Baby

I’m often quite uncomfortable talking to Christians. So I wasn’t terribly happy to find myself sandwiched between a few of them at a wedding reception I was at on Saturday. They sat there talking across me about their passion for the lost, and all the things God was doing in their lives… And I sat there wishing that I could be anywhere but there, or at the very least that I could have considerably more wine inside me. Eventually the food was served, and the conversation shifted to topics that I was more suited to - viagra jokes for example. Nice.

I ate well, and had a few more drinks, and the dancing began. I had a few dances with a few pretty ladies, and in between dances I ranted at a girl that I presumptuously refer to as my best friend even though I’ve made little to no effort to keep in touch with her of late. I moaned and complained about life, and all the problems I’m facing, and how I don’t understand what’s really going on. She said that Alison and I should pray about it, and rely on God for guidance and support. Christians, huh? So predictable.

I’ve not made any concerted effort to read the Bible since I moved house in August. I’ve not prayed in a much longer time than that. I’ve given up on believing that my faith has any perceptible impact on my life. I’ve gone on going to church out of habit, kept saying the right things to stay in the Christian conversations, and just got on with my life in the meantime. I’ve been content to believe that I’ll get to heaven in the end, if only on the technicality that I believe in God and believe that Jesus came to save us, even if that means nothing for me in my daily life. God will be obliged to let me in, because I’ve just barely fulfilled the requirements. And while Jesus may indeed have said “In my Father’s house are many rooms” I’ve come to accept that I’ll end up in the garden shed. Heaven, but only just.

So, after a few more dances at the reception, it was getting towards time for the beautiful, happy couple to leave. I got a lift back to the station from my friend’s boyfriend’s twin brother’s fiancee, with everyone in between. A 20 minute car journey with 4 enthusiastic Christians. Thankfully, we talked about sport and Dirty Dancing. Hardly my two specialist subjects, but certainly more comfortable topics than might have come up.

I headed back to my friend’s flat where I was staying the night. We chatted, ate a pizza and played on his flatmate’s Nintendo Wii. We didn’t get to sleep till gone two.

The next morning, as we were having breakfast, the aforementioned flatmate asked what we had been up to the night before. We told him that I had been to a wedding. “Oh,” he said, “any nice bridesmaids there?”. Had my brain worked quicker, I would have replied with “Yes, but not as nice as there were when I got married.” Sadly I didn’t come up with that witty riposte until about 12 hours later. My friend bailed me out, telling him that I was in fact married with a child. “God almighty” came the reply.

A few hours later, as I sat on the train back up North, I thought to myself - “God almighty indeed.” He is largely responsible for my getting married to Alison, convincing us that it was the right thing to do. He then followed up with the whole unexpected baby debacle (pronounced deh-backal, as per John Cusack in High Fidelity) and the associated drama of finding a new house and a new job in a new part of the country. Thanks God.

No, really, thanks God. Thanks for ensuring that my life isn’t boring. For keeping me on my toes. For giving me things to live for. For giving me a wife and daughter to look after and love. For putting me in the right job, providing me with a great house, and a supportive church to go to.

I realise now that while I’ve been struggling on, battling through life, God has been there, in the background, helping me out. I’ve left him out of my plans, and tried to do things in my own strength, abandoning him, giving up on prayer and the Bible, but God has stayed with me, helping me along even though I was doing my best to ignore him. He helped me to get a degree and a wife in practically the same breath. He has helped and is still helping Alison through our first few years of marriage. He has brought beautiful baby Beth to us, safe and healthy, and more amazing every day. He saw to it that I would get the right job, even though my first interview was such a disaster that after it finished I called Alison to say that “It was a disaster. It will be an act of God if I get that job.” I didn’t mean it at the time - it was an off the cuff remark, but I was right. I didn’t deserve that job in any way based on that interview, and I can’t believe that anything I said or did got me through to the next round.

A couple of hours later, my train arrived at Wigan station, and I met Alison and Beth and we went home. We put Beth to bed and had the evening together. Before bed, I said to Alison that we should pray together. She was surprised to say the least. That’s really not the sort of thing I say. So we prayed and went to sleep. This evening we read our Bible’s and then prayed. Tomorrow we will do the same. And perhaps if I make the effort with God, He will come closer, and speak to me again.

I’ve spent too long trying to be too passive in my faith. I’ve believed that it can be just a habit, that I can be a Christian without having to do anything about it. I’ve expected God to keep speaking to me, while ignoring his instructions to sort bits of my life out. I’ve thought I could get by without praying, or reading the Bible, or making any effort to follow God’s plans. I was, to say the least, wrong. So it’s time to pull my finger out, and do all the things I should have been doing all this time. Praying, reading the Bible, talking about my faith… It begins now.

I’m not fixed yet, but I’m surer than I’ve been in a long time that I’ll get there.

