Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

The day started badly and went downhill! Dash’s bus arrived 30 minutes late – this made for a stressful start to the day as one has to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. As they are often up to 15 minutes early, this means that we were effectively on alert for 45 minutes – very tense-making, not least because it scuppered my chance of doing Chi Kung before the school run. Then, just as the bus finally arrived – and I’m not sure what she was trying to do: hug me, dance with me, the hokey kokey? – Katie stuck her left leg out, I caught my right foot on it and tripped, wrenching the injured knee and sending weeks of recovery straight down the gurgler. Then she got upset (possibly on account of the stream of unusual language issuing from her mother) and Sherlock got paranoid that he was going to be left behind again and started barking his little furry head off…

Got home from the (painfully slow) walk to school, and was in the middle of a particularly disgusting task (in consideration of anyone who might be cruising FB on a laptop while eating, I won’t go into the gruesome details) when I realised that I was standing, in stockinged feet (I don’t usually wear shoes in the house) in the middle of a sea of broken glass. Jack had apparently broken a small ship-in-a-bottle type toy and the fine splinters of glass were all over the carpet.

I thought I had better get control of things, so, by noon, I had done Chi Kung, boil-washed my clothes and taken a long hot shower. I thought I needed to focus on tasks with high job satisfaction, so I sorted some of the children’s outgrown clothes into piles for recycling, charity and storage, then packed the ones for storage with plenty of conkers to deter moths and set them aside ready to go up to the attic.

In the evening, watching Heroes with Dash in the wind-down towards bed-time, we had this conversation:

Dash: I’m really thirsty.
J: Well sweetie, feel free to help yourself to a drink.
Dash: [on sofa, under quilt, with footrest extended] Actually, I’ve just got comfy.
J: So, were you wanting me to fetch a drink for you?
Dash: [smelling a rat] Weeeeelllll …
J: Come over here sweetie and snuggle up beside me. Let me tell you about my day. So this morning I got up and got you all dressed and made sure you and Katie brushed your teeth and washed your face, and fed everyone breakfast and cleaned the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher and fed the dog and put you on the bus, and walked Katie and Sherlock to school and brought Sherlock home. Then I did [disgusting task – not sparing him the details] and realised I was standing in my socks, in a sea of broken glass. I vacuumed up the glass, washed my hands many times, boil-washed all the clothes I was wearing, did Chi Kung, had a shower, gave Jack lunch, sorted out clothes for recycling, to give away and to go in the attic, did some urgent paperwork, fed Jack some more. You got home, we went to collect Katie from film club. We got home, I fed everyone and gave Daddy some soup, then I walked Katie to Elias’ house, picked him up, went to trampoline, waited for an hour, took Elias home, brought Katie home, made a cup of coffee and a slice of toast and sat down to watch Heroes with you.
Dash: So maybe I should get my own drink?
J: That would be nice.

Once I had watched 20 minutes of Heroes with Dash, 20 minutes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Katie, and 20 minutes of The Moomins with Jack, the children all trailed off to bed. Nick came in and we agreed to watch Bones – though watch is something of a euphemism in my case. Unless we are watching something very gripping, I tend to fall asleep in the first five minutes and wake up just in time for the denouement. Nick then briefly explains who killed whom and why, and we go upstairs to bed. My tendency to fall asleep whenever I am warm, relaxed and reasonably comfortable is a source of friction between Katie and I. She disapproves and, sadly, she is not alone. I recall in the run-up to my wedding, hugely jet-lagged, being driven somewhere by my father, who was horrified that I kept falling asleep and was quite ruthless about waking me up each time I drifted off. More recently, when one of my sisters came to stay with us in London, if she called out ‘goodnight’ on her way to bed and I, comatose with my head on Nick’s shoulder, didn’t respond, she would yell ‘goodnight’ louder and louder until I, startled awake, said ‘goodnight’ back. It is as if falling asleep anywhere other than bed is somehow morally reprehensible.

I have an aversion to people unexpectedly touching my face and especially my mouth (years of children with less-than-scrupulous hand-washing habits have no doubt made me paranoid) and, because it gets such a spectacular negative reaction, Katie will often choose this method to wake me up. So tonight, having fallen asleep five minutes into the episode of Bones as usual, when I felt something tickling my lips, my first thought was that Katie had sneaked back downstairs. But no, too wet, too hairy … Sherlock, who had been lying quietly in his dog-bed when I lay down, had seized the opportunity presented by an unguarded mummy on the sofa and was attempting to French-kiss me. Disgusting!

