Pass it on!

Diddle, Diddle Dumpling

You know how it goes -

Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son John
Went to bed with his trousers on
One shoe off and one shoe on
Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son John

Which, thinking about what I want to say is actually completely irrelevant. But hey, it's typed already, and I am not seeing all that effort go to waste.

Anyway. There we are with all our bedroom packed into bags, and said bags distributed about the house - spare room, understairs cupboard, attic, Kit's room - and the list goes on. And I have to get ready for Jeremy's company Christmas Do. 'Formal', it says on the invitation. 'Formal'. When last did two syllables strike such icicle terror into my heart? 'Formal'?!? I haven't done 'Formal' in - ooh, about eight years. 'Formal'? I haven't got 'Formal'! And even if I had 'Formal' I wouldn't be able to find it, becasue it's an a bag in the attic or Kit's room or under the stairs or in the spare room or - and the taxi has just arrived anyway, so these black velvet trousers held together by some sartorially criminal string, under some far-too-ethnic dark grey linen jackety-thing, are going to be topped (topped? surely not) by the only pair of not-my-every-day-shoes I can find, which are brown.

Jupiter Optimusque Maximus, not even Jeremy was going to let that one go. Taxi in the driveway, J in his tuxedo, and he starts tearing the place apart for the bag with my shoes in, a fruitless task as I am only too happy to repeat to him at three second intervals. In the end, I 'find' the pair of bronze and gold strappy peep-toe wedge sandals I wore to the wedding in South Africa, which I think are completely out of the question, and they are voted infinitely more suitable than my brown penny loafers.

Remind me - did they ever find the genes responsible for shoe management? Because I've lost mine, and am posting a reward for their safe return.

That, or my husband has more in the way of shoe gene than me. Gah.

Where was I . . . ?

Golly. A week spent telling Jeremy IT'S JUST A COUGH, I don't need to go to the doctor, everyone in the village has one just like mine . . .

On my return from SA, I sloped off in to the spare room, on account of not wanting my coughing to keep him awake, assuming the cough would get better. Ha ha ha no. Cough just as bad (NO! IT's GETTING BETTER!) and J has had to join me in the spare room as we are in the middle of having a new bedroom installed. Ye Gods and Little Fishes, it's appalling how much rubbish you accumulate even in a bedroom which, while a very important room, obv., is not actually used for that much of the day.

And I never leave enough time to do a proper packing-up job, so in spite of all my intentions of sorting as I packed, a Monday morning deadline meant that no, the crap got packed along with the regular stuff. *Deep Breath* well, I here and now resolve that nothing is going back into our brand new bedroom that a) is not useful (or beautiful, Mr Morris) and b) doesn't have a place to live.

I know I know - this means I am doomed to another large black plastic bin bag full of stuff I can't decide about. Gah.

I'm back

Sunday was spent revisiting old haunts. Our taxi driver took us into central Johannesburg (amid many dire warnings about the extremely high crime rate. Never having been to Lagos, I can't say, but that was the most frequent comparison). It's true, the city centre was in complete reverse video, and it did have the air of a frontier town - streets lined with brightly coloured tin signs advertising tiny businesses, young men eager to point out a parking place and receive a tip, and, on street corners, live chickens in wire cages clearly destined for the nearest cooking pot.

We were visiting our old place of worship, the Cathedral of St Mary the Virgin. (I wish they had a website, but pretty much no-one there does. Their idea of Broadband is about 512k. Eek. Or rather, Yawn.) The place used to be a hotbed of political sedition - members of both clergy and congregation regularly fell foul of the authorities, and were subject to trials of varying soundness. As we stood outside, taking pictures and some video, we were hustled inside (by a black man in a very nice suit) and told basically not to be so silly as really the crime rate was extremely high.

The church was exactly the same as I remembered - high, cool, beautiful, and an eye of calm in a hurricane of social upheaval.

Our old home had Julia and I squealing with delight. The owners couldn't have been kinder, showing us around the house and gardens, which held more than enough familiarity to have us both enthralled. And the evening was spent with a friend from Julia's schooldays, and her partner. 80% of the conversations began of course, with 'Do you remember . . .!' Britta's partner, Claire, was very patient with a gang of well-past-their-sell-by-date schoolgirls shrieking with unbecoming giggles.

Do I need to bore you with details of the Thai massage we treated ourselves to, on our last day? Nope, you are right, I don't. The only comment I could possibly make would be 'Aaaaaaah', anyway.

I am very pleased to be home though - away is lovely, but home with a loving husband and adored children is best.

I'm here

After the usual hoo-ha (arriving at the wrong terminal, not being able to check in because they thought Jeremy's credit card was stolen, did they - didn't they - did they have any rands at the currency exchange - oh yes they did) the flight was uneventful, and the limo ride to the hotel very smooth. Do I have to tell you about the blue skies, the blazing sunshine, and the fabulous food? Nah - OK then.

Last night we found ourselves in - how to describe it? I think if you looked from the outside you would see a gigantic warehouse. Inside, you were transported into a little corner of Venice. Somewhere in the back streets in the bend of the Grand Canal. The roof was painted to look like a late afternoon sky, until you went under a certain bridge and it was magically night time. The 'houses' have lit-up windows, some sporting Italian football scarves, and the wall-to-wall restaurants are mostly Italian. Julia said it reminded her of Las Vegas (only not so classy). And casinos, of course. Hordes and hordes of teenagers strutting their stuff.

