Return to slender...

It's the time of year when the air is filled with the tinkling sound of resolutions being broken right left and centre.  I am feeling uber-smug at the moment because my decision to have a 'dry' January has so far held out for 15 days.  Yay me!  The Shah announced that he would join me.  Approximately 10 minutes later I heard the distinctive sound of a can being opened and the Shah wandered into the sitting room clutching a tinnie of Fosters.  Yes - he had already "forgotten" about it.  Hmm.

I am going to be well tested at the weekend though, because we will be celebrating a significant birthday for the Shah.

Unfortunately, he is the world's most difficult person to buy for so he has a motley assortment of gifts awaiting him including (drum roll please) a MANKINI!  Yes - a lime green one just like Borat wore in the eponymous film. And this - for the uninitiated or just plain unaware is what a mankini looks like:-

He'll love it.  Honest.

Son has written the label on this lovingly chosen gift which reads "Better get down the gym if you're going to carry this off, Dad."  Which brings me on to my next New Year's resolution - lose weight.  I don't need to shift much but I'd be happier if I were about half a stone lighter (7lbs or just over 3kg for my foreign friends who don't have any truck with this Imperial measurement nonsense).  Frankly, I'm hoping the lack of alcohol will sort it out.  I mean how crap can life be?  No drink and no food?  You're having a larf.

The Shah agreed that this would be a good idea and, once again, decided to join me (he has since been away on business and phoned every night from a different restaurant, so I'm not holding my breath).

Anyway, very soon we won't be able to afford food as we've realised we have to get the whole roof of Crap Cottage replaced which, knowing our luck, is going to cost zillions.  Just to cheer me up, the Shah produced this recently:-

I don't know if you can see what he inscribed into the top but yes, it's Crap Cottage Pie!!

In which my boy becomes a man...

Today is Father’s Day and it is also the 18^th birthday of the Teenage Son.  Good grief, is it a mere 18 years since I was lying in a hospital bed wondering if the bit between my waist and my knees would ever function as nature intended again whilst the Shah was dancing around the labour room shrieking “I’m a dad!  I’m a dad!”?

One look at this photo of the newborn and you will see that the experience was not great for him either.  In fact, he didn’t stop frowning for about five years after this was taken.

In the past eighteen years he has brought us 

• Pride (academic scholarship to a good independent school, hockey colours, great GCSE  results)
• Irritation (he once annoyed his music teacher so much that he was chased out of the classroom and across the playground.  “Why?” we asked wearily.  “Oh I, er, fell off my chair and into the cymbals...” came the reply...ahem)
• Worry (passing his driving test only a few months after his 17^th birthday, causing me and the Shah to hold our collective breath every time he ventured out the first few times) 
• Laughter (he has an excellent sense of humour – inherited from his mother, naturally) 
• Revulsion (he can belch like a feckin’ foghorn)
• And enormous joy, as has his sister.

But it has never been dull having him around.  We have taken photos at all the major junctions of his life so far...first day at school, the day he became a teenager – all those things that doting parents do and no doubt we will force him in front of the camera again later today and no doubt he will groan and pull faces and eventually give in gracefully.


This morning, he came down to open the cards that had been accumulating: Card number 1 from an aunt contained a fat cheque - huzzah!  Card number 2 from maternal Granny contained a slightly leaner cheque, but huzzah! anyway.  Card number 3 from paternal grandparents contained, er, two balloons.  Go figure....

The poor old Shah’s Father’s Day celebrations have been somewhat eclipsed by the birthday boy.  However, he did receive two very nice cards from his children – TD made one which featured a drawing of her and her father (they are so alike as to be virtually interchangeable in personality).  Under her portrait she has written ‘Dad’ and, of course, her name under his.  It couldn’t be more true and he was thrilled with it.

The birthday boy, meanwhile, ‘ceebsed’ making a card and loped down to the local Clintons to buy one, via talking his way out of a parking ticket in the process.  (How?  That’s so unfair, I’ve never got out of a parking ticket in my life).  His card listed the top 15 things every dad in the world has said at least once and goes like this:-

1.   Don’t ask me, ask your mother!

2.   You didn’t beat me, I let you win!

3.   We’re not lost, I’m just not sure where we are.

4.   Call that a haircut?

5.   I’ll tell you why – because I said so, that’s why!

6.   You’re going out dressed like THAT?

7.   Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.

8.   Careful!  You’ll have somebody’s eye out with that...

9.   What do you think I am, a bank?

10.  Now in my day...

11.  I’m not going to sleep, I’m just resting my eyes

12.  Oh for God’s sake, where the hell are my *&*@ing car keys?  Oh thanks, love.

13.  Oi! That’s my chair, now shift yer butt!

14.  What part of NO do you not understand?

15.  Call that music?

The Shah has many other delightful and not so delightful sayings, but I feel I should save those for another day.....