The Parent Trap

It has been a funny old year in terms of both the kids and music (not so much the wife).



Both my son and daughter are now back at home. Having one of them back is not so bad but the two of them together is not a situation I wanted and it has met my ( low) expectations of being quite difficult. It’s difficult because neither me nor my wife is quite sure how to treat them. They are both adults and have lived independently but they are both still our children and the natural tendency is to parent them. These attempts to advise and guide them in their life choices (ha!) is classed as interference and any questions and suggestions are met with sullen and hostile answers and an air of why are they asking me this. Funnily enough this is how they reacted as teenagers to our attempts to parent them and thus perpetuates, at least in our eyes, the feeling that they are still children and need to be parented. In addition to this they don’t really get on with each other, which again is a continuation of how it was when they were growing up, so we end up intervening when they argue. See its complicated isn’t it.



We have a cooking rota and cleaning rota so in another sense it’s like a house share. Neither the parent approach nor the house share approach is satisfactory for me or my wife. I love both my son and daughter to bits but me and the wife had a nice quiet easy routine which has been turned on its head by them moving back and if I’m honest we wish they would both leave.



We don’t understand why they want to live at home anyway after being away at Uni. We didn’t go back home and lived in shit expensive rented accommodation rather than go back home. All we get is we can’t afford it it’s different now not like your day when it was easy to get jobs and places to live. Our retort is there were 3 million people unemployed when we graduated and we lived in cockroach and mice infested council and private rented shitholes and still survived.



Have we made it too easy for them?



My relationship with music has shifted this year. I passed up the opportunity to go and see two of my favourite bands this year and I’m not sure why. It wasn’t as if I would have had to travel to get to the gigs. They were both in my town in easily accessible venues. I even had tickets for one of the gigs but on the night I just couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm to go.



I’ve been thinking about it because although it is a cliché , music was my first love and has meant so much to me over the years and the bands I love have influenced and defined me as a person for such a long time, this change is a big deal in my life.



Perhaps I’ve finally grown up? I don’t know.

Round Up

Well here we are. The clocks have gone back bringing the months of darkness.

I did Kielder 10k in 59.38. I was pleased with this time it is a bastard of a course. My Amsterdam Marathon time was a bit of a disappointment at 4:56:01. I finished in good physical condition, no pain but I had no energy from mile 23.

Outside of this my son is back at home and has a job on a local business park. It's hard having the house full again . We aren't quite sure how to treat them. As children or as adults?

Sadly we had to have our dog put down. He had cancer. He died in my arms. I miss him

GNR Blues

Did my 16th Great North Run yesterday. I put in a disappointing 2:14:02.And to make it worse, I wasn't even the Millionth Finisher.

I'm not sure what went wrong I've trained and I was well up for it. It was hot though and I don't like running in the heat. Miles 5 to 10 were hard.

This year my disappointment at my time was made worse by a guy in my new much bigger office who, having just turned 50, did it in 1:40. To be fair he didn't crow about it. So today has been a bit flat for me.

My next challenge is the Kielder 10k in 4 weeks time. I signed up for this in in a flush of excitement earlier in the Summer. Now I'm not so sure that doing a bastard hilly run in a wet and cold North Northumberland two weeks before the Amsterdam Marathon was a good idea.

August Bank Holiday

It's not raining but it is a bit chilly for a Summer holiday.

August has flown by. Not going on holiday in August still feels strange and work has been a drag because everybody else is on holiday. I have been building up my running mileage and am set for GNR in two week's time. I have also been decorating our new utility room. Don't get me started on this project, me and the wife fell out over this but I had to back down as I could see my usual tactic of just ignoring her was't going to work (which means that she is really serious about it)so, builders employed and 1500 quid later part of our garage is now a Laundry Room. Wife is happy for the time being.

Football has started Posh started well, still not sure when I will get to see them this season.It's been hard to get excited about another season in League 1 but your team is your team and I am feeling the call of the Posh.

Glasgow Commonwealth Games

Me and the wife were in Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games last weekend. What a great city and what great Games.

