Its only flowers

It is that time of year when the diary reminds me to arrange birthday flowers for the daughter who has no father.

I don’t need the diary, years of hearing No.1 daughter tell people that her birthday was in “epsember” are etched in my memory. At the receiving end this gesture will be sneered at and immediately binned. The card will remain unopened and the thoughts will remain unnoticed.

The thing is that this is not just a throwaway gift, not some routine token, it actually means a lot… well to me at least.

I know nothing of flowers but I still labour over the selection of a bouquet that is bright and colourful to reflect the smile that I remember so fondly. As the years pass I add touches of deeper colours to show that I know that my little girl is maturing and is a woman now.

The card, such a small thing, will be printed and placed in an envelope with the flowers. The card will never see the light of day between being sealed and hitting the recycling centre. The harsh truth is that I could leave it blank but perhaps this is much an exercise for me as for my angel.

The words are not written once but several times, every year and twice a year I work studiously at the most important thing that I ever write. When I was writing legal papers they had less iterations than this card, this is important and it has to be right.

No burden can be presented, hinted at or inferred from the words. There can be no reference to any emotion other than my undying love. It is written one way and then discarded as too cloying, too gushing. Rewritten it sounds scripted, automated and is discarded again. After several drafts, over a couple of days, I settle on this years words.

After rereading the next day I check the pagination, is that comma correct or does it skew the sentence in an unintended manner? Are the line breaks in the correct place? And finally a check again to ensure that nothing can be misread, nothing is open to interpretation and nothing can be challenged as some dark malevolence.

Satisfied that the small card conveys open and honest love and nothing more I save the message. I sit back and enjoy my memories for a moment before pulling up my messages and adding one more to the unanswered list in my ‘conversation’ with No.1 son.

With my tasks completed it is back to work, mortgages to pay don’t you know. Always the silent provider, stoic and resolute it is what we do as Fathers regardless of the cold emptiness we carry.

It’s not all about incubators

Before I star this post I would like to make it clear that I know I am generalising and I know that not everyone is the same. I write from my experience rather than to castigate an entire sex.

This week the mother of my children has won her ultimate goal to make me no more than a financial institution, to be fair she probably achieved this some time ago but has now finally made it public.

As you know I have two beautiful children but, when their mother started sleeping with other people, I am separated from their mother. Whilst I am by no means a shining example or a great man I did nothing wrong, I lost my home and my family because my wife couldn’t keep her legs shut it is as simple as that.

The mortgage expires on the ex marital home early next year and so arrangements have to be made (my youngest is 18) to address the debt owed to the bank. This is not only perfectly normal it is in accordance with agreements made (via the courts) over ten years ago. Apparently suffering a mortgage, which prevented me from buying my own domestic property and moving on, for my ex-wife, her new child, lovers and my children makes me a horrible person and a failure as a father.

Apparently if I was a good Father I would somehow find the funds to purchase the love of my children. It is like one of those ‘sponsor a child’ adverts:

“For only £55K you can house a woman you despise, her partner, a child you don’t know and your children. In return we will ensure you receive bi-monthly updates addressed to Daddy”

My own situation is my own lookout for being stupid enough to sleep with such a horrible excuse for a human being, but I think it opens a wider point. As a woman think of what Dad meant to you and if, as in my ex’s case, you were denied that opportunity talk to your girlfriends about how they felt. Women talk about everything so even if you don’t have your own fond memories listen to others talking about how safe the world was when they were sat on Daddies knee. When you are consoling your girlfriends about how much they miss their father or, indeed, when you are seeking their sympathy because you feel the same stop and think.

When you consign a man to being nothing other than the idiot who funds your lifestyle then you, and nobody else, are denying your own children that opportunity. So you don’t like the guy who Fathered your children, you have changed your mind, found a better partner or it was just a blag to get a free house who cares but he is the Father of your children.

Whatever he is and however twisted you are the Father of your children is their safe knee, the man they turn to when the world is dark and seems against them. He is the man who tells daughters they are gorgeous when the boyfriend says they are too fat, the man who tells sons to dress up and get out there when girlfriends ditch them. There are two parental roles and you have stolen your children’s right to have both.

Do you think that the Father of your children could never be the man that your Father was? You are right (how does that feel?) he will never be the man your Father was because he is not your Father. To YOU he may be a bank, the man YOU cheated on, the man who didn’t make YOU feel special but, and here is the rub, if you were a half decent mother YOU would realise that it is not all about YOU!

