It's February Eve!

Been a strange month, in many ways, but it’s always nice to have reached the last day of January and be thinking “Made it through another one!”
Mornings are noticeably brighter. It’s still light enough to see across the car park when I leave work at 5pm. I’m even excited by the prospect of having to get the mower out soon, as the grass has grown considerably since Autumn!
Good old global warming.
Of course there’s still the chance that February will be minus 15 and windier than a fat kid in a wind tunnel, but I don’t care, because at least it will be February, and February is a vital step on the road to my favourite month - March!
Time to celebrate the passing of January in the way our ancestors would have back in ancient times - by opening a chilled bottle of wine from New Zealand.

RC 31-1-16

"Hmmm" (a poem)

A dull, dark, dreary day in Suffolk.
Now I am married, what do I do next?
A year of planning and mental toil
Ended when I placed the ring upon the finger.
So what do I do next?
How to occupy a mind that craves activity?
How to fill the Winter hours,
while awaiting the glorious Dawn of Spring?
Philippa would say ‘babies!’
- the logical next step in the well-trodden path of human courtship.
But I say…… “no!”
There must be more, than relationship… wedship… parentship.
Those are ships on which I have wished not to sail.
Even though two of them I have since embarked upon.
The third, I hope, will remain in dock. 

Should I find a new hobby?
Or rather focus on the ones I already have?
Those many short-term obsessions I indulged in,
before casting them aside onto the pile marked ‘bored now.’
The golf, the drums, the magic…
A little progress made; a little money spent; a little time wasted.

In March, when times are brighter,
these moments of lost reflection will seem trivial;
Like a once-worrying fog that lifted before I had to drive,
or some meal I had…. somewhere… sometime…
But for now they sit painful
Upon the ‘torture’ button of my soul.

Yeah, you’re right - it’s time for a drink.

RC 27-1-16

... upward

Life just seems so much nicer when there’s only a week left in January. Yes, my birthday is behind me and it’s a little bit of a come-down, but it’s great to know there are only a few more days to go in the darkest, nastiest month of the year, and we’re screaming on towards Spring! 

RC 26-1-16

Kill or cure

We tried to alleviate my post-birthday-party depression by taking a trip to the cinema. We went to see ‘The Revenant” which is an extraordinary piece of film-making, but didn’t exactly cheer me up. Seeing Leonardo DiCaprio ripped to shreds by a bear and left for dead in the woods was impressive, but not exactly cheerful.
Next time I’m blue I’ll just go and watch a funeral instead. 

RC 25-1-16

Miss my sisses

And suddenly, the house is empty and I sit alone with just memories of a great 24 hours, and with one hell of a hangover. 
Yesterday was a blast. So much so that I have a few bits of the day that I seem to have lost completely. I know we all went out for lunch, then we all played pool, then we all came back to ours for more drinks, games of cards, and a takeaway tea. At some point (I think it was about 11pm) I decided to show off my drumming ability and dragged Hannah off into the garage. It’s a sign of how pissed we were that it took us 20 minutes or so to find our way back into the house. A drunken game of Trivial Pursuit ensued and I think we got one question right between us.
You can say what you like about the Chesworths, but we know how to celebrate a birthday.
The plan for today was for us all to go out for lunch but none of us could face it so we just stayed here, had bacon sandwiches, and chatted and drank lots of tea.
Do I really have to wait another year before we can do all this again?

RC 24-1-16

birthday weekend ahoy!

I’m drinking red wine as I build up to the arrival of my sisters tomorrow for a serious birthday drink-up. Actually, I’ve been drinking red wine since 5.27 this evening, so it’s a pretty impressive ‘build up.’ 
5.27, by the way, is the exact time I got into the house, and the clocks hadn’t turned onto a different minute before I’d got the bottle open and the wine poured and the first glass firmly flowing down my  throat-pieces. I don’t mess about when it’s my birthday weekend and there’s drinking to be done.
I’m going to try and get through the whole of ‘Gravity’ now without succumbing to a Rioja-induced slumber. 

