flashbacks

i'm babysitting young f tonight. it's his dad's 50th birthday so they're off to a posh hotel to celebrate with dinner and a night away. after an evening building lightbulbs (disclosure - i had no idea what he was doing - his electrical knowledge surpassed mine some time ago and my role is wire holder, tape cutter, and general enthusiast), he's gone to bed without complaint. his bedtime story is the lion the witch and the wardrobe - good heavens - it is really quite scary! edmund nearly had his throat cut tonight! i don't remember being scared when i was a kid and i read those books over and over again. now i'm drinking a lovely glass of wine (his parents bribe me shamelessly) and watching tv. it's a flashback to how i spent many evenings as a teenager except there was no wine then and in my memories i was always watching moonlighting. it can't all have been moonlighting but that's all i can remember.

it's been a trying week. last friday the stopcock under the kitchen started leaking - well - it may have leaked for ages but that was when we finally figured it out. cue limited water, and what quickly became a complete (yet typical) british farce trying to get it all sorted out. it took until tuesday lunchtime, involved 2 plumbers and the water company, and included the phrase "we think we've found the external stopcock but there's a car parked on it". i had an awful cold so i was less annoyed than i might have been about having to work (sneeze and splutter) from home for two days whilst a parade of muddy-booted plumbers and water men traipsed through the house but it didn't do much for my general mood.

and today my phone died. it just won't turn on at all - it has bricked. as in might as well be a brick. i bought it off a colleague a few years ago so i suppose it has had a good life - but - dear god - i really do everything on my phone now. i keep reaching for it. f's house doesn't even have a land line so we are reduced to updates through my laptop and facebook messenger. i hope i can figure out a way to fix it as spending a few hundred quid on a new phone is not in my budget plan in any way. on the other hand, maybe a phoneless weekend will be quite - well - if not nice, at least liberating. i sure am used to being connected all the time though. i feel a bit - shipwrecked. slightly bereft.

i wonder what i was worrying about when i was watching moonlighting. school probably. growing up. pining for adulthood (i was never very good at being a kid). i'm glad it's now, and even if things are frustrating sometimes and there's bits of adulting that are ridiculous and even faintly psychotic, it's much much better than i could have ever imagined back then. it's probably good to remember that every so often.