Ive been really busy over the last few months with my degree, I probably could have kept blogging and maybe I should but whenever I thought about writing my blog it felt like I was cheating on my degree, is that insane? Probably. Anyway I’ve got lots to talk about and won’t try to do it all in one post, if you were Reading about my experiences of my son being born I’ll get on it as soon as I can.

Anyway to start with a few weeks back I read a story about 2 lesbian girls being supported by their school to attend their prom as a couple. When i read this i thought to myself “why is this news?” A school is accepting and supportive of it’s students as it should be big deal. I’m not sure what this says about me as a person if anything at all to be honest. Then I started thinking, it is a big deal to them and it’s a big deal to society to. Acceptance isn’t a given, it should be but unfortunately a lot of intolerance exists. My expectation that a story about 2 lesbian girls at school would end badly shows how jaded I have become to news of this nature. My initial reaction was that it wasn’t news worthy because it was good news and not bad news.

A story a week or so later was more what I have come to expect from the media. It was supporting a young girl who had refused to cover her head on a school trip to a mosque. Her school (a catholic school at that) berated her for such a display of disrespect. The newspaper however flipped this story on it’s head to make the school look bad for forcing her to do something against her will. The punchline of course being that it was all faked and that no such event took place. The young girl and her mother banked on the fact that the newspaper love stories of intolerance and would lap this up.

Message basically reads that he world can be a nasty intolerant prejudiced hell hole and because I expect this the good news stories don’t feel like news. We need to ensure more good news gets through to break up some of the grim reality

Not posted on my blog for some time now so thought i would explain to anybody (nobody) that reads it and doesn’t know that i’m trying to finish my degree right now.

Got a lot on my plate in the form of essays to finish writing, exams to revise for trying to find gainful employment for after i qualify and not neglect my family in the process. I feel i may be falling short on the latter of these as i have moved to Sheffield for the entirety of this week and most of last week in order to study.

Jen is however amazing and realises that it is only a couple of weeks which matter not in the grand scheme of things so all, i hope, is well.

Thats it for the worst blog post ever, apologies to anyone who is waiting for part 3 of my trilogy of posts but as soon as i finish all this University malarky i will be able to finish it and get it posted.

Part two of my Trilogy of posts about my personal experiences of child birth. I am a man, i acknowledge that my experiences of child birth in no way compares to the experiences of the woman giving birth but that does not mean that my experiences should not be written about, after all this is my website. Part one is here if you want to here what happened in the hours leading up to us leaving for hospital.

It turns out that despite the warning of the smiley midwife regarding the staffing levels (2 midwives instead of the scheduled 6) the level of care we received was pretty bang on. W were escorted to a room which was sizable, had lots of cupboards and machines and asked to make ourselves comfortable. We did the best we could after all this was a room where our son would be born and featured a not to comfortable chair and a hospital bed.

I’m wary of how much i disclose here as this is my experiences but a lot of the things i will be describing don’t happen to me they happen to Jen, i don’t want to upset her in any way so this may or may not be edited slightly.

What must have been going up for 10pm The smiley midwife came in to examine Jen, 4 centimetres was the result of the proclamation. I’d like to point out that at this point Jen was clearly experiencing discomfort but she was not screaming blue murder or anything (in short she was a trooper throughout). Our options were explained, we could either go home for a bit and come back later or Jen could go down to the ward, a ward where men are not allowed at night so i would have to leave. Neither of these options sounded appealing to us, Jen did not want to be left alone quite understandably and neither of us wanted to go home as the town resembled Narnia during the White Witches reign. I think Smiley midwife guessed what we were thinking and said she would give us a minute to think and left the room. While we discussed these rubbish options smiley midwife returned and said it wasn’t that busy so she could give us an hour in the room to see if things progressed, fantastic I don’t have to leave Jen on her own all is well. The following hour and a half passed without a visit from Smiley. This hour was far from event-less as Jen was experiencing contractions throughout but in Labour terms there was nothing to write about.

