Diary of a Gay Dad. I am a full time dad to five young children.

Daddy tried to assert lesson time this morning whilst I produced a Puttanesca for our dinner tonight. Mind you, we are down to the very last packet of spaghetti. Thank you to all you people panic buying pasta! It’s so selfish. As you know we have Tesco deliveries. And on the order arriving this afternoon, over 50% of the order has been cancelled due to them being out of stock. Okay, I’m going off focus here!

Thor has been screamy beyond belief today. Though he has been so well behaved as of late. So loving too, but his trying to bide for Daddy’s attention today just lead to shouting and screaming. Of course ‘bad cop’ Dadda had to be the one to march him up to his bedroom.

We sat in the kitchen for lunch and then Caleb decided to do his bit for ‘The Screamy Corporation’ as he let it all out as he was unhappy with his choice of sandwich filling. In the end I just asked him to join his brother Thor! We are enjoying a time of relative peace and quiet at present. Amritsar is drawing after having finished her puzzle for children above the age of 8. She just pointed that out to me – show off!

Tara and Aaliyah have been very pally of late, often disappearing to go on covert missions, sniggering together and generally being as thick as thieves. Well, they are quietly watching a Netflix movie at the moment that looks a little too old for them.

Daddy is busy with his working from home, so I am enjoying this moment of downtime before I retrieve the troublesome two. Let’s hope they are going to try to behave a little better. Happy days hey!

At 03.49am tonight we have the beginning of astronomical Spring! So, happy spring equinox everyone. I took today’s picture a moment ago on the terrace. As you can see it is a cool, wet beginning of the season here in ‘The Shires’. Did I mention that it is the earliest start of the season in 124 years. To be honest, that aside, I am very much looking forward to 3 months down the line when we are through this difficult and unprecedented time. It is hard to ignore things and just get on with living when the media is 100% focused on reporting this epidemic. As ever, thank you for reading!

What a very happy chap. All set up and rearing to go! We also factory reset Thor’s tablet this afternoon as it has been a bit glitchy as of late!

The second day of lockdown today and all is well with our not so famous five. Mind you, the noise from their collective iPads is slowly drilling into my head.

I guess that home schooling will have to start tomorrow. On a slightly more worrying front, my cough has become a lot dryer and Thor still has a temperature. Mind you, if this is the real thing, we will hopefully be through the worst of it soon.

On a related matter – Caleb has just dropped his iPad on the hard tiled floor in the hallway.

I just scoured the video feed on my phone as I remembered that the children did a re-enactment of Thor and Aaliyah’s ‘Baby Shark’ video last summer! Well, my apologies, here is the newly edited video. I hear that all UK schools are closing from Friday! Let’s look forward to a time post corona virus. But for now, let’s try to smile when we can!

Has the world well and truly gone mad! A fashionable his and hers face mask on my Facebook feed. A rather hazardous guess, but I am thinking these masks are also manufactured in China! #coronavirus #quarantine #corvid19

Well, day one of lockdown has started with Caleb and Thor merrily coughing away, though both are in high spirits. All the crew are watching Hotel Transylvania bar Amritsar, who is tinkling away with Daddy’s iPad. Daddy is pacing around the kitchen on a work related phone call.

I just deep fried chicken samosas to be had for lunch with the remains of Dadda’s homemade tomato breakfast chutney. Carb free for lent is off, what with our present situation. That is one less thing to worry about!

Aaliyah has just joined the boys with a chorus of coughs! To be honest, excluding Thor’s temperature, for me this seems like another regular cold. My chest is congested and my sinuses quite snotty – not this ‘dry cough’ that is connected with corona virus. But we have to abide with the schools decision to black mark us as possible corona virus carriers, don’t we?

Mind you I have had my share of aches and pains over the last 7 days. Was that the previous cold though? When one cold rolls straight into the next, I sometimes wonder what with five children, why we didn’t consider ‘Home Schooling’! It certainly would have spared me 4 years of sneezing and a runny nose! I do know a homeschooler called Becky. I am thinking ‘good for you hon’ at this point?

