Archives - May 2009 ↓

I love looking through the Traffic Sources section of my Google Analytics reports to discover how people found my site.

To the end of 2008, over 75% of visits had come via search engines. There are thousands of weird keywords and phrases by which people have somehow managed to stumble across my little home on the web, but the ones that entertain me most are when people type entire questions into a search engine.

I thought it would be a nice idea to share some of these questions posed by previous visitors to ianfnelson.com, and perhaps attempt to provide answers where possible. I’m helpful like that. Here goes:

 

Can You Tell Me The Dates and Names Of The Monarchs From 1066?

No. But Wikipedia can.

Can You Get Married At York Minster?

I believe it’s possible, if you have some kind of special relationship with the place.

Does Ian Nelson Have Cars?

He does.

Do I Have To Tell My Boss That I Have NF?

As in the flesh-eating virus?! It might be a nice idea.

Does Grecian 2000 Actually Work?

How should I know? Cheeky bugger.

Does My Japanese Wife Need to Take The “Life In The UK” Test?

If she wants to settle in the UK, yes.

How Are They Consumed?

They’re gulped down quickly.

How Much Do Avanade Pay?

Not enough.

How Much Is A Pint In Riga?

Last time I was there, about £1 (€1.11, $1.51).

How Much Is A Shag In Riga?

Er, I didn’t find out.

How Old Is Ian Nelson?

33.

How To Annoy A Four Year Old?

Insist that they’re only three?

How To Avoid Jury Service?

Serve a prison sentence, or develop a mental health problem.

How To Get Married In Newcastle Upon Tyne?

Carefully.

How To Improve Performance In NHibernate?

Buy and use NHProf.

How To Peel a Banana?

I do it this way.

How To Peel a Banana Strangely?

Er, with your feet?

How To Seem Genuinely Appreciative At A Bridal Shower?

Ha ha! How about considering how lucky you are that friends and/or family care about you enough to throw such an event, and shower you and your child with gifts?

Is Ian Nelson Gay?

No.

Is Ian Nelson Married?

Yes.

Is Ian Nelson Weird?

Slightly.

Was This Information Helpful?

Not so much.

What Day Of The Week Was 25 September 1998?

Friday. I had quite a thirst going that day.

What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common?

Find out by reading Freakonomics.

What Does “Ey Oop” Mean?

“Hello”.

What Is “Heather” In Gaelic?

“Fraoch”.

What Is Jury Service Like?

See my blog post on the experience.

What Is Santa Claus Postcode?

In the UK, SAN TA1. In Canada, HOH OHO.

What Is The Easiest Munro To Climb?

Probably Carn Aosda. Dull as dishwater, though.

What Is The Role Of Ian Nelson?

I wish I knew.

What Nation Gave The World The Beatles?

They hailed from Liverpool, England.

What Time Do You Make It?

Five past Three.

Where Did Telnet Go?

It’s not installed by default in Vista. Here’s how to add it.

Who Sang “We Close Our Eyes”?

Go West.

Who Sings “Bruised But Not Broken”?

Joss Stone.

 

This was a public service from ianfnelson.com :-)

Well, for the record, I passed MS exam 70-553 yesterday on my second attempt, which makes me a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer – Enterprise Application Developer:

And I also acquired a few new MCTS certifications as a happy by-product:

My full transcript, including “legacy” certifications, is here.

Phew! I think that the time has now come for me to take a bit of a break from the certification circus. They are a nice-to-have, but the opportunity cost is too high – there are many other ways in which I can spend what little spare time I have to better develop my skills.

I promised you some photos of my new office a while back, didn’t I?

OK, here you go. Click for larger versions.

The Desk

‘Puter

One Of These Books Is Not Like The Others

Bits n Bobs

In Gnasher We Trust

The folks at Typemock have come up with a cunning viral way to market a new software bundle comprising of their renowned Typemock Isolator and Ivonna tools. Having mentioned Typemock in this blog previously, and being something of a unit testing zealot, I’m happy to be a pawn in their campaign!

Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.

Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.

The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolator, a unit test tool and Ivonna, the Isolator add-on for ASP.NET unit testing, for a bargain price.

