What's wrong with terrifying children - can't a guy have a hobby these days?
There's never a dull moment in our house. A dull 40-something dad, laughingly described as the head of household, yes, but a dull moment, no.
This week the light relief was provided by our eight-year-old, courtesy of his vivid dreaming.
He burst into our bedroom at about 3am in tears, clearly distressed.
"I've had a nightmare," he sobbed.
"It's okay," my wife reassured him, "What happened? What scared you?"
It's at this point that I usually begin to worry. My Frankenstein Monster chases with our youngest, Isaac, five, have been blamed for his recurring zombie nightmares.
Which is a pity as, after annoying the wife, scaring the kids is my second favourite pastime.
I managed to combine both with a pretty good ruse last week. I twisted one of Michelle's false eyelashes, cupped it in my hand and beckoned our Bradley over.
"Hey, look at the size of this spider," I said. He bounded over to look. As soon as his face got near my hands, I blew, and the eyelash spider flew into his face. Cue much flapping of arms and hysterics.
Was it payback time? I was sure he was about to recount a nightmare mauling at the hands of a flying spider with one enormous eye.
This would undoubtedly be followed by my mauling at the hands of a flying wife with an enormous fist.
"You know how Mam reads all those magazines," he told me, "well, in my dream, instead of reading them, she was ... EATING THEM!"
I suppose it's a nightmare of sorts. And given my wife has just embarked on another meat free crash diet there's a ring of truth to it.
It may not be long before she's dining on Closer and Heat magazine pages. Eating pies stuffed with mince gives you cellulite, but eating magazines stuffed with pictures of celebrity's cellulite is okay.
Our Bradley's nightmare was then followed by two days of sickness, before once again he was in our bedroom at 3am with another dream issue.
This time however there was no sobbing, but a distinct buzz of excitement about his "weird dream."
"I dreamt I was desperate for the toilet," he told his bleary eyed parents, "and so I got out of bed and went to the toilet for a wee and then guess what?"
Can you guess what's coming next?
"I woke up and had wet the bed," he said. "I only dreamt I'd gone to the toilet."
I believe it shows he has a good imagination, if not necessarily a healthy one, as was revealed on our last trip to the beach.
While on the sand throwing a ball about we witnessed a couple of policemen running across the sand towards a woman by the sea.
One of the policemen dropped his notebook, but continued running. I could see the officers about 200 yards away talking to the woman and told our Bradley to run over and give the policeman his notebook. Which he duly did.
When he returned I asked what it was all about. "Apparently she's cut a man's head off and dumped his body in a wheelie bin."
He was making it up on the spot, but with an imagination like that, I reckon it won't be long before it's me who'll be having the nightmares. Come back dull moments, all is forgiven.
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ANIMAL campaigners were on the airwaves this week urging all pet lovers to buy car seatbelts for their dogs.
Some even suggested dog seat-belts be made compulsory in all cars.
I'm all for animal safety, but surely the safety issue here is allowing dogs to drive cars in the first place. I mean, aren't they just asking for trouble?
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Friday 10 February 2012
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