I’ve starting making lists; lists of things I want to do; lists of things I think I should want to do and “ much smaller “ lists of things I’ve actually done. What separates them from each other, apart from reality and fantasy, is the 22^nd anniversary of my 18^th Birthday.

And because forty feels like an age where extreme physical tasks may be aspirational at best, this inventory of want should probably be classified as stuff to do before I’m dead.

Bu before that this – kicking off on the younger side of the fence, here’s my top ten of stuff happily filed in a Pandora’s box marked Done and don’t come back.

10. Have Kids
I love my kids, of course I do but Lordy I certainly wouldn’t want anymore. The statistical probability of adding a fourth female to a family of two daughters and one wife is simply too terrifying. I’ve seen blokes burdened with that demographic and they look hunted. And poor.

9. Properly crash a car
Smashing up your car (or, for preference, somebody else’s) is a rite of passage from short trousered road hoodlum to middle aged, elbow-padded law abider who revels in the knowledge his sensible car won towing vehicle of the year in What Caravan? I’m dangerous enough on a mountain bike, so¾ of a ton of powered metal battering ram is not really crashing material anymore.

8. Wake up with a stranger
As opposed to going to bed with a sex goddess. You know that terrible waking feeling of spinning sky, intense urge to vomit and geographical discombobulation? It is hardly improved when followed by cruel sunlight shafting your hazy mental image that last night you pulled a super model. Leave your mates number, grab trousers and run.

7. Go on a proper bender
The kind of weekend where you go out drinking on Friday night and wake up Sunday morning on a freezing train platform without any shoes. Still in a suit but otherwise unrecognisable from the young, thrusting professional of 36 hours earlier. A goat has slept in your mouth and left with your cash, you mobile phone is covered in a slick glaze of beer and kebab and some street person has robbed you of your footwear.

And you have a hangover sharp enough to shave with. No thanks, never again. Not after last time.

6. Own a motorbike
Many people “ well blokes anyway “ trigger a Pavlovian two wheeled urge on hitting forty. It’s best described as squeezing middle aged spread into tight leathers and smearing oneself under lorry wheel some twenty minutes later. I’ve crashed too many motorbikes to ever want another one. Probably not anyway. Well not this year at any rate.

5. Buy a house
We bought this house and subsequently checked into the financial hospital of the monetary crippled. If we tried to do the same now, we’d be making Faustian deals with the devil and mortgaging our souls. House ownership have the weary trappings of repair, potential DIY and a permanent drain on disposable cash. But short of living in a cardboard box under a bridge, it’s hard to see an alternative.

Actually if we had to buy a house now, the box would be the alternative although marketed as Bijou and Compact Residence near major road links and with undisturbed views of countryside

4. Be poor
See above. As a student I was poor but so was everyone. And in those days we had overdrafts, summer jobs and “ in the case of the posh undergrads “ wealthy parents. While I kind of support the right on theory that money doesn’t make you happy, you have to balance that with being poor generally doesn’t either. I’m a financial train wreck at the best of times but it’s kid of nice to know that such behaviour doesn’t starve the children. Not yet, anyway.

3. Survive a parachute jump
I’m not good with heights and even worse with exposure. Phrases such as plummet to a fiery death instantly supplant airline safety briefings. Jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane was, without doubt, the most traumatic experience of my life. I didn’t want to be in a small plane, being buffeted around like a storm blown leaf, nor did a single atom of Al see any just cause for chucking itself out into the abyss. I got to know “ up front and personal – what terminal velocity looked like and from thereon in, I tried hard to stick to terra firma. The more firma, the less terror..

2. Go Mountain Bike Racing
I was rubbish at 33 and I’d be even rubbisher now. At 40 you qualify for the Veterans’ class and it’s all sinewy, grizzled racers with fitness, endurance and race craft. I’d be lapped on the start line. And while I loved the whole scene, I hated the actual racing. My last 12 hour race was so spectacularly bad, it ended with me grumping in a chair, drinking beer and smoking cigars at 4am in the morning. And that was the best bit by some distance.

1. Being 39
Apparently age is no barrier to progress. Yet being 39 has felt a bit like it was. There’s something transitory that wasn’t there at 29 and certainly never even entered my naval gazing orbit ten years before that. I’m not wild about crossing another one way frontier but I’ll be glad when it’s done. So this is where life begins eh?

