The Catholic Family Planning Computer

Catholic Family Planning (or Vatican Roulette as my pharmacist friend calls it) consists of predicting ovulation and abstaining from intercourse when conception is likely, but undesired.

Old Joke:
Mr Smith and Mr Jones had lived next door to each other for almost ten years. Smith, the Catholic, had one child, whilst Jones, the Protestant, had five.
“How come you only have one child,” asks Jones one day, “when Catholics can’t use contraception?”
“Easy,” answers Smith. “I only have sex during the Safe Period.”
“Safe Period?” asks Jones. “What’s that?”
“Every second Thursday, when you’re out at Lodge.”

Of course it is an easy object of ridicule, because it is only as good as the couple practising it. But then there are no side-effects, and when you decide that you do want to conceive, your good lady wife simply consults her charts and advises you when it would be a good idea to Stand By Your Bed.

After nearly ten years of successful use, I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church’s preference for this method has nothing to do with the sanctity of life, but a delight at being able to tell married couples that they can’t have sex either. It must be killing some of the elderly clergy that they have to let us know that there is a Safe Period at all…

So someone has invented The Catholic Family Planning Computer.

Darling Wifey uses this gizmo to take her temperature, and I quote here from the manual, “from the same orifice” every morning, and marks certain, erm, significant monthly events by pressing a red button. The colour co-ordination here is a suitable aide-memoire.

“Not tonight darling. I pressed the red button today.”

or even better

“As the risk of war increased, President Bush spent the day with his finger poised over the Red Button.”

After a cycle or two, the machine has gathered enough information to warn us of impending fertility. A red warning light means that I get a slap. A flashing red light means that I get the tent in the garden. A green light means that it’s time to reach for the Batman costume.

?

What makes this machine particularly Catholic is the “punishment” function:
1. You must take your temperature at about the same time every day. If you go beyond 2 hours, it will refuse to take your temperature, and extend the “red light” period by two days.
2. If you have a fever during the red light period, the following green light time is reduced as a punishment for being a sinner.
3. If you accidentally press the red button when you shouldn’t have, then three days are allowed for you to correct it. Otherwise, no green light. (Three days was good enough for Jesus. Not that Jesus used this machine, but I think you know what I mean.)
4. If you forget to press the red button one month, you will not get a green light at all for the next cycle.
5. If you forget to press the red button three cycles in a row, the computer will cast your data out, and there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

And all this punishment for only ?60!

God only knows what time it is. Meg Ryan is on the telly, snogging yet another actor, Darling Wifey is asleep in bed, and the baby has just barfed all over my Egyptian cotton slacks.

On the upside, I have a Millenium bottled Cotes du Rhone, and no work in the morning. As they say, give it your best shot, sucker!

So what is happening today? I need to sort out the tracking on the Renault (*&$%@#*$ garage charged me for tracking, and never did it!) before the tyres are scrubbed into oblivion. Some kind of therapist is visiting in the morning to assess Little Nutter, so I have to be up in about seven hours. Easy. And I have to phone the parents to let them know that the in-laws will be following them in their car on the way to my graduation party, because they don’t know the way. Ah. Nightmare.

Run away!

For professional reasons, I took the same MA that my mother took for fun as a retirement hobby. For some strange and inexplicable reason, my in-laws contributed to the funds (I paid the rest.)

(For readers of Darling Wifey’s blog, she paid the rest.)

In-laws think that parents are irresponsible. Parents think that in-laws are badly behaved and thoughtless. Guess who gets caught up in the middle, expected to solve the meaning of life whilst agreeing that yes, you are right, utterly justified, completely correct and damned good looking to boot! to whoever he is talking to.

Yup! Well done! You win a prize.

Ah, who cares! I have an MA, three kids, and a very naughty wife. Hehehe.

A whole week off school! Praise the Lord and pass the alcohol.

It has been an interesting half term, full of intrigue, stress, cancelled meetings and duplicity. I have colleagues who are spectacularly unaware of the concept of ‘disinterestedness,’ and cannot comprehend that making allowances for friends is inconsistent with “applying the highest professional standards” where other people are concerned. In the middle of this is my Threshold Assessment - I have had two hours of meetings this week (except they won’t call them ‘meetings,’ because that will form a technical confession that I am being harassed over my application.)

By last night I was fit to kill someone at the place. Current working conditions allow me to refuse to attend more than one twilight meeting a week without prejudice; they managed to force me to attend one every night.

On Friday one of Darling Wifey’s old school friends came to stay, along with her daughter. She is a single mum, because her total idiot of a husband started sleeping with some slapper of a nurse whilst they were expecting the baby. Apparently he couldn’t cope without the sex. So now he has to cope without the wife. I do enjoy hearing about the mess his life is in, and we celebrated her promotion to full partnership whilst she was here. And their daughter is an angel.

