I am looking forward to another long weekend. Having such lovely weather last weekend made Easter extra special. On Easter Sunday we had a family picnic in my mum's garden. Having my three year old nephew Oliver there made it extra special. My daughter had the idea of doing an Easter egg hunt for him. He is too small to have a lot of chocolate so I bought a set of hollow egg shaped chicks and my daughter bought some fun things to put inside them (or to hide near them).
Oliver went racing around the garden looking for the chicks with Grandad giving directions from his deckchair and his cousins trailing behind ready to help him. It was lovely to watch him and to see how much pleasure he got from a tub of bubbles, a balloon on a string, bouncy balls and a selection of books. I think the rest of us enjoyed it every bit as much as he did. It was so nice to have all the family together and to be able to enjoy the sunshine.
I couldn't help feeling a twinge of sadness because Oliver has come along so much later than my own children and he will only remember Grandad as old and frail. My children have a wealth of happy memories of time spent with their grandparents and their grandparents have been a very important and much loved part of their lives. When my children were little they longed for cousins and I longed to become an aunt - we had a long wait! Oliver has cousins who adore him and a whole family who love him very much and who enjoy spending time with him. His experience of childhood will be different, but the important thing is that he is surrounded by people who love him. Grandad may no longer be able to race around leading ponies or playing cricket in the garden, but he and Oliver are great friends and he still enjoys the fun of family life.
Robbie was at work until late in the evening yesterday because he had to work from home in the morning while waiting for the Sky repair man to come and replace the sky box. We had no TV over Easter because the sky box turned up its toes, I didn't miss it that much but certain other people were having withdrawal symptoms. I am fairly happy as long as I have my radio, I can't survive without Radio 4. The Sky man turned up eventually and everything is back in working order, so when Robbie got home last night he parked himself in front of the TV and watched junk until 1.30am.
Talking of Radio 4 it was responsible for a serious rise in my blood pressure yesterday. The You and Yours program had a 'phone in' about rail travel, George Muir from ATOC, Nigel Harris from Rail magazine, Tom Windsor a previous rail regulator and the dreaded Iain Coucher from Network Rail were all there to answer questions. The first three sounded sensible and plausible, but yet again Iain Coucher sounded totally insincere and complacent. Someone who rang in had been prevented from getting to work that morning because of an engineering overrun at Shenfield. He did his usual splutter and stutter, then explained that the planned engineering work to work on signals had been completed on time but it just so happened that the very next signal to where they were working developed an unrelated fault and this caused the delay. Whatever! When Sam was younger he always blamed the squirrels for whatever he had done wrong, he was very convincing, but that didn't mean I believed him. The calls to the program were overwhelmingly critical, the only company to receive any praise was Virgin; whatever you think about their service you have to admire their PR!
I overheard Robbie making a series of work calls during the morning, he kept talking about Craig and Timmy and I began to wonder who they were, a gay couple perhaps? Did Robbie have a secret life? Eventually I asked about them as I hadn't heard him mention either of them before. It turned out that he was actually referring to a place, Craigentinny nr Edinburgh, apparently it is the place where the trains 'go to bed'.East Anglian Daily Times
Sam and Laura are back at school this morning, they only had Friday and Monday off school because Easter was so early. They have another school holiday coming up in a couple of weeks. Easter has been a bit of a non event for us this year, usually we go to Plymouth to visit family, but with such a short holiday that proved impossible. It is lovely to visit family, but when we had snow on Easter Sunday I was quite relieved that we were at home, it is bad enough driving to Plymouth in good weather, I've had miserable journeys in driving rain and fog before, but thankfully I have never encountered snow.
Sam must be growing, when he put his uniform on this morning his trousers were perilously close to becoming 'ankle bashers' and they will certainly not last until the summer. His blazer is also looking a bit short, but that will have to last for a while longer. I am annoyed about his trousers, I bought him three pairs of M&S trousers for the new school year, they had plenty of growing room (or so I thought) and I expected them to last until the summer, but it looks as if we will have to go shopping in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully it will not be as traumatic as the saga we had buying shoes recently. I think I wrote about the visit to the shoe shop, but that was just the tip of the iceberg, for the next couple of weeks he refused to wear his new shoes. He wore his old shoes and then when I removed those he sneaked out in black trainers, he claimed the new shoes were tighter around his ankle and we had to have a 'frank exchange of views' before he surrendered and went to school in his new shoes. I feel as if I am running a laundry at the moment, Emily is home from university and I have been sorting out all the stuff that no longer fits Sam so I have piles of washing. I know it is mad to wash clean clothes before passing them on for recycling but I can't help it.
