…grayblog…

Category: married life

  • Catch up

    I’ve really been neglecting you readers lately, haven’t I? Umm, well, sorry. But hey, I’ve been somewhat busy lately:

    • Last weekend: up to Stafford with Tom to spend the weekend with Jo and Bob. Excellent time had by all.
    • Last weekend and this week: much concern about SiL, who has been really quite unwell. But she seems to be making a steady recovery, which is good.
    • Tuesday: an all-day meeting with my New Zealand sub-agent, who is in the country at the moment.
    • Wednesday: a day out with H to the Chelsea Flower Show. We dressed in our finest summer clothes and were subjected to repeated heavy showers, with the result that we looked like a pair of muddy drowned rats. But it was worth it. Not sure that it is worth paying £35 a head to get in, though, particularly when you have to sit on the floor to eat your sandwiches and drink your tea because the catering facilities are so inadequate. They were absolutely awful when I last went ten years ago and have only improved marginally.
    • Thursday: catching up in the office.
    • Friday: to Chichester for a haircut and to distribute publicity materials for my event coming up at West Dean at the end of June.
    • Saturday: Charlie and the Peet came for lunch – a thoroughly relaxing and wine-filled event.
    • yesterday: up early to go to Heathrow to meet some American colleagues of their plane, collect plants, deliver them to a nursery near my parents and then join my parents for Sunday lunch and some plant talk.
    • today: dozy sleeping and much talk of "we really should go for a walk" and "the lawn needs mowing" or "I really must start on the front garden", but it’s chucking down with rain (between burst of intense hot sunshine) – that’s my excuse, anyway.

    There are many, many things that I really should find time to write about, but I’m not sure when that will happen. If you’re very lucky, I’ll provide you with some photos, as a picture is worth a thousand words (or several thousand, if your usualy verbage is as poor as that which generally graces these pages).

  • Signs of maturity, or something

    We have two cars. My car is, as you might expect, a messy hellhole most of the time. Occasionally it gets cleaned. It rarely gets serviced. It has done 120,000 miles and it shows.

    Hels’s car is more of a "family car" and features the following accessories:

    • a "baby on board" sticker
    • a "GB" sticker
    • a baby seat
    • baby toys
    • and now, most humiliatingly, a roof box.

    I feel thoroughly middle aged.

  • Lacking fruit

    What a fruitless day. A large chunk of it was spent trying to track down the correct brake parts for Hels’s car – ultimately I gave up searching the interwebnet and went to my local garage where they, helpfully, assured me that they were as confused as I am and suggested that the best thing to do was to take the old ones off and take them as patterns to a motor factor. Hmm.

    After that, I went seeking some transparency film. Call me old-fashioned, call me a luddite, but don’t call me late for tea (very old family joke – sorry). "Why do I want transparency film?" I hear you ask. Well, the answer is that you don’t want it, I do. The reason is that I need to update my slide collection that I use when I’m giving presentations, particularly with new pictures of some of the plants that I look after in my work. But does anyone sell transparency film any more? Nope. Finally, I tracked down a particularly obscure old-fashioned photographic shop in a particularly obscure corner of NearbyTown (which is obscure in itself) and purchased two rolls of Konico-Minolta 100ASA film – not my preferred brand (always been a FujiFilm kind of guy), but given a choice of that or nothing, that will do.

    I’ve also purchased a new (25 year old) lens for my (equally old) Olympus OM2N – my current one is not in the best of health and, for the sake of ten quid, the new one might just be better. Of course, the camera is not technically mine, as it really belongs to my brother, but as it has been in my possession for a considerable number of years now and he hasn’t asked for it back, I’m claiming squatter’s rights.

    Subsequently, I’ve discovered that the camera had a part-exposed roll of film inside. So I’ve squandered the remaining frames on pictures of plants, of Tom and of the cats (Monty is so much better at posing than Treacle) and dropped it into Boots. I’ll be able to collect it on Saturday and, as I’ve asked for a CD of scans, you might get to see some pictures from it too. Of course, since it must be at least three years old, there is no telling what is on the first 23 frames of film. I suspect that it may well feature ex-girlfriends, which could make it, um, interesting. Hels has already said that she will delight in destroying any such photos as soon as possible. I’ll keep you posted.

  • Mother’s Day

    For Mother’s Day, I made a chicken, bacon and leek pie with the word “MUM” on it, and fed it to the newest mum in the family. As a bonus, there’s enough left-over to feed to, um, the most experienced mum in the family later. Double result.

    I should have taken a photo – it was a particularly handsome pie. Now it is just two-thirds of a particularly handsome pie (yes, Waitrose, I’m talking to you – the recipe says “serves 4”, but we reckon that it would easily serve six extremely hungry people with some to spare).

  • 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.

