EDITORIAL DEADLINE
Look, I love my grandson. Let’s face it I must. Ever since his parents died in that appalling road accident he’s lived with me and, initially, his grandmother and we’ve always got on well. Of course there have been clashes; he’s sixteen and I’m sixty. I’m a widower and he’s playing the market. I’m still trying to supplement my income by writing and he’s doing his best to succeed in his GCSE’s. I think I’ve been really lucky with the way he’s turned out over the past ten years.
But there are times . . . .
“Pops, can you have a look at this, please?” There’s a tradition in our family: the elder grandfather is always known as Granddad Pops and the younger one as Granddad Son. If I hated Percy, I might have resented his more youthful title. But, back to the story.
“Pops, can you have a look at this, please?” Matthew had spent the last three nights on a complicated history project. He’d looked up sources on the internet and made a careful comparison of them and drawn his own conclusions. He is in no way a plagiarist.
“Sorry Matt, I need to get a story written tonight, my editor’s so close on by back you’d think he was trying to occupy the same space.
“You don’t care. Do you? It’s taken me days to do this and all I want is for you to look it over before I hand it in. If it’s crap, I’ve got tomorrow to try to improve it. I need you to see it now!”
“Hey, look, who puts food on this table . . . . “ and the argument could have got worse and even less constructive so I adopted the obvious tactic.
Matt is blondish, slim but with good broad shoulders and reasonable pecs. He was on as many school sports teams as the schedules (and I) would allow him to be. I can’t always take him down in play-wrestling these days and I suspect that he sometimes allows me to win.
But tonight it mattered. As quickly as I could move I grabbed a belt that had just been left lying around my office – don’t ask – and wrapped it around his body clamping his arms very tightly to his sides. Even as I did so, strangely, his anger started to subside; he always relished the challenge.
“Who’s the Daddy?”
“Oh, come on Pops, you haven’t won yet.
A quick trip left him on his face and on the floor. Once I had sat myself on his shoulders, there are some advantages to being a “big” guy, I took each of his hands in turn and forced them between his belt and his jeans. Shifting my weight down further limited his arm movement even more and I told him to bend his knees. For some reason he declined to do so.
“Oh, come on, you know what’s going to happen if I start tickling you almost anywhere. Now bend your knees.” With a whimper, he did so. It’s remarkably difficult to unlace the trainers of someone upon whom one is sitting but it becomes surprisingly easier the more the victim is tickled. Once I had removed one lace, Matthew’s thumbs were quickly tied together and, thanks to the silly length of the lace, so were his wrists.
“Who’s the Daddy?”
“You are.”
“Sorry, Matt, I’ve got to get this story written. Jason’s on my back big time and I’ve got to write a TUG story for his magazine tonight. At the minute, I’ve got no ideas.”
Then, suddenly, it dawned on me.
I even had time to read Matt’s history project afterwards.