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.
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.
Apparently you will never be so tired as when you have a baby. The night time feeds, the disturbed sleep patterns and the complete upheaval of your life consigns you to the ranks of the walking dead as you survive on what little sleep you can grab. We know this. We are as prepared as we can be, after all, forewarned is forearmed.
It does beg the question, however, why does no one mention the lack of sleep before the pregnancy? Everyone, and I do mean everyone, regardless of if they’ve had children or not, is quite happy to bang on at great length about how we should be retesting up now because soon we won’t be getting any sleep at all. But not a single solitary soul has mentioned that, actually, due to discomfort and bladder related issues, a full nights sleep for my wife became a thing of the past some months ago. Something which also has an [admittedly lesser] impact on my sleep.
The Zozo is exhausted and she’s not even started yet. I crawl out of bed in the mornings and actually pray for the baby to be coming because it means I an take 2 weeks off work and attempt to make some sort of a inroads in catching up on my sleep.
Methinks that next time the expense to me and inconvenience to work can both go hang. I’ll be taking a nice large chunk of holiday before the birth and then taking my 2 weeks paternity after the birth. Work will just have to cope with me being out an extra two weeks. Since that isn’t an option this time round they’ll just have to cope with me being tired and grumpy.
In what now seems like the dim and distant past I used to spend my weekends in Cromer, work in London and live in Colchester. This setup meant that my life features trains. A lot of trains. A lot of trains that I spent a long time on. Least favourite of these was of 05:58 Cromer to Norwich because it not only meant it was Monday, but also that it was incredibly early in a Monday, I now had a 3.5 hour commute and I wouldn’t see The Zozo again until 6:30pm on Friday (assuming I didn’t miss my connection).
The 05:58 Norwich train would come in attached to the 06:03 Sherringham train. At Cromer they would divide and I would get on to what was invariably either a single carriage train or a manky two carriage one that smelt of damp carpet. I, and perhaps 2 other people, would then head to Norwich, joined by a handful of others on the way.
Today I find myself once again catching the 05:58 although circumstances have somewhat improved. For starters it’s not Monday, I have my usual commute ahead of my, albeit time shifted slightly, I get to see the The Zozo again tonight and we appear to have the swanky 3 carriage train with comfy seats and LED indicators near the doors that is usually reserved for busier lines than ours. The handful of people using the service get to take full advantage of the fact there’s table seats for all (the regular seats simply acting as a filler between the tables so as not to make the place look too empty) and I get to spread out more than I usually can. Sadly I suspect this train will now be sent off to Yarmouth or Lowestoft and my journey home will be on one of the two regular two carriage trains, or worse, the manky one that still gets pressed into service from time to time. I console myself with the fact that these days I always get a seat. Not something I could say a few years ago.
Yesterday was our first wedding anniversary. It was also the 3rd anniversary of us dating. We celebrated with a lazy morning, breakfast in bed and then a boat trip on the broads that The Zozo had organised for us. I was given control of a 7 man boat and we pootled along the river for a couple of hours. As we cruised along we enjoyed a small picnic and watched the sights as the rolled by. We were even lucky enough to see a kingfisher and an otter. The latter, being very rare, made The Zozos day.
The day was topped off with dinner at Cley Windmill where we had been married a year before. The was only one other couple having dinner so we were able to enjoy a quiet time together and have a chat with the chef who had also done our wedding meal.
Despite being out for dinner, we weren’t home too late but the day must have worn me out because this morning I slept through the alarm with The Zozo gently nudging me awake. It was Monday. It was windy. It was dark. Unlike a year ago we weren’t going on a two week adventure of a lifetime. Instead I had to get ready for work. My phone is running on fumes which means the music playing duties may have to be offloaded to the iPad and I really just want to snuggle up to my wife and fall asleep again. Sometimes I just hate mondays.
Today is not going particularly well. For starters it’s a Monday and I have to go back to work. This is compounded by the fact I’ve been on a jolly for half of last week, happily ignoring some of the problems I need to deal with today and made worse because, during said jolly, I got bugger all sleep.
Despite having the weekend to attempt to recover I’m still knackered today. The alarm brutally woke me at whatever time it is when The Zozos clock says 6:151 and a shower has failed to being me to anything like a level of alertness.
For a breif moment it looked like there was going to be some respite and an extra hour in bed when The Zozo noticed the clock in the news said 6:20, not 7:20, but that was just Monday taunting us and showing us a +1 channel. It was still 7:20, I still hadn’t packed my bag and I still had to sprint to the station.
1 The whole setting the clock a few minutes fast, apparently to stop you from being late, seems to be a very female thing and it does mean that we we have clocks in different rooms saying different times which can be confusing for the uninitiated.
I’m shattered and I ache all over. I could quite happily crawl back into bed and go back to sleep, but no, it’s Monday. Anyway, I’m going to snooze on the train so you lot are going to have to amuse yourselves.
The Zozo and I had our first proper day off in something like 3 weeks yesterday. Neither of us had work so a lie in could ensue, For once I didn’t have any freelance stuff that needed doing and she wasn’t doing coursework. We even got a reasonable nights sleep.
None of this made a farts worth of difference as 5:156:15am announced itself via the medium of the radio alarm clock. No longer a fun novelty on a Sunday, the loss of an hour is now real and it’s left me discombobulated.
So far this morning I’ve spilled a glass of water while trying to get The Zozo breakfast in bed. Rather than a gentle rousing she now had an unceremonious wakeup call with my trying to clean up. By the time I was done my cereal had gone soggy. I hate soggy cereal. I gave up half way through and, realising how late I was, gulped half my cup of tea while dressing before pouring the rest down the sink. After a mad run to the station to catch my train I realised I’d left my watch and hanky at home. I’ve also misplaced some Very Important Documents I was going to sort today. And it’s only half past something in the morning. The move to BST is evil.
I’ve accepted my fate for next weekend and have resigned myself to far too many hours on trains and busses and much milling about waiting for same. I do, after all, have the week after off so there is plenty of time to recover. The only thing haven’t worked out is what I’m going to do between 7:30am and 9:30am. Even if I walk from Angel to Liverpool Street I’ll still have well over an hour and a half to kill. One has to bear in mind that I’ll be tired, having been up all night; sweaty having been dancing all night; and dressed down because the clubs I go to are holes 
I had considered swinging by the pool at the Barbican. It may be small but it’s cheap and would wake me up, keep me active and allow me to shower. Unfortunately this is closed for refurbishment until next year, so that idea is right out. Shopping is out, It’s a Sunday and nothing will be open. I don’t really want to sit somewhere doing very little because if I stop I will fall asleep so I’m rapidly running out of ideas.
I do have big pockets in my coat so, despite traveling light, I could take a paperback with me and see if reading keeps me awake. What would be good is if I could find a coffee shop that was open and allowed charging of iPhones while drinking industrial quantities of tea.
Ideas on a postcard (or comment).