"Where every concept pleases, and only man is vile."
The youngest member of the team, Hollywood Todd, is pictured here with his favourite hat and the fishing rod from the worst present ever.
Thanks Mr Housewife your contribution has been noted.
The boy himself is nearly walking. This is one of the few photos I managed to shoot when he was not either crawling around like a lunatic or standing up and then falling over in rapid succession.
Mark and I decided to go to the Tyrrells wine tasting at the SCG the other week. Sadly it was on a Saturday morning and SWMBO and JFGP had to go to his swimming lesson. So my cunning solution was to take Hollywood with me to charm all comers whilst Mark and I dabbled with some quality vino.
It worked like a charm and the boy had a great time crawling around the members bar trying to knock patrons over. The only drawback came when I had to change his nappy and discovered that there isn’t a family room in the members pavilion. I was shocked at the lack of facilities. Shocked I tell you.
From the financial committee’s point of view it was a good trip too, because I didn’t succumb and buy any wine.
When we are young we all have dreams and hopes for what we’re going to be when we grow up. I wanted to be a policeman, the captain of one of Her Majesty’s ships or a formula 1 driver. I sometimes think that growing old is simply the narrowing of the opportunities available to us. Or possibly just the choices we have made changing the nature of the choices we can make. Nowadays I mainly dream of a quiet life, with a seat in the dappled shade a good book and a nice glass of a good, properly chilled, semillon. Tyrrells Vat 1, perhaps.
At no point did any of my dreams include me uttering the phrase “don’t look at me like that, you’re the one eating bum cream”.
Oh look, I’ve got my own wikipedia page. Hmmm, I sniff an interloper trying to challenge my position as top Andy Todd on the web.
Who is on your wikipedia page?
People, I am excited. In about an hour and a half I’m going to be sitting down in Sydney’s Opera House listening to Ben Folds and the Sydney Symphony work through a sizeable portion of his back catalogue. This will both rock and roll. More later, hopefully.
Update: It was fantastic. As close as I get to a religious experience. The 2nd best gig I’ve been to. It is now officially Ben Folds weekend at our house and only his music will be played.
… spring holiday. After the excitement of last week I took a break from my hectic work schedule and booked a little family getaway for next month.
We’re off for a three day weekend in Port Stephens. Being a classy family we are going to stay at a caravan park. SWMBO is hoping that it will be a “proper” caravan park, just like they have on the TV.
I’m just hoping that the pod of dolphins that the oldest soccer player in town has told me about put in their “guaranteed” appearance at the end of the beach every evening at dusk. Although I think we will cope if they don’t. Luckily, because we’re not going on holiday in the UK, we don’t have to worry about the weather.
And in the period of about three hours my beloved’s return to work came to an abrupt end. Even before it had started. I don’t want to go into details here because it isn’t the right place and because I’m still quite angry.
But suffice it to say that turning around at the eleventh hour and fundamentally changing the terms of an employment offer isn’t exactly tennis as far as I’m concerned.
Apart from the obvious things (Marmite, Marks and Spencer undies) there are some things that I just can’t find for sale in Australia. Starting today I’m going to document them here. This will be a very occasional series but let me start with this inaugural list of things you can’t buy in Australia;
SWMBO is returning to work. From conception to execution has taken no longer than three weeks. When she makes her mind up she doesn’t hang around.
It all started innocently enough, one day at work middle-management-Mikey casually (and I thought half jokingly) inquired if Mrs Todd was looking for a job. I replied that she was too busy spending my money to earn any of her own but that I would ask anyway. As an aside I should mention that my corporate masters have me working for a client where Mrs Todd was working when we met (all of nine years ago now). So it’s not like she isn’t known around the office. Sometimes people even have good things to say about her.
I passed this inquiry onto herself and she replied that she would be interested. Which rather suprised me because previously she had said that she was never working in IT again.
To cut a long story short she wrote a CV, had a meeting with the afore mentioned middle management Mikey and before you know it cash money was being discussed. Then Mike had to have a bit of a sit down followed by a chat with the president of the Punters Club before the deal was finally done.
The last step was sorting out the ankle biters, because apparently its neglect if you leave them at home on their own between the hours of 9 and 5. Once more Lightning Todd was ahead of the game and had decided that we would be having a Nanny. Sadly my request that the selection criteria included Swedish and buxom was roundly rejected. but wouldn’t you know it we struck lucky and within a week a good candidate was signed up. She starts next Wednesday.
SWMBO starts work the week after and will be accompanying me on the Manly ferry two days a week. So the good news is that I’ll get some piece and quiet on my commute for three days a week.
I’m not saying that we have bad music in our car (courtesy of Mr Housewife (KRed Parent)) but it is looking increasingly like Olly’s first proper word will be Agadoo. Oh dear.
I shall be burning the CD as soon as I can get it out of the car. Its the only possible thing to do.