Seaside

We're in Rockport. We've come down to the coast because the boy is back at school on Monday, and we're aware that he can't have had the greatest summer what with all of the coronavirus restrictions, so it's like a last fling before school starts up again. To be fair, school actually isn't starting up again, but as of Monday he'll be plugged into his laptop while a tutor in another part of the city attempts to teach him how to do sums over an internet connection. Anyway, the point is that he's obsessed with marine biology so we've had a day out at the aquarium in Corpus Christi. Most of it has been him bombarding us with facts and statistics about what we're looking at, which is actually a little overbearing and presupposes that neither my wife nor myself went to school; but he tends to lecture when he gets antsy, and we can't really fault his enthusiasm.

Now we're at Rockport which is about five miles further along the coast. The aquarium wasn't too full as we feared, with everyone masked and keeping their distance, so we're hoping the beach might be the same, which happily it is. We've brought swimming trunks and towels. The plan was to get the boy moving around a bit in the sea, his exercise regime having reduced to three or four daily journeys from his bedroom to the fridge in the kitchen punctuated by long periods of physical inertia with his face glued to something electronic which makes intermittent beeping noises. That was the plan but he can't be persuaded for some reason, so he hangs about on the quay looking for hermit crabs in the rock pools.

The beach isn't too crowded, thankfully, so I'm going in regardless. Last time we came to Rockport, I watched from the quay as the boy is doing now, wishing I'd brought trunks and was in the water; and on the way from Corpus Christi, it occurred to me that although I've been in the sea, mostly on either the Welsh or Cornish coast, I've never actually swum in the sea - which strikes me as odd given that I'm now in my fifties.

I've changed into trunks in the nearby public bogs, and now I'm padding down the beach with slip-ons on my feet. We've had the conversation about whether anything in the local waters is likely to bite or poison me, through which I realise I haven't even stood in the sea on this side of the Atlantic, never mind swimming. This is a first on several counts, and happily it turns out that there isn't much living along this stretch of coastline which could really do me any harm, but I wear the shoes nevertheless because I don't want to risk stepping on a sharp stone or whatever.

Now I realise that this really is my first time in these waters, because I'm up to my shins and it's actually warm. Without even meaning to, I'd braced myself for that initial shock of cold water, which of course never came. It's not even not actually cold warm. It's jacuzzi warm because of course we're not that far from the Caribbean. It's mostly sand underfoot, small stones being so few in number as to be an irrelevance, so I wade further out towards a horizon beyond which I assume must be the Yucatan and the eastern extent of Mexico. The waters are gentle, and come up to just below my shoulders after a few more minutes, requiring that I bob up and down each time a fresh wave rolls in. A grey pelican dives into the water at about a hundred yards distance from where I'm almost floating, which is dramatic and spectacular. They are enormous birds with a vaguely prehistoric look about them.

I kick my feet up from the sand and start swimming. I've only ever been able to do the breast stroke, and I'm quite frankly crap at it, but there it is. I'll never win a competition, but at least I stand a chance of not drowning. I swim back towards the beach until my flailing legs connect once again with the sand.

The boy is on the quay, pointing at things seen in rock pools.

'There's nothing stopping you coming in too,' I say, but he carries on, so we dutifully investigate his discoveries. My wife isn't swimming but is stood in the water. The boy is directing us to look at this or that, having subconsciously elected himself the tzar of the coastline. 'Did you know,' he asks in prefix to describing some aspect of marine biology, as though this is his world and we're here because he's invited us. Most of the time we do know, but as I say today he's compensating for some minor anxiety or other so he gets a pass. To be fair, I don't actually recall ever having seen a hermit crab back in England, where this beach is pretty much nothing but hermit crabs. Any shell you pick up and turn over will reveal segmented legs beating a swift retreat into the interior, so I don't actually have to feign my astonishment when the boy points them out.

I wade back out and then swim back in again a few more times. We use up about an hour.

Once we're ready to leave, I return to the land. We pass others who've come to enjoy the beach, albeit at a distance. Deck chairs and canopies are set out up along the sand dunes at the back of the road, and one family have decorated their chosen territory with flags - big life-size versions of the kind you would wave around having recaptured a hillock from the enemy, the kind which can be seen from a long way away. We have the stars and stripes, which is probably a little odd in the context but probably harmless; then we have the version featuring a single blue stripe across a black and white version of the same flag; and then we have Trump 2020 - Keep America Great. The black, white and blue version is used to show that one backs the blue, that one supports law enforcement. By strange coincidence it's quite popular with people whose love of law enforcement extends to giving cops the benefit of the doubt when they shoot unarmed black men, sometimes suggesting that those cops  are under a lot of pressure and had no way of knowing that the black man in question was unarmed - despite it quite specifically being their job to be able to make such judgments accurately so as to avoid murdering people who haven't done anything wrong.

In combination, the three flags planted here on the beach send a very clear and deliberate message, and one which, I might argue, isn't actually necessary in a free country. The guy who planted the flags isn't afraid to speak his mind, and no liberal is going to silence him, and he's proud of being able to state this. His statement is equivalent to turning up at the beach with a megaphone screaming enquiries as to whether anyone wants a fight? He's clearly a massive fucking twat, and a scared massive fucking twat.

I stare at the flags.

A fat man in a beach chair stares back at me.

I stare back at him, understanding that he's the guy, specifically he's the guy who has to make the beach, a geographical feature of the coast, all about him, and about what he believes, and what he's proud of. I keep staring and I stare hard with a big smile on my face, knowing that I make him uncomfortable, introducing a little more uncertainty into his life.

I dry out and we head into Rockport, then eventually home to San Antonio. We pass more Trump campaign material on the way back, even a Confederate flag, and a version of the Texas state flag embellished with the silhouette of an assault rifle - which is repulsive but constitutionally legal thanks to legislation passed by Democrat Senator Hugh Parmer in 2015, the irony of which will almost certainly be lost on those flying said variation of the flag.

Yet today I swam in a warm sea and it has been a good day, regardless of the shitheads.

Holi

It's Saturday afternoon and we're heading for something called Holi. This was Bess's idea. Holi is a traditional Hindu festival celebrating the arrival of spring, amongst other things. Bess has a number of co-workers from India and Nepal, and one of them told her about it. Having previously lived in Coventry - which enjoys a substantial Asian presence - I'm a little surprised that I myself have never heard of it.

'They throw paint at each other,' Bess explains.

I called my mother earlier in the day, it being her birthday. I told her we would be going to a Holi celebration.

'That's the one where they throw paint at each other,' she said.

We leave around two, taking the kid along because it sounds messy and therefore the sort of thing he will probably enjoy; plus it will be good to scrape him off the screen for a couple of hours.

Bess follows directions on her smartphone, leading us to what resembles a scout hut lost somewhere in the leisurely tangle of San Antonio's suburbs. There is a stall set up next to the hut, although we can't tell what goods are on offer, and there are just three other people here, one of whom is of either Indian or Latino ancestry. Our source seemed to think it would all be kicking off around two, but this was apparently an optimistic estimate.

We go home, then return around four. This time the roads are crammed, and there's a cop waving vehicles on towards the associated parking lot. We're at a crawl, so Bess drives off elsewhere, two, three streets away until we find a place to park. It's outside someone's home but hopefully they won't mind seeing as all their neighbours also have stranger's cars lined up along their stretch of road. We get out and walk.

Figures approach from the other end of the street. The first is a guy covered from head to foot in bright primary colours. It's a peculiar sight and he smiles because it's funny.

Once, as a student, I was on the way to some house party in a neighbouring village with my friend Carl, who began to describe a scenario in which bewildered figures emerge from the fog ahead of us, blackened faces with their clothes still smoking. This, he explained, would indicate that we were about to attend the greatest house party of all time. I've honestly never been wild about house parties, but the image has stayed with me and I am reminded of it right now. Rainbow coloured survivors stagger towards us and we can hear twangy Indian pop music in the distance. This is not what you expect to see in some average urban street. It's like the polychromatic Bollywood version of that zombie apocalypse you always hear about.

'I guess we missed it,' I say, basing this on our being the only people heading towards the noise. When we get there, it's obvious that I was wrong. Things are just beginning to get going.

