Robbie the Red Head?

Robbie has been a bit challenging recently. In fact he was so challenging yesterday that I asked him if he liked the idea of having red hair – because if he carried on like that I would be seriously tempted to bury an axe in his head! Network Rail has been annoying him again and when they start messing around with his timetables it always makes him like this. I had to ban him from talking about Network Rail in the end because his language was far from moderate. I guess I should have just introduced a swear box, he would have been bankrupt within an hour. It must be very frustrating to have to deal with Network Rail every day, but when he gets home he needs to learn to forget about it. On the subject of frustration, he gets really cross with himself because his legs have been very painful lately and it makes everything just a bit more difficult. I guess my job is to help him to keep everything in perspective.

Having decided against the axe, I was left with only one way to silence Robbie – to feed him! I made him some Rice Crispy Cakes (one of his favourites) because a couple of weeks ago he had mentioned that he would like some. I also made him some rice pudding because he and Sam like it; we don’t usually have a dessert so he needn’t think I’m going to make a habit of making puddings. He was too cross with himself to be appreciative, the rice pudding was too dry and the Rice Crispy cakes didn’t have enough chocolate – when did Robbie become Jamie Oliver! A frank exchange of views became necessary and afterwards he was considerably more appreciative.

This morning he was running late and he got himself into a mega strop. His world stopped because someone had stolen his pants – why would anyone want them! He was just looking in the wrong place, but that put his whole morning routine out and things went from bad to worse, he spilled coffee on his tie, lost his travel mug - and his temper! I gave him a lift to the station to help him to catch up with himself and he gradually calmed down. He admitted that there is another cause to his frustration – his Model Rail magazine has not been delivered on time! It sounds trivial, but to Robbie it really is a big deal, you should hear him going on about it. I got a smile out of him in the end when he admitted that he has found his own way of cheering himself up – he’s going to a diesel gala at the week end. Well, at least he’s predictable!