Ivor Cutler, RIP.
Author: graybo
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Pylons!
The BBC has been featuring public information films on their website recently and invited readers to make and submit their own. The results can be found here and they are excellent. I particularly liked Pylon Peril.
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Things they don’t tell you
As we go along with parenthood, we’re slowly discovering more and more things that you are either not told about beforehand or are glossed over. So, in order to forewarn a few other prospective parents, here are a few that we’ve found out:
- sleep deprivation. OK, so everyone jokes about the fact that when the baby comes, you won’t get much sleep. It’s always mentioned and, as soon as it is, everyone sits back in their chair and laughs. Heartily. But it really is no laughing matter and the severity and impact of sleep deprivation is not to be underestimated. Sleep deprivation has so many knock-on effects. It makes you short tempered and irritable, generally lacking in patience. For a breast feeding mother, sleep deprivation makes what can be a difficult and tiring task doubly so. And for a father, it makes your workspace seem like a terribly attractive place to take a nap (if only I could afford the time to do that – I’m working 9 or 10 hour days at my desk, plus taking the laptop into the house in the evening to do a little more). How anyone who already has children copes with this, I really don’t know.
- looking after an ill baby is even less fun. Tom has a cold. As a consequence, he is finding breathing difficult, particularly when feeding. He also has problems with catarrh so that he is coughing quite a bit as he clears his chest and isn’t sleeping terribly well. As parents, it is difficult at first to understand what the problem is – your child can’t talk and say “Mum, I’ve got a cold” or “Dad, I’m all blocked up”. When the baby starts to cry, you work through a mental checklist (hungry? dirty nappy? too hot? too cold? cholic? needing a hug? ummm – now what?) but when you get to the end of the list, you are left flicking through books or wondering if you should call up the GP. Fortunately, the onset of this illness coincided fairly well with a scheduled visit from the health visitor, and she decided fairly quickly that Tom was suffering from nothing more serious than a cold. A check-up with the GP confirmed this (the GP was actually very pleased with his progress and seemed to spend most of the consultation comparing Tom to actors and dead politicians). But it does nothing for the stress levels.
- mastitis hurts. And compounds all of the above problems. There is a lot more to it than that, but I’m not sure that Hels would appreciate me discussing that here!
- nappies aren’t made for bottoms. First nappies are quickly out-grown. Yet the next size up seems huge by comparison, so much so that I have little confidence that the nappy won’t leak because it doesn’t make a good dry seal around Tom’s legs. We’ve already had a couple of unpleasant leakage experiences. Not nice.
But in spite of all of the difficulties, when he’s laying on his playmat and follows you with his eyes as you walk around the room, perhaps even throwing the odd smile or gurgled giggle in for good measure, you can’t help but think that it’s all worth it.
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Cynic? Moi?
Tessa Jowell didn’t know. So that’s ok then. Clearly, if Hels suddenly came into £344,000, I’m sure she’d keep that sort of information to herself. And I probably wouldn’t notice if our mortgage was suddenly paid off.
I’m glad that’s all cleared up then. It’s good to know that our government ministers are cleaner than the proverbial.
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Balls
Mind Your Marbles. Simple, addictive.
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Flash breast simulator
Ermmm. Almost certainly NSFW. via Cal, amongst others.
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Time wasting no more
Linda Smith, RIP. Terribly sad – my favourite female comedian.
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By Jove, he’s done it!
Look! Look! Working archives! Yay!
Very large amounts of gratitude should be directed towards Mr Pete Dot Nu. He’s a lovely young man.
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The Loire
The Loire.
Originally uploaded by graybo.The Loire between Saumur and Angers, somewhere around Saint Mathurin sur Loire, looking upriver.
Although the river here is several hundred metres across, it is remarkably fast-flowing. That blob on the right was a lump of detritus of some sort, one of many flowing downstream. They often accumulate at bridges and around the islands. -
Travel ramblings
Travel blogging – written over a period of 8 days and completed on Friday using Cal’s marvellous Noted application – so much more refined than your crappy old Notepad.
Airport ranting! Why do I always ended up seated in departures next to someone who has clearly never caught a plane before?
Him: Oooo, look – they still haven’t put a departure gate up.
Her: No, not yet.
Him: It’s only three days until boarding time. You’d think that they would have it up by now.
Her: Mmmm, yes. There are still a whole bunch of flights above ours on the screen that don’t have gates yet.
Him: Maybe they’re still cleaning the loos.
