“Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled, nor the hour which has passed return again.” Ovid

It is just over a year since I last wrote anything for the blog. I made a conscious decision to stop writing the blog because there were a number of other demands on my time and it became necessary to be a little more discreet than usual. Robbie started a new contract last September, working on a bid team. It was a new experience for him and quite a steep learning curve, but he loves a challenge - he's on his third bid now! I have had to make some important adjustments too, I gave up my job to work with Robbie, taking charge of the business admin, driving and the various other tasks necessary to keep Robbie 'on track'. I continued with my writing work and my time was taken up with writing, proof reading and selecting photos for my book. It was such a relief when everything had been delivered to the publisher! The book was published in May and I had the pleasure of seeing my book on the shelves of Waterstones and W.H. Smiths. 

I didn't intended to return to the blog. Several of my friends urged me to start writing again, but I wasn't convinced and oddly it was a book that changed my mind. I have been reading The Diary of Samuel Pepys, and I find it fascinating because it deals with the so many of the ordinary aspects of life. It may be almost 350 years since Samuel Pepys wrote his diary but he and Robbie seem to have a lot in common - perhaps men haven't changed greatly over the years! My children, who are now all adults do not approve of the blog, or to be more accurate they would prefer to remain anonymous. So in future they will not write about them as much and when their names crop up I will come up with aliases for them.

tomorrow will be our ninth wedding anniversary and we are looking forward to a weekend away. Yesterday a friend asked me if I would change Robbie if I could, I enjoyed thinking about it for a minute or two but my answer was no, I wouldn't change him. He is a good man with a big heart and a passion for life, why on earth would I want to change him? Not so long ago my son asked me if Robbie had been my mid life crisis, his question made me laugh but I have to admit that we are an unlikely couple. The important thing is that we are happy; we have been through a lot together over the years and it has brought us closer and made us stronger than ever. 

Don't smother each other. No one can grow in shade - Leo Buscaglia

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers - Thomas Jefferson

There are many things that I love about Robbie, but his choice of newspaper is is not one of them. I detest the thing I resent the waste of paper and I resent the waste of money, I would rather he spent it on a railway magazine, even if he spent it on  Lego or any of his other many and varied obsessions it wouldn't seem so pointless. I have managed to change or modify many things about Robbie over the years, but he remains stubbornly attached to his limp lefty newspaper, so I do my best to ignore it.

Yesterday evening we settled down in the lounge, me with my laptop and Robbie across the room with his newspaper. I was lost in my own little world writing the blog when I glanced up to see Robbie holding his phone out to the cat, and more worrying still the cat was looking at it as if he was reading a text! I asked Robbie what he was doing and with a totally serious expression he said that he was showing the cat the time to prove that he had to wait another hour until feeding time. 

I shook my head in disbelief and settled back to writing the blog. A little later completely out of the blue Robbie asked "How much does mum pay for David's socks these days". It seemed such an odd question that I had to ask him to repeat it in case I hadn't heard him properly. I told Robbie that I have never given a passing thought to the price of my step father's socks - but thanks to Robbie I have now! Once he get's started on a subject there is no stopping him and I heard all about the advantages of loose top socks, a very good deal he had spotted; the price, the colour, it went on an on until I begged him to stop.

Finally he was quiet and I went back to what I was doing. Peace reigned for a little while, then Robbie's voice rang out asking "Have you noticed that you don't often see radishes in the supermarket these days?" I thought about it for a minute and decided to try my luck with a one word answer - no! It was worth a try, but it just encouraged him to provide more radish related information. I listened for a while but I really couldn't summon up much interest in radishes. I asked if he had ever eaten a radish and he informed me that he hadn't. I informed him that he hadn't missed much! I told him that if he was that interested I would buy him some radishes, but he quickly declined and told me that it just was something he had been reading about. 

So now yo know why I dislike that dratted newspaper, it puts ridiculous ideas in his head!

Getting Old 03.03.08

Robbie and the children do a pretty good job of making me feel old, but just in case I hadn't got the message Radio 4 managed press the point with a program about one of my childhood favourites, Paddington Bear, who is celebrating his 50th Birthday this year! I first encountered Paddington Bear at School. As a young child I loved to be read to, and in those far of days when the government were too busy dealing with other matters to meddle with education, my school nurtured a love of books that has remained with me ever since.

When I first started school at the age of four I wasn't to keen on learning to read. We had little red check gingham bags which hung on the backs of our chairs to hold our reading books. The reading books were deeply uninspiring, they were about Dick and Dora, their friends May and Jesse and their dog Gyp. I suspect those books came out of the ark and as a child growing up in the 1960's I didn't know anyone called Dick or Dora and certainly not May or Jesse, I didn't identify with them and I couldn't care less about what the words meant because it was so boring. We had better reading books later on, I think those were called Wide Range Readers, finally there was something worth reading and suddenly I could read.

School lunch was a very formal affair with all sorts of rules to be observed, but afterwards we had a period known as ‘rest’. It was one of my favourite parts of the school day; we all went to the school hall and rested on rugs while stories were read to us. I was introduced to The Borrowers, Milly Molly Mandy, Dr Doolittle, Sam Pig, 101 Dalmatians, The Country Child, The Moomins, My Naughty Little Sister and my dear old friend Paddington Bear. I loved them all and I can remember them very clearly so many years later, but the strange thing is that I never grew out of Paddington. I can picture myself in my college room working at my desk listening to my favourite Paddington story on my casette player and laughing out loud at his antics. I have gone on to share his exploits with my own children and I have a feeling he will still be going strong for many years to come.

The Annoying Thing About Robbie ............ 31.12.07

The annoying thing about Robbie .................. no, I need to rephrase that. One of the annoying things about Robbie is that when he reads his lips move - and sound comes out! Sometimes it is just little sounds so when he is reading it is like a low hum, more often it is a series of oohs and ahhs reminiscent of the style of Frankie Howerd. Last night he went one step further, at past 2am he was sitting up in bed reading his Model Rail magazine out loud and providing commentary and criticism as he went along. I tolerated it for a while, then I tried to distract him - no chance, in the end I had to resort to threats of physical harm to shut him up!!

We were talking about reading in the car the other day, the children were talking about their favourite books and Robbie commented that he doesn't read. I reminded him of huge piles of railway books and magazines that are taking over the house and he revised his initial comment to claim that he never reads fiction. But within a few seconds he had to correct himself again, of course he reads fiction - the stuff that Network Rail sends him is a work of total fantasy! On the subject of Network Rail, it looks as if I am going to win my bet with Robbie because despite retaining possession and causing total chaos today they are still overrunning with the work at Rugby and the long suffering passengers can look forward to total chaos when the return to work on Wednesday morning. Even Robbie didn't believe they would be that incompetent!