Oh damn, still in this dream.

So...

…I haven't smoked anything since the 2nd of January. Nor have I chewed much furniture, which is another win of sorts.

I dream of smoking, and not just jazz cigarettes. Every time someone on the telly takes a drag of a fag, some light goes on in the old noggin, and I reach for my roll-ups, which are no longer to hand.

Still, if I want to reach eighty, I have to make some sacrifices. And given that the second Ninefingers offspring is due this July, and I'm fifty-one now, I suppose that I really have to make an effort.

As a consequence of the impending appearance of aforesaid offspring, I have been given notice on my office: which will become the new nursery. I am to be exiled to a shed in the garden. It will be a posh shed…but still. The one we're looking at is made by a company in Ripon, Yorkshire, called OECO.

http://www.oecogardenrooms.co.uk/garden-offices.html

We're considering a 4m x 5m "Cube" garden office, with extra soundproofing and a few extra windows. I shall move most of my library into it, as well as my musical kit, and all of our office stuff. This will free up a lot of space in the house, which will make SWMBO happy.

At last I seem to have my web-connection back up and running (semi) properly.

So much has happened over the last few weeks, mainly in the nature of physical work, my dears.

I cannot tell you much about my relationship with manual labour prior to this excepting it had been of the 'moving musical kit' variety. New house DIY was, until this past month, somewhat beyond my horizons.

Alas, no longer.

Inexpert though I am in such matters, it has not prevented me from assembling and fitting a complete IKEA flatpack office: of which I am just waiting for it to fall to pieces as a necessary and logical consequence of it having been put together by me.

It is not so much that I glory in ineptitude, as that I recognise it as a comforting friend and attendant, always by my side, guiding my hand towards botching the simplest of tasks in imaginatively complicated ways. There are times when I consider it to be a singular talent, surpassing in merit all my other accomplishments by a margin so extreme as to leave me almost an avatar of the badly-executed task.

Nevertheless, IKEA, recognising that folk like me exist, and some of them will be wealthy enough to sue, make their flatpack furniture close to damn-well near idiot proof. So for about 1K we've got an office that both functions and also suits SWMBO's rather more stringent standards. One thing IKEA don't mention about their stuff: it fucking takes hours and hours to put together.

Anyway, the nursery needs finishing (no IKEA kit there - baby's stuff will be all high-end John Lewis, Madame being who she is), the bathroom needs redoing, the boiler needs replacing, and I have to find out about a grant for roof insulation from the local council.

The joy of the money-pit that is a house is soon to be added to by the joy that is a money-pit of a child: they tend to go together.

I used to think that, unlike some of my chums, I was a free spirit, unshackled by society's conventions. If I compared myself even to the most privileged of my chums, I could see that they were chained: to wives; to houses; to titles; to ancestors; to children, whereas I was free, despite having my own share of ancestors etc. Now I am chained to a wife and house and forthcoming baby, yet I am content. Obviously I'm either growing up or growing senile: the jury's out.

Go well. Do good things.