... 'Max that up'??

Regular readers of Charlie's Dad's Blog will recall that I have been spotting signs of the (still denied) onset of middle age in the author.  So it is with some regret (and more denial) that I have to report yet another piece of evidence to add to the growing list.

One of the penalties for resigning is of course the return of all the kit and gizmos that go with the territory and whilst I figured I could live without the laptop and the BlackBerry (for a time at least), I would need to invest in a personal mobile phone.  

Now this is not an area that I profess to having any expertise in at all bearing in mind that, as 

a Sales Manager in the early nineties I was at the vanguard of mobile telephony with an original 'car phone' the size of a house brick!  Since then, in a series of updates, I have partnered Nokia in the evolution of the mobile phone, receiving a new one every few years or so and cracking on with it.  Little did I know about the minefield that is mobile phone retailing.

I'm guessing that most of you reading this must have already travelled the road that passes through one of the mobile phone retailers and given that nobody warned me what a complete nightmare it is I can only assume that for you, it wasn't.  It must be my age!  It appears I'm on a pay as you go payment plan called 'mates'.  I have absolutely no idea what this means!

I am slowly figuring out how to work my phone... I refuse to ask my children anything about it... and I reckon that given a week or two I'll have it more or less sorted.  The biggest problem however is that I bought the thing on-line and when it arrived it was about half the size I thought it was going to be.  The only way I can see the the buttons is to hold it under a bright light with my reading glasses on and squint the way my mother does when she's doing a crossword!

I'm partially reassured by the fact that Natalie went through a similar trauma when she sorted out her own mobile a few weeks ago.  Nat opted for the face to face option and actually ventured in to talk to one of the suited up wide boys in Car Phone Warehouse (or whichever one it was) but was left floundering when he kept asking her if she wanted to 'max that up'!  Nat and I had a long debate about what this could mean but could only surmise that he was offering her a large portion of chips and a coke with it!

Back to things family and it was a 'kids weekend' this week so we had the full set to deal with.  To be fair it was cool (note to self: use of word cool is probably another sign of age... stop it); the highlight being the installation of two of Nat's birthday presents - the Wii Fit and the Dart Board!  Millie demonstrated her virtual hoola hooping prowess (impressive) and Jordi showed off his skills with the arrows (less impressive).

Harri celebrated his 11th birthday with a birthday tea - marked by the cooking of a chocolate fudge cake by me and Millie.  This was not a great success as Jordi took one bite, said it tasted smokey, then left it on his plate.  This is the first thing made of chocolate that Jordan has ever refused to eat.  Millie blamed me!

Charlie seemed to love having the kids around him, especially Millie.  It looks as though they are all coming to live nearby so we should be seeing a lot more of them.  The next challenge is going to be new schools and entrance exams... watch this space!!

... drugs bust

Charlie's Dad has a hangover... not the worst one he's ever had but the journey back from Manchester was a bit of a slog.  Of course, as an 'unemployed' it would have been far too extravagant to have paid the £4.50 to use the toll road so ignoring the warnings of congestion I headed straight into the M6/M5 bottleneck... and stopped... and remained stopped for about 45 minutes.  

I used the time to calculate that each minute of stationery time would have cost me 10 pence to avoid.  This seemed to me to be quite a bargain but then I realised I was becoming engrossed by lunch-time radio... a quantity surveyor and his teacher wife from Hampshire has been raided by police looking for Class A drugs following a tip-off.  They were most put out and seemed to have no idea who had falsely accused them.  For some reason I found this all very amusing and suddenly found myself thinking of people I could maliciously 'inform' on... and then the traffic was moving and I was glad that I'd taken the slower route home.  Such are the joys of an emptier schedule!

Charlie and Nat are up at her parents in Yorkshire.  I've not seen them since Tuesday morning and it feels very strange.  I was in London for a few days (meeting a few people about a few things!), then I went up to Manchester for an industry dinner.  It was very strange going to an event without a job... when I looked at the seating plan everybody else had a company name next to them but my name was just there, all on it's own!  I was good to catch up with a few friendly faces though and everyone seemed pleased to see me.  Not having the requirement to get up and go to work the next morning though, I clearly drank slightly more than my 44 year old kidneys could deal with in the alloted time so I woke up feeling a bit shit!

