Dad

 

Howard John Armstrong

27th July 1938 - 8th May 2011

It's not been the greatest week. My dad died suddenly on Sunday morning, at home, from a heart attack. Whilst not in the best of health after a couple of strokes over the past few years, this was certainly unexpected.
Early memories of him relate almost exclusively to railways - his father was a signalman, and Dad loved railways and everything to do with them. He'd take me on day trips with the North Manchester Railway Society to railyards in places as far afield as Eastfield in Glasgow and Eastliegh in Southampton. I might not have been the trendiest of teenagers, going train spotting with my Dad, but his knowledge of the subject was amazing to behold. On the night that Arsenal beat Liverpool 0-2 at Anfield to win the Division One title in 1989, Dad and I spent all night on Preston railway station (there is no such thing as a "train station"), watching the royal mail trains load up - in the days when a first class letter would arrive the next day, I was shown how it could happen. I saw more of the country on those trips than many of the kids I was at school with.
We built a large model railway in the loft at home, it took years. It started on a table, and grew until we had no choice but to move it up there. I remember waiting anxiously each night for Dad to come home from working in the bank to see if he'd brought a new piece of track, or a new engine or coach.
As I got older and my hobbies moved from train spotting to sports, Dad would come and watch. Perhaps not as often as I would have liked, but what that meant was that when he did come and watch, it meant all the more. I was playing so much sport when I was between 16 and 18 that I doubt he could have come and watched it all! He came to a basketball final we played at the YMCA in Manchester, and to the main local derby football match when Bury Grammar School's 3rd XI - with me as captain - took on Bolton School. I like to think we won that one. It wasn't all victorious - he watched me play cricket for Littlewick Green 2nd XI against Little Kingshill when I first started playing down here, around 1999, and I bowled a 12-ball over (not a good thing, for you non-cricket buffs). I was embarrassed for myself, but also for him, as he was sat near the Little Kingshill players, and I can only imagine the laugh they were having at my expense that he had to listen to, but he never mentioned it to me.
After his strokes he lost his mobility, and became a great supporter of Sky Sports. There was always a game to watch, be it Manchester City in the football season or any cricket at all in Summer. Cricket was a great love of his, and why not, when Gary Sobers lived across the road from you when you were a young teenager, and you worked in the scorebox while he was the professional player at Radcliffe. It's fitting that we'll be having a "do" after the funeral on Tuesday at Radcliffe Cricket Club, I think he'd like that.

Dad could be a man of few words sometimes, but every one of those was always a kind one.

A trip to Hyde Park

I went into London on Friday to join in the celebrations for the Royal Wedding. I would have liked to have taken Lara, but with the crowds and trying to keep her entertained during the duller parts of the ceremony, it seemed better to leave her at home with Baba so they could watch on TV, and I could enjoy the atmosphere without worrying about her.
Hyde Park was fantastic, they had put up three huge screens, and lots of speakers, so no matter where you stood or sat, you got a good view and could hear clearly what was happening. It was cloudy and a little chilly to start with, but as if they had planned it, the sun came out exactly as Catherine arrived at the alter. From that point on it got warmer and clearer, and the crowd in the park cheered at the "I do" moments, and joined in with Jerusalem and the National Anthem, and the Queen proved very popular too, getting lots of cheers anytime she appeared. The highlights were those kisses on the balcony, then the fly past. Having been in Hyde Park for the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002, when concorde made a flypast, I knew where the Lancaster bomber, Spitfire and Hurricane would come from, and it was great to see (and hear) them, but after they'd passed the palace, they turned 180 degrees and flew right over the crowd in Hyde Park, still very low, it was a fantastic bonus.



After the flypast there was a live band on stage in the park, and they had a "crowd vote" to decide the most popular song to play at a wedding reception, with Aerosmith's "I don't want to miss a thing" beating Bryan Adams' "Everything I do", and there was a mass karaoke session, which was very amusing.



And when I got home, my own little Princess was waiting for me, complete with the forced grin that many a bride knows on her wedding day, I'm sure!
:

27.5 deg C today, and Lara's impression of Princess Kate

It's been lovely all week (so far!) and amazingly enough the forecast looks good for the Bank Holiday weekend. Lara and I are going up to Radcliffe on Friday on the train, Olga's trip to Kazakhstan is back on, and she flies out on Sunday afternoon for two weeks.
Luda is enjoying the sunshine this week, working in the garden (voluntarily, I might add!) - today's she's painting the top decking with wood treatment. I checked the temperature from my weather station at around 2.30pm and it was 27.5 deg C (82 deg F), and not much lower than that in our southwest-facing office, with the windows and doors open. Oh how you office workers take your air-conditioning for granted!
We had a big shopping trip for holiday clothes for everyone on Saturday, it's been years since I bought new clothes for holiday, and I can see Lara taking more clothes than me.
She made us laugh yesterday at teatime.. she asked me to get her some more water, but the way she asked was more dismissive than I liked, a bit like a princess talking to a butler, so I made some crack like "Ask me nicely, you're not Princess Kate", her reply was "Middleton"! I know they're making a big deal of the Royal Wedding at her nursery, culminating in an Afternoon Tea that parents are invited to next Thursday, but clearly she's taking it all in. We followed up with "Who will she marry"?, but there's no catching Lara out, "Prince William".
It would be nice to go and see London at the moment whilst all the bunting is up, but we've no time. Luda, Lara and I will watch on TV unless I can find some event in Wycombe showing it on a big screen.
The boys are enjoying this nice weather, they're spending most of the day lazing in the back garden, until the postman or local councillors arrive at the front door, when the barking starts and they have to be brought indoors. In the meantime, this is how they spend their days:

