FUBAR the friendly lion and the Didsbury Duo

7.45pm. Friday Night. I am trapped. The Mighty-Headed Boy snores contentedly, draped across my stomach – his legs wrapped around my left arm like fleshy vines. The Pearly-topped princess has my right armed gripped so tightly as she nuzzles into a toddler-shaped curve I cannot move. My phone is open at Football Manager but my fingers cannot reach the screen. Didsbury Wife and son are out. It’s just me in a dark room, on a warm bed with two boddlers curved around me and no extra hand for internet access.

My mind drifted to those thoughts we all have, “What if In The Night Garden” was a documentary voiced by David Attenborough; if I was a teenager now would wi-fi mean I never had to leave my room and who votes for UKIP with a clear conscience?

I then thought how long-known acronyms, antonyms and phrases take on different meanings st different times of your life.

ATM. All trousers milk stained

BBC. Bathtime Bed. Chill

FUBAR – Found Upsy-Daisy But Aptamil Run out

SOS – Sudocrem or Suffer

TTFN – teenager talking flipping nonsense

HTML – Home Time. Milk Loaded

Wake Up And a Smell The Coffee – then make it after you’ve changed the nappies and done milk.

Life’s Too Short – so embrace being woken 3 times a night as you can enjoy more of it.

The Tail Wagging The Dog : Social experiment where parents make all decisions based on the rationale of teenage moods

Disney – Magical Kingdom of slightly worrying stereotypes that occupy small children in trance-like stupor for two hours per day.

Minecraft – Magical Kingdom of slightly worrying stereotypes that occupy new teenagers in trance- like stupor for three hours per day.

ETA – Estimated Time of Arrival in the old days, now a phrase dependent on the sleep wake nappy phenomenon. Now more likely to stand for Evening Tomorrow or After…

HRT. Hormonally Reactive Teenager

eBay – recycling for parents. Expect your rating to soar after the first visit to Jo Jo, ELC and Boots points out the real cost of plastic and sheepskin.

Psychological Warfare. Interrupting any song in Frozen for dressing, undressing, changing or Calpol.

1000 Yard Stare, a syndrome that occurs when on the way back from a midnight cot settle. Your nascent teenager, voice breaking mid-syllable informs you he’s hungry, can’t sleep and wants a chat. Fire up the toaster and make yourself comfy.

A television and a full moon. Both are excellent parenting tools

I sacrificed glamour like this for my children

Notting Hill 0 West Didsbury 3

In an earlier pre-Didsbury Dad incarnation I spent a couple of months based around Notting Hill working with a director so tragically fashionable that if he put his pants on inside out he would quote “The Face” as his justification and compare it to a petting zoo in which he had filmed the world’s coolest llama. Even then this aching need to be hip struck me as being similar to the crowd scene in “Life of Brian”.

Brian cries “You’re all different” and as one they respond “Yes – we’re all different” before the “I’m not” punch line”. This is all a tortuously long way of explaining that when I hear of some of some suburban outpost being feted as the ” New Notting Hill” I think of a street full of pointless, daddy’s boys and girls with more money than taste, more drugs than Boots and more reasons to bypass it.

Until Saturday Night in West Didsbury when the early autumn warmth bathed Burton Road in an atmosphere that Notting Hill would maim for (killing is SO last year). This felt to me to be the feeling Notting Hill hopes to convey; independent, fashionable, creative and louche with an urban edge.

Me, Didsbury Wife and a pram full of Baby Gap, George and Sudocrem decided to stroll down to West Didsbury for a change of scene and a little al fresco dining. What we found was  a lively, unpretentious and stylish stroll that stretches from beyond the Metrolink to the gates of Withington Community Hospital ( I recommend their coffee and artwork). Even the Burton Road pound shop has a good window display and to join in the vibe – The Canadian Charcoal Pit had chained two school chairs to the front door. I offered Didsbury Wife the opportunity of extra toppings on her Prairie Dog if we could decamp there but no …

Past the Morcilla toting Pinchjo’s, the magnificent chaos of Folk and magnificent ethos of Cachumba we looked longingly at the unchild-friendly Saturday night ambience of The Violet Hour and Mary & Archie’s. This was Notting Hill without the downside of Trustafarians and eye-popping prices for small portions.

Burton Road is in bloom and with all this beautiful choice we somehow ended up squeezed in a corner of a rush-hour Metro  packed Great Kathmandu where the hour and five minutes we waited for food allowed the babies to sleep through boredom and us to stare into each others’ eyes, whisper sweet nothings and moan about how tired we were.

Thank you West Didsbury.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQqq3e03EBQ  LIFE OF BRIAN, YOU’RE AL INDIVDUALS