There's a field behind the building I assumed to be a scout hut. The building is actually the center for the India Association of San Antonio, and the field is packed with people of all colours. By all colours I mean blue, green, purple, yellow, orange, red and so on, and the air is full of similarly hued dust clouds as everyone pelts each other with handfuls of powdered paint. The field is most likely additionally packed with people of all colours in terms of ethnicity, but it's no longer possible to tell with most of them, excepting a few in traditional Hindu dress.

There were many people of Indian descent around the places where I lived in England, and I found that I missed them when I moved to San Antonio. We have people from India in San Antonio, but they don't seem quite such a visible presence. Bess tells me that their numbers tend to be concentrated around the medical center and University of Texas campus in the north-east part of the city. Amongst her former colleagues was one Dr. Ramamurthy, mother of the actor Sendhil Ramamurthy, best known for his role in the television series Heroes.

There are a couple of decent Indian restaurants, notably the wonderful Tandoor Palace on the Wurzbach Road, but outside of such places, I no longer see Indian people in large groups; which is partially why it's so nice to be here at this festival. I'm not sure I even realised I'd missed this sort of thing, although that is perhaps an inevitable reaction for someone living in a different land to the one in which they were born.

Bess wanders off and finds the stall selling the bags of paint. She returns with four or five and hands a couple to the boy. I decline because I think I would feel weird chucking paint at strangers. Strangers, on the other hand, feel less reticent about chucking paint at me. My assailant grins and springs off to bombard someone else, and I'm trying not to laugh because it's funny and stupid, and there's something cheery about it; and I'm aware that my attempts to clear bright purple powder from my face duplicate those of Oliver Hardy as he blinks haplessly from the screen, his hair white with brick dust.

Another couple of minutes and none of us are the same colour as when we arrived, which is apparently the point. The paint sets everyone on an equal footing, and in the end we are all the same, equally ridiculous.

Junior goes off to buy more paint.

I'm tempted to dance, but I'm still a little fearful it will be the white guy dance, like I'm someone's dad at a wedding. The music is mostly what I think of as bhangra, or at least what I associate with Bollywood - modern beats rooted in Indian tradition. There's a group of young people dancing in a circle, some barefoot, and presumably Indian judging by the sandals, a couple of topknots and the raw energy of their moves. This clearly isn't their first rodeo, as we say around these parts and, reminded of just where I am - it's wonderful to be outside at some large celebration without the barbecue smoke or country & autotune wailing away in our ears.

I watch the dancers, envious.

We spend an hour or more, just soaking it all up, gradually changing colour as wave after wave of paint hits us. If the object of the celebration seems unclear, at least to me, it doesn't seem to matter. Eventually a bonfire is set alight  at the center of the field in reference to the burning of Holika, the sister of the demon king, from which comes the name of this part of the festival. We all watch the flames and savour the smoke, and it feels as though we've all come through something important together.

Lone Hollow

Junior has attended summer camp since he was about eleven. Summer camp is one of those characteristically American institutions I don't quite understand, having no equivalent in my own childhood. I suspect I would have hated the idea of going to one, but I suppose I would have adapted; and our kid seems to think summer camp is amazing so he gets the last word, seeing as how he has the actual experience.

It's November, cold, wet, and we're taking the boy to some sort of off season reunion held at a local high school, specifically one of the knobby ones. We sit in the car, waiting at the gate. The security guard comes out of his bunker.

'Is this a military base?' I ask.

'No. It's a school.'

My wife talks to the guard. He returns to his bunker and the gate slides back. We drive through the grounds. About a minute passes before we see buildings.

'Is this one of those schools where they have their own generator so they can sit out the apocalypse when it happens?'

The boy laughs at my joke, which is gratifying. We're looking for building number forty-one. We can see thirty-nine and forty-two.

'We should park and look around. It must be up here somewhere.'

Some other people wander across the way, but with neither the numbers nor urgency one would expect for something describing itself as a reunion. Still, we follow them and find a site map screwed to a wall. Within another minute we have found our building. There's a temporary sign on a board set up outside, manned by a couple of summer camp types in Lone Hollow t-shirts and evangelical smiles.

'Hey, it's Josh,' observes our boy, or maybe not Josh, but some name in that general ballpark. Josh recognises our boy and somehow manages to grin even harder. I thought he was already at full capacity but apparently not.

We enter the lecture theatre. We sign our names.

'Would you like a sticker?' the woman asks happily.

'A sticker?'

'You can write your name on it so we know who you are.'

'No, you're all right there.' I smile in diplomatic fashion and move on.

They give us publicity material and a DVD, a visual record of the most recent summer at the camp; and suddenly we're walking out.

'Wait,' I say. 'Was that it?'

'No, there will probably be more.'

'Are you leaving?' asks Josh, or whatever he's called.

'We're just going for a walk,' my wife says.

We head for the car.

'Did you want to stay?' Bess asks the kid.

'I don't know. What else was there going to be?'

'I don't know.'

'Shouldn't we go back,' I suggest. 'I don't mind but this seems kind of rude.'

We wander around the grounds for a couple more minutes, then we go back. We find seats high up at the back of the lecture theatre, which isn't difficult. There are a few parents but I count about ten kids.

'How many kids were at the camp? It was more than just ten surely?'

'There were a lot,' the boy says, with the usual emphasis on the quantifier, as though he's hoping to blow my mind, as though I wouldn't believe how many millions of kids there were at the summer camp. 'But they were from all over. There were even some kids from New York,' he says as though this were impossible, and yet he'd seen it with his own eyes.

'Wow,' I concede. 'Do you know any of these?'

'I know Josh. I don't know the others.'

We sit. Bess gives me a bingo card on the grounds of my being good at that sort of thing - sixteen squares of pictograms referring to things they get up to at summer camp - a bow and arrow, a football, a wigwam and so on. Still images of rural activities flash across the screen at the front of the hall and I notice one of the pictograms superimposed in a lower corner. Bess gives me a pencil and I start to cross them out as I see them. It's something to do. 'I wonder what we win.'

The presentation begins. Summer camp people outnumber the rest of us two to one in their cheery blue t-shirts, but then it's a cold, wet Sunday in the nether regions of Texas. The first speaker tells us a load of things about teaching kids to do stuff. It feels oddly like a sales pitch, or something which will conclude with the handling of poisonous snakes.

We watch a film, presumably the one we've been given on DVD - kids in boats, canoes, sliding down zip lines, swimming, running, making art, and quite clearly having a fantastic time. The music is the sort of populist autotuned emo you would expect, aspirational songs about having fun. More than anything, America is about team, about being true to your school, about cheerleaders and loyalty; but I suppose you get used to it.

The film ends and we discreetly leave.

So that happened.

Rah Rah Rah

I haven't mowed the lawn since October because there didn't seem to be much point. The grass wasn't doing anything and we kept getting rain. It's difficult to mow the grass if it's too damp. Then, as January kicked off with a completely uncharacteristic couple of weeks so cold, grey and wet that it felt as though we were living in England, the grass became what may as well have been a wheat field, thick green stalks at least tall enough to hide most of the cats.

Texas has now resumed operation within established meteorological parameters, so it's hot and sunny again. In fact it's so hot and sunny that I've been sunburned whilst out cycling. Today, I'm going to spray on some sunblock before I go out, probably for the first time since late September. Unfortunately we're all out of sunblock. I'm not going to get burnt again, so I amend my plans. I'll walk to HEB, the local supermarket, pick up sunblock and the usual groceries, then spend the rest of the morning working on the lawn. My working on the lawn is long overdue and will be good exercise. Furthermore, this plan gets around the annoyance of making two trips to HEB - one for sunblock before I get out on the bike, and then the usual one for the day's groceries on the way back.

I walk to HEB, then consider the garden once I'm back home. I'm going to need to go over the whole lot with the strimmer, cutting the grass to a length which won't clog up the mower every three feet. I excavate the strimmer from where it's been buried in the garage for the last six months. The engine starts without any problem, but I need to adjust the head, to draw out a greater length of cutting cord from the drum. I experience difficulties of a kind roughly described in the facebook rant which they inspire:

Strimmers, trimmers, whatever the fuck you call them - why the childproof cap on the cutting head, or in my case adult proof? Why do the instructions appear to refer to a completely different piece of machinery? Why can't I get the fucking drum out of the bastard housing? It moves this way, it moves that way, and it doesn't move any other way so how the hell am I suppose to unscrew it, and no there aren't any points I can squeeze so as to release something or other whilst attempting said unscrewing, despite the lying Trumpesque instructions? Why are such things designed so as to penalise persons like myself who, whilst not completely mechanically inept, don't spend seventy-two hours a day thinking about grommets and wingnuts?

