Sex Postscript
TV Cream has this to say on the subject of Living and Growing;

SNIGGER! Sex education for schoolkids from the unlikely source of Grampian Television. The first series featured an unembarrassed old-ish chap saying "erection". Second version had SARAH "GAME FOR A LAUGH" KENNEDY demonstrating birth by pushing a doll down a piece of drainpipe. Hmmm...

posted by Paul Fillingham at 3:43 PM

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Sex education
This has become a recurrent theme since Hannah brought home an innocent looking scrap of orange dayglo paper from school, detailing what next term's lessons will be about.

Conscious of the classroom tittering that appears to be going on at the moment, we have since furnished my eleven year old daughter with a couple of enlightening childrens books on the subject of sex and puberty. They are fun, factual and explicit, a far cry from the rudimentary Living and Growing videos that were shown at Joseph Whitaker Comprehensive (remember those?) when we were kids.

Our school's cherished Video2000 format player (a rarity in 1972) got so overheated by the subject matter of Living and Growing that the tape fouled up and we never got to see the juicy bits anyway.

Dislocation
Today I had to go back to the Queens Medical Centre to have my dislocated shoulder checked out. It was a three hour affair, which consisted of being shunted from one waiting area to another, mingling with down and outs and foul smelling people. But at least they disguised the oily after effects of the Chicken Jalfrezi I had last night, which must have been oozing from my pores.

The physiotherapist (aged about thirteen by my forty year old eyes) put my arm through its paces, but didn't cause too much discomfort. As I was waiting by the Xray department, a vagrant came staggering down the corridor. He looked completely out of it and had filthy shit stains all over the back of his jacket. I thought I would have to move my laptop off the seat next to me so that he could sit down, but a tiny nurse ordered him into a wheelchair and he was whisked away.

On my way out of the hospital I saw our old friend Brian Marshall sitting in reception with his foot in plaster. He is working at the Fire Brigade Headquarters at Bestwood Lodge now. I told him I go up there to nursery with Gilbert. He asked if I had an email address, so I gave him that and the URL for Dreamtargets. He's amused that Riff and I are going to put a photograph of him in our 1980's book.

posted by Paul Fillingham at 2:17 PM

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Spent the morning running around after a client whose site failed to go live on time due to a tiny discrepancy between Windows NT and Windows 2000. The problem was resolved by midday, but I must admit that it was more fun stealing dustbins!

Just been mailed a news item about a US family who are having ID chip implants rather like the things that are sometimes used to tag pets. Not sure if I'm comfortable with this idea. The family are stressing the medical advantages, but the scope for infingement of civil liberties is terrifying.

I guess we could get to the stage where the state argues that ID chips are fitted at birth only as a safety measure, to ensure that babies are not abducted from the hospital.

posted by Paul Fillingham at 1:14 PM

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So I'm taking Harry our black field spaniel out to do his business in the dead of night. I'm a bit sozzled from all the wine we've drunk tonight and I thought I'd retrieve our wheely-bin from the street. Except that when I went through the back gate to get the bin, it wasn't there? I scouted around for a few minutes before going back indoors. I helped Clare feed Gilbert and then I put him down in his cot before returning to the street. I had a good look around this time and found a couple of bins around the back of some dimly lit garages. At times like these I draw on my Mansfield roots. It's every man for himself. So I dragged one of the bins noisilly across the gravel to our back gate and appropriated it. "People will take anything these days" said Clare.

posted by Paul Fillingham at 2:35 AM

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Clare was at a business meeting last night, so I was able to spend the evening finishing off scanning Eva's drama students photographs.

Gilbert was easy to deal with despite his cold-induced snorting and Daisy was busy looking for fairies on her iMac, so she was no bother. Hannah and her friend Chloe on the other hand gave everyone a fright when they disappeared after their evening play rehearsal at big school. Chloe's Dad, Phil was shitting bricks. He tracked them down in another part of the school, but confessed that he'd aged ten years through all the worry they had caused. You go through all kinds of horrendous scenarios at times like that.

