Dom Davis (The Blog)

"Blogging is not writing, it's graffiti with punctuation!"

I’ve been in and out of hospital many times over my life for a while host of things. Illness, kidney stones, wisdom teeth removal, broken arm to name but a few, but I don’t think I have ever had an operation. They have always been ‘procedures’. I think to qualify as an operation one has to be cut into and, as far as I can remember, they’ve never had to do that.

Today all that changes and I am having an operation. There is a blissful irony that this isn’t at the hospital, it’s at the doctors, and it’s going to be less traumatic and less invasive than most of the procedures I’ve had. This will be due, in the main, to it being a minor operation (very minor in fact, they’re removing a mole) but it doesn’t change the fact that it is classed as an operation.

As far as I know they’re only removing 1 mole, however, I’d like them to remove more if they can. I’m covered in them and there’s about 10 that I’d happily have lopped off. I shall consult with the doctor while I’m there and see what he says. Who knows, I may be in for a whole string of operations over the coming weeks.

Having adequate, if somewhat selective hearing I’ve never really bothered about subtitles before. As far as I was concerned subtitles were the things you had at the bottom of foreign films so you could understand what was going on.

The arrival of Willow has changed all this. Little Cottage is just that: little. We have one bedroom and all three of us [notionally] sleep in there (this is, of course, assuming The Zozo hasn’t taken a fidgety or upset Willow downstairs as has happened on more than one occasion). In order that The Zozo doesn’t get too bored while performing one of the many night feeds she likes to watch the TV. The problem there being that she doesn’t want to disturb me or Willow. The solution: subtitles.

The upstairs TV now pretty much permanently has subtitles turned on, even when we’ve got the sound up, and I find myself reading the regardless of if I need to or not. Live shows are the funniest as everything appears on screen a few seconds after its actually said with the odd amusing mistake, omission or correction. I know a lot of it is done by voice recognition, but there are times when I suspect some poor sod is just typing away furiously on their chorded keyboard in order to keep up with the stream of dialogue from whatever happens to be on at the time.

Having adequate, if somewhat selective hearing I’ve never really bothered about subtitles before. As far as I was concerned subtitles were the things you had at the bottom of foreign films so you could understand what was going on.

The arrival of Willow has changed all this. Little Cottage is just that: little. We have one bedroom and all three of us [notionally] sleep in there (this is, of course, assuming The Zozo hasn’t taken a fidgety or upset Willow downstairs as has happened on more than one occasion). In order that The Zozo doesn’t get too bored while performing one of the many night feeds she likes to watch the TV. The problem there being that she doesn’t want to disturb me or Willow. The solution: subtitles.

The upstairs TV now pretty much permanently has subtitles turned on, even when we’ve got the sound up, and I find myself reading the regardless of if I need to or not. Live shows are the funniest as everything appears on screen a few seconds after its actually said with the odd amusing mistake, omission or correction. I know a lot of it is done by voice recognition, but there are times when I suspect some poor sod is just typing away furiously on their chorded keyboard in order to keep up with the stream of dialogue from whatever happens to be on at the time.

Some time ago The Zozo and I ate lunch in an Italian in the centre of Norwich. The restaurant itself was nothing special, but what was special was the chilli oil. Most chilli oil you buy is pathetic but this had bite. Not only that, but one of the little chillies in the bottle fell out onto my pizza while I was pouring the oil on and it was seriously hot. Needless to say I found out where i could buy this stuff and ordered a load for home.

Since this chilli oil contains really chillies it actually improves over time and I’ve taken to keeping the old chillies and just adding more oil and more chillies to the bottle. The oil is now so hot that I can’t even use it for cooking if The Zozo is having any. It’s good stuff!