My frustration is such that I give up. The lawn can wait. Maybe I'll see if I can buy a replacement head at Lowes. I don't want to think about it, not today. I should have just gone out on the bike. What a waste of a morning.

I'll make that rice thing, I tell myself, that will cheer me up. I'm kind of hungry and it came out pretty good when I made it yesterday, and that was really just an experiment. I wanted to use up the leftover rice so I patted it flat and fried it until crunchy to make biscuits. I've since had a look at online recipes for the sake of comparison, and there was one which seemed worth trying, which suggested topping each rice biscuit with a mixture of salmon, mayonnaise, and finely chopped spring onions. I cook up some rice, pat it flat, then leave it in the fridge for a little while. Cooling means it will keep its shape when I fry it, so the theory goes. Yesterday it worked perfectly. Today, despite having fine tuned my improvised recipe, it's a disaster. The rice sticks to the non-stick frying pan, taking on a form resembling loose gravel rather than biscuits; and the fucking smoke alarm goes off, and it takes a whole minute to find the bloody thing; and there's oil everywhere and I'm beginning to feel as though I should never have got out of bed.

'Hello,' Bess calls as she arrives home a little later.

I'm in the bedroom and I call back. 'Hello.'

'Hello,' she calls a second time with the intonation of a question, apparently bewildered to find the house empty.

'Hello!' I call back, louder and with a subtext reading I heard you the first time, for fuck's sake!

'Okay!' she protests as I enter the front room. 'You don't have to be mean.'

'I already said hello.'

'I didn't hear you.'

'I haven't had a very good day.'

We go out to eat because we have an appointment at the school so it will save time. We go to a Greek place because it's near the school. We eat our kebabs and realise that we did this last week - an appointment at the school prefixed by hastily consumed kebabs. The coincidence is funny, although it's a different restaurant in a different part of town and a different school. This is the high school, the one our boy will be attending come August. Tonight it's something for the parents, or step-parent in my case. Neither of us really know why we come to these things beyond that it seems to be expected. The maths teacher will tell us that he or she intends to try really hard to teach maths to our child, and the other teachers will doubtless make similar promises. I always assumed this sort of thing would be implicit in the fact of it being a school. I don't know why anyone would need reassurance of what, for example, an English teacher will attempt to do in relation to a child in his or her English class. I don't know why it needs stating.

We scoff our kebabs and head for the school. The parking lot is full with parents still filtering into the front of the building. We're ten minutes late but I guess it doesn't matter. Clearly we aren't the only ones. We enter the building and I notice that the woman in front of us and the one behind both wear heels so high that their feet are nearly vertical and they have difficulty walking. Parents' evenings at Junior's previous school were distinguished by a surprising quota of mothers with terrible face lifts, and I wonder if high end stripper clothing is going to be the thing at this place.

We enter the main hallway where a trio of schoolgirls are sat behind a table to greet us and provide directions. They are teenagers and their smiles are either dazzling or subject to corrective braces so that they may eventually be dazzling. I don't understand them, or why they're here after hours. They must be volunteers. I don't understand people who enjoyed school or who thought of it as the best days of their lives. I don't understand team players or any of their over-enthusiastic like.

We are directed to an assembly hall, possibly the school canteen by day. Chairs are arranged like tree rings around a central podium, and there's a table of cookies and bottled water at the back from which we can apparently help ourselves. Unfortunately we spot Devil Boy's mother almost immediately. She is someone we were trying not to think about, and she's right over there looking back at us but pretending she's only looking in our general direction - a strategic affectation allowing us to pretend we haven't seen her, which is what we do. We both knew Devil Boy would be attending this school. He was friends with our kid about six or seven years ago, but even at the age of five he was weird and creepy with something cruel and unpleasant about him, so it was a massive relief when his family moved away; but now they're back, and we don't want to have to deal with Devil Boy or his social climbing mother. We choose seats positioned so that we don't have to see her, or catch her eye and fake our mutual surprise.

Oh how wonderful - you mean your boy will be here too? Gosh! How long has it been? Those two will have some catching up.

Bess and I glance at the itinerary, a long list of who will be speaking. There will also be prayer.

'How long is this going to go on, do you think?'

Bess doesn't know. 'A couple of hours maybe?'

Some woman is speaking from the podium, welcoming us to the school and to the adventure which will be our child's learning experience up until the year 2022. She introduces a priest who invites us to stand. We all bow our heads to mumble our way through the Lord's Prayer, apart from me. I had anticipated tedious scholastic information, statistics on how great the school is and why we've made such an amazing choice in bringing our kid to its door, but this feels a little as though we're being inducted into a cult. I don't have any specific objection to the Lord's Prayer but this doesn't seem like the time for it, at least not to me. That whole deal about the separation of church and state doesn't apply here because this is an expensive private school. Bess and I aren't the ones paying for it though. We're merely the parents.

'Now what we're going to do,' the woman tells us once the chorus of amen has died away, 'is come forward and get to know each other, so if you'd each like to come out from your seat - you can go back when we get to talking about the curriculum - just come up and talk to anyone you've never met. Get to know each other.'

'Fuck this,' Bess suggests. 'Let's get out of here.'

I'm flooded with relief because I thought it was just me. We shuffle along to the end of our row and head out the building, for the parking lot. We've been here less than ten minutes.

It's a school, and an expensive one, so I'm going to trust them to do what they can to teach our kid. That's their job. I don't need reassurance, or promises. If he doesn't sail into an overpaid position as CEO of some tediously thrusting corporation in September 2022, I'm not going to have a nervous breakdown or start looking for anyone to blame; and I don't need to be part of the family.

It's the school he wanted to go to, and they seem like they mean business, and that's enough for me.

Next day, I take the strimmer to a lawnmower repair place which has a sign describing itself as the best little mower house in Texas, but strimmers aren't really their thing. I head home, dropping in at Lowes on the way because what harm could it do to ask?

The guy working in gardening equipment takes about thirty seconds to fix the thing. It seems the part I had been wrestling with had screwed itself on so tight - presumably while the strimmer was in use - that it hadn't actually occurred to me that it could be unscrewed. I was going at it all wrong.

It feels as though a storm cloud has broken.

Barbecue Quest

It's that time of year again. Byron is competing at the Barbecue Cookoff and has bunged us a couple of tickets. We're going along partially because it's his weekend with the kid - Byron's son, my stepson - and there's probably a limit to how much fun Junior can absorb from such an event whilst his father is busily setting lumps of meat on fire, so we're going to pick up the boy and whisk him back to the safety of his room and his games system. The Barbecue Cookoff is ordinarily part of the annual Stock Show & Rodeo, which is nice because it means we get to see the cows; but this year the event has been moved to a different site for some reason, one without much in the way of available parking. The plan is that we park at the AT&T Center, which is where the Barbecue Cookoff has been staged up until now, and we take a shuttle to the new site which is two miles away. The shuttles have been specially laid on. There must be a reason for this new, somewhat laborious arrangement, but neither Bess nor myself can work out what it might be.

This whole thing about parking then taking the shuttle seems like a pain in the ass. Bess looks on the map and notices that the site is about ten minutes walk from the Jack White Park Trailhead, or that's how it looks. The Trailhead is part of a greenway which follows Salado Creek south towards the old Spanish Missions. We've both been along there before, and it makes for a pleasant walk through a largely wooded strip of land away from the noise and traffic of the highway. So that's the box we're ticking.

We park at the Trailhead, oblivious to the fact of an empty parking lot suggesting that no-one else considered this seemingly obvious shortcut. We cross beneath the interstate, then a smaller railway bridge, and we follow the creek. We can hear stadium country in the distance and the smell of barbecue faintly smokes the breeze. Stadium country is country and western without the redeeming features, more X Factor than Hank Williams; but in its favour, it can always be heard at great distance and as such provides useful navigational information to the occasional questing wanderer.

'It can't be much further,' Bess suggests.

Sixty seconds later, we notice that the music now seems to be behind us. We look to the source, to the eastern line of trees, and the possibility occurs to us that we're on the wrong side of the creek. We turn around and head back for the interstate.

'Maybe if we head up that way,' I suggest, pointing.

