Oh the glamour

Proof that the consultancy life isn't all flash hotels and Michelin-starred dinners, I have here evidence of my rather unusual breakfast at the inimitable Leeson Bridge House, Dublin. On the plus side, they do cook your toast to order, and offer both "white" and "brown" varieties.

How crap are BA air miles?

I prefer not to use my blog for stuff like this but I can't hold this one in. Ok here we go. Why do you join a frequent flyer program? No, it's not for the free flights, because you rarely earn enough points to actually get one. You join these schemes because, after saving a few points, you get to go in the airport lounges, so that instead of spending the 45 minutes you invariably have to wait for your flight in a comfy chair instead of on a bench.

Now, recently the Kiwi and I booked a hire car (as regular readers will know). We booked this specific one because it got me 500 extra BA points. Woo. Looking at my balance, I should be nearly a Silver member by now, and I can almost taste the lounge.

However, these (plus the ones I've got from recent flights) are ornery air miles. They (if I save until I'm 50 I might get a free ride between terminals at Gatwick) don't affect my VIP level. You can only get these 'special' points by flying on very specific flights, which of course BA won't tell you about.

What a monumental pile of arse. Here's hoping my Aer Lingus points don't have the same effect. Pier B at Dublin airport is no place for a sane person to spend any time at all.

Back in Dublin

It's been a while since I was over here for more than a day trip, so it's weird to be away from my Kiwi again. This is slightly different though; we're running a workshop for a prospective client over here (all five hours of it) which isn't exactly a pitch but there are undertones of sales-y-ness there. It should be interesting.

The important thing, though, is the hotel. We're staying in a much nicer place this time, all old-school opulence and marble everywhere. The thing I think I like the most so far (having just checked in) is the quiet efficiency of the staff - me trying to check in with a Maestro card usually causes some fuss as they can't pre-authorise it, but here it was dealt with simply and smoothly. And they had chocolate brownies on reception.

So far, so good. Whether this means I'll be over here more in the future (on two Irish projects) remains to be seen.

Interesting thing just happened though. Last week, the head of my team mentioned that there would be a bit of a reshuffle within the team, and that I'd been put forward for one of the more interesting and high profile roles within the new structure. Excellent. This forms part of the proposals all the dept heads are putting together for their own bits of the business next year.

Today though, I've been told that there's a new part of the business being created, and that I've been earmarked to be part of that team. Controversial. So there's a decision to be made fairly soonish. Politics to consider. I think it's going to come down to 60% what do I really want to do and which route would get me there quickest, and 40% who do I want to piss off the least.

An interesting challenge. Fortunately I have a little time to consider my future. Watch this space.

Flying

There's always something a little unreal about travelling to Dublin like this. I think it's got something to do with getting up at 0445 and stumbling dreamlike through the passages from home to tube to plane to bus to office. It doesn't entirely leave one in a suitable frame of mind for presenting complex multi-million Euro business models.

This morning, though, has been unusually calming. I've found that as I've got used to the journey (although I've not been too much lately), I've started to notice littler things about it which sort of take the edge off - the example this morning which prompted me to get out the laptop and document it before coming back down to earth was on take-off.

London was covered in thick fog this morning, the resultant gloom confusing the mind into thinking it was earlier than it was. Surging off the runway, the Airbus 321 broke through the fog within 10 seconds or so, into glorious sunlight and clear blue skies.

I don't think I'll ever get bored of flying. I know it's quotidian and mundane to many of us these days, but there's something about the seeming impossibility of getting off the ground, travelling so fast and ending up in a completely different country (and in Dublin's case, a completely different century) that never ceases to fascinate. You'd have to be pretty dull-minded not to marvel in childish wonder at it all, you really would.

Anyway, today's the last day of this sprint. The Irish project is still barrelling forwards, alarming some and exciting others. The Project Manager, with whom I'm getting on much better now I'm more comfortable in my role, is on holiday next week, leaving me to pick up from him and drive the project forwards into the next phase. Hopefully this time I'll be able to get a proper handover and won't end up feeling like the idiot I did last time.

And tonight - the perennially amazing Maximo Park at Brixton Academy. I've not seen them since the release of their last album earlier this year and, although I've seen this lot more often than any other act, I'm still so looking forwards to it - it's guaranteed to be brilliant.

Phase end, widget, drinking

More techie stuff, sorry. I'm writing this post using Microsoft Live Writer, which is a little app which lets me write blog posts without necessarily being online, something that's potentially quite useful when travelling etc. Provided it actually works, it'll change the way I use this blog quite a bit.

