From Father To Son

I have been reviewing my most recent posts, and I am worried that readers may have formed the impression that I give more of my fatherly attentions to young Jasper Blunt than I do to his siblings, Barbara and Justin.

It's true - Jasper is the bright one of the bunch, always coming up with interesting ideas and theories as to how we might further progress our journey in blogland. He assures me that my debut here has gone well enough, and that's good enough justification for the time and energy I expend.

But I would not like you to think I am on bad terms with the other two. Barbara is the artistic one - a trait, I like to think, she gets from her father. Since leaving art college, she's done well for her self, although her taste in avant-garde video and collage does not appeal to everyone.

Justin is another matter. At the tender age of 42, he is still very much a home-bird, spending more hours than is good for him cooped up in his room, trawling the internet or reading those magazines which he thinks are well-hidden from Mrs Blunt's prying eyes.

Jasper thinks he needs to 'get a life' and, certainly, I can't help thinking it's about time he flew the nest. It's possible I need to give him a good talking to, or at least point him in the direction of those sites that advertise ladies from Russia in want of a husband.

In the meantime, I'll make do with offering him some fatherly advice, I think, of the kind so well captured by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, in this excerpt from their '60's classic, Not Only But Also. That might do the trick.

I'd rather be a Journalist than an Engineer

In the days when the establishment was easily rocked by the barbed comments of satirists, the late and much lamented Peter Cook was always someone I particularly enjoyed.

As I struggled manfully to assemble a simple shoe cupboard yesterday, I thought of his wonderful monologue by the character he created, EL Wisty. Mr Wisty bemoaned the fact that he would much have preferred to have been a judge than a miner.

I retrieved the assembly instructions from the bin this morning, to demonstrate why I think I was right to choose journalism as my lifetime career, rather than following in the footsteps of my father, who was an engineer.

These wordless instructions led me, first of all, to assemble the two sides the wrong way around. Then, I somehow managed to insert the piece marked with an arrow in the wrong place.

A job that might have taken any competent DIYer little more than 10 minutes managed to take over an hour. Those handles on the cabinet doors started to take on the form of an accusing grin.

They say a picture paints a thousand words. Not in this case, it didn't.