Ozymandias

There is an old tree in the garden of our summer stuga. It's dripping with yellow-green apples, crisp, sweet and watery, and the grass around it is studded with slightly gnawed fruit. In the mornings, long black slugs eat them, as well as shy deer that curl up under the tree while they're munching. In the warmth of the afternoon, it's ants, crawling around in the ragged brown caves they chomp out of the sides. At all times of day, C eats as much as she can carry, stomping round the garden happily with a bitten apple in each hand. Or she plays football with them. Or throws them around, yelling "Bump!" when they land and bruise.

There is a hammock between this tree and the next, which we break in full view of the owner as she's handing us the keys. Luckily, I've brought my own. And there's a spare in one of the garden sheds. Somehow, they both end up strung up together, not that we use them all that much. But in the evening, as the strings of solar powered chinese lanterns in the boughs light up, they look like the very epitome of a summer holiday.

Which is what we have, the four of us and my parents. There are buckets of crabs to reel in from the sea, clattering brown shells angrily against the red plastic until they get another faceful of leftover barbecue chicken. There are spectacular beaches, still warm after the full summer season, but now nearly empty, where we can sit under the pines or prod beached jellyfish or eat sandy sandwiches. Jetties must be jumped off, crashing into a cool but welcome sea and swimming back through clinging weed and pebbly surf.

We do boat trips to the outer islands, bare brown rock and purple heather, and visit the tiny wooden villages there, all blazingly white in the last summer sun. There are prawns and crayfish and pickled herring, and salt and beer and rhubarb and ginger gin. Late night card games, or playing chess with Dad, or butchering my back by swinging F round in the tame waves of the archipelago, or wandering round the docks of Stenungsund or Henån.

Nice, basically, is what I'm saying. Best holiday in years.

-

We're also looking for property, V and I. Some dream fixer-upper cottage near a lake or the sea somewhere, so we do some driving about and looking in the evenings. Most of it is out of our budget, unsurprising on Orust, which is basically an island of what appear to be retired millionaires. The rest are inland farming plots or backwoods hermit shacks.

The most intense of these is something out of a Stephen King book, at the very top of a winding woodland trail before the deep pines get really serious and Gruffalo-ish. Like, a Stephen King Gruffalo, I hasten to add, lest parenthood totally pabulate my frame of reference. Tim Curry in a bad mask, basically.

We arrive just before the estate agent in the late evening, with the sun vanishing behind the tall trees and casting long shadows over a wide strip of meadow. Brambles curl over the edges, and some ramshackle fences hold them back where they get too near the main cabin (dark seventies pine, lowering ceilings, primitive kitchen, sinister cellar) and it's hangers-on (the rotting one with the bathroom in it and the new, floorless one that the previous owner died before completing). The ugliest garden gnome I have ever seen leers from the grass. The fence has an elderly carpet hanging in the gateway in lieu of an actual gate. Everything smells of paint, mildew, petrol and old clothes, like some kind of combination charity shop and garage.

Someone old died alone here, it's being sold to settle his debts. I don't doubt it's a steal for someone (it sells for about 20% off the asking price the following morning, according to the forlorn agent), but not us. We have quite enough shades and haunts of our own without his hanging over the property like woodsmoke.

-

My dreams of going back to university are temporarily dust again - despite a place on an audio description course, I can't do the first week of study due to rehearsal schedules. Refreshing Offline with GEST for the Autumn season, and learning a political performance art piece for an Israeli group as part of a local art festival, which makes for a nice break from voicing Volvo web training sessions.

Otherwise, I have to be a My Little Pony.

Over the years, F and C have cast me as Elsa from Frozen, Tinkerbell, Minnie Mouse, Owlette from PJ Masks, the puppeteer for a thousand and one pink, wide-eyed soft toys and a sort of climbing-frame-cum-bouncy-castle. From drama school, I remember the importance of pushing the boundaries of your casting, stretching yourself in the art of transformation. Sometimes, though, you can go too far.

Fluttershy is my own personal bridge at Arnheim, the point at which I looked at my works and despaired. Little beside remains of my pride as it is after the battering of fatherhood. Roleplaying a pastel pegasus who teaches birds choral singing pushed me over the edge. I should rather remain a pair of shattered ankles in the sand than immerse myself further in that role.

