Uncle Smudge

I wanted to start this entry by listing a series of long and interesting words that you may have only encountered once or twice in your life to try and describe what my life has been like these past two or so weeks. To do this I used a thesaurus, upon which I became re-acquainted with the word, or rather the phrase, ‘cock-a-hoop’ and it made me smile, so much so that I then thought I’d start this entry by telling you this rather uninteresting detail of my writing process. So basically the last couple of weeks have been cock-a-hoop!

For those who didn’t read my last entry, I compared my life to Batman. More specifically Batman from the Knightfall story, where he was generally put under the cosh. My week under the cosh was pretty intense, with the final act embarking on Uncle hood. Yes, I am now an Uncle! :D

On Thursday the 24^th of February at 00:16 (sorry to those I texted, I was misinformed originally by stating the time of 00:07), my Sister gave birth to Kai Gavin Robert Skilton. It was quite a dramatic birth that came about very quickly. I was also on the tail end of a 13 hour shift, running on mere fumes with really bad man flu (not that anyone actually cared about me at the time, and rightly so). In many ways it was of great inconvenience because I had just worked seven days on the trot and that Thursday was my day off! But to be honest, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. In some ways it was the most fitting and appropriate end to what was an almighty week for me. And I still got to have a curry on the Thursday evening as planned.

I’m still getting used to the fact that I’m now an Uncle and simply holding Kai in my arms, but it’s certainly an exhilarating experience that is the pinnacle of what you can achieve in life. Knowing that I’m going to have a relatively significant (and I’m sure wholesomely positive) influence on a relation’s life is quite something to behold. It’s even further exemplified by Kai’s middle names, which are late Uncles whom both had a significant influence on my life. It will nearly be a year ago since Uncle Gav died and it’s something I still think about a lot. I was really lucky to have someone great in my life at the time to help me through all that, and without them I really don’t think I would have coped so well, especially with the duties I was burdened with. I was worried that I might need someone special to cope with all of this but it’s actually been a welcome distraction from everything else that’s going on around me, namely at work. That said, even after all this I would like kids one day so I’m still in need of someone special, lol.

Work continues to be horrendous but despite the sheer amount of turds, in some cases literally, being thrown our way we’re managing to cope just about. I think my salary’s jump to 30k PA though with all my over-time, certainly feels like it should have done at any rate. I did make a horrendous cock-up last week though and did something I’ve never done in three-and-half of years of film weaving, but I think that’s just testament to how much pressure and strain we’ve been under. And I’ve still got man flu btw.

So I shall end this entry by summing up that being an Uncle is amazing. I went all retro at the weekend and took some 35mm black & white photos with my nice SLR camera of Kai and family. It felt really, really good using film again. I just hope they turn out all right; in focus, nicely exposed and no thumb or camera straps in frame.