Good enough crafting

Okay.  I am willing to admit it.

I am long on ideas and short on some of the skills needed to execute them properly. 

This occasionally leads to DIY projects going just a bit wrong.

 Let's not talk about the room divider, for example.  And HWSNBN will probably get a little loud and agitated if you remind him about the mini-greenhouse.

Sometimes my projects go completely wrong.  Sometimes they work out perfectly.  But more often than not, they turn out just good enough.

I am therefore embracing a whole new style of DIY.  Good Enough Crafting.

Good Enough Crafting involves accepting that you are lacking in certain basic skills.  Woodworking, for example.  A sufficiently steady hand to operate a drill correctly.  The ability to measure something three times and get the same answer each time.  Little things like that.

Accepting you are lacking in certain basic skills.  And then doing it anyway. 

You just have to be comfortable with the fact that the finished item won't be perfect.  That there might be bits of it that need to be strategically hidden behind something.  That you have to look at it from a particular angle if you don't want to see the glaring mistake you made at a late enough stage in the project for you to be completely unamused by the idea of starting from scratch.  That you might need to stick a couple of extra nails in at a funny angle, to create a joint that would make any professional carpenter take to drink.

The thing is, an awful lot of my projects are Thomas-related.  And he is not the most discerning of customers.  So Good Enough Crafting suits us fine at the moment.

I have recently completed another GEC project.  I am pleased with it.  You can't see any of the shortcuts unless you lean over the top and peer inside, and you have to look pretty closely to notice the random bit of wood acting as a brace to stop the top from sagging.

I got sick of looking at the vast pile of multicoloured, plastic crap that has taken up permanent residence in the corner of our living room.  So I decided to do something about it.  I could, of course, have found places for it all to go, but I feel that would not be in keeping with the spirit of GEC.  So, instead, I decided to build something and hide the coloured crap behind it.

Off I went to B&Q, where I managed to purchase some pine strip wood, decorative trim, cheap cladding and two wooden bannisters without being patronised by any passing builders, making this a considerable improvement on my previous trip.

 

My hacksaw was a little blunt but after a bit of scraping and dragging I managed to get the stripwood and cladding cut into the right lengths.  I then constructed a wooden frame and nailed the cladding to it.  This woke up two snoozing children who regarded my efforts with their best unimpressed faces.

Undaunted, I pressed on, nailing a length of trim to the top of the cladding and the top of the window.  I then built a second, smaller frame to make the side, and hinged the two pieces together, before adding a door.

It didn't look terribly good.  I will admit this.  But a basic premise of Good Enough Crafting is if at first it looks a bit crap, add more stuff.  I therefore covered all the messy bits with more trim.





I painted it to match the living room walls and then screwed the bannisters onto the front, on either side of the door, and added a piece of cladding, nailed over the top.



 










Finally, I stuck things on it, added a door handle, and put it in place in the corner of the room, before sitting back to admire my deceptive handiwork.  It looked quite good. 

I felt smug.  Like a craft guru.  Or a good parenting example.  I had made something that Thomas would like.  I could hardly wait until he saw it.  I imagined his little face lighting up as he rushed towards it excitedly.

This morning he went downstairs while I was getting ready. 

There was a long pause. 

And then the wailing started.

I went to the top of the stairs and enquired as to the nature of the problem.  He appeared at the bottom of the stairs and opened his mouth for another bawl.

"Muuuummeeeee!  Move the house.  I don't liiiiiiike it."

He will like it.

Or else.

On work, writing and great big tanks...

It’s all change here.

And, as usual, change means an extra helping of chaos. 

A big, heap of all-you-can-eat-buffet style chaos. 

With extra carnage.  And hold the peace and quiet.

I have gone and got myself a new job.  The logistics of continuing to work part-time in London after my maternity leave were going to be so spectacularly complicated that I would probably have received a visit from scientists from all over the world, beside themselves with excitement at the prospect of such a clear demonstration of chaos theory in operation. 

Chaos Theory:  Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.

Sounds about right.

In my case, the “initial conditions” are the state in which the Chaos household begins the day, and the “small differences” are generally caused by two small people and their entirely unpredictable and random progress through life.

