The True Meaning of Christmas

I’ve been helping my eldest with his homework: a project on Christmas around the world.

Now, there are no doubt people out there – not ODHSNM readers, of course – who would find this outrageous.

Not me helping my son with his homework. The “around the world” bit. The true meaning of Christmas, they declare, can’t be reduced to some multicultural, relativistic blah blah blah...  - a line of argument which you know full well will inevitably end in someone blurting out the word “Immigrants!”

The true meaning of Christmas, they will say, is...erm...

Well, dear readers, let me put this to you. Christmas is just a celebration of good stuff at a crappy time of year. It has had all sorts of stuff superimposed on it over the centuries, but at the end of the day that’s what it started out as and that’s what it still is.

Don’t give me all that “it’s the birth of Jesus” malarkey. Christ is a late addition to Christmas.

He’s been stuck on top of at least two sets of pre-Christian traditions.

Pagan dessert

Firstly, the Northern European pagan Yule celebrations around the winter solstice. That’s where you get your holly and ivy, your Druidic mistletoe, your Christmas trees, your Yule log (chocolate or otherwise) and all those other Germano-Celto-Scandinavian accessories.

Not one of those things – except perhaps a log – would have been found in the Iron Age Middle East, so have clearly come from somewhere other than the Jesus story.

The second source is Greco-Roman paganism, specifically the festival of Saturnalia.

Saturnalia (Kronoia for the Greeks among us) was a month long celebration of the good old days before that bastard Zeus cursed mankind with the need to work for a living. It involved:

• Gift giving
• Eating and drinking to excess
• A general end-of-term, office party kind of vibe all round, when slaves were afforded freedoms usually denied them and the bosses made fools of themselves

Sounds Christmassy, doesn’t it?

There are loads of other hypotheses kicking about saying that the Christian myth is based on other bits of

Not real

ancient lore, but why get into all that? It’s like arguing about whether Tolkien’s orcs were green or grey. Even if there’s a right answer, it doesn’t matter what it is because it’s ALL MADE UP.

The point is – and I’ll go out on a limb here – it is completely impossible to extract a “true” Christian core or indeed a “true” pagan core. It’s a big syncretic mess of bits and bobs appropriated from here, there and everywhere.

Look at Santa Claus. Where does he fit in? Don’t try to tell me that he’s “really” Saint Nicholas, the fourth century Turkish bishop and early Christian martyr. What the hell would he be doing with reindeer and elves? He’s as obviously mashed up as Baron Samedi.

Balls

Why do you think the Puritans banned Christmas in 1647 as “a popish festival with no biblical justification”? Precisely because they could see how pagan it all was. At least Oliver Cromwell had the balls to recognise it for what it was instead of whinging about the corruption of the “real” meaning on Radio Four.

You can’t select certain bits and say that’s the “real” Christmas and the rest of it isn’t – the Christian bits, the non-Christian bits, whatever. Every step along the way contributed to getting us where we are today. Who can say where taking any of them out would have taken us? There is no distinction between the signal and the noise.

The materialistic aspects of Christmas are just as ancient as the spiritual aspects.

And if we accept that consumerism is our current religion (or substitute for it), then a 50 year tradition of buy-buy-buy from Black Thursday to the January Sales is getting on for half the age of all “ye olde traditions” the Victorians bequeathed us.

It’s as silly to worship a tree or indeed money as it is to worship a big old beardy sky-fairy.  If you pick away rationally at every part of the Christmas myth, eventually you’re left with nothing but a bloody long winter ahead of us.

Maybe we don’t need to have a justification for having a party. The weather’s shit, it’s dark all the time – don’t we have a right to cheer ourselves up?

Perhaps THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the true meaning of Christmas. 

And now...two jokes

I have a load of maps on the wall of my office. I do like a nice map.

I just turned my head to look at one and my eyes immediately alighted on the part of Egypt shown to the left.

Sacre bleu! So Dora the Explorer is really set on the Suez Canal.

