Birthday

A night at the Embassy and an Emmy win

Wednesday 20th May 2015Wednesday 3rd August 2016Baggie

And so another Premier League season draws to an end. The first solely from Stockley Park and although it hasn’t been without incident on the whole it has been relatively successful. Indeed not only successful for IMG but NBC, the rights holders in the United States. They have raised the profile of football (or soccer) in the States and not only for their production standards but for the technical complexity of bringing Premier League games into the homes of the average American. Indeed, on the 5th May 2015 in New York they won an Emmy, in the 36^th Sports Emmy awards, for Outstanding Technical Team Studio.

If you look at the list of Technical Supervisors whose names are on that Emmy, you may recognise a familiar name. NBC were gracious, not only to recognise the fact that my department assist them in their technological endeavours but to include me and a number of other IMG staff members on the official list of winners. I was very touched by this kind gesture and NBC had no obligation to include us in their win nevertheless it means that I am an Emmy winner and entitled to say so in perpetuity.

Not a bad start to my new position at work. Yes after 4 years as Head of Live Operations I am now Head of Engineering, MCR and Live Operations. As part of a departmental restructure I have become a third of the Cerberus inspired, Head of Engineering role. This is my 6^th position, in my 19 plus years at IMG, a relatively unusual state of affairs in our modern world.

The new position brings more responsibilities and a further step away the coal face which has the added benefit that I will be working only one weekend in three, rather than every weekend that I do at the moment: a rebalancing of the work-life equation and more, quality, family time.

The streak of good fortune is continuing. IMG are currently providing facilities to the BBC to produce the 60^th Eurovision Song Contest. The contest is being hosted in Vienna due to last year’s win by the Bearded Lady: Conchita Wurst. In the spirit of the competition the Austrian Ambassador hosted a send-off party at the Austrian Embassy. Along with the BBC personnel, four of us from IMG were invited to attend. How can you refuse an invitation to an Embassy from an Ambassador? Therefore, Tuesday saw the four of us head for Belgrave Square at the Austrian Embassy.

A grand building, as befits an embassy, the party was just getting going as we arrived; good timing from our point of view. There was a steady flow of alcohol but disappointingly no silver platters of Ferrero Rocher. After an introduction by Rufus Hound, Electro Velvet (the UK entrant) performed their song: ‘Still in love with you’ and there was an opportunity to grab a photo with the duo.

The icing on the cake, and the completion of the hattrick of wins, was yours truly winning the top prize in the free raffle. Yes, I won flights to Vienna and two nights in a boutique hotel to be taken by the end of the year. With Lucinda’s birthday less than a week away it was a good present to add to the 1 metre inflatable Austrian Airways jet that the tickets came attached to.

This website is not supposed to be hogged by me, merely written by me but I think they are worthy of inclusion in family news. However, you are here to hear about the exploits of the baguettes so I will stall no longer.

Lucinda’s new venture, her new vocation, childminding is going well. As mentioned I will not go into details on this website however suffice to say her regular care is settled and she has helped a neighbour out with two days of emergency childcare. She has raised invoices and has been paid. More importantly she has not had to wake up at 0345 and spend a day being shouted at by irate passengers. She has been able to pick our children up from school and be there for them every day.

Even better than that, because as a registered childminder she has had to be DBS (CRB) checked (and consequently so have I by association) and therefore we have been able to register with Éowyn’s school as potential helpers. Therefore, when the school asked for volunteers to help with the year 1 school trip to the Living Rainforest in Berkshire, Lucinda put her name down and was invited to assist. So while Lucinda and Éowyn had fun at the Rainforest (not really fun for Lucinda looking after 6 children), I took the day off to look after Amélie and Ezra. This is something that we would not have even considered in the past. So although it was a difficult decision to leave the airport it is rapidly proving to be the correct one.

As school trips indicate Éowyn’s school year is rapidly coming to an end, just a half term left but there is still an awful amount to squeeze in to those few weeks. She is enjoying her after school dancing lessons (taking after her aunties and cousins). She has some end of year academic tests (personally I think that this is a little too young – let them be children!), however the biggest event will undoubtedly be Éowyn’s film role.