Clare was back by eleven and told me about the other car hire people she'd met at the Holiday Inn. Her host, a failed public school type was bombastic and rude. And to cap it all drove back to Birmingham after one too many. Most of the guests were managers from tin-pot companies who work round the clock to keep just a handful of vehicles running. I think it helped her recognise her worth, which is something she finds quite difficult to do, especially in a man's trade like car hire.

This morning I was on top of things. Managed to get a bath before 8.30am (not easy when you share a house with three females and a baby boy) and set off for Hollies Day Nursery in Bestwood Country Park before nine. The country setting sounds idylic, but it borders Nottingham's Bestwood Estate, so burnt-out cars that have been stolen, are a common sight along Bestwood Drive. Things were different before they put the posh houses up there. But that's how it goes. These new commuter dwellings provide rich pickings. In 1984, I used to walk up and down Bestwood Drive to the Notts Fire Brigade Headquarters where I worked as an Audio Visual Assistant, my very first job after leaving Leeds Poly. So it feels kind of strange going back there.

posted by Paul Fillingham at 11:28 AM

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This morning's sunshine was so uplifting after all the stormy weather we've been having. Still, I guess we could be back to the same old winter monochromes by teatime?

Been working on web-graphics again all morning, but I'm due to travel up to Mansfield at lunchtime to see my old college friend Glen Chappell. He's been doing some photography work for Headland; some portraits and merchandise shots.

Glen and I go back a long way, to 1977 in fact, when we were young graphics students at Mansfield College of Art. He's a really big guy, with huge hands. People always remark on the size of his hands. Before he went freelance, he used to work as an in-house photographer for the National Coal Board, it was the kind of heavy industry that suited someone like Glen. His industrial photography is something I really connected with coming from a mining village like Blidworth.

posted by Paul Fillingham at 1:09 PM

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Just before 7.00am I'm awakened by a cacophony of competing musical toys coming from Gilbert's room. Daisy is awake too and Clare is attempting to kick me out of bed so that she can snatch another hour's sleep, having already performed the early morning feed.

Gilbert and six year old Daisy have established a bit of a morning routine which is centred around children's TV programmes: The Tweenies, Bob the Builder, Tele-Tubbies and the wonderfully moronic Bodger and Badger. I'm now familiar with them all.

Only Children's BBC could come up with a low-budget puppet/live-action show like Bodger and Badger and I've taken to using it as an alarm call for Hannah. Her sophisticated eleven year old sensibilities already detecting the hint of sarcasm in my voice as I announce that her favourite programme is on.
posted by Paul Fillingham at 8:05 AM

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It's even later now. Early hours of the morning, in fact. I've got shiny patches of snot and sick on my sleeve - a present from young Gilbert. Which is kind of ironic as I've been having a look at the punk history section of the CBGBs website. CBGBs was a pioneering venue for new-wave/punk music in the late 70's. I'd just started art school back then and I must admit I was always more inspired by the New York scene than anything London could conjour up.

Bleeker Street Sign NYC

I still regret never making it all the way down Bleeker Street to CBGBs when we were in NYC last February, but I was just finding my way around the city. No doubt we'll go back someday?

Anyway, all is quiet upstairs now, so perhaps I should try to get some sleep?
posted by Paul Fillingham at 2:20 AM

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Now it's just late, and it's dark and grim outside. Spent most of the evening scanning pics that arrived in the post from one of my old Clarendon college drama contemporaries called Eva Fulop. It was funny looking at youthful faces in photographs taken over 20 years ago. I have little anecdotes tucked away in my diaries and notebooks relating to those faces and I guess I'll roll out a couple into Dreamtargets.

Clare and I ate our evening meal to the sound of Talking Heads '77' and 'More Songs About Buildings And Food', at least until Gilbert woke up. He's a bit sniffly at the moment, so we're up and down every couple of hours. In my desperation I've been logging onto Pampers looking for magical remedies for sleepless nights, even though I know from experience that there's no such thing!
posted by Paul Fillingham at 11:58 PM

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It's late afternoon and pretty grim outside. I'm taking a few minutes out from Photoshop madness to complete my first Blog. I'm no stranger to web-publishing of course, but having seen my friend Emma take advantage of this Blog stuff, I thought I'd give it a whirl and see if I can't dovetail it with the Dreamtargets website.
posted by Paul Fillingham at 4:54 PM

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