Happy Father's Day!

Well, we're just coming to the end of Father's Day (here in the UK at least), and for the first time in four years I haven't used the occasion as an excuse for a family trip to the cinema. My back was just a bit too sore this year, and even though I can book to stand in the wheelchair space I didn't have the stamina - which meant it wasn't an attractive proposition. Besides, there weren't any films that really grabbed me. So what did I choose instead?

The distractions... I really thought I was going to be alone again.
Number One on my list of things to make a good Father's Day: Not having to do any cooking, washing up or dog walking. Or is that three things? Whatever, this was what I asked for straight away. And got. Both children walked the dog in the morning, my daughter did the second walk, my wife and son did the washing up between them and my wife and daughter did the cooking. Which meant that nobody got overloaded, but I got my day off.

I decided to spend some of it on solo activity, so I wrote an entry for this blog (not this one - this is an extra). And happily that also gave my wife time to catch up a bit with the gardening. Result!

When did you last have the pleasure of smelling a flower, watching a sunset, eating a well-prepared meal?
And it certainly was a well-prepared meal. At lunchtime we had steak with mushrooms, tomatoes, fried onions, Jersey Royal potatoes and broad beans picked fresh from the garden. I can't honestly remember the last time I had steak - probably a few years ago - and it was all delicious. We went for something simpler for supper - cartons of soup (broccoli & stilton, tomato, £1 each from Morrison's) and French bread. Oh, and there was a vegan chocolate cake too. Mmm, chocolate. It was quite expensive, but still less than it would have cost to go to a restaurant.

There was a beautiful sunset, too. I didn't smell a flower, but I did smell my daughter's freshly-picked mint tea, which was just as pleasant.

It's like it's some kind of a game and only you know the rules!
Apart from eating, there were a couple of other joint activities. We played the first couple of hours of Arkham Horror, the game that takes almost as long to set up as most take to play. Only one investigator got lost in time and space, and although I'm hanging on to my sanity by a thread I have high hopes that the horror of Hastur will by history henceforth. (Try saying that three times fast. Or rather, don't.)

All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was. Where do you want to start?
What's that? You say this is a meant to be a Doctor Who blog? Guess I'd better insert an obligatory reference, then.

The other joint activity was (surprise, surprise) a bit of Who. My children didn't want a classic story, and having recently experienced both Timelash and The Dominators with my son I decided that was fair enough; so we each chose two nuwho episodes to watch over the weekend. Each of us picked stories from two different Doctors: my son went for Dalek and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday; my daughter went for Human Nature/Family of Blood and The Lodger; I went for Blink and The Doctor's Wife. I watched all of them, they joined in for three each. I don't think I've seen any nuwho this calendar year (other than Good as Gold), and it was fun - I may watch a few more over the next week or two.

Anyway, hope you all - fathers and otherwise - had a great day. I certainly did. Nighty-night!