Startlingly Familiar

Tonight I find myself writing a post about free will, or to be more precise - the lack of it. In doing so, I revert to type and wander off topic to find easy sensory diversion in Youtube. I come across a Why? video through which I discover my wife incarnate.

And so I find another reason to love her;



Some of you may remember that this Four Tet video did the same for me back in 2007

Consequently, I have matters more pressing than Sans God to attend to...

Like I have any choice in the matter, eh?

Watershed

Tomorrow morning Dominic will enter full time education. He'll take his first faltering steps upon the machine's conveyor belt. I've every confidence that he'll find his balance and prevail. When Meg went full time, we worried (needlessly), that her timid personality would get the better of her. Not so with Dom. Quite the opposite. The establishment should prepare itself for the onslaught that is our youngest progeny.

This marks a watershed moment for Miche & I. You see, for the past six years my wife has devoted herself entirely to our young. She gave up her work and all that goes with it. No small sacrifice.

I'd like to say that my grotesque salary has kept the wolves from the door during these single salary years. But that would be a lie. Miche's formidable management skills, self-discipline and relentless subjugation of her husband's excesses have left us debt free. Mortgage notwithstanding.

Later this month, Miche will receive her first salary payment in her new part time job. It will be met with a sigh of relief, a loosening of belts and a fucking good bottle of wine. I'm looking forward to testing the theory that a cheap bottle of Chablis is as good as an expensive one.

A fifty pence - twenty pence moment

Earlier this evening Dominic & I were reading a rather good human anatomy flip book. We'd just got to the brain bit when we heard a blood curdling scream from upstairs. We bolted up them, two at a time, to discover Miche & Meg on top of a bed, clutching each other in terror.


This beast was hounding the poor pair - lurking on the carpet and taunting them. Waggling his mandibles. The bastard.

Of course, being the man, I'm the spider catcherer of the household. I kind of like the wee blighters to be honest. I catch them between my palms. Sometimes I even peek at them.

This one was a monster however. I'll admit to a fifty pence - twenty pence moment, if you catch my drift. It took all my effort, for the benefit of the kids of course, to kneel down and say "Cool! Come on everyone, lets look at him."

There was no fucking way I was touching him! Besides, he was a house spider and autumn is a particularly bad time for them.You see, they come out of their crannies to find a mate.

As this bull was huge and horny, I had no desire to have him hump my thumb like a dog with his nadgers still intact, thankyouverymuch.

You'll note that I resorted to the old glass & birthday card trick.

Did I just say that out loud?

Miche my beloved, needn't wear make up to look good. She has a complexion some women would kill for. Even in the small corners, where time has left its mark, she has by her very nature, tamed it.

You see, Miche smiles more than she frowns and spends more time laughing than she does shouting. In doing so, the lines that she does have, simply follow her natural countenance. It is most beautiful.

I love her for this congruence; the fact that what you see is what you get. Also, she is extrovert. So you're rarely left in any doubt as to how she is feeling. This gives vital balance to my introversion, as I'm often found to be frowning at some hidden quandary. Without her, I swear I'd disappear up my own rectum.

I try to tell her these things as often as possible. Being a man however, I frequently forget to say them aloud.

May the 4th be with you

Today was pet day at Meg's shiny new school. A culmination of a week's preparation. They've fashioned pet homes out of shoe boxes and made collages of petshop animals. Each animal's name scrawled in lanky script under it. They've told animal stories and been on bear hunts.

This morning, each child brought in a pet for the rest of the class to meet. There were cats, Guinea pigs, fish, woodlouse, worms, a pony and numerous dogs. Mcleod was amongst them.

I'd arranged for a late start at work, so could spend much of the morning with the kids. They had a wail of a time.

Miche was there too, as she volunteers as a classroom support on Fridays. She knows the teachers quite well and was chatting to one of them whilst watching the kids enjoy themselves.

"Now, this is what it's about Miche, not those damned targets, key achievements and benchmarks. This is what we should be doing all the time." She said to Miche.

Miche was delighted to hear it. You see, we both feel that our young children are monitored, measured and evaluated far too much in our education systems. I imagine that there is a template child somewhere, like a cardboard cutout, that our government compares all other children to. God forbid we create a child too bad or too good. Too different, even.

Coincidentally, I came across this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson on my lunch break today. He summed up my thoughts on the matter brilliantly. I urge you to watch it. Now, it's twenty minutes long, but this man is a wonderful speaker, and bloody hilarious too. I guarantee you will enjoy it.



Apologies for the title. It had to be done.

Too much of a bad thing?

My beautiful wife said to me today,

"You think too much."

She worries that my incessant Socratic Questioning will get the better of me. Perhaps she imagines me in a world of entropy, where everything is reduced to blandness. A world where love, beauty and awe have been swept away by explanation.

I say to her, "It's an impossibility, for I will never truly grasp the immensity of my love for you."