I vaguely remember trying to explain to people how Natalie has developed a special Charlie voice that I've never heard before but it's very difficult to describe it.  Maybe I'll try to secretly record her then add an audio link to the blog... that should go down well...

... baby won't poop!

Well that's it... as of midnight tonight I am officially unemployed!

The last time I was officially unemployed was March 27th 1988 (when I had shoulder length blonde hair and thought it was cool to wear dungarees!) so I guess it's no surprise that it feels a bit odd. Nat was all for celebrating with a bottle of Champagne which sounded like a great idea but I think she must have forgotten because she went to bed at nine o'clock and left me watching a repeat of Top Gear, so I'm marking the occasion with a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich!

Charlie's fast asleep on the sofa in the living room (unless you're a mid-wife reading this, in which case he's fast asleep in his cot on his back with his feet touching the end!). Today has been Charlie's first day of making his parents worried. The thing is... how can I put this... well he hasn't delivered a gift in his Pampers for 48 hours! So concerned were we earlier this evening that I found myself typing 'my baby won't poo' into the Google search box. Unfortunately, I'd left Google on image search and picture one came as quite a shock... try it for yourself!

'Did you mean my baby won't poop'? suggested the obviously American Mr Google... OK, yes I did. And the startling, but I swear genuine advice from Yahoo Help was as follows...

'...try an "I Love You" massage where you gently massage an 'I' (one stroke down on his right side of tummy with the side of your hand), an "L" back-to-front, starting the opposite side (his left) then across, then a "U" starting from under the ribs on his left, going down to the bottom section of his belly then across and up to the ribs on the other side, all done very gently but intentionally, to stimulate bowel movements.'

I've not tried this yet but if it works I think I've found my new career...

... Felicity Kendal

OK, here's a quick challenge for you... which TV programme am I describing...?

... On his 40th birthday, Tom gives up his job as a draughtsman in a company that makes plastic toys for breakfast cereal packets as he is no longer able to take his job seriously. Their house is fully paid for, so he and his wife Barbara make a decision to live a sustainable, simple and self-sufficient lifestyle while staying in their beloved home in The Avenue, Surbiton. In pursuit of this good life, they dig up their front and back gardens and convert them into allotments, growing soft fruit and vegetables. They introduce chickens, pigs (Pinky and Perky) a goat (Geraldine) and a cockerel (Lenin).

Fair enough, if you're younger than 30 you probably have no idea but the rest of you will be shouting the answer at the blog... 'The Good Life'!

Well this afternoon, as Natalie was digging over the vegetable patch and I was spraying Weedol over some pesky weed (the name of which I can never remember!), it occurred to me that maybe subconsciously I have taken on the persona of Tom Good from the Good Life. In fairness this revelation might have been sparked, in part at least, because Felicity Kendal had a great arse and this is a feature that Natalie shares with her. And when she was bent over those carrots...

... Sorry where was I? Oh yes, the Good Life! We're not quite self sufficient, in fact the whole of this year's harvest consisted of some small carrots, three courgettes, a selection of very oddly shaped tomatoes and twelve beetroots. I have to say that I'm extremely pleased with this crop. Maybe it's my terraced house upbringing in Liverpool but I still retain a child like delight in eating anything that I've picked myself. Apart from a few blackberries picked of the brambles in the back alley I can't remember anything else I've eaten that didn't come off a shelf!

The garden overall is in a bit of a state... my excuses are as follows:

1. We had a baby
2. The weather has been wet, which has made everything grow really fast
3. The weather has been wet which has stopped me from going into the garden
4. We had a baby
5. I'm a lazy bastard who'd rather be writing a blog than mowing the lawn.

Nat's dad who makes his living by growing things and then selling them (it's a bit more complicated than that but I don't really understand the detail), frightens the live out of me every time I walk around the garden with him. I think he more or less said that it was out of control and would soon be reducing the value of the house... thanks Big Al, I'll sleep much better now! Anyway, if his plan was to frighten me into action, it worked. I've hardly been out of the garden since he went home.

I've just realised that excuse number five above is not technically an excuse, it's actually a reason! But I'm leaving it on my list anyway!

