Friday 19th Jul

The house husband is taking a short break and will be back on Monday 29th July.

Enjoy the sun.

Jay

Thursday 18th Jul

Back to IT duties at the library this morning. Having thrown some bacon on the barbecue for the youngest and I for breakfast, primarily to reduce the amount of washing up required, but also to increase the flavour; it’s a warm stroll down the road. It’s quiet this morning. Maybe the heat has put off the clientele, and they’re all at home sunning in the garden. Alternatively, they could have stayed in to watch the Open golf and the Ashes cricket on telly.

I stop by the folks for a cuppa and the old fella is settled in to embark on four days of golf watching. Like many of his friends will be.

I drop the eldest’s laptop off at the local repair shop after lunch, where the chap expects it to be corrupted files based on what I tell him. I return home to some cleaning and an enormous pile of ironing. An hour and a half later I get a text telling me the laptop is fixed. Turns out it was a security programme causing the problem, and so that has now been removed. You live and learn, and hopefully I’ll know for next time.

The ironing is only slowly going down, but fortunately I have the sport on telly to keep me company. The youngest returns home sweating and dirty, having been on a sponsored walk with school today. So he’s quite happy for a teenage boy.

After getting tea ready for Mrs P’s return I tidy up, and then sort out some email and papers. It’s strange when one of the teenagers is not at home. It doesn’t feel right. But the reality is in 14 months if the eldest goes off to university, this is a taste of things to come.

Yours, seeing the future.

Jay

Wednesday 17th Jul

The eldest is off to Morocco today, flying to Casablanca and changing there for Marrakech.  It all sounds very exotic and exciting. Mrs P and I go to wave her off, and stand with the other parents. The fathers are of the view the kids will have a great time, and the mothers are worrying in case something goes wrong. Nature versus nurture.

It’s then on with the paper round in rather warm conditions, and apart from the postman who appears to be running around his round in torrents of sweat, the streets are quiet. I spend the rest of the day on and off trying to fix the eldest’s laptop, which decided to go wonky almost as soon as she’d left the house.

After ironing and getting tea ready for three – something wrong when it’s not four – I’m then out doing another paper round in the evening. This time it’s with the youngest, who is doing it for one of the eldest’s friends who has also gone to Morocco. To be fair he offers me half the money for the round, but I decline, though maybe he’ll see his way to buying his dad a beer when we’re on holiday. He might even see his way to doing our round once in a while.

Mrs P has mentioned on a fairly regular basis that my car needs cleaning. I’m sure I read somewhere that you shouldn’t clean them in direct sunlight, and so 9pm finds me washing the car, hosepipe out. I figure if I’m paying water rates I might as well use it.

In the end I give up on the laptop. I’ll need to take it to get it fixed tomorrow.

Yours the paper boy.

Jay

Tuesday 16th Jul

I smear suntan lotion on the back of the youngests neck as he leaves for school. For some reason young people don’t think they’ll get sunburnt, and by and large that may well be true. However, like father like son, my neck catches the sun first and so does his. The eldest is going in to school with her full Morocco expedition rucksack, and so I put it in the boot and we collect her friend, and jay-le-taxi drops them both off at school.

I then proceed round to the folks who have had a small leak in the conservatory roof. The ailing one has asked if there is a way we could get some sealant on part of the roof. However we can’t get on the roof, as it won’t take the weight. So in a “Heath Robinson moment” I’m leaning out of the upstairs back window, with a knife taped to the end of a pole, and with sealant squeezed onto the knife. I’m trying by a process of trial and error to fill cracks, hoping to get the right one. I guess we’ll find out next time it rains if it has worked.

Back home I apply a small amount more paint to the porch, before I’m off to do some umpiring. I’m doing a 40 over match this afternoon, and after applying the suntan lotion and a large hat, I’m ready to stand out in the heat for what turns out to be 4 pleasant hours. Mrs P has made tea when I get in, but having already been fed at the cricket I take a reduced portion for my fourth meal of the day.

Now my car needs a wash, and has done for a while, though I’m pretty sure I did it at Easter time, and I had an idea to give it a go this evening. But just as I’m about to commence, I notice Mrs P has got her car out and has beaten me to it. So being easily put off, I decide to leave it for another day. Regarding the rucksack packing it turns out we should have packed her walking poles, but apart from that we did alright.

Yours catching the rays.

Jay

Monday 15th Jul

Mrs P is working this morning and so I am sent to the supermarket to do the shopping. Though to be fair I have a fairly explicit list, which is written in aisle order, to help me, and ensure I don’t deviate from budget. In other words it is fairly foolproof, and in truth I manage pretty well, though like most blokes I’m not so keen when I’m given a choice of things to get, as I know I’ll likely make the wrong one.