Well, it’s all about to change.  For three days a week I will be back in the slightly more predictable world of the criminal justice system, while Thomas and Ben will be going to a new pre-school and nursery.  This is probably happening in the nick of time as Ben is now mobile.  He has taken Thomas’s trademark wounded-terminator, one-handed commando crawling, and adapted it for a two-handed, high-speed technique which means that he can get pretty much anywhere he wants to be without actually being able to crawl.  This is a problem because you get lulled into a false sense of security and leave him lying on his mat, smiling innocently and patting ineffectively at the floor in an “oh poor me, how I wish I could crawl” way, and you come back to find him trying to climb up the chimney.  Or even more disconcertingly, still lying on his mat, but clutching some forbidden item that you are fairly sure you left six feet away on top of the sofa.

But from Wednesday to Friday this will be Someone Else’s Problem.  He can go chew Someone Else’s stuff, poo explosively on Someone Else’s clothes and puke gently on Someone Else’s floor.  While this is going on, I will flounce around flaunting my un-milkstained suit, while ostentatiously not-smelling-faintly-of-poo.  I might even have a conversation that does not begin “OHFORGOODNESSSAKEIHAVETOLDYOUTHATAMILLIONTIMES” or “BECAUSEITJUSTISPLEASEPLEASEPLEASESTOPASKINGWHY”.

I hadn’t actually intended going back to the law in a formal capacity.  I had been considering doing some freelancing instead as I have been trying to develop a writing career and I have just started getting some paid commissions.  But when all is said and done, I am a lawyer and not returning to the law was just too big a step to take right now, even with all the current problems in the legal aid system.  And given that Thomas and Ben seem hell-bent on sabotaging any attempt to sit down and actually write anything, I might actually find a bit more time to at least think about writing when I am back at work.  There will be a couple of hours of travelling every day.  This might not sound like much fun to most people, but right now the idea of sitting in traffic, just thinking, in a silent, muuuummmy-free car is rather appealing. 

There will also be the heady excitement of that great invention, the lunchbreak.  A whole hour of time to eat and read and write and think, with an absolute guarantee of not being interrupted by that ominous squelching noise that indicates that nap-time is over and poo-time has begun.

I fully intend to be anti-social.  When I was working full-time I used to fritter away my lunchbreaks in the court canteen, actually talking to people.  Not any longer.  I intend to find the quietest corner of the dullest café in south-west England and install myself there with a laptop and a “do not under any circumstances talk to me” expression.  If anyone tries it, I might pretend that I don’t speak English.

I might, just possibly, get novel number two finished.  As some people reading this will know, I have finished novel number one and will be taking it to the Festival of Writing in York in a couple of weeks.  For those that don’t know, this is me coming out.

Yes, I have written a novel.  Yes, I am seriously trying to get it published.  Yes, I am quite possibly insane/delusional/*delete as appropriate.

But I am feeling a teeny-tiny little bit less delusional as of two days ago after I opened my laptop and found an email from the organisers of the York Festival, informing me that an extract from my novel, Telemachus, has been shortlisted for the live competition final on the first night of the festival.

I read the email.  I shrieked and jumped about and waved my arms.

I then read a further group email from the festival organisers in such a state of near-hysteria that I interpreted “If you haven’t heard from us by now, you are not short-listed” as “You’re not short-listed” and went into a frenzy of wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

Before re-reading both emails properly and re-commencing victory laps of the living room.

I am trying my hardest not to get overexcited.  I am failing miserably.  Making this final was one of those things that you imagine in technicolour detail – the cheers of the crowd, the agents fighting each other off, rugby-style as they throw themselves at your feet, pleading for a copy of your full manuscript.  Which did, by all accounts, happen to a previous winner.  Well, perhaps not the rugby tackling, but the other stuff, certainly.  You imagine it, but you don’t honestly think there is any chance of it actually happening.

I am not sure I can actually be any more excited. 

I might actually explode.

So in spite of Thomas and Ben’s best efforts, I have actually made it to the final of a writing competition.

I keep getting the urge to brandish my manuscript at them while shouting “Ha!  In your face, small destroyers of writing time!”

