Thursday, July 31, 2008

Tuesday was George’s swimming day – which he always loves. This week he was top of the class. We’re in the 2nd level now which means dipping the babies underwater pretty regularly… We’re told they have some kind of flap of skin that automatically stops them breathing underwater – but I think it may just be one of those things they tell fretful parents to stop them worrying..

Either way, under they go, and George has always been pretty good. This week, we had to do successive dips – where I dip him underwater, tell him to breath when he comes up, and then dip him again taking a step across the pool as I do it. George managed to get all the way across the pool and all the way back – about 6 dips in a row - without showing any signs of being upset. The other babies started crying after about three tips.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, this baby thing –mothers will fight tooth and nail to make sure you know their baby’s ahead of yours. George won this round, but you always have to watch your back – somebody will be walking, or talking, or waving before you and you need to be there to fight your corner.

It’s more competitive than working at the stock exchange. I think I’m a little insulated against it though –being a father. Mothers don’t see you as such a threat I think.

This week, the hospital authorities (the pool is in Guys hospital at London Bridge) decided that we couldn’t use the changing rooms behind reception. Up to now, the mothers have used the proper changing cubicles, and any dads that showed up used the kitchen area behind reception – not ideal if you’re trying to change a baby and yourself into swimming trunks. Now, we can’t use that area (probably for health and safety reasons – who knows?) so George and I have to wait until everyone else has finished and use the women’s changing rooms. In the end, I got bored with dripping on the woman behind reception (who doesn’t need to be any more drippy than she already is) and got changed in the disabled toilets.

As a father looking after a baby on a weekday, you’re not that unusual anymore but you do occasionally find things aren’t quite set up to accommodate you.

It reminds me of when years ago I tried to find temping work. I went into countless agencies and told them my typing speed. They all said “more and more men can do secretarial work – it’s not as unusual as you’d think, you know” then they patiently took my details and called me a few days later to send me to work on building sites.



Anyway, Lisa went Power Pramming yesterday.

If you don’t know what Power Pramming is, it’s the new form of keep fit for yummy mummies… a gang of mothers basically run around a park taking it in turns to run, walk and probably juggle with their prams.

Apparently, it’s quite fun, but I don’t think they have dads doing it… after all, they don’t want it to become competitive…

I think I’ll stick to running anyway.


The lion
On our visit to The Three Lions at the weekend, the bedroom had a cuddly lion toy sitting on the bed waiting for us. It wasn’t for George (I remember from our last trip that all the rooms have a cuddly lion) but he absolutely loved it.

Being a bit of a softy myself, I took the name of the manufacturers and ordered one for him online. It arrived yesterday and it’s already become a firm favourite…


Andrew
Yesterday, Andrew made a surprise visit – parking his lorry at the end of the road. He’s just got his international driving licence and passport, so he’s going to start doing trips to the continent. Good to see him…

Monday, July 28, 2008

Russ and Pietro came round on Thursday - good to see them and we had a great time, managing to eat in the garden – although the BBQ we’d planned ended up being done on the cooker because the disposable barbecue didn’t do anything….

The trophies which line their bookshelves (where the Doctor Who merchandise allows them room to be seen) proclaim Russ to be an excellent tennis player – but testing his skills on Wii tennis told a different story…

Anyway, I hope we managed to distract them for an evening.


Weekend away – another one
We left on Friday for afternoon for our weekend in the New Forest. We booked in to the Three Lions http://www.thethreelionsrestaurant.co.uk/Hotel_Fordingbridge_New_Forest.html - a place calling itself a “restaurant with rooms” rather than a B&B. we’d been to the Three Lions three years ago and noticed that not only do they have a great chef (Michelin stared no less) but also that they have a jaccuzzi in the back garden and baby monitors in the rooms that stretch to the restaurant. All this, aligned with a total ban on mobile phones made it a great choice for a weekend away..

A very relaxing weekend in which we had great food and took George for a long walk in a specially designed rucksack baby carrying thing some friends had given us. It’s a great – although hugely cumbersome device which makes it feel as though George is precariously balanced somewhere among the overhanging treetops, but which is actually quite safe and even almost comfortable for a couple of hours.

