To be honest, the reason we bought Amelie a plastic toy box was so that her stuff wouldn't end up all over the floor...


She hasn't grasped the concept quite as well as she's grasped the crate and tipped everything out.

I need to get things tidied up pretty quickly though. The Argus are advertising a street party round at my place this afternoon...


Music, dancing, activities and food. Frankly that's every day in the Gardner household.

Two weeks ago today, Lisa, Amelie and I drove across town to stroke a few dogs. Well as it turns out, they followed us home...


It's a new charity shop dedicated to that deeply deprived and often neglected social group, greyhounds! They're putting the dog back into do-gooders. I think it's based on the principle that Pudsey Bear doesn't do enough for canines. Possibly because he lost his eye after being savaged by a pitbull. Every purchase helps the loser of a race at Hove dog track. And if you spend fifty pounds or more, you get a signed photo of Ballyregan Bob.

Personally I'm all in favour. Frankly if a charity shop wants to open just around the corner from my flat, I don't care if it's raising money to help millionaire bankers through the credit crunch, I'll still buy my clothes there. And it fits right in. It's next door to Barber Blacksheep, the local hairdressers, so not only do we have a parade of fantastically named shops, but we've got a ready made sheepdog theme. And the hanging baskets either side are like a 'before' and 'after' advert for Miracle-Gro.

But that's not the only change to the neighbourhood since we went on holiday a week ago. A depressed graffiti artist painted this statement in blue (appropriately enough) on a nearby wall about a month ago...


And now he's finally had a reply...

It's Friday night, we're home, and Lisa's changed her mind...


Despite appearances, she wasn't actually kneeling on the air hockey table. If she had been, she might not have let in seven goals.

It's me and Amelie at the Hastings Fishermen's Museum!


To be honest, the closest Amelie's come to a Hastings Fisherman is pulling a picture of Captain Birdseye out of my Mum's recycling bin, but sadly my original companion in that photo banned me from using it, on the grounds that the wind had blown her hair out of place and she looked like Russell Brand. So I was forced to replace her with someone who doesn't care what her hair looks like.

Interestingly, the top I'm wearing was bought about ten minutes earlier for £2.50 in a local charity shop, after I realised that the gentle summer breeze wafting across the beach in late August was likely to give me frostbite. Thank God I'd grown my own balaclava.

Anyhoo, Lisa, Amelie and I have been on holiday in St Leonards since Monday. I've spent most of that time eating, which is why I haven't blogged much. It's not easy getting near a keyboard when your stomach's this big. But having spent a lot of the last two days in clothes shops, buying Amelie's winter wardrobe, Lisa and I ventured out this afternoon to do our bit for local tourism by exploring Hastings' Old Town. Here's Lisa outside the East Hill Lift, where I spent many an uplifting moment as a child...


Sadly the East Hill Lift has gone downhill in more ways than one, and is now closed. Which is a shame, because it makes it harder to get up to the clifftop and admire the view of the pier. Which is also now closed. I'm not saying Hastings has hit the skids since I stopped visiting in 1983, but frankly we were the classiest people there today. If the welfare state didn't exist, the place would have been deserted.

Still, at least the seafront was exploding...


But despite the bombs buried on the beach, we had a nice afternoon. I managed to convince Lisa that a restaurant called Webbe's was run by a former member of the boyband Blue, and we found an ice cream parlour which, for an extra 30p, would dunk your entire Mr Whippy in melted chocolate. That was money well spent. As was the £1.75 we invested in a chocolate meringue the size of my head from a small organic bakery.

Fortunately we worked off most of those calories looking for a decent fish & chip shop. Lisa's nothing if not fussy, and she dragged me around at least five establishments before she found one she'd be willing to eat in. Unfortunately it was closed. Or as the customer standing outside put it, "The f**king chippy's f**king shut". At least I think he said shut. I expect the same was true of the jobcentre.

We never did get any chips, but we consoled ourselves with a game of air hockey in the local amusement arcade. I won 7-5, with at least four of Lisa's goals being scored while I was taking her photo. A photo which, strangely, I'm not allowed to publish. Who'd have thought a simple video of someone swilling chip-filled water around her mouth could have such far-reaching effects.

Anyhoo, the good news is that after toasting my victory in the indoor sports, I put 40p in the two-penny falls and promptly won 34p, a small ceramic bear, and a fridge magnet which says 'I ♥ London'. They don't make them with Hastings on for obvious reasons. We took the bear home for Amelie, and frankly she's never loved a toy so much. For the next two hours she took it everywhere she went (which admittedly wasn't far) and nothing would persuade her to release her grip. Nothing except the discovery that the paint was flaking off in her mouth, and she'd been swallowing Chinese lead since teatime. Who'd have thought a 2p prize from an amusement arcade would have turned out so shoddy.

