2013-06-20T04:17:25-04:00 Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=richard-holt Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Richard Holt Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2157260 2012-11-19T04:23:13-05:00 2013-01-18T05:12:01-05:00

Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-holt/
But when you have survived this and made it through to adulthood, you think it is behind you. What I didn't realise was that children save the very worst for their parents.

Last week I tore a tendon in my shoulder and the pain was really very bad. I would say definitely worse than childbirth, but in the event of first-hand confirmation being unlikely, I'll have to settle for probably worse than childbirth.

My wife was sympathetic and, despite being somewhere between lightly and heavily pregnant, she womanfully took over all the heavy lifting. My daughter saw my weakened state as an opportunity.

We often enjoy a friendly wrestle, and having a slight weight advantage, the onus is on me to take it easy. But when she saw me protecting my right shoulder no such quarter was given. She was going in hard and aiming for the injury like a boxer targeting a cut above an opponent's eye.

And when we were out for a walk she really turned the screw. Normally she acts the big girl, refusing to hold my hand and scootering off ahead. But suddenly she was a baby again, wanting to be carried every step of the way.

At one point I stopped and, with the breath of defeat blowing away the last remnants of my pride, asked if she wouldn't mind walking the last 50 yards to the playground because I was in a lot of pain. "I can't," she said. "It is too far away and I am tired".

I tried calling her bluff by walking ahead and leaving her behind. But after a few paces I looked back to see her sitting on the floor with the face of a poker player who knew my flush was never anything other than busted.

At this stage I could have been walking on bloodied stumps over broken glass and it wouldn't have troubled her conscience one bit.

I scooped her up in my good arm, but this wouldn't do. She swivelled deftly around my body until I was forced to take her weight in the most painful way possible, before saying with quiet satisfaction: "Yes. Daddy carry me like this!"

Then of course when we got to the playground she was no longer tired and ran up and down in a calculated taunt to the serf who had lugged her there.

I don't mean to say that she is in any way a mean child. She is a very nice child. To everyone else. But I am her father and I am not allowed to show weakness. And if I do, she will punish me.

And this is far worse than the cruelty children show to each other. If you are a child and another child is mean to you, at least you have a chance of getting back at them. When you are an adult, you just have to take it.

Or do you? I am almost fully recovered now. And when I'm 100 per cent fit, I'm going to take her down.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1889258 2012-09-17T04:04:41-04:00 2012-11-16T05:12:02-05:00

Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-holt/
This is standard and approved parenting practice. You can't be waiting in line and paying twice just because your child can't be bothered to hold onto her Cornetto. Besides, what's the worst that can happen?

Sometimes food incidents are of a more serious nature. If you come back to your tent and find a rat has died trying to drink your soup, it is probably best to move straight to the main course. Or if a tramp has a lick of your lollipop, you should really let him keep it.

Other cases are less clear cut. Today I stopped off for food in one of Richmond Park's little cafes. I ordered the lasagna because the guy working there there said he liked it. He wasn't the only one - when I stepped inside to get some pepper, a jackdaw dived in so quickly I think it must have been staking me out all along.

"Ooh you dirty little bastard," I found myself saying in a rather more shrieky voice than I'd have liked. I waved it away petulantly and then had that someone-please-tell-me-what-to-do moment. How much had it pecked? How clean did it look? Where else had that beak been?

I thought about going back and asking for a new lunch. But the man who had served me was bound to judge me for being careless, and also think I was being a bit of a princess. And anyway, he would probably just go out the back, chat to the chef for two minutes, then bring me back the same slice of lasagna.

And besides, nobody used to mind this kind of thing. In the days of glass milk bottles left outside your house, if a bird pecked the top, that just meant you had milk without cream - it was the skimmed milk of its day. There was never any question of throwing it away.

I also worked out that in the time my back had been turned, there was only so much lasagna the bird could have stuck its beak into. So I just chopped off the corner I had seen being attacked and used a bit of lettuce to cordon off that part of the plate as not-for-consumption.

Both the cafe guy and the bird had a point - the food was tasty. I'm glad I didn't wimp out of eating it, but I did find myself bolting it down rather quickly so I didn't have time to ponder the possibility of bird spit in my lunch.

A quick web search tells me that bird-pecking can cause the spread of the bacteria campylobacter, the most common cause of food poisoning. But then if you choose to type the words "bird peck food disease" into Google, you are bound to find a corner of the internet which confirms your fears.