My shoulders still feel it, but George absolutely loved being high above the ground, bobbing about looking at ponies and trees and all kinds of non-London scenery. He was laughing and giggling – especially when I had to climb over stiles with him – for about 3 hours. It was only towards the end of the walk that I felt a solid weight on my back, lolling from side to side as he fell instantly to sleep.

By the way – we found the route for our walk at www.go4awalk.com – a useful website providing maps, walks and descriptions for rambling all over the country…

Monday, July 21, 2008

We managed to get to visit my parents on Saturday – Mum’s still wearing what looks like a piece of scaffolding to protect her hip and although she’s doing her best to look after it we still don’t know when the apparatus is coming off, or what can be done to keep her hip from coming out again when it does.

The doctors really need to do an examination to find out what’s causing it to come out, but it looks as though they’re going to wait for it to happen again before they do. This strikes me as pointless costcutting by the NHS. The fact is they know there’s a problem and they know they’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later. They should just get on with it.

Anyway, it sounds like my parents are going to put in a shower my mum can use – Lisa’s suggesting a wet floor, but that might not happen. It looks like they’re going to build a new room for it in the garage – and Lisa’s suggested a few alterations to their design idea which it sounds like they might take on board.

At least I hope so. Lisa is after all an occupational therapist and does this kind of adaptation all the time. It would be pretty rubbish if they had someone offering that kind of expertise and didn’t take her advice… Mind you, as Andrew pointed out, he’s a professional driver, but that doesn’t stop Dad telling him how to drive.

It fell off the back of a lorry…
Andrew joined us for part of the day – again, his penchant for crisis managed to give him an improbable set of obstacles to overcome before he could have lunch.

Firstly he was left waiting in his lorry for 3 hours while the warehouse people messed around instead of loading his lorry. This meant he had to leave empty, so he told the people running the warehouse he was doing so, then pulled away.

Unfortunately somebody had chosen that moment to drive a forklift onto his lorry. The forklift fell off the lorry and got jammed at 45 degrees between it and the warehouse loading bay.

Just the kind of improbable accident that happens to my brother all the time.

He then had to go and give in a form for a passport… but of course, that involved the woman in the post office being unable to fill in her own forms (it had also previously involved them taking all his documentation and loosing it).



Uncle Jim
It looks like my uncle Jim is back in trouble with the law. He’s been arrested for getting angry with someone at the council offices for some reason nobody’s been able to establish. Since we have to rely on Jim to tell us the news, we get at best a garbled mishmash of anger and denial. He’s incoherent at the best of times, and you generally get more information from what he says he hasn’t done than what he says he has.

His barrister has told him to plead guilty – and I can see why. It doesn’t matter what Jim is accused of or indeed whether he’s guilty or not – if you put him on a witness stand, he’ll make such a case for the prosecution he’ll be found guilty without a doubt.

That said, people working for councils must come up against upset, angry and incoherent people every day – partially because councils are generally in the business of failing such people on a regular basis and generally because you wouldn’t go into a council office unless you were angry, upset or incoherent. In other words, council workers are pretty well trained (or should be) in diffusing difficult situations (generally without resolving the problems that cause them) so if Jim has gone far enough to get arrested he must have done something pretty extreme.



George
George is teething again (surprise, surprise) and although he coped Ok with the visit, he let us get just out of my parents’ village before being sick all over the car-seat and himself.

Andrew – who’d followed us out – pulled up and produced towels and wipes from his car and combined with those we had, there was just enough to clear up the mess.

On Sunday morning, he did the same thing with his breakfast milk, but he seemed fine by the end of the day….



Sunday was the Dulwich country fare – a yearly event which doesn’t quite allow the people of Dulwich to pretend they live in the country. However, it does allow them to buy a huge selection of potted herbs (which we’ve been meaning to do for ages), eat fresh coconuts, jerk chicken and low-fat-fair-trade-doughnuts, and watch displays of sheep sheering and falconry (no, really!).

