All posts filed under “Life”

May 8, 2018

I love you, now and always

You’ve never felt your heart break quite like when your kid tells you that you don’t love them.

It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds; at a simple level my daughter is just getting to grips with what love is, a question that has stumped even Foreigner.

She tells me I “don’t love her all the time”, and I believe that what she means is that, say, when I’m being firm with her, or roughhousing with her, or lose my temper I’m not being loving, and I think that for her, now, that single facet of love dominates any other meaning.

And okay then, fine; I just have to both help her grow the richness of her definition of love, and constantly demonstrate through word and deed that I love her more than anything else in the world. Job done.

I do, though, have some unresolved anxieties around those of my behaviours that she seems to interpret as me not loving her. She usually squeals with delight when I pick her up and snuggle her, and seems to genuinely love getting tickled, for example, but these are, I think, things that would fall into this category, and there’s a sense in there somewhere that she’s not wrong. Issues about consent and agency, and her body being hers alone – issues that would be true for a boy too but have particularly dark resonances when the power dynamic is between a male in a position of authority and a younger female in a more junior context – swirl in the mix, and need to be considered and reflected upon. This all, as her life stretches ahead of her for decades, isn’t simple.

But for now, tomorrow, I take the least complicated, purest step. “I love you, Ada. Now and always.”

November 4, 2017

Hiut Denim Co., can they fix it? (Yes, they can.)

I’ve been fortunate to be in a position in the past to buy two pairs of Hiut jeans. I like them because they fit well and look good, because I like the company’s schtick and its championing of local crafts-based skills and communities, and, of course, because all that resonates with the image I have of myself.

But I also like them because they offer a free repair service, in-keeping with their, and, increasingly, our, mission to redress the balance away from disposability. Jeans get ripped? Chuck ’em.

Not with Hiut. My original 2012 pair have already been back once to have the crotch repaired, and when my newer pair started to go too, as well as early parenthood having ripped the left knee of the first, they both went back at once.

And look at the results below. They’re beautiful. It’s neither trying to make the jeans look good as new, nor is it kintsugi, the Japanese tradition of explicitly highlighting repairs. They have developed their own robustly unique character and identity, organically, and if you’ll indulge me, it’s one of the quiet dignity that comes from having worked hard and still had care and attention lavished on them. I love that in repairing the knee – which was an gaping inches-long gash in the fabric – they’ve even colour-matched the thread to the worn patch on the knee. (New, the jeans are a dark indigo, and they fade and scuff and soften slowly with use.) They even tidied up the fraying hems, though I hadn’t asked them to.

Hiut has a customer for life in me. I can’t justify another pair just now, but though I was tempted to cheat with another label in the weeks during which these two were off being repaired, I knew they wouldn’t please me anything like as much as they do.

Repaired Hiut Denim jeans
Repaired Hiut Denim jeans
Repaired Hiut Denim jeans
Hiut Denim jeans label

October 29, 2017

Trick-or-treating in another guise

Every year, I see and hear stories about the American import of trick-or-treating at Hallowe’en. The ones I’m thinking of roll their eyes and almost audibly tut at this, another example of good, wholesome Brits swallowing another vulgar American import.

I have decided that this year I shall allow myself to get annoyed at this, and it’s for two reasons. The first is: and so what? It’s fun, exciting, and gives a focus for activities as the weather worsens, and it may even prompt some interesting discussions about spirits and evil and death that could help kids process the world around them. Don’t be such a wet blanket; buy some fun size Mars bars, make the effort to be more neighbourly for one night, and get over yourself.

More prosaically, though, I think it’s a shame that these reports – which usually emanate from a media machine which ostensibly serves the UK yet is persistently England-centric – demonstrate how little the prevailing cultural narrative makes an effort to understand and include the whole country.

Scotland and Ireland have long had a Hallowe’en tradition of guising, going door to door in the neighbourhood in fancy dress; it’s a little different from trick-or-treating in that kids usually do a turn – tell a joke, sing a song, do a trick – before getting sweets or pennies, and the familiar pumpkin lantern is instead a hollowed-out turnip. And I know the turnip bit especially sounds quite funny – the kind of “what is like a pumpkin but more drab and dour?” fiction you’d write in translating a real-world American tradition to your novel which features a population that if not explicitly modelled on the Scots are definitely a bit Scot-ish – but there are records of guising from long before America existed.

I know too that I sound humourless and chippy, and this is hardly a pressing issue, but at a time when so many forces seem intent on dividing us, it’s sad both that the UK can still be snobbish about arriviste American traditions, and that neighbours who don’t even have the excuse of an ocean separating them can still know each other so little.