Getting Away From It All

It's been a while since we went to a wedding.

Going with your children is a new experience for me. Can't say I was prepared for it. Previous weddings, solo or with partner, compare as a training experience in the same way that being a member of the Cub Scouts prepares you for going over the top at the Somme.

It was lovely being in Scotland. Glasgow, specifically, a city with the same architecture as Edinburgh but a better colour scheme, toffee and sand shades instead of grey and black. Lovely staying with Aunty M in her huge house, along with the rest of my family. And great to go to my cousin R's wedding. Even nicer if I'd had a chance to socialise with any of them.

About ten minutes into the service, when the nicely dressed friends of the bride behind us were having hysterics, I realised that the entire day was going to be like this. C had both hands on my face and was using my sideburns to twist my head off, shouting "tickly beard!" as she did it. It probably made a nice counterpoint to whatever was going on round the altar at the time, I couldn't say. Some form of ceremony, I felt sure.

Several frazzled hours later, out the back of the function hall, I wrestled C back towards the champagne. There was an expansive park outside, complete with playpark, and although she'd just shat her nappy, she wasn't keen on heading back into the heat and noise of the reception. Nor was I, it had rained outside a while ago, and the air inside was pretty jungly. I didn't know where the pram with the changing bag was, so I asked V, who had been chasing F away from the stainable parts of many expensive frocks.

"Where is the nappy bag?" I asked, at the same time as she asked "Where's C's hairclip?" We both sounded as irritable and fraught as each other, even though I was clearly asking a far more urgent question. Missing tartan clips, even if homemade and nice looking, do not trump stinking arsecloths in my overall flow diagram of parenting proceedures.

As F and I retraced my steps through the park shortly afterwards, combing the sodden grass for the missing adornment, I couldn't quite work out if I'd drawn the short straw or not. V took C to deal with whatever vileness was within her drawers, I was squelching through the dog poop and long grass whilst trying to obey F's requests to sound more like Jay Baruchel (she's into How to Train Your Dragon at the moment, he's the actor who does Hiccup).

It all worked out in the end. F and C danced triumphantly on the main stage of the dining hall throughout dinner. Some of which we even ate! I got to talk to members of my family, mostly my mum after she'd found the hairclip. C didn't get to taste champagne, try though she might. F didn't fall off the stage. Then we all played on the grassy banks outside in the cool evening air. Or C and her cousin H did, anyway, I got to play crashmat as they slammed into me over and over again, careening down the slope into my arms.

F's abiding memory is the ice cream cone she got in lieu of pudding (we missed service as C refused to come off the lawn). Mine is getting into our early taxi home and getting straight back out because C had soiled herself and her nice white* dress, and we didn't want to pay extra to dry clean the taxi. V's is probably changing her on the bank immediately afterwards whilst being told off for not taking part in the ongoing family photos nearby. Chatting to the taxi driver on the way home was the longest conversation with an adult I'd had all day.

Not sure what C's is, she's very vocal these days but rather hard to follow still. A big happy blur, I expect, rather like the rest of us, only possibly with rather more pooping herself.

*also green and red in scattered stripes, smears and patches. Why would you give a toddler in a posh frock ketchup, then let them run about on a grassy slope? What kind of parent are you?

Here Comes Summer

Life goes on.

Pokemon is gradually being abandoned for Dragons: Race to the Edge. Even poor Bunbun is being affected by F's latest fad, getting left behind in favour of her sister's giant plushy Toothless. C is delighted - she has remained loyal to the PJ Masks, and now that F is off trained her dragon most of the time, C can play with Owlette, Gecko and Catboy much more than before. Owlette has already lost her cape.

"Broken, can't fly," C tells me in a matter of fact way about twice a day. "Daddy fixit." There's only so much superglue can do, the damn thing's already more glue than cloak.