As I have previously mentioned her after school drama class are shooting a little film and all the children in the class have been given roles. Éowyn has been typecast as the naughty girl. She has a number of lines and hopefully is taking it seriously. There will be a premiere and a red carpet event, something definitely to look forward to. Could it be the start of an illustrious film career? Are you someone from the future looking at this website for a background on the latest Oscar winner?

Éowyn isn’t the only one whose academic year is rapidly drawing to an end. Amélie will take a big step in her life, leaving nursery and heading for full time education in September. We have had Amélie’s school place confirmed and she will be attending the same school as Éowyn. Unfortunately they will not be in the same campus for as Éowyn moves to year two so she will move further up the road to the bigger site. It will be a further two years before they are on the same site.

Amélie currently attends the outstanding nursery at the school across the road from Éowyn’s new campus. However, it seems that Amélie has misheard the name of her current school for she does not attend Our Lady of the Grocery. In fairness, she does not really know what a Rosary is, the heathens that we are. We are very impressed with Our Lady of Rosary nursery so much that we have put Ezra’s name down, even though he is not due to start for nearly a year: such is the envisioned demand the newly bestowed outstanding status will have.

Ezra is growing up though and his vocabulary is increasing daily. Much of it revolves around food: ‘Pork Pie’, ‘Chocolate Toast’, ‘Cheese’ and the ubiquitous ‘More Please’ but there are the usual animals, colours and cartoon characters. If he is out and about and he sees an animal he will point to it, name it and then make the sound associated with the animal.

Usually this is a dog, for as we take the girls to school we have to walk through the local park where many people walk their dogs. He will point to the spaniels, collies and other various breeds and declare ‘dog’ followed by ‘woof, woof’. However that wasn’t what he said when he saw an Old English Sheepdog. He looked scared, pointed at the beast and muttered ‘Bear’.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘it is a doggie.’

‘No Daddy,’ came the answer. ‘Bear!’

I suppose to a two year old child an Old English Sheepdog would look like a bear and he, for one was not to be dissuaded.

Ezra’s new found love is jigsaws. Not the electrically powered reciprocating saws but the multi-piece puzzles. It is something that we are encouraging for it develops his eye to hand co-ordination, manual dexterity and problem solving at the very least. Indeed he enjoys them so much he will sit on the floor after completing his current favourite, a 45 piece ‘In The Night Garden’ puzzle, and before you have a chance to congratulate him he will take it apart and start again. We would prefer him to do this though, than sit with the iPad or watching television. There is a hint of irony considering my career, or perhaps I have better appreciation.

So, with a full BBC crew producing the Eurovision Song Concert, semi-finals and final and preparations underway for 10 simultaneous matches for the last day of the Premier League season (can West Bromwich Albion end the season with a hattrick of their own, with wins against Manchester United – check – Chelsea – check and Arsenal – tbc); not to mention the last Football League shows produced by IMG for the BBC, and a couple of recruitment drives television is taking up a great deal of my time this week. Therefore, I will bid you adieu and leave you to look at the latest batch of photos.

Peace and love

Baggie

Concentrating

Intense

Or just ignoring the camera?

The final piece

Aren’t I a clever boy?

A little more bark

Are you alright below?

Eyes right

Let’s set sail

And a yo-ho-ho

It’s a long way down

Of to sea

Don’t jump

Intense stare

Cheeky smile

A picnic in the garden

Mother and Daughter

Facial decorations

Daddy’s birthday, a Solar Eclipse and Lucinda leaves the airport!

Sunday 29th March 2015Monday 30th March 2015Baggie

A week after Ezra’s 2nd birthday, Daddy celebrated his 42nd! Yes I have made 42 orbits of the sun (to be technically accurate the solar system’s barycentre) but enough of that until later.

As, I am sure that you can appreciate, the last write up was primarily about Ezra’s birthday, however that meant that there was some news and snippets from chez Bagnall that slipped through the net. I will try to make amends for that before the big news of the year.