Typemock Isolator is a leading .NET unit testing tool (C# and VB.NET) for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such as SharePoint, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, WPF, Silverlight and more. Note that for unit testing Silverlight there is an open source Isolator add-on called SilverUnit.

The first 60 bloggers who will blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Isolator ASP.NET Bundle license (Typemock Isolator + Ivonna). If you post this in an ASP.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 60 submit) during the first week of this announcement.

Also 8 bloggers will get an additional 2 licenses (each) to give away to their readers / friends.

Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

The inimitable Ayende Rahien is close to releasing version 1.0 of his NHibernate Profiler tool, and it really is shaping up to be a rather lovely little addition to my developer toolbox.

In much the same way that we can use SQL Server Profiler to monitor database activity, and ANTS Profiler to monitor the performance and memory usage of .NET applications, NHProf profiles the activity of the data access layer (NHibernate), and even goes as far as providing helpful hints for potential improvements.

NHibernate is powerful object relational mapper, but has a (perhaps deserved) reputation for having a steep learning curve. One of its major benefits is that it abstracts away much of the drudgery of writing data access code from the developer, but as an unfortunate side effect of this it can make it easy to create inefficient data access layers.

NHProf aims to reduce this risk by providing:

“Cognitive application awareness.

Visual insight into the interaction between your database and application code.

Analysis and detection of common pitfalls when using NHibernate.”

Sounds good, doesn’t it? So what does that mean in practice?

Here’s a screenshot of the release candidate. Note that the Session Factory Statistics functionality is disabled in the current build.

Each profiled NHibernate session can be selected individually from the pane in the top left, and from there we can drill down to see the details of each SQL statement executed against the database (formatted in nice readable manner), along with details of any parameters, and even an option of viewing the rows resulting from the statement.

The statements are interpreted, and suggestions and warnings are flagged as alerts, along with hyperlinks to online guidance explaining how the data access can be improved.

A stack trace is also provided for each statement, allowing us to identify the code that caused the data access to occur. It’s possible to double-click on a row within this trace to jump straight to the code in Visual Studio.

In addition to showing the SQL statements executed by each session, details of the entities loaded by each session are also given.

…and there’s a summary of the NHibernate usage for each session.

As well as providing session-by-session detail of what’s happening, NHProf allows us to analyse the overall activity. Here, I’m looking at unique queries containing the string “study” (note that differing parameters don’t count towards “uniqueness”):

We can also obtain analysis by Method, Url (for web applications) and Overall Usage statistics:

In my opinion NHProf has the potential to become an essential tool when creating or maintaining a solution which leverages the power of NHibernate. In addition to highlighting performance and other issues, it is a great aid when learning about NHibernate, or when familiarising oneself with an inherited solution. Overall, it’s the next best thing to having Ayende sat by your side lending a guiding hand.

There are many things I love about Team Foundation Server, but the supplied diff/merge tool is not one of them. It is - how can I put this? – somewhat basic. Indeed, I’ve heard tell of people going out of their way to avoid merges purely because they find the process so clunky.

Here’s the good news – you can easily configure TFS to use a different, third-party, diff/merge tool, perhaps the one you’ve grown to know and love over many years of happy software development using other SCM products. Maybe you like WinMerge, or love TortoiseMerge. Perhaps you’re like my friend John and swear by SourceGear DiffMerge. Or maybe, like me, you’re a Beyond Compare fanboy. No problem, they can all be used by TFS. Here’s how:

• Open up the Visual Studio options (Tools –> Options).
• Expand the Source Control –> Visual Studio Team Foundation Server section.
• Click the Configure User Tools… button:

• Click the Add… button to set up a new file extension operation:

• Set up a Compare operation to run against all files (extension of *):

• Repeat the process to add a Merge operation to run against all file extensions.

At this point, you’re probably thinking “wooah, what do those argument parameters mean? How do I know what to enter?”. MSDN won’t help you out (“type any arguments that your tool requires” – thanks for that!).

Fortunately James Manning has posted a blog article which not only explains what the argument parameters mean, but also suggests recommended parameters for various popular tools, including those mentioned at the beginning of this post. Thanks, James! 

Voila! OK your way back out of the dialog boxes, and your Compares and Merges will now be displayed using your favourite Diff/Merge tool. Feel your productivity and confidence soar!