RC 22-1-16

Some things taste better with time

Welcome to what I’m calling my ‘Birthday Boxing Day.’
I’m glad Philippa arranged a meal for this Friday as it adds another day of celebration into the week and gives me something else to look forward to on this day of post-birthday blues!
Last night was really nice in the end. We had the much-anticipated takeaway and it was gorgeous. We tried a Chinese place not far from my work that I’d heard good things about, and those good things that I heard were more than justified! The ‘Set Meal no.C’ (sic) was absolutely flawless. I spent this morning full of gas and with the taste of over-subscribed monosodium glutamate firmly stuck to my tonsils. 
Yummy.

RC 21-1-16

Joyful married interaction

Philippa and I sat talking on the sofa this evening….
I said “what time are we eating tomorrow?”
She said “I don’t know. As soon as I get in, I guess.”
I said “Haven’t you booked us a table then?”
She said “Booked us a table where?”
I said “At the Italian restaurant.”
She said “That’s on Friday you idiot. I didn’t see the point of going on a worknight so I booked it for the weekend.”
I said “Oh, right. I thought it was on my actual birthday.”
She said “That’s because you NEVER LISTEN. I clearly told you we were going on Friday and you said that was fine.”
She did go on to say some other stuff after that, but I’d stopped listening by then to be honest.

RC 19-1-16

simple pleasures

After a tough day at work, in a garage where the heating had packed up and we had to wait six hours for an engineer to fix it, it was the nicest feeling on Earth to climb into a hot, bubbly bath and just stay there for an hour while Philippa cooked tea. 

RC 18-1-16

buon appetito!

Philippa has suggested we have a meal out for my birthday. She says one of the neighbours have recommended a nice Italian restaurant and she’d like to give it a go. I would have been happy with a takeaway and a bottle of wine, but who am I to say ‘no’ to a night out? 

RC 17-1-16

It sneaks up..

I can’t believe it’s nearly my birthday!
I’ve been so distracted by little things like weddings and Christmas that I’ve barely given it a thought. It’s a bit silly really, isn’t it, getting married so close to these other celebrations? From now on, all our big yearly moments will be within a few weeks of each other. What the Hell will we use as an excuse for a party in August? 
Phiippa would suggest we time our pregnancies so that each of our children are born in a month with no other birthdays. She’s so terribly organised like that. She’s also so terribly obsessed with being a mum, so I’m not going to let her see this blog posting or it will set her off again.
I stupidly forgot to book my birthday off work, so I’m a bit limited to how much I can enjoy it. Sophie and Tamara are coming to stay next weekend so we’ll drag Hannah round too (if she’s speaking to me again by then) and have a knees-up. It seems to have been assumed that this will be an annual event from now on, so I’d better get my Staff Discount card out and head for the ‘Alcohol’ and ‘Snacks’ aisles…

RC 16-1-15

First Fri-ku of 2016

Been a Wintry week
The cold has come hard this year
Autumn seemed so long

I am married now
Two lives have merged into one
And made me complete

I wish it was Spring
I want to cycle and surf
And see nice flowers

RC 15-1-16

Witches, the lot of 'em..

I still can’t get my head around what happened this week. As far as I can tell, Hannah didn’t say she thought she was pregnant, she said she felt really unwell and it felt like how she imagined it would feel if she was pregnant.  Does that really make sense to anyone? Are you surprised I got the wrong end of the stick?
Philippa was her usual supportive self. I tried explaining it to her in the kitchen and she stood there shaking her head. “So she rang you for sympathy and support because she felt rough, and you end up accusing her of being loose?”
“I didn’t accuse her of anything. I just got the wrong end of the stick.”
“Yes, because you didn’t LISTEN. You NEVER listen. How can people rely on you if they know you’ll never even listen to them and completely miss the point they’re trying to get across to you?”
“I can’t believe you’re getting on at me. I thought you might support me.”
“I’ll support you when you’re right, but I won’t support you when you’ve been a twat.”
“Shouldn’t you ALWAYS be on my side now we’re MARRIED?” I asked.
She just said “Sisters before spouses, babe” and went and sat on the sofa.