 

That said, you might start to see more maudlin entries from Dublin hotel rooms moaning about being bored and / or overworked etc. We'll just have to see.

 

Lately work appears to be picking up - I'm feeling less like I've no clue what I'm talking about, which is a good start, and of late have occasionally been producing stuff I'm actually rather proud of, even if it's just a well-turned spreadsheet. So that's all good. This phase of the Irish project finishes tomorrow (day trip to Dublin, bah), with next week once again resembling a great unknown filled with terrifyingly unbillable days.

 

However, I'm largely ignoring that at the moment, looking forward instead to heading up to Leeds to see an old friend and watch the England v France game amid a storm of homemade cocktails. Speaking of which, caught up with Melvin on Tuesday in the lovely La Perla on Maiden Lane, happy hour margaritas and top notch Mexican food, all good, highly recommended.

Prague 2

Home again, and I can't say I'm sorry to be back - Prague was great and we had a great time, but it's charm was somewhat lost on me I think. Perhaps it was the enormous crowds of shambling octogenarian American tourists (which put me in mind of the Night of the Living Dead for some reason), I'm really not sure. I'm not the world's biggest dumpling fan, either.

This is coming out sounding less charitable than I mean it to - we did have a storming night on Saturday night (bar - restaurant - bar - bar - bar - bar - bar), which was a mighty success by anyone's standards. The smarter bars in Prague really seem to know how to treat you; cigars arriving with proper ashtrays, lighting splints and cutters, malt whisky with water and ice on the side, should you wish to interfere with your drink. Martinis were pretty damn good and they even sold absinthe properly, with the flaming spoon of sugar to swirl into it.

That was all in one bar. We got out for about a tenner each. Amazing. On the whole I'd say it's a great place for a weekend; go for the nightlife, go for the more expensive looking places and don't bother sightseeing unless you particularly fancy gaining first hand evidence to back up your creeping prejudice against the colonial elderly.

As you can imagine, I'm still a bit sleepy. Work is increasingly mental as we're speeding up towards the end of this four-week sprint (still on the Irish project), building a business model and an organisational blueprint for our client. It's all new to me, but I'm learning fast, I think. I hope so, anyway. Two weeks to go...

The picture is the door handle on the inside of our amazing apartment, by the way. What a find...

More Dublin, training, lost clothes

Re my last post, I've over it now, and am quietly getting on with the serious business of sucking all 2.whatever million tracks out of the service whilst I still can, as I believe a number of other 'subscribers' are. Hooray for small mercies, I say. Oh, and whilst the mochaccino from the machine on the first floor wasn't that bad, the espresso was lethal. Although there were some mornings when Bruno (bless 'im) got in before me and was thoughtful enough to place a MUG full of it on my desk, which I think had no fewer than four rocket-fuel espressos in it. 30 minutes later and elephant tranquilisers couldn't slow me down. My most productive mornings, I think.

Anyway, back to Dublin this week, fortunately only for a day trip (although these tend to be the most tiring of all, out on Wednesday at 0430 and back around 2000, straight to the pub for the old place's semi-official leaving do, which I'm really looking forward to. This week I'm mostly writing a business case which is turning out to be more detailed than it has any right to be, and hoping fervently that all my adding up's correct. I noticed a small error the other day where I'd forgotten to divide by 1,000. Aaaanyway....

Then, on Thursday and Friday I'm in some hotel out near Reading somewhere (ooh the glamour; Kathryn gets to go to all sorts of shiny places; I'm somewhere off the M4...) on a Consultancy Skills course. I've no idea what'll be involved, but with any luck I'll be all skilled up after that and won't have to pretend at being a Consultant as I've been doing with varying degrees of success for some months now. It's been a bit like a real-life 'Faking It'; I wonder if anyone's cottoned on yet....

... and then, on Friday night, the Kiwi and I are off to Prague with some other kiwis for the weekend, hooray. I'm told it's back to its former loveliness after the recent influx of stag dos (who've all gone to Tallinn now) so I'm rather looking forward to it.

And on a final note, I've just heard a production designer on the Vodaphone Live Music awards describe Motley Crue as 'heavy metal herberts', which has made my evening, pretty much. More when I get back from Prague, unless there's wireless at the hotel on Thursday night. Looks set to be an interesting week.