Bridge, Crocodile Lake, Abu Sultan.

Say it with me: Bridge, Crocodile Lake, Abu Sultan.

So you tell Dora... [And so on]

I'm now looking hard for the real-world locations of Wizzle Mountain and the Dancing Forest.

Moments later - out of the window this time - I saw that First Group have a bus called "Chris Moyles".

I'm pretty sure there's a joke there somewhere, but I will leave you to fill in your own details.

In the Night Garden of the Soul

If you are not a parent, you are unlikely to have watched even more than a couple of minutes of “In the Night Garden” – if you are even aware of its existence.

If you are, you may – as I have – sat through hours of seemingly identical episodes of this bizarre and yet (for toddlers) utterly compelling programme.

Over the years, advertisers and even programme-makers have every so often proclaimed that they have produced some sort of televisual material “for dogs”, “for cats” etc.

Supposedly, these offerings have been based on research into how the minds of pets work, so that they will appeal to them.

Quite why anyone would want to create television that appeals to creatures that (i) do not have any money to spend on goods and service advertised and (ii) have better things to do than watch TV, such as sniffing the ground or licking their testicles, is unclear.

And yet it was nevertheless done, no doubt bringing to bear the kind of “science” that makes shampoo capable of increasing hair shine by 80% and inventing Bifidus Digestivum.

Over the years, I have watched some of these programmes “for animals” and my overriding memory of them was “what the hell was that all about?” – much as I expect the reaction of most dogs and cats to have been.

The argument as to why it made no sense to me, I suppose, would have been that these things were designed to stimulate the brains of animals, which in cognitive and (presumably) phenomenological terms are very different from mine.

That then, I suppose, explains the complete incomprehensibility of “In the Night Garden” to anyone older than three and its narcotic, addictive effect on toddlers. It has been carefully designed to interface with the brains of the undeveloped in a way that leaves the adult confused, bored and liable to drift off themselves into flights of WTF? fancy.

Which is what you are about to get right now, after I watched an entire episode of this with Tancred at the weekend.

Perhaps the Night Garden is in US

It occurred to me at the outset that ITNG features a lot of Freudian motifs.

First of all – the whole thing is a dream. Each episode starts with IgglePiggle going to sleep. The Night Garden is not a place; it’s a dream state.

Take the little sail down 

Light the little light

This is the way to the garden in the night

The “way” is the method of the dreamer, a psychical roadmap not a geographical one. It is only by taking his sail down – by ceasing to resist and to strive – that IgglePiggle can approach the Night Garden.

IgglePiggle then is a figure of tragic proportions. In reality, he is:

Out on the ocean 

Far away from land

He has – like Borges in “The Circular Ruins” – dreamed himself a whole new existence. No wonder he doesn't want to go to sleep at the end - to sleep in the dream world is to return to the utter isolation of the sea. 

The three central characters – or archetypes – correspond to Freud’s tripartite division of the mind: 

• IgglePiggle is manifestly the Ego at the centre of consciousness.
• Upsy Daisy is the Id – her phallic, erectile hair; her skirt which pops up wantonly at the pull of a string; her wandering bed which “only Upsy Daisy is allowed to sleep in”; and her overwhelming desire to kiss everyone are surely proof enough that she represents a raging whirlwind of sexuality and unconscious desire.

• MakkaPakka, by contrast, with his stooped, gnomelike body and obsession with “cleaning the faces” of the other characters is clearly the Superego – the force of repression, conscience and self-control.

The Ninky Nonk, moreover, is clearly Thanatos or the death instinct. Every journey on the Ninky Nonk ends up as a terrifying hellride which all are lucky to survive and yet the characters KEEP GOING BACK ON IT.

"An unconscious sense of guilt"

At this point, my analysis begins to break down. The opposite force to the Ninky Nonk is – as everyone knows – the Pinky Ponk, which ought then to represent the life instinct or Eros. The only way I can give any justification to that theory by pointing out that it looks like a big, green, flying tit.

