6th June, 2009 - Caffeine

I think I have a caffeine problem. Here is my daily quota:

7.15am - One mug. Instant. While staring a bit blankly at the children as they drop Cheerios on the floor.

8.30am - One mug. Instant. Brought to me by my long-suffering secretary, who will generally accompany this with a report of how useless my dictation was yesterday.

10am – One mug. Instant. Morning coffee time at work. By this stage, it is usually clear whether the day will be a disaster or whether it is likely to be worse than usual.

11am – Two cups. Strong. From the machine in the Bakers shop. Usually after these two cups I begin to feel a bit sick and light-headed.

1pm – One cup. Espresso. From whichever inn or tavern I am taking luncheon in. I usually shake a little immediately after this.

3pm – One mug. Instant. Afternoon coffee. By this stage I am in a little zone of caffeine where the world seems to buzz and pulsate.

4pm – One mug instant. Brought in by the other office caffeine junky (although she prefers tea). She brings it in with a conspiratorial air. We are like junkies. We would kill for this cup.

5pm – One mug. Instant. Just to keep me going till it’s time to leave.

6.30pm - One mug. Instant. After dinner. Just to unwind you know.

Oh God. I didn’t actually realise it was that bad. I thought this was going to be a light and humorous look at caffeine. I am addicted. I really ought to cut down, but even typing those words – cut down – has given me a bit of a headache.

5th June, 2009 - TALA!!! DADDDY!!! TALA!!!!

Me and the wife do not really get much chance for pillow talk in the mornings any more. The round faced people have put paid to that. Nowadays, we are generally roused by the dulcet tones of the round faced boy from the confines of his cot. His first word on waking is generally a very loud yell: “TALA!!!!!!”. We have lerned through trial and (regrettably) quite a lot of error that this means “Toilet”.

We have also learned that if we respond quickly to the word “TALA!!!!!”, we are generally successful in reaching the loo before serious damage is done to the mattress. However, if we are slow (generally any more that 3 “TALAS!!!!!” is the risky area) then there is a significant danger that our day is going to begin by breaking open the antibacterial wipes and a ninety degree cycle from the washing machine.

4th June, 2009 - The 30 Second Rule

I learned recently that a very high quality restaurant in St Andrews operates the “30 Second Rule” in its kitchen. The 30 Second Rule is this – if a member of staff drops an item of food on the floor, then it is deemed still to be fit for consumption provided that it is not in contact with the floor for more than 3 seconds.

This place has 4 stars.

3rd June, 2009 - I am worth more to them dead

I have been to see the financial adviser to talk about life insurance. How worthy is that? I am sure that it is my dad’s heart operation that has filled my head more than ever about thoughts of mortality, and I have been worrying that upon my demise my loved ones will find themselves in the workhouse. I have therefore, been considering what they would need, if I keel over tomorrow whilst drafting a particularly tricky Power of Attorney.

I would like to think that the answer to that last question is something like: happy memories or the scent of his aftershave on the pillow. However, I suspect that what they actually might appreciate a cheque with a few zeros at the end of it. What that means is that I have to work a bit harder to earn the money for the premiums so that they will all be ok when I keel over from a stress related illness induced by working so hard.

Bugger.

2nd June, 2009 - Life, Death and Hosiery

I love graveyards and I hope you do to. If you do not like to sit amongst tombstones and think of all the lives lived and the old bones beneath your feet, then I would prefer that you do not lurk around this blog. You are like a tee-totaller in the pub. We all tolerate you, but secretly we despise you for your peculiar ways.

I like graveyards for many reasons. They are usually rather pretty. They are devoid of traffic. They are peaceful. And they remind you that you are alive. Which is a good feeling. It is a bit like being at a funeral and realising that all of the younger lady mourners really to look pretty good in black.

Are those stockings do you suppose?

1st June, 2009 - Family Law

I still do a bit of family law work. Not as much as I used to, as circumstance has drawn me more and more into other areas, and I kind of miss it from time to time.

