'There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them' - Sylvia Plath

Photo by Linneabe

A am a bath person, there is nothing I like more Than a long soak in a hot bath while listening to Radio 4. Robbie on the other hand is a shower person, and being a train planner his ablutions are timed to the second and they have to be performed in the correct order! So a leisurely bath is an unfamiliar experience for Robbie, but he was in so much today that he look my advice and plodded off to have a hot bath to ease his pain. I was busy so it was a while before i looked up from my work and realised that he had been gone for a very long time. I listened and it was suspiciously quiet, I could hear the radio but there was no splashing and no sound of movement - and Robbie is never quiet. I rushed to the bathroom to find out what was wrong and I found that he was sound asleep. He had slid down in the bath and his face was only just above water! I shouted at him to wake him up but he didn't even flinch and I was cross with him for scaring me, so I poured water over him, that woke him up! In future he can stick to showers, there is less chance of him drowning in the shower!

A Question of Time

This is a delicate subject to mention on the blog, but it is one of those situations that either makes you laugh or scream and when Robbie is more 'Robbish' than usual he can be very funny. We were sitting outside looking at the sunset when Robbie asked if I would mind him watching Skins at 11pm, I wasn't that bothered so I said that it was fine as long as he gave me lots of attention afterwards! He looked at me very seriously and said that he wanted to watch something else at midnight but he could fit me in between 10pm and 11pm. He may be a train planner, but if he thinks he's going to have me working to a timetable he can think again!

A Cunning Plan

I have had enough, I'm starting a campaign to get Robbie to look for another job! I have never met anyone more passionate about his work than Robbie and I'm used to him leaving early in the morning or coming home late. I can't count the number of times I've had to 'put his dinner in the dog' or make last minute changes to the evening meal. Even when he gets home, his work often comes with him. Today he was struggling to find a solution to a particularly challenging problem with his December 09 timetable. He wandered around Morrisons muttering to himself about why this or that solution wouldn't work, he got some funny looks from other shoppers, but he was too engrossed in his timetable to notice or to care. His eureka moment came in the yoghurt section when he suddenly announced to anyone who cared to listen “Yes! That could be possible, it could work”. By now I was convinced the store staff were ready to call for the men in white coats, so I hurried him through the checkout and out to the car. He continued his discussion with nobody in particular and by the time we got home he seemed to have settled on a possible solution.

Robbie was exhausted after his 18 hour endurance test on Thursday when he went to visit Network Rail in Leeds, but he still got up early and rushed off to work on Friday morning. By the time he got home in the evening he was too tired and too wound up to eat! He has a reputation to maintain so he managed a few mouthfuls, but he could hardly keep his eyes open. The early starts don't bother him, they don't even bother me very much and we cope when he is late home, I am used to it. The thing that really bothers me is seeing him work so hard and not be appreciated, in fact on Friday it was worse than that, not only did his efforts go unnoticed, but he got moaned at for something that he knew nothing about and was not his responsibility. I know they have had to cope with difficult circumstances, and Robbie has willingly put in time and effort to make things work, but this has been going on for almost a year now and he is being taken for granted, I know he thinks he is Superman, but he can't do the impossible!

It may take me a while to get Robbie to see things my way – but he usually does in the end! In the meantime I have a strategy. Robbie arrived home totally exhausted on Friday evening, he is no use to me in that state. After a good night's sleep and a haircut his strength was restored, but I have plans, he will be totally worn out by the time he goes back to work on Monday morning. Why should they have the best of him? I didn't choose a 'toy boy' just to watch him sleep all weekend!

Robbie's random information for the week was imparted in the middle of the night. Just before 1am on Saturday morning he woke briefly to inform me that 'they have sweeteners reduced at Tesco in Leeds' I'm not sure why I needed to know that, but before I could ask he was sleeping soundly again.

Baffled by Technology 28.03.07

Robbie seems to be in shock after tidying his desk on Monday. Apparently he has even admitted to being baffled by technology, usually it is the other way around - technology is baffled by him! He loves his gadgets and geeky stuff and I suppose I do too, but sometimes I have to beg him to shut up! I like to know how things work, but the intricate detail that Robbie treats me to leaves me begging for mercy. My mum brought me up to believe that a woman could do anything better than a man for two reasons, we think about it first and we read the instructions!! She was absolutely right of course, she was almost always right (that’s where I get it from!). Robbie knows a huge amount about computers etc, but he doesn’t always find the simplest way to achieve things. Being a train person his attitude seems to be ‘why go from A to B when you could go the scenic route via C,D,E and F’ Fair enough for train spotting and certain other activities, but when applied to computers, cooking or most other daily activities it can be infuriating!

Robbie has a dreadful sense of direction and his map reading in the car always causes a heated argument. He has the attention span of a goldfish and rather than following the map he tells me the route the train would take, or he gives detailed train time or he manages to remember when the line closed to passenger traffic and how long freight continued after that! All very interesting I suppose, but not when it causes me to miss my turn and travel miles out of my way. He has even caused me to make an emergency stop (not recommended on the motorway) when he yelled LOOK at the top of his voice. I thought he was warning me of a hazard, but he had only spotted a train in the distance!
I shouldn’t moan, listening to his stories about his work mates it is clear that some of their wives have far worse to put up with!

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

Lofty Ideas 22.01.07

Robbie has been extremely irritating today. Before we got up this morning we got into a verbal dispute about the location of Northampton, he simply will not believe that we are in the East Midlands despite overwhelming evidence. In the end he reached over to his book case and I thought the dreaded Quail map was coming out again. I had intended to hide it after being treated to an incredibly detailed account of the route taken during his marathon journey from Leeds to Birmingham on Thursday. My efforts would have been pointless because he produced the Bakers Railway Atlas instead, and knowing that he had lost the argument, he attempted to bore me into submission!

I retreated to the bathroom for a relaxing bath, but Robbie was not far behind. By this point he was bleating about the exact location of Walsall (unless last weeks gales were more devastating than we have been led to believe, I suspect it is still in the same place!). I thought he needed something to distract him, so I asked him to go up to the loft to get some items that he had squirreled away before Christmas. I find it hard to get into the loft so I have to rely on Robbie, but as usual he got really possessive about it and seemed to require my request in triplicate giving detailed reasons for wanting my own stuff back. Somewhere hidden inside that train planner there is a bureaucrat fighting to get out! Sanity won, and with a bit of huffing and puffing he went up to the loft and reluctantly liberated most of the things I needed.

I shopped for food on Thursday and again on Saturday but once again Robbie asked to go to Tesco Express this evening. Every sunday evening he finds a compelling reason to drag me off to Tesco's, I am beginning to think he must have a woman hidden away there! He means well, but today was definitely one of his annoying days; never mind, I can send him to work tomorrow, I'm sure they must be used to him by now!