The ' R ' word

Howdy folks,
As I said previously April hasn't been the best month ever, and this was compounded by me being made ' At Risk ' of redundancy. For those of you who have been there, this is the first of five legal steps necessary for a company to say ' .. so long, and thanks for all the fish. ' What they didn't know is that I have a secret weapon up my sleeve ...... a six foot two man crying like a baby. I made Gazza look like he had a stiff upper lip. After the HR person managed to get my 'comfort blanket' back off me, and got me to sit back in the 'adults chair' again, I came up with a second solution. No, it is not what you would have expected of me - instead of throwing myself prostrate and crying " but how can I tell my hairdresser I can't afford to see her anymore " , I came up with a counter plan. The reason for redundancy is that the building I work in is being closed on May 31st. I convinced them that if I worked from home, instead of them moving my job to some stranger in Manchester, that the world would be a happier place if the role was run from sunny Thornton Heath. As of 10 minutes ago this has legally been resolved, as I have signed their new offer to officially 'work from home' starting June 1st, as long as I promise not to cry anymore. Hopefully now my biggest risk is whether that next donut will burst my trousers, I 'll keep you posted on both.

Much love

Fraser
xx

'May' we enquire what you are up to?

April has been a bit of a crazy month for all sorts of reasons, so we are hoping that May just might calm down a little, to let us enjoy inflating the £3 paddling pool on the deck, and performing life guard duty with a cold beer. Lily still wees in the pool, but at least she isn't running around and doing 'bombies' yet, and the 'No Petting' sign seems to work - as she doesn't seem to allow any pets in the water. Attached is a photo taken in Australia when we visited Kate, Rob and Scarlett, where she was given a 'shark towel' by the Duthies to scare aware any prey. It worked a treat and she was not chatted up by any stray boys or sold any lottery tickets while on the beach. As always holidays with the Duthies are filled with great joy, and then incredible sadness to leave them, but they always cheer us up when we are upset at having left the NZ family behind. The start of the year was an absolute joy, and a real tonic to get us throught the grey January that is the UK.

The wee scrapper is now using all furniture in the house as a 'climbing wall' and is doing a fair impersonation of Sly Stallone in the movie 'Cliffhanger'. Naturally she doesn't mumble as much as him, and her knuckles don't scrape along the floor, so progress is being made every day. The biggest bonus of all is that we have now introduced her to the TV, and she loves it. I now understand what all those parents talk about when they say they enjoying doing stuff with their kids - ' Top of the Pops' is our favourite passtime.

To get some fresh air we are now taking her out for spins on the bike. As you can see I decided to buy a jacket that made me look like a traffic cone so that we safely could be seen from space, and any also from vehicles.


How her Granny managed to get on the back of the bike without me noticing is a skill in itself.
( Opportunity there for a " Scottish " and " free ride " joke surely ) .

So life is ticking along, and our gal is being a delight more and more every day. She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but then you are not around at 5:00 am to dispute any of this.

Congratualtions to all of those clever people who have had adorable babies recently.

Neil and Lorna have darling little Archie,
Zoe and Paul have had cute little Bronte, and Kristen and Malcolm have welcomed aboard beautiful little Georgia.

Sounds like 3 reasons to celebrate - mine's a Guinness.

Much love to you all from us 3 here

F, M and L
xx

Welcome to our site

Here we are folks,

We have finally caught up with the rest of the world and actually created a BLOG too.

Inspired by Kate and Rob's wonderful site we hope to keep this updated regularly enough so that you folks at home can see what we have been up to

lots of love

F, M and L