Today was the - I dunno, I've been describing it as a 'family thing', and that seems to satisfy anyone who asks. Fact is, my cousin Mark, whose wedding we celebrated today, died five days ago. For the last three months he hadn't responded well to his chemotherapy, then he had a stroke, and died. We didn't know he had already married Felicity in May. We convened in a lovely hall for a meal, and speeches, and music, and Felicity looked lovely in her wedding dress.

Just no groom.

I met Mark's sons for the first time, who are both charming, clever, courteous young men. We caught up with one of our cousins - very disappointingly, the other was trapped by flooding in the Eastern Cape and couldn't join us - and enjoyed meeting a roomful of total strangers. I've got some pictures, I'll show you when I get back.

Eat your heart out . . .

This is where, no kidding, my sister and I are booked in. A little to the north of the centre of Johannesburg, in its own park, and not even slightly over the top. By a delightful co-incidence, one of Julia's liveries, a good friend, is going to be there too, on business. The delightful bit is that we managed to book in on her coat-tails, as'twere, and are being charged a less-than-usually-extortionate rate for the room.

This friend and I will be travelling out on the same flight, she up in Business Class, and me, of course, in Steerage. Jeremy suggested I ask her to swing an upgrade for me. Tempting thought, neh? I had to weigh that against the opportunity to be, for eight hours in a row, surrounded by strangers, none of whom would talk to me. (Apart from asking in hushed tones, 'Would you like your dinner now?', and 'May I take your dirty dishes away without you having to lift a finger?')

Come ON! Steerage could never be that uncomfortable.

Decisions, decisions . . .

THIS POST IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH. IF YOU ARE IN ANY WAY FAINT-HEARTED, LOOK AWAY NOW.

I'm still feeding Sid. I know, I know . . . you can't tell me anything I haven't thought of already. There it is. The frequency is much reduced, generally to weekend mornings, but last night she asked so damn' winningly for a feed that I crumbled and agreed. Now, because her feeds are so few and far between, I can never remember which side is next, but Sid usually can. But it had been quite a while since the last feed, and Sid was stumped. So she looked at my chest, saying

'Eeny, meeny, miney, mo . . . .'



OK, I'm done with the oogy stuff. You can start reading again now.

In Other News, I had, and inflicted upon two innocent little girls, the most beastly afternoon. I needed to go to Mothercare to buy vouchers for Beri's teacher who is going on maternity leave. As Claudia Mae was to spend the afternoon with us, I thought I might take the two girlies to the in-the-middle-of-blimmin'-nowhere superstore, buy the vouchers and treat us all to lunch in a local cafe. Good plan, until I realised that the directions I had been given had missed at least one roundabout, and before I knew it I was crushed - crushed, I tell you - by traffic in deepest Southall, with no option of turning around. We were in the car for nearly two hours before finally pulling back into our forecourt, sans vouchers, sans lunch, sans patience, sans everything. The girlies fell on their lunch like the wolf on the fold, with zero time to do any playing before the school run. You'd think I had done more than my share, but as I didn't get the vouchers I have to do the whole thing again tomorrow. At least it will be with a different little friend, and I plan to go to a different Mothercare.

I'm doomed.

Some Bangs, and the Occasional Whimper

Phew. So that's Fireworks night over and done with for another year. The little'uns stuck it all out, hooray (I love fireworks, and definitely consider it the short straw if I have to take a bratlet home halfway through the show), Beri's only, though not inconsiderable, concern being that the fireworks might land on his head, and Sid telling me that I didn't have to say 'Oooh!' every time, and that I should just say it when a firework was 'specially beautiful. After the show, a houseful of people, with the children, some of them really quite small, whooping it up until about 10. And we still hadn't had supper.

Jane and Ian visited for the weekend, and Jane awarded all the children hand-drawn stars for chewing with their mouths closed. You have to take the victories where you find them, don't you!

Wonderful, wonderful Freecycle had enabled me to find a home for a blanket which had developed a split down the middle. (A woman with puppies, which were going through their bedding faster than she could wash it.) I wrapped the torn blanket in a plastic bag, and stuck a big label on saying 'Puppies', so by leaving it outside the front doorI didn't have to be at home for her to collect it. You would not believe the number of people who asked me if there really were puppies in the bag. Including a girl in a Chesham High uniform (local grammer school. You have to pass an exam to get in). Really? Puppies wrapped in a plastic bag?!? Maybe that's an additional question they should include in the 11+ . . .

Hi there! Remember me?

Instead of doing this, I've been making this. I'd be tweaking it still, but I've realized that I can't make it up all by myself, I do need the occasional fact. This is where, to my irritation, other people come in. Nasty, unreliable things, people, who don't attach the same importance to my objectives as I do. What is with them?

So, here we are again. Half term over, and I'd tell you all about it but I've forgotten it all. Right now it's all house-tidying and Performing Arts Week and Jeremy's away again and how much exactly to have some new bedroom furniture?!?

Actually now I mention it some vague memories of half term are stirring.

A very happy couple of days spent in the west country with friends, involving unfeasible amounts of yomping up and down some substantal hills, eating about every hour-and-a-half, and generally revelling in what felt like the last of the year's sunshine.

