I was brought up in the traditional manner, by chain smoking adults who dipped my dummy in Guinness to help me sleep. I’m not sure how much this informed my choice of Father’s Day activity this year – getting really drunk then going to a zoo – but in any case it didn’t happen. Instead, I attended an event at Nid’s nursery on the understanding that I would not be expected to sing, dance (and I include rhythmic clapping in this category) or join in anything whatsoever. My concerns were, however, unfounded. It was a pleasant afternoon with other fathers who I suspect were attending under similar terms, saying ‘Is there a bar in here?’ and ‘Mine’s a Kronenburg if you find it’, and enjoying dad-style chuckles while Nid chewed books and looked on thoughtfully. Incidentally, I have picked Nid up from nursery while drunk on two occasions, and found being in a room full of bright colours and tiny blundering humans hilarious, although I prudently disguised this as simply being very happy to see him. Also, as I dropped him off recently, one of the staff pointed out a quantity of blood in my hair from a head wound sustained by jumping into a bookshelf when England beat Columbia on penalties. With this kind of form, it seems likely that at least one of us will get taken into care quite soon. Anyway. As Sid gnawed his way through This Rabbit, That Rabbit and the Wheels On The Bus I contemplated the correct etiquette for children chewing communal books. It seems unhygienic, but then so does having a child in the first place, so I decided to let it go.
My usual group parenting takes place at ‘Who Let The Dads Out?’ mornings at the local church hall, or afternoons with the Coffee Mums, which I was relieved to discover is not a clumsy East Anglian term for women of mixed racial heritage. ‘Who Let T
he Dads Out?’ consists of bluffing my way through conversations about sugar beet with agricultural workers, whereas as a Coffee Mum I am considered quite exotic for having been to Selfridges. This is not to pander to the usual lazy idea of Norfolk being mono-cultural; it isn’t middle class enough for that. For example, there is a German at ‘Who Let The Dads Out?’, an engineer working on the not inconsiderable problem of heating the many remote farm buildings in this area. He seems a decent sort, even when Germany got sent home from the World Cup for being beastly, but I am keeping an eye on him, just to be on the safe side. Similarly, at nursery, the play leader of Rock Pool group, where Nid is a penguin of some kind, is Mancunian. As a result, he has starting to say ‘Hiya’, her standard greeting. While this is a useful addition to his lexicon, otherwise consisting of ‘Daddy’ (which he calls his mother), ‘dog dog’ (which he calls me), and ‘Ahhhh’ (which he calls the dog), he is saying it in an undeniably Mancunian accent. I discussed this with ‘Anton’, a man from Deptford whose daughter, having lived in Manchester and Leeds for eight years, now sounds like Gracie Fields. We’ve met her before actually, years ago in the last blog when we were market traders, and you may recall that her graduation ceremony took place in the same building against which she was conceived. I’ve had a quiet word with the chief nursery lady, who attended Cheltenham Ladies College for what appears to have been about four hundred years, and we have agreed that she will be sacked in the morning*.
I would leave Nid
with Joe and Becka when at Runton, but considering they already have nineteen children, I’d feel like I was taking the piss. That said, he is an increasingly familiar sight there, stumping around, feeding goats through the petting zoo fences and laughing at Graham’s dogs tearing about the place with our own ever-game hound. Open space and fresh air are bad for children though, so when my current girlfriend is not in evidence, he is usually to be found playing in the wallpaper ‘Anton’ and I have scraped from the inside of the Old Servants’ Quarters while we all listen to the World Cup on the radio. We were pleased with England’s overall performance and that we have players who seem likeable, earnest and committed both to each other and the greater cause. It was difficult to say that about the squad when it had people like Rooney, Terry, Lampard, Jenas and Sturridge in it. That said, although my fondness for the England side is renewed, I am aggrieved that I had to wait twenty eight years to see them in a World Cup semi final, whereas Nid managed to do it in eighteen months. It seems most unfair.
*This is not true. She is a marvellous nurse in a marvellous nursery and, in common with all the other children, staff and parents, Nid is very fond of her.
Photards – this weeks’ studies in film are:
Main – some sheep. I started to count them, but fell asleep.
Top inset – Joe teaching the petting zoo goats how to wash up.
Middle inset – apprehensive Nid stumping around the East Anglian countryside like an Ewok, with my current girlfriend, his mother.
Lower inset – a glade or hamlet or something. Water meadow? I dunno.
A ‘sea fret’ is a persistent fog carried inland by warm air blowing across cold water, whereupon it clings to the earth, turning June into February and ruining early season ice cream van trade for miles around. They are, as Norfolk folk say, ‘holly reasty’ – ie, ‘wholly rancid’ – and, much as it would amuse me to meet someone actually called Holly Reasty, I agree with them. While Runton escaped the worst of the unseasonal murkiness, the ‘rhythm of life’ – the name that people in these parts give what is clearly an carnival of death – was interrupted. The fret-addled combination of hard summer earth and slick wet grass is hazardous to sighthounds, such as the ones belonging to Graham, who can slip and damage tendons while operating at high speed. Sighthounds operating at high speed is, in turn, hazardous to the rabbits they are chasing, such as the ones on the Runton Estate, who enjoyed a bonus month of damp untroubled frolicking as a result. Shearing the petting zoo animals was also postponed as it was too cold to take their jumpers off and, when it eventually did take place, Joe fancied a pop at it. Slithering about the enclosure unfettered by skill or experience and under sustained assault by an Angora goat, he swiftly resorted to the language of the public bar, inappropriate for Becka’s watching forest school kids who thankfully drowned it out with cheering and laughter.
the arrival of summer, a tradition which also seems to have disappeared. Still, not before time, I suppose, all things considered. I can no longer remember whether the girls who have nice tits were good or bad or, most likely, both for feminism, but I hope they are still happy because if they can’t enjoy major sporting events or get into university, there’s no hope for the rest of us. That said, most of my World Cup consumption has been via BBC radio, as God intended, while decorating the Old Servant’s Quarters with the incredibly expensive wallpaper ordered by After Lunch and Falafel For Lunch 
To return to the meteorological theme, sea frets are the ‘mist rolling in from the sea’ from Paul McCartney’s ’70s bagpipe-athon Mull of Kintyre. There is a problem though: sea frets are peculiar to the east coast, but the Mull of Kintyre is on the west, opposite Northern Ireland. I’m afraid the 114 year old mop top has lied to us, and I am not the first to say so: the amputee Heather Mills made similar claims throughout their divorce proceedings. When called upon to provide character witnesses, McCartney chose Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and the Head of NASA, suggesting a certain amount of social connectedness. Additionally, he was represented by Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia, whose clients include the actual Queen of England, and Nicholas Mostyn, a prominent high court judge. Faced with this onslaught, Mills ambitiously chose to represent herself. In her introductory notes to the court, she claimed to have been recently nominated for a Nobel prize and that her mother had also lost a leg in a motorcycle accident but that, unlike hers, it had grown back.
The Runton Diaries 