We saw Bolt cruise the final leg to win the 100m relay.We saw England win the 400m relay and the Pole Vault. I sang Jerusalem proudly twice with a slight tear in my eye. The organisation was fantastic and the natives were friendly so all in all a very satisfactory weekend.

Our Hotel The Heritage Hotel,was on the Great Western Road just up from the Botanical Gardens a few hundred metres from Hillhead subway on Byres Road and despite being horrendously overpriced for the Games was fine , not in any way flash and not luxurious but I would recommend it for a stay.

There were lots of young people with "Yes" badges on and Hampden did roar when Scots did well on the track or field, but the Scots in the crowd cheered the English and Welsh and Northern Irish athletes with almost as much gusto. So I didn't get any sense of how the Scots will vote next month. Personally I don't care whether they vote Yes or not.If they want to stay in the UK that's OK, if they don't that's OK too.

The house is crowded as both my son and daughter are back with us, the son only for a few weeks, the daughter for longer. The dog is happy and enjoying having the pack back together.

Football season starts on Saturday. Posh away at Rochdale and so it begins again

The National

As I said in my last post , my trip to London and to the summer fun at Hyde Park was more to see The National than Neil Young. I love Neil and wanted to see him again but The National was the attraction.

The National are a band that demonstrates how important 6 Music has become , for me at least, as a way of discovering new bands in the same way that John Peel used to be for me particularly as a teenager.

If you haven't listened to BBC 6 Music do so now, if you like any of the music I post occasionally on this blog you will love it.

Here is a link to The National's website, you can listen to and watch them perform some of their music.

Neil Young at Hyde Park

Last Saturday I saw Neil Young and Crazy Horse in Hyde Park. My son was with me.

I got tickets in reality more to see The National than Neil Young. They were excellent and a band I have wanted to see for years. I think they sort of spoiled Neil Young and Crazy Horse for me.

Not too keen on the set Neil played, not many of my favourites. He seemed to realise that the set list wasn't going down too well and, as he went into his solo set half way through he said " You sad bastards stop complaining" to the crowd.That made me smile. You get what you are given from Neil Young. No compromising.You have to admire that. And boy can he play guitar

Not a classic and my son said it was like watching an old bloke and his mates jamming after the first two songs ( Love and Only Love and Going Home)took up the first twenty minutes of the set but it was still worth the trip down to London for me. Another chance to see a true legend.

World Cup 2

My last post lamented the quality of the football in the knock out rounds of the Brazil World Cup. Then , just to make a fool of me, Germany go and thump Brazil 7-1 in the semi final.I was sat watching it with my wife, our jaws dropping in amazement as the goals went in.

Normal service was resumed the following day with the excruciatingly boring Holland V Argentina semi.

I hope the Germans turn it on again on Sunday and smash the Argentinians. It's not often you'll hear me support the Germans but over the last couple of years having been to Berlin twice and with my son's passion for all things German,I have almost become fond of them.

At least they are a team not like the South Americans who are Messi and 10 other blokes in blue and white striped shirts.

World Cup

I just about remember watching the 1966 World Cup Final on a black and white TV with my Dad and brother.

I vividly remember watching England throw the game away against the Germans 4 years later thinking how could that happen. I remember 1978 thinking how far away Argentina seemed watching the Dutch contrive to lose again after losing in '74. I remember watching Platini in 1982 and '86 as well as the "hand of god" .1990 of course lives on in the memory. I remember 1994 and the heresy of staging it in the USA.

In 1998 we were on holiday in Brittany for the final.I remember my son, who was only 7 at the time, wanting Brazil to win as we stood and watched the match in a bar full of passionate French fans. We went back to our apartment at half time as he got a bit scared as the French got more passionate. 2002 mostly passed me by but 2006 lives on as we were in a hotel bar in Barcelona full of Italians for the final.

Four years ago I was in Cuba for some of the World Cup watching England humiliate us again only softened by drowning my sorrows with excellent Mojitos.

