You Appear To Be Writing A Blog

I need an extended break. It's been a while - not counting Christmas, it's been six months since I last had some time away from work. The old Duracells have powered down and are in need of re-juicing. I just need a spell on the sidelines; away from my desk and the meetings and the looping code that loops everywhere apart from where you precisely want it to go. When I look out the window at the moment I see skies that are brighter and bluer than a new born baby's eyes and I immediately get to thinking I want some of that. My office smells of recycled sweat and it gets both stifling and suffocating and it gets in your clothes and eventually you cannot wash it out anymore. So I need a break.

I already had next Wednesday to the Wednesday afterwards booked off for our brief and once important and now forgotten trip to Germany. So the idea to bookmark this minor excursion with two extra days off each side to make up a full fortnight off (or if you're counting, sixteen days) contained a few degree of appealing mileage. My only stumbling block would be to clear it with Peter Handyman. Who's been back in the past couple of days but hardly in the sunniest of moods. But, the last time I checked he was still pretending to be my chum so I knew it wouldn't be a completely hopeless endeavor.

Leaving school is marvelous, isn't it? The two major joys of which are no more homework and no more teachers. So, you get into work (with its longer hours) and you start taking work home (because those longer hours are not quite long enough to cover what you need to do) and you encounter bosses (who are far worse than teachers as a teachers could do was lob a board rubber at you whereas bosses can make every day of your working life a intermidable misery. Hold on...)

So wearing my eight-year-old boy's body with its red, nobbly knees and laughably unfashionable pudding-bowl cut I crept up to Peter Handyman's desk. He sat there, staring balefully at the screen. He must have been in a bad mood as you could smell the barely-subdued anger. He looked at me and asked how much I knew about Microsoft Word. I said enough to know it's a complete pile of cack. Peter went on: There's been an new install overnight and now whenever I try to type a letter that bloody paper clip pops up and tells me I'm doing it wrong.

Ah yes. The Microsoft Paperclip, possibly the most hated animated character in history behind Scrappy-Doo and Sir Fred Goodwin. Only my company would install a version of Word on our machines that still had that bloody thing on it. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if an edict came out telling up we were all going to have to revert to Windows 3.1. I once opened a blank word document and typed in "Goodbye Cruel World" just to see if that chuffing paperclip would pop up and say "you appear to be writing a suicide note. Would you like me to help you with that, or perhaps give you the number of the Samaritans?" - but it obviously had the sense keep quiet.

So I reached across to Peter's keyboard and mouse and a few clicks later the pesky paper clip laid six feet under. Peter thanked me and asked what I was after. I said I'd like to extend my holiday a couple of days either side. He made a little bit of a pantomine in appearring to deliberate but then told me that that would be fine once I'd bombed off an email to personel informing them of my requirements. Which I did so immediately at my desk.

So from five-ish tonight I shall have sixteen clear days off. This hath sparkedth my better mood a little. No idea what I'm going to do with so much free time (aside from the time spent in Germany although I've still no real idea what we're all going to do whilst we are over there. I'm relying on Colin to provide the suggestions on that count. Obviously a look around Cologne will be on the agenda, but other than that...)

Came no closer than solving the Lukas/Gabe Basketball/Martial Arts conundrum last night. Last weeks decision (neither of them) was a bit of a cop-out, next week we will be in Germany, so this week I had to take one of them. I told them to flip a coin, hoping (with complete selfishness of course) that Lukas would emerge victorious as I can at least watch him play, but Gabriel emerged the triumphant flipper. Lukas reacted in a way I was quite surprised by - he started crying. Not gushing tears but his face filled up and his lips thinned as he struggled to maintain a twelve-and-a-half year old's expected composure; it was weird and so unLukaslike in seeing him like that. I put my arm around him but he shrugged it off and went stomping off to his room. Bit of an over-reaction, I thought. I asked Gabe if he knew if anything was up with Lukas at school but he just shrugged and said he didn't have anything to do with Lukas at school. So much for sibling concern, then.

Took Gabe to the Martial Arts academy and we had a very brief chat along the way. I asked how he'd gotten things sorted with Lian but he just said they'd gotten back together naturally, whatever that meant. I asked if he'd asked her why she'd not gotten him anything for his birthday but he said the topic had never arisen, and hopefully it never would.

I will ring Sarah up tonight and see if I can persuade her to make the long trip up from Southampton some time before I am off to Germany. It really is about time she met the boys. If she can survive that, then at least I can allow myself a little further hope that this relationship may somehow turn into something concrete.