One day a couple of weeks ago, Joe, our grandson suddenly decides he wants an Emerald Version of something or other for his Gameboy. At about the same time Amber our granddaughter is making a list of all the things she wants from the American Girl store in New York when she goes with Alex for a birthday treat.


Alex tells Joe he can have the game as long as he saves up and buys it himself and tells Amber that she has too much on her list but whatever Amber can save up Alex will double and that will be her birthday treat to spend in the store. Both kids think about this and disappear into a bedroom to get their heads together to discus ways of earning extra money.


Next, they both go to grandma and ask if they can have extra pocket money if they do some chores around the house.

“Of course” says grandma “I will give you a list and price for each job”.

I know this is coming my way so I get out the Black Book which has been under used for a while now and start listing jobs and working out prices. On the list is such as: hang the washing out – 20p, bring in washing - 20p, set table - 10p, clear table – 10p, clean car £2.00, clean windows - £1.00 and lots of other jobs to do with keeping their bedrooms tidy and their clothes put away. I give the list to the kids and they go off to study it.


And just to prove that I get some things right they come back some time later with a book each. They have a page for each day of the week, the jobs are listed down the left hand side and they are each going to tick which jobs they have done that day. At the end of the week I can then calculate their pay. They have created their own Black Books without me saying anything to them. I can’t wait to show them to Christine. As you should know Christine and Black Books do not go together and I see her eyes glazing over as I explain how the books work and that the new system comes into play from the next day. Christine mumbles something about it not working and goes into Beverley shopping with Alex. But I know best, I was a project manager and we have now got three Black Books. How can it go wrong? It’s great to see, it is obvious that the organisation created by the Black Book method has simply missed out with Christine but is back in full force with the grandkids.


Mornings at home usually start slowly, some quiet reading time to begin with, the kids watch Cartoon Network, breakfast is about 8.00am and then on with the day. The first day of the kids project and its absolute chaos, I know there are only two kids but it seems like there's more. Joe is trying to make Amber’s bed as well as his own, the more beds you make the more you earn. They are having a very loud discussion on who is setting the breakfast table as they both are carrying cereal bowls and plates to the table. The washing is being hung out and it hasn’t even been washed yet. It’s not working, Christine looks at me with that same old ‘told you so’ look and calmly calls the kids and asks them to get their Black Books.


The kids' Black Books are now in the bin along with my list of jobs and prices. She sits down with the kids and agrees a weekly rate to cover all the jobs and all they need to do is take turns. One does breakfast today, the other tomorrow and so on. I have my head in the bin trying to retrieve the Black Books to get the project back on track when Christine walks by and says

“it’s all sorted, the books can stay there”.

How can it be all sorted? How do you know how much to pay them? How do you know what each one has done?

“It doesn’t matter” says Christine “I was going to pay them the full amount each anyway. If they only do half the jobs it’s better than watching Cartoon Network all day”.

But this can’t be right. I was a project manager I know we need the Black Books so I retrieve them, remove the prices for each job and give them back to the kids, they now tick each day what they have done. They then compare the ticks each evening to make sure they are each doing their share. Both kids are still using the books even if not quite in the way I intended. I’m proud to watch them ticking the books, not that I mention it to Christine... Much. As I said she would never have made a real project manager!


But what the kids did miss was the item at the bottom of my job list £20 a week for anyone who could keep Alex’s bedroom tidy. Christine looked in one day last week and then checked the rest of the house to see if we had in fact been burgled. She has never, ever changed. All I can say is it’s a good job she has Dawnette, the housekeeper at home.

Being retired is pretty good. No cares, no worries. The sun is still shining on what must be developing into one of the hottest summers on record. It’s 7.00pm and my biggest concern is how to make sure Dave and I don’t go to the pub too early.


Tuesday night, as you know, we meet Kev and his crew down the Corner House but if we go too early I know I will have a headache the next day. Of course I could simply drink less when I get there but it doesn’t seem to work that way.


As I say it’s 7.00pm and suddenly there is a shout from the Garden Room. Obviously something bad has happened. One of the grandkids hurt! Alex has lost her book! Christine has spotted the marmalade I dropped on the new settee! I rush through and would you believe it, it’s worse, the internet connection is down. Now to you and me this would be a hindrance, a nuisance, but to Dave who was about to have his two hour Skype call to Sven, the German in Barcelona it’s as bad as it gets. Without his laptop on line he is lost, it’s like having his right arm lopped off. He is suddenly out of the loop of what’s happening. So we need to get it back on in a hurry.