To celebrate the arrival of Willow (and to also congratulate the team on some big releases we’ve got out – but mainly Willow) I’ve decided we’re going to have Pizza at work for lunch today. In order to maximise the pizza experience I’ve also bought in my bottle of chilli oil. I haven’t decided what pizza I’m having yet, but I do no that whichever one it is, it’s going to be hot

So, ostensibly this is my first full week back at work. I am actually getting to escape a little early on Thursday due to a doctors appointment but this doesn’t remove the fact that there will be 5 mornings without Daddy Cuddles, 5 days where I won’t be at home during the day and well over 50 hours of being around my daughter stolen from me by work. This sucks. Royally.

I can see that The Tiredness that everyone has been going on about will start kicking in too. While The Zozo does a fantastic job of not disturbing me during the night with Willow there is no getting away from the fact that there is going to be a certain amount of interrupted sleep. When you’re getting up at 8, having 30 minutes worth of cuddles and then doing little other than strolling round Cromer, cooking, washing up and playing masses of Skyrim this is not a problem. When you’re crawling out of bed at 6:15 to then do a full days work it’s going to be a little more problematic. Since I blame work (and, to a limited extent Camelot) for getting me up at that time and taking me away from Willow I would suggest work be nice to me or risk having me snap at them.

I shall be investing a sum of money in Euro Millions tickets this week. A million would be enough to leave work and live off rental income. Half a million would probably do to be honest.

Having effectively missed two Mondays on the trot it’s only really to be expected that Monday was going to be out to get me when I returned to work. Such is its desire to ruin my day it’s completely hijacked Friday, an otherwise benevolent day. Yes, it’s back to work for me today. And it sucks. Mightily.

Despite the fact we haven’t been anywhere or done much for this holiday it’s been up there on a par with the honeymoon and I’m not ready for it to be over. People at work all said I’d be desperate to return after the two weeks were up but I can categorically state they’re wrong. Monday has stolen Daddy Cuddles and it’s going to be 11 hours until I see my family again. This makes me sad. I’ve said it before and I shall say it again, if we do this again I’ll be taking my full entitlement of paternity leave and butting as much holiday up to it as I can. To hell with the cost and to hell with work.

Not content with taking me away from my family, Monday has also inflicted physical injury upon me by way of paper cut (or more precisely, foil cut) from, of all things, a pill blister pack. You know it’s stooping to new levels there, but then I think it feels threatened. Tomorrow is Saturday after all, and there is absolutely nothing Monday can do about it. I just need to make it through another two weeks and I get to spend another week with my family again. In the mean time I need to have a word with Camelot about them holding up their end of the bargain so I can retire and live the life I’d like to become accustomed to.

I’ve been waiting for the release of Skyrim for about a year now. It’s the fifth in a series of computer role play games that I’ve been playing for years now and is panning out to be the best by quite a long way. Sadly my usual gaming machine is at the office and my laptop just isn’t up to the task of a big modern game like that so I’ve got the PS3 version. Playing on the console has the upside of not having to by new kit to play it but does have the downside that I need to share the television that the console is plugged into with The Zozo which means I can’t play the desired 18-20 hours per day that I’d otherwise aim for. That said, The Zozo is being good about letting me play so I’ve got a few hours game play under my belt. I can see it keeping me happy for a good many months, if not years.

I actually have two copies of Skyrim as I made the mistake of pre-ordering it from play.com. I had figured that it would get dispatched early (it was) and arrive on Friday ready for me to play (it didn’t). Since I didn’t know if it was going to arrive late, or just not at all, I also reserved a copy at Argos. This means I knew there was a copy of the game waiting for me without me having to actually by two copies unless I really had to. Sadly I really had to and I ended up walking to Argos to get my reserved copy. When the play.com copy comes (still not here) I’ll simply send it straight back for my money back.

I have two savings accounts. With the economy being in the toilet as it is these don’t so much offer an ROI as a handful of pennies for each grand squirrelled away in them. I would put the money in our ISA, but that’s full too – plus I never really know how long you need to leave the money in it to qualify for interest, I just seem to get some cash lobbed into it by the bank every year. Ironically enough the best rate of interest is on my current account, but that’s capped on the first few grand and I get to pay lots of tax on it.

