Its been a rather eventful week. I’m still trying to get rid of the Nintendo music playing in my head. They had that music playing out the bushes in the resort the whole time.

It was pretty sunny and a good day to be out. I got bored at times and I thought that maybe that's what being a parent might be like - all the time…You’re bored but you’re actually ok with it as long as everyone else is happy.

This whole experience has made me think about parenting and children. Basically, you sacrifice your life for your children and everything is for them. Their excitement and happiness is your excitement and happiness.

Small kids have such short memories. They can have a full-blown meltdown over a splash of water you playfully whipped up on them from a gentle stream running down a slope at Legoland and the next moment you’re holding them in your arms trying to console them over your seemingly darsteadtly act. Oh, and you feel so bad for making them cry which is weird because it's not often that a seemingly fun and playful act results in tears. Your brain is like what? why crying, that was fun – I don’t understand, help, this is new…

It's easy to see why you’d become overwhelmingly intoxicated with emotion and heartfelt compassion for them. I guess this is what turns on within the brain of a parent as they raise their children. It's surely an evolutionary trait. Everything about them is so fragile and innocent and they really cannot fend for themselves. You must intervene at all times if they are ultimately to survive, nothing depends on you more than that. Its quite humbling and scary and I’d admit that at times I’d been over-worried about certain things. I’m not a father but I can see what might be involved.

There is the story about Phil Collins’ little boy who fell to his death crawling off a balcony. You have to be vigilant, it's important and crucial. The song Tear Drops In Heaven is about it. You have to keep your eyes on them all time. 

You also start to detect the pitch and sound of your people, like in the wild, a spotted wild dog periodically chirps to get a response from her pup. Its the same like in being in a noisy shopping store, its like sonar you hear the mom call out to the kid, and the kid reacts and all is good. That’s one way to not have to have line-of-sight all the time. I didn’t know that, so I’d be constantly scanning up and down watching feverishly at all times. Dumb me.

And everything takes such a long time, dressing, washing, eating, sleeping and all of the time seems to involve talking in the background, like all the time. Answering questions, explaining things, asking, nudging, telling. It's certainly a full-time job. But you do it without thought or spite because of that realisation that it's so overwhelmingly necessary to do so and how wonderful it makes you feel to be so important and instrumental.

I just went to the gym in the mornings and let them go through the laborious and time-consuming phases of getting ready – which seems to take a lifetime for the reasons I mentioned above. I think it was a good strategy because by the time I’d come back, they were ready to go and no one was stressed out. And then boy did we go, place after place after place. I’ve been to more places in one week than I’ve been to in a whole year.

It was like persuading cats to do my bidding and that their best interest is what I’d say. It's a strange thing because you want them to have fun but you want them to be careful but you feel that they are not, so you have to instruct them which makes you feel like you’re trying to run their lives but you’re really not and just want them to have fun and be safe. These things are tough to do at the same time. I’m a buzz killer I think at times, trying to over plan, direct and star in the movie. After a while you realize that you’re really not staring in this movie, you’re outside the frame and that that's ok – as long as everyone else is happy. I think that’s what parents are about. It's a thankless job but you don't need thanks.

I’d have to plan ahead because I knew that if I didn’t warn them about the next train stop being ours or that they should go left now and right next that there would be agitation, stress and no-one wants that. But I think as a parent, you almost become a mindless zombie when it comes to having to deal with things that otherwise a single person would avoid. An example is stress, confusion and pain – these things you just become familiar with and you gain some resilience to it. I’m not a parent, I’ve merely been a temporary, pseudo-in-place-father and I’ve had to become accustomed to it and learned that with a child, without experience or real-world consciousness, they don’t really avoid it, and as such as a parent you have to deal with it for them.