I ring the internet provider’s status line which tells me they have no problems. I then ring their technical help line and after listening to bad music few a few minutes because “all our operators are busy” I get a young guy who takes my phone number and asks me to hang on. He comes back in a further few minutes and declares “there is a problem on the line” as if this information makes everything OK. I explain that I already know this because I’ve lost my internet connection and that is why I am ringing.


He passes the problem to the engineers who only work office hours so it will be tomorrow before it’s fixed.


I ring again this morning for an update, to be told that the engineers suggested that I turn everything off and back on again and it should work. Two things: Firstly, good of the engineers to suggest that but at what point was anyone going to pass that message to me. According to the guy on the phone they were “just about to ring me”. Maybe! Secondly, having been part of an IT Help desk some twenty odd years ago, I was always surprised by how many calls you got rid of by simply turning things on and off. Even if it didn’t work the chances of that person getting back to you was remote. So you had still got rid of them.


It didn’t work of course so I ring back and got some young girl who probably didn’t want to start off her day with me on the other end of the phone. She explained that the problem now needed to be passed back to the engineers and could take up to three working days to fix. Three days, I am now suggesting rather strongly that three days is ridiculous and for the sake of Dave’s health I needed it fixed more quickly and she needed to make sure it happened. This was all fair comment because it was obviously her fault that the error had occurred in the first place and so she should be able to mend it.


Half way through this conversation a little bell rings in my head. Since Alex’s arrival from The Bahamas, she and Christine have spent considerable time huddled over the computer. Alex has been introducing Christine to the joys of E-Bay. How to set up an account, how to bid, how to pay, etc. and Christine is currently watching three auctions , one has two hours to run, one two days and one three days. No internet, no bidding, no buying, no problems.


So back to girl on the phone, I suddenly change tack and ask her if she can ensure it will take three days. She assumes I am being sarcastic and tells me it will be fixed as soon as possible. I explain the situation but she doesn’t seem to understand and still insists it will be fixed as soon as possible. Poor girl can’t win, I was shouting when it would take three days now I’m shouting because it might not take three days. But was she bothered, probably not, it was probably coffee break time, maybe a bacon sandwich and then onto the next idiot on the phone ranting about his wife and E-Bay.


The connection came back on within two hours so the auctions are still being watched and my bank balance is likely to take yet another hit. But the good news is the marmalade on the settee has not been spotted yet. But there again if I had a decent breakfast of bacon, eggs maybe a sausage instead of wallpaper paste I wouldn't be eating toast and marmalade on the settee in the first place.

The British Open is over and once again in a major sporting event, our own Open Championship, we fail to turn up. We didn’t perform in the world cup in Germany. Wimbledon, except for one very surprising game by Andy Murray proved to be a total flop and Jensen Button is only a mere 80 points behind Alonson in Formula 1.


But the really annoying thing is we know we are not any good, with total British conviction we were sure we would not win the Open particularly after Monte decided to call it a day at half time.


What has happened to the winning spirit we got from the complete anihilation of the Aussies last summer to win the Ashes. The only way I can see us winning anything is to take a leaf out of the American’s book and start our own World Series of something that only the British take part in. Even then I would lay a bet we could come second.


But while speaking of Americans I am sure some of them may be OK but any nation that can vote George Bush as its leader must be not all there. What can you say about the man, presumably when promoting family values says:

"I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war." —George W. Bush, Charleston, West Virginia, Jan. 27, 2002

But really my unrest with the Americans started with Captain Marvel, Dave and Angie. This all goes back to one of my earliest projects. I was simply consulting on this one and finished up in a hotel in Nottingham with seven or eight other team members. Angie was the new girl on the block, fresh to the company and to working away from home, I of course was an old hand and felt I should take her under my wing and give her a few pointers. This naturally had nothing to do with her being seventeen, blonde and pretty good looking. She did well and in fact she went on to work on other major projects with me at a later date, she would probably still have worked with me later even if she hadn’t done well, though not of course because she was seventeen, blonde, etc.....



Captain Marvel was the representative from the company whose software we were buying. A very loud American whose only redeeming feature was that, as we were the customer, he saw fit to pick up the nightly hotel tab. He always signed it off with a flourish as Captain Marvel. So on the grounds that I have very few principals, and that anyone buying the booze cannot be all bad I decided that Americans were acceptable. Until Dave came along.


