Reply to: A very bright idea

[NickFitz]

When I was little and we made long car journeys, my parents seemed to have loads of tricks like that...

"When I was your age, I would have run straight up to the top of that hill!"

Said in this layby on the Horseshoe Pass.

It got me and my brother out of their hair for half an hour

[NickFitz]

I have to know if my "gadar" is working correctly as it never has. The number of times I have presumed someone was and they weren't

So, are you?

Ask Halo Jones

[TheFaQQer]

Kind words RC. I think I need to buck up. It's been a tough year all in all. Birth of third child. moving house, "that project manager" episode. I can't remember the last time I took time off. Still, I have a lot to be thankful for.

And I have done stuff. Rebuilt the car engine when we had no money and it was still on finance and it blew up. Built chuffing huge garden retaining wall. Flown a plane on honeymoon with SY02 in the back.

And I hope to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats. Lots of adventures to be had as well.

Just bitch and moan about your in-laws. Get them trained young in sarcastic put downs and barbs. That's what I seem to have taught mine - DD1 (now 6) just rolls her eyes at me now. I think it's a trick she picked up from her mother.

[suityou01]

F***.

I'm a failure.

The biggest achievement in my life to date is setting up the security on a WiFi router. And then I lost its password.

Those wifi routers are tricky. Did I hear you say you were self teaching yourself VB.Net? Set up a forum. Don't really sound like much of a failure to me.

Lost the router password? DP nearly formatted the wrong HDD the other night.

For interest, take a look at the Certified Ethical Hacker course. Chuffing interesting I think. I have covered all of the topics but never sat the exam.

[RichardCranium]

Rebuilt the car engine
Built chuffing huge garden retaining wall
Flown a plane on honeymoon with SY02 in the back.
hope to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats.

F***.

I'm a failure.

The biggest achievement in my life to date is setting up the security on a WiFi router. And then I lost its password.

[suityou01]

You only think that because that is how the media makes us think. But they are wrong.

You are your children's Daddy. When they are little, they know you are the most important man in the world. They want to know what you do and how you do it. They want to know your moral values and your prejudices. They want to know you love them and that you think they are good. They want you to spend time with them.

Am I right in thinking you are the Director of a Limited Company? Isn't that exciting?

Does Daddy work in the most famous city in the world? In the finance sector too? Wow! How special is that? Do you work near that big tower block that you can see from all round the South East? Do you cross the Thames to get to work? Do you see the boats?

How did you come to meet your wife? What did you see in her? Can you see those things in your kids? If so, how exciting must that be for them?

You built the garden wall? I can't do that; that kind of practical work seems to be beyond my abilities. But for computers I have no idea what I would be doing. Can you teach your children how to do practical things? How to make things from scrap? My dad can but never found the time to teach me.

You are underestimating yourself, what you can do and your value.

Kind words RC. I think I need to buck up. It's been a tough year all in all. Birth of third child. moving house, "that project manager" episode. I can't remember the last time I took time off. Still, I have a lot to be thankful for.

And I have done stuff. Rebuilt the car engine when we had no money and it was still on finance and it blew up. Built chuffing huge garden retaining wall. Flown a plane on honeymoon with SY02 in the back.

And I hope to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats. Lots of adventures to be had as well.

[RichardCranium]

I am dull.

You only think that because that is how the media makes us think. But they are wrong.

You are your children's Daddy. When they are little, they know you are the most important man in the world. They want to know what you do and how you do it. They want to know your moral values and your prejudices. They want to know you love them and that you think they are good. They want you to spend time with them.

Am I right in thinking you are the Director of a Limited Company? Isn't that exciting?

Does Daddy work in the most famous city in the world? In the finance sector too? Wow! How special is that? Do you work near that big tower block that you can see from all round the South East? Do you cross the Thames to get to work? Do you see the boats?

How did you come to meet your wife? What did you see in her? Can you see those things in your kids? If so, how exciting must that be for them?

You built the garden wall? I can't do that; that kind of practical work seems to be beyond my abilities. But for computers I have no idea what I would be doing. Can you teach your children how to do practical things? How to make things from scrap? My dad can but never found the time to teach me.

You are underestimating yourself, what you can do and your value.

[suityou01]

Admittedly our generation don't have the stories our parents had, but if you don't tell the ones you have, they're lost forever and your children lose something that should belong to them: who they are and where they come from.

You're not kidding. My life is the sum total of working, the occasional holiday, DIY and family time. Pretty normal. It's not got the same ring to it

Hey remember that time I first filed a VAT return on line.
Hey remember when I built that garden wall.
Hey I know I remember when I first met you mum, we went to the cinema and the pub.

I am dull. Dull dull dull dull dull. And I suspect most on here are too.

Of course if the Bilderberg group get there way and America invades Iran then life could become quite technicolor.

[RichardCranium]

More please.

Ask your parents / aunts / uncles / grandparents for theirs!

Because then they will be your stories too.