So... I've not written anything in ages... I've not really been using the web much of late, at least not in any way that requires any creative input. Blog and facebook have gone out of the window really. Let's try writing something and see if anyone comments, besides the usual clamouring crowd of spambots. No, sorry, no one wants your realty porn, whatever that may be. Anyway...

Work is pretty busy and interesting, which is good. I appear to have settled in rather well to being an accountant, which is something I swore I'd never do. It's not boring, honest. Training is going well, and the trips to London are looking like they'll get to be more fun come the summer. Frisbee in the park = good thing. That being said, sauna on the tube = bad thing... I think walking will be abundantly more tempting.

Beth is doing well. She seems to be permanently teething which makes for much wailing and gnashing of the relevant teeth. Apart from that she's getting the hang of lots of other stuff. Here's a quick list of newfound skills:

• Saying "Dada" and "Mama" to us.


• Standing up and cruising along stuff.


• Pointing at stuff she wants.


• Dropping stuff off her high chair. This is funnier for her than for us.


• Putting things in our hands and laughing when we say thank you to her.


• Starting to get the hang of her shape sorter.


• Recognising the house when we come home from somewhere.


• Crawling everywhere.

So, that's all good.

Things might be clearing up a bit God-wise, but I'm not sure. I'm sure the comparison between rich men (or more pertinently, those who put their faith in money) getting into heaven and camels getting through eyes of needles could just as well be applied to those with scientific knowledge... Not that science is a bad thing, or it can't co-exist with religion (which I'm sure it can) but it does make things a bit challenging when people use science to try to dismiss God. Still, I'll struggle on, through stubbornness if nothing else.

Music... I bought Elephant by The White Stripes the other day. A bit older, but pretty good so far. Quite an impressive variety of sound from what is mainly just two people. It achieves a raw, rough sound without resorting to mountains of producing it to make it sound that way. I'll have to give it a few more listens, but I think I'll be getting some more of their stuff.

Films... I want to see Spiderman 3. We're going to visit my parents in a few weeks, so we'll probably take advantage of being able to leave Beth one evening and go out to see it. I also want to see Pirates Of The Caribbean 3, but I might end up going to see that when I'm down in London without Alison. After the huge disappointment of the second one, I'm not exactly hoping for much, but I'd still like to see what happens. Maybe they will salvage things. I hope so. I'm also looking forward to Die Hard 4, though I'm sure it'll be little more than Bruce Willis blowing stuff up and coming up with one liners. Nothing wrong with that once in a while.

Right. I'll try to post something more constructive here sometime soon.

Platoon was on TV the other night. I watched it while trying to fix my computer, which decided to take a nosedive last week. I'm not sure which was the bloodier battle, to be honest. I didn't succeed with fixing the PC, so I'm now forced to pick up some new bits and bobs. Curses. On the plus side, the film was damn good, if you like war films, which I rather do.

I've not written for a while, largely due to the aforementioned PC death. I've got a post planned which should provide significant amusement, but again it is contingent on getting my home PC up and running again, so for now you'll have to make do with a generic news type update. News follows:

• I'm not dead, in spite of two weeks of not blogging


• Beth can now pull herself up into a standing position. If you leave her sat next to the sofa, she'll stand up and lean on it. She did it like three times in the bath yesterday. She's also got about a million teeth (or maybe it's closer to six) which is pretty cool.


• Work is OK. It's pretty busy, and pretty crazy at times. I feel out of my depth quite a lot, and I'm often having to learn stuff on the fly with no real clue what I'm doing. I usually get the hang of it OK though, so that's a mercy.


• I played through Zelda: Link's Awakening again the other week. For a game that's about 15 years old, it's awesome. I'm also trying to play A Link To The Past on my DS, and failing to see what all the fuss is about, even though it's supposed to the best Zelda game ever in the world, bar none. It's too hard and it makes no sense. Or perhaps I suck at it. Hmm.


• I'm selling a whole bunch of junk on ebay. Someone buy it. Go on. Please.


• I still suck at Fantasy Football, but not as much as the 5 people below me in the league. Unlucky.


• Life On Mars is back on the TV, and this is a good thing because it is awesome. Now, if I could just muster one computer in this house that works, I could set up my magical TV recording box and record it, on account of how I will be out at Bible study this week. Bible study good. Missing Life On Mars not so good.

That's about all I can think of right now. I haven't bought anything exciting lately, so I can't witter on about music or films or whatever. The most exciting thing I've bought lately was a hard disk which caught fire, which is not a good thing. Anything that runs the risk of burning my house down is generally deemed to be crap, so I wasn't too impressed with that. On the whole, 3/10 for surprise value alone. Even The Killers album was better than that.
Right. It's supper time, so I'm off. Bye!

