Stolen Time - Two Minutes! 18.03.07

I had a nice Mother's Day. The children gave me some lovely cards and they gave me the new Ben Mills CD and The Queen DVD. I haven't had time to enjoy either yet as we went out to spend the day with my mum.

Robbie has been surprisingly well behaved this weekend - maybe he is sickening for something!! This morning, we were cuddled up in bed enjoying the luxury of not having to get up at the crack of dawn when did his usual trick of spoiling an intimate moment - by worrying about a timetable change for his train in May. It is bad enough that he even thinks about trains when we are in bed, but he is only obsessing about two minutes, so it is hardly going to blight his life. Apparently they need an extra two minutes journey time because of work at Rugby, he would have provided even more detail but I explained to him that he may not survive until May if he keeps doing this. He was quiet and gave me his undivided attention for a few minutes before reverting to type and telling me all about the new Hornby magazine, he even showed me the pictures! Oh well if you can't beat them join them, or so they say. I got my own back this afternoon, I nicked his Rail magazine, and made him wait ages to read it!

It snowed a bit when we went to collect Emily from work and when I parked and turned off the engine the wipers were at either side of the screen rather than at the bottom. This didn't bother me as we would be driving off again as soon as she came out, but Robbie couldn't bear it. It sent him crazy and he begged me to turn the engine on to move the wipers to their correct position. Eventually I had to relent, just to shut him up. This caused me to suggest that it was yet more evidence that he is "on the spectrum" - he went mad! It doesn't bother me, I know he is a bit weird and I still love him, but there again maybe all train people are a bit strange

Security Blanket 29.01.07

This afternoon found us heading off in the car to see my mum. Robbie sat in the passenger seat engrossed in the National Rail Timetable which he had decided to bring out for a ride. Kids have teddy bears and security blankets, Robbie has Quail maps and timetables! His excuse for reading it on this occasion was to work out the best route to Leicester because Emily has to go for a university visit in a couple of weeks. He could easily have looked it up at work tomorrow, but he uses any excuse to drag that massive timetable around with him. The good news was that we don't have to go via the dreaded Birmingham New Street, the bad news was that Robbie plunged himself into despair when he recalled that he will soon have to survive without his beloved timetable in book form, as in future it will only be available online. I had not thought of Robbie as a Luddite before, but he is certainly not happy with this particular manifestation of progress.