  • On being a new father

    Being a parent is an utterly exhausting experience. Long nights of fitful sleep with an ear cocked for gurgles, snuffles, whimpers and the occasional outright cry. Disgusting nappies and fountains of pee add to the experience. But the rewards are fantastic. Tom is already fixing his gaze on our faces when we hold him and displaying a definite sparkle in his eyes. Starting as we mean to go on, and following a tip from our midwife, we’ve succeeded in teaching young Tom to stick his tongue out at people. Next is the challenge of teaching him to blow raspberries. From there, it’ll be a short step to having him swear like a trooper.

    I know that one or two regular readers are either expecting a child or considering parenthood, so here are a few handy tips from our experience:

    • You will get more advice than you can handle. It will come from family and friends; from books and health professionals; even from total strangers. Most of it will be contradictory. Much of it will be totally useless. Nearly all of it should be ignored. Everyone is being genuinely caring and trying to be helpful – I do appreciate those sentiments. But after a while, you will be totally overwhelmed and wish that it would stop. With this in mind, I’ll try to keep the rest of this post concise and truly useful.
    • Don’t waste too much time and money on books. We had a good pile of books about pregnancy which were obtained at not inconsiderable expense. Most are still unread, even though the pregnancy is now complete. The most useful book that we had is the free one given out by the NHS – it has got all the essential information presented in an unvarnished style. It answered most of the questions that we had.
    • Ante-natal classes are well worth attending. We tried to get on to the NCT classes, but these do involve a not insubstantial fee – as it was, they could only fit us on a course that started 14 days before the due date. If Tom had come early, they would have been useless. They also tend to have components related to breathing (I practice every day, so I’m quite proficient) and vocalizing your pain (a.k.a.: screaming). Instead, we went to the classes held by the NHS at the hospital where Tom was born. These were run by the midwife team there, were informal (and irreverent), free and, like the NHS book, told us what we needed to know in a concise and unvarnished manner, including a tour of the facilities (knowing your way around is vital). The NCT classes are reputed to have a social element which we found was also present in the NHS classes – we’ve made friends with a couple who had a son two weeks before Tom, with whom we can now share experiences and, more usefully, a pint.
    • Birth plans are useless. Mostly. Most books will advise you to make a birth plan. We had a plan that extended to a whole sheet of A4. When it came to the crunch, everything on the plan went out the window – the only thing that actually came to pass was that I was present at the birth. However, making a birth plan does serve the purpose of forcing you to research all the things that might happen and understand what the choices are and what they might mean. That knowledge was very useful on the day, at least for me, as I was able to guide Hels through the process and choices as we went (she was a little distracted to be able to think consecutively – I can’t imagine why).
    • Mothers – do not expect to have a shred of dignity remaining after more than 5 minutes in hospital. Any air of mystery that you have tried to maintain around your partner will also disappear. Let’s face it, you’re going to be in agony, shouting and screaming, with all your bits on display. Get used to the idea – once you do, you’ll relax a bit more. And you’ll need your sense of humour.
    • Fathers – be warned that midwives will size you up in seconds. I had what can only be described as a very hands-on role in the delivery of my son, acting as the midwife’s assistant throughout the entire process. This did mean rolling my sleeves up and getting my hands dirty. It was only afterwards that we learned that, when you arrive in the delivery suite with your partner, the midwife will use her experience to quickly get a measure of you. If she thinks that you are the type who is going to sit in the corner and pass out at the sight of blood, then you will be given a seat and a corner and left to it. If, on the other hand, you come across as being made of stronger stuff, then you’d better be ready for some hard work. If you can, try to get the latter result (if you think you have the stomach for it) – helping our midwife deliver Tom is going to be an experience that will be with me for the rest of my days. It also means that you are too busy to pass out!
    • Be prepared to be very, very scared. When we got to the end of labour, one or two things started to go a little awry. Tom was born at 5.18pm, with the midwife cutting the cord and then turning to her assistant (the official one, that is, who was present only for the final few minutes) and saying “Theatre! Now!”. Tom disappeared through the doors and was gone and we were left wondering what the hell was going on and if our child was alive or what. As it turned out, Tom was not breathing and needed to go to theatre (the next room) to be given a bit of a kick start in that department. A minute later, the nurse came back and held the door of the delivery room open so that we could hear him crying. I don’t think I’ve ever be so relieved in all my life.
    • Post-natal wards are the noisiest places on Earth. You think your local bypass is noisy? Or that nearby building site? That’s got nothing on the post-natal ward. Twenty mums, twenty newborns, twenty partners, perhaps twelve staff. You will not find a quiet corner. Mums should not expect to get much sleep.
    • Keep the number of visitors to an absolute minimum. Everyone will want to see you and your baby. Both parents will be utterly exhausted and will want the baby to sleep whenever he/she can as it gives them a chance for a little shut-eye. Even your parents can be told to hold-off visiting for a while. The only person you will welcome into your home will be the community midwife.
    • You will end up with three pushchairs. Fact. Get used to it.
    • You will go around grinning like a loon. Assuming you’re not fast asleep at the time. And your child will be the most beautiful baby in the world. You will turn into a baby bore. It’s fantastic, though you may seriously consider whether you would ever wish to put yourselves through it for a second time.

