Sedation

Had the day off as my wife was having a wisdom tooth extracted and needs a 'responsible adult' with her all day. I'd been briefed that she would need constant care for twenty four hours, and would not be allowed to drive or operate machinery.

As we were early in our schedule, we bought ourselves two take away teas on the way. They were so hot that we had to stop the car several times to avoid being scalded. Most of it was either spilled or poured away and we arrived late.

I took a newspaper and two books with me, but the whole thing was over in ten minutes. She was heavily sedated for her extraction, which they likened to having three bottles of vodka. "Most people leave happy!" they announced cheerfully, although she came out looking more like the morning after three bottles of vodka.

We got home and I put her to bed to look forward to a quiet remainder of the day. Within two hours she was up and about, within three was getting me to mend the drippy toilet and within four she was cleaning the oven. Now, this is something she has never done before so I think the sedation somehow had a reverse affect on her. If there was any machinery around, she would no doubt be operating it.

I'm sure it would have been different for me. These days, if I have as much as the equivalent of two sips of vodka I am in bed for the week. I'll stick with the hot tea.

My Daughter Likes The Avengers

My seven year old daughter is a big fan of The Avengers. As this compensates for her aversion to Dr Who, I have been letting her stay up to watch it on Thursday evenings. Between seven and eight o'clock is normally reserved for bedtime things; reading, bathing, teeth. For the Avengers I made an exception but this week she became overtired with 'The Positive Negative Man' and it all ended in screaming and tears when she wouldn't go to bed afterwards.
"You'll never watch the Avengers again!" I yelled, which is something I never thought I'd hear myself say.

Drive Time

I'm reckoning that we're easily going to spend at least a thousand pounds this month just on cars.
It's our fault for being a 'two car' family. Just as I've got over spending a small fortune on my wife's car (not to mention walking to and from the garage in the pouring rain and driving the toy car loan vehicle for a day) I suddenly lose the power of my handbrake on the way in to work this morning. Halfway to Shepton Mallet I face the 'shall I turn back or press on?' dilemma. Pressing on, I realise just how many hills are involved in my daily jaunt to work.
After half an hour of careering up and down hills I pull into a garage on the outskirts of Shepton Mallet, what you might call the 'badlands' of town. Dirt tracks. I drive up one and park, handbrake off. I don't encounter Martin Sheen, but instead something from 'Deliverance'. A small figure leaning over an old wreck of a car looks up with a 'well, city boy?' look in his eye.
Luckily I avoid banjos, canoes, Burt Reynolds and squealing like a pig. The handbrake is fixed by lunchtime but I'm glad to get out of there, careering back to Bristol for five.

Since You've Been Gone

Our annual assault on the garden today. Being a Bank Holiday, what more could you possibly do? Well, I deliberately tried to squeeze some other things in.
Realising that port and cigars were out of the question, I set about solving the riddle of 'the old photograph' this Easter weekend. We bought a new scanner on Saturday. We also bought a new Dyson. Both were surprisingly quick purchases, but something went wrong after that. Fired with success, we set out to buy a mop and became indecisive. The mop buying took hours and I know why. Unlike the scanner and the Dyson, there were no experts on hand to guide us.

There was no expert on hand to guide me in how to install the scanner when we got home with it. Almost an entire day later I'd only just managed to scan in the 'old photograph'. This is a picture of a man in First World War uniform standing with a woman and a small boy. I found it amongst my aunt's papers when she died and I have no idea who the people in the picture are.

I emailed the picture to my 'lost relatives', the ones who found me on Genes Reunited. Within a few hours I had discovered that the photograph was taken in 1917. The soldier is my great uncle Arthur, on leave from the war, with his wife and son. The parents and brother of my father's cousin, now 88 years old, and who's existence I've only known about for a short time (but that's another story).

Anyway, I made an old lady happy, and all in a shorter time than buying a couple of household items.

A Senior Moment

What exactly is a senior moment? I think I may have had one, where all of the images for Smoking Jacket were accidently deleted.
Moment over, welcome back.
The tamagotchi never lasted and, anyhow, we have a real cat now.