Looking back, my worst falling asleep experience was in the first week of a new job. We were running a big learning event up north somewhere. It had been a long day of training and I hadn’t slept well the night before because my room was a small smelly single beside the hotel’s noisy air-conditioning plant. My new boss, when he discovered that we would be on the same train back to London, decided that we could have the post-conference wash-up AND my orientation meeting on the train. He was a lovely man – one of the nicest people I have ever worked for – but even his best friend would admit that he could be a bit soporific. So there I was, knackered, being gently rocked in the warm, comfortable first class carriage … Next thing I remember was him saying, with uncharacteristic sharpness, “Am I boring you?”. I had fallen asleep just as he was outlining my objectives for the next six months!

Later I found out that the team responsible for booking venues and rooms always gave the training team the crappiest rooms. I, and others, took them to task on this many times, but their leader (a woman with the rather apt email address of DramaPalmer@…) was a law unto herself. I only once got a nice room. We were training in Canary Wharf in September 2001, about a week after 9/11. The trains were all crazy and I arrived on the first day with just enough time to dump my bag at reception and get into the training room for the first plenary. It was about 7 by the time I finally got a chance to get my bag and go up to my room. I opened the door and there it was – the whole of London spread out before me. I had been given the penthouse suite. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it was widely rumoured that Canary Wharf would be the next target, and no one else had been prepared to sleep on the upper floors!

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Received a text just as we were about to leave for school: Siniqua, the mother of Katie’s little Finnish friend Elias, asking if we could take him to school as she has a bad cold and is trying to stay under the covers. I was happy to help out, but it did mean that poor Sherlock had to stay home, as Elias is nervous of dogs. Got home and played with the distraught Sherlock for a bit, then wandered down the back to check on the pungas. They are all looking really healthy, though slightly submerged in autumn leaves off the big horse chestnut trees. I am unsure whether to clear the leaves away or leave them as protection during the cold weather. Any ideas?

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

A happy day for young Sherlock, as he not only got to accompany us on the morning school run but he then got another walk in the afternoon when we took Katie to cello. He seems to have got over his antipathy to rain – which is just as well considering where we live! In between these two high points, I decided to let him come upstairs with me. We have gradually been giving him a little more freedom to wander the house, a process that hasn’t always gone smoothly. Notably, about a week ago, Nick and I had just got to a particularly exciting bit in Breaking Bad (because we don’t have a television we tend to get to the good stuff a couple of years after it’s finished!) when the screen suddenly went blank. We thought we might have struck a scratch on the DVD or something, but no, investigation revealed that young Sherlock had chewed through the network cable. This briefly put me in mind of a university friend (an avowed pacifist and vegetarian) who, cross that his little brother’s pet rabbits had chewed through the sound cables on his expensive stereo, taped all the sound cables up out of bunny-reach, but left the power cables temptingly on the floor…

So I was slightly nervous about having Sherlock upstairs – not least because of the significant opportunities for the theft and chewing up of socks – but in the end he surprised me on two counts. First, he didn’t seem intent on stealing laundry, and second, he didn’t seem very interested in staying close to me. Instead he made for Jack’s room (which has the thickest carpet in the house – I hate carpet but so far we have only got around to removing the stuff in my bedroom) found a patch of sun and settled down for some quality time with a rawhide chew-stick.

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Everyone back to school and I was looking forward to making progress on a bunch of stuff. Jack was a bit reluctant to go – saying he was ill – but Nick and I were of the view that he has just got a bit fond of staying home with mummy and being pampered. We sent him off and I phoned the school to warn them that he might be a bit reluctant and perhaps they could make sure he got to do something he enjoyed in order to remind him that school can be fun. Got a call back from the school around 11am to say that Jack had a temperature of 102! He eventually arrived home, looking completely normal, and devoured 4 slices of wholemeal toast, an apple and a plate of cheese and crackers. It seems to me that there are three possibilities:

Level 2 Chi Kung.