Anyhow, that’s the day so far and we are only up to 10.30 am, so I shouldn’t be complaining as there is sure to be plenty of time for that in the time to come. The main thing is that everyone seems happy enough. But will this continue to be the case? I am sure that there will be many flash points ahead!

I really did not want to talk about the global pandemic you may remember, however all five children were sent home at 2.30 this afternoon from school to self isolate! The family lockdown is on. We have all lived with constant colds for around 4 years now, ever since the girls started at preschool. And then when the little ones followed – the colds just didn’t stop! Since our holiday in Cornwall I have personally suffered 2 separate colds lasting approximately 2 weeks each! We are only back 3 or 4 weeks remember.

With this kind of scenario one would be crazy to think the worse regarding Covid – 19. But Thor has an elevated temperature and all five are coughing away merrily at present.

This is the start of 14 days isolation for us! Our nanny Sindy fled once the children were in and undressed from their school uniforms. John has just arrived home, his office in disarray with the entire staff now working from home! He has just informed me that Sindy is willing to return in one weeks time!

I am sat here with Thor snuggling in besides me! I haven’t personally left the house for two weeks already now! All we can do is see how things progress from here I guess.

And Thor finds a surgical mask in his toy box! Oh dear, I really have tried to be completely neutral to what is going on around us with Corona Virus. There is enough news on that front and I am sure you are not reading this to be reminded! Go safely however, won’t you!

Getting reminiscent about India these last few days has inspired a rather indian themed menu this weekend! Before our big family adventure, I only knew the menu from the local Indian restaurant. My favourites were king prawn tikka masala and chicken dhansak! With a rather nice pilaf rice mind you. But on my first visit to India I was left shell shocked with Indian cuisine. And that was just the breakfast menu at the hotel! New delicacies were introduced, such as Sambar, pooha, poori, idli, dosa and dosa masala. These amazing Indian classics I have since simulated in my own kitchen on many occasions.

The nanny who helped me out a little in India, Bharti had cooked I few of these items for me whilst living in Goa, but I learnt and adapted these recipes as I do, in these last years of our great family life. I tend to look at two or three versions of a recipe from the internet and then make Dadda’s ultimate version.

Today was nostalgic. For some reason or other YouTube was opened on my new Apple iPhone 11. Yes the new phone that I was scandalously pressurised to purchase by the said manufacturers! Now, there is one YouTube channel that I subscribe to and that is Gita’s Kitchen. She is a font of knowledge on all things ‘Indian Cuisine’. It is Indian food for Indians! Anyhow, today she produced 3 types of Sambar, a spiced soup that is popular in all hotels and eateries for tourists and locals alike on the whole of the Indian sub content.

Okay, I have no tamarind or exotic Indian vegetables, so I reworked my take on Sambar and our lunch was a take on the finest Indian breakfast imaginable!

More time to write down the recipe for you tomorrow, would you like that? This is genuine food, so please, I would feel privileged to share, but for now just the photos of our slightly spiced up menu today. As ever – thank you for reading dear hearts…

The rice on my plate in the first photograph was there purely for show. A slightly more refined salmon curry nonetheless with Dadda’s classic curry sauce! So, please note that I am still doing a carb free lent! There has only been one or two tiny slip ups thus far!

Well, kindle fire 7 actually! Although he breaks his own body weight in ‘stuff’ each and every month, daddy was insistent this morning that he should have his very own iPad (Fire 7 tablet).

You might remember that both Thor and Aaliyah had to behave extremely good for 7 and 4 days respective! But daddy just threw away the protocol this morning and decided to insist to me that Caleb was having one without having to ‘earn’ it and that was that! Caleb then proceeded to saying ‘na na na naa na’ to me!

John just has to be ‘super dad’ every single weekend, not caring that there is fallout always.

