Mancub

For the first time since 1996 the adults in the Tinhouse outnumber the children. The number of children has dropped from three to two, while the adults have increased from two to three.

Tinson1 is eighteen today (Tinson18, I could now call him, but won’t). He is legally an adult, allowed to drink, vote, buy over-18 video games and watch X-rated movies. A whole new world is therefore opening up to him, since he has never voted before.

One year and a day ago I wrote this post about the day before he was born, and about how our life changed forever. How quickly the 18 years since that day has passed, and how wonderful it all has been. He’s been a ridiculously happy baby, a winning though occasionally scarily angry toddler, a successful and popular schoolboy, and then, although he’s referred to in our house as GT (Grumpy Teenager), he’s been a very personable teenager.

I know I sound laughably blinkered and rose-spectacled in this post, but it honestly is true. He’s a super kid, and will make a super adult.

Today we’re celebrating. It’s half past two in the afternoon, and already we’ve drunk Buck’s Fizz (thanks to his Godmother) and are heading out for a meal soon.

He is young, clever and charming. I envy him, I admire him, I’m proud of him.

We love him.

The Excitement is in Tents

Tinson1 if off to Oxygen this morning.

This is his “end of school” celebratory event. A load of the class are heading off to Majorca, and he was going to do that, but he came home one day and said “nah, it’s getting too messy” (and when a 17-year old bloke says that, you wonder WTF they were planning), so he opted for this instead.

This is his checklist, which I found on the kitchen table (sorry that’s it’s a bit hard to read, it’s not easy taking photos & uploading them at 5.30 am):

The list is apparently based on tips from the Oxygen website. The compilers, bless them, sound as innocent and naive as he does.

The second item, for example, says “something luminous to notice our tent”. Ignoring for a moment the construction of the sentence, which would lead you to believe that English is not Tinson1’s first language, a short reflection will quickly reveal the flaw in this plan. Attaching something luminous to your tent so that you can find it in the dark is a great idea, but only if you’re the only people doing it. I have a mental image of a load of half-asleep people wandering blearily around at 4 a.m. in a field eerily lit by a thousand luminous tents, the whole scene looking like a Sellafield housing estate being visited by zombies.

Item 6 – “Lock for tent” – is also touching in its innocence. It’s rumoured  that both the first and second of the three little pigs also invested in locks.

His proposed diet for the weekend is interesting. “16+ nutrigrain bars” and “canned fruit (must have opener tabs)” mean that at least he’ll be getting his five helpings a day, if in the least possible edible form. The second last item, though,  says “Jam sandwiches – keep for a few days!” (his exclamation mark). I fear he will discover that, while this may be true of the jam (there’s a reason why you find it in Tesco in an aisle marked “preserves”) it is unlikely to be true of the bread, and the only thing worse than eating mouldy bread is eating mouldy bread with strawberry jam on it.

I’m mentally blocking out the last line. It’s not just the word “vaseline” that worries me, it’s the “dot, dot, dot, question mark” that follows it.

(By the way, while I’m grateful that the list doesn’t include entries like “condoms” or “spliffs”, I have been a parent long enough to know that he might well have a second list).

I hope he has a great time, though, and I envy him. The line-up for the weekend is incredible (I’ve heard of more than half of the bands, which is saying something) and the whole thing will be a great experience, and hopefully great fun.

The weather forecast, for Saturday in particular, is absolutely shite.  It wouldn’t be a music festival if it wasn’t.

Put Away Childish Things

School’s Out… forever. Tingirl had her last day in the Bray School Project today (the picture above is from one of her first), and we now have no children left in primary school.

Tinson1 had his first day there on September 1st, 1996 when Tingirl was only six-ninths er, cooked, so the Tinfamily have had a connection with the BSP for her entire life. As indeed has she, as she was accompanying Mrs Tin on school runs and sitting quietly at school meetings long before she ever became a pupil there.