With the first weekend of the Easter holidays upon us (where has that time gone, it only seems five minutes since the last holiday), it is probably a good time to reflect on Éowyn’s last half term. This half term saw Éowyn’s class assume various responsibilities. Each class takes its turn and the roles vary from assisting at lunch or in assembly or, as in Éowyn’s case, register monitor. Éowyn and her friend Jessica had the responsibility to collect the registers from the main office and deliver them to each class. She seemed to enjoy the responsibility and it also cemented her friendship with Jessica.

Her biggest achievement of the half term though was to perform well enough to be entered into the ‘Gold Book’. This is the book for outstanding achievement and this was her third entry. This meant that she had earned a Gold Certificate! A rare achievement and even more outstanding considering the fact that she only started this school in November and it took her a while to settle. It is a feat that she is, rightly, proud of and something that Lucinda and I are very proud of, too.

The end of term also saw the end of Éowyn’s after school clubs: Spanish and Drama. Unfortunately, Éowyn hasn’t enjoyed Spanish. Lucinda and I were hoping that she would take to a new language because it is a skill that neither Lucinda nor I have and we were hoping that we could encourage our children to become bi-if not multi-lingual. Perhaps it is something that she will take to later in life and perhaps if Amélie or Ezra take an interest in a language it will encourage their older sister. We wait and see. Therefore, there will be no Spanish lessons next term.

Drama, on the other hand, she as loved. This is probably no surprise to anyone that knows her, and although she got a fit of the giggles for the first of her performances she made amends as the show went on. As an incumbent member of the Drama group she was offered an early bird chance to sign up for the next term. Obviously she wanted to and so we paid the subs. It maybe the best money spent as there is an added spice to next term’s group. They may be involved in a feature film, which, should it go ahead, would see our little one on the big screen and will a chance to go to a premiere. Fingers crossed that this comes off and Éowyn Bagnall gets her own entry on IMDB.

As I have already alluded the 20th March 2015 saw my 42nd birthday (the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything – according to Douglas Adams). It also saw the Vernal Equinox and more interestingly a Solar Eclipse. The path of totality lay far to the north of the globe with the only land masses that saw a total eclipse being the Faroe Islands and Svalbard; not the easiest of places to visit. The whole of the UK was treated to the potential to witness a partial eclipse though, with the South East forecast to see the moon cover 85% of the Sun (the further north you were, the greater the coverage.

This was the first chance to see a solar eclipse in the UK since 11th August 1999. Then the path of totality clipped the South West of the UK (Cornwall) before heading across the channel and into mainland Europe. Myself and three friends headed to France to witness totality, rather than struggle into the peninsular country of Cornwall. A somewhat, haphazard, unplanned trip found us in Barfleur in Normandy, sitting on a promontory jutting into the English Channel (or la Manche as the French call it) watching the wall of darkness approach across the water.

If you have never experienced totality, I would seriously recommend making the effort. It is truly a magical, nay eerie and unsettling experience. Your core being knows that something is not quite right. The temperature drops, a wind picks up and the light goes out. It is completely different to the way that the light level drops at dusk. For at dusk the sun falls towards, and then drops below, the horizon. As it falls, shadows lengthen and the light turns reddish. During a total eclipse the light levels drop (and towards the end, very quickly) but there is no change in colour or shadow length. It is like a dimmer switch on a lightbulb. The sun simply goes out. This seems completely alien to our rational minds. I can see why some people become shadow chasers and follow eclipses around the world.

Interestingly, and there seriously was no planning on our part, it turns out that Barfleur was the port that William the Bastard (although you probably know him better as William the Conqueror) departed with his Norman troops in 1066. It is also twinned with Lyme Regis, one of Lucinda and my favourite places.

