You came and went so fast this year, it's like I didn't see you
If I could live life as a month, then I would like to be you
You change our world so much, making everything so green
I love your presence every year, and now you've come and been
Each May's date of departure seems to pass so very soon
And now we get to spend time with your younger sister, June
RC 31-5-22
I got summonsed to Gavin's office today. Talk about feeling like a 12-year-old on his way to see the Headmaster.
It was ok, in the end. To give him credit, he doesn't suffer with stubbornness, and if his behaviour is detrimental to his business, he will notice it (eventually) and put himself in reverse gear. He tried again to push me into organising a huge event for Thursday, but I held my ground and convinced him we should leave things as they are. We've got some nice things going on already, and if he wanted to alter them he should have done it at some point in the past few months, not drop it on me less than a week before he wanted them to happen. It's not as if this event has crept up on anyone, we've known for a year that Thursday and Friday would be Bank Holidays. He behaved a bit like a child who has been told he has to go to bed while it's still daylight, but he accepted what I was saying, in the end.
I imagine there'll be some kind of comeback at some point in the near future. He'll have me moving caravans around or get me to personally paint every fence on his properties, but for now I can relax again and get on with my normal day-to-day duties, rather than trying to locate bunting at short notice or find a bakery that can rustle up 2,000 Union Jack cupcakes.
RC 30-5-22
A strange day. One of those days where the weather cannot decide what season it wants to portray, where my body cannot decide whether it is tired or energetic, and where I see 14 hours go by without really feeling like I've done anything.
On the positive side, I managed to mow the grass without upsetting my knee, I cooked a rather delicious lunch of pork chops, mash and gravy, and Mathew and I had a lovely afternoon of silly playing and educational fun.
Not every day can be an absolute belter, so I'll take the good bits of today and go to bed satisfied, if not elated.
RC 29-5-22
For the first time since I started working for him, I actually had an argument with Gavin today. He can be a bit over-enthusiastic and over-bearing at times, and he lets himself get obsessed with some insignificant factors and keeps going on about them, but generally speaking you can deal with him by ignoring him or just doing what he asks for, with minimal effort. But today he beat me over the head repeatedly with something and I just couldn't let it go and walk away.
He suddenly decided, five days before the date, that we should have a massive on-site street party at each of our three locations for the upcoming Jubilee Bank Holiday. He had visions of hundreds of people waving flags and eating vol-au-vents, simply because the photos would be good publicity. Even though we are at nearly 100% capacity for nearly 100% of this year, he is still trying to find ways to make us look attractive to other holidaymakers. I told him there were already plans in place for fun little Queen-based events in the coming 7 days, but he dismissed all that as 'not enough, Rory, not enough.' I asked him why he was dropping this on me today and he said, 'You did such a good job of putting the Hallowe'en thing together, you're the ideal man to pull this off,' which is a change of opinion, because he was dead against me doing anything in October and didn't even acknowledge it as a success after it happened. We had about ten minutes of back-and-forth 'discussion' in which I kept insisting there was no need to add to our program as it is already, and he kept buttering me up to try and talk me round. I gave him a list of reasons why it was unfair on the staff to suddenly ask them to do more, and why a hastily-put-together, half-arsed attempt at something was likely to end up unsuccessful and leave us looking unprofessional, but it got me nowhere. He was like a 5-year-old putting his fingers in his ears and saying 'la-la-la' because he didn't want to hear what he was being told.
In the end he shouted, "Well, whatever you say, THIS IS HAPPENING!"
To which I replied, "Well, it won't be happening with help from me," and I stormed off.
So, we'll see what happens next.
RC 28-5-22
Gavin seems to have finally given up on his stupid, nonsensical, embarrassing idea about getting our sites on television. The fact that every management-level employee he has was railing against the idea constantly didn't deter him, but his inability to get a decent response from his approaches to various production companies did. His enthusiasm has been waning daily, and thankfully he seems to have become discouraged to the point of accepting defeat. He spent most of the afternoon sulking, while the rest of us threw an impromptu loud-music-in-the-office, coffee-guzzling party at his expense.
