Chickens in a box

I love, love, love it. Today I played in my first ever tournament. So much fun, despite having a bit of a grumpy mare to start with in the first two chukkas. Booted, yelled, hissed, whipped, chivvied, begged, cajoled, pushed  - she wasn't having any of it. Changed ponies at half-time and had a much better run at things in the second two chukkas, even managing to score a goal. And our team eventually come in a respectable third (out of four, well...not last anyway!) The main thing though, was meeting new people, having a laugh and galloping up and down in the fresh air, and the afternoon was all of the above. As the new year draws closer my resolution is to make more time for myself to do the things I enjoy without worrying or feeling guilty about it. Polo and writing being the most obvious, with going to the gym coming in a close third. If something makes you smile, it's absolutely worth making the time for. The ironing [insert menial task of your choice] can wait.

Several lifetimes ago I booked us all tickets to see English National Ballet performance of The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum. We went up from Basingstoke yesterday as the Paddington Line is closed, but it turned out to be an easy run into town followed by a monster afternoon of shopping in Regents Street and Oxford Street. Suffice to say attempting to put one foot in front of another was challenging. Why can't people just walk in a straight line? The worst offenders are the texters; weaving all over the place and you cannot get past them. Close second; the couples. Invariably holding hands and dawdling along looking in every shop window. Come on people, some of us have got places to be! We all did pretty well out of it in the end. I was especially pleased with my new black Ralph Lauren polo shirt. The boys stocked up on Gap Jeans and Eddie took out the Men's Department at M&S. We drew the line at Hamelys - quite literally Hell on Earth. By 5.30pm we were knackered....

After many days and many nights of sitting, eating, sitting, drinking, eating etc. It was time to face the outside world and attempt activity. Cold Turkey (as in the weaning oneself off unhealthy and addictive substances variety) is never easy, but we had to break the cycle. Laden down with pockets full of Quality Streets (you need to ease yourself into new habits gently), and a backpack containing a hip flask of Sloe Gin circa 2016, slices of Christmas cake and some token satsumas to make up our five a day, we set off on a marathon hike along Watership Down. It is such a beautiful place, even in darkest December. I've been walking, cycling and riding Watership for well over thirty years and hold it very dear. Today was no exception and the two and a half hours it took for us to hike along Wayfarers flew by. I did have noble intentions not to imbibe anything alcoholic today...but as the yard arm approaches, I feel that having walked all that way, and then followed it up by a fo...

It's the day after Boxing Day, and we're home after a whirlwind few days of meat, stuffing (more meat), vegetables (with meat), gravy (made with meat) and booze (refreshingly meat-free). Time to sit down for five minutes with a G&T (+ lime - a fruit, so I'm told) and take stock (not literally, that went into the gravy. Along with the meat). We've been back in Blighty after our trip over to Australia for Alexander and Vanessa's wedding for just over three weeks now, I just can't believe how the time has flown. Being there for such an amazing day will stay with us forever. It was perfect, and to be a small part of it, a privilege. There is something very special about having a Mrs Judge in the family again. Back home to pre-Christmas panic with no presents or preparation of any kind organised. Fortunately all came together in time and we had a wonderful day with our fabulous friends The Greens - full of laughter, fizz, food, Lego and board game...

Another week on my own. Eddie was in Vegas last week, home for three days and this week it's Denver. Not that I mind really, it's the same hamster wheel, just a bit lonelier. At least I get to catch up on rubbish TV I otherwise wouldn't get to watch! In a bit of a fug what with one thing and another. There's a lot going on and I don't feel entirely in control to be honest. Christmas hasn't even registered for starters, and while it may only be November, by the time we've come back from Oz we'll be in the thick of present-buying, wreath-making, turkey-ordering and God knows what else. Then there's work and a new job I'm taking on which is bigger and therefore more stressful. It's a great opportunity, but still a worry about how we'll manage. Eddie not coming back from Australia with me doesn't help (he's staying in Singapore to visit a customer) because that first week back is jam packed with meetings - none of which I'll b...

It's a slow start to a Monday morning after a busy weekend. David came down so that we could attend the Green's annual gathering of Newbury's Great & Good. This year's theme - GinFest. And it was indeed. Great fun all round, but with my advancing age, recovery takes days... On Sunday we went to East End for Remembrance Day - 100 years since the guns felt silent. A wonderful, crisp sunny day surrounded by friends and family made it, as always, a very special occasion. As we walked past our old house and up Jaggers Track we felt very nostalgic for our former home, and once again the loss of our Bella came back to us as of course she should have been there, trotting ahead as she always did. A lot to look forward to with Christmas just around the corner, but more immediately our trip to Australia in just a couple of weeks to celebrate Alexander and Vanessa's wedding. It's come around so quickly. I'm going to find it very difficult being so far away from ...