If leaving there is upsetting her, though, she’s hiding it very well (though not as well as Tinson1 did. In the car on the way home from his last day there, in a conversation with Tinson2 he referred to the BSP as “your school”). She is eager and excited about the prospect of secondary school, and keen to get on with what young people regard as the terribly urgent process of racing through their lives as quickly as possible.

Mrs Tin is similarly unfazed by the thoughts of leaving a school where she has been on so many boards and committees for so many years. She received many plaudits I think she will miss it more than she thinks she will, but only time will tell.

The school itself is wonderful, run by a bunch of really terrific teachers backed by ranks of dedicated and hard-working parents. It will still feature on the Blogiverse, as both Jo and Ciara still have kids there, and I’m looking forward to being able to keep up with events through them.

In earlier years I did a lot of the driving to school, so got to know the BSP quite well, but latterly have rarely been inside the door (today was only the third time in Tingirl’s final year) so I should miss it less than any of them, and I suppose I do. But I do feel that today is a significant one. Our youngest child has finished at primary school, and is growing up. She’ll be a teenager later this year, joining her brothers on the ever-shortening road to young adulthood. I’m happy for her, and proud of her, but I do feel a little bit sad.

We still have kids, but as of today we no longer have children.

Life’s Simple, in Theory

So Tinson 1 has finished school.

He sat his final exam, Chemistry, on Tuesday and left his schooldays behind him. He got home, gave us a carefully analytic summary of the exam (“piece of piss”) and invertebrated down in front of the telly, as if already settling into his future role as one of the unemployed.

After a while he admitted that he felt a bit strange, watching TV without a hearing a nagging voice inside his head telling him he should be studying (he usually had a nagging voice outside his head telling him the same thing, and I think Mrs Tin is now as at a loss as he is).

Anyway, when some friends rang to say they were going to play football down in the leisure centre he jumped at the chance. He played the game, went back to someone’s house and then walked home, getting in at about 4 a.m.

During the football apparently he got some sand or dirt into his sock, but instead of stopping and removing it he played on, so now most of the skin has come off the sole of his foot. Therefore he spent his first day as a grown-up lying on his bed with his foot in a bandage.

As his father, it is my job to worry about him when he does silly things, and I have to thank him for giving me so much practice.  But remember, this guy has applied to college to do Theoretical Physics, so now I’m starting to worry, not just for him, but for all of us, for our planet and indeed for the populations of distant worlds in galaxies far, far away.

The Principle of Cause and Effect seems to have passed him merrily by, and the thought of him in a very few short years spilling coffee into a worm hole, getting sand in the Large Hadron Collider or sneezing violently into a bowl of Dark Matter (it comes in bowls, doesn’t it?) should strike fear throughout the entire universe.

Was Einstein that scatty? Actually, looking at his hairstyle (a generous use of the word “style” there) he was possibly worse. The Principle of Cause (using a comb) and Effect (neat hair) seems to have escaped him too.

At least Tinson1 always knows where his hair-gel is.

Into The West

Tingirl’s class left for their trip to the Aran Islands this morning.

The Aran trip is a rite of passage each year for the class who are about to leave Bray School Project. It’s a three day trip with just three teachers and no parents. This is its 18th year, and it’s something the kids look forward to from the minute they start their final year (please note the use of both “its” and “it’s” in that sentence, Jo).

The journey, after the first car trip to the school, features a coach to Heuston Station in Dublin, a train to Galway, another coach to some pier somewhere and finally a boat to Aran, arriving just in time to get ready to start the return trip home. That’s why the phrase “this morning” in the opening sentence was used in its most broad sense, meaning “well, really still last night, but the date is different so I suppose we’ll have to call it this morning”. In other words we got up at 4.30, and arrived at the school at half past five.

But the bus didn’t arrive till 6.15, as a badly parked Eircom truck at its garage had partially blocked it in. This left less than an hour for the journey to Dublin, though the scarily young-looking driver assured everyone that he would easily make it.

“He’s a bit young, isn’t he,”  muttered some parents, ” I hope he doesn’t go too fast”.