Better not to think about it. Best of all not to do it again. Toddlers will always drop ice creams, but leaving food unattended in a park full of hungry animals is a mistake I will hopefully only make once.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1820699 2012-08-22T03:38:31-04:00 2012-10-21T05:12:12-04:00

Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-holt/ sit semi-comatose in front of electronic devices.

This week they published a report showing that parents spend a fortune toys - an average of £10,000 before each child turns 18 - when what children really need is traditional, imaginative play. They often do this, the report says, because they feel "pressure from all angles" and also because they want to "look good in front of other families".

In order to encourage a return to traditional play, they have come up with a thing called the Pocket Playground. This is a collection of eight simple items - coloured threads, building blocks etc - costing just £6.12. With this you get a list of 50 activities that should keep children happy for hours. This all sounded a bit Walton's Mountain to me. Still, with clouds looming and a two year-old to keep happy, I had nothing to lose but the price of a fancy coffee and what the Italians don't call a panini.

I took the list to WHSmith and bought crayons, modelling clay and a packet of coloured paper, but then couldn't find any of the other things. I would have tried somewhere else, but my daughter is even less shop-happy than I am. Besides, having spent £7.23, I was already wildly over-budget, so I decided to head home and start having traditional fun.

I looked down the list of 50 activities. Even ignoring the ones using things I had not bought, I came across another problem. Number 11: Learn the art of origami and make a bird with flapping wings. The only way I could have done this was by consulting the oracle of YouTube, which would have kind of gone against the whole idea. No matter, there were many more things to choose from.

Number 34: Create sculptures of your family using modelling clay. This I was confident we could do. Not do well, necessarily, but we could give it a damn good go. I cleared the table and we sat there with nothing to distract us but a large block of gooey grey clay. I am not artistic, but it's amazing how gifted you can feel when you are with someone who still finds it quite difficult to take off her own shoes.

Within a minute I was totally absorbed in an attempt to make a life-like model of my wife. I was involving my child in the process, of course, but I wanted it to turn out well, so I was taking the lead. My daughter didn't mind taking a back seat. She was happy pulling little pieces of clay off the block and splatting them on the table. But then as I was halfway through, she looked at my efforts and said: "Is it a car?"

Undeterred, I finished the model. My daughter did recognise that it was her mother. Well, she realised that it was a human, and seeing as the first human she thinks of is her mother, the lack of facial features didn't seem to matter. She then asked me to make a model of her, then of her scooter, then of me. She further contributed by refraining from squashing my work as much as she could manage.

Then an amazing thing happened. I looked at the clock and saw that two hours had passed. We had sat at that table for two whole hours. If you have ever spent time with a child this age, you know that this doesn't happen often. All for £1.75 worth of reusable clay. Just then, she looked at me and said: "Can I watch Charlie and Lola on Daddy's iPad?"

The spell was broken, but it had already been worth it. I will definitely try some more of this arts and crafts stuff. And we did manage to play on a bit longer with the clay, even if it then descended into chaos. But that was the best bit, not least for the question she asked when I showed her some rudimentary circus skills with the discarded body parts. She looked on admiringly and said: "Can I do it, can I juggle with Mummy's leg and head?"]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1774628 2012-08-14T03:17:42-04:00 2012-10-13T05:12:11-04:00

Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-holt/
Not that I generally approve of making stuff up. But with each momentous victory, commentators referred to the million people who supposedly say they were at Wembley when England won the World Cup. It seemed like they were egging us on. The "I was there, honest" line is practically sanctioned by the IOC.

Luckily, I don't need to rush my decision. Now is not the time for the lying to start. I am not brazen enough to look people in the eye this very week and tell them I can still smell the chlorine when anyone mentions Tom Daley's brilliant bronze.

But as time passes, and the edifice of truth is worried away at by repeated waves of wishful thinking, I will surely find it easier. And if I start to pretend for the benefit of other people, how long before I start to believe it myself? And once I start to believe it myself, it may as well actually be true.

And it's not as if I don't have all the relevant, may-as-well-have-been-there facts to hand. The one thing the sofa viewer will remind the smug ticket-holder is that the view from home is clearer, if not truly better. So I've got all the memories already in full technicolor glory, they just need adjusting slightly. I practically was there, really I was.

It's not as if I actually feel left out. The atmosphere throughout the Games was amazing everywhere. I rushed home to watch sports I have always liked, sports I didn't know I liked, and sports I was pretty sure I really didn't like. I cheered and cried along with everyone else. I had a fantastic Olympics.