I sometimes go to conferences on family law matters, and it always strikes me that the people who practise in this area are, by and large, extremely nice, fair-minded people. It always irritates me when people say that it is the lawyers who help to stir up the bad feelings in a divorce. It seems to me, that in general terms the lawyers are bending over backwards to stop their clients ripping out one another’s throats. In fact, the purpose of the law in this area might be just that: it is better to have a civilised battle where writs and motions are the weapons, than it is to sneak round to your ex’s house and pour acid into their trousers. However satisfying that might be.

31st May, 2009 - Shhhhh!!! It's a Secret

Have you ever been told a secret that you absolutely have to keep secret but that bounces around your mind like a puppy in the back seat of a car, every sinew longing to burst out and bound across the open countryside of public knowledge.

I have. But I can’t tell you about it.

30th May, 2009 - Critical Success

I read today that since 1980 more than 50 forgeries have been found in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. That’s hilarious isn’t it? In one of the Western World’s most respected palaces devoted to art, they have for years failed to spot that fifty of their exhibits have, in fact, not been painted by recognised masters, but have been dashed off in the potting shed by a guy called Dave.

I like to think of Dave the Forger, sunning himself in the South of France – on his yacht I hope – with a couple of blondes in tow, while art critics gaze knowingly at his work (let’s face it –if they’ve found fifty so far, there’s a lot more still in there undiscovered).

Critics are tossers. Dave is an artist. And a commercially successful one to boot.

29th May, 2009 - Here in my Car

If you stand back and actually think about it for a minute, driving nowadays is an absolute nightmare. We have been peddled a myth that the motor car represents Freedom – that we need it to truly experience liberty. The adverts show happy, sexy , young people ripping along pristine ribbons of tarmac on mountains, in deserts, and in the outback – no-one else in sight. No crowds. Just you and the open road. Buy the Nissan Micra – the ads say – and you will become Kerouac. You will become an adventurer. You will be a maverick.

What is the reality though? Traffic jams and roadworks. Old apple cores in the footwell. Electric windows that don’t quite work. I suspect that I could have more of an adventure – and experience more solitude – if I took a five minute stroll from my house to the little patch of woodland that no=one ever visits.

I don’t though. I jump in my car and go to the shops.

28th May, 2009 - Respectable in the Eighties

I kinda miss the 80s just now. I think it is the recession, and all the gloom and doom that seems to have infected us all. I am bored with cookery programmes telling us how we can cobble together a delicious meal from stuff that our neighbours’ checked in the bin last night. I am depressed by all the talk of how we are all to be taxed until we squeal for the next decade to pay for the Porsches of fat bankers.

I long for the 80s when we were all optimistic and wore button down shirts with Paisley Pattern ties. I want to listen to Prince on a spanking new CD player in a wine bar. I want to eat Nouvelle cuisine to a cacophony of building work as they convert beautiful old churches into high-end flats.
I want to be infected with optimism.

27th May, 2009 - I Wonder What I'm Doing in a Room Like This

It is peculiar. I have this month purchased tickets to go and see concerts with (a) Gary Numan, and (b) Marillion. These are both artists that I was interested in back at school. More than a quarter of a century ago actually. I fear that my tastes have moved on little in those 25 years, which is a bit of a worrying thought.

I like to think that life is a bit of a journey, where we meander along untrodden roads, picking up new experiences, learning new things and walking forward into new territories, always growing. But, if my ticket purchases are anything to go by, life is not like that at all. It is not a path of bucolic country lanes that I am wandering down, but rather I am swimming around a goldfish bowl, looking again and again at the same scenery, and seeking out the same experiences over and over.

Soon, someone will notice I have fin rot and flush me down the toilet. I will probably be humming Are Friends Electric? as I disappear around the U bend.

