When You're a Boy

The aftermath has landed. I'm alone after dropping the two delightful walking bags of female hormones back to their mother.
Today started, as so many of them do, with good intentions. A trip to the Science Museum was on the cards and we had found an big area of commonality; 11 and 13 year old girls and their 41 year old Dads are both keen on the thought of an interactive spying exhibition, in which you're trained in spycraft before being set off to complete your mission. To be fair I was slightly more keen on the idea than them but that's hair splitting of the highest order.

But us boys don't take 9 hours to get ready do we?

A quick crap, some toothbrushing and a shower, a bit of deodorant, a splash of the cologne stuff if you're a new man, which of course I am, just old, some clothes on and we're ready to go. And, it may be too much detail but the morning was a crapless one for me, so I was even quicker.

Then I waited. What on Earth do you girls do in the bathroom. I got the vague idea there was make up, hair, more make up and more hair and then the process, rather like a Guns and Roses song, was repeated ad infinitum. By ad infinitum I mean just enough time for me to suggest that we didn't have the time to go to the science museum. That was rescheduled and we're now heading there in a couple of weeks time. Off we went to see a film instead.

In line with one of my latest fads, that of searching in everything that happens to me for a lesson, I've decided that the lesson in this episode is that I must make them get ready earlier, instead of relying on their good judgement and common sense to be prepared at the alloted departure time.

We saw a film, came back and lounged around, in a rather enjoyable fatherly and daughterly way. Then I dropped them back and am now sitting here surveying the scene. At one point I caught myself saying:

"No daughter of mine's going out with breasts like that"

I really did, I stopped and we laughed but it's not a phrase I ever thought I'd be saying, for so many reasons.

I've got a beef and potato curry simmering away on the cooker, I'm due to meet a couple of good friends for a few beers in an hour or so and life feels, smell and is damn good.

But there's a big tidy up looming, clearing up girls' mess and getting back to a semblance of tidiness.

And it occurs to me that, when I was 11 or 13, I was just a boy. Life was easy. I'd stare at girls, without the faintest clue about what might happen next if one showed any interest in me. I'd listen to music and walk around bumping into furniture. Thirty odd years later my life is pretty much the same.

Girls at that age have a whole plethora of other things to contend with.