The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

During one's recent sojourn at home with the young Hulk one had the opportunity to catch oneself up with a variety of movies. Hmmm, come to think of it, it doesn't feel so recent anymore.

One such movie was The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, which was rather enjoyable although taken in small 20 minute chunks due to having to attend to my high maintenance daughter's needs comma various.

Seeing the movie inspired me to dig out my copies of the Chronicles of Narnia and schedule them for a re-read - chronologically of course as it wouldn't be correct to read them in any other order.

Luckily for me any issue of first written versus first in the storyline are immediately solved by looking at the spines of my Fontana Lions, Lucky Book Club editions circa 1980.

Hence my return to Narnia commenced with the titular volume and it's prominently displayed number one.

It was a quickish read and crammed a lot of happenings into its 170 pages. In a way it was refreshing to have a lot left to imagination rate than detailed over pages and pages.

In any case it tells the story of the creation of Narnia - including the secret origins of the lamp post - and is quite fun with the proper young children and the nasty uncle and beginnings of the whole Chronicle. I give it a 3 star rating.

I expect the rest of the series will be read as light respite from one's usual hefty tomes of fantasy and scifi over the coming year.
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I'm gonna have to send you back to Sleep School.

So it turns out that Sidekick Searching takes up a lot of one's time. When you throw in a last minute vacancy for a stay at Sleep School it's almost a given that the lauded regularity of The Tales is going to be the first thing to suffer.

I didn't even have time to send you of my quick review of Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov - an okay read in his sparse style that sets the scene for his earlier Foundation series with a mild adventure romp across a planet-wide city.

So, Sleep School was an interesting four days.
Yours truly was able to regain bachelorhood for two of the days, including a triumphant return to Tuesday Knights in a game running under the tyrannical hand of Badger. Fantomas, Pirate Dave and Legion2 were one's companions for that experience.
One night was spent in an ineffectual men's group that one had volunteered for but was aimed at men who wouldn't be involved in all that baby stuff. I wasn't even asked to talk about myself until walking out the door in the last minute.

After the group the evening was spent trying to sleep in the bedlam environment of distant screaming from the other attendees. Our Hulk was, of course, perfectly well behaved (and the cutest one there).

The whole experience was beneficial for Salsa Girl and Hulk but unfortunately not miraculous as there is still some hard work to be done to get sleep happening in the afternoon and evening - even if we are blessed with long overnight sleeps.


After the past few mornings I am now seeking admission to the Sleep School program for The Tiger as she seems to think that 4.30 am is an acceptable time to rouse the rest of the household.
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The Sidekick Search

Those who have known me for a while will be aware of my alter ego spawned during the heady days of Malaclypse III in the company of the likes of FridgePower, Judge Mingus, My Guitarist, Tuck, and other assorted musos - Testosterone Man - possibly related to fervent pounding of drums and other rugged and manly pursuits.

In any case the lack of a sidekick has held me/him back in all endeavours for many a decade.

I have tried many avenues to protégée procurement:

• trials of Rhythm Section equals - Judge Mingus did not last long before soloing off on his own
• grow your own - knocked on the head by Salsa Girl as Hulk is apparently too young to be cruising the streets fighting crime
• recruitment - alas, while an awesome gaming addition, Young Jim, has proven rather reluctant on the whole smashing things to bits front. (and what's more he has a tendency to betrayal as evidenced by a 3 nil thrashing he once handed out to me while in league with Badger)
• pleading with Supervisor Grand Chief K for the necessary help in getting all my work demons defeated - repeatedly scoffed at and uncomprehendingly disbelieved about the amount of effort required to make librarians happy on the IT front

However recently the stars seem to have aligned. Not only have I managed to finally rid the library of the scourge of marketing for once and all, but the resulting employment gap has been deigned to be filled with an IT Sidekick!

Supervisor Grand Chief K did, however, make sure it was not all puppies and roses for me as she dropped the responsibility for the "Recruitment Process" into my lap. Hence I have been up to my neck in SeekSpam and resume reading for weeks now. Culminating in a day of interviews in which I had to suffer through Devil's Advocate always offering the other point of view, and other various moments of me not getting my whim. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking putting together that interview panel.

Still we are very close now and it shouldn't be long before I can strut out at work with a sidekick by my side (and slightly behind).

Of course we are local government so not long is probably next Autumn.
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