Second Half Of A Day In The Life [2/2]

Previously...on A Day In The Life...

Jason's gets the kids to school, rushes round the shops, tidies up the house, has a visitor and goes to the Doctors.

And now...the conclusion...

12:10pm - Arrive at Courtyard on time! Made it! Collect Jamie and change his shoes. Walk home hand in hand.

12:25pm - Arrive home. Jamie wants lunch, but I didn't have time to prepare it before we left - and there's very little bread anyway. Decide that for once I will be having the bread (fed up with missing out) so give Jamie some chicken and vegetables with noodles. Followed by a yogurt.

12:40pm - Make my lunch - bread and a few other items - some Polish sausage among them. Jamie pestering throughout for things. Very hard to have a peaceful meal when the kids are about!

12:55pm - Clean up the lunch things, change Jamie's nappy, get him another drink. Empty dishwasher. Play with Jamie for a bit. He's tired so put him in playpen in hope he'll have a sleep.

1:10pm - Jamie goes to sleep. This is the time I normally feel exhausted and ought to go too - but the burden of responsibility weighs too heavily upon me. I know I can't rest until the preparation for Saturday's disco is done, and so it's on to the computer. A couple of PM's and emails dealt with and away I go.

1:30pm - Busy transferring files between computers, loading up new karaoke tracks, finalising disco playlist. This has been one of my most challenging jobs yet. As well as loads of 40s and 50s music throughout the evening, we are also having a war time style sing along in the middle - there are going to be 8 karaoke songs displayed on the screen for this - but instead of microphones every in the room is to sing along. These 8 tracks are to be as follows:

White Cliffs Of Dover

Que Sera Sera

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree

My Old Man's A Dustman

Leaning On A Lampost

We’ll Meet Again.

Vera Lynn! Rocking Fritwell Village Hall
 this Saturday!!!

As an aside - I have spent at least 10 hours already on this disco. I am investing more and more time into preparing for my gigs this year - as anyone who I have done a wedding for this year will testify. It pays off when they have a fantastic night - if I couldn't give them that, then I shouldn't be doing this at all. But with this in mind I have decided I am going to start charging more from January - because I think for the amount of time and effort I put into making these nights special - well - to use an oft quoted phrase "I'm worth it". I don't think £250 is an unreasonable amount to ask as a standard rate for the level of service I offer and the amount of effort that goes into it.

2:10pm - Finally finished! Check on Jamie - still asleep - just time to nip off for a shower.

2:25pm - Down from shower! Jamie awake! Let him out - we do a few word games with the shopping list game. "Where are the oranges?" "Where's the bread?" - that sort of thing. I have always spent hours doing this sort of thing with the children - I am sure it benefited Ollie and now Jamie enjoys it too.

2:40pm - Time to start on the dinner. Unusually for a Wednesday, we are having a roast as I have a nice bit of beef and we missed Sunday dinner last weekend as I was the only one here. Peel spuds, prepare joint, boil spuds etc.

3:05pm - All in the oven cooking away. No school run this afternoon, so Claire picking Ollie up. Really tired now - going to try and grab half an hour before dinner I think if Claire's not too tired too.

3:35pm - Ollie's home, along with Claire - dinner coming along nicely - do a bit of basting on the joint. Have really run out of steam. Claire nips off to the shops and takes Jamie, Ollie goes up to his room for a while so I lay down and grab a 10 minute cat nap.

3:50pm - Back in kitchen. Just pottering about now as I prepare dinner. Ollie asking questions nineteen to the dozen about random stuff. Toothache again! Grrrr! Went to dentist last week and he basically covered over the cracks - not enough. Still some pain down there. Have a follow up appointment in 2 weeks - if they can't fix it, it's got to come out!!!

4:15pm - Claire and Jamie back. Final preparations for dinner - Yorkshire's about to go in. Hive of activity over next half an hour co-ordinating all elements so everything is the right temperature and ready to go at the right time!

4:45pm - Sitting down to dinner. Ollie decides to dispense with the cutlery and eat a large slice of beef by hand. If I didn't know better I'd suspect he had sneaked down and spotted some of my midnight ham-fests. Lovely dinner all round! All ate well - no complaints!

5:20pm - Dinner's all done and dusted - time to play with kids for a bit - Jamie tired though so seems ready for bed already. Ollie and I are going to try a few more challenging levels of Rail Maze. Plus he has a new book from school to read.

5:45pm - Jamie has gone to bed early, Ollie and I are playing Rail Maze, and then after that Find the Object on the Note. Claire is busy with a cake, harmony in the Ayres household. 