 

Now I just need to deal with the threat of plagiarism from HWSNBN who has read one of my writing books and declared his intention of stealing the name of my main character and writing a book on tanks. The problem is that the proposed plot of "The Adventures of Ben Telemachus and his Big Tank" is pretty much a perfect classic hero's journey and, should HWSNBN ever actually write it, he will probably be instantly signed up by a major publishing house who entirely fail to realise that it isn't actually a post-modern, ironic consideration of the hero's quest but, in fact, just a book about tanks.

Dear lady in the post office....

Dear Lady in Post Office

I fully appreciate that if you visit a small, single-counter post office, you run the risk of getting stuck behind someone doing something that will take a Very long Time.  Some post office type tasks are just slow.

I can live with this.

 However, can I tentatively suggest that it might, just possibly, be a teeny-weeny bit unreasonable to spend nearly FIFTEEN MINUTES trying to decide which Olympic gold medallist you want on your letter.

I’ve seen some of the Olympic stamps.  They are very nice.  But what may have escaped your notice is that once you put one of these miniature works of art onto your envelope, you will then place it in the post box and never see it again.  A fifteen minute-long decision-making process therefore seems a little bit disproportionate to the pleasure you will derive from the eventual purchase.

And I have to say I am a little puzzled by your stamp-deciding criteria.

You wanted one of the rowing stamps.  I approve of this.  I like rowing.  I was there for two of those gold medals.  But I’m going to hazard a guess that you weren’t.   How do I know this?  Well, the conversation with the lady behind the counter was a bit of a giveaway.  The description of the women’s pair and double as “the women, in a two” was one giveaway.  As was your query about the “men’s team who won gold, didn’t they?” 

So given the fact that you appeared to have no particular involvement in rowing, why in the name of arse, did you spend over five minutes debating the relative merits of the women’s pair and the women’s double?

Particularly since you then decided that you actually really, really wanted the dressage team.  And were prepared to spend a further five minutes agonizing over the decision between the individual and team stamps.

And then you eventually left with Mo Farah. 

That well-known Olympic rower and dressage competitor. 

After a final few minutes considering whether the 5,000m win was more stamp-worthy than the 10,000m victory.

Why?  Just why?

Regards

The post office queue

 

 Seriously.  How I didn’t run down the queue, grab a woman rower at random, lick them and slap them on the envelope, I do not know.

Fortunately Ben is not the most patient of creatures and after staring at the woman with growing disbelief for a few minutes, he launched into a series of pterodactyl-like shrieks, clearly intended to convey “What the bloody hell are you doing, woman?  It’s a bloody STAMP!” causing her to finally become aware of the ten or more people, glaring and fuming behind her.

“Oh dear,” she said, with a weak smile.  “There’s rather a lot of people waiting.”

Excellent, I thought.  She is going to finish up.

“Maybe I’ll just have one more look at the 10,000m one…”

Field of dreams...

In the aftermath of the Olympics, it was inevitable that the coverage would be both retrospective and forward-looking, with the commentators reflecting on some of the great moments of the games, but also considering whether British sport can reproduce, or even improve upon, this record medal tally, in four year’s time.

These games have exceeded expectations, not only in our place on the medal table, but also in terms of the response of the nation.  There has been little trace of the cynicism and disenchantment that clouded the lead-up to the 2012 Olympics.  Instead, there has been a great outpouring of goodwill and enthusiasm for the efforts and the successes of the British team.

As the Olympics drew to a close, Matthew Pinsent and Steve Cram turned their minds to the future, with a short BBC1 documentary about the issue of funding in British sport.  Liz Nichol, Chief Executive of UK Sport spoke about the need to attract young athletes into a wide range of sports, and about the way forward for those sports which have underperformed at these games.  She also commented about the “no compromise approach” that is needed, adding that “it is not funding for everyone – it is funding for the best.”

Eighteen years ago I sat in a rowing boat for the first time.  I was coxing the Edinburgh University novice women’s eight which included another brand new rower.  Her name was Katherine Grainger.

Two weeks ago I sat in the stands at Dorney Lake and watched her win an Olympic gold medal.  Two days earlier I sat in the same place and saw Phelan Hill, a fellow member of London Rowing Club, take the bronze in the men’s eights.