There was also a tent demonstrating the wii fit board, but no chance of buying one, a selection of sickening rides, and an entire canvas boulevard of council “awareness” schemes… although I’m not aware or what kind of awareness they were promoting.


After the fare, we went to Sam’s with Mons, Abbey, Claudia and Fee for a long afternoon of lunch and cava.

We returned home late, giving George another disrupted bedtime.

The bad parent’s club
I had my first taste of the bad parent’s club – having put George on the top of the washing machine in the bathroom to brush his teeth, I turned away to grab some toilet roll to wipe his mouth.

In that couple of seconds, he rolled over and fell off onto the bathroom’s tiled floor.

He’s got a graze on his back, but doesn’t seem to have suffered any damage… but I felt awful. I won’t be leaving him on anything from now on.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Ok – so I’ve given in and bought a wii with my birthday money. If you don’t know what a wii is, it’s the latest in videogame consoles – the games are pretty simple, but you actually have to get up off your backside to play them. To play tennis, you stand in front of the TV, batting the ball back and forth as though you’re playing tennis. The same for bowling, snooker and boxing…

The bit I haven’t yet got is the wii fit – this is a balance board which is supposed to help you exercise by measuring as you step on and off it , lean back and forth or do press ups.

Getting fit is on my to do list and I’m hoping the wii will help…. And of course, it’s fun.

George is crawling
As of today, George has decided he’s not going to sit around anymore – while the health visitor was here (her 9 monthly visit to test his development) and Lisa was telling her he couldn’t crawl yet, he suddenly got up and crawled over to take a look in her bag.

There’s no turning back now – and I think he’s about to become a much bigger handful.

Anyway, he’s also got an insane number of razor sharp teeth now – we discovered the back ones coming through yesterday. I’m expecting another row to appear soon…

Forearmed is half an octopus
I also got a call this week from someone wanting an animation of how to assemble a gun. It’s for a ministry of defence training video. Now, I do think we need an army – even though I disagree with most of the things they’re asked to do right now - and I certainly think that army should be well trained. However, this video isn’t just for training – it’s for sales as well – in other words, it’s an arms dealer and I’ve no idea who their other clients are.

While I’m happy to do work for the British army, I’m not quite so happy about doing an animation that will be used to train random gun buyers all around the globe….

I’ve asked them to send me more info, but if I can’t get more safeguards, I’ll have to turn this one down.

Ok – so I’ve given in and bought a wii with my birthday money. If you don’t know what a wii is, it’s the latest in videogame consoles – the games are pretty simple, but you actually have to get up off your backside to play them. To play tennis, you stand in front of the TV, batting the ball back and forth as though you’re playing tennis. The same for bowling, snooker and boxing…

The bit I haven’t yet got is the wii fit – this is a balance board which is supposed to help you exercise by measuring as you step on and off it , lean back and forth or do press ups.

Getting fit is on my to do list and I’m hoping the wii will help…. And of course, it’s fun.

George is crawling
As of today, George has decided he’s not going to sit around anymore – while the health visitor was here (her 9 monthly visit to test his development) and Lisa was telling her he couldn’t crawl yet, he suddenly got up and crawled over to take a look in her bag.

There’s no turning back now – and I think he’s about to become a much bigger handful.

Anyway, he’s also got an insane number of razor sharp teeth now – we discovered the back ones coming through yesterday. I’m expecting another row to appear soon…

Forearmed is half an octopus
I also got a call this week from someone wanting an animation of how to assemble a gun. It’s for a ministry of defence training video. Now, I do think we need an army – even though I disagree with most of the things they’re asked to do right now - and I certainly think that army should be well trained. However, this video isn’t just for training – it’s for sales as well – in other words, it’s an arms dealer and I’ve no idea who their other clients are.

While I’m happy to do work for the British army, I’m not quite so happy about doing an animation that will be used to train random gun buyers all around the globe….

I’ve asked them to send me more info, but if I can’t get more safeguards, I’ll have to turn this one down.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Went to see Kate and Darren at the weekend – and inevitably ended up playing on their new toy – the Wii fit. Wii fit is a balance board that allows you to play videogames by measuring the way your weight balances – with the result that it can detect movements like leaning and stepping.


