Carruthers Ten Years On: May 2009

May 2009 saw the first birthday of the Carruther's blog.

I like this ransom-note style demand for payment.

When Andy tasked me with making a mask, I was fairly proud of using components One, Two and Three to make this to wear.

Son

So, this happened.

Sarah and I were having a baby. We were very excited. We decided not to find out what we were having. I mean it was a baby, obviously, but you know what I mean.

We were expecting to be induced on Monday the 11th of February and we planned to spend the weekend before relaxing ahead, we went out for a meal for my brother-in-law's birthday and afterwards Sarah couldn't feel the baby move, so we went to hospital to get checked out.

They were both fine, and we relaxed, but while she was on the monitor the baby's heart rate went from an apparently normal between 130 and 150 beats per minute to a more worrying jumping from 112 to 200 and back again instead. It calmed down a bit so they said we could go home. We did and went to bed about midnight.

At half two in the AM, Sarah woke me and said she thought her waters had broken, I leaped out of bed, turned the light on and pulled back the cover to reveal blood everywhere. I called an ambulance and we went in. After assuming the worst, when we got to the hospital we discovered that the baby's heartbeat was fine, Sarah was in labour and the blood appeared to be coming from the placenta. After such a big bleed they recommended a C-section and so instead of days of waiting for an induction to kick in, there was a baby in my arms 45 minutes later.

The surgeons and his team were amazing, but I can't give them all the credit. I cut the umbilical cord. While they finished working on Sarah, I held him in an ante room and found myself singing to him. What do you sing when you've forgotten all the nursery rhymes you ever knew?

Apparently, it's 'Joyriders'.

With Sarah out of surgery, we were a trio. We were parents. We decided not to share the news for a while and just sat and stared at him and at each other. I'm not sure who, but one of us turned to the other and said "What now?"

Being rushed in by the ambulance meant we didn't have any of the things we packed for the notoriously long induction. When my father-in-law brought them in we had games we no longer had time to play and books we no longer had time to read. We had impressively overprepared for one outcome and were woefully underprepared for another.

Between Sarah's blood loss and the baby's weight loss, we spent a week in hospital and got a bit institutionalised, but we got into a routine. Things came together and we worked out how to be less terrified.

I meant to post all this in February, but things have been manic since and so our son is now an astonishing seven months old. He's fantastic and has now paddled in the sea, begun weaning onto solid food and added the Only Fools And Horses theme tune to his favourite songs.

Carruthers Ten Years On: April 2009

For much of April 2009 on the Carruther's blog, I serialised the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, because it features a character called Carruthers.

I still like this April Fool's Day post and this Glommer one, but that's about it.

Masked Crusader

The Masked Raider was another character to appear in Marvel Comics #1 and like many of his peers he seemed to be doomed to obscurity.

Marvel is currently celebrating its octogenarian status and after 79 years away from the limelight, the Masked Raider has ridden his horse back on to the pages of Marvel Comics. This time in its one thousandth edition, but don't look too hard at the numbering in between.

I wrote this about the Masked Raider and his return.

Carruthers Ten Years On: March 2009

March 2009 was pretty bleak. It did make me look up the word 'osculate'.

I like don't cuss the bus, Simon Says and Hop, while this one uses a joke I came up with when I was seven. It made my cousins laugh, so it stayed with me.

Hero Today, Gone Tomorrow

Marvel is celebrating it's eightieth birthday this week. The date on the cover of Marvel Comics #1 is October 1939, so presumably it's for business reasons that the celebrations have shifted.

During the Golden Age of comics, Marvel gave us great characters that are still with us, Captain America and Namor to name but two, along the way, however, there were casualties. I wrote this in honour of those characters that were there at the beginning that didn't necessarily stand the test of time.

Carruthers Ten Years On: February 2009

February 2009

I'd clearly gotten into a bit of a routine of searching for things that could lead to multiple post and Pursue was no different. An abuse of a Trivial Pursuit card, which wasn't particularly funny and I probably only posted it because I realised I could include upside down text. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to Phil Reed.

Other than that, it was a pretty lean month, probably because I was waiting for the Rehearsals footage to arrive. I like this one and the title of this one.