Knowing my readers are troubled by a low threshold of attention deficit even when compared to a special needs goldfish, I’ve been ruthless in my selection. The remaining five hundred or so, including gems such as send wine back and understand the art of grouting, shall remain electronically welded to Pandora’s bosom. The lucky things.

Next up, all the exciting tasks I set myself at the age of thirty that I’ve yet to complete. Where the hell did those ten years go?

… now there was a couplet to strike terror into the heart of any freelance consultant. Fiscally, it didn’t get much worse than that unless the project sponsor was hit by the belated realisation that all your talk of stabilising event horizons or evangilising synergistic operating efficiencies was nothing more that total bollocks wrapped up in bullshit. It only ever got worse when your thin lipped accountant started nervously quoting sarbanes-oxley as you explained you’d bought a small yacht for the purposes of “business development“.

But even at our worst, which I grudgingly accept was on the euphemistic edge of dishonest, we were merely street magicians compared to Gorden “David Copperfied” Brown and his financial slights of hand. Politics rarely infect the hedgehog as it lacks the catharticism of other posts and leaves me wanting to throw the monitor into the local offices of the council. Plus, of course, I know bugger all about it although that is rarely a semantic leash to my random rabbit chasing doggedness.

But the porridge gobbler has gone too far this time. While one hand giveth, the other slaps you lightly about the face, joyfully explaining you’re screwed anyway. While I have absolutely no problem with a taxation system earnestly charting wealth redistribution through a sea of tax increases, I’ll be buggered if anyone is going to tell me that in some way it’s doing me a financial favour.

Personally I may more tax or I may pay a little less. Frankly, I don’t give a shit but I do care that a government that has crusaded as the bastion of public services appears to have spent everything while delivering very little. So while we’re laying off nurses and targets replace common sense, I’ve come up with a new idea. And I’m telling you because there is absolutely no bloody point in pretending that our vote offers some kind of representation.

How can 20,000 people, each driven by their own motives, imbue a power hungry arse to speak for them to an even greater power crazed circle, who themselves gave up listening about the same time the votes stopped being counted. This is not a party politics thing – they’re all as fucking bad as each other, they don’t care about your problem or your opinion but they certainly care about their own.

The US system as least acknowledges this and lets you vote directly for the President who may share some of your ideals such as bombing oil rich countries, or screwing the earth beyond the point of reconciliation. At least you know what you’re getting, rather than some pointless stuffed shirt asking anodyne questions about constituents that he cares only slightly less about that the bloke answering in the dispatch box.

They say the young are disenfranchised by politics. Good on them, maybe they see it for what it is.

Anyway, here’s my idea. In the same way that we receive good karma for sponsoring a goat or a cow in a country we once funded with slaves as the most profitable export, why not abolish some taxes and allow us to sponsor public servants? It’d be like The Sims but for real. I’ll sponsor two nurses in the local hospital and they can write me some reports on how many people didn’t die because someone cared about their welfare. I’d feel good, less people may suffer and it won’t cost the government a penny.

You see where this could go? We wouldn’t have to sponsor those public services that everyone accepts are either a total waste of time or a government revenue generator. Traffic Wardens – you can bugger off home for a start. Free Market economics with a social edge, I think it could be a winner.

I mean come on, we cannot really do any worse.

There’s much in the papers today about living on the edge. Whether that’s chucking a Rugby ball about, or facing terminal cancer with a cheery smile, or winning in business by playing odds no one else dares – it’s all about being something that others are not.

Life on the edge is “ naturally “ edgy. It’s about making dangerous choices while fully understanding the precarious consequences, but doing it anyway. It’s the self confidence to fight against the tide, be a sheepdog in a field of sheep and never, ever accepting that what you are doing is even close to being enough. Religion speaks to us that our short life is merely a precursor to something better, but those peering over the abyss believe that there is nothing penultimate about life on earth.

So it’s really not a nice place to be.

Sometimes I get a glimpse of what that world must be like where now is everything and you are one cowardly decision away from normality, regret and safety. And the older you are, the line between pushing it or faking it becomes increasingly blurred. Parental responsibility and physical fragility are the waves drowning your youthful impulsiveness and washing you away to a conformist shore.

And that’s a shitty place to be as well.

Life without risk is no life at all. With my mortality fear looming ever larger, each day is a test of your bravery, your commitment, your closeness to the edge. So you must steel yourself to step forward, to look the drop full in the face and feast on the rush of spitting fear in the eye. And then running away quickly.