The readership of this blog is generally split between a minority of visitors who know me in “real life” (hello, mother!), and a majority who have an interest in .NET, SQL Server, and associated software development topics. There is of course, some significant overlap between the two groups (I hope you’re remembering this – I’ll be asking for a Venn diagram later!)

Anecdotal evidence reveals that some of the techies amongst you appreciate it when I blog about the tools, components, services and techniques which I regularly use in my day to day work. So, I shall try to include more of that kind of content in the future.

In the meantime, you might like to check out http://ianfnelson.com/pc-build/ , where I keep a crib sheet listing the software currently installed on my laptop. This is ostensibly to assist me with any rebuilds, but I will enhance it to include links to the application websites and any reviews I might have written on this blog.

I hope you find this useful.

If you’ve taken a look at the homepage for my business site, you’ll know that there are three areas of expertise that really interest me:

1. Enterprise .NET Development
   Architecture, Design and Development of enterprise n-tier .NET solutions using a domain-driven, object-oriented approach.
2. SQL Server Development
   All aspects of development with the full range of the SQL Server suite, including Analysis Services, Integration Services and Reporting Services.
3. Software Development Process Improvement
   Proven experience implementing version control, work item tracking and continuous integration.

The last point is fairly woolly and difficult to convey in a single bullet point. What I’m trying to get across is that, having spent a decade or so developing solutions for a wide variety of organisations and industries, I have had the benefit of witnessing many working practices and techniques and obtained a reasonable idea of what does and doesn’t make for an efficient and productive software development team.

Further, I believe that this experience of “other places” is an example of the added value that comes from hiring a freelancer or consultancy for a piece of work. So, whilst clients will generally initially hire me to undertake a particular chunk of .NET/SQL development work, inevitably as I go about that task I will bring to the table some of the best practices that I’ve encountered over the years.

Often these issues will be raised early in an engagement, when asking seemingly basic and straighforward questions of the client in order to get on with the job in hand:

• Which source control system are we using?
• Where do I log bugs?
• Which unit testing framework are we using?

As time progresses, and depending on the nature of the client, the questions have a tendency to get increasingly specific, and perhaps be re-phrased as open suggestions:

• Will the deployment occur out of hours?
• Should we be performing static analysis as part of the build process? FxCop, NDepend perhaps?
• Wouldn’t it be a good idea to use a mocking framework like Rhino Mocks or MOQ to simplify these tests?
• I really think that the database schema should be version controlled.

Some clients are more receptive to these ideas than others, and inevitably there’s a delicate balance to be struck between being seen as the helpful and experienced consultant who’s full of good ideas, and the irritating Mr “You Don’t Wanna Do It Like That” character portrayed by Harry Enfield. And the willingness of an organisation to change will fall somewhere on the continuum between “let’s change everything again starting today” and “but that’s the way we’ve always done it!”

Still, it occurs to me that there is a definite value in asking these questions when it seems appropriate. Further, I find that some of them work excellently in job interview situations to turn the interview into more of a dialogue (letting the interviewer see that you’re interested and thoughtful), or at the very least as fodder for the inevitable “Do you have any questions for me?” coda.

So, with that in mind, I’ve decided to compile and publish a list of the questions I like to ask (if only to myself!) about the way in which development teams work.

You’ll find it at http://ianfnelson.com/software-development-process-questions

Feel free to add comments and suggestions to that page, and I’ll try to keep the list updated over time.

Tuesday of this week was a good day for conference announcements.

First, Ben Hall announced the next Alt.Net.UK conference, to be held in London over the course of a full summer weekend. This includes an Alt.Net beers session on the Friday night, one of Alan Dean’s much talked-about Open Space Coding days on the Saturday, and finally an AltNetConf Open Space discussion on the Sunday. The value to any prospective attendee would appear to be sizable, yet the cost? As with all Alt.Net.UK events, it’s free.

Later that day, when our American cousins awoke, Jeff and Joel announced a series of five Stack Overflow DevDays, to be held in four US cities and London, UK. Deliberately priced reasonably at just $99/£85, the places have filled up fast – the cost seems to be low enough to pose no barrier for most of those interested in attending, even in these harsh economic times.

