Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 December 2008 17:51:17
Well, as promised, I've found some time to write a bit now. The last couple of weeks have been pretty chaotic, and most of the major developments can either be categorised as "good times" or "bad times" in a Justin Lee Collins stylee (although I must admit Led Zep were the real inspiration for the title...)
So, in no particular order, in the last couple of weeks I have:
- worked my butt off trying to sort everything out that needed sorting before I finished w*rk for Christmas. Theoretically this should be Good Times, but the reality of trying to keep up with everything has often been more like Bad Times. My job is tied in with education, so you might expect that as the schools prepare to break up, things would wind down. You would be wrong. Instead, as schools prepare to wind down, they send us page after page of requests for things that they want ready for the first day back in January. And quite aside from the fact that they're clearly assuming that we're all still going to be in the office over Christmas (right, just because you're on holiday, you don't expect us to be as well, eh?), there's the fact that, to put this stuff in place for the first day back, we might need to get more information and speak to someone at the school. But - you'll never guess what! - they're on holiday. I could go on, but I think you get the idea...
- held a baby for the first time in my life. I don't know how I've got through thirty years of life without holding a baby before, but last weekend I spent a good ten or fifteen minutes holding little B, my friends' 6-week-old. He didn't cry, poo or puke, otherwise he'd have been handed back much sooner. His dad said he was quite docile because "he isn't sure whether he's sleepy or hungry". That's how I feel most of the time. Anyway, apparently I was a natural at baby-holding, so Good Times on that score.
- done my first Christmas dinner of the year, with my housemates. We had roast duck with a wide selection of veg, tiramisu, wine and a large number of Good Times. We also had a fine collection of cheesy Christmas tunes playing in the background, leading to a wonderful comedy moment as we stopped to say grace, only for it to be preceded by the trumpet fanfare at the start of Jonah Lewie's 'Stop The Cavalry', which sort of ruined the moment while simultaneously making the moment. After dinner we invented a game in which we wrote the Queen's speech for her, one word at a time. Although since large portions of it were hugely inappropriate, I won't share them here for fear of being sent to the tower.
- heard that my granddad has been in hospital. He had a suspected case of gallstones. They've decided not to operate for now, but in order to get him discharged, my parents have had to take him in at their house, as Social Services wouldn't let him go back to live on his own until he had a care plan organised. So while the trip to hospital is certainly Bad Times, at least I'll be able to spend more time with granddad over Christmas, which is Good Times.
I'm sure there have been some other major things as well, but those are the most immediately obvious ones. Still to come - I have to do my Christmas shopping. Thankfully I only have a small number of presents to get, but unfortunately I have no idea what to get for any of them. And the shops are pandemonium already. Bad Times, I suspect...