Being self-sufficient, I’ve been able to hone many aspects of living, strategies ways to accomplish things in an optimum way. All this evaporates with young children. So the best you can do is to look to the imminent future and predict what could happen and prepare for it. Not try and manipulate things towards a predictable outcome, because you can’t do that but just try to be prepared. That’s why you see parents all equipped to the hilt with bottles, blankets, strollers, prepared foods, emergency things that you’d not think about because you know that you’ll not need it because you’ve planned the outcome of your day. Children and circumstance make this impossible. That’s why they head to the lifts. I think the modern day lifts in cities are less for the elderly and more for the pram. When is the last time you saw a granny shopping in a Gap store in Oxford-street? Never.

People do grow when they become parents. I’ve seen this now, they mature and they have a sense of worth and dedication to a life that before they didn’t. I’ve said this before and I might be wrong but sometimes I think people have children because they have reached what they feel to be the ceiling of their lives(and this might be biological too). Sometimes I think people get bored of life and then get married and have children to remedy it, to add a newness to their waning experiences. It certainly does change things and it certainly adds meaning to their lives.

I played the pseudo-dad for most of the time, supporting and facilitating, trying to see the future and trying to prepare for it. Most times it involved carrying things, doing things and being an Oracle and trying desperately to be good at it. Sometimes you feel you’ve let down the team if you don’t know an answer to something. Other times these seeming shortfalls are overlooked if you just say you don’t know instead of trying to extrapolate an answer.

I’m still haunted by Phil Collins’ little boy though. Makes me quite fearful of the potential of the future and then this makes me determined to try not be a victim of it.

The weather has been great, being on the London eye was lovely and peaceful, I think although I’ve been told it was really boring, for me it eclipsed Shrek’s Adventure, the west end musical, Disney stores, high-street retailers and Lego Land(which to be fair I really enjoyed). The London eye and also all the connecting parts, the travelling is what I enjoyed the most. It's kinda weird that all the bits in between getting to and from places were the most enjoyable for me(and most annoying for everyone else it seems).

Like just sitting in the pod in the London eye, watching the world from up high, everyone is peaceful and you are almost literally in your own little bubble that you can almost have a grip on, you get to just watch and listen and see and do nothing – just watch and feel the world and not actually be in it. Funny enough both the travelling and the London eye has been cited as the most arduous, boring and painful of the experiences this holiday.

I’ve come to enjoy the predictability of being in a train, knowing when to get off, knowing that nothing will happen while we're traveling, its where I can plan things and most importantly, now that I come to think about it, is when I can really turn off and embrace the sights and sounds of the people around me. I'm not an outgoing person, I'm an introvert and when I can listen, not instruct, just listen and watch is when I'm at my best.

I’m not someone who is a born leader so instructing people is not easy so I’m not that good at it. I might come across quite rigid. It gets quite hairy in places I don’t know, receiving questions requires more working-out and reasoning and thinking than places you’ve been before. Buses you’ve never taken before, trains that go places you’ve never been before. All while making sure everything is ok, is kinda challenging but kinda worth it. It's like solving a puzzle, you feel great after doing it.

Its a great feeling listening to conversations on the back of a bus from a long day out. Its long but I enjoyed that more than the shopping on Oxford Street or the glitzy amusements trying to grab your attention. The only thing that has your attention on these long hot commutes are those around you – and its fairly peaceful – not much goes wrong when is on a train – except when a 4-year old needs a wee and its 11 pm and the station you’re forced to get off at has no toilets…improv is the name of the game.

Its safe to say that my life has been shifted out the way somewhat, I’ve made way for folding prams, carrying and lifting things(but not weights!). My single life has had some repercussions, however - having only one of most things(a slant at optimisation) is at odds with parenting where there is a lean towards the convenience of now and over the burden of it tomorrow.

As a write this, I have a pair of little boots on my desk, that look like they should belong to a miniature human and they do.

Sprawled out over my living room there are clothes(mostly pink), bags, opened toys and unopened ones(also mostly pink), shopping, blankets, suitcases(also mostly pink), Disney merchandise where once there was just an empty carpet, a nicely positioned rug and lots of empty space.

It's not a bad thing nor is it a good thing, its just a thing - an interesting thing.