William has a week off and has tootled back to school today happy to be back with his friends.  James has had last week off and still has a week and a half left to run. Words fail me. Apart from one - ridiculous. 

It's been a busy few days and with two days off a lot has been accomplished; from getting the boys' hair cut to washing the car, stocking up on pharmaceutical supplies to play dates, cinema trips and teas out. Yesterday we went to London for the day and had a fantastic time exploring Greenwich. We crossed from East to West on the Meridian Line and tootled up and down the Thames on a river bus before heading home for Spag Bol and the telly. Today was my turn to WFH. It was also the day the plasterers came to sort out James' peeling room and the chimney sweep turned up - in the middle of a webex call as it happened. So in between moving to avoid workmen and boys, making cups of tea and trying to work, it was total chaos.  After an elevenses involving lardy cake, energy levels went stratospheric. Not mine, I hasten to add...I packed boys, swimmers and laptop into the car and headed for Northcroft to throw them into the icy waters for an hour while I logged in and actua...

It was very quiet this morning when I woke up and of course I immediately knew why. I hadn't slept well anyway. But whenever I find myself paralysed with doubt about Bella and the decision we made, I think back to how ill and thin she was and I know that we did what was right. If we'd waited a day longer, she would have suffered. As it was, she left us happy, relaxed and loved.  My eyes are sore with constant tears. I look and feel like a wreck. Not ideal when I have to get up at 5.30am for work. One of life's great cruelties is that it doesn't stop to give you a chance to get your head around things. You have to keep going. It is relentless.  Everyone's been on edge today, but the boys and I planted narcissi and snowdrops around Bella's grave which Sonya and Richard had given us (in a beautiful basket along with champagne, tasters and chipsticks - the perfect comfort combo). We're not ready to celebrate anything yet, but I know that one day we will b...

Bella's condition worsened through yesterday, she became noticeably weaker as the day went on and I worried about waiting to call the vet on Monday. When Eddie got home, he said, a propos of nothing, that he thought we'd need to do something tomorrow and I agreed. When we came down this morning, there was no question, there was no more doubt, we knew that the time had come. They say you do know, don't they? And we did.  We waited all morning and with 10 minutes to go before the vet arrived, sent the boys to Waitrose Cafe - it wasn't right for them to be here. Then it was time to say goodbye. We held Bella and told her how much we loved her as we felt her slip away. And just like that, she was gone.  We buried Bella in a sunny corner of our garden, curled up asleep with her lead and a small bouquet of roses from the flowerbed. We will remember her for all the incredible things that she was. The best dog ever. Loved more than words can say. ...

This morning I called the vet and told him we wanted to take Bella off her steroids. We think that at this stage they're actually making her feel worse, on top of what she is already suffering. Although she isn't in any pain, she is getting thinner and more lacklustre by the day. It isn't fair to keep her going like this just because we can't bear to let her go. It's what we always said we would not do. The vet agreed, so we're reducing her steroid intake by half. But it won't really make any difference. Looking at her today, we're bracing ourselves because we think we'll have to call the vet over in a matter of days. The awful decision we face, is when to do it. When do you know? What we don't want to do, is leave it so late that her quality of life has become so reduced it's making her miserable. I think she's very sad already, I think she knows. And I suspect she's ready too. So one more weekend to say goodbye - unless there...

There is a balance to be found between the manic ferrying between rugby, tennis, football, swimming etc. that so many parents find themselves doing, and relaxing at home. We've done the ferrying and, fed up with spending our lives in the car, opted for a spell of relaxation. However, the reality of having two bored boys at home is that most afternoons and weekends are spent in endless and pointless arguments about when and who is going to play on the X-Box, phone, TV (select screen of your choice). There's no point making the boys do stuff they don't want to do. We've tried all of the above with varying degrees of success. All you can really do, is offer them as many chances as possible to try new activities, and they have given them all up (with the exception of tennis). The problem is that they don't have a team sport to play, and while I get that not everyone's a team player, I also still believe that understanding how to play for and be part of a team,...

