Sleep Interrupted

Over the weekend Louise took me to Barcelona as a surprise birthday present. It was the longest time we’ve been away from the children since Jessica was born — they got to stay with their grandparents for three days.

We had a wonderful time and being able to have a full night’s sleep and a long lay in every day was such a luxury, only made better by the fact that the hotel served breakfast until 10.30 and 11.30 at the weekend!

Barcelona is a great city to visit and even in Decemeber the weather was good. I even enjoyed trying out my very limited Spanish; in the past I would have clammed up and resorted to English, just as I did when I went on our school’s German exchange half a lifetime ago.

Of all the sights we saw, the Sagrada Familia just blew me away. The originality and scale and… vision of the building is just something I could never have imagined. Louise and I have vowed to go back when it’s finished. If you have even a passing interest in architecture, you should put it on your to-do list.

We have lots of photos and I’ll try to get the half decent ones uploaded some time over the next few days.

The Ringathon turned out to be a great success! We were late starting, only getting the first film on at 10.15. After we’d finished the first disc of the first film, I was getting worried — it was midday and we still had 5 more discs to get through. But as the films picked up, so did my mood and by the time we stopped for lunch at 2pm I was confident the rest of the day was going to be fun. The final credits rolled at 12.30am and most of us had managed to fend off sleep, more or less.

Thanks go to, in chronological order: Mark, Neil, Tim, Larry, Jayne, Dave, James, Adam and Kathy for coming along for the ride. Congratulations go to Mark and Neil for going the distance, with an honourable mention going to Tim for inspiring the whole thing and only actually missing less than an hour of the first film. Finally, I’m sure anyone who tasted Louise’s gorgeous curry will join me in thanking her for cooking dinner for us all.

Well, the week that followed last week turned out to be even harder, with Jessica having a relapse and becoming very restless at night. This lead to a string of nights with me sleeping on the sofa with her in my arms. I haven’t been that tired in a long time — probably two years ago when Ben went though a similar experience.

Happily, however, she’s recovered now. One of the contributing factors turned out to be her sixth tooth. After a couple of weeks of a having a very sketchy appetite, she’s now making full use of this new tooth and eating as much food as she can get her hands on.