Eventually, one’s knowledge of a subject matter and willingness to stretch an already ridiculously overtaxed metaphor becomes exhausted and the maddeningly disorienting power of the programme drives one’s thoughts along a new track.

Tombliboos are clearly the immature form of Teletubbies. The Tombliboo larvae and hatch out after a couple of weeks as adult Teletubbies – at which point, they are carefully relocated from the night garden to Teletubbie land.

Terrifying, bloody slaughter

The principal predators in the Tombliboo ecosystem are Fimbles. A hungry Fimble that breaks into a Tombliboo bush: a bloodthirsty tornado of fang and claw ensues, which – trousers or no trousers – the Tombliboos are helpless to resist. It is one of nature’s most shocking scenes, which has yet to have been captured on film.

As you can see, it is bewildering for an adult human to watch an entire episode of “In the Night Garden”. I haven’t even touched on the Pontypines and the myriad potential meanings of “wave to the Wottingers”. Is Mr Pontypine’s detachable moustache an emblem of castration-anxiety? And what are the Tittifers really?

Beware the Night Garden – once you have been there, you may come back a different person altogether. 

How to Win School Appeals – Part 2

So, let’s suppose that having applied to your local schools back in January, now it’s April and you’ve just opened the fatal letter saying that you didn’t qualify for the ones you wanted and instead your child has been given a place at Shithole Primary, Murder Street, Craphill.

What do you do from here?

Before I go any further, I should give a few disclaimers:

1. I am only talking about reception class size admissions appeals here – these are probably the hardest to win and the ones that you are most likely to have to fight.
2. We live in Bradford and my entire experience is based on that city’s schools and education department. Every education authority will have slightly different procedures, so not everything I say will be universally applicable.
3. When we did win our appeal, we were not actually given the reasons why in detail. I went to two appeals, and I lost one and I won one. So am I going to throw everything I learned or was told or suspect at you. Some of it may be completely irrelevant – but some of it must be true.
4. I can see that this is going to take more than two parts to finish – so more wisdom will follow in later posts.

So where do you go from here?

Armalite and ballot box strategy

Well, there is nothing to be gained from refusing to accept the place at Shithole Primary. If you don’t accept it and then you don’t get a place anywhere preferable, your child ends up without a school place at all – and the last thing you want by now is then kicking around the house for another year or getting allocated a last minute place somewhere even worse.

Plus, if you take the place, you look like a good meek little subject who is playing the game by the rules. I was asked whether we had taken up the place and/or otherwise been to and engaged with the unwanted school in both the appeals I went to, so this must be important.

Secondly, put your child’s name down on the waiting lists for all the schools you would prefer. Some people mistakenly think that going on the waiting list and appealing in some way cancel each other out – they don’t.

Chances are, a few kids will drop out or otherwise not take up places they have been offered before the appeals come around – and you might get one of these. They are awarded on the same terms as the original admissions decisions are made, so if you only just missed out on a place on distance there’s a good chance you will get one down this route.

Plus, going on the waiting list puts your case back into the admissions authority’s hands, giving them more time to make a mistake which you can exploit later.

I can’t stress the importance of going on the waiting list enough. It gives you a reason to be on the phone to them all the time collecting information.

Open up as many fronts as you can. Remember, you care a lot and the council doesn’t have to care that much. You only have to get lucky once – they have to get lucky every time.

What you are dealing with

99% of the time, the reason you will have been rejected is down to our friend the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. That is, because there were 30 kids (or a multiple thereof) who met the admissions criteria “more than” you.

This law on class sizes is a trump card in the admissions authority’s hands – however, it is not the Ace of trumps. If it was, the only hope you’d have would be to take a challenge to the European Court of Human Rights and even if you won, your kids would be 18+ by the time you got the primary school place.

No, the class size law is round about a seven of trumps. It woops most other arguments – even ones that seem world-beating from an ordinary human point of view - but it can be defeated.

