Mario Kart 100CC humiliations, sweaty beer drops and the wheel change of lost dignity

It's been a busy month - with mad dashings all over the country and overseas. My planning has been ambitious - resulting in early morning darts at 5am and arrivals back home at midnight. Weary but happy to sink a glass of red wine and kiss the kids goodnight.

This month I was particularly proud of my ability to change a car tyre under pressure. Ten minutes til my conf call and I manage to wrestle the rusted hulk off the car and replace it with the old faithful in the boot. There's a girl in the car park at the office on her mobile phone chatting away as I frantically spin the nuts off and jack the car up (not in that order). For the first few minutes I make a vague attempt to hitch my trousers back up as I bend down and kick the wheel brace repeatedly (the nuts take a while before they budge!). Thinking - "I must save her embarrassment and my dignity".

But eventually the builders butt is out and I don't care. There something strangely liberating about the air whistling between the crack as you carry out dirty, man's work. I would ask that this line is never quoted back to me out of context to wheel changes. Or I guess - it might sound a bit weird. Either way - I was so proud of my wheel changing achievement that I took a picture. Genius! Pure genius. My wife just thinks this further confirms how utterly stupid I am.


Later that week we head off to the Levellers on a Friday night. I meet up with my mate Tree and we reminisce about old times. At one point during "One Way" a few drops of something splash into our pints from the ceiling.

"Ahhh - it's ok Tree - it's just sweat."

The sweat of two thousand crusties jumping up and down until even the ceiling needs to cool down and dump a fine drizzle of rain down on us.

Behind me there's a man wearing a 1993 Levellers t-shirt and waving his walking stick in the air like a crazy man. Elsewhere there are savvy looking kids with dreadlocked, slightly balding dads pogo-ing on the spot and at one point in the night a truly humongous Sumo Sized bloke pogo's through the crowd towards Tree. He has launched his t-shirt in a fit of delirium and is wobbling along to the Riverboat Song with arms flapping wildly in the air and naked belly undulating to the rhythm. At a certain frequency his belly will never be able to stop moving. This is a worry. The worlds first perpetual motion machine locked within a fat scary b*stard. He has seven or eight breasts and at one point I lose line of sight with Tree and fear the worst.

"Man down! Man down! For God Sakes Tree get out of there!"

Tree emerges from the otherside - intact. I look at the missus - Sarah is worried that she has drunk man's sweat in her pint. We swap to red bulls and coke.

At some point in the month I'm in Switzerland. Switzerland is great. I buy a miniature alpine horn for the kids and instantly regret it. Apline horns make a really painful noise when the kids blow it at 6 in the morning. Think VuvuZella - but worse. Pray the world cup never makes it to the Alps!

I buy Sarah a lovely well-thought-out present (a pair of comedy Oven gloves with a Swiss woman in traditional Alpine dress on the front). I have excelled myself - this almost beats my "Steve Irwin - Crikey! Australia Zoo" tea towel I got her on my way back from Brisbane and my "Cowgirls know how to do it Houston style" oven mitt from last year.

Sarah takes it well - I have set a tradition now. Comedy kitchen utensils for my wife. And she was hoping for jewellery and stuff! (Ok - so I get some of that too - or I'd be dead by now!).

Yesterday is a turning point in my life as I accept that my time as the dominant alpha male is over. I must hand over family responsibility to my son. For he now has the dominance within the pride. It goes like this.

"Daddy - I can be Bowser cos he is my favourite and you can be Yoshi".

"Ok - let's go. Hang on a minute - Fintan - why am I in twelth. What's going on here."

"Daddy - it's ok. You're just a bit slow. It's ok though."

"Right - final lap - you're going down now son...here I come...!"

I pray for a lightning bolt or a mushroom but get a sodding green turtle shell. Fintan is in eighth and somehow I am in eleventh. This isn't supposed to happen. Initially I am laughing - thinking - I've been here before - messing about - the tortoise and the hare and all that. But this time the hare has left his sleep for too long. By the time I realise the real danger of losing to my five year old son - it's probably too late.

I'm catching him - I overtake (this is only 100cc by the way - not even 150CC!)and then he mags me - lightning strike and I am splatted and out for the count. Finishing ninth to his eight.

For me - this is a big moment. I am proud of him but he doesn't seem to realise the magnitude of genuinely beating his (slightly inebbriated) dad at Mario kart Wii.

"It's okay daddy - it's the taking part that counts," he tells me - quoting the kids from his after school club. I pray the world will eat me up. Truly a new low has been reached. I lamely defend myself.

"150CC Mushroom Cup - SNES - no-one could beat me Fintan. Serious. It's true. Back in 1994 - I was a legend!"

