And how, exactly, did I get mixed up in all this? The GB now cares only for a thing called "XBox". It is a two-edged sword. One edge is rather handy,in that is prevents him trailing round whining "Mum..I'm BORED".On the other edge, it precludes any conversation,is the cause of charmless language, and depredations on my bank account in order to purchase football players for FIFA 12.
Now we are poor, as I have mentioned, and the GB has to sell things. Electrical things, which are weighty and awkward, and things that need chargers. Things with remotes that become even more remote when needed.These are a few of my least favourite things.Because he isn't old enough, and I am; I have to go round with him to buy and sell, in peculiar shops run by young men with elaborate whiskers and emotionally unstable t-shirts. There is always one chubby goth girl with a piercing and a cold sore. I have to lean on the counter and listen to utterly impenetrably Babylonian conversations about gigarams , megaclouds and platforms,and provide three sorts of ID with my photograph. I do have three sorts,actually. Unfortunately in one I look like Myra Hindley,and in the other two; Rosemary West and Danny La Rue respectively. This startles them in Cash Generators but is unremarkable in Gameland, where everyone looks like a serial killer who has been up all night. Sometimes a new game comes out. The GB and his friends are overcome with a Chattertonian deathly langour as far as their existing games are concerned. Those games, once hotly desired, have lost all their wonted charm and lustre. They could not be more gimpy if they tried, it seems. So life will only be worth living again when Assassin's Creed 3 is in their possession, and it comes out at midnight, so the over-18 person in the house (me) has to go and queue up in Kecks with boys who smell of cider.
While this phase persists , and it's been six years so far, there is no chance of him reading a book ("Gay and for Girls"; see blogs passim). I don't know why I find this so distressing, but I do. I want the Xboy to find the same refuge and pleasure in reading as I have. When he was little,he adored books, and ate several each week. We used to go up to Muswell Hill, where there was an engrossing brace of bookshops;one for him and one for me. I would buy him a book, and we would go and sit in a nice bar sorry I mean organic fruit juice and flapjack cafe; and I would read my book while he drooled and gibbered over his. And vice versa, as he got older and so did I.
Even up to eight or so he could be bamboozled into reading, graphic novels (comics with a PhD) about zombies, Adrian Mole, the smaller and more portable Stephen Kings, and a dreadful chap called Darren Shan. Mr Shan writes books of such gore-drenched gruesomeness that an episode describing a demon using the corpse of the hero's infant sister as a glove-puppet constituted one of the blander pages. For a short while, it seemed that the GB had found a genre of books that he could use.
There was a brief flirtation with the "Guinness Book Of Records", but only so he could follow me round intoning desperately uninteresting facts in the dull monotone of Peter Cook's E. L. Wisty; "Did you know that a flea could,if scaled up, jump over the Albert Hall...Have you seen this man from China who has the world's longest toenail...?
I would flee into the bath for the world's longest soak,but he would follow me in, and sit on the toilet seat."Did you know that the Coelecanth..."
My dramatic training was stretched to its limits, as night after night I impersonated Horrid Henry, and Just William, Max, and an entire island full of Wild Things, in an attempt to deliver such thrilling bedtime stories that GB would take up his book and read. Sometimes the next-door neighbours would clap me through the walls, so stirring were my audio performances. I thought of hiring Martin Jarvis to read to him at night.
But no. I now have 2,000 books,and he owns two. One is in French, and he likes the pictures in the other one. Gah!
I worry that this might have something to do with his father, who also owned two books.One was "Of Mice And Men" and the other one wasn't.
Mind you, my Mother was Mrs Sport, I am a hopeless rabbit,and the GB is great hulking Rugbyperson. I may have to wait for erudite grandchild. Unless the GB peels himself off the XBox, though, he won't know what to do with a girl. They only exist in games as hookers to be run over or to have their heads eaten off by ghouls. We need more games designed by bookworms. Let's have "Grand Extreme Mobile Library 1V", and "Assassins Read",and quickly,please.
Now we are poor, as I have mentioned, and the GB has to sell things. Electrical things, which are weighty and awkward, and things that need chargers. Things with remotes that become even more remote when needed.These are a few of my least favourite things.Because he isn't old enough, and I am; I have to go round with him to buy and sell, in peculiar shops run by young men with elaborate whiskers and emotionally unstable t-shirts. There is always one chubby goth girl with a piercing and a cold sore. I have to lean on the counter and listen to utterly impenetrably Babylonian conversations about gigarams , megaclouds and platforms,and provide three sorts of ID with my photograph. I do have three sorts,actually. Unfortunately in one I look like Myra Hindley,and in the other two; Rosemary West and Danny La Rue respectively. This startles them in Cash Generators but is unremarkable in Gameland, where everyone looks like a serial killer who has been up all night. Sometimes a new game comes out. The GB and his friends are overcome with a Chattertonian deathly langour as far as their existing games are concerned. Those games, once hotly desired, have lost all their wonted charm and lustre. They could not be more gimpy if they tried, it seems. So life will only be worth living again when Assassin's Creed 3 is in their possession, and it comes out at midnight, so the over-18 person in the house (me) has to go and queue up in Kecks with boys who smell of cider.
While this phase persists , and it's been six years so far, there is no chance of him reading a book ("Gay and for Girls"; see blogs passim). I don't know why I find this so distressing, but I do. I want the Xboy to find the same refuge and pleasure in reading as I have. When he was little,he adored books, and ate several each week. We used to go up to Muswell Hill, where there was an engrossing brace of bookshops;one for him and one for me. I would buy him a book, and we would go and sit in a nice bar sorry I mean organic fruit juice and flapjack cafe; and I would read my book while he drooled and gibbered over his. And vice versa, as he got older and so did I.
Even up to eight or so he could be bamboozled into reading, graphic novels (comics with a PhD) about zombies, Adrian Mole, the smaller and more portable Stephen Kings, and a dreadful chap called Darren Shan. Mr Shan writes books of such gore-drenched gruesomeness that an episode describing a demon using the corpse of the hero's infant sister as a glove-puppet constituted one of the blander pages. For a short while, it seemed that the GB had found a genre of books that he could use.
There was a brief flirtation with the "Guinness Book Of Records", but only so he could follow me round intoning desperately uninteresting facts in the dull monotone of Peter Cook's E. L. Wisty; "Did you know that a flea could,if scaled up, jump over the Albert Hall...Have you seen this man from China who has the world's longest toenail...?
I would flee into the bath for the world's longest soak,but he would follow me in, and sit on the toilet seat."Did you know that the Coelecanth..."
My dramatic training was stretched to its limits, as night after night I impersonated Horrid Henry, and Just William, Max, and an entire island full of Wild Things, in an attempt to deliver such thrilling bedtime stories that GB would take up his book and read. Sometimes the next-door neighbours would clap me through the walls, so stirring were my audio performances. I thought of hiring Martin Jarvis to read to him at night.
But no. I now have 2,000 books,and he owns two. One is in French, and he likes the pictures in the other one. Gah!
I worry that this might have something to do with his father, who also owned two books.One was "Of Mice And Men" and the other one wasn't.
Mind you, my Mother was Mrs Sport, I am a hopeless rabbit,and the GB is great hulking Rugbyperson. I may have to wait for erudite grandchild. Unless the GB peels himself off the XBox, though, he won't know what to do with a girl. They only exist in games as hookers to be run over or to have their heads eaten off by ghouls. We need more games designed by bookworms. Let's have "Grand Extreme Mobile Library 1V", and "Assassins Read",and quickly,please.
No comments:
Post a Comment