Charlie is beginning to develop a personality. In fairness, it's just a start but he now definitely has a special cry that basically means 'I'm not hungry, I'm not tired, my nappy doesn't need changing, I'm just a bit pissed off for a reason even I don't fully understand but you're my parents and I'm wholly reliant on you to sort everything out for me so I'm making this noise which is a close to a shout as I can get.' Nat and I both recognise this special cry and we both work very hard to make sure that Charlie is not with us when he makes it... it's like a parental version of pass the parcel.

We've had two visitors from the previous place of work this week and it was all very strange. I tried to be really interested in what was going on but in truth it was really difficult. How intriguing that you can work for twenty years for a business and then six weeks later be totally unconcerned about anything that happening there. That's not strictly true... I'm still very interested in the people but not in the other goings on. It makes you realise how attached we become to our places of work. It takes on a life of it's own and we attach importance to it way beyond the reality.

Gosh, that was a bit philosophical... I'd better go and have a cup of tea....!

... Flobadob Bobalob

I know, I know! I've been missing for a while!

The thing with PCs is... you don't realise how much you rely on them until they go bang. And I'm sorry to report that Charlie's Dad's PC went bang in a big way a few weeks ago. I really don't want to bore you with detail but here's the potted history...
I'm happily chatting to someone on Facebook when the screen goes blank - that's it, no warning just a blank screen. The big box bit of the PC under the table is still whirring

 away like nothing's happened but there's nada going on up here. OK, so what do you do? You do what all Indian call centres tell you to do.. you turn it off, then turn it back on again! BAD MOVE!!!

The screen worked fine but all it would display was a little message the said 'FLOBADOB BOBALOB file (or something like that) is compressed - press ctrl + alt + del to restart'. Pressing the three buttons did indeed restart the PC but you can guess what message appeared once we were up and running again... 'FLOBADOB BOBALOB file is compressed...'!!!

I went round this loop for a good few hours (like a trained monkey) before concluding that my PC was in fact knackered!
OK. So you've just resigned from work and cleverly moved all of your contacts from your work PC to your home PC (you're going to need these to find a new job at some point). You've had a new baby and all the new photo's have been transferred from the digital camera to the PC... and deleted from the camera!! All of your bank accounts are on line... your tax returns... your e-mails... your blog... and your PC's just gone pop! This is not good!

So, as promised, long story short... in for repair... bad news... hard drive is dead... need to rebuild from scratch... maybe restore some lost data... that will be £200 please!!! ARGHHHHH! Good news! All photos are recovered. Bad news! All contacts are lost!!
Another three days after it's return and we're connected to the Internet and blogging again! I'm going to wrap this machine in cotton wool from now on... this must never happen again... I've aged about five years.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the Olympics! Final result for Team GB... 49 medals! And the

 number of those won in a sitting position... 40!!!! Team GB - the world's best at anything that involves sitting down. Maybe for 2012 we could introduce whole new categories of medal winning opportunities... bus riding maybe (to tie in with that very odd slot at the closing ceremony)?

The Olympics have been great. With no job to go to, I've been engrossed by the most unusual sports - women's beach volleyball for example! Me and Charlie could hardly pull ourselves away when Brazil were taking on Argentina! Natalie was a bit put out that the clothing rules were different for the men but really, you don't want to see six foot six hairy bloke in a thong... do you?

Apart from the beach volleyball, I am now an expert in (in no particular order): Archery; table tennis; BMX racing; dressage; taikwondo (favourite moment of the Games when the Cuban kicked the referee!); and best of all, the Madison! Trust me the Madison is a sport which appears to involve about fifty cyclist wondering aimlessly around a track for about an hour. I've no idea what the rules are or what was happening but I remained glued to it nevertheless.

And Charlie? Well Charlie has passed the 4kg mark which means he's officially off the anorexia watch list. His lungs have now also developed in to fully fledged wailing machines which exercise themselves several times daily (and occasionally nightly too!). We've had all the relatives round - including the Scousers (who just kept looking at him and saying 'Arrrr... e's goooorjus'!)

Believe it or not, I don't officially finish work until the end of this week so my mind has turned towards what to do next... still no idea! I'll keep you in the loop!

... sitting down Olympic medals (2)

... just realised that so far Team GB have won four medals and none of them has been won standing up!! Two for swimming, one for three day eventing and one for cycling! Also, we're tipped to win a medal or two in the sailing tomorrow!