Friday night itself wasn’t funny. I was woken eight times by an assortment of wife and children, having to settle infants back to sleep with drinks and monster-clearing expeditions into wardrobes.

And no, Darling Wifey, I cannot explain how the baby got milk in his ear. The bit I put the bottle in last night sucked the milk out.

I know that it is wrong to laugh, but you have to laugh really.

This morning I had to get Little Nutter’s car seat out of my car and put it into Darling Wifey’s car. I have ruined more than one of her days by driving to work with the car seat, leaving her stranded at home with the children, unable even to take Little Madam to school.

So this morning I transferred the car seat, and posted her keys through the letterbox before I drove to work.

Little Nutter posted them back out of the letterbox.

Darling Wifey had to climb out of the window to get them.

I know I’m going to pay for laughing, but I can’t help it.

I’m up for my Threshold Assessment this half term. This is basically Tony Blair’s way of giving a payrise to teachers and claiming that it is a reform to improve education. Instead of just handing over the payrise, we have to demonstrate competence in five areas by choosing and submitting evidence.

I chose my five areas, and have to hand over nine sets of evidence. And my application is being assessed by a maths specialist.

One of the things he wants evidence for is my planning for teaching philosophy and theology in the Sixth Form - which he spent six weeks examining last year as part of the ongoing “School Development Plan.” However, he couldn’t possibly inform himself of his findings, because Threshold is a government programme, and the School Development Plan is confidential.

The processes for the Threshold Assessment were devised by the finest minds in the country.

Anyway, my assessor was complaining about his workload (whilst giving me his list of documents he wishes me to provide as soon as possible.) Apparently he was up at 6am reading my application. I have no sympathy - this is a man who knows precisely what I have been doing for the past three years, and does not need to see evidence to pass or fail me. All I can do is exploit one loophole: he is obliged to review all the evidence I submit.

So tonight I spent three hours dumping my PC into the printer. It comes to just short of 500 sheets of paper.

Darling Wifey is on the receiving end of the worst that small children can throw at her - the same happened when she was off work after the other two babies were born. I can’t blame her: she is used to running a department, studying for a PhD, getting consulted by the BBC, writing short stories and generally saving the world before tea. Now she is a little frustrated by the limited scope of activities available to her.

Tomorrow she is hosting a conference of local health authority child development workers as they examine the Little Nutter - my phone call last week has prompted an extraordinary reaction amongst the paediatricians and speech therapists.

They are going to Sort Themselves Out and Properly Diagnose His Problems - because I told them that if they didn’t I would Tell A Good Lawyer That They Sat On Their Backsides For 22 Months Before Losing His File.

Saturday night with another old friend - now a high-powered ‘forensic accountant’ in London. All business-class ‘plane travel thrice a week and reports for judicial review by 9am tomorrow. She is obviously highly stimulated by the challenges of the new job - until last year she was a humble accountant in a provincial company. Last week she was celebrating a “small” high court victory.

Planning a trip to the USA for Darling Wifey. She needs a treat, so she can have a bucket-shop ticket to Boston and three nights on a friend’s sofa: Christmas shopping should be fun over there. She is keen to take the baby, who will be three months old by then, and I will be left with the Little Madam and the Little Nutter. Let’s see if he dares pee on the carpet for me…

No lunch. There was some fresh pasta and bolognese, but I couldn’t find anything to store it in, so I ate it at midnight last night rather than waste it. (The last tub in the house is full of tea-leaves.) Then I forgot to get some bread out of the freezer. Hunger pangs!

What did the eskimos sing when they got their Christmas dinner?
“Whalemeat again, don’t know where, don’t know when…”

Remember The Tygers of Pan Tang?

I spent this evening with the producer of their latest album - he was so drunk that we ended up talking about Flink Poyd, arguing about whether “Comfortably Numb” was as good as “Rock of Ages.” When I asked him about Def Leppard he told me off for changing the subject. And they say that rock & roll is in decline.

The party was good, though. A friend was celebrating his degree: a surprise party thrown by his wife, with a gift as well - a laptop computer. And for those of you who think that a degree is no big deal when you are 34, my friend was homeless and starving ten years ago. Tonight I am too tired and too busy to celebrate, but it would be too mean-spirited of me to stay away, so I joined him earlier, and only came home to bathe the baby. I’ll return later on.

