Snow Day

Why, in the UK, does the snow take us by surprise every year?

We act like we have never seen the stuff before.

Ohmygod! Snow! On the ground. On the roads. Everywhere! White stuff! I can’t possibly travel in that. Our modern technology just cannot cope with it! We’re just not built to function in snow! Stop the country! Back to the caves!

A hundred years of industrial revolution grinds to a halt in the time it takes for some middle class office worker to pull back the curtains, see an inch of snow on his people carrier and decide that it is simply too difficult to attempt any kind of journey into work.

Scott of the Antarctic would throw his frozen shite at us in disgust. I bet Sir Ranulph Fiennes is out on his front lawn right now sunbathing and eating a Cornetto.

What utter wussies we are.

The entire country shuts up shop. It’s ridiculous. My wife has had to take an unpaid day off work today because all the bloody schools are closed.

There’s barely an inch of snow on the ground here in the Midlands! It’s nothing. Nothing at all. When I was a kid I can remember weeks and weeks of heavy snow in ‘81/’82 and having to walk to school in it every day. The staff all turned up for work. And so did most of the kids. The only time the school ever gave us a day off was when the boilers broke.

Nowadays everybody leaps onto the smallest snowflake as an excuse to take a day off. To have an impromptu holiday. No wonder this country is the poor old man of Europe. Where’s our hardy British spirit gone? Over the last few decades it’s been replaced with a whiny, wheedling, shirking tendency to try and wriggle out of any onerous responsibility or task that requires even the tiniest bit of hard work. Nowadays I suspect schools and businesses close merely to avoid the possibility of litigation should someone slip and smash their buttock on a kerbstone while trying to gain access to their premises.

It’s cowardly, lazy and a little bit tawdry.

The snow up North has been far worse and I bet there’s a fair few people there who will still struggle into work nonetheless.

From the Midlands down to the South though (maybe I’m wrong) the snowfall hasn’t been nearly as bad. It should be business as normal with the added novelty of some beautiful winter views to gawp at from our office windows.

Instead most people are at home watching telly or building snowmen in the garden.

I’m not. I’m at work.

Harrumph.

Pass me another turd, Scott old man, I’ve got the ballista working properly now.

Water

The foyer in the building where I work has, as its centrepiece, a water feature. A huge brown stone monolith of odd angles and aesthetically engineered drops that guarantee a playful background plash of water whenever a visitor drops in to spend a week’s wages on a cup of tea in the café.

Or at least is does when the bloody thing is working.

Unfortunately it hasn’t worked for about a year. It was turned off last winter due to suspicions of “a small leak”.

I guess this is an occupational hazard for a water feature. That and people lobbing pound coins down the plughole or going for a number 2 down the chute.

For various reasons it wasn’t looked into. It got overlooked. The water feature became a dusty dry stone sculpture that only dreamt of the cool flow of legionella rich water gently caressing its chiselled corners.

Until this week. The idea of restoring water to the “desert” feature suddenly became “of the moment”. It became my task for the week. My pre-Christmas mission.

Experts were called in and assembled. Opinions were voiced. An agreement was reached. Existence of the leak needed to be empirically proven or disproven one way of the other.

So an experiment was launched. The water was switched back on. The algae on the stone was moistened with H20 once more.

Like all water features, ours works by recycling the same water round and round. The continual movement prevents stagnation and bacterial build-up. A simple ball-cock mechanism adds fresh mains water whenever necessary to compensate water lost by evaporation or hoodies taking a rare bath. Yesterday, once the system was up and running, we disabled the ball-cock. With no fresh water topping up the system we’d soon be able to see if we were losing any.

We started at 3pm and my brief was to switch the thing off at 5pm when I went home and then back on again tomorrow morning at 9.

At the most we were expecting maybe an inch of water to disappear.

Instead, at 5pm I was gobsmacked to discover that not only was the water feature dry but the entire reservoir tank was also empty. The pump was gamely sucking up hot air.

Where had all that water gone? Several gallons of it had vanished down into the guts of the building in the space of 2 hours without any evidence of it ever having been there.

We have a mystery on our hands.

Further investigations will take place today. I daresay some dull, prosaic explanation will be found. Personally I’d like to imagine that the water has escaped into another dimension, possibly feeding a waterfall in Narnia or topping up a jacuzzi for a couple of half naked elf maidens.

Or perhaps, like a recent episode of Doctor Who, the water has taken on a sinister life of its own and is, even as I write, seeking out some poor unwitting human host whose body can be possessed and turned to some dastardly scheme of world domination. Indeed, it may explain the congregation of strange gentlemen who daily hang around the front of my work building, foaming at the nose with various sized cans of Special Brew growing out of their bottom lips and who have an undissuadable penchant for defecating up the pilasters.