Smiley returned and examined Jen, 6 was the update which meant we could stay hoorah for Smiley her negotiation skills and poor time keeping. The time is approximately 11.30pm now, Jen is being amazing and i am being a completely useless man, but from what i hear that’s pretty much my expected role. I was holding Jen’s hand rubbing her back, telling her i love her all the usual and expected stuff. I don’t know how other expectant fathers feel at this point but i was doing these things out of lack of comprehension at what else to do. The truth being there probably is very little else you can do, you cannot ease her pain, you cannot do any of it for her and you certainly can’t make it stop, so what do you do? If anyone who has been through this can tell me I’d love to know, really i would but as it stands i continued to feel like a spare part.

The next hour brought a massive increase to the length and intensity of the contractions. Jen would ask me to get Smiley for some pain relief during the contraction and then as it faded she would tell me not to. This made me feel like i had something to do, as tiny a task it it may be and then not have anything to do again. I kept asking if she was sure she was ok without the pain relief and if she wanted it then i would get it for her. Yeah i was grasping at straws in a mix of wanting to feel part of the experience, helping Jen get through it and realising that it was all her, she had to do it pretty much by herself but maybe if i talk enough crap she won’t realise this and maybe it would be more bearable for her as a result.

Truth is i was a bit scared, i have never seen Jen in that much pain and unless we have another baby i never want to see her in that much pain again. It’s not just a feeling of helplessness but also the pure horror of seeing the woman you love in what seems like agony and being completely powerless to stop it, and that is scary. I have a bit of a protective nature and always have, my size gives me the advantage of being able to prevent people starting fights with my friends, yeah i like that, it’s a power thing and in moderation who doesn’t like a bit of power. Powerless however sucks, and it sucks real bad and that is how i felt that night.

Jen finally got to a point where she decided the pain was to much and she needed relief. I went to the nurses station (what am i, American) or whatever it’s called in the UK to see everybody eating take away pizza, man i was jealous. I informed somebody that Jen wanted pain relief and was informed i should return to the room and press the button, doubtless the only reason this system was put in place was to avoid prospective dad’s seeing pizza. Button pressed and here comes Smiley, I explained Jen’s pain relief of choice was Pethadine. Smiley asked if Jen just wanted to try gas and air for a bit, Jen answered that in no uncertain terms she wanted something more than just gas and air, however she did accept gas and air until the drugs came. Smiley returned with an injection which apparently was agreed with Jen would not be Pethadine but Diamorphine, i don’t know what i was doing when this was discussed but i don’t recall that conversation.

Obviously painful contractions continued for about ten minutes at which point Jen said she felt the need to push, button pressed and Smiley arrives and examines Jen and with surprise in her voice states “well that woman’s Epidural will have to wait, your fully dilated”. The next five minutes were a blur, Smiley took on the guise of Tommy Lee Jones in Volcano and started barking orders at me. Me, why is she telling me to do things, I’m the dad not a staff member. She asked me to fetch a thingy from the cupboard, take a wotsit from the doofer and move the hoojit to the side of the doodlebop. Truth is i have no idea what she asked me to do i just remember that i did it. The last of her orders was to press the call button. I stood by the side of Jen holding her hand and watching Smiley at the business end of birth. She looked at me and asked if I’d pressed the button, i had but nobody had come. Apparently i had incorrectly pressed the button (god knows how that is possible) so Smiley pressed it and within seconds a baby catcher (i know i envision a baseball catchers mitt too) appeared in the room.

Mason’s head was visible, i could not help but watch, it was indescribable but in a really good way, Smiley’s hand was cupped near the top of Mason’s head ready to hold his head and I’m guessing support his neck and head from flopping. I’ve heard that a lot of men are freaked out and even put off sex as a result of seeing a baby being born. I can’t see how they could view it as anything less than amazing, if i were religious i would call it a miracle but I’m not and Atheism does not afford us a word of that magnitude but if it did, this would be that word. Then i panicked, Jen asked me later why i didn’t cry because she expected me too, i didn’t cry because our baby was blue and the cord was round his neck and my brain went to a really bad place. I asked if he was ok probably with an inflection of fear in my voice, Smiley just answered “yeah he’s fine, it’s really common” all the while unravelling the cord from round his neck. He was placed on Jen’s chest and he started to cry, it was the best most relieving sound i have ever heard in all my days of existence.

