Robbie On A Bad Day

Where do I start? Maybe I should just say that Robbie's mood yesterday evening was a little fragile, it was clear that he was tired - the sound of snoring was a bit of a hint! I went to bed at around 11pm and I thought he would follow shortly after - he didn't! I made sure that all my alarm clocks were set correctly because it always takes my body clock a few days to adjust to losing an hour. Then I settled down to sleep. The next thing I remember is being woken by someone treading on my ankle - Robbie had finally decided to come to bed. I probably told him to go away as I drifted back to sleep, but I was woken again shortly after by a loud bleep, then another, then a whole series of bleeps and a flashing blue light. In my confused and sleepy state I couldn't work out what was going on, was it morse code or some sort of secret message? I forced my eyes open to see Robbie kneeling naked on the bed attempting to change the time setting on his new Lego alarm clock. There was a brief but brutal exchange of insults and I advised Robbie to take clock to the bathroom to set it with the light on! It was just after 2am and I was determined to get some sleep so I turned my back on him and pulled the duvet over my head.


His Lego alarm clock announced  that it was 5am and time to get up - he slept on. After several further episodes of blue lights and bleeping and considerable input from me, Robbie plodded off to the bathroom. That dratted alarm clock continued to serenade me every 5 minutes until Robbie returned, I wanted to implant it in his head but I restrained myself and told him to take it away and drown it! His interest was then taken up with pants! Allegedly I had deliberately deprived him of his favourite underwear by failing to do a dark wash yesterday. I did a dark wash on Sunday evening, how many pairs of pants could he possibly have got through since then! I provided him with clean pants and socks but he wasn't keen to let go of the issue and he continued muttering about the underwear conspiracy until he found something else to moan about. Apparently I have deliberately failed to oil the hinges on our bedroom door just to annoy him! That man makes my hands itch sometimes!!


The thing is that none of those things were the real problem. The truth is that he is in so much pain from his back and his legs that he doesn't know how to put one foot in front of the other. He will not go to the doctor because he knows there is nothing they can do except give stronger pain killers. I feel so useless, I wish I could make the pain go away, I wish I could do something, anything to make it easier for him. There has to be some way to ease the pain and I am not going to give up until I find it!


Photo by Clix

A Fitting Description

Sometimes when I sit down to write the blog I cant write about the most pressing issues, thoughts and feelings as it would either be breeching the confidence of someone who would not want that issue made public or it would make extremely boring reading. That was the case today, so I did what I usually do when this happens, I clicked on to a site for writers looking for inspiration. There was a long list of questions, but the one that jumped out at me was 'describe yourself in one word'. That was a fairly easy question for me to write about because my special word was given to me a very long time ago and over the years I have grown into it.


I went to a very traditional school that put a strong emphasis on academic achievement. The teaching methods may seem rather old fashioned by today's standards but I am glad that we had to learn so much by heart, because it has stayed with me all my life and the poetry in particular has brought me so much pleasure. From the age of 9 we had spoken English lessons with the formidable Mrs Nichol who could strike fear into even the bravest heart without even raising her voice. We had a textbook called Poems for Pleasure and we were expected to choose a poem from the book, write it out in an exercise book, learn it by heart and then recite it in the lesson. She would hear half the class each lesson so the whole process worked on a fortnightly cycle. 


When my name was called I took my exercise book across to her desk then walked across to the corner opposite her desk and recited my poem. I was fairly pleased with myself as I had remembered it without prompting and I hoped I'd read with enough expression and meaning to satisfy. There was a long pause when I finished the poem then her deep terrifying voice boomed out "Idiosyncratic, what is the meaning of idiosyncratic?" I was frozen to the spot, the word was not in the poem and I had no idea what it meant. I told her that I did not know. She replied "idiosyncratic, meaning peculiar unto one's self; learn it and remember it because you will need it for the rest of your life to excuse your spelling!" My spelling has improved since those days but the word has remained with me ever since. I developed a great respect for Mrs Nichol, she was certainly formidable but she was an amazing teacher with a very good sense of humour.


