My little sister is pregnant, she and I found out today! Listen hard: you can probably still hear our mother squealing.
I have decided the baby should be named Wilberforce, regardless of gender. I have offered to drink for both of us while she is expecting. No need to thank me, Sis.
Delightful to have a nice surprise, to counter stepping on a dead mouse on the bedroom floor earlier.
Monday 30 January 2012
Friday 27 January 2012
How to... Survive Valentine's Day
Somewhere in the gap between Christmas and New Year, I noticed a rack of red cards in the supermarket. The presence of various drawings of roses, doe-eyed teddy bears and highly flammable synthetic padding could mean only one thing: these were cards produced in honour of St Valentine, aka “Hallmark rubbing their hands in glee day”.
Even as a happily married thirty-something, V-day makes me deeply uncomfortable. A tubby over-achiever with glasses inspired by Timmy Mallett, I was never a likely recipient for an anonymous card as a teenager. Even worse was the annual humiliation of receiving one which had clearly been written by Gran using her left hand. Once, aged 17, I plucked up the courage to send one to the resident heartthrob of Upper Sixth, only to spend a full week sweating in the common room as he and his friends tried to identify, via handwriting analysis and frank interrogation, which girls had sent the FOUR cards he had received. Oh, the horror.
The whole thing is a swizz, frankly. You try to go out to eat; forget it. Prices are tripled and all the food is pink, even the spinach. Restaurants are devoid of atmosphere as Derek and Barbara silently consume their blush-tinged stroganoff, Barbara thinking “Is that bunch of forecourt carnations really all he's getting me?”, Derek feeling irritated that he's paying £80 to sit in mutinous silence over three courses apiece and a bottle of Mateus Rose.
In the end there is only one way to make it through to 15th Feb, and that is to ignore the whole sorry business. If your relationship is working this won’t be a problem, and if it’s not, giving an adult a mournful-looking teddy and a slightly suggestive card is hardly likely to reanimate the corpse.
Ostriches have the right idea. Bury your head in the sand, and wait for it all to be over.
Even as a happily married thirty-something, V-day makes me deeply uncomfortable. A tubby over-achiever with glasses inspired by Timmy Mallett, I was never a likely recipient for an anonymous card as a teenager. Even worse was the annual humiliation of receiving one which had clearly been written by Gran using her left hand. Once, aged 17, I plucked up the courage to send one to the resident heartthrob of Upper Sixth, only to spend a full week sweating in the common room as he and his friends tried to identify, via handwriting analysis and frank interrogation, which girls had sent the FOUR cards he had received. Oh, the horror.
The whole thing is a swizz, frankly. You try to go out to eat; forget it. Prices are tripled and all the food is pink, even the spinach. Restaurants are devoid of atmosphere as Derek and Barbara silently consume their blush-tinged stroganoff, Barbara thinking “Is that bunch of forecourt carnations really all he's getting me?”, Derek feeling irritated that he's paying £80 to sit in mutinous silence over three courses apiece and a bottle of Mateus Rose.
In the end there is only one way to make it through to 15th Feb, and that is to ignore the whole sorry business. If your relationship is working this won’t be a problem, and if it’s not, giving an adult a mournful-looking teddy and a slightly suggestive card is hardly likely to reanimate the corpse.
Ostriches have the right idea. Bury your head in the sand, and wait for it all to be over.
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