I was asked to cut the cord with the instruction “press down really hard as it is really gristley” i took this to mean Press down really hard in one motion. I was pressing really hard, the baby catcher gave me no further instructions then after a few seconds the job was taken away from me as it needs to be done quickly. Baby catcher then used a Scissor action to cut the cord, i felt robbed, misinformed and duped out of cutting my son’s cord. Her instruction’s weren’t clear and she offered no support while i was trying. This really upset me at the time as i’m sure you can imagine but as time has gone by i have realised the lack of importance this has over our son being healthy.

We have a son, he’s a small, wrinkly, fleshy, little bundle of crying but he is the most gorgeous small, wrinkly, fleshy, little bundle of crying ever and i instantly fell in love with him. Smiley said she needed to go do the other woman’s Epidural and baby catcher claimed she would return with tea and toast which i presumed was an odd joke but turned out to be a real thing. All the while Mason was laid on Jen’s chest gurgling and looking quite content with his weird little hat on. After tea and toast and the reccomendation that Jen have a bath i was left alone with my son. Just me and him it could have been a beautiful movie style moment, but i’m an idiot so it wasn’t.

If you want to find out why you will have to wait for the final part of this trilogy.

Well it’s been nearly a year since I last went running, in fact according to this post the last time I ran was the 31st of May 2009! That post also partially explains why I haven’t been running since then and this one fills in the gaps. I now have some arch support inserts for my shoes and they have worked a treat I now get zero pain from my arches. So I decided it was time to go for my first run, thing is I decided this about 2 months ago and haven’t been able to pry my fat lazy ass into my running gear, until 6am Monday morning that is.

I made the reasonable assumption that almost a year of excessive eating + the extra weight + the lack of exercise would = me being unable to muster any energy together for a decent run so i reverted back to a running guide i have used before that was given to me many years ago by my friend, and here it is:

 Week 1 Run one min, walk 90 seconds. Repeat eight times. Do three times a week.
Week 2 Run two mins, walk one min. Repeat seven times. Do three times a week.
Week 3 Run three mins walk one mins. Repeat six times. Do three times a week.
Week 4 Run five mins, walk two mins. Repeat four times. Do three times a week.
Week 5 Run eight mins, walk two mins. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
Week 6 Run 12 mins, walk one min. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
Week 7 Run 15 mins, walk one min, Run fifteen mins. Do three times a week
Week 8 Run 30 mins continuously

It can literally take you from fat slob who can’t stand up to get the remote to being able to run for 30 minutes straight in less than 2 months and it works really really well. I figured I’d go for week one as i feel really out of shape. Turns out this was a genius stroke because i found it really easy so it has just given me an almighty boost of confidence and i can’t wait to go running again.

This is also good news as just before my injury type thing i bought a good pair of running shoes, size 14 decent running shoes as you can imagine are not the cheapest and i got to wear them once. They are glorious, i believe i tweeted at the time about what a comfortable run it was… until the next day of course when the pain started.

I ran again this morning, i bumped up to the week 2 runs which was not entirely challenging but far from easy. I reckon this is the right level as week 3 i probably would have failed. It took me a little while to get out of bed, i even considered putting the run off but talked myself out of it. The first few weeks it’s tricky getting my self out of bed or whatever to go running but once i’m running i love it, especially when i get to the point where I’m not stopping every few minutes and you can pretty much just run.

Anyway point is i’m running again and next on the agenda is diet, for the moment i’m cutting out the needless snacking i’ve been doing and trying to eat less carbs, when my student loan comes through i will put together a better diet. The gym is something i want to start up again but i want to fight the flab first., oh and commit fully to the final year of my degree of course as i feel it’s a little more important right now than my waist size.

In a bought of pure laziness and can’t be arsedness i got up late today meaning that by the time i got to Uni in Sheffield to study it would be around lunch time. I decided this wasn’t worth it, i called out to a friend who works at the local college’s library to see if i could take advantage of her good nature to discover that that library was closed. Harumph, what can i do other than schlep all the way on a bus, train and a tram for 2 hours only to have to do it all again to come home.

