Month: May 2014

What are people on trains thinking about?

Again, this isn’t a thought from the toilet (I don’t have a great track record with using train toilets having exposed myself once to a smart man in a suit because of my incompetence with Virgin train toilet locks). This is a thought from sitting on a train (I’m writing this blog entry still on a train).

The thought is: what are people on trains thinking about? A secondary thought is: why do they look so depressed? Chances are they are going somewhere at least mildly exciting, so why the glum faces? Even if travelling for work, it is likely to be more interesting than just being in the office. When I get to travel for work I feel quite excited. But perhaps that’s just me. However, today is a weekend day so I imagine most of these people are going somewhere interesting, visiting friends, a football match (the football tops and beer cans might give it away), a stag party (for those dressed as pirates) or a shopping trip. So why do they look so miserable? Perhaps their expression isn’t related to their destination at all, maybe they are having profound philosophical debates with themselves to while away the time getting to this exciting place to which they are going. Or maybe they are trying to work out what to have for lunch. So am I mistaking misery for concentration and quiet solitary contemplation?

If only I could hear them, their thoughts might go thus:

‘Hmmm Coventry next stop. I haven’t been there for years. I should go there again. I wish I’d got a coffee at Birmingham. Thirsty now. Oh well. I’m tired. I have an itch. Ahhh that’s better.’

Man thinking about going to Coventry

Man thinking about going to Coventry

‘I hate this song. I should just forward it. I wonder what is the meaning of life. Hmmm. Ahh this song is better. I do like a bit of One-D.’

Does he like this song or not?

Does he like this song or not?

‘Agh damn nose. I hate this time of year. Major snots. When did I last have some Piriton? I wonder if she’s replied to my text yet? I’m hungry.’

Brrrrrppp!

Brrrrrppp!

‘I hope we get the chance to watch Britain’s Got Talent tonight. I can’t miss it. Oh we’re approaching Rugby. Ages to go yet. I hope it doesn’t rain today. My hair will frizz up if it gets wet. I need a wee. I hate using train toilets. They stink. Can I last? I’ll just have to try.’

Britain's Got Talent fans

Britain’s Got Talent fans

I often wish I could listen to all the inner dialogues of other people. And if I could hear them, would they be more interesting than mine?

There is no such thing as the perfect parent

This isn’t rocket science but I think everyone needs to be reminded of this fact occasionally.

Last night’s ‘weird thought had whilst sat on the toilet’ was prompted by a recent Facebook discussion I took part in. This was a conversation about how disheartening it is for ‘normal’ people to see status updates on Facebook that read: ‘Just back from a fantastic weekend with the kids hang-gliding  – we had a brilliant time!’, ‘So pleased that [name of child] likes eating raw carrots and broccoli rather than sweets!’, or ‘[name of child] knows her 232 times table backwards in Swahili – what a star!’

This was me last week

This was me last week

The question that was posed was: what would be your negative-parenting status update? This threw up lots of responses which included many bad parenting examples (or perceived bad parenting examples) and a lot of guilt regarding lack of time spent with children rather than time spent doing other things or working.

This debate was very interesting because it turned out that everyone who commented could cite both good parenting times and bad parenting times (of course, this is obvious), many people talked about struggling to balance work and home life and everyone talked about why it is that people share the parenting highs on Facebook. Is it really that they are perfect parents? Are they really trying to make other people feel bad? Is it just showing off? I don’t think it is, I think the people who talk about their broccoli-eating, hang-gliding children are ‘normal’ people. They are just trying to assuage the guilt for the bad times that we all have by highlighting those few positive moments. it is a self-affirmation of their occasional good parenting moments. ‘See – I can get it right sometimes, look world!’ I know this to be true because I do it.

