As is part of the routine, I had my adorable nephew this morning. I’ve already blogged about how having him with me seems to gain me a little respect, and today was more of the same.

This is the third time that the little man has been to visit my workplace, and he’s now on familiar terms with a couple of the ladies in it. He has the same good taste as me; his favourite is my favourite too, Janjan. He was playing with her stuffed sheep, Shaggy.

I eventually managed to coax him away from her and the other two girls in the childcare team to pop upstairs to where my other favourites are. In the past, he’s been a little intimidated about strangers picking him up, but he’s familiar enough with them now to sit on anyone’s knee. And so begin his first day behind the desk, courtesy of Rani’s knee.

The little scamp can crawl now AND is good on his feet, so we didn’t get him there for so long before he decided to head off to another room and meet a few of the carers who were in there. This is normally a very profitable part of the day for him, since at least one person gives him a chocolate. There weren’t so many in there today, so he was out of luck.

There’s a cupboard in the corner, with a handle on it.

This is like a red rag to a bull, a needle full of detergent and rat poison to a junkie … he has to open it. Well, what a surprise … biscuits. And not just any. No sir, we’re talking about Uncle Tim’s favourites, Nice. Actually, we’re talking about Uncle Tim’s biscuits, full stop. “Ta”, he muttered, before helping himself to a couple.

We went down to the childcare team again ready for lunch. No bib. I tried anyway. Tuna is not the best food for a toddler to eat if you’d like the surrounding floor to be in pristine order, so the food attempt lasted about five seconds … the time it took Boy Wonder to deposit half a fish over the floor.

And then it hit. Biergarten! And so off we went. I grabbed a couple of pints of Bombardier, Alfie grabbed himself some lunch. We had to establish that my juice wasn’t his, not that this put him off trying to start on his first beer seventeen years before the law allows it.

The chaps who were there seemed to enjoy the presence of a youngster. Alfie, precocious soul that he is, waved at everyone he saw, no matter how unfriendly they might appear to others at first glance. (They weren’t unfriendly at all. Books, covers, all that.)

He started to play up a little which is usually a sign that he’ll need putting to bed, much as he tries to fight you when you put it in motion. Sure enough, he was snoring within twenty seconds of being placed in his pushchair. Well, we have a place we tend to go where he can snooze and I can read: Caffè Nero on Gallowtree Gate, Leicester.

I really hope that someone who works there chances upon this post, because I can’t commend the service there enough. There’s one young lady who seems to recognise us on sight, and always cheerfully materialises when we enter, to ask us where we’d like to sit and expeditiously move chairs and tables about to clear our path. She comes around to check that all is OK, and very kindly stands at junior’s side when the two pints of Bombardier and large americano inevitably cause me to scuttle to the loos. It’s great service, absolutely superb, and because of this girl’s attention I’m going to make it our regular venue for coffee and a pause. Just to repeat, it’s the Caffè Nero on Gallowtree Gate, Leicester.

And that’s the end of another tiring day with the little man. I don’t know how people can cope with a kiddy every day, never mind have a bunch more of them

Tags: Alfie, Caffè Nero

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Photoblog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.