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Griffin has been bringing reading books home from school every day in his suitcase for a few months now, but not had “homework” so we never pushed for him to read with us and kept up the bedtime stories every night with us reading to him. When Emma had a chat with the school teachers and they told her that his reading was not up to par, we began getting him to read his school books to us at night instead of just us reading him a story.

In the past few weeks his behaviour has been that of a typical five year old, atrocious, with enough cute thrown in to make me wonder if it is just me or if he really is the devil incarnate.

Yesterday Emma and I had a serious bollocking session with him and Emma tried a new one… “why don’t you just TRY saying ‘Ok Mum, ok Dad, I will do what you asked’ for a single day and see how much fun you have?”

Well, today was that day.

Holy cow what an awesome day!

All day he has been polite and kept the screaming and shouting to outdoor activities (and being tickled obviously) but for me the cherry that truly topped off a wonderful day was his reading to us before bedtime.

Usually when he reads to us, he fidgets and he looks around and he strokes Pashkadia (a cat for those who don’t know), but he rarely actually looks at the words and I rarely remain calm for the duration…

Tonight he read us two books…

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So tonight we were treated to a child that not only was able to read just about every word, but one who was able to follow the story, complete sentences and work out new words AND recognise them later in the story!

That may not sound much to someone who has not lived through this, but man o man was I a mess. I am so proud right now of this little man’s ability that I have even forgotten how much he has ignored this in the past!

Truly an amazing experience helping a little one grow, truly a life changing event (or series of…)

Well, lets hope we can keep it up, he is a great kid most of the time, hopefully I can help find the buttons that get him to be a great kid and not let him find the buttons that make me a cranky dad

I will never be the same level of superhero that Griffin’s father is in his eyes.
His Dad is invoked in every instance of strife as his saviour, his panacea for all his ailments and the bringer of all things status related to Griffin’s life.

I cannot ask him to call me dad because he already has that moniker firmly attached to his real father.

So what do I do?

I am thinking that it is perhaps time to get him to stop calling me “Baz” or “Barry”, even though those are my names, I think he needs to have a more fatherly moniker to attach to me that will help him bond a little more on a parental level while not attacking the position his father holds in his eyes.

So I think he needs to call me Pop or Pa or Da, just not Dad, and not Baz.

Maybe this will help him connect me in his mind as a parental figure while allowing him to maintain that connection to his father with no internal conflicts for his young mind to have try to resolve.

*sigh*

It’s not easy being a family man.

I gotta say though, when he is treating me like his dad, when he is playing with me, the way his face lights up when I get home from work, the love and cuddle I get in the mornings, the bed time stories, the tall tales about school days the the the… sheesh I could go on forever… ALL of this makes this one small strife seem so trivial, so petty even.

I am his Dad, Pa, Pop or Da, whichever way you slice it, he knows it, I love it, I love him. That makes this all so much easier.

Thank my lucky stars my wife is so unbelievably beautiful and warm and loving and as in love with me as I am with her.

THAT makes everything easy.

I love my wife, I love my family, man o man am I a lucky man!

On Saturday we attended the LLanrhidian Village Fayre which had us rolling cheeses, racing pigs and drinking. Er… did I mention the drinking?

Lucky for me my wife reminded me early on that we were going to Griff’s new motorbike in the morning so we called it quits long before hangover land was entered.

Damn I like your guitar!

My biggest takeaway from the fayre was not the village atmosphere nor the camaraderie of men forced to spend a perfectly good day wandering around aimlessly while their kids played exciting games of “throw the ring on the bull” or “throw the loo roll into the toilet”.

It was quite simply that Griffin’s love of guitars will make him a rock star one day.

And of course that will make me rich. I will never have to work.

Ok, obviously I am one of those fathers who pins all his missed dreams on his kid. I gotta say though, he makes it so damned easy. What with his cute charm, his innocence and his “hey Mister who is playing on that guitar it is nice but my one at home is also nice and its bigger than yours”

Pietro and Griff stood for ages watching the musicians ply their trade, crooning out a blend of old and new rock covers. I drank cider and watched them…

Add to that the fact that the next morning he was up at 7am and ready to go.

Go where? you may ask, why, to the store to pick up his new motorbike of course!

Griff guns it like mad! Click to view movie

We went and fetched it at 10am, the longest three hours in this 5 year olds life… man did they drag on for him. A true “are we there yet?” morning…

His first session went off smoothly – forward forward DRIVE!!!! Until he hit some bumps while riding towards Emma – and the drop off above the cars – and lost control… Sheesh, I have never seen Emma move so fast. She launched herself in front of the bike and grabbed boy and bike and pulled them to ground. Good one love, that could have been a world of hurt (and cost).

He got straight back on and that was the last control loss for the day.