The school mission is over: there was a very long meeting this morning with the team who put it together. A lot of work went into the feedback to ensure that it reflected accurately all the positive things that the mission had achieved - although this was inevitably weighted towards the younger students. The VIth form are outraged at having been patronised and ignored. There is obviously a lot invested in catechesis in the Church - but the people responsible are not communicating with those responsible for Religious Education. If they exchanged information, all the difficulties of the past week would have been avoided.

Pick of the day, however, was when the team started going on about how my department knew nothing about catechesis and Christian missions. I myself have more experience on missions than all eight team members combined as well as my MA in Catechetics; one colleague is national director of one of the country’s largest youth organisations; another…. oh, this is turning into a very boring blog entry.

Poor old Darling Wife is going slightly mad. As she was leaving on the school run yesterday my Number One Son decided to strip and pee on the carpet. She does all this to ensure that my genes survive: her sanity is clearly in question. All she wants in return is a trip to a decent clothes shop, and some Celtic knotwork earrings. However much I appreciate her, it isn’t enough.

Wasn’t it sweet of my good lady wife to redesign and relocate my blog for me? I think.

I said I would treat her tonight. I brought home fresh salmon, a couple of bottles of Vouvray, some cream and new potatoes. The plan was to tell her to put her feet up whilst I cooked. Except she had spent the whole day with her feet up feeding the baby, so now she is cooking (and reading The Times) whilst I look after three children. I think she likes the distraction after so much time in the company of infants.

Work is developing in an interesting direction. The department has a very competitive personality in it now, and as we already have a very high-flier at the start of what will certainly be a glittering career, and I have already received a lot of input to help me with my MA, undercurrents are developing.

I don’t think that anything as blatant as jealousy is happening, but there is an awful lot of what can only be described as scene-stealing going on. That and some catty put-downs and backstabbing.

I want to run my own department, so really the thing for me to do in this situation is not join in the competition, but analyse it. Is it just attention seeking, or is there some real, substantive professional rivalry and competition for opportunities going on? How can you tell the difference? And whatever the difference is, how would I tackle it if I was in charge?

Hmmm. Watch this space.

A husband and wife were settling down to sleep, when he starts to cuddle his wife, kiss her neck and caress her.
“Why don’t we try the Missionary Position tonight, Darling?” she asks.
“Sounds good,” he replies. “What’s that?”
“You naff off to Africa, and I’ll get some sleep.”

Three reasons why a five year old girl and a new born baby don’t mix:
1. Barbie’s tutu doesn’t fit
2. Babies don’t drink from Early Learning Centre teasets, even if you do put the milk in first
3. New born babies don’t make magical noises when you play with them, and it isn’t because they are broken. They just don’t.

This week, school has a Mission Team in. I wont name them, for obvious reasons. All these reasons are critical. Which is a shame, because they are pretty good, actually.

First, as the department is repeating at every opportunity: be positive, be positive, be positive. This Mission team is very enthusiastic, and their production values for their on-stage presentations are superb. They are also incredibly enthusiastic, and have been entertaining.

However, there is an underlying set of assumptions that have caused major problems. First, they appear to be assuming that “Hey, we’re young!” will be read by the children as “you can listen to us because you obviously don’t listen to your teachers.” One or two of them have admitted to drug use in the past, and this has made them objects of ridicule by a few of the children; the phrase they are saying that you have to be a smackhead before you can be a Christian has been repeated around the school. And finally, they have massively underestimated the Religious Education that the students receive in Catholic schools - which is remarkable when you consider how many of them went to Catholic school themselves.

I’m sorry, but you cannot imagine that GCSE students in the Catholic education system don’t know the Bible, have never heard of Tacitus or Josephus, or don’t know the difference between the Gifts and the Fruits of the Spirit.

So the Mission Team are underestimating the students, and are maybe being a little too ambitious in their goals this week. What they have done well, though, is illustrate a few moral lessons with entertaining presentations. I wonder if our students will get used to their different culture of prayer if we have the same team returning in the future?

The real high point of the day was the teacher who drives half a mile to school every day complaining about there being no spaces left in the car park. And later on, the same teacher was insisting that she always notices how everyone is dressed - and complimented me on always being impeccably turned out. I was wearing the jacket from a dark blue suit, the trousers from a black suit, a tie that featured Bart Simpson and odd (brown) socks. (This is a small clue that the baby kept us both awake last night.)

PS An apology to visitors from Alien Marmalade: I can’t maintain the same high standards of HTML editing when I use other people’s computers all the time. If she hadn’t broken the laptop before passing it on to me, I would have one of my own now!

“Jesus said to him a third time, ‘Simon, son of Jona, do you love me?’ and Simon Peter was upset because he had asked him again. He replied, ‘Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Feed my sheep.’
And Simon Peter answered, ‘But Lord, you do not have any sheep. You’re a carpenter’.”