... 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...