It’s something in the water, I’m telling you...

The Mystical Toilet

When you're a kid, toilets are magical, mythical, mystical contraptions.

Aside from the boyhood / manhood pleasure of blasting your urine around the rim like you're strafing an invisible enemy army, there is the magic of the disappearing water.

You pull / push the flusher and all that water shoots down and disappears... where?

As an adult, of course, the toilet is downgraded to merely a mechanical appliance that is (quite literally) always at your unthinking convenience but as a kid... they're akin to dragons and unicorns. Eerie, intriguing, frightening beasts of indeterminate morality.

My eldest boy, Ben, was always a little scared of the toilet and overcoming that fear was a major factor in getting him properly toilet trained... making that big step from carelessly filling his nappy to anticipating the demands of his bladder and making a pre-emptive strike at the portal of the big white telephone. He got a toy car every time he successfully made it to the toilet. Even now those cars are referred to as "poo cars". But his initial fear is understandable. That wide open mouth... The chasm down to deep waters... The porcelain abyss with it's strange smell even when the water is clean... It's a big thing to park your bum over it for the first time and relax enough to let nature take its course.

That fear is also greatly increased when the toilet has eaten one of your toys.

Ben once accidentally dropped a favourite toy down the loo when he flushed it. Of course it went the way of all small solid things trapped beneath the flush cycle.

And that only added to the mystique of the toilet. It transports things elsewhere... Elsewhere via dark underground water chutes. Through the sewers, through vast underground caves... out, out, far out to sea. Or so I used to think as a kid. It's a bit disappointing to learn as an adult that everything actually ends up in some huge sediment tank at a nearby water treatment plant where all the muck is literally sucked out of it. God knows where that toy is now but it's certainly not floating around the Atlantic as Finding Nemo would have you believe.

Anyway, my youngest, Tom, is displaying early signs of having an interest in the toilet. When he has a bath (or a "splish splash splosh" as it is known in my house) he likes to have a quick peak over the rim to see what's down there. I'm hoping this bodes well for future potty training and isn't an early indication of his entire Duplo brick collection making a bid for the Pacific sometime soon.

But regardless of erroneous submersibles and unlikely submarines, it's comforting to know that his toilet rites of passage will begin soon. That he too, in time, will embrace the mystique of the toilet.

Enemy in sight. Release safety catch. Open fire...! Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta...!

Magic.

Fair Or Foul?

I got excited at work last week.

This singularly rare occurrence was caused by Kirstie Allsopp.

It seems that my employers were taking part in the new Keep Britain Tidy campaign that was about to be fired up and were asking for volunteers to take part in a special lunch time litter pick. How was Kirstie involved? Well, this new national campaign was being figure-headed by the particularly luscious Kirstie who I mistakenly thought was going to be personally throwing her lust-inducing weight behind the endeavour.

I was all prepared to wear rubber gloves and rubber boots (in fact rubber everything), give up my lunch break and get stuck in to the man made mountains of mess that regularly besmirch my home town of Leamington Spa. Not only was I prepared to invest in my own litter picker (which I’d be quite prepared to let Kirstie handle) but I was actually plotting to shovel extra detritus around the district’s footpaths and byways just so I could present my bulging sacks to Kirstie at the end of the event to show her what a tip-top litter picker-upper I really am.

I just know she’d have been impressed and would have whisked me off for a mochaccino somewhere to say a private thank you.

I had it all planned.

Sadly, once I tore my eyes from her picture and actually read the article on my work’s intranet properly it transpired that Kirstie would not be present at the actual Leamington Spa event. Instead she’d be at the official launch in London. What? Get your bleeding priorities right, Kirstie!

It seems all we’d get in L Spa was my big boss in his marigolds.

Not exactly a crowd puller. Needless to say I spurned the litter pick and moodily ate my sandwiches in the park and begrudgingly threw my crisp packet into the bin afterwards.

This is the story of my life. To not exactly brush fame as to see it smeared across someone else about 100 miles away.

Not that we don’t get to meet famous people through special events organized by my employers...

Only last month I could have taken part in an anti dog fouling campaign and met (not necessarily shaken hands with) Ricky Tomlinson who was taking a personal interest in the campaign and actually come down to Leamington Spa to throw his lust-repelling weight behind the launch.

Now I’m not knocking this campaign at all. Speaking as someone whose shoe soles seem to be permanent turd magnets I wholeheartedly approve of any endeavour to remove dog logs from our streets.

