Toddlers on a plane

So we're off on holiday tomorrow to France - which means, sadly no ODHSNM next week. If you're missing it that badly, read some of the stuff from 2010, when I only had one reader and that was my mother.

As much as I'm looking forward to the holiday, I can't help but think that in roughly 24 hours' time I will be declaring – as per Samuel L Jackson:

"I have had it with these motherlovin' children on this motherlovin' plane"

Or words of marginally more severe profanity to that effect.

So, is it extra Calpol? Or whisky? For me, obviously. Advice on airborne child-wrangling gladly received!

Who do you think? The Libyans!

So, goodbye then Colonel Gaddaffi, you crazy old bastard.

It may not have all been over by April at a cost of a few hundred quid, and it may have required a little more force from NATO than was strictly mandated by the UN, but what is it they say?...ah, yes...the ends justify the means.

That's the moral authority and military hegemony of the West re-established then. No longer can it be said that democratic states will tolerate tyrants; even ones who pose no harm to anyone anymore except their own citizens; even ones who make themselves useful from time to time.

Let that be a warning to all you other dictators out there. You hear that? That's the Clash of Civilisations in the distance! Put a foot wrong and BANG, we will mess you up real bad. Are you listening Hu Jintao? No, I didn't think so.

Anyway, now the brave people of Libya can elect a modern, secular, centre-left (or even centre-right! It really is up to you!) liberal democratic government of their own - just like the people of Egypt did earlier in the year.

Hooray for democracy.

By which I mean "fingers crossed, but not getting my hopes up for democracy".

In the meantime, remember the good old days?

PS – The image above is a John Yates classic.

Adopt a peasant

Have you ever fancied owning a poor person? Well, now you can – if you live in Hull, Blackpool or Westminster.

If this pilot scheme goes well, middle class people all over the country could adopt their own family of peasants or a clan of urban lumpenproles. I for one think it would be simply lovely!

The theory is that people with jobs "mentor" a jobless household to get them into work, according to the "social entrepreneur" behind it, Emma Harrison. I find it hard to imagine what a "social entrepreneur" does, unless it means making money out of social programmes – which, with £300 million of government contracts under her belt, Ms Harrison looks highly adept at doing.

I can't help but think this is ridiculously patronising in every way.

Is the grateful serf supposed to view his employed mentor with such admiration that the very force of the example set by seeing a real-life working person makes them stop being a feckless skiver on the spot?

Or is the middle class role model just supposed to fill in forms for their unemployed protégée, in nice, legible handwriting, using long words, spelled correctly – like a Job Centre Cyrano de Bergerac?

I'm intrigued to know what special understanding of "how to find and keep a job when you have no skills or experience" the middle classes of Hull, Bristol and Westminster are presumed to have.

I have a sneaking suspicion that someone like me coming into your home and telling you that - for example – you might find getting a job easier, oh I don't know, if you learn to read or stop drinking Special Brew in the morning is unlikely to go down any better than it does coming from the government.

Coming soon – "voluntary" workhouses funded by wealthy philanthropists and the all rest of the Victorian era! You won't be laughing at my moustache soon...

One year of ODHSNM

ODHSNM is one today. That means it's started to crawl around and it has increasingly strong opinions on what it will or won't do (and especially, eat).

However, it still lacks effective bladder or bowel control, and has to be prevented at all costs from getting to the stairs.

Yes, my blog is no longer a baby. It is now a toddler (much like my actual toddler, Tancred, who is also one year old). No longer can I put it down somewhere and expect it to still be there when I get back.

I find it quite remarkable that I've kept writing this up for this long. Here's to the speedy passage of the next 17 years, and to ODHSNM finally leaving home!

A remedy for society's ills

So while the government fumbles around trying to decide which recipe of "same old shit" to serve the country in the aftermath of last week's rioting – almost certainly with a squirt of "...but worse" topping – I've taken matters into my own hands.

I am challenging the sick culture of the early 21^st century by growing a big bushy handlebar moustache.

Now, I know that this is does not fall anywhere on the conventional left-right spectrum of "what to do" responses that have been aired in the last few days, which has generally covered the more familiar options from "give them more free stuff" to "spray nerve gas on them".

To that my answer is – so much the worse for conventional left-right distinctions. I'm growing a moustache and you can interpret that however you want. It's not retro. It's not ironic. If Eugene Hutz can do it and still be this cool, why can't I?

Throughout history men have had the freedom to grow all sorts of crazy hair on their faces and get away with it. The 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th century represent the apex of this trend.