It's Lisa enjoying her 40th birthday in Hastings town centre!

I think the mid-life crisis has begun already.

And before you ask, the "oh no" at the beginning is partly because I thought I'd pressed the wrong button on the camera, but mainly because she said our relationship is over if I publish the video.

Happy birthday my darling. Love you lots. xxx

I always said I'd do something special for Lisa's 40th...

And sure enough, whilst making her walk half way across London with a big suitcase to save on tube fares, I stopped and forced her to pose with a binman outside The Ritz. It's those little touches of glamour which make a two-mile hike worthwhile. Although I moved her on quickly before she asked to sit down.

Anyhoo, Lisa and I have spent the weekend in our nation's great capital. I rejected The Ritz for being too clichéd, and instead booked a room at The Westbury, just off Bond Street. It's the closest I've come to a Mayfair hotel since I last played Monopoly.

Our walking tour from Victoria station took us past a number of landmarks. Frankly the only thing we didn't pass was Go, which was a shame as I could have done with the money. There was The Ritz of course...


... Buckingham Palace...


... Canada Gate...


... and the local pound shop...


... so called because they need a pound of flesh before they'll let you through the door. That's Lisa showing off her new ring. Or possibly doing 'I'm a Little Teapot'.

But we eventually made it to our five-star hotel for a nice sit down. When I stopped outside the front entrance and said "We're here!", Lisa genuinely thought I was joking. I think her exact words were "I was expecting a Travelodge". That's five years of experience talking. It's annoying though - I could have saved myself a fortune with no risk of disappointment.

Once inside, the reception staff took one look at us, realised we'd never fit into a Queen size bed, and promptly upgraded us to a King size room at no extra charge. I haven't had so much space since I was single. Frankly we could have had a row and slept apart without the need for a second bed.

But anyhoo, having got changed, looked at the breakfast menu, and wondered how they can charge twenty-two quid for a bowl of cornflakes and a coffee, we pressed a few buttons on the plasma TV, hoped it wouldn't show up on our bill, and then popped around the corner to Hamleys...


Frankly the forty-five minutes we spent in the pre-school section of Britain's busiest toy shop on a crowded Saturday afternoon in August is proof of just how much we love Amelie. As was the bill at the end of it.

Having dumped our purchases back at the hotel, we headed off down Regent Street, realised it was too packed to get anywhere fast, and ducked into Brewer Street, where we soon came across Aldo Zilli's Fish Restaurant. As a regular viewer of daytime cookery shows, and someone for whom the term 'chef' means nothing if it's not preceded by the word 'celebrity', Lisa was naturally keen to give it a try. So we took the table by the window...


I spent most of the time trying to resist the urge to order a bowl of Optivita, but despite that, it turned out to be one of the best meals we've ever had. Being in one of London's finest fish restaurants, with freshly prepared dishes direct from Billingsgate Market, Lisa naturally chose a main course which included no fish whatsoever. A decision she regretted the moment she tasted my trout starter and sea bream main course. It was food to die for. Just ask the fish. But the good thing about being out on your 40th birthday treat is that you can steal your partner's food without starting an argument. And Lisa took full advantage of that.

Our main destination, however, was further down Shaftesbury Avenue...


Yes, what better way to spend a Saturday night than watching a musical about drag queens, starring a man who once sued a magazine for claiming he was gay. I have to say, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, starring Jason Donovan and a bloke who once wrote for 'Home & Away', was fantastic. Really. Admittedly, the audience was full of middle-aged women with feather boas who insisted on clapping along like they were at a Chippendales show (which is something Lisa would know all about), but despite that, I loved every minute. It was the most visually spectacular thing I've ever seen. And the music was foot-stompingly good. It even had one genuinely heart-stopping moment. It was the bit during the interval when I walked up to the ice cream seller, asked for two thimble-fulls of chocolate, and heard her say "£6.40 please". Lisa won't be seeing treats like that again till she's fifty.

Anyhoo, having experienced the best meal, show and hotel of our life together, we rose late on Sunday morning, checked out of paradise, and hit the west end shops. Lisa spent most of the next two hours in the changing rooms of Oxford Street, while I sat in McDonalds with the suitcase. I think we both enjoyed ourselves. Having reached the limits of our respective purse and stomach, we then headed off towards New Bond Street, walked past Graff jewellers (their window looked strangely empty) and eventually arrived in Picadilly, before journeying back across Green Park and taking a Where's Wally shot of the Victoria Memorial...


Trust me, Lisa's in there somewhere.