Disappointingly, the eclipse of 2015 was, in the South East of England at least, completely obscured by low cloud cover. Nevertheless, there did seem to be a drop in temperature and a sense of gloom over the land, nevertheless was not even a glimpse of the astronomical delights happening in the heavens above. The UK only has to wait until 12th August 2026 for the next partial eclipse of the same level of coverage. I will need to live to be 117 to see the next total Solar Eclipse visible in the UK. 5 days before Amélie’s 80th birthday (23rd September 2090) Cornwall will once again be treated to totality. Therefore I think I will have to chase the shadow to experience totality again.

Thus, what seemed like a celestially bestowed birthday present was somewhat of a let down. Unlike my actual birthday present from my wife. I have mentioned one of my favourite authors (Douglas Adams), another of my favourite authors is Philip Pullman. In fact his ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy is probably my favourite set of books. One of his latest projects has been to re-image 50 of the fairy tales that were collected by the brother’s Grimm. With this project he returned to the darker side of the fairy stories, closer to the original transcriptions by Jacob and Wilhelm.

Lucinda saw that Philip Wilson had adapted 6 of these fairy stories into an ‘Immersive Play’ that was at the Bargehouse in the OXO tower wharf and bought two tickets. The Grimm Tales was described as ‘An Immersive Fairytale’ and that is exactly how it is. The Bargehouse is an old industrial barge house which added to the atmosphere of the fairytales. The actors performed 5 of the 6 stories and each story was told/ performed in a different room within the building with the actors encouraging you to follow them between stories.

Incredibly atmospheric and completely enthralling, I fully recommend going for a visit to the South Bank (of the Thames) and listening to a number of fairy stories while drinking a pomegranate and gin cocktail. An excellent birthday present, thank you Lucinda, and thank you to a combination of Nanny and Granddad (and Lauren) and Uncle Michael for looking after the Baguettes so that we could leave the house after dark! If you are interested there are still tickets available and the run has been extended until the 11th April. You will not be disappointed.

As interesting as Solar eclipses, birthdays and potential film parts are they are put somewhat into the shadow of (eclipsed by, if you will) the decision that Lucinda (and I – it is a partnership after all) have recently made. As you may recall last year as Lucinda returned from maternity leave, the company that she had worked for, for over 16 years, decided to outsource her position and thus a month after returning to work she was made redundant.

This wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as there was a redundancy package (that in addition to the monetary aspect consisted of retaining the flight privileges – a big bonus even though we haven’t used that privilege for many a year) and Lucinda managed to secure a job for the company that her position was outsourced to. However, juggling a shift based job with three children and a husband whose job involves working weekends has been beginning to take its toll on both of us. To ensure that Lucinda was home in time to pick Éowyn and Amélie up from school she was forced to take the early shifts at the airport. That meant that her alarm was set for 0345. This meant that she needed to go to bed early the night before thus affecting another family day.

It also had an knock-on effect on me, for every day that Lucinda worked meant that I would then assume childcare responsibility. This would be fine on my days off, for it would mean that there could be daddy-days! However, on days when I was working it would mean that I would have to wake earlier than usual, get myself ready for work, and get all three children fed and dressed; drop Éowyn, Amélie and Ezra off at three different places before driving into work and starting my day.

This was how it was for the last 12 months and although it was something that we could, and did, do it was taking its toll on both of us and more importantly on the children. Coupled with this, Lucinda wasn’t enjoying her job and so we discussed the idea of change.

Since being been blessed with motherhood, Lucinda has enjoyed looking after children and children seem to respond well to her and so Lucinda decided that she would like to pursue the idea of childminding. This would be something that she could do at home and thus still be there for our own children.

And that, my dear readers, is where we find ourselves at the end of March 2015. Lucinda has completed her training and is nervously waiting for her Ofsted inspection (on Monday 30th March – details to follow in the next write up). Once registered she can begin her new career, which will not take long to begin for she has a client waiting in the wings once that registration is official.

Exciting times await.

And with that I will bid you good-bye and hope that you join me soon to find the results of our Ofsted inspection.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Grimm Tales

The spinning wheel

If there are so many lights, why is it still so dark?

Reflections

Where are the dwarfs?

The big bad wolf?

The south bank

My birthday cake

The girls will be jealous

Amélie Gein?

Ezra Gein?