Oh, and one more thing - lost clothes. I thought that, in the interest of maintaining the underlying theme of this blog (The Adventures of the Kiwi) I thought I should mention the absolutely wonderful episode yesterday where she had to knock on the door of one of the flats in the building next door to retrieve her shorts and a towel which had blown off our balcony whilst drying. We're still one towel, a dressing gown and a pair of knickers short; the people who own the properties they blew onto are away, so the knickers will have to stare forlornly at us through our kitchen window til they get back. What must the neighbours think....

Are we there yet?

For those of you not in the UK, today is a bank holiday, and what I'm doing instead of feeding my beer baby in the pub is sortofworking. I've had to invent a new word for it, because it's not really working, but I am actually doing constructive professional things in between doing this damn thing that Kathryn posted on her blog and has been intermittently occupying my time all morning. I've also been listening to more Pet Shop Boys than is probably healthy, but I'm in a sunny sort of disco mood and have had Se A Vida E going through my head since I woke up, so there you go.

However, apart from doing my expenses form (yay!) and fiddling around on Facebook (damn you facebook), I have actually been working this morning, and the main reason for this is that the Dublin project appears to have slipped another week, sort of. I have found this in the past though - instead of everything being delivered with a triumphant flourish on the due date, it all sort of trickles in over a period of several weeks. This is feeling like the last week of it all though - we've got a fair idea what we're building and how long it'll take, so work could conceivably begin next week.

I'll be involved then, although the build is taking place in the UK, so the visits to Dublin and their accompanying 0430 wake up calls will be less frequent, fortunately. I'm also going to miss the first week of the project because I'll be in Corsica working on my ability to do nothing for hours at a time (which I got quite good at in Sardinia last year). That's ok, as as far as I can see, week one will be all about working out who's sitting where and all the techies making sure their development environment is all working and so on. Nothing I really need to be involved in, I don't think.

One thing I will have to do before hols is give a wine tasting to my colleagues. 30 of them have responded to an invite to one on Thursday evening - normally 10 is a challenge to keep under control, so this could be something of a challenge, but I'm looking forwards to it. Will be a nice way to end the week - although it could make packing on Friday morning something of a challenge.

So, holiday then! Off on Friday, two nights in Nice (must... make... joke...), a week in Corsica and then one night in Cannes on the way back. Well, it's not really on the way back, but it's in the area and the Kiwi's never been. Personally I thought it was pretty dull, but it's a bit iconic I suppose and the train ride down the coast past Antibes is really lovely. Good cocktails at the hotel bars on the Croisette, too...

I can't bloody wait, to be honest. Apart from anything else, I've forsaken beer for the past month or so in an effort to be able to see my toes again, and I'm so looking forwards to that first cold one by the sea. That said, I've noticed a real improvement - I've cut out beer and almost entirely cut out bread lately. I've not really been exercising all that much more, but I'm visibly trimmer, so that's my top dieting tip - drink less beer.

I'm sure there'll be photos and all when we get back, but for now you'll have to make do with one of a pile of unnaturally shiny apples on reception at last week's hotel. They were definitely real: I think they'd been polished.

Update etc

So, you've probably noticed that it's been a while since my last entry, and so it has. I've not got bored of this blogging thing, I've been alternately manically busy and avoiding getting online for non-work purposes in a kind of 'laptop brings pain' sort of way. So here I am, with a rare Saturday to myself and in a bit of a communicative mood. Work is finished for the day, having spent this morning trying to get something right that's been plaguing me all week.

On that. One of the major frustrations I'm finding at the moment is that whole thing about just not knowing stuff. There are things that are expected of me which I'm just not being told about, and of course when it turns out that I've not done whatever it was, I end up looking a bit rubbish. There's also the annoying thing about knowing what it is I need to say or communicate, but not knowing the 'proper' ways of doing it. These have been a recurrent themes over the past week or so and have been getting on my nerves somewhat. I think we're almost over the worst though, for now.

This particular phase of this project has slipped by a week, which isn't great news. The Project Manager came back from holiday on Monday (my 30th, incidentally, more on that later) and predictably was appalled by how random it'd all got in his absence. Personally I reckon that properly briefing the team and formally appointing a de facto team leader might've helped, but there you go, what do I know? One more week to go, looks like a bit of a week of absolute hell to me, most of it spent in Ireland with nowhere to hide.