Well, considering one of my New Year's Resolutions was to blog more often, I'm so far doing a pretty shocking job. Still, on the off chance that anyone's still reading, hello! I've just paid my subscription for my web hosting for the coming year, so I guess I'd better make the most of it.
Christmas was good, New Year was OK, that's about all there is to say about that. Beth got oodles of presents, all of which had to be unwrapped for her as she is too little to have a clue what's going on. Still, we all had fun. I spent a couple of nights with my parents to give Ali a break from Beth, which went OK. Kinda better than expected, given that it's the first time I've looked after her on my own. It meant I could go and see some friends on the Wirral, which was good as I'd not seen them in ages and most of them hadn't seen Beth before. The manager of the coffee shop where we met, where I used to work, didn't believe Beth was my baby. Perhaps I don't seem the type to be married with a baby. Still, there you go. That being said, one of Alison's mum's friends future son-in-laws who incidentally works at the estate agents that have just sold my house (small world, etc) was amazed that I've managed to get through uni, get a job, get married and have a baby by the age of 24. Anyway.

So... what's happening? Well, work is going well. I've not been away to London in ages, so I've had a good run at things in the office, rather than just the usual 3 week gaps between training. I'm feeling pretty settled in the office, and I think I'm doing OK at stuff, though I've got an appraisal coming up soon, so I'm sure I'll find out how I'm really getting on when that happens! I'm looking forward to the next trip to London, as I've not been in ages, and I do quite like it. It'll be good to see everyone again, and hopefully we can go out and have fun and all the rest of it. It's kinda weird having to cram the bulk of my social activities and going out into one week a month with people I don't see the rest of the time, but that's the way it goes.
Alison and I are in the midst of arranging a summer holiday. We're going to Finland, as I've not been in years and Ali has never been, and my relatives over there haven't seen Beth yet. We've got flights and my parents (who we're going with) have sorted a big cottage for us to stay in. Apparently my brother and sister and their respective significant others might be coming too, so it'd be a big crazy multi-generational family holiday. Now that I think about it, it could almost be the premise for some trashy comedy film, the blurb of which would no doubt tout the "hilarious consequences" that ensue, but hopefully all will go according to plan and we'll have a good time. Roll on... uh... August.

What else is happening...

• My Fantasy Football team is languishing near the bottom of the league. Rubbish.


• I'm trying to build a media center PC. So far this involves selling anything I can find to buy computer components.


• Beth can sit up for hours. She can't crawl, because she seems to be stuck in reverse. She is learning to eat, but it's slow, and often it boils down to her painting her face with Weetabix or inadvertently sticking bits of carrot up her nose or whatever.


• My Nintendo DS Lite is probably the best thing I have ever bought and I love it. I'd buy a Nintendo Wii as well if I had the money.


• We put curtains and wall hangings up in our bedroom the other day, which makes it look a whole lot better.


• We watched Big on DVD last night. It's a great film.


• We've just finished season 5 of 24 on DVD. It was great. Far superior to season 4, and easily up to the standard of seasons 1 and 2. I wish we had Sky so we could watch season 6, but I guess that will have to wait.


• I've read Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. It was brilliant. Quite scary and haunting, which is kinda weird as most books and films don't really bother me. This genuinely unnerved me, to the point that I was scared walking around the house in the dark at night. Really well written, and clearly inspirational to swathes of horror film makers. I had a nightmare about it last night too. Weird.

Right. My lunch hour is nearly over, so I figure I'll just submit this and be done with it. No links today. Shocking, I know.

See you soon.

Tangent: All I Want For Christmas by Mariah Carey is the best Christmas pop song, and pretty high on the list of bestest general pop songs ever.

Now, back to my life and what's happening in it...

I've been busy lately... I've also been ill. I've had a cold and sore throat and such like since I got back from London, which is pretty rubbish, but I'm managing. More rubbish is the fact that baby Beth is now ill, and is waking up in the night and hacking and coughing and generally not being very happy. Pretty naff really.

So... what's been happening? Well, we went to Leicester over the weekend. It was pretty tiring, given the non-sleeping nature of Beth, but it was good to see all our old friends and go to church there and such like. So while the trip felt kinda hard to justify when we were getting lost en route or being woken up at 4 in the morning (in someone else's house - even worse) it was worthwhile in the end. Pretty good on balance.

It's nearly Christmas. This is good for various reasons, not least because I really, really need a holiday. I'm tired in the extreme and need a break from work. I do like my job, but I am about ready for some time off. It's the training that's hardest to be honest - it's not easy doing a full day at work and then coming home and having to do homework on top of it. It's worse than school, I swear. It's certainly worse than university, hands down.

I've bought some CDs just lately. Here's my thoughts:

Sam's Town by The Killers

This is a pretty disappointing album really. The single, When You Were Young is about the only genuinely good thing on there. The new single, Bones, is a horrendous invitation to treat (if I may abuse the terminology of contract law for what might better be described as a blag for a shag) with an absurd horns section that makes the whole thing sound like it was produced by Andrew WK. There's a couple of good tracks, like Reasons Unknown and Read My Mind, but the rest of it is just bland and forgettable. It would appear that The Killers have a limited amount of quality per album, so while their debut had extreme highs in the singles that make up the first half of the album and extreme lows in the latter half, this follow up is just consistently middling. As an esteemed colleague of mine said, there is nothing remotely anthemic here - there's certainly no All These Things That I've Done, and the aforementioned When You Were Young is just barely as good as Somebody Told Me, which isn't the highest praise. I really cannot recommend this album in any way.

