Fifty for Fifi

I recently had a conversation with our daughter about what I was and I wasn’t allowed to call her.

Apparently I can comment on her fashion choices, tell her that she is looking pretty as a result of her fashion choices, but I’m not allowed to call her beautiful.

I briefly tried to make a case for special rights as a father, but only briefly. I’d always prefer where possible to allow her to exercise her own judgement. If she only wants to be complemented on things she put an effort in, so be it.

She’s the same as her mother in that. I deliberately get myself in trouble with Fi but adding “but you always look beautiful to me” when she’s got herself ready to go out. I am, however, good at giving specific feedback. I’ve been interested in fashion for sometimes and can sometimes even attempt to turn some kind of a look myself.

My case for special rights as a father in this particular discourse relates to today’s song. When she was tiny and needed to be comforted on her way to sleep, I’d hold her in the dark, play songs on the phone to her and sing along. One such favourite was a cover of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns ‘N’ Roses.

Famously the original was created when guitarist Slash was warming up for a practice by playing a series of broken chords. To his annoyance (according to some retellings) the rest of the band insisted on building a song around the exercise and thus one of signature sounds of their first album was created.

The lyrics, I admit, are more of a romantic love than a fatherly love, but equally they’re sentimental and loving rather than raunchy and given that our daughter does indeed have eyes of the bluest skies, it worked well enough, particularly when sitting up in the small hours of the night.

Now, I’m well aware I’ve broken the general theming here by talking about our daughter rather than Fi, but you see if you look at one you are looking at the other. Photo stolen from Fi’s Facebook page, captions hers.

I mentioned the version I sang along to was cover. Flat Pack was a project that put out one song, the cover built around the vocals of Katty Heath. The particular remix I stumbled across was put out by another electronic artist/producer, Mylo that I’d been previously introduced to by my friend Andrew. I find it truly… beautiful.