Getting laid

It was remarkably pleasing that The Seagulls are top of League One after another win this weekend. The chaos the match caused on the A23 as we arrived for (yet another) flat tidy up was soon forgotten. It's been several years since we've had much to cheer about, but this is certainly excellent news. And with the new stadium well under way, perhaps I dare hope for a new renaissance in football down at the seaside. The memory of the old football stadium being sold off, levelled and turned into a Toys'R'Us will hopefully fade.

I've lost count of the number of times that we've tidied and re-tidied the flat over the last eighteen months. Every time we make some progress, we have a new workman/builder/contractor in to cause chaos and undo all our good work. This time it had been the carpet fitters. All the carpets were between twenty and forty years old and were in a shocking state - plenty of wear and tear which included many spills and stains from growing children meant that I let the painter cut away all the edges of the carpets so we could get a good finish on the skirting boards. Last year when the kitchen was refitted, the ceiling was pulled down, and essentially 200 years of shit came with it, covering everything in a black sticky soot. It was gross. I can't tell you why but the night before the carpet fitters arrived, I had my head down on the carpet in the hallway. All I could smell was years of stale cooking.

But their arrival meant more furniture moving...and then putting back the day after. Thank heavens The Cat's Mum was there to help. I'm not sure what she thinks she's got herself into, having paid someone to clean her house for the last twenty years. Still, a change is as good as a rest as I like to say to her. Often.

So upstairs is now done. Lovely cream carpets in the music room and the play room (that's the one with the Playstation in)) and a blood red hall carpet that flows down the stairs. It's delicious.

Next week the carpet fitters will be back to do downstairs. This may just push me over the edge, but I'm sure the results will be worth it. And at least I'll have the job of making them at least a dozen mugs of tea to keep me occupied.

And the whole thing keeps my mind off work at the moment which can only be a good thing as we lurch from one recession to the doldrums to another recession.

Sweet 16

Friday night was The Cat's birthday night celebration. Her real birthday is Wednesday, but celebrations have begun early.
Of course at 16, the big question is 'Alcohol?'
The answer from the teenagers was of course a resounding YES!!!
The answer from the adults was "um, err, um, erm".
We forewarned other parentals and there were no objections.
So a small quantity of beer, wkd, and Pimms was purchased.
As they arrived The Cat's Mum and I retreated fingers crossed and sat nervously in the living room whilst the party got into full swing in the basement, onto the conservatory and then into the garden before returning to the house.
Clearly our nervousness got the better of us as we dropped off to sleep whilst watching Sweeney Todd.
In the rest of the house there was no blood letting, no vomiting, no breakages and no one disappearing upstairs.
As the witching hour arrived, parents arrived, offspring collected and the evening ended.
Everyone happy.

The Office

My very kind phone provider was recently battered into submission and gave me a new phone even though I wasn't due one. The old one was rubbish, and the new one is lovely. My contract says I can upgrade it at the end of the month, so I'll have two shiny new phones in my pocket. If only I had enough friends to justify it. The new phone has only two problems - one it has a rubbish camera, so my First Friday Photos may well be a bit rubbish this time. The other thing is, being an 'Android' phone,it forced me to create a new e-mail address. bradstockboys95@googlemail.com. I don't like it, I didn't want it, but it has insisted. Hopefully no one will ever send me anything on that address because they'll never get a reply. I like my hotmail address for all things personal and my work address for all things work.

At home, I like to wake to the radio (Q Radio) and have my tea and toast to the radio - XFM. The Cat, however, has to be woken by an earthquake level 9 on the Richter scale, and over breakfast has struggled with my choice of radio station. She asked in her lovely way whether it would be possible to have Capital Radio on during breakfast. As an accommodating person I said yes (whilst cursing under my breath). This morning, the radio was retuned to Capital. Johnny Vaughan I think. It lasted no more than 30 seconds before The Cat said, "Oh I'd forgotten I hate Johnny Vaughan, can you put it back to XFM." I feel there must be a third way.

