Weevilstepmother

Today's timewasters are supplied by Horace the Happy Hacker, who emailed me a link to 'a number of the funnest timewasters I have come across ever...' Having given them a go, I can confirm that they certainly are a waste of time of immense proportions.

First we have Click Once A Minute. Here, you have to click on the red circle. Once a minute. The hours just fly by...

Next we have Don't Shoot the Puppy. The aim here is, well, not to shoot the puppy.

Thirdly is Get To The Finish. I never have, I just can't bear it...

One I do rather like is 'How Much?', quite a nice little premiss for a game I thought.

Finally, there is Don't Make Mommy Cry. Avoiding making mum cry is your object, though you may just bet tempted to make the old dear blub like a toddler who's just dropped its ice cream cone on the beach. I know I did.

I can't give you any scores to compete against. I couldn't bear these bloody games and didn't get very far with any of them. So you're bound to beat me, even if you don't go there and play...

I am inflicting them on you today in celebration of Horace's birthday - so raise a glass, give a toast, pull up the keyboard and waste some time with rrrr.

The other night I ran a bath for the Sun, and he chucked in his fizzy bath bomb and plopped in himself. A minute later I was passing the bathroom door and heard a querulous half-wail from inside: 'Weevil, please get rid of that wasp!' (Yes, he calls me by my name, not 'mummy'). Knowing his longstanding inability to distinguish between flying insects - first demonstrated by his insistence from toddlerhood on calling any six-legged flying creature a 'buzzing thing' - I opened the door with a laugh, expecting to find myself face to face with a little fly.

It wasn't little. And it was far from being a fly. Zig-zagging wildly around the light fitting was the hugest meanest dopiest wasp I have ever seen. Since the last time I saw a queen wasp, that is. As it flew towards me I kept stock still, trying to close my nostrils like a camel. It flew right into my face, bounced off and bimbled around on the other side of the room. Thinking quickly, I turned off the light and opened the door - the dopey wasp flew out towards the landing light. Pausing only to yell out of the doorway 'Tallboy, can you see to this wasp, I'm busy with the Sun at the moment', I slammed the door and joined the Sun in a sigh of relief.

I related this tale to Horace the other day, and he told me that he himself wasn't a big fan of wasps. Sadly he seems to attract them wherever he goes. He asked me which I thought was the place with the most wasps. I didn't know. 'Zoos,' he said emphatically. Do you know, I think he's right. 'One time we went to the zoo and there were wasps everywhere. I kept still but that meant others just kept landing on me. They were playing a game...'

His unfortunate experience triggered a similar memory with me. Some (several, many) years ago, Bristol Zoo opened up a Fruit Bat enclosure. With two doors at each entrance in an airlock type arrangement, punters could walk into the enclosure and wander round with the bats above them. When this was new, the Ex and I went to the Zoo, and I fancied going in.

At that time I used to buy a lot of stuff from the Body Shop; my idea of what's acceptable and ethical was much more convergent with theirs then than it is now. My favourite thing was Banana shampoo which used to leave my hair lovely and smelled gorgeous. The Ex pointed out to me that I'd washed my hair with it that morning; he then spent the next minute graphically representing bored fruit bats getting a bisto-like sniff of my hair and descending with glee onto my head. I have never, ever, ever gone into the fruit bat cage...

Spare a thought today for Lanky Herbert 01. He's not having a very good day at all. For a start the clocks went forward yesterday morning, so he's a little fuddled anyway. And he only had a whole day to put his alarm clocks forward in time for school on Monday morning, so you can understand that he didn't actually get round to it. Yes, I did say 'clocks'. He tells me he has three, because otherwise he doesn't get up. One of them is radio controlled so set itself correctly. The other two are stuck in the past. This morning he was as confused as a badger on speed in a blindfold, and didn't get up till 8 o'clock.

For the next few minutes he rushed round like a little dervish: wash, breakfast, bag, teeth. Checking with his sister that she was ready for school, he received a response in the form of a tidal wave of vomit. All down him. Back he traipsed to the shower, fresh clothes, dry hair, clock(s) ticking...

His dad had been just about to leave for work when his sister was sick, so he called him back in to see to her. By the time he came down again ready for school (again), his mum had got home. What with dad's car half way out of the garage and mum's car on the drive, there was no way out for Lanky Herbert 01's car, so before he could move a millimetre he had to play chase the lady with the cars. Then his mum told him to go and check on his little brother at the bus stop in the pouring rain.

I think he was quite glad finally to get into school, you know. Sadly his bad luck wasn't over. Lurking in the office he was fiddling with stuff on the desk when he noticed the uber torch. It's a big yellow rechargeable thing which sends a beam about as far as the bat signal up into the clouds. Almost. It seems to have a magnetic attraction for blokes; I just use it as a torch. To the Lankys, and Horace, and sometimes Baldrick it's a laser beam or a ray gun or a goodness knows what that needs sound effects and posturing. I'd been using it because we had a power cut and one of our servers was out of action - I'd needed the torch to go fossicking in the depths of a deep dark cupboard. LH01 picked it up and looked into it with interest. Just as he turned it on and received a million candle power in the left retina.

Still, I expect it was some consolation to him as he stumbled blindly round the office that it wasn't as bad a day as the one where he drove into a pig on the way home. Or even worse, the day when his puddle-soaked foot slipped off the brake in the queue to leave the school car park and he rear-ended a Head of Department...

Well, the frogs are all At It in the pond. In a big way. We thought it would never happen. For weeks, Tallboy has been bewailing the lack of frogspawn. A couple of weeks ago we were walking back from the shops, past the infants' school. Tallboy peered over the hedge and caught sight of their pond, which looked oddly wrong. We stopped, and worked out that while your traditional pond might be made up of a body of water with a smidge of frogspawn here and there, the school pond in fact comprised a body of frogspawn with a smidge of water here and there. Give it a couple of months and there's going to be a plague of frogs of Biblical proportions round there.

A couple of days ago, Tallboy reported excitedly that we had two patches of frogspawn. He was still disappointed because it seemed desperately inadequate given the levels of froggy activity in the pond, but it was better than nothing. From then on, he was on amplexus stake-out. I would come into the kitchen to find him training the binoculars (stationed by the window in case of bird-watching) on the pond and counting to himself. '50!' he yelled triumphantly as I came into the kitchen yesterday.

I took the proffered bins and squinted at the pond. How the hell had he been able to see out of these? I lowered them and peered at the lenses, sure they must be covered in gunk. Nope, nothing. I raised them to my eyes again and adjusted the focus backwards and forwards, failing to obtain anything better than a foggy, swirly view. 'What have you been doing to these?' I niggled. Tallboy grabbed them and peered. 'They're fine for me, what's up?' 'I can't get them to focus. Can't see a bloody thing...' I had the good grace to be excruciatingly embarrassed when Tallboy pointed out a fact which I had rather overlooked - it was pouring with rain outside and the window was a squiggly, focus-defying blur.