Éowyn Gein?

Éowyn’s Sixth Birthday

Monday 20th October 2014Baggie

So a busy few weeks continues with our oldest child’s sixth birthday. Yes, Éowyn came into this world six years ago. Although six years, in the grand scheme of things, is not that long it is amazing to think how much our lives have changed in those years. It is also difficult to remember that we once had a life sans kids.

Éowyn’s birthday, this year, fell on a Friday. The Friday the week after 54 European Qualifying games. Hence my ‘weekend’ this week was Wednesday and Thursday so it seemed a good opportunity to claw back some of the days owed me to turn it into a three day ‘weekend’ and tag Éowyn’s birthday onto the break. With Lucinda unable to take the day off work it meant that I could take Éowyn and Amélie to school and look after Ezra, and then to be there to pick the girls up at the end of the day.

Despite it being her birthday, Éowyn did not wake any earlier than usual Friday morning. However, she did declare that it was her birthday and she felt different now that she was 6. She did not elucidate as to what this difference was exactly but good to know that there is a difference between being 5 and 6, it is too long ago for me to remember (the 1970’s!).

The morning, as most parents of young children can probably relate to, followed its usual routine of cajoling them to get ready and ushering them out of the door, so there was no time for present opening, that would have to wait until after school. However, she had received her main present from Mum and Dad the night before, her first bicycle. Yes, both Amélie and Éowyn received bikes for their birthday, I will keep you up to date with their progress and when the stabilisers come off. That is a little way off yet.

We had asked Éowyn what she would like to do for her birthday and whether she wanted to invite anyone around. It will not surprise anyone that knows our daughter that she wanted her best friend Aaliyah to come round and to go to the pizza restaurant (Pizza Express in Staines). Éowyn rushed out of school doubly excited firstly because Aaliyah was coming home, and secondly it was her turn to take Marmaduke home. Marmaduke is a teddy bear that is given to a member of the class to take home each weekend. The chosen child then has to write a little diary entry of what they did with Marmaduke and attach a photo of them with Marmaduke. So Éowyn insisted that Marmaduke came along to the restaurant.

Since Friday night, is usually movie night alternating between our house and Emma and Martin’s house we invited Emma and her kids Blake and Natalie along too. So a table was booked for three adults, 6 kids and a bear.

We only live a short walk into Staines town centre so we decided to walk the kids to the restaurant. As we started, we questioned whether this was the wisest of decisions, however apart from an attempt at walking on water by Natalie and Aaliyah (the mistook an algae covered pond for grass) the journey was uneventful and all six were very well behaved and we got to the restaurant relatively unscathed, if a little soggy.

I am not sure that the restaurant staff were fully prepared for the rumbustiousness of a table of excited children; however in fairness to our brood, they may have been a little noisy but they were not unruly. They all ate well, although the prize for the best diner was Ezra. He ate every crumb of his three courses and helped the others finish their meals too. Not bad for an 18 month toddler, although he is a Bagnall and my son, so it is to be expected.

The one thing we had overlooked when we decided that we would walk to the restaurant was the fact that we have just passed the Autumnal equinox and so the nights are getting longer. So by the time we had finished our meals and left the restaurant it was dark. O.K., we live in a town on the edge of one of the largest conurbations in Europe so dark is a matter of perspective, nevertheless it was a lot darker than when we arrived, especially the walk through the park, that had Amélie holding on to her daddy very tightly

Éowyn still had a large pile of unopened presents when we arrived back home (safe and sound, I hasten to add). She was kind-hearted enough though to allow Amélie and Aaliyah to open some of them, although not the big ones! There were a few tears when I refused to extract some of the toys from their packaging but it had been a long day and it was the cue for Lucinda and Éowyn to take Aaliyah home and me to put Amélie and Ezra to bed.

There was a whole weekend ahead of them to play with their toys and another party to go on Saturday morning. Georgia’s princess party, so they needed their sleep and so did Mum and Dad.

All it is left to say is ‘Happy Birthday Éowyn, love Mum and Dad’

Peace and Love

Baggie