But Ricky Tomlinson? Posing next to a dog turd bin? It didn’t exactly get the juices of my enthusiasm flowing.

Kirstie, you’ve broken my heart.

P.S. Would anyone like to purchase a second hand litter picker? Unused. Clean. Grip handle squeezed only once. Going cheap.

A Fence Is The Best Defence

The Bloggertropolis security compound was strengthened and fortified against all rogue incursions of the canine variety over the weekend.

A sterling local company of fencing experts who go by the name of ID Fencing descended on the ol’ homestead early Saturday morning and disgorged enough woodery and nailery from the back of their flatbed truck to construct a fully functioning watchtower complete with machine gun posts and sniper slits.

Alas, such an item of garden furniture was beyond their remit to build and so instead they worked like Trojan’s to put up a 6ft fence that greatly diminishes the possibility of anything larger than a squirrel ever gaining access to the inner sanctum of my lawn and herbaceous borders.

I’m proud to say my backyard is now tighter than a gnat’s arse.

We’ve even seen a drop-off in the amount of cat poo that normally bullet-holes the lawn which, as far as I’m concerned, is an added bonus.

Although we’ve lost a little bit of view and the illusion of space the good definitely outweighs the bad. For the first time ever we feel safe and private in our garden. And more importantly we feel that the kids are safe. Our troublesome neighbours with their rampaging rottweiler left over a month ago but we decided to push on with the fence plans regardless. You never know who might be moving in after them – a wild cat maniac, a boxing kangaroo aficionado or even a man in a cloth cap with a penchant for cock fighting. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

As it happens the fence was a wise move.

The fencing boys – being local lads – were able to inform us that the garden that abuts onto the bottom of ours belongs to a “half way house” of indeterminate variety.

Marvellous. And I thought we lived in a nice area. Hyacinth Bucket as opposed to Onslow and Rose.

Seems I was wrong.

Seems we have the Gallagher’s living at the bottom of the garden. Or to be exact, rejects from the Jeremy Kyle show. During bouts of weekend gardening Karen has been able to eavesdrop on drunken protestations of love and drunken death threats should one or other of the rehabilitatees veer from the path of physical faithfulness and exclusive intimacy. Not so much the course of true love as the coarse...

Anyway, Mr and Mrs Ex-Jailbird own a ruddy great pit-bull.

*Sigh*

I’m wondering if there is still time to electrify the fence and build that watchtower...

Twitching The Nets

There’s been a double departure from out street this week.

Two sets of neighbours have vanished in the night leaving an assortment of detritus in their wake (an old mattress, a swivel chair and an assortment of mildewed shelving).

The first was the Polish family that lived in the counterpart to our semi and used to impinge upon our back garden privacy by staging volcanic barbecues every weekend and walk around in bollock revealing shorts whenever there was the slightest hint of sunshine.

I shall miss their loud arguments in Polish – the wife was particularly vocal – and their pigeon English as they tried to make small talk with us with the small change of their English vocab. But what I won’t miss is the door slamming, the stomping up the stairs, the late night hoovering or their eldest son who played the guitar so loud late one night that I was forced to go round and knock on his front door.

I didn’t get very far. His parents were out and with typical teenage nerve he tried to tell me that he didn’t even own a guitar and that the music was coming from a house about 20 yards away on the other side of the street... totally overlooking the fact that while he was stood at the door talking to me Mr Hendrix had mysteriously downed tools mid-lick. I wasn’t happy: after being on this planet for nearly 40 years, I’ve pretty much worked out how my hearing works and can divine where sounds are coming from and know when someone is trying to take the proverbial.

The damned temerity! I came away wishing I’d clipped him around the ear but the guitar playing didn’t start up again so I guess it was a victory of sorts. Young whippersnapper!

The other departure is even more welcome. The people whose Rottweiler has terrorized half the street for the last 2 years have finally gone taking with them Cujo (or whatever the dog’s name is), sundry ill fed rabbits and a particularly pernicious black and white cat that couldn’t deem a day done until it had shat on our lawn.

Our youngest, Tom, has (alas) inherited his father’s ability to wonder across an open field and step straight into the only instance of animal excrement for miles around and then carry it into the house in a compact little pat on the heel of his shoes. Suffice it to say, I shall not miss the cat at all.

The biggest relief though is the removal of the dog. Some of you will be aware of the worry and trouble that it has caused us and other neighbours by frequently escaping from its own garden and rampaging through ours and everybody else’s.

I am an animal lover but this dog was terrifying. Huge, bad tempered and slightly unhinged. Not what you want snarling around when you have young children who love nothing better than pottering about outside.