The rowing world is a small one and there were no doubt many others in that noisy, buoyant crowd who were in the same position, realising, as I was realising, that there is something very bitter-sweet about watching others do what you once dared to dream of doing.

Because if we are honest, really deep-down, no-holds-barred honest, there are probably very few of us who have not, at some time, imagined ourselves crossing that greatest of finish lines, perhaps lengths in the lead with the commentators sanguine.

Of course there was only ever one real contender in this race….

Perhaps by a foot after a late, unforeseen charge.

It’s gone right to the line.  Did they get it?  Did they….it’s Great Britain for the gold!

For some of those watching in the stands, those dreams were never more than a pleasant distraction, something to toy with while lying in the bath, eyes closed, mind drifting.  I’ve been known to play the Chariots of Fire theme while running, and imagine myself miraculously transformed into a world-beating endurance runner, out-pacing the Ethiopians in the final 100m of the London Marathon, to the incredulous, ecstatic cheers of a home crowd.

I am reasonably sure that this is not going to happen.

But for others in that crowd, those dreams were a little more substantial.  For those who had competed at the top end of the domestic circuit, or who had made it to the fringes of the national teams, the dreams had slipped just a little further along the line between “fantasy” and “hope”.  Not quite as solid as hope, and yet no longer as flimsy as a fantasy.

They played Chariots of Fire at the medal ceremony.  This was apt, since I am fairly sure that some of that crowd were mentally striking the “Harold Abrahams watches Eric Liddle winning” pose.  You know the one, the transfixed gaze, silent awe with just a hint of envy, the noise of the crowd fading away behind.  As Phelan raced, I was sitting in a row of several other members of London Rowing Club, all of us doing the Harold Abrahams.  Of course Abrahams had his gold medal by the time he watched Liddle win his, whereas if you had picked the lot of us up, turned us upside down and subjected us to a vigorous shaking, you would have wound up with a couple of national championships silvers, a handful of Home International medals, a slightly random Commonwealth Regatta mixed 8s trophy and an awful lot of battered and bent domestic sprint race tankards.

In short, a little pile of not-quite-fulfilled dreams.

It is bitter-sweet to see someone else fulfil those dreams, no matter how far-fetched they were.  That feeling is even more acute when it is someone you know.  There is that unshakeable sense of “so near and yet so far”, the sense that you must have just put a foot wrong, somewhere, all those years ago.

Or perhaps it is something else.  Perhaps it is simply that when you have known someone who goes on to achieve greatness, it is difficult to lose yourself convincingly in the fantasy that you could have been a contender.  You are confronted, unavoidably, with the reasons why it is them and not you. 

There are so many qualities that make an Olympic champion.  You might not have recognised them at the time.  It would be disingenuous to claim that those of us who spent our first year of rowing in a boat with Katherine Grainger had any inkling that she had taken the first step on the road to London 2012.  I do not think that any of us had the perspective needed to make that assessment.  But she had something undeniably special, even if only with the benefit of good, old-fashioned hindsight.

When you watch your remote and distant idols, your dreams are safe.  When you can flesh out those two-dimensional media images with your memories of the real, flesh and blood people who you once trained and competed alongside, you have to face the truth.

But you know what?  That truth isn’t so bad. 

Sitting there, at Dorney, it really hit me for the first time just how important all of us nearlys are to the sport, to any sport.

Every Olympic champion trod a long path to that medal podium, and they did not walk it alone.  They trained with dozens of sportsmen and women who fell by the wayside, who waved them onwards and wished them well.  They competed against hundreds of others who would stay with them for a little while before slipping behind.

Olympic champions are not created in a vacuum.  They do not spring, fully-formed, from the brows of their sport’s governing bodies.  There is a cast of thousands lining the road to gold, a cast of nearlys and not-quites and never-could-have-beens. 

The organisers of the 2012 Olympics hope to “inspire a generation”.  I have no doubt that they will succeed.  But it is not just about inspiring the next generation of medallists.  It is about inspiring the hopeless dreamers, the steady sloggers, the nearlys and the not-too-bads who will be the stepping stones for our future champions on their road to a podium that has yet to be built.

You can’t fund “the best” without funding the second-bests and the third-bests and the absolute-worsts.  I hope that the legacy of these games is more funding for the entry-level of sport.  For local clubs and schools as well as national talent-identification programmes.