12 Stops And Home by The Feeling

This, I can wholeheartedly recommend. It's unabashedly poppy and bright, but is that a bad thing? Wikipedia cites the mighty ELO as one of their influences, which explains the full and exciting sound, and also goes some way to explaining why I like them. The album is quite varied, but it flows well from one thing to the next. Love It When You Call is probably the high point for me - joyous 80s hair rock that The Darkness never quite managed to deliver. Probably the best CD I've bought this year.

Black Holes And Revelations by Muse

Ah, Muse... I'm going to do a bad thing and compare them to Radiohead, simply because their musical path is somewhat reminiscent of Radiohead's route from The Bends and OK Computer (cf. Muse' Origin of Symmetry and Absolution) into the realms of weird experimentation on Kid A and Amnesiac. Black Holes seems transitional in the same way that Kid A and Amnesiac were. In and of themselves, these albums aren't all that much to listen to, but they led to the mighty Hail To The Thief (which, tangentially, some lady on the train was listening to this morning - pretty heavy for 8 in the morning. She also had it on random play, which I consider a crime) which is one of Radiohead's finest works. Will Muse follow up Black Holes with a similar masterpiece? I don't know, but I do know that I hope that this record is not the end of the journey. It's not that it's not musically accomplished or uninteresting... it's just... unsatisfying. There's too much stuff on there that feels out of place or out of character, as though it's a test of different styles. In the words of Roy Walker, it's good, but it's not right.

So, that's music for you. I also picked up High Fidelity on DVD, which we watched last night. It's a great film, and it's a rarity for a film to be different from the book that spawned it, while still being as good. I love both the book and the film - they paint such a good picture of a certain type of man, a man that is pretty much me. The lead character is a person I could have been, given various twists in history, and it all feels very close to home. I love it.

Talking of books I could have been in, or written, I've just finished reading a book called A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. It's a sort of memoir about a guy's life after his parents died and how he looked after his little brother and so on. It's only loosely based on real life, and it certainly plays with the semi-fiction idea, being very self referential in an Adaptation sort of way. It's good, and funny, and quite clever, but... It just doesn't seem to deliver. I'll try to explain why. The premise of the book appears to be that the writer is writing with a view to experiencing some sort of catharsis from the death of his parents, as though by thrashing all his experiences out on paper he will somehow be liberated from them. Alas, by the end of the book it seems to become apparent that this is not occurring, and that for all his attempts to get over things this way, he just can't, and he will always carry them with him. The trouble with this is that to me, the reader, it then appears that the book is a failure - as though I have read something pointless. The writer sought closure by means of my reading about his tortuous experiences, but he doesn't get it - have I then wasted my time? The thing that bothers me further is that this failure is acknowledged by the writer, as though he knows the book can never help him to get over the deaths in this way. So does that make it OK that he failed? If he knows he failed, and he writes that into the book, does that make it OK? It's a bit confusing to be honest. There's a paragraph in the book which might serve to illustrate this a bit better. The writer is in the process of throwing his mother's ashes into a lake, but things aren't going quite right. I'll transcribe the section below...

I am doing something both beautiful but gruesome because I am destroying its beauty by knowing that it might be beautiful, know that if I know I am doing something beautiful, that it's no longer beautiful. I fear that even if it is beautiful in the abstract, that my doing it knowing that it's beautiful and worse, knowing that I will very soon be documenting it, that in my pocket is a tape recorder brought for just that purpose - that all this makes this act of potential beauty somehow gruesome.

And that, in some sort of way, is where the book suffers. It's good, but it's pointless, but if he knows it's pointless, is it good regardless? It's hard to say really, especially when you're finishing off this post after coming home from the work Christmas party. Anyway. I guess you get the idea.

My one other criticism of the book is that it appears to be somewhat over edited, to give it the impression of being very cavalier and off the cuff, in a comparable way to certain bands who apparently go out of their way to make their music sound as though it was recorded in someone's bathroom on a Fisher-Price tape recorder from a jumble sale... but I digress. I'm not sure quite where the middle ground on this is, as the style suits the book, but I'm slightly suspicious of it, as it's clearly been carefully edited to make it look like it was never edited, if you follow me. Ho hum.

So... that's about that. I have indeed recently returned from the office Christmas party, which was good fun. The meal was good, the drink was free, and it was good to talk to everyone about something other than accounting! So, a good night all in all.

More sometime soon... Happy Christmas, if I don't blog before then...