A day spent in Chiswick at the pool, delicious hamburgers for lunch, and finding to my horror that Whittards are selling Flying Saucers at what I consider to be an extremely reasonable price. And discovering to my even greater dismay that Sid likes them too. Now I have to share. Ugh.

Odds Farm Park for pumpkin carving - thank goodness the day was cold and gloomy and sporadically rainy.



Kit's school has forgagged regular lessons in order to study (study! HA!) foreign continents. Kit is engaged in learning all about South America. One week! For a whole continent! What are they going to do on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday? Be that as it may, Kit is taking in my Venezuelan passport for the edification of his schoolmates.

Book Club

Last night we met to discuss Affluenza. Usually there are eight or nine of us, but this time I had the feeling that the book had not been a popular choice - present were the two of us who had started the club, and the person who had chosen the book. Nevertheless we had a very pleasant evening, deciding that Mr James was, in large part, absolutely barking, and that stay-at-home moms should be paid a salary. Result.

Kit woke up in a bad way this morning, complaining of a fever and a stomach ache. The fever proved debatable and the retching noises not really credible, but the distress was real enough. He eventually produced a yellow card*, and told me he was in for the high jump. Poor fellow was in a bad way, but eventually agreed that it was better to get it over with rather than never go to school ever again.

Of course the day proved much less difficult than anticipated.

*His school awards a green card for exceptionally meritorious behaviour, a yellow card for an infraction of the rules and a red card for a hanging offence. This was Kit's second yellow card in two-and-a-bit years. On this occasion, he threw his lunch bag.

Second time unlucky

So much for a weekly swim with my ma, the which we both need. Today's pool temperature was a degree even lower than last week, so we didn't even get in. We agreed that, lovely as our shared sandwich sitting in the car is, NEXT WEEK WE WOULD PHONE AHEAD.

Well, I thought, at least that gives me an unexpected hour to work on the website I am building for our church - but I'll just quickly catch up on the old bloggeroonie . . .

Jeremy is back up on his feet, and its business as usual. He flies out to Essen tomorrow for two days - I won't be at all surprised if his lung infection occurs again. But I'll have to hear about it on the grapevine, as, what with the rugby an' all, we have very little time for conversation! Maybe next week . . .

Right now all we are doing is hunkering down and waiting for half term. Jeremy is taking the week off, and our plans currently include a trip to Somerset, a trip to Essex and a trip to Ikea. Can't wait.

Oh, the irony

I have nothing for this post. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Well, about five minutes of irony, which I'll tell you about in a minute. And mucho moaning. It's been a quiet few days, and Jeremy has been away again, (not one week of this new job has gone by without him flying somewhere. And it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon) so we were all looking forward to the weekend. Jeremy came home early(ish) on Friday, promptly came down with something and took himself off to bed, and it looks like he will recover just in time for Monday morning. I'm only telling you this because the alternative to blogging is getting the session for tomorrow's Sunday School ready. Bleurgh. (It's my fourth Sunday in a row. So bleurgh, bleurgh and thrice bleurgh.) But hey - I don't need to have it ready until 10 tomorrow morning - that's eleven hours away. I got time.



No of course I don't have time. So here's the irony, and then I gotta go.

I have this lovely son Kit. He's handsome, clever, funny, and loving. He has many strings to his bow - he enjoys reading, he plays guitar, he loves building models. Thing is, none of these strings include singing. No, don't get me wrong, he sings all right, with gusto, at school and in the church choir, but in none of the sounds he makes can I detect a tune. Plenty of clues in the words and the rhythm as to what he is aiming at, but keep a tune? Not at pistol-point. The lovely choir-mistress insists that his place is in the choir, and that he will gradually learn, and to tell the truth I do detect an improvement, but the pace of change is pretty damn gradual.

So there he was, doing his homework at the kitchen table, and he started singing.


He sang that old Beatles number, 'What would you do if I sang out of tune'.

Oh, and if you have a spare five minutes, take a wander around here. It's a hoot.

A Sunny Sunday Afternoon

Sunday was good - Jeremy took the boys to their first Karate grading. The cynic in me jolly well knew that, in spite of only having been going six weeks, they were going to pass, else how does the organisation keep hold of its paying customers, but the mother in me burst with pride when I heard that they had both achieved their blue belts. (I was helping out at Sunday School. It was 'Back to Church' Sunday, and the place was heaving. Urgh.)

After a hurried lunch Jeremy went off to Wiltshire for his last performance of Cosi, and I took the children for a walk down to the ford - a glorious afternoon, the boys conker hunting happy as Larry (Larries?), Sid chirruping along with me, the very picture of familial bliss, and it took two seconds to fall apart. Beri tripped over a stick and started shrieking, Kit went to see how badly he was hurt and got smacked on the head and started shrieking, and while I was running toward them I didn't even see what it was that started Sid shrieking. Oh cripes. All three of them, yelling their heads off, and us not even close to home. The sort of thing that can really make your shoulders droop. Having established that while there was blood it was not actually pumping out of any gashes, that we could all wiggle our fingers and toes (though of course it hurt A LOT) and that there would be hot chocolate immediately we got home, off we set. (Three children, two hands, you do the math. Golly, this blog is turning into quite the pop quiz.)

