Little victories

We recently sat en famille and watched a 'documentary' laden with reconstruction of a gladiator - not just any old gladiator, but one of the few about whom a great deal is known.

This gladiator had been captured by the romans in his home land in part of what is modern Romania and brought towards modern Italy to work as a slave in the quarries near Rome when, at the time, stone for the construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre (the Colosseum) was being extracted.

In the reconstruction he picked a fight with a fellow (Celtic) slave during a visit by a gladiator school owner having failed during the initial sweep to get himself purchased. He and the Celt went off to gladiator school and in due course graduated.

According to this to this documentary as this gladiator became better established in his 'chosen' career his life became gradually gradually and remotely entwined with that of the son (future Emperor Titus) of the Emperor Vespasian at the behest of whom this new arena was being constructed.

The documentary climaxed at the arena's opening games at which, under the auspices of the son (the father having died, probably of old age) numbers of convicted criminals, exotic animals and some gladiators perished. The best documented fight staged during these games was that between our 'hero' and the Celt he had first fought at the quarry, with whom he had graduated from gladiator school and who had subsequently been sold to a rival school.

The two of them slugged it out with shields and swords, then swords, then fists and finally knuckle dusters, with first one and then the other seemingly down and out. Finally the 'referee' stepped in and turned them to the notoriously blood-thirsty new emperor for a decision as to their fate; and after a moment of suspense both were awarded the wooden sword and wreath that signified their release.

Ahhhhh... still this was being narrated by Ross Kemp so it can't have been serious history and I'll probably find the whole lot was made up, by a bored classics undergraduate at a midlands former polytechnic.

Anyway all of this was merely leading up to recounting a small victory we've had here, chez nous. The layout of the house is such that I can hear the Fat Bastard come out of his room, pad past mine and, if he doesn't close the door I can earwig as he performs his early morning ablutions.

To be honest I've got over the revelation that a bloke can simultaneously piss and fart, and the novelty of scraping his face scrapings off the basin, the bath, the walls, the mirror and the floor (and anywhere else he manages to spray them) has worn off. This morning though was something of a red letter day because as I lay there trying to block out this charmless early morning symphony (oh, for spring and a rival din), I heard distinctly the unmistakable sound of him Lifting The Toilet Seat.

I nearly fell out of bed with the shock of this extraordinary small gesture toward the young female members of the household who are rather prone to stumbling out of bed and making their way to the bathroom still rubbing sleep from their eyes and sitting down without actually getting as far as to open those eyes.

I try my best to get there before them (and after their father) and wipe the seat down with a bio wipe from the packet I keep handy, but I don't always succeed. More to the point it does confirm that I was right, that he doesn't ordinarily lift the seat and was lying (as usual) through his teeth when he looked me in the eye and insisted that he always does. I think this is some sort of double victory; as usual even in those occasional moments when he plays at being the good guy he manages to expose himself.