This caused one of the Alt.NET UK organisers, Alan Dean, to tweet the following hypothetical question:

“We intend to keep http://www.altnetuk.com / free (we like it that way) but I’m curious: if it were a paid event, how much do people think that tickets would cost?

It’s a tricky question, especially in the current economic climate, and there’s definitely a difference between “tickets would cost” and “people would be willing to pay”. But having given it some thought, I tweeted this reply:

@adean alt.net pricing – for the recent In The North event, perhaps £195? For full weekend, incl. codeday, more like £495. But free is good!

And here’s my thinking: looking at pricing for the big name conferences such as Tech-Ed, DevWeek, DevTeach, Mix, or Software Architect, you can expect to pay thousands of euros, dollars or pounds. Plus, they’re always held on weekdays, which further increases the effective cost for freelancers such as myself.

From a technical learning perspective, one of the most useful paid conferences I ever attended was Software Architect 2007 (see this blog post). The speakers were generally excellent, and really helped me get to grips with concepts including Contract First Development, Loose Coupling and Inversion of Control, which have all since been staples of the solutions I’ve developed. But as I mentioned at the time, the attitudes of some of the other attendees surprised me:

“It amazed me that a number of my fellow delegates kept raising their hands and asking questions which invariably began "Yeah, but why can't I just...", followed by suggestions which effectively seemed to boil down to creating hardcoded, inflexible solutions! To say that this was supposedly a conference of architects, even relatively simple concepts such as Reflection, Polymorphism and Generics seemed to be lost on some people, who apparently would be more comfortable maintaining massive switch statements for the rest of eternity!”

Although there is some overlap in delegates, there’s a notable difference in the attendee demographic between the big paid conferences and the shoestring community affairs. Generally speaking, many of the attendees at the former tend to have their costs covered by their employers, and perhaps see such events as being a cunning way to get an easy day out of the office. By contrast, those people who give up their weekends and pay their own way to participate in community events are invariably passionate about technology and best practices. As a result, these tend to be the better way to network, socialise, learn, share experiences, and generally meet like-minded individuals (as opposed to suffering death by PowerPoint), and how do you put a price on that?

I consider that, for the right attendees, the OpenConf Alt.NET events offer the same value as these big-budget conferences, but without the associated glamour, high-profile speakers, swag, and other overheads.

So, with a finger waving wildly in the air, I thought that a figure of £495, being approximately half the cost of a typical three-day conference, sounded reasonable. But then an afterthought struck me, and I followed up on my original tweet with:

@adean ...although having said that, any charge would change the attending demographic, probably negatively so, and hence reduce the value!

Gah, it’s a paradox! The intrinsic value of the OpenConf format is that it attracts the passionate folk who turn up, unfunded by their employers, out of their love for tech. Start charging an appropriate sum, and the demographic will change, reducing the value of the conference accordingly.

Fortunately, the Alt.Net.UK organisers have no plans to start charging, so this can remain merely a curious hypothetical discussion!

What do you think? Which events, paid or community-driven, do you consider to be most useful to your career and personal development?

Since .NET 1.0, developers have been able to easily dump all manner of settings in the appSettings configuration section. And boy, does it get overused! Ever join a new project and find something like this lurking in the config file?

<appSettings>
	<add key="SmtpServer" value="smtp.mycompany.com" />
	<add key="bgColor" value="lightsteelblue" />
	<!-- <add key="connstr" value="Server=TestDB;initial catalog=DBName;Integrated Security=SSPI" /> -->
	<add key="connstr" value="Server=LiveDB;initial catalog=DBName;Integrated Security=SSPI" />
	<add key="PageSize" value="20" />
	<add key="Homepage" value="/default.aspx" />
	<add key="FooServiceLicenseKey" value="YR39-WN51-CB73-DF62" />
	<add key="SendEmails" value="True" />
	<add key="FontName" value="Arial" />
	<add key="CookieName" value="Foo" />
	<add key="AdminTabVisible" value="False" />
	<add key="BetaTabVisible" value="False" />
	<add key="NotesTabVisible" value="False" />
	<add key="IntranetURL" value="http://intranet.mycompany.com" />
	<add key="DummyCustomerID" value="99" />
	<add key="TimeoutPeriod" value="150" />
	<add key="ShowErrors" value="2" />
	<add key="PostcodeRegEx" value="^([Gg][Ii][Rr] 0[Aa]{2})|((([A-Za-z][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][0-9][A-Za-z])|([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]?[A-Za-z])))) {0,1}[0-9][A-Za-z]{2})$" />
	<add key="FirstDayOfWeek" value="1" />
	<add key="Environment" value="Test" />
	<add key="AdminUsers" value="smithj,brownc,davist" />
	<add key="ValidityPeriod" value="20" />
	<add key="ExchangeRate" value="1.50" />
	<add key="ExchangeRateEUR" value="1.10" />
	<add key="EmailBody" value="Dear {0}\nThank you for your email, one of our operatives will be in touch shortly." />
</appSettings>