Personally I just hoped the journey wouldn’t involve him trying to turn right onto a road that had a car waiting where the STOP marking as in the attached diagram. Because I had just realised that I’ve met this driver before, about a year ago, when I was the driver at the stop sign, and it was only by reversing violently backwards as he turned that I managed to keep his impact with the Tincar down to a brief juddering. In fairness, he’s a lovely guy, was very apologetic, and fixed the tiny amount of damage that was done to the Tinbumper.

Anyway, watching the expert and effortless way he reversed the huge coach into the schoolyard this morning it’s clear that he has improved since my encounter with him, so I kept this information to myself.

So off they went, jabbering excitedly, ready for their first big trip away from home.

One Small Step

This is Tinson1, though admittedly not the most up-to-date photo of him.

It feels as though that picture was taken yesterday. Yet since then he’ s been to playschool, then real school, then secondary. He’s tried his hand at soccer, hockey, basketball and athletics, been on school trips from the Aran Islands to Barcelona, and had a go at the tin whistle, the violin and the guitar. Actually, come to think of it, he’s cost us a fortune.

And this morning he starts his Leaving Cert exams and, unless he finds a job dancing in Britney Spears videos, he’ll never wear a school uniform again.

He has applied to Trinity to do a course called (I’m not making this up) “Physics and Space Science”. I really hope he gets in. He’s loved science all the way through school and, since I once scored 26% in a Science Exam, I’ve always been baffled by his talent for it.

His class had their Graduation Ceremony last week (God, we get more American by the day, they even had a yearbook) and it was wonderful to watch this collection of 96 confident and good-natured young adults, and see the respect and affection that they obviously had for their teachers and for their school.

My generation worked our arses off so that these kids would have a better economic outlook than we had when we were leaving school. It seemed to be working. Just a couple of years ago our biggest concern was that none of the Tinkids might ever be able to afford their own house. Then a small group of selfish, stupid gobshites managed to blow the whole thing, and again we are looking at the prospect of a generation facing unemployment or emigration.

I hope things get better quickly. Because these kids deserve more. Tinson1 has worked very hard, as have a niece and nephew of mine who also face the Leaving today.

I’ve just texted him that we’re proud of him, and got the reply “thanks, dad, means a lot”, which made me well up in a most unmanly way.

And we are proud of him. So very proud.

All the best today, my son.

My Little Girl, Pink & White as Peaches & Cream is She

Back in June I wrote a long piece about Tinson1 when he got his first part-time job. The following month I wrote one about Tinson2 when he headed off on his own to the Gaeltacht. The order they were born in dictates that Tingirl would be left till last, but that’s not the only reason. The fact is that she’s the hardest to write about, because she’s the one I know least. But she’s twelve today, so it’s time to try.

I know nothing about girls. Mrs Tin will back me up on this. Part of the reason is that I have one brother and no sisters. (Actually, that’s not strictly true anymore, since my dad got married again 3 years ago and the Wicked Stepmother brought four more sons into the family as her dowry). Having had no sisters in the house growing up has meant that I’ve found it almost imposssible to know what Tingirl is thinking at any stage in her life. All I know is that she thinks I’m wonderful, and I’ve no idea why.

The news that she was on the way came as, well, a surprise. When we first found out that Mrs Tin was pregnant Tinson2 was only about ten months old, and we were so mortified that we told nobody for months. My brother’s wife suspected, and kept asking him to grill me about it, which he wouldn’t. She also kept asking Mrs Tin pointed questions about whether she was still going to the gym, which she kept saying she was. In the end I said we’d better tell her before the gym sued us, since giving the impression that going there gave you a figure like the one Mrs Tin was developing was unlikely to do their business any good.

Part of the reason we were so concerned was that it was brother’s wife who minded the Tinsons while Mrs Tin was at work, and we were afraid that she’d say she couldn’t mind three along with her own three. Sure enough this happened, so Mrs Tin had to quit work for good. Not only that, but I needed the car in the job I had at the time, so we’d to fork out for a second one for her. While all of this seemed disastrous at the time, it changed our family life for the better, and oddly helped me get even busier, as I was no longer tied to child & wife -collecting.