I popped out to the pond this morning to find it still full of amorous froggies and clumps of frogspawn. In places the water was almost boiling as they climbed over each other and thrashed around. The croaking was amazing, males were calling from all quarters and the chorus of 'raarrrp' noises was charming beyond measure. When they had got used to me squatting next to the bank, heads popped back up through the duckweed and I took a few snaps. If you're offended by graphic depictions of amplexus, please look away now:

(As always, if you want to see a bigger version of the image, just click on it - the second one looks much better bigger)

Today I have been mainly making up rhyming slang for food. See if you can guess what I would be offering you if I were to serve some:

slang	answer		guessed by
Venerable	(Venerable Bede) swede		jennyta
Charles	(Charles Babbage) cabbage		bristol traveller
Dennis
African Greys	(African Grey Parrots) carrots		Alan S
Ogden	(Ogden Nash) mash		Alan S
Burnt Umber	cucumber		jennyta

I have to admit to using the second one quite regularly, particularly when unloading the shopping, for some reason...

Final hint - the Dennis in question was a sportsman

Totally absolutely final hint - the food comes from a bakery...

Just had to share this one - it seemed so apposite somehow. This quote popped up as quote of the day on my Google front page:

---

I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

Rita Rudner

---

I just read this quote to Tallboy; his expression is far beyond my ability to paint with words...

Today a little herbert was messing around with a football in the quad. Nothing unusual about that, indeed quite the opposite. Notwithstanding the magic kitty, there's generally something floating about on the other side of the window too. Footballs, rugby balls, tennis balls, oranges, apples, drinks cartons, shoes -if it can be chucked, it will be...

This chap had his football and was showing off just a little - kicking it high into the air and trying to trap it as it fell. As the bell rang for the end of break, he kicked it up hugely. I followed the trajectory with my eyes, and thought to myself as it descended 'Blimey days, he's lucky it didn't hit the... Oh dear!' He'd never have been able to do this if he'd been trying to: as it fell, it hit a branch of the big cherry tree, lost most of its momentum and nestled in a forked branch in the lower half of the tree.

He stood below it, forlorn. He jumped, and hung ape-like from the bottom branch, too far away from the lodged ball to move it, jiggle though he might. He dropped to the ground and grabbed his backpack, tossing it up at the ball and missing by a mile. He stepped back a few paces and took a run-up, hanging again from the branch but his agitation was getting him nowhere. Egged on by a little chum, he tried the backpack again with no better result.

Craning his neck, he peered at his ball. Everyone else had gone to registration; it was just him against the tree. There was a definite High Noon feeling about the whole affair. Inspiration struck - he removed a shoe and stood there wobbling slightly on one leg. Leaning back to line up the shot he wobbled even more, but managed to avoid putting his stockinged foot down. The first shot was a little wild, and he had to hop over to retrieve his shoe. Trying again, he hit the target, and dislodged the ball. You could tell he was torn as both shoe and ball descended, not sure which one to go for first, but good sense prevailed and he hopped over to his shoe.

'He's got it down,' I said to Baldrick. 'Chucked his shoe up at it.' Baldrick looked up from his code for a moment, then uttered a short laugh. 'I was just thinking,' he said in response to my questioning eyebrows, 'what if everything the poor lad chucked up got stuck too. Bag, first shoe, second shoe...' Oh, he's evil. Funny, but evil...

The job sometimes feels like a neverending battle against the wily little herberts. Squish one down somewhere, and another one pops up somewhere else. They niggle and fossick in little corners of the network, squirrelling away naughty programs and other verboten items. Today has been a squishing kind of day; tomorrow no doubt they will pop up elsewhere, undaunted.

Baldrick has been off the past couple of days, squeezing in the last dregs of his leave before the end of the year. It's been mostly quite quiet, though a couple of the usual hangers-on have been putting in an appearance to make sure I don't pine too much...

Java Boy has been taking seriously my attempts to hint to Tallboy how much I would really really like one of these. He sat down in Baldrick's vacant chair, and mentioned that he had been quizzing his mother on what her tactics might be in a similar situation. 'She said she'd take my dad to the shop in question, point out something really expensive, then point him towards what she really wanted, nudge him into the queue and make good her escape.' Not a bad plan at all, but it has one fatal flaw. The object of my desire _is_ the most expensive thing in the shop. Short of getting Jeff Capes in and asking him to pick up the shop and tip it so that everything on the shelves fell into my bag, which I spose might be even more costly...

Horace the Happy Hacker, too, has been in evidence. Following a very successful cat levitation session earlier this week, he has attracted a crowd of supporters. This bunch of hopefuls hung around outside the mirrored window at the very beginning of lunchbreak, peering in and tapping at the inanimate kitty in the window in a vain attempt to get it to move. As Horace slid past them to the Door that is opened only to the Chosen Few, he was spotted. He made his entrance amid shrill cries of 'It's the cat man!' He looked rather chuffed with his new soubriquet, and rewarded his fans with a virtuoso cat performance.

After school Horace was still mooching around, avoiding his looming coursework mountain. We talked about principles, and money, and stuff in general. We negotiated the final payment for a little four-part scripty job he's been doing for me. This kid will code for Smarties, bargain! The first three parts of the job were each rewarded with a tube of Smarties, but unfortunately the final tube didn't survive long enough at Weevil Towers. After consulting a currency exchange site, he confirmed that he was happy to receive a multicoloured pointy origami made from twelve colourful sheets of paper. Fair's fair, it took me half an hour to make...

The talk of Smarties triggered a far off little look in his eye. 'I've got a spreadsheet at home,' he confided. 'I'm keeping track of the relative proportions of the different coloured Smarties. So far Brown's in front, I think because it's chocolatey-looking.' He may have a point, but what about Purple? 'Ah, they're quite rare really,' he responded authoritatively. Good to see he's making profitable use of his time, then. He might not have his ICT coursework in on time but he'll be able to tell his teacher the probability of her next Smartie being a Blue one...

Arriving in Bristol after our walk, we peeled off like the Red Arrows in full display. StepD hooked up with her friends and wandered off, giggling. I left Tallboy chatting to some chums at the science display in the Galleries, and headed for Lush, my absolutely totally incontrovertibly undeniably favourite shop. Ever. I walked in, grabbed a basket and inhaled deeply. Yumsk!

Resisting the temptation to sweep each surface cleanly off into my basket, I wandered, sniffed, touched, yearned. And put the odd item in. Incidentally, the Lush item for which I yearn the most of all is this. I keep leaving the Lush Times open on the Secret Stash page. Sometimes I hint hugely, along the lines of 'This is just the kind of thing someone who loves his wife very much would buy her...' Sadly, I don't think the hints have much chance of hitting home - we're talking here about a man who earlier this evening sat on the sofa and piped up, apropos of nothing, 'I'm a jelly fruit!' I don't think I'm even close to 50% penetration through this man's outer mental haze...