For me, the London games brought it home that you can dream of an Olympic finish line, or a record-breaking marathon, or a win at Henley regatta, but not regret a single minute of the time spent not getting there, because someone else did get there.

Besides, I have plans.  

Two sons + Friends with two sons = Coxless 4.

Olympics 2032 here we come.  I wonder if there is any chance of it being held in the Maldives…..

Pimp my bookcase...

I have started another DIY project.

It is a good and useful project, which Thomas will like and which, like all good child-related projects, will have large benefits for the adults in the house.

HWSNBN came home from work and gazed upon the debris of my project and his face did that thing that faces do when their owners are trying not to raise their eyebrows or roll their eyes.  His expression was so transparent I could almost see the words scrolling across the back of his head. 

Here we go again.

This, in my view, is grossly unfair.  I know he didn't actually say it, but I am going to feel hard done-by anyway.

I am willing to concede that there have been a few DIY projects in my past that have not gone quite as well as they could have.  HWSNBN has particularly fond memories of the shelf that fell on his head.  I think this shows something of a glass-half-empty attitude since he stubbornly refuses to take into account the couple of hundred days when the shelf did not fall on his head.

Anyway, I have not yet completed the current project, but HWSNBN's expression reminded me of my last excursion into the world of DIY, when he was forced to concede that sometimes I get it right.

I like Ikea.  It is full of shiny things, in enticing little arrangements that beguile you into thinking that your house too can look like a showcase of modern Scandinavian living if you just have the matt black photo frame, the scented candles and the cubist room-divider.  And then you get them home and find that your room actually resembles nothing so much as a student halls of residence.

This is particularly true of the ubiquitous Billy bookcases.  They are cheap, unoffensive and practical.  But no-one is going to walk in and say "Ooh!  What lovely bookcases!"  Thomas needed some storage in his room but I was resisting buying Billy bookcases.  And then I came acoss this site - and this project.  It is one of several examples of what people have done to make their Billy bookcases look like built-in furniture.

So off I went to Ikea for 5 half-height Billy bookcases which were duly assembled, with the requisite cursing and shoving of dowels into the wrong holes, and spaced evenly along the wall.

There followed a trip to B&Q and a minor tussle with a builder who seemed to be under the impression that women with babies are incapable of making stripwood purchasing decisions. 

I had a piece of chipboard cut into two lengths to cover the top of the units.



I cut the pine stripwood into lengths to cover the gaps between the units and to hid the bases.

Then came the lengthy saga of the spectacularly mis-named No More Nails as I attempted to glue strips of decorative dowling to the top edge of the units.  I eventually managed to get them to stick by taping them in place for two days.

The next stage was particularly fun.  One of the least attractive things about the Billy bookcases is the little row of holes down the sides.  I discovered that the easiest way to fill these is to stick your finger into woodfiller and then rub it over the holes until the filler builds up.  This unfortunately means that you spend the rest of the evening attempting to remove dried-on woodfiller from every little crease and crevice of your skin and fingernails.



Finally, I primed and painted the whole lot.  I will admit to a certain "oh let's just get the bloody thing finished" approach by this point, so the paintjob isn't quite as good as it could be, but Thomas isn't the most discerning appreciator of interior decoration.  All he was concerned about was the fact that he finally had his beach-hut fairy lights up and working.





HWSNBN looked mildly impressed. 

I could tell he didn't want to.  A successful DIY project from me threw his world out of kilter a little bit.

I look forward to knocking it a bit further off its axis with a second one.  Watch this space...

Memories...

Thomas has what appears to be a prodigious memory.  This might sound like I am having a proud-parent moment, but actually I can assure you that this is Not A Good Thing.

My brain has always been the memory equivalent of one of those extreme hoarders you see on daytime television.  If my mind was a semi-detached bungalow in a quiet corner of Milton Keynes, it would be full of black rubbish bags, old newspapers and piles of unidentifiable pieces of metal and plastic that might come in handy one day. 

