I think my dad just cursed our household; not ideal during a pandemic 17/05/20

Today’s fun family excursion was a walk through a forest which opens out onto a normally quite serene beach. In light of the recent relaxation of some government imposed restrictions, despite having claimed in the past that they would ‘never tire’ of the moors within walking distance of our front door, my parents have decided to venture further afield for this particular route. This means having to drive for 40 or so minutes just to reach the beginning of the walk; already this to me seems excessive. 

Whilst at this point in the pandemic, travelling by car feels like something of a novelty, akin to how Austen’s characters must have felt travelling by horse drawn carriage, I’m not quite sure how my suggestion to have a family games day transpired to this mundane form of torturous family bonding exercise. Nevertheless, an hour later I find myself not engaged in a rigorous Mario Kart tournament as I had envisioned, but instead piling out of the car and lacing up my dr martens. (I don’t own walking boots. This is a purposeful strategy to avoid this type of laborious activity and forced immersion into our natural surroundings. Unfortunately, ever the problem solver, my dad kindly suggested that as the terrain wasn’t too testing, my boots would probably suffice. Great.) 

The walk itself was not altogether unpleasant (that’s not to say that my quiet reading time during the car journey there and back wasn’t my favourite part) and it was I suppose, nice to exercise our liberty to enjoy these public footpaths and picturesque coasts. Then my dad ruined it. 

I feel that to a certain degree, really I ought to take responsibility as it was me who reminded him of how we used to take pebbles home when me and my brother were younger and paint them. In fact I think I still have a kitsch heart shaped pebble on my bookshelf which I’d painted with the colours of the rainbow when I was little. It’s the sort of quaint memorabilia I look upon now with a sort of disappointed self regard, not only on account of my lack of artistic skill that it clearly shows, but on a more base level, a rainbow? Really younger me? Cliche much? Yet I can’t quite bring myself to throw it away. Moreover, these days, I just don’t feel right about removing pebbles from the beach, I can’t quite explain it but I just think, given the current catastrophic state of the planet due to global warming and other man made atrocities, it’s just best if we leave things, as much as possible, the way we found them. 

 Today, Tony (my dad’s name being an essential component of this story), decided to select from the beach a rock which had a sort of garish facial quality to it, with the idea that he would take it home and paint it. I think at this point, it is important to address the distinction between the heart shaped multicoloured product of my theft from our much beloved northern coasts, probably more than decade ago, and my dad’s attainment of something that bears more resemblance to Ed Vardmunch’s ‘Scream’.

Walking back up from the beach, you have to climb these 50 or so steep steps which, when you reach the top, gives a great view of the shore below. As we stood, catching our breaths and appreciating for the last time in a while the scene before us, my stepmum Maggie drew our attention to some words written in pebbles in the sand. They read ‘RIP TONY’. Perhaps it’s just coincidence, and we’d just missed a funeral party commemorating their late father of the same name. Or maybe my dad has brought a curse upon himself and possibly the whole household. I even tried bargaining with him, telling him it was me or the rock, but as the thing is sat next to me on our dining room table, not only has he afflicted calamity and disaster onto the entire family, he's also challenged my integrity. 

I suppose the only real way of knowing who will suffer the inevitable tribulations that await, is to go on living our lives, like sitting ducks, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. My one consolation is that Tony has promised to condemn his stony monstrosity to the garden once he's painted it. We’ve already been subject to forced familial isolation as a result of Corina virus, I think the last thing we need is a curse looming over us all as well.