Charlotte has the voice of an angel!!!

Clearly she is messing about but…

She’s going to kill me when she sees this online…

Lewis coming home when we’re asleep in bed…

As the title suggests…

It’s making me feel quite old now that Lewis is getting home after midnight very often with parties or just working at karate and we’re not staying up worrying about him. We do have the rule that he has to wake us to say he’s home but it’s still the fact that he’s out there late at night with friends or baby-sitting or whatever. Not getting into trouble though I hasten to add.

It made me think of when I was his age and that’s mirrored that as well. I used to sit up with mum watching TV and then when I started going out to see girlfriends or into town I’d get home and creep around so as not to wake everyone up. Full circle…

Charlotte is out at parties a lot more now, but she still likes to be picked up. I don’t mind doing this but it has meant that I am driving around at 3.00am with her and some friends dropping them left, right and centre. Her friends can’t believe it…and to some degree nor can I!!! But at the same time I don’t want her worrying or not going or leaving early because of it.

Jack’s Last Few Days at Primary School

So, this was the week that Tash has been dreading, Jack finally leaving Primary School which in turn means our involvement with Wolvercote school has come to an end. We worked it out to be 14 years that we’ve been involved so it was all quite sad really as the end of an era in our lives. Admittedly I was a bit less emotional than Tash, but then I’ve not been as involved as her.

So we had the Leavers’ Assembly on Wednesday, they had various performances and anecdotes, a bit hit and miss as you’d expect for an assembly written and performed by the students themselves but they enjoyed themselves as did the parents and teachers.

Jack repeated his talent show routine and that went down well. Did some singing as well. Some tears throughout from parents and then the class teacher Miss Boaz read out her speech and started crying and that set everyone off! The kids were in floods! Hugs and photos and all sorts. All very sad and draining.

In the early evening there was a school disco organised so we went along to that as we’d organised it, well Tash had, but I helped out on the bar so that was fine, had one or two drinks…Tash was a bit tipsy as well.

Friday came and Tash had the day off so walked Jack up to school and did whatever throughout the day. We then went up to the school at 1.00pm and waited as they all came out. The lads were all in tears again, the girls not as many. When Jack came out it was clear he’d been crying nearly all day! Red, puffy eyes…so that set Tash off.

We pottered around in the playground for a while as they signed each other’s shirts and then went down to the Plough where it was agreed that the parents would all stay for a while and the kids all went off playing and more signing of anything that moved. I had a pint and stayed an hour and then went home to carry on with some work, Tash stayed another couple of hours before making it home for something to eat and then we went to the Red Lion for 6.00pm. Not many people there but we spent time chatting with Loretta and a couple of other people I didn’t know. All very pleasant and again Jack and what kids he knew played in the park.

Left around 9.30pm and then walking past the White Hart I saw Liam through the window so went in for 30 mins for a half, but it went slow so i had two and came out at 10.50pm instead! Took some prawn crackers as a peace offering and all was fine!

So that’s it then, time to move on. Jack is definitely ready for the jump and looking forward to Cherwell, I am convinced he’s going to be a huge success there, the teachers are looking forward to receiving him already we know from Lewis so that’s a definite benefit!

Lewis Shining as a Sports Leader

Had some nice news from Lewis earlier in the week at the Year End Assembly. He’s been a Sports Leader throughout the year and really enjoyed what he’s been doing in terms of involvement for organising Sports activity days with other schools and helping the teachers and so on. He’s had tremendous feedback throughout from other school teachers which has been really pleasing.

One even said that he should consider being a Sports Teacher as a back up if the Engineering doesn’t work out. Anyway, there were awards at the assembly and he and two others, Kathryn being one of them, got the highest accolade of a Platinum Award, so he was pleased with that and sat down.

Then the teachers announced there was an additional award for one of the best Sports Leaders that Cherwell has ever had, Lewis Dark!!! They gave him a ticket to the Para-Olympics next month so he was really chuffed with that recognition, as were we even though we weren’t actually there to witness it.

Very pleased and very proud indeed. Well deserved him.