October 3, 2017

Zig-zag butterfly

I finally realised a while back why parents’ anecdotes about things their kids say and do struck me as so banal before I became one myself: it’s because you have no calibration for what’s remarkable.

Anyway, tonight as I read my two year-old daughter The Cat in the Hat at bedtime, when we got to the line “And look! With my tail! / I can hold a red fan!” she said, with some effort, “Daddy, the fan is like a butterfly! A zig-zag butterfly! Like [the butterfly in the garden she named] Dotty!” And I am undone.

An illustration from The Cat in the Hat; the cat is holding a red fan in its tail which has a white zig-zag pattern on it

June 29, 2017

Driving each other crazy

If two cars reach an impasse in Britain, and one flashes its headlights to the other, it means “come on; I cede”. In France, it means “stay there; I’m going to push through”. Imagine the scene where a Brit in France or someone French in the UK gives or sees a flash and interprets it the wrong way, judged against the dominant convention in that place. There’s a crash, and both aggrieved parties leap out of their car, each thinking they’re in the right as they talk at each other, not only in a foreign language but from a completely different context.

Neither is right, neither is wrong; but both think both that they are right and the other is wrong, by sheer force of cultural conditioning. It’s not merely a question of perspectives, but of failing to realise that the lessons and values of your culture have been so subtly but fundamentally and perniciously codified into your worldview that you don’t think to ask if there could even be another perspective. What is this wanker doing? He flashed his lights for me to come on so I drove forward but then so did he and now there’s car on the ground and we’re both shouting at each other.

I think about this often.

June 4, 2017

‘Safe’

I went to bed last night as Twitter was just starting to twitch with news of something happening around London Bridge, assuming that when I woke it would either have been jumbled mis-reporting or the latest in the capital’s history of terror attacks.

This morning, as we read and listened and reflected, my daughter was playing on some foam climbing blocks when she slightly overreached her balance and toppled slowly off, crying – mostly from surprise – when she hit the floor.

It is a trite point, but, curiously, a legitimate and profound one too, that ‘being safe’ doesn’t – rather, shouldn’t – mean that one must never come to physical or emotional harm; it means an environment wherein you are confident in exploring and playing and expressing yourself, knowing that if you overreach and come to harm, there is kindness, support and comfort.

‘Never coming to harm’ is a dangerous fiction, one that legitimises and excuses authoritarian behaviour and policies that actively damage those for whose lives you are responsible.

January 17, 2017

Don’t wake the monster!

I’m only part joking when I say I bet the dramatic trope of creeping past a slumbering monster must have been originally written by parents who have tried not to wake a sleeping baby.

Had to pop stuff into Ada’s room tonight; crept stealthily in, but she stirred and sat up in bed. I immediately dropped down behind the solid end of the cot, out of sight. She seemed to resettle, but I couldn’t be sure, so I had to risk a peek. If she was awake and watching, catastrophe! But she was asleep! Creep, creep, set down qui-et-ly, creep, creep, pull door to at a tectonic rate – breathe sigh of relief. Properly cinematic.

Frankly, I’d take a rabid dragon or slavering Cerberus to sneak past any day; consequences are less dire.

December 31, 2016

Playing with Lego

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved playing with Lego. The love hasn’t dimmed as I’ve gotten older; Lego’s role in my life has just changed. Where once it was about the stuff of play – about discovering how objects interact and about how I could at the same time give shape to and spark my imagination – as an adult I would occasionally turn to the calm, methodical accretion of a set’s blocks as a way of quieting stress and anxiety.

Our daughter got some Duplo for Christmas, and it’s been wonderful to play with her. Of course we play with her all the time, but it is usually asymmetrical. The pleasure my wife and I got from the play was meta-level; we enjoyed seeing Ada develop and become curious and then work to sate that curiosity, and of course we enjoyed the simple fact of the time together, but there wasn’t much enjoyment to be wrung for us from the activities and games themselves.

This is different, because while all that meta-pleasure is just as present, we’re both surprised by how much delight and fun we’re getting from the Duplo itself.

And it’s exactly because of that curiously cyclical sparking and feeding of imagination. Sometimes I’ll set out to reify an object that’s in my head, but more often than not I’m just noodling about with bricks – these big, coarse voxels in unexpectedly beautiful renderings of simple colours – and either end up creating pleasingly nonsense objects, or I’ll turn over what I have in my hands to find that it suddenly looks like a whale, or a truck, or an oddly stooping old lady. It’s something akin to pareidolia, or what the creator of those Lego ads was tapping into – another take on “the pictures are better on radio”.

