the adlards

There once was a man of the desert
Who pondered on what was most precious
Now you might have thought
It’s water of course
But water’s not what kept him in it

Perhaps rather than being committed I should be committed. It’d be a lot easier day-to-day and life in an institution can’t be that much more weird than what I’ve got now.

Take this evening for instance. I was knackered. I wove through the thousands of police in London and made my way home. Walking towards the house I was accosted (before I’d even got to the front door, mind) by our elderly neighbour brandishing a particularly vicious cross between a garden trowel and a pitchfork. My heart sank. All I wanted was to get inside, kiss my wife and kids, pour a large tequila and get on with whatever I needed to do in order to get to bed feeling I’d done my bit.

She wasn’t wearing her hearing aid (that’s right, this is same neighbour who watches tele without it). One sided conversation at volume ensues with much demonstrative waggling-and-poking-with-intent of the pitchfork:

“HELLO JAMES! (with a cheery smile) I NOTICED THAT THE JOLLY DRAIN’S BLOCKED DOWNSTAIRS!”

(aah, yes, ummm, haven’t got around to that yet)
“Oh, really, which one …”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. YOU KNOW, I’VE POKED IT BUT IT DOESN’T SEEM TO BE EMPTYING!”

(hmmm, hard-as-nails old lady acting plaintive, I’m sure I’m about to be obliged to do something here)
“Well, would you like …”

“I WONDER IF YOU MIGHT HAVE A TRY?” (thrusting now clearly quite smelly pitchfork in my direction with a huge toothy grin)

(What, in my suit, lady, are you nuts?! For the love of God, at least let me get inside and change before my sense of duty forces me to take up your weapon of choice and do battle alongside you.)
Just then she noticed that the overflow drain looked blocked too.

“OH LOOK, I THINK THAT ONE’S BLOCKED TOO. I’LL GO AND POKE THAT ONE AND THEN LEAVE THIS (lethal implement) OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR IF YOU HAVEN’T COME OUT YET.”

I’ll spare you the detail of actually helping her to clean the three drains. Suffice to say the drains are now clean, my neighbour is happily watching the News at Ten, and my life is, of course, complete.

Maybe institutional life wouldn’t be weird enough.

“the dog’s bollocks” as my Best Boss Ever used to say. I very occasionally get the opportunity to do this and yesterday was one of those days. My productivity sky-rockets, I get to drink real coffee without paying two quid a cup and I get to see my family when I take breaks (or when they seek me out and climb onto my lap to point at the screen and ask, “a-e-i-o-u, Daddy?”

Why work any other way? I honestly don’t know. I have better connectivity at home than in the office, I don’t lose two hours of the day commuting, and once I’ve rolled out IP Telephony next month my extension number will get me at home without the need to forward to my mobile. That’s a good thing, isn’t it …

So why didn’t I blog yesterday if I was home all day? Because I’m DILLIGENT and COMMITTED, something that’s clearly not understood by any company with a no home-working policy.

Josie was on top form this evening, telling me animatedly about her day, apparently spent popping balloons with her friends and then throwing them in the bin. Her improvement in mood may be down to her condescending to drink a little. The last couple of days she’s insisted on drinking almost nothing, leading to a tell-tale “thunk” at potty time and complaints of “botty sore”. I explained last night before bed that she should really drink lots of water because it’s very good for her botty and would stop it being sore. We counted the cups she drinks and the cups daddy drinks (drank, technically, before going back onto caffeine and beer). She apparently took me at my word and has drunk more today than in the last week combined.

It always surprises me when she takes advice to heart. We hover in that uncertain space between her capacity to understand (which, frankly, is staggering), her very clear understanding of what she wants, and her ever present two-year-old delight in refusal regardless of what she wants.

In other news, our neighbours have invited a laughing horse over for after-dinner drinks. Some people can make conversation, others are condemned to a social life consisting entirely of laughing at the tops of their voices in a vain attempt to flatter their hosts, cover their drunkenness and appear “lively”, “with it” and “hip”. It’s very sad. Aah well, perhaps if I put the extractor fan on in the bathroom I won’t quite hear her through the walls. Please don’t let her stay over, I’ve heard her in the throes of conversation, I don’t think I could survive much more …

I met Jeremy a couple of weeks ago, just for about an hour. I found him a man as full of life as you could wish; engaging, confident, eloquent and quick to laugh. I looked forward to working with him. Today he was declared missing following the blasts in Sharm al-Sheikh.

He wasn’t a friend – he was barely an acquaintance – but I’m still sad, and if he doesn’t return I shall miss him.