We last saw the dog last week. Again on the loose. Eyes wide with agitation. Bounding up and down the street and biting chunks out of the bumpers of passing vehicles.

The Poles (at a push) we shall miss. But as for the doggers...

Good riddance to ‘em.

The Mechanics Of Profanity

I perform a daily external patrol around my place of work pretty much as soon as I arrive on site each morning, armed not with a telescopic baton, pepper spray or a taser but with a bin bag and the keys to the bin store,

You see, I’m not on the lookout for armed blaggers or tooled up psychopaths but for litter louts and damned defacers. Or rather, I’m on the lookout for their multifarious droppings.

This is just one of the many uplifting and status elevating jobs that I perform regularly for my employers.

On a good morning my rounds will net nothing more than a couple of empty cans of Special Brew and an empty cigarette packet (usually Marlboro). Though on occasion these items are augmented inextricably by the presence of a pair of ladies shoes, the cellophane wrapping from an Asda T-shirt (which will be missing – presumably on the purchaser’s / shoplifter’s back) and an odd collection of serviettes still folded up into neat little squares.

Plainly the drunks and tramps around the Leamington Spa area have standards. Not necessarily high standards but standards none the less.

On a bad morning I will encounter what is known in the trade as “a man turd”.

Now, this is not to be confused with a dog turd.

A dog turd is bad enough. I don’t need to describe one to you because you’ve all seen one / walked through one. They’re disgusting and unwelcome in the extreme but have one small positive; one saving grace. The odour of a dog turd (unless stepped into and thus reactivated) is relatively short-lived. A quick slide action with a shovel and they can quite successfully be scraped up off the ground and catapulted into nearby undergrowth without too much post-contact shovel cleaning required. If you’re really lucky the turd will already have turned quite crusty and will barely have left a mark on your spade of choice. Job done (no pun intended, etc).

None of this is ever true of a man turd.

Now, you can tell a man turd by the size and smell.

They smell bad.

And they smell bad forever.

So bad in fact that even a passing hyena would gag.

And they take a hell of a long time to go crusty. In fact they retain a Christmas cake moistness of such magnitude that they may one day be identified as reliable sources of H2O in a post atomic holocaust world.

If you’re lucky the “bricklayer” will possess a healthy digestive system and will deposit a single neat sausage that can be scraped up quite cleanly and lobbed somewhere out of sight and out of mind. If you’re unlucky, however, the owner will have the digestive system of a cat on high strength worming tablets and will leave matter that can be variously described as “a broken muffin”, “a Spanish omelette” or, worst of all, “a walnut whip”.

And such matter will defy any and every attempt at efficient shovelling. In fact using a shovel is just a big no-no. You’ll just get the offending matter spread over a wider surface area and the shovel itself will be transformed into a chemical weapon so effective it would make a muck-spreader vomit.

What is needed is an industrial strength hose and a bio-suit.

I was faced with one of these this morning.

Now, I’ve become something of a stoic when confronted with these still-warm examples of ethno-botany but a couple of niggling questions always buzz around the back of my head (like the flies) every time I encounter one.

The mechanics of producing such an offering... I mean, how exactly does someone go about it?

The pulling down (or up) of clothing and the squatting down I can just about envision (though try not to)... but... cleaning yourself up afterwards...? What happens there, eh?

Do these people come pre-prepared with toilet paper or freshly bought copies of The Big Issue? If they do this suggests something premeditated about their whole activity and therefore a sickness of the mind.

Or are such droppings evidence of people genuinely caught short... a case of the poo-train is coming and the brakes they ain’t a-working?

What happens then? Surely you don’t just pull up your kecks and walk daintily home, ignoring the uncomfortable localized heat and the feeling of greasy skid marks working themselves deeper into the gusset of your Y-fronts?

You must surely make some attempt to clean yourself up, to scrape off the worst?

But with what or on what?

Nearby foliage? The wall of a building? The pavement itself?

A sleeping tramp?

My mind boggles.

Answers on a piece of toilet paper to the usual address please...

The Shit Sandwich

The shit sandwich is a day where nothing goes right.

Actually that isn’t enough for a shit sandwich. It’s a day when everything that can go wrong does go wrong. And all the things that can go wrong delight in their wrongness at exactly the same time.

You get a deluge of wrongness.

If you’re feeling ill and have slept badly the night before that’s even better because then the shit sandwich becomes a club shit sandwich.

Extra big filling. With mayo. Ooh great. Just for me? How kind.