The Second World War killed off a lot of moustaches. Most effectively, I suppose, by killing an awful lot of people with moustaches. Perhaps – as with the British car industry - the critical mass of skills was lost. Perhaps after all that, shaping a moustache seemed rather pointless.

Some moustaches died by the company they kept. The toothbrush moustache of Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy never escaped its association with Hitler, although his equally-distinctive side parting got away with it – eerily paralleling the respective roles of Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd in the 2007 Celebrity Big Brother race row.

Just ten years ago, it was fairly unusual to see anyone with facial hair below the age of 30. But today, one just has to look around to see acres of sparse, wispy, "is it or isn't it?" beard adorning the faces of pasty youths, clad in their androgynous uniform of nerd glasses, jeggings and ballet shoes. Something, I fear, has been lost to the meaning of the moustache in this barrage of bumfluff.

Reclaiming the moustache fills me with not a little apprehension. I can't help but think that in taking this step, I am making a very significant statement. People are going to make assumptions about my politics, my personality and my sexual proclivities on the basis of what's on my upper lip as soon as I start waxing it. At best, I'm going to be called "eccentric"...

Still, I'm married, I've got two kids, I have a decent job and I have the self-confidence to look like Friedrich Nietzsche – what do I care what conclusions strangers leap to about me?

I REJECT the tyranny of conformism.

Thus spake Zarathustra.

A riot of my own

It would undoubtedly be far too cynical to suggest that the London riots came at just the right time for the Metropolitan Police.

In the wake of the phone hacking scandal – and its subsidiary, rather more important corollary, the "exposure of massive corruption in public authorities" scandal – the Met's reputation was not so much in the toilet as round the U-bend, through the pipes and gently pullulating in a big circular tank somewhere in the countryside.

And yet, just a couple of weeks later, the country is united behind it, thanks to the capital's very own tracksuit-clad lumpenproletariat. There's nothing like a threat to property to remind you who your friends are, eh?

Still, at least the London rioters had some vague notion of a pretext (the shooting of Mark Duggan by Met officers).

Their provincial brethren haven't even bothered, unless you are still accepting "errr...the cuts?" as a remotely valid or remotely sincere excuse for any and every kind of nihilistic stupidity.

You know how I plan on showing my opposition to the closure of local libraries? By stealing luxury luggage from Louis Vuitton and burning a bus. You know why I pooed in my pants, rubbed it on my face and threw what was left at a passer-by? The cuts. Oh, and no one listens to me.

Pleasingly, not even the Guardian seems to maintain that what's been going on for the last few nights is in any sense a "protest" – although there are plenty still plugging away with "root causes" explanations out there. Oh, it's all because the poor dears get stop-and-searched a bit. Boo hoo. It's all because that nasty posh man wants to take away their table tennis club. My heart bleeds. I prefer this explanation.

Bradford has been remarkably quiet throughout the current events so far – probably for reasons implied in the photo above. After all, where's the profit in looting a pound shop?

On doing it yourself

This weekend, I designed, constructed and erected not one but two gates in our back garden.

The primary purpose of these is to stop Tancred getting down the passages either side of the house. He's at that age where the mere sight of gravel fills him with an insatiable desire to eat it. Unfortunately, these areas are also our cats' favoured latrines. So, to avoid Tancred (i) eating gravel at all and (ii) getting an unpleasantly soft-centred surprise when doing so, I built these gates and put them up.

We've been talking about putting barriers across the alleyways at the sides of the house since Roger Jr was at the gravel/cat poo eating stage.

Every so often for the last couple of years when at a garden centre, we look at the gates available, inhale sharply at how expensive they are, and finally realise we don't have the measurements anyway.

But not this weekend.

After Elvira measured up, Roger Jr and I jumped in the car down to Wickes – whence a quick foray into Morrisons revealed that you can buy 440ml of their own brand curry sauce for just 9p! – and bought the raw materials.

A couple of hours later – MY NAME IS ROGER OF SICILY, KING OF KINGS: LOOK ON MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR. Then on Sunday, I did it again on the other side of the house with the leftover bits.

That means you can get 22 jars of it for less than a £1.99 jar of Pataks. Unbelievable value.

Now in the past, I've always been a bit crap a DIY. This is largely down to impatience and an outright contempt for inanimate objects.

From the impatience, we end up with projects begun with no idea what step two will be, let alone the finished product; whatever tool is to hand used rather than the right tool for the job; compromises made, injuries sustained.

From my hatred of the material world, frustration, rage and injuries sustained at the refusal of objects to bend to my will.

