Blokes

Whilst sitting pleasantly comatosed in front of the TV last night one of those shiny happy femininely positive fashion shows came on and neither Karen nor I had the gumption or the energy to reach for the remote. This particular one was called Twiggy’s Frock Swap and was basically just a televised version of that newest of trends to hit the UK’s Bingo halls and beauty parlours... the clothes swap party.

Premise: get a group of glamorous ladies of assorted ages and sizes together in a warehouse with cartloads of their old clothes and cast-offs and let them swap their clothes in a vaguely entertaining fashion conscious eco-friendly way. The clarion calls runs along the lines of: ladies of Britain recycle your clothes don’t bin them (or send them to starving children in Africa) – it’ll save you money if not wardrobe space!

It was slightly more interesting than the cushion whose soft woolly surface my face was half submerged into.

But while I listened to the glorious voice of Lauren Laverne wash over me like a warm Geordie breeze I had the thought: why don’t they make programmes like this for men?

And the answer hit me almost straight away.

Picture the scene: Gok Wan cakewalks around a group of Weatherspoon’s throw-outs in his high heeled diamante winkle pickers.

“C’mon guys let’s get swapping those g-strings and string vests! Woohoo!”

One shambolic hoody steps forward offering up a pair of torn and faded baggy-arsed Levi’s. “Er. Yeah. I got these to swap.”

Some nerdy looking sci-fi junkie steps hesitantly forward. “Yeah. Cool. Er... I’ll give you a couple of Playstation games for them if you want... Grand Theft Auto and Halo...” He shrugs noncommittally.

Hoody, nodding Noel Gallagher style: “Yeah nice one. Done mate.”

Goods are exchanged. Silence reigns. The men nod mutely among themselves and fidget uncomfortably before the camera.

In the background Gok tears out his hair in long thin oily strips and collapses sobbing to the floor – obviously overcome with the intensely broiling testosterone. The producers meanwhile tear up the series contract and head out to the pub.

Blokes, you see, we’d just be too damned sensible to be entertaining.

Unforgivably Foul

I have been, it has to be said, unforgivably foul of late.

Bad tempered. Grumpy. Short fused. Liable to erupt into immense fireworks at the drop of a hat. I believe I’ve been attributed the nickname “Bird’s Nest” as a direct result of this.

Undoubtedly it’s all down to stress. Overworked. Underpaid. Pressure left right and centre. There’s nothing going on but the mortgage, food bills, energy bills, credit card bills, utility bills, child care bills... and Christmas is coming.

With typical good timing my web design business seems to be slacking of too. Work is drying up. Belts are being tightened everywhere I guess. And my efforts to find an extra part time job to beef up our income to a level somewhere above the bread-line have so far fallen on barren ground. See, things are so bad I’m even mixing my metaphors.

And should I even succeed in acquiring an extra job where on earth am I going to find the energy to actually do it? Gaah!

I’ve responded to this maelstrom of financial down-turns in a typical man-like way. Recalcitrant. Taciturn. Head down. Transferring my frustrations onto other less deserving targets – Karen, the kids, faulty household appliances, cold callers and anyone else who steps into my sights. With the exception of cold callers nobody has really deserved the amount of spleen I’ve been venting.

And I do dearly apologise.

Things have just got a bit much and the hill ahead seems somehow steeper than it used to be. I can feel my hair turning white and my mouth turning to ash...

It’s not a good look.

But anyway, the conclusion to this morning’s confessional is this: I’ve realized / remembered that the trick to surviving bad times is to focus on and preserve the good. Because the good remains and is always there. You’ve just got to keep seeing it. Karen, the kids, our home, our friends, etc...

But not the cold callers.

Never the cold callers.

Another Slice Anyone?

In a fatigue-induced kitchen-based accident last night yours truly very nearly sliced off the top of his middle finger with a pair of scissors.

I say “very nearly” with a degree of exaggeration.

It’s not like I sliced down to the bone or spray painted the ceiling with a 30ft blood geyser.

But it was messy. And rather stupid.

How did I do it?

Well, I was doing my bit for recycling and was attempting to deconstruct a large cardboard box. As anybody knows a few swipes with the blade of a pair of scissors is great for parting glued or sellotaped edges.

However, not so great when you get your finger caught between the two blades one of which then jams in the cardboard and, the laws of physics being what they are, pulls its companion towards it.