A friends’ parent bravely piloted a Lightening jet fighter for many years, but now stutters through his remaining life twitching on phantom adrenalin and craving the rush. But what a life – suspended between terror and greatness never counting the cost of a junkiesm that holds you hostage to stuff you can no longer do. It’s the same but worse for those who chase the dragon in every raised vein, or grab their kicks from a bottle. You may reasonably question their willpower and social responsibility, but even they must dimly toast Dylan Thomas and his raging against the dying of the light.

It distills to this “ better to live to forty, fifty maybe sixty years old rather than waiting for God while dribbling into a hospice pillow, forgotten by those who were once the centre of your world. Your lie broken in a bed that’s waiting to be a coffin “ at best a responsibility and, at worst an embarrassment.

So there should be none of that embarrassment if you mainline your twenty something old self and remember that sometimes Who Gives A Fuck?‘ is an entirely appropriate way to greet adversity and accountability. I used to think I hated being scared for myself, or frightened for my family. You know that stomach churning revelation at 3am that maybe your best times have gone and you’d blown what little talent you had.

But I don’t anymore “ because even pretending to be on the edge rocks like a hurricane and while the lows are lower, the highs fly “ Icarus like “ to the Gods. And here’s the thing; the singular joy of being a coward is every time you carve a fast, sketchy bend or confront a scary inner demon, it fills your heart up with life stuff and makes you seven feet tall and invincible.

And that’s a fantastic place to be “ even if it is only for one minute in a thousand.

Life on the edge is not a choice. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to be aware that you can choose to shuffle sideways into conformity or, take a deep breath and jump “ hoping against hope you can learn to fly.

Flying is good.

Random and Verbal attend a proper Church Of England School. Proper in that it shuns any of that modern multi-denomination malarkey, instead brainwashing pliable minds and demonising other faiths. Okay, it’s not quite that bad but the annual nativity play is straight down the line Christian dogma with a few hedgehogs (honestly!) thrown in to provide amusement.

The intake is predominantly white and while that feels like a bad thing, there is no way I am getting into an argument about it on here. But in what must have been an inspired piece of casting, the little Muslim fella was cast as a King from the East. He did look a bit confused though when, twenty minutes in, he was surrounded by farm animals, a small baby doll and not even the slightest mention of Muhammad.

The kids are amazingly precocious – all aged between five and seven-“ able to recite dialogue from memory and sing many songs all in cute harmonies. And their accompanying hand actions are a joy to watch, especially when it all goes wrong and Rebecca from class R inadvertently pokes the teacher in the ear.

Random was a Star (literally) this year pirouetting around the stage while marshalling the first year kids. She looked remarkably assured and rather tall which came as a bit of a shock really – I mean are they meant to grow up this fast?

Verbal on the other hand has not inherited her Dad’s “Everyone! Look at ME” persona and so last week’s piano recital was met with much pre-angst and blood draining worry. I was watching through the steepled fingers of the truly terrified because I so wanted her to be ok. Not good you understand, just not stage frozen and traumatised. She gave me a look, that belied her tender seven years, which translated to “Dad, I’m shitting the bed here”

But she was great. Sure she missed some notes and so it was a contemporary take on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but it was worth all the naked terror to see how rightly proud she was.

The problem with the school hall = other than the smell which transports you back thirty years and has you wondering if you’d done your homework-“ is the dust and grit that flies about. On both occasions where the kids have been performing, something’s stuck in my eye and caused it to water. Odd that.

Still It’s the Christmas Disco tonight. Which allows for me to smuggle in a couple of cans of lager and check out whether the poor bairns do in fact dance like their dad.

… was this week and I didn’t go. Having never been to the firm’s bash, I’ve no idea if it mimics the social car crash of almost every one I did attend. But I decided not to risk it.

And this is almost entirely due to my ground state of ˜grumpy bastard‘. However it also breaks Al’s Life Rule #1 which, while complex and erudite, can be simply distilled to Life’s to short to drink with arseholes?. It’d be plain wrong to suggest everyone who shares my workplace – especially those who are privy to the scribblings of the hedgehog and to you I extend a wavey hello, nice to know we’re all in this shit together eh?? “ is an irritating nonce with the social panache of a special needs gerbil, but you know how it is.