After a week on 12 steroids a day, it was time to take Bella back to the vet to see if there was any improvement. A gibbering, weeping wreck, I braced myself for the worst news (as I have done for the past three weeks). The vet looked sympathetic and gave absolutely no reassurance that there would be any glimmer of a positive result. I left in bits, watched by the rest of the waiting room as the pet owner you never want to be. However, yet again Bella has defied the odds and shown a 10% improvement from her previous test. Her red cell count is still horribly low, but not low enough to give up quite yet. We have another week's grace. Having pulled myself together over the course of the afternoon I went back to weigh Bella (we forgot at her appointment what with my gibbering etc.). She has lost 2 kilos...I don't know what to think. We soldier on for another week.

Just home from a week in Lisbon with the Cisco team. It was so nice to finally meet the people I work with. The problem is that we're all based in different countries, so spend our entire time on Webex video calls but never actually see each other in person. What a difference actually speaking face to face makes.  I feel like I really made some good friends, and that next time we have a call, it'll be so much easier. I've also developed a penchant for Monkey 47 ... It's the first time I've actually felt part of a team for such a long time, since Vodafone days. When you're a contractor, you're always on the outside; the feet under the duck. Makes me realise how quiet I've been for so long. Contractors are hired to do a specific job in a specific time for a specific day rate. That's it. Hit the ground running, keep shtum, make the client look good, do the best you can to deliver what you're supposed to, move on. Sometimes I forget that I'm ...

OK, so I am officially an emotional wreck now. There is still no conclusive evidence of cancer in Bella's blood, which doesn't mean she doesn't have it; if it's in the bones then it wouldn't show up. But it also means there is a chance that something else may be at play. She is too weak for a biopsy and general anaesthetic, and we don't want to put her through that just to find that it's cancer after all. However , we can try steroids. This would be a way of ruling out anything else, because if she responds to steroids, then it might mean that her anaemia is caused by something else that steroids can treat. If they don't work, then we know that it's almost certainly cancer and we're back to square one. It is our last option, but it's a chance. We may just be buying time, but it's time I am grateful for. More tests to run on Monday. They will expect to see her cell count either stabilising or improving if the steroids are working....

We brought Bella home on Monday - all her scans came back clear; no free fluid, no tumours. So all was well and things were looking up. However she was still anaemic and we didn't know why. The lead vet sent off for more blood tests and yesterday we went back in with her to find out the results. The tests showed a steady decline in both white and red cells, so the vet thinks it's an auto-immune response. Because both types of cells are affected, and having seen what he has so far, he feels it's likely that Bella has cancer in her bone marrow. That would explain why she has been lacking in energy for some months now. She's obviously had it for a while, but it's crept up so slowly you'd hardly notice. Her coat is shining, appetite fine, everything normal. Except...she's pale. And now she is running out of her mature cells but can't produce any more. We're at crisis point. Of course none of this is conclusive, to really know for sure she would ha...

I drove home down the M4 from a long day in a windowless room, to pick William up from Taylor's. Dropped him at home to do his French prep and went straight out again to get James from Prep Club. When I got to Thorngrove I saw a mum I knew, so smiled and said hello. She said hello back, and then the lady she was standing with started talking about prescription glasses to her and the two of them turned away and carried on as if I wasn't there. I sat on the bench outside school watching them witter, and then saw another friend. So I smiled and said hello. She said hello back, and then another mum came up and started talking about football training to her and the two of them turned away and carried on as if I wasn't there. James came out and we roared out of the drive in the little red car, which always gives me enormous satisfaction. Unfortunately my elation was short-lived as I came home to find William had spent the entire 30 minutes I was away playing on his phone. T...

Bella is home! Order is restored (as is the balance of the universe). The vet called yesterday to say they'd looked at her spleen, liver, lungs and heart and couldn't find a trace of cancer, or blood. Which begs the question, why put her through all that in the first place only to find out that a) you'd wasted your time b) put a dog through unnecessary stress and c) put a family through the emotional wringer. I guess as a tumour was arguably the most likely diagnosis, and the one they were expecting, they had to rule that out first. Now we wait for more blood tests to find out what's causing her anaemia. We have a follow-up meeting tomorrow when we'll get the results and hoping that the outcome will be positive, the prognosis excellent and the medication quick, simple and uninvasive. In the meantime we may need to put the house on the market to cover the vet bills, having realised too late that our insurance only coughed up (continuing the theme) in the event ...

