Enjoy regular father-friendly news and insights from Fathers Network Scotland and our guest contributors. Contact FNS with your own story.
Posted by Colm Black · March 21, 2012 11:06 AM
In the midst of a recent conversation at a parenting event I was attending I heard the phrase, "Sometimes I feel like I am just a taxi for my children!" It was said with a humourous grumpyness. How many of us have thought and felt the same, especially when you get the feeling that you are living your whole week at the local Leisure Centre and your children's times for their various classes are all higgledy piggledy and a logistical nightmare.
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Posted by Colm Black · March 02, 2012 11:25 AM
I grew up in small town, rural Ireland in the Sixties. Television was relatively new and I recall only black and white in our home. Then colour came into our home and a bizarre and rather psychedelic show from America called ‘The Monkees.’ Davy Jones and Mike Naismith (whose mother, I once heard, had invented Tippex but since that might have only been a rumour, maybe I had better Tippex it out?) Then there was Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz, who, in the deepest recesses of my mind had been a child star in ‘Circus Boy’ with Noah Beery. Remember him? Noah Beery? He was the father of Jim Rockford and famously starred in one of my favourite Westerns, ‘Red River’ with the brash John Wayne, the smooth and effortless Montgomery Clift and the toothless and utterly brilliant Walter Brennan.
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Posted by Colm Black · February 14, 2012 11:27 AM
It's Valentine's day. Hype? A bumper season for florists? There are articles every where about love, from The Guardian Family Section on Saturday where we read about 5 couples who fell in love at first sight and seemed to buck the trend, 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure,' to 'Sense' the RBS Magazine which has emblazoned on the front, 'The Love Issue - The Chemistry of Falling in Love.'
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Posted by Colm Black · January 09, 2012 11:32 AM
Ok. Now let me get this right. Monday is music lesson for..........then Beavers. Tuesday is swimming for two, which two?......then music for one straight after.............and Wednesday is swimming for one, then Cubs for two straight after..............and all homework has to be done by Thursday ...and you are home late from work 3 days this week, did you say........and then there is Church House Group to be organised for Thursday.....and I would like to escape to the Gym at some point.....and the garage needs clearing out ....and I have a meeting at school about..........is that on Tuesday or Wednesday?
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Posted by Colm Black · December 01, 2011 9:02 AM
I went to bed last night and he was on the TV explaining what a good deal the public sector pensions are and how hard the Govt is working to make things fair. I got up this morning and he was on the Radio explaining what a good deal the public sector pensions are and how hard the Govt is working to make things fair. It must be thoroughly dull having to cover the same ground over and over again in interview after interview after interview.
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Posted by Colm Black · October 27, 2011 9:06 AM
Against the back fence
In the pouring rain
My Father’s bike.
The ‘Raleigh All-Steel’
Two flat tyres.
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Posted by Nick Thorpe · October 12, 2011 9:09 AM
“Daddy?”
“Yes, love?”
Story time is over, and the lights are out - but I’ve noticed my six-year-old son often uses his last waking moments to bowl me the kind of question that might stump a philosophy graduate.
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Posted by Colm Black · September 07, 2011 9:17 AM
Raymond Carver – the American short story writer and poet published a book in 1985 called “Fires”. It is a great collection of essays and poems. Included in the book is a wonderful and moving essay called, “My Father’s Life” and a poem entitled, “Photograph Of My Father In His Twenty Second Year.” He says, “The poem was a way of trying to connect with him” long after he had died.
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Posted by Gary Clapton · June 24, 2011 9:21 AM
Last month three of us contributed to a conference hosted by Sure Start in West Lothian entitled ‘The Invisible Man: working with fathers’.
David Drysdale was first up and his bit on men, fathers and caring was well received. The third was John Roger’s presentation on Mellow Dads and this also went down well with evidence of children being able to return home after work with the father.
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Posted by David Drysdale · June 16, 2011 9:24 AM
Fathers Day Storytelling - a celebration of active fatherhood
Saturday 18th June, 11:00am-4:00pm
at Scottish Storytelling Centre
John Knox House 43-45 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1SR
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