Public Address - Southerly (Home)

Late for What? | May 30, 2007 08:51

When you're in a supermarket, and you hear an irate mother chastise her children with the words "Padmé, stop hitting Anakin!", you know that it proves something.

Maybe it proves the non-existence of God. After all, if God existed he would surely strike dead a woman who names her offspring after the main characters in three of the worst pieces of cinematic drivel ever produced. On the other hand, perhaps it proves that creationists are correct about the theory of evolution. It seems to me that -- long before she had a chance to breed -- natural selection should have eliminated anyone so stupendously cretinous.

Still, I suppose it's a consolation that there isn't a more idiotic way to spell Padmé or Anakin. Of course, there's Pahd-may and Annakkyn, but that's only equally as daft. It doesn't even begin to plumb the depths of illiteracy required to produce Krystyl, Britnee, Jeyzikuh, or Deztini.

What goes wrong with people's brains when they have a baby? I knew a perfectly normal couple who announced that they were planning to call their son Mungo. Even prison isn't sufficient punishment for people like that.

Then there's the middle-class fashion for unspellable Celtic names. The parents who discover a thimbleful of Welsh ancestry, and then promptly decide to call their son 'John'. At least, it's pronounced "John", but it's spelt Ysgrifennydd. Or the couple who find out that her grandfather was 1/2048th Manx, and so bestow upon their daughter a Manx name that's pronounced "Katherine", but is spelt Myparentswereapairofovereducatedwankers.

Some people, of course, have almost a genius for names that will get their children beaten up at school. This is best illustrated by the so-called 'double handicap', where both forename and surname manage to achieve a kind of horrific synergy. My mother worked at a high school for many years, and compiled a special catalogue of such victims of parental insanity. This is her top five list (all genuine names of real people):

• Dugmore Mango (male)
• Titty Maxi (female)
• Cary Mellow (male)
• Delbert Spangler (male)
• Bland Woofter (male)

Despite the potential for lifelong psychological damage, the really worrying thing is that coming up with a name is the easy bit of having a child. In fact, the whole issue of human babies leads to further questions about the validity of religion and/or natural science. It seems to me that a loving God, or a believable evolutionary process, would surely produce a newborn that's more appealing than your standard infant.

Take kittens and puppies. Who doesn't want a kitten? What sort of monster doesn't find puppies adorable? If human babies were as appealing as kittens or puppies then I'd want dozens. I'd even look forward to parenthood if my offspring were merely as winsome as foals or lambs. But frankly, the cutest human baby that I've ever seen is no more endearing than, say, an average-looking rat.

Don't get me wrong, I think children are great. I can talk for hours about the charms of my nieces and nephew (very clever, very handsome, and extremely well-behaved and polite). It's just the baby years that worry me. My concerns about early infanthood could perhaps be summarized as follows:

1. Frighteningly hideous (see above)
2. Makes an appalling noise
3. Boring
4. Goes wrong too easily

The thought of being responsible for one scares the bejesus out of me. Even visiting friends with babies is like going to see someone in prison: they're unable to leave; there's no privacy; and, given half a chance, the inmates attempt to suck your nipples. You come away thanking God that it's your friends instead of you.

But it's not that I don't want children -- far from it. It's just that I'd rather they didn't go through the baby stage. Or, at the very least, that they started off as something more acceptable, such as a meerkat, or perhaps an echidna. Of course, it's said that everyone finds their own babies appealing, although somehow I doubt that I would be so easily fooled. Babies have always struck me as a failed experiment.

At any rate, my fear of babies has become somewhat irrelevant. A few months back, Jennifer came home and -- as I suppose millions of women have done throughout history -- plonked herself down on the settee, and announced: "Hey, dude, guess what? I'm late."

And I, as I suppose millions of men have done before, replied: "Late for what?"

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A Little Voyage Around My Grandfather | May 21, 2007 22:16

The most vivid memories of my childhood are associated with visits to my grandparents. And none more so than the blissful sojourn that resulted from the unexpected birth of my sister on my fourth birthday.

I already had a brother. He was a sturdy two-year-old with a sunny disposition, invariably described by my Scottish relatives as "unko bonny". This verdict was issued with a certain note of relief in their voices. By contrast, I had been a memorably gloomy baby, whose incipient frown lines had reduced my mother to tears of anxiety on several occasions. Everyone was glad to see her blessed with a less Leonard-Cohen-like infant.

At night, tucked away in his cot, my cheerful little brother would laugh in his sleep. Genuine toddler belly laughs: "Ho ho ho... ha ha ha... ho ho ho". He was a likeable chap. It was strange to waken alone at my grandparents' house, with only the empty ticking of the cuckoo clock to keep me company.

