the adlards

(now in skip; decimated garden apparent)

Ice lolly, Dad?
You eat your egg and I’ll get you an ice lolly.
Yum. You get lollipop.
Yes, you eat your egg.
You get lollipop.
After you’ve eaten your egg.
Aaaaarrrggh! (is there no justice in the world?)
Josie, you eat your egg and I’ll get you a lolly.
OK
Eat your egg then.
Get lolly.
Aaaaarrrggh!

One expects to be able to leave this kind of conversation at work.

I’d planned to spend today assessing tenders for a major system implementation. Instead I reviewed a new standard desktop build; re-assessed the inter-dependencies between implementing IP telephony, completely refreshing our hosted infrastructure, delivering three large pieces of bespoke development and commissioning a new contact centre (all of which deliver in the next 12 weeks); and kept up to date with an ongoing service outage.

Now I make it a point never to write about work here but it has to be said, in the interests of expurgating the last remnants of the working week from my tortured psyche, that if my working days were filled with fewer conversations like the one above I would have been assessing tenders today. They’re good conversations to have at home with Jo. She learns and adapts. It’s like playing a Deathmatch against a beginner, it gets more difficult every time. Other conversations I could quote (but won’t) are just uniformly futile; I sprint around the Gothic castle, finger hovering on the trigger, every nerve twitching, only to realise belatedly that I’m the only person in the building. What I need is a better HUD.

At least the deck-man’s making good progress. I was quite jealous of him today, working out there in the sunshine without a care in the world. Then it started tipping with rain, he couldn’t get one of the posts quite vertical on his own and his concrete was getting too wet. I’ll stick with my brand of stress for the moment thanks very much.

He’s put in fence posts that match the pergola posts, an effect I enjoy but which I’m sure will be completely lost once the fence panels go on. Posts finish going in on Monday and decking starts on Tuesday. He’s doing an excellent job. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through a weekend without access to my garden shed.

Some new pics in the gallery including a few of the garden such as it is.

This is a skip.

Both deck-man and skip arrived and worked hard all day. The fence starts going in tomorrow, then it’s decking time. Just thinking about it exhausts me. Goodnight.

So skippeth the deck-man?

Well then. The decking man didn’t start yesterday because he couldn’t arrange a skip. He said it was ordered for today and so today’s when he’d be starting. That didn’t sound unreasonable so I was up bright and early looking out for the skip. I had to go to work and Michelle waited until mid-morning before deciding it was a no-show and going out. When she returned there was still no sign of him; there was a skip delivery note but no sign of a skip. She gave the decking man a call. He’d been expecting them to deliver later in the day and said he’d enquire. He called back with the news that the skip had been delivered in the morning, but that the skip-hire men had been chased away by a Very Rude Neighbour. Really? We have one of those? I know quite a deaf one, but surely she … oh bollocks.

When I got home I wandered round the neighbours making enquiries. I had no joy at the first; I could see her as I rang the doorbell but she didn’t flinch so couldn’t have had her hearing aid in. I didn’t fancy having the conversation that played out in my mind:
Good evening neighbour, how are you?
OH HELLO! LOVELY EVENING ISN’T IT?
Yes it is. You didn’t happen to see a 7-foot skip lying about anywhere today, did you?
YES, YES … AND HOW’RE THE CHILDREN?
Very well thanks. It’s only the hire place says someone a little abrupt chased them away.
WELL DO GIVE THEM MY LOVE!
I will do, but I think they’d rather be paid a re-delivery fee.

So I moved on. I had more luck at other doors. Apparently the skip was delivered and two of our neighbours (including, to be completely fair, the one I didn’t get to speak to) helped them by moving a car and offering positioning suggestions. Another neighbour saw it arrive, went out for a bit, and on her return it was gone. I haven’t yet found the Very Rude Neighbour. I think the skip driver, who hadn’t collected payment on delivery was sent back post-haste before some anonymous person took the freebie and filled the skip. Quite where the VRN story comes from I’m not sure. I’ve written letters to those I haven’t spoken to to pre-empt a repeat in case there’s any truth in the story.

Two new words from Josie today:
“Mum, this is brilliant.” Carrying a new (car boot sale) tracksuit top
“This is huge.” Showing Mum a magazine

Skip and deck man arrive tomorrow. All being well. Had better do, it’s the only chance there is it’ll be finished before the 26th which is The Deadline.