I remember verbatim, completely inconsequential conversations from when I was eight.  I remember the roles I played in the long-running, elaborate pretend games we acted out at junior school.  I remember the sinking feeling after I inserted the eraser from the end of a pencil up my nose and felt it disappear into the depths of my nasal passages.  I remember how I felt several years later when an ENT specialist finally extracted it and everyone looked at me with raised eyebrows and a “Well?  Anything you want to tell us?” expression on their faces. 

I remember things that HWSNBN categorically claims he never said.  And I remember HWSNBN not telling me things he is adamant he told me ages ago.

I am not at all happy that Thomas appears to have inherited this trait. 

The problem with a small child who remembers absolutely everything you say is that you can’t fob them off with vague answers like “maybe tomorrow” or “we’ll see.”  Because tomorrow will come and they will remember.  You also have to be extraordinarily careful not to use any words or phrases that you don’t want them to pick up, because once heard, never forgotten.  “Oh my God” is now Thomas’s stock response to anything going mildly wrong. 

HWSNBN is very far from impressed.

But there is another problem.

When they start asking questions, you have to give an explanation that won’t come back and bite you in the future.  You can’t give the simplistic version with the intention of upgrading the explanation at a later stage, when their understanding of the world has improved.  Because they will remember every, single, word of the account you give.

And they will regurgitate your explanation at the most inappropriate moment possible, no doubt prefaced with “My Mummy says…” so that you look, at best, like an utter idiot, and at worst like a homophobic, racist, intolerant bigot who has given their child a narrow, homogenous view of the world around them.

I know this because I used to do it.  One of my poor mother’s more unfortunate sorties into the world of child-friendly explanations involved an early attempt at sex education.  It was years before I figured out the belly button wasn’t actually for what I had been given the impression it was for.

Yes, I may have been a slightly naïve child.  But “When a man loves a lady then he puts his thing in the lady’s tummy.” 

Really.  I ask you.

Anyway, Thomas’s memory hasn’t been too much of an issue recently since his questions have tended to be about things that a three year-old is capable of understanding without too much tweaking.  Things did get a little bit tricky when he wanted to know what a television aerial was for.  There were vague explanations involving Mr Tumble flying through the air.  An invisible Mr Tumble obviously.  A very small, invisible Mr Tumble, given that he then squeezed down the aerial cable and landed in the television.

This was not my finest scientific moment, I grant you.  The problem was that I began the explanation before realising that I don’t actually know how a TV aerial works myself.  For all I know Mr Tumble does, in fact, flit about invisibly looking for likely aerials to plunge down.

The television conversation paled into insignificance, however, when Thomas got going on the subject of religion.

Well, he didn’t.  Of course he didn’t.  He’s three.  But he asked what a church was for and I had another one of my panicked visions of him toddling off to pre-school and saying “My mummy says…”  I may, therefore, have got a little carried away.

Mummy?

Yes, Thomas.

What’s a church for?

It’s a building where people go to…

[long pause for thought]

To what, mummy?

To think about things.

What things?

Um, important things.  Nice, important things. 

            What important things, mummy?

Er, important things like being nice.  And songs.  They sing songs.

            Like baa baa black sheep?

No.  They sing songs about being nice and sharing things.

            Oh.  Why?

Because they want to.  And they tell stories.

            Thomas the Tank Engine stories?

No.  Stories about someone called Jesus.

            Jesus?  Who’s Jesus?

[panic begins to set in]

Er, Jesus was a nice man.  Who was nice to people.  And wanted everyone to be nice to each other.

[Clearly my Jesus is channelling Bill and Ted – be excellent to one another.]

            Why?

Well, because he wanted everyone to stop fighting and love each other.

            Oh.  Why?

Because it was important.  Because he believed he was the son of….

[No.  There is no way I can manage an explanation of what people believe about God]

Because some people believe he was magic.  Although not everyone believes that.  Mummy doesn’t believe that.

            Do I believe that?

Er, you can believe anything you want to believe.  Obviously.

[desperate, and slightly rubbish, attempt to change the subject]

So churches.  They are also places where people go on Sundays.

            Why?

Well sometimes people take babies there so that everyone can say hello to them.  And sometimes people get married there.

            Oh.  What’s married?

[oh gawd]

Well, it is when a man and  a lady really like each other [must not mention belly buttons, must not mention belly buttons] and they promise to live with each other and share all their things and be nice to each other.