I like the word idiosyncratic, it sums me up very well. I do things my way, I am not a sheep, I don't follow blindly I make my own decisions and I have my own opinions. That may irritate people sometimes, but I like it that way and I am not going to change, so don't waste time trying. If I had to choose a second word to describe me it would be 'determined' (or as my family would say 'stubborn'). It is not so easy to think of just one word to describe Robbie, he is a man of many words and one word would never be enough to describe him. At the moment the only word that even comes close is impossible!

What Goes Around Comes Around - I Hope!

I should have been in court on Friday, I can't say I was looking forward to it but I would have got a lot of satisfaction from seeing that man squirm. The man in question is the idiot who pulled out from being parked at the side of a main road without looking in his rear view mirror, he drove into the side of my car as I was driving along. Accidents happen sometimes, we all make mistakes, but this chap was an accident waiting to happen, he was on his phone and not paying attention to what he was doing.


When he hit me we both pulled in and he couldn't stop apologising, he seemed really angry with himself and generally lacking in composure. I was quite shaken up but it was me who had to stay calm and reassure him. I  gave him my details and got him to write his information down in his own handwriting, in fact he wrote it on the back of a piece of paper listing the calls he had made that day. My car came off worse because his car was bigger and higher than my Galaxy I had a dent and a deep scrape along the side of the car from the back panel stretching all along the rear door.  He told me that he would ring me the following day to confirm that he had reported it to his insurance company.


The following day I rang my insurance company and made arrangements for my car to be inspected and collected for repair, and also for a hire car to be delivered. I was entitled to a similar car to my Galaxy but as I didn't need a large car in the next few weeks I asked for a Micra or something similar (I got a Nissan Note and instantly fell in love with it). The man did not ring me the next day, but he did ring the following afternoon, there was something odd about his tone and he seemed surprised that I had already reported it to my insurance company. 


My car was inspected, photographed and collected, it was away for repair for well over a week because they had to order parts and then it had to be resprayed. The car came back and I heard nothing more until mid January when my insurance company notified me that his insurance company had not received any notification or claim from the other driver. I tried to call him but he didn't answer my calls or respond to messages. It became clear that he had got the damage to his vehicle repaired without informing his insurance company, maybe it only needed a new bumper.


At first he tried to deny the accident completely, but thankfully I still had the details in his handwriting written on his call sheet. Then he tried to claim that it was my fault but I could disprove that because there was no reason to pull across him and I could prove my arrival at work by CCTV image and fingerprint entry. To get to that destination I needed to be in the outer lane. He clung to it being my fault until we issued court papers, then he drew it out as long as possible  before admitting liability but disputing costs. There was nothing to dispute, I asked for a smaller hire car and I used the repair company recommended by my insurance company, my only other claim was for my excess and a nominal sum for phone calls. He managed to delay and procrastinate but finally a date was set for the court hearing, as everyone predicted he waited until less than a week before the hearing and then decided to settle. 


There really should be a penalty for people who do that this sort of thing, it wastes court time as well as messing people around. It has taken fifteen months to bring this to a satisfactory conclusion, he thought that he could make it go away if he ignored it but he didn't bargain for me having the tenacity of a Jack Russell Terrier, I never give up! 

The Peter Principle at Work

Why do I have to spend so much of my life dealing with idiots? This question crops up far too often for my liking and more often than not the answer can be found in the Peter Principle. A sociologist Dr Laurence Johnston Peter explained that organisations become incompetent because individuals often get promoted to one level above their highest competence and stick there being incompetent and micromanaging until either they retire or the company crumbles around them. Dr Peter asserts that the work of an organisation is done by the workers in the company who haven't yet reached their level of incompetence and if there are enough competent employees the organisation still functions despite the incompetent (and sometimes obstructive) managers. If a company forms a culture of mismanagement only the incompetent employees will remain because the competent ones will become exhausted and move on - it is impossible to soar with eagles when surrounded by turkeys!