Marvin Minsky came to mind;

"We all are reluctant, with regard to music and art, to examine our sources of pleasure or strength. In part we fear success itself– we fear that understanding might spoil enjoyment. Rightly so: art often loses power when its psychological roots are exposed. No matter; when this happens we will go on, as always, to seek more robust illusions!"

The more I understand not only the world, but myself, the more I appreciate what I have. However fleeting it may be.

Illusion or not, no matter.

These posts are going somewhere, honest...

Quite what Miche saw in me the night we met, eludes me even to this day. She was (and is) beautiful, confident and popular. I was the new guy in town, lost and bemused, having left my home to embark on a new academic life. To compensate for being thin, bookish and awkward, I'd grown my hair long. So as to look like the rock star who lived in my head. The effect was, umm, interesting.

I was talking to the cliche that you find at the end of any bar, anywhere in the world. He was drunk, and I was bored. Michelle, as I came to know her, arrived from nowhere, bouncing with energy. She placed herself between me and the pisshead and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

She said "Hi, who are you? You're new."

Now, I can't remember how I replied, but it must have been good enough for her to lead me away from the bore and into the bosom of her social group. I didn't look back. Never have.

Four o'clock that morning, we were sat on the floor at some random party, the pair of us stoned. In a crystal clear moment, that one gets sometimes with ganga, I realised that we'd talked, ensconced, for eight hours solid. Yet I couldn't remember her name. I've never been good with them, you see.

I couldn't think of a good way of weaving the "So, what's your name again?" question into the conversation. Could you imagine it!

So, I left her that morning, knowing that she was something special, but having no idea of her name. What a prick...

An awakening

A small part of my spirit listens to the seasons. During our shortening winters it sequesters away in some warm corner of my 'soul'.

There's a day, that I can pinpoint each year, when it awakens. Today is that day.

I'm not follicaly blessed, so even a glimmering of the spring sun beats down on my skull. Leaving the office early tonight, it was warmed a little. The sky was clear, and yet it was still mild. I noticed the trees beginning to blossom.

Driving home, I found that the sun no longer loomed on the horizon. At last, it had climbed high enough for my sun visor to block. My foot got heavy on the accelerator and the stereo got loud.

I came home to a quiet house. I forgot that both kids were out at friends for tea. Miche was working at her desk quietly. We'd the house to ourselves. Mmn.

Later, I decided to give our front lawn it's first cut of the year. Dom was dropped off, saw me with lawnmover and uncharacteristically ran past into the house. No hello or nothing.

A minute later he clambered out of the front door, dragging his yellow kiddy mower. He must have been rummaging deep in the garage to retrieve it. We finished off the lawn together. Up and down.

With smug self satisfaction, I decided that life is good, and spring is here.

Gravity never made someone fall in love.

Fifteen years ago I fell head over heels in love with Michelle. Seven years ago we married and five years ago we had our first child. I consider myself, in these respects, to be the luckiest man alive.

Even though the rush of our nascent longings have calmed, we remain very much together. To the point where only 'us' matters much of the time.

To me, enduring Love is an exercise in humility, luck and determination.

However, it could also be down to a good set of hormones;

THE FIRST STAGE

Testosterone and Oestrogen

The first stage of love - lust is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen – in both men and women.

STAGE TWO: Attraction

Adrenaline

The initial stages of falling for someone activates your stress response, increasing your blood levels of adrenalin and cortisol. This has the charming effect that when you unexpectedly bump into your new love, you start to sweat, your heart races and your mouth goes dry.

Dopamine

Newly ‘love struck’ couples have high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical stimulates ‘desire and reward’ by triggering an intense rush of pleasure. It has the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine!

Couples often show the signs of surging dopamine: increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest details of this novel relationship.

Serotonin

One of love's most important chemicals. This chemical may explain why when you’re falling in love, your new lover keeps popping into your thoughts.


STAGE 3: Attachment

Oxytocin

It's a powerful hormone released by men and women during orgasm.

It probably deepens the feelings of attachment and makes couples feel much closer to one another after they have had sex. The theory goes that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes. Oxytocin also seems to help cement the strong bond between mum and baby and is released during childbirth. It is also responsible for a mum’s breast automatically releasing milk at the mere sight or sound of her young baby.

Vasopressin

Is an important hormone in the long-term commitment stage. Vasopressin (also called anti-diuretic hormone) works with your kidneys to control thirst. Its potential role in long-term relationships was discovered when scientists looked at the prairie vole. Prairie voles indulge in far more sex than is strictly necessary for the purposes of reproduction. They also – like humans - form fairly stable pair-bonds. When male prairie voles were given a drug that suppresses the effect of vasopressin, the bond with their partner deteriorated immediately as they lost their devotion and failed to protect their partner from new suitors.

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Hormones or no hormones; Miche, you are adored.