[Badger]

... and your dad's family ended up north and down the pits by accident and shall I go on?

Yes!

These are like EO's stories which were great.

More please.

[RichardCranium]

I don't know any cool stuff like that though. I'm dull, thick and mildly irritating.

Surely you have stories of your own life? How you & Mrs SY01 met & courted? Things you have learned upon The Way of Life? Places you have been and things you have seen? What for you was a holiday in Spain is a fantasy about faraway lands to them. What about stories about your own parents and your own childhood? And what stories have you inherited from your grandparents, siblings and aunts & uncles?

If you do not practice recalling and telling the stories, they will be lost for ever.

I find it utterly horrific that there are cultures that have passed down stories for centuries and even millennia that will be discarded for Bambi, Dumbo, the feckin Aristocats and a poxy twat of a human-sized mouse.

And if you assume you are dull and boring and tell your kids nothing about yourselves, then your kids will call you boring. Because you will be.

Tell them stories about how you were nearly crushed to death by a tank transporter but were saved by a cup of tea, how the black market from the docks to the markets worked, what life was really like in a wartime mill town, what can happen when you volunteer for something during National Service, bomb disposal in Algiers, blowing up arms dumps in the desert (and accidentally taking out a tribe of passing nomads in the process), not being invited to your own mother's funeral, being ordered to steal 20 tonnes of anthracite, getting a story in the Liverpool papers about a doodlebug going off when actually it was you and your mates with a drum of carbide you'd 'found', suddenly walking out of work and going home and meeting your sister on the way there who is running home from school during classtime to get home and find your mum dead, how your ancestors come from a different part of the country from what you thought and your dad's family ended up north and down the pits by accident and shall I go on?

Admittedly our generation don't have the stories our parents had, but if you don't tell the ones you have, they're lost forever and your children lose something that should belong to them: who they are and where they come from.

[suityou01]

When my Mum was in the Wrens she had some admin office job where she and a more junior rating shared a room in an old house which served some military purpose.

It was April and it started snowing outside. They got colder and colder and eventually my Mum started worrying about this girl she shared the office with; she was going blue. So my Mum lit the fire.

The tulip hit the fan: they were outside the official dates for being permitted to have fires and no officer had authorised the lighting of the fire. My mum was put on a charge, had to pay for the coal and then had to black lead the fireplace, stock it for lighting then whitewash the coal in the fireplace and the coal scuttle.

Her memorable bit was an NCO screaming at her "The coal is for painting, not for lighting".


As an aside, as any ex-forces bod will tell you: "If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't move, pick it up. If you can't pick it up, paint it."

Good times.

[RichardCranium]

Intrigued to know why they painted coal.

When my Mum was in the Wrens she had some admin office job where she and a more junior rating shared a room in an old house which served some military purpose.

It was April and it started snowing outside. They got colder and colder and eventually my Mum started worrying about this girl she shared the office with; she was going blue. So my Mum lit the fire.

The tulip hit the fan: they were outside the official dates for being permitted to have fires and no officer had authorised the lighting of the fire. My mum was put on a charge, had to pay for the coal and then had to black lead the fireplace, stock it for lighting then whitewash the coal in the fireplace and the coal scuttle.

Her memorable bit was an NCO screaming at her "The coal is for painting, not for lighting".


As an aside, as any ex-forces bod will tell you: "If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't move, pick it up. If you can't pick it up, paint it."

[Sysman]

When I was little and we made long car journeys, my parents seemed to have loads of tricks like that.

Look for registration year letters but you can only go up by one at a time i.e. find an A reg, then a B reg etc. Repeat in reverse sequence.

I remember doing the car numbers thing. It was numbers rather than letters; in those days you could actually start out at 1 and work up.

But once we got a bit older there was no talking in the car. Weird but true.

[suityou01]

When I was little and we made long car journeys, my parents seemed to have loads of tricks like that.

Look for registration year letters but you can only go up by one at a time i.e. find an A reg, then a B reg etc. Repeat in reverse sequence.

Telling me stories of their own lives. (I loved that.) "Never turn down a cup of tea, Private. It might save your life." "The coal is for painting, not lighting."

Teaching me songs and we'd all sing along. "There was rats, rats, big as bloomin' cats in the stores, in the stores...". I think I can sing every Glenn Miller song ever written!

Telling me about the history of the region / place we were passing through.

Telling me things about what they had done when they had once passed through a place.

Getting me to explain to them about stuff I had learned in school that they had not been taught.

However, I was a child that always had library books on the go, so I could entertain myself by reading anyway. Children are still taught to read, aren't they?


With hindsight, through my childhood I must have had scores of hours of tuition by my parents in my family history, my background, my culture, my country. Is that something children are now not receiving? If so, it seems a terrible shame to lose all that to be replaced by Disney's outpourings.

I don't know any cool stuff like that though. I'm dull, thick and mildly irritating. You can't choose your parents.

Intrigued to know why they painted coal. Praps your parents were total nutters?