the adlards

I have a boy’s room for the first time in a long time.
Not a little-boys’-room, you understand, a real boy’s room. It has my PC, my games, my books, my airfix models (yes), my toolbox (yes again) …

I spent the day sorting the room out and the evening, after little-girls-bed-time, sitting in my boy’s room building a PC from old bits I have. It has one of those keyboards that plugs into a big round multi-pin socket. No really. I’d forgotten those ever existed. It’s also got a bunch of drives and a whopping 64Mb of RAM. Now that’s not something you’d get hold of easily today. I’ve installed a version of Redhat from Back In The Day and will use it to archive stuff.

Way cool man.

Unemployment is all it’s cracked up to be.

Sophie woke at 4.15 and sat up in bed with a huge grin on her face refusing to go back to sleep. We moved her to our room and she eventually dropped off. When Jo woke she sang “Happy Birthday” to Sophie in bed before she realised Soph wasn’t in the room; she came dashing through to give her a hug.

Sophie’s bike, above, has become permanently attached to her left hand except when she’s playing with her tea set.

Tea at Granny & Grandpa coming up and toddler group in the afternoon.

I was sorting through old papers in my study the other day and came across Adlard & Adlard: The Complete Summer Catalogue. “Boats and paints and pots and pans and lamps and stands and mugs and rugs and towels trowels flower-pots and chairs and shoes and tins and bins …”. When we moved to the UK in 2000 we sold pretty much everything. We took three chests of stuff and an easel in excess baggage. We moved back to Cape Town in 2006 with a 20ft container and over the past four weeks we have very seriously considered doing it all again.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there’s “very seriously considered” and then there’s “very seriously considered”. As my blogging has become more and more sporadic over the past twenty months and our relationship has inevitably become more distant as a result, there may be a chance you’ve forgotten my natural inclination to understatement. On Tuesday afternoon at 16.20 we decided not to return to England next week. Our house was on the rental market; we had flights booked and confirmed; we had forty minutes of business time left before the packers arrived to start work in our house. It just didn’t feel right.

So quite seriously considered, then. We had decided in the last week of April that it was time to change our employment arrangements. Our gut feel was that we’d be moving back abroad, but we went out to our networks and friends all over the world immediately. Sure enough, we had not a single local lead within our decision timeframe and so made our plans to move: budgets were drawn up, sales lists were (once again) compiled, removal quotes and surveys (and re-surveys to absolutely ensure we’d fit a 20ft container again) were had, tickets were booked, agents of every description were contacted, met and negotiated with. There were periods of immense frustration, times of great excitement and times of intolerable grinding drudgery. Yes, I know, it was just four weeks.

There’s a lot can be accomplished in four weeks, but the real art of critical program management is about the skin in the game. We had backed out every financial commitment (except our dining room table, which we’d shipped up the coast and are missing terribly) by 10am on Wednesday. The emotional turmoil of change is more difficult to quantify, impossible to “back out” and evades easy resolution.

For the past few days, then, we’ve been regrouping, recovering from the inevitable early-winter viruses and beginning to think about what we want next. A change of pace of some description no doubt; a set of changes of pace following hard on each others heels in some almost-random pattern would probably be best.

We’re not quite sure what that looks like yet but have a little time to figure it out, what with work finishing this week.

When I’m at my most stressed I dream of going farming (deluded soul that I am). If anyone out there’s looking for a goat-herd please let me know.
Must include house with grounds.

This post from December 05 was brought to my attention by a spammer who evaded my nets. It made me laugh not just for MGW’s impressive witticism, but because life feels pretty dangerous right now and I’m spending a fair part of my time cleaning:

“I need to find something dangerous to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“As we grow up we stop doing things that involve physical risk and I think I need it.”
“Vacuuming can be very dangerous you know.”

The party began before the sun rose. The two wunnerful li’l things woke and crawled into Mum & Dad’s bed just five minutes before the doorbell went off, in the pitch dark, to signal Granny & Grandpa’s arrival. Birthday cake was never meant to be consumed before sunrise, but one makes sacrifices for one’s children.

At 8.30 I took The Three (and a half) to the airport to go and visit Granny Heather and Grandpa Ian. The only thing that could have made this birthday better would have been for it to be a BIG plane, not a LITTLE plane. And to have had more (any) friends at her party. Tricky, given the allotted hour.

The Army taught me to sweep. Well, in truth the Army taught my Father to sweep and he taught me which I suppose is not quite the same thing. Many of my generation missed that particular life-lesson, but I didn’t. The Army also broke my Father’s front tooth so that he had to stick it back in with superglue before a speaking engagement when I was 17 so really I’m rather glad. That I missed that particular life-lesson I mean. I’m sure if the Army had taught me to drink my taste wouldn’t run to the kinds of fine red wine that it does. I don’t know whether that would have been a good thing or not. I have a friend who spent considerable time around the time I was born setting up radio outposts in the Far East whilst a member of the One Tonne Club, drinking a hundred pints a week. Would I feel culturally deprived? Would I feel anything at all? Probably not with my body mass.

Missing things is intriguing. I miss a lot of different things, usually in a very non-specific longing sort of way. Some are things that happened to me, some are things I made happen, some are things that never happened. Very occassionally I miss a person. I miss different things on different days. Most days I don’t miss anything at all which makes me wonder if I’m ever missing anything.

What I miss most today is going down the pub to watch the World Cup. An entire nation of fanatics would pack into that pub every afternoon. We’d groan together, hold our breath together and jump up and down screaming together. A school chaplain once taught that that sort of behaviour is OK - just not in a group. He didn’t understand football.

I have had cause over the last few weeks to think a little about what we chase and why we chase it and whether, while chasing our tails like itchy dogs, we’re perhaps accomplishing something that might be objectively considered to be useful. On the side. By mistake as it were. I don’t think we are. I think if we want to achieve something useful we have to mean to. And then if we really want to achieve something useful we have to.

Michelle’s had a lovely day. Really. Take it from me.

This weekend just past I found a notebook of mine from 1994, here is my log of petrol fill-ups driving from Cape Town to Grahamstown at the end of that year:
R63,63 Pinelands
R42,50 Heidelberg
R42,60 Plettenberg Bay
R11,86 Storms River
R33,40 Colchester

This morning I put R50 into my nearly-empty tank and it looks like being enough to get me to the office and back. Twice, I should think.

We had our 20-week scan yesterday and we’re having another little girl, which is GREAT. I love being Dad to little girls. I’m sure I’d love being Dad to little boys too, but I just don’t know

We got a DVD of the scan so will no doubt get some pics online soon. She’s thriving and “normal” whatever that means. I’m not sure I’ve met a normal child.

Last Monday night I was as low as I’ve ever been, alone in a hotel room in Johannesburg afflicted with some dreadful virus. Looking at my pale reflection in the glass shower door opposite my porcelain throne, not only was all ill with the world but I was responsible.

This Monday night I’m alive.
This Monday night I want to run around in circles screaming “Hallelujah” at the top of my voice.

But that would wake the children.