Her: Mmmmm.
Him: Or the plane hasn’t arrived. I bet that’s it. The plane hasn’t arrived.
Me: SHUT UP!Reasons why I prefer flying BA from Gatwick:
– they fly from the North Terminal, which is vastly superior and not filled with plebs.
– they give you a better quality seat on the plane.
– you can check in electronically without the need to queue.
– you can choose your own seat without a rugby scrum.
– they give you tea and a sandwich.
So why am I flying EasyJet from South Terminal today, complete with rugby scrum, plebs, crap seats, check-in queue and surcharged tea and sandwiches? Because they’re a darned sight less expensive on this route.Oh for the love of all that is good in the world, they’re playing Mull of Kintyre of the chuffing PA system and the bloke next to me is singing along. And, no, I don’t care if he looks over my shoulder.
Anyway, I’m off to Venice. Sounds romantic? Not a bit of it. I’m flying slum class into Marco Polo before getting a taxi to Padua, arriving late at night, sleeping over in the hotel and then spending all of tomorrow at a trade show in a less-than-glamorous conference centre, before getting another taxi back in the darkness to Venice and the late slum-class flight to Gatwick, arriving just in time to do the midnight nappy.
Still, it’s the first time I’ve done this event, part of my effort to make up for missing Europe’s biggest show which was straight after the arrival of Tom. So, hopefully, I’ll do some useful business.Time to board.
EIGHT DAYS LATER:Well, Padua certainly was worthwhile, if only to get up to speed with the politics of my industry. One of the problems with working in such a small industry (there are no more than twenty businesses doing what I do in the world, half of which are one-man/woman businesses [actually, they’re almost all men], and seven or eight of whom are in alliance with each other, including some of the companies that I work with) is that there are almost alwys some political issues to be dealt with. In Padua, I discovered that one of my competitors has been rather over-stepping the mark with regard to one of the products that I manage and then sought to get my permission to do what he was already doing. As I’m generally inclined to work directly rather than through local sub-agents whenever I can, the answer was pretty much always going to be “no” anyway, as one of my other competitors who happened to be there at the same time already knew. But the fact that this guy had already gone where he knew he shouldn’t have already made me less inclined to hear him out. He got a firm “no, no, no” from me. There isn’t anything that he is doing that I can’t do myself, making more money for me and for my breeder clients, but it leaves a messy issue to resolve and a bunch of confused grower clients. (This probably means nothing to most people, but there you go).
As you’ve already seen, I managed to get a brief hour (or just an hour, as hours are neither brief nor long – they’re just hours, sixty minutes) to wander from the convention centre into the city centre in Padua. The outskirts of the city are downright ugly and belie the beauty of the city centre. Certainly, when approached from Venice, all you see are industrial units and smokestacks. Mind you, as you fly into Venice, all you see from the plane is an oil depot – you’d think that someone would think about these things.
The flight home was marked by one of the longest queues for security that I’ve ever endured at an airport; the realisation that whilst Venice airport is a gorgeous building, the catering facilities on offer after security are crap; and a full plane (cramped – another reason not to fly EasyJet) with a groin-scratching smelly Italian as a neighbour. (Let me add that I have nothing against Italians – most of them are very nice – but I don’t like smelly groin-scratchers of any nationality).
After a few days of rest and catch-up back home, on Wednesday of this week in bombed down to Portsmouth to get the late late sailing to Caen for a trip on to Angers for another show. Yes, more lovely surroundings in the Loire valley, viewed from the inside of a conference centre. Meh. At least this time, thanks to my late booking leaving me with only a hotel in Saumur, 30-odd miles away, I had a chance to take the back road alongside the river from the conference centre to my bed, and enjoyed the views. The exhibition itself was useful with almost nothing but good news and positive vibes, including some very flattering comments from one of the largest companies in my industry in Europe. On the downside, I have spent the show wandering around in a zombie-like state, thanks to Tom having a restless night before my departure and then a generous swell at sea on the crossing leaving me pretty much unable to sleep. Once I hit the hay last night after a pretty good meal in a Saumur brasserie, I slept solidly for some time thorugh a phone call and alarm, leaving me rushing around like mad this morning and dashing back to Caen to get the ferry with only minutes to spare. Thank goodness that Hels called me when she did this morning.
The ferry back is only a little less rough, but I’ve managed to locate a power socket so that I can listen to some music and complete this long boring rambling post for you. I only do it because I love you, dear readers! Count yourselves, um, lucky.