Ever had a ‘Dani moment’? You probably have but don’t realise it.
Dani moments are named after Karen’s daughter--- you probably know them as Blonde or senior moments, but to us; anything that is dumb or exceedingly clumsy is a Dani moment.
And Dani can come out with the most amazingly odd statements; statements that bear no relevance to logic what so ever. For example we once took her to Cardiff--- first off she thought Cardiff was somewhere in England (this from a geography student) and secondly, when she came upon the large and imposing law courts, she asked if that was Buckingham Palace and was the Queen in.
Oh and she walks into things...lots of things. Dani isn’t blonde, but we all feel that she probably should be. Anyway, my reason for mentioning this is that Karen, not normally prone to ‘Dani Moments’ had quite a few of them on Sunday.
It started after I had gotten up to walk the dog, leaving Karen to take a shower. By the time I got home again she was standing by the bedroom door, wrapped in her white bathrobe--- with the turban effect on her head--- fanning herself with the door. I asked her what she was doing and she replied that she was still hot from the shower and needed cooling down. I went into the room, grabbed my towel and headed to the bathroom, warning her to be careful.
‘Careful of what?’ she said, and roughly two seconds later she found out as the door creamed her on the forehead, sending her spiralling off into the realms of mild concussion--- She landed on the bed with what I swear were little tweety birds flying around her head.
Once I’d checked to make sure she was okay, and she was once again about her daily routine of full body creaming, hair products, drying her hair followed by the straightening rituals, I headed out for a shower, just in time to see the dog sit up on the edge of the top step to scratch himself (he was half asleep and had failed to notice how close he was to the edge) and by the stroke of his first scratch he went thumping down three steps on him bum. I just shook my head and muttered, ‘stupid mutt’ and carried on.
Once Karen was ready and had had her breakfast we decided to take the dog for a longer walk around the Groves (a delightful woodland on the outskirts of town). In itself the walk was fairly uneventful until Danny, the dog, not Dani Karen’s daughter (very confusing when they’re both accident prone numpties), stopped suddenly and became very agitated by the smell of something. Both Karen and I looked at each other in confusion; Danny carried on his intense sniffing with his one front leg cocked at an angle, just like a real dog would.
Suddenly, and without warning, he went howling off the way we’d just come. He crashed through the undergrowth, spewing leaves as he went. He’d stop periodically, pick up whatever scent he had found, give another hunters’ howl and crash back on.
What could he have found? Was it the scent of a rabbit? A squirrel? Or had he picked up the trail of something more sinister? Was he trying to protect us? I began to swell with pride and yes, even a tear escaped my joyous eye as I truly believed that after eleven years, Danny was finally turning into a real dog, and not the accident prone, wind breaking nut job he’d been up until now.
We began to encourage him with cheers of ‘Come on boy, what is it and, what’ve you found?’ This seemed to have the desired effect of spurring him on to even greater heights of industrious activity and howling.
Eventually we noticed that although he was going through all the motions and making all the right noises, he didn’t seem to actually be doing anything other than run around in circles, scratting up leaves, howling and setting off into the same routine.
After about ten minutes he’d picked up quite an audience; with other dog walkers looking on in confusion as they passed by--- squirrels and rabbits had broken their daily routines and had joined the growing storm of birds that had come down to see what the commotion was all about.
Eventually it dawned on me what was going on. I stood up from the log that me and Karen had been sitting on, sighed deeply, called Danny and started walking off. And as Danny came crashing past us with his tongue lolling out the corner of his mouth and assorted twigs and leaf mould attached to his stupid fur, I explained that this great hunting dog of ours had only gone and picked up his own scent and had spent the last ten minutes tracking himself.
But even with the day having already racked up a concussed ‘love- of- my –life’, a dog doing a slinky impression down the stairs and having made an attempt to track himself---unsuccessfully I might add---the day, it would appear, was not complete of its ‘Dani moments’. Where Danny the dog, had left off, Karen was about to take over.
Dani, Karen’s daughter; the little accident machine that had given her name to the eponymous ‘Dani Moments’ title, needed a new computer--- hers having given up the ghost. And seeing as she was in Cardiff (now fully aware that Cardiff wasn’t in England but still unsure as to whether the Queen lived there or not), was staying with Adam, her boyfriend. We’d arranged to meet her halfway and go to a Curry’s store to acquire a new computer. So at 3:30 we met up in the car park outside Curry’s and headed towards the store.