Once I had resisted temptation long enough, I headed off to the coffee shop to meet my New Friend, Minnie. I was expecting to be one of a crowd coming to celebrate her birthday, but what with the vagaries of bad weather and childcare commitments and the up-in-the-airness of stuff arranged on an internet forum, I turned out to be the only other person there. We chatted, she inspected my purchases, we guzzled coffee, I presented her with her multicoloured gift. I admired her lovely henna'd hair and told her of my attempts to go purple which had resulted in a residue of red being left in my hair and not a hint of purple to be seen. She told me of a friend of hers, who dyed her hair all sorts of bright colours. She had a fluffy white bunny which bounced round the house; when she was applying dye and wanted to wipe her hands to change colours, she would dab her fingers in the bunny's coat.

We talked about motorbikes, and learning to ride them. Minnie had tried being at the business end of a bike, but decided she was happier on the back. On her first outing, up on the Downs, she had become entangled in the string of a kite which the kite-flyer had let fall across the road. Am I alone in getting images of war films, dispatch riders and piano wire here? The string wrapped itself round her neck and she performed her first emergency stop. The kite flyer came running up. How foolish he must have felt, how apologetic. Not really, no. 'You almost had my finger off!' he yelled. Better luck next time, then...

On her second occasion in the saddle, she managed to wheelie a CZ into a brick wall. Quite an achievement really, these Eastern European bikes aren't known for their one-wheel capabilities. The bike's owner came running up to her, cross as a badger that's not had any bird table swinging action all week - 'I've _never_ been able to get it to do that!'

So, what have the good people of the interweb been looking for recently? Well, if the referral logs for this site are anything to go by, a whole weird bunch of stuff:


what is a weevil?
cooeee!

curvaceous mums
well, I suppose I am, though less so. Did I mention I'd been losing weight recently?

i've lost 3 stone
Ah, OK, I might just have mentioned it once or twice...

wicked stepmother creations
Creations? Mostly mittens, recently. And web sites.

ladies weeing
After weevil and stepmother, the most popular search string to lead to this blog...

crazed weevil
No comment

blinds which way to close up or down
At last, someone with a bit of sense. The answer's obvious - just see which way Tallboy's closed them, then do the opposite

jeremy clarkson jet powered bicycle
Unless I've been sleep-blogging, I'm pretty sure I haven't posted about this...

carrot cake green bits
I really wouldn't eat it if I were you

bicker mice
I like this. I think it's got legs. A kind of 100% murine Itchy & Scratchy. Have your people talk to my people.

have you ever seen a badger swing from a bird table by it's teeth
The answer to the first six words is 'yes'. Beyond that, I'm speechless. I really can't believe it. Imagine something so out of place and wrong. But enough of my apostrophe pedantry, no I haven't seen a badger swing from a bird table by its teeth - but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. In fact, I'd rather like to think that it had...

For the past five days I've been in an inward-facing, world-excluding intangible bubble. As a consequence of my cold, my middle ears are blocked up and my eardrums are hugely damped. Depending on the frequency, volume and direction, sound either doesn't get through, is distorted or is at the very least muffled.

Using the phone becomes weird; you feel the handset against your ear, yet the voice sounds like it is coming from the next room. Speech itself can be hard to deal with - it has gone from an effortlessly-decoded string of meaningful words to a stream of sounds which have to be mentally spannered together by trial and error to construct the content, possibly even correctly.

I had a similar experience going back a decade and a bit. After an ear infection, my hearing just went. I could just about cope with making out what familiar people were saying to me, but other stuff was a nightmare. It was easier to cope at work than at home, though - I worked in a University department supporting Deaf students. All the people with whom I came into daily contact were either Deaf, hard of hearing, hearing but able to use British Sign Language or at the very least deaf aware. It just wasn't a problem. Sadly, that was then, and this is now...

Tottering into school last Friday (possibly going back earlier than I really should have done but Baldrick wasn't in and you don't want to know what's been going on with the mail server) I arrived to a familiar scene - buses lined up tidily in a row, disgorging herberts left right and centre into a seething mass of near Brownian motion. Making my way through them, the noise coming at me from all angles (ranging as usual from excited chatter to squealing to shouting to hair-curling oaths) disoriented me hugely, and I was quite wobbly as I gained the little side door where I usually cut through.

Yesterday I felt better, though just as deaf, and when we picked StepD up from Poppy's we walked into Bristol. I strode ahead, trying to keep to a brisk pace, while Tallboy and StepD brought up the rear, their conversation an audible but indecipherable hum behind me. Reaching an incline, I sped up a little to maintain the pace. I'd gone a fair way before I realised that StepD was shouting my name, and turned back to see them both stood back at the traffic lights I'd passed at the bottom of the hill. I trotted back to join them, to be greeted by Tallboy asking me what the hell I was playing at, he'd told me we were crossing the road there. To the back of my head. On a road busy with traffic. Without checking I'd heard. When he knew I was having difficultly hearing stuff...

Not wanting the same thing to happen again (and not being sure of our route), once we had crossed the road I asked Tallboy where we were going from here.

'Well, we go along here then' *turns to point at something over there* 'flurble wurble wurble wurble wurble' *turns back*.

'I didn't get that,' I respond.

'It's just' *turns to point over there* 'flurble wurble wurble' *turns back*.

'I need you to look at me when you're talking to me, please.'

'Look, it's only' *turns away to point over there* 'flurble wurble wurble' *turns back with exaggeratedly patient expression on face*

*taking his cheeks between my palms and holding his face directly in front of mine* 'BLOODY WELL LOOK AT ME WHEN YOU'RE TALKING TO ME!!!!!'

*slightly taken aback but with his eyes fixed on my face as if by nails or superglue or something very spiky or indeed hugely adhesive* 'We go over there and cross the car park and then cross the road and then we're at Castle Green so we're almost there really.'

*the urge to kill or at least seriously and horribly maim subsides in me* 'Thank you, darling.'

So, we have an office with a mirror film-coated window, a plush cat toy on the windowsill which, being white, contrasts highly and is therefore very visible from outside, and a curious teenager who hangs around the computer room during lunch in the accepted geek manner.

Noticing a group of herberts outside the window regarding themselves with that sideways checking-myself-out look, I reached over behind my monitor and jiggled the cat around a little. This makes its face move against the glass and has been known to catch the odd primper's eye and make them start just a little. As it did this time. 'Ooooh!' I heard one squeal. 'What's a cat doing in there?'

