TV killed the radio star

I’ve been trying to imagine what your life will be like when you grow up. When I was 10, my brother got his first computer, and we thought Pac-Man was the height of technological sophistication. We’d put cassettes into our BBC computer and listen to the ‘eeeee-aaawww’ as the games slowly, laboriously loaded. And then we’d play, for hours, the same game over and over again.

This first taste of technology converted Tim (Uncle Tim to you), and he got so bitten by the technology bug that he now earns gazillions as a computer wunderkind down in Cambridge. As for me, I threw computers over for books and poetry and mournful music. I was more interested in hanging out in parks with unsuitable boys, bunking off school and reading Bukowski.

(Now, don’t be getting any ideas: if I even catch you thinking about bunking off school, I’ll march you to the gates and back and every day. Wearing my most embarrassing outfit and giving you big wet kisses in front of your friends.)

Anyway, although I learned binary code at school, it never really did anything for me. I didn’t go near a computer again until university. The internet was so slow I’d take a book with me when surfing the web; it took me so long to type out my dissertation that I got a crick in my neck; and I didn’t get a mobile phone until I was 24. And in my first job, we debated whether DVDs would ever take off.

I was thinking about all this (mainly about how you’re not going to be allowed a TV or PC in your bedroom, as it happens), when I came across this interview with Ian Brown:

‘My kids laugh at me when I tell them about life when I was 14. They say "Go on dad, tell us again". There was no Walkmans, videos, Nintendo or Xboxes, no internet, no mobiles. No computers. No DVDs. There were only three TV channels. They cry laughing.’

‘But it made us hungry and thoughtful. And we had great things like the Sex Pistols. We're breeding a generation who won't invent anything. They've got everything. They're stimulated all day and they're never bored. I think there should be an hour of total boredom every day for all kids.’

Or, to put it another way: necessity is the mother of all invention. Prepare to be bored, baby…

House on bricks

I must confess: the minute I posted my last entry, the sun came out. The park formerly known as ‘mud pit’ has dried out and walking the dog is less a lesson in trying not to fall arse-over-tit and more a gentle perambulation.

I shouldn’t write ‘arse’ or ‘tit’, should I? Close your ears against such naughty words and remember: it is every parent’s right to be a hypocrite. While I may swear with navvy-like abandon, any foul-mouthed emissions from my son will be met by a quick clip round the ear.

But I will have carried you for nine months, given myself over to stretch marks and saggy tits (there I go again), a gravity-loving arse (really, I can’t help myself) and don’t get me started on childbirth. Third. Degree. Tearing. So I reckon that after all that trauma I am allowed to be a hypocritical mama.

Do as I say, child, not as I do.

Etc.

Anyway, the sun has finally come out and I’m sat sweltering in the attic, a gentle breeze blowing over the roof-tiles and in through the window. The dog’s in the garden, belly-up in the sunshine, and I imagine your dad is downstairs with both kitchen door and beer bottle resolutely open.

I’m in the attic as I write because there’s nowhere else to sit. The attic, usually my office, is now sanctuary from the hellish building works going on downstairs. In honour of your impending arrival, we thought we should sort out the damp, get a new toilet (not that you’ll be using it for a good few years yet), stick in new windows, lift the floorboards to stuff in acres of insulation, re-plaster, make your room bigger and better, oh, and the list goes on.

It feels like the house is jacked up on bricks, waiting for some kindly mechanic to take pity and restore it to full working order. And, loath though I am to shift the burden onto such tiny shoulders, it’s all your fault. If it weren’t for you I would have been quite happy to ignore the mouldering damp, the shelves falling in, the skirting boards flaking off. I would have made do with our leaky WC, our draughty front room with its hideous textured wallpaper ceiling, our strangely-shaped spare room. Honestly, I would.

But with you on the way we’ve been galvanised into action, and so on top of the physical joys of pregnancy I’ve got to put up with a house on bricks. I guess this is my first lesson in motherhood: it’s all about give and take. I give, you take.

Doing it ourselves

I’m not a natural when it comes to DIY (or housework when it comes to that matter), and nor is your dad. It would be safe to say that we’ve developed something of a blind spot around damp patches, peeling paint, holes in the wall and unvarnished floors. Sadly for us (but luckily for you), we’ve woken up to the fact that doing DIY with a babe-in-arms will be far worse than doing DIY with just us two.

So we’ve been getting to it. First step is the damp. Simon spent the ‘worst weekend of his life’ last weekend taking all the plaster off the walls downstairs, in readiness for some men injecting the walls with chemicals, wrapping them in waterproof membranes and then slathering them in plaster.

I spent most of the weekend sat in the bedroom with the dog, under strict instructions from him downstairs not to do too much. I did manage to blacken the rusty old fireplace in our bedroom (a job I had successfully avoided doing for two years). All went well until I took off the masking tape that had been protecting the walls from the gloopy black paste I’d liberally applied. Off came the tape, and so did half the wall. The fireplace looks great though.

This is why I hate DIY: one step forward, two steps back.

We’ve also been without a bedroom door for six months (don’t ask). A month ago, Simon pulled a blinder and managed to find a replacement (to be fair, it was in next door’s drive and we could barely get out of our own front door without tripping over it). He sanded it down, cut it to size and then hung it. We went to bed feeling all smug that we’d finally sorted it, only for me to wake up, half-suffocated, at 1am. Your dad had liberally doused the door in white spirit after sanding, and the fumes seemed to multiply during the night.

Cue me waking Simon up and crying that the smell might hurt the baby (that’ll be you, then). And cue Simon getting out of bed, taking the door off its hinges, hefting it downstairs and putting it in the shed.

Two weeks later, the door is still in the shed. Told you we were crap at DIY.