We were old hands at birthing at this stage, and Tingirl was born at a respectable mid-afternoon time on the exact day she was due. The Tinsons adored her from the start, Tinson2 and she became like twins, and everything was good. I do remember one scary day when all three of them were crying at different things at the same time, and we realised for the first time that we were outnumbered, but generally everything was great.

When a girl has two older brothers she can either go the tomboy route, matching them in rough play and manly pursuits, or she can go the girly route, twisting them round her finger with her cuteness. This is the option Tingirl selected, though she could still hold her own if she needed to. When she was about one she was in her granny’s, and her similarly aged but bigger girl cousin tried to pull a toy she was holding away from her. “Now don’t hurt little Tingirl,” said my brother-in-law, kindly but also slightly condescendingly. “Don’t worry about her,” I said, “she’s well used to having an older brother at the other end of whatever toy she wants to play with, so your daughter’s WAY out of her league”. Sure enough, after thirty seconds the big cousin was pink in the face tugging two-handedly away at one end of the toy, while at the other end Tingirl was holding on with just her left hand, never taking her eyes off the TV. It might still be my proudest daddy moment ever.

In the same way that salmon are born instinctively knowing the route back home, I believe girls are born knowing all about princesses, ponies and Barbie. At the age of about three, Tingirl was in her baby-seat in the back of Mrs Tin’s car, and Mrs Tin scolded her about something. After about a minute she suddenly burst out sobbing “I’m..not..going.. to..be..Daddy’s…..princess”. It’s not an expression we’d ever used. Where do girls get this stuff from?

Anyway, she’s grown up sweet and funny, and her brothers would do anything for her. I’ve told the story of how Tinson2 stepped between her and a snarling dog in Kusadasi. Tinson1 and she give an impression of quiet indifference toward each other, but on another holiday in Malta she returned crying to our table at the pool because a bigger boy had knocked her down and broken her necklace. We comforted her and then realised Tinson1 had vanished, and I found him in the games room with the guy up against the wall by the neck (oh, I’ve just realised why he wants to join the FCA).

She has a generally terrific relationship with Mrs Tin, and the two of them revel in being the two girls in a house of three men. They had a Mamma Mia night last Saturday, where we were all ordered to sod-off to other rooms in the house. They watch Strictly Come Dancing together. They go off on shopping trips. Very occasionally though they quarrel, and I see a brief flash of very real anger in Tingirl’s eyes, which shows that the relationship will be as challenging as any other Mother/Daughter one in the years to come.

Like, whatEVER

As I said, she’s twelve today, and I find her even more mysterious and scary as she starts to develop. She speaks in an Amonda Dort accent that, like, SO didn’t come from us. She’s got er, chest bumps now, and I don’t know where to look. Her wall is covered in pictures of young guys from bands & shows I’ve never heard of. She’ll be starting to “get off” with boys soon, & though I said in yesterday’s post that guns are bad, just typing that sentence has given me the sudden urge to buy one.

I said something about this in a comment on Jo’s blog about five months ago, and this was Jo’s reply:

“Tinman, you sound fraught! I must think of a good book for you to read. ‘Promiscuities’ by Naomi Wolfe is wonderful, but I don’t know if its reassuring for dads (it’s not what it sounds like, just a study of growing up a girl).

If I may, you are the man she gets to practice her femininity on. You’re the safe training wheel of masculinity, in an ideal world. So if you make her feel loved, cherished, safe and worthwhile, respected and important, she’ll probably feel those things about herself, and choose men who do the same. Listen to her. And give her insights into what it’s like to be a man!”

5 years time?

I can tell you straight out that if she ever practices her femininity on me, I’ll be in the pub within thirty seconds. It’s what I’ve always done when Mrs Tin practices hers, and I see no need to change a winning formula. It was good and helpful advice from Jo though, (who I hadn’t even met at that stage) and I have to admit I’m kind of looking forward to the teenage years to come. No matter what they might bring ->.

So Happy Birthday Tingirl. You are – of course – my Princess. And always will be.