The next response was a standard one - they wonder what's going on in the room so they come up close to the window, cupping their hands round their eyes and peer in, nose against the glass. Now normally, one of two things happens. Either one of their mates thinks it's a jolly jape to trot up behind them and cuff the back of their head so that their forehead makes sudden contact with the window to the amusement of all the other herberts around, or Baldrick (OK, sometimes me as well) either chucks a rolled up ball of paper at their nose, taps the inside of the window at nose level with the back of his hand, or looms his face up to the inside of the window on a level with the inquisitive voyeur outside. The outcome is generally the same, though the loudness of the squeals as they realise that there are actually people in the room do vary - Baldrick looming always seemed to have the most marked effect, for some reason.

Now Horace has seen this happen, and having now seen the cat effect, he put the two together. Removing the cat from my control, he went further than my jiggling it around in one place. His magic cat levitated up and down the window, around and around. A crowd of bemused pointing herberts assembled outside. Withdrawing the cat, Horace waited for the inquisitiveness to build; soon one herbert could stand it no more and approached, hands shading his brow. Before Horace could act, another herbert behind him accomplished outcome one and our curious herbert retreated, rubbing his brow and hurling imprecations after his assailant.

Horace manipulated the cat again, to a chorus of squeals and a forest of pointed fingers following its movement. Again he withdrew it, and a brave herbert approached to peer in, this time without a surprise rearguard onslaught. No, this time the surprise attack came from the front, as Horace tapped the window and the herbert yelped 'There's someone in there!' Which rather sweetly suggests that they really believed the IT office contained a levitating Persian.

A game developed, with Horace moving the cat, then more and braver herberts coming to peer in the window, several at a time. I suppose it cut down the odds of being the tapee. Horace would tap, the herberts would squeal and scatter and it would all begin again. I don't recall ever having seen Horace so sportive and gelastic; I suppose it made a change from all the quotidian social engineering and hackery...

Having picked on the Lanky Herberts last night, I suppose tonight it had better be the turn of Horace the Happy Hacker.

Erm, I'll need to rewind a smidge here. Soon after I started working with Baldrick, I decided that I needed to buy a little something for the office. We already had a coffee machine and comfy chairs. The purple cushion arrived later, for me to rest my broken arm on after the smash on the bike. What I sought was, in fact, a plush cat. Baldrick is given to periods of cunning planning, during which times a far-away world-domination-contemplating type look comes into his eyes, followed by a grin and an enthusiastic outlining of the latest plan. Having already pointed out to him, possibly slightly unkindly, the resemblance between him and 007's arch-enemy Blofeld, I realised that all that was missing was the white Persian.

I searched and searched for one. Some were too short-haired, some weren't totally white, some turned out to be poodles. Every time we approached a toy shop I would be forced to enter and make my way to the soft toy department, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 GBP. Pink fluffy cute things abounded. Wistful seal pups with a 'you wouldn't club me would you?' look in their eyes. Shaggy dogs. Birds. Freakish agglomerations of scraps of fur fabric which were pretty much guaranteed to give small children nightmares. But nowhere was there a realistic-looking white Persian cat. Finally, though, on one of these forays, I spotted some long white fur peeking out. Knowing I was about to unearth a Pyrenean Mountain Dog or polar bear, I found myself looking with surprise into the eyes of a cat-sized, cat-shaped white fluffy thing. Eureka!

The cat now sits in the office, its nose to the window. No one is allowed to have a brilliant plan in the office without they grab the cat and stroke it madly as they launch into an exposition of their thinking. Mostly, though, it just sits on the window sill. There is something very special about that window sill. It is aligned almost perfectly East - West. The more perceptive amongst you will realise that this means the sun, on rising, glares in through our window, and continues to do so until mercifully it passes the main school block and leaves us in shade. Sadly this doesn't normally happen until work is over, but it's the thought that counts. After a summer spent sweltering in front of that window, we beseeched the caretakers to help. I researched solar reflective film; they fitted it.

What a difference! The light and heat were cut down hugely, but there was a downside too - everyone now thinks our window is a mirror and at the very least checks themselves out in it, if not redoes their hair or even applies their lipstick. I must ask Baldrick to stop that, come to think of it. The surface isn't completely reflective - it depends a lot on the relative light levels - but because most people passing it are only looking at the reflections, they tend not to register that there is a staffed office behind it. If they do notice anything, it's likely to be
a white fluffy cat-shaped face, which does cause a spot of comment...

The story about Horace THH concerns this cat and I meant to write it all tonight, but I have run out of juice and I'm afraid the story will have to wait. I have a nasty case of the lurgy and I'm going to dive back under my wheatbag-warmed olbas-scented duvet. It hasn't been a long post so as long as you haven't breathed too deeply while reading, I doubt the germs will have got you...

I can resist it no longer; I have to post about the Lanky Herberts. To recap: a pair of sixth formers who work for Baldrick and me two evenings a week. They get experience and money; I get three hours a week when I'm not bottom of the pile and can dole out the jobs *evil grin*.

One of the regular jobs involves taking the crap out to the bins. We have piles of waste cardboard left over after each delivery, and it does tend to pile up a little. If one of the general herberts who comes in to use the computers over lunch winds Baldrick up enough, they'll get a box detention - which involves carting the cardboard to the crud containers. More serious misdemeanors are penalised by the handing to the miscreant of a paint scraper, along with an injunction to get under the desks and scrape the gum off the underside. Sadly, if no-one has merited such a box detention, then the lucky recipients of the job are the Lanky Herberts.

If you stand our side of the car park and shade your eyes, looking towards the hills, you can just about make out the rubbish bins in the far blue distance. The normal method of transport is by means of the big blue trolley, generally loaded so high that they can't see where they're going and so wide that various boxes fall off as they go through doorways. On grand occasions we borrow the 'coffin' from the caretakers. The Sun (when he comes in to work sometimes during the holidays) enjoys such trips, particularly on the way back, when he gets to ride inside it.

A little while ago, there was a big box containing a miscellany of rubbish which needed to go to the bins. I asked the Lanky Herberts to take it, and they decided that as it was just one box that they could manage between them (so didn't need the trolley) that they would wait until it was time to go home, when they would take it with them on the way to the car. Fair enough. At home time Baldrick and I walked out ahead of them, unhampered by any boxes. Half way across the car park we became aware that we hadn't seen the LHs behind us, turned and waited. Eventually we saw them appear round the corner, dragging the box behind them. It was a little heavier than they had thought...

Baldrick was keen to get on the road, so marched up to them and took over. Stretching out his arms to encircle the box, he strained and lifted it, confident that he could carry it the last half car park's worth of distance. Alas, the scraping it had received as it was dragged thus far took its toll, the bottom gave way and the contents cascaded to the floor. It was dark; the contents of the box were mainly small, and myriad. I'd have helped them pick it up if I hadn't been so incapacitated with laughter...

