I've been meaning to blog this.

Before we went on honeymoon, we discovered that Susanne is pregnant. It was not exactly what we planned, but we're delighted anyway.

Today we had a 23-week scan, and all is well so far. And we found out that it's going to be a girl.

We had a scan earlier, and Susanne has felt the baby move, but somehow it was still an 'it' up until this moment. Now it's definitely 'her' and she's beginning to seem like a real person.

All sorts of things go through my mind. She will be born, we hope, in early 2004. A child of a new century, a new millennium. A child who will grow up in a world very different from the one I grew up in. George W Bush and Saddam Hussein and Tony Blair will be crusty old guys vaguely remembered from her childhood, if at all - historical figures as remote to her as Churchill and Eisenhower and Nasser to me.

She will grow up in a world where music always came on CD - or maybe by then everything will be on MP3 or MiniDisk or some newer format. (I can imagine the pitying look I will get when I tell her we used to have big vinyl records - best not to mention the old 78s my parents used to have). Television will always have been in colour, phones will always be mobile, and when you want a piece of information all you will have to do is Google for it.

Everything I ever learnt will be wrong, everything that astounded me in the past 40 years she will take for granted, and all the things I take for granted will be turned upside down, because that's the way the world works, and we can't change that.

Even in 2004, though, babies will still cry and demand things and parents will worry and fuss over them, and I intend to maintain that tradition.

Yeah, like I have a choice.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's broadband.

Finally, after months of saying what a good idea it would be to have a connection that (a) did not tie up the phone line, (b) did not cut out after 2 hours, and (b) was actually fast, we finally managed to organise a broadband connection.

First we had to get our BT line reconnected after 6 years. Then we had to get a USB bus (er, a thing that lets you stick 4 things in one USB port). Finally we had to install the new modem and software.

Actually, I'm using the Royal We here as I actually did all of this myself. I have the phone line draped across the room and the modem stacked on a box of old magazines, and the PC speakers are on weird locations on my desk.

I installed the new USB thing without difficulty, then I stuck the modem in and so far so good. Then I put the disk in and that was fine until the setup thing on Windows demanded I get my original installation disk for Windows 98.

Well, I knew it was here somewhere but ever since Susanne and Philipp moved in everything has been topsy turvy (tupsy tapsy topsy turvy might give a better idea of the order of chaos that has been achieved).

So I moved things about, one layer of mess on top of another layer of mess. And finally I found the Windows 98 disk where I left it, right in front of me.

Well, after a few weird system crashes it seemed to settle down.

And now I've got broadband! Hurray!

Okay, tomorrow I must start tidying up again...

Ding dong merrilly on high, the bells of heaven are ....

Wait a minute. It's not Christmas already, is it? It's still September.

But apparently Christmas begins in September, according to my local Somerfield supermarket. They've already got out the Christmas cakes and puddings, and half an aisle is bedecked in holly and red and green decorations.

Confusingly, they've also got the Halloween decorations in another corner.

It just makes me feel the years are getting shorter and shorter....

There must be a reason why the Germans have a word, schadenfreude - the pleasure of observing the misfortunes of others - and no one else does. Perhaps they are the only ones who do this.

Anyway, I was reminded of this when I was in our bright new kitchen and I went to put something back in the fridge. I opened the dishwasher door instead.

Susanne burst out laughing and was practically doubled up with laughter for about five minutes.

Honestly, it wasn't that funny. The fridge is a piece of electrical equipment, behind a wooden door with a metal handle. So is the dishwasher. It's an easy mistake to make.

Admittedly, they're on different sides of the room, the handle is bigger, and one opens downwards while the other opens to the right. But the principle is the same.

It really was not that funny! This is nearly as bad as the time I poured the coffee into the jar and forgot to take the spoon out first. A mistake anybody could make. (Surely? Or is it just me? Oh, I see, it's just me).

Then again, maybe it's only the Germans who are honest enough to admit that other people's misfortunes actually are often funny.

We had a problem with our oven. It did not work.

So we asked IKEA to take it back and replace it with one which does work. Eventually, after trying to get us to complain to the manufacturers, Whirlpool, instead, they agreed to deliver one in 4 weeks. Eventually, they agreed to deliver one in a week instead.

Whirlpool meanwhile agreed to send an engineer along to install the new one.

I do not wish to create the impression that all this was accomplished easily. It was not, but I do not want to bore you with the tedious details of someone else's consumer hell.

However, when I looked at my phone bill I realised that the Service number I had been asked to call at Whirlpool was an 0870 number. I was paying around 10 pence a minute for the call.

For non-UK based readers, I should explain that you can have three different kinds of non-geographic numbers: 0800 (which is free), 0845 (which is the cost of a local call, no matter where you call from ), and 0870 (which is more expensive than a local call).

That might not have mattered, except that they kept me waiting for about 20 minutes.

This time, when I called to arrange the engineer's visit, they did not answer the phone after 30 minutes. I had to give up and collect Philipp from school.

Then I called again, and this time it took about 20 minutes, of which 10 was spent waiting for them to respond.

I wrote an angry letter to Whirlpool, telling them I was going to contact the BBC's Watchdog programme. I had a look at the BBC site. They have a contact phone line.

Yes ... it's an 0870 number ....

Things are back to normal now, except with dust.

We are getting a small room built in the loft for Philipp, complete with a spiral staircase and two loft windows. In the meanwhile, all the junk that was in the loft, complete with all the toys, clothing and other stuff that will eventually end up in the new room, are sitting in our sitting room.