She's two tomorrow, C is. It's unreal, the time just floats off. One minute, she's keeping us up all night screaming, the next, she's, well, she still does that, actually. But she's louder. And more creative. She got herself deliberately stuck on the windowsill behind her bed after lights out the other night. "Daddy! Stuck!" although she wasn't, she was curled up in a ball behind the curtain and sniggering over her own cunning.

F is somehow immune to C's nightly shenanigans. She rolls over and goes back to sleep as C shrieks and thrashes, or turns the lights on at two in the morning. C will happily crawl into our bed, beat round the ears and backs and cry until she's sick if we try to stop her. She doesn't dare try any of that on F. There are possibly methods at work of which I know nothing there. Somehow, I don't dare ask for tips.

C marched herself to playgroup this morning (F scootered), where she proudly took off her hat, shoes and dummy, handed them to me and said "put away!" And then happily went off to play with no fuss. She's just had Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, the hilariously named Coxsackie Virus that looks a bit like chicken pox, so her birthday photos are going to be a little blotchy. She's been ill with something every fortnight, quite religiously. She also proselytises enthusiastically.

We've had everything she's had, every cold, stomach bug and fever. Summer holidays are coming up. I'm knackered, V's knackered and the break is long-awaited. If we keep her out of that den of plagues she calls Dagis for a bit, we might get some strength back.

Yeah, I just read that back to myself. A summer holiday with both girls? If we're still awake or alive by August, I'll count it a win.

Appetite for Destruction

"C, do you know where Mummy's headphone earbuds are?"

C has a good think about this, a proper serious concentrated moment of thought, and then she looks excited. Still concentrating hard, she strings together her first entire sentence.

"C eat up them!" she tells us, very proudly.

They aren't anywhere else in the house. So until further notice, I guess they're in our daughter's bowel.

Could have been worse. When I shared this story with my mum over Whatsapp, she remembered when I was little and was suspected of having eaten the pin from a Remembrance Day poppy. Apparently, the hospital gave me cotton wool sandwiches to eat, hoping that the wool would wrap protectively round the pin and save my young intestines. And then if that doesn't work, you swallow a spider to spin some silk, then a bird to catch the spider before it gets out of control, then a litre of morphine so at least you die painlessly.

Hooray, what a splendid way to spend Valborg and May Day - rooting through well-filled nappies to make sure they haven't become a permanent fixture. Happy holidays, everyone.

North of the Wall 2/2

We left Arboga during another hail shower, clattering away as massive empty goods trains roared through the station. "Captain Crunch!" exclaimed my colleague B, an expression of surprise she's never employed before or since. This is what touring does to your brain, mangles it. Only earlier, over breakfast, I'd deployed the word 'bush' as a sound effect for something appearing out of nowhere.

Sala promised to be bigger and more cosmopolitan than Arboga on the map. A shopping centre! Arts museums! A nearby silver mine that does tours! A positive haven of urban culture!

Maps lie. A lady at the art museum was delighted to learn we were actors, and offered us free seats at the rabbit skinning activity in the craft rooms that morning. The shopping centre had about six shops in it, not including the Sibylla restaurant. As we waited for the bus to the silver mine, a helpful local girl told us the history of the bus stop over the last five years, how the bus used to stop at a layby in the park behind us. "I used to do acting," she said, "but now I have to look after the hens on the farm." Wise choice.

More rain, more hail. The silver mine was freezing cold, although quite interesting. Twenty miles of tunnels chipped out of the rock by hand over hundreds of years, most of those pre-dynamite. Stopped me feeling sorry for myself, at any rate. Poor me, having to stay in a hotel and eat burgers and gulasch at the local hipster restaurants. Not like those lucky miners two hundred years ago, climbing into the dark, clutching burning torches in their teeth so they had two hands for the ladder, before spending twelve hours a day chipping at a burnt rock face with a rusty spike. Those were the days.

Even on the way home, when our train got cancelled and we got diverted via bus back to Västerås so we could wait three hours for a new one, it wasn't exactly hard labour. Free food courtesy of SJ didn't stop me moaning bitterly as I sipped my banana split frapino and listened to Tori Amos on free wifi all the way home. Well, the grass is always greener.