What you have to prove is that:

1. The admissions authority (usually the council, but if you’re dealing with a church school for example, it could be the governors) made mistakes in applying the admissions policy.
2. If they hadn’t made those mistakes, then on correct application of the policy, your child would have got a place.

Sadly, it’s not enough to show that the council cocked up – which is usually simple enough. Just deal with them for long enough and they’ll do something wrong: hence I recommend that you contact them regularly, ask lots of questions and sooner or later you’ll get some work experience kid who has no idea what they’re talking about misinforming you about something or other. That’s why going on the waiting list actually helps with your appeal.

For that reason, you should note down every communication you have with the local authority for time and date and try to get the name of the person you are talking to. As far as I can remember, they never volunteered this information, which seems significant.

And don’t expect them to call you back when they say they will. Be prepared to chase everything yourself.

Stay tuned for the next instalment – in which I will talk about the power of paperwork and of gossip

How to Win School Appeals – part 1

It's a minefield...

Roger Jr has been at school for 7 days now at our first choice primary school. Getting him there, however, has been a battle – which only now do I feel philosophical enough to tell the tale of and make light of.

It all started back in November 2011, when we got a bundle of forms from the local authority asking us to declare our five choices of primary schools for Roger Jr to go to.

Fast-forward two months, and a couple of nights before the deadline, we took a look at them and jotted down (i) the local school which all the other kids up our road went to and (ii) a handful of others.

You may well say that not doing piles of research, bribing councillors and vicars and taking long-lens photographs of headmistresses in compromising positions was the first place we went wrong. You may be right – but what reason did we have to doubt that Roger Jr would get into the same school as all the other children who lived up the same road and therefore at more or less exactly the same distance from the school?

Before I continue, let me explain a couple of things. This may not be how it is everywhere else – and for that reason, I would recommend that you read the paperwork you get sent thoroughly and often – but in Bradford straight-line distance from door of dwelling to door of school is the main determinant of priority for admission. Kids in care and siblings of kids already at the school get first dibs (and to the latter, we will return in due course), but then the school’s favour beams outward like a light and blesses the first cohort of nippers it touches.

Cohort? Yes, we have enrolled Roger Jr in a Roman Legionary school. Discipline first, eh?

No, what I mean is that – thanks to Tony Blair – primary schools have to take in reception kids in batches of 30. The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 says that in the first two years of school, the ratio of pupils to teacher must not exceed 30:1. This – as a parent appealing against an admissions authority decision – is your primary enemy.

Already, you can perhaps see that this is an area best not left to chance.

Anyway, back to our story. Time passes and soon it’s April. We get a letter through from the council and it says that Roger Jr has not been offered a place at any of the five schools we applied for. Instead, he has been given one at a school we have never heard of, in a place best characterised as “a demilitarised zone”.

You see, when you are told that as a parent you have a “choice” of schools, this is not what you are being given at all. You are being asked for preferences so that, in the unlikely event of your child being eligible for admission to more than one of those schools, the council has a tie-breaker. That is all your views count for here.

You see, it turns out that there had been a glut of births in Roger Jr’s school year. And as such, the blessed light emitted by our school of choice (or preference) was guttering like a candle in an airtight room, reducing its circumference from over 0.6 miles to a mere 0.45 miles.

That is, there were so many kids of school age apparently living closer to that school than us (and we will return to that “apparently” later on) that we didn’t qualify - for our number one choice or indeed for any of the five we had named.

And so, because we didn’t live close enough to the school 0.6 miles away, Roger Jr was to be shipped off to a school some 2.5 miles away – a triumph of bureaucratic logic.

It looked alright, but not right for us

Now, I don’t wish to slag off the school Roger Jr was given a place at too much. They’re doing the best they can given their location. And they seem to have nice facilities – schools that have been in special measures often do. They had very nice, big playing fields around the school, although I suspect that large areas were probably heavily mined to deter burglary. The staff seemed pleasant enough, and the head was very good about it when we told her that we intended to fight tooth and nail to ensure that our son didn’t go to her school.