You don’t? Ok, Christmas parties pay direct homage to their clichéd stereotype, where a largely dysfunctional flange of those battered by a year of sneering, bullshiting and lying are liberally doused with alcohol and flung together in a seething mass of petty rivalry, sweat and imagined slights. Is it any wonder that every sane man would light the blue touch paper before running away at top speed? Slipped of the leash of corporate responsibility and rendered fearless on gassy lager, it’s only a matter of time before a testosteroned swagger across the dance floor ends in a slurred Hey mate, you’re such a useless wanker and annoying little shit. I’ve hated you for ever and at last years party shagged your other half. What do you think of that then eh? Wanna make something of it??.

Insults are screamed; first pushes and then punches are traded. Security are called just before someone slings a drunken arm round the protagonist and offers that most anodyne of beery advice not worf it mate, just not worf it?.

And that’s just the women.

Continue reading “The Office Christmas Party….” →

Have I taken leave of my senses? Or are the Conservatives handing out suitcases of cash to all impoverished mountain bikers who have recently grown a beard, and can demonstrate double jointed thumbs? Maybe they’re advocating a new transport policy where BMW X5 drivers are all injected with leprosy?

Disappointingly, it’s none of those things, however Tim Love Child? Yeo, representing what the Conservatives amusingly refer to as their liberal, cuddly side, actually made some sense. It’s rare that the S word is associated with the self important, stuffed shirted sound bites that feed off our deluded cravings for democracy, but in this case it’s well earned.

You see, he wants to abolish GMT. Initially I was aghast at yet another historic British institution being abandoned, pensioned off or “ more likely “ sold to the Americans. But no, he’s talking about making the evenings’ lighter at the expense of extending darkness further into the morning. Since we spend far more time awake “ unless you’re a student “ after lunch than before, this is clearly a winner. As a man with something of the night about him?, the prospect of staving off Lygophobia* for a goodly number of planetary rotations gets my vote.

Oh there’ll be some nonsense talked about Scottish farmers having to plant in the dark and children north of Manchester risking almost certain death when walking to school. I refute all these arguments with the simple response that they don’t affect me at all. And tractors now have lights and so do cars, which is precedent since nobody walks to school anymore.

Obviously, it’s never going to happen because it doesn’t fit in with the Government’s stated priorities of invading oil rich countries, introducing a CCTV controlled nanny state and lying.

Actually I’ve changed my mind, I’m not going to vote for any of them “ it just encourages the buggers.

* fear of the dark apparently. I found this and my other interesting phobias here. I discovered I am also suffering from Ombrophobia (fear of being rained on) and probably Xyrophobia (fear of razors) considering my currently hairsuit facial grayness. Now with a hint of ginger “ it’s all I can do to stop kissing myself, so attractive has this made me.

And who could miss the irony of Sesquipedalophobia which is “ wait for it “ a fear of long words.

Simon Barnes of The Times is a great Sports Writer. I always to turn first to his page because he’s so even handed with the raw emotion and the actual occasion. He writes beautifully about the pointlessness of sport while still held in its’ magical thrall. A good read every day, trading adjectives and verbs in the volatile market of what distills to grown men kicking a ball about.

But today he wrote about his sons’ condition of Down’s Syndrome. Any parent who can read the article without wiping their eyes is kidding themselves. One statistic that stuck was the stark reality showing that 94{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} diagnosed with the pre-born condition results in termination. I’m not sure what this says about parenting in the 21^st century but it’s nothing with any obvious merit.

There is nothing I can add to his honesty, but I do remember when our second child was growing in the womb, we too had the test to detect what medical science calls an abnormal foetus. We talked about the long term consequences of a Down Syndrome child with all the seriousness of those faced with decisions guided by nothing but a moral compass. But silently I prayed hard “ for the first time since being confirmed as a lifelong atheist “ that our baby would be fit and healthy.

In public I would never have called for termination, but in a sleepless night before the test, that may have been my preference. And now it’s brutally obvious that any such decision would have been plain wrong “ you cannot deny a child life because it doesn’t fit with your view of how life should be. We can no more play God than those choosing designer babies with their blue eyes and Cambridge intelligence.

It made me realise how lucky we are to have two healthy kids whose lust for life validates our own. Take the religion out of it and you are still truly blessed with children even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

I’m going to send a donation to the Down Syndrome Trust once my blurry eyes run out of tears. Not because I feel sorry for the kids “ they know no different “ but because if they pass the stigma exam of what children should be, they deserve all the help they can get.

And if this seems like sentimental nonsense without an obvious point then welcome to being a parent.