Recently my kind-hearted parents-in-law took on the parenting, nappy changing, winding, mopping up sick duties, while me and Jo headed off into town with mates, drank beer, ate curry and were all ears to a music gig fronted by a talented mate, Rob Crisp, who's plays in a couple of bands as drummer (and what a drummer he is). He plays all over the south of England, and Salisbury was the venue this time around with his tribute band. All genres of music with stuff from childhood and the present day resounding around the pub. It was quite late when we arrived, as we had spent so much time in the pub pouring over radio, radio and more radio conversation. This bores my wife senseless, and she kindly suggested that we keep radio talk exclusively to the nerd nights and nowhere else......yawn yawn. When we moved on from the curry house to the pub, the atmosphere was already electric and buzzing to the sound of the throbbing band. I noticed that practically everybody in the pub, young and old were drunk! A great end to the night.
One sting in the tail was that our first night off from Oscar duties, was blighted by the clocks going forward an hour, so by the time we rolled in to bed after much curry and booze, and having to be up at a decent hour to collect Oscar, we'd had no extra sleep. DOH!
On Mother's Day, the entire Clarke household got together in Swindon for nosh. This is my nephew Josh, holding Oscar, with dummy plugged in for noise reduction purposes.
Here he is again, balling his eyes out, but surrounded by his girlfriends at another "New mums meet-up". Basically an opportunity for them to slate their useless husbands while gorging on cake and other sugary treats. Five babies all crying at once in one room sounds like my idea of torture. Keep well away.
My lasting memory of Mother's Day was my Dad. He was wearing an ill-fitting new(ish) fleece he picked up from a shop that he claims wasn't from a charity shop. The fleece was a medium and my Dad isn't. Think new wardrobe is in order.
