The House Husband

We had a funny episode at work today. Nick (at work) has just started life with a smartphone and has been struggling to come to grips with it. He’s not that keen on a touch screen, particularly for texting, so I suggested he try Swype. He loves it and had spent the week getting used to using it when it suddenly disappeared.

Sometimes it does this – I don’t know why. It’s not a major thing and is easily fixed. Of course that is always going to be dependent on the user knowing how to do it. Nick didn’t so I fixed it for him and showed him how in case it happens again.

While we were discussing the wonders of modern technology, Leona (Head of Something or Other in the Office Next Door) walked by on her way to the coffee and just said in passing that she’d never put petrol in a car and would be hard pressed to know where it went.

Further revelations were forthcoming after this outrageous admission. She has never changed a light bulb…EVER! I have no idea how old she is but she’s at least 30. That’s a long time to have not changed a lightbulb. She actually admitted she didn’t know HOW to change a lightbulb.

This makes her sound a bit dim but she’s not at all. She’s very good at her job and has a bubbly but intelligent personality. She is also well liked. She’s just not very good with ordinary, every day things like the replacement of light bulbs.

This was all before lunch and caused great hilarity in the basement. After lunch, Leona paid us another visit to tell us she had just done something really silly.

She was walking through the museum when her phone rang. It was her dad. They chatted for a bit as she walked along. Apparently they chat quite often. She was probably telling him that he had been remiss in not teaching her the basics of household survival.

As she walked and talked, she reached into her back pocket for something when a cold shiver ran through her body. We all know the feeling. You expect something to be there and it’s gone. A wallet, a £20 note, gold watch. It’s a horrible feeling.

Leona stopped in her tracks, patting herself down, starting to feel quite desperate. She told her father she’d call him back later, she’d lost something and had to go. He, naturally, asked her what she’d lost.

“My phone! It was in my back pocket but now it’s gone!”
“I think you’ll find, you’re talking to me on it.”

After we’d managed to calm down, having all exploded into uncontrollable laughter, this episode sparked the usual conversation about losing glasses when they’re on your head, something I do quite a lot.

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At lunchtime I popped into the V&A, deciding this week to visit the Chinese and Japanese galleries. While there, I discovered the work of Ah Xian, a Chinese artist born in 1960. His work (in the museum at any rate) features four porcelain busts. Given this one is called ‘Bust 34′ I have to guess there’s more than four!

Bust 34 by Ah Xian

I think they are all strangely beautiful but this one was my favourite.

Interestingly, Ah Xian moved from Beijing to Australia in 1989 after Tiananmen Square. He moved to Sydney in 1990 and I think he’s been there ever since. He spent eight years in Oz working as a house painter and five years trying to get political asylum. This display of his porcelain busts was supported by the Australian government via the Arts Council. I’m not sure if that means it was financially or emotionally supported.

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Now, I think it’s about time I admitted the truth. It’s come to my notice that it is a bit of a struggle going out on a Friday night these days. It may be an age thing but after getting up at 6am, slaving over a hot computer for six hours then going shopping for my wife, I felt pretty chilled and not ready for a night on the lash with Stevie B! Of course, that all changed when I saw him.

Last time we met up, Stevie couldn’t drink because he was driving and had work the next day (it was, after all, only his second week there), which was why we planned a Friday night. However, the non-drinking night had been so good that I’d decided not to drink as much as usual, pace myself a lot slower and just enjoy the company and chat. I have no idea whether Stevie decided the same thing but he matched my drinking pace and we both remained delightfully sober.

As usual, we chatted about everything and anything and all ports in between. And then the bombshell that wasn’t, given I have been waiting for it since they were married. Lara’s pregnant. He showed me the 12 scan of ‘Bubbie Beattie’ which I refused to go gooey over, telling him it looked quite weird with it’s teeth on the outside of it’s head. It’s too early to know the gender but Stevie wants a boy. Mainly because there is already an awful lot of girls born in his family and he wants to go some way to redress the balance.

Here he is begging Lara to bring his (forgotten) wallet down to the pub just after she’d dropped him off.

Please Babe!

Last night there was an accident on the M25. This is not exactly headline news – I’m pretty sure there’s probably a number of them each day – but this one had Stevie stuck in it. And we were meeting up for a drink and dinner. This is opposed to the usual drink, drink, drink and kebab because he was driving and also doesn’t want to give a bad impression to his new bosses.

Yes, Stevie has a new job! After spending half his life working at the same place (albeit with different names), he was head hunted by the opposition and whisked away to far greener pastures. To say he’s loving it would be underestimating his enjoyment.