The club shit sandwich also has vicious peppercorns in it that lodge painfully between your teeth and gums like explosive grit. You carry the taste around with you all day. So much so that everything else you experience on that day also begins to taste like shit. It’s like the shit sandwich is spreading or... even worse... breeding.

And shit sandwich begat shit sandwich and its name was 12th January 2009...

The last thing you want to be doing when chowing down on a shit sandwich is gnashing your teeth but alas the Biblical allusions demand that this is done. So you gnash. And gnash. And it’s shit.

And it’s all yours.

Because people will share your lunch, your politics, your office stapler, your darkest secrets but nobody – nobody at all – will willingly share a shit sandwich with you. If you’re packing a shit sandwich you’re eating alone. It’s got your name all over it. Just your name. Just you.

Yes sirree. Sure looks good but if you don’t mind I’ll just stick with this here ham and lettuce... mm mm!

And you can’t blame them. You can’t blame them at all. Everybody gets a shit sandwich every now and then. It’s the way of the world. When it’s your turn to get a shit sandwich it isn’t a cup that can be passed on to someone else.

It’s bequeathed to you by life itself. You’ve just got to grit your teeth and make your way through it. Neck it down right to the last few flaky crumbs of the crust and hope that tomorrow it finds itself in someone else’s lunch box.

Because a shit sandwich isn’t like lightning. There’s no law that says it can’t strike in the same place twice...

There is after all such a thing as a double-decker shit sandwich...

*Sigh*

Pray for me, people. Pray for me.

I’m really not sure I have the stomach for it.

To Grit Or Not To Grit?

Back in the good old days when men wore cloth caps, drank real ale by the cartload and went to bed in hobnailed slippers icy roads and footpaths were rarely the source of major moral dilemmas. They were certainly not problematic enough to put you off your woodbines.

I mean the solution is simple, in’t it? Yer just sling a bit o’grit or salt down and tell people to walk proper careful like... It’s bloody winter what do you expect?

And should passersby still go arse over tit in the slippy conditions well... it’s only a laugh in’t it? That’s just the way life is. And if you end up in th’ospital wi’ a broken ankle or two we’ll drink ter yer good ‘ealth in pub later... no ‘arm done, like.

All sounds very sensible and civilized to me.

But alas, the good old days are no more and instead we find ourselves mired neck-deep in the modern age of political correctness and litigious opportunism.

You see gritting the pathways these days is a can of worms or a hot potato that few are brave enough to handle and in dear old Leam (from which I hail) such moral dilemmas cause many a frilly knicker to be entwisted.

In the modern age it seems one (and by one I mean an individual or a corporation) can be successfully sued if one decides to grit an icy pavement but a passer-by still falls over upon it and splinters a rib or three on a frozen dog poo... whereas if you do nothing at all and they fall headlong into a storm drain and break their neck they can’t touch you for a single penny. You are not responsible.

Crazy but true.

And I have it on good authority that this bizarre state of affairs is just as applicable to home gritting / salting. If you grit your pathway and your friendly neighbourhood postman cracks open his knackers in a spectacular pratfall that sees a recorded delivery parcel inserted somewhere tight and moist he can sue your ass to kingdom come. But if you leave the pathway as nature intended and he still anally ingests your brown paper wrapped package from Holland well it’s just tough titty cos he can’t touch you for a rusty farthing.

As true as I’m sitting here at the foot of our stairs.

Now, am I the only person in this country to think that such a selfish, mealy mouthed, spiritually impoverished outlook is a national disgrace? Indeed, is it a national disgrace or is such jobsworthy (mis)conduct just a local (in)delicacy confined to the ice-covered streets of Leamington Spa?

Surely as a nation we are better than this? Surely to do something is always better than doing nothing? Don’t we have a responsibility to each other as well as to ourselves? Isn’t there such a thing as a communal duty of care?

Do we really want to see Mrs Scoggins from number 73 cracking her spine in half performing an ice skating move worthy of Torvill and Dean in their heyday as she takes a walk to the local post office to buy a second class stamp?

Ladies and gentlemen, your thoughts please.

Bleurgh

Apologies for the lack of posting this week – though I’m sure you didn’t miss me – but me and the brood were all struck down by the lurgy.

Not a “cold” lurgy. That’s simple enough and to be expected at this time of year (or indeed any time of the year in the UK). I could have coped with that. No problemo.

Instead our immune systems were introduced to an unwelcome guest in the shape of a disease who I’m sure was the bizarre offspring of an unholy marriage between typhoid and dysentery.