'That's along the highway,' Bess says. 'We won't get very far.'

We're both looking at the headquarters of the Lucifer lighting company, which is at least on the same side of the creek as the Cookoff. The grounds of the Lucifer lighting company slope down towards the water, and there seems to be a path worn into the grass, so again we head off.

'That always struck me as a funny name for a lighting company,' says Bess. 'Like Beezebub plumbing or Satan parcel delivery.'

'You know Lucifer means light bringer?'

'Really?'

'Actually I'm not sure, but it's something like that. Luce means light in Italian, so…'

'Well, the fallen angel - I guess he was supposed to be pretty hot after all.'

Approaching the railway bridge, the path takes us into a labyrinth of reeds, dried stalks of Arundo donax, an invasive species which can grow up to twenty feet in height and does well in really shitty, contaminated soil. It's one of those things which thrives around industrial estates and places you probably don't want to go, and the earth beneath the bridge is accordingly decorated with flattened beer cans and burnt patches. Forward progress becomes difficult.

'I'm having my doubts about this one.'

'Let's turn back,' Bess sighs. 'I don't feel like getting assaulted today. I suppose at least we tried.'

We return to the car, and grudgingly drive to the AT&T Center where the parking lot is already filling and we have to pay ten dollars on top of the Cookoff ticket price. We follow the crowd on foot, everybody drawn to the point from which the shuttle will depart. Everyone is wearing a Stetson and my head feels suddenly naked. I'm overdue a haircut, that being one sin for which a Stetson usually compensates. I've been meaning to buy a new hat for some time. My current Stetson has had a lot of use and is consequently so old, crappy, and distressed that it could pass for the cover of a Nine Inch Nails record.

The shuttle arrives and we all pile on. It's actually a school bus, the large yellow kind as driven by Otto in The Simpsons. I've never been on one of these buses before, and yet they are universal to the experience of almost everyone I know. The interior is cramped and crappy and it feels as though someone will almost certainly bring either a goat or chickens on board at any moment.

'You must have seen that in Mexico though,' Bess says.

'Not really. The buses seemed a bit scary and confusing. I took coaches out of the city but that was different.'

'No chickens?'

'Mostly businessy types. I caught a Pesero in Tula but there was no-one with a chicken on there. It was a bit freaky because I was just following what everyone else did, and no-one seemed to be paying when they got on, so I sat down and assumed you were supposed to pay when you got off. Then the next few people who got on paid the driver, making me look like an arrogant cunt tourist.'

'What did you do?'

'I paid him when I got off and tried to explain that I was a clueless gringo. He didn't seem to care that much.'

We head off and I think about Mexico, and then crazy school bus drivers described by Henry Rollins in his spoken performances. Thankfully our guy just seems to be doing his job. We take a side road I've never noticed before into what may as well be open country, and yet we're still in the middle of the city because that's how San Antonio works. We are surrounded by scrubby fields of cacti and we pass stables with horses stood around.

Finally we arrive. We get wristbands and find a map posted on an information board, from which we learn that Wack 'Em & Stack 'Em have a concession just a little way further along the main thoroughfare. The place is packed.

Wack 'Em & Stack 'Em is the name of Byron's barbecue team, apparently taken from a song by Ted Nugent. I have no idea when it all got started, but he's always been a good cook. Apparently someone at some point told him he should compete in barbecue competition events, so he did, and in doing so acquired a whole team of helpers, crew, hangers-on, or whatever you want to call them.

'So what do the rest of those guys do?' I ask my wife, because she's telling me the story. 'Do they just hang around and maybe pass him an onion if he needs it?'

'Pretty much,' she tells me. 'Byron does most of the actual cooking. They turn things on the grill while he's doing something else, or they stand around and make sure the beer is drinkable.'

'So it's really Byron who wins the competitions?'

'Yes, but to his credit he's never really been about personal glory in that way.'

It transpires that Byron has a rival team formed from Wack 'Em & Stack 'Em dissidents who felt sidelined by his superior cooking ability, despite his repeated emphasis on everything having been a team effort, even when it wasn't. We're better than this, they apparently cried out. We can barbecue as good as any man, and no more will we stand in the background occasionally handing a tomato to some superstar…

We find the concession and we have wristbands which grant admittance. There's a marquee and a bar. The barbecue trailer is at the back, a huge open-sided thing on wheels with Byron and a couple of others working away. We find Junior in a caravan next to the trailer. He seems glad that we've arrived, but we have to tell him that we're not leaving just yet seeing as we only just got here.  We talk to Byron and Robert and have sodas from the bar. One of the bartenders wears a hat resembling a turd, specifically a furry cartoon turd with a smiley face. It's not that much of a surprise.

Having found our bearings, Bess and I take a walk. There are a couple of stalls selling hats around the corner, including Stetsons. It takes a few tries but I find one which fits my apparently massive head, and it's only twenty dollars. I buy it and feel that the journey has been worth my while. We wander a little further but come perilously close to where some band are still belting out the stadium country by which we forged our earlier path. We head back to the Wack 'Em & Stack 'Em concession.

Just outside the concession I pause to read postcards pinned to a board. They're from little kids, all addressed to Byron and mostly thanking him for buying their cow or pig. I get the impression that in most cases, the cow or pig in question has been hand-reared by the child who wrote the card.

'Did you see this?' I ask Bess.

'Oh yeah,' she says. 'He does a lot for those school 4H clubs.'

'4H?'

'Horticulture, husbandry, and a couple of other Hs.'

'Hogs?'

'No.'

'But it's like agriculture and stuff?'

'Yes.'

I take another look at the postcards. It seems like these kids put a lot of love into raising their animals. 'They know what Byron does, don't they, why he's buying their animals?'

'Oh yes.'

This is one I'm just going to have to keep from thinking about too hard, given that I already know where meat comes from.

Byron appears, jovial as usual. We shoot the breeze for a couple of minutes, wishing him luck with thrashing the dissidents in the upcoming competition. He horses around as is his way, a man truly in his element.

Then we gather up the kid, and head home.

Winter Wonderland

The Winter Wonderland is staged in the parking lot of the school, Sunday afternoon, and I'm trying hard to work out why. It doesn't really seem to be about anything beyond kids having a limited quota of fun and promoting the school, but maybe that's all it needs to be. Furnished with the snow cone which is apparently stipulated in his contract, Junior wanders off to find his buddies. We stand and watch the snow slide for about a minute. Somebody invented a machine which makes snow, and they have one here today. There's a line of hyperactive kids climbing steps, then tobogganing down the snowy incline on the plastic sleds provided. It probably helps if you're twelve and haven't grown up loathing snow, or indeed almost anything cold, as I have.

There's a crowd gathered a little way off, and it's only a little way because the parking lot isn't particularly big. I can see very small children stood on a stage singing something religious. Bess and I make our way to the front, but the voices of the children are drowned out by their own backing tape.

Down past the school entrance, a line of tables has been set out with fun activities, but the whole thing is beginning to remind me of Fun Land from the first episode of Father Ted; and to further map the extent of my imagination, one table is manned by the science teacher who reminds me of Andy Dwyer from Parks & Recreation. He seems to remember us so we stop at his table, which is the only fun activity of obscure methodology. He has three trays of iced water and he invites us to probe each with a finger and to guess which is the coldest. They all feel about the same.

'One of them is colder,' he insists, showing us the labels, regular, with added sugar, and salt water. 'Like to take a guess at which is coldest?' he asks again.

I guess that it's salt, but I can't remember why - something about water taking longer to boil if you add salt when making spaghetti.
 

Salt it is, Andy Dwyer from Parks & Recreation confirms happily, because it freezes at a much lower temperature. He whips out a thermometer and shows us: fun and educational.

We wander off, past the face painting and into the school. The building is essentially a church welded onto a school because it's a religious institution - although thankfully not one of those which favours intolerance and brainwashing. It's a proper church too, and pretty big, not just some chapel or vaguely theological outhouse. It reminds me a little of Coventry cathedral and is conceivably of about the same vintage.

We look for familiar names in the alcove where the ashes of wealthy patrons are kept, without success. Our boy's grandfather is apparently here somewhere, as is his great aunt, Barbara Jean. It's odd to find myself attached to a family with relatives interred inside a church, like King John at Worcester Cathedral.

We walk up the aisle towards the altar, enjoying the stained glass and the organ music bellowing forth above our heads.

