So, the last time I blogged regularly, I had a 2 1/2 year old child who had just had their first trip abroad to France. Now, that child is 6 and is in their last term of their second year at primary school.
It’s been an interesting time, not least because a big chunk of 2020 was spent stuck at home. Days before the UK went into full lockdown in March 2020, our childminder closed and initially I spent time at my parents’ house in York for childcare. When that became an impossibility, I had the joy of working at home whilst trying to keep a four-year-old entertained for four months.
In some respects, I was lucky; my child hadn’t started formal education yet and so home-schooling wasn’t required, but it was hard; taking awkward phone calls for work whilst your child is demanding attention isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. A lot of CBeebies was watched, as were various Netflix and Disney+ shows. Indeed, my child watched so much of Jake and the Never-land Pirates on Disney+ that Jake became their imaginary friend for a while. I had to do this on my own as my wife is a front-line NHS worker, and had no choice but to carry on going into work throughout the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, she contracted Covid-19 in April 2020 and was very ill with it, but thankfully made a full recovery.
Fortunately, in September 2020, my child was able to start school, and settled in well. The school wasn’t our first choice – indeed, it was actually our third. Our top two choices where schools that were more convenient for us, being as they were on our commute to work; this third choice of school was further away in the opposite direction to our workplaces. However, whilst it may not have been our first choice, in retrospect, it was probably the best choice for our child as it has much smaller class sizes due to it being comparatively under-subscribed. We were also fortunate to get a place in the out of school club.
We were also blessed with good fortune in January 2021, when the country went back into lockdown and the schools closed. This time around, the government widened the categories of key workers, meaning that I qualified as well (and our HR department responded very quickly to my request for a letter confirming as such) so we were able to get a key worker place and avoided two months of home schooling. Thankfully, apart from short periods due to possible exposure and ‘having a cough’, there’s not been so much disruption to their education this year.
Despite a rough time in 2020, I’m still enjoying being a parent and we have a lot of fun as a family. We have regular days out, and our child now has regular out of school activities on Saturdays too. Most importantly, they’re happy and healthy, with a group of friends.
We still only have the one child at present; that could change in future but we’re still waiting for my wife to take her driving test before we consider having another.
Well, hello. This is my first blog post in almost four years.
I last wrote a post on here in September 2018, and then took an un-planned break from blogging. This was exacerbated at the end of 2018, when I attempted to upgrade the server that this web site runs on, and ended up wiping everything. And I mean, everything, including the backups that I thought I’d saved elsewhere but hadn’t.
Just like that, 16 and a half years of blog posts were gone, along with all the comments. Now, it’s possible that I could have re-built most of the blog posts, using things like the Web Archive and help from others, but between working full-time and being a parent, I just didn’t have the time or the inclination to do so.
Furthermore, I was beginning to become uncomfortable with how much I had shared about my life over the years. Back when I started the blog, aged 17, I had a tendency to over-share. Over time I reigned that in; I was in a relationship with someone between 2005 and 2009 where I agreed not to share her real name on here, and though we’ve both moved on I’m keeping that commitment – not least because we’re still in touch and actually met up recently.
But I also wanted to reign in how much I talk about my child, who is now six. I’m happy to share their age, but I’m afraid you won’t be knowing their name or seeing recent photos, and I’m even keeping their gender off here now too. It’s about consent and privacy – as a parent, I want to protect my child, and they’re too young to really know what a blog is, never mind have lots of information about their life made public.
I am hoping to get back into the habit of blogging regularly, though not on a daily basis as I had aimed for in the past. Initially I’m aiming for twice a week, as there are four years of news to catch up on, but my minimum aspiration is for one new blog post per week.
Why now? Well, I’ve wanted to get back into writing for pleasure again. I’ve written a few things on Medium, but it feels like writing for a magazine; I’d rather stick to somewhere more personal that’s just about and run by me. I feel like I have things to say now, and hopefully the time to put those things into written words.
If you’re an old-time reader of my blog, welcome back, and I hope that this wasn’t too much of a surprise when it popped up in your RSS reader. And if you’re a new reader, hello. You can read my very dry ‘about me‘ page which is more focussed on my work, but I hope you’ll stick around and will get to know me better.
As usual, I didn’t intend to leave it two months between blog posts, but life got in the way again.
The main reason for my absence is that we actually went on a proper holiday for the first time since our two-year-old was born. We accompanied my parents for 10 days in France, including a visit to Mont St-Michel, pictured above. This was at the back end of June, and I still have over 100 photos to sort. As well as Mont St-Michel, we visited the chateaux at Chenonceau and Chambord, Zooparc Beauval and the Jardin de la Source near Orleans.
This week I’ve been at home with our two-year-old whilst the childminder is on holiday. We’ve been to The Deep in Hull, Stockeld Park and a repeat visit to Ponderosa (which has improved significantly since our last visit). Right now, they’re asleep, so I have a rare chance to write a quick blog post.