Dave was a quiet guy from Fort Lauderdale with an apartment on the river. Nice guy, maybe ten years, perhaps a couple more, older than Angie. He introduced me to Vodka and Grapefruit as an early summer evening aperitif. He was also the one to drink his flaming sambuca without blowing out the flames. Nasty, didn’t eat much for the next few days, lips all blistered. He also seemed to take a shine to Angie.


By now I was in communication with Angie’s mum and dad, letting them know she was OK and doing the right things. They were concerned as this was her first experience of being away from home for any length of time. So I made sure that no one tried things on with her.


Then along came Dave with loads of dosh, pictures of his apartment in Fort Lauderdale and tales from America. He asks her out for lunch, she hesitates but asks where he wants to go. “Paris” he says. That’s Paris, France - he’s suddenly gone from nice guy to Flash Yank in two minutes. He wants her to fly across to Paris with him for lunch. How can I explain that to her dad, I don’t think he would approve. Paris for lunch! The last guy on the team to ask her out took her to McDonalds for a burger before taking in a movie and I worried about how to explain that to her dad.


So what can I do, any seventeen year old's head would be turned by this guy’s style so how do I stop this happening. Obviously explaining to Angie that I didn’t think this a good idea only makes me sound like her dad and that wasn’t going to help. So in true project management style I find a work-around. I let someone else in the team know what happened the last time Dave took some one to Paris, the return flight delay, the surprise hotel even how he dumped the girl the next day. This made up message was past through three or four people before reaching Angie who that night told Dave where to stick his lunch.


Dave was very confused and spent the night at the bar with me trying to understand what had gone wrong. I of course consoled him and commiserated with him and simply said “young girls, how can you understand them?” and ordered another drink to go on Captain Marvels bill.

OK, so sometimes the Americans are useful.

We all know what retirement is about. Get up in a morning put on a track suit and slippers, M&S furry ones, walk down to the paper shop for the morning paper. Cup of tea, read the paper then wait in the queue down the post office for the pension. Back home to morning coffee and a shared scone….. Now there’s the rub.


The new cooker, the one with six rings on top, two ovens, a grill and a warming drawer, the one that was essential to our way of life to cope with the new cooking and baking regime which Christine was to introduce has been installed for eighteen days and have I had a scone? No! Nothing remotely like a scone.
We were supposed to be getting drop scones, fruit scones, cheese scones, all types of scones but nothing, not even a buttered scone. But to be fair, this cooker is a far cry from the twenty year old small cooker we had before which took forty minutes for the oven to reach temperature and ten minutes to boil a pan of water. This is like having a Rolls Royce to the previous mini, so there is hope yet.


The fridge is a different kettle of fish. Obviously it’s different - you don’t cook in the fridge and it's not a kettle! Sorry I’ll move on. I think I mentioned earlier the fridge has this bio-fresh drawer with humidifier in which you can keep cabbage fresh for 180 days. This concept has defeated both of us. We turn the humidifier on to keep the bio fresh drawer fresh (if you get what I mean) and this produces more damp and water in the fridge than you would usually find in your average Amazon rain forest. We have now turned off the humidifier and are using the bio-fresh compartments simply as salad crispers. This seems to work a lot better but the cabbage has now gone off. But seeing as a new bag only cost 69p from Tescos and they had shelves full of the stuff I wondered why we were trying to keep the original one at all.


Of course getting used to the cooker and the new fridge and freezer and dishwasher is further complicated by having Alex, Dave and the grandkids staying with us for the summer. So as well as getting used to the new equipment, Christine has also to get used to cooking for six instead of simply for two of us.

But things are beginning to fall into place. Last night's Toad-in-the-Hole filled two big baking pans and rose to six inches high, but its main claim to fame was that Dave couldn’t finish it off. For the first time ever Dave left the table without polishing off the lot.


Speaking of Dave, I thought it was only me but maybe it’s a man thing. Every time I walk past the fridge I always open the door and look inside, I am not sure why but it must be to see if there is anything in there that takes my fancy. It’s not that I’m hungry or even want anything and I usually just quickly close the door. So why do I do the same thing ten minutes later and then ten minutes later again, etc? I have no idea but I was pleased to see it’s not only me, Dave does the same thing.


