Oh how I hate surprises
So it was the Disreputable One’s birthday on Sunday. And seeing as his other half is in the process of dragging him kicking and screaming into the 21st century, she suggested that he might like a digital camera. So I set about contacting my siblings.
Me (via text): Alright siblings! Any chance of us clubbing together and buying Dad a digital cam 4 his birthday THIS SUNDAY?
Mad Uncle A (via text): Alright saves me a job. U get it send it & I’ll send u the cash. Don’t spend too much I’m not f*ckin Bill Gates.
Sensible Uncle I (via text): Fine.
Well, he’s a man of few words. So, great, I thought, might have known as the token female I’d get lumbered with the shopping, so off I go, spending a happy afternoon researching cameras on the internerd… and finally I come up with an absolute corker. Hubby is a Fuji man (he’s got one of those great big black yokes like the paparazzi are always sticking up Britney’s skirt), and my little red Fuji Q1 is fantastic, so I settled on a really flash new black Fuji Finepix one at 7dayshop.com – less than 2cm thick (ooer!), equipped with a 2.5″ LCD screen, 7 million pixel CCD sensor (no, I don’t know what that is either), a 3x optical zoom, image stabilising system, face detection and an infrared transmission system (not that I expect he’ll be transferring his photos wirelessly but hey, it’s there if he needs it) and an extremely fast shutter speed to ensure his photos come out clear and bright even with a little alzheimers-induced hand wobble (just joking Dad). Anyhoo, I couldn’t get my order to work on 7dayshop, it kept asking me to login again, but Pixmania.co.uk had it too so I sent off my order and sat back all smug. How easy was that?
So you know this is going to go all pear-shaped, don’t you. Two days later, I got an email saying it was out of stock and would be delivered as soon as possible. Poo! I fired off a quick email: ‘No! It has to be delivered by Sunday. It’s my Dad’s birthday! Can’t you find something similar that you DO have in stock?’. Another day goes past and, finally, I get an email back: ‘the black’s out of stock, but we do have Wasabi Green (oh dear), Sunburst Orange (oh dear again) and Cherry Red in stock. Quick text to Dad’s other half and we settle on the red, which I order with another ‘please, please hurry up and deliver by Saturday’ message.
Long story short – Dad’s birthday came and went with no camera in sight – in either black or cherry red. Sensible Uncle I sent him a card saying ‘hope you enjoy the camera’ (oops, that buggered that surprise then), but still nothing. Then this morning, I check my email to find, completely out of nowhere – a completely new ’thank you for your order’ email from Pixmania, saying that my black camera will be delivered in 3 to 5 working days. Give me strength. Next time he can have his usual port and stilton and bloody lump it.
To my Disreputable Dad, with love.
So you know when you have those conversations with your kids? Lazy, half-hearted chats on the way home from school, or sun-baked after lunch holiday lounger conversations about ‘what it was like when you were little’, or ‘what’s your earliest memory’ type things? Well one thing that’s always guaranteed to get my kids going is hearing about their Grandad when I was little.
He wasn’t (and still isn’t) your average, run of the mill Dad, granted; but oh the excitement, the adventure of having the Disreputable One for a Dad made up for the fact that he was rarely there at bedtime and could be absolutely, utterly, counted on not to be there for parent’s evening either.
We used to get scribbled postcards (he needs a new spider) from exotic places like Barbados and Dominica (‘why can’t we ever go, Mum?’), and have to sit through interminable slide shows of beautiful beaches and colourful tropical birds when he did finally get home. When he was around, though, there were long summer days down the Cricket Club, building dens out of hay bales and paddling in the stream while the men baked out on the field. I remember doing mad things like driving to the Sheraton Hotel at Gatwick Airport and having lunch in a really posh restaurant while planes jetting off to foreign climes whooshed over our heads. And then there was The Royal Tournament (field gunners…phwoar!!), cash incentives for passing exams, a treasured memory of glimpsing him in the audience when I played the judge in Toad of Toad Hall, late-night car journeys to see the Christmas lights on Oxford Street, or being woken at 4am to get in a taxi to go on holidays to all sorts of exotic (to my 8 year old self) places: Fuengirola, Tunisia, Tenerife…
When he left, I was ‘grown up’ but still we fought and shouted and I hated him for breaking up our family, ruining future Christmases, happy visits to Grandparents for my boys, etc. But hey, he’s my Dad (you generally only get one) and I kind of suspect he’d agree that my Mum’s happier without him (a Disreputable husband too). Now it seems the norm that they’re not together and they’ve even talked on the phone (a milestone).