Tash made her own award for him and Charlotte…

To be freelance or not to be…

So…after 8 years I am made (not) redundant…don’t ask…it’s the usual non-committal, non-official dealings with an employee who’s no longer required.
Had a meeting with Allan 3 weeks ago and he told me out of the blue that my time with the company was up and he was to help me find somewhere else. Hardly a bolt out of the blue but it did leave me reeling, not every day that you’re suddenly in No Man’s Land thinking what the hell do I do now?
It took a bit of time to get my head around it and loads of advice from people but I’m going to go it alone and work for myself in a freelance capacity. I’ve set up my business and done all that side of things, I’m good to go, only thing missing is customers…slight problem…but I am starting on that track now. I intend to work with existing customers and provide the sort of Admin and training services I can see that they’re crying out for.
If I get the sort of response I hope for and have got from two people already then I think I will do okay, we’ll see.
Tash took it well, but it’s now been 4 weeks since the announcement and things have slowed down so she’s starting to worry now. I am sure we’ll be okay though.
I told Darren today, as Jason had told me he knew, but Darren was quite shocked and thought it was just one of those things that Jason had mentioned but wasn’t expecting to happen – something along the lines of “Allan and Julian are in the process of talking through a new job” – not “I’ve instructed Allan to get rid of Julian” which is how it was put to me by Allan. “It’s not working” – that’s the quote.
So as you can imagine, even before this announcement I’ve been very slack on my diary, but even more reason for being so now. Nothing notable to announce really so perhaps just as well I’ve been quiet!
Lewis has been working through is AS exams and Charlotte has been doing her Mocks. Jack finishes at Wolvercote in just a few weeks. I’ve going to Lewis to see a couple of University Open days and then have Cornbury to look forward to.
Well, best get some sleep, I’m still putting in so many hours at work, it’s very odd, it’s like the redundancy isn’t happening – Jason still gives me tons to do and I stupidly still do it. Madness, I have my own life to start sorting out and I am still too committed to the company to concentrate on myself. That’s the problem I guess for the last few years, I’ve given so much and lost a lot of myself to the company…that’s a sinister way to end the blog isn’t it?!?!?

Visit to the Big Smoke…

Interesting day today, knew I had to be in London for a training session on the new Data Mining for Harper Collins and hadn’t done enough testing so was up at 5.00am to do so. Quite quickly I soon found that there were loads or problems with what I wanted to show the customer…panic!!! Some quick emails and screenshots sent to Support and then off to get the train
It’s nice working so early as you do feel as though you’ve got a lot done before anyone is even up, but then by the time it’s 8.30am you feel like you’ve done half a day already. Did some work on the train and then made it to Paddington at 8.00am – talk about busy, packed solid!
The first session went okay but the fixes I needed completed weren’t finished so that wasn’t ideal – I worked throughout the lunch break and got the issues sorted in time for the second session so that was okay and it went better. Lots of action points but didn’t leave until 5.00pm – tired.

It was sad to see on Twitter that the Cavalier pub in Northway was being pulled down today (http://twitpic.com/9e1yjq) to make way for student accommodation. Had some good times in that pub over the years when playing Sunday morning football for Cold Arbour. Ah well, progress I guess.
So back home in the evening, Charlotte was getting ready for her Duke of Edinburgh expedition, it’s only a test one to get them ready for the real thing in a couple of weeks time. Huge great rucksack on her back – I am sure she’ll be fine but it’s going to be hard work…

Jack on song yet again…

The lads played against Crowmarsh Orange today in what I expected to be a comfortable match which is what it turned out to be in the end. We started incredibly quickly when Max scored within 2 minutes with a great strike from outside the box and we pushed and pushed but they hit the post twice and should have scored themselves but we were just more clinical and scored again through James Othen.

Then without much to-do Max and James scored again for us to be 4-0 at halftime.

Changed things slightly and they continued to play some good football and the game was petering out until I moved Jack back up front and he suddenly scored two fantastic goals with long range strikes that the keeper could do nothing about from outside the area. He then latched onto a poor defensive clearance and then simply passed it into the net round the keeper for his hat-trick. Nothing too remarkable there…except he did all these in the space of about 3.5 minutes!