Two more sessions later on in the day saw him wipe out another two times, proper bailing over the handlebars and each time as I run up to him frantic that he is maybe burning his leg on the exhaust pipe or his ankle which is under the bike has been broken or or or PANIC… he looks up each time and says – “Sorry Barry – will you help me pick it up again please”

I love this boy.

Fear? What is this fear thing of which you speak?

Watching the big grey clouds hovering all over the bone dry English countryside heading home. I know its been raining at home for the past couple of days, today too I am sure, but tomorrow is forecasted SUNNY AND DRY for my birthday party.

Getting myself into the mood now, thinking about playlists, listening to Devildriver, Chimera and Fear Factory to get the juices flowing.

Having conversations about zeppelin shaped boobs – I love Facebook sometimes

Ok, these are rockets, not zeppelin’s but come one, Tank Girl rocks totally rocks!

And with this classic noombie apparel she will always have a special place in my overactive imagination!

Thanks Neal for the Geri Haliwell zeppelin boob reference.

I have to admit, looking for pictures of Tank Girl’s rocket boobs online was a brilliant task to accompany the playlist I currently have running… Slayer, Pantera, Machine Head, Chimera, Devildriver and more…

Gotta love this shit!

AMAZING?

Hardly, but super functional for me in that I often find the time to write my blog posts while travelling on the train between London and Swansea, particularly around Newport and Cardiff and the 50 minutes spent in underground/undersea tunnels where connectivity just doesn’t exist.

This nifty app has downloaded my theme, allows me to tag, categorise and insert video and image content really easily with an offline preview that is not 100% perfect, but it is close enough to keep me extremely happy.

Suffice to say, my transition to the UK is now complete. 100%

My furkids and my kid are getting along just fine, no-one has had a tail broken or a claw raked across the face (yet) so things are looking extremely positive for their adjustment to Welsh living.

Ok, who am I trying to kid? They are decimating the local shrew population. I went online to see what effect on other life this would be having and found out that only seriously starving animals will eat shrews because they have a scent gland down either side of their bodies that makes them taste awful to owls and other small rodent predators. That explains why their little mangled bodies have not been eaten. So far they have caught at least 2 a day since Sunday last.

That is 16 shrews (and one mouse)…

The website I found www.mammal.org says that there are only up to 50 shrews living in a hectare. So at this rate in 2 weeks there will be none in this hectare of land… I am actually quite grateful that they a) don’t eat them and leave me the squibbly bits as a present in my shoes (yes that has happened before) and b) that the shrews are so prolific and short lived that they have not much in the way of natural predators.

Alright, that’s all about shrews, what about the chicken in the title of this post?

Last week I noted on Facebook that Slap (my Alpha-male) had been stalking a chicken, clearly bewildered, excited and afraid.

This weekend saw alot more activity than just poor Slap’s confusion at seeing uncooked KFC for the first time in his life.

On Friday evening all six of my furkids were out and about in the garden as Emm, Maggie and I sat around having a chat in the evening sunlight.

One of our neighbours chickens had also decided to venture into the relatively abundant food supply area of our compost heap.

Well, Ted, Molly, Soothica, Jazz and Slap all stalked smartly to a safe distance of SEVERAL meters away, all dead keen to eat the chicken, all clearly shit scared to launch an all out assault. Let’s face it, a chicken is a large bird, much too large for a cat to kill unless it was prepared to risk serious injury.

Alrighty, they did get more interested and get alot closer, but no serious takers in terms of actually living the dream, realizing the walking KFC family feast dream…

Emma and I laughed, sheesh, the deep throaty guffaws attributed to those about to seize power using only a matchstick and a small keg of explody stuff…

A while ago, Whiska’s did a commercial about a cat sleep-hunting buffalo, Emm and I were chuckling about a great idea for Nando’s in line with this.

Picture it, cats stalking the chicken, sneaking up, getting close and thinking “hey, thats not Nando’s bollocks to this, and walking off…” Or even just what we see – cats stalking a chicken – what they see -  a Nando’s spatchcock in the garden walking around…

Oh well

Bloody nice having these little critters around again, has made my home complete, now if only I could import all of my friends…

Last night I fought against poor connectivity on the train back from London, trying desperately to get a text feed from FIFA to let me know how my home nations football team were faring against Uruguay.

Because of the poor connectivity I only gound out about the first goal against at half time… GRRRRR

And BIG thanks to Clarkie for sending me updates via BB messenger.., they kept me in the loop. Especially about Anne Frank.

Anyways, made it to Swansea and ran straight from the station into “The Grand” (no fellow Jo’burgers, this is not a house of ill repute, it is a reputable establishment) where Emma was waiting for me with a nice cold pint of Brain’s Smooth, wet with condensations… mmmmm

I made it in time to have a sip of beer and settle in to see Khune’s sad tackle on that Uruguaian fellow.. Red card Penalty Goal

A stirling attempt by the keeper - terrible first thing to have to do in your first World Cup match...