Remarkably there was and still is no pain.

Just a slight numbness but this could be down to the tightness of the plaster expertly administered by my wife as I held my newly grooved digit over the washing up bowl.

Karen thinks there is the possibility that I have severed a nerve (possibly hers) but I fear this sounds far too glamorous to be true.

It’s just a cut.

Received in the battle to save our dying planet.

I’m a bloody hero, me.

Cough Drop

I’m having a weird day today, probably aided and abetted by the fact I had a crap night’s sleep last night...

Baby Tom was fine, I can’t blame him at all – the sleep training has really paid off and any night time disturbance now tends to be very minimal. Instead, despite having eyes as heavy as John Prescott’s sick bag, I just lay awake into the small hours, wearing myself out with my many fruitless attempts to drop off.

The knock-on effect today is that I feel out of kilter with the rest of the world and totally benumbed. I feel like a cheap pair of 3D glasses – things aren’t quite lining up properly but I can still tell what they’re supposed to be.

If I was at home I could cope with that quite well. But I’m not. I’m at work and am required to be “on the ball” and capable.

None of which is actually in my job description but I feel too drippy to point that out.

So I’ve had a painful morning dealing with complaints of sexual harassment levelled against our cleaner (sorry, Hygiene Technician), meeting a lighting rep who has totally exhausted my fake interest in light bulbs, dichroics and barn-door shutters, running around trying to catch up on the paperwork that has been flapping around my desk since my day off on Friday and I have just shambled through the most bizarre office conversation ever which started off on the subject of new local authority gumf warning us about the dangers of the “employee terrorist” (the office bully by any other name), leapt onto the John Prescott bulimia bandwagon about halfway through and then finished off on the delightful subject of condensed milk sandwiches as eaten by Lenny Henry on Tiswas back in the early eighties.

My brain feels warped.

I feel like I’ve just coughed it out of my mouth like a dropped bollock in a fashion rather reminiscent of the Ood on Doctor Who on Saturday.

None of which bodes well for the afternoon...

Of Doorbells And Telephones

I’m sure that my irascibility this week has been caused by lack of sleep pure and simple but it’s curious to note that it has had some positive effects.

I’ve noticed that during any R&R time that I’ve managed to claw to myself over the last few days I’ve been more reluctant than usual to answer the doorbell or the telephone.

In fact “reluctant” is an understatement.

I’ve just refused outright to do it. And it’s felt absolutely great.

Not that I’m shutting out friends or neighbours you understand – I’m 99.9% positive that most of these would be intruders were cold callers, charity workers and salesmen. You can always tell. Usually I at least open the door and give them a polite no thanks but this week I’ve just ignored them completely – and taken great delight in the fact that the TV and any ambient household conversations were all perfectly audible.

On the occasion that the telephone has rung and I haven’t recognized the number I haven’t answered it. Sorry. Too bad. Not interested. Even if you are Keeley Hawes begging me for a pint, a curry and a tongue sarnie.

It feels wonderful to be free of the slavery to the ring tone.

I’ll communicate when I’m ready to, thanks.

And when I want new windows I’ll do my own research and make my own decision in my own free time.

Until then the drawbridge is pulled up and there are sharks in the moat. Attempt to cross at your peril.

Blurgh

5 hours sleep.

5 hours sleep.

And possibly that will be considered a good night at some not too distant point in the future.

Yes Tom’s sleep training has begun in earnest. He’s well recovered from his recent bout of gastro-nastiness and so Karen and I have decided that it’s high time we stopped pegging our eyes open with matchsticks and started getting a decent night’s sleep. We can’t go on as we are – lumbering about like one legged dinosaurs with absinthe hangovers. We’re lurching from one illness to the next due to the fact our batteries are not so much run down as slumped into a state of negative energy.

We need to sleep.

Enough’s enough.

And at nearly 6 months Tom is old enough now to go through the night. He just needs to be persuaded.

Sadly PowerPoint presentations leave him cold at the moment so all we can offer him is cold turkey. Last night he woke just after 11.00 – just as Karen and I were dropping off to sleep in fact – and then proceeded to howl and kick his cot like a miniature Hulk for a good 2 hours until exhaustion finally transported him to the state of beatific sleep.