'That's what you want,' I observe, 'proper organ music, not piped crap from a CD or whatever.' I'm thinking of the Christmas service which featured kids singing along to muzak piped from a laptop.

The organ ceases.

We both turn and there's a man up there. He looks pissed off. 'I'm trying to practice.'

We look at him.

The church is empty but for the three of us, and the door was open so Bess and I didn't need to jimmy the lock in order to effect our entrance. We were talking, as opposed to shouting or singing sea shanties whilst howling with laughter and throwing up. I'm a little surprised the organist could hear us up there in the organ loft, or whatever you call it.

'There will be a service later if you'd like to come to that,' he adds without making it seem as though we would be particularly welcome. It sounds like an awkward afterthought from a man suddenly aware of his own knobesque qualities.

'Okay,' we say and leave.

Just beyond the slide, there's a patch of fake snow set aside for snowball fights and the like. We watch Junior stuffing snowballs down the backs of garments worn by his various school friends; and we notice a child whose anonymity I'll preserve by calling him Juan, son of a legitimate businessman who makes an honest living importing legal materials from Mexico. Juan is at a different school these days. I suppose his father is the man I'll need to see if it all goes tits up next time I renew my green card, if you know what I'm saying.

By this point we've probably extracted all the fun there is to be had from the Winter Wonderland. Junior is still busily terrorising his friends, so we go to the supermarket for cat food, then return thirty minutes later by which time even the kid is bored.

We go home, and as we pass through Olmos Park we witness some sort of medieval re-enactment deal unfolding, except it's all a bit brightly coloured and comical, and the costumes are like something from It's a Knockout; so the day hasn't been a complete waste of time after all.

High Society

We're driving along a certain road through Alamo Heights, and we're driving slowly because it's dark. The road winds down a hillside and Bess snatches glances at a map she has displayed on her phone. We pass another road on the left, a junction with bright lights illuminating expensive cars tended by smartly dressed men. The scene suggests valet parking, which is what we're looking for.

'How do we get back there?' Bess is trying to make sense of the directions given by her phone.

'We turn around,' I suggest.

We do so, returning the way we came, passing the junction of brightly lit motor vehicles before taking a right.

'What are you doing?' I ask. 'It was back there.'

'I don't think that was the road.'

'Did you not see all those cars?'

'Yes, but that wasn't their address.'

'No, but if their house is on a corner - as that one was - then it will be alongside a second road other than the one given as the address,' I explain, fully aware of my having begun to sound like Peter Cook. 'I therefore put it to you that we've just driven right past the place we're trying to get to. Turn here.' I point.

We approach the cars and the lights from the other direction.

'This must be it,' I say.

'I don't know.'

'That's valet parking if ever I saw it, and the invitation said there would be valet parking.'

'Okay.' She winds down the window and asks the guy who is about to open her door. 'Is this the Pace residence?'

He smiles and confirms that it is, and tells us he will be happy to park our vehicle.

'No, we just wanted to know we had the right place.'

'Let's just go with the flow,' I say. 'You saw the streets around here. We could end up having to park miles away.'

Bess concedes the point. We get out and a complete stranger climbs in and drives our car off around the corner, albeit a well-dressed complete stranger.

Some years ago, back when I was living in England, I developed a fascination with Mexican culture and by association a taste for Mexican food. I made my own salsa, but more often than not I'd buy a jar from the local supermarket because it would keep longer. I favoured Pace brand salsa, which was slightly harder to find than the better publicised version made by Old El Paso, but actually tasted like salsa; and now here I am, roughly fifteen years later on the other side of the planet, arriving at the home of the Pace family because our kids go to the same school. This is one of these things I could never, ever have foreseen. Pace were bought out by Cambell Soup in 1995, but it's the same family, and that's why they live in such a huge house, and why their parties offer valet parking.

I know that America has a class system, contrary to the claims of the recklessly idealistic, but I was never convinced of it being a direct correlation to anything I remember from England. Alamo Heights is full of what I'm told are the American upper classes, but mostly they just seem to be regular yahoos with too much money. Take away the big house and the superfluous ceremony and you're still left with some grunting knacker stood in Walmart in his pyjamas stocking up on beer and Funyuns; but I now realise I have it wrong. It's Christmas, and the Pace house is decorated with the extravagance of a department store, but it's kind of tasteful with not a ho-ho-hoing animatronic Santa to be seen. Inside the house, the walls are covered with art, actual canvasses - mostly abstract expressionist - and the guests hail from some demographic other than the cigar and face lift set which doubtless still clog up PTA meetings at the San Antonio Academy.

Junior rushes off in search of other kids, and we say hi to Ava, the daughter who knows our boy from school. We always try to encourage their friendship because Ava is intelligent, a good influence, and she doesn't take shit from anyone. She's shot up this last year, tall, skinny and a little awkward, but she's a great kid. Everybody loves Ava.

Bess introduces me to Ava's mother. We've met before but it was brief and a long time ago. As we talk, my initial impressions are proven. These people may have a ton of money, but they read books and are able to converse on subjects other than ball games, taxes, or favourite Disney character. I present Mrs. Pace with a pork pie, introducing it as an English delicacy, which I suppose it is because you can't buy them here, at least not without having to spunk away seventy dollars on refrigerated postage from some artisan mail order operation. I only ever want one pork pie a year, usually around Christmas, but my craving has been such that I've ended up making them myself. This has been quite an undertaking given that the required hot water pastry can be a bugger to work with. As I present Mrs. Pace with the pie, it feels as though I have lapsed into a peculiar east-European accent.

I bring you a gift from my people.

'It's supposed to be eaten cold,' is what I actually say. 'Maybe with pickled onions and some cheese. It's a traditional Christmas morning thing.'

I get the feeling she's slightly bewildered by my offering, but nevertheless hurries off to place it in the fridge.

Bess and I mingle in search of food. There's a huge silver platter piled high with what turns out to be jam sandwiches - a surreal effort most likely aimed at the younger guests. An eccentric cubbyhole below the staircase has been converted into a bar, so I grab a glass of wine, and we head for what seems to be the dining room. Music is provided by professional carol singers in pseudo-Dickensian atire, three of them giving voice in the doorway of what is probably the living room. I suppose it's a little hokey, which is true of most things associated with this particular holiday, but at least its not some fucking soundbar belting out Jingle Bell Rock, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas or any of the usual festive atrocities.

'You remember, Ty?' Bess tells me, propelling me towards a tall, cheery man of a physical type resembling a classical Greek hero and with a proud head of curly locks.

'Of course,' I bellow happily as I shake his hand. 'You have a lot more hair these days!'

He's glad to renew our acquaintance but seems puzzled by my comment, and about ten minutes later I will come to a realisation that actually I don't remember having met him before, and I thought he was Mr. Bertha, our boy's similarly statuesque but shaven-headed teacher. Never mind. It's Christmas, and we've all had a few.

The buffet seems an odd selection, as though some crucial element is missing, but it's smoked salmon and caviar, amongst other things, so I'm not complaining. We fill our plates and head outside into the garden. Ava passes in the dark with an entourage of pouting girls, and the boys are similarly arranged in their own small groups, daring each other to perform retarded acts near the fountain.

We head for the garage and watch Santa doing his thing for a little while. A sequence of small children are ferried to his knee for photo opportunities, and I'm not even grimacing. Maybe it's the wine. I have another glass and we go back inside. We look at the art, and I try to explain abstract expressionism to my wife, about how the painting is a thing in itself rather than a representation of something else, about edge tension and surface and all that good stuff. It's been a while since I found myself having to think about any of that kind of thing, and Bess isn't convinced.

Eventually, we're partied out, and we find the boy wandering around on his own, which is more or less what we've been doing too. We leave and our car is driven around to the front gate for us. We've probably managed about an hour, but I didn't hate any of it, and that's good going for me.

Giraffe

Unlike Ayn Rand, I endorse the general concept of charity, even though I'm never quite sure where I, as an individual, stand relative to public acts performed so as to raise money in its name. Several decades ago, Mandy - my girlfriend at the time - recruited me to a sponsored walk in aid of an organisation called Respect for Animals. Naturally I was opposed to animal cruelty, and was therefore happy to walk a couple of miles along the bank of the River Thames knowing that the money I raised would buy much needed Nicorette® patches for Beagles, or something; but the thing which bothered me was that the organisation benefitting from my legwork was called Respect for Animals. It sounded wanky and right on as though named by some condescending tofu-scoffing middle class twat keen to present something which working class thickies wouldn't need explaining to them, and which wouldn't terrify those Daily Mail readers perpetually on the defensive at the thought of anything having rights, particularly scrounging benefit cheats of the four-legged variety; and I was going to have to go into work with my silly little forms to screw some sponsorship out of my colleagues.