As a couch based referree, I sadly agree on the foul, the penalty was definitely earned, but a red card I thought was too harsh, it was not a foul that prevented a goal, it was not a foul that was any worse than any of the others, at least he was going for the ball…

As sick as the second goal made me, I was even more sickened by the fact that the camera’s kept on panning to the crowd where *big tongue in cheek moment* loyal South African fans were leaving in their droves 5 minutes before full time. Where is your support? Fuckers. I was not and am still not impressed.

A supporter is someone who supports.

When do you need the most support?

When you are at your lowest.

Not every team makes it to first place, just being in “the finals” is already a great honour and achievement.

Bafana Bafana, I still support you, lets hope and pray that the callous show of “solidarity” from our fans does not rob you of your strength and will to win in your coming match.

Anyways, they ended up missing a full further 10 minutes and another goal

*GROAN*

At least Emma was holding my hand…

So I finished my beer and we came home.

Slap, Ted, Molly, Soothica, Jazz and Pashkadia will be touching down in Landimore circa 11:30am tomorrow.

Scenes like this will become commonplace once more…

Dinner? you talking to me?

I cannot wait!

Emma and I have bought them comfy beds that hook onto the radiators so that they have beautiful warm beds to sleep on, jumbo size kitty litter boxes, toys, food, bowls and an inordinate amoutn of stuff (like catnip chocolates) to help them forget their rough treatment over the last 6 months.

It will also be a sad time for me in that the fact that poor little Oscar did not survive the quarantine will finally settle in.

Oh Oscar… *sniff*

Well, the birds and rats and mice in the village have NO idea what is coming, this will be like scenes from a Quentin Tarantino movie as they set about the countryside laying waste to every tiny little animal in their path…

I can see it now… “From Dusk till Dawn – they play with you before they eat you”

Roll on tomorrow!

A brilliant Friday afternoon saw me feeling uber proud to be a South African, then totally destroyed that we drew 1-1 with Mexico in the opening match.

Dancing in the disco bumper to bumper...

That was followed by a fantastic night out at Face/Off, a moving party that is usally housed at Sin City in Swansea, though this Friday it was hosted at “The Club”
A good number of giggles, plenty to drink and some awesome music but it is still no Red Room…

The problem that Emma and I face is that our taste in music is so vastly different that we spent half of the night walking from the “Indie” dancefloor to the “Metal” dancefloor in the hopes that we would catch a song we both wanted to listen too… As can be expected the Indie dancefloor played shite all night and we found our salvation on the Metal floor.

This was not at all because they opened the dancefloor with Nightwish’s I wish I had an Angel but becasue they also played much more laid back stuff than only metal, including Marilyn Manson, RHCP and more.

Was an awesome evening and we left purely because Emma wore heels… Still with sore feet and the promise of a tender head, we got home at a respectable 2am.

The following morning I woke up and let Emma sleep in, went and played with Griff till Emma surfaced at 9am, a record sleep-in since I have been here!

Then off for shopping AND AND AND…

We took the Griff to see the motorbike we want to buy for him, just to check if he is physically big enough to ride it.

He is.

Thank Jeebers…

I hate to think what would have happened if he was still too small and we had walked away with me saying “Sorry Griff but you can’t have this awesome thing I just showed you. You can just wait till next year sometime…”

Chaos, panic, disorder. My work here is done… Well, done partially. We are buying the bike, but now need all the bloody apparel. The bike will arrive in the next two weeks or so, with his apparel arriving at a similar time. Then its off to get MESSY!

So where do you ride motor bikes around here? I dunno?
I have been asking around, but there seems to be very little in the way of space you won’t get arrested on…
So Emma and I went down to Llanrhidian Marsh yesterday for a walk and a look around…

Mud? HELL YEAH!

It has only taken me 9 months to get down into the estuary to have a look. It is really beautiful there. Long endless plains of green green grass which as you walk along gets broken into little islands of green as you see the narrow little rivers of sticky mud and water.

On more than one occaision wellies were stuck tight in the mud, Griff was COVERED in it, I fell forwards into it (after saving Griff AND Emma!!!). Luckily I stopped myself from landing face first by punching into the mud… Needless to say my hands feel very smooth today

Sadly though, while this was a great day filled with fun, finding crabs and battling the clawing sucking mud, it is not a good place to ride off road bikes. Something sinister about quick-mud that can suck you under and leave nary a trace…

We did spot someone on a pit bike racing around, but he stayed on the road alongside the marsh. I had a chat with him and he says that the local police won’t bother me as long as my noise levels don’t bother the locals… We will see…

MUCH more about that story when we have the bike in Griffin’s hands.

Sadly Ferrari were not able to close my weekend off with a fantastic one two, but hey, third is not the end of the world, hopefully they are able to close the gap a little in the coming races.