In the office, the musical chairs shenanigans continues. I've mentioned them before. I've reposted Weird John several times, and Mad Maria at least once. There was an Irish girl who came in. She was lovely but left in the blink of an eye. She was nearly replaced by The Spaniard, but he just couldn't quite make his mind up.

So in came The Baron and The Bane Of My Life.

I'm not quite sure when it became apparent that all was not quite right. It may have been when The Baron came in, had a shower and used the hand towels we all use to dry himself with. All of himself. None of us have been able to wash our hands since.

It may have been when The Cat's Mum came in bearing a very full box of Millies Cookies. When she'd gone The Bane took it upon himself to offer them around to everyone else.

Or it may have been when I heard a key in the door lock at 10.00 in the morning whilst I sat at my desk. The door had been locked. "Hello" I called out. "Oh" said The Baron "I didn't think anyone was in". At 10 in the morning. Clearly I've been in the wrong job all my life.

Or it may have been that whilst I was out, they came and took the cables connecting my two computers to the network so they could connect themselves. "We didn't think you needed them" they said after I'd spent half an hour when I came back trying to work out why I had no Internet access.

Or it may have been when The Bane just started helping himself to magazines on people's desks without asking.

Or it may have been when they decided to connect a router to the network, knocking everyone else off and thereby causing me to spend an hour and a half on the phone to an expensive computer technician before we discovered what they'd done.

Or it may have been when The Barron set off the alarm, and thought of letting me know by e-mail suggesting I call him. I picked up the e-mail four hours later.

Or it may have been the tea bag left in my tea which The Barron (kindly) made this morning. I found it when I reached the bottom of the mug.

Or it may have been......

Smile

Winter's coming, but we're still smiling.

Tara's gallery can be found here

This weekend the children were mostly burning the house down

So there I was chatting to Rich Dad on the sidelines of the second rugby match of the season, and he mentioned that he's 6-8 weeks behind in the training schedule for his trek to the North Pole. Evidently he keeps picking up injuries because when he was young he wasn't fit so doesn't have 'core strength' now that he's older. It made me realise a couple of things - one that mindless decisions made in our youth have lifetime consequences, and secondly that being rich doesn't just enable you to but a bigger house and a flashier car...you can afford the time and expense of doing things the rest of us can only dream of...good luck to him - he is really making the most of his success.

I remember when I took The Boy and his sister to see their mum in the hospital in Dublin after her brain hemorrhage that it was the first time I had seen them together for several years. Obviously it was an emotionally highly charged time but it was a beautiful sight as they messed around, chatted and generally interacted as only brother and sister could. I've held that memory very close in the years since, and it was probably that which encouraged me to be determined to keep them close after their mum died. Unfortunately I failed on that front but I've continued to hope upon hope that they will become close again as they get older.

Now, though, The Boy has The Cat and The Cat has The Boy. Putting the offspring of different parents together can be difficult, but in this case a great school friendship has blossomed. It is just startling to see the two of them play together, squabble, wind each other up in such a fashion. I love it. I suspect that both had missed having a sibling to play with when they were younger, and are now making up for it.

Friday night they were playing one of their games...it seems to involve The Boy trying to reach the house from the bottom of the garden without being seen. He wears his army camouflage gear. The Cat must also avoid being seen...I'm not quite sure how it all works, but The Boy has written out the rules for for The Cat to LEARN AND UNDERSTAND. Anyway, the game was in full flow and I was on the phone to Grandma in Cyprus. There was a screech from upstairs...clearly The Boy had been spotted. I thought. Moments later, The Boy barged past me presumably trying to reach home base. I thought. I continued chatting away; The Cat's Mum continued cooking dinner.

