Tag: parenting
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Death At One’s Elbow
A year ago today, my ex wife killed herself. At the time, we had been divorced for five or six years and I had custody of our three kids, so aside from the shock, there was little practical impact on our daily life – just a lot of mental goings on. Although I had a lot of conflicting feelings, grief was not one of them. I had grieved the loss of our relationship long before, and after a fairly bitter divorce that almost bankrupted me there was certainly no love lost. Most of what I felt was anger. Anger that… Read more
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Big Daddy is Glympsing
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of BlackBerry. Yes, I know that BlackBerry are currently unfashionable and it’s apparently (judging by the media) the ‘in thing’ to bash BlackBerry at the moment, but I’ve been using their phones for the last 5 or 6 years, and I’ve always been happy with them. That said, one of the big selling points of BlackBerry has traditionally been BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), which I’ve never been a particularly big user of – not least because I didn’t really know that many people who were also using BlackBerry devices (and the number has been… Read more
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Who’s rap-rapping at my door?
…It’s the Three not-so-Little Pigs! I’m on a bit of a fitness kick at the moment, owing to our renewed membership of the area swimming pool and a complete unwillingness to change my diet. I’ve been out jogging a couple of times, and I’m trying to get back into cycling. So when I needed to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy round the corner, I decided I’d cycle.  I took Finn with me, as I thought he’d benefit from some exercise, too. It’s only a mile away, so to make it worthwhile we took a detour on the way back… Read more
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Loitering with intent
Last weekend my integration into polite society took another step forward, as I took Finn on his first Scout camp-out. This, the wife  reasoned, would be something fun for Finn, and would also give me the ‘opportunity’ to socialize with some of the other dads. The wife normally takes Finn to the weekly scout meetings so why it is necessary for me to get involved too, I don’t know. That said, I have met some of them before and some are actually alright (Mr. Tim), so I guess there are worse people to spend time with. Plus, going with Finn… Read more
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All-American Dad
To give my eldest son the opportunity to make a few more friends, my wife signed him up with the local scout pack. Little did I know that it would involve more work for me than him. So far we’ve had to build a bird house and a toolbox (both of which my father-in-law thankfully helped him out with, not I), and there seems to be a constant list of ‘belt loops’ (the new version of ‘achievement patches’) that he’s going for, requiring me to teach him how to repair a puncture on his bike, or whittle a model out… Read more