Not for you, obviously – this is my blog, you want good news for you get your own ego massaging outlet.

First, I have a cold. Not obviously good news, you might think, but last week I had tonsilitis, and yesterday I woke up with a sore throat, so a mere cold is pretty good.

Second, in the course of mounting my high horse yesterday I discovered that my mother is entitled to a medal, the Pingat Jasa Malaysia Medal. She already has one from the Queen, but as I always say as of now, you can’t have too many medals.

Third, while talking about the problems some outdoor workers have with sunburn, a presenter on some awful TV program I skimmed past over breakfast said (roughly) “Well the problem for builders is that Dave can’t turn to Joe at lunchtime and cream up his back can he?” No, no he cannot. Unless he’s the builder out of the Village People perhaps. What a great way to start the day.

Last week was an odd one – Monday was a public holiday for Easter, I worked Tuesday, then had the rest of the week off to look after the kids (schools are closed). Unfortunately on Wednesday I also came down with the sore throat that my wife had had. Not a big deal, really – it was pretty nasty for a couple of days for her, but that was all. So on Thursday the kids and I spent the whole day (as in over 8 hours!) at the local zoo. I returned exhausted, and since then have been a miserable waistrel, barely able to eat because it hurts so much to swallow, shuffling around with aching joints, but still having to look after the kids while Claire works. As part of trying to ease my discomfort I took some anaesthetic lozenges that I appear to be allergic to; the palms of my hands broke out in spots that itched most distractingly.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, the sun shone the entire week making me want to go out cycling while being utterly unable to. Once more the deity of your choice breaks wind in my general direction. Now I have an appointment to see the doctor, so no doubt I’ll be feeling completely better in the next couple of hours just to make me look extra foolish.

Update: Tonsilitis. So on top of everything else, apparently I’m now 7 years old.

With the string of excellent weather we’re having here at the moment thoughts naturally turn to decking. We’ve decided on a layout, and I’m currently working out how much timber it needs. If the wood came in one long piece it would be easy (though I concede that transport may be an issue, and walking through forests might be a little dicey, what with all the infinitely long trees), but because it doesn’t I’m having to do some figuring.

The tricky part is a triangular section joining two oblongs (or rectangles if you prefer, but why pass up the opportunity to use the word oblong?) There’s enough wood left over from the two oblongs to cover the triangle, but some of them won’t be quite long enough to span the hypotenuse in a single leap (check it out, I totally used the word hypotenuse in a sentence). To work out how many extra boards I’ll need before I can use up the offcuts I’m having to use cosines and tangents!

Now I know that it’s not exactly degree level stuff, but this is the first time I’ve used sohcahtoa (or the old aunt sits on her chair at home, if you prefer) in real life since I learned it from Mr Furmston* when I was about 14. We spent a lot of time on it back then, or at least that’s how I remember it, so this is pretty exciting. For maths.

*Mr Furmston taught us Pythagoras’ Theorem using a long story that ended with the punchline “The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides”. In my opinion it wasn’t worth it.

Update: I’m crushed – on further analysis all I need is Pythagoras. Looks like that hippo stuff was worth it after all.

We just got hit by an unexpected few minutes of what we could humorously call a mighty wind, and as we stared out of the window in surprise a seagull went past. I don’t speak seagull, but this one was pulling several G’s trying to stay on course, and was clearly thinking “Holy Craaaaaaaaap!”