6:45pm - Ollie asks to go to bed, and I take him up and get him ready for bed. PJ's & teeth. Question him over mysterious brown stain on bedroom wall and get confession you really don't want to hear. Advise that any future repetition will not impress!

7:00pm - JTV begins with a fairly crap episode of the Simpsons. On series 22 now. They really should call it a day but I continue to watch for completeness sake. This is the time of day when I like to slump back on the sofa (me and Claire both) and just chill out after the hard work of the day. Life has changed so much in recent years. Even up until about 3 years ago, I would be out a lot at nights doing things e.g. Wednesday would be Aunt Sally night, but I haven't played in a match for over 2 years now. Why? Quite frankly, we, and other young parents (by young I mean the age of Claire and the children, rather than myself) are just completely knackered by 7pm and all we want to do is take it easy. Social life - goes on hold for about a decade.

7:30pm - Being Human - 7th episode of Series 2. Great plot as always but I get so irked at lazy plot devices that haven't been researched properly. To cut a long story short, in this episode we are made to believe that the clocks have gone back last night so it's now 7:15 on his watch, whereas it would have been 8:15 the previous day. All well and good. But the clocks go back on the last Saturday night in October - so if they really had gone back last night it should have been Sunday - yet it was parents evening at the school. Find me a school that opens for a parents evening on Sunday and I'll let that one go. But even worse - when he emerged from the school it was still broad daylight outside. At 7:15pm - in October? No - the sun should have set at least 2 hours before! This sort of thing so irks me! The BBC are great at ensuring that there's no stray satellite dishes on people's houses in period dramas and all the costumes etc are done to precision so why make such lazy errors in the script. Maybe I am just a pedant, I don't know. But if I was producing a show, I would never let such mistakes get through.

Great show so I'll let them off - this time!

8:35pm - Start the new series of Sherlock - (2nd series - episode 1). Another enthralling episode, was quite pleased I sussed out some of the things before they were explained e.g. her body measurements being the code for the safe. Trust me to suss that one, huh? Also pour first glass of wine of the day. And have a little bit of cheese from Aldi to go with it. Claire falls asleep before the end - long day for her, so she heads up to bed at the end.

10:15pm - Sitting in front of lovely red glowing fire, still nursing first glass of wine. Decide I fancy a game of poker so bring laptop through, switch lights off and get cosy. Enter the $5 tournament on BET365 which starts at 10:20pm every night and has hundreds of players - I've entered it dozens of times and never come remotely clear to winning but it's good value and a lot of fun for a few quid. The fire looks absolutely gorgeous, the room is positively toasty and I pour my second glass of wine.

10:35pm - The poker tournament has started well, I have won a few nice pots already and am leading the whole tournament. This is nothing unusual at all - frequently I am up there with the front runners but it's nothing to get excited about. When it gets serious later on and we're approaching the later stages I always seem to get majorly unlucky on a big hand (when I've got the better cards) and get wiped out - the sort of hand that if I won it, would give me a serious shot at winning the tournament - watch this space.

10:50pm - Add a couple more logs to the fire - do enjoy this time of day, particularly when autumn comes. The peace and quiet and warmth - everyone asleep, no noise outside. After the stresses of the noise pollution we had during the summer with the builders etc it's so nice to sit here like this.

11:00pm - Well we are getting near the end of the day and it has to be said this has been a good day for me. A very busy day with lots to do but one where I managed my time well, did everything I needed to do and everything I wanted to do too. A clean bill of health from the doctor was a bonus. Not every day goes this well, but as long as I manage and plan effectively and my health or state of mind does not let me down, then I know I am on top of things. And crucially I didn't waste time on anything that detracted from time I was able to spend playing with the kids which really, is the most important thing of all. Because when they are older - they won't really remember me washing their clothes, cooking their meals etc. They will remember playing games and the fun things though!

11:10pm - Still in the poker tournament but just lost half my chips when all in with QQ against an opponent with a weaker hand who got lucky. As so often, my bright start has fizzled out. Still - it's only cost me $5 to enter this tournament and I have not had any rebuys - since I never lost all my chips - so am getting entertainment value. Reached the first break now - no more rebuys and now it gets serious.

11:15pm - Predictably knocked out of tournament on the last card dealt - when had an 88% chance of winning with a top hand - such is life and poker - for me anyway. Still - had an hour's cheap fun. First prize in these games is about $500 - I'll get there one day!

11:20pm - Decide to call it a night and grab a bit of supper - and off to bed by midnight. Thank-you for spending the day with me readers.

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Jason xx