One memory amongst others sums up my Dad. The night before I got married (for the first time), I sat in tears on their sofa when he came in and sat next to me. I told him I didn’t want to go through with it and that I was worried I was making a huge mistake. After spending all that money on invitations, suits, posh Laura Ashley wedding and bridesmaid dresses, a sit down meal for hundreds, did he rant? Did he tell me I was a nightmare (as usual)? Nope, he held my hand and said ‘Titch, it’s never too late to change your mind’. I didn’t change my mind, and it didn’t last long but, hey, I went down the aisle on his arm knowing that he wouldn’t have cared wasting all that money as long as I was happy.
Disreputable? Yup. Unreliable? Surely. The best Dad in the world? Absolutely.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
A postbox full of loveliness
Ooh, I love post. One advantage to living here is the extra excitement that builds on the walk down the drive to the postbox. Nobody in Ireland seems to have a letterbox in their front door. They all have a lovely little tin box thing on the front gate that you have to open with a key. A key! Hubby hates post because he gets all the bills and crap, so I get the special job of walking down and emptying the post box. Sometimes it’s even a parcel. I reallylove a parcel. I must be the only 38 year old woman who still gets excited opening her pressies on her birthday (and I got some right corkers this year). I am also lucky to have incredibly thoughtful parents. Me Ma sends little cards and letters (often with a very welcome €10 for the boys) and The Disreputable One will often send jokes and stuff to the boys, and cut clippings out of the newspaper about things that he thinks will interest me. A recent photocopy of an article about censorship in Ireland being a good example: did you know that as late as 1967 (when the Censorship ofPublications Act was finally reformed) Ireland had probably the toughest censorship laws in the ’free’ world? And did you also know that the list of authors whose books were banned by the Irish Censorship of Publications Board included Hemingway, Steinbeck, Shaw and even Raymond Chandler (my goodness, how did the people of Ireland live without Philip Marlowe?)? Anyhoo, digressing. The point is that my Disreputable Dad knew instantly that I’d like it, and was kind enough to stick it in the post. Ripping it open and reading it as I wound my way back up the drive absolutely made my morning – like a little chat with the aul’ boy even though he’s not here.
One downside of this love of parcels is a serious Ebay addiction that knows no bounds. This, though, combined with the memory of a goldfish, means that I’m permanently pleasantly surprised by my purchases. I’ve been trying to cut back, as you know, but this morning even our seriously overworked Postie had to admit defeat and leave one of those little yokes in the box that means you have to pop to the Post Office and pick up your bulky items (I love those too).
Four parcels offered up such wonders as ‘The Water Boy’ DVD (LOVE that film: ‘Youuu can doooo it!’), a DVD of the original ‘Italian Job’ which I really want the boys to see (‘you were aownly suppaowsed to blaow the blardy doors off!’), a copy of Helena Frith Powell’s ‘Two Lipsticks and a Lover’ which I’ve wanted for ages (I just really need to learn the secrets of Parisian women), and the pièce de résistance: a signed copy of Nigel Slater’s ‘Eating for England’. I just love a deliciously new pile of books by the side of my bed. And you can almost guarantee that by the time the pile’s back down to two or three, the ‘To Do’ list in my phone will have another huge list of books and films that I’ve read about, or been recommended, or just remembered that I liked, and after a couple of glasses of Merlot and a lubly Ebay session, the little tin box at the end of the drive will be full again. Bliss.