Will we ever win a medal standing up??? Colin Jackson... you're a genius!

By the way... why is it 'Team GB' and not 'Team UK'... I know I sound like a Daily Mail reader but Northern Ireland is not in GB but they are in the Olympic squad.. answers on a postcard please!

... fighting weight!

This is my first attempt at blogging (if indeed there is such a verb) and I started out with the intention of posting a blog each day. Having quickly realised (on day two) that this was probably not going to happen I did at least think that one every few days was probably going to be achievable, but no!! My poor readers, both of you(!), I'm so sorry for failing to update.... it won't happen again!

So what's been keeping me so busy? Well that's the thing, I can't think of a single thing that been stopping me but I swear I've never been so busy - busy doing nothing I guess! I've swapped my work office for my home office - I seem to spend at least three hours a day on my PC; updating social network sites, answering e-mails, updating contact lists, checking out URLs for new business ideas. Nothing really important but it sure uses up time.

Charlie is growing! I say this as though it's something that two week old babies don't normally do, but trust me, Charlie's weight has been something of an issue these last few weeks. The midwife visits have simply been renamed the weigh-ins as all they seem to be concerned about is whether or not Charlie has managed to gain those all important 2ozs since the last visit! It's becoming ridiculous... we've taken to feeding him till his eyes pop just before the visit is due. So desperate are we for Charlie to make the weight that we even experimented with small lead weights attached to his back using flesh coloured tape (I was convinced that this would work but Natalie was concerned that being collared would result in Social Services involvement so we shelved the plan).

I assume that all midwife visits are like this... it seems to me that we spend the first three months of life trying to gain as much weight as possible and then the rest of our lives being told we're obese!

Natalie and I have now concluded that we DON'T LIKE MIDWIVES and we're not letting them in to our house any more... we just hide when we see the car coming. We'll keep feeding Charlie pies until he's three stone, then we might let them back in!

On a completely different point, I'm still receiving loads of messages of support from ex-colleagues and friends... some of whom I've not spoken to for ages. It's really funny, but some people you think would be in touch have just gone missing and others who I never expected to hear from have been really kind. It's made me stop and think about previous colleagues of mine who've moved on... which sort of person was I?? I hope I made the effort to contact them and to wish them well... I'm sorry to say though that I'm not sure I always did.

I've been running (a long way!) and I've discovered it's great thinking time... today I had a great idea. It's staying secret for now but it might just be the one to take forward. I need to do some digging.....

... sitting down Olympic sports!

Have you ever trimmed a hedge? No? Well here's a piece of advice then... pay someone else to do it! My arms are aching good and proper but the hedge looks great. This is clearly the biggest clue yet that I've reached middle age. Someone told me years ago that if the first thought you have when you wake up is that today would be a good day for a bonfire then you've officially reached middle age. This is self-evidently true but the pride with which I stood back and admired my work today must surely be another sure-fire indicator of advancing years! I'm also becoming increasingly attached to my gold fish... this is a problem because Natalie wants to drain the pond and replace it with a sun deck!!

Charlie's sleeping in his vibrating rocker thing. He seems to have taken to it. He had his first trip out with his mum today. Apparently it took the best part of forty minutes to free his car seat from the mounting but then it was all worth while because he then visited Marks and Spencers, Boots and WH Smith, with a special stop a Somerfield on the way back to the car (where he cried all the way down the cold meats aisle... good lad!).

I'm losing track of days... I think it's Friday tomorrow and in a worrying development the only thing on my agenda is to watch the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. I worry that this might become something of a trend over the next two weeks. (Note to self: you need to ration your Olympic viewing!)

I've just remembered a conversation I had with Colin Jackson (big name drop!) a few months ago... he told me that this was going to be a big Olympics for Britain in any sport that involved sitting down!! He singled out rowing, cycling and horse riding - he might have a point.

Need to go for a run tomorrow... the plan is to run three times a week and so far I'm sticking to the schedule. I'll let you know how it goes!

... yellow fountains!!

