Quickie



Blimey, it's hard to get time to do a blog post these days. Work and children. Killer combination. Here's the concentrated burst of news:

mentalatworkbeendoingalltheToyotaworkaswellasworkingonnewaccountsanddevelopingcom
panyprocessesathomehenryisgrowingupfastalthoughbeenabitpoorlyrecentlylivvyisshowingsig
nsoftheterribletwosbutstillgorgeoustakenhouseoffthemarketwillstickitinourcurrentplacefora
whilelongermorebabiesbeingbornallovertheplacenotoursthoughthankfullystillagoodreason
tostaywherewearecannotwaitforaholiday.

Oh - and we've changed email addresses. You can no longer reach us under maticks@tiscali.co.uk. We've decided to give Rupert Murdoch even more of our money and are now e-housed at maticks@sky.com. Please do share this information with all who might care.

And on we go ...

Scoreboard!

English law may ignore February 29th entirely, but it's still four years until the next time I can post a blog post on the day, so here it is. An appropriate return to this forum, I think we can all agree.

Did you know Leap Day has it's own official cocktail? Oh yes: here it is!

• 1.5 oz gin


• 0.5 oz Grand Marnier


• 0.5 oz sweet vermouth


• a squeeze of lemon.

Shake with crushed ice and pour into a chilled cocktail glass.

You must never order a Leap Day cocktail by name. I have no idea why, but you really, really mustn't apparently.

Some more curious (i.e. mainly dull) facts about Leap Day:

• It was invented/decreed by Julius Caesar. Who also decided to name the seventh month of the year after himself whilst he was fettling with the structures of time. A calendar-stylee two-fer, as it were.


• Century years were made leap years if they were divisible by 400. So, 2000 was a Leap Year, but 1900 was not.


• It was St Patrick who first decided women should be allowed to propose to men on February 29th.

I will be back with a fuller update of things what have been going on over the weekend. There's Christmas photos and all sorts

Festive frivolity

Time races on and the party season is well and truly upon us. Tomorrow's my last day at work until well into the New Year, much to the ill-disguised irritation of many colleagues.

On Tuesday we had the Amaze Christmas Kids' party. Which is basically an excuse for any Amaze employee with suitably impressionable kids to finish work early and stuff cocktail sausages, chocolate krispy cakes and orange squash down their offspring. Complete with slightly batty party games, the girls in Accounts dressed as elves and, of course, a visit from Caretaker Chris ... errr, I mean Father Christmas.



A weekend in Lutterworth kicks off the Christmas period, complete with Granny and Great-Granny (a rather unfortunate event started today, when Tick started telling Livvy about Christmas and Grannies without making it very clear that this was not happening immediately. Stringent protests followed when it transpired that today's agenda contained nothing more exotic than being dropped off at nursery).

Livvy and Tick, meanwhile, have been perfecting the mince pies. An art Livvy is new to, but with some astute guidance from Mummy, the end result appeared to satisfy all concerned. Albeit after some pretty non-committal taste tests, including the standard "brief and careful lick" approach beloved of kittens and children everywhere.



The Christmas wine has been ordered, a tiny two-foot Christmas tree adorns the lounge (much to the inexhaustible delight of Livvy and even Henry), bags of Spekulatius biscuits fill the cupboards and the daft last-minute rush around the shops awaits. 'Tis truly the season to be jolly.

"Doo doo de da doo doooo"

Christmas is open! We've been to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Manchester and introduced Livvy to Advent Calendar chocolate (verdict: acceptable). So it must be Christmas time. We're probably most excited about it because we think she's going to be relatively tuned into the fact that something lovely is happening. Tick is insisting on teaching her about Father Christmas, whilst I'm content with the rather more pronounceable "Santa". Although she's right of course, we shouldn't encourage ghastly Americanisms. As Granny might very well say ...

The party season is upon us - West Kirby today, the Amaze children's Christmas party next week, Tick and Livvy will be spending a lot of time choosing outfits, one fancies.