Tonight there was a large pile of empty boxes to take to the bins, and I asked the LHs to oblige. Piling the trolley high, dropping the odd box now and then, they set off. A short while later they returned, and asked for another job. I sent them off in the other direction to fix a printer. Passing the trolley station myself on my way over to the Music block to look at some machines there, I was bothered by an empty space. "Erm, Baldrick?" I poked my head round the office door, "Did you ask them to take the trolley somewhere else?" No, he hadn't, it should be back in its normal place. "Um, would you mind asking them when they get back if they wouldn't mind trotting back and finding it?"

They had loaded the damn thing, navigated it out of the building through tight corners and narrow doorways, guided it down the slope, led it across the car park avoiding the nasty drain cover dips and unloaded it with gusto into the bins. Whereupon they had spontaneously forgotten about it and left it there. My fault, I guess - I hadn't actually instructed them to bring it back with them...

The other day, Baldrick and I were sat at our desk, looking out across the quad. The Lanky Herberts hove into view, each holding a small yellow package which they moved toward their mouths every so often. As they got nearer, we could see that they were holding Sherbet Fountains, which happy Herbert/Sherbet juxtaposition caused me far more merriment than it had any business to. They ambled over to the office to say hello, and assumed their accustomed positions (due to the corridor-like dimensions of our office) behind our chairs.

Lanky Herbert 01 pulled a second Sherbet Fountain out of his pocket, and Lanky Herbert 02 imparted the information that there was in fact a third one still in there, awaiting its fate. Laughing about Lanky Herbert 01's addiction to sherbet, Baldrick and I decided that it was probably better than an addiction to many other powdered substances. What I first took to be Lanky Herbert 02's agreement turned out in fact to be a rather serious case of spluttering. In control of his breathing at last, he turned a reddened and tear-streaked face towards us. "I was tipping it back to get the last bits out and I er snorted some up my nose." Baldrick and I looked at each other - and we'd thought it was harmless...

I woke up this morning and bleared at the digital clock radio. I noted with some satisfaction that it was 7.47 - I like it when the numbers mean something else too.

The other night I had to get up to visit the loo during the night. Annoyed at the need to get out of bed and the chilly temperature, I looked at the clock to reinforce my bad mood by confirming the earliness of the hour. As I read off the numbers my mood changed. Yes, it was early - but it was a special early. 3.14 a.m. Pi o'clock!

Another red number burned onto my retinas is 1.42, a number which doesn't have any other significance to me than that it was the first thing I saw, some 11 years ago, when I opened my eyes having felt a 'pop' and a 'dribble' which, as I drifted into consciousness, I realised heralded the start of the arrival of the Sun in the world after a nine month wait.

The red number I see most of all is 6.42, a number with special properties. If you add 9 minutes to it, then another 9 minutes, you get seven o' clock, or Weevil's get-up time. Most mornings, you can get away with adding another 9 minutes to it, so that you get Weevil's really must get up now time. On bad mornings, you can add another 9 minutes to it, whereupon you get oh-crap-oh-crap-oh-crap-how-could-you-let-me-hit-snooze-again-it's-all-your-fault-get-out-of-my-way-I-need-to-get-in-the-shower-NOW!

I'm not what you might call a morning person...

I'm feeling ill and miserable so I'll cheer myself up by sharing some knitting with you. No, seriously, bear with me here.

In the run-up to Christmas I discovered my cache of knitting wool, forlornly cast aside in the loft. I also found my kids' mittens knitting pattern and a fiendish plan arose in my mind - I could produce some bespoke mittens for the junior members of the family as a special Christmas pressie. *click click clickety click*

The first set I hadn't made before, but were very simple to produce. I present Dinosaur Mittens:

(Click on the picture to load a bigger version of the image if you like.)



These were for Thomas Fiend.

The second set I had previously made for the Sun when he was a littly. Very simple but quite charming and lovely. The mittens aren't bad too. I present Froggy Mittens:



Finally I created the most fiendishly fiddly pair of mittens I have ever laid my hands on. I present Rabbit Mittens, complete with fluffy tails:



I've been asked to take commissions for these by 24 year olds but sadly I just can't be bothered to alter the pattern. Plus I'd need so much extra yarn for the long joining-together-down-the-sleeves string, just too impractical, my dear...

I've been walking like an old bid for the last two days. On Wednesday I had a stressy day, got home from work, threw my bag on the floor and challenged Tallboy: 'Badminton?'. I called the Leisure Centre and asked if there were any courts free. Yes, at 9 and 10. Meh, far too late. Anything earlier, I wondered. Well yes, hesitated the teenaged Leisure Centre chump on the end of the phone, there _is_ one free in a quarter of an hour. He spoke in tones that suggested only a moron could possibly phone up and book a court at that notice. Yay!

We changed at lightning speed, grabbed the racquets and headed off. Warming up, I became aware of a twittering from the court next to us. Four women were foraying into the joys of badminton, squealing as they hit the shuttlecock and hooting when their opponents missed it. After five or ten minutes, I distinctly heard one say to the others 'Ah! It's the _yellow_ lines!' That explained why we kept finding them in the tramlines of our court.

We started our first game, a close one where I felt the benefit of my weight loss to date. Did I mention I've lost 3 stone 11? Well OK I know I did, I'm just rather proud of the fact... Circumstances did rather conspire to thwart me though, and I lost the game by one point. The twittering from the next court was distracting enough, but my trousers were worse. Dating from my pre-weight loss days, I hadn't realised how big they were on me. Every time I moved they fell down an inch or two, and I was forever pulling them back up to a decent level.

The worst distraction of all was Tallboy, unsurprisingly. He kept going for impossible shots and falling over. Watching his pratfalls in mixed amusement and concern, I would see him grin and realise that I had been so fixed on him that I had let the shuttle land unhindered on my side of the court. Curses! An effective tactic, but not one without risk.

In the third game I was smarting from two close defeats and was determined not to let him win again. Towards the end of the game, he hit the shuttle hugely. I saw it rocket towards the back of my court, and was set on smacking it right back at him. Trotting backwards, I managed to move faster than my feet could carry me, and measured my length backwards on the floor. Slightly winded, and with a wrenched hip, I lay there for a moment, collecting my thoughts. A worried face hove into view and came closer. He helped me to get up and hobble to the side of the court, where I had to retire hurt. At least it meant that he drove for a change _and_ made tea.

What really bugged me though was that if I hadn't lost half my ample arse over the last four months I would probably have bounced harmlessly...

This morning I took the Sun to the doctor (he's been off school with a manky virus, it's been a week now so it was time for someone to have a look at him). We parked in a corner of the nearly deserted car park and toddled off to book in. The Sun became markedly teenaged and monosyllabic once in the surgery. Normally one to hold forth at great length on the subjects of farting and pooing, he was reduced to a stunned silence when the lady doctor asked him about how much he was breaking wind and defecating. She listened to his chest and gave it the all clear, but suggested another couple of days off school. He brightened visibly at this point.

