Advice for Remy

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 258. Write things down or you'll forget them. My daily worry at the moment is that I'll go to all this effort to think of a good piece of advice for you, write it all down, edit it, find a suitable photo, upload it to every social media platform under the sun, only to have somebody contact me telling me I've already done that one. Even worse - I've already done it twice. I started off with the best of intentions to try and keep track of them, to overcome my absent-mindedness and prevent this kind of thing from happening. I made a spreadsheet, I summarised all the topics I'd written about, even added key words to filter through. But eventually I stopped, either through lack of time or lack of motivation, and now I'm paying for it. I now have my own notirously poor memory to try and use as a tool to filter out unoriginal ideas. If I'd carried on with my original plan to list everything and categorise it all, I'd simply be able to do a quick search each time and figure out which ideas had already been used and which hadn't. No matter how good your memory is, you won't remember things. Whatever it is, you won't remember it. Things you've done on particular dates, things you want to do, shopping lists, birthdays - you name it, it'll be gone. The beauty of this modern digital age is that none of us have an excuse for not making notes of things on our phones. Of course the only issue then is remembering where you've put it. (Oh and apologies if I’ve posted this before).

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 257. Don’t assume you’ll always feel about things the way you do right now. It’s important to remember that no matter how strongly you feel about something right now (either positively or negatively) you may not always feel like that. For example, I distinctly remember being a teenager - probably about 16 or 17 - and hating shaving. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror with my red Wilkinson Sword three blade razor (which was, at the time, cutting edge, so to speak), and cutting my face to shreds every time I tried to do it, hating every second. I remember thinking that if the technology existed to laser zap every single one of my facial hairs to kill them and make them never ever grow back, I’d leap at the chance and have it done straight away. I remember thinking that there’s no way in hell I’d ever want to have a beard, so it would be the easiest decision possible. If I had taken that decision, current me - who hides his potato-shaped face under layers of hair - would be in despair. I now can’t ever imagine not having a beard for the rest of my life. But, taking my own advice, who knows if that itself may one day change. It’s fine to be strong willed and certain in your thoughts, feelings and opinions. But always keep in the back of your mind the thought that maybe, just maybe, you might think differently in time. It may be a long time away and it may never happen, but don’t make decisions which will, for example, leave yourself beardless and potato-faced for the rest of your life with no way to change it.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 256. Coriander is just the worst. This is coriander. Yes, it may look like a harmless, innocuous herb, all green and pleasant and not hurting anyone. But don’t be fooled - that’s what it wants you to think. It is in fact a soap-flavoured demon, hell-bent on ruining every meal it touches. You see, I am one of the lucky ones. One of those who taste this vile greenery for what it really is - poison. Okay, not poison, but it tastes bad is what I’m getting at. A proportion of the population (let’s call them the ‘normies’) are like me - they taste coriander as a horrible bitter perfumy flavour which is honestly repulsive. The other segment of the population (let’s refer to them as the ‘freaks’) taste a wonderful flavoursome tangy fresh flavour, due to a genetic abnormality present in their unfortunate bodies. It’s really not their fault - they’re just built wrongly. Either way, they seem to have something which blinds them to its repulsiveness which the rest of us don’t have. And thank god we don’t. Let’s hope you’re one of us - that you can see the light and taste this vile vegetation for what it really is. One day we’ll make them all see how awful it is. And until then? Well, we’ll just have to make our own little coriander-free pot of salsa separate from the main one and just get on with our more enlightened lives.