Twins: Ten Thousand Letters To My Children

Ahead of Sophie lies a promising career as a professional mourner. Culturally, what could be more different to our retentive way of dealing with loss. For every stifled sob we suppress, some cultures celebrate the passing with a dose of energetic hysteria. A gaggle of inconsolables weave and ululate about the coffin for a set turn and then retreat to the back of the cortege for a rest, leaving fresher lungs to lead the grief stricken peloton. Apparently its a thing! My daughter has a precocious talent for switching on the waterworks and can readily transform from sublime contentment to streaming eyed, runny nosed distress in the time it takes me to say no to an ice cream, a shoulder ride or impose any other intolerable cruelty. Sadly, we (and by we, I do of course mean me) have let this go unchecked and too late has the realisation dawned that Sophie has secretly been weaponising her tear ducts. Our normal routine involves managing a predictable routine of low level res...

There was a time when a jaunt to Paris required an appointment with the ruff tailor, overtime for the man servant and a change of horses every twenty miles. Since suspension was in its rudimentary phase, this journey was best avoided by anyone not partial to a week astride an over excited pogo stick. In those days the Channel's choppy greyness only offered nauseous, wind assisted flotation as a means of passage; modernity has given us the added choice of going over it or more recently, under it. The plane is undeniably quicker but even when you do get moving it is still a gamble. Keeping your feet on the ground largely avoids the check-in roulette, the baggage tombola and the scratch card security, all of which are prone to leaving you expensively disappointed and quite probably sick to the stomach. After all, why else would they call it a Terminal? The ferry has its charms, as our trip to Ile de Re in May demonstrated, but when time is limited, those precious hours seem b...

Its a good friend who will drive 60 miles to meet you for lunch when you already live close enough  to shout abuse at each other from an upstairs window. Its an even better one who will split the lunch bill evenly without a murmur of dissent, when blatantly you out ate them by a ratio of four to three. Everybody had news. M has a second due imminently and had evidently reached the state of weary resignation of someone who would rather be in February, be it this year or next. P revealed a return to writing and drip fed tantalising titbits that didn't make it entirely clear whether she was penning top class or merely top shelf literature. The children played hide and seek to a standard usually reserved for those who don't really understand the rules and were further hampered by the absence of any adequate cover behind or beneath which to hide; this and a tendency to wander out of concealment at regular intervals, to announce that they had yet to be discovered. The olde...

Forums fizz with acrimonious posts trumpeting rival preferences for The Avebury Rings versus Stone Henge. A cursory glance reveals countless threads which usually start with a polite enquiry from a curious American tourist and quickly descend into caustic trolling. Domino's. Pizza. Swayed only slightly by the current English Heritage/National Trust turf war we stuck two fingers up at the Henge in favour of inspecting the famous but mysterious stone rings. Erected in around 3,000BC, just before tea time, you could see them as one of those inexplicable acts of human endeavour at a time when the cutting edge of technology was .... a cutting edge. The less charitable might observe that about the same time the ancient Egyptians had finished their tea, cleaned the dishes and were instant messaging each other on their I-Tablets about how best to make Avebury look like a childish practical joke. Theories about the precise circumstances of their erection vary from relig...

My excessive time in transition was partly due to the need to towel dry every potential chafe point. I had bitter experience of the bleeding nipple stigmata on previous under prepared outings. The hiatus also gave me much appreciated time to steady my jellied legs. Whatever the reason, the race clock faithfully records that I squandered 4 minutes and 58 seconds before mounting up and gamely pedalling off to complete the ride section. Wasted. A leisurely spin along the Esplanade with picture post card views of the estuary to the right seemed to bode well for what lay ahead. After all, I cycled to work daily and, even allowing for some boastful under estimating, 3 miles routinely took a smidge less than 12 minutes. Surely then, I should have the whole thing wrapped up in under an hour? For me, however, all truly horrible experiences tend to conform to the same pattern and this was no exception. My initial optimism, which seemed so richly justified as I the ambled along the ...

One of the drawbacks to a gilded start to life is a relaxed attitude to endeavour and casual approach to jeopardy. Some regard this as laziness but to the critical eye, these are the characteristics of most great trail blazers. Avoid anything containing the word Max. As the loosely affiliated Portishead Triathlon team slowly came to their senses, the excuses began to materialise. One by one the drop outs started to accumulate as realisations slowly dawned that race day clashed with hair wash day, duvet day and corporate away day. Back up plans were trailed long in advance; terrible but previously quiescent ailments surfaced and medical advice definitely precluded exertion. In the end, the doughty band of heroes was whittled down to two; me and Adrian. Had we done some preparation, then he would have been my ideal training partner but even he was making noises about the pressing need to be somewhere else other than the start line. I have to confess that I too had my doubts....

Some offspring surpass their parents' achievements. Others merely repeat them. But pity those who fumble the transition, fall short of expectations and watch as the world overtakes them. They can only stare at their feet in embarrassment as the unrated outsiders surge past to snatch life's podium glory. When I was young, I never doubted that I could be a medal hopeful. Despite being the progeny of two less than towering forebears, neither of whom topped 5'6'', I fully expected to be long limbed. The aquiline features would come in time, I assured myself, despite the freckled stoutness that seemed to beset my childhood years (and those of anyone else remotely related to me). And there was no doubt in my mind that I would eventually possess the type of patrician brow that compels lesser men to scrunch their flat cap to their chest and tug forelock. In short, one day I would grow up to be David Niven. Thanks to my boundless optimism, I still haven'...