Beri's first reaction to adversity is to start yelling for his Daddy. Any adversity, large or small, Beri is very much the equal opportunity over-reacter. (Nothing can shatter the calm of a sunny woodland glade like a sizeable five-year-old bellowing I WANT MY DADDY!) But he has now figured out an alternative. We keep our mobile numbers in largeish type permanently taped to a kitchen cupboard. Because the little s** can read, and far better than he lets on, he can now grab the phone, and call his poor beleaguered father any time he feels like it. Today, after our usual argument about his post-school snack (he favours a packet of crisps, I vote for a slice of bread) he called Jeremy, and tinily, pathetically, said "She won't give me any food!"

And Kit introduced me to QWERTY Warriors 1 and QWERTY Warriors 2. Do NOT go there. Once you start, you cannot stop. (But RAMPAGE is the best.)

Phew

Not too bad after all! I did have visions of half a garage full of brown paper bags with handles. Now all I need is the nerve to open the box and see what I've actually bought . . . Damn Paypal. Damn, damn, damn Paypal!

I missed quite a boat recently. All I needed to do was find the family diary to check the dates and commitments over half term, before buying tickets for the Terracotta Army. About half a day it took me, and by the time I got online again all the tickets had gone. Vanished. Pfft. There are still some left for a few weekdays early next year, and I'm seriously contemplating taking the children out of school for a day. This is not an opportunity they are going to have again, after all.

(And why does Blogger think I'm German? I mean, how does it know?)

Aah - who am I kidding? By the time I talk to J about this tomorrow, even those tickets will have gone too.

You do the math

Jeremy and I have decided that, actually, it's quite rude to take wine when invited to a dinner party. It implies that one's host is either too poor to afford a bottle, or will provide rubbish wine, or, indeed, is too stupid to notice that you have brought a bottle of undrinkable because CHEAP vino di merda.

But you have to take something, neh? A little box of six handmade chocolates, a teeny posy of seasonal flowers, maybe organically cultivated, fairly traded pecan nuts wrapped in handblocked mango-leaf paper. You know the sort of thing. Which is all wonderful, but how do you carry it? How do you present it to your host? Especially when that box of handmade chocolates is actually quite teeny when compared with a bottle.

Well, you put it in a brown paper bag, don't you? Not just any old bag mind you, but something a little more classy, bit more up-market, know wha' I mean? Something with handles.

Google, bless it, came up with a number of possibilities. Comparison being the order of the day, and remembering that package and postage count, calculator at the ready, I found some good quality, well-constructed nice looking bags at seven pee a pop. Seven! What a great deal, eh? In went the order, Paypal did its thang, and here I am, awaiting delivery of 500 small brown paper bags, with handles, due tomorrow.

Hang on a mo' though. 500? Five? Hundred? OK. Just how many DPs do we get invited to anyway? Seriously. At a generous estimate, I'd say five a year. Including reciprocation, (where a brown paper bag with handles wouldn't count) that makes 10 social occasions a year - sounds about right. Which means we would use the final bag in 100 years time.

Holy crap! I Just thought - how big is the package going to be?

20 lengths. Go me.

All Change

We said goodbye to Jessie today. Remind me what it is about these girls and university? We are not too sure what to do without her, apart from begrudging her her first foray into adult life, her opportunity to spend three years studying something she's really looking forward to (Architectural Technology - how fab does that sound?), and a LOT of partying. Go Jess.

See the cake? It was delicious, if I say so myself, and as long as I didn't mention that it was orange flavoured, Kit thought so too. As for me - well, cake is something I really don't need that much of. So hooray for Ma and me - we now meet every Tuesday at the swimming pool where I chug up and down a coupla times, and Ma splashes about in the shallow end. I am inordinately proud of the fourteen lengths I managed last time, all with a resounding lack of technique, and with LOTS of inter-length pauses. Go Me.

Know your Onions

The other day, chopping home-grown onions to make supper, I wept. I wept copious quantities of painful tears. Man, was it uncomfortable. And it occurred to me that it was the first time in YEARS that cutting an onion had made me cry. What on earth has happened to our supermarket onions that they don't do this to us any more? Are we so removed from the way the world functions that we breed de-natured onions so as not to cry?

My onion crop was rather successful this year. Thank goodness I make very good red onion marmalade, and in spite of the children's protests they do go into much of what I cook. Next year's sets have just arrived, and by next week should be in the ground, and I get to spend next summer in floods of tears. Can't wait!

Oh and P.S. for those of you who don't know, What's the difference between an onion and an oboe?




Nobody cries when you chop up an oboe! Ha ha ha ha ha!

If only the thought really did count

Met Ma for a swim today. She is in need of regular exercise (CRASH! there goes another glass house), so I said I'd meet her at a swimming pool halfway between us. The pool proved pleasantly warm and underpopulated, and Ma and I paddled about very happily for half an hour. Afterwards, we picnicked on sandwiches, figs and pears in her car, and decided that this was one habit worth getting in to.

So the half a bar of chocolate I just ate doesn't really count, does it?

All Change

It's new everything for us all here at Valentine Towers. The boys go into new year groups, and Jeremy started his job. The boys appear to be having a good time, Kit enjoying the opportunity to use the shorter route to school, which involves Crossing A Road (gulp), and Beri not having a backward glance for me as he files into his classroom.