0130, it was back to the real business, changing C's nappy after a shrieking nightmare and being affectionately punched in the ear for half an hour as she settled back to sleep. Oddly, it felt like relaxing, breathing out after a long week. I'm already hungry for my next away fixture, flying off to exotic Sussex for a day-long voice job. No hotels there, mind, just lots of flights and connections. Hail too, I expect. Bring it on.

North of the Wall 1/2

I was away this week, travelling up to the Northeast of Sweden with GEST and Offline, the show we devised. A proper tour of the provinces, playing in a pair of small towns around the Västerås region. Hence the nerdy Game of Thrones reference - yes, I've been touring Westeross. Geek pride.

Arboga is even a medieval town (actually medieaval, according to the tourist guide. The extra vowel makes it extra authentic). The bridge in the middle of town has a huge bronze telescope fixed on the brutally jagged rock in the river nearby, on which merchants wrecked their ship and were obliged to found a town in order to survive. They did a good job of it, at least. Six hundred or so years later, it's all still there. Narrow streets full of little crooked houses, crumbling brickwork and imposing wooden doors, a church with a witch's hat steeple and a strange surfeit of podiatry shops.

We were performing in a downstairs room at the library, a nice concrete 70s building full of distressed wood and violent orange and brown fixtures. Our show is a short detective thriller about a missing boy (we play police), and the room we were in felt like a 70s police station briefing room. It just lacked a greasy haze of cigarette smoke and masculine corruption.

The town felt empty. Not that Gothenburg is massive or anything, it's about the size of Coventry I think, but Arboga's streets seemed perpetually deserted and eerily quiet. The massive Konditories on the main square stretched on through two or three buildings each, one like a Georgian mansion, the other like a 1940s tea room in the Lake District. Possibly the entire Lake District, it really was massive. Locals stared at us surreptitiously, presumably wondering if we were about to order the finest wines known to humanity in plummy tones. Miss Blennerhasset would have been alarmed.

Strange being away on tour again, living out of a suitcase in the latest in a long series of adequate hotels. My colleague B had no running water in hers. I had a bed as soft as a damp victoria sponge, from which I watched the sun rise after a sleepless night. I sing the night-night songs to the girls over Skype, I watch Netflix over patchy wifi, I eat too much breakfast at the buffet to compensate for the lack of sleep. I forget to pack the shampoo I bought to replace the shampoo I should have taken with me from home. Touring is tiring. It feels like it ought to be fun, a working holiday almost, and instead there is the conflict between laziness and protestant work guilt, that although I should be pleased to be doing my job, I'd perhaps rather be at home with comfortable pillows and less cash.

Lots of picturesque woods around Arboga. I was looking forward to walking through them in our afternoon off. It hailed heavily, enough to hurt even under the cover of the pines, and I retreated to the featureless safety of the hotel.

Three more days until home.

Gotta Catch Them All

C has nice healthy bowels at the moment. Good and regular. Reliable sign of good health, that. You'd always ask after it when taking patient histories. Official WHO guidelines state that nobody who can poop normally can be worse than 50% ill overall,

She's pretty regular generally, in fact. At four o' clock every morning for the last week or so, she's padded relentlessly through to our bedroom and nested on the pillows by my head. Which is where she then takes her nice regular shit, grunting softly into my ear before twisting round, thrusting her stinking nappy in my face and proudly saying "Daddy! Daddy! Poop!"

Official WHO guidelines state that parents who have to clean up poop in the middle of their normal sleep patterns cannot be more than 50% well overall.

-

Pokemon is the flavour of the month with us right now. Mormor started this by letting F play Pokemon Go on her phone. I made it worse by finding Pokemon the Series: XY on Netflix. The hardback encyclopedia was probably not a good idea either.

It's not all bad, I tell myself as F and C squabble over the rights to V's phone, or as V comes back thirty minutes late from work because she found a new Pokemon up on top of Skansen Kronan at 2230 in the rain.

F colours in Pokemon, plays at being Pokemon, trains her soft toys in gym battles (Bunbun, who is an electric and water Rabbit-type Pokemon, I'm told, has just learnt Quick Attack) and is already ordering a Pokeball-shaped cake for her 5th birthday. I know more about the evolutionary trees and vulnerabilities of various regional specimens (specimon?) than can be entirely useful. Useful other than being my daughter's living Pokedex, I mean.