This is when you realise someone truly is a friend; when the glue that keeps your relationship together is no longer there. We met through work and while our conversation always transcended such mundane things as the people we worked with, it was still difficult to ignore them completely. Thus, our conversations would quite often be about mutual colleagues. Don’t get me wrong. These were generally pretty entertaining, given the people, but a relationship needs to move beyond the common environment and head into something less tenuous.

To be fair, I’ve regarded Stevie as a friend for a very long time. Our conversations have always been diverse and extremely pleasant. The two of us are always interested in the other’s newest pursuits (and older ones, of course) and we can talk for hours. Like last night. We hop from subject to subject with nary a break for air. It comes from enjoying each other’s company.

Anyway, the night was very, very pleasant. We spent it at the Wheatsheaf (a favoured haunt of old), by the big roaring fire, supping on big pub food and the odd pint of Stonehenge Eyeopener.

Our conversation went from Stevie’s new job to my wrist to Lara’s job to mutual apps on our Android phones. (So nice to see someone else with sense enough not to have an iPhone.) We also spent a lot of time discussing photography as Stevie has a DSLR very similar to mine.

But, sadly, as all these things must, the night drew to a close. The big brass bell was rung at the bar, the lights were turned full on and we stepped out into the cold. Stevie dropped me at the station and we rapidly started planning our next night out. Hopefully it will be in January.

Stevie Duderino

And thus is explained the lack of a blog post yesterday. Although the drinking was at an all time low, I still didn’t manage to get home very early.

My sleeping is still pretty interrupted even though the pain is all but gone. The cast is just uncomfortable when I move and I wake up. Which means I wake up feeling like I’ve not been asleep. Last night was no different. But then I get to indulge in the time honoured tradition of the Granny Nap.

After lunch, reclining on the big lounge, poodle in my lap, I drifted into a deep sleep. I was having a lovely dream I cannot remember but which featured Stevie, before Carmen decided I really needed to know that someone had stopped outside the house with a dog. I managed a good two hours though and felt a lot better.

The best part of the day was the arrival of my Limbo M67 Adult below elbow injury waterproof protection sleeve. This fantastic device means I can have a shower again! Although I have to wait for Mirinda because it’s impossible to get it on one-handed. Still, it’s going to be a welcome addition to my weekend and means I get to wash my hair.

My life has become filled with the tiniest joys.

I haven’t seen Stevie since November 3 last year. I know the date exactly because it was the Wednesday before I went to the opera when we unexpectedly bumped into Tom which was the Thursday before my birthday on the Saturday. So we had a lot of catching up to do.

As usual we chatted about everything under the sun after I brought him up to date with the medical situations in Oz. Nicktor has suddenly decided he wants to walk Hadrian’s Wall and I was amazed when telling Stevie that he’d never heard of it. The wall, not Nicktor’s new mania. So, of course, we then had a long chat about the Romans in Britain and the extraordinary wall.

Normally we start drinking in Sovereigns but we’re always chased out by the noise of quiz night (or “…eggheads at Sovs” as Stevie calls it) so this time we decided to go to the Wheatsheaf which is a nicer pub anyway because it serves 6X. Imagine my horror when I was standing at the bar ready to order drinks and noticed a sign which stated that quiz night was Wednesday at 8pm!

When I told Stevie about it he was shocked and horrified that the two best pubs in Woking were unusable on a Wednesday night. We sat, sullenly staring at our beer. This morose mood didn’t last long and we were soon chatting away again.

At about 9:30 I suddenly said “I guess the quiz night is cancelled tonight.” This was very pleasing. We sat and drank and chatted until the bell went and they kicked us out.

I staggered home and was greeted by two insane poodles at about 12:30. Bed was very, very welcome.

I woke up feeling decidedly seedy, dragging myself out of bed at 8am. But drag I had to as I had a lunch date with Dawn today. My second Cansfield this week.

After a lazy couple of hours I managed to stand up under the shower long enough to get clean and set off for Haslemere.

My first stop was the music shop to replace Mirinda’s missing capos for her guitar. Chamberlains is a wonderful music shop with lots of mysterious instruments that always look compelling. They have lots of pianos scattered throughout the first floor and today a tuner was sitting at one constantly hitting a single key, giving very fine adjustments to it before moving on to the next one. It was extraordinarily annoying. I mentioned it to the shop assistant who shrugged and said you didn’t hear it after a while. Fortunately I was only in there for five minutes and left hurriedly, capos firmly held in my hand.