Yuk!

Here’s the good news: It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that there are no longer any good reasons to use the appSettings section. Yay!

Firstly, since .NET 2.0, we have the connectionStrings section, specifically designed for holding database connection strings. Tobin recently posted a nice simple example of how to handle connection strings for multiple developers / environments within a single source-controlled config file.

Secondly, there’s a whole bunch of settings in this example which would be better stored in the database, with administrative users given a front-end to manipulate the values when required. Otherwise, you end up relying on the likes of sysadmins to make changes to business rules, which can be more trouble than it’s worth.

Thirdly, and most importantly – for the remaining properties we can instead choose to use custom configuration sections to hold our settings in an organised, hierarchical way and strongly-typed manner. This is the de facto approach when developing shared class libraries, but is also really valuable for application-specific settings. This is nothing new – here’s a nice succinct blog post from Phil Haack in March 2007 explaining this technique – but in my experience it isn’t used frequently enough.

I’ve never done an in-place OS upgrade before. As far back as Windows 95, I’ve always taken the more laborious (but in my mind, cleaner) method of formatting the hard disk and starting again from scratch. I’m a bit of a masochistic neat freak in that sense.

But, having only very recently repaved my business laptop with Vista Ultimate x64, I couldn’t stomach the thought of doing it all over again with the Win 7 RC. So, for the first time in my life, I thought I’d give the in-place upgrade a go. It took a long time (like, about four or five hours of unattended installation), but it all worked perfectly – best upgrade ever!

So far I haven’t encountered bugs or compatibility issues whatsoever – all the software I had installed just works fine (including SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and all the usual developer tools).

I’m growing used to the new-style taskbar (it’s very MacOS inspired, isn’t it?)…

…and I appreciate the fine-grained control I now have over the icons that appear in the system tray (sorry, “Notification Area”)…

 

…and the Wife Acceptance Factor is high. She “likes the fish” :-)

If I can get a pass out from helping to look after the burgeoning Nelson family for an evening, I’ll be going along to this Agile Yorkshire session next Wednesday.

May 13th - Ralph Williams: Exploratory Testing

Details

In this session, Ralph will provide an overview of some techniques that bring Agility into the world of testing. (The world of testing is a strange place: regarded by most people as a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there, it is an unmapped wilderness where the waterfall methodology still roams unfettered.)

The main focus will be on one such technique, Exploratory Testing. It is defined by many as "simultaneous learning, test design and test execution", but Ralph will attempt to be more helpful. After the presentation many of you will claim this is what you have been doing all along, but now it has a fancy name you can use it without shame and companies can sell you high-priced consultancy in it.

Speaker

Ralph Williams is a Test Consultant at the Yorkshire Building Society, based in Bradford. The Society develops much of the application software used throughout its 140 branches and offices, and Ralph is responsible for managing the testing for some of these systems. He has previously worked in various management, testing and development roles at Erudine, Wanadoo and British Telecom, and specialises in Agile Testing and chocolate.

Venue: Victoria Hotel, Central Leeds

Date/Time: Wednesday, 13th May, 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start.

More details: http://www.agileyorkshire.org/

With all the (non-social) networking that I’ve been engaged in recently, I thought the time was ripe to get myself some new business cards. When I originally formed my company last year, I foolishly tried making my own, with a cheap inkjet printer, MS Publisher, and some blank cards. The results were predictably amateurish. In retrospect, I don’t know why I even attempted this – I’m usually a big advocate of outsourcing anything that isn’t a core competency. I suppose my stationery fetish got the better of me, and I was irresistibly drawn to the blank business cards when I spotted them on a pilgrimage to Staples.

