Sleep Interrupted

I haven’t done a lot of blogging recently, but thought I should make the effort before the year is out. So here it is; a little round up of the year. Hopefully it will not end up sounding too much like one of those hideous letters that old ladies write to everyone they know at Christmas, outlining all the medical conditions they, and all their neighbours, have had throughout the year, or the letters you get from old schoolfriends, whose soul aim it is to make you feel inadequate with stories of their wonderful life, glamourous, well paid job and intelligent and good looking children (probably named Jocasta and Tristran).

January did not get off to the best of starts with Jessica coming down with chickenpox on New Years Day. She was followed by Ben, two weeks later.  My dad underwent emergency surgery for a ruptured stomach ulcer.

February was Jessica’s third birthday, and Andrew and I spent the day in London at a friends wedding. We celebrated Jess’s birthday the next day, she didn’t seem to mind too much.

March - my dad died on the 10th. Not much more to add really. Almost a year has passed and I am still filled with anger that he died so suddenly, and so unfairly.

After Easter in April, Ben started Reception at Infant School. He was, and still is excited by going to school. In fact most mornings I have to call him back out of the gate to collect his lunch and book bag, and say goodbye to me. Jessica started pre-school and absolutely loves it. She had been raring to go for some time, and so far the excitement and enthusiasm has not worn off.

May was my birthday and saw Andrew and myself, my sister Jayne and her then bf Mark, and our neighbours Wendy and Gary (whose birthday it also was, and who happens to be Marks brother) having a very nice meal, and far, far too much alcohold. The party continued at home until mostly all of us of the female persuasion were unconscious.

The first week of June was one of the only two sunny weeks of the year, and was when we had been due to go on holiday. However, because of Ben starting school we postponed the holiday until the end of July.

The second sunny week of the year, the last week of July saw the four Smiths and my mum travelling to the Isle of Wight for a week in a caravan. With our newly acquired roof box, we did actually have a fair bit of room. We all enjoyed the holiday, I think we wore my mum out, and the children both enjoyed the ferry rides. The journey home for me was not entirely pleasant, as before we boarded the ferry to leave, in order to kill time, Andrew taught Ben to skim stones over the sea. Sadly Ben made up in force what he lacked in direction, and a rather large stone (rock!) hit the side of my head with quite a lot of power. Cue me falling to the beach with my head bleeding. Nice. At least it was on the way home, and not the start of the holiday.

In August we went to both a wedding and a christening, both of which were very nice, and blessed by good weather. I also signed up for a GCSE in Biology, a step nearer to starting a PGCE, a plan a few years away yet.

September, the children both went back to school and pre-school, I started my Biology course, which I am greatly enjoying, and I also got a tattoo, cunningly planned for when my mother was out of the country in Seattle.

In October the children went to two Halloween parties. Jessica went as various combinations of cat and princess, Ben attended both as an actually quite scary skeleton. At the toddler group party, he had groups of small children running screaming from him. Success. We also had the first, and only, snowfall of the year, just about enough to scrape together a small snowman. Andrew missed this as he was out of the country.

November would have been my mum and dad’s wedding anniversary. A couple of days before the date, mum, Jayne and I went to a tree planting ceremony that a local gardening charity had arranged in honour of my dad. Dad had helped raise a lot of money for new greenhouses, and they wanted to plant a tree for him, to say thanks. It is an oak tree.

And now to December. Again, this month did not start well, with Tilly, our cat of 8 years dying. The month did get better though.  Both children had very busy social calendars with school plays, carol services, sing alongs and birthday parties to go to. Frequent readers of the blog will know that after a few false starts from me, Ben did manage to complete a competition entry for the School Fair programme cover, and his was in fact chosen as one of the winners. Christmas this year was quite strange without my dad, although I think we managed to enjoy the day, with two excited children it was hard not to. I think my dad would have had a bit of a laugh at Jayne and I, as we attempted to set fire to the Christmas pudding. This was normally Dad’s job and involved a small stainless steel jug and brandy, which he carefully warmed before setting it alight and pouring onto the pudding. Jayne and I had a large stainless steel teapot, with lid, and a large quantity of vodka, which I heated until boiling point, swirled around for good measure (releasing lots of alcohol fumes), and which then Jayne set fire to. The mini explosion almost cost us our eyebrows. The pudding was then lit, as was the plate and surrounding tablecloth. The vodka in the teapot continued to burn for some time, the flame coming out of the spout looked very pretty.

So one year ends. and another begins, and we start all over again. I am hoping this year is better than the last. It is looking good so far. Andrew’s job seems to be in an area if not of growth, then of steadiness, Ben and Jess both look set to continue enjoying school and making friends, Ben is continuing his judo, and Jess is progressing with her swimming. My GCSE course is interesting, and I am quietly confident for a good result. Building work and landscaping have finished on mum’s house, which is certainly less of a worry for her.

I think all is left is to wish everyone a healthy and happy New Year.

If you ever played Command & Conquer back in the day and are looking for a passing distraction you could do worse than trying out Crystalien Conflict. It’s a great little RTS on the Lego web site, which Ben and I have been playing together recently.

Things have certainly come a long way from when I played Adventure with my dad, loaded from tape on a home-made Acorn Atom. I remember this experience vividly and how much fun I had as we mapped our way through the maze of twisty passages by leaving our possessions behind in a trail, Hansel and Gretel fashion.