Jeremy came home from work on Monday full of bounce and pizzazz, enthusing about what a great job this was going to be. Tuesday proved a little more sobering, but by Wednesday he was bushy-tailed again. I'm a tad anxious about tonight, it has to be said. As our friend Oliver remarked, maybe they are playing 'Good Day, Bad Day' with him.

Oh, and poor Kit! On the days I collect Sid from Montessori, I leave a key for Kit, because he is back a few minutes before I am. Yesterday, as I arrived home, he came out to greet us, And Closed The Door Behind Him. Of course with the keys inside the house. Poor boy was beside himself, and wept and wept. (I asked him if he could tell me exactly why he was crying, and he said it was because he felt so stupid. Dunno about you, but I thought that was jolly perceptive.) Luckily our key-holder friends are just up the hill, so Kit fetched and returned the key, and all was well.

And we found a possible reason for the intermittent malfunction of our super duper expensive HDD DVD recorder player thingy, the fixing of which would have required we take out another mortgage. A piece of Geomag was attached to the back of the unit. Gah.

Just fun stuff

I really liked this, and this. Also, I wanted to tell you about my daemon, who is called Rasthmus and is a whippet, but I can't get the code to work. Go to http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?250059 for me, wouldja?

Good Game, Good Game!

Sid and Beri have a new game. They get out the salad spinner (one of Sid's favourite toys anyway), fill it with the contents of the colouring-in drawer, set it spinning, AND TAKE OFF THE LID. Just how far can a bunch of pencils get flung? We Need To Know.

In other news, school starts next week, so it's New Shoes time. (Am I using too much Upper Case? Hard to tell. Maybe I should use some colour or bold or italic for a change. Or Maybe Not.) Six new pairs of shoes, and we haven't even started on Sid. Thank goodness Jeremy is getting a job. Kit is only just holding on to his taller-than-his-younger-(by four years! (ooh look - italics!))-brother status, but it's not hard to imagine Beri overtaking him. And one of his teeth is loose. He's only just five! This is very precocious, surely. I wonder what old wives' tales there are about losing teeth early.

Excuse me - the Show parade is about to pass our house . . .



Phew. Finally back after an exhausting afternoon at the Country Show. Bungee trampolining, Hook-a-Duck-and-win-a-piece-of-c**p, falconry, dogs jumping through flaming hoops and Very Large Snakes. Something for everyone, really. (Really cool snakes. One about 12' long, an albino boa. Coool. And we could touch them too.)

Jane and Ian are here for the weekend, so how pleased was I that all three children complained vociferously about the quality of their supper, and have left most of it uneaten.


First in an Occasional Series - Things my Mother-in-Law Says.

'Beri, why don't you try a little honey with your sausages?'

Ok, Party's Over

Both parties, actually. Poor Sid has been feeling dreadfully left out - after all, if both boys get parties, why shouldn't she?

Kit required his guests to bring water pistols and a change of clothes, and in spite of the gloomy evening, and the fine rain already forming, the eight children spent a very noisy half hour getting drenched before forming a very cold and bedraggled queue for the shower. Suddenly having three shower rooms in the house was barely adequate. The girls beat the boys in the quiz, but were rubbish at pass-the-orange, and Jeremy's twist on the spoon-and-string game was that the spoon had spent the afternoon in the freezer. Hee hee hee.

Beri's party also involved quantities of water - in his case, a water slide with a paddling pool at the end of it. More wet children, these ones muddy as well. Lunch was pizza, hula hoops, slices of apple, and chocolate cake *hangs head in shame*. One girl ate the hula hoops and a slice of cake, and one ate only the hula hoops. I learned later that her mother had given her a sausage roll before the party, on the grounds that she never ate her lunch.

We are in our last week before term starts, and before Jeremy starts his new job. I don't know that any of us are much looking forward to either of those things.

Blog? What blog??

. . . .ah yes - this one.

Well, it's summer, and the children play, and Jeremy does DIY, and I feel guilty about not doing the washing-up. That's about it, really.

Well, I guess there were the Perseids - Jeremy and I lying on the trampoline at eleven o'clock at night, not nearly well wrapped up enough, staring into the light-polluted sky and marvelling at the unparalleled beauty of the aeroplane lights - a major benefit of living so close to a flight path. Our viewing was totally undistracted by random shooting stars, thank goodness. They get so in the way of a decent bout of plane-spotting, dontcha find?

Sid painted her fingers and toes - when I say 'painted her fingers and toes', I do mean 'painted her fingers and toes'. On each digit, she started at her middle knuckle and plastered purple sparkly goo all the way to the end. What slightly scares me is that I don't know where she did this. Am I going to find a crusty lump of ugh on a Turkish rug? On the wooden floorboards? Smeared over a sofa or the curtains? In the library, heaven forbid?

Did I mention that Kit had a trial Karate lesson at the end of last term? Did I further mention that Beri, a couple of days after this, wanted to know if he could join in? So last Thursday, off we went to watch the brothers HA! and UG! and HAI! their way through a class together. Kit, bless him, took very good care of Beri, (drawing on his VASTLY greater experience of karate lessons, obviously) positioning him so he could see, repeating the sensei's instructions, and being fantastically big-brotherly.