I can relate to this

I can relate to this

The debate concluded with the thought that we all need to tell ourselves and our friends now and then ‘I can do a good job’ even if most of the time we feel as if we are battling against a tide of well-known and well-trodden parenting errors. Those good times when we spend a rare day building a tent out of towels in the garden make up for the many days spent dragging children to and from school while we tap on our phones or reply to emails or when we feed them chip butties or chicken nuggets that have never seen a chicken. Our children will remember the tent-building more than the being dragged and the nuggets.

chicken nuggets

Yummy

Then later on that same day I had a bad parenting experience. My youngest son decided that just after I’d got into the bath was a good time to have a poo accident. Did I leap out of the bath to help him? No way! Instead I issued instructions on what to do to him from the comfort of the bath. This was perhaps not the best strategy, in hindsight (rather, I should have shouted for his older brother to help him). As my youngest son took his trousers and pants off, the poo travelled at some speed across the room landing splat on the carpet. So in the end I had to get out dripping water all over the floor and sort the mess out.

I have many other examples such as this one of me not doing what I ought to do. Generally, I work too much, I use ‘in a minute’ too often, I let the youngest make his own breakfast sometimes, I get the oldest to take charge when I’m on the phone, we spent a lot of time in the school holidays doing nothing, we’ve never been to Legoland or abroad, I don’t do enough jigsaws with the youngest and I am rubbish at getting the other two to practice their weekly spellings and timestables (I can’t even remember the last time I sat number two boy down to practice his spellings – January?).

But a few days ago we were at a local National Trust cafe and a lovely old lady took the time and effort to tell me ‘you have three lovely boys’ which gave me that gooey warm feeling inside all parents crave. That same day number one and number two son begged me to buy them a set of Oxford School Reference books in the National Trust second-hand bookshop. It can’t all be bad then. And I did post about this on Facebook (but then I also posted about the flying poo).

My geeky, if often neglected, children

My geeky, if often neglected, children

The quarter to eleven train doesn’t exist

I should confess from the beginning that this isn’t a thought I had on the toilet but rather it is one that I had later on lying in bed waiting for sleep. I hope that I can still justify writing about it. I think it is an interesting thought. It is worth sharing.

Every night when I am lying in bed, shortly after turning the light off, I know that if I hear a train go by in the near distance then it is a quarter to eleven. This train is a freight train and rumbles on for about ten minutes, chugging past rattling its cargo as it does. This is ‘the quarter to eleven train’, at least that is what we call it here. I find this sound very comforting and if I am still awake when it goes past then sleep usually comes soon after. It is almost as if I can’t get to sleep until the quarter to eleven train has been and gone. If, heaven forbid, it were to miss a day, I’ll be awake for hours I’m sure. But as far as I know it hasn’t missed a day. I need to hear that train.

This isn't the quarter to eleven train

This isn’t the quarter to eleven train

However, last night, I was sat in bed reading my book and I heard the gentle rumbling of the quarter to eleven train approaching. My first thought was ‘oh I should stop reading and go to sleep if it is a quarter to eleven already’. But it was nowhere near a quarter to eleven. it was ten thirty-five. This had me doubting that the quarter to eleven train actually exists. Perhaps it really is the ten thirty-five train. Or worse perhaps the train doesn’t even have a time. Maybe the train travels when it is ready and it passes by at ‘around’ a quarter to eleven every night. Or far worse than that, perhaps the quarter to eleven train doesn’t exist at all. This thought troubled me. This would take away the comfort of routine from me. I like routine. Shortly after the sound of the long ten thirty-five train passing into the distance, I turned out the light and lay down my head. Silence. No train to lull me to sleep. This was not good. It would make a good end to the story if I told you I tossed and turned for hours, at least until the quarter to twelve train went past. But that would be a lie. I fell asleep.

My book

My book

I hope that my fears are unfounded and the quarter to eleven train does indeed exist and that last night’s early train was a one-off. Otherwise we might have to move house to somewhere that does have a quarter to eleven train.

How come morning people marry night people?

This isn’t the weird thought from last night, but an old weird thought, but since I’ve only just started this blog I have a whole bank of weird thoughts to draw upon, and this is one of them.