Returning to the car, the car park was no longer quite so deserted. There was another car parked there now - in a mostly-deserted car park, the moron driver had chosen to park in the bay next to me. Well, I say next to me - I really mean in the bay _with_ me. Idiot. With the weight loss now standing at 3 stone 11 lbs at least I was able to squeeze in the gap...

Unpacking the nice bottle of Lactulose the doctor had suggested we get, the Sun viewed its straw-coloured contents with suspicion. "Nooooo! Don't make me drink pee," he begged. It was highly reminiscent of the time I bought some veggie 'chicken style' slices for him to try in his lunchbox. When he got home I told him there was a surprise in the fridge, something new to try in his sandwiches. He trotted off, excited. I heard the fridge door open, a pause, then the closing of the door. I could hear his response coming towards me down the hall, concluding with his dramatic entrance in the doorway, throwing himself to his knees, his hands clasped together in an attitude of deepest supplication: 'noooOOOOOOO!! Not chicken cheese!'

He soon changed his tune when he tasted the medicine. "Mmmm, I could drink the whole bottle at once!" I grabbed the bottle and put it out of his reach (not an easy matter as he's within a couple of inches of catching me up), the potential consequences of such consumption just too catastrophic to even commence to contemplate countenancing...

I'm not going to promise a weekly Timewaster, but I'm sure I can come up with the odd one. The Timewaster I'm proposing to you this evening is ace. And the annoying thing is, I can't take the credit for its discovery. That honour goes to Mystery Waver, so if you like it, it's her you have to thank. She emailed me a little while ago with a link to 'a little game which my son forced me to play'. I clicked - and I was hooked!

It's a little Flash game, and once it loads and sits there all quiet, you might wonder what on earth you're supposed to do. OK, first thing to do is stick your speakers on. Down a bit. Down a bit more. Touch louder. Magic. Next thing to do is click. Some places in the picture your pointer makes a hand shape and you can click stuff. Sometimes something happens, sometimes nothing happens. The idea is to keep clicking, randomly at first, then with deliberation as you learn what happens, until you finish the game.

Let me introduce you to two little symbols, one of which you will become very friendly with before too long. Look down at the bottom right hand corner of the game. There against the black background you should see something that looks like a 'Z' balancing on a beachball and a couple of arrows that might look a bit like the 'refresh' button on your browser toolbar.

The first one is a question mark and gives you the aim of the game and a couple of hints. Didn't find this desperately helpful, to be honest, but hey, they made the effort... The second one will reset the game back to the beginning so that when you go wrong you can give it one more go.

There are several ways you can kill the little chaps in the game, some of them more satisfyingly gory than others. The Sun and I particularly liked the one where you fire the guy onto the spear. Oh, and the one where the bear riding the bacon slicer does for the guy in the tunnel. But don't let me encourage you to splatter the chaps just for amusement - the instructions say to avoid it as much as possible. Just once or twice won't hurt though...

My tips:

click and see what happens

click again

click again

if something only moves a little bit, it's probably for a reason

timing is crucial at some points

were you born in a barn?

I have completed it and can help any stuck person who emails me with details of how far they've got. I'm not going to post answers in response to comments because it's too much of a spoiler. And I'm a meanie.

The guy who produced this game has others on his site (you'll see links on the page when you load the game) which are worth exploring too if you like this one.

OK well that's the blah over with, come along with me to enjoy hapland.

And so it came to pass that Baldrick and Weevil had a day out, to that London, to attend an educational technology show. Many shiny things might there be there, yea, even gadgets and thingummies and watsits. There might also be some useful bits and bobs, too. You never know.

'We'll go in the car,' said Baldrick. 'Much cheaper than the train. I'll drive if you like. We can park at Osterley and take the tube to Olympia.' Suited me - I couldn't drive, since I traditionally fall asleep on the way home from London. As we left work the evening before the trip, Baldrick called to me across the carpark: 'Don't forget to bring a blanket!' Ah, yes. I'd forgotten his car has no heater. But a blanket? Surely he was joking...

He turned up at the front door bright and early the next morning, removing his hat theatrically to greet Tallboy. Baldrick has a most shiny and smooth pate, shaved each morning and buffed with baby oil for that extra *ting*. It is, one might say, a highly recognisable feature. So much so in fact that whenever Tallboy has seen Baldrick wearing a hat (as he often does in the winter, what with having no hair and all), he has totally and spectacularly failed to recognise him. 'Er, did you mean it about the blanket?' I asked, not entirely sure whether he was pulling my leg. 'Too right,' he said, 'it's bloody freezing this morning!'

Shrugging, I picked up the grey and black tartan fleecy blanket which I had folded up at the bottom of the stairs, just in case. As we drove off, with the car registering a temperature of 2 degrees C, I was wishing I had brought another two with me. I unfolded it and huddled underneath it, trying to avoid exposing anything to the icy air. Making our way along the M4, I was aware of lorry drivers looking down from their cabs into the car as we passed them. 'I bet they think it's kind of you to take a sick old lady out for a drive,' I moaned. I didn't help the image as the journey wore on and the temperature failed to rise; my head was freezing and I wrapped my scarf around it, turban fashion, a bid to the core.

We stopped at Reading for a loo break, it was divine to feel heating again and unstiffen the joints. The flush arrangement in the loos was one of those wave-your-hand-in-front-of-the-sensor type thingies, but I didn't notice. I got a heck of a surprise as I flamboyantly readjusted my scarf, throwing it over my shoulder and activating the flush while still sat down. Didn't half wake me up, I can tell you...

Back en route, I was getting fed up with the radio so I bludgeoned Baldrick's reluctance and bunged in a compilation tape of ELO's greatest hits I had carefully crafted the night before. He started singing along straight away, it was totally his era. 'Ah, you should have put this on before,' he broke the trilling to say. 'Tell me about it! I wish I had, too - I can't help tapping my feet and my toes are finally warming up!'

It was a pleasure to get onto a hot crowded Tube train. Almost. I warmed up slowly as we approached the show. We saw all sorts of shinies, had our badges scanned by eager salespeople from all angles, competed with each other to get the most bags full of stuff and generally walked our little legs off. Squeezing back onto a crowded Tube on the way back, I tried to conserve every Joule of energy, knowing the hell that was to come on the way home.

As it was, I can't tell you too much about the trip home; I went to sleep before we'd even left London. It's traditional, you know. Thankfully I didn't snore or dribble. Probably. Too much.

At work the next day, oblivious of the staff member stood behind me and the raised eyebrows I was about to cause, I joshed Baldrick about the sub-zero temperatures - 'Next time I go in your car, I'm bringing my duvet!'

The Ex has a new job. After twenty five years of making kitchen appliances, during which time he wished fervently for redundancy, his wishes were eventually granted last year. He followed with a stint of making chocolates in a chocolate factory but that was only a temporary contract and he finished there before we could make the 'Willy Wonka' nickname stick.