No food is bad! Hulk smash! Oh alright then I’ll go to sleep. Zzzz...

He then slept through until 6.45am – a minor miracle in our house and then proceeded to chow down on his breakfast bottle like a good ‘un with not even a frown let alone a grudge. Ah bless him. So forgiving.

Karen and I estimate (possibly over optimistically) that it should take 2 weeks at the most to train him to sleep through the night. 2 weeks of sitting head heavy in the small hours of the night listening to our little marvel pitch his will against our own. 2 weeks of thinking that it might actually be worth our while booking a hotel room for the night or even flashing a police man just for a quiet night in the cells just to get some much needed sleep.

If I’m desperate I suppose I could always tie several rolls of plastecine to my waist and get myself held under the prevention of terrorism act. 28 days of howl free sleep sounds mighty fine to me. I could even cope with the plastic bag over my head and the greasy truncheon poked about my nether regions...

I’ll do whatever you want Mr Hunt, just let me sleep...!

Slight Return

Ah the multifarious joys of being back at work.

Actually it’s not too bad. Although I feel as wet as a wet rag left in a flooded mire of wet rot it’s almost pleasant to be back in the “outside world” of work and professional labour.

After Tom’s illness last week I really felt for a while that nothing else existed except dirty nappies, crying, sleeplessness and an all pervading sense of worry and dread. It was really quite depressing and for all work can give me the glums at the best of times, it is a glumness of a much different calibre. Lighter in a way. Cosmetic. You can keep it at a distance. When your children are ill it is horribly up-close-and-personal and there is absolutely no escape from it.

Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t much rather be at home right now. It was very hard saying goodbye to Karen and the kids this morning. We’re close anyway but nothing bonds you even tighter than adversity. It feels very strange not to have Karen around or to be feeding Tom. Or changing the odd fulsome nappy.

Instead I’m back to dealing with cack of a different sort. The usual complaints... Building issues. Plumbing issues. Electrical issues. All stuff that doesn’t so much as float my boat as blow it clean out of the water and then sink it with a massive broadside. Mr Hornblower your cabin awaits...

As for Tom. He’s much better. Not quite 100% but getting there. We actually had a diarrhoea free day yesterday and he’s begun to put on weight again. The only remaining vestige of the illness is a slight return of the colic about an hour after he goes to sleep at night. Luckily Karen’s got the knack for sorting that out but it’s not nice watching him cry and squirm with pain.

The only real blot on the horizon is Tom’s appointment at the doctor’s tomorrow. He’s booked in to have his second inoculation. Apparently it’s more common for babies to react to the second one so I daresay he’ll be feeling rough for another day or two afterwards. Poor kid. It seems to be one thing after another at the moment. It hardly seems fair.

But on a much brighter note... Tom has managed to make a very important and no doubt rather fun discovery over the weekend. He’s located his own toes.

I can only describe his delight as indescribable...

Ne’er Be Well

I had to accompany the council’s Health & Safety Officer on a Health & Safety Inspection of the building yesterday.

It’s one of the many joys of my job.

2 whole hours of looking for trip hazards, checking for correct fire safety signage, electrical service conformity to various regulatory bodies, recommended lighting levels and ergonomic workstation risk assessments... oh bliss.

As you can imagine, I could barely contain myself.

Why is it that all H&S officers are not so much devoid of a sense of humour but lumbered with one so socially inept that they refuse to laugh at anybody else’s jokes while making determined efforts to constantly crack their own?

And why is it that I feel obliged to play along with it?

Anyway, I had to give up faking my laughter about half way round. The cold / virus / bug thing that has plagued me for the last 5 weeks has now plummeted down to my chest and is forcing me to cough and hack up my lungs like an asthmatic coal miner. There was so much sputum flying around the H&S guy ended up looking like Dan Aykroyd from Ghostbusters.

However, inspection-wise we did ok. The guy had to find something to pick us up on – naturally – but it was all minor stuff; easily sorted. Generally though we passed muster.

Good-oh.

I on the hand, handkerchief pressed to my mouth like a consumptive, was condemned as a H&S hazard. If I don’t get better soon I just might find myself Risk Assessed out of a job.

Hmm. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Ketchup

This is going to be a very messy post I’m afraid.

