I’ve had a couple of busy days so the only time I’ve had to write I’ve spent working on a story. I’m not making any promises as to when I’ll publish but at least the words have started to appear on paper again – I’ve scrapped two versions over the last six months. Let’s hope third time lucky.


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On Wednesday, Youngest had his CBT, which stands for Compulsory Basic Training and not Cock and Ball Torture as a certain person thought. I don’t know, there is just no hope for the woman. I mean, what chance have Pooks and I got when your Beta is like that? She’ll corrupt us.

She's a cheeky sod too - just look at the business card she made me. Mind you at least I can put mine on the blog - which is more than Chris can. Actually I was rather chuffed with it, cool ducks! I shalln't be letting the cat she it, she doesn't need any encouragement.

Youngest was getting a little bit down in the dumps last weekend – which isn’t like him at all. He’s not one of life’s worriers or moaners normally, unlike his mother. It was starting to affect his work too – to the point that on Sunday night he came into the bedroom, sat by me on the bed and started to cry – he hated his job, he was tired and fed up, he'd had enough. That is just not like my youngest, I've never seen him like that before. I've seen him upset obviously but this time was different.

We spent ages discussing the reason behind this and it took me even longer to get to the bottom of it. He wasn't stroppy or showing off, he stopped with the crying, if anything he tried very hard to say he was all right now, just forget it. Which to be honest, with a teenager, worried me even more.

Basically he was working full time, coming home and finding his mates had all gone off on their mopeds. He had the money to go out with them, but not the transport. He had to ask either Himself or I for a lift or wait an hour for a bus to take him into town to meet with them. By which time they had usually decided to go elsewhere.

And as he knew how I felt about motorbikes, he wasn’t going to ask if he could have a moped. I’ve seen the result of motorbikes I'm afraid; no mother should have to see their 18 year old in a coffin, especially as it was the car drivers fault. And something like that doesn't just affect the family; the grief and loss are like ripples in a pool, far spreading. I suppose at 17, Youngest doesn’t even need my approval to purchase a moped anyway, but he wouldn’t do it because he knew how I strongly I felt and more to the point, the reason why.

So we had a family discussion and we came to the conclusion that we wanted him to be happy, he works hard and needs to see that there is a reward for that. Now Granddad had brought Eldest his first car, a small second hand run around and had also put money aside to do the same for Youngest. He was also of the opinion that although we all worried about bikes, it was money that Youngest could use if that was what he wanted. He just wouldn’t have the money to buy a car with.

So we came to an agreement – he could buy a moped as long as he carried on with the driving lessons and didn't race around like an idiot. So we purchased a moped, and booked the test. A few years ago now the government brought in compulsory training. You have to prove that you're safe to ride a bike before you can go out onto the road, which to my mind is a good thing.

It’s a days training with an instructor and son was very lucky that there was only one other person taking the test, so he got a lot of the instructor's attention - groups can run up to ten people. The day hadn’t started that well, Simon from work had agreed to collect the bike on his motorcycle trailer, but unfortunately moped wheel are small and chucky, so it wouldn’t fit through the wheel gap. So true to form, we had to go to option 2. Simon rode the bike to the test centre and we followed in my car.

As we were early Si showed Youngest some of the things that would be covered, we then left him to it and went back to collect his car and trailer. I then had a long wait to see if he’d passed, because if he hadn’t Si would be driving the moped back home again.

Youngest walked into my office about 3pm with rather a large grin on his face, threw his arms around me and said that he’d passed. Since then I think he’s driven all around the county with his mate. Although every so often they pop home - I'm sure that he's doing it to put my mind at rest.

And today he’s off for a week’s holiday in Menorca with his mate from next door and his family. They want to hire mopeds over there for a few days – so next week I could be a nervous wreck and certain people will no doubt suffer my whinging. I came home earlier yesterday to pack his case, which he still hadn’t done. Yes, I've had countless people asking me why am I packing his case? Well it's a mummy thing and I'm allowed to do that on occasions. So really it’s Youngest's own fault that I’ve packed a load of condoms in it.

He slept next door last night as they were leaving for the airport at 4.30 a.m. Before he went he gave both me and his Dad a hug (something that he stopped doing for a while), and it suddenly dawned on me that my little boy had grown up and had started to act like a responsible adult instead of a stroppy teenager (of course that could change again). The resulting tears after he'd gone saw the profits of Kleenax shoot up again.

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More fun and games at work yesterday. I eventually managed to get onto the payroll report site; unfortunately we had two rejections – the one being a trustee’s mileage claim (that can wait until next month) and the other - my manager’s salary. She obviously gets paid too much because she hadn’t noticed – although not paying her can’t have done my promotion prospects much good.

So I then had to ring the bank and arrange a direct credit as unfortunately she had direct debits going out. That has got to be the worse payroll I have ever run.

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We are looking after next doors animals whilst they’re away – well they have my son, so I suppose it’s a fair swap. If you thought I had a mad house, you should see theirs.

The ducks with one of the Koi Carp.

Some of the chickens

Toby,

Barney (who was born blind)

And Buddy

Two baby Quails, hatched on Wednesday night, they are now living in my back room under a lamp. They were half an hour old when I took this picture.

To show you how tiny they are I photographed the egg shells next to my thumb. Yes, I know my nails need doing, thank you.

When I came home from work yesterday a few more had hatched bringing it to seven in total although one is very weak and we’re not sure if it will live. They’ve warned me that the mortality rate of quails is high; so several could die over the next few days.

I bloody well hope not – I’ll never live with the guilt.