Raising Other
People's Children

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit.

No use being a damn fool about it.”

W.C. Fields

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This is the book that never got written.

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Apparently, writing a book is like a relationship.  Blog posts, essays and short stories are like holiday romances but writing a book is like maintaining a relationship.  Even you don't want to be writing it, you don't want to be thinking about it, you don't even want to acknowledge its existence; a book is something you've got to be committed to.  I read that somewhere and, no, that's not my handing out unwanted relationship advice.

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I am said to belong to the 97% of all writers - writing folk - that write without finishing.  As a result of this reluctance to finish, or my affinity with procrastination, I belong to the 99.4% of all those who write who is unpublished.

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But I do enjoy writing and I have recently discovered that my thoughts, my ramblings, my (sometimes desperate) attempts at being funny and my (even more desperate) attempts at being thoughtful are appreciated by others.

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But what is so special about me?  Why should you read these pages?  Well, there is a short version answer and there is a longer version.  The longer version you can find here.  The short version is that there isn't that much special about me.  I am a regular person (EDI translator: single white male in his late forties) with a regular job.  I am special to my mum, my wife, my daughter and a handful of others.

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Though in recent years, I have discovered that in the course of having regular jobs for about thirty years now, I have been placed in a position of looking after children an awful.  In fact, I've spent more than half a lifetime looking after children, the lion's share of which weren't actually mine.  The lion's share of which I didn't know until the moment they were placed in my care.  There were the children I used to babysit, the children I used to coach football, the children taught, the children I looked after in very random circumstances and now the children that we live with.  And of course my own daughter.

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I am not that special but believe, looking after other people's children is really, really special.  Special because children are special - they lead special lives.  Special because they're special to their parents - in ways that even I don't always understand (but then parents, parents, are bloody special too).  Special because children are different in different circumstances - different with different people.  And special because children do dumb stuff.  Like, genuinely dumb stuff.  I tend to think that children are capable of doing dumb things, adults are capable of doing evil things; the difference is that adults know.

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Anyway, all of this is good material for a book and for many years, I have been writing that book.  It's just that it seems I only do holiday flings.  Essays, short stories - a Website.

This is that book.  The book that never got written.