ill-gotten gains and for some reason, perhaps because at that point I had lost all reason, it seemed like the most logical purchase I could make. In fairness they are delicious. Which is just as well, because 600g is a lot of biscuits.

Today I saw a fat rat
Not a fat cat
Or a plump bat
Or a rotund gnat
But a rat
That was fat

Perhaps I lack tact
But I think it is fact
And fairly exact
To call the rat fat
For it was indeed a rat
And it was very fat

Rodent body shame
Is not part of my game
I really don’t judge
For I’m partial to fudge
And other sweet treats
Which are delightful to eat

If you overindulge
You’re likely to bulge
But I can self console
About lack of self-control
For though I am no beanpole
And the rat may be smaller
I’m considerably taller
And can say without caution
If we consider proportion
That I would not self flatter
To claim the rat was much fatter
For the rat was very fat

My success in returning to a weekly blogging schedule, and avoiding my boom and bust (if I’m honest, mainly bust) approach to blogging of recent years has largely been predicated on writing a lot of posts during my week off work at the end of May; a week which was granted to me in honour of my professional status as a qualified teacher who is employed by a school (a period of time otherwise known as ‘half-term’).

School holidays have always been a major factor in my decision to continue in a profession, which yields few other benefits prior to what I’m led to believe is a fairly decent pension (should I survive long enough to enjoy retirement). There are some who believe that working in education is rewarding on a spiritual level, and I suppose it might be at times, but if I had my time again I might well choose a profession that is rewarding on a more financial level. However, irrespective of the other pros and cons of pursuing a career as a teacher, the holidays are definitely a plus.

Or they certainly were when I was a father of none.

These days much of my school holidays are taken up with spending ‘quality time’ with my daughters. Indeed much of my life outside of work, even during term time, is spent with my offspring, given that Mrs Proclaims is in the final stages of completing a PhD that has been going on since before our first child was born. It was originally meant to be completed by 2019, but, thanks to two bouts of maternity leave and a necessity to switch from being a full time student to a part time student in order to accommodate the existence of our children, it is now likely to be completed some time in 2025. When in 2025 we can’t be certain, but Mrs Proclaims assures me that it will be done before 2026 and at that point I might possibly have some time outside of work which is not entirely devoted to my children.

Whether I avail myself of this time, if and when it does become available is another matter entirely. I’m not sure I’ll know what to do with myself. Perhaps it’s because I love my daughters so much that the thought of not spending every second of my ‘leisure time’ with them is abhorrent to such a devoted father as I have become, or perhaps it’s that I’m now experiencing some kind of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

I suspect it’s the latter. Not that I don’t love clambering around the foamy apparatus at the soft play centre, but I do sometimes wonder if there might be more to life.

Anyway, the point is that currently I do spend most of the school holidays with two small and fairly demanding people, so my ‘free time’ isn’t quite the blogging nirvana that one might hope it to be. Nonetheless, as I write this it is May 31st and in the past week I have produced enough material to take me, on the basis of a sensible and pragmatic schedule of one post a week, into July. It has been quite an effort, in spite of my notional ‘week off’. Hopefully though, I am so far ahead now that I will be able to maintain a fairly regular output.

One obvious side effect of blogging so far in advance is that I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world at the time of publication. I am aware that at the time I plan for this post to hit the blogosphere, the UK will have entered the week of the general election. This is notionally quite a big deal and I am usually interested in politics. I have, in the past, even been quite opinionated about the government du jour on these pages. I still am fairly opinionated about them in real life, but it all seems to have descended into farce some time ago and there is little room for satire about an administration that seems to unintentionally self-satirise on a daily basis.

Indeed, although I am writing this some weeks in the past, it would have to take a campaign of significant ineptitude for the Labour party not to sweep into power on July 4th. The most effective election strategy for Sir Keir Starmer would surely be to say and do absolutely nothing and he should be a shoe-in for Prime Minister on the basis that he isn’t a Tory. One imagines that if he makes too much effort in raising his own profile, he might accidently lower his appeal on the basis that, in and of himself, he really isn’t all that interesting.

Rishi Sunak might still be holding out hope that he can remain the incumbent premier on the basis he isn’t Liz Truss or Boris Johnson, but I suspect that will not be enough. It is a contest of two very bland leaders of two political parties that have, at the time of writing, largely failed to capture the public imagination in a positive way. But the party in power have presided over some absolute cock-ups in recent times and it does seem very much like their time is up.

I expect, on the big day I’ll be very interested in the outcome of the election. At the time of writing I’m almost entirely indifferent. But I thought I should at least make an effort to make the post vaguely topical.

For most of the time I have been writing this, the weather has been as inclement as it has been for most of the week (aside from Wednesday 29th May, when it was glorious). However it does look as if the sun has put his hat on briefly, and my children have had slightly too long in front of the TV, so I’ll sign off on this post, which has been mainly written on my laptop and I’ll take the kids out in the garden and write next week’s post on my phone.

In which I will possibly offer some reaction to the outcome of the election or some other future event I can’t possibly know anything about.

My house smells of bin
Much to my chagrin
If my house were an inn
I would not check-in
Because it smells of bin

The unpleasant scent
Now ever-present
Does not make me content
It will not relent
And does not augment
This two-story brick tent
And causes my descent
Into a state of torment

The source of the smell
Is hard to tell
It makes me unwell
It’s a kind of Hell
I want to yell
And yell and yell
And try to expel
Or somehow dispel
This abominable smell

Though I’m not so unhappy
That my home smells so crappy
You may call me sappy
A mawkish chappy
But I am happy
To be a pappy
But being a pappy
Means my house smells like nappy