Philippa has not entirely thrown out my suggestions for Baby Names 2022. After seeing me write down 'Rainbow' and 'Clarity' on our 'possibles' board, she said "Hey - I'm open to all ideas right now." I'm expecting that to change, but my current thinking is that the more I offer up ridiculous names like 'Clarity' the more she'll be accepting of my chosen favourite 'Jerry'.
I went through almost the entire day without yelping with knee pain. The exercises, cycling, stretches, icing, ibuprofen, physio and resting seem to finally be having an effect! At this rate of recovery, I might be back to my old self by Christmas!
Names have surfaced as a topic of conversation once again.
I'm surprised it's taken this long really. Junior 2.0 is due in less than 6 months, and Philippa is determined that he/she won't be saddled with a name that will give them an embarrassing and toxic start in life. We spent ages thinking about this before Mathew was born, and I'm not even sure we considered 'Mathew' once in the whole long list of possibilities, and certainly never in its final spelling, so it may well be a pointless exercise. But it's fun!
I think I may have kept blogging about the ideas we had, but I don't like looking back through these Chronicles, so I'll have to rely on you to contact me if you find something resembling a past list of potentials. I think I liked 'Summer' for a girl, but that's already in use within Philippa's large family. I seem to remember that my wife was keen on traditional, old-fashioned names for girls, but I may have got that wrong.
Anyway, this time around, we're trying to be mindful of the fact that they might like something unique, without falling into the trendy trap of gender-neutral monikers that are empty and meaningless. We're considering putting a chart up of favoured names, which we can move up and down as out opinions change. Then, when the Young 'Un pops out Oct/Nov time, we'll just use whichever name is at the top of the appropriate list. A sound idea, I thought, but that may have been the influence of wine.
As things stand, with nothing written down, and with just one conversation under our belts, we have 'Jamie' as a possibility for either sex. We have 'Betty' and 'Sara' for the females, and 'Thomas' and 'Jacob' for the ones with penises.
Personally, I'm pushing hard for 'Jerry' but Philippa isn't keen on the fact that it would be in tribute to Jerry Rice. He is the greatest non-quarterback-playing footballer in the history of the NFL, but my wife still thinks it may be giving him 'too manly a role model to live up to.' Don't worry though, fellow fans of the 49ers, I've got five months to work on her, and for most of that time she'll be emotional and uncomfortable, so persuasion should be easy.
Oh, and do me a favour - if you're upset by me only mentioning two variations of sex that my child might be born with - stop reading this blog forthwith. And stick your head in a river somewhere and leave it there.
Oh, and by the way - with that last paragraph, I'm not encouraging suicide, I'm just making a joke and displaying the depth of my anti-Wokewank feelings.
God, I hate the 2020s.
RC 24-5-22
I am wondering why it is that certain sports get me excited and interested, while others leave me cold and unconnected. Last night (perhaps unwisely) I sat up until 1am watching the culmination of the US PGA Championships. I shall leave my thoughts on the sad meltdown of Mito Pereira for another day, and concentrate instead on the fact that I was enthralled by the whole affair, even though I had no real interest in who the eventual winner would be. None of those in contention were people I am particularly fond of, and save for a patriotic feeling of support for the British challenger, Matt Fitzpatrick, I was indifferent and unambivalent as to the outcome. And yet still I sat through six hours of coverage, enjoying the swings and roundabouts and foregoing sleep for the purposes of knowing the result.
As you well know, I often 'pull an overnighter' in Autumn and Winter to keep up to date with happenings in the NFL, and the last round of the US Masters is possibly my highlight of the annual sporting calendar. But yesterday, here in England, we had what I am told was the most exciting finish to a football season in a decade, and I couldn't have given two hoots. Maybe I get swept up in the exaggerated excitement that is inherent in American sports? Maybe I like the garish, over-enthusiastic sense of occasion, rather than the entertainment inherent in the games themselves?
Some of my choices are explainable and understandable (to me, at least). I shall watch the French Open tennis this week, because I love the gladiatorial nature of the one-on-one combat, and the incredible speed of thought and movement that allows each player to control a ball travelling at over 100 mph when they only have a second or so to compute where it's going, make a decision on how to return it, and execute their chosen shot with precision. I shall also watch the tennis - as much as it pains me to admit it, and as much as you might hate me for saying so - because it is pleasing to watch incredibly fit female athletes racing around getting sweaty in the Paris sunshine. So it's not always about the sporting drama itself, it's sometimes about the aesthetics.