We're planning on camping a couple of times this Summer, and decided it would be wise to put the tent up in the back garden to make sure mice hadn't nibbled holes in it (it has happened to the old tent), and it gave Lara a great place to play when she got home from nursery. I bought a couple of new sleeping bags for us, Lara has nearly grown out of her cute toddler sized one, so she'll have one of the new ones, as Olga already has a good one. I worked out that mine is 16 years old, and whilst it was top of the range in 1994, it was about time I had a new one. I couldn't resist trying it out, so slept in the tent on Sunday night, with Jackson for company. The sleeping bag was fine, but the slope on our garden meant everytime I rolled over, I also rolled down the hill, and I woke up on the other side of the tent in the morning.

Tonight we're utilising our babysitter again, and going to the cinema to watch Limitless. We've not been to the cinema together since Lara was born, so it's simple pleasures like that that we hadn't realised we'd missed. Luda is being a great help with the babysitting, Olga and I went out for a Thai meal last Friday, where I had a Weeping Tiger (it's beef dish!) and it was great.

The bookie is the only winner

We had our usual dabble on the Grand National on Saturday, with no great success. Over the past few years one of us has usually won a bit of money, enough to cover the bets I put on, but not this year. Lara did the best out of all of us, Midnight Club came 6th, then Luda's horse Backstage came 10th, but the rest of our horses failed to finish the race (though they did all live to see another day). Lara had good fun picking the horses, based on the colours of the jockeys' silks:



Lara's been at home between Monday and Wednesday rather than at nursery as she's had a bad cold, so Luda's been busy entertaining her. It wasn't too distracting for us working in the loftroom, we were expecting more visits from Lara but the weather was good which meant that she could play outside with Luda much of the time, even with her cold.
She's gone back to nursery today, they're gearing up for the Royal Wedding there, there'll be an afternoon tea party the day before that the parents are invited to.

Busy times

Wow, nearly two more weeks slide by, it's a reflection on how busy things are at home at moment. What's been happening? Well, in no particular order:

• Olga's mum arrived on the 2nd April, and will be here until September. Last year she helped look after Lara for a few days a week, but now Olga and I are working at home, that just wouldn't work, Lara would not understand that we weren't there to play with her, so she'll carry on full time at her nursery.
• We booked a holiday! It feels like we've not been away for ages, almost as if we've not had a holiday since Lara arrived on the scene, but then I think of 3 weeks around Ekaterinburg, a few days in St Petersburg, a few days in Barcelona, Ireland, a week in Holland, Wales, Devon (twice), the Lake District, and that's when it's been the three of us! On top of that Lara's had fortnights in Cyprus and Russia with Olga! Olga has been hoping for a beach holiday for ages though, so we've gone the whole hog and booked a week-long Med cruise, followed immediately by a week in a hotel in Majorca. It turns out I've booked the same hotel that my mum and dad took me to when I was 10 months old. Not that I remember it!  The cruise will take in stops in Corsica, Italy, France and Menorca. That's the last two weeks of May sorted out.
• Lara still loves her gymnastics, and last week got her first badge - it was only a token effort really, to give the kids something to show us proud parents, but she has definitely improved in the simple things she has to do there, so it's certainly not a waste of time, and she really looks forward to it. Here's her badge..:

• The whole working-from-home thing is going really well, we're both very busy, and it's all super interesting stuff. Olga's proposed trip to Kazakhstan has been postponed for a second time, which is fine as she can spend more time with Lara and her mum (and me!). I have already booked a train ride up to Radcliffe over Easter for Lara and I, so we'll go ahead with that, Olga and Luda can have some quality Russian time together. I have been benefitting this week from Luda preparing lunch and tea for us, I could get used to this!
• Exercise! I bought a bike off eBay a few weeks ago, and I have actually used it more than once to get to the gym and back in the mornings. It's been a good few years since I rode on the roads, but at 7am it's pretty quiet, I'm not sure how keen I'll be at 8.30. We'll find out when we get the child seat for Lara, then I'll be taking her to and picking her up from nursery on it...
• Lara - everything's fine with her, she had a cold recently but nothing out of the ordinary. Since we took the sides off her cot a few months ago she's been really good at sleeping in her bed and not wandering around, although once or twice we've heard her creep downstairs and appear in the lounge (she can easily defeat the stairgate, it's only there now to keep the dogs downstairs). I was worried that she's do that every night and we'd struggle to get her to sleep, but it's not the case. She's waking up earlier than before, more consistently around 6.30, sometimes she'll sleep till 7am. It suits our timetable though, and getting up in these lighter mornings isn't as difficult as if it were midwinter. It is funny on the occasions when she has a proper lie in and we have to wake her up, her first line is "I want a bit more sleeeeeeep" and she pulls the duvet over her head. She's three going on 14. She went through a phase of insisting we leave her light on, and I was worried this would become a permanent habit, but it lasted a week or so and now sometimes she insists on a little bit of light, other times she'll turn it off herself when she's finished reading (OK, looking at the pictures), and sometimes she'll insist on us turning off the light completely.

Well, that's that I think. Time to move away from this laptop and doing something totally different - sit in front of the Chelsea v ManUre game on tv!