by Nick Griffiths | Jun 7, 2013 | DO IT, MAKE IT
I am not a natural thrower of children’s parties, and neither may you be. Certainly in my experience of such jellified events, a series of mothers cluck delightedly around an amorphous mass of infancy, while their menfolk introduce themselves to one another in low...
by Nick Griffiths | May 3, 2013 | DO IT
As a child I was whisked every summer to Shanklin or, if Dad was feeling especially adventurous, Sandown, located side by side on the Isle of Wight. It felt like another world, of sand (I demanded to wear socks, stop the dreadful stuff infiltrating my toes), dinosaurs...
by Nick Griffiths | Apr 19, 2013 | DO IT
Clearly we have to put our own tastes aside when watching a film with the kids. Sometimes it pans out; other times, less so. I recall a cinema visit in 2003 with my then nine-year-old son. We’d gone to see The Hulk – his choice – a film so tedious I had to chew my arm...
by Nick Griffiths | Apr 9, 2013 | LUNCHBREAK, THOUGHTS
I shall never forget the moment my father, reclining on a sun-lounger in our Hampshire back garden, stripey trunks on, chest-hair out, sat up and asked me: “Do you want to be circumcised?” It wasn’t so much asked, as blurted out. A sudden rush of blood to his head. As...
by Nick Griffiths | Mar 18, 2013 | LUNCHBREAK, THOUGHTS
It was so utterly unexpected. I’m sitting in the viewing gallery, next to his mother from whom I am estranged, and Dylan is walking along the poolside, in a line, among the children against whom he will compete. Voices echo and my nostrils are aware of chlorine. He’s...