I’m standing on a train with about a hundred and twenty people in this one coach. It’s late, it’s slow, it’s packed, it’s hot, it’s smelly and I have some bloke’s bag grabbing my arse every time the train rocks. They charge me two and a half grand a year for the privilege of this. I’m supposed to be rescuing bulbs from the garden right now but there won’t be any light by the time I get home. Which is only good for the cricket …

It’s a drizzly Sunday afternoon – my favourite kind. I have a very good red wine breathing and I’m sitting in my corner of the living room with Sophie on my chest in the Baby Bjorn while Josie plays with a tiny dolls house acquired at the morning’s car boot sale. That’s right, we had two kids fed, dressed and at a car boot sale by 8am on a Sunday morning. Fortunately at that time it was a misty Sunday, not a drizzly one. In return for being maniacs we did get loads of kids clothes for a quarter of what we might have paid on eBay with the added advantage of being able to pick and choose. Interesting trend, isn’t it?

OK, now I have a crying baby on my chest and a toddler trying hard to put on a pair of tights under a tutu which is completely obscuring her view and evidently causing some frustration. Excuse me a minute …

There, that’s better. Josie’s setting up grannies on the road of her play village and driving over them with a post van; Sophie’s settled for the moment. I’m not sure whether I should be addressing the family or the traffic issues. I think I’ll opt for helping her make the grannies stand properly so they fly further.

So what did you miss in the week I didn’t blog?
Michelle has new glasses which are, and I quote, “Pretty cool.” I had my eyes tested for the first time ever and was quite shaken when my right eye was blocked and the bottom two lines of the test chart immediately went hazy. What I’d suspected was proved and the prospect of actually needing glasses leapt into focus – a substantially different proposition to just thinking about how cool they might be. As it happened I read the third-last line and then the bottom two lines were more-or-less back in focus. I have an optional prescription and a referal to an opthalmologist because of a small haemorrhage in the back of my right eye. Could be caused by vigorous sneezing I’m told … can’t imagine how it might have come about in my case.

Two warnings for anybody who’s never had one of these (eye exams):

1. They have a machine that blows puffs of air into your open eye. Hard. Like being struck. It’s not like a fairground attraction at all, unless perhaps you’re watching me sitting in the chair.
2. When they check out the inside of your eye they use a little scopy thing with a light on it and get really close while you’re trying to focus on the middle distance and can only see the light. Some people, who shall remain nameless, are overwhelmed by the urge to kiss; I found it alarmingly reminiscent of the surgery scenes in X-Men. Shadowy figures behind bright light well within your intimate personal space. She gazed so long into my right eye I was sure whe was damaging it in order to make a sale.

Moving swiftly on …

The next-best highlight of the week was when the Three met Sarah, Mark and Elspeth at the Big Space as they were on their way South to go camping. I got phone pics at work of them having a great time.

Now I’m going to see if my brother and sister-in-law in East London are still alive (seeking telephonic confirmation), and if so tell them we’ll be visiting in February.

On Tueday the decking man cometh!

Walking to the station this evening letting the warm, soft summer rain slowly ruin my suit, I realised that I haven’t blogged for an entire working week. It’s like I went to work on Monday morning and am just now going home, sitting into the pull of a train that’s slowly dragging me from the week that week 36 was into the sunshine of a weekend with the Three.

Other great songs I know:
Maggie and the Ferocious Beast
Jimmer Jammers
Postman Pat
Pingu
Not really the stuff of moonlight serenades, but everything else seems to have been driven out. The Pingu one is particularly terrifying when it’s hammering through one’s brain on endless loop on a tired morning on the way to the station.

The hayfever’s so bad today I’m walking about with one of Sophie’s muslins over my shoulder to catch the snot. You didn’t want to know that, did you … must remember to wear a colourful tie to work tomorrow.

The picture below belies the Nature of Things. Last night started late and ended early and those two seemingly benign two-year-olds in fact have more energy beween them than is to be found in a collection of four adults. We know this.

We all set out at precisely the right time this morning to ensure we got into the new play park, Big Space. We know we got it right because as we all arrived we passed Sebastien walking in. That place is wild, there are pics in the gallery. There is a mammoth slide with door-mats to slide on and when they polish it up everyone gets airborne going over the bumps. At one point I thought someone was breaking the sound barrier going down the slides, but it turned out to be a sixteen-stone bloke hitting the deck after the bumps. One of the great things about Big Space is that parents don’t need to feel guilty about playing too. In fact you can happily keep sliding while your toddler takes a break, goes for a pee, or sinks into an exhausted stupor. I can also recommend diving full-length into the ball-pit. Best check for bottom-dwelling kiddies first …

Josie and Elspeth had a fantastic time. Sophie contributed by throwing up prolifically, which only went to show how excellent the service is. The whole area was steam-cleaned within ten minutes and the staff were entirely supportive and friendly.

We all went to town and then to Wagamamas in the afternoon. Josie and Elspeth are accomplished noodle eaters.

7am and all’s well … they don’t sleep much, but they are very cute.