Category: family

Blinkers 2

Yesterday evening, fresh out of the gym and leaving the leisure centre, my attention was diverted, pleasantly I might add, from the single-minded pursuit of getting out and home for dinner. Diverted by someone I've known for a few years now, and whose husband used to work for the same company as I.

I apologised for my tunnel-vision, she remarked about my apparent single-minded sense of purpose, and we parted company.

Ok, ok, ok, in a spirit of full disclosure I must confess I wasn't just at the gym. No. I'd just taken my youngest daughter to her weekly swimming lesson; and we'd, together with her oldest sister, endured the trauma of showering and changing in the men's, and the far-busier-than-Saturday's weekday lesson time slot.

What strikes me as comforting, especially against the backdrop of my 'Blinkers' post at the weekend: two people I've known for a while took the time to say hello. Which was nice.

Blinkers

We went to the pictures yesterday, to watch the Lego Batman Movie. I suspended my sense of disbelief as usual and yes, cried near the end. Who knew that hanging a picture could be so moving‽

To get the film review out of the way, it's fantastic, obviously it is, with an opening sequence that rivals pretty much anything I've seen I all my years (old git.) One of the best scenes in it, a precursor of what's to come, involves heating Lobster Thermidor in a microwave.

Yeah ok, YMMV.

On the way out to the car after spending more money than I intended to (two large Belgian chocolate milkshakes for the girls, from the Costa Coffee) an old, esteemed colleague spotted me, and made his (and his family's) presence known. Upon him asking how the film was, all I could do was mock-rub my eyes, indicating 'it's a tearjerker', and we parted ways.

Interesting that, I've always tended to have tunnel-vision, a single-minded sense of purpose when…

If anyone ever see me walking the streets (or, it's even worse in the car) and I apparently blank them, it really is my inability to focus on anything but the one thing at the centre of my attention. Yesterday's thing: safely getting the girls to the car. Thirty years ago? Making sure I completed the jog without stray dogs, cars or pedestrians breaking my rhythm.

So don't be shy.

7 bits

Last week, during the school holiday, my wife took our daughters to a National Trust property. My oldest has to prepare a piece on Victorian England, so where better to go than a historic home and mill?

During the tour around the mill both girls made key rings, beads strung in the form of a binary number representation of the initials of their first and last names.

The next day I got together with my youngest to decode the beads, adopting a methodical approach:

  • Explain what binary numbers are used for these days,
  • Explain what they were used for in the olden-days,
  • Sketch out a table of 7-bit binary, and extend it to 8 bits,
  • Note down the first set of beads, being careful to establish a datum from which to start, in case we chose the wrong end first,
  • Add up the filled 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 positions, explaining why,
  • Find an ASCII character table from the Internet to decide which character the number represents,
  • Repeat for the second letter, which proved we'd chosen the wrong end from which to start, but it didn't matter for the first,
  • Success!

Ok, you get the idea. A surprisingly fun thing to do on a miserably mild English winter afternoon.

Nine

Today marks the ninth anniversary of the sale of our first home together, my wife, my first daughter, and me. A precarious few months preceded the joy of signing that piece of paper and terminating the first of our two mortgages together.

Two concurrent mortgages, though in no way unique, stretched us nonetheless. The simple fact is that we picked a budget for our new home and exceeded that by a generous two-digit percentage.

And we're still paying for that decision.

Still, it is good that I've not been shot at, for at least nine years and three months.

Hungry

In the hurry to leave the house for this morning's school run and journey to work I forgot my lunch, I forgot cash (the cash my wife got for me yesterday evening) and…

Having nothing edible in my desk drawer for the first time in weeks I'm sat here now looking at a vending machine 'Hot chicken soup', and wondering if its calorific value will be adequate to sustain me for the next 5 hours.

Hey, a bonus, this time it's actually not heated water with bits of green stuff floating on the surface layer of micro-froth.

(sips slowly, smacks lips, mmmm…)

Slapstick

My oldest daughter has just been watching a YouTube video of children falling over or off things, and some are obviously hurting themselves. The thing I find most disturbing is the parents continuing to film and laughing. It mirrors the response of a mother to her son falling up the steps at the cinema earlier today: uproarious laughter.

I'm a fan of some variants/practitioners of slapstick, and all in favour of my two finding out the hard way, but don't like the notion there's comedy to be gleaned from a child's misfortune.

Maybe I'm living in the wrong age, doing parenting wrong.

Or…

Cake culture

After reading this, I've a question for anyone arriving here accidentally…

Dentists call to end cake culture – BBC News.

Go on then, instead of Krispy-Kremes who's up for kumquats or kiwifruits‽

It might have been BBC's Tomorrow's World, it was certainly decades ago. I recall a TV spot devoted to dental health, specifically the question; which is best for your teeth, an apple a day (doctors can't be wrong) or a nice piece of cheese?

Unsurprisingly, most opted for the apple-a-day, disregarding the deleterious effects of the acids present in most fruit.

But at least the article above got me thinking. Which was nice.

On the occasion of my next birthday I'm of the mind to subject my colleagues to a mouthful of abuse!

Slag

My wife just called me a slag. I honestly cannot believe she meant it in connection with my unconventional delivery of ginger nut biscuits to Ruby dog; mouth-to-mouth. Surely not.

A period of self-analysis is thus required. So here I am, cogitating; ginger nuts in one hand, dog restraining the other.