[sudden panicked vision of Thomas hearing about someone having two mummies or two daddies and announcing “My mummy says marriage is for a man and a lady”]

Well, not just a man and a lady.  Sometimes two men promise to be nice to each other and live together.  And sometimes it is two ladies.

            Oh.  Why?

They just do, okay?  So they go to church and promise to the vicar that they will live together.

[a thought occurrs]

Except they don’t always do that.  Sometimes people live together and share their things without going to church and promising.

            Why?

Because not everyone believes in….

[Nonono!  We’re still not doing the God explanation]

Because people like to do things different ways.

            What different ways?

Well some people go to a church, like that one, and they call themselves Christians.

            Is that their name?

Not exactly.  It’s just what they call their group.  A bit like at nursery where you have the Bumblebee room and the Aviary room.

[This is not going well]

Some people go to a different kind of church, called a mosque, and they are called muslims.  And some go to a church called a synagogue, and they are called jews.  And some people don’t go to any church and they are called ag…

[Stop.  Just stop.  You are not going to discuss agnosticism with a 3 year-old]

They just don’t go to church.

            Oh.  Why are they muslims?  What is muslims?

Well they are just people who go to a different church.  All people are the same but they like to do different things. 

Well, not the same.  People look different but that doesn’t matter.

            Different?

[This has the potential to go so, so wrong.]

Well, not different in a bad way.  Just different because everyone’s different.

While being just the same.

Obviously.

[long pause for thought from the back seat]

            So muslims….

[time to wrap this up with a short and punchy explanation]

So that’s what churches are.

Look cows!  They might poo!

I should probably explain at this point that cows pooing are one of Thomas’s greatest fascinations for some reason.  If Jesus had popped up and re-enacted one of his greatest miracles, Thomas would probably have just given him a “Walking on water?  Is that all you’ve got?” look before returning to gazing entranced at the pooing bovines.

So in future, I intend to avoid the lengthy explanations and just find the nearest field of cows that might poo.  Even if Thomas remembers the conversation, it is going to be pretty unarguable that cows poo.  His future teachers might get the impression that I have a mild poo fetish, but they probably won’t think I’m a bigot.

A poo-obsessed idiot, maybe.  A bigot, no.

Job’s a good’un.

Our Great British Race...

When Mo Farah won his 10,000m gold medal, he was joined on the track by his pregnant wife, Tania and his step-daughter, Rihanna.  Elsewhere in the stadium Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford were celebrating their own victories.  These three athletes made up a triumvirate of British success that made this the best night for athletics in this country.

The next day I was surprised not to see the picture that I had assumed the press photographers would be clamouring for.  I had expected to see the Farahs, Ennis and Rutherford, together, flanked by union flags, above a story about British multiculturalism.  Mo Farah was born in Somalia and came to the UK at the age of 8.  His wife and step-daughter are mixed-race, and his unborn twin babies will be an impressive mixture of ethnicities when they put in an appearance in the near future.   Jessica Ennis is also mixed-race, while the longjumper, Greg Rutherford, has the classic, celtic, red-haired, fair-skinned colouring.

I thought the media had missed a fantastic opportunity to showcase the strength and diversity of the people of Britain.  This country has a long, long history of immigration, dating back thousands of years.  My own recent ancestry includes a Latvian immigrant who made a home in South Shields, a town renowned for the matter-of-fact welcome afforded to the many communities of overseas settlers. 

Yes, immigration brings its difficulties. 

Yes, it is something which needs to be carefully handled. 

But it is part and parcel of what makes us British.

It took me a little while to realise that the lack of what I thought would be an iconic image of these games was in itself a tribute to the established nature of diversity of this country.  The reporting of Mo Farah’s win gave relatively few column inches to his Somalian background.  He was consistently described simply as “British”.  Now where the broadsheets are concerned this probably isn’t so surprising, but  the tabloids other more niche corners of the media tend to jump gleefully upon anything with an immigration or racial angle, with great public interest stories such as “Muslims stole our Christmas tree” or “Immigrants responsible for global warming, the state of the economy and the last ice age.”