But why do some things appeal when others do not?
I suppose it's the same as anything, really. You might love the Marvel films, I find them childish and over-reliant on CGI. Nirvana are seen as one of the best bands of all time, and I haven't heard one song of theirs I can stand. I'm a 49ers fan, 80% of the world seems to view them as a franchise born of the Devil. Passions are individual and never the twain shall meet. We like what we like and we can't always understand why.
Let's put it all down to Life's Rich Mystery and go back to watching Bianca Andreescu against Ysaline Bonaventure.
RC 23-5-22
Another barbecue at which I shall ignore the lessons learnt last week and overindulge in meat, snacks and alcohol???
Oh, Hell Yes!
RC 22-5-22
My comments yesterday about Rioja-That-Isn't-Pricey-Enough-To-Be-Rioja made me realise something that is affecting my at-home intake at the moment - Philippa seems to be shopping more often at the 'cut-price' establishments. I don't know why. I know prices are going through the roof quicker than a clumsy chimney sweep, but we both earn decent money and we don't have expensive hobbies. Plus, by fair means or foul, I still have my staff discount card from my work for a particular supermarket chain. I may have left over a year ago, but I can still get a hefty percentage off a grocery shop so I don't see why we're buying the cheap shit. Maybe she's believing all the scaremongering that is saying we're going to be paying £99 for a pint of milk by Christmas and is trying to act accordingly. I'm not going to revisit my old topic about the British public being controlled by the British media, and that being done through fear, but I would point out that 'the cost of living crisis' only started after it was obvious that Ukraine wasn't about to explode into a mushroom-shaped subsection of Russia, and that those 'imminent nuclear threat' headlines only started after Covid numbers started plummeting and people started feeling good about the future for the first time in two years.
See - you've got me talking about it now, and I'm instantly feeling shitty. So, to paraphrase my views - ignore the news, shop sensibly, love the ones you're with, and you'll find your levels of panic and pessimism subsiding further with each passing hour.
RC 21-5-22
A bottle of red wine and a few painkillers last night and my knee felt right as rain and I was in a good mood again!
I'd like to put across a message of abstinence but sometimes drugs are the only answer. And let's not get carried away here and start reporting me to the DEA - in the course of six hours I took 4 paracetamol and 2 ibuprofen and drank a small bottle of rioja. It wasn't even decent rioja, either, it was a cheaper one from the more cut-price supermarket that was only 8% ABV, I think. So, it probably doesn't even class as rioja and if I looked more closely at the label I would probably see that it's rioja spelt with a 'k' instead of a 'j' and it was probably brewed and bottled in Lancashire, several hours travel time away from the Rioja region of Spain. But it did the job and cost less than a fiver so who am I to complain?
RC 20-5-22
I went back to see Silvia (yes, it's spelt that way) the physio/spa lady at one of our sites who had helped me (a.k.a tortured me mercilessly) when I first injured my knee. She had a poke and a prod and got me to do weird movements, and says she thinks it may be a slight cartilage tear. If it's 'slight' enough, it should settle down and heal itself; if it's a more considerable tear it might eventually rip apart completely and block my knee joint, causing me to have a locked knee and an operation. At this point in her explanation, I found myself feeling light-headed and sweaty so I lay back down on her treatment couch. She's given me some simple exercises I can do that should strengthen the joint and alleviate the symptoms without causing further damage. I have to do those three or four times a day, keep elevating and icing it morning and night, and don't spend too much time each day on my feet. Every step one takes, apparently, involves a ridiculous amount of weight and pressure being absorbed by the knees. It won't be a quick fix, she tells me, and I may have to put up with discomfort, weird noises, pain and weakness for anything up to a year.
I know it's not a huge diagnosis to deal with, in the context of what other people have to contend with, but right now I'm pissed off and depressed and I hate just about everything in the world.
RC 19-5-22
My knee is still nowhere near being right.