26th May, 2009 - Modern Life is Rubbish

I am on the train, in first class again, travelling up to see my old boy in the hospital. It is Saturday, and I am considering having a glass of wine. How civilised is that – a mode of transport where you can have a wee alcoholic refreshment as you glide towards your destination. And no paranoia about the possibility of being over the limit in a few hours time for the return journey.

It is of course absolutely right that the powers that be have banned us from drink driving, and I personally am utterly paranoid about drinking even the night before I am due to drive, but I sometimes think the modern world – for all the right reasons – is missing something in these days where the leisurely lunch with a glass or two of good red, is taboo. Sometimes on a Friday, I think it would be nice to tuck into a plate of pasta and a bottle of chianti and drift leisurely into the weekend. But the commute home puts paid to that.

25th May, 2009 - My Secret Diary

I have been watching too much children’s telly recently. I laughed when I saw on of my friend’s Facebook status: she pointed out that she realised that she had been watching C Beebies (the BBC channel for under-5s) for half an hour on her own before she realised that her child had been somewhere else all the time.

The only series I watch nowadays is In the Night Garden which is an odd psychedelic thing where soft toys wander around a garden which is a bit like heaven and a bit like the crazed imagination of a writer on an acid trip. I get quite grouchy if I miss an episode because I am working late. It is rather relaxing, and frankly the story-lines are considerably better than Frost.

I realised I was watching too much this morning, when I found myself watching the adverts and actually experiencing quite a strong urge to purchase Dora’s Secret Diary. Get this: it is a diary that opens when you (and only you) speak to it. How secret is that! You can also write in it with a UV pen, so that prying eyes will be oblivious to your innermost thoughts.

Utterly brilliant. After all, if you write a diary regularly, you don’t want everyone to read it. I mean who would be stupid enough to publish their daily thoughts, say, on the Internet! Crazy huh?

24th May, 2009 - A Dilemma

Should you give money to beggars or not?

I did today. I was in Glasgow with the kids, and there was a guy – thin, young, dishevelled, hungry – sitting, propped up against a wall, clutching a Starbucks cup with a sad little pile of small change in it. I walked past. Then I thought about it. And then I turned back and gave him a paltry quid.

I am sure that I was motivated by guilt rather than any altruistic intention. But, if I thought my little pound coin would assuage my feelings I was wrong. I was immediately beset with a host of worries. Will he spend it all on drugs or booze? Will I inadvertently have contributed to his death by overdose? Am I actually doing more harm than good?

I don’t know. I really don’t. He looked hungry though, and I am well-fed.

23rd May, 2009 - The Great Dezondo!

I was watching the Derren Brown show How to Control the Nation with my Significant Other last night. If you didn’t see it, the show was essentially an experiment in mass hypnosis where the slightly creepy Derren attempted to mesmerise the British public through their television screens.

He didn’t try to start anything terribly dangerous – he didn’t urge us to march on parliament or lynch Simon Cowell or anything quite as useful. But instead he tried to make us all stick to our sofas.

And it worked on my wife! After Derren finished his little film, she was firmly rooted to our three seater, and try as she might she couldn’t prize her buttocks from it. Much amusement for me of course, but made all the sweeter from the fact that I predicted that she’d be hypnotised. I have some experience in these matters as regular readers of this irregular column will know, because for a brief period in Fifth Year at school, I was a hypnotist’s assistant.

My friend Dezo had read a book on hypnotism and had a nice velvent jacket. At teenage parties he would assume the role of The Great Dezondo. I would assist. I would fetch chairs, polish his medallion and suchlike. There was no pay, but there was always the chance that he would get some girls to take their jumpers off. He never did of course.

He did, however, persuade the Couch Potato that he was spiderman.

22nd May, 2009 - War Diary

My boss brought in his dad’s war diary today.

