[caption width=“2576” id=“attachment_6626” align=“aligncenter”] A gentleman can be judged by his headwear. [/caption]

[caption width=“4032” id=“attachment_6624” align=“aligncenter”] Iris and the bird bath[/caption]

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Enjoying Easter time in the kitchen with my little girl.

Buzzfeed rounds up how horrible being sleep-deprived is for you:

When you get consistently bad sleep, your brain suffers. You can experience impaired learning ability, poor judgment, emotional problems, poor motor skills, and more, Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, tells BuzzFeed Life.

Yikes. That’ll be fun in a few months. It brings back memories of how uh, confused, I got back in 2012. Luckily, io9 has a guide to good napping:

Not all naps are created equal. Some naps have been shown to rejuvenate where others boost creativity. What's more, when you nap can be as important as how you nap. Here's how to nap like a professional, nap-taking machine. Here's how to nap like you MEAN IT.

Still missing you Dad, over a decade since you passed.

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch

Damn you, Coke, for catching the new parent experience so very, very well. It’s the cut between the pre- and post-parenthood living room that does it, I think.

[via CoCreate]

A homeowner.

A dad.

Doing the lawn on a Sunday afternoon, while my daughter plays on a blanket.

I’m middle-aged.

I’m happy.

Nap Time

A random photo from my scanning of old family negatives. This is Dollar, my childhood neighbourhood, in the midst of winter snow. This was taken sometime in the late 1980s - probably 87 or 88, I'd guess, and was the work of my Mum.

As autumn starts to get a grip on 2011, this picture makes me nostalgic for my childhood in Scotland…

Hey, Dad. 

It's been 10 years now since you and I celebrated a father's day together. I wish you were here to celebrate this one. It would be great. You'd be a grandad, doing your level best to spoil my nephew rotten. We'd have lunch, laugh, potter on the beach, and you'd fall asleep on the sofa, as you so often did.

But no, you're not here for that. Cancer took you from us 10 years ago, nearly. 

I still miss you, you know. I still want to pick up the phone to tell you my news, or ask for advice. I still want to show you Shoreham and the beach, and talk to you about holidays and work and other things.

You know, if I make it to the age you were when you died, I'll have lived over half my life without you. I've already been without you for a quarter of my life. But for all your grumpiness and short-temper, for all the things you never did and now never will understand about me, for all the arguments we had through my teenage years, I miss you. You helped define me, define my life and define the man I am.

And for that, I will ever be gratefull.

Happy Father's Day, pops.

When I was growing up, I remember vividly my Dad choosing to absent himself from the living room when a depressing, downbeat or tragic fils, show or documentary came on. "I know these things happen," he would say. "But I don't need it rubbed in my face."

Like the teenage tit that I was, I found this annoying. I was still stuck in the mindset that sad or bleak = "deep". My father was clearly not as deep as me. 

Roll forwards a couple of decades, and I'm beginning to see his point. It's been a rough seven or eight years, with illness, mental health issues and death rocking the family. And now, in my precious leisure time, I've become somewhat adverse to stories tinged with bleakness and despair myself. Real life has plenty of that, thanyouverymuchindeed. Which is why I found myself a little thrown after we watched A Handful of Dust on the AppleTV last night. 

I'm not sure where our copy came from - a free DVD with a newspaper possibly, or inherited from my mother. But a while ago, I ripped it, stuck it on the AppleTV and charity shopped the original, intending to watch and delete the digital copy. And last night, at a loose end after Science Online and a trip to B&Q, we finally got around to watching it. 

I admit: it's been a while since I read any Waugh. And I do feel that this adaptation, as enjoyable as it was, lacked the satirical edge of Waugh's writing. But it was enjoyable, the characters believable and the acting uniformly great. But, my goodness, that ending was bleak. We spent the best part of two hours watching a decision, born of boredom, destroy a family completely. And what was the point in that?

Sleeping on it, I realise that I've slipped into too much of a goal-focused mindset in recent months. The point of the movie, as in so much of life, was the journey, far more than the destination. Did I enjoy the process of watching the film? Yes. Very much? Did I enjoy the ending? No - but that doesn't diminish the enjoyment of watching the film. And, in a sense, the ending wasn't final. It was an endpoint to a certain situation, a certain voyage in the characters' lives, but for most of them, there was life left to live. I'm a long way short of being a person who heads straight to the misery memoir section of the local bookshop, but perhaps I'm crawling my way back towards enjoying some of the more downbeat aspects of art.

This was the view from our back garden in Dollar, around 1987 - September or October, I'd guess. I can't claim any credit for the photo, as it was Mum's work.

I could have shared a photo of my brother in a very mid-80s Miami Vice-style outfit.

But any jury in the country would acquit him of my murder if I did so…  

I'm spending some time scanning my way through a big bag of negatives, and this morning I was working on a film from the early to mis-80s. This is my brother, on holiday, in very 80s mirror shades - with me very clearly reflected in them. 

I'd have been pleased to have taken this shot today, let alone 25 years ago.