For the last six weeks at work we’ve been encouraged to wear a suit on Fridays and then pay a fine for doing so in order to raise money for comic relief.
Being that my office is a t-shirt and jeans type of place, it makes a fun change, actually, although I do feel kind of trussed up wearing a suit at my desk all day. Still, we’ve raised well over £700, which isn’t too bad at all.
Last night we went to Liverpool Women’s Hospital to visit Graeme & Lisa’s new baby, Francis.
It was odd being back at the Women’s Hospital – I hadn’t been there since picking up some vitamins for Elisha shortly after she was born. On the way there I was telling her that I was taking her back for a refund because she had tried to run away when I was putting her coat on at nursery. When we got there it turned out that she’d fallen asleep at some point in the journey, anyway, so I don’t think any lasting psychological trauma was inflicted.
We waited to meet Graeme in reception, who led us upstairs to the nursery ward area where Francis was staying in his incubator. Through the window we saw Lisa sitting with Francis, before going to the waiting lounge. Fliss took first go at visiting Francis, while I waited with Elisha and Graeme in the lounge.
When I went in I was amazed at how tiny Francis is right now. I thought Elisha was reasonably compact when she was born, but Francis, being a couple of months premature, is well pocket size. He didn’t have a whole lot to say for himself when I was there, but moved around a lot more than I was expecting. It was good to see that Lisa was doing well, too, despite being very poorly when Francis arrived.
It must be pretty hard to have to leave your baby behind at hospital all the time, but Lisa looked like she was coping pretty well with it. We were lucky, in that Elisha arrived right on schedule, without any complications (even if it seemed like there were at the time), and we were home later that same evening as if the whole procedure is fairly routine. Judging by the number of babies in the intensive care wards nearby, and in incubators in other nursery wards, their arrival doesn’t always go as smoothly as it did for us.
Fingers crossed that the worst is over for baby Francis, graeme & Lisa, and that he’ll be home with them before too long.
Sooner than expected, I got the car back from the garage yesterday afternoon and it was great to be behind the wheel of it again. Despite growing in familiarity with the Corsa as the days went by, it always felt awkward, even if my initial thoughts about it being “gutless” turned out to be unfounded – it had quite a bit of power, it was just much lower down the rev range than it is in the Jazz.
Later that evening, Elisha seemed very pleased to see we had our own car back when I picked her up from nursery, too. She does this “ooo-oooh” thing when something catches her attention, and that was in full effect when I was strapping her into her car seat.
For myself, it’s good to be back in a car I can step out of, rather than one that I have to scramble out of like a turtle on his back. The Corsa was so low down that it really did take a bit of effort to enter and exit, so I’m not going to miss that at all. I did kind of get used to the “throaty” sounding engine, though… the Honda engine is so much more refined, but it was quite good fun to blip the throttle of the Corsa for a low roar from the engine bay. I can understand why boy racers like them so much – it sounded like a much faster car.
Hopefully I can avoid making any more careless mistakes in future – the Jazz is a great little car and it’s a shame that it’s spent the time it has in the repair shop, because, for the most part, I’m really careful with it.