11 years of winging parenthood and finally g̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ waving a tearful goodbye to our beloved offspring as she hits boarding school.
Think we’ve done about as much damage as we could along the ride…the rest is up to you now champ.
Good luck in therapy and we’re always here to help with bail and poor life choices.
Love you Zara xxx
30 years after Francis Fukuyama prematurely ejaculated the phrase ‘end of history’ to describe a post ideological paradigm where only reason was left standing, we’re officially at the end of fucking days.
If there is a God – he’s a comedian – I’ll give him that. As humanity unravels quantum entanglement and synthesizes edible proteins from recycled C02…… it turns out that Boris Johnson isn’t a cautionary tale about contraception or an early casualty on Love Island – he’s the British Prime Minister.
The US President may sound like a 3 year old swearing he never shat his pants while declaring himself Sex Emperor of the Winning, but at least his incoherent lamppost humping makes some kind of addled sense. Me big man. Lamppost gonna get it. Lamppost loves it. Yay Me. But the Boris approach doesn’t even seem to have that level of ambition. Positive thinking gibber gibber. No, but yes, but nobut Jam. It’s like an Aldi version of Prince Phillip.
But there’s got to be something deeper in play. Both Johnson and Trump claim the future while fetishizing a narcotic past – Make America Great AGAIN. Take BACK Control.
Meanwhile AI, automation, gene editing, the climate crisis…… the irony of our politicians refusing to legislate for the inevitable while shouting the national anthem under a testosterone duvet is something history won’t forget.
Every existential threat is global. Terrorists are a fucking sideshow. If we can’t regulate AI, biotechnology and carbon emissions through multi-lateral consensus – we’re fucked. The banking crisis was John the Baptist for Christ’s sake – playing countries off each other for tax and regulatory breaks made companies more powerful than any one government. All it takes is a single weak link for a virus to replicate. If ever there was a time to build rather than burn alliances…..
And maybe it’s about religion too – if science has made God increasingly implausible, perhaps we’ve got some biological imperative toward faith. It’s not just a right wing phenomenon either – the backflips I’ve seen from people trying to rationalize Corbyn’s incompetence are downright Olympian. The man is drowning against the most dysfunctional Tory government in history, but still it’s everyone else’s fault.
On the day Boris Johnson slithered into Number 10 on a wave of third rate Woosterisms – there’s nothing left but to howl at the moon and hope he doesn’t try to hump it.
So – was having a bit of a verbal joust with my daughter Zara – and what with her making a solid play for ‘student becomes the master’ status – I began flailing outside the box.
As she wheeled out ever more on point impressions of me ‘playing it cool’ after a heavy weekend. I suddenly heard myself swear I’d put her favorite stuffed animal on Tinder if she didn’t wind it in.
‘You wouldn’t’
‘I would’
‘Go on then’
‘I bloody well will’
Her arms fold and her foot begins to tap. An eyebrow has been raised…… Shit… Need to front this out..
Profile created
So with domestic issues back in the mix and honeyed words like ‘you’re unbearable – if you don’t fuck off – I’ll hire a JCB to get you out’ jokingly bandied about, I decided to try my hand at conflict resolution.
Arriving in Brussels – I stopped in for a quiet pint with Donald Tusk to see if we couldn’t iron out some of this backstop nonsense. Suggesting that a statue of Churchill with a squadron of Spitfires flying out of its arse in the middle of the European Parliament might help nudge things along, I found his vision profoundly lacking, so there was nothing for it but up the game.
Kidnapping Jean Claude Juncker, and wrapping him head to toe in a French maid’s outfit, I stuffed him into the back of a Nissan X Trail and delivered him to Boris Johnson’s office, hoping to reawaken his Continental spirit – and to his credit – Boris redrew his red lines all over Jean Claude, until JC’s gag fell out and suddenly it was all ‘managed catastrophe’ instead of ‘Bonjour Cherie’.
Slipping some acid into Jacob Rees Mogg’s port and whisking him through the 19th century section of Madame Tussauds looked like it had real potential – especially when I hid behind Napoleon and said ‘We surrender to ze magnificent British’ in my most Allo Allo accent – but the wheels came off shortly afterwards when Nanny finally tracked his mobile phone and gave me a good thrashing with a hairbrush that once combed the privates of Henry V’s favourite courtesan.
Really struggling by this point – I flew in a team of IT engineers to try and reprogram Theresa May’s soundbite function, but it was apparently more of a hardware than a software issue, so on to Jeremy Corbyn who was found trying to purchase a viable Brexit policy from his local charity shop but had to settle for a new cardigan. He seemed confused bless him – so I accepted the Werther’s Original he offered in the spirit of unity.
Next stop Ireland – where suggestions to just sail the whole place a bit closer to the UK and make the Good Friday agreement an Easter Egg hunt fell on deaf ears. After one final call to Donald Trump pretending to be the Russian Ronald MacDonald – he just kept repeating ‘Iran bad. Saudi Good. No Collusion’ after his latest intelligence puppet show….. at which point, I finally abandoned hope.
Limping home in despair – the final insult is that the wife doesn’t believe a fucking word of any of this and there’s a fucking JCB en route as we speak.
Christ – need to take a long hard look at my skincare regime.
Stepped up to do a nursery school run for two 3 year old honorary nephews this morning due to parental illness / work commitments. Despite warnings of potential chaos and offers to subcontract my subcontract – I was brimming with epically misplaced confidence.
After desperately googling ‘how to fit a car seat’ and breezing one of the lads through a short but dramatic meltdown, we bonded en route through sustained abuse of the car radio which stubbornly refused to belt out anything other than static.
Deeply unimpressed at my inability to play tunes and listen to Google maps at the same time, the dynamic duo were wavering on just how on board they were with this new school run structure and after christening me a succession of poo poo related names, we finally arrived to my undying relief.
‘Right – out you get lads’ I said cheerily.
‘No’
‘Ah’
Enter random pedestrian to witness my abject helplessness.
‘Don’t you want to get out and help Daddy’ pipes in this delightful Samaritan.
‘Oh no – I’m not actually their Dad’ explains I – hoping to justify my total lack of authority.
‘Ahhhh’ says my self appointed new helper… and changing tack, she generously attempted some further assistance..
‘Don’t you want to get out and help Grandpa?’