This ‘good cop’ – ‘bad cop’ relationship can only truly come to an end when things are made more even to how we have to act in front of the children!

The video today does spontaneously show Caleb’s interest in playing with a screen, but just 20 minutes ago I was called by Aaliyah, back to the kitchen after Caleb had just thrown his sandwich at the wall and there it lay on the other side of the table, it’s contents everywhere!

Does Thor have it in him to do gymnastics? He has just taken it upon himself to join Aaliyah on the living room floor doing the splits! It seems that everyone bar Caleb now wants to go to gymnastics classes! They just saw some gymnasts on the TV and were blown away! Maybe Caleb could consider a standup comedy routine?!? Aaliyah is really keen to go back, especially now that it might just be a family event! More on this as it evolves.

Achievers assembly today saw four of the not so famous five awarded with a certificate! Their smiles say it all really. This kind of thing can really give oneself a lift and that really can’t be a bad thing, can it? Amritsar participated in last Fridays assembly, so no worries on that count. I hope that those smiles continue into the weekend. More on that tomorrow perhaps!

Aaliyah and Caleb were born in a post earthquake Kathmandu Nepal, in the early summer of 2015. There were still tremors, the monsoon had kicked in, the sanitation was bad! But we made the best of it for the 5 long months it took the UK government to assist us in being able to come home! I thank Rekha and Bharti in being able to help out nannying in those difficult times. I was no stranger at the gate of the British Embassy, pleading for their assistance from the second the children were born. They just looked on and gave no assistance whatsoever!

Our nanny Sindy who takes care of the school run has been off the last 2 days, so John has worked from home and ferried the children to and from school. Sindy back in the morning and John back to the office!

And guess what! Not a single drama or breakdown. We are definitely getting there aren’t we! Now, just waiting for Tara to return from Football Club and dinnertime awaits. Just ham sandwich’s today, as you know they enjoy a cooked lunch at school and today was roast chicken – lucky them.

John being home meant that we got to go out for lunch today to the same restaurant we celebrated my birthday at ‘Henry and Joes’ in the local town of Newbury! It’s a real pleasure to eat there. One of the owners Joe spent some time in Thailand and Nepal, both places you might remember I have spent time living in! So lots to reminisce about I guess.

Just got me thinking about a little trip down memory lane. Maybe we will do Bangkok tonight and Kathmandu tomorrow.

This weeks menu has by-in-large been carb free for me. Though today’s salmon with lobster bisque and sugar snap peas did need the addition of a few slices of fried potato to elevate it! Please do note my home made broccoli stalk rice with the chilli con carne.

The third offering this week was large shrimp with Mexican sweet peppers and asparagus! Yummy 😋 Carb free eating is difficult when it comes to snacks, but if you focus on the production of at least 2 decent meals a day, you can eat very well. Today’s lunch was sausage, cheese omelette and mushrooms! You see, you can eat well, living carb free, if you wisely consider your food, opposed to just gorging on it!!!

Sadly there is a thick blanket of cloud down here in ‘The Shires’. However, tonight’s picture is not from a free picture archive, rather I have an old friend Andrew Hill to thank for the image, taken this evening all the way up there in Bonny Scotland.

Now, I don’t plug my book too often, do I? But I think that it is fair to say as there is a super moon tonight, that Eighteen Moons is still available through your Amazon account, simply by searching for Eighteen Moons. Or just google Eighteen Moons!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eighteen-Moons-Before-Diary-Gay/dp/1794528334/ref=nodl_

This is the synopsis of the story if you are interested in reading any further:

