A well worn-out summer for the boys ...

The boys are exhausted. Despite the fact that this was considered something of a mission impossible, Nassim and Imran have run up the white flag and admitted defeat in the "what shall we do next?" stakes.

Out of the 42 days of holiday they have had 10 days of football training, two weeks of camping of which one week was in Somerset and the other week at Tidemills, next to Newhaven. They have had four days at the Happy Valley Holiday Camp, two days in France, two days at the swimming pool ... and now they are, well, tired. So this is their weekend off and next week it's back to school, hip-hooray!

In September we will be moving home too. We need more space and especially a garden for them to let off steam. When we have moved I will add some photos to the family album web page.

I am exhausted. My week was fraught and set many hurdles for me to jump. Parenting the boys on my own is not easy and the boys, loveable as they are, sometimes wear me down. I had the first of my parenting assessments this week, a visit from a seemingly affable social work practitioner called Ruth. We discussed the boys and the challenges that single-parenting presents to a nearly 57 year-old. Well, at my age I have to expect people to be slightly incredulous that I can manage two boisterously energetic children ... I utter the same disbelief to myself in the mirror each morning. 

Actually, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang are slowly improving. Nassim is rapidly developing into a much more reflective child and Imran, well he is only 6, but he is becoming calmer. They are more difficult together than individually, like many children with little age difference. My brother Barry and I were the same, we must have driven my mother mad at times, but hey, she lived until she was almost 80, so it cannot be so bad for you.

So what more could possibly go wrong in my life? Having been fired from my all-terrain, aluminium-framed bike in an RTA in Brittany last year and crocked my shoulder and hip - the right-side - rendering me little more than a semi-walking reason to be x-rayed and scanned, I arrived at the orthopaedic hospital only to be told that I would have to go forth and do something about my hypertensive blood pressure. "One hundred and eighty!" said the nurse, as if I had done the treble with my darts "Over one hundred and twenty" he continued, in a slightly less enthusiastic tone, whilst shaking his head. "The doctor always tells me my blood pressure is a bit high" I said in a rather over-confident way. "This is not a bit high" he said "this is near the summit". So now I have to wait even longer for my shoulder reconstruction. 

That didn't stop the boys and I from visiting Dieppe in the half-term though, and lovely it was. We visited Auffay and St. Aubyn-sur-Scie and other really lovely little villages. We are going again in April, but as a group with three other people, so that will be much more fun.

Sorry I have been away so long, but my life is like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, it is bound to degenerate into chaos and it has done that spectacularly. 

Since last writing I have become the single-parent father of my own personal Bader-Meinhoff gang. If there was a god I am sure that he would have sent me two of his angels. As it is I have ended up with Home Alone, except that it's me that is home alone with them. Cruel is the hand of fate that gives me two jokers from the pack! I love them -  that's the problem!

So I am struggling through my final assignments and wishing that life could be just a shade or two rosier, but it isn't. The way Nassim behaves at home would definitely lead you to believe he is self-synthesising Dexedrine and Imran has decided that, rather than be the sweet, quiet little boy that he was, he will pursue his brother for the last five years of inflicted hell and pay him back. Imran will be 6 nnext week, he is vegetarian, he is sensitive and he is driving me mad. My children seem to be a reincarnation of my brother Barry and I at the same age: I feel sorry for my mother now! 

Having fallen off my bike in Brittany last summer, I am now in need of recycling. I dislocated my clavicular bone (on top of my right shoulder) and damaged the nerves in my hip. I am soon to undergo a shoulder reconstruction to alleviate the problems with my right arm and my hip should be dealt with after that. Expect a visit from me because I will be one-armed for a month or more - and very bored.

Well this is the weekend, so I am going to make the most of it, let my hair down a bit, what's left of it. The snow has gone so I might go for a walk ... a very short one.