So we appealed.

Now, friends and readers of a socialistic bent may disapprove of our having done this.

If every middle class parent whose kids get sent to a “bad” school exploits their special powers of pushiness (a little middle class secret – you get sent on a course where they teach you all that stuff as soon as you start paying 40% tax), then only poor kids will go to the bad schools and rich kids to good schools.

And that, they will tell you (in a bit of reasoning whose rather disturbing premises they are rarely keen to examine more closely) guarantees that bad schools stay bad and good schools stay good.

Well, let me take on my detractors. You are, of course, entitled to your opinions. However, unless you have children of your own, in this case they are worth precisely NOTHING SO SHUT UP.

Not only do I challenge any parent to admit that they are prepared to accept an inferior start in life because of their political views – I also accuse them of mistreating their children. I see no difference between that and, say, forcing your four-year-old to be a vegan because of your views.  

Sorry, but all abstract positions about what is right or just for everyone go out of the window when it’s your own children involved.

Ask me if my preference is for a fair society or for my kids to get on - I don’t have to research my answer to that.

Coming up in Part 2! I might actually explain “how to win school appeals”!

Five tips for shitty drivers

I know a lot of you out there are really terrible drivers, who ought never to have been allowed behind the wheel of anything faster-moving, heavier or more expensive than a Cozy Coupe.

So, I have put together these top tips to help you – if not to actually become a better driver – then at least to minimise the threat your fundamental incompetence poses to other road users.

No biscuit for going slow

If you are driving past a speed camera in – say – a 30mph zone, there is really no point in slowing down to 20mph while you pass it. It’s not going to “accidentally” go off if you’re doing 25mph.

Yes, it’s true that bad things happen when you go past one too fast.

That doesn’t mean that good things happen when you go past too slow.

The cameras do not photograph you going past below the speed limit in order to send you a present for being a good boy.

Don’t force people to be polite

OK, sometimes it can be difficult to right pull out of a junction into a busy road. Here is a tip though: don’t pull out halfway and block the traffic coming from the left while you sit and wait for someone to let you in on the right.

If this was the sort of blog where you get other people’s jokes recycled, I’d say something about tiny women in massive 4x4s at this point. Or BMWs.

But this is Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind. and everything here is fresh. Or if it isn’t, I can assure you, I came to the same conclusions independently.

Know your limits

When I am dictator, one of the first things I will do is make lorries straying out of the left-hand lane on the motorway a capital offence.

If your vehicle is restricted to, say, 55mph and the speed limit is, say, 70mph, YOU HAVE GOT NO BUSINESS OVERTAKING ANYTHING! Stay in the slow lane and do not block the whole frigging carriageway up until you have dragged your sorry arse round.

If you have a caravan, just stay off the motorway altogether. In fact, just stay at home. And don’t ever leave it.

Make other drivers aware of your idiocy

The best way to signal your lack of any kind of redeeming sense to other motorists is to buy a Porsche Cayenne or Range Rover Sport.

If you cannot afford one of these gold-plated wanker beacons (or if, despite being a congenital imbecile, you nevertheless have a vestigial degree of taste), your options are as follows:

1. Take a normal car (preferably an affordable Japanese model for authenticity) and put stickers in the front and back windscreens saying “Minicab”. On seeing this tell-tale sign, other drivers will not be surprised when you make a U-turn in front of them, mount the pavement to hit a cat or do something similarly deranged.
2. If you would rather be thought of as an arsehole than a maniac, buy a van.

And finally...

If you see a large man in black on a small, battered white Honda scooter, let him do what he wants. Get out of his way, cheerfully wave him past and try not to run him over. 

Mayan Apocalypse Liveblog

T-350: According to the Mayans, the world is going to end later this year. Specifically, on December 21 – so we will at least get to watch the Olympics first.

And so, as this final year progresses, I will be the first to you know about all the portents of doom as they happen, right up until the big moment when the planet is destroyed. At that point, I will hand over to the aliens, evolved dolphins or whatever that humanity will be passing the baton on to.