Anyway, this time round I decided to do things properly, and order some cards from moo.com. I’ve experienced Moo’s quality products in the past, when John provided me with a voucher for some mini Moo cards featuring photos from my Flickr photostream. Their product range has now expanded, and I opted for a set of these Dr Woohoo Swirls & Curls cards, along with a wee acrylic card holder in which to carry them.

Unfortunately, when the order was arrived, the card holder was missing, and I was disappointed to see that my logo had been slightly cropped by a few pixels on two sides. A small thing, but noticeable enough to remove the desired air of professionalism. Believing that you can best judge a company by how they behave when something goes wrong, I got in touch to report these issues, and true to their word, I received the following response within 24 hours:

Dear Ian,
Thank you for getting in touch with the MOO Team.
We're sorry you did not receive the holder. I am resending the holder for you today.
We're so sorry your images did not come out as you hoped. Some users are experiencing difficulty with certain types of logo uploads, as there is no bleed allowance for the image as it sits on the card. We are looking into improving this feature but in the meantime it's best to provide a border around your design so that it is centred and nothing is cut off.
I am going to give you a coupon for a free set so you can re-design your cards.Try to place a white border/margin to centre the image and this will solve the problem.
Just enter this number into the "PROMO" field when you get to the payment section and click “Go”.
(deleted)
Please feel free to contact us again if you have further questions.
Best Regards,
Miss Fauzia Hussein
Service Agent – MOO

Things that I particularly like about this reply:

1. I received it within the promised timeframe.
2. The spelling and grammar is perfect.
3. It’s addressed to me personally.
4. The email itself contains all the information I need. None of this “Your ticket has been updated – please log into our portal to read the response” crap.
5. It is signed by an individual, and has an individual’s reply-to email address – no anonymous generic “service@” address in sight.
6. Both issues are dealt with in the simplest and most convenient manner possible for all concerned – immediate despatch of the missing item, and a voucher code to re-order the cards.
7. It contains a concise explanation of why the original cards didn’t meet my expectations, which uses appropriate language and doesn’t patronise me. It goes on to explain what I need to do next time to fix the problem.
8. Despite the fact that the problems with the logo could arguably have been my fault, for failing to include a bleed allowance, there’s no insinuation of my culpability here – Moo are happy to take the hit.

I’ve now received both the card holder and some new cards which I’m very happy with. Ping me if you’d like one!

It gives me the utmost pleasure to announce the birth of Miss Isla Grace Nelson.

Following a ludicrously speedy labour, Isla entered the world in an ambulance on the eastbound A64 near Bilbrough services on Tuesday 28th April at 18:09 local time (see this time in your time zone).

Her birth mass was 3.750 kilograms (8 pounds 4 ounces), and length was 50 centimetres (20 inches).

Photos can be found at http://islanelson.com .

Now, a few people have asked me to blog more details about Isla’s birth, notably the events that led to her being born in an ambulance and not, as had been planned, at York District Hospital like her big brother. So, here goes. Inevitably, this is all from my perspective, though as Jocelyn’s side of things seemed to consist mostly of agonized screams and wailings, perhaps those aren’t the kind of details you want to hear anyway.

Call #1 – It Begins

I was working in Leeds on Tuesday. The first inkling I got that something was about to happen was a phone call from Jocelyn at 14:10. She told me that she was experiencing pains of a largely indeterminate nature, but not to bother coming home from work at that stage, as it might be nothing. Fair enough. Apparently she had been out to aqua natal that morning, then run some errands, and had only just put Ben down for a nap and started to think about what the pains might be. The conversation lasted 2 minutes 6 seconds, and I went back to my work.

Call #2 – Come Home

The second phone call came at 14:50. It was just 17 seconds long:

“Hi Ian. So, these pains don’t seem to be going away.”

“You want me to come home?”

“Mmmmm, yeah - I think you’d better. Can you make the 3:15 train?”

“If I run. Speak to you soon.”

