Love, Flowers

For anyone who might be following this stagnant internet backwater who I haven’t emailed, my third daughter was born at 12.28 on Tuesday. She hasn’t got a name yet, but is healthy and pretty damn big in comparison to my first two daughters.

It’s been quite a ride – she was 12 days late, so the last two weeks were spent in a constant state of nervous energy wondering when the labour would start, I rushed back from London a couple of times when we thought things were kicking off, only to find they weren’t. Was getting pretty frazzled with the whole thing… Monday, had all manner of hell with car parking – My partner was due to be induced in the afternoon so went to work in the morning, train was cancelled so drove to Basingstoke, didn’t have enough change for car park there so drove back to Micheldever, forgot that season ticket had expired so when I came back at 2pm there was a bloody ticket on the car. So, drove to the hospital, eventually found a space, then discovered that the car park machine didn’t take notes or cards (they used to…). So had to drive and get change – by the time I got back there was a massive queue, so I drove down to the town, parked there and got a bus to the hospital. An hour and a half, it took… and by the time I actually found her in the maternity ward they’d decided to send her home as they didn’t have enough doctors on hand if the induction went wrong and they had to do an emergency ceasarean. I was not amused, no.

We went home, and then pretty much straight away the waters broke and we went back in. And it all went smoothly after that. The relief of having everyone home safely was enormous, it’s now the months of broken sleep that’s going to fry my brain.

Still, now have two week’s paternity leave, so maybe a chance to catch up on paperwork and spend some time having fun with the girls.

Yeah, if I can keep the chronic misanthropy in its box, it’s all good.

This was taken at the ‘Gnome Reserve’ in Cornwall, when I was on holiday a few weeks ago. I did promise gnomes and Hugo Chavez. I can give you Hugo, but I’ll have to pass on the gnomes as I haven’t done anything with the pictures, I think they’re best left in a folder, untouched until I’ve made peace with the fact of their existence. No, Hugo in conference with a penguin was the thing that tripped my brain into gibbering non-comprehension, after it had already been made vulnerable by all the surreal stuff that was going in this place, like families of teletubbies, Abraham Lincoln driving a tractor… I looked hard for the Manson family, but they must have been hiding. It’s Hugo that stands out though.