What's it for? they would ask, and I would have to tell them, and as I explained it would feel as though the organisation may as well have named itself Hey kids, let's not be fascists because that's like a real downer, yeah? Let's show some respect for animals, because like some of them are like really amaaazing, you know? Hey, anybody want any more taramasalata? Melissa Jane bought plenty at Waitrose so, you know, like help yourselves, yeah?

Back in the present day, its October, traditionally the time of year when my wife and myself undertake a charity walk in aid of fragile X awareness, and hopefully also some research given the cost of the tickets. This is the third year we've done it, although it should probably be taken into account that the first two were both rained off. It doesn't rain much in Texas but when it does, it really fucking rains. The walk usually takes place at Raymond Rimkus Park in Leon Valley, which was under five or six feet of water this time last year so it wasn't simply a case of remembering to take a brolly. One might think these cancellations would be a bit of a pisser for the charity in question, but surprisingly it wasn't so. The deal, so I am told, is that we all buy advance tickets which entitle us to take part in the event, and that's where the money comes from. Then all that is required of us is that we turn up, collect a free t-shirt, take part in the walk, and the job is done. It sounds a bit Kafka-esque to me, but it's a day out and it's a good cause, and all I have to do is hang out, walk around a park, then eat a few complementary tacos.

This year, the weather has turned cold, but there's been no sign of rain, so it seems like it's actually going to happen. While Texas enjoys an autumn in terms of leaves turning brown and falling from trees, where temperature is concerned, we wake up one September morning and find that it's winter. Last night we were still frying eggs on the pavement at eleven, two hours after sunset; but today we will need woolly jumpers, hats and gloves. It's like someone flipped a switch and turned off the summer.

Anyway, it's Saturday morning, and we're all awake and wrapped up warm. Junior has been obliged to rise five uncivilised hours prior to his customary weekend réveille. We drive over to Myra's place with the kid whinging and whining for most of the journey. It's too early and it's cold. It's colder than it's ever been before. It's probably not even this cold on Pluto, he suggests.

I spent the first ten years of my life in a farmhouse in England, a farmhouse heated by just a single log fire in the front room, no double glazing or insulation, and a farmhouse which was in such a poor state of repair as to have cracks in the walls through which wind, rain, and even snowflakes would occasionally enter. Sometimes I tell the kid that he's never experienced real cold, but I bore even myself just saying it.

Myra is the mother of Andrea, who is my wife's best pal; and Andrea is the mother of Tommy, who is our boy's best pal. Sometimes we go over to Myra's house for Thanksgiving. She's always interesting and tells us of her school days in a class of children in a school of just one room in what sounds like the old west. She doesn't seem that old, and her testimony probably reflects on how this is still a young country when it comes to the descendants of the more recent waves of settlers.

We are standing around outside Myra's place, flapping our arms to keep warm when Andrea arrives with Tommy, then the six of us walk to the park. We find other volunteers gathered around a covered pavilion with tables, benches, and the barbecue pits you always find in Texan public parks. Crappy music is playing from speakers wired up to a laptop - vintage hair metal for the oldies, autotuned idoru for the kiddies; but there's food and coffee. There are a couple of folks milling around with clipboards but nothing seems to be happening so we help ourselves to tacos. The tacos are wrapped in foil and kept in insulated styrofoam boxes, so they're still hot. They've been ordered in from Las Palapas, so we're eating the real thing as made by human hand with not a blob of bright orange cheese style snack product to be seen, which is nice.

'It's the least they could do,' Bess explains, before telling me how much the tickets cost - a figure so inflated that I've since forgotten it on the grounds that it couldn't possibly have been that much.

'Can we go to the park park?' Tommy asks.

I don't understand the question.

'Sure,' says Andrea, and the boys run off towards the trees just past where we came in. My enquiry reveals that we're in the park, therefore a smaller play area which I didn't notice when we arrived is the park park. Nothing is happening yet, so it doesn't seem to matter.

Beyond the pavilion are football fields as I would think of them, as distinct from handegg fields. There are a couple of small groups having a kick about in the distance, some taking it seriously with track suits and rules, others just passing the time and staying warm.

'Look!' I point to a family with a couple of small children, making their way over from the football field. The smallest child shuffles along dressed in a one-piece animal costume complete with ears. It's very cute. Maybe she's a bear or something.

Bess responds with her customary awww, and we try to work out what the animal could be.

Eventually it seems like something is happening so I go to fetch the boys from the park park, even though I'm not actually sure where it's supposed to be. It doesn't matter because they've heard the call and are coming to meet me.

We assemble and then walk around the circumference of the park, following the path. Volunteers are situated along the way dispensing free candy and similarly artificial treats to the younger walkers, who have been given buckets in which to collect their candy and treats because it's so close to Halloween as to make no difference. We share out the treats between us. I initially decline, then cave in and take a bag of Cheetos, mainly out of curiosity. They're bright orange, salty, and taste more like actual food than I thought they would. As I munch, we pass the family of the little girl in the animal costume. Her fluffy suit is a bit saggy, tan with large dark patches and small knobby horns on the head.

She's a giraffe, we realise.

The route we follow is punctuated with volunteers dishing out candy and informative signs stuck in the grass at the side of the path, reminders of why we're doing this. The US National Library of Medicine describes fragile X thus:

Fragile X syndrome is a genetic condition that causes a range of developmental problems including learning disabilities and cognitive impairment. Usually, males are more severely affected by this disorder than females.

Affected individuals usually have delayed development of speech and language by age two. Most males with fragile X syndrome have mild to moderate intellectual disability, while about one-third of affected females are intellectually disabled. Children with fragile X syndrome may also have anxiety and hyperactive behavior such as fidgeting or impulsive actions. They may have attention deficit disorder (ADD), which includes an impaired ability to maintain attention and difficulty focusing on specific tasks. About one-third of individuals with fragile X syndrome have features of autism spectrum disorders that affect communication and social interaction. Seizures occur in about 15% of males and about 5% of females with fragile X syndrome.

This information is reiterated in simplified form on the signs we pass, one of which lists associated physical characteristics. One associated physical characteristic is large, sticky-out ears. This gives me some pause for consideration given that more or less the entire population of my school had large sticky-out ears.

After fifteen minutes, we're back at the pavilion. We eat more tacos and wait, although I can't tell what for. The boys have once again ran off to the park park.

A rope is thrown over the branch of a tree and a piñata is hauled aloft. Suddenly the place is full of children. I take another walk across to the park park to find Junior and his friend. This time I'm all the way there before I see them. It's mostly swings, roundabouts, and climbing frames of colourful toughened plastic. I would have thought the boys were a bit old for it, but then what do I know?

'There's a piñata if you're interested.'

'Okay!' They come along, jabbering away in what may as well be their own shared language for all the sense I can make of it.

We get back to the tree and I see that they're attacking the piñata in shifts, small kids first, older ones later. The smallest don't seem to fully grasp what is expected of them as an adult gives them the stick with which they are expected to get bashing. Most of them just tap the piñata a couple of times and look confused. The giraffe steps up to the plate, as they say, but she doesn't have much upper arm strength either. It looks as though we could be here all day. Eventually someone finds one of those small, violent kids from somewhere, all beetle brows and an evil grin. He smashes the papier-mâché with a high pitched yelp of triumph and makes it rain candy. The kids pile in like a pack of dogs. It's a feeding frenzy.

Then there's a prize draw. We find out how much money we've raised and it seems like a lot. We hang around and eat more tacos until it seems like time to go.

Once again I wander off to the park park to fetch the boys. They're on the swings, yelping and laughing and repeating meme-derived catchphrases to one another, and stood at the third swing is the giraffe. She seems upset and confused and she's calling Mommy over and over like its a spell which will summon her mother from the ether.

Oh fuck, I think, mind spinning with all sorts of unfamiliar, protective instincts. I look around and believe I recognise the giraffe's mother over the other side of the park park. We pass her as we go to join Bess, Andrea, and Myra.