As I arrived at the station, I wondered whether I should pick up a copy of the day’s newspaper, for posterity in case the baby should be born that day. In all honesty I thought it a remote possibility, but bought a copy of The Times anyway, reasoning that at least it would be something to read on the train home.

As it happened, on the platform I bumped into Ruth, mother of one of Ben’s pals, so I had some company and conversation for the journey. That evening Ruth posted a comment on my Facebook page saying “Talk about cool, calm & collected. You were more in control than me when I saw you this afternoon!!!”. This is true - Ruth had something of an “eeek!” expression on her face for most of the train ride. I, meanwhile, anticipated many hours of agonizing (and for me, boring) labour ahead before any real excitement (little did I know!), so I avoided Ruth’s panicked gaze by tweeting.

The train pulled into South Milford at around 15:45, and Jocelyn was there to pick me up (she’d waited for a contraction to pass before making the short journey to the station!)

Call #3 – Summoning Backup

Before we could think about heading to the hospital, we needed someone to look after Benjamin. Fortunately my mum had been on standby for this task for several weeks, denying herself her usual daily allowance of wine in preparedness. I placed the call around 16:00:

“Mum, we need you please. Joce is in labour.”

“Oh. But I have a pot of chutney on the hob. Hmmm. How urgent is it?”

“Contractions about 10 minutes apart.”

“Oh. Well. I’m just going to have to leave the chutney, aren’t I?”

“Yep, I’m afraid so.”

Mums, don’tcha love their sense of priority? ;-)

As we waited for backup to arrive, Jocelyn started pacing around the house in the way only a woman in labour possibly can. Benny thought this was hilarious, and walked behind his mother, playing “Follow the Leader”. I’m not entirely certain how much this helped Jocelyn’s situation – by this time most of the sounds emanating from her mouth were primeval groans. I just kept out of the way, and tweeted again.

Call #4 – We’re Coming In

When my mum arrived at ours around 17:00, I instinctively went to make her a cup of tea, and a drink for myself. It was at this point that the pacing, grunting, Jocelyn, stopped holding everything in and found her voice again.

“Call the hospital. Call the hospital. Need to go in,” she said, stabbing a forefinger at her green NHS notes. I did as I was told.

“Hello, my wife is in labour, and we’d like to come in, please,” I politely told the lady who answered the maternity ward phone.

“Well, you’re very direct and straight to the point!” she curtly replied. I hadn’t realised that I would be expected to make small talk. “Can I at least have some details?”

After providing the details requested (including “can I have a number beginning with ‘D’” – what kind of number begins with ‘D’ I wondered? Hexadecimal? I decided not to pursue that discussion at the present) she asked to speak to Jocelyn. I don’t know what they talked about – Joce just said “yes” three or four times, then put the phone down and told me we were to go to the hospital immediately. I was a tad disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to drink the cup of coffee that I’d just made myself, but thought it wise to keep this thought to myself, too.

Call #5 - 999

Google maps tells me that the 17.3 mile journey from our home to York District Hospital takes around 33 minutes. It’s strange, in my head I always think of it as being much shorter, I don’t know why. On this particular day, travelling at rush hour, it would have taken us even longer, due to heavy traffic and road works.

By the time we were just a couple of miles from home, Jocelyn was screaming almost continually. Glancing at my watch as I drove, I timed the contractions to be three minutes apart, then reasoned with myself that I must have made a mistake and forgotten the original location of the minute hand – surely eight minutes would be more appropriate at this stage? But then the subsequent contraction came another three minutes hence, leaving little doubt. I didn’t share these timings with Jocelyn, but I’m sure she was well aware of the immediacy of the situation.

My heart sank when we reached the A64 to find the eastbound carriageway moving at a snail’s pace. We trundled along for a mile or so, before Jocelyn spoke the truism that I’d not dared admit to myself:

“We’re not going to make it to the hospital. You’re going to have to call 999.”

Now, I’ve never had cause to phone 999 before. I had flashbacks to primary school assemblies wherein visiting police constables soberly explained the problems caused by hoax calls, and made it crystal clear that we should only think about dialling 999 if we were on the verge of death itself, lest we would surely go to hell, or at the very least be grounded for a good few weeks. These sessions obviously had a big influence on me, and I briefly hypothesised about an alternative solution to our problem, such as trying to force a route between the two lanes of near-stationary traffic. Jocelyn’s response came in the form of another anguished scream, and at 17:31 I placed the call. Mercifully my mobile had a charge, a signal, and Windows Mobile 6.1 hadn’t decided to crash when I wasn’t looking. Here’s how the conversation began:

“Emergency, which service please?”