RC 14-1-16

I really should listen more carefully

Spoke to Hannah again tonight. She got very peeved at me. I’d rung full of brotherly concern to ask for an update on her ‘condition’ and she just got abusive - “I did NOT say I thought I was pregnant, I said I felt so unwell it almost felt like I WAS pregnant.“ She finished her sentence with something that sounded a lot like “you dick” but I can’t imagine that’s actually what she said.
So it turns out the pregnancy thing and all it’s various consequences was never a possibility, except in my head. Thankfully I hadn’t put my foot in it by voicing my concerns to her, or writing about it on an openly-public blog forum or something silly like that….

RC 12-1-16

The Family Way

Had a strange conversation with Hannah tonight. She told me she thinks she might be pregnant. Now obviously, with a priest-in-training as a boyfriend there would be serious ramifications if she is, as either she’s doing the dirty on him or he’s doing the dirty on his religion and could be about to lose his church and his family. But in my head all that fell away to make place for this one selfish thought - “if she is pregnant my life will be Hellish because it’ll just fire Philippa’s maternal fire even further.”
Bad brother? Bad husband? Maybe, but hey - good or bad, right or wrong - I am what I am.

RC 11-1-16

....and relax....

Another great weekend of blissful married contentment. 
It’s so nice to be enjoying each other again. We’ve had months now where every available moment seemed to be taken up with plans for the wedding, or thinking about the wedding, or making phone calls about the wedding, or shopping for the wedding, or arguing about the wedding. Now it’s all done and dusted we can get back to normal life and doing the things together that made us want to marry each other in the first place. Today we had a lie-in, then a fry-up, then a bit of a walk, then a game of Kerplunk (an old favourite from my childhood that Sophie kindly got me as a Christmas present), then cuddled up to watch a ‘Twilight’ film. Wouldn’t be one of my first choices, but Philippa was dead keen, and isn’t it part of married life to do things with your spouse that you might not necessarily like yourself, just so you can see them enjoying themselves? I hope so, and I hope Philippa thinks so too, because I want to watch the NFL play-offs for the next six hours…

RC 10-1-16

A pig in poop

So how is this married life thing going, I hear you ask?
Remarkably pleasantly, I have to say. No big changes or big revelations or anything like that, just a great feeling of contentment and an internal understanding that we’ve done the right thing.
Was it really only two weeks ago that we had our wedding? (I’ve just checked my calendar and my diary, and yes it was!) It feels like we’ve been joined together for years and yet it feels like it only happened yesterday. Love does strange things to your understanding of time, I guess.
Sorry, I’m actually making myself feel sick now, with all this romantic gushy-wushy sentimentality. I shall go and beat myself mercilessly with bamboo and try to return as the grumpy old cynical arsehole I was not too long ago.
Bear with me…

RC 8-1-16

Schoolboy error

I realised today that I signed my first blog of 2016 with the wrong date - I put 3-1-15. A small mistake and one that is easily rectified, but as I’ve sworn never to go back in and edit anything I post on this blog it will now be sitting there incorrect for eternity.
And now the OCD part of me has to come to terms with that fact and find some way to deal with it…
Could be a long night. I’ll put the kettle on…

RC 7-1-16

I Blame The Parents

This is my favourite story about the recent Xmas period:

A woman was in our supermarket on January 3rd looking for toys for her daughter because “Poor little Trixibelle had a really disappointing Christmas.”
“Oh dear, what happened?” asked one of our staff.
“She wanted a telescope, so I went to the Science Museum website and bought one for £1400. When she unwrapped it she said ‘This isn’t what I wanted. I want the HUBBLE telescope.’ I tried to explain it was in space and impossible to buy as a present but she lost it and didn’t speak to me for two days. Now I’m trying to make it up to her.”
Spoilt little shit. 

RC 6-1-16

Status, and indeed Quo

Philippa started talking about babies today.
That didn’t take long did it?  Just over a week of married bliss before I start getting pressured about a family.
I guess the honeymoon is over, before we’ve even had one. 

RC 3-1-15