Katie-cheese has been complaining that
(a) this blog doesn't recieve attention or as many comments as others (ahem, like mine?)
(b) and that no one contributes enough

So to kill a few birds, I'm posting something SHE wrote which I'm will strike a chord with most of you. Enjoy.

Stare straight ahead. Don’t even think about looking at your father. Keep your eyes fixed on the television screen. The show can’t last forever.

Sunday nights are ever constant. Offering roast dinners, banter around the table, inane questions resulting in answers already known, and after dinner settling around the TV watching period dramas on the ABC.

It’s the end of the night that bothers me. There is nothing more awkward as sitting through a sex scene with your parent. “ Contains a sex scene” is the dreaded warning that precedes the program; the booming voice of the warning haunts me throughout the program.

When will this gratuitous sex pop up?

In silence we wait. I begin to wonder what my Dad is thinking. Whether the moments that we share will embarrass him and if he will leave the room to avoid the painful situation. There are some things that are unspoken and will remain unspoken between father and daughter.

At last the scene arrives. Unbearable silence. My eyes are fixed on the telly, I repeat my mantra “Don’t cough, Don’t move, Act normal”. My father doesn’t move either. The ABC has changed. When I was young there was never any sex on our public broadcaster, now sex fills the ABC’s agenda, what sacrilege to show a period drama with sex on a Sunday night.

The three minutes of sex seems to last a lifetime. My mind is alert to any movement from my father. I’m worried about what he is thinking. We as children know, of course, that parents are asexual beings. It’s cruel but true: fathers have never engaged in intercourse.

And then it is over. The unspoken is never referred to; and it’s a relief. Perhaps forever we will fall into our routine, painstakingly avoiding these awkward situations, or at least until next Sunday.