But the tabloids, like all the media, have an instinct for what the public want at any given time.  When things are bad, people want someone to blame.  The media is there, serving up immigrants, people on benefits, single mothers and any other corner of society that can be given the tabloid treatment.  The middle-market media, to a great extent, thrives on conflict.  You just have to look at the popularity of Jeremy Kyle to see that people love feeling self-righteous about another section of society.  Gender conflict sells.  Conflict with authority sells.  And racial conflict sells.  Especially if it can be coupled with a good dose of indignation about “the authorities” siding with “them” against “us”.

But during the Olympics, the national mood has been a bit different.  There has been a great hunger for stories, not of conflict, but of courage and determination and success against the odds.  People haven’t wanted anything to take the gloss off Britain’s remarkable achievements in these games.  They’ve wanted to stand behind the union flag and sing God Save the Queen.  They’ve wanted to be part of the greatest show on earth.  They've wanted to be a unified, united Britain.

Perhaps it will be transient.  Perhaps anyone who has ever moaned about “bloody immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs” will immediately revert to form as soon as the Olympic torch is extinguished.  Perhaps it will be “Bloody immigrants.  Coming over here and taking our gold medals.”

I hope not.

Because whatever our troubles, whatever our conflicts, we British are at heart a glorious, eclectic mish-mash of genes and cultures and colours.  We’re black and white and every shade of pink, brown and indescribable, unreproducable-by-Farrow-and-Ball yellowish-peach in between.  We’ve spent tens of thousands of years bleaching the memory of the African sun from our skin beneath the unreliable British skies.  Tens of thousands of summers no doubt spent moaning about the weather and wishing we could afford to go abroad like Bob and Mavis from the cave next door.  And tens of thousands of years of welcoming wave after wave of travellers and nomads and immigrants from the places we left behind in our distant past.

Staffordshire MP, Aidan Burley misjudged the public feeling and caused outrage by describing the opening ceremony as “leftie multicultural crap”.  He claims to have been misunderstood.  There certainly has been some misunderstanding going on, but I think it is Mr Burley who has failed to grasp something pretty important. 

We are multicultural. 

It would be as impossible to take multicultural influences out of any story of Britain as it would be to pretend that 1066 was just another year, or that the two world wars had no impact upon our population. 

So to refer to the multicultural elements of the opening ceremony as “crap” is pretty much the same as saying “Hey.  We’re British and we’re crap”.  Aidan Burley’s comments say a lot about the way he looks at the world around him.  He looked at Danny Boyle’s vision and saw “multicultural crap” while most of us just saw “Britain”.

If I was one of the organisers of the closing ceremony, I would thinking, right, just to piss off Aidan Burley and those who agree with him, let’s have more multi-culturalism.  Lots more multi-culturalism.  All the multi-culturalism we can get.  Calling all those with even a hint of multi-culturalism in your background.  Your country needs you!

We thought we didn’t need to be heavy-handed about celebrating our diversity, but if Aidan Burley and his supporters want to ridicule it then let’s go all out and have a massive, multi-cultural, diversity party. 

Let’s have morris dancers with bells and daft hats.  Let’s have kilts and grass skirts and saris and kimonos.  Let’s have bagpipes and Rolf Harris.  Let’s have stiff upper lips and carnivals.  Let’s Not Mention the War while simultaneously letting it be firmly known that we are Not Mentioning the War.

Let’s carry Mo Farah through the streets in a triumphal sedan chair made from an Ikea Tullsta armchair and a couple of Billy bookcases.

In short, let’s show that we understand what it is to be British, and let’s hope that we can take that understanding forward when the games are over and the euphoria begins to fade.

I can probably pull off a little bit of mini-multiculturalism myself with my Manx and Latvian ancestry.  I shall dress up as Mark Cavendish and go stand outside Aidan Burley’s house shouting my most fluent bit of Latvian.

Es runaju mazliet latviski bet mana izruna et mana grammatical es nau pareizas.

With a bit of luck he won’t have access to a  Latvian dictionary and will assume I have come up with something slightly more profound than “I speak a little bit of Latvian but my grammar and my pronunciation really aren’t very good.”

If he figures it out then he could probably be justified in calling my multiculturalism crap.

 [rethinks plan]

[decides to leave it to the closing ceremony organisers]