World’s shortest walk

Busy weekend in the end! We had a little party (mostly little kids from nearby/NCT group/neighbours etc…) and a few of the more grown up little kids from our amateur dramatics club. Apparently they’re adults but it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes! The party was deemed a success and the slightly random combination of Chinese and Indian cuisine seemed to go down well. We reverted to type with a few well rehearsed nibbles: sausage rolls, crudites, a selection of fruit and and trilogy of hummuses – plain, beetroot and basil. The main food was the ever trusty peanut butter chicken (must remember to share the recipe for that), plain boiled rice and a simple aubergine, sweet potato and chickpea curry (vegan).

The only problem is that I’d underestimated how much cooking the sweet potato would need in a big pan and had to wait a while for it to simmer off ready to be eaten; by which point the littler children were a little bit tired and keen to eat and get home. But all the food was eaten and we’d cooked quite a lot so it must have been a success (or we’re still to find the multiple portions hidden in the fireplace!)

Piglet was adorable and clearly enjoyed having lots of people in his house. He pretty much spent time with everyone there in some capacity and was very willing to share his toys and company, especially the baby toys that had been put away for a good year or so and were back out for one of the newer arrivals. His similarities to his dad and granddad to get his guitar out at the end of the party and turn performer are as transparent as they are cute. A long stimulating day though meant a delayed bedtime and long sleep. He didn’t wake up until 8:15 on Sunday. That’s honestly the closest I’ve come to a lie in for nearly three years!!

Sunday was meant to be a walk round a botanical garden in Windsor Great Park and a light lunch/coffee. However the late lie in meant that we had breakfast bathed in bright sunlight but it was nearly midday by the time we managed to leave the house. On top of that, it turned grey and started to rain as we drove there. By the time we’d parked the car, with Piglet unintentionally fast asleep, it was freezing with rain coming it at 60 degrees as if driven by a hurricane. I was cold just getting Piglet out of the car – there was no way we were going for a walk.

Instead we just went for lunch at The Savill Building, the cafe/restaurant/shop at the entrance to Savill Garden. A stunning wooden lattice roofed building with a sloped grass roof, as if it just emerges out of the ground. We’ve been a few times (it’s quite a good base for walks even if you don’t want to go into the botanical gardens) but they’ve done a lot of renovation work in the last year or so and it looks really impressive now.

The restaurant looks nice but isn’t an obvious ‘go to’ place for allergies. The menu is full of attractive options but many things look like they’d probably contain milk and not much that made it look like we’d find it easy to eat apart from a well meaning ‘If you have specific dietary requests, please let us know. We would love to tell you what is in our food to assist you with your choice’. My scepticism, however it turns out, was misguided. They were happy to help, make a list of the meals I’d like them to check and came back very quickly with answers. It does mean that there was no customer facing allergy menu but we were lucky that the items we most fancied just happened to be dairy and soya free so ‘choosing’ definitely wasn’t difficult.

The food came quickly and was really good quality. I’d gone for fish and chips, Piglet for fish fingers, chips and peas and my wife the vegan pizza. (Note that I said light lunch earlier… that was meant to be the plan but in the end we decided to have a big warm meal instead of the walk and just skip the food shopping and big meal in the evening. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it…). Piglet was very happy with the large number of peas but his eyes lit up at the sight of mummy’s vegan pizza. Apart from picking off the small hot peppers he had slice after slice; leaving me and mummy to largely share the remaining fish and chip portions. Well, that was until all the pizza was gone and he went back to demolishing his own (surprisingly generous, for a kids portion) plate of food. In the end all that was left was a handful of chips.

The only drawback about having eaten at The Savill Building was that they have sliding automatic doors out onto the terrace and with the freezing wind, we were bracing ourselves against the cold every few minutes. I must remember to sit further away from the doors next time we’re there. By the time we’d finished, we were too cold to brave our way back to the car and so just upped our coats and bags and move to the cafe which was literally at the other end of the building (and better sheltered). While the food had been surprisingly accessible for our allergies; the drinks were not. With only soya milk as an alternative, our only hot options really were an espresso and another peppermint tea. Warming, if nothing else…

That espresso, it turns out, might be quite a memorable one; in the sense that it looks like it might be the last one I’ll have for a while… I’ve been thinking about it for a bit now and my clear addiction to caffeine bothers me. I don’t drink a huge amount – one large strong coffee in the morning and then approximately one on average in the afternoon on a week day – but at weekends it’s pretty clear by mid afternoon that I ‘need’ one if I haven’t had any coffee since breakfast. It’s not the worst habit to have and I do genuinely enjoy it rather than having it just to tide me through, but I think its important to test what your boundaries are with it, and at the moment I feel it dictates to me more than I dictate myself.

I’ve done it before of course. I went a year without caffeinated drinks (apart from one rum and coke on a night out without having realised that violated the terms!) the year that my wife got pregnant. Initially because I’d been really poorly over Christmas and I’d pretty much gone cold turkey from not being able to face the idea of drinking coffee while I was sick and then flirting with the idea of going a bit longer once I realised I was unhooked. It then became a full year once my wife became pregnant in some sort of ‘act of solidarity’ to demonstrate how staying awake was a complete luxury before the arrival of Piglet. By the end of the year, if I’m honest, I didn’t really feel like I’d gained any health benefits from going without and I found it satisfyingly easy to get back into drinking coffee regularly.

There is another reason for contemplating going without caffeine and I wasn’t entirely sure whether to write it here. It’s personal but arguably no more so than the history of my interactions with milk and the highs and lows of ‘on the job’ learning for parenting:

Fertility.

Cutting out caffeine is one of the things that can possibly help and it was while warming up over that espresso and tea that me and my wife remembered that it was during our year of being caffeine free (she’s remained caffeine free ever since, by the way) that she’d become pregnant. It took us a fair bit longer than we expected to have Piglet and we’ve struggled with the ups and down of that process like many, many other couples have. We would also like to have had a second by now, but it hasn’t worked out like that yet.

Before you start up the symphony of tiny violins, I am very aware that I am blessed to have had a child and there are many people who have had far more heartbreaking stories than we’ve had. We had started to go down the route of fertility treatment when Piglet naturally made his mark on a urine soaked pregnancy test nearly four years ago – and I appreciate that some couples never get that chance. But we’re also aware that it’s clearly something that isn’t happening easily for us and we’re keen to try anything (sensible) that might help.

So I’m currently day two of being completely caffeine free (bar chocolate – I’m not ready to go to that level yet). And I can definitely feel the withdrawal symptoms. I’ve had a tension headache most of the day and I drank extraordinary amounts of water yesterday to make up for something (not quite sure what). I’ve also been tired, particularly in the middle of the afternoon. I think I very very briefly fell asleep at my desk today waiting for a macro to run on my computer. But actually in the evenings I feel more naturally tired rather than just shattered like I usually do. It doesn’t help that Piglet seems to be doing a one-on one-off sort of sleeping routine where he sleeps amazingly one night and then repeatedly wakes up the next to remind you how good the long sleep felt when you had it.

It’ll be interesting to see how the next few days go. I hope I’m near the peak of the physical withdrawal symptoms but I’m sure there’ll be a morning in the next few weeks where getting out of bed without even the faintest smell of coffee will be a huge challenge. I’ll let you know!