Right then. It's about time I blogged properly, so here goes. I'm going to waffle about what I'm up to at the moment, and then post pics of Beth at the end, so if you're just here for the baby pictures, skip ahead.

So... life then. Work is going well. It's really quite busy. I've got lots of work to be getting on with, which is pretty cool. It's at a pretty good pace which means I'm always under enough pressure to be motivated, without it feeling too overwhelming. This is a good thing. I've been hearing some horror stories of some of my fellow trainees in other offices not having anything to do. One guy told me he'd spent the afternoon practising how fast he could say "Peter Piper". He got it down to 5.2 seconds, apparently. Impressive, but not exactly what he's there for. I might be off to visit a client sometime this coming week, which would be my first, and I might have a business trip to London a week or so later to learn something complicated. Exciting stuff. I am, as tragic as it may seem, really enjoying this job. For all my concerns about spending my life as an accountant, it's actually pretty good so far. Good stuff.

I spent some of my hard earned cash on a Nintendo DS Lite. It's easily one of the best things I've ever bought. I picked it up on ebay and it came with Nintendogs and that Brain Training game that you've probably seen people playing on the train/bus/plane/helicopter to work. Those two are pretty cool, especially Nintendogs. The whole stylus and touch screen thing is cool, even if it is just a contrived way of getting a mouse onto a handheld console. It's pretty neat to be able to talk to the dog with the mic and teach it tricks, and stroke it to say well done. Nifty. I've since picked up a few more games, including Phoenix Wright, a mad little visual novel type game about a lawyer, which Marilyn Manson, of all people, loves. So there you go. I like it so much I sold a bunch of stuff and bought one for Alison as well. Admittedly there is the ulterior motive that I need someone to play Mario Kart against, but she's been getting into it for herself, especially this mad little game called Cooking Mama which is, as the name suggests, all about cooking. Cooking Japanese meals. As you do. So, that's pretty cool. Heartily recommended. Buy a DS Lite. Or buy me loads of games for mine. I'm not too fussed which.

I picked up the new Muse album too. It's taking a bit of a time to get into, as it's a bit more obscure than Absolution. It's good, just a bit crazy. I think it'll grow on me. It's certainly very musically accomplished, to say the least.

We watched Good Night And Good Luck last night, George Clooney's film about the news reporting on McCarthyism in the 50s. It was very good, well written and well acted. It was quite concise, which bothered me slightly, as I could have watched a lot more of it. The subject matter was certainly very interesting, and I like the sentiment that TV and journalism should be honest and challenging. I found the closing line of the film very strong:

"This instrument [television] can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."

I don't know if I mentioned it at the time, but I remember thinking that sort of thing when I watched Gunther von Hagens autopsy programmes on Channel 4. It was astounding to me that TV could be so educational, when primarily it's just utterly forgettable crap, if I can be frank. As sci fi author Sturgeon noted, 90% of everything is crud. Now, autopsies are certainly different to political awareness, but I think the point stands. It would be nice if TV could actually challenge us once in a while. Anyway. It was a good film.

Things with Ali and Beth are good. Beth has been a bit ill, which has been hard work for Ali. She had some kind of bug or something that was making her sick, which was pretty gross and fairly distressing for her. She's come through that now, and is back to being cheerful, which is good. Ali and Beth are having fun, so that's cool. Beth is getting pretty good at sitting up, as well as picking things up and holding them, and putting everything in her mouth! She's trying to feed herself when Ali gives her pureed fruit and veg, which is entertaining if extremely messy. So... here's some photos!



This is back when Ali first started giving Beth some solid food, nearly two months ago. She's just had some passion fruit and was very pleased with it!



Here's Ali holding Beth, who's wearing a little snowsuit that my sister bought for her. It's really cute. It has a giraffe on it, which you can't see in the photo, and it's really snuggly and warm.



Here's me with Beth who's in a little dress that Ali got for her for like £2 or something, thanks to a handy voucher. Nice.



Here's Beth in her door bouncer. It's a proper life saver - she loves bouncing up and down, and it can keep her entertained for quite a while, so you can get on with something in the meantime. It also helps with getting the burps out of her!



Here's Beth on a swing. She has to be kinda wedged in (hence the blanket) but she really likes it. She starts giggling and grinning. Very cute.



Ali has found that Beth can be quite easily entertained by giving her random items to play with and look at. So, here's Beth having a look at the whisk. Tasty...



Lastly, here's me and Beth out on a walk just this afternoon. We went out to a place called Pennington Flash, which is a nature reserve type place with a big lake, and saw all the ducks and geese and suchlike. I carried Beth round in a little harness on my front and she had a great time looking at everything.

So... there you go. That's about enough for now! See you again soon.

I'm at home on a Monday night... It seems awfully strange after the past month of training away in London and Cambridge. It's over at last! I'm very glad to be home and able to spend some time with Ali and Beth. Good stuff. I'm finally in the office this week, and will actually be getting down to work on Wednesday when my inductions get finished. I'll let you know how it goes...

