choosing Derek as a profile photograph stunt-monkey

Sitting down to write a new blog post without the merest shred of an idea in mind is never a good plan. Distraction and diversion go into overdrive - for example, today I thought that it was suddenly very important to improve my Blogger profile. Specifically, I became horrified at my lack of a photograph.

Being the owner of a digital camera, I have no shortage of photographs of myself - taken by others, I hasten to add. Should I choose the smiling, the thoughtful, the jumping, the morbid, the facile or the neanderthal pose? And how about that one, taken by N, not quite straight, not quite in focus and with my camera-supporting foreshortened arm filling the corner? None seemed to chime with rightness.

And then I remembered Derek.

N has a long-suffering soft toy, Derek The Psychedelic Monkey. Much loved, in need of a wash, bedtime comfort and, sadly, extinct. Yes, the Gund Corporation of New Jersey has decreed that this crazy melange of clashing colours in simian form is no longer to be manufactured and, even on the world wide web, I have found none still for sale. So we'd better not lose him. Machine washable, by the way, but only on the delicate cycle.

Somehow, the calm, steady gaze, together with the dependable nature of that enigmatic half-smile, summed up the qualities which I wanted to get across. A purple monkey - it's not how I think of myself and yet...

N is partly to blame for this since she has inherited the family disease of addressing relatives by a rollcall of names, sometimes stopping at the correct one, sometimes overshooting and doubling back, sometimes passing nowhere near before petering out. To that end, I am often known as Derek-Daddy, a name which I find not at all unpleasing.

The two of them are currently asleep, which is why I find myself able to write anything at all during the day. A brief swim this morning in our local pool has worn us both out ("us both" meaning N and Derek-Daddy, not Derek himself - he might be easily washable but takes an implausible amount of time to dry). The month of August has found the toddlers' and the children's pools both closed for maintenance, thereby throwing parent and infant combos into the main pool with the "youth element".

And I find that there is hope for society - the youths in question being loud, boisterous, keen to splash and to congregate obstructively in gangs in the water and on the side and, at the same time, being fun and polite and careful not to disturb the littler ones and overly apologetic over a barely noticeable splash that didn't even go particularly near to N.

I would still rather have a roped-off section for parents with young children - not to protect the young children, of whom the other kids are already sufficiently protective, but more so that the older children can have more of a rumpus without worrying about who's getting a drenching.