So who has annoyed me so much that I feel the need to write about the Peter Principle? I have a long list, but don't worry I will only mention one or two. The postman who left a slip without bothering to ring the bell to deliver a parcel, the employee at the sorting office who didn't want to even look for the parcel because I hadn't waited 72 hours - when I insisted he grudgingly admitted that the parcel was there! Then there is London Midland, words fail me, they have turned incompetence into an art form. They have allowed an inherited problem to grow and to bring the company to it's knees and they have shown such lack of consideration for their regular customers that those who can have resorted to travelling by car! 


Some of my family members don't like me to write about them so I will not go into detail, but when I feel that they are being targeted unfairly I become a force to be reckoned with! The teacher who gave my son a detention because his drink spilled in his bag and soaked his exercise book had better watch his back! I went to all the trouble of changing my working hours so that I could pick him up afterwards only to find that the moron had rescinded the detention! I could go on, but all I will say is, I intend to fight against the oppression of small minded jobsworths, if you mess with me I will not be happy but if you mess with the people I love you'd better learn to run!!

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

You would think that after this long Robbie's capacity to surprise me would have diminished considerably, but you would be wrong! The other day he read out a comment that he had made on the facebook status of one of his friends, it didn't make much sense to me but that wasn't a surprise, train spotters (sorry I mean railway enthusiasts!) seem to talk to each other in code most of the time. The comment in question was about hiding a pair of trainers under the bed, that seemed relatively normal to me compared to some of the things that are hidden under our bed, but Robbie seemed to find it funny. Eventually he explained that his friend was a trainer collector and he had to hide new purchases because they were taking over the house. It still didn't seem very funny to me, after all I spend my life tripping over Dr Marten boots with a few pairs of Converse thrown in for good measure. I pointed out that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but that just made him fold his arms and stick out his lower lip.


That little incident set me thinking, Robbie knows some 'interesting' people including a plane spotter, an escalator spotter, a roundabout spotter (the road type not the fairground ride), several bus spotters, a couple of closet milk float spotters and a whole legion of train spotters. Then there are the obsessive collectors, some collect train parts or railway related stuff, there is the trainer collector and various other hoarders. Robbie collects railway books, magazines, model railway stuff, cuff links, ties, pens, stationary - and that is only the things that I am prepared to admit to in public. The big question is where does he meet all these people? Hoarders anonymous perhaps or maybe there is a social networking site for extreme spotters or possibly they have some sort of secret handshake like the masons. One things is certain, when it comes to the weird and the wonderful, birds of a feather flock together!

The Meaning of Life

In my experience life has a habit of creeping up and smacking you around the face when you are not looking. In the last week or so there has been a whole collection of worrying and upsetting things, but one thing has pushed all the others into the background. A very special friend of mine is terribly ill and the outlook has been bleak in the extreme. It made me very sad and every time the phone rang or a message arrived I expected the worse, but yesterday afternoon there was a tiny hint of hope and I am clinging to that.


The thing that makes this friend very special is that she has a very different take on the world because she has a learning disability. We have had so many happy times together and a few sad ones too. When my first husband died she didn't struggle for words like everyone else, she said exactly what she felt with tears rolling down her face, that meant such a lot to me. Mostly I remember the good times and the crazy moments that always managed to bring a smile to my face. There was the time when she got a new chest freezer, among all the usual items she froze a whole cucumber and a tinned steak and kidney pie. We laughed so much when I told her they would make excellent weapons but they would be useless if defrosted! 


I remember one day when we were out shopping she queued up in Boots to pay for some shampoo and when she got to the counter she announced to the cashier "If I hadn't been a twin I would have been a triplet" it made perfect sense to her but the look on the cashiers face was priceless. One day we went to London by train, we travelled on the underground, we went to Madame Tussauds then we looked at the shops in Oxford Street and Regent Street. By the time we were heading home on the train I was exhausted but she was still full of beans. We had seen and done so much, but when I asked what she had liked most she said "I liked that man in Mc Donalds". Then there was the time when she got a new budgie, she wanted to name it after me, but since she and I have the same name she wanted the to give the budgie a different name so she called it Nissan after my car! Not long after we first met she got very upset with her work placement because they listened to the wrong radio station. I tried to tell her that it wasn't such a big deal, but she was in a bad mood and she said "anyway there is too much f---ing bad language in that place". We laughed so much about that and in a strange way it made her feel better about her work.