The second week in Cambridge was pretty good. The workload was slightly lower and the days slightly shorter which was a mercy. We were learning all about capital allowances, which I can't imagine you will want to read about, but which I have linked you to anyway. It's been pretty interesting, and certainly worth the time being as it's something we'll actually be doing in the office. The week was also helped along by the addition of "compulsary fun" which was an afternoon off work to do something a bit more exciting. I chose to go punting, which was good fun, but is a lot harder than it looks. We also had the usual assortment of evenings in the bar and playing pool and the like, though I did catch a bit of flak for putting on Leave by R.E.M. on the jukebox, in all it's seven minutes of siren blaring glory. Rock on. The stay in Cambridge also gave me a chance to see my cousin and her husband, who are expecting a baby pretty much any second now, which is pretty exciting.

I've been doing my best to make some new friends while I've been away in London and Cambridge. I'm not always very good at making friends. I certainly failed to make much a terribly concerted effort at uni, as the few uni lurkers reading this will likely attest, and as such didn't make a vast number of friends there, which was kinda unfortunate. I had something of an epiphany, silly though it is, after writing my recent post about how nice it is to have old friends, when I realised that - duh - it's hard to get any old friends unless at some point you make some new ones. Put in the context of the lyric I used at the time, I can't very well attain the precious few friends to whom I should hold on, unless I'm prepared to have some who come and go. So, I've been making more of an effort and trying to get to know people and have fun with them and so on. It's been going pretty well really, which is good. I've been getting to know lots of people from the tax course, in particular the people who I was staying in a hotel with in London. We're from all over the place, so it's kinda weird to be back in my office in Manchester and not be seeing my friends from Southampton or Leeds. It'll be good to see everyone again in 3 weeks when we're next down in London for training. So, I'm making some new friends... which is nice.

In related news, I've managed to get along to the church that Ali has found for it. It's called Christ Church Pennington and it's in one of the adjacent villages. They describe themselves as an evangelical Anglican church, which is pretty much exactly what we're after. We had a pretty good example of that crossover just this Sunday gone - the very Anglican baptising of two babies, coupled with a very spirited sermon from Matthew 25:31-46 about the sheep and the goats, complete with discussion of heaven and hell and so forth. Quite a departure from the usual Church of England baby dunking. So, there we go. Alison has got stuck in to taking Beth along to Mums And Tots and to a thing they put on called Tiny Church. It's good that she's getting to meet some other mums and so on. We definitely need that.

Beth is not well at the moment I came back from Cambridge with a cold last week and apparently gave it to her. She's all bunged up and full of catarrh which is not much fun for her. It makes feeding something of a nightmare, and she spends a lot of her time screaming which gets old pretty fast. She's had a bit of a temperature as well. Ali has got some Karvol, which smells like being ill in my memory, and some stuff which is like Vicks, but gentler. Hopefully Beth will get better soon.

And now... I need to go and feed her. I'll write more another day... always so much more to write! Bye for now.

It was our wedding anniversary about two weeks ago. We got sent various cards, including this one, which has nothing to do with wedding anniversaries, but a lot to do with me:



I guess that might not mean a lot to some of you guys reading, but Alison laughed a lot, and I had to concede the point. Everything must be straight. Things must be at right angles. It's an ever pressing concern. OCD springs to mind. So, that's fun.

While I'm busy posting pictures, here's a couple which don't violate anyone's copyrights... Here's Baby Beth aged 14 weeks, lying on her front on her baby gym. You have to put babies on their fronts to get them to exercise their necks which, as you can see, Beth is doing. Good work.



Secondly, here she is sat in her chair, grinning like mad. She was clearly very pleased with whatever was going on at the time.



Right. I've got some other stuff I want to write about, but I don't have time right now, so it'll have to wait. Maybe I'll do it on the train this afternoon. Off to training again... Last week now.

I met up with an old friend on Wednesday night, while in London. She lives and works there, so it made sense to meet up on the rare occasion that I was down there. I don't think I've seen her since my wedding, which was two years ago, which is quite a while. Sure, I keep up with her blog, but that's not quite the same. We sat in 'Spoons while it poured down outside on Marble Arch, and had a good catch up for about 3 hours. It was really good to see her and find out what's going on and see how she's doing.

There's some people, friends, who I've known well enough and for long enough, that meeting up with them and catching up is easy. We've got enough common history and we know each other well enough that its simple to just sit down and get on with talking and having a good time. I don't fully understand how it can be that easy, when you haven't seen someone for a long time, but nevertheless, it's certainly a good thing. I find it quite reassuring to meet people who know me that well, and who I know well, and there is just some kind of understanding there.

I think I like the idea of having some kind of fixed points in life. That's not to say that people don't move about and change and do different things, but that the relationship is quite a fixed thing. It's easy to pick up where you left off with someone like that, because you just know each other that well. Perhaps I find it particularly helpful at the moment when things are moving so fast and my life is changing around me.