I seem to have been all over the place of late, constantly trying to catch up on my life and not at all succeeding. I owe far too many people emails. I have little projects around the house which I’m no nearer to completing than I was over the Christmas break. My novel, although not at all falling by the wayside, is languishing slightly under the cold shoulder of relative neglect... I’m still plugging away at it but my progress has been slow over the last few weeks. I just haven’t been able to spend enough time getting back into it after the New Year hiatus. Not that it’s doing too badly: 102,100 words and counting... just counting extremely slowly.

I can’t deny it; my energy and inspiration levels have dropped significantly since the New Year.

I’m sure it’s just a seasonal thing but I do find under achievement very frustrating... even though the old plate is actually pretty full at the moment. Karen’s mum is still in hospital though Karen hasn’t visited her for a week or two due to illness – she and Tom and myself have all been afflicted with the post-Christmas lurgy that’s been doing the rounds. Plus Tom is having periodic bouts of teething and is currently recovering from the mother of all nappy rashes. None of which is conducive to sticking a baby into a car seat for 4 hours to drive up and down the country to visit someone who doesn’t even appreciate it.

Sorry. I was going to give the anger thing a rest.

University continues well though, even there, I can tell that I’m slowly reaching the end of my tether. Another 12 months and it’ll all be over and I’ll be indescribably glad. The constant outlay of money and energy is wearing me thin. Doing a part-time degree has been great in many respects – I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise – but 10 years slogging back and forth is way, way too much. I’m happy to commit to long-hauls but even I have a limit.

The web site business also continues apace. A constant background hum of extra work and toil sloshed onto my plate. It’s time consuming, tiring and frequently tedious but it does bring in much needed extra money. And God knows I need it – I’ve got Karen’s birthday fast approaching this month plus Valentine’s Day on top. My budget is as shot as a suicide bomber in Dimona. Sorry. Bad taste. But topical. And really I’m finding that difficult at the moment.

And TV at the moment – usually my hardy standby in terms of blog-worthy material – is ineffably flat. Sure there’s Torchwood and there’s Lark Rise To Cranford. And Ashes To Ashes starts this week... but it’s not impinging on me like it used to. I have no real enthusiasm for new stuff at the moment and it’s frightening. About the only thing that’s excited Karen and me with regards the telly is working out how to use the Catch Up TV feature on our Virgin box. But this just means we’re watching “old” stuff out of sync with the rest of the country. Lost in our own private TV schedule.

All in all I feel like some kind of weird psychological hibernation process is occurring in my brain. Like I’m not fully engaging with the world around me. Like I’m a record being played at the wrong speed. Mind you as long as it’s not Whitesnake I really shouldn’t complain too much.

Mainly though I’m just annoyed with myself. Annoyed because on the whole I have very little to complain about so why am I so full of moans? Other people are having a much rougher time. I’m just feeling a bit blurgh. And that hardly makes for a decent blog post.

Dropping The Baby

Not a nice experience over the weekend: 5am Saturday morning and so tired that one handle of Tom’s Moses basket slipped completely out of my hand before I could stop it...

The result was that Tom was ejected to the floor in a manner that he really didn’t like at all and Karen and I had our hearts in our mouths for a good hour afterwards. Thankfully we were very lucky. We tend to carry the basket low to the floor anyway so as it was Tom didn’t suffer any kind of drop – he basically was just rolled sideways out of the basket and onto his back on the carpet.

He certainly cried about it but it was mostly shock and surprise and was soon smiling, cooing and feeding again as normal.

I, however, felt awful – really shitty – and just had to hold Tom close to me for a while to make sure he was ok, followed by Karen doing the same. Instinctive reaction I guess.

We both know that such accidents are actually quite commonplace – all of my friends with babies have experienced such incidents at one time or another – but it’s unpalatable when it happens to you.

The only good thing about it is that it’s made us be extra careful when manoeuvring Tom around in his basket since then... especially in the small hours of the morning.

On a lighter note Tom is displaying a definite sense of humour – loads of laughs and bubbly giggles – and a definite interest in the world around him. He also likes having his face stroked.

Just like his old man!

Thursday’s Weather

I’ve had the glums for last few days – a combination of work dross, lack of sleep, a bad back and the interminably grey skies that have sat over the entire country like a giant pie crust.

What kind of filling are we, I wonder? Steak and kidney? Chicken and mushroom? Beef and onion?

