12th October 2006

The Lady of Leisure and the Wee Lad have flown home. School and work commitments have meant that Little Madam and myself will not be joining them for another day or two. In a desperate attempt to convince me there is something of substance and consequence to her day, I have been left a detailed list to enable me to take care of my daughter. Times for the school, drop off and collection points, times of art classes, meals to cook, how many times an hour to breathe etc. She then circulated said list amongst all the ladies who lunch, to make sure that when unreliable husband inevitably messes up some one will be on hand to rescue Little Madam.

Of course the plans did not take account of the unpredictability of a pre-teen social calendar, so the unreliable husband spent began every working day by cancelling the various pick-ups previously organized. Actually this have gone pretty smoothly all week, and granted, taking lunch at 3pm to bring my daughter back to my office is not sustainable in the long term but we coped and neither family life nor work suffered noticeably.
Of course I played the hardship card over the phone to the Lady of Leisure, particularly when it came to unannounced fancy dress parties at school that I suddenly had to prepare for. None of it was that bad and though I was too last too cook, LM and I went out for a few decent bites to eat in East and Red Bones and we had a great bonding time. To get brownie points on top of all that was bonus indeed.

The washing machine didn’t turn out to be quite the saga I expected. In fact the whole thing got sorted quite quickly and finished up a little under 2 weeks. Greased lightning round these parts.