It has always amused me, amazed me even, that out of many of  the couples I know (and at my age, I know a lot), one of the members appears to be a ‘morning’ person who leaps out of bed at the dawn chorus full of ideas and plans and questions and the other is a ‘night’ person who  can just about manage a grunt before 8.30am. At the other end of the day, the ‘morning’ person (i.e. me) struggles to see the end of a film on a Friday night with their eyes fully open yet the ‘night’ person could quite happily potter about on the Internet until 1am. Yet they get on. Yet it works. Why is that?

Is Homer a night person? I think so. Marge is a morning person.

Is Homer a night person? I think so. Marge is a morning person.

I need to meet a couple that consists of two morning people or two night people to disprove my theory that morning people partner with night people EVERY TIME. Would they both leap out of bed at 7am ready for a run around the block? Would they be sat side by side after midnight searching for holiday destinations (or in their younger years dance side by side like nobody is watching until 3am)? Would they eventually become one?

Dr J. Evans Pritchard would have been proud of this graph

Dr J. Evans Pritchard would have been proud of this graph

I’ve also wondered, while sat on the toilet, does this theory also apply to friendships? I am inclined to think so. My best friend from my school days was a night person. It was always her who persuaded me to go out at 9pm and dance until 3am. I’d get up early the next day, find a nice quiet spot to read my book until hunger took over. Then I’d have to raid her fridge while she slept on.

At least half of the people here are wishing they were snuggled up in bed with their books

At least half of the people here are wishing they were snuggled up in bed with their books

Most of my close friends now seem to be night people. I can sit and talk to morning people, and sympathise with their gripes about living with someone who can’t decide what they want to eat for lunch before 12am, but we’ll never be soul mates. Night people seem to be more relaxed about life, they seem to ooze a different sort of energy than morning people. They don’t worry about deadlines, they don’t get anxious, but they persuade me to do adventurous things just when I am settling down to read my book and have a cup of herbal tea.

I’ve spent a lot of my life wishing I was more of a night person. They seem to have more fun than morning people. During my student years I was almost able to be an honorary night person for a while but however hard I have tried to fight it, I’ll always be a morning person to my core. These days I only see midnight once a year, and then grudgingly because it is deemed rude to go to bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve.

 

Not, what are knees for? But, what am I for?

My middle son has asked me to correct my mishearing of his weird thought while sat on the toilet. Apparently, he didn’t ponder the point of knees, rather he pondered the point of ‘me’. Easy mistake to make I think and I’m glad I made the mistake as otherwise I wouldn’t have spent ten minutes pondering the point of knees yesterday.

So, to correct my mistake, I hereby announce that he once sat on the toilet and wriggled his fingers and thought: ‘What is the point of me?’ That is really quite a big question and too large to debate at great length here.

What is the point of 'me' not my knees

What is the point of ‘me’ not my knees

What are knees for?

This isn’t my ‘weird thought’ but the ‘weird thought’ of my middle son. Today, as I was telling my children that I had started a blog called ‘Weird Thoughts I Have Sat On The Toilet’, I asked them if they have similar weird thoughts while sat on the toilet. My eldest looked bemused, my youngest giggled and my middle son replied with: ‘Yeah, like the other day, I was sat on the toilet and I started to wriggle my fingers and toes and I thought: “what is the point of knees?”‘

What are these for?

What are these for?

Life is like a wave

Last night’s ‘weird thought while sitting on the toilet’ was that life is like a wave.

The wave of life

The wave of life

Every day, and every moment in the day, feels like the crest of a wave might feel like if it had feelings. Life is current and fresh and happening and moving. All the emotions felt at that moment are current. Tomorrow that feeling will have moved on and the emotions will have diminished like the wave which has moved along the surface of the water. But that feeling of being in the present continues and never dissipates, it just organically changes, like the shape of the crest of the wave. It isn’t the same water but it looks the same. The past recedes and flattens, the future is ahead and flat, but the present is high and moving.

Examining the physics behind what a wave is, my theory makes sense. A wave, in physical terms, is a disturbance or oscillation that moves through either matter or space, accompanied by a transfer of energy. The particles themselves do not move far, if at all, it is the energy that turns the matter into a wave. So the present and current is the energy and that energy moves through that linear constant we call time, which is life, until the wave breaks on the beach.

So life is like a wave.