'I think your giraffe wants you,' I tell the woman, pointing to the forlorn little figure still stood alone at the swing.

'Oh yes - she wants me to help her up,' the woman explains, amused, informing me of something I had genuinely failed to realise. I feel a great sense of relief, and we all go home.

Birthday Boy

It's taken a while, but I finally seem to have achieved some kind of communicative syncretism with the child, the fruit of my wife's previous marriage, my stepson. He was six and puzzling when I first showed up, although even then it was already clear that his sense of humour lay at a healthy tangent to that of everyone else in the universe. All that he lacked was the means by which to communicate it. Here's the first joke he ever told me, one of his own compositions:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Cheese.
Cheese who?
Cheesy.

The joke had the cadence of something proposed by one who has not yet grasped what humour is or how a joke is supposed to work, but as time has passed I've come to realise that Junior knew exactly what he was doing. It's an unfunny joke, specifically a joke which relies upon defying audience expectation of the punchline making sense or being conventionally amusing. I too went through an unfunny joke phase, as did a number of my friends at school, the apotheosis of which would probably have been the block of wood joke cycle pioneered by Jason Roberts.

Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because he was glued to the block of wood.

You probably had to be there. We were about fourteen, so it could be argued that Junior has been ahead of the developmental curve in this respect.

The timeshare jokes started a couple of years ago, beginning with him asking friends, relatives, and occasionally random strangers whether they would like to buy a timeshare. None of us really found it particularly entertaining, which is probably what made it funny for him, so he continued. In fact he really hammered that thing into the ground, so much so that it eventually became funny. My wife paid for and built him a sarcastic website for his last birthday. Subsequent gift-giving occasions have further furnished him with timeshare-themed business cards and custom printed promotional pens which he gives out to other kids whilst savouring their utter confusion. My biggest fear was once that I might be stepfather to some drooling games-addict man-child who can name four-thousand different species of Pokémon but never quite got the hang of wiping his own arse; but happily it turns out that I'm stepfather to Chris Morris. My adopted child is a living Swiftian satire on late capitalism.

Now it's his fourteenth birthday. It's morning and my wife is headed off, first to collect the boy from his father's house and convey him to zoo camp, and then to work.

'Wait!' I say. I'm washing dishes. I pull the plastic lid of a Land O'Lakes butter carton from the water, swipe it clean, dry it off and hand it to her.

'Here. Give him this and tell him happy birthday from me.'

'He'll be thrilled,' my wife chuckles.

I haven't bought him anything because it's difficult to buy for him, so many of his interests being in non-corporeal things inhabiting screens of one kind or another; which leaves us just with the thoughts which supposedly count. The thoughts which count for me are that I've bought him nearly everything he's eaten under this roof for the last six years, and kept his room clean, and that he's surrounded by relatives forever throwing money at him, so he gets a butter lid and he'll be glad of it. I have a hunch that this kind of useless gift will appeal to his sense of humour, and it's given as an homage to the relatives of my friend Carl, specifically his grandfather and sister. The two of them never saw eye to eye and would present each other with cheap passive-aggressive gifts at Christmas, a newspaper one year, a packet of crisps the next.

We formally celebrate the boy's birthday in the evening with a meal at Magic Time Machine, a themed restaurant. The theme is vague, depending upon who the waiters and waitresses feel like impersonating from the worlds of film, television, comic books, showbusiness, or whatever else the dressing-up box has coughed up. They're mostly pretty good, staying in ludicrously exaggerated character as Jack Sparrow, Batman, or Lara Croft whilst taking our order; and best of all, it's mostly amateurish, enthusiastic, and aware of its own absurdity as opposed to slick and corporate, more Rocky Horror than Magic Kingdom. I guess the waiters and waitresses get to pick which character they play based on how well they feel able to pull off a convincing Spiderman or Marge Simpson or whoever. This means that our own table is attended by Miranda.

Miranda wears a striped shirt, too much lipstick, baggy pants with the message haters back off inscribed on the ass, and we haven't heard of her either.

'I have a series on Netflix,' she explains in a weird voice, patently an impersonation of someone none of us recognise. 'You should really watch it.'

I suppose this at least means that should I ever apply for work at Magic Time Machine, I'll be free to bypass Robocop or Shrek or whoever and just go with what I know best, waiting tables as a former ruler of Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico. The hardest thing to decide will be whether I'm Itzcoatl (1427-1440) or Ahuizotl (1486-1502). I never could decide which of those guys I liked the more. Anyway, it will be hilarious, I promise.

Junior, so it turns out, is very happy with the butter lid I gave him. He's been showing it to all the other kids at zoo camp, incurring their admiration and jealousy.

His father is with us, aided by a walking frame following major surgery just yesterday; and also Jay and Courtlandt, respectively our boy's uncle and cousin. Miranda crams us all into a corner where the edge of the table intrudes upon the bellies of at least four of us, this being Texas and all. I complain so she moves us to another table, still twittering away in bewildering fashion and delivering catchphrases none of us have heard before.

There's Byron, one day after surgery and all on the day of his own father passing; so two of our group have lost their dad, and two have lost their grandfather, and the occasion is strange and a little subdued.

Junior opens presents as we wait for drinks to arrive. As well as the butter lid, he also receives a Swiss army spade from his father, a high-tech shovel which can be disassembled and repurposed for all manner of esoteric survivalist requirements. He plays with the shovel for a while, taking it apart, showing us the blade, the components one might use to start a fire and so on.

We pass around his birthday cards and read them.

One is from his grandfather, no longer with us.

It tears my heart out, just for a moment, seeing the signature.

Happy birthday, kiddo - your Granddad's dead, I think.

Drinks come, iced tea, beer, and something green with waves of dry ice frothing over the brim for Junior, all part of the service at Magic Time Machine. A minute later, he accidentally knocks it over whilst demonstrating some function of the Swiss army spade.

Courtlandt grabs the butter lid and uses it to scoop frothing liquid across the table into the now empty glass.

'See! I told you it had a use!'

We all agree what a great present the butter lid has been as Miranda brings us another green drink with dry ice.

We eat. Jay and I discuss our favourite Police albums. He likes Synchronicity, but I prefer Zenyatta Mondatta.

Everyone is a little subdued. It's impossible to imagine what must be going through the heads of the two boys. I still remember how hard the death of my own grandfather hit me at roughly their age.

Miranda fetches a to go box so I can take the leftover fries and make chip butties with them. She draws a pair of pants with haters back off written across the seat on the polystyrene box, then a pair of lips and an arrow pointing to the name Netflix, so we'll be able to find out about the character she's been playing and decide whether it's funny or not.

Next morning, Junior screws his Swiss army spade together and announces that he'll be taking it with him to zoo camp.

'Are you sure?' I ask, sharing a quizzical glance with my wife. 'I mean with great power comes great responsibility, and you know that thing cost your father a lot...'

He whisks out the butter lid, flashing it at me like a cop showing his badge.

'Well, all right then,' I say. 'I guess you know what you're doing,' and I'm secretly impressed, perhaps even proud.

I Do Know a Way...

I never imagined I would inherit a kid. I always liked the idea of passing on my genes by some vague method, but for most of my life I was never in any place which looked as though it might lead to such an eventuality. I read Susan D. Blackmore's excellent The Meme Machine and told myself that I would instead pass on my ideas, my memes rather than my genes. In any case, it seemed to be the way we, as a society, were going.

I never expected to marry anyone, or to meet anyone I would want to marry within days of having met them, or that a marriage resting upon so seemingly tenuous a foundation ever stood a chance of working; and yet here we all are, complete with a son from my wife's previous spell of matrimony. The prospect of suddenly becoming a stepfather would have seemed daunting had I thought about it, which I didn't because I filed the thought away under the heading of bridges to be crossed when the time is right.

My first meeting with the boy, such as it was, was as a face looming up on a screen as Bess and I were attempting transatlantic communication by means of Skype or YIM or one of those things involving a webcam. He wanted to know what she was doing and so I was introduced as Mommy's friend, the one she'd met in England. He was six or maybe seven and seemed to enjoy the novelty, if not the diversion of attention away from himself. The first thing he said to me was:

poooooooooo,llllkknyyyzxswt

This was followed by further strings of what the Futurist F.T. Marinetti once termed parole in libertá, in this instance spontaneously generated by a small fist hitting a laptop keyboard in preface to an animated fight with virtual water balloons. This was an additional feature of Skype or YIM or one of those things involving a webcam, one allowing users to season text not only with smiley faces and the like, but a button which delivers a smirking cartoon child to my screen, a bratty homeboy who hurls an animated water balloon at the viewer. The projectile grows as it approaches until it fills the screen and then appears to burst with an electronically sampled splash. It's probably funny if you're six or seven but soon becomes repetitive for anyone older.