His new job finds him taking a quite different course. He is now working for a firm which supplies assistive equipment to elderly people and people with a disability. Although the job was originally supposed to be on the maintenance side, he is getting out and about on the road a great deal, assessing customers' requirements and delivering the goodies.

He recently went to a Home where he was trying to give information to some of the residents. His efforts were thwarted slightly by an old chap who kept passing through his field of vision, first bouncing a football as he went, then progressing around the room with his arms folded making motorbike noises. Later, he and his colleague had to deliver a new chair to a resident who was uncertain about change. They had to creep it up a spiral staircase quietly, leaving it in the doorway of the resident's room, all the time to a soundtrack of 'I don't want a chair! I don't want to see them!' Then they had to dive off across the landing and hide in a toilet while the resident got used to the chair. When, finally, the resident was confident enough to see them, they had to poke their heads round the door, smile and wave gently until they were allowed to bring the chair in to its final destination.

He told me ruefully last week when I enquired how the job was going that 'to be honest, most of the time I seem to be measuring how wide people are.' One client, weighing in at nearly 40 stone, needed a specially-made chair. I wasn't surprised:'Did it have steel reinforcements?' 'No, but when it came in, it looked more like a sofa...'

A thought struck me - elderly, frail people + measuring them at their widest part - 'Do many of them smell of wee?' 'Oh yeah, loads. I don't mind though. It just washes over me...'

We try to be good, chez Weevil. The car only if we're doing a big shop (or if it's really really really raining), otherwise it's bipedal power. The kids, particularly the Sun, may moan, but tough. Today's weekly trip to the shops was a small affair - no kids here with us at all this morning, so we could walk at our own pace and take our chosen route, across the busy road just down from the crossing, over the bridge, pausing to note the water level, the weed growth, the fish activity (zero), the bird activity (ooh loads), and so on.

As we walked up the final leg to the shops, I saw a dear old bid hove into view on the pavement ahead. As Tallboy and I were walking two abreast, evasive action would be needed. I slowed so that I could slot in behind Tallboy, envisioning a seamless, almost balletic manoeuvre. I'd reckoned without Tallboy slowing down to match my slower pace, making slotting impossible. 'Keep going!' I urged, flapping my hands in the universal 'bugger off' gesture. 'What?' he slowed down even more so he could catch what I was saying. 'I said keep going...sorry love, there you go, sorry about that...you moron!' By this point I had managed to duck behind him, just missing the tartan shopping trolley and giving the old dear palpitations, no doubt. Game old bird though, not many of them would play chicken like that and hold their nerve...

Too late, but he got the idea at this point, and sped up. His legs are hugely longer than mine, his pace therefore commensurately long. I had to trot and puff behind him all the way to the crossing, never quite managing to catch up. Swine.

At least we managed to get to the shops without shoelace problems. I fully accept my responsibility (genetics, poor tuition or a combination of both) for the Sun's inability to tie a decent bow which will last for more than sixty seconds. But Tallboy is, let's face it, decades old, and should know better. On walks to the shops with the pair of them, I end up feeling like David Bowie (sans Pierrot costume, natch) in the Ashes to Ashes video; every two minutes one of them is down on one knee to one side of me, retying his bloody laces.

Waiting in the departure lounge, we mused on the nature of a Wudu. We'd both visited the loos at the airport and had found them advertised as 'Ladies with Wudu' and 'Gentlemen with Wudu'. We loved the word and were intrigued by what it meant. I peeked into a little room at the end of the row of cubicles, and saw seats down the middle, taps set low down on the wall, and tiles everywhere. I was still none the wiser.

Boarding the plane, we were shown to our seats - a nice window square on to the seats, just behind the wing. The legroom didn't look too promising though, and it turned out to be about half an inch less than the length of Tallboy's femur. Which was nice. As we waited for takeoff, the stewardess was running through the safety drill with the couple in front. Watching the stewardess guiding her hand to the various overhead buttons, I realised that the lady sat next to the window was blind. 'In the event of an emergency, you can call me, but I'm sure your husband will help you.' 'Depends what's in the will,' muttered the chap in front of Tallboy.

As the time for takeoff approached, the stewardess strapped herself in to her little seat facing the punters. 'So,' she chirpled brightly, smiling at the assembled wannabe stargazers, 'you're all into Astrology then?'

When we were in the air, one of the astronomers grabbed the microphone and warned us that there would be a flash test in 15 minutes. The literature had been very specific: cameras were permitted but no flash was allowed as this would destroy the night vision of the people around you and lead to your death or worse at the hands of a baying pack of outraged passengers. Everyone got their digital cameras out and started faffing around with the settings. Tallboy had already got ours set up but I was paranoid that the settings might have changed, so got it out and checked. It was fine. Sadly the three biddies ladies the other side of the aisle weren't having as much luck. Fiddle as they might, the flash still went off, the bid nearest us emitting an excited 'Oooh!' as the flash fired.

The cabin lights were shut off as we approached our destination to allow our eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Which they would have done, if not for the flashing bids opposite us. 'Oooh!' they cried again and again as the bloody flash went off for the nth time. There were deep mutterings of discontent all around us. To be fair, though, the navigation light on the wingtip was shining right in our window, which wasn't helping matters too much. Particularly when an excited astronomer up the front squeaked into the microphone 'Ooooh! I can see the Aurora, it's brilliant, look!' Meh. Then people behind us and in front of us started squeaking excitedly too. Double meh. The navigation light was switched off when we were on station, and we got to look out too, only fifteen minutes after everyone else.

We did see the Aurora, though it was a tad of an anti-climax to be honest. You see the photos of great coruscating neon-coloured swathes of light taking up half the sky, and that's what you expect to see yourself. What we saw was a grey band across the sky, the bottom of it a definite line, the top of it diffuse. The light levels were so low that my cones had given up and my rods were firing on all cylinders: sensitive to light, but not to colour. It did whet our appetite though, to go somewhere cold and northerly for a few days and see them from the ground in all their glory.

The view of the stars was amazing - the low light levels meant that you saw so many more stars than normal, and this was very exciting, although the size and position of the window meant that you could only see a part of the sky at once and couldn't maintain the viewing position for long in any event. We had to keep swapping round so that each person in the three seats had a decent stab at a window view. This was an interesting exercise in the pitch black. I didn't mind the squeezing past Tallboy bit but I hadn't even been properly introduced to the guy on the end. I'm pretty sure that most of the time the hand which rested familiarly on my rear belonged to Tallboy...

The navigation light beaming back through the window indicated that we were about to head back. Ignoring the commentary which continued for the benefit of those who weren't being blinded by an exterior light, we rummaged for the Tom Tom Go. Once it picked up a signal, it was a bit confused, bless it. The Zafira doesn't normally do 550 mph. It was neat to see the map zooming by at high speed, and to get an idea of where we were.