He was a thorough little soul. I imagine him as a rather pale, round faced fellow, with metal-rimmed glasses perched daintily on the end of his nose and a penchant for wearing rubber gloves. Akin to an auditor of bodily functions, he got his feet under the table distressingly quickly and made it his business to go through every little process that related to the ingestion and the expulsion of food. His computations were constant, his calculator buttons hot and we’ve all been heavily taxed as a consequence.

To put it simply: we’ve had both ends on the go at once. We had a run on the family bank, so to speak, and the vaults are now empty.

I’m sure you get my meaning.

This is the first day I’ve felt human again.

This is the first day I’ve not been perched above the toilet or propped, face down, gazing despondently into its Loch Ness depths.

This is the first day I’ve felt in control of my body again.

The auditor has finally left the building.

But be warned, however, folks: he’s looking for lodgings elsewhere. I’m sure of it. I’d keep your account books clean if I were you…

Double entry book keeping isn’t for everyone.

Projectile

Our planned trip to the zoo yesterday didn't quite happen. Bad weather and illness swept the best laid plans of mice and men clean off the table and into the waste paper bin...

Tom started projectile vomitting during the afternoon. Quite spectacular geysers of slimey milk that coated him, Karen, me, the sofa and the rugs on the carpet... This coupled with the voluminous amount of Tom's bedding and clothes that have been regularly saturated with yellow nappy porridge over the last few days has meant that the washing machine has constantly been on the go since Saturday and the whole house smells like a nursery laundry room. Not fun.

We got an appointment to see an emergency doctor at the hospital last night to get Tom checked over. Thanfully by then the vomitting had stopped. The doctor was great but wasn't overly concerned. Thankfully all of our efforts to keep Tom hydrated have paid off - no signs of dehydration. The doctor said a couple of vomitting episodes are fine but if it becomes constant then that will be a cause for concern. Other than prescribing some Dialarite there was little else he could do. The virus needs to run its course so Tom can build up a resistance to it. It could take a week. It could take 10 days. Worse can scenario: it could take up to 3 weeks.

Karen and I are shattered. To make it worse Ben and I have also come down with dodgy stomachs this morning so my return to work has been (un)regrettably postponed until Monday. I'm desperately hoping that the situation will have improved by then.

God knows we all need a break...

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!

Normal Life

It’s hard to believe that Tom is now a whole 8 days old! All that build-up to the birth – 9 long months of waiting and wondering and worrying – and suddenly it’s all ancient history. Over and done with. Water under the bridge, etc.

Only it isn’t over and done with, of course. In every respect it’s all just beginning. The worries haven’t stopped – they’re just taking different shapes and forms but they’re still there and still as piquant. Is he pooing enough? Is he pooing too much? Is he eating enough? Is he comfortable? Is he putting on enough weight? Does he like me?

From what I’ve heard from friends this constant parental paranoia is all perfectly normal. And regarding the last question above he certainly seems very content to have me feed him or change his nappy. Now that’s got to be a huge badge of acceptance in anybody’s book.

But the other worries still persist daily though they seem quite trivial in the cold light of this blog.

I can recall my mother telling me that when you have kids you never ever stop worrying about them… even when they’re grown up and are living their own lives far away from yours. You worry forever. Are they happy? Are they healthy? Are they pooing enough?

This is normal life.

And you know what? Above, beyond and behind it all… it’s undeniably good.

Home

It's been an incredibly busy week in the Herrick-Blake household and we're all pretty shattered. However, it's lovely to have everyone home.

Karen and Tom were allowed to leave the hospital on Friday afternoon and since then we've been acclimatizing Tom to his new surroundings. He was a little freaked out at first - I guess he'd got used to his life on the hospital ward and suddenly everything was different: new sounds (a lot quieter), new smells, new sights. He was quite fractious Friday night but since then has been a lot more calm and settled.

I must admit I never thought I'd be one to go "all soppy" but quite honestly I can sit and look at him for hours and love holding him. Every facial expression is a delight and that goes for every sneeze, gurgle and poo too - the latter seeming to be very hard work for him at the moment!

Anyway, I hereby promise not to let this blog turn into a one-track paean to babyhood and baby rearing - I know such things are not everybody's cup of tea - but please do forgive me if I occasionally lapse into baby-centric rhapsody every now and then...

I'm totally in love!

Nigella Espresso

Baptitious kitchen chatelaine, Nigella Lawson, kicked off her new “good food fast” cookery TV series last night – “Nigella Express” and not, as I’d hoped, “Nigella Espresso”. Hmm. It seems that my idea for a raunchy bedroom-based dessert focused TV pilot has been turned down flat by the bosses of Channel 4... I can’t understand why. I mean if they’re happy to invest money in Gillian McKeith intimately examining other people’s poo why not fling a few tenners my way to buy a spatula and an industrial barrel of whipped cream?