Eighteen Moons is the extraordinary and moving story of Andi and John and how they brought together, against huge odds, the family they had longed for. Today they are loving fathers to five beautiful children including two sets of twins, all of them under the age of six. But the story of how this very special family came together is a tale filled with heartache and frustration, determination and courage. It’s also a story full of humour, human frailty and, above all, love. Their quest for children took them across the world and brought them up against seemingly impossible challenges. But as the whims of officials and government directives thwarted their every move and sent them on a wild adventure which took them from India to Thailand and on to Nepal, Andi and John refused to give up. Extraordinarily, Andi and John’s first twins were the last British surrogate babies to leave India (post new rules), their son was the last to leave Thailand and their second twins were the first British children to be born through surrogacy in Nepal. Happily together for twenty years and the besotted owners of two daft but loveable Dalmatians, Andi and John longed for children to complete their family. Two, they thought, would be perfect, ideally one fathered by each of them. After looking at surrogacy options worldwide, India seemed to offer everything they hoped for and in 2012 they went to India to begin the surrogacy process. A few months later, they heard that their surrogate was expecting twins. Andi went to India for the birth; the plan was that John would join them and together they would bring the babies home. When two gorgeous daughters were born they couldn’t have been happier. But what followed was a nightmare of bureaucracy and obfuscation, as John, the twins’ natural father, was refused a visa and the Indian Government refused to let Andi leave with the babies. For month after month Andi lived in India, caring for the girls, while he and John struggled to find a way to bring them home. At every turn they were thwarted until they became so desperate they considered smuggling the girls out of the country by boat. Their daughters were eight months old when, finally, John was able to go and bring them home. Same-sex surrogacy had been banned in India, so Andi, still longing to father a child, turned next to Thailand. With the news of a successful pregnancy everything looked rosy – until the Thai government also clamped down on surrogacy, the clinic was closed. For several heart-stopping days they didn’t know what had happened to their surrogate, or their baby. Finally they heard that all was well and Andi said goodbye to John and the girls and went to Thailand to be with his child. A son was born and a delighted Andi hoped to take him home within weeks. But what followed was an extraordinary saga of delays, denials and, eventually, Andi’s arrest on trumped up drug charges. Given the option by the arresting officers of waiting three months for a court date and a guaranteed three, month sentence, a second option was put on the table. No criminal record and the chance to be the first westerner to serve in the Royal Thai Army. This would take him to an army barrack’s deep in the Thai jungle, he had just one phone call, to tell John what had happened. On the day he was freed Andi found John, and their son, waiting for him. Days later, after five long months of waiting, they flew home, to introduce the girls to their new baby brother.When the surrogacy clinic in Thailand had closed Andi and John’s remaining embryos had been transferred, with the help of an Israeli agency, to Nepal, where surrogacy was still possible. At that stage, unsure of the outcome in Thailand, they had given the go-ahead for a surrogacy attempt. Now they heard that once again twins were expected, this time on the roof of the world. Andi arrived just after the massive 2015 earthquake in Nepal. The final five full moons of this story would be set in Kathmandu.

Oh dear – maybe too many words for you! Sorry about that and take care, won’t you…

Gracie has finally finished her season. Ever since we arrived home form our holiday in Cornwall, she and Remus have driven me crazy! Yes, these last 2 weeks have been a nightmare, what with Remus going crazy every so often and Gracie trying to dominate the situation. It’s hard to write this without using the word ‘hump’! All female dogs go through their season perhaps twice a year. We had arranged to have her spade this year given her age and the increased likelihood of ovarian cancer. However the day she was booked in at the vets to get the snip, she started showing the tell tale signs of her season and quite honestly, she has been acting crazy ever since.

I will always remember the evening after Remus was neutered! He just moped around, looking up at me with sad eyes. All I could hear in my mind was ‘What have you done to me dad’? The fact that we had kept Gracie meant that we had to have poor old Remus done all of those years ago. Although Gracie is his daughter, he still goes crazy, crazy whenever those hormones are present. It’s never an easy time. Hopefully this will be the last time for Gracies coming into season. We must now wait 3 more months for the vet to carry out the operation.

I used to joke to John about Gracie having a litter of puppies. She herself was from a litter of 15 and Remus was from a litter of 12. Can you imagine the complete madness of doing that? Anyhow, let’s look forward to a slightly more sedate time with the dogs, if that is at all possible…