The The Cat appeared in the bathroom which I was standing by and calmly put her stockinged feet in the bidet. After a short while I noticed the soles of her stocking all appeared to be cut away, or melted. She was deeply engrossed. Eventually I caught her attention and mouthed "Are you OK?" She said yes, but something was not quite right. I lost track of my conversation and said goodbye to Grandma in Cyprus. By this stage The Boy was there tending to her. I asked what had happened, and got "It's fine it's all sorted". I thought I could smell burning...and went to the top room where The Cat had been. The ceiling was burnt...not a scorch mark, the lights had melted and two large burn holes in the carpet, a burnt t-shirt and burnt (Paul Smith!) flip flops. And plenty of ash.

The order of events had been...The Cat had been speaking on her mobile to The Boy during the game - she was in the top room, he had been in the garden. "Can you smell burning?" she asked, "No" he said. Then he said "The fire is behind you." It was indeed...one of them had somehow thrown a t-shirt onto the spot lights, it had caught fire. The Cat screamed. Pulled the shirt down and stamped out the flames with her stockinged feet. She got a blister for her troubles. The Boy rushed to the rescue. Together they put out the fire.

It was one of those events that is so serious that no one got told off. But much time was spent contemplating the potential consequences.

Art is in the eye of the beholder

I think I've woken with a hangover (again) and am a fair bit grumpy. Fortunately The Boy's demand for £15 for a new rugby shirt didn't seem to unreasonable in my haze first thing.

Last night The Cat's Mum and I went to the British Art Fair at the Royal College of Arts. We went last year, but the difference this time was that we returned home together.

At the show, the stands were manned by the largest gathering of Ruperts and Mirandas to date. Slack jawed, floppy-haired trustafrians rah rah rahhing...you can tell it drives me to distraction. I'm sure they are perfectly nice people, but the air of elitism is impenetrable to me. The art ranged from well-established names like Lowry through to complete unknowns to me - a person who 'knows what they like'. In general my steely inexpert eye would say that most of it was uninspiring and inartistic. But that doesn't stop them charging a fortune for these works...was there anything there for less than £1000? I couldn't find it. And on one stand, the average price was well over a quarter of a million fine English pounds. I'm sure it was a prime target for any art thieves, but there didn't appear to be any security of note. I stand in awe at this. I can only assume that the market for expensive art is self-perpetuating with one Rupert selling to the next and so on...or perhaps I just wish I had the money to join in the merry-go-round?

Out on the street yesterday was a gathering of a different kind. The street which runs in front of the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade was full of firemen, and had been blocked off by riot police. I doubt there was a Rupert among them, but plenty of Robs, Petes and Andys. They had gathered to hear calls to fight impending cut backs. They were animated and passionate...although a few had sneaked off round the corner for a crafty pint...and I can't help but feel this is a sign of things to come. This may well be The Boys first winter of discontent.

That was the week that was

So last week was all about Back to School. You couldn't turn a corner without seeing something about it.

At home, lost school books had to be found and uniforms that should have been hung up, but were screwed up in the back of the wardrobe, had to be washed and ironed. Faintly remembered routines have been revitalised - alarm calls at 6.45, shower, tea, breakfast and off in the car - remarkably, because it's still fresh, it's been an early start every day so far. It won't last. School timetables have to be learnt and after school activities organised and diarised. In the evening, the return of the rabble, homework to be done (one is far quicker at doing this than the other...it's a cause of some friction), dinner cooked, eaten and the dishes piled into the dishwasher. It's the rhythm of life.

This week, it's all about the onset of autumn. Last night the central heating was switched on for the first time. Radiators had to be turned on...and my task will be to bleed the ones that are boiling at the base and freezing at the top. On the motorbike, I need to wear my winter gloves, and will change from wearing my Kevlar reinforced jeans to full motorcycle over trousers 'designed to stop muscle stripping'. The trees in the garden are just beginning to turn yellow, orange, brown and soon the leaves will fall and there'll be a pocket money task of sweeping them up. It's still light in the morning, but definitely darkening as I ride home...but I remain hopeful that there will be a last burst of sun this year. In the office we've started talking about Christmas arrangements...

A celebration...Tara's gallery

I won't pretend this is the greatest picture I've ever taken....but that doesn't stop it having a good story behind it....and this one worthy of any John leCarre novel.

