Month: July 2011

Unclehood

I love being an uncle. I can highly recommend it. It’s all the fun of parenting with little of the tedious admin.

An example. TLC and I spent a chunk of the weekend at Pier 32, the codename I have decided to give to her brother’s gaff (a little more on Pier 32 later). We are guideparents to the son of the family, a bright bit of ball lightning called AJ. Guideparents? AJ’s mum and dad don’t stand for any of that religious nonsense, and he was named with all due ceremony in their local pub by a humanist minister. Does this mean I take my guidepaternal responsibilities any less seriously than if AJ had been christened?

Of course not. A vow is a vow no matter what kind of house you take it in. Our visits together may be infrequent, but we make sure AJ gets quality time when we’re around. As I am an unreconstructed big kid, this means lots of time with Lego, and time on the computer helping him out with homework projects. As AJ’s mum and dad have recently invested in a 27 inch iMac, this is not the grind it could be. Yesterday I helped him make a 12-page newspaper. I only grabbed the mouse off him once or thrice.

I’m not great with kids – they have a tendency to un-nerve me with awkward questions and unwarranted meltdowns. However, all the kids that I am uncle and god/guidefather to are exceptions to the rule, and I delight in spending time with all of them. Being able to sneak away and leave them to their parents after getting them sugared up and over-excited is, of course, just the cherry on the cake.

 

Falling Skies: none more SF

You can have fun with FX’s new big-budget SF show Falling Skies by playing spot the reference. It’s so stuffed with nods to other shows that it becomes a commentary on the state and visual style of filmed SF in the early part of this most scientifictional century.

(Spoilers ahead. Break left. Engage thrusters.)

Continue reading Falling Skies: none more SF

Dork’s Progress

After a couple of days working on The SEKRIT Thing That Won’t Be SEKRIT much longer, I’m back at work after two and a bit weeks off. And hoo boy, am I not ready.

I was clearly in denial about the whole prospect. I didn’t do a bag pack or a sort out of what I needed. Hence clattering round the house at half six this morning, waking up TLC by rummaging in cupboards and pockets for passes and tickets. Back into the house for my wallet after I’d locked up.

A hectic cycle ride to the station (road sense gone, nearly plowed into a pedestrian in headphones stepping off the pavement without looking) was capped off by the realisation that the key for the bike lock was back at home.
A return trip into a head wind, swearing all the way.

A stand-up train trip on tiptoes (yes, that busy) only made me more determined that an early train is the way forward. And do you people not SHOWER in the morning? (sidebar: after three bike runs, I probably wasn’t too fresh myself).

And yet I was still in work more or less on time. Shame there was no-one there to witness it, and the telecine’s not working. And I feel like a bag of swamp water and noodles now. Knackered before nine. Great start.