She asks very little of life, she accepts people on face value, she doesn't judge or tell people what to do but she takes great pleasure in her friends and in the simple things in life that so many of us take for granted. I hope with all my heart that she will get well again, the world needs more people like her.

Another Birthday

Robbie was not the only birthday boy this week, on Thursday one of my son's childhood heroes celebrated his 60th birthday. Dennis the Menace one of UK's best known comic characters is 60!We were on holiday in Norfolk when my son bought his first Beano annual and discovered the chaos and mischief of Dennis and Gnasher. For us it was rather special because as a child with Asperger Syndrome he loved factual books and he was very uncomfortable about reading fiction. I remember him crying when he read Cat in the Hat because it didn't make sense. Dennis led him into a world of mischief and imagination and the Beano was his first stepping stone towards enjoying fiction. He was passionate about his comics and he amassed a huge collection of Beano annuals and comics and everything had a Beano theme. He had a wooden go-kart, pea shooters, a collection of catapults and other essential items to emulate his hero.

Perhaps Dennis the Menace wasn't a perfect role model, but he wasn't so bad, he taught my son to have fun, and the cartoons always showed that bad behaviour has consequences. Best of all he managed to turn my son into an enthusiastic reader and the little boy who loved the Beano so much is now a young man who hopes to study English at university.

The Secret is Out

The long silence on the blog has been partly due to me working on a top secret project. It was Robbie’s birthday yesterday and I wanted to do something special and totally unique for him, so as well as buying him several presents I made him a couple of wooden items too. Robbie is passionate about pens and pencils so it seemed like a good idea to make him a pencil box and pencil holder. The pencil holder is shaped like a pencil and I have decorated it in a fair approximation of the Cross Country Trains colours, the pencil box was much more sober and sensible! I made up for the sober and sensible with a rather naught set of nesting dolls which I am certainly not going to display on the blog – but they brought a smile to Robbie’s face! It took a lot of work but I was very pleased with the way they turned out – I am going to make him a railway related set next.


Robbie got lots of other presents including his favourite aftershave, an external hard drive, a rather special tin of Starbucks coffee, a coin purse and an alarm clock and radio in the shape of Lego bricks. So, he is another year older but I wonder if this birthday has made him any wiser!

Photos From the Rail Tour

50 Years Old and Still Awesome

We had to get up stupidly early on Saturday morning to catch a train to London in order to spend a day with the other female in Robbie's life, Royal Scots Grey. We were going to Edinburgh on a rail tour. It was refreshing to actually find a parking space at the station and miraculously for London Midland our train arrived on time and the journey was relatively uneventful. Euston was busy even at that hour on a Saturday morning, but we had time to choose some magazines and make the obligatory visit to the toilets. For once it was worth 30p in terms of cleanliness and facilities, but why can’t they choose paper dispensers that actually work, there is nothing more frustrating than being able to see that the toilet paper dispenser is full but having to battle to get it!

We arrived at Kings Cross in time to buy a much needed hot chocolate or in Robbie’s case coffee, before boarding the train. Robbie showed me to my seat and immediately abandoned me to go off and take photos of his beloved Royal Scots Grey. The train pulled away but there was still no sign of Robbie and for a few minutes I wondered if I would be making the journey without him. He finally turned up, he had been chatting to various mates on the train.

Tea and coffee was brought to our table, the waiter was absolutely gorgeous, and I realised that the trip may be more interesting than I had anticipated! I have to say that the tea was the worse I have ever tasted in my life, quite an achievement when you consider that Cross Country tea is unimaginably bad! Breakfast came and went, the waiter was considerably more interesting than the food, but Robbie happily tucked into all the food that I didn’t eat – except the porridge, that defied even his appetite! The combination of kippers and black pudding in close proximity almost reduced me to tears, the smell was too much to bear, but once the food had been cleared away I cheered up considerably. My good humour was in part due the two men across the aisle leaving the carriage for an extended period, one had a phone which alerted the whole coach to every incoming text and call and the desire to harm him had become overwhelming.