The idea is that you can ski, dance, play hula hoops and do lots of keep fit excercises while playing videogames.

The games are pretty basic, but they’re great fun and you can persuade yourself that you’re getting fit by playing them (the game actually works out your body mass index - 28 for me, though I don’t really know what that means apart from that I’m overweight) and nags you if you don’t play on it regularly enough.

I’m very tempted to get a Wii Fit… it’s great fun – although at Kate and Darren’s we do need to eat a couple of thousand calories and drink more alcohol than our robotic trainer would approve of before turning it on.

Sunday was another food-fest, with Sam cooking Lisa and I as well as her parents a roast dinner.

It’s now looking as though Lisa’s sister, Sally, Colin and their 4 children are going to be moving down to Worthing. They’ll be close to Lisa’s parents’… actually very close as while they’re looking for a place to live, they’re all going to move in. Which should be entertaining.

Lisa’s parents had their own large family so they should know what to expect, but that was a long time ago. I just have to trust they haven’t forgotten the chaos four children can cause.

I think we’ll have to arrange some holidays – or at least days out for either the kids, or the grandparents sometime soon.

Friday, July 11, 2008


Ok – I eventually got to see it – and as it turns out, it was one of those holywood style affairs. You know – when you walk out thinking it was all very exciting, but with this nagging doubt that something was wrong… then as time goes by, you realise you’ve been had – that actually the plot hidden under all the action and fireworks didn’t actually fit together properly….

Anyway, I did manage to go jogging again on Tuesday evening – despite trying to convince myself that the fact I wanted to pack my shorts for Wednesday’s trip was a good enough reason not to go….

This getting fit thing isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s not the running that’s the problem. It’s the stupid excuses I keep coming up with not to go… Still, they say there’s a three month cut-off period for this kind of thing… it’s a sort of momentum - if you can keep on going for three months, you create a new habit for yourself and it becomes harder to stop than to carry on.

Or so the theory goes. Apparently it applies to new years resolutions… if you’re still carrying them on by the end of March, you’ve probably succeeded…


Palma

On Wednesday I went to Palma. A two day business trip – I’m doing some animation work for a superyacht (more than that, I can’t say as I’m under a confidentiality agreement). And it’s quite a yacht too. The sort of thing millionaires take their holidays on…

The flights out and back were absolutely fine, but I still don’t like flying. The trouble isn’t really the safety of planes – and I don’t feel any more or less secure looking out of the window or sitting in the isle. In fact, looking out is always beautiful… it’s just that for some reason I always feel better knowing that what I’m standing on is solid right through to the Earth’s molten core. No good reason for that, but it doesn’t matter what the plane’s doing or where I’m sitting in it – I can’t escape the constant uneasy feeling.

The woman next to me in the queue had a Tee shirt bearing the words “I’d rather be jogging”…. I don’t think I’d go that far, but it’s a tough call.

I managed to pass the journey by watching Genesis of the Daleks on my ipod… sad I know, but there you are…

About half way through, the stewards came through selling ropey sandwiches. At the same time, I noticed the smell of baking bread – coming not from the sandwich trolley, but from the air conditioning….

I didn’t know Easyjet had adopted the same selling techniques as supermarkets and house sellers, but apparently they have.

As we landed at Palma, we passed the wreck of a small plane upside down beside the runway. Reassuring.

At the end of the day, some things are scary - but you can’t decide what to do based on what worries you. It’s scary getting married having children, running a business… Nothing worthwhile comes without leaving your comfort zone… you just have to be worried and do it anyway.

the view from my hotel


The job
The trip itself was useful in that I got to meet the people I’m working for and get drunk with them… That’s a pretty important part of a project sometimes – once you know each other a little bit socially, it’s a lot easier to work out what each other wants and can do.
We also got to check out the boat (which right now isn’t finished) and we got to talk the project through a bit more.

It was a bit of a flying visit (in one day and back home the next) and I’ll probably have to go back in a couple of weeks when things are a bit more complete.

This certainly looks like a promising job – with possible other jobs coming from it too….