Robbie was late home from work again yesterday. He told me he had some exciting news and he had a huge grin on his face. He had been in contact with Wendy, his cousin from USA and she had met up with cousin Bobbie who reminded Wendy that various family members had worked for a well known company building locos. As you can imagine Robbie provided me with a full account of the various classes of loco that the company built, but I will spare you the details. He was delighted by this news and he has decided that trains must be in his genes! I wonder what is in my genes, endurance perhaps?
Help he is driving me mad! No, I don't mean Sam, Robbie is doing my head in. We finally have a weekend together without him dashing off to play trains so I hoped we could have a nice lazy family weekend. Our 'us' time on Saturday morning was spoiled by a dispute about 'the human windmill' waving his legs around and taking all the duvet. When I finally thought I had his undivided attention he chose exactly that moment to cut his toe nails! I retreated to the bathroom for a nice relaxing bath, with Radio 4 providing a little sanity in the background.
Saturday passed with Robbie eulogising about the marvels of Northern Ireland Railways. He went on and on about their various systems, I will spare you the details but top of his list of was that they don't have to suffer the tyranny of Network Rail! That makes him want to move to Northern Ireland right now! A bit later on he was sitting at his computer when he started to make strange roaring noises, I was just about to call for the men in white coats when he explained that he was making the noise of Castle Class 450's. Mistaking my horror for interest, he went on to explain the subtle difference between them and Thumpers - Im none the wiser, but if it pleases him to snore while he is awake I don't suppose I can do much about it.
Sunday morning was cold and snowy, I don't remember having snow on Easter day before! I decided that I was in no hurry to get up. Robbie put his arm around me, looked into my eyes and said "Argos tomorrow, they have a really good kitchen bin at half price". Great, looking into my eyes obviously makes him think of the kitchen bin! Sadly Robbie has never followed the adage 'when in a hole stop digging'. He continued to cuddle me and after a couple of minutes he said, "oh look, I've found a stretch mark" - It wasn't lost, unfortunately! I hope he has good health insurance because he makes me feel murderous at times. I wonder if anyone could train him, or maybe he is just unique!
Robbie went to see the children in Walsall yesterday, just a brief visit to deliver their Easter gifts, then back to work to finish a few things off because he is off to Ireland this morning. He was quite late home so by the time we had eaten I was quite tired and he made it worse by reciting packing lists over and over again. He will be back on Thursday evening so I don't think packing would have proved too taxing, it is just Robbie's way to speak his thoughts and he drives me mad, I had to beg him to shut up.
I correctly predicted that Robbie would want the white shirt that he wore yesterday to take to Ireland, so as soon as he got home I put a load of white washing on. I was too tired to stay up and wait to put it in the dryer so I left Robbie with clear instructions. I often go to bed before Robbie and I am usually asleep within a few minutes, but there is no guarantee of staying asleep. Robbie tends to appear like an apparition at the end of the bed, flapping his arms and sighing a lot - like Marley's ghost without the chains. He launches into conversation regardless of whether I am asleep or awake. Last night I became aware of Robbie's voice saying something about his balls not working anymore, I struggled towards consciousness wondering whatever could be wrong. Further conversation revealed that his shirts had come out of the dryer badly creased and Robbie was blaming the dryer balls (they work brilliantly by the way). I told him to put the shirts on a quick wash and then hang them on coat hangers to dry them over night. The apparition vanished or to be more accurate it stomped off and it was heard rampaging around the house for the next hour or so.
Robbie got to the airport safely this morning and the mystery of the balls was solved - they didn't work because he had stuffed the dryer so that the air could not circulate properly. When Robbie phoned from the airport I told him to take care and stay safe, he replied that he would be fine because he'd had three weetabix this morning - I don't think I will ever understand how that man's mind works!