After a long break, we’re finally moving forward with the house renovations again. I did some tiling for the first time in the downstairs toilet, which is now (mostly) painted and just needs flooring before it’s essentially finished. The next big project is our two-year-old’s room, which we’re hoping to get finished by the time they turn three in December.
On the technology front, I’ve replaced my iPhone (in addition to the new iPad in May). I had been planning to wait until the autumn, but the battery in my old iPhone showed signs that it was about to fail. I’ve upgraded to a Product(RED) iPhone 8, which is lovely and fast when compared to my iPhone 5S.
I’m hoping that I’ll have time to write at more length about what I’ve been up to; I have around 30 bullet points in my ‘blog post ideas’ note in Evernote.
Today is, once again, my birthday. I’m now well into my mid-thirties.
I haven’t anything special planned today – I’ll be going to work as usual. Tomorrow, I’ll be meeting up for lunch with my parents for a birthday meal.
I’ve not really asked for any presents this year. Instead, I’ve simply asked for money, to put towards buying a new iPad. My current iPad Mini was a 30th birthday present, and is now four years old. The screen is cracked and broken and the home button no longer works. And I suspect that iOS 12, which is likely to be released later this year, won’t run on it.
Also, my age now is double the age I was when I started this blog, back in January 2002. Although, to be pedantic, I was 17 years and 7 months old when I started blogging, so it would be some time next year that I could claim to have been blogging for half of my life.
I’ve been feeling pretty rotten this week, having caught a particularly nasty cold. Presumably from Lizzie; she’s had a cold for a few days now and so her face has been constantly covered in snot. And she likes giving us kisses now, which is cute, but also a sure-fire way to pick up her germs.
I have still gone to work as normal, and I thought I’d write about what I do to get through a rough patch.
Please be aware that I’m not a medical professional, and none of this should be considered medical advice. If a medical professional advises you to do something else, follow their advice, not mine. This is just what works for me.
Get up and get clean
When you’re feeling rough, either because you’re ill or experiencing a decline in mental health, there’s a temptation just to stay in bed. And, if you’re so ill that you really cannot get yourself out of bed, it may be best to stay there – if you have ‘flu for example. But maybe call NHS 111 if this happens, just in case it’s something more serious.
If you can get yourself out of bed, then do. Have a shower, and put on clean clothes. Brush your teeth. Shave, if you have facial hair. You probably do these things anyway, but make a special effort to do so. If you’re feverish, then you may have shed a lot of sweat, so getting yourself clean and fresh should help.
Get some fresh air
Go outside, even if it’s just for a few minutes. If you can’t, at least try to get a window open. I felt noticeably better as soon as I got out of the house.
Go to work, if you can
This is a subjective point. I have a desk job, so work isn’t too strenuous; plus, this week a lot of people were off so the office was quiet. Also, I take the train to work, so there was no need to drive; I would have been less likely to go in otherwise. Being at work, seeing other people and being productive actually made me feel better.
Drink plenty of fluids
I mentioned fever sweats – you’re more likely to get dehydrated when you’re ill, so drink plenty of water. Avoid alcohol; the odd hot toddy is probably okay but too much alcohol can leave you dehydrated and feeling even worse. Stick to no more than one average-strength alcoholic drink a day.
Take paracetamol
Paracetamol (acetaminophen to Americans) is cheap, and can help ease your symptoms. Adults can usually take two tablets no less than four hours apart (but always read the label).
Get plenty of rest and avoid stress
Finally, whilst I do advise getting out during the day, rest is also really important when you’re ill. Go to bed early, and avoid doing too many strenuous or stressful activities so that your body has time to recover.
As the certificate above shows, I passed the PRINCE2 Practitioner certificate in project management. I took a week-long intensive course with QA Training in Leeds in March, which included the foundation and practitioner exams.
I was lucky to get a funded place, in a ballot held by my trade union branch at work (Unison). QA’s PRINCE2 course is not cheap, costing over £1000 – there would have been no way that I would have been able to afford it with my own funds. For your money, you get a copy of the official textbook (Amazon link – sponsored link), workbooks and full sample papers for both examinations. Refreshments are also provided, and the coffee machine is pretty good, but you need to bring your own lunch. That being said, QA is based in City Exchange in Leeds, which is the tower block overlooking the Trinity Leeds shopping centre, so there’s no shortage of places to eat within staggering distance.
PRINCE2 is a project management method, originally developed by the British government. Indeed, the Cabinet Office co-runs Axelos, the company which manages PRINCE2, in a joint venture with outsourcing firm Capita. Consequently, PRINCE2 is commonly used in project management in the UK public sector and it’s a useful certification to have.