If breakfast was disappointing, lunch was tragic, even Robbie had to send food back uneaten and that is unheard of! I almost wished that we had got out at York and gone to the NRM or something, but at least I was able to look forward to getting to Edinburgh and finding a decent cup of tea and something to eat. The heating was on but it was incredibly cold for the whole journey, not helped by the catering staff needing to keep the door to the vestibule open most of the time. My feet were like blocks of ice, but Robbie was even colder than me. He kept himself busy looking out of the window collecting train numbers – so sad!! I had a book to keep me occupied and one of the passengers nearby was interesting to talk to. He was sitting next to a harmless but totally potty chap who was so obsessive about his specialist subjects (track bed issues and bogie design) that he made Robbie seem almost normal.

The costal views were nice as we travelled through Scotland, but the early start caught up with me and I found myself nodding off. When we arrived in Edinburgh Robbie (and everyone else) trotted off to the front of the train to take photographs of Royal Scots Grey. I was somewhat disconcerted to find a man playing the bagpipes next to the train, but we were in Scotland so I should be tolerant. When the piper finally finished playing there was loud cheering – I couldn’t help wondering if the people were cheering so enthusiastically because it had stopped! Robbie got his photos and we headed off to Café Nero for a long awaited cup of tea and something to eat. It was nice to meet some of Robbie’s friends and finally put faces to names.

When we headed back to the train I was right next to Royal Scots Grey when it was powered up. I can see why Robbie is so passionate about Deltics, it really is rather awesome! Robbie insists that RSG is a she, and considering ‘she’ is still going strong and looking amazing at 50 maybe he is right. I had high hopes of the evening meal on the return journey. After lunch they had asked us if we wanted soup (tomato and basel) or pate for starters. I don’t like basel and I don’t eat pate, so I had to forego the starter. We were told that the main course was steak and ale pie, this filled me with horror as I am tee total for religious reasons and I do not eat food cooked with alcohol. I was offered chicken as an alternative and I asked if it was just plain chicken and was assured it was. I was able to enjoy a bread roll while everyone ate their starter, then everyone was given a plate and served with very tempting looking steak and ale pie and their vegetables were served at the table. I sat there plate-less watching them eat, eventually a waiter came out and offered me a plate with a piece of chicken doused in some fancy tomato like sauce, I rejected it as I don’t like fancy sauces and strong tastes and I had specifically checked that it was just plain chicken. It was taken away and when everyone else had finished their main course I was presented with a piece of chicken on a plate with the vegetables already on my plate. The chicken was too pink for me to risk eating it so for my main course I had cabbage, I would have gladly eaten more cabbage but I was only given a tiny serving. We waited and waited for our afters, when it eventually came I was disappointed again. It was a brown songey thing smothered in the sickliest sweet caramel sauce with something that alleged it was cream around it. One taste was enough to make me gag, it was far too sweet and the so called cream was disgusting. So for my main meal I had a couple of mouthfuls of cabbage, a bread roll and one biscuit for cheese - thank goodness that I bought emergency supplies at M&S. I was longing for a cup of tea, but we had to wait until we were well past Durham before we finally got a drink.

So what were my highpoints of the day? I met some lovely people, I got to see Royal Scots Grey close up –it really is awesome, I saw the Emirates Stadium, that waiter really was very cute, in fact all the staff were friendly and helpful and they made the journey very enjoyable. There were only two low points, I was so cold and for me the food was a big disappointment, in fact it reduced me to tears! To be fair about the food Robbie enjoyed some of it especially the steak and ale pie. I would certainly go on a rail tour again, but next time I think I would choose the non-dining option. I have enormous respect for the staff, they work very hard to make sure that everyone has an enjoyable time.