Extract

I bloody love a good extract, me.

Specifically, Marmite. God damn. That shit (figuratively) is good. I mean, okay, “yeast extract” makes it sound a little like the byproduct of a medical condition, but it’s just so packed full of umami goodness that I can happily overlook that.

Mmmmarmite.

It wasn’t until my university days that I got on board the Marmite bandwagon. Previously I had fallen firmly into the “hate” camp. Then, one day I got really drunk. The post booze hunger hit hard and I needed savoury snackage. As it was toward the end of term, money was tight. So tight, in fact, that my own cupboard contained no food whatsoever. Not even biscuits. Not even cheese. Not even a lonely, mouldy crust of Tesco Value bread.

My flatmate, in a similarly foodless situation, sat in the corner watching as I scrimmaged for sustenance. Casually, cruelly, he suggested that perhaps I’d like some Marmite. Just a spoonful of that thick brown gloop would satiate my savoury hankerings for a week.

For the record, eating a spoonful of Marmite is not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever done. It burns a bit. But it was an epiphany. I LOVE Marmite!

Nearly a decade has passed since that watershed moment, and my relationship with Marmite has remained solid. Unwaveringly monogamous. Until six months ago.

A stay with a good friend in London saw temptation rear its head; she had no Marmite for our post-booze toast session. I queried how this could be so, and the answer shocked me:

“I prefer Bovril”

I was in no mood for experimentation, so I stuck with just butter.

All was well, I returned home and thought no more of this alternative extract. But my friend visited recently, bringing with her a small gift: a jar of Marmite’s beefy brother, Bovril.

Now the usurper was in my house it was only a matter of time until I would try it. I pre-empted the inevitable and cracked the seal on the jar later that day.

Bovril is a revelation. It is easier to spread. It has a slightly mellower taste, still able to scratch the umami itch, but less likely to strip a layer of flesh from the roof of your mouth. I am officially a two extract man now.

Phwoar.

But, I wonder, where next? My appetite for toasted bread products is voracious. How long before I find myself Vegemite curious? What other, more obscure extracts are out there, just waiting to tantalise my taste buds?

*drools on keyboard*

Forest

We are all sharing a bed while we’re in the forest, because one of us is not well. His body is stripped of all but a nappy, his fever is furious and hard to keep on top of. The drugs aren’t working like they usually do. He looks so much smaller, as if the illness has diminished his physical presence. In a foetal ball, perched atop a pillow, he occasionally jerks and shudders before resettling.

I wonder what goes through his head to make his body do that. Fearful, feverish dreams? He seems scared, and it hurts me to know that I can do nothing about it.

His sleep is snatched, sporadic, restless, and so is ours. It’s quiet here, the birds and animals are asleep, there are no roads nearby. A baby’s cry is far more piercing when it’s the only sound.

A poorly boy taking a nap. Aww.

We get up early and look outside at the trees, the water, the rocks and the morning light. I wonder aloud why people have chosen to live anywhere but here. I feel more at ease and at home here than I ever do in the tarmac coated sprawl of a city or town. I suppose there just aren’t many jobs in the forest.

I'm not feeling well, can you tell?

The arrival of morning signals the departure of the fever. The rash remains, to remind us we’re not done with the whining just yet, and woe betide should you run out of Calpol. Suitably dosed, we head out on the bikes, weaving between the other assorte

d short term forest dwellers, most of whom look like they haven’t seen a bike before, let alone ridden one. Crashes are narrowly avoided and the swimming pool is reached.

Cool water laps at our skin and rinses away memories of the unpleasant night time, replaced by chlorine’s gift: desiccated skin. But he loves it. He thinks he can swim, we do not. He wants no aid to buoyancy apart from one of us, so we scoot around the pool, pushing him ahead of us. He remains utterly calm while we change him back into dry land clothing and, though a part of me feels foolish, we believe that the worst of the illness, a reaction to the MMR vaccination, is over.

Bedtime proves my foolish part correct. The fever is back. At 3:30am I meander through the haze of sleep to give him Calpol. He sleeps next to us again.

In the morning I discover I’ve left the lid off the Calpol. An ant crawls near to the bottle. An urgent trip to the shop to buy more occurs. We swim again. He loves it again. I continue to love the forest, continue to love the time I am having with my family, continue to hope it will somehow not come to an end on Friday, when they let the cars back in and we have to leave.

Forest at dusk. Pretty.

Our first holiday as three hasn’t been the easiest four days, but I will always remember it and cherish it.

Garden

Do you recall, not so long ago, all those property programmes on TV banging on about how great decking is?

No, neither do I really, but I assume they must have done, because one day in mid-2008 I realised that every garden I went in seemed to have planks of wood where grass had once been.

