Blokes with Babies

We're all very, very big softies when it comes to Miss Maddie... here's my Dad, Uncle Doug and me cuddling the little 'un.

Number One Fathers Day

Without getting all Iron John over here*, the phrase 'rights of passage' springs to mind. It's my first fathers day. It's a big thing.

For coming up on four months Maddie did well with the wrapping, and painting the footprint mug must have been really tough as the brushes are so big and Maddie's lttle fingers are engorged, chubby and cute from VAST quantities of milk. Also got a Che Guevara notebook and a gorgeous shirt. She knows me so well, to paraphrase Tim Rice's 'Chess'. I'm very proud.



One person who wouldn't be proud would be head of the baby-stasi Gina Ford; we've just been on radically routine-busting jaunt to Cumbria that featured late nights, feeding on demand and a complete jettisoning of the cot. Very bad. Must get back on track.

Cumbria was a giggle. I had two days with some marvellous forestry folk but got to spend all day yesterday with Miss Maddie and her beautiful mum. Given that sleep is a stranger, we were able to pack, eat and get out of the B&B by nine. We shot on up to the Solway Firth, and then it all went a bit David Lynch on us. There were pomeranians on shopmobility trolleys, a youth having a row with himself, and a woman wearing an empty salad bag on her head.

Other than witnessing the effects of housing two-thirds of the world's civil plutonium on the West Cumbrian coast, caught the Roman museum in Maryport, the annual Carnival in Cockermouth AND the gorgeousness that is Lambrigg Wind Farm. Yum.



*Iron John? A now chronically-unfashionable 'Men's Movement' tract from way back written by poet and real man Robert Bly who would, by the way, totally kick Alain de Botton's arse.