As mentioned, the PRINCE2 course is quite intensive – especially the first two days, where you prepare for the foundation exam. You start the course on Monday, and sit the foundation exam on Tuesday afternoon. There’s around three hours of coursework to complete before the course starts, and two to three hours each week night. That’s on top of full days in the classroom. That coffee machine was very much welcome, and I’m also indebted to my wife for managing Lizzie whilst I looked myself in the bedroom to study. I’m also thankful to one of my colleagues who took the course a few weeks before I did, and was able to lend me the textbook. That allowed me to read the first few chapters before starting, so that I had a better grounding of some of the terminology from day one.
You receive provisional results from the Foundation exam straight-away, as a pre-requisite of the Practitioner exam is that you have passed the Foundation level. On Wednesday, the class gained a few additional students who were just studying for Practitioner, and we took the Practitioner exam on Friday afternoon. Both exams are multiple choice, but whilst the Foundation exam is just an hour, the Practitioner exam is two and a half hours. And I needed the full two and a half hours. In the Practitioner exam, you’re typically given four choices; two will be wrong, and the other two will be the right answer but with one for the wrong reason. This is still counted as a wrong answer though, and is the major difference between Practitioner and Foundation. You need to know why an answer is right, not just that it is the right answer.
The results took a couple of weeks, and, fortunately I passed. The pass mark is 55%; I managed 81% in Practitioner and a similar score in Foundation. You don’t get anything extra for passing well: it’s pass or fail. There’s no merit or distinction grades.
The Foundation certification is valid for life, and the Practitioner certification is valid for three years. You can extend this by doing continuing professional development with Axelos (and paying them some money), which I’ll have to contemplate.
As for my own career, having PRINCE2 doesn’t change anything in the short term. It may mean that I’m able to take on some project work in my current role at work, and I may look for other roles in project management. It was a big confidence boost though; excepting my driving tests, this was the first time I’d taken an exam since leaving university. I also feel pleased that the extra effort that I put in was worth it.
Happy New Year! As usual, I’m making a handful of resolutions that I’ll aim to achieve in 2018. I don’t always blog about them (as a quick search of my old posts suggests), but here’s an overview and the rationale.
Try to get at least 10,000 steps on an many days as possible. I’ve been a Fitbit wearer for almost two and a half years now. 2017 brought some good streaks where I managed 10,000 steps on consecutive days, including 100 days from July through to October. I would like to have more streaks in 2018. I think 10,000 steps every day for 365 days is out of the question, especially as I’m writing this shortly before lunchtime on the 1st January and I haven’t even hit 1000 steps, never mind 10,000. But I think it’s having a positive effect on my fitness, requires a relatively small commitment each day and it’s achievable.
Become a PRINCE2-certified project manager. I’m booked onto a week-long intensive PRINCE2 course in March, with funding from my trade union. The funding was awarded from a ballot, and the course would normally cost a four-figure sum, so this really is an opportunity that I can’t afford to lose, both morally and financially. So I need to make sure that I put in adequate preparation beforehand, allowing me to make the most of it and pass the exams.
Move forward with house renovations. We did some more work on our house in 2017, but not as much as in previous years. Two rooms downstairs are almost finished, so this year I need to get on and complete those jobs. We also need to start on our two-year-old’s bedroom, which will be a major project including re-plastering and probably some electrical work.
More child-free evenings out. Christine and I managed two child-free evenings out in 2017, which were the first ones since the end of 2015 when our two-year-old was born. We’ve had several offers from potential babysitters and need to do more to take up these offers, so that we can have some more quality time with each other.
Write more blog posts. My blogging basically fell of a cliff at the end of last year. I’m going to aim to write two new blog posts each week, and re-start my answers to Richard Herring’s Emergency Questions.
Clear out our spare room and have more guests staying over. We have a spare bed, but it hasn’t been used since May 2016 because we’ve had too much stuff piled up in our spare room. We should now have enough storage space to put all that stuff away properly, so that we can actually use our spare room and have more guests staying over.
Although our child turned 2 this month, we’re planning a proper birthday party in the new year. We didn’t do one last year as I don’t think a one-year-old would’ve known what was going on, but I think they’ll enjoy having a party.
In June, we’re going on holiday! We’re spending 10 days in France with my parents. It’ll be our two-year-old’s first trip abroad, and the first time that I’ve been out of the country since my Middle East trip for work in 2015. And it’ll be my first time driving abroad.
We have two weddings in the calendar. One is the day after our own wedding anniversary in May, and the other is later in the year.
I’m hoping to buy a new iPad, and perhaps a new phone – I will have had my iPhone 5S for three years in February.
More work on the house. We’ve nearly finished the downstairs, but the room that will be our two-year-old’s bedroom needs a lot more work.
Education! Christine starts a part-time university course for a few months in January, and I’m taking a week-long intensive project management course in March.