"Daddy - have you ever played Rainbow Road? I'm very good at that."

"Rainbow Road - I nailed that!...."

Time moves on and I remain planted in it - back in 1994.

Giant Tortoise raisin death, "What's a run?" and Red Bull Dependency...a life in gigging

It's a Monday night and I've got a free pass - so I'm off "gigging" to see "The Streets" in Liverpool. As usual - public transport lets us down at the first hurdle. There is a bus replacement service from Chester to Hooton (where the F*ck is Hooton?!) and then a train into Liverpool. This is crap news for a Monday night and my mate Chris is not impressed.

His track record on public transport is not good.

"Tom - I've only got on a train three times in the last five years and every time it goes wrong." says Chris.

"Yeah - fair enough. There was nothing we could do about the train catching fire last time. That was out of our control..." I say. (This was a Just Jack gig last year).

"And at Christmas - there's nothing you can do about snow like that..." I add.

"I nearly died in that snow. I had to walk 2 miles in snowdrifts above my knees - just to get to the nearest pub in Hooton."

"Aha - so at least you're familiar with Hooton then. So that's good."

Either way - we sit on a bus last serviced in 1937 and chug towards Hooton. And soon we are gig-bound and the night is looking up. We follow a couple of thirty year olds in baseball caps and low-slung jeans up the Lime Street Escalators and bundle in to Ma Eggerton's pub just outside. To say the pub does a disservice to spit and sawdust is an understatement - but I have great affection for it.

We walk into a heated arguement at the bar. "F*ck off alright! I wanted the day off alright?!"

"You F*ck off! What's your problem eh?!"

And that's the bar staff. The bar manager and bar maid are close to a full on cage fight. I seem to remember a similar barney last time I was in here. The locals don't bat an eyelid as the bar maid storms out mid shift.

I order a beer and remind myself not to complain about the head on it. They could serve me a jar of tepid cat p*ss and I'd probably just grin and bear it. This place is proper 'ard.

The Streets delivers a quality set. We nod heads - bob up and down - wave hands in the air and stupidly - very stupdily - I down the entire bar-supply of vodka and red bull during the night. It doesn't quite give me wings - instead I am buzzing all night and wondering for the rest of the week why I seem to have used up my entire back-up of "energy" for the next seven days. Curse the Taurine! Curse it!

Come the weekend I am better. I take the kids to the Zoo and meet up with Chris again. I detour via the Tropical Reptile House for the first time in years. It's cool in there and we run around looking at the wild exotic birds that are allowed to wander freely about you. Declan tries to feed a box of raisins to the giant, near-extinct Galapogos giant turtles and pulls a mini fit when I take that option away from him. (I am not gonna be responsible for killing off the last of a species!).

Later at home we have the annual "cleaning of the car ceremony". It's a bit like the trooping of the colour. A fair deal of pomp and circumstance and tubthumping from me. The first layers of green moss fall away with a quick scrape but some of the meaner looking fungi have had a whole year to take hold and even Fintan's "cloth whiplash technique" fails to budge these hard-core dirts.

"I can't feel my hands daddy...my hands?!" Fintan cries out after an hour or so.

"You'll be fine - just stick them in the bucket again," I advise. But he's beginning to look a bit blue around the edges and it is about one degree outside. But crucially - not snowing or raining.

The day is capped off with England beating France in the rugby. I should savour this moment as mere days later - I am to suffer the great double excruciation of an entire Irish clan of in-laws reminding me that England just lost to Ireland in the Cricket World Cup. And then having to actually explain the Cricket rules to my wife.

"So O'Brien just scored the fastest century in world cup cricket ever - that's pretty amazing..." I tell my lovely Irish wife.

"What's a century?" she says.

"A hundred runs..." I say.

"What's a run?" she asks with genuine curiosity.

At this point I should give up - but I forge ahead. She asks another question.

"So are England Rubbish or are Ireland really good?"

This is very hard to answer - because Cricket is a complicated business and this is also a trap.

"It's complicated. An individual can play very well but the team still loses. You can play for five days and still draw," I tell her.

"But England lost. So Ireland must be better." I can't fault her logic.

I decide it's best to dwell on the Ashes victory instead. Much better.

Sarah checks her facebook and it's awash with Irish friends and family in delighted celebration. One comment reminds us that "cricket is just a protestant version of hurling" and my brother-in-law reminds me that "cricket is for girls".

Later still - Sarah concludes that even if Ireland had just beaten England in a wheelbarrow race - the place would go mad celebrating. And why not - when's the next Wheelbarrow World Cup?

She is very happy. I am mildly grumpy as we go to bed. I dream of wheelbarrows and men in Kilts (weirdly). So perhaps Scotland are next to beat us?