For this reason I’m taking my time with Ben and making sure we get through the game. The adventure I had with my dad was never completed because we got stuck, much to my disappointment.

At this point it’s traditional to make curmudgeonly grumblings about there being nothing wrong with simpler, traditional games that don’t require a computer. Well, I don’t agree but I’ll make this observation: Just yesterday Ben was played Draughts with me (and others) on a real board in the real world. He got just as excited and involved as with anything on the computer.

I think what you’re playing is not so important. As long as it catches their imagination and is fun for both of you then you’re winning. If I can get Ben thinking stategy, be that why jumping an opponent’s piece isn’t always your best move or why defending your Crystal Harvester is so important, then I’m happy.

I missed Carol’s last show. I think Tim says everything I’d want to say on the subject.

Today our cat Tilly died after a short illness. Louise and I are both very sad but Ben and Jess are too young to take on board what it means.

It will be strange not to have her around, as she’s been with us since before the children were born and for all the time we’ve been in our current house. We got her in 2001, around the time we were married, along with her brother Tiger. She was a rescue cat and the rescue centre estimated that she was three years old. That means she was about ten. She certainly didn’t seem old to us.

Tilly was the most docile cat I’ve ever met. She took untold grief from Ben and Jessica and would only scratch after extreme provocation. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer family cat. She was so unassuming I think we all took her for granted… and now she’s gone.

Goodbye Tilly. We’ll all miss you.

Louise and I both believe that one of the most important things you can teach your children is to be self reliant. To this end we work hard to teach both Ben and Jessica skills like getting dressed by themselves and getting their own breakfast.

Now, this is not the easiest course of action and often enough backfires. You’ll come down in the morning to find the fridge door wide open with a pool of milk on the floor next to it. Just yesterday Jessica got dressed on her own initiative but used one of her tops as a skirt.

However, it does pay off in the long run. Just a year ago the average time I’d get up on a weekend was 7am. This morning the children still got up at 7am but when I rolled out of bed at 8am they’d been playing nicely together (modulo one screaming argument which they resolved without our help) and had already eaten their breakfast together.

Congratulations to Tim, Kathy and Naomi!

One thing I’ll say is that having children certainly sparked my own interest in photography.

This Christmas is the first one that Ben has had at his new C of E school. Although vaguely aware of religious connotations to Christmas, to him (and the rest of the family) Christmas is more about family getting together, and to be brutally honest, presents.

The other day, Ben came home with a competition to design the front cover of the School Christmas Fair programme. The theme was of the Traditional Christmas story. Ben (foolishly) asked me what this was.

Me : Hmmm I’m not really sure. Maybe Rudolf, or Father Christmas? Not sure if there is a traditional Christmas story.

Ben: Umm, is it maybe something to do with Jesus?

Me: Oh yes, that Christmas story.

Ben: Daddy? Do you stop growing when you’re 18?

Andrew: Well… some people stop growing before they’re 18 and some people stop growing after they’re 18 but I stopped growing when I was about 18.

Ben: And when was that?

Andrew: Err…

Ben: Was it 10,000 years ago?

The last two weeks have been pretty hectic. This time two weeks ago I was sitting on a flight to Houston. The night before, Louise and I were working a bar together, which was a lot more fun than I was expecting.

The flight to the US was for work. Two days in Houston, visiting our seriously hurricane-proof data centre, followed by two days in Washington at a CDISC conference. For an inexperienced traveller, that’s a pretty punishing schedule; I didn’t do much useful on the Friday when I got back.

Saturday evening saw us all braving the downpours to go to the Wokingham firework show. The numbers were down significantly on previous years. I’d say only about a third the normal turnout. This had the advantage that we could park relatively closely. We left before the finale, however, as the kids had become very wet and cold.

This last week saw me scrabbling to catch up at work while trying to sort out a broken toilet flush at home in the evenings. I almost sorted the toilet out entirely on my own (with Louise on parts shopping duty during the day) but had to call in my dad for the last stage of reconnecting the water. I’ll get there one day. It only twigged with me a year or so ago that dads aren’t born knowing how to do everything, they just have twenty plus years head start on you.

I’m really enjoying work at the moment. We’re working on a new project, which is allow us to start over. This is a rarity in the application development arena. So often you’re building off someone else’s work, which limits your choices. We’re taking this opportunity to adopt some best of breed technologies and design the code in a way that we can have extensive automated unit tests. I’m very hopeful that the benefits this will deliver will be measurable. I’m also really chuffed that my team has taken my directions and run with them.

Yesterday saw my third visit to the Woking Beer Festival. The highlight, as ever, was the Whurlitzer performance by Len Rawle. Several hundred beered-up folks singing along to the likes of Old Bull And Bush and Jerusalem is great fun.

I’ve not been following Jamie’s Ministry Of Food very closely but I’ll have to admit that his Chicken Korma recipe is really good. It might feel a little like cheating using a pre-prepared curry paste — I’ve been a From Scratch curry person since Mr Sutton pointed me in the direction of The Really Useful Indian Cook Book about 10 years ago — but when it tastes this good I don’t care. This one’s a keeper.

So, in the spirit of passing it on, follow the link and give it a try. Just don’t blame me if you eat too much.