My wife, her obviously visible pregnant bump and I went for a lovely meal at a local tapas restaurant last night. While the patatas bravas probably lacked that spicy kick you’d get in a bar run by a genuine Mardrileño, it was flavoursome and congenial enough that I’d want to go back. The staff were quite charming and poilte. As we left, the conversation went something like this:

Waitress: I hope you enjoyed your evening. (Indicating Mrs T’s bump) When are you due?
Mrs. T: About now?
Waitress: You’re expecting soon?
Mrs. T: No, I’m in labour now.
The waitress went a quite obvious whiter shade of pale.
Mrs. T: (cont.) Don’t worry, I’m not going to give birth here.

That was at about eight-o-clock. Four hours later, precisely on midnight, Mrs. T gave birth - at home - to a little girl hatchling weighing all of 7lbs and 3oz and a sister to hatchling #1.

That was some tapas!

I’ve made a little error in judgement.

Ya see, I’ve got a brand new shiny-shiny and it’s, well, extremely shiny. It’s a laptop. The same one I tried buying last year only newer, better specs, direct from Dell and shinier. But… there’s a little problem. A tiny problem. A problemito if you will. And that’s quite aside from the fact that it comes with Internet Explorer 6 installed as default (with Windows XP Pro SP2 - Vista be damned!)

The miniscule issue I have - and I confess that I’m entirely to blame for my propensity for magpie-like attraction to the shinies, is that the laptop, with its 2.6Ghz Dual Core CPU, 4Gb RAM, 400Gb HDD, Dual 256Mb SLI Geforce 8700M GT Graphics adaptor, remote controlled media player, 17″ widescreen and backlit keyboard, is too big to fit in my motorcycle panniers. Also the power supply is the size of a brick. Well, half a brick but seriously, it’s brick sized. Red brick not breezeblock because that would be silly. It’s HUGE (and that’s before you add in usual male exaggeration). I suppose it’s not actually a surprise when you consider it’s a desktop replacement rather than a tiny portable. Ah well - it’s a problem I can deal with.

Did I mention how shiny it was?

(P.S. When I get my broadband connected in the flat next week, there will be no stopping my plans for world domination. You have been forewarned. And forewarned, as they say, is given enough notice to make the appropriate plans.)

I could begin this post with a plenitude of pithy aphorisms about the nature of fear, the effect it has on the soul and the fine line between audacity and insanity. I could philosophise about how the highly evolved ego can dominate control the primal instincts of the id, supressing the fight or flight instinct and standing tall against adversity. None of this would hide the fact that I was so frightened that I nearly shat myself on Sunday night.
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