Getting a word in edgeways

On Sunday evening Robbie, my son and I were sitting in the lounge, they were watching something boring on television and I was chatting to someone on the internet. The adverts came on and I commented on one which really annoys me. Rather than making me want to buy their products it makes me want to shop elsewhere to punish them for such irritating adverts. My son who was sitting on the other side of the room said "Mum, speak with your inside voice!"
Robbie was sitting in the corner trying to hide the fact that he was giggling like Mutley. He and my son are like two little kids, each takes great pleasure in seeing the other one get into trouble, but at other times they gang up and tease me. I overcame the urge to dash across the room and grab him by the throat, preferring instead to let him hear considerably more of my 'outside voice'. 

I pointed out that I had put up with a lifetime of drivel from my son. I had smiled sweetly during his 'dinosaur phase' while being subjected to more information than anyone could ever need to know about the life and times of the dinosaur. Then there had been his Denis the Menace phase, his spy phase, the Superman phase. Not to mention his obsessive interest in all things film related - and I do mean all things film related, he nearly drove me mad with the myth of the hanging Munchkin. Then we come to Robbie, I don't know where to start when it comes to his obsessions, he shares Lego, Dr Martens, Indie music, Hornby, railways in general, buses, books, magazines ......... and that really is the tip of the iceberg. I can assure you that he doesn't hold back when it comes to sharing his enthusiasm about all these subjects - even at the most inappropriate moments. Thanks to Robbie I know so much about the workings (and failings) of train toilets that I could choose it as a specialist subject on Mastermind! I have never once asked either of them to 'speak with their inside voice' and I have put up with both of them having the attention span of a gnat when it comes to anything I want to talk to them about. Well the worm has turned! Prepare to be bored rigid boys, you are going to hear a lot more of my voice, as they say, if you can't beat them join them!!

Do As You Are Told!

Last weekend Dave (the cat) and I had a nice quiet Saturday while Robbie had a fantastic time on a rail tour to Penzance. By the time Robbie got home I had gone to bed so I didn't have a good look at him until the Sunday morning. Most blog readers will know that he likes nothing better than trotting around in his pants - only in the house, it scares the neighbours if he goes out like that! Anyway I noticed that he had cuts and grazes on his legs and when I questioned him he didn't have a clue how they had happened. Robbie's legs are a bit challenging (rather like their owner!) and what would be a fairly trivial cut for most people can be a real problem for him because things take so long to heal, in fact they often get worse rather than better. So it is hardly surprising that I was determined to bathe the cuts and put some antiseptic on them before they had a chance to go bad. Robbie, who still deludes himself that he is Superman, had other ideas and he was equally determined that his legs would be fine without any attention. I gave up on him because I knew that he would meet his match later in the day, and sure enough he had only been at my mums house for ten minutes before a large tube of Germolene was produced and his legs were duly anointed. The tube of Germolene was sent home with us and Robbie promised to take care of his cuts and grazes. Taking care of his legs has involved me chasing around the lounge armed with antiseptic several times this week and until yesterday he was adamant that he would be fine. Yesterday morning he was forced to admit that one of the cuts was now green and nasty and looking very angry and will need to be dressed to prevent it getting even worse. The problem is that he is going on another rail tour in a week or so and I am wondering how to protect his legs from whatever he managed to scrape them on last time - shin pads seem a bit extreme for a rail tour!

Late Yet Again!

Robbie was in the dog house again last night for being late home. We are fast reaching a point where him arriving home at a normal time is less common than all the late nights. It is not as if his ordinary day isn't long enough. He gets up at 5am to catch a train just after 6am and he usually gets home is about 7.30pm, that is a long enough day for anyone and him stumbling in at 10.30pm in so much pain that he can hardly walk is absolutely stupid. We all have a responsibility to take care of our own health (not to mention our family responsibilities!) but I just don't know how to make him understand that. I think I will have to make him stand in front of the mirror and practice saying no and meaning it!! How do I get him to stop thinking that he is Superman when the reality is much closer to Homer Simpson!!

Talking to the Wall!