But in 2020, when my daughter is ten, she is bound to ask whether I took her to the Olympic Park when she was a toddler. I'm not sure if I can bring myself to tell her that I meant to apply for tickets, tried to be clever by leaving it until the last minute, then forgot and missed the deadline.

And there's no point going on about how I tried repeatedly to buy the extra tickets that went on sale during the Games. Yes, I did spend hours watching synchronised swimming on one half of the screen, while on the other half the 2012 website teased me with tickets that were there, then suddenly were not.

But the fact is, I didn't try hard enough. And when I did try, I didn't try luckily enough. This is not an image of yourself you want to project before the eyes of your adoring child.

I do have one chance of redemption: getting tickets to the Paralympics. Channel 4, which bought the TV rights, is cleverly showing adverts thanking the Olympics "for a great warm up". All the signs are that they will be brilliant. But I've been on the website and nothing is available.

More tickets are apparently going on sale before the sport begins. I do hope this is right. And this time I had better get lucky. Otherwise I will have to lie about going to see two sets of Games.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1694148 2012-07-23T06:22:02-04:00 2012-09-22T05:12:05-04:00

Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-holt/ The Times this weekend headlined "Ian Tomlinson is our Rodney King moment". A warning from such a figure of authority must be taken seriously.

There are obvious similarities. In 1992 four white LAPD officers were acquitted after they were filmed beating King, a 25-year-old black man. Last week a Metropolitan police officer was acquitted after he was filmed shoving and striking Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper seller who collapsed and died shortly afterwards. Both cases involved videos of policemen that many people thought made them look guilty, but that were then viewed differently in the law courts.

There the similarities end. The LA acquittal sparked six days of mass rioting in which more than 50 people died and 2,000 were injured. After the Tomlinson trial, there is anger and talk of civil action, but so far no rioting. But surely the man who was the most senior policeman in Britain wouldn't make such a comparison without good reason. If he says this is our Rodney King moment, we had better brace ourselves for trouble.

He accompanies the warning with a prediction of "awkward consequences" for policing and the need for a "new compact about how police officers deploy lawful force", whatever that means. The subtext of the piece is that we would generally be better off if Sir Ian was still in charge.

But this is the same Met chief who in 2008 was accused by Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, of "completely misunderstanding" the law. Sir Ian had called for celebrities to face a jury if they were caught on film apparently snorting cocaine. He made the much-derided plea after spending months failing to bring a case against Kate Moss following her notorious powder-snorting video. Sir Ian seemed to believe that an alleged offence that his officers couldn't find grounds to prosecute, could somehow be proved beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Finding novel approaches to tackling drug use was a recurring theme of Sir Ian's tenure. In 2006, he revealed that smartly dressed Met officers had been posing as drug dealers in a sting operation aimed at catching middle class cocaine users. It is not known how many people were caught in the stings, but as possession of cocaine is routinely dealt with by caution, it seems unlikely the crime of trying to buy non-existent drugs from pretend dealers will have led to many convictions.

What was significant was the timing of that revelation. It came as Sir Ian was desperately trying to stop people discussing comments he had made about the killing of Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. In an effort to demonstrate that the media was "institutionally racist", Sir Ian had contrasted the case with crimes involving non-white victims, saying that "almost nobody" understood why the murders became such a big story.

Another highlight of Sir Ian's time at the top was when he faced accusations of a cover-up over the shooting by his officers of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. Sir Ian managed to refute the accusations, but his lack of grip of the facts in the aftermath of the shooting was quite something to behold. It left nobody in doubt that organising a cover-up would have been well beyond his capabilities.

Sir Ian - now kicked upstairs as Baron Blair of Boughton - does not say exactly what trouble we should expect from our Rodney King moment. He just leaves the warning hanging there for us to ponder. But whilst talking up such a sensitive topic by comparing it to a case that sparked widespread civil unrest is certainly irresponsible, it must be seen in context. Sir Ian's time in charge of the Met was so gaffe-laden that it will mostly be remembered for his bravery in facing down repeated and ever more strident calls for his resignation.

Thankfully now, it doesn't matter how many riots he predicts. Nobody is really listening.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1688606 2012-07-20T06:46:47-04:00 2012-09-19T05:12:38-04:00

Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-holt/
It makes me wonder if we need to have made quite so much effort with her. I mean, why bother going out of your way to treat a child well if she is just as happy playing all day in a sand pit with people she has just met?
It is not as if she is ever grateful for the things we do for her. It is just constant criticism.