C is similarly intrigued. She can name a good twenty or thirty of the little monsters, from her favourite Dedenne to more obscure things like Starmie or Dugtrio. V laughs at me for knowing what these mean, although she's the one doing all their Pokemon Go legwork. You won't catch me trekking up hills in the dark for an Onyx. I'm a nerd and that's physical exercise, the traditional enemy of my people.

It feels like they're filling their brains up with a lot of confusing nonsense, sometimes. Dunno which parent they get that from. Yes, I can still remember the stats line for a 2nd Ed 40K Lascannon unaided, (Short range 20", Long 60", S9, -5 to armour saves, d6 damage), but that's neither here nor there. Perhaps this mental kibble could be better replaced by, I don't know, drilling economics or a working knowledge of Mandarin into them.

But then Pokemon the Series: XY is actually pretty well written, with its cheerful message of teamwork, caring for your friends and not giving up even when you lose. And F is reading her encyclopedia most days. "That says evolution," she told me accurately, looking through one of my acting lesson handouts the other day. Darwin would be proud, right before he used his Darwinite to become Mega-Darwin X.

Seeing F walk to dagis, hypnotised by mummy's phone screen to the extent that she occasionally walks into things is rather less encouraging. As is C's furious scream when you take the iPad away from her after a thirty minute stint. But then they go and dance together, or play dens on the sofa, or have an equally fierce tantrum over something entirely non-computer-game related, and I try to calm down and remind myself that my failings (computer game addiction, specifically) are not theirs. Not yet, anyway, and at least I know what to watch for.

-

It's been almost two years since I changed jobs or re-educated myself in any way. Lazy! Time to get a new batch of applications sorted out.

Nocturnes

It's the middle of the night. In accordance with well-established tradition, our bed is full of restless children and bewildered, grumpy adults.

I am roused from what passes these days for sleep by a round of solid and insistent punches on my shoulder. As all the questions I'd initially like to ask have the word 'fuck' in them, it takes me a moment to marshal my thoughts.

"What the, what are you doing, F?"

"Hitting you. You were snoring." I probably look outraged enough that she feels a need to further justify this. "That's what mummy does."

Good to know that she spends so much time observing our midnight behaviour.

-

It's the middle of the night. In accordance with well-established tradition, C has decided she needs breakfast at 0415.

"Yoghurt," she tells me, bouncing up and down on my midriff. "Yoghurt, yoghurt yoghurt, yoghurt yoghurt yoghurt. Yoghurt!"

"It's not oof breakfast time oof yet oof," I say.

"Please," she says confidently, not to be polite but because she believes this to be how you close the deal.

"No, back to bed," I say, and start the ten minute process of hauling myself upright to carry her back to her room.

And then we do a little dance for forty minutes, where I put her into bed, tuck her up, say "night night" firmly and leave as she sulks. And then she gets up, opens her door and waits silently for me to come and repeat the process.

Sometimes she takes out her nap and demands one of a different colour, as though the blue one is all used up and only the pink one will now do. Sometimes she insists on grabbing and kneading my ear for five minutes or so. Sometimes she just rolls over and feigns sleep, although she's up again almost as soon as my head hits the pillow again.

Always, she knows exactly when I'm on the verge of slumber and times her entrances with consummate skill. There is never sleep, never enough, and I am a dazed and shambolic wreck during the days.

-

It's the middle of the night. No, it's not, it's five o' clock on a weekend, it just feels like the middle of the night. I've made egg fried rice and dumplings for dinner.

"This tastes like very old roast chicken that's gone mouldy," F says, grimacing over a forkful of rice. "And this!" she says, poking a dumpling. "This is like even older milk that's also gone mouldy."

"Digustin," agrees C, sticking her tongue out.

They aren't wrong, in fairness. I mean, the rice is okay, the standard of acceptable takeaway at best, but not exactly haute cuisine. The dumplings aren't nice, some spinach and ricotta pre-made bland that's almost totally tasteless. Not that this justifies my children Gordon Ramsaying me over dinner, of course.

