There is a new XBox game out, called COD, I think. It is £40-odd pounds, which I do not have. The GB is in a mood of profound despair.All his friends have managed to acquire said game. They are all in heightened states of bliss, blowing up tanks and swearing at each other with headphones on. My child is a techno-leper, a pariah. He doesn't have his phone either, because he left the charger plugged into the Wirral. I bought him one off Amazon, which arrived very quickly (hurrah!) and exploded equally quickly (boo!). I need the laptop because I am applying for increasingly unsuitable jobs (fish farm manager,anyone?) and writing this.And also discovering that on Facebook, there are other parents who cannot or will not buy this blasted new game, and are consequently being subjected to psychodrama and Extreme Sulks 2. There's another new one on the way in a couple of weeks, too. I shall have to sell an organ, or flog The Dog to a vivisectionist.Maybe I could become a wifelet of the Loins of Longleat? I could drug him and smuggle a few bibelots out, and off I go to "Antiques Roadshow"..
The GB wants to work. For money, obviously. He does not wish to be part of the Big Soc. and smilingly sweep the streets for a bogus Certificate of Citizenship, or some such other nonsense from Mr Macaroon's Ministry of Silly Ideas. He would go up a chimney, if paid ready money, without a qualm, although it would have to be an awfully big one. He was rather Right-wing, as a baby. He used to sit in his high chair for long lunches,waving a bottle, going red in the face and yelling about immigration. Or at least that's what he sounded as though he was cross about and he made at least as much sense as that Griffin chap. It is very easy to imagine babies as politicians, and indeed, vice versa. All babies look like Churchill, and all toddlers like Boris Johnson. It is their tragedy.
Anyway, he does not want to go to University.Years ago, this would have horrified me. Now, I think he has a point. I was teaching at a University not so long ago; it was very different indeed from the shambolic seats of learning-by-osmosis attended by myself and my peers. We were exposed to education, in that we were sometimes in the same room when it was happening. We got to know people who had read more books than we had, and knew more about specific things. This often led to conversations, which were sometimes interesting and often banal. Those conversations were sponsored by alcohol manufacturers. Some of us got to meet people from completely different backgrounds, and some of us (not me, I'm afraid) had sex with them. This was all very educational, and beat working. I would like to think that this still happens but I am not at all sure that it does, to any great degree (no pun intended). Maybe it will in the High-End Universities, where you pay the full whack and get the complete experience. In the other ones, the own-brand Victor Value Universities, you will pay less, but get an education-lite. Crammed into vast hangars and bellowed at from huge screens in "contact hours", you will hurtle through your modules as if on a Japanese bullet-train. All the rest of your "Higher Education" will be based on the "FOAFO" model i.e. "Fuck Off And Find Out".
So I think The GB might well do better in The World. Although at the rate he's growing they might have to build an extension. I was away for a few days, and when I came back he was even more G and less of a B. He is sitting on me,at the moment. One great leg is stretched over my lap,effectively cutting off the blood to my feet. Any minute now, a huge arm, seemingly made of stone, will be thrown around my neck, oblivious to the cracking of my poor collarbone. He does exactly the same thing as he did when he was a wee tot, which is to use me as a human sofa. It was cute when he weighted a stone, but now it is life-threatening. I am looking forward to the day when I can curl up in his palm and he can carry me around. It may not be a long wait.
The GB wants to work. For money, obviously. He does not wish to be part of the Big Soc. and smilingly sweep the streets for a bogus Certificate of Citizenship, or some such other nonsense from Mr Macaroon's Ministry of Silly Ideas. He would go up a chimney, if paid ready money, without a qualm, although it would have to be an awfully big one. He was rather Right-wing, as a baby. He used to sit in his high chair for long lunches,waving a bottle, going red in the face and yelling about immigration. Or at least that's what he sounded as though he was cross about and he made at least as much sense as that Griffin chap. It is very easy to imagine babies as politicians, and indeed, vice versa. All babies look like Churchill, and all toddlers like Boris Johnson. It is their tragedy.
Anyway, he does not want to go to University.Years ago, this would have horrified me. Now, I think he has a point. I was teaching at a University not so long ago; it was very different indeed from the shambolic seats of learning-by-osmosis attended by myself and my peers. We were exposed to education, in that we were sometimes in the same room when it was happening. We got to know people who had read more books than we had, and knew more about specific things. This often led to conversations, which were sometimes interesting and often banal. Those conversations were sponsored by alcohol manufacturers. Some of us got to meet people from completely different backgrounds, and some of us (not me, I'm afraid) had sex with them. This was all very educational, and beat working. I would like to think that this still happens but I am not at all sure that it does, to any great degree (no pun intended). Maybe it will in the High-End Universities, where you pay the full whack and get the complete experience. In the other ones, the own-brand Victor Value Universities, you will pay less, but get an education-lite. Crammed into vast hangars and bellowed at from huge screens in "contact hours", you will hurtle through your modules as if on a Japanese bullet-train. All the rest of your "Higher Education" will be based on the "FOAFO" model i.e. "Fuck Off And Find Out".
So I think The GB might well do better in The World. Although at the rate he's growing they might have to build an extension. I was away for a few days, and when I came back he was even more G and less of a B. He is sitting on me,at the moment. One great leg is stretched over my lap,effectively cutting off the blood to my feet. Any minute now, a huge arm, seemingly made of stone, will be thrown around my neck, oblivious to the cracking of my poor collarbone. He does exactly the same thing as he did when he was a wee tot, which is to use me as a human sofa. It was cute when he weighted a stone, but now it is life-threatening. I am looking forward to the day when I can curl up in his palm and he can carry me around. It may not be a long wait.
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