Saturday 29th of July 2006 – Our week together
I dropped you in Manchester today, we got the train there at 12:15, arrived at Manchester at 14:37, in the wonderful Virgin tilting train (the only train company in England that’s value for money, especially considering that I only paid £40 return for the whole thing, as I booked in advance).
Then we walked around Manchester Picadilly with your nana Linda, took a photo of ourselves in the photo booth, pulling silly faces, I smoked two cigarettes – but I haven’t smoked anything for weeks, apart from 2 at Serious Business last week. Anyway I felt a bit sick after smoking them and refused to smoke anymore when your nana offered me another one.
At 17:10 I got the train back to London and you and your nana went off to Heywood. I felt really sad on the way home, but you called me to say you got to nana’s safely and that cheered me up. When I got back to London I should have been home in about 15 minutes, but it took ages, because the Victoria line was messed up, the buses were messed up, the traffic was messed up… Argh!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s been incredibly hot in the last 2 weeks, like I’ve never experienced in England before, not for such a sustained period of time. As a result, on our week off, just gone, we couldn’t go cycling as I had planned, so we went swimming and did other things instead. In fact, here’s what we did on our wonderful week together:
Monday: I picked you up from Wandsworth as you stayed at your Dad’s last weekend. Last Friday was when R. told you everything about him moving back up North. I phoned up to make sure you were ok. As your father can sell fridges to eskimos, not only were you ok, you had planned your entire life up to university. You were adamant that you’re going to live with him when you’re 10. You were as happy as larry… I went to Cardiff for the weekend – it was J’s friends baby’s christening. When I arrived there I appeared to be suffering from food poisoning, we had to run to the B&B just after we’d left to explore town. Don’t know if it was stress or the hot weather or food poisoning, but all I could do was sleep for 3 hours (after having a serious case of diarrhoea), after that I felt fine. Came back, picked you up, we drove home, the traffic was great as the city is empty, then we went food shopping, then I passed out for an hour, it was so hot. After that we went swimming at 3:30 and stayed there till 6.
Tuesday: went shopping in the morning, got a magic mug for you. You can draw on it and it stays forever – see here, a wallet for J and some goggles for myself. Then we spent time in Paradise Park, playing football, you cycled a bit (it was too hot for hardcore cycling), then you played in the water section of Paradise Park with a couple of boys. You seemed to be under the impression that when you move to Manchester you’ll be seeing me every weekend, so it was up to me to bring you down to Earth and explain clearly that if you move there you won’t be seeing much of me at all, especially not every weekend. Needless to say you weren’t so keen to move after I said that. I also said that if you felt angry about this whole moving thing it was ok. I’m still very surprised about how well you’re taking it, but I think it’s because you don’t quite understand what it means. When your dad and I split up you took that very well too, maybe you’re one of those people who takes everything well, I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see. I find it hard to believe it though, because you’re always complaining about stuff (I wonder where you get that from) and if this isn’t cause for complaint I don’t know what is.
Wednesday: very hot again, we stayed in the flat for most of the day, watched Ice Age II (which was funny!), we watched ‘The Afternoon Play’ on BBC, the one with the guy who declares himself a republic:
The Good Citizen:
When Adam Clay walks into a rural village police station to declare he’s seceding from Britain and setting up his own republic, he is unaware of the furore he’s about to create. Kate Dobie, a high-flying Fleet Street journalist, is home visiting her dad, Sergeant Happy Dobie. Under pressure to return to London to uncover the next big story, Kate decides that Adam is the perfect subject. Her exclusive stories soon attract the attention of the media and the government, and journalists and photographers descend en masse on the sleepy village. Events spin out of control when Adam’s estranged wife Joanna appears with their two daughters and sells her version of the story to a rival paper.
I’ve seen it before and I like that one. We also watched two others this week: The Trouble with George and Your Mother Should Know.
After that we went swimming again. We both had goggles this time and spent ages diving under water, throwing a marble in and racing to find it. We had so much fun!!! I asked your nana to see if they have swimming lessons in Manchester because you’re ready for it I think… We were wearing our goggles for so long that when we came out of the pool we both had red circles around our eyes and looked like we’d been punched.