We rounded off our weekend with a meal at Bella Italia near Victoria Station, where I ordered the spaghetti carbonara. Thirty seconds later, the waitress returned with a concerned look on her face, and said "Do you realise it has bacon in it?". So it's official: I look Jewish. Thank God Amelie wasn't there with her Hitler haircut.

Anyhoo, we got the 5pm train back to Brighton, and arrived home on Sunday evening to be greeted by an excited Chloe. And the basket of clean washing she'd been sleeping in all weekend. Lisa now has a fur coat for the first time in her life.

We're back from our weekend away!


Is it my imagination, or do we look a lot more relaxed without Amelie..?

Five weeks is a long time in the life of a naughty child. On July 11th, the most Amelie could do with a plastic stool was to crawl up to it, lean on it and laugh at her mother. Now she can climb onto the thing and stand up to get a better view of the TV...


She also uses it to get within grabbing distance of Chloe on the back of the sofa, which is quite enterprising if you ask me. Admittedly, there's every chance she could fall and break her neck the moment you turn your back for more than five seconds, but the way I look at it, at least she's not rummaging around under my computer desk and pulling the leads out of my monitor.


Anyhoo, the big news of the day is that I'm now officially on holiday for a week and a half. We're currently living in the last days of Lisa's thirties, so I've taken some annual leave to help her through the inevitable midlife crisis. It's the first break I've had since starting my new job, so today felt like like the last day of term. I should have taken in board games. Possibly a box of 'Snakes & Bladders'.

I've actually spent the day at Horsham Hospital, which is one of my favourite places to work. Especially since the council's tourism department got to work on the beautiful park next door...


Mmm... nothing brings those visitors flocking in like a few signs mentioning rats. I sat next to one while I ate my lunch. A sign that is, not a rat. I've mentioned here before that Horsham Park was the scene of the world's biggest custard pie fight back in June. Frankly they should have hired the custard pied piper instead.

But taking a leaf out of Hamelin's book, tomorrow we're driving Amelie out of town and dumping her with her grandparents for the weekend. Then first thing on Saturday we're off on a magical mystery tour to celebrate Lisa's birthday. I booked it for this weekend, because by Tuesday she'll be too old to enjoy it.

Fantastic news from today's All-Staff Info-Mail...


Never mind the free lunch, it's a board game about catheter infections! Sometimes the best ideas are the most obvious. I can't believe no one's thought of that before. Personally I'm still working on my quiz about the layers of the eye, which I'm calling Uveal Pursuit, but there's probably no point now that Paula's beaten me to the prize. I suppose it was bound to happen though. When you work with catheters on a daily basis, you have to be good at taking the piss.

The real tragedy though is that I didn't get to enjoy the free lunch. The Pebbles Restaurant (so called because you put on a few stones if you eat there) is next to the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital (so it'll be plastered with posters of Amelie in a month's time), which in turn is just over the road from the Diabetes Centre, where I was sitting in on meetings with the dietician all morning. So I was perfectly placed to dash across the pelican crossing for an all-you-can-eat binge-fest the moment I'd finished listening to patients getting advice on healthy diets.

Unfortunately fate stepped in shortly before midday, in the form of a broken computer in Haywards Heath. Someone had to drive up there at short notice to collect our sick PC from the health centre and take it into hospital. And as the only person with a car (and a home) within walking distance of the Royal Sussex, that person had to be me. To be honest, I think that's the other reason they hired me.

It's taken almost three months, but I've finally found out why I was given this job. It turns out that we have a patient on our books with serious anger management issues, who has been barred from four different GP's surgeries, and who phones us up every year and demands an appointment with a man. Presumably because they give him more of a challenge in a fist fight. Unfortunately, that's never been possible. Mainly because all the screeners are women, and most refuse to wear a false beard in the line of duty. It's no wonder he's so angry. According to our senior administrator this afternoon, one of my female colleagues "came to blows" with the man last year. I hope she was talking figuratively.

But the good news is that having fought for his rights (quite literally) since 2006, the chap will finally get his wish this year. The rotas for October have been drawn up today, and with much excitement and relief on the part of my workmates, a plan hatched on the day of my interview has finally been put into practice, and he's been assigned to one of my clinics. I wouldn't mind, but I already have to deal with murderous colleagues. I don't know where I'm more at risk: the consulting room or the staff room.

But fortunately the ability to tame wild animals is in the Gardner blood...


Lisa says that Amelie really looks like me in that photo. I think it's the fearless expression. That and the double chin.

I've spent today at Crawley Hospital. I had to get there particularly early this morning, because two months after first requesting a permit for the staff car park, the powers-that-be finally agreed to take my photo and give me an ID card. I had an appointment at the Estates Office at 9am, so at eight-thirty I started asking people where it was. Six members of staff and one phone call later, I eventually found the place. Frankly if the hospital want to store Tamiflu securely, they should stick it in the Estates department. By the time any panic-ridden thieves manage to locate it, they'll have died of swine flu.