Somebody kindly tried to use us as a spam platform today. His test address (making enormous gender assumptions, I know) seems to be HomerRagtime@aol.com and his IP was 195.169.128.119
If you’re crawling for addresses please help yourself. If you’re not, feel free to add the above to any dodgy list you might come across from time to time. If you don’t know what I’m on about, leave well alone.

So how would you expect two people (who, I remind you, haven’t had a normal night’s sleep for seven weeks, have been fighting off some malicious virus for five days, are responsible for two very small kiddies on a minute-by-minute basis and are just getting into the swing of being a family of four without visitors) to spend their Saturday? Perhaps your answer would be something like this …

4am: Michelle up and ready to go to the Next sale; fortunately decides that would be idiotic and waits until
7.30am: Michelle to sales (she’s never done this before …); Josie wakes as front door closes; Dad has two screamers for two hours
9.30am: Michelle back; all go out to see if there’s a car boot sale on
9.45am: No car boot sale, opt for the Galleria
10.15: Visit the toyshop (got a great play mat for Sophie) and play on the kiddy rides; become convinced I’m suffering from something terminal just behind my right eye; caffeine and food help a bit; becomes obvious that Josie’s teething
12.00: Decide to take Sophie and Josie home for lunch
12.22: Pass an outdoor shop with tent display; U-turn; look at forty mostly-rubbish tents
13.30: Arrive back home; feed Jo and Soph; Josie to bed
13.45: Re-plan our garden (that’s right, we’ve decided against the conservatory in favour of a nice bit of deck)
15.00: Wake Josie and go to Buttles to price decking
15.25: Buttles closed, opt for the Nursery – much better for garden stuff anyway
16.05: Look at decking, plants, water features, fence panels and garden furniture; decide not enough furniture choice
17.15: Go to Homebase; disappointed
17.40: Fit in a quick grocery shop
18.10: Comatose on sofa; desperately trying to scrape together the energy required for the dinner-bath-stories-and-bed routine (and failing convincingly)

… or perhaps not.

Seems a lot of people are playing catch today. Hundreds of police playing catch all over London (very, very well I might add); an as-yet unidentified (and now dead) victim of a game of catch between his Cessna and the lawn of the Reichstag; and, most importantly, Josie learning to play catch in our back yard (pics in the gallery).

She’s very good. I think I can remember learning to catch, so I must have been older than she is; come to think of it some of my fondest memories of mid-childhood are of Dad and I playing catch with a tennis ball in the yard at Inverness Avenue (Cape Town) … but back to the story … her fine motor skills are not exactly characteristic of Michelle or I which begs the age-old question of genetic origins.

Admittedly, in this particular instance not a tough question to answer – while I’d battle to hold up my end of a friendly game of cricket, I have a brother who’s a scratch golfer. He wasn’t around at the time in question, so one assumes that some of those genes, combined with some of Michelle’s dad’s found their way in combination into Jo.

A more interesting genetic question, perhaps, is how in the world Sophie is on the 91st percentile. To say that Michelle and I are somewhat vertically challenged is possibly something of an understatement. We were both near-shortest in our class before and after, if not during, those obligatory and desperately unsynchronised pubescent growth-spurts. Sophie was born on the 75th percentile for weight, length and head circumference. Over four weeks her weight moved up to the 95th (she likes her food), but of course her height remains on the 75th. I’ve set up a webcam to monitor the postman.

There was a man lived in a beautiful land that had had no rain. The sky was hard, the trees were bare and dust blew through the meadows, collecting in his eyes and the corners of his house. Time passed and his cares about his house, his meadows, his trees, his health and his wealth waned as he allowed his mind to become consumed by his thirst.

One day, as he was standing lost in aimless thought on the baked earth outside his front door, he noticed an unusual coolness on the breeze. Was this the first gentle promise of rain? He remained rooted to the spot, scanning the horizon. Hope quickened in him. Sure enough, the sky darkened and before long he felt the rush of wind at the edge of the storm and drops began to fall. The rain swept in. He stood, as heavy drops danced in the dust, letting cool water course down his face. The smell of wet earth enveloped him and as the rain poured down joy rose in his heart.

He couldn’t tell how long he’d stood, but quite suddenly the sky lightened and the sun broke through. The earth steamed and all was soft around him. The man returned home, parched, for he had not drunk.

(and not very good ones at that)

There was a bang that blew the young man’s rucksack open. Apparently he “looked extremely dismayed”. I’m not suprised – all that time invested in home bomb making and not one vestal virgin in sight. If this was heaven it looked a lot like Shepherds Bush.

When I left work I was stopped at the South end of Clements Inn by a very efficient policewoman ably assisted by a very cool bomb disposal robot which we’d heard eating a “suspect package” just a few minutes earlier.

I’ve made it as far as City Thameslink where I await a severely disrupted train service. Annoying? Certainly. Terrifying? Ummm … no, actually.