In contravention of every known rule of child-rearing, my Glaswegian grandfather declared a daily competition to see which of us could get up earliest in the morning. The prize was a bar of chocolate, and I would generally eat my winnings for breakfast. My grandparents would have bacon and eggs -- followed by toast and red jam. Both courses were washed down with several pints of tea.

All three of us preferred our hot beverages on the sweet side, with two lumps of sugar and two spoonfuls of condensed milk. If the tea was too hot my grandfather would pour it into a saucer and then back into my cup -- a practice severely frowned upon by my grandmother.

After breakfast, the first job for the men of the house was burning the rubbish. The concrete incinerator at the bottom of the garden had been purpose-built by my grandfather, and he was proud of the fact that it had once cremated a cat. I was appointed deputy fire-lighter. The incinerator produced a deafening roar when it got going, and a plume of embers and thick smoke would waft cinematically over the neighbours' rooftops. This always seemed to please my grandfather. "Ach, I like a good fire," he would say contentedly.

Our next activity involved traffic practice. My grandfather would chalk a network of roads on the terrace at the back of the house, and I would glide solemnly around on my Edwardian-style tricycle. It was an occupation that we both viewed seriously. My grandfather would sit on his deckchair, smoking in a contemplative manner, until such time that he felt road works had become necessary. He would then rise, and signalling gravely with a red table-tennis bat, would bring the traffic to a halt.

A duster and chalk would be employed to redesign the traffic flow. Sometimes an upturned bucket would be requisitioned to act as a roundabout. A green table-tennis bat would be raised to indicate that I could now resume pedalling.

And so the morning passed in calm and dignified activity. Lunch took place in the cool of the front room: salmon-paste sandwiches and lemon cake. Another pint or two of tea. My grandmother was a good plain cook, and her cake deserved thorough and concentrated attention. At the end of the meal we would listen to the one o'clock news bulletin on the wireless.

Afterwards I would accompany my grandfather to the grocer's to collect the messages. A tin of condensed milk, some potatoes, a loaf of bread, a packet of cigarettes (Pall Mall plain). Having reached the age of four I regarded myself as practically an adult, and would insist on carrying the shopping. The lumpy string bag knocked awkwardly against my short legs as I stumbled along the footpath beside him.

The swing-settee was a good place for singing on a sunny afternoon. My grandfather had attached a rope to a peg in the ground, so that he could pull the pendulum-chair back and forth. I can effortlessly recall the words and music of the songs we used to sing together: Horsie Keep Your Tail Up, Save your Sorrow For Tomorrow, Me and Jane in a Plane, If I could Plant a Tiny Tree of Love, Mary Ellen at the Church Turned Up.

The last was a musical piece slightly unsuitable for children, which described a bridegroom who committed suicide rather than marry his fiancée. I used to enjoy bellowing lustily along to the lines about his eventual demise:

He didn't want to wed,
And you'll find him in the river
with his toes turned up.

We had our evening meal at six o'clock sharp. Dinner could be slightly problematic for me if it involved 'greens'. Neither my grandfather nor I were enthusiastic consumers of anything healthy; but he was supremely self-sacrificing, and would scrape my vegetables onto his plate when my grandmother left the room. "You can get your vitamins from pudding," he would whisper conspiratorially.

After pudding -- two helpings for me -- it was a fair bet that the Reids would pay us a visit. Mr Reid was the only person I've ever heard use the expression 'Hoot toot' in a real sentence. As in: "Hoot toot, it's a braw het nicht!". He was apt to sing songs in Gaelic with sufficient volume, as my grandmother put it, to address the Albert Hall. I was warned not to encourage him. Memory fails when it comes to Mrs Reid; I remember only a blurred shape and a rather posh Scottish accent.

The grown-ups would sit and drink tea, and perhaps play cards. Their conversation seemed excessively dull, and I would occasionally attempt to enliven the proceedings. I recall offering to entertain everyone by demonstrating my ability to count to one thousand. Astonishingly, my offer was declined. You can't help some people.

The promise of a story from my grandfather was practically the only thing that would get me to bed. My preference was true-life tales of the bombing of Glasgow during World War II. I particularly enjoyed accounts of my grandfather's former workmates who had been "burnt alive by incendiaries" or "blown to smithereens" by the Luftwaffe. Air-raid sirens and mass-murder made bed seem more appealing.

Later, made drowsy by Hitler's attempts to annihilate Glasgow's industry (a task shortly to be completed by Mrs Thatcher), I would listen to my grandparents in the next room. The rustle of my grandfather's newspaper; the low murmur of the radiogram; the faint sound of my grandmother's knitting-needles, as she fashioned an outfit for her new grandchild. And the slow measured rhythm of the cuckoo clock.

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