I was a bit early for lunch so I wandered up to the Shottermill ponds to look for something to blip. The geese (there are many of them around the ponds that regularly attack dogs and small children) were all asleep or lying down gazing placidly at the seagulls. This lot were ignoring the traffic.

Not bovvered

The sky was nearly all blue today and the pond looked quite picturesque. An excellent blip, I thought, and took this.

Shottermill upper pond

I then wandered down to the Mill where Dawn was actually waiting for me. This has never happened before. Not that I can remember anyway. We went in and ordered lunch and beer.

We spent a lovely hour chatting about her PHD, Nicktor’s new walking mania, Blip, going on a dig this year and many other things. For lunch we decided on the Mill pie with vegetables. It was lovely but massive. The veg was very welcome as I’ve not eaten that well this week.

After lunch we drove up to Linchmere to look at the glass door in the lovely little church of St Peter. It’s amazing. It gives a wonderful view of the graveyard and across the valley. It brings the outside world into the church in a wonderful way. And then we spotted my blip for today.

On one of the walls there is a carving. It depicts the seven deadly sins with a row of little marble heads, each representing a sin. It was carved in France during the 14th century. The little heads are marble and the stone they sit in has been carved to look like monkish cowls around them. I blipped ‘envy’ because his face was pretty grotesque. You can see him here.

7 Deadly Sins

After taking a few hundred photos, Dawn drove me back to the bus stop at Shottermill and, after a wait of five minutes, I made my way back to Farnham in an empty bus. Well, apart from the driver and me. I felt a bit self concious as I’m reading My Family and Other Animals which makes me chuckle on almost every page. The driver did look at me rather oddly when I left the bus.

Oops. I went a bit mad in the hot bed. I stupidly dug up and threw away some perennials. I have been soundly told off. I misunderstood the instructions. I have no excuse apart from my stupidity. Let’s just forget about that and move on…

I had a great night out with Stevie. Marriage has not changed him and we drank and chatted away just like old.

He raved about Australia. For their honeymoon, he and Lara started in the far north of Queensland, did all the usual spots then flew down to Sydney to meet up with his sisters. They loved Sydney (how could they not?). He was amazed at the lack of crowds.

His sisters surprised them both with tickets to Rigoletto at the Opera House. I was stunned. Just how long had Stevie liked opera? This was the first, he said. And he loved it. He thought it a bit odd that the supertitles didn’t change as often as the singers sang but I explained that they just repeat it a lot. He was sitting next an American man who loves Rigoletto and who has seen it all over the world. When Stevie said it was his first opera, the guy gushed and said he was so lucky that this was his first because it was so brilliant. He was very enthusiastic, Stevie said, making his wife constantly try to rein him in.

From Australia, they went to Japan and Hong Kong but we didn’t get that far. Talk moves with a fluidity that defies logic when we chat. The concept of a linear conversation escapes us.

Then, oddly, we moved to O’Neill’s, something we rarely do when who should spot us but Tom. Weasel Tom. He is in Woking with Glyndebourne Opera. He asked if I’d like to come and see the opera for £10. He said the production was terrible but the music was great and there’d probably be enough free seats for me to lie down and just listen to the music. I told him he was really selling it. Anyway, I gratefully accepted his invitation and am off to see it tonight.

Stevie and I then left the pub, popped into Poppadom Charlie’s for the obligatory late night dinner and then, finally, said our goodbyes on platform 5.

And then, today, I destroyed the hot bed. Though, I would like to add, that I managed to find the yarrow and replanted it so, hopefully, no harm done.

Here’s a picture of the poodles in the park.

Poodles among the leaves

Gate Street Barn is a fantastic venue. Buried deep in the Surrey countryside, hidden away from everything yet still reasonably close to civilisation. Actually, that’s not altogether true. It’s nowhere near civilisation.

It’s a wedding venue, among other things, and today it played host to Stevie & Lara. And what a day. Yesterday it rained and the BBC was promising all sorts of wetness for Saturday but, according to Stevie, he paid a load of Chinese engineers to seed the clouds away and, voila! Sunshine and blue skies. Funny how people say ‘skies’ when there’s only one.

Linda was a tad annoying in getting us to Bramley. For some reason she figured it would be a terrific idea to take us via Guildford. She was pretty wrong. Guildford on a Saturday afternoon is NOT very nice.

Even with Linda’s best efforts, we managed to get to the wedding before the bride. I was thinking this was our first wedding since arriving in England but, of course, it’s not. We went to Nicole and Luke’s way back along time. It marked our only trip through Croydon. We were forever blighted and will more than likely never go again.