  • The Day After Tomorrow

    There is a three-word entry in my diary for Sunday:

    Baby due date

    So, if you find it’s gone a bit quiet here, you’ll know why.

    It’s not much of a secret that we’re getting fed up with the waiting now. H is extremely uncomfortable, no matter whether she sits, stands or walks around. Neither of us is sleeping very well at all, with the result that concentration has gone out of the window and we pass chunks of the day in a zombie-like trance. And we know that it probably will not get any easier in the next few weeks, with more sleepless nights and the novelty that is a smelly nappy to contend with.

    You have to wonder why people volunteer for this sort of thing.

    UPDATE: Not more than half an hour after writing that, Hels became concerned that things were kicking off. So we phoned ahead and went to the hospital (a 30 minute journey from here). H was attached to monitors and given a trace and lots of prodding, but it proved to a false alarm – nothing had started and the baby was acting normally. So we relaxed, came back home and actually had one of the best night’s sleep we’ve had in the last week. But it does all keep you on your toes.

  • Cyclops

    Cyclops kitten – thanks Bob.

    Hmm. A baby due any day now and people send me links to deformed kittens.

  • Happy 2006

    For the first time since 1986 (I think – understandably, my memory is a little hazy in this regard), I didn’t go out for New Year’s Eve. Although we had tickets for the cheesey disco at The Pub Next Door, Hels and I are full of a particularly unpleasant cold, so we decided to stay in and in fact retired at 9.30 – ridiculously early. Having said that, I do feel better this morning, so perhaps an early night paid off.

    Today we have spent the morning tidying the house in preparation for the arrival of the parents for NYD lunch – a suitably low key way to spend the day.

    Of course, you’ll all be expecting a review of the year. Well, here it is:

    In general, 2005 has been a year of consolidation and was always going to struggle to live up to the excitement of 2004 – but there has been excitement enough for us. Both home life and work life have been successfully consolidated, although we’d like to have more money coming in in both areas. And, thankfully, 2005 has generally not featured much in the way of bad news, certainly not anything that I’m still dwelling on now.

    As for 2006, clearly there is one event that is going to dwarf all else. Becoming parents is going to change our lives in ways that we probably have yet to even imagine. I think we are reasonably prepared for what is coming – certainly from a practical point of view, we have pretty much everything under control (all saving the final touches to the nursery).

    As for resolutions, I’m not a huge fan of making promises that I know I probably won’t live up to, but here goes anyway:

    • finish the garden. This is a major project that could take weeks or months, involving relocating our car parking area and moving large quantities of soil by shovel and wheelbarrow – but it will radically improve the look of our house.
    • get some learning done. Not sure what yet – something towards my MCIM or Chartered Marketer status would be good. Perhaps some language learning. I’ve even been thinking about learning shorthand.
    • really get on top of business. There have been moments this year where my business has led me and I’ve not been leading the business – clearly that must change, although I think I’m ending the year in a much better position to that which I started it in.
    • to update grayblog more regularly, probably with more photos. And hopefully not just of the cats or the baby.
    • to take more exercise and lose a little weight. We eat healthily in terms of what we eat, but fall down on how much we eat. Which in itself is not a problem, but when coupled with my increasingly sedentary lifestyle has resulted in a noticeable bulge. This year, the bulge will go and probably by means of increased activity. Doing the garden will help that.

    Crumbs. That’s enough for one year!

    Anyway, happy new year to all of you who come here regularly and particularly to those who are good enough to comment. Blogging remains good fun, both writing and reading, so I fully expect to still be here in another twelve months. I might even fix the archives!

    Meanwhile, go and check out the good news at Uborka.

  • Christmas

    Last year, my Israeli clients all seemed to make a point of sending me emails on Christmas day, as if to say "Ha! Makes no difference to us!". It’s not a tradition that I wish to see encouraged.
    So, having put together our quiz for the family for tomorrow (goodness knows why we have to do this sort of thing – I’d rather eat loads of food and then sit around being bloated than have to entertain people), wrapped all the presents (there were lots – and I only had to do the ones that I’m giving to H, as she has taken care of gifts for everyone else – delegation is the name of the game), stocked up the food and fuel stockpiles in case of unexpected snowdrifts (60% chance of snow on Monday and Tuesday could render Ruralville isolated if the gritters don’t make it out to us on Bank Holidays), we’re now fully prepared for whatever the next few days throws at us.
    Expect quiet here for the next few days (though you probably won’t notice much difference from normal) except for automated posting of the quiz here tomorrow (can’t do it today in case the in-laws read it). Whatever you’re celebrating, I hope you have a good time.