"Don't be so rude, you two. You know the rules, I'm sorry it's not the nicest food but even if it's not your favourite, you still need to eat it up."

"Tack för maten," C says immediately, gets down and goes off to play. I gamely try to put her back in her chair a couple of times, but the writing is on the wall. So is some of the food.

V gets home, which is a moment of great joy to both girls as it gives them someone else to interact with instead of a rather sulky daddy. V is also not particularly moved by the food, although she at least pays it lip service, but I'm soon left alone with the congealing leftovers.

God! I long for time off, for a week when neither of the girls have February fevers, for a night of uninterrupted sleep. I can't spell any more when I write, I have to look everything up. Even on days when I'm not working and everyone else is out, I have no energy, no motivation, no willpower to get things done. I shamble round the house like a teenager, poking at projects and pretending to tidy up before falling asleep uncomfortably on the sofa. The news is full of Brexit, Trump and invented Swedish crime waves, my mind is full of frustration and incompetence.

Yet I can still read to the girls, or spend half hours pretending to be Pikachu with F, or play catch with C, or drag them unwilling to playparks and insist on exercise until we all enjoy ourselves despite the midwinter blues. This is normal, this is all as it should be, this too will pass.

Februhaha

Nuts, I missed January.

Well, F has learned to whistle, and does so all the time when she isn't being Pikachu. She is Pikachu most of the time, however, so I'm not quite sure how I have the impression she's whistling non-stop. Maybe it's because it's such a, what's the word, memorable noise? Lodges in the brain, you know, like a candiru fish in a unexpecting urethra.

C still won't sleep through the night. Her current excuse is teething (last week it was a cold, next week it'll be stress linked to world affairs). She's just so angry in the night! Angry that we won't pick her up, angry that she's uncomfortable, angry that we keep trying to soothe her instead of leaving her in peace like she's clearly telling us to.

A long time ago, as a junior doctor, I mastered the monotone delivery required to answer a post-midnight request for new drug charts to be written up, or a new drip authorized, or one of the many non-crucial but still urgent tasks experienced nurses were inexplicably required to ask newly-qualified junior doctors permission to do at 0330.

In fairness, it usually just mean I or one of my colleagues had forgotten to write up a new drug chart during the day, so we only had ourselves to blame. I have flashbacks to those conversations as I pat C on the back and tell her that yes, it is the middle of the night, and yes, it's all okay, and no, she doesn't need the iPad just now and yes, Rara is right there next to her. Tired reassurance unhindered by empathy, that's the thing. You need someone to vomit on too? Okay, get on with it. I won't stop you because I'm exhausted, but jeez, you're going to want to skip the speeches at your wedding.

-

Trump.

Nothing to do with my kids or my life in Sweden. In fact, we're delightfully removed from it all in many ways. Scandinavian ivory makes for good towers. Yet I can't help but be scared and livid at his actions and his behaviour. More so when I hear UK politicians (pillockticians? is that a thing?) sort of not quite defending him because they can't, but trying quite hard to for the sake of Atlantic trade.

You fucking morons. Okay, perhaps he isn't Hitler, perhaps 'monster' is a bit too much to stick. Are we going to wait until he is very clearly a monster before condemning him? Or is more slack, enough to hang us all, really the best way to deal with him?

He's not a Nazi. That was a political movement in German last century. Let's for heaven sake's not call him that, like he did to the intelligence chiefs the other week. He is definitely a fascist, promoting authoritarian nationalism with all its anti-liberal and anti-minority trappings. He said he would build a wall. He said he'd shut America's borders to Muslims. Why is anyone surprised that he's doing it?

His bark and his bite are the same fucking thing, Boris Johnson, he does actually say what he means, something your generation of Tories have utterly forgotten about. If you don't agree or approve with someone's actions, but let them do them unchallenged anyway, why work in politics at all? You clearly don't want to make a difference to anyone.

I'd like to say 'rant over' and forget all this, move back to genial ramblings about children and acting. It's actually more tempting to go and make a placard and try and stop traffic somewhere until something gets done. At least I have a peg to hang my middle-aged fury on, which is nice.