Battle Stations

How are you ? Well? Have a good Christmas,? Enjoy the break? Didn't it go quickly! Christ, one minute I'm packing up and thinking about my week and a bit away from the office, and precisely one minute later I'm back at my desk thinking "funny...thought I had a break due to me?". How did my Christmas go the? Actually it wasn't too bad. I tend to endure Christmas Day as my house is taken over by hoardes of children running riot through it like speed crazed kids from Village of The damned. And yes I include my own in that evaluation. It's just not the sort of Christmas day I grew up with and therefore it's hard to adapt. For some the noise of kids screaming, shouting and playing drum kits/keyboards as their prezzies is joyous, but for me...well it just raises my blood pressure instantly and I end up smiling through gritted teeth for the latter part of the day. The morning is always nice though as my kids open their prezzies and the adults (me, GMD, The Grand Master, Audrey and our special guest Helpful Auntie) open ours. Helpful Auntie is a recent addition to Christmas Day. She has been down previously with her husband but unfortunately he died earlier this year so this was a new experience for her, Christmas without someone you've been with for 40 odd years. No doubt a new and rather unwelcome experience one would imagine. Why Helpful Auntie? Well, she's always doing something around the house. Making tea, helping with the cooking etc.

However, the day started with a present to me which frankly took the wind out of my sails and left me in a rather emotional state. And it was Teenager that did it. In brief, Teenager is the product of GMD's rather brief first marriage to Dickhead. Dickhead is a man who, no matter what you've seen or done, has seen or done it bigger, better or quicker than you. He lies and bullshits his way through life. In effect he lives in a Billy Liar themed alternative planet to the rest of us. Yes he's that sort of Dickhead. He proved his worth in his short marriage to GMD by being her childhood sweetheart for many years and then having an affair with another woman whilst GMD was pregnant with Teenager, having already been traumatized by an earlier miscarriage. Quality bloke huh?

Anyway, because of this and despite the fact that teenager has lived with me since the age of about 1, Teenager has had to use the surname on her birth certificate at school, and well everywhere a legal name was required. This has meant she has been missed at fire drills because they called out her name with his surname and has been referred to in letters from the school in the same way. Something I know she has never been happy with. Over the years Dickhead has seen less and less of he, not due to me or GMD, but because she is a growing young woman with her own values and friends. Stroppy, yes. Typically confused by teenagerhood, yes. Easily distracted, yes. In fact she has all the stereotypical symptoms associated with being a Teenager. She also has her own growing sense of independence and this is what has caused the decrease in her seeing him over the years. Context set? Right, on Christmas day she hands me a wrapped box which rattles. I am told I must open this first before anything else. I proceed to do just that. The box is a shoe box and the rattling things were just Christmas Tree decorations. However inside the box was also a certificate, and when I opened it up it was a legal document, signed by Dickhead, Teenager and witnesses, that Teenager had changed her surname from that belonging to Dickhead to that belonging to me.

She had done all of this off her own back and by her own devices. She asked him face to face if he would allow this as a Christmas present from her to "her Dad". He is a Dickhead but this must have hit hard, and to his credit he agreed and sad that this would be his Christmas present to her. I can't tell you what this did to me, but suffice it to say, the normally verbose Jack suddenly had a fit of being somewhat tongue tied, and frankly speechless. Every present after that seemed rather trivial to be honest. But I have revised my opinion of teenagers in general, and especially my own Teenager. She's a special one and no doubt. And so other news. I won the Battle of Boxing Day. This was the battle that GMD had decided to start by preventing me from going to see my beloved Chelsea play Fulham that day. Quite simply I put my foot down and said that the days when I was told what I can and can't do are gone, I'm 44 years old after all. I also recruited the covert help of The Grand Master, Audrey and several other friends to lobby in my favour. At least I thought it might be covert but in the end it was obvious that I had lobbied my lobbiers as it were. I also argued that after Christmas Day I deserved a few hours of Jacktime in more peaceful surroundings. believe me, the cacophony of noise at Stamford Bridge paled into insignificance against the competition between Christmas CD's, kids drum kits, electronic robopets, kids electronic keyboards and hand held microphones with built in amps! I didn't get the job I applied for before Christmas, but luckily I hadn't put too much hope on that. Just getting to the second interview stage was cathartic enough for me to snap out of my wage-slave depression. I liken it to reaching the final and losing. You can let it devastate you or you can treat it as a good learning experience. So I guess my days at work continue to be unchallenged, but buffered by plenty of "working" from home, days off to play golf , no arguments over long holidays and time to write this blog. See , life ain't so bad when looked at from another angle.

I also passed my exams that I took in October time, so am now a fully qualified IT Service Management professional. So, things begin to look up, and the lesson learned is don't think there are no surprises left. Good things come to those who wait as they say in the world of Guinness.

Later, GrocerJack