nickbennett_blog

Tag: the

  • Fatherhood

    Sleepless nights, tantrums, and strange coloured pooh. These are just some of the side effects of being told you’re going to be a father. The fundamental fact of things is that we men, by our very nature, aren’t built for this. We are built like a B52 squadron. Deliver the package and get the hell outta there. Women, on the other hand, have a natural instinct to have kids by the time they hit puberty. A lot of girls in my school needed no further encouragement.

    Society has drilled into us what a stable family looks like. We’ve all seen The Waltons. Although, how many sodding kids do you need. I know it was set in the 30s before the ‘ribbed for her pleasure’ prophylactics but I’m sure the Dad could of put a sock on it? Any hoot, back to my point. The image of this family life is a portrayal and it isn’t natural, so for us men, it takes a lot for us to fight off the urge to get the hell out of dodge. It’s pathetic and don’t you think we know this. We’d never envisioned it to be like this. We had it all planned. The platinum albums, the World Cup winner’s medal, and the Nobel prizes. By accepting fatherhood, it’s like you’re accepting defeat the dream is OFFICIALLY over.

    So 3 months or so back Hannah tells me the news! Still a shock at the best of times let alone on day one of a ‘month off the booze’. For some reason, my logic assumed it would take a lot longer. Hannah had been on the pill since she was 17 so to conceive within 3 months was a shock. It all seemed surreal until our first scan. It left me breathless. There was our little dude/dudette. It hit me for 6. Time to man up Len! We cleared the spare room (nursery) which involved boxing up my songbooks, guitars, and football memorabilia. No bitterness just a slight sadness that I hadn’t seen through these hobbies to their fullness. I hope that one day I’ll open up these boxes and have someone to share these past times with. So a new chapter in this saga I call life. As one door closes another opens and all that jazz. I get the butterfly feeling of excitement when I think about what’s behind door number 1.

  • DePRESSing

    I’ve always known that the press in this country are a bunch of scandalous cads. I’ve some personal experience as one of these creatures (from the ‘Screws of the World’) slim-ed his way into our school after hearing a sixth former had got one of the teachers pregnant. By the way, back then this was a big story! There was no code of conduct or etiquette that you may expect from a man representing such a fine national institution. His tie was halfway down his undone shirt as he appeared from the back of the school where we were playing football. He asked us whether we knew anything before he was shepherded away by one of the teachers. There is one thing that has only become more apparent in recent years though, how bloody hypocritical they are!

    Front Page – “Pubs ban England Shirts – Outrage”
    Back Page – “What’s your game, Fabio? – Capello signs up for online game”

    Front Page – “Triesman fix claims”
    Back Page – “Remember the war England”

    Front Page – “Terry Scandal”
    Back Page – “Do it for Sir Bobby”

    You get the picture. These papers claim to be ‘behind our boys’ but I’ve never heard such nonsense. If I’m fully behind something I don’t try my utmost to undermine it at every possible opportunity. I’m fed up with hearing the defense ‘Oh, that’s our press they’ve always been like that’. We can stop it now by just not buying their papers. No one is cleaner than clean in the world, so I don’t expect the England football team to be any different. The Daily Mail set up Lord Triesdman by getting his personal assistant involved in the sting. Nice one! Don’t want to host the World Cup then. So come on Fleet street, stop playing silly buggers at least for a couple of months!