Actually the sitting room used to be the bedroom, and then we decided to change them round, and then we decided that did not work, so soon it will become the bedroom again.

There, I hope that's clear.

We paid two dodgy East End wide boys to come and take away all the rubbish we had gathered in the weeks since we last had work done - it cost a little bit less than a skip would have done. Plus, they did all the heavy work. Which was nice ...

Once the room upstairs has been done, that will be everything. Well, except for the tiling and painting of the kitchen. And painting the hallway and the other rooms. And putting down new carpet. And of course the new room will have to be painted and carpeted.

And of course we have to buy storage units for the rooms, to keep all the junk and stuff that won't fit into the remainder of the loft.

But that will definitely be the end of it.

Well, except for the garden, of course...

Well, we survived.

Yesterday I took my rucksack and walked with Philipp round the corner to where the big blue water tank had been placed. I actually did this three times in the course of the afternoon, but just after 6 we went there and actually found a queue of people.

The queue was fairly short and we quickly managed to fill six plastic water bottles and a large water container that holds about 10 litres.

On the way back, we passed a couple of men who said, "you're wasting your time, we just spoke to Thames Water and they said the supply will be back on in fifteen minutes".

"I'll believe it when I see it," I said, but actually I did believe it. I just didn't want to seem like a plonker who had just wasted his time carrying a rucksack full of water unnecessarily.

Sure enough, about 15 minutes later the tap sputtered and a feeble flow of water began. By about 30 minutes later it was in full flow.

I cannot begin to explain how joyful this made me feel. To be able to shower, to wash the dishes, to have clean clothes, to make a cup of coffee - and above all, the ability to sit in peace without my legs crossed, willing myself to be constipated. What a relief...

People in South London are stinky.

Not usually, that is, just this weekend.

For the past three days we have had no water - the pressure was low on Friday evening and then on Saturday afternoon it cut out completely. It came back for a little while on Saturday evening, and it's been off since then.

No showers, no washing machine, no dishwasher, no toilet. Think about that - there are so many things you take for granted involving water.

Our water supplier is Thames Water. They said there was a burst water main in nearby Peckham, and it was being repaired. We tried again this morning, and twice got cut off after ten minutes. Their website is worse than useless (have a look and see for yourself - it's one of the worst-designed sites I've ever seen).

We were told that there would be a water tank nearby. We went there, a five minute walk away, and there it was: a huge blue plastic tank holding over 1000 litres. There was a long queue of people carrying various receptacles: plastic bottles, watering cans, jugs, pots, crates. They lined up in the street and waited their turn, patiently.

We had a couple of containers, some water bottles for drinking water, and some other ones of questionable cleanliness which we figured would be okay for water to flush the toilet. It took about twenty minutes before we got there. Luckily it was a warm sunny day, so the wait was bearable.

We're having to be very sparing in our use of water. The odd thing was, this was the very weekend we got our water tank removed from the loft. There used to be a big plastic tank up there, which stored water for the bathroom. It's actually unnecessary and, since we are turning the loft into an extra room for Philipp, we decided to get it removed. On Saturday, just before the water went off, our plumber Geoff came round and disconnected it and fixed the pipes. It's a pity - we could have used the water this weekend.

Now, Philipp is at home because his school, which is just around the corner, is closed because there is no water there either.

There were steps last night, as we lay in bed.

We could hear footsteps overhead. They were only little steps, though, so either there was a child loose in the loft or an unwelcome invader had moved in. After a while the steps went away.

I checked this afternoon. I guessed either a mouse or rat or bird had got in. There was no sign of any of these, but we did find a strange looking object in the corner of the loft. It turned out to be a wasp's nest. We poked it with a stick and established that the wasps had moved out.

We took it down to the garden and examined it. It seemed to be made of thin card - all honeycombed compartments, empty of either honey or wax, and with a similar roof that crumbled to the touch.

I did think of getting in touch with the wasps and asking them to construct a loft extension for me, but then there would be the problem of explaining why we demolished their home.

Is it just me or are we in some sort of musical time warp?

I've just been listening to Virgin Radio, and I keep thinking, "that's the Velvet Underground", or "that's the Small Faces" and it turns out to be the Strokes, or the White Stripes, or the Libertines.

I'm not complaining, mind, I like the music. It's just that there's a certain feeling of deja vu - or in this case, deja entendre.

Or is this just a sign of getting old? Probably.

Yes I know it's been a while. I'm surrounded by boxes and I have to fight my way to the computer.

Susanne and Philipp have moved from their flat around the corner into mine, which is much smaller. We had to pack everything in boxes and put them into a van - which took about an hour and a half - and go around the corner - which took about ten minutes - and get them out of the van and put them in my place - which took about an hour and a half.

Amazingly, most things survived the move. We assumed, unwisely, that we would know where we put everything, so instead of being very organised and writing 'kitchen' and 'bathroom' and so on on each of our boxes, we sort of stuffed everything into random boxes and bags and hoped for the best.

Now we probably have the right boxes in the right rooms, but we still have to guess where lots of things are. First we sorted out the kitchen, so we have something to eat, then the bedroom, so we can get some sleep, then the bathroom - very important obviously. Now we have the living room and the hallway full of stuff that doesn't go anywhere else.

So I decided to install the satellite dish I bought the other day. I fixed it to the wall and plugged it in, but unless there's a station that broadcasts in black with no sound, I don't seem to be getting any signal yet. Hmmm...