May 24th, 2010: Winter Jefferson

There’s no more effective alarm than a pair of boney knees in the small of your back. Daddy, wake up. I groan, feeling as if I’d only been in bed for a couple of hours. Probably because I have. I inwardly curse at least thrice before my left eyelid gets pried open by insistent fingers. Daddy wake UP! Those giggling brown eyes are relentless in their demands for cornflakes and I’m ousted from my warm bed.

We arrive at the school a good ten minutes after the bell rings. Mr G; late again! – I’m scolded by the humorless harridan that meets me at the classroom door. Yes, I tell her silently. But. There was a dragon waiting at the top of the driveway. It was pretending to be the neighbour’s cat, but we knew better. As it curled around my son’s legs we spotted the iridescence of fur-hidden scales, glistening in its steaming breath. You can’t walk past a just awoken dragon without pacifying it, everyone knows that. You get to spend the next six hours beating the mundanities of the curriculum into his head, my glowering eyes inform her as she ushers him clucking to his seat. Please don’t begrudge me the time I need to educate him in the realities of the unreal.

I can feel the fangs creeping their way past my lips – no, not yet. Wait. I key in my password and as I hit enter everything changes to the wonderful world of the Lord Winter. Adult conversation, walls with no scribbles, clothing without grubby handprints from where children have been tugging on my shirt tails……

… and then it’s time to depart this digital dream. To go line up with the other Daytime Dads, all hunched over in the peculiar position of the man that knows that a small tornado is about to hurl themselves at their gonads. Later on this evening I’ll kiss my wife and these two centres of my universe goodbye as I leave for work. And it occurs to me… although Second Life gives me everything want, I have everything I need right here.

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Winter Jefferson, blogger of “In Cold Blood” is a non-sparkly vampire knight fashionisto who fights for the headspace of some poor beleaguered bastard who lives in Western Australia. He enjoys playing mind games with his pet chickens, tormenting foreigners with tales of the dreaded Drop Bear and writing incredibly bad poetry. He wants to be reincarnated as any of the Davids Bowie; Attenborough or Tennant and comes back from the market with magic beans every single time. If you really want to torture him, then get him to write but confine him to just 365 words. Winter also really hopes Mrs Tucker never finds this blog, but if she ever does… would it hurt to lighten up just a bit you old bag?

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