Every child deserves a Father, a safe place, a man who can save them from the world and a man that they will always love. When you deny a child their Father, by whatever means you use, you lose any right to call yourself a mother you are just an incubator.

 

Note: You will notice that I have capitalised Father and not mother, this is intentional. When I am writing about somebody who deserves a title I will capitalise. 

Some explaining and delightful visitors

Several people have said to me recently that they either “don’t know how I do it” or that they “couldn’t do it”. We all hear these statements at various times in our lives and my most recent ones have been against both the current and planned workload. My working day at the moment starts no later than 6 am and ends no earlier than 1 am, that has been the way for the last week and will be the way for the next 4, after that the hard work starts. This workload is fuelled by copious cups of tea, a sandwich and a bag of crisps unless it is one of those days when I remembered to make toast for breakfast.

In the interests of furthering the debate I thought that I would give you an insight into my psychology. I must say in advance that I am not offering this in a Richard Branson ‘what you need to succeed’ style far from it, if anything  I am showing the unhealthy aspects of my personality. I have been called ‘driven’ but I don’t think that’s accurate, I may be determined but I am not sure that translates into driven. I am incredibly stubborn which is both good and bad. It was stubbornness that left my hands where they are and sees me using them today, it was also stubbornness that led me to my pub, I don’t give in that’s just not for me. There is an old saying that winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win, well I don’t quit, ever. The unhealthy side of my stubborn streak can be seen in the raw and bleeding patch on my right arm where I have literally worn through the paper thin skin from the failed graft. There is no sensation in that area so I rarely notice that I have damaged it and I have no time to stop and pander to it, far more important things to do.

Nature bears the brunt of a lot of my stubbornness as you would see if you watched me getting up in the morning. I have to roll out of bed onto my knees at the moment, luckily I have a low bed. When I first wake up I am missing a shoulder and two wrists, well not missing since the pain assure me that they are there! Once I get upright I have to work my limbs into submission before I can lift a kettle, in truth this is before I leave the bedroom since I am not convinced that tripping over would end well. So to answer the question of physicaly how can I spend 18 hours on hard physical labour, the answer is simply how could I  not?I am a practical person and things need doing, besides I still have a grudge against Ms Nature to settle. Does it hurt? Yes, a lot. Would it be easier not to do it? Without doubt. Is it wise? Well there’s a question, my recovery is littered with experts agreeing that me doing what wasn’t recommended was, in fact, the right thing to do so who knows. The questions are academic anyway, it is simply who I am.

I have never needed a lot of sleep, although conversely I can normally sleep on demand, so that allows for the long hours. Rather than being driven to succeed I am furiously critical of my failures. Today’s plan was to stain the decking, amongst other things, I had the material, the weather and the time. It transpires that the deck oil was incredibly over optimistic in its coverage information and the two tins that equated to two coats actually didn’t even cover half of the decking for first coat! Now my plan had involved getting the deck done and then strolling along the coast to either Sandown or Ventnor, kind of like a weekend treat reminding me of the majestic splendour that I live in. I may have even stopped for something to eat although, in truth, that’s unlikely since I loathe eating out alone. Because I took a step back on the decking, through no real fault of my own, I have gone nowhere, I have filled holes, wired networks and stripped plumbing and will continue well into the night. This is not as simple as some form of self flagellation it is driven by an internal rage at the failure to achieve it is not as if I am punishing myself for failure but rather that the failure pushes me on. Hey I never said I was normal.

On a lighter note I had the pleasure of meeting one of the four daughters who worked in the pub when their Dad had it from the early 50s. She was delighted that the old name is returning and dated the extensions earlier than we had thought since they were there when they moved in. It was a great chat and I look forward to showing her around soon, the look in her eyes spoke of 25 years of happy memories. This, for me, is one of the wonderful things about pubs, they are like a public repository of memories. Sure somebody lived in your house before you but it’s unlikely that you will ever meet them and if you did they would just say “oh that was my room at the front” pubs are not like that, they are formative in people’s lives. Over the last 200+ years this old lady has had an impact on thousands of lives and its my job to keep her at it. I remember being devastated to see pubs that I had a connection with close forever and I wouldn’t want anybody to feel that loss over this old girl, I take the challenge of guardianship incredibly seriously and am proud to keep her going.

Inappropriate blushing

A few years ago something changed in the brewing of Becks lager and I became violently allergic to it. This was not just flushed cheeks but itchy, burning skin and difficulty breathing. Some experimenting revealed that the challenge was specifically the bottled product and I henceforth avoided it. It would be nice to think that was the end of the story but, since Ms Nature is involved, it is not.