The balloon indicates a celebration...I just wonder if you can guess what for? If you look closely at the signs behind Queen Anne, you will see they are written in Russian. And I can tell you that getting a helium balloon in St Petersburg in no easy task. Fortunately that labour of love didn't fall to me, rather to our American travelling companions....and , of course, they are rather good at that sort of thing. They asked at the hotel that we were staying at where they could get one. No Clintons in Russia you know. They were given a number...in my head this was hurriedly scribbled on a piece of paper and surreptitiously passed to them by a rebellious receptionist in a dark corner of the hotel lobby. That may not have been the actual case. The Americans then made various phone calls to people who did not speak English. Perhaps they were waiting for the right password. Eventually they found the person who could supply them with this secret merchandise and were directed to a door in a back street of suburban St Petes. It wasn't a high street. In fact there were no shops at all. Just a big wooden door. They knocked. I'm sure it was a rhythmic three knocks followed by silence and then a further two brisk bangs. The door opened slowly, and they were ushered inside. Money was exchanged. The deal was done. The only challenge was to get it back without being seen, so they walked side by side with the balloon hidden behind them. They side stepped quickly into the hotel and made for the dining room where it was secured to a chair. The victim was, shortly afterwards, brought in to the room....and utterly charmed by it. Queen Anne's balloon accompanied us all for the remainder of our holiday, but sadly was unable to arrange an exit visa, or manage an escape over the border, so remained trapped in enemy territory.

Long Way Down

A few years ago, Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman decided to head off round the world on their motorbikes, turning the adventure into an excellent TV programme. At the same sort of time, a film was released, The Motorcycle Diaries. Naturally I got confused and didn't realise that this was about Che Guevara's formative years...how he developed from an aspiring doctor into an iconic revolutionary figure. The Motorcycle Diaries is superb, and I've lost count of the number of times we've watched it.

Together these two visual feasts have encouraged The Boy into an interest in motorcycles...something I regard as less than healthy, and have done my utmost to discourage him from. Fortunately, he appears to be heeding my plea that he doesn't learn until he's 35. I hope he sticks to that.

It has also very positively stimulated an interest in the outdoors, travel and adventure. All to the good.

The Long Way Round (I'll let you guess in which direction they encircled the globe) was followed by The Long Way Down. You guessed it, in this follow-up, they went North to South. It wasn't quite as captivating, as the format was just the same as the first series, and somewhat devalued by the presence of newbie biker McGregor's wife (if she could do it, so could anyone...and I thought this was supposed to be a boys' adventure)...but quite entertaining none the less.

For Charlie Boorman, it was this start of a new career..as an autograph signer and adventurer....which was fortunate as his acting career was not quite as stellar as his travelling companion's. The Boy was lucky enough to meet him at The Motorcycle Show and get the autograph he so wanted.



McGregor has gone from strength to strength...although personally I've never been a fan. Not sure why, his films just don't appeal.

For both Long Way Round and Long Way Down, the boys raised money for UNICEF, visiting some of the charity's facilities on their journeys - and that interest clearly still remains. So I'm very happy to have been asked to post the following video to help raise money for Pakistan's children whose lives have been devastated by the floods.

The Battle of the iPods

What I meant to say, as we reached the three quarter point of Avatar (3D) that we had eventually got round to seeing this weekend, to the man sitting behind us in the swanky West End cinema was "Would you mind awfully not repeatedly knocking the back of my chair please as its quite distracting."

What I actually said was, "Can you stop kicking the back of my......

......

.....

fucking seat"

Before realising it was his friend sitting next to him that was doing it. So I quickly turned forty five degrees and added,

"Yes you...it's you...I can see your foot"

I'm so glad I didn't go into the diplomatic corps...

It was during the big battle near the end of the film, so the adrenaline was pumping...its an excuse of sorts...

Does anyone know why Apple insists on updating iTunes so frequently that I regularly haven't installed a new version before an even newer version needs to be downloaded. I spend more time downloading than listening, which seems somewhat perverse.