“Ambulance.”

“Ambulance, can you tell me the number you’re calling from?”

“07901 828483”

“What’s the address to which you need an ambulance sent?”

“I’m travelling eastbound on the A64, east of Tadcaster. My wife is in labour, we’re trying to reach York hospital but we’re not going to get there in time.”

“OK. I need to figure out exactly where you are. Have you gone over the river?”

“Er, I’m not sure". I wasn’t certain to which river she was referring (Ouse, Foss, Wharf?) and I couldn’t remember which was which anyway, so it seemed futile asking.

“Is there a lay-by or somewhere you can pull off the road and park?”

“Er… yes, we’re coming up to a small exit road now. Signed to Catterton and Healaugh.”

At this stage I was now glad that I’d made the call. The patient, calm lady on the other end of the phone told me to get off the A64, stop the car, put my hazards on, and await the assistance which was on the way. I used the “Where Am I?” TomTom functionality to confirm my location, and confirmed the colour and make of our vehicle. Then the operator told me I should “prepare and reassure my wife”. I think my efforts in respect of this task resulted in an epic fail.

Cavalry

After 9 minutes and 34 seconds the cavalry arrived, in the form of a down-to-earth Yorkshire chap in an ambulance responder vehicle. His initial words, on handing Jocelyn some nitrous oxide, were “There you go love, cop a load of that. Suck it in, there’s plenty!”. On being told that Jocelyn’s waters hadn’t broken, and nor was there any sign of a head, he frowned in my general direction, seemingly giving the impression that we were wasting his time, and I felt certain that he would dob me in to Mrs Lound, my primary school head teacher.

“Weren’t you listening during assembly, Ian?” I envisaged her asking me sternly, as she proceeded to instruct me, a grown man of 33, to stand on the naughty steps of a school building that had long since been demolished.

Then he glanced at his watch for a second time, and it seemed to dawn on him that, broken waters or not, contractions of only a minute apart indicate an imminent birth. He confirmed with the disembodied voices on his radio that an ambulance was on its way, before glancing up and down the length of our shiny Toyota Verso.

“What reg’ is this?” he asked me.

“Too new!” I shouted back, and he grinned back at me.

“We’d better get an ambulance then, hadn’t we?” he replied.

The ambulance duly arrived, and Jocelyn was transferred into it. I abandoned the Verso and joined her. The all-female crew, Jo and Jo, told us that the plan was to try to reach York Hospital. Being safety-conscious ladies, they instructed me to sit down and put a seatbelt on, leaving me unable to offer much support over and above shouted encouragements and gripping Jocelyn’s ankle supportively. Not for the first time that evening, I began to think that I probably wasn’t helping much.

We’d only got a mile or so down the A64 before another blood-curdling cry and waters breaking all over the ambulance caused the crew to abandon all plans of reaching York Hospital in favour of delivering the baby at the side of the road, near to the services at Bilbrough top. From this point on, everything happened in double-quick time, and Isla Grace came into the world at 18:09.

We later learned that Isla was only the second baby that Jo and Jo had delivered in nine years of manning an ambulance. I wouldn’t have guessed; they seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and exuded an air of professionalism at all times. I was so thankful that we’d called the emergency services. Everyone grumbles occasionally about the enormous tax burden of the NHS, but there’s no denying that, in one’s hour of need, they really come through. God bless the Yorkshire Ambulance NHS Trust.

The high quality service continued as Isla and I transferred into a second ambulance whilst Jocelyn travelled ahead in the original vehicle. After checkups and a few stitches, Jocelyn was discharged from hospital later that evening. I took a £30 taxi ride to recover the Verso, we popped into a McDonald’s drive-thru for our supper, and we were all home and safely tucked up in bed by midnight.

It’s not an experience any of us want to relive, but as the bard said, All’s Well That Ends Well. And it’s a great story to tell Isla in a few years time.