I can't believe it's Wednesday afternoon. By now I thought I would be formulating a great plan setting out what I'm going to do next but I appear to be bogged down with all the day to day stuff - feeding, changing, burping (him not me!) and erm... feeding! His mum would argue that in fact she is doing all of this, not me.. and she would be correct. But I must be doing something because the days are disappearing!

Managed to pop into the office with Charlie and his Mum yesterday... a chance for all the girls to cluck over the new-born and for me to say goodbye to some colleagues (and to reclaim some of the crap from my desk - all of which turned out to be entirely useless and went straight in the bin when I arrived home!). Still, Charlie went down well; slept all the way through the whole ordeal!

News of my departure has reached the wider regions of the industry and I've been inundated with messages of support. Facebook has become my second home - there's even a group dedicated to keeping me in my job! Not that the campaign's going to work but it's nice to be wanted!

Charlie's not really grasped the concept of night and day yet, which is a bit of an issue! He seems to be able to sleep like a baby all day, then lie awake all night (or should that be cry awake all night?). Problem is, his cry is just pathetic really, a sort of whimper that forces you to take action - if he was bawling like a Banshee it would be easier to ignore him! His other wonderful habit, shared no doubt by all of his male baby friends is the yellow fountain at changing time! Even though he manages to hit himself in the eye most times he's clearly found something to amuse himself.

I've discovered an issue with my blog... nobody is reading it... or at least, if they are I have no way of knowing that they're reading it. Need to find out how to promote these pages... leave it with me!

...vibrating rocker

Sunday afternoon.

Charlie's fast asleep in his vibrating rocker thing that plays shit music. I think that's why it makes him go to sleep. 'On no,' he thinks 'another gripping medley of nursery rhymes. Time for sleep!'. Still, as long as it works I'm not complaining!

Yesterday was full on visitors day. Nat's mum and dad were down from Yorkshire and were joined by Amanda and Dessy who are over from Australia. Everyone thought Charlie was very good but then they would; he was angelic till they left then cried all night... little git!

Amanda and Nat's dad are gardening types so they very much enjoyed the tour of Degsy's garden. It would appear that the arboretum (a word by the way which sounds best in Geordie) is chocker block with rare and interesting trees. The only problem at the moment is that nobody can name any of them with any degree of accuracy. Until yesterday I'd never heard of a handkerchief tree, today depending on who you believe, I might be the owner of one!

Anyway, everyone agreed on one thing; that I would loose control of the land within three months and would be paying for a gardener to regain control. Well... we'll see about that!

Tomorrow is day one of officially not working so I need to make sure I keep myself busy. I've bought a book on how to design your own web page so that should eat up some time! If I get round to building one, I'll let you know.

Lot of messages wishing me good luck... and a few people trying to persuade me to change my mind (which is nice), but the deed is done! There's no going back now.

... a much better idea!

Well that's gratitude for you! I resign from a twenty year career to erm... spend some more time with my family, and you throw up down the back of my t-shirt... nice!

It's been a funny day today. I knew it was coming so maybe I was better prepared than those I was calling but still, it's odd to telephone everyone that works for you to tell them that you won't after all be returning from paternity leave.. no, you've decided that actually it would be a much better idea to pack it all in for six months to spend time with Charlie and his Mum, Natalie!

This is going to be interesting! It almost impossible to describe what it feels like to suddenly not be working for the business you've been working for for twenty years (and five months!). That's well on the way to being half of my whole working life. What happens now? What time do I set my alarm for? Do I set my alarm? What will I do all day? How long before I become hopelessly bored with it all? Will I stagnate; become unemployable? Good grief! It all seemed so simple when I decided to do it... now it's all a bit scary.

On the bright side though, think of all those things I could do now that I'm free... all those big ideas I had when I was 20 but didn't have the money or the wherewithal to get on with... how exciting!

And then there's Charlie! I know that my genetic make up is designed to convince me that he's the most beautiful baby boy in the world (so that I'll protect him from any danger that comes his way). I know this because I remember thinking that my previous three children were the most beautiful in the world and that would be too much of a coincidence! I know this... but still, he is the most beautiful boy in the world. One week old today! 7lb 12oz when he was born... and a bit less than that now! He's a top man and I love him to bits already. We're on a big adventure; me, Charlie and Nat. I have absolutely no idea where we're going but we're on an adventure and it's going to be fun... whatever happens!