(Written 15th January 2010, post-dated 27th December 2009)

Our family is not like other families.  Most children abhor the idea of spending time with their parents, let alone uncles and aunties they hardly ever see, and anything family-related at Christmas time is definitely out.  Not in our family.  Every year (if we can) we all meet up shortly after Christmas for “Draisey Day”.  We usually descent on my uncle and auntie’s house in Woking, spending the whole day eating, playing silly games, playing music, and generally catching up on the past year or so.  And it’s one of the highlights of my year.

This year was no exception, not least because we brought with us a portable people-magnet – a little baby boy.  More than that, Samuel is the first of the new generation, which makes him even more significant.  I’m pleased to report that he lived up to the hype, and thrilled everyone the whole time we were there.  He was passed from person to person, he fed when he had the opportunity, he slept very little, and he kept everyone amused without doing a single thing.  What a gift it is to be a baby.  Shame he’s too young to realise it.

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(Written 15th Jan 2010, post-dated to 13th December 2009)

The big day has finally come!  My wife and I are now proud owners of a little baby boy, whom we have called Samuel Joseph Dawkins.  He was born just before 8am, weighing in at 8lb 7oz (and no, don’t even think of asking for that in so-called “real money”).

It all started at 11:15pm last night (well, technically it *all* started 40 weeks ago, but that’s another story…) when Ellie’s waters broke.  She wasn’t getting any contractions at that point, so we phoned the maternity ward at Paulton (which is our nearest delivery centre) for some advice on what to do next.  They said to come in for a quick check-up, to make absolutely sure that it was the waters that had broken and not something else; it was fully expected that we would come home afterwards though, as labour usually lasts many hours, especially for the first child.  Nonetheless, we packed the car with everything we would need for every situation, following our carefully crafted lists to the letter, before setting off for Paulton, which is a good 30 minute drive.

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Here’s a confession – I’ve not been blogging as much recently as I should have been.  The reason?  Twitter.

I use my blog to tell people what I’ve been doing recently.  My readers are usually friends and family, unless a passer-by happens to stumble across something via Google that interests them.  My posts are generally about things I’m interested in, things I’ve done, things I meant to do but didn’t, or things that I want to rant about.

But now I’ve fallen in love with Twitter, my Twhirl client always running on my desktop, ready to accept my latest status update as and when I feel led to bend the world’s ear with my 140 characters of insight.  No logging in, no pressure to write unnecessary paragraphs of fluff, just a short blast of information.  No time like the present.  The result is that I feel like I’ve told the world what’s going on, despite the noticeable absence on my blog.  So I apologise that I’ve not posted more here in recent weeks.  Blame Twitter for being so darn addictive.

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About a month ago I bought a brand new Samsung Tocco Lite, otherwise known as the S5230.  I’m ashamed to admit that it was bought from Phones4u, against my better judgement, but I guess we all make mistakes every now and then.  I had actually only gone into the shop to have a look, and hopefully try it out for real rather than just watching YouTube videos and reading the specs, honest.

Phones4u aside, the phone is mostly fantastic.  Jumping on the touchscreen bandwagon, the Tocco Lite is an iPhone for plebs like me who can’t afford the real thing.  My previous phone, just for reference, was a Motorola L6, which was gorgeous, but was beginning to show its age a little (not in performance, just in a few cosmetic scratches to the case, which turns out to be more plastic than metal, despite appearances).  The Tocco Lite has a comparatively enormous screen, is more or less the same size, and is actually fractionally lighter.  That’s good, because it means it’ll sit in my pocket nicely.

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