Mind you talking about looking in the fridge, I remember a few years back a friend of ours, Judy was on a diet and had a strict list of things she could eat. But anything she could sneak out the fridge without her husband knowing didn’t count, she could eat that, probably no calories in sneaked food!. For whatever reason the diet didn’t produce the required result, not that it was needed anyway.


So there we have it, I am sure that as soon as Christine has time to understand how the eight different functions of the ‘multifunction oven’ work, we will have scones and perhaps even sausage rolls. In the meantime tonight is baked fish and Christine has done that already on this cooker and it was a big success.


Which reminds me of my first principle at work, find something you can do well and keep doing it, leave the clever stuff for others it may go wrong but if it goes right then remember to get the memo out first letting everyone know it was your idea.

Last Saturday night we went to the ‘Humber Bridge 25th Anniversary Bash’. This had been organised by our good friends Chris and Gwen, the ones with the wavy plates in Session 29. You know the sort of thing, take a picnic, table, chairs, booze, watch a concert and end with a fireworks display.


Gwen and Christine have a lot in common, they like the better things in life. They both work on the theory that ‘you only get what you pay for’, so if it’s cheap it probably isn’t good value. So naturally we had privilege tickets, not for us to sit with poor people at the back of the field, we are privileged, when we arrive we will get to sit at the front nearer the stage.


But first of all we have to get there. We park in one field and then have to carry everything across the next field to our privileged position. We have tables and chairs, cool bags with the food, more cool bags with the wine and various assorted bags with table dressings, lamps, blankets, fleeces, etc. As we leave the car I have seen Sherpas with lighter loads, I am sure that Tiger Tenzing Norgay set off with less for his 1953 assault on Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary.


The first job is to get set up. Chris is an old hand at these sort of picnics and takes control. First he has ground sheets to stop the damp, we are in the middle of a heat wave and it hasn’t rained for three weeks and we are all sitting on chairs but Chris knows that later tonight the damp-proofing will be necessary so these are arranged to cover an area big enough for the fourteen or so in our party. In reality, a decent developer could probably build three houses on the area we covered but at least we wouldn’t have other people sitting on our knees.


Just as an aside, have you noticed that if you are the only person sitting in your deck chair on the beach the next person to arrive will sit right beside you. Why do they do that?


So the ground sheets are down, the table's up and the chairs in place, now it’s Gwen’s turn. Out comes the lace table cloth and napkins and the crystal glasses; we are in the middle of a field remember. But we have done this before Gwen has taken crystal glasses for wine on the beach and brandy glasses to holiday cottages to say nothing of Christine’s coffee perculator in a camping tent. She only camped once, didn’t like it - never done it since. Nowhere to plug in the hair drier.


Now it’s out with the nibbles, crisps, olives, cheesy things, etc., before going right into the picnic. Gwen had been shopping at M&S and brought salmon, prawns, assorted types of fish plus various Italian meats - all very good of course and brilliantly presented - but maybe losing out in the substantial department. Fortunately Chris, who is not one to buy only one of anything when you can buy four, had realised the problem early and from out of his many bags comes the sausage rolls, scotch eggs, flans and various items of, shall we say, the stodgy variety. Suddenly everything's well with the world.

We eat, we drink and then WOW! on comes Katherine Jenkins. I have never seen so many men suddenly interested in opera singing. I, of course, have always been an opera fan and am only looking through the binoculars to see if she is using the correct breathing pattern. But the others well….. I'm not sure. And there I was thinking that Charlotte Church was the only good thing to come out of Wales in living memory. [Oi, watch it boyo -Ed.] I settle down with the binoculars for a good night. We are only three yards from the stage but for obvious professional reasons, I need the binoculars to check her breathing.


It’s an excellent night, we started at 4pm in the field when the sun was shining and it was very warm in our heatwave, all the girls in sleeveless tops looking very summery. By 8pm everyone was in jumpers and by fireworks at 11pm all the summery girls had turned into grandmothers wrapped in blankets trying to keep warm.


Right after the fireworks, 1000 cars were trying to get out of the car park field at the same time. We are going nowhere and not helped by Chris saying “muscle your way in front of the queue”. He drives a very large four point something litre Lexus but was now in Christine’s Clio which doesn’t seem to threaten other drivers quite as much. To top it all the village next to the car park had a gas leak and we were all directed onto the wrong roads.


But even after the long journey home we had had a brilliant ‘party in the park’. Looking forward to next one Chris.