Absolutely stunning it was, I was very proud indeed to have witness him to that.

I then went to Lewis’s match as they played their last match of the season against Abingdon – bit of a needle match and Lewis once again played well and we ran out 2-0 winners. Should have been a lot, lot more but their keeper pulled off some great saves and we were a little bit wasteful in front of goal

A good day’s football all in all.

KFC Treat for Jack’s birthday…

We had a family bucket of chicken…us???

The fat family from Wolvercote?

This piece is bigger than Jack himself…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going for it!

Jack’s 11th Birthday–Friday 13th April 2012

Woke up at Sue’s early today and then got up for Jack’s birthday, he was really excited today throughout. I think we forget how young he really is sometimes, it was nice to see him so full of enthusiasm.

Anyway, he had the presents on the sofa and kept looking outside and around the house for ‘a bike’ that he was sure he was going to receive. We dragged it out as usual and then asked him to go down to the freezer in the garage to get some bread for the fry up, as he was walking down the path he got suspicious and looked behind himself and we were all looking out the kitchen windows so he knew what to expect when he got into the garage…he was delighted as well.

We then came round to our house and grabbed what we needed and his friends started turning up for the party. Mind you, at 9.47am Jack said to me, “Shouldn’t they be arriving now?”, I think he was a little anxious that no one was going to come to his party, but sure enough they were all here on time and we went off to Bowlplex. There was 10 of them and they split into two teams and an hour passed by quickly. The end was funny as Jack’s team thought that they’d won and were celebrating but when Katie’s score came in it meant the other team had won by 4 points so the celebrations changed very quickly!

We then made it down to Cutteslowe Park and had a picnic and then played rounders and football and it was really nice as the weather was holding out and sun was shining. Couple of hours passed by and we then took the kids home around 2.00pm but some of them stayed and Jack went up to the park to play more football and the like.

Tash and I stayed at home and worked on areas that we could now that we could get into the house. As agreed we then went to the Red Lion at 5.30pm and it was packed. It seems that everyone in Wolvercote turns up on a Friday night! The kids all went over to the park as usual and the adults stayed and had a few drinks..they were flowing a bit too freely tonight and my recent tee-totalness took a bit of hit! Never mind. It was a great atmosphere in the pub, Mum and Derek came down and there was also the Bamptons and the Carrolls.

Jack and all the kids were called into the pub at one point as the candles on his cake were lit and the whole pub sang to him which was lovely.

Then mum called me over for a quiet chat and she told me that she’d had the ‘All Clear’ from the hospital regarding her cancer. Quite clearly that was fantastic news and she didn’t want to announce it to everyone so I did and there was a huge cheer…and more drinks! That really was so pleasing to hear that news and everyone was delighted.

We stayed until about 10.00pm and staggered home..not before catching Mum & Derek eating their chips in the car outside the chippy and we all jumped in to scare them!

To finish Jack’s special day he was aloud to sleep at William’s house for the night. All in all a really fantastic day and one that I hope he remembers.

What a shit day…

Not sure if it was the finish at 2.00am, although tonight is 1.30am as well, the chicken curry or the sheer stress I am feeling but I was sick as a dog last night. Couldn’t get up in the morning and was being sick the whole time.
Got into work, and had Darren make some sarcastic remark about deciding to turn up and I was very rude in my reply which surprised everyone, including myself. Very uncharacteristic and unnecessary as Darren is the one person I have time for in the office. I obviously apologised immediately in front of everyone but it wasn’t good form on my part. Rest of the day I don’t think I managed to speak two words and I didn’t eat or drink anything.
Could be stress, really wouldn’t be surprised, it’s really hard work at the minute in that every single thing I am doing is being scrutinised, not enjoyable. In saying that I had an incredible frank discussion with Pauline regarding her situation and realised she’s actually got it worse than me. I felt so sorry for her as she’s been treated pretty badly and has been working with Jason for 23 years, couldn’t believe what she was saying.
Actually I could as it was the same as what I’ve been saying to Tash
Back at the hotel in the evening working and saw that the Oxford City Nomads won promotion today but the ‘first’ team, which clearly wasn’t, played North Leigh in the Senior Cup final and lost 5-0. Not good at all. I understand that it was mainly comprised Youth players, bit disappointed that us Vets were not asked to represent the club, ah well, give the future a chance I guess!