Since the rather scary incident with Becks I have developed occasional alcohol blush. This reaction results in scarlet blotches across the skin and is a common ‘allergic’ reaction in Asians. The cause of it in Caucasians is less well understood but it does tend to be random, as I have found, rather than every occasion.

Thanks to Dr Google and some unintentional experimentation I have moved a step closer to understanding the triggers, further experiments will be needed to confirm. The theory is that a reduction in ALDH slows the metabolism of acetaldehyde which is also the mechanism used in drugs to treat alcoholism.

The annoying thing is that the symptoms seem random, well they did. On Saturday night I drank some beer, nothing unusual in that, on Sunday afternoon it hit. After one pint a friend enquired as to whether I had been welding, the colour is that vivid. But here is where research is king, apparently ALDH reduces with hydration levels. Obviously drinking beer reduces hydration but there is one other key from the weekend, chinese food!

I have not eaten Chinese food for some time, I avoid it because it is unhealthy, often unpleasant and also because it dehydrates me. This weekend I had a craving for crispy chili beef which I satisfied on Friday. Unusually for me I conserved part of the meal for Saturday night and thoroughly enjoyed it. It would seem that the combination of alcohol and salt reduced my hydration level and this triggered the blush. I think that there may be more to it than this because I didn’t suffer a hangover which is the usual indication of dehydration but it’s a start.

In other news I have yet another scary example of the welfare culture of this country. My friend’s daughter asked to do something over the weekend and he explained “daddy doesn’t have the money for that”. Without a thought his daughter advised going to the bank to get some money. Daddy then had to do the whole ‘you have to work for money speech’ to explain how money gets into the bank.

Ever thoughtful his daughter was not going to leave it there “don’t they put money in your bank for you? They do for mummy” obviously he attempted to explain the reason that mummy got money paid into the bank but his daughter seemed less than convinced. I felt for the guy and the situation he found himself in, how should he explain it, in fact how could anyone? Do you explain to your daughter that in the UK the state sponsors mothers? But if you don’t then you have to make the case that mum is wrong and that’s not a winner either.

In a country that is massively over populated, has high unemployment and huge welfare dependency how do you explain state sponsored childbirth? Like the ever improving economy and the never ending glass it is a myth but unlike the last two we believe it. So the friend whose young, part time employed son has recently become a father was proud. The lad has split with the mother but “give him his due he helped her move into her flat”. As a father, hell as a human being he should be in despair. Another child with no future, born to a young mum and funded by a bankrupt state, it’s not an inspiring situation.

Of course the father will ‘step up’ and graciously accept the £1 per week reduction in his tax credits which the state will impose as child maintenance. The mother’s parents will be declaring how well she is doing as the state funds the next 16 years of her life. This general acceptance of the situation is symptomatic of people faced with a situation that they cannot understand. It won’t be long until the card makers hit upon this lost opportunity and produce ‘welcome to the gravy train’. A clothes company will produce baby clothes with ‘sponsored by the national debt’ emblazoned upon them. Remember you heard it here first.

Beetroot chocolate and ‘him’

It has been an oddly unsettled weekend and I’m actually not too sorry to be returning to the stability of work. I don’t know what it was that sent the weekend askew but I knew no good would come of it from Friday. As most of you know I live alone and I do not own a freezer, there are odd reasons for that which I shall explain later. This means that the visit to the grocery store on the way home Friday is the pivotal point for deciding the weekend menus.

I don’t know if it just me but food is a good barometer of my mood. If I am feeling positive and upbeat I can see a meal in every item that I come across on a shelf. If I am not feeling, well just not feeling ‘right’, there is nothing but effort and waste on the shelves. On Friday I left with two pints of milk and a packet of Minstrels, the later discarded after I ate one and decided that they tasted of beetroot.

For the purposes of completeness let me explain the absence of a freezer in my flat, beware it makes perfect sense to me. When I moved into the flat nearly eight years ago it was a temporary arrangement, at the time it was ‘until I sort my divorce out’ and in my defence that took 6 years. The flat was a furnished flat not particularly by choice but due to limited availability at the time. Everything that came into the flat came by car with my logic being that I could move out with the same uncomplicated method.