I imagine that to those of you who know me even a bit, it should be plainly obvious that - outside of my family - the friends I have who I feel are that close are pretty much all women.

Anyway. I'd best cut this short, as I'm on the train (through the magic of wireless intermaweb access) and not only is my time about to run out, but I'm also about to get to my destination and my battery is dying.

PS I'm off to Cambridge for some more training. Alison and I had a good - if brief - weeked. We saw The Black Dahlia. It was pretty good. I quite like noir stuff. It was quite gruesome though, and while I didn't fully understand the criticism of Scarlett Johannsen as being overly sexualised, I did think Josh Hartnett and Hilary Swank were very good. Lastly, Beth giggled for me yesterday, which was a first, and was extremely cute. Bye for now!

Ali has just sent me a handful of pics of baby Beth to put up here so here goes... This first one is Beth at 11 weeks, which was about a week and a half ago. She's getting pretty big now, and she's so much more alert. She's also found her hands, as you can see from the fact that she's clasping them and putting them in her mouth and stuff.



This is surely one to keep for when she brings her first boyfriend home... although on the flipside I must admit to owning and wearing grey briefs, so I guess I can't really claim the high ground here.


And finally, this is officially one of the funniest pictures ever, and the cutest. Amazing. Behold!


So, there you go. That's Beth. See you again soon.

Well, actually I've been home for a short while and am about to leave again, but there you go.

So, I've had my first week away on training in London. On the whole, it was good. The work is going well so far, and it's been good to meet some new people and get to know them. It's kinda like uni all over again... except you get paid and you stay in a flash hotel and charge the cost of your meals to someone's expense account. So yeah, it's better than uni.

There's about 25 people on the course, I forget exactly how many. We're from all over the country. 7 of us are far flung enough (Bristol, Manchester, Leeds and Southampton) that the firm puts us up in a hotel, the rest have to commute in daily. The first hotel we got put in was pretty naff, and we got moved out of it after the first night because one girl found a mouse in her room. The next hotel was uber flash though, which we figured when the guy in the tail coat asked us if we needed a hand getting our luggage in. Nice. So, that made the whole "away from home" thing a bit more pleasant.

The days are pretty long and busy. The training runs from about 9:30 to 5ish, though we did finish much earlier than that the first couple of days. We've done some basic accounting, and then started studying law, and tax law in particular. We've been given our statute books, which are basically huge books with the actual letter of the law written in them. There's about 20,000 pages, which is not only scary, but also impressive, as the books aren't all that big. Still, you know you're in trouble when the index is the size of a regular paperback in it's own right. So, here's to 3 years learning to find my way around the books!

In the evenings we've been out and about getting our meals and going for drinks and stuff. I'm getting a bit of a reputation for eating a lot, as I'm doing my best to make the most of the expenses policy and the fact that someone else is paying me to eat in a restaurant. I may as well order 3 courses and finish them all, right?

I caught up with my sister on Wednesday night, as she was down in London for a few nights with her boyfriend. I met up with her in Piccadilly Circus, where I'm sure there were no actual Londoners, just tourists. We all had a drink and a chat, which was nice. Good to see her again. On the meeting front, I'm looking forward to getting to see some other people I don't get to see too often, which should add a bit of extra fun to the jaunts to London.

I got back home at about 9 on Friday night, which was pretty good going, but Ali reckons I can get back earlier if I go via Wigan... something to try in the future. We've had a good weekend together, much more relaxed and enjoyable than the last one. It's our wedding anniversary tomorrow, so we had a fancy meal last night (beef bourgignonegenonenegggee) to make up for my absence on the actual day. It's good to be back and see Ali and Beth again, obviously. Beth has grown a bit since I last saw her, and as Ali had told me, is now "talking" like crazy. She makes all kinds of cooing noises and burbles away to herself, looking very pleased. It's well cute.

So, back to London tomorrow. 1 week down, 3 weeks to go. I might try to post during the week, especially as I apparently get free broadband access in the hotel. See you soon.

Well, so far work is pretty good. I had my induction in Manchester on Thursday, which went well. We had various talks about the firm and the job and the different streams (audit, tax, business restructuring) that people are doing. It was also a good time to meet everyone and start getting to know people. At the end of the day we all got the train down to London, and headed off to the Hilton, no less, for the night. It was, to say the least, quite flash. My room had two queen sized beds, which is about 4 times more bed than I need. Still, I wasn't about to ask to be moved to the nearest Travelodge! We went out for dinner at a random Italian restaurant (located above some suspicious looking night club with an ominous sign stating "Minimum spend per person: £44") which was fairly nice, and I wowed everyone with my maths skills by dividing the bill in my head. Which was fun. We headed off to a pub for a drink then all crashed back to the hotel.