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 255. Sometimes you just need a break. So I’ve neglected these posts of late, leaving future you to fend for yourself for a few days without advice. But it’s been a very busy time of late and both your mum and I have been a little worn down with work, life and getting things done. So it was a very welcome change of pace to be able to take last week off and visit your grandparents in Devon for the first time since you were extremely small. We relaxed, ate, drank, walked, beached and switched off, and it did us the world of good. Sometimes you just need to stop, take a break and recharge.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 254. You don’t need to know all of the laundry instructions, but some are helpful. I’ve always been very good with washing clothes. My natural over-cautiousness and worry about doing things wrong means I follow the instructions about how certain things should be washed very carefully. Too many slight shrinkages have rendered beloved items unwearable over the years for me to be anything other than paranoid about checking and double checking the tumble dry symbol on the label, and only ever putting them on low. Anything which might even briefly have at some point come into contact with a sheep goes on a wool or delicates wash. But what if it says dry clean only? Surely a delicates wash for a pair of dry clean only curtains couldn’t possibly do any damage? Well the two inches of daylight at the bottom of our dining room patio doors begs to differ. Lesson learned. But this is about the extent to which I get over-cautious with washing labels. Do not bleach? Pah, was never going to anyway. Squiggly lines? Who knows and who cares - can’t be that important. Ironing symbols? Do we look like a household that irons? But today, for the first time ever, I fell victim to a classic washing error of sitcom proportions - a red item unexpectedly turned everything pink. Fortunately you can pull it off, but now your favourite white polo shirt is a fetching shade of salmon. Typical that the only instruction I failed to read and follow was ‘wash with like colours’. Certainly won’t make that mistake again.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 253. Having small animals around always makes you feel better. For the past couple of days, you’ve been very much under the weather. Restless sleep, streaming nose, croaky voice, and generally feeling very sorry for yourself indeed. As I write this at 9.30pm, around 2 and a half hours after your bedtime, you’re still rolling around your cot, intermittently sniffing and crying and chirping and coughing to yourself, in an uncharacteristic bout of insomnia. You’ve been very much off your game, but one thing that’s sure to pick up up, even when feeling like this, is the pets. You delight in chasing Paul around the house, even if he doesn’t quite reciprocate these feelings. And Mulberry - the chirping sounds you make whenever he enters your eye-line show us that he’s probably your favourite thing on the planet (well, second only to bananas). Your relationship with the pets will set you up for life, teaching you valuable lessons about companionship, caring and bonding, and they’ll be like your closest little friends for some time to come. When we visited Woodside at the weekend we came across these otters, who chirruped continuously towards you, much to your delight. Who knows - maybe a slinky mammal added to the household wouldn’t be such an otterly ridiculous idea?

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 252. Perfect your egg-frying technique. Eggs are the most versatile of foods - there’s hundreds of ways to eat them. But one of the best is the humble fried egg. It’s only recently I’ve managed to cook what I consider to be a really good fried egg, so listen up - as I’m about to divulge egg-frying secrets to you which will make you the envy of all those who taste your Sunday morning fried egg sandwiches. Firstly, get the pan very hot, and add a good glug of oil - vegetable or sunflower are best, olive tends to get too smoky. Once it’s good and hot, crack the egg into the pan (and always crack an egg on a flat surface, not the edge of the pan - it’ll mean you’ll have less chance of getting pieces of shell in your cooking) and then leave it. Completely. Let it bubble and spit away without touching it at all - not even to move it around. The absolute most you should do is to spoon some of the oil over the top of the egg to help cook the top. Now this is where paths may diverge - if you’re one of those heathens who likes a disgusting runny unctuous yolk, then keep spooning the fat until it’s looking all white with crispy browned edges, and you’re done. If you’re a normal person, flip that bad boy over and cook the other side. Once it’s nice and crisp-edged you’re good to go. Flip it between some slices of bread or add it to some sausages and chips, season with salt and pepper and you’ve got yourself a little package of perfection.