I scoffed and mocked when they told me it could be 6-8 weeks before I recovered from my 'embarrassing slip' but here I am, 7 weeks to the day since I tumbled, and it's still giving me grief. I stepped off a pavement today and had to stop sharply as a moped came roaring past, and the jolt of pain I felt through my knee left me breathless.
Bastard thing.
It's not just a discomfort issue, either, it actually feels like there's something wrong with the joint. At first, I had put the 'puffy', sensitive feeling down to a bit of internal swelling, but nearly two months later I've still got clicks and grinding sensations and I'm starting to think I may have actually done some damage beyond a simple sprain. I've started cycling again in a hope to build the muscles up around the knee, but I think that may be a bit of 'closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.' (Or, perhaps more appropriately, '...after the horse had bolted, fallen, and buggered his cartilage up.') There's no sense protecting something that is already broken, after all. It's like putting bubble wrap around a cracked vase or putting a dust cover on a book that's already been splattered with paint.
I'm not saying that I think I've broken anything, by the way, but I'm pretty sure that your knee is not supposed to make a squelchy sound when you're climbing upstairs, and I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to feel like it has a snapped guitar string flopping around in it when you're walking.
Strangely enough, cycling is fine. It doesn't make it hurt at all. But when I get back home, climb off the bike and try to walk through the house to get some water, THEN it starts to throb like a bee sting on a ballsack.
It's probably gone on long enough and is still bad enough to warrant a trip to the doctors, but I can't be bothered to wait 45 months for a scan, so I guess I'll stay on the ibuprofen.
RC 18-5-22
This means nothing to me, but may mean something to those of you slightly older than myself:
A quote from one of the gardeners at work, during a conversation about dodgy images online:
I grew up in the 70s. The closest thing we had to internet porn was seeing Jenny Agutter naked in 'Walkabout'.
RC 17-5-22
Hangovers are horrible, right? Alcohol lingers in your system and makes every available organ feel like it's been put through a mangle, twice. You can't think, you can't eat, and you just want to lay down in a dark room with an intravenous drip rehydrating you without the need for you to put anything into your mouth.
It is also possible to get a hangover, of sorts, from overeating. Meat, especially. Throw yourself wholeheartedly into barbecued fare on a Sunday afternoon and you are running the risk of non-stop nausea through Monday.
Then, too, there is the not-much-reported, but oft-mentioned on this blogsite, 'Snack Hangover' which occurs when one has overindulged in salty products at a party and ended up with your sodium levels shot to bits, fighting for control of your own sanity while your body tries to process all the over-processed crisps, nuts and crackers you have forced down your gullet unnecessarily. This one is particularly nasty, because you don't really get a warning that you've gone too far, until you realise you've gone too far, and then you've got to deal with it for the next 36 hours or so while your body reboots and recalibrates.
Each of these are unpleasant and best avoided if possible, especially when one gets into ones thirties, and can't fight through the pain as well as one could when one was younger, and when one is faced with a long day at work and then an evening with an energetic young child. Each of these is unpleasant, but the real shitter is when you get all three of them together. Then it really is a day of physical suffering, accentuated by the fact that you should know better by now and really shouldn't find yourself in this position yet again.
In case you hadn't guessed, today I have the Triple Whammy.
Just thinking about what I ate, drank and snacked on yesterday is making me want to vomit in a large bin and then sit in a cold shower.
Next time someone asks me - "If you could be Dr Who for a day, where would you go in the Tardis?" - my answer will be 'Sunday May 15th 2022, about 4pm. I'd go there and find myself in my garden and tie myself to a tree to stop me reaching for another burger and some Pringles.'
After yesterday's pathetic prose about barbecues, I decided it was time to Man Up and face my own lethargy. So today I have put together an outside feast the likes of which this small part of Suffolk has never before witnessed. We are all stuffed to the gills and we have enough leftovers in the fridge to feed everyone in a four mile radius for a fortnight. My fingers are burnt, I smell of smoke, my hair is singed, I have terrible indigestion and my eyes are bright red from the heat. And you know what? - it's the happiest I've been in weeks!