When we bought our house in 2010 the decking craze had faded a bit. But, because no-one had any money anymore *shakes fist at Lehman Brothers et al*, all the gardens which had been covered in nice wood were now covered in two year old, neglected wood. Our new home had been treated to a liberal smattering of decking, roughly 70% of the back garden was covered in it.

Aesthetically speaking, the decking was okay. It did have a thin film of incredibly slippery green stuff on it, as a result of the previous owners never cleaning it, but as long as all you wanted to do was look at the garden from inside, it was okay. Cutting the lawn took moments, as there was only roughly four square feet of it.

Structurally, the decking was not so good. It was flagged up by the surveyor, as it had been built too high, which meant a risk of damp creeping up past the damp proof course of the house itself. It also had a bit of a rickety "DIY" feel to it.

One day, soon after we moved in, water started coming through the kitchen floor, which put something of a dampener (sorry) on our moods. We didn't know where the water was coming from, and the decking didn't have an access panel to the drain we assumed would be underneath it. If that drain was blocked, causing our kitchen to do an impression of a paddling pool, it needed sorting. The decking had to go.

The occasions where I feel like a manly man are few and far between.  The day that I started taking up the decking was one of them. A hammer, a saw, not one but TWO crowbars were my weapons of choice.

The decking didn't go without a fight. Despite it's less than sturdy appearance, I soon discovered that whoever had built it was a firm believer in not using one nail if there was the option to use six. Reinforcements were drafted in: Mrs L, my younger brother, my mum and dad, all pitching in to purge the garden of the wooden blight.

Slowly but surely, we were winning. At the very end of the day, I let my guard down. I lost my respect for our adversary and trod on a six inch nail. I didn't have any body piercings before that day, and I had never suspected that my first one would be right through my foot.

One tetanus jab later and the last few pieces of wood were transported to the tip. Hooray.

Sadly, the state of our garden beneath the decking looked like an homage to London during the blitz. Which is pretty much how it remained until last Tuesday, when a nice man came and rotovated it, turfed it, and gave us a nice, Cam friendly garden.

The house I grew up in had a big garden at the front, a small garden at the rear, and a disused quarry which me and my siblings used as our personal adventure playground. I can't imagine I'll ever be able to offer Cam a similar facility, but we do now have some usable outside space for him to run around in and get muddy. This pleases me enormously. I love the outdoors, and the availability of green space for Cam to use is important to me.

We already have the obligatory Little Tikes Coupe, what other garden essentials do we need? Over to you for your suggestions…

Purpose

I could probably write a post every single day about something a politician has said which has caused the urine in my bladder to approach boiling point. When I see what our elected officials are spouting the air in my vicinity adopts the vivid purple hue of a two day old bruise, as the blue from my swearing mixes with the crimson of my rage.

I don’t write those posts every day, because I don’t have the time. Or the inclination. Or the purpose.

Ah yes. Purpose. It’s not only me who lacks it. According to Childcare Minister Elizabeth Truss the nurseries of our nation are riddled with purposeless toddlers. Apparently, our approach needs to be more closely aligned with the French (yes, really, a Tory politician who thinks our continental cousins have something better than us).

Our nurseries are “chaotic settings, where children are running around”. How DARE THEY? Children, some as old as FOUR, with not even a hint of a schedule. Which means, of course, that by the time they get to primary school they are not prepared to sit down and listen to a teacher.

I’m sorry (I’m not), but what utter, utter tripe this is.

First off, let me say this: I want my child, and the children of others, to grow up in a world where they are allowed to be children. Actually, allowed? No. Encouraged. Being a child is amazing. Playing is amazing. All the fantastical things we believe as children which are driven out of us before our tenth birthday, Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, and all their friends, are great. Not having a care in the world is lovely, and it should last as long as possible.

Seriously, adults, just because we’ve signed up to a world model which requires constant growth which we have trouble sustaining, doesn’t mean we ought to be grooming our children to be part of it from ever earlier ages.

Second, has Elizabeth Truss ever seen how purposeful a two year old can be? Perhaps the nanny she employs to look after her kids could give her an insight into that one. Here is a brief video of Cam:

Looks pretty purposeful there, doesn’t he? Sure, the purpose he’s displaying might just be to remove as many tissues as possible from that box, but he seems pretty sure of that intention, right?

Cam’s not even two. He’s only just one. A purposeful one year old.

Like all other one and two year olds, his purpose is simple: learn through experience. Play. Discover. Explore. Interact with the world around him.

Be a baby. Be a toddler. Be a child.

Let the adults worry about having a purpose because, in all honesty, most of them probably haven’t worked theirs out yet.

Seat

Just over a year ago, when Cam arrived into our lives, we accepted that Things Would Change.

Once there is a tiny additional human occupying your spare room, opportunities to do the things which used to be the things that you did to relax and enjoy yourself become a bit thinner on the ground.