The television that I have was selected not for picture or sound quality but for the ability to fit the entire box into my car after it was delivered to Paul’s whilst I was at work. House purchase slipped by and pub purchase became the next deadline, mostly it still is. I may have introduced a ‘soft’ deadline of resolving the aftermath of the accident but there remains a target. Many is the time that I have convinced myself that I should purchase a new television, a freezer or re-carpet but I always change my mind. As much as I love the ocean backdrop and as happy as I am in the flat it is forever an indicator of delay and life being on hold. Somehow I can’t quite bring myself to do anything that could solidify it’s status.

Anyway, having discarded the chocolate I knew the weekend was not going to go well. Don’t misunderstand this, I wasn’t expecting disaster but I had the feeling of disconnect and could envisage spending a lot of time at home. I only left the flat twice on Friday to collect and return a laptop repair. On Saturday I popped in to catch up with good friends freshly returned from their well deserved break. My key-ring now sports a shiny Corfu fob (thank you Emily) and I have to commend the choice of T-shirt which confirms that “I do all my own stunts”. A bottle of Metaxa, the delightful rose tinted Greek brandy is now safely secured at home. I hope that I looked as grateful as I felt, if I didn’t I can assure you that it was not intentional I love you guys!

Three pints on Saturday confirmed that I was not in a sociable mood and I returned to tea and ‘the other project’. Early nights and early mornings oh and tea, lots of tea were the dominant features of my weekend. There is no reason that I can place my finger on for this disconnect. I miss my children terribly, but have for some time now. I am upset that my daughter has not even told me whether she has received the gift I sent for her birthday, but I didn’t really expect her to. The growing list of unanswered messages to my son hurt, but they always have. The whole ‘life on pause’ thing is a heavy weight to haul but it hasn’t changed.

This is another of the positives in the licensed trade, there is no room to disconnect. Sure there is a personality in a pub and it could be said that you hide behind it but their is no room to allow that personality to slip. I guess sometimes when the weight of life weighs heavily sometimes you just need to dissociate from it.

On a more upbeat note can I apologise to the interweb for using it whilst naked on Sunday, I trust I didn’t offend any search engines. The reason that I didn’t have time to get dressed was that I needed to log in to my Lotto account, there was “important information”. I logged in and discovered that I had indeed won on Saturday! Rest assured I won’t let this change me, I will stay as mardy and sarcastic as ever. I will be speaking to my advisors to find the best lager to invest my new found £25 in.

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Hotel living

I have worked away from home for years so hotels are my home and sometimes things remind me that this is not the way that everybody else lives their life. There is a small group of us that use the hotel that I am currently using, some are from my company and some work for other companies in the area, we are the true residents of the hotel. Hotel living has taught me how to pack all that I need into a single bag, it has taught me never to worry about locking the door at home or turning the gas off and it has allowed me the luxury of always being a visitor to home. Hotel living is certainly not for everybody but it is for me and when I was stuck at home post accident it all felt very odd.

The thing with being a hotel resident is that you learn the staff and their ways, you learn the odd things about living in a business, because my contracts are long ones you actually watch staff develop. When I returned from the accident the hotel staff had been told about it by my colleagues, each and every one of them has stopped me and had the conversation and when I think about it that is probably more conversations than I have had at home! I get Christmas and Birthday cards from the hotels that I use, I get the gossip on who dislikes who, who pulls their weight and who is leaving. I know every room in a hotel and know which rooms I don’t use because the heating is rubbish or its noisy. I have walked into furniture and doors when my mental map picks up the wrong details in the middle of  the night; when the Holiday Inn in Derby gave me odd-numbered rooms repeatedly followed by an even-numbered room I got up to use the toilet in the middle of the night and walked straight into a wall because the room was the other way around.

My memories of events and news are linked to hotels so you know when people say they remember being in the front room when their son took his first steps or their daughter said Dad for the first time? Well I remember being in a hotel in Ballymena for the first and Ballymoney for the second! You may wonder what triggered this random post, well it was talking to the night porter this morning who was recounting the crowd from a training course that were in the bar until 2am. We were debating how these late night drinkers would look in the morning and it occurred to me that they are the target audience of  hotels, the sales teams and the course attenders that treat it as a big night out and meet breakfast with a hangover. It is this target audience that leaves rooms trashed because they won’t be remembered, I always leave my room tidy,turn the AC down and open the curtains because over the years I have learnt that the maids like that and let’s be fair they spend more time amongst my possessions than I do. Like some middle class housewife I make sure that I leave the room as clean as I can for the cleaners and that’s because hotels are my home, so when your on a course and get smashed in the evening go quietly past 280 I have an early start.

Having said all of that, I am still looking forward to living above my pub……