Robbie is still talking about the lovely breakfast he had on Sunday. If he thinks I am going to spoil him like that he can think again – but if he wants to cook for me I wouldn't object! He said that the people he was with couldn't understand what he was saying, it doesn't surprise me, my mum still struggles to know what he is saying. Everyone thinks it's funny because Robbie talks enthusiasticly and very fast, after about two paragraphs worth my mum will look at me and ask what he said - I can usually sum the whole lot up in one sentence!

I wish Robbie would accept that he is not superman, I have written about it before but he really has to recognise his limits preferably before he falls over. When he got home on Sunday he'd obviously had a great time on the rail tour but he was struggling to walk and he had a lot of pain in his legs. The said that his legs felt as if they didn't belong to him, I can't imagine them belonging to anyone else, they are like him – unique, but if he wants them to keep working he needs to treat them with a little more respect and at least rest them for an hour or two on a long journey like that. I tried to tell him that but I may as well talk to the wall!!

He is off to the North today, to York I think, needless to say it involved an early start and I expect he will be late home too. By the time I get to see him in the evening he is so tired that he nods of mid sentence, but at least I can look forward to the weekend, I may be able to have a whole conversation with him!

Legs Behaving Badly! 06.03.08

I took Robbie to the hospital for his tests this morning. I was asked to go in with him which turned out to be a very good thing. He had to take off his shoes and socks and pull up his trouser legs, then he had to lie back on an adjustable chair like the ones dentists use. The tests only took about fifteen minutes and I don't think Robbie found it too painful, but it did make his legs jump about a bit. The conclusion was that the nerves in his legs are not too far from normal, well normal by Robbie standards anyway. He likes being unique and his legs are no exception, one is longer than the other and one foot is four shoe sizes bigger than the other, so I think 'unique' just about sums it up. They have concluded that the problem is probably the result of nerve damage in his lower back due to his spins bifida, and this is preventing the nerve messages reaching his legs. They wanted to do an MRI scan to get a better idea of what is going on, but Robbie said he couldn't cope because he is claustrophobic (allegedly). I intervened at this point and Robbie finally agreed that they could arrange an MRI scan, after all if women can cope with giving birth and the many other indignities we encounter, I am sure he can cope with one MRI scan. He will just have to close his eyes and imagine that he is on the bottom bunk of the sleeper train!

Robbie was upset afterwards because it is very unlikely that there will be anything they can do to stop him falling over or to ease the pain, and it makes him frustrated. I think it is always better to know, and it has ruled out a separate cause for the falls so we are a bit further forward. Now we have to wait for the MRI scan appointment and in the meantime Robbie will continue to act like superman to prove that he is OK, but don't worry I have warned him that wearing his pant outside his trousers would be taking it too far - it would be more Homer than Superman!

Time For A Change 02.08.07

Robbie was not too impressed by being called Donald (as in where's your trousers) yesterday, so I am not going to write about him today - he deserves a rest!

I have been giving a lot of thought to work life balance recently as there are a number of changes taking place at work. At present I work a little less than full time hours and I still seem to spend my entire life chasing my tail. In fact I am thinking of naming our house 'Forth Bridge' because the housework and maintenance is always a work in progress! Sometimes I wonder if it is worth working so hard to give the children a decent quality of life when most of our free time is taken up with housework, ironing and fighting a losing battle in the garden.

This morning I walked into the kitchen and felt a howl of anguish welling up inside me. Yet again the 'washing up fairy' had missed us from our rounds and despite everything being washed up after our evening meal a precarious pile of crockery was sprouting from the bowl. Perhaps it was someone's idea of modern art in the style of Tracy Emin. Actually I think that Tracy Emin's 'Dark Bed' is rather eloquent, maybe the full washing up bowl speaks volumes too - about a lack of responsibility, or possibly it suggests that we have hungry intruders every night! No, I am not getting a dish washer, our global footprint needs to shrink, not grow!