Well it turns out that these days local libraries have computers. Well stupid of course they do, everybody knows that. Yeah i guess i did know but for some reason my brain didn’t connect the dots between a library in an educational institution and a local library (and i’m doing a degree, scary isn’t it0. So here i am sat in my local library, probably the first time i’ve been in a library outside of a college or university in 20 years, i’m on the freaking internet and i’ve got to say it’s a pretty cool place.

Just behind me is a selection of DVD’s including Watchmen, Taken and the probably rubbish but apparently violent Gamer and to my right is a rack with a small but decent looking selection of Graphic novels including Akira. Awesome is all i can say.

Get down your local library it’s probably mildly cooler than you thought it was.

Time has been in short supply of late, what with University, some part time work that I needed to do before I sank financially and then of course family commitments which are my life right now and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mason is now 10 weeks old and fit and well after his early bout of not gaining weight which scared the bejeebers out of me, I’m proud to say he’s now quite the chunky munky. But what I really want to talk about is child birth or rather my experiences of it and not in a “ooooh it’s so hard for the man” kind of sexist piggy kind of way… I hope.

Firstly we felt like we had been waiting forever, we were convinced he would be early which meant the closer it got to his due date the worse it felt and then after his due date it was even worse. If I can give any advice to any couple it would be to not tell anybody that you think your child will be early, i lost it on facebook one day because everybody knew we thought he would be early and would ask if he was here yet which added to our frustration. If I were to give any advice to friends of people expecting a baby I would say don’t keep asking if the baby is here yet, believe me when the baby does come you will find out one way or the other.

Anyhoo 6 days after the due date mild (and when I say mild that’s not me taking anything away from Jen it’s just they are mild by comparison) contractions started in the afternoon. It’s hard to relate to what’s going on as a man because the most logical comparison of the way this feels is apparently really bad period pain, in addition to this Jen had these feelings before several times so your in a weird state of prepared for everything and nothing at the same time. During this period a none the wiser three year old is running around and you don’t want to alert them to the fact that anything is wrong in case it freaks them out, it’s a false alarm or both. Then the point came that Jen knew it was the real thing, I’d like to think I would be as calm as her if I were in her shoes, I’d also like to think that i was as calm as her after she shared this knowledge with me. I’d like to think I had the body of an Adonis too but I also know that this is not the case.

Jen asked me to ring her dad to come pickup Ruby. Everything became very real very quickly but before the reality a brief moment of nothing. If somebody told you that you had won a million pounds that information would not sink in straight away, your brain would take a moment to process that A. somebody had just won a million pounds and B. that person was you and this is how I think I felt at that moment. If it were the movie of my life (TV Movie or straight to DVD of course) the screen would go soft focus and blurry round the edges and the sound would be muffled with a very slow pull to a wide shot then snap back in to a tight shot with clear sound and visuals. That kind of disconnectedness that must have only lasted .54153394 of a second before that amazing I’ve won a million pounds/ we are going to have a baby feeling kicked in.

Two whole hours have passed in which period checks were being made (clothes, nappies etc), hands were being held and grimaces of discomfort and pain were being made. Its now 9pm on Tuesday the 5th of January 2010, I don’t know if you were in or around South Yorkshire on that date i also don’t know if you remember the weather on that date, but i do. There was a lot of cold wet white stuff on the floor and more of it was falling from the sky. The car was covered in it and needed warming up and de snowing ready for our trip to the hospital. The roads were slippy and quiet, snowy nights like that always remind me of the BBC kids drama from my childhood called “The box of Delights”. The hospital is not far away from our home and we got there within ten minutes and were greeted by a very smiley and friendly midwife who informed us that due to the weather they were under staffed and (her words) “i apologise in advance for the level of care you are likely to receive”. I think in anybody’s book of “comforting things to say to a woman in labour” these words would not feature.

In order to keep the post size down i figured i would split this into before, during and after so this is as suggested by the title part 1 of 3

In about a month I will have the necessary funds to buy a car. This something I must do as once I qualify the fact that I drive is going to increase my employability by around 80%. I get my last loan payment in April and I qualify in July, however buying a car asap will also increase my choice in part time work I’m putting an ASAP on it. The reason for my post is that I would like to hear from anybody who knows somebody (or even knows somebody that knows somebody who has a car or cars for sale.