On a more fun note, I turned 30 on Monday, which was horrifying. I'd never really been that bothered about it, but all of a sudden towards the end of last week I was starting to feel like I'd really not got to where I wanted to be in general by this age. I reckon I was being a bit too hard on myself, but it got to me a bit all the same. The pain was eased slightly by an afternoon in the park with some friends on Saturday and lunch at the River Cafe on Monday, which was absolutely tremendous, something I'd wanted to do for years.

The Kiwi, continuing her trend in buying me potentially lethal gifts (last Christmas she had me thrown out of a plane at 15,000ft), has bought me a first helicopter flying lesson. I'm really looking forwards to it - one of my life's ambitions has been to learn to fly a helicopter, so she's done well, I'm amazed and so touched that she's picked up on it. I suppose the only worrying thing about it (apart from the fact that there's no reason to be found in most schools of physics why something like that should actually fly) is that having wished for it for so long I turn out to be rubbish at it. We'll see. I'm bracing myself for my Christmas present, which will no doubt be a 'Beginner's Lion Wrestling' course or something. She's ace - always helping me push my boundaries.

Speaking of continuing trends, I've discovered that for the first time in my life, I'm actually getting fat. This is truly horrific. I've always been slim, and yes, sometimes tended towards a little beer belly, but I've never actually noticed wobbliness. Until now. I've cut out beer (sob), bread (making finding lunch more tricky) and I'm trying to get some exercise in where I can. Which reminds me - must go for a swim. In fact, I think I'll do that right now.

Rant. Pure, unfettered rant.

There, warned you. I've been in the most appalling mood for the past few days, inspired almost entirely by the people around me and their complete inability to follow instructions. Let me paint you a picture of recent times, starting with a mid-point presentation to the client at the end of last week.

All the way through this project, I've been clear to the creative team what the priorities are from the client's point of view, and how the fact that we've understood what these priorities are is crucial to maintaining our credibility. Despite this fact, two key points were missed off the presentation. I mean, so key that the client had to spend about an hour going over them again, pointedly looking at me with a sort of 'are you some kind of idiot' look on his face.

Coming out of the presentation, I mildly voiced my concerns to the group, and we settled on redesigning the whole thing the following day. That was actually quite productive, and I thought we were getting somewhere. We did, to an extent. The plan was to re-present to the client (who's on holiday - we presented over the internet) today, with more fully formed designs and technical solution.

Everything turned out well, except for the fact that we presented a homepage design without any advertising, one of the key points missed off the first session. Cue me going very red-faced and coming up with a number of excuses and again, looking like a bit of a fool.

So, whilst we're more or less back on track and I'm reasonably sure of getting this all sorted by the end of next week, I'm not exactly loving some of my colleagues right now. Stuff like that, by which I mean blatantly not listening to briefs and following one's own agenda, really doesn't help speed things along. It doesn't help that my 30th birthday falls right in the middle of it all, and I don't think I'll be able to properly relax with all this going on, in fact I know I won't be able to.

Still, all good experience I guess. Off to Dublin again tomorrow, thankfully just for a day trip, back there again next week for a couple of days. Can't decide if I want to stay on this project after this phase... jury's out on that one.

Must... blog...

Very quick one, as falling asleep on keyboard. Somehow wearing self out without seeming to be terribly productive. Hotel was lovely, lunch today at Tate Modern was too (albeit rushed), going to Manchester this weekend hooray, only in Dublin for a day trip next Thursday hooray again, mind leaking out of ears due to uncontrollable heaving beast of a project - booooo.

More comprehensive stuff next time, promise. When I've had some sleep. And maybe some of that EPO stuff that gets cyclists to the top of hills. Should be able to get me to week 5, I reckon...

Tales of Mayhem

This week's been one of those which is a bit like crashing whilst snowboarding. You're careering along at a fair pace and all of a sudden, nothing quite goes wrong as such, but for some reason the world's going upside down and round and round and things are hitting you from all sides and everything's white and then it stops. And you think 'Am I still alive?', before gingerly picking yourself up and doing it all again.

There's a few reasons for this. One is that the whole project is gathering pace, and now we're properly into the thick of it. Once you get into the detail you tend to find out a lot about the people around you - how much they're really involved, whether they're actually bothered about delivery, how good they actually are at their job, what their personal expectations from this are and so on. Can be a tense time.

The other reason is that the Project Manager went on holiday yesterday and that sort of puts me in that position. Which is fine and all, but to continue the analogy-fest, it's a bit like being in the passenger seat of an 18-wheeler and looking over to find the driver's jumped out. I'm intending that when he comes back in two weeks' time he'll find himself surplus to requirements, but I'm not sure I can quite pull off that sort of coup just yet.

