Meanwhile in Stockholm

Two days of voice work on the other side of the country.

It took three months after getting the job to nail down tiny details like when it might happen, how much I might get paid and if travel was included. Fair enough, production schedules can be tricky and budgets aren't always controlled by the people giving you the job. It took them fifteen minutes to send me a Non-Disclosure Agreement after the job offer, mind. Good to know where their priorities lie. 1 = Corporate Liability, 50+ = Pay The Actor Scum.

Making sure all the travel costs were minimal, both for our budgets and theirs after they finally admitted they could pay some expenses, meant travelling at 0400 and sleeping in a hostel. Not done that in a while. I was fairly nervous about it, despite the place having a good reputation online. Lots of things have good reputations online. I probably have a good reputation online. It means nothing.

I was worried I might not be safe sleeping there. I needn't have. I didn't get any sleep.

Yes, there was some vomit in the communal sink where the american teenagers had overindulged. Yes, I forgot the code to my room door when I got up to pee in the night and got let back in by a very angry south american guy. Yes, the Portuguese backpackers who arrived at 0400 needed to have a good old laugh about how much noise they were making. And the one in the bunk opposite me snored violently all night. As the thin sun slithered in through the net curtains that morning, it lit up the flabby naked buttocks his sheet had fallen off, at which point I decided enough was enough and left.

There were also long hours of nothing to do. Stockholm's a good city to visit, but expensive. And the best way to not spend money is to wander about looking at things, although November isn't exactly the cheeriest time to see them. The Riddarholm Church is amazing, but it's also shut at 0830. If you've just spent five hours drinking lots of water to save your voice and lots of coffee to stay energised, then you have to spend lots of money I didn't have to use the pay-to-pee loos. Or the free but stinking ammoniac pissoirs in the street, which look like old fashioned guard duty boxes. Maybe they once were, your guards could stay out longer that way whilst getting their bearskin hats fumigated for free into the bargain.

I got some english money from my lovely aunt M for my birthday, which was luckily still in my wallet. I converted it at the station and spend the Friday night at the cinema. I watched 'Fury', which was a by-the-numbers war film. Apparently, war is hell and makes good men do bad things. Who knew? The interminable climax came after about fifty minutes of SS men getting dismembered graphically by machinegun fire. Heroic Brad Pitt (Spoilers!) dies when a grenade gets him. Whereas all the nazi cannonfodder got burst to smithereens by such explosives, Post-Death Brad looks little the worse for wear, just a little tatty round the edges. As though he's merely been smothered in his sleep by the heavy hand of symbolism.

The job was good, despite all this. Eight hours of highly-appreciated shouting in a booth for a computer game, which I'm still not really at liberty to discuss thanks to the NDA. The high was probably being told to make the line "Yes! Smell my musk of strength" sound 'more like Hitler'. I think that's how Shakespeare imagined it when he wrote it.

The low was still those buttocks winking in the early dawn. Dammit, I can't get them out of my head.

No NO No

Thirty five minutes of sheer tantrum this morning.

Putting on a bib with breakfast has never been a problem before. Suddenly it was. It was a dealbreaker, a total infringement of everything F held dear and good. How dare we? How could we? It was just too much.

V ended up putting F in her room to cool off for a bit. After five mintes, she screamed slowly back into view round the edge of the door, pushing a bag of old clothes in front of her. Look! she seemed to say. Look how angry I am! I'm so angry, I'm pushing this bag of old clothes! YOU MADE ME DO THIS!

She managed to sustain this level of fury for half an hour more before gradually deciding that it had never really happened. She refused to back down from her stance on bibs, or stop crying when reasoned with, but we found common ground in toy cars eventually. Then when she realised she was still hungry, breakfast was achieved with total normalcy, including happy bib use. All friends again now.

She's throwing between one and three of these meltdowns a day, although this was the longest one with the least provocation so far. It's not easy for her, I guess. She can say what she wants and has moods and opinions, and it's frustrating her when we don't go along with these for intelligible reasons.

Same goes for us, though. Why did she take against the bib this morning? No idea. Why can't I help her rebuild the demolished block tower she's just asked me to help make? No idea. Why isn't this apple quite right? No idea. Maybe she's just so infuriated with so many things, these straws are shattering the spine of the next queued camel when it becomes available.

So "yes"becomes "YESH!", "no" becomes "NOOA!", and her eyes screw up and her face goes red and her cheeks puff out like some Shogunate era wind god and we're just going to have to weather the storm until she learns how to explain herself better. Or ask nicely, because that might also work.

Ha. In about ten years, I'm sure this will all seem like a beautiful memory.

Older and Wiser

A jolly morning of housework. I like our kitchen lino, it's got one of those usefully dirt-concealing patterns. The down side to this is that you don't realise how much it needs a clean as quickly as you ought. What, for example, is artistic swirl and what is the micron-thick remains of a raisin.

-

It was my birthday yesterday.

"Do you know what today is?" V asked F, in the appropriate tones of hushed awe my nativity commands.

Blank look, shaken head.

"It's daddy's birthday! It's daddy's birthday today," V said.

F took this on board and nodded slowly and wisely. "Feya ha berday too," she said. And then claimed the present V suggested she give to me as her own. A tantrum was averted by tactical iPad deloyment.

F wanted burgers for dinner on Sunday. "Where are we going to get those from?" I asked her. She pointed to the cupboards.

"Pappa cook," she said. Right.

A month ago, she would say please when asking for things with only a tiny prompt. Now we just get a big cheeky grin and a very emphatic single nod.

"What do you say?"

"Pappa, get more cumcumber, put here."

"You can have more cucumber, but you have to say please!"

"Yes." Nod nod.

"Can you say please, then?"

Nod.

"Well, you can have more cucumber when you've said it then."

Tantrum.

Which isn't to say it's all tantrums. By no means - F is currently about as angelic at going to bed as I can imagine she ever will be. If you tell her it's bedtime in ten minutes time, ten minutes later she takes you to help brush her teeth and then goes to her room of her own accord. Something tells me we've got about twenty minutes before she starts deciding on her own deadlines for this, though.

-

I'm taking my monday evening drama group.

"But how old are you, though, really?" asks E, a bossy thirteen-year-old. This has somehow become the moment's teaching point, my age.

"How old do you think I am?" I ask, a foolish Scorpio to the last.

"Fifty?" suggests A.

"Fifty three?" thinks G.

Oh how I hate you all, you glossy teenage bullies.

I go home and get a doughnut with a candle in it from my lovely wife, and watch an extremely entertaining rubbish film (Hercules - The Legend Begins, a lot better than you'd expect, because the inverse would be impossible).