We’ll see…

check up
Yesterday, George had a check up and the hospital told Lisa he doesn’t need to come back for two years…. His heart is working fine… which is great news.

My mum also seems to have got her broadband working, which is great (although they haven’t yet become comfortable with the idea that you leave it attached – they still plug it in only when they want to go online and then unplug it afterwards – mind you, they do that with the answerphone too, so it’s not a surprise).

Mum seems to be doing well with her hip, and she’s doing the right amount of resting and exercise. They’re even thinking about making some of the changes to the house that will allow her to look after her hip once she’s better.

One of these is the addition of a walk in shower. Right now, the plan seems to be to build a new room for the shower by extending into the garage. It would be easier to fit it in the upstairs bathroom – but apparently this will involve re-doing some of the tiling, so it’s not a good option. Not quite sure why moving a few tiles is harder than building an entire new room – but sometimes it just is. Sometimes, the psychological challenges are harder than the physical ones.

On a similar note, Grace and Igor are still very unhappy with their home (it sounds as though they’ve got good reason to be – the carers last week didn’t know how to operate Grace’s oxygen cylinder. Something I can’t believe they’ll get away with because when she needs it, it’s a matter of life and death!) Carol has now found them a place near Rustington, and they seem interested in taking a look.

However, that would take them further away from my parents and when it comes down to it, Grace isn’t going to want to get further away from Dad and risk seeing him less often.

Monday, July 7, 2008

The last Episode of Doctor Who

This weekend was the last episode of Doctor who for ages… not just the end of the series, but no series next year, so just the odd special before David Tennant is replaced as the Doctor…

Massive hype for this last episode, and even the press weren’t allowed to see previews so that the Russel T Davies rumour mill could play havoc churning out wild speculation all over the Internet and the media.

Added to that, the return of Davros and a huge cast list of current and historical companions and stars returning and the spinoff series’ Torchwood and Sarah Jane Smith combining in this huge finale.


In other words, as a fan, I was quite keen to watch it.



The Mighty Boosh
It was on on Saturday night, and Saturday we went to the Mighty Boosh Festival… a collection of bizarre musicians including Garry Numan… and a collection of bizarre comedians including Ross Noble came together to entertain an even more bizarre crowd of people dressed as futuristic prostitutes (not including us). That meant I was going to have to wait for Sunday for the final episode…

Anyway, the promised rain never showed up, so it was a great day which we (Lisa, George, Sam and I) used as an extended picnic.

I think festivals are getting better and better organised. Toilets are now approachable, the food is varied and not entirely “freezer to fryer”, everything that can be recycled is and there are even inflatable sofas on sale for those visitors who don’t want to sit on the grass…

On second thoughts, maybe they’re not getting better organised. Maybe they’re just going middle class… instead of serving one type of canned lager, you now get a choice of wines or a recycled plastic jug of Pimms. Instead of ultra-processed zebu offal burger, you now get tempura or Napolitana pizza.

This was an “alternative” festival – and that used to mean the audience was living or exploring alternative lifestyles – society was being challenged by “alternatives” that nobody quite understood… you didn’t used to be able to move without being offered CND badges, signing anti-aphartied petitions or buying a copy of the Socialist Worker.

Now, alternative means just watching somebody else – and they don’t even have to be alternative – they just need to pretend to be alternative in a post modern ironic sort of way. You can be alternative by putting on a gold leotard or a funny hat. You don’t actually need to do or commit to anything. You can just watch.

It’s a lot easier…. and it’s fun. Zimbabwe and the food crisis don’t impinge on a good rock festival…

The young folks of today, eh? Don’t know they’re born…


The happiest baby in the world
Speaking of the young, George managed to make it through the whole day (up to about 11pm) with just a little nap at 7pm. He absolutely loved the acts – especially the mighty Boosh themselves who came on at 9:30. he laughed and clapped and giggled and despite having to be held up by us (we all came away feeling like we’d had a workout) he didn’t cry at all.

In fact, George is generally happy most of the time… OK, he does cry when he’s tired, or in pain, or when he’s being neglected, and he doesn’t always have good nights, but his crying just seems to be punctuation in a general mood that’s surprisingly bright and cheerful most of the time.

