Please do not adjust your set…

…normal service will be resumed. Yes, I’m back by popular indifference. There are several reasons for me putting pen to paper at this juncture: firstly—the fact that I love you all and feel it my duty to pleasure you (oooerr missuss) with my witticisms; secondly—the cricket season has come to a conclusion (and the conclusion was that my coaching skills may be in need of further fine-tuning); lastly—the ‘talent’ show season has commenced so you can’t go near the TV without being confronted by woeful warblers from Wagga Wagga or tuneless teens from Toowoomba and as for the magicians from Wandering…
So, in a bid to steer clear of the visual nightmare that is reality TV I have hibernated to my new lair. I am guessing you have already noticed that I’m writing this from a new position—no I don’t mean that I’ve placed myself into a Kama Sutra-type contortion whilst typing— I actually have a new room in which to write/draw/create/muck about on Facebook/stalk ‘a certain actress’ on t’internet/sit doing nothing. To be honest, it’s the ‘sit doing nothing’ that I aspire to, and once I have my new comfy armchair (exact design yet to be confirmed) ensconced safely in the corner of the office I shall see those aspirations achieved… night after night.
I should perhaps point out that the new seating position and the fact that there is now room in the office for a comfy chair, isn’t due to any DIY work on the old room carried out by yours truly. Not a bit of it, it’s due to the fact that it’s an entirely new room, in fact we are in an entirely new house. Well, new to us… it’s about twenty years old and has recently been refurbished. So where is this new place? I hear you ask (albeit reluctantly). Well, you know how last time we moved about 10,000 miles (half-way round the World) well, this time we moved about three quarters of a mile (two minutes up the road). Why so? Well, the reasons are manyfold, but none of them had anything to do with the start of the TV talent show season. Well, I say manyfold… okay, Wendy wanted to move. The kids were bribed into submission with offers of trinkets and en-suite bathrooms—in George’s case, and a bedroom big enough to have a sleeping area/study area/living area/and a nuclear fall-out area (okay, it’s a wardrobe but should be treated with the same caution as a disaster zone)— in Harriet’s case. I was cajoled into the move by being very kindly allowed to do all of the packing. Okay, not all the packing—clearly I wasn’t allowed to handle Wendy’s delicates, or her nick-nacks. Look, I don’t have many skills but I’m pretty good at fitting things in small spaces. I admit however that there were several items that proved problematic to find again as part of the unpacking process. It was several days before some things turned up again… phone chargers, cuddly toys, Tina Arena, and the fridge freezer. Moving day went surprisingly smoothly to say that there were four of us in the chain all moving on (Maundy) Thursday morning. We were completely unloaded in the new house by 3 o’ clock, and by 7pm I was completely loaded… funnily enough I knew exactly where I’d packed the bottle opener (and the spare bottle opener, and for that matter the emergency bottle opener).
And what exactly did Wendy get out of the move? She wanted a view (one that wasn’t Torquay). And she now has a view—trees; grass; sand; more trees; men of a certain age wearing slacks and ill-fitting polo shirts whacking their balls… we overlook a golf-course.
We are totally unpacked now (in fact that was the case before the end of the Easter weekend) and the only thing still looking for a home is the CDs, which wouldn’t really be a problem but there are now more than 400 of them in our collection… I think they’ve been breeding, That would be quite interesting… wonder what you’d get if my ‘Moose’ album hooked up with my ‘Modest Mouse’ album?
On the way home from work today I got off the train two-and-a-half stops early. This was entirely in the interests of Marathon training and not because I was trying to dodge the fair. I did a quick change into my running outfit in the car-park (to which no-one took a blind bit of notice) stuffed my work gear in my rucksack and headed home. About a 100 yards later I was questioning the wisdom of not streamlining what I had to carry and cursing the fact that I have the heaviest work shoes in the history of mankind (maybe with the exception of Elton John in Tommy). I can’t tell you the exact distance covered or time it took because I didn’t use my running app on this occasion—I didn’t want to feel the shame when I heard the disdain in her voice as she gave me the workout summary… our relationship just isn’t ready for those sort of traumas.
I would like to scotch the rumours that claim that the only reason that I chose to do my training tonight was that I was trying to come avoid coming home in time to catch the back end of Harriet’s all-day birthday party. Nine 12 and 13 year-old girls for seven hours—it’s little wonder that Wendy and George looked a bit shell-shocked at the end of it. I’m not altogether sure why but the party had an Hawaiian theme, so now the house is full of pineapples, coconuts and those flowery necklace things (I know they have a name but it escapes me). Apparently the decibel levels ran a bit high but it would appear that everyone had a good time.
Right, I’m off. If you need five tracks to bridge you over to the weekend try the following: Laid—James; Friday I’m In Love—Cure; You Told A Lie—Camera Obscura; Walkin’ Talkin’— The Men They Couldn’t Hang; Shake And Crawl— The House Of Love.