I have been tremendously lucky; Mrs L has been extremely accommodating of my need to go out and play a stupid game where ten grown adults throw a ball through a hoop for forty minutes. Basketball generally takes place during times when Cam would (and, thankfully, is) usually sleep, so I've never felt like I'm leaving Mrs L to deal with the baby while I go out and enjoy myself.

The same can not be said for my other pre-baby hobby: cycling. 

It is fair to say that I have missed cycling. Time spent on two wheels since Cam arrived has been minimal. Which is fine, obviously. I love the time I spend with Cam and I wouldn't change it for anything. 

Unless I could combine cycling and Cam. I don't mean I want to create a cyborg bicycle child. I just want a way to get out on the bike without having to leave the family behind when I do.

Which is why, pretty much as soon as he was able to hold his head up, I started thinking about bike seats for Cam. There's not an enormous amount of information out there about cycling with a baby, but there is some. I looked at www.cyclesprog.co.uk and www.sustrans.org.uk. Most importantly, I got some first hand information and recommendations from Cathy Bussey's blog. All of which led me to thinking that Cam's first birthday would be a good time to start seriously considering cycling with him.

Cathy had some good things to say about a Dutch baby seat called the Yepp Mini. So, I bought one. Here it is mounted on my 1994 Kona Kilauea:

Fitting it was very simple, a five minute job which required only a couple of allen keys (Yepp even include one in the box, although it is made of metal which is about as durable as a mild cheddar). The mount goes between the stem and the headset if you have a "traditional" threaded headset.

If you have a threadless headset, you'll be needing an additional adaptor before you can fit the seat. This, to me, seems a bit backwards. Most bikes now come with a threadless headset, it would probably be more sensible to include the adaptor as standard. I'm not complaining though, since my ancient Kona has the old style headset.

Once it was fitted, I looked at the bike and thought "there's no room left for me". Luckily, this is a bit of an optical illusion (apparently I don't occupy as much space as I thought). Once on the bike I was close enough to Cam to feel like I was giving him a cuddle, without him being in my way, or me being in his. My knees do brush the back of the seat a bit, but a bit of saddle adjustment will hopefully sort that out. 

The first few moments of riding feel a bit weird; all of your baby's weight, plus that of the seat, is on the bit of the bike you use to steer. You know how it feels if you put a carrier bag with some heavy shopping in on the end of your handlebars? It's a lesser version of that. Once I'd been riding for five minutes I didn't even notice it.

You do lose some steering lock, and I'll probably add some padding to either my bike's frame or the metal bars on the seat, to stop any risk of dents in the top tube. It's not a big issue though, and you're probably not mounting a child's seat with a view to riding extreme terrain. My mother in law has told me in no uncertain terms that I'm not to do any stunts with Cam on board. No wheelies then...

Okay, that's the factual stuff over with. I would recommend the seat. The seat is good. Moving on...

Cam seemed to enjoy his first ever bike ride, we only went for a local ride, but he got to see the world from a different point of view (it's nice and open compared to his buggy) and didn't cry or scream once.

I came back with a massive smile on my face and a feeling that we have opened a door to all sorts of potential family fun. Getting out of the house with a baby can be a bit of a chore. Everything takes AGES with a little person in tow. Buggies are very short range instruments, and starting the car to drive a mile seems incredibly wasteful to me.

A bike seat occupies a lovely middle ground, it offers much of the freedom a car does, but without the running costs. It also means I will have more chances to do a thing I enjoy, and involve my baby in it as well. 

Erm, it might read like one, but this isn't a sponsored post. I just really like cycling and I'm really glad I can now do some with Cam on board. If Yepp want to give me some free stuff, I'd gladly take it, but they haven't up until now...

Thatcher

Hear that rumble? It's the sound of a bandwagon, which I'm about to jump on. I've been deliberately staying away from this up until now, because I've been hearing all sorts of impassioned stuff. I didn't really feel I had anything to add when it comes to, you know, HER.

See, I'm a bit too young to remember what life was like when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. She was resident at Number 10 for the first eight years of my life, years where I was definitely more interested in the exploits of Optimus Prime than those of the Prime Minister.

Of course, as luck would have it, I lived in the South West of England, so my family wasn't being directly affected by things like the closure of coal mines. My dad was made redundant during her tenure, but not as a result of anything she did. Would I have understood or cared even if he had been?

So I wasn't old enough to have an opinion of the Iron Lady at the time she was exerting her will upon the nation, nor was I in one of the geographical areas most impacted by her policies. According to many, this means I'm not allowed an opinion on her now.

Well, sorry, but, no.

One of my ex-girlfriends lived in a shared house at university. Among her housemates was a young woman who would only watch films, or read books, which were set within her lifetime. Incredibly, anything prior to this was considered completely irrelevant to her. That's weird, right? Really weird?