Even the people at the nursery are constantly telling Lisa that they want to adopt him.

I think we may have the happiest baby in the world.

Of course the one thing I’ve learnt over the last 9 months is that nothing stays the same. He’s constantly changing and every week he learns something new. Right now, I can say he started smiling at a few weeks old and hasn’t stopped since. However, it may just be that his misery genes haven’t yet kicked in and that as soon as he works out what life is all about, he’ll fall into a deep morose.

He’s just on the verge of learning to move around on his own and that might trigger a whole world of things he discovers he doesn’t like…


The reactionary
This week’s discovery has been the idea that it’s other people’s reactions rather than just things that happen that’s important.

He’s started to, when he encounters something new, check my or Lisa’s reaction to it before deciding what he’s going to do himself. If he goes to pick something up, he doesn’t know what to do with, he’ll quite often look around to one of us to see what we think about it before deciding what he’s going to do.

Of course, it doesn’t usually matter what we do – he’ll mostly just put the thing in his mouth, or bang it on the floor and then giggle – but it’s nice to see he’s realised that other humans have reactions just like he does and that most of the time, people are more interesting than things anyway.

At least that’s my take.


Sunday
Having missed Doctor Who on Saturday I decided to watch the repeat on Sunday night.

Sunday we had a gentle day, working up to a late lunch with Lisa’s parents in Sam’s new kitchen – Sam’s kitchen seems always to have been in a state of flux with experimental work surfaces and layouts going in and out of vogue, sinks appearing in dining tables, then moving around the room and Sam’s hatred of kitchen units causing wave after wave of welsh dressers, 70’s style sideboards, and shelving to sweep through the room in disruptive waves of chipped Formica.

This latest incarnation offers room for a proper dining table and to celebrate this, she invited us all round for a roast heart (except me – I had a veggie alternative). The one constant in Sam’s ever changing kitchen is the slow cooking pots of offal.


Anyway, Lunch went on late, and melded into the men’s single’s final at Wimbledon. This turned out to be the best (and longest) tennis match ever played… apparently… and ended with Federer loosing to Nadal in a nail biting finish.

The main nail-biting from my point of view was the tension of whether we’d get home in time for the repeat of the final episode of Doctor Who. In the event we left just as they were going into the last few games, and got home at 7:35 – fine because Doctor Who started at 8pm.

Except that they’d moved it, so it in fact started at 7:30… no point watching if I missed the first 5 minutes, so I went upstairs to download the episode and put it onto DVD.

Unfortunately, this process for some reason took until 10pm – and we ended up watching the remainder of the tennis followed by Midsommer Murders… Ahh!

Of course, we could have put it on at 10… but Lisa had to get up at 5:30 – so that was a no go….

In other words, as I write, it’s half six on Monday night, and I still haven’t watched it.

Which would be fine – except I can’t open emails because all my friends are Doctor Who fans and talking about it… I can’t open a newspaper… I can’t turn the radio or TV on… in fact just by looking out of the window, I risk finding out what happened…

Doctor Who is the most popular programme on British TV – which, although it means I’m no longer a pariah for being a fan, also means avoiding finding out what happened is a bit like trying to get through the 1966 world cup final weekend without knowing the result.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

A weekend without George

We spent our first night without George since he was born on Saturday. Lisa’s parents looked after him to give us a night off.

So did we go to a nice hotel and open a bottle of champagne?

No. we went to a campsite in The New Forest and slept out in a tent.

It was Gareth’s 40th and he invited a group of friends to spend the weekend playing rounders, eating barbeques and generally enjoying the outdoor lifestyle. well, I say the weekend… actually it started off at midday on Saturday because I spent so long on last week’s film project that I ended up having to stay at home on Friday and meet Lisa on Saturday in Southampton. It ended about 10am on Sunday because we had to zoom off back to London for the Police concert in Hyde park.

In fact, we were quite tempted to book in at a B&B for the night just to get a little peace… only we figured we’d never live it down.