RC 15-5-22
I don't know why, but I seem to have fallen out of love with barbecues. In days past, I would fire up the barbie with the merest hint of sunshine, but nowadays its monthly, if at all. In days past, I would devour enough burnt meat to feed a monastery, but nowadays I'm happy with a sausage or two.
Are my tastebuds changing, I wonder? Is the thought of eating chunks of other animals one that is starting to repulse me? Or am I just getting lazier and I can't be bothered with the rigmarole of setting up, lighting coals, marinating meats, standing outside cooking and exercising self-control so I don't eat it all before it's ready? Is the smoke inhalation now more off-putting than the smoky taste alluring?
I used to get excited just at the thought of having a barbecue later in the day. That excitement would carry me through dark times at work and give me something to look forward to as I drudged my weary path through life. Now, though, an imminent barbecue feels like a chore that needs to be ticked off a list, rather than a festivity awaiting to be enjoyed.
Maybe it's an age thing.
RC 14-5-22
I've done this before, but I haven't done it for a while, so to celebrate Friday the 13th, here are some strange (and totally fabricated) superstitions from around the world:
In Liberia, it is considered unlucky to cut the nail on your big toe. Special shoes are made to allow for the life-long growth.
In the Tossoko region of southern Japan, it is unlucky to poo on a Thursday.
In Nottingham, giving a ginger child the middle names 'Elon Musk' is said to guarantee his virility.
In Lima, Peru, it is unlucky if you fry tomatoes while whistling.
In Western Australia, anyone over the height of 6ft 5in has to walk into a cinema backwards or risk six months misfortune.
In Poland, it is seen as a sign of bad luck if you sneeze while kissing a waitress.
In Quebec, Canada, tying up your left shoelace before your right is said to bring a curse upon your entire family 'for three generations hence.'
In Manila, in the Philippines, it is bad luck to say the word 'kumquat' while naked.
In Namibia, they think its unlucky to walk under a female camel while she's yodelling.
RC 13-5-22
It genuinely scares me how quickly time flies by in the Spring months. It feels like only two hours ago that I was asking 'Where did April go?' and now we're nearly halfway through May.
If I was elected God (and who knows, maybe one day I shall be) the first thing I would do would be to install humans with a remote control device with which they could alter the flow of time. Winters could be sped up so we could get through them quicker, and March until October could be run at x0.5 so they would last longer. A beautiful sunset could be paused and a painful dental visit could be skipped completely. Your best days could be replayed and your worst experiences deleted.
Imagine if God was an elected position? It would make things fairer, spiritually. After a brief spell in the afterlife, you would be eligible for nomination as a candidate. Your experiences on Earth would make you ideally placed to make decisions about how things were run, and you could put your case forward to your fellow angelic beings and ask for their support and their votes. Surely that would be better than having a God that stayed in situ for countless millennia? People are saying Vladimir Putin has gone mad after two decades in absolute power of Russia, imagine what would happen to someone who had been in complete charge of everything since light first touched land?
It makes much more sense to me to have the position of God limited to a particular pre-agreed term of office. (Assuming God exists at all, of course, which I doubt, but you never know for sure.)
RC 12-5-22
Fast food is bad for you, but everything is sponsored by McDonalds.
You need lots of protein, but you shouldn't eat meat.
Red wine is good for your heart, but you shouldn't drink alcohol.
Fruit and veg is vital, but you shouldn't eat too much fruit, it's sugary.
Carbonated drinks are anathema, but Coke ads are ubiquitous.
Dried fruit was perfect for children, now it's abhorrent.
No wonder people hate scientists.
RC 11-5-22
The weather's been improving
The days are getting long
My mind is slowly soothing
As the blackbird sings his song
A brighter Sun is glowing
The trees explode with green
My wife is slowly growing
With a second son, unseen
My working life is busy
Summer season starts in Spring
At times, my head is dizzy
But I wouldn't change a thing
RC 10-5-22
These 'long gaps between postings' seem to be getting longer and more frequent. Busy times at work, and having a small child and another baby gestating within my wife, are all things that are conspiring to keep me from the blogsphere.
Plus, I'm lazy.
There, I said it....
RC 9-5-22
Happy New Month.
Today is about cooking a roast, enjoying family time, and watching snooker.
That is all.
RC 1-5-22