The Time Bubble

You may, or possibly may not know, given its low profile here, that our friends across the pond are today celebrating "Thanksgiving". It's Thanksgiving in the good old U S of A What's this all about, you may ask, well I shan't bore you with the origins of the tradition, this is something you can find out for yourself. Let's face it, few people here think much about what Easter's all about when they are greedily ripping open their chocolate eggs. As a basic summing up, it's a bit like Christmas Day, but only the Christmas Dinner bit of it i.e. no presents, decorations or any of the other stuff, just everyone getting together around the table and having a big roast dinner, with of course, a large turkey as the centrepiece. Everyone also has the day off work - it's a bank holiday. Now I would imagine that for people who have jobs, having to drag themselves out to an office every day, having a Thursday off at this time of the year would be a...

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 - Jam...

Once again during my trip to London I passed by close to the London Eye and got to wondering if anyone had ever had a shag on it. In public I am guessing probably not as you go in a car with about 30 other people and there are not exactly any hidey holes where one could perform such a feat, even if your lady sat on your lap it would look suspicious. I am thinking maybe being tossed off under a blanket might just about be feasible, but hardly the most romantic way to take advantage of the setting of floating high above the London skyline. Now with it being Valentine's day and all, I thought, whoever runs this wheel is missing a trick here. What an opportunity to get make some serious money by offering the ultimate Valentine's day date. Now as we all know there's loads of idiots with more money than sense in London (bankers, stockbrokers, MP's - take your pick) so why not get them to spend some of it. Now for what I propose I would suggest perhaps a fee of say £5,000....

Ollie will be 5 this year and still I am having horrendous problems getting him to eat properly. The thing is - mention this to any other parent - and they will always have some advice for you, based on their own experience. The simple fact is though that none of this clever advice ever works because they don't know my son. I don't mind people who have had similar problems who offer advice - even though I know it won't work. What drives me up the wall is the endless leaflets, books (gourmet food for babies etc) that simply assume it's easy to cook and prepare healthy food for your children. It applies to people in real life too. Now I have no problem with people who offer well-meaning advice, it is those who patronise and assume you are a bad parent because you cannot get your children to eat properly. How I would love to hand over my son to some of these people for a few days and see how far their advice and strategies get them. I've tried all the advice goin...

Let the carnage commence!  Well, there goes another Christmas, pretty much as expected. I've pretty much got my Christmasses down to a tee these days, have settled into a little family formula that works for us, so let's run through it. I don't like to spoil Christmas Day by being either hung over or tired since having the kids, the traditional Christmas Eve booze up has been knocked on the head. Back in the Nielsen days, this basically used to involve getting a lift into work on Christmas Eve, leaving work at 12, going on the piss around Oxford, getting the bus back to Bicester early evening (with crossed legs) and then continuing the festivities back in Bicester before ending up at someone's house, or maybe mine. I shudder to think about it now to be honest, waking up underneath a Christmas tree on the 25th amid a sea of Strongbow cans is an image best consigned to the archives forever. But - no need to miss out! I generally have a bit of a booze up on the 23...