"Put down that wrench!"

Off up to town with ias and the garklet yesterday to see the Holbein exhibition at Tate Britain before it finishes, but not our most successful day out. Slept poorly the night before, and had a headache for most of the day that left me feeling grouchy and tearful by turns. Finally got out of the house after noon, thanks to a combination of arguments about pannetone (don't ask) and last minute feeds.

Got to the Tate at 3pm, only to find that they were selling tickets for entrance at 5pm by that point, so decided to book online and come back on Sunday. Saw some other bits of the permanent exhibition, including Too Much Turner in the Clore. Introduced the garklet to his first Mondrian, which he found fascinating (we'd already found that he likes Bridget Riley, and the Deluxe mode in jwz's xscreensaver). Walked from Pimlico to Villiers Street to meet hsw, which was lovely. The garklet seems to be building up a fanclub.

And now the not-so-great bit. Went to the Melton Mowbray for the London Circle, to see the Usual Suspects and also to point at London fandom and tell the garklet that one day all of this would be his, so he'd better start thinking of a title for his fanzine.

...and we got thrown out because their license doesn't allow children in the pub. I didn't see a sign on the outside of the pub prohibiting under-18s, and the 2003 Licensing Act makes no provision for barring children from pubs. It does have a number of other sensible provisions concerning children and alcohol, none of which apply to the garklet since, at exactly four weeks old, he never buys his own drinks let alone those for others, and sticks to milk anyhow. The duty manager in the pub (not the licensee) wasn't able to show me the specific conditions of their license that prohibited children from entering the pub.

Therefore, I shall this morning be phoning Trading Standards at the City of London and asking them if the premises license for the Melton Mowbray stipulates no children. If it doesn't, I'll be formally lodging a complaint with Fuller's, and if it does, I'll be complaining to Trading Standards because the Melton Mowbray weren't able to show me the license copy or summary that they should have had on prominent display.

For those that are looking for an excuse to escape from their families between Christmas and the New Year, we're offering a retreat from family politics. We're having an open house on Friday 29th December 2006, from noon onwards (our address is in this friends-locked post). Any or all of the following may be involved:

• Eating
• Drinking
• Making merry
• Playing silly board games
• Talking nonsense
• Adulation of the garklet

Anyone interested?

As promised:

Also, because it's never to early to get online: garklet

Alexander Iain, weighing 3.268kg (or 7lb3 in old money), at two minutes past midnight this morning, by caesarian section. Both the garklet and ias are doing well, even if mum is rather tired. More tomorrow (later today?), including pictures.

As mentioned in previous posts, we're putting up a shed this weekend. Believe it or not, this is actually on the critical path to getting the nursery sorted out before the garklet arrives (erect shed, move paint tins from library cupboard to shed, move computer into library cupboard, turn former computer room into nursery). The shed got delivered this afternoon, slightly later than I'd hoped, and I can now breath a huge sigh of relief.

You see, when we took down the previous shed, ias and I measured the plot and realised that we had enough space to fit a 7'x7' shed. I went ahead and ordered the shed from Screwfix.

A week later, I woke up in the middle of the night with the realisation that I hadn't measured the height of the passageway through which I'd need to move the shed panels in order to get them into the back garden. A passageway which has less than 7' of headroom at either end. I lay there tossing and turning for the four hours until dawn while trying to work out what I could do:

• There's limited space at the garden end of the passageway, so there's no guarantee that we'd be able to turn the panels to clear the garden gate if we moved them diagonally through the passageway.
• We're mid-terrace, so we'd have to heft the panels over at least two gardens if we were to try and get things in from either end.
• That aside, there's a wall at each end of the terrace with a doorway of the same dimensions as our passageway, so we'd have to lift it over that wall as well.
• It might be possible to take the panels apart, carry them through in bits and reassemble them, but the base is a single sheet which would need to be cut.
• Lifting the panels over fences and walls would take more people than we're likely to have around at the weekend.

We've been very, very lucky. The highest minimum dimension of the panels is 6'10". The diagonal in the road end of the passageway is 7', and there's just enough space to get round the gate at the other end. Moreover, the shed panels were light enough either for me to move by myself, or for ias and I to move between us (yes, I forced my wife to do heavy labour when almost eight months pregnant). The downside is that it's clearly a very cheap shed, but hopefully it'll last for a few years longer than the previous one was going to.

As ias has posted elsewhere, the three of us (including the garklet) are taking part in a clinical study of the effects of maternal diet on allergies in infants. We had our first appointment today, which included allergy scratch tests for both of us.

This is one of the main reasons (apart from the furtherance of Science) that I'm happy to take part in this study; I suffer from hayfever for about four months every year, and I was curious about which allergens I was sensitive to. Grass pollen showed up as I expected, leaving me with a larger welt than the positive control of histamine. Tree pollen also showed up, which would explain why my hayfever has been getting earlier in recent years. Less expected were the slight responses to dogs (just as well I prefer cats) and to peanuts (ironic, given how much I eat them). I'm wishing that I'd taken a photo of the marks.

ias had no marks bar that for the histamine, and that faded away pretty quickly. Nice to know that one of us is healthy...

Another scan this morning at the Princess Anne with ias, and all's well. Also, haven't we grown? Vertebrae! A beautifully visible heart! Eyes! Cerebral hemispheres! A stomach and a bladder!

For those that also want to go gaga over the scans, they're on gark.net.

Those of you who read ias's journal will have probably already read our announcement. For those of you who don't, I'll repeat it here:

Ladies & gentlemen,

May I introduce to you, on the third attempt: Garklet no.1

Garklet no.1 is currently 12w3d. Arrival is expected on 21 November 2006 but given the timekeeping of its parents, I wouldn't hold your breath.

The web page is rather bald at the moment (Nick did it!) and unfortunately the picture we got this scan was not the greatest but it is the only picture we have. The previous scan at 10w3d was really clear but unfortunately they didn't give us a piccie. We've had rather a lot of scans with this pregnancy due to me rather inconveniently spotting throughout the first trimester, however no reason for said spotting was ever found and garklet carried on developing right on target, quite oblivious to the whole thing.

I won't be posting a huge amount about the pregnancy (I've averaged about on post a week so far), but if anyone would like to go on my pregnancy filter, let me know.

ps: the temptation to title this entry "who's the daddy?" was, thankfully, not overwhelming.