I keep calling my boss my boss even though he is no longer a partner and technically I am my boss’s boss now. But somehow I don’t feel like my boss’s boss so I still call him the boss.
Anyhow. His father had been involved in the liberation of some of the Nazi concentration camps at the end of the Second World War, and his diary – typed up from his manuscript – is absolutely gripping stuff. It’s a firsthand graphic account of the absolute horror that existed within living memory only a few hundred miles from where I am typing this. I could jump on an Easy Jet flight and get there in a few hours.

I read it in the Baker’s shop next to my office, and I found it utterly creepy to think that the hand that written this was only a two little generations away from me – not even that.
The veneer of civilisation is rather thin and is to be cherished.

21st May, 2009 - Big

I would really, really, really like to spend a day inside the head of my daughter. As I type this (in a train on the way to Aberdeen as it happens) I am secretly hoping that lightning will strike the overhead wires, hurtle through the generator and crackle through my laptop as I type the words
I would really, really, really like to spend a day inside the head of my daughter
and then I would come to actually inside her head, in the manner of the Tom Hanks documentary Big.

I want to live in a world where the absolutely most important things are pretty things. And where happiness is sitting on a sofa under a burberry blanket wearing about 42 bangles and a pink feather boa.

It looks great, even across the gulf of the years.

20th May, 2009 - Cats

I miss having a cat. I don’t talk much about this at home, because my Significant Other believes that cats are directly responsible for the spread of every disease known to man. In her view, if we let a single feline into the house, we will all succumb to a deadly bout of bubonic plague or MRSA or some such. I think she secretly believes that cats are the masterminds behind the Taliban, and invented the Hydrogen bomb.

So, I have long-since stopped my vague hints about bringing a pet into our household. About how it would be nice to have a wee purring pal in your lap when you watch the telly of an evening. About how relaxing they are. About how they are actually very clean animals.
Ah. I’d really like a cat.

19th May, 2009 - Standards are Slipping

The Roundfaced Girl has started nursery. She has a little yellow polo shirt to serve as her uniform, and she looks unbearably, heart-breakingly cute in it.

I find myself worrying about the standard of the nursery teachers. Will they have the necessary standards? Will they learn her how to speak proper? Do they know how to position an apostrophe? This last one I appreciate is a bit of an unnecessary worry given that the Roundfaced Girl is only 3 and is unlikely to be penning her PhD thesis for a couple of years yet, but it is never too early to worry about grammar.

In my day, we were beaten repeatedly until we knew the difference between its and it’s. That was pre-school education for you.

18th May, 2009 - The Roundfaced Boy' Taste in Shoes

I am worried about the Roundfaced Boy. In most ways he seems quite manly – he likes cars; he doesn’t like the colour pin; and he enjoys organising items (wooden blocks, lego pieces; carelessly discarded chisels) into neat little lines. However, he does have an odd habit of walking around the house in his mother’s high-heeled shoes. I was sitting in the living room today looking after the children in my customary fashion – I was reading the Weekend Guardian and drinking coffee whilst they were somewhere else in the house (at least I believe they were in the house – it is best not to worry too closely about these things).

So, there I was enjoying my Saturday, when the RFB minced into the room in a pair of silver pumps shouting “Mummy’s Shoes!!!! Mummy’s Shoes!!!” Obviously, I am very PC and avoid gender stereotyping at all costs, but I did find myself removing the shoes and trying to divert him with a plastic tractor. I think I might have said “Men like tractors. That’s what men like.”

17th May, 2009 - Fighting With the Wife

My Significant Other and I had a fight the other night. I was in the right of course. I had gone to bed at a decent hour, read a few pages of Heat Magazine (I am on the side of Katie at the moment: Peter Andre knows exactly what he is doing with the press), and fell fast asleep. However, I was awoken when my Significant Other clattered into the room at about one in the morning, brushed her teeth in an extremely irritating way in the ensuite and then started texting all of her 472 mates from the other side of the bed. There is nothing – nothing- more annoying than someone on the other side of the bed trying to text quietly. Frankly, I suspect that at least 30% of 21st century homicides are the direct result of someone’s sotto digits dancing around the keypad of a Nokia.