So the past week has been productive, tiring, a fair bit of fun and generally ok. Thought I'd share with you the view from our office in Dublin, too. It's rather nice, can be distracting sometimes. I've also managed to upgrade our hotel slightly, possibly a bit further than I thought: one of the chaps who came over last week asked me to get a better hotel next time, as we'd been relying on the client to sort that element of the logistics and although the hotel's alright, it's not great. I gently mentioned this to the client, who said that they only had an account with the one we'd been staying at so we might as well sort it ourselves. I found the next closest hotel on a map and asked our travel elves to book it for me, which they did.

Turns out it's Bono's hotel. Well done me. Thought I'd get a bit of stick about this but apparently it's a sort of thing they do at our place. The thinking being that if you're being forced to spend time on your own, in a foreign city and away from your loved ones etc, you ought really to at least be able to do this in a pleasant environment. Round of applause for my employers, please.

In other news, everyone should check out www.wefeelfine.org. It's ace.

And here we go again...

Another 0430 start tomorrow, shudder. It really does leave you feeling a bit dislocated all week, that sort of thing, and dropping out of my normal routine does tend to leave me somewhat ruffled. I'm sure I'll learn to deal with it in time, the rest of the team seem to manage ok.

Given the relative silence from me this week I've decided to jot a little entry down now (whilst telling the Kiwi that I'm working, which I sort of am. Sort of.). You see, we have but one ethernet connection in the Irish office, between numerous people, and the connection in the hotel is appalling, so my opportunities to do interweb stuff are a bit limited. I'd hoped to be able to give nightly updates or something, but there you go. Oh, and if you think I'm doing this from my phone, stop right there. It took me 20 minutes to write an email the other day.

On the whole it's been a productive week. I'm fortunate enough to be working with a very experienced Project Manager who's giving me a fair bit of guidance, which is great as I've not worked as a Business Analyst before. There's a certain discipline to it, which seems to be aimed at coaching people for whom analysis doesn't come naturally through the whole thing. It's a case of putting fairly rigid processes around what for me is a pretty natural way of thinking, so once I'm through the learning curve of understanding those processes I should be ok. End of next week, I reckon. It's sort of fun, in a challenging kind of way.

One of the things I'm having to learn about at the moment is unions. See, as a child of the Thatcher era, I know nothing of unions in practice. All I know about them is that getting rid of them left a lot of working people rather exposed but meant that more senior people could make more money, or something like that. Anyway, the unions are alive and well in Ireland, and one has to tread extremely carefully when entering a business to potentially effect change. I've horrible visions of the Irish fondness for kneecappings and the like, but I'm told that doesn't happen nearly as much these days.

I did actually write a big long blog post last week, typing it into Notepad and intending to paste it in when I next got online, but I decided not to expose you all to what was a fairly downbeat entry about how bored I was and how over this whole working away from home thing I was. True, I was getting a bit sick of crap TV, no swimming and no Kiwi, and any city's pretty much the same old boring nonsense when you're there on your own (as I was for much of last week, effectively), but I decided in the cold light of day to count my blessings etc. I went for a run the next morning south through the canals of Dublin, with all the hedges sparkly with dew and the morning sun just starting to warm up the cobbles and everything sort of popped into perspective.

Flying back into London on Thursday was a real eye-opener, can't tell you how good it was to get back to this city which, despite all its failings I really am starting to love. Was truly amazing to walk out of the tube later that day into the Kiwi's arms and get back HOME, where there are unthreatening pubs and normal money and decent food and reliable internet connections. She made a brilliant paella on Friday night too, fantastic thing that she is, having batted those lovely lashes at the fishmonger in Notting Hill and come home with some of the fattest tiger prawns I've ever seen. I'm a very lucky chap.

So, lunch today at the best pub in West London, the Temperance just by Putney Bridge with some friends of ours who've just announced that one of them's in a family way, and then an early night and doing it all again next week - we have pivotal workshops Tuesday and Wednesday, including dinner out on Tuesday which apparently might stand a chance of changing my opinion of Dublin cuisine. Presumably this means it's not in one of the thousands of kebab shops which seem to be the cornerstone of Irish foodiness. Here's hoping...

Dublin 1

Very quick one today as I'm supposed to be working really and have a meeting in 23 mins, but I wanted to drop a note in to say the I'm installed in Dublin and about to embark on this project proper.

