That internet

Our new home is on a campus - lovely, but the process of arranging internet (a fuss in the UK at the best of times) has stretched into a two month drudge. For all of January I eked out my monthly mobile data allowance, regularly sneaking into coffee shops to scrump for WiFi, in anticipation of hitting the 2GB cap and incurring godawful fees. The cap came and went and I clenched my buttocks in anticipation of the bill.

Instead, I got an SMS from Vodafone.
'You are now halfway through your unlimited data test drive.'

Oh yeah. I'd renewed my mobile contract and Vodafone were doing that whole, drug dealer, first month is free thing. There were just two weeks left before Plusnet attached the internet anyway, but I felt it behoved me to abuse this data to the fullest extent.

Obviously the 4G went on and has stayed on since. I changed my various apps to 'download over 4G', and doubled the size of my downloaded Amazon music library, audible book collection, and backed up all my photos to Google. This only consumed a few gigs of data. I needed to do more.

I had received for Christmas a boxed copy of the game Metal Gear Solid V. I knew from various internet sources that the disc in the case contained only an autoloader for the Steam videogame store, a download code, and no actual data, so this case remained in its shrink wrap - a meaningless fetish representing the death throws of highstreet retail.

Metal Gear Solid V is a 27GB file, and I downloaded that sucker through a mobile phone tether. It took less than three hours. At 50%, when I realised that it was working, a mad grin overtook my face.

My Steam library contains hundreds of games, most I've never played, almost all I've never downloaded, purchased in bulk in bundle deals, steam sales, received as free promos. My secondary hard drive has two terabytes of room left on it.

The question is, what will run out first? The hard drive? The time until Plusnet connects us? The phones's physical integrity? Vodafone's 'unlimited' data?

Someone's going to blink... But I'm just sleep deprived enough that it won't be me.

Vapnartak

On Sunday 7th I left best beloved in charge of bugglesnuff and went to Vapnartak, a wargames convention at the York race ground. It's far from the biggest con in the country, with less than two thousand visitors and only lasting a day, but situated in the five story race track building with vast glass windows overlooking the expanse of grassy track (turned by recent weather into a flat of glassy ponds) it is perhaps the most opulent.

Though I would ordinarily spend a convention leisurely drifting from stall to stall abusing the plastic in my wallet, I was taking part in a wargames tournament. I'll save the details except to observe - if you are a UK Warmachine player, Vapnartak is a one day event well worth travelling for, brilliantly organised and judged, with great tables and a broad standard of competition for players new and experienced. I lost three games, won one, enjoyed them all immensely, and to Greg from Newcastle - that last game was a blast. A well deserved win to you.

(Of further note for UK Warmachine players - Guildball, the English designed skirmish minis game made by former Warmachine tournament veterans, had at least as many players, maybe twice as many, and I would be very interested to know whether this pattern is repeated across the country).

Shopping wise, I picked up some new airbrush paints, cleaning fluid, cleaning pot, and some tiny wee flowers to make my models' bases all pretty. Only the very best for my metal dollies. The trade halls burgeoned with demonstration, participation and show games on a huge scale. Recreations of the battle of the Alamo, Stewart pacification of the Scots, a French foreign legion siege, dozens more, all on tables 10 feet or longer lovingly layered with miniatures and terrain. The sort of thing that would have a formative impact on a child.

Two weeks from now I'll be in London for the epic Smogcon tournament. Thank Christ for grandparents. Best beloved, you're a star.

Sunset Yellow

Best Beloved likes her some children's cereal. Frosted Boulders, Sugar Blimps, Crunchy Cinnamon Pillows, stuff that's essentially a crunchy pudding to lure children into eating first thing in the day. I include Cheerios in this - adults who think you're eating adult food when you have a bowl of Cheerios, you are mistaken. Likewise Crunchy Nut, which is Frosties for people who don't own their vices.

So in the international aisle at Tesco I spot a little cluster of American cereals. I love the boxes of American cereals as they perfectly embody the earnestness of Yanky packaging, proclaiming their health benefits like a Victorian pill bottle, while perfectly executing a pop-artistic gaucheness and naivety of design that you don't see outside action figures and waterslides in the UK. My eyes were drawn to the Apple Zings. These have many ironic virtues - they're made by 'mom brands' cereals, a name that could only be born in the hell cauldron of uncriticized capitalism. Some diligent importer had overstickered the ingredients list to match some European edict. At the bottom of the list was the proviso 'May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children'. They're a children's cereal that causes ADHD. Obviously I bought them.

A little later in the week my parents were visiting and I decided to show the Zings to my dad. 'Read the ingredients list,' I said. He used to be a special educational needs teacher. I figured that ADHD brekkers would give him a chuckle.

'Jesus Christ,' he said, 'Where did you find these?'

'Tesco.'

'Tesco? Why did they have these at Tesco?'

'They were in the international aisle.'

He called my stepmum over. 'Have a look at these love.' She was a midwife.

'They've got Sunset Yellow in them!' She said. Sunset Yellow is an E number. 'Isn't that banned?'

'They did ban that,' My dad said, 'Back in the 80s.'

'Why did you buy this?' Asked my stepmum. 'You wouldn't want children eating this. This wouldn't be safe for breastfeeding. Who's eating this?'

Best Beloved, who is breastfeeding the Buggle, had been eating it for the last three days.

'I am eating it.' I said. 'I am the only person who is eating this.'

Making deposits in Satan's piggybank

You have a different relationship to effluvia once you're a parent. For instance - when was the last time you had shit on your arms? Those without children might imagine a slight toilet paper malfunction that leaves one finger faecally daubed, but I mean right up your arms, up near the elbow. When was the last time that shit was put there by someone's foot?