Now the sticky bit, when I say I have money to buy a car we are talking around the £500 mark hence the title of this post. I’m looking for a cheap car that may only have to last me 6 months or so until I can afford a better one, this mat sound like a waste of money nut it really is necessary for my work and to qualify without a car will put me at a severe disadvantage.

Prefferably I would like a 5 door (AKA hatchback) family size car. I have had a cavalier and vectra in the past (both of which cost me sub £500) and this size is perfect for me as I am huge.

If anybody can help then tweet me facebook me or reply on here.

Thanks in advance

The following is based on a true story:

<Internal monologue> Ah my train is arriving at the station i shall stand up and walk to the doors to await the train coming to a full stop and the doors opening (my internal monologue is a lot posher and articulate than i really am). Oh dear i appear to be facing the doors that won’t open how foolish of me, i had better turn around. I can see people milling around outside the doors waiting to get on the train, but wait, they appear to be completely cutting off my exit, i and my fellow passengers will be unable to get off the train, we need to be able to do this for them to be able to get on. I’m sure they will realise their error and move once the doors open. No it appears they have not realised and they are now standing staring at me expecting me to exit the train even though they are completely blocking my path <internal monologue>

GET OUT OF MY WAY YOU IDIOTIC BABOON’S ARSES BEFORE I STAND ON YOU

I do hope it is temporary stupidity because to be that dim on a daily basis must hurt. On the subject of stupidity with doors remind me to make a post about lifts soon.

Last night I was laid on the living room floor on my back. When I do this Ruby likes to climb on like I am a piece of playground equipment. We started playing a game which involved Ruby standing on my chest then diving superman style over my head at which point I catch her, lower her slowly to the ground over my head the pick her back up and stand her on my chest again. This was repeated over and over and over again, today my triceps are screaming.

This made me think about other games I could create that would be fun
for a toddler and beneficial for me as a workout. The idea then
continued as being a great DVD aimed at parents who have little time
to go to a gym but could do these exercises while playing with their
kids, of course I understand that just taking part in play activities
with your kids is exercise but the idea was to isolate muscle groups
to make it more effective.

Then my Brain went a step further and thought about possible
implications of the whole idea being inappropriate and potentially
having a backlash against it.

I tell you what, that was a busy 5 minutes on the train this morning I
was rich and famous for a brief period but hey ho.

How long have we been waiting for this exactly? It feels like forever. Rumours have been popping up and disappearing only to reemerge months later for years now. Apparently the iPhone was born out of tablet research and technology’s and now the iPhone and the iPod Touch get their big brother the iPad.

I have a very mixed range of emotions to it. It’s gorgeous, it’s sexy, like the iPhone it just works so simplistically while still being complex and most importantly of all i want one. However i also feel a little underwhelmed. Maybe it’s the mass of hype and build up to it that have made me feel this way or maybe it’s the fact that it is pretty much just a large iPod Touch. For me i would use it in place of my iphone while at home. It’d live under the sofa or the TV cabinet or similar and would be used mainly for the web over wifi so surfing, blogging, Twitter and probably games/apps to. I can’t see it going any further than the garden though and as a result I really don’t see the point in 3G versions.

I think the bigger news i think is the book store. It’s another business model for apple to rake it in from and the way it appears to work is very nice but again this is just a variant on the app store so is hardly groundbreaking.

I want to play with one and I’d love to own one but it seems a bit extravagant when the biggest impact it would have on my life is to preserve my iPhone battery a bit.

I will probably give it a miss and just wait for the next iPhone though

Update: Say I buy an iPad, I buy it to use on a commute. I get on the train, I sit at one of the highly coveted tables. 1 person at the other side of the table has a laptop/ netbook and is watching a movie, surfing the web, emailing or whatever. His laptop screen creates a natural barrier giving him a degree of privacy, a degree of privacy only achievable by me if I hold my iPad for the entire time. Not that great