Two year-olds have their own way of dealing with things they don't like. They don't pretend food is lovely and then politely refuse seconds, they spit it down themselves as if you've tried to poison them. If they don't want their coat put on, rather than politely declining your help, they act like you are administering a high-voltage Tasering.

So rather than worrying about whether we are doing enough to nurture our children, maybe it is time for a bit of calculated neglect. I have compiled a short checklist:

1) Provide food but take no interest in how much of it they eat
2) Only show affection if they show it first
3) If they throw a tantrum, remove any hazards and walk away
4) Don't bother trying to reason with them, it is a waste of time
5) Don't pretend to like Mr Men books. They are all rubbish, apart from Mr Tickle

It was this kind of thinking that hit me the other day at a wedding. My daughter was having a lovely time until it got to that point of the evening where toddlers should really be gone. My wife put her in a pushchair and she almost immediately fell asleep. We then wanted to head back to the dancefloor and neither wanted the job of watching a child sleep.

The venue was operating one of those nightclub-style rooms where you swap your coat for a raffle ticket that gives you a good chance of winning it back at the end of the night. The lady working there was lovely and I asked if she wouldn't mind me wheeling my child in. She happily accepted, even handing us a ticket (which didn't seem strictly necessary as no other children were being stored there, as far as I could tell). Then we were off, rejoining the party weighed down only by a tiny and rapidly fading sense of guilt.

Was this a bad thing to do? Should we have CRB-checked the coat-room lady and demanded references from previous cloakrooms she had worked in? You can only do so much to make sure your child is safe. You could try watching them every moment, but they would certainly never thank you for that. Besides, everyone needs a bit of a dance occasionally.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1671109 2012-07-18T10:46:35-04:00 2012-09-17T05:12:07-04:00

Richard Holt http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-holt/
It is not that we don't get on any more. We have a great time all morning, and for most of the afternoon. But towards the end of each day, normally when I am trying to make her supper, all good humour has evaporated. She tries to stop me cooking, because she thinks I am selfishly neglecting her so I can hang out in the kitchen. As she grabs at my legs I come out with some petulant teacherism about "not doing this for my own good you know". She cries and says she wants her mum to come home. I don't cry, but I do want her mum to come home.

A solution has mercifully landed in our collective lap. We had put her name down for a couple of nurseries, with a view to her starting part-time before Christmas and full-time next year. Then last week our favourite one called and said they unexpectedly had two days a week available immediately. We asked the little lady if she would like to start going to the nice school we had taken her to see. She gave a unhesitating "yes" before adding, emphatically, that she wanted to go "on my own... not with Mummy, not with Daddy."

So that was clear, she wants to hang out with people her own age, and I get some time to remember what being an adult is like. I can read a newspaper without little hands batting away at it. I can make a phone call without her saying she wants to talk to them, by which she means cut them off and watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on YouTube.

Today is her first day. I thought I would be one of those parents who finds themselves sniffling at the gates as they watch their little darling toddle off to be looked after by strangers. Thankfully she made it easy for me by engineering a massive falling-out at the uncharacteristically early time of 8am. She refused to let me get her dressed, refused to eat her breakfast, whined and generally acted the child-demon. Never mind Ofsted ratings, at that point I'd have left her out for the binmen.

So instead of feeling tearful, I dropped her off with a relief that was almost physical, like breathing again after you have snorkelled down too deep. Comparing spending time with your daughter to the feeling of drowning sounds mean, but even the loveliest child has a way of bringing you close to losing your sanity. It's the relentlessness, the questions, the constant demands, the "daddy, daddy, DADDY!"

So I skipped off into my carefree adult world with a whole day to do whatever I wanted at my own pace. I read, I called friends, I planned what exciting work I could start doing with my new-found freedom. Then slowly my mood started to dip. I wasn't sure what it was. The sun was shining, I was out and about and nobody was telling me what to do. Then it hit me, sitting on a bench by the river. I missed her. There she was, laughing and playing with her new nursery friends, and I missed her.

Luckily it's not long until I have to go and pick her up. But already I'm wondering what it will be like when she sees me. Will she have missed me as much as I've missed her? Will she be glad I'm there to get her, or will I need to drag her out screaming? Is it awful that I hope she has quite enjoyed it but prefers hanging out with me?

Ah well, we've still got the rest of the week to spend together, and hopefully now we'll appreciate it more and won't fall out as much. Not that there's anything wrong with an argument, it makes it easier to spend time apart. At least for a little bit.]]>