Oh and yes yes yes! - Sid decided, in no uncertain terms, that she had had ENOUGH of an overnight nappy, and could she not, please? Based on the fact that in the morning her nappy was never less than VERY soggy with pee, I had my misgivings, oh yes. I gave in on the understanding that Jeremy dealt with the one-in-the-morning soggy bedding roust-out. To my amazement, it's been ten days now, and not one accident. (The same cannot be said for the daytime, however . . .) So it's only Beri now. Gulp.

You win some, you lose some

Having persuaded Jeremy's parents to join us for the day, and Jane having offered to look after the children while Jeremy and I saw the house, we missed Audley End. Extremely irritatingly, it was shut. Ha - I knew we were right to join the National Trust. Those English Heritage dossers are an idle bunch.

To Jeremy's and Ian's delight, the next possibility was Duxford Air Museum (the children didn't care, as long as it involved lunch). Being as how the major exhibits are all aircraft, the place is huge. We got to see inside a prototype Concorde, and ride on an electric train from one end of the museum to the other.

I found myself profoundly disturbed by the Land Warfare exhibition, which concentrated on WWII and the Normandy Landings. (I know. At my great age.) I know we weren't in there for that long, and certainly didn't see absolutely everything, but nowhere in all the diagrams and pictures and video footage that I saw was there any mention of the lives that were lost. No idea at all of the scale of human destruction. Yes, I understand that small children would be quite unjustifiably frightened by graphic representations, but no mention of the dead at all? It seems such a blatant omission, and such a cynical one. I don't understand why veterans' groups don't make a bigger deal of this.

Anyway.

All the Valentine grandkids were there for Sunday lunch, so the children had a ball, and on Tuesday the five of us went for a swim. Sid was so reluctant to get out that she yelled and stamped her feet and refused to get dressed. Luckily she had changed her mind by the time we got back, so she dressed before getting out of the car. (Hadn't changed her mind about yelling and stamping her feet, though.)

And for the first time ever chez ValentineSr., the little ones were independent enough to amuse themselves and eachother, which meant Jeremy and I could spend some time just sitting. (I vividly recall the Christmas Beri was just two years old. The call to lunch came, and I found him sitting in the middle of a great pile of games. He had found the boxes of Ludo and Scrabble and Halma and Monopoly and and and and, had opened them all and tipped their contents out onto the sitting room rug. Oh how I laughed. Ha ha ha ha ha.)

And the big news - Jeremy has a job!

Not just any old I'd-better-take-it-because-I-have-a-family-to-feed job, but a real, proper, senior senior JOB. A general managership at E-on Ruhrgas. Thank goodness. Now we won't have to sell the children for experiments.

Argh

My Aralia Elegantissima.

My mother-in-law's Aralia Elegantissima.

Is it the lunch, or is the conversation . . .

It's hard keeping up with her sometimes.

We've done hardly anything since we arrived home, and feel all the better for it. The house, which was extremely tidy when we came home, is pretty much back to its usual shambles. Sid and Beri have ALL the sofa cushions from ALL the sofas piled in the middle of the floor, are dressed in their sunsuits and are playing some arcane game, while Kit is off at a friend's party, racing Go-karts.

Tomorrow morning we go to Jeremy's parents in Essex for a couple of days. I'm hoping to visit Audley End, where there is a wonderful vegetable garden managed by the HDRA. In Trevarno we saw a similar garden at a MUCH earlier stage of restoration, again with the HDRA's involvement - if we get to make the visit, I'll tell you about the Vine House. Maybe we'll even have the courage to see the inside of the House this time.

Our friend Daisy, who is a couple of weeks shy of her fourth birthday, and a twin (developmentally, twins are supposed to lag behind singletons by about six months), has just mastered the art of riding a bike WITHOUT STABILISERS. (Beri, almost a year older, hasn't a clue.) She was riding round the garden, where her parents were standing chatting, and crashed into her father's legs. She fell off, got up, and putting her hands on her hips said 'Daddy! You MUST learn to look where you are going!'

We're Back

Two whole days ago, and we've been having a well-earned rest after the rigours of the holiday. On the left, a picture taken on our first, and on the right, a picture taken on our last day. Ha flippin' ha, eh? Well, it was bound to happen.

We went to the Blue Reef aquarium in Newquay, which is the most charming aquarium I've ever visited - small, but perfectly formed. I found my favourites, the jellyfish, and Sid found Nemo and would NOT be dragged away.



And we saw the Green Flash! It was quite, quite perfect. (Jeremy didn't believe me, a) that it existed, and b) he banged on about latitude and atmospheric conditions and blah blah blah. Imagine my intense irritation when, on the first possible evening, I had my camera to my eye, and missed it, AND JEREMY SAW IT. Aaaarghh!) I learned my lesson the next night though, and was privileged to see, for a fraction of a second, the most beautiful green.


Our way home, on a very beautiful and warm day, took us through Lacock, where, to Kit's excitement, part of Harry Potter had been filmed. The Cloisters, and the rest of the Abbey, are indeed fascinating, but the item that caught my eye was the Monastic Drain.

What?

Over halfway through

. . . and we are all EXHAUSTED. This blimmin' weather means that, rather than enjoy the beach, we are dashing from pillar to post having a LOT of adventures. This being Cornwall, of course there are a lot of lovely things to do.