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 251. Be weird - anything else is just boring. So today, our mammoth week of a million jobs to tidy the dining room saw me required to move the grandfather clock, clean behind it and put it back again. Simple. The vast network of cobwebs and other unpleasant stuff behind it tried to stop me, but I was in no mood to be trifled with. That clock got a good clean, had its corner of the room rejuvenated, and was returned to its rightful place without incident. That was, until the next time the hour mark rolled around. You see, for over a year now, this clock hasn’t chimed. It used to entertain us on the quarter hour (with the same chiming tones as Lincoln Cathedral, if you’re interested) and bong tunefully on the hour, but it has taken a vow of silence for a long time now. Until today. Presumably I stirred something deep within it and reminded it of the role it was supposed to play in the house, as it chimed up in all its glory, entertaining us every 15 minutes and on the hour. Marvellous, and a very welcome return to our house. However, that’s not the full story. You see, it’s gone a little, well, weird. It seems to have forgotten how to count. At 8am, it chimed 10 times. At 10am it struck 12. At noon it struck 3, and earlier this evening it announced that it was 1 in the morning. But, this has actually made us love it even more. After all, not everyone has a confused and absent minded grandfather clock, trying to remember the time but failing almost every time. Is it midnight? Is it mid-morning? Who knows, and who cares. It’s time we took a lead out of the clock’s book and acted a little weird - life’s more fun that way.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 250. Don’t put things off if you can do them now. They say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, and the second best time is today. It’s sometimes difficult to do something or to start something that you feel won’t bear fruit for a while. But often, by not doing it you’re ensuring that future you will curse current you for not being more on the ball with things. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time to do something now, as it already seems too late to be worthwhile. But I guarantee that, if you don’t do it, in a year’s time you’ll look back wishing you had - and then you’ll be a year further down the line and in exactly the same position. So don’t delay things. Don’t look back in a few months or a few years or even a few decades and wish you’d done something sooner - you can’t get that time back, and you can’t rewind. That’s not to say you have to be reckless - just be proactive and have the courage of your convictions to go for things you feel are right and see where they take you.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 249. If you have chores to do, break them down into tiny manageable chunks. Whether it’s tidying the house or getting boring work tasks done, garden work or homework, chores are inevitable. There’s always something that has to be done, and the older you get, the more there seem to be. Your mum and I missed our chance to do a full spring clean in the house in the spring, so are now doing a late-summer-preparing-for-autumn clean instead. And as these cleaning jobs are some of the dullest things you can ever possibly imagine, we’ve tried to make it a little more palatable. We chose a room to start on and have a week to fully sort - we chose the dining room. We then wrote down every single tiny little task we could think of to do to make the dining room spotless - and I mean everything. Moving things out and dusting behind them, hoovering the cobwebs from the ceiling, washing down the skirting boards - we’re not playing games here. We then numbered them all (55 if you’re interested) and each day we draw 5 each randomly for the next day. Today we’ve done all 10 we needed to do (plus a few more) all whilst going about our daily life - a little 5 minute clean here, a little 2 minute dust there. So we’re now a fifth of the way through the deep clean of a whole room and it barely feels like we’ve expended much energy at all. Things are always much easier and less daunting when you break them down into small manageable chunks. Now excuse me while I go and... ** checks number - 47 ** ...clean the cat door. I said it was effective, not glamorous.