When a text arrives at 09:04 on a Sunday morning, it’s a good guess that the person who sent it has been waiting for 9 am to roll around, in order for it to be a socially acceptable time to bother someone. The text that arrived this morning was from Estelle, one of the school gate mummies, saying that Clara had been nagging her for hours to phone me and find out when she should come around for the party! Katie had mentioned on the Friday school broke up that she and Clara had been planning a party at our place and that Clara was going to come an hour early to set up, and bring a disco ball(!) but when I asked her when this was meant to happen, they didn’t seem to have set a date. I texted Estelle back that there wasn’t a party and waited with some trepidation to see if anyone else was going to show up. No one did luckily.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Although we don’t celebrate Halloween ourselves, we like to have some sweets available for trick-or-treating children, so Nick asked me to pick some up on the way home from the course last night. On the bus back to Charing Cross, I got into the spirit and gave some sweets to the driver and to a little girl in a witch costume. Arriving in Blackheath, I had a bit of a close call: at the bus stop, there was a mother and son pair dressed as halloween pumpkins. I was about to congratulate them and give them some sweets when I realised that they weren’t actually in costume – they were just rather spherical individuals wearing bright orange puffa jackets!

Level 2 Chi Kung.

A tough week, in which I came hard up against my inability to discipline myself to rote-learn meaningless drivel! I’m afraid that the trainer on the APM course made dull material even duller. Hours of Powerpoint, relieved only by clips from a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the Eden project. Unfortunately the Eden project stuff was all of the ‘example of what not to do’ variety, so not really much use as a study aid. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t time to incorporate some group work / how learning – we finished early (or, in the trainer’s language, ‘took an early bath’) every day.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Another dull day of APM. One positive is that I have solved the problem of when to fit in Chi Kung. Although I am strongly motivated to do Chi Kung in the morning, I am not Richard – if I need to check in for a flight at 6am, I won’t be getting up at 3am to fit in 2 hours of Chi Kung before I leave for the airport! So I had been wondering when I would fit it in during this course. Yesterday, I had a bit of a brainwave when I saw how many of the conference rooms were empty, so, at the tea break, I went to reception and explained that I am recovering from a knee injury and would find it very helpful if I could use an empty meeting room to do some exercises at lunch time. The receptionist said that this would normally be prohibited but, as an apology for the mess-up yesterday, they would let me have access to a room. I went back at lunchtime and was shown into a lovely big sunny room where I did Chi Kung undisturbed. It was great – and made it much easier to stay awake in the afternoon. I did the same today and, again, really enjoyed the Chi Kung even more than usual, as a break from sitting still in one place.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

APM Project Management. Arrived at Broadgate Tower slightly late (09:12 for a 9am start) jumped in a lift and pressed the … uh oh, no buttons. Peered discreetly around, trying to see if the buttons might be hidden behind one of the other passengers. Nope. Finally asked someone. Oh no, no buttons, you have to select your floor on the touch screens outside the lift well and then go to the lift that the screen tells you is going to your floor. By this time we were at the 23rd floor (I needed the 11th). I was advised to take the first lift going down and get off at the interchange floor, except no one could remember if the interchange floor was the 19th or the 17th. Got off at the 19th and was stuck there for 10 minutes waiting for a lift down. Finally had to go all the way back to the lobby and start again. Got to the 11th floor at 09:32 but 11th floor reception claimed to have no knowledge of the course and weren’t prepared to let me just cruise the meeting rooms until I found one full of people who looked like civil servants. They suggested that I phone civil service learning. CSL then insisted that the course was in the Piccadilly suite, while reception insisted that the Piccadilly suite wasn’t in use. I handed my mobile to reception in the hope that they would thrash it out between them but no joy. Finally CSL phoned the trainer and got him to look at the name on the door of the room he was teaching in. Course utterly dull and because CSL won’t pay for coffee and tea, every break has to be extra long because, if one needs caffeine (and believe me, one does) one has to brave the crazy lifts to leave the building and buy coffee down the street. Hey ho – it’s going to be a long week.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Baking day! Knowing that Daddy would be off on a long bike ride and Sunday would therefore be a mummy-morning, the children started putting in their requests several days in advance. Katie called for baking day and Dash requested gingerbread pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. Jack, as always, wanted brownies. After the pancakes were tidied away, I got a double mixture of Hugh F-W’s brownies in the oven (it’s really not worth making a single mixture in our house!) then, while Katie licked the bowl and beaters, I started on Nigel’s Slater’s spice biscuits. These are not only yummy (containing 16 pods worth of cardamom) but fulfil the criteria of being easy for Katie to roll out and attack with cookie cutters. I really like to leave the cardamom quite chunky, so that when you bite into a piece you get a strong hit of cardamom but the children hate that, so I ground it fine to keep them happy. Once the mixture was ready, I cut off a third of it and set Katie up with her own floured board and rolling pin. She made a really good job – using the smallest snowflake-shaped cutter to make lots of tiny biscuits.