My week off

Hello again, only me! A whole week off writing – well deserved I think.

The reasons for the break are varied but, at the end of the day, are only excuses. People with much busier lives than me manage to spare time to write something.

For me though I’ve enjoyed spending a bit of time focussing on some slightly more important matters – namely my family and my home.

It’s half term holidays here in Oxfordshire and so my boys and my wife have been milling about the house with nothing to do. Feeling sorry for their plight, I decided to take charge of the situation. As a result I took three days off work and set to work having some quality time instead! On top of that I decided to have a break from doing my blog related chores too. I realise this has left almost millions of people in the lurch with nothing to read, half of the population of the planet flapping about the internet with nothing to do. Perhaps I should have set an ‘Out Of Office’ message directing people to KB’s Wanderlust while I was away.

The first job of the break was the apple tree. This was planned well in advance and my parents were booked in to come and visit, my Dad buying a chainsaw via my blog specifically for the job – thanks Dad!

And so it was that with absolutely no tree surgeon’s knowledge or experience whatsoever, I shimmied my way up an entirely overgrown apple tree and set to work. I call it Extreme Pruning, and this is very much the way it went as branch after branch fell. My mighty chainsaw prowess impressed literally no one. Somehow I survived without needing to ring ‘dodgy accident lawyers for you’. It would have been a shame to sue my own Father for the irresponsible way he failed to supply the correct ladder, but where there is blame…

In fact I did manage to fall off the ladder at one point, luckily before I was passed the chainsaw. My wrist is still in pain, undoubtedly sprained but I guess it’s too late to claim now. Apart from that I had one branch swing into my face and countless others bounce off my head, but all in all I survived, which is possibly more than the tree can say!

Certainly the small apple tree at the bottom of the garden failed to make it. It’s rotten, dead branches were producing rotten fruit and so Jo read it the Last Rites and I put my black mask on and carried out my grizzly duty. It’s odd; I don’t think I’ve ever deliberately killed anything before (except ants, and mosquitoes) and it really did make me feel a little sad once the excitement of manfully fulfilling Michael Palin’s dream had worn off.

We toiled for three days, the whole family joining in but especially my Dad who absolutely revelled in having something to do and put hours of back breaking, blistering work into cutting up the branches into small enough pieces to transport. By Monday lunch we were finished and the garden was clear of mess. My parents went home and we regrouped to start having a bit of family fun.

‘Family Fun’ involved going to Portsmouth for the day, via Portchester Castle. I lived in Portsmouth on bases and on ships for the better part of 4 years plus another couple not too far away in Fareham so it came as a real shock for me to discover Portchester Castle. I assume it’s a new attraction that has been built since I was last there in 1998! I suppose your interests change as you get older and more responsible; funnily enough I was too busy in the Ship & Castle to bother going to see a real one.

Should you be into castles, or at least into family days out, then I can recommend this one. It’s in great condition and in the Keep you are able to get right up onto the roof giving amazing views of the harbour. You really can close your eyes and imagine the Romans looking out here feeling very well defended (if a little cold). Inside you find out that the Keep was used a prison as recently as the 1860’s and again you can really picture the conditions they were kept in. I truly had a bit of a moment! Then I stopped having it as the boys were trying to draw on the mural the owners had painstakingly restored.

We went into Portsmouth to carry out the cunning part of the plan. Last March we visited Portsmouth and were talked into buying an annual pass. This allowed the whole family into all the attractions in the Historic Dockyard (Mary Rose, Warrior, Museums, Harbour tour etc.). Some of the attractions were one visit only but most were unlimited visits. Needless to say we never went back to re use the ticket. I realised this recently and so I declared that we would get some value out of our ticket before it expires.

It was with some feeling of despair that I heard Jo ask, as I confidently marched into the Dockyard, “Did you bring the ticket?”

Ah

The ticket was still pinned to the notice board at home, where it had sat for the last year. I was about to get the first clue of the week as to how cunning and sly my wife can be. Sometimes I wonder if Jo is really British. There is something not right about the way she will never put up with the rubbish that she is dealt with. Quick as a flash, Jo marched up to the counter, out of my earshot, with a look of fierce determination on her face. There was no way she was coming all this way and not be able to use the missing ticket.

Seconds later Jo returned waving a ticket in the air, her smile brightening the room like a thousand candles. It turns out that because we said “yes” to giving the tax to them as Gift Aid, they had all our details on record. It only took a moment for them to confirm that we were genuine ticket holders. We were away and soon aboard H.M.S. Warrior, a beautifully restored Naval Warship of the 1800’s.

I should point out that a day later Jo defied all odds by managing to replace her handbag in the most unlikely scenario ever. Just after Christmas, Jo had decided to treat herself to a new handbag; several weeks of hinting had been completely missed by her devoted husband! Jo had lost the receipt, but less than a month after purchase the handle had snapped. Jo was gutted, this was quite an expensive bag, much more so than she would normally consider. A few more weeks passed without an opportunity to get to the store that the bag came from, and I for one had written it off. My wife, however, is a formidable opponent for any chain store. The day after Portsmouth Jo got her chance and headed off to Debenhams. Very quickly she convinced them that she had bought the bag too recently for the snap and wanted to replace it. They accepted her story (after all it was true) and said she could replace it with a bag up to the same value of the original bag. Jo looked but could not find the same bag as before and eventually found one she liked £10 less than the original. The upshot of all this is that Jo now has a new bag and a £10 gift voucher out of a scenario that I would never have dreamed could possibly work. If that isn’t amazing enough, Jo got home and then ‘remembered’ that she had forgotten to mention that she originally bought the bag during a sale!

Any way, the rest of the week has gone, the fun continued when I wound up having to sleep on the sofa downstairs because the boys remembered a promise from ages ago about letting them sleep on the sofa bed in the lounge. However they were too scared to sleep downstairs on their own! The things we Dads wind up having to do!

So I’m back at work, and now I’m settling back into my other life. The Internet can relax.