What I meant to say was “Do you think you might please stop texting darling, I have a busy day tomorrow, and I need my rest so that I can give 100% of myself to my clients.” But it did not come out that way. And I found myself on the sofa.

At least it was quiet there.

16th May, 2009 - See How I am Become Middle Aged!

My decent into middle-aged, middle classed living death continue. Now, I am finding myself getting annoyed at teeneagers who wlak across my front grass. I live in one of these estates where the front gardens are all open plan, with no hedges or fences, and I live on the corner plot. So, it is quite natural for folk to cut across my lawn as they turn the corner. However, that does not stop me seething about it.

I find myself digging my elbow into the ribs of my Significant Other and saying things like “Look! Look! They’re at it again.” and “I would never have done that at their age: my father would have tanned my arse.” I occasionally think about knocking loudly on the window and shaking my fist angrily at the youths, but I suspect it would do no good. And besides, some of them are quite big.

15th May, 2009 - Love Me Tender

I was somewhat surprised to read today that Elvis still receives about 100 Valentine’s a year addressed to him in Graceland. Here’s one I plan to send in February.

Violets are blue;
Roses are red;
Necrophilia’s my thing baby;
So, I’m glad you are dead.
(Uh huh huh).

14th May, 2009 - Sibling Rivalry

I am irritated by my sister from time to time. This is not because she is particularly irritating, but because she is better than me in all the ways that count. Oh sure, I am better at playing Mediaeval Total War on the PC than she is, and I suspect that she doesn’t know the track listing on Marillion’s classic album “Script for a Jester’s Tear”, but she generally makes me feel a bit of a failure everywhere else.

For example, her house is pristine, whereas mine looks like the sort of place some Eastern European zombies have been living for the past 18 months, since mankind was destroyed by the virus that was brought to earth by the asteroid. When she comes to visit, I can tell that she can’t wait to get home and have a shower afterwards.

13th May, 2009 - Mmmmm! Tasty!

I was chatting to my dad at the hospital about an acquaintance of his who is a junior chef. He has got a bit fed up recently of cooking pub grub, and decided to go for an interview in a kitchen run by a chef with a Michelin star. You know – one of these artists, with flair and drive, who strives for perfection with every stir of his spoon. A man whose life is food and his kitchen. A man who wakes in the morning, his head brimming with flavours and ingredients and ideas.

I suspect that the correct answer to a guy like that when asked: “How do you feel about cooking?” iis not “I have lost my passion for it.”

12th May, 2009 - Viruses

Sorry. I called my last post "viruses" because I wanted to say something about viruses. But then I got carried away, ranting about my father's selfish behaviour in getting some nifty new pulmonary veins fitted at the other end of the country. (I am still seething).

Anyway. The thing about hospitals that has changed since I last visited them (back when something really important was happening i.e my operation) is that there are now dire warnings posted everywhere about the importance of dousing your hands with anti-viral gel every thirty seconds. It is all very worrying, and has the faint feel of a science fiction movie in which Dustin Hoffman is going to have to save the world by coming up with an antidote.

I don't like viruses. Them and Danii Minogue. They both seem rather pointless to me.

11th May, 2009 - Viruses

My old boy's in hospital at the moment recoovering from heart surgery, so it has been a fretful few days. He is now, happily, on the mend.

He has, however, had his surgery in Aberdeen. Which is - if you ask me - downright selfish of him. There he is wallowing in his bed (after having been split open from neck to belly button and prized open like a walnut), drinking cranberry juice, eating grapes and generally having a nice old rest. Whereas me? Me - I have to treck all the way up to Grampian to visit him. By First Class Rail. Eating pretzels and reading the Guardian.

Honestly. The sick. It's all "Me. Me. Me."