Whilst we haven’t booked anything, we’re hoping for another London trip.
Although we did go to a New Year’s Eve party, we were home and in bed asleep when the 1st January began.
We made a return trip to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which is one of our favourite zoos and in within reasonable driving distance of home. We only went once in 2017 but I’m sure we’ll be back at least once in 2018.
Our first child-free day of the year saw us go to the cinema to see A Monster Calls. It’s a great film that gets very emotional in places.
As usual, January is my blogiversary, and in 2017 I marked 15 years of blogging. Whilst I barely wrote anything in the last three months of this year, I’m not planning to completely give up on blogging any time soon. I also reviewed the Google Chromecast that I got for Christmas, and which has seen extensive use throughout the year.
Halifax is home to Eureka, the National Children’s Museum, and I took our one-year-old there in March. This was the first time that I had visited as an adult, the museum having opened 25 years ago when I was a child myself. Other museum visits included the Manchester Museum and Temple Newsam near Leeds.
I contemplated buying into Apple’s updated iPad range. That hasn’t happened yet, for financial reasons, but I am likely to buy a new iPad in 2018. My existing iPad Mini 2 won’t get iOS updates after this coming summer and it needs a screen replacement. I’d rather not spend more money on it if I’m due to replace it soon.
May is my birthday month, although it was yet another year of insignificant age. In addition to a child-free day, to watch Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2, we also had our first child-free night out. We went to see a recording of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue in Halifax.
May was also the time for our annual trip to London. It was our one-year-old’s first long-distance train journey, and the first time that we took a pushchair on London Underground. We had hoped to make another London trip in 2017 but we never got around to booking it.
In April, a General Election was called, and the Labour Party (of which I am a member) decided to launch its manifesto in the building where I work. It was good to see the nation’s media descend on Bradford and to see Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues receive such a warm welcome.
And I went on a Stag Do, in Leeds and then up and down the Worth Valley.
June
The General Election took place in June and for once I wasn’t disappointed with the result. We didn’t get a Labour government, but I think the result was the best that we could hope for considering the circumstances and how far behind Labour was in the polling back in April. We had a nice afternoon riding model trains in Brighouse, and a trip to Thornton Hall Farm near Skipton. June saw the second of the two weddings. Afterwards, for the first time in a while, we had no forthcoming weddings in the calendar but we’ve recently had another invite come through for 2018.
In July, I started answering all of the questions in Richard Herring’s Emergency Questions book, 15 a week. This lasted until September, when I took an unplanned blogging hiatus. I wrote about the first thing that I bought on Amazon.
I got a new Fitbit, and our one-year-old got their first passport. We haven’t been abroad yet, but have a holiday to France planned in 2018.
August
We visited Ponderosa near Heckmondwike. I don’t know if we’ll go back, as I wasn’t happy with the way the animals were kept. We also went to the Legoland Discovery Centre at the Trafford Centre – we may go back in a couple of years but I didn’t feel like it was very good value for money.
Another trip to Manchester included the Museum of Science & Industry, which has the benefit of being free and it has a toddler room. Being open on the August Bank Holiday Monday helped too.
August and September are always busy months for me at work, but we did manage to slip in a visit to Harewood House, north of Leeds, and a day trip to Harrogate for Christine’s birthday (including lunch at Betty’s, of course). We also went back to the Leeds City Museum, for a new exhibition on skeletons. As well as being free and easy to get to, Leeds City Museum always has plenty of activities for kids, especially during school holidays.
October saw visits to the Tropical Butterfly House near Sheffield, twice in consecutive weekends. I took our one-year-old one weekend when Christine was working, and ended up going back as a family the next weekend as we enjoyed it so much. I’ll do a proper blog post about it soon.
November
Just the one day out in November, to the Elsecar Heritage Centre near Barnsley. Christine and I had a child-free week off; we had planned to go away somewhere, such as London, but we didn’t get it booked in time. We did, however, spend over £1000 in Ikea, by buying a new sofa and some storage units for the dining room. This ultimately required five people to build.
December
And finally December. We made two trips to Lotherton Hall near Leeds, the second with Christine and my parents. The first was during its Christmas experience, which sees it opening late with extra Christmas activities. It was good value for the £6 per adult entry fee, although I ended up with a filthy car after parking in a muddy field. We also went to the Trafford Centre to finish off our Christmas shopping, where we also saw the Coca Cola truck.
We had Christmas in York with my parents.
So it’s been another busy year with plenty of days out. Hopefully there’ll be many more in 2018.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, from me, Christine and almost two-year-old. We’re staying with my parents in York, as per usual.
I realise that this is the first blog post in two months, and only the second since September. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is likely to be to get back into blogging twice a week, it we’ll see.
Hope you enjoy the rest of Christmas and have a lovely time with family (or a relaxing time on your own).