Back at the airport at half midnight, we popped to the loo before our bleary journey back home. We clearly weren't the only ones to wonder about the Wudu. I heard an excited voice outside my cubicle: 'Sharon, Sharon, come quick! I've found the Wudu!'

We sat in the second row, growing more and more esurient. Finally, a tall and rather dishy young man swept into the room, and the tempo of the preparations increased. The talks were about to begin. I loosened the zips round our lunchboxes in preparation and as soon as the lights were low, I was in there, liberating the sandwiches. I tried to rustle the bags as little as possible, grabbed a couple of sarnies and thrust them into Tallboy's hand. I bagged one of mine too, less cheese, more cucumber. Crisp cucumber. Crunchy cucumber. My plans for a quiet snarf were scuppered as I became aware of heads turning towards me, tutting and disapproving. I tried to eat as quietly as I could, but it was impossible, that was some _really_ crunchy cucumber in there...

The first talk, aimed at putting space in perspective, featured a description of what a light year is, the highlight of this section for me being the guy saying that the mile was the yardstick of distance on the earth. The next talk was by the dishy young astronomer. *sigh* When the talks were over, everyone piled out, we zoomed past the senior members of the party (most of them) and made it to the car in good time - we wanted to get to the airport in reasonable time to be assured of a seat next to each other. Dismissing the need for further farting around with the Tom Tom Go, I pointed to the little map: 'It's not far to the airport, we can't miss it.'

As we sailed past the airport exit, the bicker level rose to astronomic proportions. Rising even higher the further we drove on past the airport in search of a junction in which to turn. We got to the appointed car park in time to join the end of a huge queue of stargazers. This fuelled a nice long bicker about whether we would have been parked by now if we hadn't missed the junction, whose fault it was that we missed the junction, the unlikeliness of sitting together on the plane and whether or not this was a good thing in all the circumstances...

When we finally found the check-in desk in the correct terminal (that is, of course, not the terminal we originally entered) and were offered window seats next to each other, we calmed down a bit, and grabbed a chance to sit down and eat the rest of the sandwiches without inconveniencing anyone else. We meandered along to security, only slightly hampered by the couple at the front of the queue who were attempting to enter the departure lounge without first having checked in. I passed my bag to the bag checker guy and walked through the metal detector. As I picked my bag up at the other side of the machine, I heard the alarm go off. Some idiot had some metal on them, then. I turned to see Tallboy being whisked to one side and frisked by a friendly security man.

He had nothing in his pockets and the security guy found nothing wrong with his clothes. I was expecting someone to start snapping on the rubber gloves, but the security guy prodded Tallboy's shoes and said 'You're wearing steel toe-caps aren't you?' 'Er...yeah.' 'You'll have to take them off, Sir.' So Tallboy is stood there in stockinged feet, looking sheepish, as the security guy takes his shoes off to go through the machine. Whatever possessed him to wear safety shoes on an outing? 'Oh, I wear these all the time. I wore them when we got married.'

Yesterday morning I broke the news to Tallboy that he wasn't going in to work, neither was I, and that we were going on a special trip for his special birthday (which isn't actually till next month, but what the heck). I gave him a few moments to finish ghasting his flabber, then quizzed him on whether he had sussed it beforehand; I was sure he had seen clues all over the place. No, he said, he'd not suspected anything:

not my secretive trips to the bank on our Saturday morning walks to bank the cheques that the family were sending me (everyone chipped in for the pressie)

not mail arriving for me with Oxford postmarks addressed in his mother's and sister's handwriting

not the envelopes he uncovered lurking at the bottom of my knicker drawer while he was 'putting away the washing for me'

not finding the A4 address book open at his sister's number when I would never call her without him being there to talk to her too

not the white A5 envelopes arriving addressed to me plastered with the firm I booked it through's logo all over the frank

not my whispered conversations with Poppy in the corner which stopped suspiciously when we saw him coming

Oblivious, in fact.

I told him that were going to go to Birmingham and go up in a plane to go and see the Northern Lights - a three hour trip with an eighty percent chance of seeing them. He was chuffed to bits - it's something he's always wanted to see, and the going in a plane bit was a bonus too. It was Poppy's idea - she'd seen it advertised in a local paper. It was her idea too to ask the family if they all wanted to send him - they all loved the idea.

I explained to Tallboy that we had to assemble at a hotel for a briefing, and he asked me if I knew where it was. 'Oh yes,' I replied, blasé as anything - I knew I could rely on the Tom Tom Go. Tallboy breathed a sigh of relief. 'Oh good, because I left the Tom Tom Go at work last night.' So he did end up going into work after all. Not to worry, we had plenty of time, so he had a nice gossip then we climbed back into the car and were off on our way again. We'd only got ten miles down the road when he decided that he would rather like to come back and get his contact lens case and glasses as we wouldn't be back till very late. Fortunately I'd factored Tallboy dither time into the itinerary.

We stopped off at Mum's for a bite of lunch then headed off across country to the hotel, fighting our way through driving snow, breaking through it and then racing it the rest of the way. As we pulled in to the hotel, I confided that I was glad we were stopping as I really needed the loo. Tallboy confided that he did too. My need increased by the second as we circled the car park in a vain attempt to find a parking space. Finally installed in a bay round the back, I leaped out with my loo antenna on full sweep, rounded the car, and found Tallboy farting around with the bloody Tom Tom Go. After a quick but satisfying bicker we entered the hotel, heading at top speed for the loos. Somewhat more relaxed, we made our way to reception and hung around for half an hour for the start of the talk.

The function room we found ourselves in for the presentation was huge, and bulging with humanity. We sat down near the front and Tallboy trotted off to the Marjorie Dawes-looking rep who was doling out tickets for the airport car park. 'Car park ticket? Or dust? Anyone? No? Dust?' She managed to avoid talking to him for five minutes and instead dealt with a stream of queue-jumping interlopers. That is, until she turned to one very nice chap who motioned to Tallboy and pointed out that he had been first. I surveyed the room, focusing on one librarian-looking chap who was selling pamphlets for a fiver a go. He was insisting on autographing them, though many people were walking away with bemused 'who the hell was that?' expressions on their faces. Some people thought the pamphlets were free, part of the expedition, and the autographer's sidekick - a thickset kind of chap in a long overcoat who was taking the money - soon disabused them of this idea. When faced with actual expenditure, most of the punters gave the pamphlet a quick look, handed it back and walked off shaking their heads.

Tallboy and I sat there, impatient. People were faffing around setting up laptops and projectors, panicking when their screensavers cut in and caused the projector to flap about losing the video signal, and other annoying timewasting stuff. Apart from the pamphlet guy, he was still going strong. By the end, his mate could hardly close the money bag, it was so full of folding. Still Tallboy and I sat there, eager for the lights to go down and the presentation to start. We needed some cover so that we could sneak our sarnies out. We were starving...