Waiting for Godot

Still no sign of the Hogga sprogga as of Sunday 14th, little bugger ruining his (or her) dad's reputation for punctuality. An induction is planned for midweek, and if all goes according to plan then I'll leap off the plane from Dusseldorf, drive back to Norwich after 2 days high pressure consulting and pause only to collect Marcela before heading to the hospital. It looks to be a long week.

Anyway so far so good - work is interesting, doing a project recovery for a major client in Germany. The weird thing is that it is quicker for me to fly from Norwich to Amsterdam to Dusseldorf than it is to go by train from Norwich to my office in SW London (that's the building I am pictured standing outside - in the same office park as my cousin Grant, by some rare coincidence). I wonder how many years of my life I've spent in transit, both literally and figuratively. Germany will be the 21st country I have worked on assignment in and the 31st I have visited. Still, it's long overdue for the Hogga to visit the land of some of his forefathers - as mentioned in other blog pages, my dad's mum's family originate from Germany although they left it for South Africa in 1700 (Erasmus) and 1713 (Swart).

More news soon, I have a £5 bet that it's a girl while Marcela, bolstered by a lot of anecdotal evidence about the shape and size of her pregnant tummy, is convinced it's a boy. My bet is backed by a peculiar vision I had of the kid, a little sharp-nosed princess with black hair and eyes, while listening to its heartbeat around month 7.