I have no idea and as you can imagine pondering such questions has done little to improve my mood.

However, I can’t deny that there is something comforting about the featureless grey skies that have lidded my world for the last three days. Maybe I’m only saying that because I’m English and we English are secretly proud when our weather proves to be even more mundane and dreary than our European cousins think it.

For some reason it takes me back to my junior school days... huddling in the playground wearing a home knitted bobble hat and those annoying mittens tied together by a giant piece of string, watching the world go by over the other side of the school fence, thinking how lucky all the grown ups were to be able to go about their lives without having to be stuck at school all day...

I seem to recall that for a short period in 1980 there was a huge thunderstorm nearly every Thursday afternoon. Forked lightning and everything. It sticks in my mind only because the headmaster at the time – the evil Mr Enoch – informed us that Thursday was named after Thor, the Norse god of Thunder (hence Thor’s Day) and so the thunderstorms were all rather apt.

Sigh. I’m so glad I came out of school with something embedded in my skull (other than a thrown chalk rubber).

And now I sit at work, watching the world go by outside my window and think how lucky all the kids are to be attending school rather than sitting here behind my desk grubbing at interminable paperwork and trying to diffuse the latest plumbing disaster to hit the public toilets...

Is that amused hammering I can hear in the distance...?

On The Buses

Fame hungry swine that I am, I have this week managed to get my name inserted into the hallowed pages of the Leamington Courier yet again. Lord knows why they don’t ask me to write the entire ruddy paper for them. Hmm. Probably because I’d demand too much money...

Anyway, the background (for those of you that are interested) is that the local bus company, Stagecoach, have launched a brand spanking new bus service this week. All posh leather seats, fleur-de-lys décor and gold trim. And hardly any space for parents with prams or pushchairs – a subject, as you know, which is rather close to my heart at the moment.

The end result was that Karen, Ben and Tom were refused entry to three buses on the trot one afternoon this week because the one and only space on each bus (which is technically set aside for wheelchair users rather than prams) was already occupied by a mum with a pushchair. There was nowhere for Tom’s pram to go so it was a case of “sorry luv, you’ll just have to wait for next one...” By the time they eventually got home they were all tired, freezing cold and very very upset. A 20 minute journey had taken the best part of an hour.

Not good enough! What’s the use of Italian leather seats a-plenty if you’re not allowed onto the bus to use the damn things? Right, thought I: no-one treats my wife and kids like that...

And so you can read the gory details below. The letter was sent to The Courier and to Stagecoach themselves:

Re: Your new Goldline Bus service

Whilst I am very impressed with the aesthetics of your new Goldline bus service as unveiled this week – the Italian leather seats, the plush navy and gold interiors – there has been a huge oversight on the part of the bus designers.

If you are a young mum with baby in a pushchair or a pram your chances of boarding a Goldline bus are severely diminished because of the lack of provision for such devices within the bus itself.

My wife has been refused entry to your Goldline buses on three consecutive days this week because the “space for wheelchairs” was already occupied by a traveller with a pram. On the second day that this happened she was refused entry to three buses in a row. This meant my wife – recovering from a caesarean, our 6 year old boy and our 4 week old baby were left waiting in the freezing cold for over 40 minutes despite three buses having called in at the bus stop during this period. By the time they were allowed to board a bus night had fallen and the baby was due a feed. Both he, my boy and my wife were understandably very distressed.

To be fair I’d like to state that I have no complaint against the bus drivers at all. They were all sympathetic but unable to do anything about the situation. In fact one commented that “this had been happening all day”.

Having used the G1 service myself I couldn’t help but notice that the only space for pushchairs is actually designated as being for wheelchair users only. It seems no provision has been made for mums with young children and babies at all. I rang your Leamington office this morning and asked what would happen if someone with a pram was occupying the space when a wheelchair user wished to board the bus. Reassuringly I was told that Stagecoach would not ask ticket holders to leave a bus once they had paid for a place and the wheelchair user would have to wait for the next available bus as my wife had done.

In this age of anti disability discrimination I can’t see such a response being sanguinely accepted by any wheelchair user. And given the great pains your bus designers have gone to in order to make buses more accessible to the disabled such a notion rather contradicts all your efforts to make buses accessible for all.