We also went to Oxford to see Ben & Monali married. And, when we really thought about it, it seemed we’d attended more weddings over here than back in Australia. Quite odd.

Still, it was lovely seeing Stevie finally married. Of course the bride was as lovely as all brides are, the speeches were funny without any rude surprises, it was all very traditional even though it contained nothing about god…except the time the father of the bride mentioned him.

Something Mirinda asked was why celebrants face the people and the couple face the front. In a church, this makes sense. After all you are pledging your troth in his sight and need to face him (at the altar) but when the ceremony is not religious, it would be much nicer if the guests could see the couple and not the celebrant. One of those odd things we seem to cling to for no reason other than it’s what everyone does. Still…apart from the fact that we couldn’t hear anything, it was a lovely non-religious wedding, and they both looked lovely.

It was a great afternoon and we left them to it, asking Linda to direct us home. This she could do, without going via Guildford.

Mr & Mrs Beattie

When I grew up, one of the roughest towns nearby was Blacktown. It paid to be very streetwise when venturing out at night. Being close friends with a few locals helped a lot. Well, when I think of Woking, it reminds me of Blacktown: Fine during the day, a bit scary at night. And I’ve always called Stevie a Woking boy. He’s lived in the area all his life. He knows the right places to go, the right people to avoid looking at, the right kebab shops, etc. Well, no more!

Yesterday evening, Stevie met me at Woking station in his mini, all Mr Slick with his car keys, and took me for a spin around the area where he grew up. While it isn’t that far from Woking proper, it is worlds away. A leafy suburb with big, set back lawns, towering hedges and sleepy streets. He grew up in a paradise! No longer the Woking boy, he shall henceforth be the Little Prince. Sadly, we didn’t drive by his parent’s mansion. He was concerned that they’d spot his rather distinctive car and force us inside.

He then drove me to a nearby lake, where he goes fishing. He parked up and we walked over to admire this massive reservoir of water. Yachts sail on it, it’s so big. It’s about the size of Frensham big pond but long rather than round-ish. It was a glorious evening and nice to see so many people enjoying the water. It was also quite chilly so I was also quite surprised.

Back into the car and off to Shere. Shere is one of those English villages that has parking for 12 cars and manages to attract 30,000 people every weekend. It is the quintessential English, chocolate box kind of village with two pubs, an old church, Tudor buildings, thatched rooftops, the works. Mirinda and I used to live quite close to Shere when we first started living in Surrey. We went over one weekend, drove around a bit, then came home, it was so crowded. That’s a slight exaggeration. We actually managed to find a spot and parked, wandered around then visited the White Horse pub for a beer.

It was no easier finding a park last night but fortunately you can park a mini in the smallest of spaces, which we did, then wandered up to the White Horse for dinner. It’s a brilliant country pub. It was a farm house originally and became a pub in the early 1700s. Very welcoming, good beer and excellent pub food. Stevie went all blokey and went for the mixed grill while I had the delicious gammon and eggs (my usual pub dinner).

Stevie, being the good, concientious chap he is, drank some fizzy stuff with blackcurrent cordial in it while I had a few pints of TEA. And I have to say that it was delicious. It’s interesting that beer from the same brewery can taste differently in different pubs. For instance, TEA is quite undrinkable in Wetherspoons in Woking but it was fantastic in the White Horse. Like buying it fresh from the brewery (something Nicktor often does when he’s been working in Guildford as the brewery is about a mile from here).

We had a lovely long chat, catching up on each other. He is presently engulfed in wedding plans – he is due to marry in September – as well as preparing for a friend’s wedding at which he is best man. The wedding will be by a celebrant (a registrar over here) in a garden and sounds like it will be lovely. Like they all do, I suppose. He also ran the half marathon in Reading, which I find amazing. Not because he’s unfit – he is the fittest person I know – but because it’s an amazing thing to do. Running 13 miles. Incredible.

We left Shere and popped into the Onslow Arms at Clandon where a band was playing to five people and a dog. The dog seemed to be enjoying the music more than the five people as it’s tail was swishing in time to it. I had a pint of Shere Drop, a very local beer with a lovely summery palate. We chatted some more and then he drove me back to Woking where we made the usual promise to make it a monthly thing.

It made a big change to our usual meet-ups as we didn’t get drunk. I mean, Stevie didn’t drink anything! I think we should try and do it like that next time as well. It makes for much better conversation and I can read the paper on the train going home.

Stevie proudly holds up his car keys in the White Horse