Thursday: Went to watch ‘Deep Sea 3D’ at IMAX, it only lasted 40 minutes, which is just as well, as it was pretty intense viewing. Lots of sea creatures getting killed and slimy things about, all incredibly large and very realistic!!! Still, it was great watching you trying to touch the thousands of jellyfish we found ourselves surrounded by. You covered your eyes when the sharks showed up and got a bit scared a couple of times. After that we wandered around the London Eye and found ourselves taking a boat tour on the Thames, something I’d never done before. So, lots of photos got taken on Thursday, of course, you know me, always taking photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/plasmatika/sets/72157594213786032/
Then we got back home, phoned nana to arrange things for Saturday and I ended up arguing with her, because she thought it’d be good to pick you up and go, rather than stay with me while I waited for the train back to London. She was trying to save a bit of money, but I thought she was trying to avoid spending time with me, because of everything that’s been happening, and the fact that I’ve been rather upset that your father is moving away. I ended crying for ages, just couldn’t stop, you gave me a couple of hugs, I said that I couldn’t stop because we’d been swimming so much I was full of water. You understood it was a joke and we had a little laugh and I started crying again. I was also harsh on R., on MSN, and said a bunch of things I shouldn’t have. Basically I had a bit of a breakdown, I felt like running away and not dealing with any of this anymore. I felt like dying. Things got pretty dark in my head for a couple of hours. But hey, that’s part of being human. After much crying I felt a bit better, called your nana after you went to sleep and we had a good chat. Your nana never ceases to amaze me, she really is a lovely woman.
Friday: Packed your things for your trip, went shopping to get your nana a bottle of Baileys and ‘Banana Ale’ for your uncle. Then we went for a wander and bought you some new trainers, size 3, because size 2 was too small and there doesn’t seem to be 1/2 sizes anymore, which is very odd, I’m trying to find out what happened to 1/2 sizes on urban75. you still couldn’t tie shoelaces. You said your dad tried to teach you before but you were too young (your words), anyway, I explained to you and demonstrated about 3x and you got the hang of it after about 5 attempts, then you spent the next hour practicing, you were sooo happy! Brilliant stuff. So, I taught you how to ride a bike, chase marbles in the swimming pool and tie your shoe laces, I’m well happy!
We then played football at Paradise Park in the afternoon, to try out your new shoes. Then your dad popped over to say goodbye to you before you went. He told us that Jo was at home earlier that day, with the front door open, because of the heat – and they often leave it open anyway – when some guy walked in and snatched the mobile from her. Thankfully he didn’t lay a finger on her!!! She said he was smartly dressed as well, so definitely an opportunistic thief. It’s good to know not all thieves go around beating people to a pulp. It would have been terrible if something bad had happened to Jo. Your dad may not believe this, but I think she’s a lovely woman, and has been the best thing that’s happened to R., even if it means they’re moving away because of having met each other. At least she’s a nice woman and some sort of saint, for putting up with your dad… * joke * 😀 She does seem to be a very genuine, lovely person and comes from the same place as your dad, so they understand each other, something we never did, your father and I, culturally speaking. Later on J came over and we had dinner.
You also spent a considerable amount of each day kicking a balloon around the flat, you seem addicted to balloon kicking! You also spent some time drawing on your feet and legs and mine too, with a felt tip pens, and listening to Horrid Henry tapes.
Oh, and your eye has had another episode too, since Thursday. This time I’m giving you liquid Zovirex, as the specialist I took you to see prescribed. This stuff costs £50 a bottle apparently!!! Dr Riadh A Wakeel, consultant dermatologist, prescribed it when we went to see him a few months ago, as the recurring eye thing, which we thought was impetigo, and you were always given antibiotics for, just seemed to be happening too often. Hopefully this should fix it, it certainly hasn’t grown as big as the other times. The Dr. says that after two more episodes, if it’s not fixed then we move onto a 6 month course to try and kill this herpes on the optic nerve, which is what he thinks you have.
This has always been there since you feel down and hit eye on the floorboards at 11 months:
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You were a happy lad when I left you in Manchester, full of beans. Your nan was over the moon too, how lovely to see you both so happy, even though it broke my heart a bit leaving you there, I know you’ll be loved to bits and have a great time.