For my part, I'm content to settle down somewhere quiet and start drawing up my wine list for the occasion ...

Up and running
Ten days back at work and the upheavals of the recent weeks appear to have been absorbed, albeit it with all the usual pain of such situations. Quite a few people are having to find new jobs and those of us that remain are feeling the squeeze as we strive to service our clients with what remains. But that's life and it's better than some of the alternatives that were (briefly, thankfully) on the cards.

Back at home, meanwhile, we're continuing to integrate little Henry into family life. His main contribution, frankly, is windy bubbles. That and making a variety of cute/funny faces as they work they way around the system. But it's all amusing and although he's not as settled as he was earlier on, we're still not exactly suffering infant Armageddon.

Shameless plug

Following Tina's lead from last year, here's my christmas wish list. Saves all those humming and haa'ing, "can't think of anything now" phonecalls with mothers, sisters and other relatives.

Back to Reality

It seems absurd to my internal perspective of time, but it's been a full month since little 'enners made his entrance and, as such, the time for me to return to work is upon us.

It is unlikely to be the vertiginous experience suggested by my choice of image here, but given recent events, this is something I look forward to with mixed feelings. On the one hand, of course, it's an opportunity to put the change behind us and start afresh - renewed, if not exactly invigorated, by recent upheaval. On the other hand, the past month, at a really elemental level, makes much more sense. I mean being at home with wife and two children, family at one. Focused on that and only that. When you stop and think about it, the whole "work" thing is utterly preposterous. As are the age-old needs and motivations that have enshrined "work" into the human condition ...

Anyhoo ... enough of that, eh? Unforgivably trite. I blame a lack of sleep. Which, actually, we're not really suffering from. Henry is still struggling occasionally to settle into life, but thanks to the aforementioned Infacol and some general good fortune, he's not really robbing us of too much night time.

A final note: as the Capital of Culture 2008 year draws ever closer for the city of Liverpool, the flagship cultural venue is more or less complete and starting to shape up it's programme of events. Exciting times for the city and great to have such a world class venue added to our already world-famous waterfront.

Quite the week

It's a week now since we returned from the holiday environment in Hoylake and the many hands that helped us with the new arrival. And, of course, our return to Liverpool was the inevitable trigger for a serious downturn in young feller-me-lad's behaviour. More or less as soon as we put down the carry-cot, he'd more gripe in him than a post-prandial John Prescott and was eager for the world to know all about it. The ensuing 24 hours were not pretty, but we got through them.

In no small part thanks to the modern miracle that is Infacol. This potion, this magic elixir, has saved our sleep, our hair and our sanity ever since I brought it home from the chemist's (some eight nanoseconds after they opened on Monday morning). A small, wonderful pipette filled with what looks like runny cake icing, administered before a feed and catalyst, following said feed, for all manner of burpal and rectal eruptions. A cacophony of splurts, gurgles and splats later and the little Gent is laid down, blissfully asleep, any notion of wind disturbing sleep banished for the duration. Truly, nothing the healing professions have devised - certainly not since Getafix administered his favourite potion to Asterix and the Gauls - matches this wonder. Why it's inventors have not been summoned to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize before now, I do not know.

Bombshells

Life being the kooky old dame that she is, the whole baby thing was thrown into something of a stark perspective on Wednesday, when a call from one of my Project Managers informed me that my current employer, Amaze were going into administration. A somewhat surprising piece of news given the general sense of well-being the company exuded when seen through the prism of our CEO's infrequent but unfailingly positive reports on its situation.

I cannot, for all manner of hopefully obvious reasons, go into the few details I have on the situation any further. Suffice it to say that what remained on Wednesday of the equally startled Executive Team has, since then, managed to conclude an eleventh-hour buy-out by a company called Hasgrove, a group with what appears to be a strong track record in the acquisition and successful management of companies in the Advertising/PR/Digital sphere. So to everyone's immense relief (mine foremost) I still have a job and a salary. Panic over. For now.

That's it - more soon.