Week 37: Mr Luvva Luvva

Gin (so called because she is a one-woman festival of the distilled liquid) is sitting on the sofa with Milo the pup’s ”Settle” towel next to her. It’s called a “Settle” towel in the vague hope that he will, for once, stop bouncing and have a calm, quiet chew on something which isn’t human or furniture. Milo, of course, sees his towel completely differently. Through a fog of adolescent, canine hormones, Milo sees his “Settle” towel as lady that is worthy of his attention. Oh yes, Mr Luvva Luvva is in town and is going to use all of his charms to get his way. And from what we’ve seen, his charms involve biting and shaking his intended amore, getting “her“ into a position he is happy with and then hammering so fast he tips onto his nose. It’s a wonder Barry White hasn’t written a song about him.

Back to Gin and towel on the sofa. We’ve not tried the Settle towel on the sofa before, usually letting Milo on to the couch au naturale. Today we are trying something different in the hope that Milo might slow-down and rest whilst we watch Netflix. Before I pop him next to her, I decide to clean his teeth. When I say “clean his teeth”, I mean smear his teeth in doggy toothpaste. We haven’t got as far as a toothbrush yet because he will eat it. Milo likes doggy toothpaste. Getting it by his tongue and onto any teeth takes the reactions of a cat. I have the reactions of a rapidly ageing bloke. The toothpaste ends up on a couple of teeth, his tongue, nose and one ear. He loves it! Toothpaste smearing completed, I deliver the pup to the sofa.

He sniffs his towel and is immediately into “Hello sweet lady” mode. Mr Luvva Luvva starts scrabbling at his towel, bunches it up, gives it a thorough shake, before backing it up against Gin’s leg. And then boom! The beast is unleashed and he is off. He’s going so fast that Gin’s glasses start to slip down her nose. “Oh My God, get him off!” she pleads, voice shaking as though she were hanging on to a pneumatic drill. No chance. This is hilarious!

The pup reaches warp-speed when Gin screams “What the hell is that? What’s that on my leg? Oh My God!“. She is pointing at a white, foamy substance, eyes wide, horror flicking across her face. “It can’t be can it? He’s not old enough!”

At this point dear chums I decide that perhaps laughing like a drain isn’t going to lead to cordial relations in the Mrs H household and decide to help. Mr Luvva Luvva has blown-himself out and fallen on his nose, and gin is staring, transfixed, at her leg. I look at the foam. It matches that on the hound’s face. I can‘t resist:

“Never seen dog semen before”.

”Get it off GET IT OFF!”

”Hold on, let me sniff it”

”What? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

And with that, I dip my finger into the foam and dramatically sniff it. Gin is dumbstruck.

”Surprisingly minty”

”Jesus you are a MONSTER!”

“But then it is toothpaste.”

My how I laughed all the way to A&E to have Milo’s coffee-tree-root-chew surgically removed from where Gin rammed it.

But good news! The young people’s replacement iPhones arrived (second hand; we aren’t forking out valuable wine funds on new phones). After the usual shenanigans of trying to remember the shared Apple ID password and locking the account, lots of shouting and blaming each other for not writing it down anywhere, we started the configuration of the new phones using the old phones’s settings. And this is how it came to be that I was looking at GT‘s (Girl Teenager) phone when a message pinged in from “Lesbian John”. Eh?

”He sounds a bit confused”, I remark.

”No she is not at all”.

”Eh? Must be me that is then”.

I admit it, I know I am on dodgy ground here. I don‘t really understand the approach to genders in the current era. I have no problem with people choosing to be whatever they want to be, but I find it quite perplexing. GT though feels really strongly on the subject. Does that stop me? Does it heck. I plough on.

“John has a willy?”

”Yes”

”John likes women not men?”

“Yes”

”But John prefers to dress as a girl“

”Yes”

”Doesn’t that make him a straight boy who cross-dresses?”

”NO! John identifies as a girl. Look Dad, I know you are trying to understand, but you are old so I forgive you for getting it wrong all the time”.

The thing that really struck me about this conversation, apart from me now being an old man whose world view has become rather fixed, is how bloody complicated all of this is. Above all, for the souls that identify as something other than that which their physiology might suggest, their lives must be so much harder than for the majority of us. I can’t begin to imagine how far out on a limb they must feel all of the time.

It’s funny isn’t it, each generation has something difficult to contend with, whether it’s world wars, nuclear threat, or a deadly disease with a little name and no known treatment (as poor Freddie Mercury found out). The current generation has to deal with dog-fight between those that embrace a new acceptance of all sorts of differences (derided as ‘woke”) and the populists (derided as “Gammon”), who entrench themselves in the old (and in my view, rather less glorious) ways, refusing the accommodate the vastly different norms on equality and gender.

Hold on I’m feeling faint with brain-strain. I’ve been doing Thinking again haven‘t I? We know it leads to trouble.

But what of BT (Boy Teenager)? He hasn’t (as indeed have the rest of the family) been so well this week with an on-going cold virus. Consequently he hasn’t been out much (just once with the dog), leaving him stuck indoors with Too Much Thinking Time. When BT thinks, he often worries and this week was no exception. He is acutely aware that his friends’s lives are moving on as they ramp-up to their GCSEs in 2022. He has been worrying that they will all go off to new colleges, make new friends and forget him. He is also nervous as to how he will earn money with no qualifications under his belt. He is a smart lad and already making plans for this, but naturally those plans chop and change depending on how he is feeling. Despite the concern over his future, the idea of returning to any educational establishment or engaging in formal learning remains a source of total anxiety for him and those routes are still blocked. He is though so much better compared with 24 months ago and we are thankful for the progress that he has made (and continues to make).

Ach listen to me. All reflective because I haven’t been able to play golf or get out on my bike for a few weeks. Maybe the Carbon Steed will be out next week. If it stops raining.

Week 37 then. You could say it went with a bit of a bang.

I wonder what Week 38 will bring? Will we start to see the effects of lockdown filtering through into the infection numbers? Hope so; Christmas will only be a month away.

Love & elbow-grease,

Mr H

x