Having not been married for a decade, I'd forgotten about the little tiffs and squabbles that can populate family life.

This weekend we toddled off to see some friends on the other side of the M25. A journey long enough to require music. Of course radio is not good enough, so three of us decided to bring our iPods. In an act of uncommon charity on my part, I suggested we listened to songs from The Cat's collection. The Cat is, of course, a teenage girl. Which was fine until The Cat's Mum insisted on taking control, and further still insisted on playing the sort of music that no self-respecting teenage boy, and his father, could tolerate. Britney Spears, Avril Lavine and Bryn Terfel among them. After much lively discussion, I tried awarding points out of 10 to each played song as a gentle hint. The Cat's Mum was hitting a lowly 3 before I resorted to switching to the radio, switching to the CD, and disconnecting the iPod. It all seemed quite fun as we tried to avoid the enormous queue on the M25 which was sending stress levels dangerous near the 'heart attack' point.

On the return journey, The Boy was given the chance to plug in his iPod...and all seemed to be going well, as The Cat was given the chance to play a couple of tracks. but then it all went horribly wrong. it may have been The Verve. It may have been Radiohead, but suddenly The Boy was on a roll, and refused to allow anyone near the music. We tried to mediate, we tried to reason, we tried the application of commonsense. We even tried humour. But to no avail. The Boy disconnected the iPod from the car stereo and put on his headphones. With jaws dropped, the rest of us were left in momentary musical absence. The CD player was then switched on, and we sat in silence apart from the thumping out of Bachman Turner Overdrive...

To be or not to be....

"I think I'm putting lard on the cat's boils that night. He's an arse..." was the response to my text asking a friend if he was going to be watching TV on Thursday night. What I was really asking was whether he'd be watching Alan Davies' Teenage Revolution. AD was at Bancrofts, where The Boy goes following in my footsteps, and has built a career slagging off the place. I don't know why the school lets him back, but they do, so we have to endure his nonsense time and time again. Last night, he spoke in a contemptuous way about it being 'posh'. Well compared to many schools it is, but then if you're brought up in a prosperous middle-class area, living in a house that is worth (today's prices) in the region of £800,000 by a successful chartered accountant father (and mum who wasn't mentioned) you're really quite posh yourself aren't you? His key act of rebellion seemed to be riding his bicycle on his neighbours drive and putting posters on his bedroom wall. Wow. Over the last decade or two Bancroft's has been one of, if not the, the top mixed schools in the country, and manages to churn out people who generally avoid the elitism of many Public Schools. I'm so glad that Lucy Mangan in The Guardian described it as "an extremely tedious hour"

One performance I will miss though is The Boy in Twelfth Night as he has decided not to audition for the Senior Play this year. His reasons are complex and it's a great sadness after he stunned everyone with his genius performance in the Middle School play earlier this year...but he says his evenings are full, so I'm not going to insist...as if I could anyway!

And back on the professional stage Deathwatch with Simon Russell Beale (by reputation our greatest living stage actor) is getting rave reviews, which I don't understand as the play itself is cheesy nonsense and the man's performance is not all that it could be. Just shows that you can't trust the critics...not that I did anyway.

I feel I need to lie down...

Oh it's back to school...Tara's Gallery

Me: "I've forgotten to get Brandon Flowers"
The Boy "Well there's two florists in Loughton"

Hopefully that's not a sign that the last five year's education has been wasted. The Boy is a great lover of music - he has quite a talent, and picked up playing the guitar very easily....I'd like to think that it was because he was exposed to recorded music from the earliest days, and live music from when he was knee high to a grasshoppper. Of course we all have off days...

For this week's gallery I chose this shot. Taken just before he started at his then new school five years ago. He was moving from a very right-on school in Finsbury Park, where poverty hung around every corner and there were notices in the school playground telling parents it was harmful to take their children out of school to Bangladesh for three months, to a posh Public School - interestingly it manages to churn out some very well rounded kids without the elitist attitudes of many of its ilk. Perhaps it's because some parents sacrifice a lot to be able to pay the fees for Bancrofts.

