Week 6

Week 6 follows hot on the heels of week 5 quite literally given I only posted week 5 yesterday. I've caught up! What with weather that's a bit more snow than sleet, it felt like a good day to eat a two person portion of lentil dhal supermarket soup (love a curry sauce masquerading as a soup), and three bowls of cereal (I convince myself it's a healthy snack), sit on the sofa and write week 6 whilst it's somewhat fresh in the mind.

As an added incentive, my wife had a weekend away in Bath with some friends from her old primary school days (a lot of dancing, air guitar and wooden spoons for microphones as far as I could tell) and having shared a link this blog peaked at a massive 6 unique visitors yesterday which was very exciting. Now at least one of those visits was me, the second was my wife and the other four potentially just clicked the link and didn't actually read anything, or possibly worse, they read it and thought it was properly shit but it's still 3x more than the previous record daily high.

Week 5's trip to Istanbul was always going to be a tough act to follow but week 6 did contain my youngest son's 15th birthday. Two boys born in November! Yep, you guessed it, I am a romantic love machine come Valentine's Day. Well perhaps 15 years ago. My wife would strongly disagree on both counts. Needs must springs to mind.

As birthday grouches, we ruled out a party for our 15 year old fairly early on. One party in November is plenty. Instead I agreed to accompany him into London as he hit the shops for some new clothes. He's very different to our other boys. Whilst the other two have generally been happy to pitch up in some kind of sports apparel that they've carefully left on their floor for the last month or so, our youngest makes significantly more effort. Unfortunately that effort frequently comes at the cost of our patience.

He takes an inordinate amount of time in the shower followed by an inordinate amount of time styling his hair. To achieve his curly, wavy (permy?) look, he has experimented with more styling products from gel, spray, mousse, putty, and currently hair powder than I've had curries disguised as soup.

As for the trip itself, we came very close to visiting three different Zara's all located along Oxford Street. That would have been a new record for me having only just beaten the record by visiting two Zara's a few minutes earlier. Fortunately he was happy to switch out the third Zara for Week Day which appear to focus on supplying enormously baggy jeans in every size possible except the size that fitted my son. That was only available online. We ended our trip with donuts from Donutelier. It was genuinely a lovely day.

The following weekend, he headed to Welwyn Garden City with his friends to a fair. In proper W style, he was going to catch a train at 5.30pm right up until he said at 4.40pm, can you drop me there now? And then didn't let me know when he needed picking up until I messaged him at 8.30pm saying I'd just finished cooking my dinner and could he give me some forewarning on pick-up time. 'Now, please xx' was his instant reply. I ate my dinner of Charlie Bigham's green thai chicken curry for two (wondering if I'm in a minority eating portions reportedly designed for two) very quickly.

During the week I caught up with a friend of mine from work who I'd stayed in contact with. I prodded and probed as to what kind of catastrophe had befallen the office since my departure. As I suspected, office life had simply carried on without me. Whilst I know that's a good thing, I'd like to imagine there's a small tinge of sadness blurring the edges when people look at my empty desk except... I did get moved around the office a number of times following my resignation so no empty desk.

I'm not really sure what the etiquette is when revisiting the local area of an old office. Partly this is because previous offices were in locations you'd have to go out of your way to visit but also partly because I didn't stay in contact with anyone (ok only a couple of people).

I concluded it was best not to drop in on the old office like some ghost of Christmas Past so I planned to get in and out following lunch with no other current employee wiser to my presence. That was until I made the fatal mistake of nipping into a nearby Boots to make a last minute purchase for my son's birthday and bumped into another old colleague. In hindsight, asking him what fragrance he'd buy for a teenage boy wasn't the best question to lead off with. We live and learn.