I’m just a boy who can’t say no.

My kids are unwell. Scoop has an ear infection and Alex has a throat infection. Nothing uncommon about that during this wintery weather, and their antibiotics should sort them out sharpish. And while Scoop has been a little bit snotty for a while, Alex’s throat – and the associated symptoms – came on quite suddenly yesterday evening, prompting this conversation:

“Dad, I have a headache.”

“Oh dear. Whereabouts is it hurting in your head?”

“All over. And it’s making it so I can’t say “no”.”

“Pardon? It’s what?”

“It’s making it so I can’t say “no”.”

“Oh. I see. And has this ever happened before?”

“No.”

The “patient history” question. It’s a miracle cure. I should market it.

Note: Together with his sudden onset of sore throat, fever and headache, I did (seriously) consider that by saying he “couldn’t say no”, Alex meant that he couldn’t shake his head because his neck was stiff and did all the relevant checks for meningitis.
Thanks for asking.

Bit shaky

It’s been distinctly wintery in Cape Town this weekend.

I’m a bit shaky, since a quick trip down to Agulhas proved no escape and upon our return, I somehow, somehow found myself at the Good Food and Wine Show at the CTICC.
This probably doesn’t sound too bad to most people, but we were really there just to see Katy Ashworth from CBeebies.
Well, the kids were, anyway.

Considering the lack of patience generally shown by young children, ours stood very patiently through an awful lot of queuing: to get in, to get into the kids section, to get in to the CBeebies show, to get back into the kids section etc etc etc.
All in all, it was horrendously oversubscribed and unbelievably overcrowded – and the kids loved it.
For these parents, while gaining much pleasure from our kids excitement, it was perhaps less enjoyable. The highlight for me was noting that Heston Blumenthal is a bit of a shortarse, the lowlight was some guy trying to sell us flour by claiming that he had been cured of Multiple Sclerosis by eating wholemeal bread for three years in Australia. Utterly disgraceful.

It was another lesson that having kids makes you view things in a whole different way. If it wasn’t for them, we probably would have ended up drinking wine, whiskey and several litres of Klipdrift Gold, which obviously would have been terrible.

Wait. What?

Oh, and: The Insurance Guy finished the Comrades in 9:48:59 – an unbelievable achievement.

Flying high

It’s been another manic weekend here at Chez 6000.
The last of my regulation energy expired on Wynberg School field a few hours back and I’m definitely well through my reserve tanks now.

My boy (though now asleep) enjoyed his weekend to the fullest, and so this quota photo on him hanging in mid-air during a Southern Cape dune jumping session seemed the most appropriate I could find at rather short notice:

This last dregs of my ATP will be expended on replying to comments from loonies on this post.
Entertaining stuff and well worth a read.

Five

My little boy is not so little any more.
Today is his fifth birthday and that long, dark, chilly day at Cape Town Medi-Clinic seems a long long way back.

We’re very lucky to have such a great son and his sister is very lucky to have such a loving big brother. I guess that basically, what I’m saying here is that we’ve decided to keep him a bit longer.

Happy Birthday, Alex.

Pirate Party

This isn’t some late entry for the upcoming municipal elections (although… no), this was the immediate and unequivocal choice of my son when asked what sort of party he wanted for his fifth birthday.

Personally, I couldn’t really see the attraction, but then I wasn’t looking at it through innocent 4.96 year old eyes.

No, what went through my mind was 20 kids taking one of two sides: Some playing poorly organised, desperate Somali gunmen, sweating over whether they’re going to get several million dollars or be shot dead by US Navy Seals while the others pretend to be Malaysian sailors, working under a Panamanian flag of convenience and terrified as to whether they’ll ever get to see their families again. All with cupcakes and the occasional green Fizzer.

Of course, there is a far more romanticised, swashbuckling image of piracy as well. Captain Hook, Captain Blackbeard and (thanks to Charlie and Lola) Captain Squidbones, all searching for buried treasure, parrots on shoulder, cutlasses in hand and eye-patches on… well… eye. And (thankfully, I guess) that’s the image that we’ll be going for.

It all happens this afternoon – had to think about that since this post has been pre-written – so expect photos at some point if things go well, no comment if things are just “ok” and no more blogging ever if it all goes a bit Fukushima.

Kind regards,

6k. (aka R. Jimlad)