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Yesterday we took the kids Christmas shopping, which was tough work but we came out of it fiarly unscathed. Phoebe and me came up with a stand up bit about this tree ornament for sale in John Lewis, which depicts Santa behind sign posts pointing to Love, Respect, Freedom, Tolerance, Equality and Pride. Confusingly you have to go in different directions for this things, so if you're into respect and equality go left, but if you like love, freedom, tolerance and pride go right.
Good news for 80s pop band King, but what if I want respect and freedom?
Sorry that's not possible. You have to choose.
Surely pride and equality go hand in hand? Not according to Santa.
Can we have directions to somewhere useful like London or the toilet? NO only poorly defined concepts that sadly will never be fully aligned.
If anything will stop Phoebe believing in Santa then it's this horrible mismash of nonsense
Anyway yesterday Ernie, who basically always wants the last thing he's seen, decided he really wanted the Jet Pilot Interactive dashboard, that he'd never heard of til he chanced across it. It looked a little bit young for him, but more importantly it cost an eye watering £99 and the only one they had in John Lewis had quite a badly damaged box. I said if he still wanted it later that we'd get it on line.
Amazingly at bedtime it was all he could talk about. It's actually quite cool and maybe it's for slightly younger kids, but I remember my mum and dad giving each other concerned glances and asking me if I was sure when I said I wanted to get some Play People knights when I was (at least) 8. No need for a 28 year old joke here. I was too old for them.
Are you sure you want those, aren't you a bit old? asked mum. But my friend had them and I loved. them and we got them and I played with them A LOT. They were great. In fact going and finding that picture of them has given me goose bumps. I'd forgotten about half the stuff that came with them, but the minute I saw it I was back playing with those capes and flags and ceremonial trumpets.
Kids know what they want.
Today I looked up the toy online and annoyingly it as £99 or more everywhere, but more annoyingly as I clicked to buy it on Amazon (I know) it told me it would be delivered on the 4th January. Obviously that was useless to everyone, so I cancelled the order. But it was out of stock everywhere. Even on the John Lewis website. It did say though that there were a few stores with one or two, one of which was Welwyn where we'd been yesterday.
I knew how much this meant to my son and even though I thought there's a pretty good chance that he'll play with it for five minutes and forget he had it - maybe this is his Play People. Maybe it'll give him goosebumps in fifty years time and he'll consider buying it again on ebay (or whatever the future people use to barter post-Apocalypse. Like a dad in a terrible Christmas movie I was going to have to return to the shop and get this, before Sinbad or Rob Schneider or some other almost superstar actor got their hands on it.
The website said there were two at Welwyn so maybe I could even get one with an unbroken box.
Look, I had stuff to do. I could have done without this, but my kids come first and my son couldn't be disappointed on the big day. My only fear was that I'd be too late.
Amazingly the box we'd picked up yesterday was still there, even though you couldn't get these things for love or money (you could probably get them for money) anywhere. I asked the assistant if there was a not broken one somewhere as it said so online, but she said no. I didn't have any choice and yesterday Ernie had said it didn't matter that the box was broken (which is true) so I couldn't risk it. I bought it and I got £5 off cos the box was so fucked up. So I almost felt like a winner. If you ignore the fact it cost me £94 and I lost an afternoon's work.
Of course our kids will never know the sacrifices we made for them due to love (I was losing respect and freedom for starters), and that's why I've blogged about it so that he will read this in a few years time and realise what an ace dad I was. Apart from the need for validation which was an unpleasant quality.
We can't say it's from Santa as even he will realise it's the same box he saw in the shop, so it's going to be his gift from his grandma and grandad, who can now question whether his toy choices are age appropriate, just as they did for me.
Greatest dad in the world. Though don't say that to Catie, who had literally done everything else for Christmas and who was very reluctant to celebrate this one-off piece of heroics and will be even less so now I've shown off about it. Not that she reads this blog. So I can tell it how it is.
I love her.
A post work out rambling ramble from a tired and weird old man, constitutes this week's Stone Clearing podcast.
Hope you enjoy it. 