But the good news is that I'm now in possession of a West Sussex Primary Care Trust ID card, which frankly looks better than my Brighton one. I should move to Crawley just so I can use it more often. Especially as it's such a multicultural place. I walked past these fine establishments at lunchtime...


They could open a shop in the middle selling nail polish, and they wouldn't even need a new sign.

Anyhoo, I may have had an early start this morning (just ask the bags under Lisa's eyes), but the day couldn't have ended better. My last patient cancelled, the penultimate one arrived half an hour early, and the one before that didn't need any eye drops. Frankly I've never got away so early. If every day was like that, I could get a second job and buy Amelie a pony.

I returned home to find Lisa and Amelie out, and this desperately scrawled note lying on the coffee table...


Frankly if she's going to keep stealing my work pens, she's got to expect me to hide her Nintendo DS games. We all have things we can't live without.

It's me, Lisa and Amelie at the dog track!


I'm not sure how Am's identical twin got into my arms, but I don't like her manners. I think she's seen too many panting dogs.

Anyhoo, I told Amelie that I'd buy her a puppy one day, so we headed over to Hove Greyhound Stadium this morning to put a down payment on a couple of favourites. The last time we were there, I came home with £158.50. This time I made slightly less. About a hundred and sixty quid less. Even the 20p I invested in the chocolate vending machine only returned five Minstrels.

But despite losing more money than a high street bank, a good time was had by all. Lisa's Mum spent a few hours risking half her pension on dogs picked by Amelie, while Lisa and I attempted to play cupid by persuading an old friend to go on a date with one of these people. I'm not sure either was hugely successful.

But personally I'm still trying to get over the moment when Lisa's Mum looked up from her race card, studied Amelie for a few seconds, and then said "She looks like Hitler with that haircut". I wouldn't mind, but she's the second person to say it in twenty-four hours.

It's important to get the housework done at the weekend...


If I can just teach her to stand on a stool, she can do the washing up too.

Is it legal to marry your own daughter..?


You're right, I should probably wait until she's sixteen.

But child brides aside, I did a late clinic on Tuesday of this week, so I was allowed to leave work an hour early today. And what better way to spend that hour than by taking Lisa and Amelie down to the pier for some fresh air and fruit machines. To be honest, after my short afternoon at work, I felt like taking a long walk out to sea. Suffice it to say that anyone who saw this blog post last week and thought "Thank God no one reads Full House magazine..." needs to think again. I now know at least ten people who do, and I work with them all.

I spent this morning in Horsham, blissfully unaware that back here in Brighton, a hospital porter who I've only met about three times, was sitting on the toilet (which frankly is a detail I didn't need to know) reading a copy of last week's Full House magazine, and somehow managing to recognise me. Within hours, the article had been passed to my colleagues, and I returned to the department after lunch to be confronted by a dozen people, all of whom thought I'd written it. I spent most of the afternoon trying to convince them that I hadn't.

But still, after an experience like that, nothing you do seems embarrassing any more...


The hat suits suits her, but frankly I look like a bloke in a burkha.

I've spent all day today at the Mile Oak Medical Centre. It's one of my favourite places to work, mainly because the consulting room I use has an en-suite kitchen with my own private kettle. I don't ask for much in life, so the ability to make tea between patients just about does it for me. Although to be honest, I don't always need a kettle to reach boiling point at work.

Anyhoo, I was wandering around behind reception this afternoon, checking my appointment list and wondering why all my patients seemed to be hiding in the toilet, when a little old lady turned up and said she'd brought in a load of magazines for the waiting room. The receptionist told her how kind she was. Before adding that they can't accept any of them due to swine flu. I presume they don't want to spread panic via sensationalist tabloid articles. Of course it's just possible that they see magazines as an infection risk, but frankly if glossy literature spreads swine flu, the government shouldn't be sending everyone a leaflet.

But on the subject of odd policies, I popped into the West Hove branch of Sainsbury's at lunchtime, where the bloke on the checkout kindly informed me of their new rules on carrier bags. Apparently if you ask for them, you can have as many as you like, but if you don't ask, they're not not allowed to offer. Which results in the situation I witnessed at the checkout, where a bemused pensioner with no bags stared helplessly at his shopping hurtling towards him down the conveyor belt, and wondered why the young man on the till was doing nothing to help. As the boy eventually explained to us both, "If you don't mention bags, we're not allowed to". I'm like that with my patients' eye sockets.

As for tomorrow, I'm back at Horsham Hospital. And after last time, I'm taking my autograph book.