Are wheelchair users and parents with newborns to fight it out at the bus stops with the victor claiming the one and only bus space allocated to them? This is shoddy, second class treatment of both parents and the physically disabled. It just isn’t good enough.

I appreciate that a solution might be difficult to achieve but nevertheless something needs to be done. There are clearly more mums with young children in the Leamington and Warwick area than there are G1 buses... this problem is clearly not going to go away and needs to be addressed ASAP.

Yours sincerely...

In the words of Blakey from On The Buses: I ‘ate you, Stagecoach, I ‘ate you! Aw-haw-haw-haaaw!

No Bean Monday

Do you ever have one of those days when nothing major goes wrong, nothing especially disastrous occurs but nevertheless the day is a mega crap one?

I had one yesterday.

I didn’t get half an hour to myself at work – there was always someone around wanting something or needing my attention. Nothing particularly difficult or traumatic but I just didn’t need or want any of it.

I also found it difficult to be creative despite feeling in a creative mood. It took me nearly 90 minutes to “get into” my novel and then I only produced a measly 600 words. OK. It’s not going to be the end the world but it’s frustrating.

And then there was lunchtime.

Lunchtime summed up the entire day. I decided to treat myself by going to Mr Spud, the local purveyor of that fine English traditional meal, the hot potato. A nice hot spud with a chilli con carne filling was just what I needed to cheer me up and break the malaise of misery that had laid its broad hands upon my shoulders.

Only when I get to be served I get the dregs from the chilli pot. Instead of starting a new pot the seller merely tipped up the sparse remains of the old and slopped it all over my spud. The result was I was the only spud purchaser that day whose chilli contained not one single kidney bean.

And I love kidney beans. For me they are the highlights of a chilli.

Some days, it seems, it’s plainly not worth the effort of getting out of bed...

Colic

I’m pleased to report that baby Tom continues to thrive – his veritable life of Riley only spoilt by the advent of colic whose wearing effects we are all resigned to enduring for the next 3 months or so. After this point the health visitor assures us that the colic should disappear and we might be lucky enough to have a small period of peace and baby prosperity before the teething cycle begins...

Oh joy.

To be fair – aside from the one hugely troublesome feed when the colic appears to be at its worst (which seems to hit Tom in the early evening on a daily basis) – the lad is doing well. He’s a real guzzler and is hitting his ideal birth weight target regularly. 9lb something when he was last weighed on Tuesday. I know I should have the exact amount indelibly pressed into the soft putty of my mind but I’m a bloke and we don’t record such things in this way... if at all.

Karen and I are shattered. Whoever said looking after a baby was bloody hard work was under-exaggerating. Having had the day off on Monday to give Karen a break I’m not sure which is more tiring: staying at home looking after Tom all day or going to work and then coming home to help out with the evening feeds.

I confess I’m a wuss but am I enjoying it? Weirdly – yes. Even during the darkest hours of baby-care fatigue the thought is always in my mind to make the most of it as Tom is growing so quickly that all this will soon be mere memory. He’s gone from being almost lost in the bottom of his Moses basket to nearly three-quarters filling it already.

He’s getting quite chunky which is very satisfying to see. A “swollen angel”, in fact, to quote David Sylvian...

With a hunger cry that can drown out any other earthly noise in a 12 mile radius.

Town Cryer or opera singer may both be options for him later in life...

Me, I’m looking into somnambulism...

Paternity

It’s hard to believe that I am now three quarters of the way through my paternity leave. The thought of returning to work on Monday is something of a sour one to say the least. It’s been nice to cast of the weights of roof leaks, toilet blockages and council demands and instead concentrate on leaks, blockages and demands of another sort.

I little imagined how enjoyable it would be to have a baby around the house. Sure it’s tiring but as Karen pointed out: you know you love them when they howl their lungs out in the middle of the night and you still think they’re adorable.

Talking of Tom: he’s feeding (and pooing well) and when the mid-wife visits today we’re hoping she’ll confirm what we already suspect – that he’s exceeded his birth weight. He’s certainly looking a very healthy little chappie. Long may it continue. He’s got a really cute smile as well though it’s a bit disappointing to realize that it’s only wind at this stage. But hey – maybe that explains the similar reaction I get from most people?

