Moving On: Part The Second

"Someone has hacked into my account..." A scary proposition, raising spectres of hard-earned funds being siphoned-off by sneaky coves too lazy and too clever to work for their own living.

Context here, though, is a strong signifier. Were I to say it, 'twould be true; when, however, it is young E the utterer one knows at once, by parental instinct, that this is merely late-teenage code for 'I have foolishly overspent, dearest Papa, and could you lend me a couple o' hundred until pay day, or else I starve and it be on your conscience forever?' ('Lend' being, naturally, a further juvenile code for 'give freely with no expectation of any return at any time, ever'.)

In the old dispensation the matter would have easily been resolved. 'Hie thee to thy room at once child, Mama will summons you when supper is served, and if your footloose ways vis-à-vis personal cashflow means you are effectively self-grounded, with no socialising or spending, until the end of the month, then take it as being but a tough, salutary and necessary lesson in life's funny ways.' Simple Micawber principle of finance, with which we are all so familiar - in theory at least if not quite in practice. (Know ye it not? Then look it up at once, 'ere you and yours are doomed to eternal penury.)

Dispensations being rather new than old, the remedy must shift to another plane altogether. A few fiddles with the - quite old - Internet banking malarkey and the required funds are telegraphed over instanter. (The alternative of a plain 'No' not being a sustainable option. Feet perhaps should be firmly put and kept down, strangely though they never are. It is, after all, a parent thing.)

Why not - you reasonably ask - if an exchange of funds is required the traditional 'hand in the pocket, hand over the cash in readies' as per the perennial norm of these things? Not a goer any longer, sad - in its way - to report. For we are here and E is there, quite beyond the reach of an outstretched fatherly arm, even one heavily baited with cash. How, one has to ask, has it come to this, that a short moment or two ago E was but a literal babe at home and in arms, and yet now she is so grown and grown up to be living in her 'own flat'? (The quotation being yet another signifier that we, of course, are essentially paying for the whole thing.)

Time it is indeed that has done the deed alone and unaided. Blink only - it seems - and you have missed it. Whoosh quite they go: babe, infant, child, adolescent then finally grown and gone all in a trice. Takes some digesting that does: the bare and bereft nest sans fledgling. All as nature intends, one does not wish to cling - well yes of course one does ever so - and thus, bracing oneself, one waves toodle-pip, fond farewell, crying 'take good care and don't forget to text', as the next generation legs it down the road towards independence and freedom.

Does one then lose all purpose in living now that the daily nurturing round is done? Can seem that way at times. Opportunity now there may well be to boogie on down to some hot night-spot safe in the knowledge that one will not be upbraided for sad dad dancing; a chance given but not taken. Mates round for a three-day poker-fest another possibility, with no innocent child to be spared the exposure to such wanton moral turpitude. Can't really see that happening either. Time perhaps to break out the hash-stash, now that the 'do as I say not as you observe me to do' imprecation has lost its imperative? Hardly appeals at all, possibly strange to discover.

Jump on a passing traveller's caravan, the fortuitous life of the raggle-taggle gypsy-o? That I own would be a belter. Would have, though, to be a wi-fied caravan for the next 'I've been hacked' call. Wish only I'd had that excuse with the Palladian parents. Sounds all so plausible don't it? Not to the ever-doting but not yet daft Papa it don't!