An Early Night!

Robbie often promises me an early night but for all sorts of reasons we don't get to bed until much later than planned. So earlier this week it was a nice change to find ourselves in bed reasonably early. Robbie went through his usual rituals including setting the alarm on his blackberry so that it would wake the alarm clock up. Then he reached across and picked up a yellow A4 folder containing early copies of Model Rail magazine, he proceeded to tell me about the history of the magazine, the variations in content over the years - he even listed the issues that were missing from his collection. I was wide awake when I went to bed, but it is surprising how quickly I fell asleep!

Ready at Last

Friday was a bit of a blur, packing, getting the car ready and filling it with fuel as well as last minute shopping. By 7.30pm everything was packed, the house was a tidy as I could manage and I tucked myself into bed to get some sleep before the long drive to Cornwall. I planned to get up at 2am so I needed a very early night. I'd not heard from Robbie but Laura was on standby to pick him up if he managed to get home without incident.

The call of the bathroom woke me up at midnight and as I sleeply emerged from the bathroom Robbie came bounding up the stairs wearing some new PJ bottoms, they had Batfink on them and they were startling to say the least. I went back to bed and reluctantly got up again at 2am. Robbie was still up, he was too scared to go to be because he knew he wouldnt get up again. I had to hurry him along because he was still running on Irish time and at that speed the holiday would be over before we got there!

I packed the flasks and food for the journey, then I packed the final items into the car while Robbie downed tools and made himself a bacon sandwich (at 3am!). Finally Laura and Sam and I were ready in the car and after sitting in the car waiting for Robbie for what seemed like hours we drove off towards Cornwall. By the time we reached the end of our road everyone else was asleep and I was left with an increasingly stressy sat nav for company. I knew the best way to go and each time I ignored the sat nav I could hear the edge in her voice as she announced that she was "recalculating".

An Early Night 30.07.07

I thought I did really well yesterday evening. I remained totally calm when Sparky cut through the electric wire again. During the evening Robbie said that we should have an early night and for once he didn't get engrossed in ebay or distracted by deltics and he was ready for bed before me. When I finally emerged from the bathroom I found Robbie sitting on the bed in a 'garden gnome' pose, clutching the TV remote control in one hand and what looked like a railway dvd in the other. Once again I had been conned, but I didn't really mind watching a railway dvd so I settled down to choose which part to watch first. As I read the details it became clear that it wasn't a train dvd it was a transport dvd and I was faced with such delights as Twenty-four hours in the story of the British Railways Channel ferryboats, the 'link spans' directly joining the roads and railways of Britain with those of France and all the Continent. If that didn't float my boat (sorry about the pun) I could go for the mind blowing boredom of the transporting of a distillation column, 137 feet long, 500 miles by road from Greenwich to Grangemouth in Scotland.

Not surprisingly I refused to watch anything and I banned television for the rest of the night. I snuggled down in bed and started to talk to Robbie, but the only response was a snort. He had fallen asleep within seconds of laying down and was 'Z'ing vigorously so I was compelled to pinch him several times to adjust the volume. The next thing I remember was the alarm clock going off this morning It wasn't quite the early night I had in mind but there again life with Robbie is a unique experience!