I’m glad we didn’t, though because the day was great fun and the evening sat around what would have been a campfire if it hadn’t been warm anyway and if we’d been allowed to light fires which we weren’t – was nice too. Even though I was so tired I went to bed about half ten.

Camp sites are not as I remember them… I remember 1 man tents that took 2 men to carry them and 3 to put them up. Nowadays a tent comes in a flat lightweight disk which pops up as soon as you unzip it.

Of course, it still takes 3 men 3 hours to get it back in the pack again at the end of the holiday, but you can’t have everything.

The campsite seems to divide between people who have never camped before and those who have some experience. The way you tell them apart is that those who have never camped go into a camping shop and say “I’ve never camped before – what do I need” consequently they show up with trailers full of inflatable wardrobes, three story tents and solar powered self inflating cooking stoves comprising a four ring burner and a double oven.

Those who have camped before turn up with just a tent because they’ve watched a survival programme and think they can make fire from some dried up bark and a stick… Consequently, they then spend the rest of the weekend trying to borrow all the other stuff from the non-campers who find they don’t need it anyway because they’ve accidentally bought four duplicates.


Next to us on the campsite were a group of identical tents containing a selection of teenagers and a man in an army uniform who took great delight in tying them to trees.

I’m guessing it was a reality TV show destined for BBC 3.


On Sunday we cleared the tent away before most people were up – our SAS training came in handy – you should see Lisa assembling an AK-47 – and left to find a Little Chef for a greasy breakfast before moving straight on to lunch with Lisa’s parents.

We also got to see George again briefly (he didn’t seem to have missed us, but he can now clap which is useful) before we got on the train to London for the last Police concert ever in the UK…. Or so they say.

It turned out that this wasn’t just a Police concert… after a couple of acts we hadn’t heard of (no surprise there – we’re not great on the up-and-coming music scene – in fact the already-here-music-scene’s a bit of a mystery to me) suddenly the Bangles came on!

We also got somebody called TK turnstile – or something… OK, ok I know who she is. And she was really good – and funny too. Although she did do something I’ve never seen anyone do at a gig before… she forgot the words and had to start again.

Apparently the Stranglers were on a different stage, but we’d staked out a good picnic spot on the grass so we didn’t move.

The police did 2 hours in the end. I was impressed – they even did Invisible Sun – the only police record I ever bought. For some reason I really like the song. Perhaps it’s because I like my music not to say what it means quite… it’s a song that sounds like it’s really downbeat, but it’s actually about optimisim… the same as “Every Breath you take” sounds like it’s a love song, but it’s actually quite dark…

Anyway, Invisible Sun isn’t their most popular number, but obviously the band think it’s something special because it’s the only song they did with a slideshow (I get the feeling it’s some kind of charity record, but I’d never heard that).


Lisa loved the show too – which is lucky considering it was her birthday present.

By the time we got home, we were about ready for the end of the weekend… getting back to work seemed like a rest.


Jogging
On Tuesday night I did something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time… I went jogging… half an hour, but it seemed a lot longer.

I’ve been aware that I’ve said I need to take some exercise for about 5 years now and hardly done any. Now’s the time to start. Lisa’s running tonight and we’re going to do one run per week each from now on.

The trouble is, it’s so easy to find reasons not to go out… you feel a bit ill… you’ve got a heavy day tomorrow.. .you’ve had a heavy day today… it looks like it’s going to rain. I nearly got out of it last night because my jogging shorts are also my swimming shorts – and since I’d taken George to swimming class (his first time underwater without me holding onto him – the teacher dunked him and pushed him over towards me for me to catch) they were wet…. Unfortunately it was sunny and they dried… curses!

I think you have to commit and say “I’m going whatever”… and that’s what I’m going to try to do.

It was Lisa’s suggestion, but it’s on the “things I’ve been putting off for 40 years” list, so it’s time to tackle it!


Palma
Just to make everyone jealous for no reason… I’ve got an animation job which means I’ve got to go to Palma for Two days next week to hang about on a super yacht.

It’s all right for some….

Actually, the yacht’s not finished yet and I’m flying in one day and back the next, so it’s not going to be that much fun.

Still, more on this story as it develops…