Even though I’ve stated before that Dani is an accident, always on the brink of happening, she, like all teenagers, have this built in sonar which gives them the ability to walk while texting without colliding with anything or anyone. And Dani managed to weave and thread her way through parking cars, reversing cars, panicky and irate shoppers with indolent kids who wanted nothing but a burger, whilst continuing to BBM Adam--- who had only just left 30 seconds previously. And this she continued to do throughout the whole time that the salesman tried to both sell her a new computer and beat us to death with his halitosis. Eventually Dani looked up from her BBM’ing long enough to point at a bright shiny laptop and say:”I’ll have that one” before delving back into the world of none communication. The sales man informed us that he needed to install antivirus, some software and to download a bucket load of drivers and that this would take around fifteen minutes. We said that would be fine and that we’d walk around the store while we waited.
And that was when Karen became the ‘Dani moment--- queen for the day’.
It started harmlessly enough. I had noticed some very sleek computer screens--- Dani broke off from her BBM’ing long enough to point out that it was a touch screen, which impressed me mightily and I began playing with it. Karen, meanwhile, was busying herself with a computer at the end of the isle and suddenly cried out in elation
“Hey, this one’s cool, look at this”
I wandered over to find that the computer’s screen was filled with some sort of chart which she was gleefully running the mouse over whilst adding and taking away numbers. I became mesmerised by all of this and got caught up in the child like fever that had gripped her. Once she’d finished playing with that page--- altering it beyond recognition. She was wanted to see what was on the next one. Dani walked over, looked up briefly, registered abject horror and told her mom to get off it immediately as it was the shops’ sales computer and she’d just deleted that months’ sales figures.
Karen let out a little yelp and moved off smartly. As she did this the till underneath it popped open, my eyes grew in shock and I darted after Karen, feigning nonchalance all the way. Dani went back, tutting into the ether world of cyber chat.
With the exception of Dani setting off an alarm (we still don’t know how she did that) and me attempting to look intelligent around an i-pad, which involved touching controls I didn’t fully understand and then being unable to delete the surprised looking photo I’d just taken of myself, all went fairly quiet.
But then Karen spotted a 3-D TV, a sofa and a display of special glasses with a sign inviting us to sit down and soak up the experience. Karen, now in full on giggling school girl mode, shot over to give it a try. I followed after her and Dani sloped behind.
I must admit it was an amazing experience, and it was really weird the way things seem to pop up both in and out of the screen. But every time I said ‘Wow look at that’ Karen would just say ‘I can’t see anything special, it just looks blurred to me’ I couldn’t understand it. I waited until something blasted out of the screen towards us and said ‘well what about now?’ Karen shrugged her shoulders and said she still couldn’t see anything and that it was still blurred.
I feel at this juncture that I should point something out about Karen. When she gets frustrated or flustered, she gets louder, and because she obviously felt that she was the only one not getting it, she was becoming more and more irate and therefore louder and louder and her frustrations were beginning to gain an audience. But as suddenly as she had started panicking she stopped and said, with a giggle, ‘Oh hang on, I think I know why it’s not working’. I turned around to see her grinning with embarrassment while she wiggled her finger through the lens. It turned out she’d spent the last five minutes trying to watch 3-D TV through a set of glasses that had no lenses.
I groaned, she giggled her embarrassment and I passed her another set. She put them on just as a swarm of bees came flying out of the screen towards us. Well she leapt about four foot into the air screaming ‘Ahhhh, they’re going to get me...’ ---she threw the glasses off and shot over to what she considered to be a safe distance. Dani, who was unfazed by the whole affair, was still texting Adam...with her 3-D glasses on.
At that point the salesman came over and asked her if she was okay. His halitosis had a strange kind of anaesthetising effect on her and she melted down behind the i-Pod stand.
Anyway, a few moments later he brought the computer over and we left--- much to the relief of Curry’s staff. But I’d love to be a fly on the wall when they try and explain that month’s sales figures.
And yes, underneath my desk, that is piles of books and a box of reference material, plus a few spare plates for watercolour usage. And to the left of the table there is a high rise block of editorial cartoons and the six boxes of envelopes I brought four years ago for a mail shot campaign I never did.