He's standing on the balcony of the flat we lived in on Borough High Street. The poor lad had a very long commute because our plans to move close to the school had taken longer than expected. We finally moved in October, and he was then able to walk in five minutes.

Yesterday, he returned to school after the long break as a Fifth former. It's one of the few year's that has a name that most people would recognise - he's been a Third (first year), Remove (second), Lower Fourth and Upper Fourth. I still don't understand the modern way of doing it...is he Year 11?

Fifth form seems to be the beginning of the end...a year of GCSEs, two of 'A' Levels and then away to University. If I remember rightly, the year is accompanied by feelings of being grown up, but without the wisdom and maturity to be gained in the sixth form.

He's looking forward to it. I'm sure it will be another successful year. I hope.

Bang goes September

So it's barely got going and....:

1. Grandad in Cyprus has landed up in hospital with pneumonia and pleurisy. This is, of course, number one crisis, and will cause sleepless nights in Loughton, whilst in Cyprus Grandma in Cyprus runs around in ever decreasing circles and wears herself out. Naturally we have absolute faith that this will work out fine.

2. The Cat's Mum's birthday. Friday night we all headed out after I made some Vodka Martinis. We came home some hours later after one of our number disgraced herself in the taxi. Not seen behaviour like that for 20 years.

3. The Cat managed to break the hubble bubble pipe. I'm pleased, the Cat's Mum's pleased as it will save any future discussions

4. Friday afternoon and the office above decided to redo their plumbing. I don't think the idea was to send all their waste water through the ceiling. But it may have been.

5. I can't find any of the photos I've taken on the new phone...they're supposed to be on the computer somewhere, but they are elusive, so that'll mean no photo post this month

6. The Boy is having a clear out of clothes too small to wear. Without even rummaging through the bag, I can see plenty of things that are still too big for him

7. Potential new client has moved meeting to the time when I'm supposed to be getting food for The Cat's Mum's birthday meal tonight. I can't refuse. I will suffer later

8. The new Simon Russell Beale play (Deathwatch) is erm risible...and one of our group was so scared in one part, she screamed loud enough to bring the roof down. The whole theatre turned and looked. I slunk down

9. I still haven't caught up with all the blogs I like to read, so I shall end up getting further and further behind...

10. I'm supposed to be organising the OB's dinner...but the OB's haven't yet got the website working so that people can book tickets. It's happening 15th October. Or not.

11. School starts tomorrow. I wonder which bits of uniform need replacing?

Technology defeats us all...

I was looking back over the blog from year or so ago, and discovered that when I switched from the Blogger comment system to Disqus, all the previous comments disappeared. I'm rather sad about that, especially as I hadn't meant to move to Disqus...hey ho as Henry Ford never said, "History is bunk".

I've also been given a new HTC phone by T-Mobile because my Nokia was so awful. In fact my relationship with The Cat's Mum may well come to an end now because we'll have nothing to talk about. The thing about the new phone is that it has an app for social media, and what I now find is that when I post on Facebook, that post also comes up on my RTFM Twitter feed. So magically, the real me is revealed to the hidden me. I'm not sure that's good, but anyway, keeping secrets was never a strong point. I may yet have to reveal my real name.

Whilst we were away in Icyland, GCSE results were published. The Cat and The Boy were awaiting results which contribute to their final grade for three subjects. They were cool as cucumber about it. And naturally I appeared to be. As we arrived back, The Cat ripped open her results to get a very impressive 2 A*s and an A. The Boy's results were back in the old home...his initial comment that he could wait, changed and he nearly bit my hand off when I offered to drive him over there to get them. 15 minutes later he had his results. 3A*s including two which were 100%. I'm pleased. The Cat's Mum's pleased and The Cat and The Boy are both off to a flying start as they begin their GCSE year on Tuesday....