The solution, it would seem, is to have a child. Willow now has an account that gives 3% on the first £20,000 and, while I’ll need to investigate the tax situation, I’m pretty sure I can get out of giving huge chunks of the interest to the government. Given we may also get money every month from the government (the jury is out as to whether “not means tested” means “not means tested” or “not mean tested below a certain income threshold, so really means tested”) Willow could be turning to a sound investment… or at least not quite as crazy an expenditure as she could be.

With yes days annoyance fresh in my mind I called my private banking manager first this this morning. The number didn’t work. Arse. Still, never mind, I’d call the premier banking call centre and get the details I needed from them. In got through quickly (i always do, it’s one of the perks of the account) and the lady on the phone just wanted to verify who I was with some security questions. No problem.

Question 1: what amount was yesterday’s transactions to the apple iTunes store for? Erm… I don’t know, they roll up purchases and tend put them through in batches. Let’s try the amount on the latest email.

Question 2: When did I open the account? Erm… feck knows. Sometime this year if you’re talking about when the faffing about happened. Looking at the paperwork for the time I’m going to guess this date.

Question 3: How many accounts I have? Does that include savings accounts, current accounts, ISAs, credit cards, mortgages, joint accounts? I dunno, 5?

Question 4: What is the first line of your address. Easy, nailed that one.

Question 5: What is the airspeed velocity of a laden swallow? I don’t bloody know! African or European?!

I was duly informed that they had failed to identify who I was, couldn’t access my account, couldn’t tell me how to get hold of my private banking manager and that I would have to wait for a letter to arrive or go into my branch.

Right. Bag loaded with paperwork, passport and iPad. Let’s head to branch. Was. Not. Happy.

Got to the branch and spoke to someone on the counter. They looked confused, which is probably to be expected, and I was handed off to someone who could help. I explained the situation, showed them the letter and they straight away said that the insurance company should have been told about the account move and that it shouldn’t be a problem. “Leave it with me”, she said, either she would get it sorted or, if my private banking manager could fast track it, get him to do it. We then sorted out the contact details for my private banking manager (I had the number 1 digit out for him, this is now fixed). A few other bits and bobs were sorted out meaning the outcome was satisfactory and my ire was quenched. I would not be moving my accounts.

Subsequent to that I’ve had a call from my private banking manager to check that everything was being sorted to my satisfaction and explain what was going to be done to ensure that I got my insurance money.

What I do find slightly ironic is that if I was a normal customer, who probably needs the money to pay a rent cheque, or buy food, I would probably have to jump through no end of hoops to get this sorted. It would be annoying, but not financially catastrophic if I didn’t get this money and they bend over backward to ensure I do get it. Still, I’m not going to complain

Update: So the bank called. They’re refunding me the lost money from the insurance claim and given me a nice bit of compensation. I was actually very nicely surprised

Thud. Poor little pinky had fallen. She wasn’t well. The Zozo found her that morning huddled in the corner of her car, face on the floor. She wasn’t eating and was very wobbly on her feet. Since then I’d had Pinky out and fed her some chocolate cake. This had perked up a little bit but was still wobbly. Now, unable to stand properly or walk straight, she’d obviously slipped off the ledge in her cage. Watching her make her way back up again was distressing. She was wobbling so much she could barely walk up her ramp, needing several attempts to make it. Clambering up the various bits of her cage was a struggle, the risk of falling again ever present.

Sadly we knew this was it. Pinky was 2, which is very old for a mouse. She’d outlived the other mice by a long way and she’d survived long enough to meet Willow. That night I gave her a final stroke and said my goodbyes.

At some point during the night Pinky passed away. I think she had a happy life. She certainly bought us more joy. I spent the morning packing away her home and cleaning down where the mice had been. At some point over the next few weeks we’ll put her, and the other mice, into the Cristal box and cremate them. What with Willow to look after I think it’ll be a while before we get any new pets.