10th May, 2009 - Photos

There is a photo on my wall: black and white. My family when I was about 14. Me; my dad; my mum; my sis. My dad has plainly said something rude because my mum has a knowing look on her face, and my sister - chic and classy even at 12 - looks shocked. I'm looking on, slightly detached: bespectacled, slightly awkward, and dressed like I am auditioning for the role of Young Compo in the stage adaptation oof "Last of the Summer Wine: the Wonder Years". (It is no wonder I didn't have a bird).

Mum and dad are looking at each other. Laughing. We are lying at the foot of some huge, old tree that looks like it's been there forever.

9th May, 2009 - Diet

I am getting fat.

I am typing this too you while a drink a can of Fosters and work my way manfully through a king size bag of chocolate buttons. (Personally, I think Cadbury's should go the whole hog, and make chocolate buttons the size of tractor wheels. Only then will I be happy).

I fear that my lifestyle is not currently very healthy. I currectly list my hobbies in "Who's Who" as: synching my i-pod; eating cheese; and alphabetisising my CD collection. I think that these are unlikely to take me to glory at London 2012. On the other hand, I am increasing my chance of a stroke in later life considerably, so it's not all gloomy.

I am going on a diet.

8th May, 2009 - My First Brush With Danger

I remember being about 3 and sticking my fingers in a light bulb socket. I can still feel the crawl of the current under my skin and the jolted way my teeth felt. It is funny to sit here and think of something that happened nearly four decades ago, and for it to still stir the same physical feelings that it did all that time ago.

My first recognition that the world is full of Harmful Things must have burned itself into my brain. The neurons re-aligned and pathways formed that are still here today. How odd.

7th May, 2009 - 10 Anecdotes About Fringe 2009 - #10

So. I am in the bogs at an Italian Restaurant. Quite a nice Italian Restaurant. I am doing a jobby. It is quite nice to get away from the children and the actors (often the two categories are indistinguishable - they both dribble a lot and demand lots of attention) so I am making the most of it. I am taking my time.

But my reverie is disturbed by noise coming through the wall from the ladies. At first I think that it is the telly, but then I realise that it is Lanarkshire's Leading Actress who is playing the lead in 21 Girlfriends. She is on her own. I presume she is - like me - be-cubicled. And she is loudly reciting her lines from the play. Loudly. In full accent.

I cannot get away from them. Not even here. I give up and go back to join the party.

6th May, 2009 - 10 Anecdotes About Fringe 2009 - #9

We got some good reviews this year. "Trainspotting" picked up a couple of 5 stars and a couple of 4 stars, and my own wee effort bagged 4 stars from the British Theatre Guide. What was odd this year was that the shows were reviewed really early in the week which meant we had the opportunity to that fringiest of fringe things: stapling the reviews to flyers. The idea here is to differentiate yourself from the 1000s of other shows by pinning some tangible proof to your handbill to the effect that you are not another bunch of students from the Home Counties performing Hamlet barefoot in a toilet in Leith to a Drum and Bass sound track.

This will mean nothing to those of you who don't inhabit Edinburgh in August, but the currency amongst the performers is quite definitely STARS. We are prostitutes for them. Well - I'm not. I've never slept with anyone for a star. I've never sunk so low as to sink to my knees and unzip the unwashed corduroys of a sweaty hack from The List just to get a favourable review.

But that's only because they've never asked me. If any of you are reading this, drop me an e-mail and I'm sure we can work something out.

5th May, 2009 - 10 Ancdotes About Fringe 2009 - #8

Ah. This is what I've worked all year for. Here. Now. This.

Standing in the pishing rain, attempting to hand out flyers for my show to bedraggled punters hurrying from one venue to another. This is how I choose to spend my holidays. Some people love relaxing on a sun-drenched beach in the Carribean; others soak up the culture in the Carribean. But me? I stand huddled under an archway clutching a wad of soggy paper.

Sometime - just sometimes - I wonder if this is really the way to spend your Summer Holidays. I don't think Cliff Richard would have hired a bus if the destination had been as dreech and dipiriting as this.