But since then, I've got a lot better. Part of that is perspective – I've seen what a bloody terrible job I've made of innumerable DIY tasks in the past, and rather than hurling myself into the same trap once again like a First World War general, I've started thinking things through beforehand. Anticipating problems – and most importantly of all, observing the vital maxim "measure twice, cut once". I've lost count of the number of times I have believed that I've measured something properly, only to get a completely different reading on the second attempt.

Apparently, they were selling for 5p each at one point.

I've also reached that age where I have accumulated almost every tool I could ever need for any straightforward DIY job. I say "accumulated" because I have little or no recollection of ever buying or being given most of the tools I have. As women magnetically attract clothes, shoes and paperbacks with bright pink covers, so tools are drawn to men. At night, they shuffle forth, edging their way towards sheds and garages, to nestle alongside others of their kind arrayed in plastic crates. Then when you go to get a new lightbulb out, you find yourself staring at a broken angle-grinder wondering where the hell it came from.

But most importantly of all – and if any idiot comes to this site looking for advice, (i) god help you but (ii) here's a good bit – my transformation was effected by upgrading from ordinary screwdrivers to an electric screwdriver. Even the simplest DIY used to be a miserable, time-sapping affair, usually concluding in a botched job with screwheads poking out or snapped off, and a huge blister in the palm of one or both of my hands. No more! Now, I just whip out my Bosch and –bzzzzt- problem solved.

Another digression – this time not concerning curry sauce (even curry sauce of unbeatable value).

Manufacturers of screws: it is highly frustrating when the err....(checks Wikipedia)... screw drive disintegrates under the pressure of the screwdriver, leaving me unable to get the screw in any further or indeed out. I know you think I'd be even more pissed off if my screwdriver's tip ground off. And I would. But can't you find a slightly tougher material for making screws than frozen butter?

Can anyone recommend to me a brand of screws whose...errr...Phillipsy bit won't just crumble out under pressure?

9p. I still can't believe it. Morrisons at Five Lane Ends in Bradford. They had loads left on Saturday.

My second favourite tool is my jigsaw. I love it (i) because sawing through anything manually is a total pain in the arse and (ii) because it feels spectacularly dangerous to use. Installing a cat flap using the jigsaw was one of the first jobs I did that went well, and instilled in me the sense of pride that turned around my standards of workmanship. It's thanks to that raging mechanical instrument of devastation that I am the thoughtful man I am today.

Putting the gates together went unbelievably well. I clinker-built them, like an old fashioned sailing ship. Well, like the garden gate that came with our house.

Hammering the nails in saw me sustain the only injury of the whole weekend – a blister from holding my finger out along the hammer's neck to achieve greater accuracy. I don't think I'm giving too much away about my identity by including a picture of my hand. Yes, I am ... a white, right-handed man.

Putting them up gave me cause for concern, though. I fear drills.

I have always imagined electrocuting myself by drilling into the mains. Imagine my surprise then, when a couple of years ago, I drilled into NOT an electrical cable, but a water pipe! At night. In winter.

Yes, we had to get an emergency plumber round who turned up about 1am, drain down the entire central heating system and clean up a lot of flooding.

Ah, happy days.

But it went fine – primarily because no one, to my knowledge, has ever installed a water pipe or an electrical cable inside a brick. Another handy tip – don't use a cordless for masonry drilling. You'll be there all day.

And I was so proud of my handiwork you know what I did? I sanded the tops down. Attention to detail much? Then I promptly hit myself in the ankle with the unsanded bottom of the gate, which I had cleverly mounted at exactly the same height as the middle of my Achilles tendon. And, like Victor Frankenstein, I cursed my creation.

It is often said that the men of my generation are pitiful children in adult bodies, who can't take care of the basic maintenance, construction and mechanical tasks that our fathers take for granted – and indeed, literally have to get their dads to do for them.

I blame school. No one ever told me to change a plug, but they did make me into a big ponce who knows more about the Second Empire of France than how electricity works.

I did have to get my dad to put in a new light fitting for me. But I did the second one, under his supervision. I have also made cement, laid a patio, boarded my loft, put in a drain, built a wall that is still standing after two years, thawed frozen pipes and identified and removed the source of a mysterious stain on the ceiling of Roger Jr's bedroom (a decomposing dead mouse). And I only stuck my hand through the ceiling plaster once.

Gradually, I am battling my forced exile to the world of the mind. I am reclaiming the material world, inch by inch, stone by stone, block by block.

Unbelievable.