Either that, or I will turn to any remaining Mayans at that time and describe to you the look of intense embarrassment on their faces when it turns out that the conclusion of a 5,125 calendar year cycle since the date of their creation myth means nothing at all.

And when that happens, I will have very little to tell you – because there aren’t any Mayans to speak of and haven’t been for some hundreds of years, they having notably failed to predict the collapse of their own civilisation in the 10^th century.

Still, that major omission notwithstanding, I plan on taking the idea that the earth will crash into an as-yet completely undetected planet called “Nibiru” on a specific date later this year – despite the entire balance of astronomical evidence being against this hypothesis – 100 per cent seriously, and I will keep you updated accordingly. Only 350 days to go!

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.

The magic of e-reading

Do you remember that there was once a time when you didn't have a mobile phone, and no one else you knew did?

So if you wanted to get in touch, you'd have to (i) remember their phone number and (ii) call their house to see if they were in? Or alternatively – and even more outlandishly – you'd have to (i) remember where they live and (ii) drop by to see if they were in.

How on earth did we get by wasting so much time? Walk round to someone's house! The very idea of it.

It's very odd how mobile phones, laptops, social media, iPods etc etc have all insinuated their way into our lives subtly and irreplaceably, to the point where we take them completely for granted.

They start appearing and you think: "That's ridiculous – I never needed [whatever the gadget does] before. Why would I need that now?" Before you know it, you get panicky if you can't check Facebook while you're on the toilet. The medium is the message, innit?

So I must report unto you – my readers – then, that I am now the owner of an Amazon Kindle (thanks to all the Sicilies for my Father's Day present!) And having been sceptical about them before, experience suggests that I should approach this new bit of technology in my life with the innocent openness to having one's mind changed of a new boy turning up for his first day at Pyongyang Central Penitentiary College of FE.

Having lugged a hardback copy of "Against the Day" (1,085 pages) around with me for the months it took me to read (TWICE), I am already feeling the benefit in terms of improved posture.

However, the Kindle is affecting my habits in other ways. It is changing what I read – for the simple reason that there are hundreds of great books out there (many of them here) that are FREE.

Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't pick up a second-hand copy of Herodotus' "The Histories" for any price. On the one hand, it would take up too many of the sparse cubic feet in my tiny house. On the other, if it was shit, I would feel obliged to read it to the end because I'd paid for it.

I know what you're thinking. No, not "oh god, he's talking about Greeks again – I thought this was going to a funny one or an angry one". What you are thinking is Herodotus' work would probably not have survived the last 2,600 years and become a central part of the Western literary canon if it had been shit.

Well, believe me – despite the lure of "The Histories" being effectively the novelisation of 300, I would not have stuck with old Herodotus past that endless description of "how big various things in Egypt are" in the second book if it hadn't been free. And I am probably a more enlightened person for doing so. My bag is certainly enlightened. BOOM BOOM.

It still hurts me mentally to think that I gave up reading "On the Road" TWICE because it was so awful after paying full price for a brand new copy. And that was about 17 years ago.

But now, I can pick up books by a whole host of authors and give up on them if they're a load of old crap like Kerouac, because they didn't cost me a penny! In your face, economics of publishing! And in your face, self-imposed obsessive-compulsive rules of behaviour!

So, if you like sci-fi and you haven't read HG Wells or Jules Verne – stop paying money for new books and read the foundations of the freaking genre for nothing. If you like horror, Arthur Machen and HP Lovecraft. If you like crime, Conan Doyle. And you needn't spend a penny. Well, if you already have an e-reader that is.

Plus, it's better than the library, because (i) you don't have to remember to take anything back, (ii) it's likely to exist for more than a couple of years to come, and (iii) best of all - it's not full of smelly vagrants and weirdos!