Bella is at the vets. She's been there overnight and is on a drip and waiting to be seen by the Clinical Lead who'll do an ultra sound of her abdomen and potentially an X-Ray of her chest to see what is causing internal bleeding. 48 hours ago, life was completely normal and all was fine. But Eddie and I had noticed that Bella was becoming increasingly lethargic. She's definitely not been her usual self for weeks now, but we put it down to the hot summer we've had. Then when it cooled down and she was still listless I called the vet, who told me not to worry, but to call again if we were still concerned. On Friday (it's Sunday morning), Eddie came back from a walk and said she was walking behind him by the end. The same thing had happened to me on the Thursday - and that was it. I called the vet and took her in on Friday evening. The vet said she looked fine - and she did - no loss of appetite, coat shining, nose cold, ears up, sound etc. You would never have k...

It's been one of those birthdays which has run over three days rather than an afternoon/evening special. Typical James! We took four of James' mates out to the cinema on Saturday to watch 'The House with a Clock in its Walls'. An odd choice maybe, but the alternative was 'Antman and the Wasp.' which looked dire. Or go karting which would have required us remortgaging the house. Honestly how much? Fortunately the boys seemed to like the film, and an endless supply of popcorn and wine gums probably helped. Then back home for Fortnite and burgers, followed by chocolate and vanilla cake. None of which touched the sides. They're a nice bunch and it was actually a pretty relaxing way to spend the afternoon. A far cry from the carnage of earlier years and smaller versions of this lot. On Sunday Eddie dropped the three of us off at Snelsmore and we walked back through the woods in the sunshine with Bella, while he dug beans, carrots and leeks from the allotmen...

It's James' birthday on Monday, but he's got his mates round tomorrow and he wants to have his birthday cake then, so they can all sing Happy Birthday and take a slice home. All well and good. Apart from the fact that I have back-to-back calls pretty much all day, and friends round for dinner. AND, I refuse to buy one. With an hour between calls it has just been possible to wolf down a fish finger sandwich (using the thinnest of slices, Eddie having eaten the rest of the loaf while I was on my previous call), mix up a chocolate Victoria sponge and get it in the oven. Icing I can sort out later. Then I wondered, as I often do, whether it would ever occur to a man to take his lunch break to bake a birthday cake. And whether high-achieving women would just go and buy one because they were focused on work and couldn't spare the time. And whether it is career limiting to spend time baking cakes when you could be working through your lunch hour. Yesterday on a call we w...

The only way to survive working full-time and managing a family and menagerie, is to become the most efficient, organised person possible. Every single minute of your day needs to be catalogued and aligned to a specific activity if you're going to fit it all in and not forget anything or anyone. In my case this can prove challenging, as I'm naturally an extremely lazy, disorganised and impractical person. iPhone alerts are fundamental. If notifications aren't set, it ain't gonna happen. Days are invariably broken up into bite-size chunks of time, an example of which would be: 06:20 - Alarm goes off (Today Programme). Press SNOOZE. Go back to sleep. 06:30 - Alarm goes off again (Headlines). Listen. 06.38 - Headlines end. Shuffle into the shower. 06:45 - Hair and Make-up. 07:00 - Yell at boys to wake up (Eddie) or go upstairs, draw curtains and say "it's morning." (Me) 07:10 - Breakfast - argument about who's laying the table/having what for...

"I won." "No I won." "No I won." "No I won. Anyway, it didn't count because I'm left-handed." "Your grip was wrong." "It wasn't. And I won anyway." "I don't want to argue with you. I won." Etc.

For months James has been complaining that he doesn't want to do judo anymore. It's only one hour a week, and we think it's been great for him to be part of a club, outside school, learning a skill that he's actually pretty good at. But the tantrums and tears have escalated until Eddie and I have come to dread Tuesday evenings. The question is; if James hates judo so much these days, why make him go? Because he might regret it later? Because it's great to learn a new sport? Because it'll keep him fit? All those reasons and more, but that's only because we know what it's like to give something up and then feel all those things. What does James care about hindsight, or learning from his parents' experiences. Nowt. So I did a deal with him. If he stuck at judo until Christmas and went every week - without complaining - then we could revisit the situation in the new year and he could give up if he wanted to. Alas the concept of honouring a deal is ...

So...the Houghtons are alive and kicking, still living in the house in Donnington. Mostly having a wonderful time, in between working like slaves, putting the hours in at school and fighting with each other. Thank heavens for the telly, although now we have the dreaded X-box to contend with as well (duelling screens, the joy). The boys seem incapable of turning either off without bedlam - and a fight of some description of course - ensuing. More to write, I've started and will continue, planning not leave it another five years this time! N.B. I did try to write a diary with an actual pen but found it incredibly laborious, and my handwriting is atrocious these days. Terrible, too much typing.