4th May, 2009 - 10 Anecdotes About Fringe 2009 - #7

I am going to tell you about one of my secret Fringe rituals. I know it will remain a secret for two reasons. First, you have a kind face, and I feel I can trust you. Second, I know that only two people read this, so I am relatively confident that my confidences will remain firmly under wraps.

I sneak out of the flat early, while everyone else is still sleeping, and I buy a newspaper. Usually the Scotsman (although I am reviewing my patronage of that rag, following their sever lapse in taste at giving my play a less than glowing review). And I take it to a little cafe I love, and I read it! I read it slowly. While drinking coffee. More than one coffee. We take our time with each other, the newspaper and I. We do not rush things. We sit there in the early morning light, not speaking - we do not need to - we understand each other. We now the spell will be broken so, but for now - in our little cafe by the castle - we are the whole world to each other.

3rd May, 2009 - 10 Anecdotes About Fringe 2009 #6

"Trainspotting" - as I am sure you will all know - is a serious piece of work, and my mate The Nanny made a terrific job of directing our production at the Fringe this year.

The show rips open the fabric of the world of the cozy theatre goers world, grips you by the throat and pulls you into another world. And it's a world that probably exists within a couple of miles of where you sit reading this now. Needles and desperation; soaring highs and crushing despair; death and deceit. Like a lot of great art, it shows you other places. (Read "Brick Lane" or "Midnight's Children" or "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep").

Having said all that, my favourite moment is the drug induced incident involving a man in a hamster costume. I urge you to go and see it. You will laugh yourself silly.

It's on again next week at East Kilbride and tickets are available here - http://boxoffice.southlanarkshire.gov.uk/

2nd May, 2009 - 10 Anecdotes About Fringe 2009 #5

Another kids' show I saw this year was "Burglar Bill". It was deeply worrying.

Here is the plot as far as I can remember it (although in fairness I did doze off from time to time):

Burglar Bill is a burglar. (So far so good.) He is a fairly petty burglar. As far as I could make out he stole only tins of beans and toothbrushes. In many ways he can be forgiven his crimes - all he wants to do is eat and maintain fair dental hygiene. These are not great crimes in the grand scheme of things.

However - and this is where it starts to get a bit weird - during one of his night-time burgling missions, he comes across a box. And the box contains a baby. I am not entirely sure that kids' shows should involve abandoned children in boxes. (I mean we all do it from time to time don't we folks - put our kids in a box for a bit when they are getting annoying - but we shouldn't advertise it, far less portray it as light entertainment).

But it gets weirder. The baby has been left in the box by Burglar Betty: a lady burglar. She is a single parent and seems to be without childcare in the early hours of the morning, for she has been forced to abandon the baby in the box to allow her to complete her burgling.

After some hilarious episodes involving the baby farting, Burglar Bill finally returns the Baby to Burglar Betty. Rather than report Betty to social services, Bill falls in love with her and they get married.

I am sure there is a moral there somewhere. Isn't there?

1st May, 2009 - 10 Anecdotes About Fringe 2009 #4

I appreciate that my blog entries can verge on the saccharine from time to time. I am sure that it has something to do with fatherhood. So, for those of you that wish to avoid slushy over-sentimentality, please read no further. I promise you that I will return to rants about the Scottish Executive soon enough.

However, I went to see a show called "Giraffes Can't Dance" at the Fringe this year with the kids. Huge puppets and silly dances and brilliant acting. The basic premise is that the Giraffe can't dance but he wants to go dancing, and we follow him on his quest to find his dancing feet. It is a bit like Ulysses. Except with a talking tortoise.

However, the show featured some very naughty monkeys. They got up to all sorts of high jinks and petty crime. They even stole one of the daddies from the audience. At this, Number 1 Girl (now 3 years old and no longer bald) flung her arms around my neck and looked very seriously at me saying: "The naughty monkeys won't steal my daddy. I'll look after you."

Now. If that's not worth the price of admission, I don't know what is.