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Peter Rook: tips for a MAD-grandad
There are some definite upsides to becoming a MAD-grandad – that's a Middle-Aged Divorced Grandad (see last week's column).
There are some definite upsides to becoming a MAD-grandad – that's a Middle-Aged Divorced Grandad (see last week's column).For a start, you can legitimately exercise your right to be a grumpy old man before your allotted time.
This means that you offer your unsolicited views on everything from the absence of a melody and a good lyric in modern music, to the health and safety-obsessed nanny state and the inability of "this generation" to make their own entertainment using a just tin of buttons, a jam jar lid and an orange.
In fact, you should find every opportunity to moan about how society is going down the dunny, although this should not be too much of a leap, since you probably do this anyway to anyone who cares to listen.
Seeing as how you have become a MAD-grandad, there are also certain modes of behaviour that you must now adopt.
Paramount of these is the acquisition of a wing-backed armchair placed strategically in front of an roaring open fire. A three-bar electric heater will have to suffice if you don't have an open fire.
You should also always carry a pack of Werther's Original wherever you go, just in case your grandchild requires rewarding for an improved school report or the fact that he can end sentences without using the word "ennit".
You should also buy your grandchildren complex mechanical noisy toys and very generously supply extra long life batteries to keep them going to wreak revenge on your own sons and daughters for the purgatory they put you through via their music collection.
The MAD-grandad status also means that you can now accept your ageing (deterioration) process with sanguine resignation.
For a MAD-grandad "getting a little action" now means you don't need fibre today and an "all-nighter" means not getting up in the middle of the night to pee.
Being a MAD-grandad also means you can come to terms with acquiring jug ears and the perverse anomaly that your ears increase in size in direct disproportion to your ability to hear anything.
Any yet, your over-sized lug-holes assume the receptive powers of an unwanted ear horn when some wannabe gangster from Bretton drives by in his pimped-up ride with the stereo bass on full throttle.
And when people talk about the recession you think they are referring to your hairline.
After all, true grandads should be grey with a just few wisps of hair at the sides to allow for a come-over. That's how I remember grandads of yesteryear, and they are the role models that we should aspire to.
So embrace your status as a MAD-grandad and revel in all its unbridled pleasures and possibilities.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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