Jack’s Chocolate Supply

Jack came downstairs from his bedroom munching on some Dairy Milk chocolate from his birthday, my favourite, and I asked if I could have a little bit. He said there was some in bedroom in his cupboard and as I walked up the stairs he shouted after me,

“Dad, there’s a lot of chocolate there, please don’t get carried away!”

Cheeky git! Although it worked and I only had a bit!

16th April 2012 – Back to work, Tash new job & Lewis feedback

Back to work today, bloody hard to get into the routine having been off for effectively a week, the drive into the office was a long one, no surprise there really as I wasn’t on the road until after 7.00am and it was first day back at work for people. Made it in and got the usual load of problems – nothing changes! I ended up spending nearly the whole day going through emails, not much progress at all.

Tash started her new job today as we caught up later and she said how nice it was and they all made her welcome. She’ll be fine with it and even after some time I am sure that she will take over certain areas, she was saying that they are in the Dark Ages! They have an Inbox but nothing is ever cleared from it!! No folders or calendars to book our rooms or anything, it’s all paper & pens!

She then phoned me later from Taurus gym and said that Mary had been speaking to her about Lewis. Mary said the he was an absolute pleasure whilst over in Belgium and everyone commented on how great he is, what a pleasing attitude and all round nice guy he is. Simple things such as the evening out in the square when they’re all showing off and encouraging people to show off their skills, he was up for it and joined in whereas others shied away.

His conduct and attitude was impressive and both Beci and Sue Dale said that they want a lot more to do with him in terms of being involved in their events, tournaments and even TV Commercials. No idea if they will back it up but who cares, it’s obviously very pleasing to hear that sort of feedback about him

As a parent that makes us both very proud indeed. Well done to him…can we take any credit in the way that we’ve brought him up?!?!? Or is it in spite of our upbringing of him…

Below is a video that Mary took of his team’s performance in Belgium, there’s a few misses in there but they did well and for a team that hadn’t trained with anything like the normal commitment that is required they’d done well. More importantly they had a great time.

They want to go again next year and Mary & Rob want to take a Taurus team which when Jack heard he was desperately keen…are the Belgiums ready for Jack Dark?

In fact, just had a text from Mary & Rob offering to pay for his first driving lesson for his 17th Birthday this Saturday, he’s clearly well respected isn’t he? Good lad.

Team Reaction performing in Belgium

 

House Decorating Update

Woke up with a bit of a hangover…Jack’s party last night

Got to work on bringing all the furniture from outside in the garage and office into the house, nice being able to finally see things are taking shape in terms of re-covering the sofa and getting it in and working on the new bureau for inside which Charlotte worked on and did a brilliant job of creating.  Impressive watching her as she just got on with it,

She asked a couple of questions but didn’t really need my help at all.

I finished the shelving and it all looks good together and the computer can now be set up in there

Got the TV set up and the lights back on the wall and then Paul and Terry came round to do the skirting again – that’s costing quite a bit - £100.00 just to buy the skirting. This redecorating exercise is certainly costing a lot more than Tash and I originally planned!

But it will look good and it’s needed

Still things that need to be done – but we’re getting there and the house is feeling liveable once more

Funny Football incident last night

I've now played football for 35 years (since playing for Quarry when 8 years old) and last night witnessed one of the funniest things in that time

Edge of the box their forward shoots and Justin Merritt gets whacked in the face blocking him from no more than 2 yards away and ref gives a ridiculous penalty against him.

Justin proceeds to use every single swear word imaginable towards the ref and then simple storms off towards our dugout and says,

"Right, that's it, I'M NOT PLAYING ANY MORE!"

The ref was calling him over so as to book him but he ignored him and just walked off the pitch in disgust.

I'm sure that if the ball wasn't on the penalty spot he'd have taken it with him.

It really was the funniest thing I've ever seen on a football pitch and after the match no one said anything to Justin to remind him...NOT!!