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 247. Be safety conscious (just don’t take tips on it from your nanny). I’m generally a very cautious person. I worry about everything. Things going wrong, things getting lost, things breaking, people getting hurt, and just about most other things you can worry about. I try to keep a lid on it and not let it rule me, but it does mean that, much to the frustration of your mum a lot of the time, I tend to be the voice of “We shouldn’t do this” or “We can’t do that”. But I just want to keep everyone safe. I probably get it from your nanny, who is commonly known as the Health and Safety Inspector of the Rook family. Her aversion to her offspring or her offspring’s offspring so much as riding a bike has become the stuff of legend, and her threats to let down the tyres of any motorised two wheeled vehicles owned by the aforementioned is a threat I feel is rooted in truth. Take this scene from our day with her today. Tonnes of toys laid out. Nice, you may think. She wants her grandchildren to have fun. Well, upon deeper investigation it turned out that the reason she was so insistent in bringing so many of these boxes down from upstairs was to form a barrier between you and the fireplace, so you couldn’t fall on it and hurt yourself. I tell you, as the Daily Mail would say, it’s health and safety gone made. Well, you’re made of sterner stuff than that. You saw those boxes, steeled yourself, found a way through, fell over and hurt yourself anyway. So there you go. There’s probably a moral here somewhere but I feel I’ve somewhat lost the point. Basically be safe. Or, if you can’t be safe, injure yourself in a deeply ironic way.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 245. Don’t let nostalgia fool you into thinking everything was ‘better back then’. So this evening we watched a little of your favourite programme - In The Night Garden. It’s one of the few things that’ll stop you in your tracks and engage you immediately - that and Justin’s House and the immeasurably brilliant Sarah and Duck. It has a such a calming effect on you it’s wonderful to see - especially when, at the beginning, we find out it’s an episode introduced by the miniature train the Ninky Nonk, and not that bloody godawful farting airship the Pinky Ponk (admittedly this isn’t something I ever saw myself getting wound up by, but I bloody hate that thing). Years from now you’ll probably look back on these programmes as the golden age of kids TV, lauding them as better than anything which came before or since. I know, because that’s what I do. Nothing nowadays can beat the sheer brilliance of such classics as Mr Benn, Button Moon, Pigeon Street, the original Postman Pat and Rainbow. However, that’s not true, no matter what I think. My nostalgia of my idyllic childhood of course leads me to think that, when I was little, everything was better than it is now. But objectively, of course that isn’t the case. Some people still hark back on a daily basis online to ‘when things were better’ (usually people in their 60s seem to be most guilty for this) when doors could be left unlocked, everyone got on, nobody stole or lied or cheated, and the world was a perfect utopia. They of course forget all the bad stuff that happened, because they’re living in rose-tinted nostalgia of their youth, as they are often worried and confused about how the world has moved on. Change is inevitable and should be embraced. So by all means, keep thinking In The Night Garden is the best TV ever made for kids, but just deep down know it might not be - and that’s okay. We’re all entitled to enjoy our own nostalgia, but just don’t be ruled by it.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 243. Be adventurous with your eating. You used to be a fabulous little eater. You'd plough through everything we put in front of you, whether it be green vegetable, pulse, potato, meat, fish, cereal, dairy, or just about everything else. You'd make light work of curries, chillis, vegetable dishes, fish pies, sandwiches, Weetabix and pretty much anything you were ever dared to eat. And for the first two-thirds of the day you still have a cracking appetite. You feed yourself your morning Weetabix and banana like you're half starved, thrashing through them in no time at all. You devour your lunch - usually some sandwiches, cucumber and fruit - and would probably have twice the amount if we gave you the chance. But for the past few weeks, when it's come to your evening meal, you've been a nightmare. Dishes you ordinarily love have been strewn across the walls, over the floor and, mainly, over Paul, as you're for some reason rebelling against all the things you used to love. As I write this, you're pulling faces, shouting and scraping some lovely dinner from your mouth and smearing it everywhere it shouldn't be. We're not quite sure what's caused this reversal of eating for your dinner, but we're hoping it goes away quickly as it feels currently like our dining room is at least 30 percent mushed foodstuff. But we're not going to give up, as we're determined to give you a wide and varied eating experience so you'll be an adventurous eater when you're older (currently, it's only Paul who's getting a wide diet, scavenging on the scraps you're depositing on his head).