It’s silly, I guess, to find this quiet joy surprising, since I can’t remember a time without Lego, but it is. It turns out I had simply forgotten that this was a thing Lego could be; not only a tool by which to construct a given object, whether realistic or fantastic, but also something that one almost has a dialogue with, something that you grip and manipulate and query and listen to as you play without direction – like a child does. And as I am rediscovering how to, thanks to my own.

November 12, 2016

One of my favourite things about Hamilton (isn’t about Hamilton at all)

Hey, Hamilton, the hip-hop musical about Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, is pretty great! Chances are you know this already, though, either because you’ve been listening to it on heavy rotation since you discovered it, or because you have that one weird friend – hi there! – who is constantly telling you how great it is.

Yes, I love Hamilton. And further, I love that I love Hamilton. As I crash headlong toward middle-age, my fear of my tastes ossifying intensifies; I have betrayed much of what I thought and wanted when I was a kid, but that one sticks. I have always hated, and I hope I always will hate, the attitude that says modern media and culture is de facto worse than those that pervaded when one was young. I reserve the right to call any part of it god-awful, because there is always god-awful stuff among the quality, but to call it all god-awful is lazy and stupid, and robs you of the joy of discovering fresh delights.

I buy and enjoy new music, films, magazines all the time, but it’s particularly exhilarating to discover something like Hamilton; something that tilts my orbit, something that I want to evangelise, something that I feel such a weird and instantaneous sense of ownership of and kinship with. It gives me the same tingle I got when I discovered Douglas Adams as a kid, the first time I watched Cabaret as a kid, the first time I played Chuckie Egg as a kid; in other words, I love it like I loved stuff as a kid – and I love that.

September 15, 2016

You’re not wrong; you’re just an asshole

Recently I got a parking fine. This was because I was parked somewhere at which I had to display a ticket (even for the allowed free duration) and I was not displaying a ticket, so the fine was completely correct. However, I appealed, sending the below covering note.

Hello, folks. We got a penalty notice yesterday, and I’m not challenging that the ticket is correct; we were parked and weren’t displaying a ticket, and if you reject this appeal of course I’ll pay. I would like to explain, though, that it wasn’t out of malice, and we were within the free parking period. My wife and I were taking our baby daughter swimming for the first time at the Olympia pool, and we were a bit stressed and anxious, and as we juggled bags, baby and plans for making the experience as smooth as possible for her as we got out of the car, we just forgot to get a ticket for free parking. About 45 minutes later we came out, went to Marks & Spencer to get lunch, and only as we were walking back to the car I spotted the pay stations and I suddenly realised I had forgotten to get a pay-and-display ticket. We were parked well within the free time allowed, but just forgot to get a ticket to confirm. Time-stamped receipt from pool attached; sorry, we didn’t take a receipt from M&S. Thanks for your time.

My appeal was rejected, and this was the explanatory letter I got from UK Parking Control Ltd.

Dear Mr Phin,

Thank you for your recent communication concerning the above Parking Charge. Please rest assured that our Appeals Manager has personally reviewed this case and carefully considered the various points raised. Our view, however, is that these particular circumstances are neither unreasonable nor unjust and so we will not be waiving this parking charge in full.

As per our client’s instruction, all vehicles must display a valid pay and display ticket to park within this area. Unfortunately when your vehicle was photographed no valid ticket was being displayed. Your vehicle was left unattended on Private Property, therefore giving you no authorisation to park. There are sufficient signs warning vehicle drivers that should they park their vehicle without displaying a valid ticket this will result in a Parking Charge being issued to the vehicle.

You will be aware from the Parking Charge that we offer a discount for parking charges paid within 14 days. As you lodged an appeal, we are prepared to extend this period for another 14 days from the date of this letter. But if we do not receive your remittance at the reduced rate of £60.00 within this period, the full amount will then become payable and we will put the matter in the hands of our Debt Recovery Agents.

We appreciate that this is not the outcome you will have hoped for. Unless you have any additional information that you have not already brought to our attention, this decision is final. Although further correspondence will be noted and filed, please do not expect any response from us except where you have provided new evidence to substantiate your case.

We hope you will take advantage of the extended discount period and will send your remittance promptly. Yours faithfully,

And so, of course, I paid the sixty quid, because to paraphrase The Dude, UKPC isn’t wrong; it’s just a shower of officious, unpleasant little assholes.