Emily is 18

Emily is 18 today. I now have a daughter who is an adult. A sobering thought. A very sobering thought. I need a whisky. Or two. Hmmm...better make it just the one, I am in court tomorrow.

Eighteen years ago on this very day, she was born at North Middlesex Hospital. The time since then has been so eventful. It seems simultaneously to be both an eternity and five minutes ago. I wonder what Christine would have made of Emily to see her today ? I am sure she would have been incredibly proud. I would give anything to be able to let her know, to reassure her that the little girls that she brought into the world and that she loved so much, have grown up to be so bright, so self-assured, so beautiful and so full of life. They and now Molly, have enriched my life beyond all measure. I have no real grasp of the anguish Christine must have suffered knowing that she would never see them grow up, but even a moment's contemplation of it is apt to make me feel utterly desolate.

I remember my 18th Birthday Party. July 1979. I had swapped trainspotting for Punk, I had been going out with Christine, my first proper girlfriend (who 6 years later became my wife) for just over 6 months. I was no longer a virgin, the afternoon of Wednesday 30th May 1979 had seen to that. My fate was sealed so far as my A-levels were concerned. And at last I was old enough to set foot in a pub and purchase alcohol - although it is possible that this might have happened once or twice before that. I remember it as a time of great uncertainty and yet great optimism, but that recollection may be coloured by the 20:20 hindsight produced by my rose-tinted spectacles.

I wonder how Emily will look back on this day in 27 years time. Or if she will at all.

Running Joke

I have started running again. Well, jogging would be more accurate. I have been doing it very early in the mornings with the dogs - do not want too many people to see 40 tonnes of middle-aged blubber bouncing along the woodland paths like an escaped giant blancmange. The dogs are enjoying it, although I think they find the pace a bit relentless. They would prefer to sprint off across the fields in the vain pursuit of the crows that seem to taunt them, followed by a bit of walking before the break-neck high speed pursuit of the next squirrel/pheasant/deer that crosses our path, followed by a bit more walking. Instead, I jog around at a fairly constant pace with them putting in the extra sprints in between. Fartlek for dogs. The family have unkindly suggested that I am the man who put the 'fart' in Fartlek.

At least the hounds will be leaner and fitter as a result.

Some arty photos

I have put a few of my pictures in albums on Flickr. I am planning to add to these in the future.

You can view them via these links :

Arty Farty A few of my more esoteric images

Our Country's Good Some pictures taken of Beaconsfield Theatre Group's recent production of Our Country's Good

The Ace of Spades

So we finally had the back garden done.

The pond has gone, the other daft water feature has gone. The two rocky mounds have gone. The muddy quagmire that was the lawn has gone. It has all been filled in, levelled and re-turfed. The dogs have a separate fenced off area for them to ruin and Helen and I have madly planted the beds with shrubs and flowers. It actually looks like a garden for the first time since we had the dogs.

The day after the pond was filled and the new turf put down I was sitting with Molly in the lounge very early in the morning, when a huge heron plonked himself down on the grass. I watched as he did a very obvious double take, looked left, right and up and down and clearly thought to himself "I am sure this is the right garden, where has the bloody pond gone ? There was definitely a pond here before. It was right....here. I must be going mad." Then he took off again. It was a wonderfully comic moment, I just wish I had been able to catch it on video.

Anyway, as usual we took our enthusiasm a step too far. I decided to create a herb garden in one of the raised beds. This meant removing a large fig tree which I assumed would be a fairly easy task. I chopped the branches off in no time at all and left a stump about 2 feet high. I gave it a good shake. It was disconcertingly solid. I gave it a jolly good kick. This resulted in a short informal walkabout in the garden as I mouthed a few obscenities and hopped to relieve the pain in my stubbed toes. So I decided to dig it out. I dug all around it exposing several inches of roots. Cut through a few, but still it stayed rock solid. So I decided to take the spade to some of the roots. I raised the handle of the spade high above the ground and put my whole (not insignificant) weight behind it and brought it down as hard as I could in the expectation that it would scythe its way through even the toughest of the roots. Had I realised that there was risk I might miss the roots and had I known that there was a lump of concrete just below the soil where my spade was about to land I might have been a little more circumspect. The jarring pain that rocketed through my hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder was truly excruciating. The doctor has confidently predicted that I have done the sort of damage that will take "a bit of time" to mend. In the meantime he has given me the sort of painkillers that require insertion not ingestion and the pain is breaking through even those with no trouble.

I did get the stump of the tree out though, by chipping it away, with an axe, piece by piece, very gingerly, with my left hand.

So The Ace of Spades, as I am now known around here is feeling a bit sorry for himself.

When colds go bad...

We had a very scary trip to A&E with Molly last week.

She had been a bit miserable for a couple of days with a cough and a cold and on the Monday night she had a very high temperature and was plainly unwell. We called NHS Direct in the middle of the night and took her to see the doctor in the morning. He just said that he thought it was a virus and that we should be able to manage her temperature with Calpol and Nurofen. We were off to Cheshire that day to the funeral of Len Webster (one of my great friends from Bar School). Molly was a bit subdued all day but her temperature stayed reasonably low. We stayed in a hotel overnight and that night she became very hot again and we continued to treat her as suggested by the doctor. The next day she was clearly unwell. She became floppy and listless and the medicine failed to bring her temperature down. On the way back home she was getting worse and worse so we decided to take her to A&E. A very wise plan, as it turned out.

When we arrived at A&E, the triage nurse was very reassuring and essentially told us that everything was going to be fine and that they would soon have her temperature down. We were less confident because we knew that the Calpol Nurofen combination was not working. Within about 20 mins we had gone from "there there, we will soon sort her out with a teaspoon of Calpol" to three specialist paediatric doctors, two nurses, a mobile chest x-ray, a trip to the resucitation room "for just in case", an oxygen mask, saline drip lots of frantic activity and some very worried faces. Her blood O2 was at a mere 75%, her temperature was almost 40 degrees and climbing and she was dangerously unwell. She was admitted to the children's ward and thankfully the rehydration and oxygen worked quite quickly to bring her temperature down and her blood O2 back to 100%. They kept her in overnight and until the early evening on Wednesday. We then had to go back again on the Thursday morning just to get the final blood test results which were all fine. Apparently, it was just a very very nasty viral infection.

She still has a dreadful cough and a cold, but otherwise is well on the mend.

To say we were all a bit worried would be a massive understatement.