What I have learned about babies

Our youngest had his first bottle of ordinary cow milk today. OK, that was the product of a slight misunderstanding on my part, but oh well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Tancred – pictured here shortly after his emergence into the outside world - is now one year old and is on the brink of walking. He can do it pretty well when supported, but simply prefers to crawl around – it being generally quicker and less likely to end in falling on his face.

So, as I was leaving the house, Elvira and I agreed that Tancred is now not a baby, but a toddler – meaning that the baby-owner/operator stage of our lives is (god willing) over.

This is sad in some ways. Four years ago, I didn't like babies at all. Now I do. I even like babies that are not related to me. I particularly like babies that I have no responsibilities towards other than to briefly amuse before moving well away. And babies are a hell of a lot nicer than toddlers.

Anyway, I thought that at this time it would be appropriate for me to share with you all what I have learned about babies before it all leaks out of the rusty, corroded and poorly lagged pipework of my memory and all that's left is mouldy patches under the lino of history.

1. Baby poo is not frightening

The fear of poo is a big concern for non-parents and new parents. In fact, it is considerably less unpleasant than many day-to-day substances. Cat food, for example.

Newborn babies produce something called meconium, which is greeny-black and alarming to look at, but not generally a problem because it soaks straight into nappies.

Thereafter, what they produce while on a purely liquid diet is no problem either. It typically looks like bird seed in a korma sauce and doesn't smell of anything much. You have to change this kind of baby's nappy every hour or so – so you get plenty of exposure.

It's only when you start weaning them onto solid foods that babies start to produce the kind of noxious, sticky and highly mobile substances that you rightly fear. By then, you should be well prepared.

2. Newborn babies are not fun

Culture and social pressure all assure us that, as soon as you see your new baby for the first time, you are overwhelmed with love for it. Naturally, if this does not happen, you (i) feel immensely guilty and (ii) pretend that it did happen, because you would be publicly marked as a psychopath otherwise.

Well, I'm going to let you on in a little secret. This takes time. Newborn babies are no fun at all. They don't do anything other than flop about and react extremely badly to pretty much every stimulus. Or lack of stimulus.

Your newborn baby will not smile, laugh or even look straight at you with any kind of recognition. They don't do that. Until they are about three months old, babies are pure burden.

Plus, as a new parent, you will have to get used to the kind of self-effacement that does not come naturally to a generation that is used to putting itself first, second and third. You won't sleep, you won't be able to do anything you want to do and you'll be driven to distraction by perpetual crying for which you can find no reason whatsoever.

Sorry, but it's true. The first three months of a new parent's life is really hard because you have to dedicate yourself completely to this little lump that just takes, takes, takes and gives nothing back – and you have been led to believe (i) that it does and (ii) that you're entitled to "me time".

Of course, the love is building up unconsciously – and when they do finally smile, laugh or otherwise acknowledge your existence it bursts through and you realise "Aha! That's what they meant!" and it all falls into place. But unless you've been brought up around babies – which most people these days haven't – you'll be on the brink of collapse into full-blown insanity until that point.

3. Babies are philistines

No matter what your good intentions are in kitting out your baby with lovely old-fashioned wooden toys straight out of the imaginary Dickensian childhood that neither you nor anyone else you know ever had, it will always prefer a gaudy piece of non-sustainable plastic that makes a shrieking noise composed of pure migraine.

The only circumstances under which babies prefer wood to plastic is when they are chewing it.

4. "Baa Baa Black Sheep" is THE SAME as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"

Most of the horrible shrieking toy noises you will have to endure will be one of these tunes. And it will gradually dawn on you that they are THE SAME.

They differ slightly at the "one for the little boy who lives down the lane"/"like a diamond in the sky" parts – although you can still, a la I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, easily sing one to the tune of the other – and "Twinkle Twinkle..." has an extra line at the end. But for all intents and purposes, they are the same.

You will come to hate them both.

And that, dear friends, is everything I have learned about babies. I hope it hasn't put you off – because much like learning to play the piano, it might be a real drag to begin with, but it definitely pays off if you stick with it.

If anyone else has learned anything about babies, please do share with the class below.