Although I don't see a great deal of my daughter these days compared to when she was a child, I like to think that our relationship hasn't suffered as a result. We speak to each other almost every day and when we do meet up it is always a great deal of fun with lots of conversation and laughter. At the back of my mind I realise that she doesn't remember ever living with her mother and I because she was only two years old when we split up, she probably doesn't remember her step-dad not being in the picture and to be fair he has had to deal with the more serious side of parenting. One of the advantages of being a separated dad was that I only really had to deal with the fun and games and I look back at her childhood with a great deal of pride because a childhood is exactly what I gave her; games, making things (our Punch and Judy box being a particularly big achievement), baking, cooking, the beach, the park, and general silliness. In my head there are nothing but happy memories (I only recall telling her off on the odd occasion) which is why it hit me hard when we stopped seeing each other on a regular basis when she became too old to want to come and see me when she had friends and parties taking her priority. When I was in my teens I hardly saw my parents for that same reason - your friends are better - and I lived with them, although I was a bit of a twat at that age so they were probably quite pleased.
Anyway, the reason that I mention my relationship with Emily is because today I had my heart lifted by her. She initially messaged me on Facebook to ask if I had put her money into her bank account. To be honest I had forgotten last week and only realised yesterday when I was doing my personal accounts so this morning I dropped double in for her to bring me up to date. In the midst of a general chit-chat about how she was (she's currently in Qatar) she sent me a link to a picture of a record player asking if it was a decent model and why did it have a phone plugged into it. I explained that it wasn't a 'proper' record player but a device for copying your record collection to MP3 and although they are good for that function, they are pretty crap for playing records. With this in mind she sent me another picture to see if this was a 'proper' one, which it was. It turns out that she wants to start buying vinyl records; as I told her, this is the happiest day of my life and there would be no more moaning when I wanted to look in record shops, she even expressed an interest in checking out Rob's Record Mart.
To delight me further, she asked me for some musical recommendations so I sent her the YouTube link to the David Bowie album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, (with additional photo of me in that phone box on Heddon Street) and another link to Appetite for Destruction by Guns 'N' Roses. It turned out that she already listens to these artists, leading me to hope that the Wand Erection/Justin Beiber days might be behind her. This started my mind whirring into another potential project that would make me very little, if any money but would be a bit of fun and came up with the title Fatherly Advice, For The Record. A podcast wouldn't work because it would be too close to Steve's LP Box but as I told Emily that I would recommend an album a week, a blog detailing the album and why I chose it might be an interesting read (by 'interesting' I mean 'I would find it interesting'). I'm not sure when or if this will begin, but I will end today's blog with Emily's words:
"Oh God, what have I started!"
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