It's been a good season and with the news in the changing rooms that Chinnor dropped points made it even more enjoyable evening. It's been good because we've not had it easy and for once the championship was out of our hands and we needed a favour, which we got.

Well done Young Kenny - inspirational.

It's been a pleasure...but suffering for it now after drinking in the 6 Bells afterwards. Great bunch of lads.

Read more:http://www.oxfordcityfc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=842#ixzz1rAIGIUct

Jack’s Football Match going well

I had an interesting problem this week with Jack’s football, I knew I was only going to have 10 players so I emailed the Abingdon manager who the previous week had been beaten 10-0 and I have a good relationship with him and said I’ve only got 10 players – would you mind if I played two lads who are not signed on? He came back to me and said, No! Not acceptable, rules are rules. Their lads are feeling down enough, and the parents and coaches are down so they don’t want to help other teams beat them.

Initially I accepted it but the more I thought about it the more it irritated me. To my mind, are you really that desperate to win a football match that you want the other team to only have 10 players, would you be happy as a coach that 2 boys are sat at home unable to play? The more I thought about it the more cross I got. Sad!

In saying that, when I got to the game, there was the angry Geordie coach who’s an arsehole so it all made sense and clicked into place why I had been refused my request. He’d been kicked out of Grove and is just a horrible sad man. He was his usual ungracious, aggressive hostile person and shouldn’t be involved in kids football – but there you go. So we got on with it and the attitude of our players was just fantastic, I was so proud. They worked so hard and completely played Abingdon off the park and we 2-0 up with really well worked goals – Abingdon got one back. We went 3-1 up, Jack playing well again and got the penalty and eventually our lads tired and Abingdon got back to 3-3 for the end result and they were chuffed and jumping all over the place.

I had their coaches going on and on constantly, really irritating and had we had 11 players we’d have stuffed them. It wound me up to be honest. Shouldn’t let it get to me but it does sometimes.

A good performance though.

Day off in Bournemouth

After a busy weekend for Easter and then popping into the office for a day to catch up with things meaning I was up at 5.30am, got back home in the evening and then worked until 4.00am to clear items and problems it was nice to think that I now have a couple of days off from work…although we’ll see how much I can avoid emails and calls from work, I don’t hold out much hope!

Anyway, we cleared out the rest of the front room today so that the men who are coming to sand the floor could do the whole lot, as you can see the whole of the downstairs is now empty for them to work through.

You cannot get into the kitchen at all, nor the office or the shed! We have to be out of the house for a couple of days which is perfect timing doing it now because we’re going to be out and about anyway!

Can’t wait for them to finish the work because this means we can start bringing the sofa back in and sort out the TV etc. It’s been a long process.

Before we could set out for Bournemouth I needed to drop Lewis off to go to Belgium, as he’s gone off with Beci & Sue Dale and the skipping team to enter a tournament for European championships.

Decorating, Tash leaving James Cowper and Games of Thrones Season 2 starting!

More decorating over the weekend. We’ve got people coming in to sand the floor down etc whilst we’re away in Bournemouth and we had Paul come round and do the wall-papering whilst I pottered around – looks good. Took him about 4 hours but it was top quality workmanship and it looks great. Money well spent, no way in the world could I have got anywhere near that level. Tash wasn’t around all weekend. She left her job at James Cowper on Friday so they had an evening out, I went and picked her up at 1.15am and she wasn’t too bad, drunk but not terrible although in the morning she wasn’t feeling too well at all.

Shame because she was taking Lewis and Jack to a karate tournament in Birmingham area where they did well – I was kept in touch. Lewis did a black belt kata competition which he won, and the two of them also went into a sparring competition, but they said afterwards that there were some “strange” referring decisions which was a shame and it caused a lot of disagreements – appeared to be favouritism which they were on the wrong end of.

Jack got to 3rd place play-off so that was good – but he didn’t get it

On Sunday, Lewis was doing skipping in readiness for his competition in Belgium next month which will come around very quickly. Tash said they looked good. Charlotte has just been pottering around and doing her homework – so she’s been busy with all that. They have two week holiday now, she had Rose over for the night and were their usual selves – watch Drop Dead Fred!