It is surprising how we so quickly get used to difficulties within our own home and I am sure I am not the only person who has put up with an inconvenient kitchen for too many years - and on current finances it is likely for a few years longer as well! When I actually had a good look at the kitchen I realised that there are only two items in the right position and at the correct height for me to use easily, thankfully one of those is the kettle! The sink is also at the correct height for easy (and frequent) use, but everything else causes me to bend down, to reach above head height, to use steps or to reach around an obstacle. Clearly it must have been designed (or more likely thrown together) by a man. Perhaps I can't have a new kitchen at this stage but I am going to use my work skills to make some long overdue changes. I am going to risk assess it, create an action plan and reorganise all the storage to meet my needs. Robbie hates change, so I expect he will have quite a bit to say about it but there again he has a lot to say about almost everything. At present I even need to use the steps to alter the volume on my radio because it is perched on top of the fridge freezer! Even worse if I want to open or close a window I have to use steps and scramble onto the worktop - its madness! I am sure with a bit of planning and a lot of effort I can make my life much easier.

On a lighter note I got up yesterday to find that Sam's collection of small superhero figures had escaped from his bedroom and were arranged on top of the hall radiator in what I can only describe as startling poses. Wonder Woman appeared to be having her wicked way with Superman and a different version of Superman was in an extremely compromising position with another male superhero. I will spare you any more details but after briefly thinking that I must be a complete failure as a parent, I saw the funny side and had a bit of a laugh while making myself a nice cup of tea to recover from the shock!

An All Action Hero 14.02.07

I made Robbie suffer for his strop, on the journey back to Northampton I nicked his (unread) Rail magazine and read it from cover to cover. I liked the interview with Chris Gibb, I imagined that he would be much older, not sure why. The article described him as an all action hero, so perhaps it was him and not Superman on Sam's favourite train! I thought it was a very good article. He say's that the 'average' passenger thinks Voyagers are great, well I am not 'average' (being female gives me a head start towards perfection!) but I am a big fan of Voyagers, they have nice toilets. I think he is right about the staff too, the train crews on cross country are more friendly than the ones from the 'dark side'. Some of the train managers have added entertainment value, there is one who has a better gay walk than Robbie, a real John Inman wiggle. It is better than watching TV when he is on the train! If you want to improve cross country the best thing you could do is 'head hunt' the station announcer with the camp voice from Milton Keynes, he is amazing, we go via Milton Keynes just to listen to him, he's brilliant! Possibly the only good thing about Milton Keynes. To digress for a minute, I saw a chap (platform staff) at New Street today who looked so much like Alf Garnet. It was a bit scary, he looked as if he could have been a traffic warden in a previous life!

Anyway back to Robbie's Rail magazine, I loved the train photos with the Chris Gibb interview, but where is Cornwood Viaduct, is it in the Plympton/Ivybridge area? The first photo of Chris Gibb was fine, the second was perhaps a bit of a mistake. The way he was sitting made me think of Rainbow - you know, Zippy and George. George was cute, but perhaps that is not a franchise winning comparison!

I have been reading the Christian Wolmar articles quite regularly. I am used to hearing him speak on Radio 4, but to be honest he confuses me. Sometimes I think he makes a lot of sense, but every now and then he says or writes something that to be honest makes me think he is talking out of the wrong end - but then what do I know anyway. His article this week about freight was really interesting.

I have given Robbie his magazine back now, so peace reigns! He is feeling poorly this evening, I hope he hasn't picked up the bug that the children had because he has to go to Leeds tomorrow.

Superman 05.02.07

Robbie's habit of wandering around the house in his pants causes a number of problems, there is the obvious horror factor of course, but there are less obvious difficulties too. It gives him the idea that he is Superman - we don't have many mirrors in our house!! He always thinks that he can take on the world, that's fine most of the time, but he is rubbish at taking care of his own health. He forces himself to keep going when his legs or his back hurt and then he ends up hardly able to move and all he can do is lie on the floor. There is no point nagging because it doesn't make a scrap of difference, but I do worry about him, he was so bad today that he couldn't manage to get to work. I hate it when this happens because far from being Superman he is more like an incapacitated troll! Unlike most of us he absolutely loves his work and he is impossible if he has to miss a day.