There’s a new thing the toddler has adopted.
I don’t understand it.
I don’t agree with it.
“I just don’t like it” to quote Pauline.
That new thing is the toddler wants to walk around with a swishing brown tail in its nappy.
“Say what?”
“True story”.
It’s hanging onto it’s turds as if they were gold. The fight I had with this creature on the weekend to get a steaming nappy off it’s body and it’s toddler cheeks into something clean, was an eye-watering test to parental patience. For a full 15 minutes we were both saying “no”. The toddler of course started the ensuing madness, and me being the delightfully daft prick that I am, decided to go along on the journey. It kicked me in the chin as I tried to wrest the swinging mass from its nethers, whilst it screamed with all it had.
I managed to calm the toddler down after a bit and the game of “no” thus began. She said “no”.
Then I said, “no”.
She said “no” with a pout.
I said “no” with a frown.
She said “no” with a side-eye.
I said “no” with a foot stomp.
She said “no” with a grin.
I said “no” with a turn.
She said “no” with a smile.
I said “no” while folding my arms.
She said “no” was a kind of question.
I said “no” with a flourish.
– and on it went and on it went with all the many ways to say “no”. The game became fun. Which was my angle. Get the beast on my side. Use misdirection to get my goal. Confuse it and ultimately defeat it. Hahahaha.
Thinking I had regained the trust of the toddler, I tried the nappy change again to be met with a scream combined with a fart that sounded like a rusty screen door opening.
My powers of negotiation are pretty good at times. Usually the idea of getting a couple of bucks out of a guy I find totally pedestrian, but on high-ticket items, I usually get a guy down to the price he was willing to let the thing go for….
Toddler negotiation however is filled with traps and I fell right into one. I had gained its trust through a shared game and now, to the toddler, I had betrayed it. We were playing fine and now I wanted to burgle it’s turd. I could read it’s eyes, “you bastard. You total bastard.”
“Darling, we need to change your caboose”.
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”
“Jesus save me.”
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”
“You can’t keep a swinging turd in your nappy.”
“Yes!”
Then it tried to escape off the change table. I grabbed it as it squirmed and kicked and howled at it’s God to destroy me.
Lucky for me, it’s God ignored it.
The wailing went on for some time, as did the swinging nappy. My humour had left a little while before and my patience was tapping its watch. I found myself wondering what kind of weight was hanging in that nappy for it to swing so. Usually the only thought I give to a nappy is to get thing off fast and have it destroyed.
I finally won and got the nappy off it. Yet, winning wasn’t my first thought when I looked at the horror within.
“Holy Jesus! Did you get into my Guinness?”
What lay before me was destined for hell.
It took a dozen wipes to get rid of that one and a dozen beers to erase it from memory.
We have all taken to watching a thing called slow tv. When I say “we” I of course mean myself and the wife. The toddler hates it. The toddler thinks it’s for old wankers. The toddler is correct.
Slow tv is basically someone mounting a camera to the mundane so the rest of us can stare at that mundane in a kind of odd club of the mundane. It can be a really long train ride, or a river cruise or a merry fire burning in a hearth, or some knob trying to catch a fish for 8 hours – you know, basic stuff that is so ball-numbingly boring that you go back to searching for midget porn or watching lawn bowls or darts.
However! We liked one particular fire called Birchwood and turned the 65 inch super ultra high def, (usually locked to kids shows), telly and turned it into a virtual open fire. It’s a pretty cool thing to watch on a cold night if one is depressed, hung over, married or looking for a virtual open fire they can play on their telly. All it really needs is the virtual bearskin rug and it would be fully twee.
George Ford is the filmmaker and must be laughing his balls off as he goes to the ATM. “I can’t believe Netflix paid me for this. I can call myself a filmmaker now!”
George, and I love George’s movies, has set-up a camera in front of some logs within a hearth and hit the record button as the logs burn. I imagine he enjoys a snifter of sherry as he giggles to himself and signs the talent contract. There’s a slow fade at the end after 1 hour. That’s all we get. 1 hour. Shot on a DSLR and edited in iMovie. ‘Edited’ – as in a title placed at the front and a slow fade out at the end. We’re fans of George. He saw a market and he won. So much so we tried his other 2 fires that Netflix has released. Not as good as the original I must say. Logs weren’t set up as well, fire didn’t take hold on the front logs, cheap consumer lens was set to autofocus and kept dropping out with the light changes (damn L series lenses), daft music in one episode that I guessed was meant for Christmas. In fairness to the filmmaker, I believe those might have been his earlier work as he was reaching for the ultimate one-shot, one take, fire in a hearth opus. But George has 5 IMDB credits as a filmmaker. He’s released more commercial content than me and I respect him for that. Setting up his DSLR and making a fire for us all to watch is awesome. Selling it to Netflix for the world to watch is pure genius.
Fun fact: The toddler freaking loves miniature railways. We took it to a miniature railway on Sunday and it lit up like a billion Christmas lights. So much so, I got my ass in that tiny train so I could be among the wonder that kid was going through. I wish I could see the world through her eyes.
It also loves waking on walls. I’d still walk on walls if the terror of flashing my hairy ass to the world didn’t keep me in my place.
Danny Matier 