Last night, my long awaited series 2 of Game of Thrones started and I watched it on the computer and that was good – lot of adverts though. But great to have it back on and looking forward to catching up with all the politics and shenanigans happening in Westeros!

Jack’s Self Confidence in his football abilities..

Driving to football on Sunday to play against AFC Brightwell, Jack decided to tell me which professional footballers he's like:

"I've got Maradona's skill and speed, Messi's left foot...and height..I've got Cantona's goal celebration and I've got...Ronaldinho's goofy teeth!"

I almost crashed the car...

We made to the ground and he then had a chance to show me and he certainly did! He’s getting better and better it has to be said and if he doesn’t get Player of the Year again this season I’d be stunned. In saying that, he missed a penalty today but his all-round play and the goal he scored was so pleasing.

Sunday’s match was odd, I only had 10 players in the end and admittedly Brightwell are struggling but the performance of all the team was so pleasing, they won 4-0 in the end and I can still see all four goals in my mind’s eye. I shouldn’t be affected by how the kids do in a match but this time I was made up for the rest of the day…sad really.

What pleased me most was the number of crosses we put into the box and whenever someone was out wide they tried a trick or a skill and one of the goals caused by Fred’s wing play was an absolute pleasure. He’s getting better every single week and he does this ‘lollypop’ as Big Ron would describe it and it sells the defender nearly every time.

So Fred got the ball, did his trick and went past the player as if he wasn’t even there, it was incredibly perfect, put in a deep cross and Pierce scored with his right foot again. Similarly, Jack did some tricks on the edge of the box and was lining up to shoot when shut down by 3 defenders and he changed the angle of his contact so it turned into a pass down the left channel, Pierce crossed and Max headed in. Very pleasing indeed because this is what we’re practising every Friday night, so score two goals from training routines is great!

Anyway, back to only 10 players this week but against Abingdon which is frustrating, but that’s the problem with the location of the team…affluent area so all go away on holidays!

Ah well, we’ll see how it goes!

Bootleg Beatles

It’s 5.50am and I am driving into work – got up nice and early! I was up at 3.50am because of loads of work going through my mind but decided to get into the office bright and early. It’s dark but towards London it’s lightening up and looking good. It’s busy on the road already.

So taking the chance to update the diary – notes from the weekend then include:

We spent the whole weekend painting the front rooms and ceilings – looking good. It’s taken ages though.

On Saturday night Tash and I went out on our own to a concert at the New Theatre which was the Bootleg Beatles, we were supposed to be going with Nikki and Gaz but they decided to cancel for some reason, but because we’d paid for the tickets we were not going to do the same so we went along. Admittedly, I wasn’t overly bothered about going in the first place but out of low expectations you can be surprised. It was a really, really good evening. Basically, we had a Beatles concert from when they first set out in the 60’s through their different stages like St Pepper and hippy etc. Really enjoyed it.

Carl Mullins Funeral – Tuesday 28th February 2012

Incredibly sad day today in that I attended the funeral for Carl in the morning before going to work. It was well attended by so many people and there were a few old faces that I recognised and who recognised me. There was definitely a good few hundred there.

The service was good, the highlight being the speech written by Leah (his sister) but read out by her husband(?), it was fun and moving speech and captured her life and memories with Carl. All things that anyone that knew him could relate to I suspect. The vicar then went over-board in his part of the service and lost some of the congregation with his well-meaning words of comfort. But never mind that, we’d not gone along to listen to him.

You can only guess at why Carl ended his life, not that I will speculate, if ever it’s understood or explained then I’d be interested, but not in idle gossip. I did like the photo on the Order of Service, it was his one in Oxford Boys in his blazer and tie and that brought back many memories indeed, not just of Carl but the school as a whole and there were a lot of other lads that would have been the same having gone to that school.

I’ll remember Carl as the clown who was centre of attention, laughing and making stupid comments and flicking his wedge cut flowing hair that the never washed so it would retain its style! I think that’s a good memory to hold of someone and it captured what he was like in the later years at school and 6th Form.

Such a shame, such a real sad shame that will haunt his family for ever which is another tragedy.