One Man and His Blog

Well, as promised, I’ve found some time to write a bit now.  The last couple of weeks have been pretty chaotic, and most of the major developments can either be categorised as “good times” or “bad times” in a Justin Lee Collins stylee (although I must admit Led Zep were the real inspiration for the title…)

So, in no particular order, in the last couple of weeks I have:

- worked my butt off trying to sort everything out that needed sorting before I finished w*rk for Christmas.  Theoretically this should be Good Times, but the reality of trying to keep up with everything has often been more like Bad Times.  My job is tied in with education, so you might expect that as the schools prepare to break up, things would wind down.  You would be wrong.  Instead, as schools prepare to wind down, they send us page after page of requests for things that they want ready for the first day back in January.  And quite aside from the fact that they’re clearly assuming that we’re all still going to be in the office over Christmas (right, just because you’re on holiday, you don’t expect us to be as well, eh?), there’s the fact that, to put this stuff in place for the first day back, we might need to get more information and speak to someone at the school.  But – you’ll never guess what! – they’re on holiday.  I could go on, but I think you get the idea…

- held a baby for the first time in my life.  I don’t know how I’ve got through thirty years of life without holding a baby before, but last weekend I spent a good ten or fifteen minutes holding little B, my friends’ 6-week-old.  He didn’t cry, poo or puke, otherwise he’d have been handed back much sooner.  His dad said he was quite docile because “he isn’t sure whether he’s sleepy or hungry”.  That’s how I feel most of the time.  Anyway, apparently I was a natural at baby-holding, so Good Times on that score.

- done my first Christmas dinner of the year, with my housemates.  We had roast duck with a wide selection of veg, tiramisu, wine and a large number of Good Times.  We also had a fine collection of cheesy Christmas tunes playing in the background, leading to a wonderful comedy moment as we stopped to say grace, only for it to be preceded by the trumpet fanfare at the start of Jonah Lewie’s ‘Stop The Cavalry’, which sort of ruined the moment while simultaneously making the moment.  After dinner we invented a game in which we wrote the Queen’s speech for her, one word at a time.  Although since large portions of it were hugely inappropriate, I won’t share them here for fear of being sent to the tower.

- heard that my granddad has been in hospital.  He had a suspected case of gallstones.  They’ve decided not to operate for now, but in order to get him discharged, my parents have had to take him in at their house, as Social Services wouldn’t let him go back to live on his own until he had a care plan organised.  So while the trip to hospital is certainly Bad Times, at least I’ll be able to spend more time with granddad over Christmas, which is Good Times.

I’m sure there have been some other major things as well, but those are the most immediately obvious ones.  Still to come – I have to do my Christmas shopping.  Thankfully I only have a small number of presents to get, but unfortunately I have no idea what to get for any of them.  And the shops are pandemonium already.  Bad Times, I suspect…

I would like to apologise to both my readers for the lack of recent posts.  There is much to talk about, but no time in which to type it.  Maybe at the weekend…

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote anything here, not because I haven’t had time (I’ve had plenty of it, as you will see) but because I haven’t really known what to write.  So let’s go back to last Friday…

I was off to Tina and Spike’s for the weekend, but first I had to do half a day at work.  And before that I had to pack, something I probably should have done the night before but had somehow failed to do.  So I was already late leaving the house, and then the traffic was abysmal, so I didn’t get to work until half 9.  Flexible working hours are great – although, of course, they’re not so flexible that I don’t have to make up what I’d lost.  Never mind, I thought, I can work through to half 1 if needs be and still be in time to catch the train to London.

Unfortunately, over the course of the morning, I found myself feeling pretty rough, aching all over and struggling to focus on what I was supposed to be doing (OK, that last one’s not necessarily a sign that I’m ill, just that I’m awake).  My colleagues suggested I should leave early, and eventually I agreed and, as a result, got a slightly earlier train and arrived in London Town before rush hour kicked in.

After a good while of catching up with Tina and Spike, we headed off to their local Indian restaurant where I ordered possibly the tastiest curry I’ve ever had.  Unfortunately, I was starting to feel increasingly rough, and I only got halfway through before I had to give up.  But after a good night’s sleep on the sofa bed, I felt a lot better on Saturday morning.

While Spike was working, Tina took me for a guided tour of Crystal Palace park, which was very interesting and featured rather more dinosaurs than I would have expected.  But by the time we got back to the house, I was feeling a bit rough again – a general feeling of indigestion, bloated stomach, frequent burping; not good.  Undaunted, in the evening we headed off to Waterloo (where Napoleon did surrender) to meet up with some Strange People From The Internet, which was a lot of fun.

The next night’s sleep was less peaceful, largely due to the five attacks of diarrhoea during the early hours.  Which at least explained why I’d felt so yukky the evening before.  I’m guessing I had the winter bug that’s been going around.  Of course, with this being a Sunday morning, there wasn’t really anywhere to get some tablets and that, so I had to chance a trip on the bus to the train station, then a train to Victoria to get some medication before heading home.

Well, on Monday I felt OK, but figured I should stay off work just to make sure I’d got over it.  I phoned my manager and said I hoped to be back on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, the early hours of Tuesday morning saw the diarrhoea back again, so after I’d phoned work I went off to the doctor.  He suggested I should take the rest of the week off and stay away from people as much as possible, so I decided that’s what I’d do.

Well, I’m pleased to say that I now seem to have shaken it off – but it’s taken the whole week.  Unfortunately two of my housemates have also been ill with colds and flu this week, so at least I’ve not been sitting at home all alone very much.  But I’ve definitely had enough now, and I’m actually looking forward to going back to work on Monday.

So onto more pleasant news – we got a new washing machine today.  The old one started leaking when Chez tried to use it a couple of days ago.  An engineer came to look at it today and said it wouldn’t be economical to fix it; within a couple of hours our wonderful landlord had bought a new one and was round at ours plumbing it in.  So Chez’s washing is finally being washed.  The great thing is, not only does the new machine have an environmentally friendly 30 degree setting, but it also has an electronic display that tells you how long until the wash cycle finishes.  And you can programme it up to 20 hours before you want it to start, which will be very handy for doing washing while I’m at work.  Get in!  (I’m beginning to wonder if I’m a little more excited about the new washing machine than I really should be… but trust me, it’s a thing of great beauty.  Whoop whoop!)