Anyway, gripes aside, it was good to see the dusky voiced one back on the telly and doing her damnedest to insist that her plainly glamorous life is anything but and is, in fact, as humdrum as that of the rest of us. Hmm. I don’t think so Nigella. My entire family could live in your walk-in pantry and never have to go to the supermarket again. Ever.

But I think that’s part of Nigella’s appeal. The slightly embarrassed and guilty glamour-puss seductress coupled with the “oh I’m so dowdy really” yummy-mummy modesty. That and the cow-eyed looks over the garlic grater and the coquettish lip moistening as she manhandles the biggest sweet potato I’ve ever seen in my life. No wonder Nigella has one of the biggest male fan bases of all the TV chefs.

Apparently she’s horrified by accusations that she deliberately sexes up her cooking performances but I’m sure she’s also clever enough to not mess with a schtick that plainly works. Besides which the sensual element definitely adds an essential layer to the recipes and is an integral part of the Nigella ethos – whether it’s there deliberately or not. Nigella is all about pleasure: the pleasure of food and the pleasure of life. And it would be a sad individual indeed who objected to that.

The main thing though (as has been pointed out by a reader of this blog, Lucy) Nigella is smokin’ hot. At 47 she’s looking damn good. If that’s what big puddings do for you then I’ll take double helpings please.

Talking of which, last night saw Nigella tenderizing a couple of pork chops with a rolling pin. The way she moved was, ahem, mesmerizing to say the least.

Anthony Worrall Thompson – though he could easily emulate the upper body motion – would not have had quite the same effect...

Movements

Rumours abound this week that Dominatrix of Dieting, Gillian McKeith has been dropped from Channel 4 like a lead jockstrap. Apparently her Third Reich tactics and blitzkrieg nutritional regime have appalled even the most iron stomached of Channel 4’s TV executives who are now of the opinion that Ms McKeith is simply just too cruel and needlessly harsh in her patented weight loss techniques to be allowed onto the nation’s tellies.

About time too. I can hear Gillian’s shrivelled bones circling the S-bend of television world even as I type.

Not that I’m taking credit, you understand, but this here blog has thrown a couple of good slaggings her way in the past; notably here, here and here...

And now for a movement of a different sort: I actually heard from Mr Chauffeur man yesterday. A very polite and respectful email promising to get payment to me ASAP. I was pleasantly gobsmacked.

About time too yet again.

Though I’m very aware that it might be wise not to count this particular chicken until it’s hatched...

Blockages

What type of person wilfully blocks a toilet?

I really need to know. It’s something I’ve never done myself or even, for that matter, ever had the urge to do and yet frequently in the course of my day-job I come face-to-face with bizarrely blocked toilets on a frighteningly regular occurrence.

It’s like there’s some sort of club or secret society that I’m patently not a member of.

Most of the time the troublesome blockage is caused by a beer can or a rolled up copy of Heat magazine. You’d think that top shelf magazines would be the obstruction of choice but, no, these rarely make an appearance in my experience. Miles and miles of scrunched up loo paper feature quite a lot too but this is plainly the work of amateurs or bored school children – so much so it’s barely worth commenting on. It takes a dedicated expert to do the job (pardon the pun) properly. Because let’s face it: a beer can or a rolled up copy of Hello Magazine requires a fair bit of planning and effort to see it securely installed. Such blockages are the by-products of finesse and a certain amount of personal refinement. They’re out of the ordinary and the items chosen to perform the snarl-up usually have the flavour of social or political comment about them. It’s sculptural graffiti. 3-D satire.

The most bizarre blockage that I can recall (and I recall it only because it was so bizarre – I don’t particularly catalogue these lavatorial events) was a loo that I encountered at the end of Dover pier. Somebody had shoved a whole, unused loo roll down the toilet. Then, not content with this ironic swipe at the Andrex ideal, they had then dropped a “log” of nuclear-submarine-like proportions straight down the central tube of the loo roll thus spearing it not unlike a big blue fish in a barrel. Hoop-la indeed.

I have to say that I was both incredibly impressed and disgusted with this singular feat of precision bombing.

But the same question still remains: what type of person chooses to do this? Who in their right mind decides that today is the day they are going to block a public convenience?

Am I failing society by not blocking a toilet myself? Am I missing an essential life skill? Or am I just lacking in ambition?

Oh well. Bombs away!

Snow Poo

This is rather a distasteful observation to be making but it’s impinged on my consciousness too much over the last 36 hours to be allowed to pass by without comment.