The last two weeks have been a pleasant blur. It’s felt like Christmas in an odd kind of way. With Ben on half term we’re all home and it’s been really great to spend so much time together as a family. Somehow we’ve settled down to a very relaxed, easy going routine where nothing much seems to happen and yet the days seem stretched and full.

Little of import has occurred and really that’s the greatest pleasure in itself.

In fact the only really exciting thing that has occurred in the last few days was the appearance of half a mouse in the garden. I kid you not. I woke up yesterday and spotted the hindquarters of a mouse lying beneath one of the garden chairs. Yuck. Not an appetizing thought when one is preparing breakfast. Butty as I christened him was gone when I got up this morning, however, so I can only assume that some enterprising moggie snaffled the rest of him in the night.

Let’s face it; he wasn’t going to attempt much of an escape...

So this is the world that Tom has found himself born into. A world of mysterious half mice and father’s who will return to work with a heavy heart.

I wish I could think of something deep and meaningful to say at this point but to be honest I’m far too content to ponder such things…

Result!

Rough

Apologies for the delay in posting - for some reason Blogger has been experiencing one or two technical problems and as a result I've been unable to publish sweet FA since the weekend.

Below is the post that I've been trying to publish since Monday morning...

It’s been something of a rough few days.

Karen and I had to head over to the hospital Sunday evening as baby Tom was unusually quiet – enough to get us both quite worried. As soon as we arrived Karen was wired up to a scanning machine for 20 minutes and I’m relieved to say that all proved to be well. Not only that but there are early indications that Tom might try and pre-empt the date set for his Caesarean (9th October)...

We no sooner arrived back home than I found a telephone message from my mother reporting that my granddad had suffered a fall – a result of a high fever and an ulcerated leg – and had been admitted into the very hospital that Karen and I had just come back from! He had a comfortable night but unfortunately took a turn slightly for the worst yesterday. He's reacted against the anti-biotics they've pumped him full of and is now suffering from diarrhoea and an infection.

There was utterly no communication from Mr CM over the entire weekend. To tell you the truth it was no more than I expected and I’d had an email to him drafted up since Saturday morning informing him of my intention to take him to the Small Claims Court if I didn’t receive full payment in 7 days. I was then going to add the court costs onto the amount owing...

As it was, I received a telephone call from him yesterday at the 11th hour - a much more polite and "hey buddy" type of call than Friday's frosty dialogue - and he appeared to completely capitulate. He's asked me to divide the invoice into two separate ones and send a copy of one to himself and the other to his business partner (they're splitting the cost 50/50) and they'll see that I'm paid within the next 7 days.

Hmm. I'm not getting my hopes up too much but my instincts are that my strong stance on Friday may have moved the mountain... I'll wait and see. I've kept a copy of the draft email just in case. It may yet get an airing!

Talking of ignorant and annoying people – I never did hear anything more from the hack from the London Standard so can only assume that the piece I wrote about Nigella was either never used or was used but they couldn’t be arsed to tell me or send me a copy. Either way I’m pretty cheesed off though more disappointed with the lack of manners than the lack of publishing credit.

But as I’ve been feeling as rough as a badger’s arse for the last two days anyway I’ve consoled myself with a couple of sick days off work and have been recuperating by reading, watching TV and generally bumbling around the house in a warm and comfortable fugue… It’s actually been quite blissful.

Sleeplessness

The baby’s not even born yet and I’m suffering sleepless nights!

For well over a fortnight now I’ve been waking up around 5am and just lying there, absolutely exhausted but nevertheless wide-eyed and awake and as far from sleep as it’s possible to get. The cumulative effect is that I am now practically a zombie (though hopefully with less offensive BO) and have the ability to fudge up the most basic of physical actions. Weirdly my thought processes don’t seem to be diminished one iota but then, if you’re already at rock bottom, there is no where else left to fall.

Anyway there are number of external factors which are no doubt exacerbating this state of sleeplessness: my neighbour is a postman and leaves the house around 5.30am every morning and seems unable to do so without stomping down his stairs and slamming the door like Marsha’s enigmatic daughter from Spaced. I’m not yet in a position to confirm or deny that he wears the same stripy stockings as well. My boy is also waking up pre-5.30am and as quiet as he tries to be there’s a vast difference between a 6 year old’s idea of quiet and quiet per se. Anyone with kids will know what I mean.