I hold an opinion on Margaret Thatcher because she was important. She did big things. Changed the way a lot of people think. Wreaked havoc on whole swathes of the country and had no interest in hearing people's objections.

Some people have probably thought about (and cursed the name of) Margaret Thatcher every day for the last twenty years. I haven't. But I have thought about her in the last week, because:

- She was kind of a big deal
- She died
- It has been the top story for every media outlet ever since

Probably the most divisive political leader in living memory, and some people think we shouldn't be talking about her. Except that's not what it is, is it? The people who are resisting the negative comments about Thatcher are the people who believe that she saved the nation (and, for the record, I think anyone who sees no bad in her actions is a fool, but I also think her actions came at a time when something needed to be done, and big changes are never positive for everybody). These are the people who want to hear only praise. Probably, in large part, they are the people who did well during Thatcher's time in government.

Now, I have no desire to go to a party in celebration of anyone's death, that's a bit macabre for my tastes. Do the people staging these things think that somehow Lady T still had her hand on the steering wheel all these years? That the unwell old lady portrayed by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady was a cunning disguise? Maybe don't put your energy into celebrating Thatcher's death, put it into fighting against her ideological offspring's current style of government. Or, maybe, have a death party, I don't really mind. I also wouldn't mind if you were celebrating the death of someone whose politics align more closely with mine. It might be bad taste, but I don't find it offensive.

If Margaret Thatcher is now in some other plane of existence, watching down (or up…) on us I don't think she'd be offended. I might be too young to remember, but apparently she was quite a strong character.

PS - The alleged cost of the funeral though? That's taking the piss, especially with the "we're not telling you how much it cost until it's happened" line which the government are taking. No-one's funeral should cost that much. Silly.

Citizenship

Lunch breaks are an oasis of calm and time to myself during the working week. Some people don't take lunch breaks, preferring to work through and reach the end of the day a little quicker, but I don't. I need a lunch break (as, incidentally, do most of the people who "work" through theirs. I have often wished I had the sort of temperament which would allow me to shout "look, you festering arsehole, just because you haven't left your desk, doesn't mean you're not having a lunch break. You're not working, you're wiping the juices from your sandwich from your chin while catching up on whatever bilge the Daily Mail website has on offer today. Prick."), and I take one.

Unfortunately, lunch breaks don't always pass by in the calm and recreational manner I prefer. Sometimes they include things which leave me prickling with rage. Today was one such day. The reason? Shopping trolleys.

Shopping trolleys bring out the worst in people. Dutifully, they provide transport for our supermarket purchases, accompanying us down the aisles as we select the various foodstuffs which will sustain us for the coming days. Rarely do they complain; the occasional shake of a wheel in protest at their life of servitude, little more.

Such a loyal piece of equipment, you would think, ought to draw some respect in return? No. The car parks of the land are awash with discarded trolleys, their contents transferred to the boots of Fords, BMWs and Volkswagens and their naked, wiry frames left stranded.

I will say this just the once: if you are the sort of person who leaves a trolley in the middle of the car park and drives off I think you are a total, utter, absolute fuckbean of a wankstain.

This simple action, to me, says so much about who you are: you don't care about anyone but yourself, you are immeasurably lazy, you have no thought for the property of others, you may well have a shady sideline in tearing limbs off kittens for fun.

The trolley park is over there! *points* It is not far! Never more than thirty metres I would guess. How long would it take you to get there and back? Are you so busy and important that you can't afford that time? No. You are not.

What's that? It's raining? Boo-fucking-hoo. You poor, poor bastard. Are you the Wicked Witch of the West? No. You are not. In fact, you're already wet, so just go and put the trolley away.

Today, I saw a man about the same age as me (which is to say: not a member of the unfathomable youth) run a few metres with his trolley to gain speed before letting go of it and watching it speed away across the tarmac. He hadn't even pushed it in the direction of a trolley park. It very nearly made it as far as a parked car. Not that he'd have known, since he was in his car and away by then.

I would have liked to ask him this question: what would be your reaction if, upon returning to your car, a trolley had been pushed away and put a nice, big dent in your driver side door? You would want somebody's blood, I am sure of it.

But this behaviour does not stand alone. It is just one example of a vast array of twattery which occurs daily. Another example: people who use the last teabag in the caddy at work and don't refill it. WHY THE FUCK NOT? There are literally hundreds of these things, seemingly small, which simply serve to make me think that we are moving toward a society where we all just don't give a solitary shit about one another.

I try to live by a simple maxim: don't be a dick.

Sometimes I get it wrong, but it usually means I don't do things like leaving a trolley in a car park, or not replenishing the tea bags.

Life is far nicer if you're nice to other people. Be a citizen. Don't be an über-selfish muppet.

Am I overreacting? What are the tiny bugbears which will you with despair? Should I just stop giving a fuck and join in?