This year it is hard to remember that England actually played in the competition, we were so poor.

it has been a funny World Cup this time round. It seems to me that the quality of the football has actually got worse the longer the competition has gone on. Brazil have been poor and their match against Colombia was not worthy of a quarter final of the biggest competition in the world. France and Belgium looked like they had had enough and wanted to go home in their defeats flattering the Germans and the Argentinians in the process.

The match I am watching now as I type ( Holland v Costa Rica) is again very poor. It is hard to believe this is the same Dutch team that two weeks ago destroyed Spain.

But I'll keep watching the match and the rest of the competition because the World up has been an important part of my life for literally as long as I can remember.

Sunshine

Now it's July. Middle of the summer and the sun has shone even here in the North East. I'm taking a quick break from the football festival that is this year's World Cup to write this.

Summer means exams and holidays and festivals to me even though I haven't taken an exam for over 15 years not had a proper summer holiday for five and not been to a festival for over 10 years.

The Summer also means the marching season in Northern Ireland. I was reminded of this when I looked at a colleagues' on line calendar today and saw July 12th marked as a holiday in Northern Ireland.

This has given me the excuse to put this track by Stiff Little Fingers. I hope the youngsters there still want an alternative land.

Alternative Ulster- Stiff Little Fingers

Hello Long Time No See

Whoa what happened there. It's June and Summer is here.

My absence is due to the mundane rather than the marvellous. Work, my friends,work is what has kept me away from you all.And how are things in your little world. Do you still see the same old crowd.

I survived the cull of the disengaged and have the bright shiny new contract to prove it. We'll,fuck them is all I can say.

Now that everything has calmed down I'll try and get back to the more important stuff of this Blog.

See you soon.

Embrace Return

Several years ago I wrote a very melancholic post about this Band. I wondered if they would ever return and make me believe again*.

Well they have returned with an excellent collection of songs on their new album Embrace. It's Embrace but different, their influences are there to hear and the two singles Refugees and Follow You Home give an incomplete idea of the album as a whole.

I'm not going to say its without its faults but the quality is there.

You can buy it from all the usual outlets.

* I'm not quite sure what they make me believe in. Maybe faith,love and a bloody minded determination (to spend 8 years crafting their art) and self belief that what they do is worth any sacrifice they have to make.

Springtime

Up here in the frozen North East we have had some glorious bright sunny days with our trademark Clear Blue Skies.

Work has settled down in a strange waiting for the change type of atmosphere. Everyone just wants to get on with their new job whilst not quite ready to let go of their old role.

Personal life is steady as usual, another period of change as my daughter will be moving back in a few weeks time after two years away, albeit only about a mile away.

I am in training for he Sunderland Half marathon in a couple of weeks time. Training has been hampered by a niggling abductor/groin injury which flares up after about an hours run, especially going up hill. So I won't be setting a personal best this year.

As usual as my training steps up I listen to a lot of music. This song came up on Sunday.

Neil Young - Ohio.

May 4th is the day of the Sunderland half marathon. It will be 44 years since this happened.

Slow Time Monday

After a weekend in London and the emotional highs and lows of Posh's win at Wembley in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy today has been a quiet day. I took the opportunity to listen to Berlin by Lou Reed for the first time all the way through.

I'd recommend that you do the same if you haven't already. It is a masterpiece.

Hanging on in quiet desperation

It may not be pretty but bloody minded desperation and a refusal to let others push me out seems to have worked.I still have a job. And in a region where we'll paid secure jobs for men in their early fifties are rarer than a cup winning team that's not a bad result.

Hard-Fi

I have always liked Hard- Fi southern( or more accurately outer suburban London) white working class music inspired by black working class music, neatly observing real life concerns about power, money, drugs and crime sometimes with a more political edge.

Here is a link to a new song Move Over

Young Rebel Set (again)

I wrote about them before Christmas. Their album is worth a listen. Here is a video of their latest single

New Year

Christmas good, New year crap- wife ill in bed. Me I get back to work and get this flu bug. Its only this weekend I have felt better.

Work is still crap. I have another interview this week and if I don't get one of the jobs on offer I will be out. Not without a fight though.

On a more cheerful note. Embrace are releasing new stuff after 8 years away.

Here is a link to their single Refugees