J and I particularly enjoyed the chance to visit Trerice again - for both of us it is the most perfect house, and we indulge in wild fantasies of what it would be like to live there. This visit I even mapped out the route the children would take to the nearest school, and d'ye know, it all looks perfectly do-able. Now all we need to do is find the £5mill MINIMUM that the NT would ask, and you can all come visit for as long as you like.

The gardens at Trevarno were pretty spectacular, particularly as Management had mapped out a canny quiz for the children, which drew them happily around a fairly long walk. (And the playground at the end was very satisfactory too.) I found the bit about how they came to do it pretty astounding too.

And what with the hotel having a small but perfectly formed indoor pool, which we have visited almost every day, and four times as many stairs as our own home, (and exactly as many lifts!) we are all plumb tuckered out by the end of the day.

And guess what? The weather looks set to brighten up the day before we leave.

We're off. See you in August.

The lilies Marie brought me last weekendAnd a card Julia got for her birthday.

From our Moscow Correspondent

. . . and I quote,

What a beauty* (your blog), and the car's not bad either. I love the dancing children's photos on the front page.

It is extremely hot here in Moscow today, about 29 degrees, there is no air conditioning in the office and I had to walk back to my apartment this morning on discovering I had left the keys to a cupboard in my jacket pocket.

Meeting this afternoon probably until late. . . . I shall try and get out on Thursday rather than Friday. . . . I'll let you know.

*my bold, italics and colour.

Poor man - and he says Moscow is horrible too. I bet he's wishing that he had been chucked out along with the diplomats, but hey - he's there with an oil company, and the Russians aren't even remotely that capable of shooting themselves in the foot. (He says he actually wanted to post a comment, but as his screen is displaying in Cyrillic, he has no idea what he is doing. No smart remarks, please.)

We had a bit of a facer last week, in the 14 seconds Jeremy was home in between foreign trips, when he rang our holiday hotel to check on the status of something-or-other, and told them we were booked in from the 28th July to 8th August. 'Ho no sir', they said, 'we have you down from the 21st to the 1st'.

Argh.

Just as well we phoned, eh?

As our plan had been to put the children in the car at 5:00 on the morning, to avoid the horrendous traffic, this would now give Jeremy about four hours in between getting home and setting out on a five hour car journey. And in that time he would have had to unpack, put a wash on, pack, load the car, and take the MLC** for a spin (he only had it a few hours before he had to leave the country for days. Ha ha ha ha ha!).

So, unless he gets home a day early, we will leave on the Sunday morning, and maybe he will have had time for several spins.

**Mid Life Crisis

'I've booked a test drive' he said. 'Do you want to come?' As 'appens I was busy, and came home to find THIS on my doorstep.

'I didn't think you'd mind' he said. 'It's an Audi after all.'

How well he knows me.









In other news - my sister took Ma into A&E late last night, with a suspected heart attack. Turns out it was just a hiatus hernia. She came out in time to cook us lunch, then went back in again to have more tests tomorrrow. What some people will do to gain attention.

And Sid, who is very happy with MUH being for MUMMY! and kicking KUH being for KIT! isn't quite getting why we tell her that YUH is for 'lellow'. Where's the logic in that?

What a way to start the week

Stuck in a lift. With two small children. With a third due back home and me not there. And a chicken simmering on the hob. Oh yes, and one of the small children needing to pee.

The Infant School has an outside lift for wheelchair access. (It is so out of the way and round the bend and at the end of a very twisty path that I don't know quite how wheelchairs are supposed to get there at all. But once they do, There Is A Lift.) It's a platform secured in a steel case, and works by keeping the button pressed. Quite hard work for a small child. Not to mention boring. But rather than using the flight of six steps to leave the school premises, over the last couple of weeks we, at the request of Beri, have taken to using this lift. And yesterday . . .

We called the lift, got in, held the Down button, and waited for the 'click' of the releasing door. In vain. The Up button worked fine, but once more, no 'click'. Down again, and up, and panic was definitely setting in. Did I mention that this lift was a tiny bit out-of-the-way? And that the playgound was now fairly empty? And that Beri was now introducing his bladder as a legitimate topic of conversation? It was beginning to look like the plot of an early Stephen King novel. Think 'Cujo' without the dog. Think 'Christine' without the car. Better yet, think 'Panic Room' with me as Jodie Foster. Oh c'mon! You are just not trying hard enough!

But I digress.

Luckily Vash (who has the most beautiful twin girls in Beri's class) passed, and after she had stopped laughing, went off to the school office, and we were deluged by giggling women, pointing out that there were no keys in the lift lock (thanks) that we may have to call the school handyman who had gone home (thanks again) and that the emergency key didn't look like it actually fitted the lock (thanks once more).

Of course the key eventually fitted, we effected egress and scuttled off, without even a proper (if somewhat ironic) thank-you because of the chicken and the third child. Did I mention one of the giggling women was the headmistress? That poor boy is doomed. Doomed I tell you. Forever, Mrs Peal will identify him as the boy with the mother who broke the lift.