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 242. It’s perfectly okay not to like things that other people like. I’ve never wanted to be a sheep, a blind follower of others. I think it’s such a shame when people don’t have the courage of their convictions to like (or dislike) something just because others don’t feel the same. To not pursue a hobby or love because you feel others will trade you for it. To pretend to be into something because those around you are and you just want to fit in. I’d love for you to grow up liking what you like and disliking what you dislike, and not caring what others think. Play football or do ballet, be into Avant Garde French cinema or kids cartoons, listen to Brahms or Britney - it doesn’t matter. If you like it, go for it. If you don’t like it, avoid it. It should be that simple. Paul is trying to set the example to you at the moment in the only way he knows how. Your toy, affectionately known in this house as Psychedelic Drug Cat (PDC for short) is something we’re relatively fond of. However, he has, for some reason, become Paul’s mortal enemy. He hates him with every fibre of his tiny angry being. He never touches any of your toys, yet as soon as PDC comes out of the toybox he tries to rip his creepy little face off. He doesn’t care that we don’t feel the same - he just goes for it. So be like Paul, just perhaps slightly less aggressively.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 241. Don’t leave food scraps lying around - rats are everywhere (and they’re waaaay bigger than you think). Before you were born, when your mum was pregnant with you, we had rats in the house. We first realised something was amiss when we made some high-protein cereal bars one evening and left them on the kitchen worktop. The next morning, all trace of them was gone. Over the next few months we had an ongoing battle with the rat family, resulting is us disposing of quite a few of them (though they put up quite the resistance). I was reminded of this today as this afternoon we again made some similar baked treats and, spookily, came across this absolute unit of a rat on our afternoon dog walk. Now I always imagined the ones we caught last year were normal rats - pretty much large mice. But this one. My god. If he was hit by a car I’m certain it left a dent in the bodywork. He’s an absolute monster. So let this be a warning - they’re out there, and they’re not friendly little rodents, like something from the Wind in the Willows. They’re gigantic feral beasts out to steal your wallet, car and keys before moving into your house and assuming your identity. Don’t give them a chance. Learn from our mistakes and clean all your food waste away. Because this meat-head is clearly what happens when rats gorge themselves on homemade protein bars.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 240. Just because something’s broken doesn’t mean it’s of no use. This is Jeremy Fisher. He’s a slightly broken ceramic fish who enchanted us during a visit to Cheltenham and has hung in our bathroom ever since. He’s one of many, many deformed, broken, imperfect or otherwise incomplete things in our house which we’ve grown very fond of. Your mum and I have always had a habit of picking up these kinds of things - reduced to clear because they’re slightly damaged, making us feel sorry for them as clearly nobody else would want them. There’s the tall dog without a nose who currently lives by the pond. There’s Owen, the Triceratops skull, who was reduced because some of his neck fronds (surely not the right term, but you know exactly what I mean) were broken. There’s the as-yet nameless stone leaping fish statue currently living in the dining room that your mum bought recently (who you’ve annoyingly taken to filling with all sorts of things - most recently your toothbrush). And, of course, there’s the fabulous Rickon, whose broken tail made him, in our eyes at least, no less of a magnificent ceramic leopard, and he’s been a centrepiece of the living room ever since. Just because something isn’t ‘perfect’, shouldn’t mean it has no use, no value, or can’t bring joy to people. In our house we’ll always welcome and embrace the broken and the imperfect.

[advice-for-remy]

Advice for Remy, Day 239. Never, under any circumstances, be a bully. I was very fortunate during my school life that I never really got bullied. It helped that I was bigger than most others my age (although that doesn't always stop a lot of bullies) but it meant that I avoided the hell some people have to go through. I was reminded of it today, as my Facebook feed was filled with photos of smiling (and possibly quite apprehensive) kids posing for the obligatory back to school doorstep photos after what has been a very long and bizarre extended period away. Hopefully they'll all have a great time back at school and won't find themselves the victims of some cowardly classmates destined to make their lives hell. But bullying isn't something only confined to the classroom - it's just as prevalent in adult life as well. I've worked alongside many a bully in my time, who used their position, authority or sheer dominance of personality to push down those around them and get ahead. And you only need to look at the people running the world right now. We have arguably the world's biggest and most cowardly bully in the most powerful position in the world. But the thing to know is that bullying won't get you anywhere. The cowardice behind it will always catch up with you in the end, and you'll be brought down to earth with a thud. Always make sure you’re the one helping people up, not knocking them down.