"Daddy! Blow Dandelion!"
"Ffffthppppp..." I am covered in a few grams of toddler spittle as we play the amazing new Dandelion game in the garden.
He comes back with more. Thousands more. It occurs to me that the "Blow Dandelion" game shall unleash a further plague upon my garden. But really - you can't get more than there are already. The only thing keeping them at bay are the other weeds - vying for attention. Next week - next week I shall lawnmow. But today - today I shall enjoy some playtime with the kids.
If I reflect on the last 2 months (which kinda explains the lack of blogging time) - I would summarise it as "controlled bedlam". My average out the door time is now somewhere around 05:45am and sometimes I finish work at near midnight. But...and here's the weird thing - I'm loving every minute. Whether I'm half way up a giant silo, standing on top of a really big turbine or whizzing through Crewe - the gateway to everywhere...
Last month we headed down to the London Book Fair to check out what was going down in the book world. Being a dedicated author and all - I took my wife along and we spent a good half an hour checking out the general hubbub of publishers and agents hard at work...and then we went in search of alcohol. Now - the London Book Fair is humungous. I never realised Earl's Court was so big (and had such horrific accoustics). Mice whispering in the farthest corner sound like elephants having an on-musk mating battle to the death. (Which made my impromptu work conference calls the most disastrous telcons in history. It was like talking to someone on Mars using tin cans and string - with ten thousand bees buzzing in your ear).
Either way - they had a Pizza Express inside. I love Pizza. Specially spicy Pizza. And specially red wine, beer and Pizza. And then more beer and my wife's Pizza too when she's not looking.
The queue for lunch is orderly but large. There are about thirty people ahead of us. We wait so long - I think there must be a Pirates of the Caribbean ride at the end of it. We strike up a conversation with the couple in front of us.
"Hello - big queue eh?"
"Yes. It is..." These people aren't overly chatty. They are proper book business people. Everyone eyes up everyone elses label IDs on their shirts. Labels are bad - labels create a pecking order. Luckily my "Tom Arnold - Byker Books - Author" has some vague bargaining power (it doesn't get you a Ferrari or a free back rub or anything - but people spark up a little and open up a little more).
"So what do you do?" I ask the lady.
"I'm an illustrator for children's books," she says.
"Wow - that's cool,"I say. For we have both children and books and I am wondering if she drew anything good or not.
"So - you do anything famous?" I ask. It's probably uncouth but what the hell.
"You know the Gruffalo?" she says.
"Holy cow - you did the Gruffalo? That's the best book ever - our kids love it - and the artwork is just phenomenal - you did that?!"
Sarah has already picked up the signals. Back up back up - mayday mayday - pull out pull out. But I am a bloke and blunder on - gushing about how cool that is.
"No - I was the author's illustrator before the Gruffalo..."
The tumbleweed crosses our path. A dead crow caws above my head and for all the spin I try to put on it - she senses my obvious disappointment. I am a mirror into her soul.
Oh well.. Pizza time!
They bolt for a table and don't even offer a goodbye. Miserable B*stards.
Everyone is young, female and thin....or fat, male, grey haired and old. Many are American.
They all drink mineral water and stare at us in disgust as we order an actual bottle of red wine - on a Monday at lunch in a Pizza Express! Shock and awe! Where was Joanna Lumley when I needed her?! Damn these responsible booky people.
We're having such great fun that we order a few more wines and leave with a spring in our step and 14% pumping through our veins. We chat to many more people and drink the free wine at the Scientologist stand. No-one else is - so we might as well. L Ron Hubbard wrote lot of books. Seriously. He's in the Guinness Book of Records for it!
We get to London Euston at about 5:30 and stare at a blank board. Not a single bloody train is going anywhere. Crap.
"Due to a fire on a train - there are no trains from Euston currently. All trains to the Midlands - please make your way from King's Cross. For Liverpool and Chester Please go to Paddington and take a train to Reading..."
"F*ck off!" I curse the announcer. Has he ever attempted to get to Chester via Reading before? We'd be better off nicking a push buggy, strapping a particularly flatulent weasel to the back of it and making our way under fart power back to the North West than go via Reading.
I decide to ignore their advice (the Vigin train person tells us it will be 4am before we get home via "The Reading Method").
"Let's go to the pub until this whole "fire" thing blows over.
So we sit and wait a few hours and low and behold..things free up again. Nine thousand tired groggy commuters stampede towards a train that holds a few hundred people at best.
As we are pegging it down the councourse - Sarah says to me..."If we get split up I'll meet you on the train..now give me my ticket." Wow - she means business.
It was like something out of the apocalpse or a 1950's Horror movie(or Monday night commuting in London). Random panic...men stampeding over women. Wives leaving husbands - children screaming...
"Sarah! Sarah - where are you?!" I am bolting down the platform in a maelstrom of panicked commuters - whistles are blowing and I've lost my wife. I am having a major dilemma - do I board the train or do I not?
Is she on it...or not. If I leave her behind then I am officially paying for that mistake for the rest of my shortly to be divorced life.
In hindsight - I wish I'd had a chance to shout my "Last of the Mohicans" line at her..."Sarah - where-ever you are...whatever happens...I will find you..." But it's too late for retrospective melodramatics.
So I board and clutter down the train just as we pull away. To find her sitting happily ensconced in her seat texting me...
Men really don't stand a chance do they? We really don't...
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