But in all honesty I think I’m just waking up early due to internal factors. When Karen and I lost the baby last year the experience was pretty horrific and although it turned out that Karen was perfectly safe I nevertheless went through the classic “pacing of the hospital corridors at 4.0am” while Karen was carted off to the operating theatre and for 90 minutes I had no idea what the hell was going on. Since then my love of hospitals and all things medical – always pretty ropey at the best of times – has waned rather drastically to the point I get hives at the mere thought of us having to undergo yet another hospital experience.

And of course, now that the date for the caesarean has been set the clock is ticking and so are my facial muscles.

I know, I know, it’ll all be fine.

But I worry.

Odds Bodkins

Forgive the lack of cohesion on this post today but it amply reflects how my mind is not working. Mid-week fatigue. Ah. Dontcha just love it.

So to catch up and round down:

The pregnancy continues well in itself though it’s triggering Karen’s latent IBS. This means she’s in pain when she eats, in pain if she doesn’t and can’t ever guarantee a good night’s sleep... hence she’s permanently exhausted. Thankfully her bosses have agreed to let her reduce her hours: she no longer has to work Friday’s. This has made the working week a lot more manageable for her.

The novel continues apace: I shall post another excerpt soon. I’m sure you can all contain yourselves in the meantime.

And lastly, I was sent a link to the Simpson’s movie site (http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html). It’s great – you can make your own Simpson’s cartoon character/avatar. Mine is above. Apart from a few minor discrepancies it looks a lot like me. On a bad day. Or even a good one. He’ll be the one miserably reading a poetry book and sipping a double whisky at the back of Moe’s Bar.

Hey dudes, eat my short.

Tatered

After an extremely busy weekend I feel absolutely done-in. So apologies to anyone expecting a post sparkling with my usual wit and bonhomie. At the moment my eyes are gummed up with fatigue and my brain powered down with the same.

Not a pretty sight. But then I’m not much cop on a good day either.

An eventful day off on Friday saw Karen and I lunching together at a lovely Thai restaurant in Stratford, watching our boy perform in his school assembly and then hotfooting it to the cinema to see Spiderman 3... which I actually enjoyed. I used to get the Spiderman comic as a kid so Spidey always has appeal – Kirsten Dunst is just an added bonus. Mind you I wasn’t sure about her “jazz club singing” in this particular outing. Still easy on the eye often means deaf to the ear...

Saturday was taken over by a phenomenal bout of pregnancy related toothache that afflicted Karen from the outset. Cue various phone calls to NHS Direct, cue endless waiting for unsympathetic doctors to call back and refer us on somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else that referred us back to the original number. It was like some kind of tortuous dance. Once we’d jumped through enough hoops we were finally allowed to see a doctor at the hospital (by which time Karen was screaming in agony) to get some industrial strength painkillers which could dull the pain and not harm the baby.

God I love the NHS.

Sunday saw us trying to catch up on all we’d missed on Saturday – house chores, gardening chores, shopping chores and in between I did some work on a web site I’ve been commissioned to build for a local chauffeur company. Once it’s completed I will no doubt post a link to it on this ‘ere blog.

And now here I am at work on Monday wondering where the hell the weekend went.

Work is great fun today. All the bad weather last week resulted in leaks bursting forth everywhere and much warping of wood. Guess who’s having to spearhead the clean up / repair operation?

Yep.

I’m in me galoshes once again.

It’s non stop glamour, my life...

Fatty Gay

No. Not a reference to Johnny Vegas suddenly announcing a highly unlikely swing to the homo side of the street but instead a play on the French word for fatigue...

Yes, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends so much over the last few days that it now resembles Darth Maul’s light sabre. Only without all the balletic wrist-twirling, jump-kicking and grimacing.

Well actually there’s been lots of grimacing. My face has been pressed to the grindstone so much that if I were a CB radio ham my handle would undoubtedly be The Grindstone Cowboy...

Swamped by crap in my day job, my burgeoning web design business has also been hotting up so much that I’ve effectively been working 12 hour days for most of this week. I’m amazed at how dour “all work and no play” makes me. Christmas seems another world away rather than another week away.

Still things should slack off by the weekend and I can try at last to regain my Christmas spirit and joi de vivre.

After all there’s no point being a humbug at Christmas time if you haven’t got the energy to enjoy it.