2006-03-07
Jo goes back to California early on Thursday morning. I was hoping to hear from her for another rendezvous today but nothing so far, and her phone is switched off. We did some shopping together yesterday lunchtime – she was stocking up on a few things you can’t get in America and escaped from the children and her mother-in-law at lunchtime. When she phoned in the morning I thought she sounded a bit irritable but we were fine when we were together – if completely chaste –and I think she was just feeling a bit trapped. That’s her life at the moment, and if she is coming back to work it’s going to be good for her to get some other forms of stimulation, but I know we’ll have to help her with her confidence. Dave certainly doesn’t do that. While it was gratifying to see how inane conversation about something as mundane as shopping was lighting her up, it is a reminder of how far she has been shrunken. It’s just been so good to see her. I hope she feels the same.Catherine was given a webcam for her birthday. I wasn’t keen on her having one – I’m not sure it’s a good idea for people to be able to see you like that. But she persuaded her grandmother to get one for her. Of course, true to form, my mother-in-law couldn’t manage to get the right thing. Lynne and I commented before the package was opened that it would be wrong in some way – just as just about everything they’ve been asked to get for the children’s birthdays and Christmases over the last twenty years has always been wrong, inadequate or just broken. We fully expected to have to make a trip somewhere to get the thing replaced – and lo and behold! when Catherine opened her parcel it turned out to be a webcam for a laptop – with about five inches of cable only.
Her brother came to the rescue though – it turns out he’s had a proper webcam attached to his laptop all the time he was away at University so they just did a swap.
Now - parents of teenager girls will know that the sole raison d’etre of a parent is to be embarrassing. We have no other recognised function in life (we are of course programmed to provide food, clean clothing, MONEY and transport so those don’t really count) so it is our duty to maximise opportunities to embarrass. If I’m out at the mall with Catherine I make a point of dancing to the muzak, or walking with a pronounced limp, or hugging her in an ostentatious fashion so that she goes scurrying off behind clothes racks or volunteers to go to New Look or Zara on her own.
Knowing this I don’t think she’d worked out the possibilities of a webcam. My dancing behind her is now building up something of a fan-base amongst her on-line friends. ‘Get yr dad dancin again!’ and ‘Yr dads lame’ has turned into ‘yr dads kl!’. Last night she was on-line with some boy she’s trying to impress, and I was in the background doing my ‘One Step Beyond’ dance from Madness (it suits the jerky style of a webcam, I find). Her friend gradually filled the screen with a chant of ‘Kevin!, Kevin!, Kevin!’ And then later I wrote out a large piece of card with
SOZ
G2G
BUBI
and held it up behind her.
The next ploy is for Lynne and I to engage in some long heavy-duty snogging, but any suggestions are more than welcome.
It’s only a matter of time before she decides to put it away.