After getting up at 0445 yesterday morning and flying over here, we got straight into the client's offices and went through all the admin stuff you have to do when working on a client site; security passes, laptop access etc and went through a series of project kick off meetings, resulting in a very tired and head-spun me stumbling off to the hotel later that afternoon in no mood for anything except a hot bath and a big soft bed.

Bit clearer this morning having had some sleep, went for a run down the Liffey for an hour or so at 0600 and very lovely it was too on this sunny, crisp morning. I got thinking about river cities on the way out and back, the Liffey's a very quiet, slow river, very calm and inky black and so still you can see the insects rippling the surface in places. Compared to the churning, milky, rolling Seine or the purposeful power of the Thames it's really quite sleepy and village-like. Got me wondering if you can define the sense of a city through the character of its river, which is the sort of not-entirely-nonsense-but-nearly I'm prone to dreaming up whilst running.

I know I've only been here a day, but I've not really got the measure of this town yet (it's my first time here). Architecturally it's a weird mish-mash of styles which don't really compliment each other at all; this feeling carries on into every aspect of the place creating a sense of laissez-faire and general lack of aesthetics which I'm not finding too endearing at the moment. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but it still feels like a bit of a frontier town, with everyone building their own thing regardless of context - don't they have town planners here?

Anyway, I'll have more of a wander round later in the week. Everyone says this place is wonderful; I'm never one to take the received view without finding out for myself though. The client is great though, very welcoming, very forthcoming and supportive, and in many ways we've a totally blank sheet to work from, and a 7th floor office with a gorgeous view to work in. Fingers crossed this could turn out to be a very cool project to work on... although four days a week without my Kiwi is a very high price to pay.

The Incident With The Pigeon

Well, what a busy morning we've had. Picture the scene - I'm still in bed, reading a truly awful bit of chick-lit I found under the bed for want of anything better to read. The Kiwi's on the phone to her dad in Australia. We hear a bit of a commotion going on in the kitchen and, still on the phone, the Kiwi wanders through to find out what's going on. I remain in bed, pondering quite how chivalrous it is for me to leave her to investigate the goings on in our kitchen.

Cue reentry of the Kiwi into our bedroom, wide-eyed, screaming and generally in a state of abject terror, poor father on the other end of the phone and the other side of the world wondering what the dickens is going on.

"OHMYGODTHERESAPIGEONINTHEKITCHENGETRIDOFITGETRIDOFIT"

Now, as I think I've mentioned before, we live on the third floor. Our kitchen window is a sash, and looks out onto the back of the building and that of the building in the next street over. The sash was open this morning, and a great stupid flying rat had managed to get itself into our kitchen and was perched awkwardly on the top of the bottom sash, which was raised up to more or less the top of the window.

Those who know the Kiwi well will know that she has a bit of a thing about birds. For me, this is the first time I've actually encountered a genuine phobia up close. The difference between a mild dislike (oh, I don't care much for birds) and a phobia (running away, shaking, tears) is quite striking. It's a fairly serious and alarming thing to see someone you care about in such distress and I hope this doesn't come across as poking fun at it.

Anyway, back to the story. Still in a complete state, I shut the Kiwi in the bedroom where I think her dad tried to talk her down a bit. Got a dressing gown on and went through to the kitchen where the poor thing was perching on the sash, supporting itself against the window with its wing and eyeing me nervously. A bit of armwaving and verbal abuse later (from me, directed at the bird) and a few headlong flights into the window pane (the bird, not me), it was off.

So the Kiwi is calmed, stops quaking a few minutes later. Finishes conversation with father. I get in the shower to shave my head, as I tend to do of a Saturday morning. 1 minute in, knock on the door. Woeful face appears through it.

"It's pooed."

Histrionics begin again, quietened down and sent to the shop to get breakfast whilst I 'deal with it'.

And so out of the shower, looking like I'm about to have brain surgery with about a quarter of my head shaven and a towel wrapped round me, disinfecting the kitchen. Mentally jacking up my brownie point score.

I think we're ok now - post-breakfast, showered, reading paper and with a kitchen that even C-Difficile wouldn't survive in. I'm off to Dublin next week with work (FOR A MONTH), so you should expect a fair bit of bloggage during that time as I'll be lonely and bored. I'm back for weekends though, so it's not too bad and I'm sort of excited despite being a bit terrified. More on that later - it's lunchtime and I'm hungry again.