At the moment the shit has the consistency, texture, even the smell of cottage cheese. Not a good cottage cheese. Tesco everyday basics, maybe. This makes it less offensive when smeared liberally up my forearms and shirt, but has put us off cottage cheese. As a vegetarian I find this upsetting.

Often the infant will be sitting on one's lap, squirming, squawking, obviously processing a good quantity of Asda own brand. There's nothing to do but egg her on.

'Shit. Shit. Shit, you magnificent bastard! Shit your tiny brains out!'

Eventually she does.

We have avoided any piss-in-the-face episodes, which I have heard are part of the rich tapestry of boy parenting, but piss-in-the-bath is pretty regular. This event causes you to confront your own hard limits. Suppose you were planning to bathe using this water. You are aware that urine is pretty much just water and ammonia - that's practically a cleaning product. If the baby had peed in the bath without your knowledge it would do you not a jot of harm. But you do know. And if you leave the water in now, you are proactively choosing to bathe in baby piss. It's not just icky. It's something a badly medicated celebrity would do in an LA detox retreat

You even treat your own emissions differently. For instance - the baby, after thirty uninterrupted minutes of howling, is asleep, tied to your chest in a harness. You realise that for the last fifteen minutes your bladder has been toiling against the pressure of hot gallons of piss. You attempt to set her down in her crib but no sooner do you unlatch the first clasp on the harness then she is wide awake, shrieking directly into your face. Refix the harness and she is asleep so deeply it resembles a coma. You attempt this a few times, each time unleashing an earsplitting burst of red noise. Several parents and harnessed babies of different sizes could serve as a rudimentary, awful musical instrument. By this point your bladder feels like a car tire is being inflated inside it.

I am not too proud to admit that I have pissed standing up with my baby harnessed to my chest. I plugged her ears with wax, like Odysseus tied to the mast, so she did not hear the siren song of piss hitting pan. But shitting with my baby affixed to me is a motion too far. Her mother may feel differently, given as the infant spent nine months living happily and directly beside her gurgling bowels.

The other great thing about baby shit, besides nothing, is that you come up with all sorts of great metaphors for taking a dump. It's a literary coal mine. For instance:

Opening the Conservative party conference.
Another fine offering by AA Gill.
A lengthy session in the Finnish Parliament.
Giving a Welsh grammar lesson.
Three line whip in the lower chamber.
Letting slip the dogs of war.
Releasing that difficult second album.
Planting flowers at Thatcher's grave.

Strike a pose, vogue

Here are names I have come up with for poses the baby adopts:

Paint me like one of your French girls
Uncle Fester
Victorian suicide
Dead mouse
The plank
Window collision sparrow
Rugby ball
Cartoon drunk
Mincing
Mister Burns

Sable

I finally unpacked my toy soldier painting equipment, only to find I had no worthwhile size 0 brushes. So, a trip.

Two trips, as I made the mistake of buying Games Workshop brushes on my first foray. Avoid these brushes like the plague. After one use they'd begun to fork. I cane my brushes, but even by my standard this is a dismal performance. Cheap glue or cheap hair - everything about them is cheap but the price.

The second time I went to the Art Shop in the York Shambles. These narrow medieval streets with overhanging Tudor buildings are the kind of thing Americans visit the UK for. Super twee. They're cobbled too which is pretty good when you have a pushchair, a nice bumpety bumpety that puts the buggle down to sleep.

Brushes sound like Harry Potter wands - instead of Dragon's Heartstring and Phoenix Feather you're looking for pony or squirrel or sable hair. I picked up a size 1 synthetic watercolour brush with an extra long tip, and splashed on a size 0 Windsor and Newton series 7. These were kept in individual tubes on the counter, to protect them from oxygen, I assume.

'Windsor and Newton, size 0, series seven watercolour. A pine shaft and kolinsky sable bristles. How interesting,' The shopkeeper said. 'The sable that gave the fur to make this brush gave fur to make only one other. Sometimes brushes share a special connection, you see.'

'But who owns the other brush?' I asked.

The wizened brush seller leaned across the counter and looked at me across half moon glasses with a dark expression.

'He who must not be named.'

So I think I got somebody else's brush, but fuck it. My prophecy now.

I asked for advice on brushcare, which is why I went to a shop and didn't just buy the thing cheaper online. Her advice: for sable and other natural hair brushes, it's possible to retain springiness and point for longer by conditioning the brush with hair conditioner once a month. To protect brushes from acrylic paint there's very little to be done, the pigment is a bugger for creeping up and settling under the ferule or near the base of the brush. However, preparing the brush by wetting it and removing the water from the tip leaves a protective band of water under the ferrule that should prevent the pigment and its medium travelling up when you actually load it with paint. On a £12 brush I'll take that kind of care.

'And beware the agents of the dark one.' She added. 'They will try all tricks to separate you from your brush. So make sure you hide it, secret and safe.'

'Like in a drawer?'

'Is it lockable?'

'No. Its on an IKEA desk unit.'

'A drawer would do, yes.'

Suicidal sleeping

The baby approaches 'safe sleeping' like a frat boy approaches safe sex - not at all if there's any hope of the alternative. She will drift off blissfully (no matter how snotty, cantankerous or irascible she has become) when in bed with a parent. This seems quite natural, but cosleeping is a SIDS risk, what with the possibility of rolling over and crushing the bab like a big dumb rabbit.

She particularly likes drifting off in the carseat while wearing her outdoors puffer jacket. Slowly cooking like a foil wrapped beef joint, or perhaps developing irrecoverable spinal deformities from the unnatural jellybean posture the seat squishes her into. Nevertheless it covers the half an hour I need to pack the cans away after we're back from shopping so sod it, job's a good 'un.

If we offered her a plastic bag to shove her head in before bed time I bet she'd take it.