James Proclaims!

It’s Tuesday afternoon as I write this. Which is unusual. I haven’t been the most prolific blogger of late, but when I have managed to get around to writing anything, it has tended to be on a weekend, often with a view to posting on a Monday. Yesterday was Monday and I did post something about Little Proclaims asking her tablet to make fart noises. So this post might not make it onto the site until next Monday, because life with two kids and a wife working towards a PhD means that, without the onset of another pandemic, I’m unlikely to have the time for blogging I once did, and it’s better to have something ‘in the bank’ for next week than to post for two consecutive days and then disappear for several months.

The reason I am able to blog on a Tuesday is that it is half-term and I am blessed with a rare bit of downtime. Mini Proclaims is napping, and Little Proclaims, having tired of asking her tablet to break wind, is now using the device to watch Number Blocks. Which is entertaining and educational, so I can let her enjoy that without needing to curtail her screen time too much. Being an education professional, I do get to enjoy the benefits of the school holidays, but that has rarely translated to a prolific blogging schedule – there’s normally too much else to sort out during the holidays that I never have time to do during term time. And that is no different this half term. There is a lot I should be doing that I’m not at present. But I did take the girls out this morning. I’ve booked Little Proclaims into extra swimming lessons every morning, because she likes swimming and I like that it tires her out. Mini Proclaims always comes to watch. She’s not always the best behaved of toddlers in public, but she seems to find observing swimming lessons quite calming. After swimming, I took them both to soft play, which wore them out. Unfortunately it also wore me out because Mini Proclaims is slightly too small to make her way around the various foam based obstacles without me clambering over them with her.

So while one daughter is napping, and the other is enjoying some maths based cartoon fun, the only activity I felt physically able to do was to blog.

Unlike for my last two posts, I am using my laptop to write this. My most recent efforts have been put together on my phone, and I suspect that will be my method of choice for most posts moving forwards, as the opportunity to sit at my laptop, uninterrupted, is a rare thing these days and my phone lets me write ‘on the move’, which is a state of being I generally find myself in most of the time. Today the weather is not the best though. Today has chosen to embrace the stereotypical notion that it always rains in the UK. It does rain a lot in the UK, but I normally do get to use my garden quite a bit during the summer months and it is from there I suspected I would be writing the majority of my blog posts until September. Au contraire, the last time I was able to enjoy my weed infested grassless lawn was over two weeks ago when I wrote about it in this post.

I am hoping that the rain will at least help the grass seeds I scattered on my lawn recently to turn into, y’know, actual grass. Looking out the window, it all seems to still be quite brown at present, with the only green patches being the aforementioned weeds. It would still be nice to be out there though.

I think the greatest frustration is that, because of the inclement weather, I’ve yet to put up my recently purchased rotary washing line.

I was quite looking forward to putting up my new rotary washing line.

I never cared much about rotary washing lines before I became a dad. If I’d written a post about a rotary washing line before 2018, it would have been a missive steeped in irony.

But there is nothing ironic about my desire to use a rotary washing line in 2024. I even researched consumer websites to find the best rotary washing line to suit my needs.

I’m more interested in my rotary washing line than I am in the fact that the UK is currently in the build-up to a general election.

You could read between the lines and see that last statement as a clever satirical commentary on the current state of British politics. It might well be. On some level I hope it is.

I’d hate to be the kind of person who sees a rotary washing line as the highlight of his month. But I am genuinely worried that I have become that kind of person.

I think it’s time to wake Mini Proclaims from her nap and to remove the tablet from Little Proclaims. Small children don’t always provide the most intellectually stimulating conversation, but even they could produce better topics of conversation than a rotary washing line.

Sadly Mrs Proclaims can’t. She’s just appeared in the room as I’m writing this sentence but all she talks about these days is 19th century French literature. The rotary washing line is definitely more interesting than that.