The next day started with breakfast, as it should, but this was no ordinary breakfast! This was Hilton hotel breakfast, which means you can have just about anything you can think of for breakfast. I went for Danish pastries, yoghurt and cereal. Quality. After that the real business of the day began with our full on induction. We had more talks about the firm, and this time also had specific talks about the training for our particular stream. For me, that meant 3 hours or so of being told about the tax training, which sounds pretty tough really! We shall see. We had a fancy lunch, and at the end of the day headed off to "the BDO pub" as it is apparently known, being as it is round the corner from BDO's main offices. Drinks were free, which was handy as I had no cash on me at that point. After a pint some of us headed off for the train back to Manchester. I finally got home at ten, in time to feed Beth before bed. So that was that.

So, jobwise things look good so far. All the people are nice, and the job looks hard but interesting, so that's good. No fears realised just yet.

This weekend has been good, but busy. I've been doing some of my homework ahead of time (keen!) so that the coming weeks are slightly less stressful. We tried out a new church this morning, which was a bit of an experience for one reason and another. Some bits of it were a bit on the Adrian Plass side, for those of you who have a clue what that might mean. We'll try a few more places and then see what we find. This evening has been a bit mad what with getting everything packed up for the coming week in London, which is not helped by the fact that I have to get up at half six and drive to Stockport to get the train on time. Fun stuff.

Ali and Beth are doing OK, though I do feel a bit bad leaving them behind on their own. Ali should cope, but I know it's an awful lot easier when there's another person round. Hopefully some people can visit her or she can visit them or something (hint hint). Beth is doing well. She's getting really heavy now! We're trying to teach her about hand eye co-ordination by attaching one of the cats rattly toys to her wrist with one of Ali's hair elastics, but she's not really getting it yet. Oh well.

Last but not least... my mum bought me the best card:



And no, that doesn't mean I've stopped playing computer games! See you all later.

Some good friends of ours did us a big favour and took Beth off our hands for the afternoon, giving us some peace and letting Ali catch up on some sleep. Beth has thrush in her mouth and Ali is feeling none too well, so feeding has become something of an ordeal, and we were very much in need of a break! We had to take Beth to the emergency doctor on Saturday on account of it, but fortunately she was prescribed some medicine for the thrush and appears to be improving.

So, that's the naff side of parenting... On the groovy side, Beth is learning to smile which is really cute, and is also getting some more control over her arms and hands so she should start developing well on those lines in the near future. She's also growing, and we're having to put her in 0-3 clothes rather than newborn now. She's nearly 8 weeks old... It seems very quick, but at the same time life without her seems a world away (6th quote down).

We went up to see my parents last week. It was good to take Beth away from home for the night for the first time, and get a taste of travelling with her. My parents and sister were glad to see her. They even got to look after her for an afternoon while Ali and I went to the solicitors to talk about all the house moving stuff. Things seem to be moving along well. Contracts should be exchanged by the end of this week, and we're moving the following saturday. It's all happening now! We're making a good start on packing, though obviously it's a bit difficult as it has to be fitted in around looking after Beth. As I think I said last time - I don't really like seeing all my stuff packed into boxes. It kinda makes you think about how much of your life you base around possessions and so on, which can be a bit of a can of worms when you really start thinking about it... Ah, materialism. Anyway.

Besides that... We're enjoying Season 3 of 24 on DVD (purchased on ebay for but £14 - get in), which we'll hopefully finish before I head off for training for most of September. I'm also finding myself somewhat charmed by Will Young's new single and it's Blue Peter video. So there you go then.

Oh, and I'm off to my friends' Sophie and Max' wedding on Friday. It should be a good laugh, and I'm looking forward to caileighing in my kilt again... I'll try to get some photos up sometime after that, in what will probably be my last entry from this house. See you then.

More pictures... I really want to blog something more substantial, but there's just not all that much to say at the moment. Things are crazily busy, but it's mostly stuff I've written about before. Being a parent is hard work - lack of sleep, lots to do, feeding, etc... House moving is going OK. We're off to sign contracts next week. It's freaking hot. Um... that's about it. Oh, and Ronan "arse" Keating has covered Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls. His version is near identical to the original, adding nothing, but sounding just different enough that you suspect it's a cover. Then you find out it's him and get cross because it's clearly just some absurd money grab and will probably sell more than the original! Anyway. Here's some photos...

It's Beth in a dress!



It's Ali and Beth at the dedication!



It's the cake my mum made for the dedication!



It's the extended family!



It's my brother (who was really taken with little Beth) and Bethany!



And now for something different... here's some pictures of butterfiles that I've been taking in my garden. We've got a couple of those big butterfly bushes and we've had loads of them turn up. I've seen about half a dozen different kinds, which is pretty cool. Here we go:

Peacock:



Red Admiral:



Tortoiseshell:



So, there we go. I'll blog more stuff sometime, I promise... Hope you enjoy the photos at least. Bye!