52 week project – Week 18

We’re big fans of stripes in our house.

Football

Lois: ‘He’s a big doofder isn’t he, Dad?’

Your Dad: *whacks sofa* ‘Yes, sweetheart. He is.’

Lois: ‘Is that one lying on the floor Messi? Did he trip?’

Your Dad: *whisper swears* ‘Ffffffff….fffffff…..ssssssss’

Me: ‘Good guess, honey. No, it’s Didier Drogba.’

Lois: *shouts at screen* ‘You BIG JESSIE.’

Phoebe: *sings* ‘There were ten green bottles standing on the wall, ten green bottles standing on the wall…’

You’re so keen to be part of it as, no matter how loud and confusing, you can see how much he loves football.

You ask him what the difference is between Manchester United and Manchester City and why they’d need two teams there. You question why that one kicked the other one. Why the ‘one in charge’ wears black. Why they can only touch the ball with their hands sometimes. Why you should always support the team that are playing against Manchester United.

You like to impress him by guessing which team the three letters stand for on the screen score board. You know that if Liverpool play at home they get to wear red. That the home team’s score is always given first in the result. You love sitting with him peeling the sticker backs off, reading the numbers, finding the pages, smoothing down the stickers and filling your Euro 2012 sticker book together.

For him, you watch, listen and learn.

For you, he doesn’t swear.

Football’s not all bad.

52 week project – Week 17

It’s complete. After months, and hours and hours of hard work by your dedicated Papa your gorgeous playhouse, ‘The Wee Blackhoose’, is complete.

Every inch of it is handmade, from the carved wooden P and L initials on the sides of the veranda to the coloured stained glass window on the back wall.

The window catches are made from the cherry tree that stood in my Grandad’s garden which I used to swing on as a child. The wood has been in Nanny’s attic for over ten years, Papa knew it would come in handy one day.

I dread to think how much money it’s cost him in the end, it certainly doesn’t look like it’s made from the ‘spare wood in my garage’ which was his original promise.

A true labour of love, it will be standing in our garden for many many years to come. He may be my step-Dad but he’s your whole-Papa and no mistake.

Be warned, if I catch you smoking a fag in it when you’re 14 I’ll take it off you and make it mine.

The best things about redundancy…

We always knew it would be a gamble, a leap of faith and a change for us all to accept the offer of voluntary redundancy. But this morning I realised just how much easier and happier it makes things, having your Dad here.

I lay in bed listening to him getting you both dressed in your room. There was little fussing and the three of you chatted about the school day ahead, what leggings and hairband to put on. You were all singing along to a One Direction song together – not loud and deliberately but low and unaware, all in time with one another. I even heard him offer to put your hair in a ponytail. Which you quite rightly declined as I am the best at doing ponytails and plaits thank you very much.

Instead of automatically starting the sentence ‘Muuum’ you’re now just as likely to ask ‘Daaaad’. I like that.

Instead of the 7:30am rush to all leave the house together the pace is slower. The jobs, although they’ve always been shared equally, feel even more evenly spread. The pressure has been released. We all have more time.

What do you two think are the best things about your Dad not working at the moment?

Big one: ‘He gets to stay with us. We get to play with him and give him more cuddles than usual.’

Little one: ‘We do jigsaws with him. We watch The Simpsons with him. We can make bananas with him.’

Really? I must have missed that miracle banana creating session.

But he did make homemade pasta and pesto with you both this weekend, patiently showing you how to stir the egg into the flour with your fingers, wind the handle, catch the strands of fresh pasta and bash the basil. We’d never done it before even though we’ve always talked about it and I suspect that we can blame the daily grind for getting in the way as it does with so many things.

I guess that we’ll all be in for a shock when normality returns and your poor ol’ Dad gets a new job. But until then we’ll keep plotting, seeking out that one amazing business idea that’d let us hang on to this anti-9-5 routine we’ve got going right now. Because, apart from the bank balance, I think everyone is a whole heap happier for it.