Paul Davidson
Weeknotes 069: Nice
It’s only February but the garden is dusted with snowdrops and crocuses line the route to the park. A sign of warmer weather and freedom from respiratory illnesses.
We carted Piglet off to her grandparents to release us to celebrate the early twitterpating with Monday night oyster happy hour. The Chef had Tuesday off and led me astray and we stayed out past midnight with whisky cocktails. Back home we attempted to tipsily recreate them in the kitchen. Not the wisest Monday night decision we’ve made.
My genes kicked in to spare me any ill-effects and I was able to hit work with a reasonably clear head. The Chef, not so much. A lunchtime Greggs run was passed to the bed troll to scoff between hungover naps. It was 4 pm before I saw her leave the room.
Grandma and granddad looked tired when they brought Piglet home. She’d bolted up screaming through the night and the only placating was with stories downstairs. To prove their truthfulness she repeated for us.
Any residual fugginess from booze and sleep deprivation was cleared from The Chef’s head with news that there’s a job opening that she’s been hoping for. A week of evenings spent on the computer trying to capture her irreplaceable excellence.
Piglet was no better that night. Lǎolao and Lǎoyé forgot to return the paracetamol.
A sleepy reading of this lovely review of Virgina Woolf’s food references has me hungry for beef stew.
We’ve had a flood of roofers round to quote for our leak. Prices ranged from £800 to £12,000. Guess which we’re going with.
It’s meant I’m still not in the office so that someone’s home to let them in and pretend to understand what a soaker is. It’s been a productive and grown up week at work regardless, filled with the rip-roaring excitement of writing vendor contracts. Modern tables are good for this though and I’m all in on the new SharePoint lists. They couple well with atmospheric ambiance.
Book day at nursery and—after being persuaded away from 汽车来了—Piglet plumped for Wow! Said the Owl. She1 made an owl mask to show off to grandparents on videocall. Granddad refused a favourite colour, only for a sharp-elbowed sotto voce demand to “just pick a bloody colour” left him with his new lifetime fav of red.
The Chef smuggled Tunnocks Tea Cakes home with her. I’ve a lot of respect for a company whose business model seems to be, “we do two things. You like them both. Done.”
We fitted in our third new year of 2022 over the weekend. With recent hangovers for Lǎoyé and The Chef, it was the most restrained so far. A long and late settle for Piglet gave all four grandparents the chance to be insufferably smug about how good at bedtime they are in comparison.
When she’s not being a bedtime diva, you can see she’s gone through another mental leap. She’s scooting with confidence and can anticipate actions in games now, rather than just following. And she roasted the Chef with a “What’s in the washing machine?” “I don’t know, nothing?” “Hah! No! My finger!”
All that sweetness, joy and basking in development was undone when she lay in the middle of her bedroom floor and curled one out on the carpet mind.
The teachers↩︎