Date Archives: Wednesday August 31st 2005

You know how you have these periods where you keep meaning to get around to doing something, but you just keep putting it off until, well, there’s just no excuse for your procrastinating and you feel guilty?

Well, I feel guilty because I’ve missed updating the site for most of August. Actually, all of August. I have no excuse. Well, I have one excuse – we decorated the bedroom, which took a great amount of effort and over a week to complete. It does look much nicer now, if that’s any consolation.

Normal service is resumed as of now, though, so September will be better, I promise.

Oh, except for the third week, where we’re going to Portugal for a holiday. Yay!

Last Friday we went for Fliss‘ second scan to check that the baby was in good health, had all its limbs, organs – all that kind of thing. This is usually when you find out what sex it is, assuming you want to know.

We did want to know. We’d been looking forward to finding out. Fliss especially, and me almost as much, as I figured that learning the sex of the baby would instantly unlock that previously untapped part of my brain that equips you for fatherhood.

The baby had other ideas, mostly revolving around comfort and shyness. What other reason would you have for crossing your legs during a medical examination? Me? I would cite shyness as a very good reason, so I’ll give my future son/daughter a pass on this one.

Despite the best efforts of Fliss and the baby scanner lady, prodding away at her belly (Fliss‘ belly, not the baby scanner lady’s) in order to get some movement, the baby wasn’t giving away anything.

So that’s that – now we have to wait until the tail end of December to see what we’re getting. Almost fitting, really.

I’d gone down to London especially for this night out in Islington on the first weekend in August. I knew my former workmates Jess and Ray would be there, and possibly Rick too. Oh, and Dave, the director who made me redundant. Dave was leaving the company, too, so it was more of a leaving do for him than an actual reunion, as a lot of the people I’d hoped to see couldn’t make it.

Still, it was great to catch up with Jess, Ray (who still does his turn up late with a big entrance thing &ndash this time it was with cigars), and Rick, who turned up looking in great health, like some bronzed surfer dude. There were some others I hadn’t seen for years, or worked with at all, for that matter, but the common bond of having worked in the same place made for good company.

The evening seemed to whizz past at quite a pace. Before I knew it Rick had left to catch his infamous last train home, and the modest crowd had dwindled to a merry few. At one point I was drunk enough to tell Dave that I thought he was an honest, stand-up guy. Which was weird – I thought he was a lazy, problem dodging git when I worked with the company, but time heals all in this case, and looking back it’s easier to see why he played the role he did.

Danger, High Voltage
After saying farewell to Jess and Ray, I ended up in a gay club with Stuart Rae at Kings Cross. The reason being is that I was staying in cousin Iain’s room, but Stuart had the key and I needed to go and meet him at a location of his choice or end up roughing it. It later transpired that the room had been left open, a fact that Stuart did not disclose to me over the three hours of queer intrigue set to a soundtrack of immeasurable gayness that followed.