Now I know there will always be some dog owners who refuse to do the decent thing and scoop up their mutt’s poop from the pavement. Either through laziness, squeamishness, lack of preparation or just plain misanthropy they will decide to leave Fido’s faecal sculpture steaming obesely in full view of the world and fully in the way of every boot sole, brogue and flip-flop that happens to pass down that particular pavement for the next couple of days.

Revolting. But happily in today’s modern age of the acme pooper-scooper and the doggy-do flip-top dustbin anti-social incidents of this kind are becoming fewer and more far between.

Why is it then that whenever there’s snow on the ground incidents of dog-poo abandonment increase tenfold?

I’ve lost count of the number of dog droppings that I’ve literally had to skate past on my way to work this morning. They are absolutely effing everywhere.

Do dog owners suddenly get hit with an absurd desire to leave warm chocolate logs on the roadside in the vain belief that such seasonal decorations will cheer up the rest of us as we go about our business in the freezing conditions?

Or do they just like to prettify the snow further by giving it a slightly piebald appearance – dotting their little poo mounds all over the place like spilt Maltesers?

Or are they motivated by sheer scientific curiosity – an overwhelming yearning to see how long the snow takes to melt when a hot doggy botty lays a burning coil down upon it, creating a little brown island amongst that huge ocean of whiteness?

Or, as I really suspect, do they just think that the little snow faeries will magically clean away their poisonous turds when the snow eventually disappears in a few days time without them having to lift a finger to do anything about it themselves?

It’s disgusting, repulsive and disgraceful.

I’m looking at every snowman and snowball with extreme mistrust...

Here’s mud in your eye? I don’t think so.

Madame McKeith

How can such a tiny, decrepit, bag of bones be so humongously scary?

Ok I’m being unfair here; I know that health food dictator, Gillian McKeith, has bounced back to health from a very serious illness to embrace the nuts-and vitamins perfect-poo lifestyle that she so brutally advocates on her TV programme, You Are What You Eat, but for all that she bullies her fat clients with demonic Caledonian energy I can’t help thinking that there is something extremely unhealthy about Gillian’s general pallor and demeanour. Is she really any healthier than the morbidly obese size-0-wannabes that she regularly tortures with her celery and spinach smoothies? She certainly doesn’t look it.

But what really disturbs me about The McKeith is the contemptuous, harsh attitude with which she treats all her "patients". She’s a bully. She’s absolutely vile to people whose self-respect and self-image is already at an all time low. Her dietary techniques seem to centre around unpalatable food combos, daily poo inspections and ritual public humiliation. I am not exaggerating.

Gillian never seems to be satisfied unless each week she has made her clients, both male and female, cry with guilt, heave with disgust at their own bodily produce and gag with horror at their regular weekly food intake.

I realize that this is the traditional shock tactic approach. Gillian is basing her whole modus operandi on old school army training techniques: totally demolish the soldier’s current belief system and then rebuild him/her anew with a whole brand new ethos. And certainly it seems to work.

But does the end ever justify the means?

She made one poor woman climb into a bath of cold processed food sludge in order to illustrate the kind of crap she was subjecting the inside of her body to. Dubious in itself but Gillian made the sobbing woman do it in the front garden of her London home – with curious passersby peering over the wrought iron fence – thus publicising the poor woman’s distress. That is just not on. For all Gillian is undoubtedly motivated by worthy ambitions – a real fire to save people from themselves – she nevertheless doesn’t give a fig (syrup of) for their emotional well-being or their feelings. Gillian seems to have a very machine-like approach to people. I’d go as far to say she’s a nutritional mechanic rather than a healthy lifestyle guru. As long as people are physically fixed what does it matter if Gillian has messed their minds up in the process?

Of course, these people subject themselves to Gillian’s regime willingly so maybe that’s all the justification that Gillian needs? These people are in extremis and I’m sure in some cases it literally is do or die. Such endeavours always make compelling but uncomfortable viewing.

As I watched last night’s show though it struck me that Gillian is much like a high class dominatrix. An endless stream of clients readily shuffle into her home each week to submit themselves to her elegant E. Coli cruelty and her clipped colonic punishments – every one of them doe-eyed and desperate for one word of praise from Gillian’s perennially curled lips as she forces them to produce "the perfect poo" and imbibe tofu and nettle-root miso soup in quantities that wouldn’t fill a gnat’s belly.

Oh Gillian, I’ve been a naughty boy – punish me with the stotty cake iron maiden face mask again!

You are what you eat? Eat the underside of my boots, worm!