the adlards

Boxing Day’s my favourite day of the year. Let’s be honest, the preceding couple of days are really something of a trial, despite the entire marketing machine of the Western World straining every fibre of its being to persuade us otherwise.

I finally, on Saturday afternoon, joined the ranks of those grim-faced but victorious Christmas dads – the ones with a look in their eye hovering between “I’ve done it all” and “I hope I haven’t done it again”, the ones carrying great fistfuls of bulging packages of every shade of brown paper. Christmas packages don’t come in plastic bags, apparently, and must be boxed/wrapped/stuffed regardless of size such that the paper bag is filled to it’s maximum extent. On de-bagging, my armloads of soon-to-be-most-treasured-possessions fitted very easily into my handluggage, which I thought as decent a hiding place as any. I always finish my Christmas shopping on Christmas eve, I think I need the pressure.

That said, the highlight of Christmas Eve was without doubt turning around in Starbucks to find Josie skating about the floor standing on two bags of their Special Christmas Blend coffee beans. Sometimes it’s just impossible to strike an appropriately corrective tone. She had a great arm-action going.

Christmas Day is wonderful and with kids is a whole other experience, but then comes Boxing Day. The cooking’s done and – in a perfect world – properly digested. The washing-up’s done. The Three are placidly playing with their now-most-treasured-possessions and I can do whatever I feel like … get a bit of exercise pushing a laden stroller to the park, clean the house as I look forward to the New Year, watch the truly startling selection of kids features on tele. Sometimes one’s day-to-day experience leads one, unwitting, to such sudden and remarkable heights that all the world seems laid out peacefully below and it’s not clear that there’s anything useful left to be done. Or so I’m told. Haven’t actually been there myself.

But Bank Holiday Tuesday! The Day in Lieu … who knows what promise it holds?

Josie grew wings overnight, so perhaps the dreadful larval stage is over. Of all her presents she insisted on carrying a little handbag to church this morning (in addition to the inseperable wings). When the music started she opened up her handbag, whipped out a harmonica she had stored there against just such an opportunity and started playing along. Not quite in the same key. I cried I laughed so much.

Sophie opened some presents of her own and was particularly taken with a pair of maracas which make a great noise as she tries to eat them.

If there’s time after our walk we’ll publish some pics …

On Wednesday I needed to go out and get some things so loaded Sophie and Jo up in Phil and Ted’s Most Excellent and headed for town at a brisk pace.

A couple of hundred yards from the house Josie started saying, “No James, not this way.”
“Why my darling? Where do you want to go?”
“Not this way.”
“Why not this way, Jo?”
“There’s fire.” (Pointing staright towards where the Hemel fire had been)
“No, Josie, that fire’s gone out. There’s no fire anymore.”
“Yes there’s fire. Over there.”
I swear she could see it. She was so focussed and anxious that I was convinced something nearer by was burning. I started searching the skyline and buildings in that direction for signs of flames. Eventually …
“No Josie there’s no fire anymore.”
“Stop Daddy! There’s fire. We’ll get burned and go to hospital.”

WHHAAAT?!
How did she put that together? There’s been no footage – hardly a mention – of casualties in the Hemel fire and we’ve not been concerned by it .

Much discussion of the spreading of fire and the role of firemen ensued before we continued on our way to town. Without, I’m relieved to relay, resorting to that ages-old fire-retardant trick of pulling a buggy snuggle completely over one’s head.

“Josie, what’s my name?”
“Daddy!”
“And what’s my other name?”
“James”
“That’s right! And what’s your sister’s name?”
“Sophie Mai”
“Yes, and who’s downstairs?”
“Mummy!”
“That’s right. And what’s Mummy’s other name?”
“Darling”

I have decided, while brushing my teeth having finished off the previous post which was a multi-day task under the circumstances, that the whole idea of a work/life balance is bollocks.

Forone thing work is part of life so the balance is immediately skewed.
For another, life – or mine at least – is a fairly complex set of variables and priorities amongst which I establish a constantly shifting equilibrium. Attempting to maintain any particular state of that equilibrium causes significant stress.

Doesn’t translate very well into HR policy I suppose.

Michelle’s quite ill so I’ve been working from home since Friday – it turns out that doing a full day’s work while looking after the Three makes for a long day. I’ve learned to use the mute button on my mobile to good effect:
“blah blah blah massive infrastructure project blah blah blah”
[toddler approaches, let conversation move on and hit mute]
“James, want to talk to your friend.”
“Ah. Well, I’m talking to my friends at the moment, darling, could you wait a bit?”
[toddler sits beside me or pulls over an upturned bucket and stands on it beside me precisely at hands-free height … unmute with some trepidation to maintain flow of conversation]
“My turn now, James?”

Some of my more longsuffering colleagues have actually experienced the joy of conversation with Josie. But that’s nothing compared to the conversations she’s had with that wonderful woman at Orange who is guardian of my voicemail. Josie will chat happily to her about her day, Father Christmas, presents, or anything else topical while being told to press 2 to send a message or 3 to change her mailbox settings.

My daily working arrangement has the two girls with their toys and tele in the sitting room while I work, standing, next door in the kitchen (thanks to wireless) with a serving-hatch-view of them if I turn around. Michelle sleeps upstairs. I’d done a couple of hours of this yesterday morning and was just preparing for my first teleconference of the day when somebody turned off the Internet. Just like that. It was unbelievable.

I could ping my access points and switch and router, so it was obviously The Internet that was at fault. The prospect of two and a half hours of discussion of current issues without access to any current information was a little daunting, so I said hello, stuck the phone on mute and went and played with the girls. Well, not really, but I did spend some time jabbering away on the handsfree while crawling through storage spaces inspecting connections and equipment. It didn’t take long to find that our router had departed to the happy router land over the sea where the sun probably shines and the condensation levels in winter are so much better for you.

I was in a bit of a pickle. I’d even loaned my 3G card to a colleague. I managed to find a replacement that wouldn’t take two days to ship at a corner computer store (did you know any of those had survived the commoditisation of the market?) and phoned my ISP to send my account details to my phone as I wouldn’t be able to recover settings from the dear departed router. £85 and a couple of hours later we were up and running again as though nothing had happened – except of course I’d missed lunch and any opportunity to capitalise on the girls’ midday naptime.

I think I’ve struck a pretty effective balance between work and my current care requirements, but take away the Internet and the balance is absolutely shot to hell. I mean, the whole work end of the scale disappears in an instant; how can I balance that?

I was woken at 6 this morning by a huge rumbling crash that shook the building. I rolled over and wiped the condensation off the window to see if the building over the road had fallen down – that’s what it sounded like. It hadn’t so I went back to sleep.

As it turns out there was an explosion at a fuel storage depot five or ten miles away. It stores aviation fuel mostly, apparently, and we’re being told there was an accident there at about six this morning. The sky out of the front of our house is clear and blue (with a wintery white wash); the sky out the back is one enormous black smoke-cloud.

“I need to find something dangerous to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“As we grow up we stop doing things that involve physical risk and I think I need it.”
“Vacuuming can be very dangerous you know.”

It’s not often Michelle has me falling about with laughter.
I’m being attacked by some sort of virus at the moment and have been awake for only about a third of this weekend, so it’s nice to have the alert bits filled with such witty repartee.

New pics in the gallery.

The big red digger has taken down 3/4 of the building, pretty soon a set of shiny new apartments will be going up across the road. There are still some idiots who park next to the demolition site and walk to the station because the parking’s free (note black sedan). If you’re one of those and if you suspect the safety fence may have fallen on your car last week, we saw it happen and have photos but you can’t have them because you’re stupid.