Meeting the boy in person was different and somehow involved less direct interaction. He didn't seem to understand what I was or how he was expected to process my presence. It wasn't so much that he disliked me, or even resented the intrusion - which would at least have been understandable - but he seemed somehow in awe of me, which was weird, and this was combined with his having become unusually fixated upon his mother over the years. He wasn't shy. He simply didn't talk to me, or interact with me. He gabbled away about nothing to his mother and would seemingly ignore me when I spoke; but it always turned out that he simply hadn't heard the question, his focus having been on other matters, and he's the same even now at the age of thirteen so it's just the way he is. Also, he was weirdly pushy for such a small kid, somehow precocious and yet without either the vocabulary or social skills to quite excuse it as idiosyncratic charm. His apparent confidence seemed astonishing, almost obnoxious, but as I've learnt, none of it is born of malice or is intended in quite the way it can sometimes seem. It's just how he is.

Bess told me that as soon as he was old enough to be costumed and taken trick or treating, he'd insisted they go as a bat and a pirate, his mother in fake paper wings.

'Wait,' I asked, incredulous. 'How old did you say he was?'

'About three, and my Mom took his side.'

'So you let a three-year old tell you what to do?'

I no longer need to ask such questions, having experienced his weirdly single-minded sense of purpose first hand. It's not really coercion so much as just really knowing his own mind, and you get used to it eventually.

We went to San Antonio zoo. It was odd but not unpleasant. He knew where he wanted to go and what he wanted to see, and once there he'd lecture us on whatever animal we were looking at. Did we know this? and Did we know that? but his speech was difficult to understand and some of his assertions were patently ridiculous, and anyway - shouldn't it be him asking the questions? What's that animal called, and so on? It was hard to even get a word in edgeways, not least because doing so would be to engage in a pissing contest with a small child, and we'd all end up feeling weird and bad and wishing we'd just kept our mouths shut.

'No, I'm pretty sure you'll find that elephants are from either Africa or India.'

He'd frown in thought and then announce, 'I don't think so,' like you'd asked him a question; but this came later, our first interaction beyond laptop screens and virtual water balloons occurred at the sand pit. Bess and I were exhausted with the novelty of this new world we were building and so we took the boy to the play area for a break from him lecturing us. He hit the sand pit and began making pyramids, but I could see his technique was pitiful.

'Screw it,' I told myself and went to join him. I sat on the wooden edging and started piling on sand, so he began directing me, making suggestions; and we opened negotiations. Later we collaborated on his latest Star Wars Lego piece, and I got the hang of how to tell him he's got it all wrong without it sounding like I'm calling him an idiot, after which I began to understand what made him tick a little better, if not why. We drove to Austin a few days later, which was tough with the continuous monologue coming from the rear, but I just had to go with it so I climbed over the back of my seat and submitted myself to an extended lecture on the numerous beasts of How to Train Your Dragon, illustrated with action figures and delivered as a seemingly endless series of lists. It would have been more entertaining had I been able to understand a few more of his words, but his enthusiasm made up for the shortfall. Much of the return journey was taken up with the animal guessing game. He wasn't very good at it but compensated by ignoring the rules with amusing abandon, finally defeating both Bess and I with the mystifying initials RB, which turned out to be rock buddy, which I suppose is what you call a rock who happens to be your buddy; which was the first time he made me laugh.

Bess and I were married and we all settled into a routine. The boy's personality remained forceful, unusually focussed, and occasionally a little abrasive. I'd ask him to do things and he wouldn't, or I'd ask him to stop doing things which he'd keep on doing regardless, and all because he's a kid and that's how they are so there's no point in taking it personally. I began to turn our yard into a garden by digging the whole thing up. This yielded huge mounds of large stones and so I made borders for flower beds, packing the stones tight as though making a drystone wall.

'I need bugs,' the boy tells me, and so I point to the borders I've made. 'There were quite a lot out there. Look under the stones, but put them back in the same places when you're done,' and he does this, but his interpretation of the same places means roughly within three or four feet of the original position. I am displeased, and my displeasure will be referenced each time I mention how the boy never goes out into the garden. It's because he's afraid of you, I will be told, and there'll be nothing more to say; but right now I've dug sixty-five paving slabs of red porous stone up from a corner of the garden and am planning to relocate them in a more practical setting at the rear of the porch. I've excavated a large rectangle of earth, levelled it as best I can with sand, and now the boy comes out to help me. He likes the look of the digging. I give him the other spade and he gets to work on a hole of his own, one which has more to do with art than landscaping.

'You realise I'm going to be covering this whole patch over with paving slabs?' I tell him.

He looks around. 'But what about the hole?'

'Well, that's where I was hoping to put the slabs down, so it will be covered over.' I'm silently kicking myself for my failure to deliver the cruel truth, that the hole he has dug is without purpose.

He considers this a little, then makes an announcement. 'I do have an idea.'

This is a really odd tick of his, the I do statements delivered as though in answer to a question we've all been asking ourselves.

'Go on,' I suggest.

He explains how we can finish the hole he's been digging, and how we can then lay down the slabs as I've proposed with the hole left intact. Therefore whenever we need to access the hole again, we can just lift the slabs and it will be there. I don't know why he thinks we will need to revisit the hole unless in the interests of nostalgia. There is a dreamlike logic to many of his suggestions.

We're out walking and we pass a fallen section of tree trunk. He'll run to it, climb over, start jumping up and down on it and looking for bugs, all inevitably leading up to, 'can we take it home?'

'It's five foot long and is too heavy and we couldn't fit it in the car if we tried,' we tell him; which is true, but we don't want to crush his dreams with the more honest there is no good reason why we should take that tree trunk to our home. We silently think of the other crap he's found now living in his room because no-one could come up with any good philosophical argument against his taking possession of a three foot length of telephone cable or the rusting hub cap from a truck.

We walk on and then it comes.

'I do know a way we could take the tree trunk home with us,' because he thinks we've been puzzling it over, trying to come up with a solution.

How can we make this happen?

He does know a way, and it's always something ridiculous which wouldn't work but nevertheless has its own internal logic of sorts. I do know a way has been applied to everything from abandoned cars to actual fully grown deer which he's already given a name and added to our expanding roster of household pets. He acquires things, or aspires to them because he likes the look of them and for no other reason that either of us can fathom. Trips around Lowes or Home Depot were once characterised by the boy asking for purchase of something he would have no justification for owning - as though we're in a toy store - a length of plastic pipe, a sink plunger, a box with holes by which one may sort different sizes of nails and screws. My wife and I now have a game between ourselves, what would Junior want based on who can pick the most esoteric item in the store, the thing the kid would ask us to buy him for no sane reason.

Six years down the line, it has become easier - no less weird, but at least somehow more familiar. His voice has broken and his vocabulary expands into increasingly baroque realms by which every other sentence is qualified with if I'm not mistaken or if I remember correctly, but it's easier to understand what he's saying if not why he's saying it. Every thing is still an announcement, often prefixed with a question - 'I do know [general outline of subject],' followed by 'would you like me to tell you about it?', and then a series of hesitations and bullet points. 'Well... wait... let me see... number one: the thing you really need to know about sharks is that...'

Six years down the line and it's more funny than annoying. He's weird, but not in a bad way, and we're probably all weird by one definition or another. The three of us have taken to family walks each Sunday afternoon, based on Danny Trejo suggesting that a good parent will make memories by dragging their kid away from the iPad whether they like it or not. The boy is still operating from a position of peculiar focus, and he'll probably never grow out of delivering long, long lists of fascinating facts to an audience which may not even be particularly interested, and occasionally he'll still find some object which we're not bringing home under any circumstances, and yet it will turn out that he does know a way...

It's been exhausting, but educational, and thankfully some of it has been fun. I'm not sure I'll be passing on an inheritance of any of my ideas after all, but maybe it doesn't matter.