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Working From Home Herald - Issue 29

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  Issue 29: The one with the F.R.I.E.N.D.S Reunion: Last week on the 27th May, millions of millions of people tuned in to watch the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. reunion. Em and I were two of them that watched it as soon as we could having dropped the children off. It was perfect for us as we had booked the day off to celebrate the reunion of the cast and to mark 21 years to the day that we started dating. Like many F.R.I.E.N.D.S had a huge impact on me. It started when I was 15 and ended when I was 25. A lot of what the characters went through, I could identify with. Emma and I met 21 years ago and our first date was drinks and a movie. The film was Final Destination (a horror which I happened to have seen the week before). So, whilst Emma, jumped, squirmed, hid her head, and screamed (during the film not on the date), I was the stoic, brave stranger who wasn’t fazed by the scares throughout the film. (my first viewing was a different story and I never admitted that I had seen the movie until
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Working From Home Herald - Issue 28

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  Issue 28: Deceiving the Dog Sometimes you do odd things every day as part of your morning or night time ritual. You do them so often that you don’t even consider them as peculiar until you mention it to someone else in passing. This happened last weekend whilst standing watching Jamie play football. I was talking to the other parents and the conversation centred around one of the parents and their gorgeous new puppy. Despite their best efforts their dog was just not getting the whole toilet training thing. Inevitably they asked what we did. Being an honest sort of chap I admitted that even at 3 years old, Scout still has the odd, rare accident, but this was mainly due to the boys waking up at all hours in the night and disturbing him and me not hearing his soft barks to go out. The accidents are few and far between but we initially struggled to train Scout until we came up with an innovative solution to stop him having accidents during the night.  You see, Scout is a homely dog
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Working From Home Herald - Issue 27

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  The Irrational dislike: I am pretty sure this is a thing, but it certainly is for me. I am of course referring to having an irrational dislike of a celebrity. A person I have never met, don’t know anything about in regard to their personal life and has never, I repeat, never done anything mean or horrible as far as I can tell. At least, they have definitely never done anything to offend me personally. And yet… despite knowing all of this, despite reasoning through all logic you find yourself not liking them.  It is unreasonable, stupid and even a little pathetic. I am not going to reveal who the celebrity is because knowing my luck, someone reading this will know him personally and may be offended. In true Line of Duty fashion let’s call the mystery man X. I could not articulate why I feel this way. The poor man has done nothing to warrant these feelings from me. In fact, millions of people love him but for some reason when I see him my toes curl and my teeth itch. Why am I con
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Working From Home Herald - Issue 26

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  The new first day So, as you might have gathered from the last couple of issues, I was a tad excited to have the pubs open again. There is just something about drinking in a pub garden with the sun shining and having a draught pint rather than a can. My Dad was equally excited, if not more so. My mum had actually reported that over the last few months she had to peel his face away from the pub window at points when he has walked past. Having had the week off, we agreed to meet on Wednesday lunch time to have our first drink. I thought this was perfectly reasonable but soon learned that on the Monday they opened my Dad was one of the first customers at my local pub, having conjured some spurious reason as to why he needed to go to Sainsburys as soon as the snow had stopped! Still Wednesday came and the drink was every bit as good as we had anticipated. I have a great relationship with my Dad but he is a very, old fashioned and stoic man with little to say at the best of times. Our tru
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Issue 25

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  Training to drink: I do like an occasional tipple down the pub. Ok, so that might be an understatement but the key word in that sentence is “pub”. I am very much a social drinker and having a family with young boys I don’t get to do it very often, but when I do, I love it.  Over the past 12 months, time spent in the pub has been severely restricted and whilst others have carried on drinking indoors with their families, for some reason I just don’t enjoy drinking at home. I occasionally will have a bottle of beer if we have a barbecue but most of the time, I’d much rather have a cup of tea and keep a clear head and avoid the headache in the morning.  That being the case, I had drinks on two nights since November. Both have been on zoom calls where I have caught up with friends and on both occasions, I did not have more than a few bottles of beer. Do I feel healthier for it? Not really if I am honest. Have I lost weight? A bit but not much. Therefore, I have been craving the return
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Issue 24

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  “Yesterday was a bad day” Last Tuesday was officially a day of reflection as it marked a full year since we went into Lockdown. There have been several thousands of words written on what this has meant for many.  As a family we sat down at dinner and reflected on the past year and focussed on the positive memories from the past 12 months. A lot of it made us truly thankful. From the barbecues in the garden to splashing in the paddling pool, from the surprisingly good insular Christmas Day to the endless walks. Each of us recalled a favourite memory but when we asked Toby, he said, “It was a bad weekend.” He was of course referring to our latest walk, where we decided to try a new part of the common. It started off very nice, walking through woodland and running down steep craters and then I had the bright idea of crossing a road to enter the common on the other side.  All I can say is that it was the definition of the grass not being greener on the other side. The gorgeous trees
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