I’m then under instructions to go to the launderette, and so pass a quiet half an hour reading the paper and watching the world go by. It seems at the moment as though Mrs P is happy to keep me busy. In the afternoon I start putting the first paint on the porch, and despite covering a very small area I manage to get undercoat on my T-shirt. Fortunately Mrs P was of the view the T-shirt was old and therefore it didn’t matter. Personally I liked it, but there you go.

When the eldest came in we packed her rucksack for her trip to Morocco. She’s off on Wednesday and it needs to be in school to be checked tomorrow. So I guess I’ll find out then how I could have packed it better. In the evening we go out for dinner with the folks, as its mum’s 70^th. It’s nice to go out and sit and chat with the teenagers, in a more grown-up environment. They still bring the electronic devices, but they aren’t completely tied to them. As the kids grow you go through stages of going to different types of restaurants, be it burger joints, pizza’s or Nandos. But now other avenues are opening up to us, as their tastes develop, albeit more expensive ones. After all every silver lining has a cloud.

Yours feasting on birthday cake.

Jay

Friday 12th Jul

Will this blessed sunshine never end? Well I’d certainly be happy with a few more days. In fact I must have found myself in a holiday frame of mind, as I got the flip flops out today.

I decided to continue my recent efforts on the bike and went for an hour’s ride this morning, before the real heat of the day. I specifically picked a route that would avoid the temptation of Tuesday’s steep hill, and so returned home in better condition. I hope the cycling is doing me some good; it seems to be getting a little easier each time. I worry if by the time I get competent, the winter won’t have arrived.

I managed to fit in a coffee break in front of the Ashes, which is turning out a thrilling first test, with any luck we’ll squeeze past the Aussie’s in this one. I return to my DIY project and finish filling the appropriate holes in the porch, and then sanding where appropriate. I can see the lure of undercoating on the horizon.

I’ve just finished clearing my emails when the eldest returns from school, to tell me she’s off to her friends for tea, and could I drop her off. So jay-le-taxi sallies forth, but her friends are not where they were expected to be, so I leave her promising to text me shortly to let me know they’re together. Half-an-hour later I’m rather peeved not to have had any contact, and let her know as much by text. Still no response! Eventually she replies apologising profusely, but basically she forgot to let me know they were together. She has the attention span of a goldfish when it suits her.

I bung some burgers on the barbecue, making the most of the sunshine, and watch some cricket with the youngest before Mrs P comes in. The eldest had been catered for in the burger stakes, but fortunately having a teenage boy means any potentially spare food does not go to waste. Jay-le-taxi then drops the youngest off at cricket and returns to collect him later. Then come the late texts from the eldest, and at around 11.15pm jay-le-taxi is waiting at the station to pick her up. I thought now she can drive there’d be a bit less of this, but no, it’s way past my bed time and here I am, in kinship with so many other parents of teenagers, sat in the car in the dark waiting for the offspring.

Yours remembering they’re still teenagers, and not adults.

Jay

Thursday 11th Jul

I chuck the bacon on the barbecue this morning. There are a couple of reasons for this. One the barbecue sits outside the kitchen door and is easily fired up, and two it’s less cleaning up for me. I take the view that building up the flavour on the barbecue helps with flavouring the food, and as all we tend to use it for is burgers, sausages, bacon and the odd kebab, the theory works just fine. On another glorious english summers day, it seems wrong not to take advantage.

Around the middle of the day I get to the folks for a cup of tea, to be told there are a couple of jobs they could do with a hand with. Now I have no problem at all helping out, as the ailing one is well on the way to recovery, and will soon be able to do these things again himself. But given that, much like me - and now you know where I get it from - he has never been particularly pro-DIY; I wonder how soon he’ll feel able to resume what he used to do, when the house husband is on tap to help out.

I crack on with the cleaning, with an ever more painful finger which I am due to take to the doctors this afternoon. It’s been hurting on and off for a couple of weeks now, and I see the GP registrar who is very helpful, and advises me it is most likely soft tissue and ligament damage, and prescribes me some gel to rub in. I’ve no idea how I did it, but fingers crossed, not that I can at the moment, it’ll sort itself out. It doesn’t stop me doing the ironing, and making the tea.

The eldest had invited a friend home after school, in this case a boy. Now Mrs P and I are very confused about the whole boy/girl/friend status thing. In our day, it would have been a boyfriend, but lines seem to be more blurred these days. Anyway they disappeared into a room together to chat, and once again we have no idea on what is the etiquette on these things. Suffice to say he is a very well mannered young man and cleared his plate at tea. So I could argue he enjoyed my cooking, or you could say that teenage boys will eat most of anything, as long as there is a lot of it.

Yours looking on the bright side.

Jay