Hooray!! We’re uncles again.

• Jack Connor was born on Tuesday 21st February at 13:40. Weighing in at a whopping 9lb 2oz. My brother and his wife are over the moon – as are my parents. Jack’s my brother's first boy, so now there’s someone to carry on the paternal family name, something I’ve obviously been quite conscious of. I’m sure my brother was too, and Dad.

• Friday night we went down to Brighton's over the top Royal Pavilion to watch the 'Adult' pantomime ‘Babes in the Bushes’ with Stuie, Louise + Jo. To say it was dire would be being generous, it was full of racist drag-queens and in-jokes. We’d had enough by interval and left to go eat tapas and have a few drinks instead. I think we went to the 'R-bar', then another bigger bar, and someone decided we needed a dance, so we went to Revenge. It ended up being a fun night. We stayed the night at Louise and Jo’s and then had a late breakfast and sat around chatting. Louise and Jo were lucky enough to ride the Nineties London property boom, and have ‘downsized’ to a lovely 3-bedroom house in Brighton. Met one of the Pony’s primary school friends for lunch con partner and partner’s sister. After lunch we just wandered around Brighton, went to the pier - rode the ‘Crazy Mouse’ and played ‘Dolphin Derby’.

• Sunday afternoon it rained. And rained. And rained. But only after we’d got to London’s literary Hampstead. So we popped into the King William for a pint and lunch – hoping it would stop. Instead we sat there and complained amongst ourselves about the crap service and how nice a pub it could be.
  We were only there for an hour or so, but when we left my eyes stung from the cigarette smoke for another 3 hours. Bring on the smoking ban I say – I can’t wait.