UPDATE. My friend Marie, who taught for many many many years, (and was very recently awarded her PhD, hooray!) reckons that if Mrs Peal ever reads this, she might well feel that I am calling into question her professional detachment, and that OF COURSE her opinion of my younger son will be based solely on his performance and deportment at school, and not on spurious consideration of his inept family, and that she will be offended at the implication that she is swayed by such minor concerns. I'd like to take this opportunity to say NO-OOOO-O-OO-O! Mrs Peal's professional detachment is everything it should be, please like him, please, and anyway he takes far more after his father than me, in fact my parenthood of him has been called into question (not only be me) so that's all right then.

Isn't it?

Sports Day's On. No, it's not. Oh wait, yes it is . . .

As the weather here has been, for the last two months, ABSOLUTE RUBBISH, Sports Day has been cancelled, rescheduled, rescheduled again, cancelled and rescheduled.

TIMES THREE.

Playgroup, Infant School and Junior School. Oh oh oh, not forgetting the Triathlon that the Juniors are doing AS WELL as the blimmin' Sports Day. Argh.

Well phew for us, because one of those events has finally been crossed off the list. (Only three to go. Unless they are cancelled of course. And not rescheduled. Argh again.) Sid had her Sports Day - or to be more accurate, her Sports Half-Hour With A Break For Rain. It was SO CUTE! All these two- and three-year olds, with the dimmest grasp of what they were doing, some fatally distracted by Mummy, others having to be led along the race track by the hand, and all of them so excited by whatever it was they thought they were doing.

There was a Running race, a Pairs race, an Egg-and-Spoon race, a Shopping race, and a Motorbike race. Sid took the Egg-and-Spoon so carefully that she barely appeared to be moving at all, and by the time the others had finished she was practically in a different time zone.

But she won the Shopping race. By streets.

Uncle John

OK, so it's not tomorrow, but here's Uncle John anyway. He is one John Fortey, who in 1458 had bequeathed £300 to finish building the church. (Jeremy and I reckon that's about 1.5 to 2 million quid these days. Yikes.)

'Fortey' was Ma's mother's maiden name, and a hitherto undiscovered english cousin had done the genealogy.

So we dropped by St Peter and St Paul in Northleach to pay our respects.

And found Christ Risen.

Time Off for Good Behaviour a deux

The children ignored our going. Off we went, Jeremy and I, into the sunset, he with the maps, the paperwork, the extra-quick-drying trousers, and The Boots That Saw Him Through Ten Weeks In Greenland, and me with far too few pairs of socks.

Sadly, no twinkly lights - - - - - - - but oh, the magazines! And the his'n'hers hangers!

A delicious supper (by delicious, I mean someone else made it, brought it to me, and took the plates away when I was done. And also, extra points for actually being delicious.), a comfy bed, a warm husband . . .

On our seven-mile walk on Saturday we passed the Augean Stables,

bumped into three sisters (Valkyrie? There's a name due for a comeback, dontcha think?)

and nothing happened.

Discovered the ur-sweetshop, and bought some socks. I suspect, with socks like these on offer, it wouldn't have mattered how many pairs of socks I had brought with me.

I'm going to stop this post here, because managing all these pictures is proving EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING. I'll tell you about Uncle John tomorrow.

Jeremy Has A Job

Yay! And it only starts in September, so he has the next two months off. Well, he is expecting to do a bit of work here and there, but otherwise . . . Paint! Polyfilla! Chisels! Screwdrivers! More Paint! And yay again - no more orange corridor. Hello bathroom light pull. Hello skirting boards. A TIDY GARAGE!

It's a weight off all our minds.

In the mean time, we are getting ready for out weekend away - we are off to The Lamb in Burford tonight, and back on Sunday afternoon. The children are so self sufficient these days - all I need to do is leave enough cereal for three days worth of meals, and Kit can toast bagels. They will have the telly, and we will call each night at bedtime.






NO OF COURSE NOT! Julia and Ma will be standing in loco parentis, and the children are as excited as all-get-out about spending the night at Aunt Julia's.

And look what passes for weeds here in St Giles! They spring up unbidden everywhere, in all shapes and shades. Papaver Somniferum - a little Golden Triangle all of my very own.

Oh oh and and and and! This is a slightly odd time to be blogging, I know. I really should be shopping (we might be leaving our brood in the hands of minders for the weekend, but the minders are strangely helpless when it comes to thinking what to feed the little darlings. So I have to provide a bag of food) but Jeremy lost my credit cards. Yeah! O know! It's normally me, and I have to find them while J gets Very Antsy Indeed. Oh how he hates it when I can't find my cards, even though I know they are just temporarily mislaid, rather than in the hands of some total deadbeat crim who is, even as J panics, running up large bills at the Jaguar dealership, the big fat gold jewellery shop and the off licence.

LATER - As I really did need to get the shopping done, he gave me his card, and carried on searching (to avail, thank goodness). I confined my shopping to Waitrose rather than the Jaguar dealership, the big fat gold jewellery shop and the off licence.

The Marmalade Cat

Julia had a great big do at her livery yard on Sunday. 64 riders (not all at once!) doing their thing for points and rosettes. It's quite a kerfuffle, with people and horse boxes and horses all hither and yon, and because it's affiliated it is taken VERY seriously. (No, I've no idea what 'affiliated' means here. Go ask Julia if you're that interested.)

Now, Orlando does love himself a bit of kerfuffle, and likes nothing better than to get right in the middle of whatever meleé offers itself, but small cats and large horse hooves do not make a happy combination, so Ma elected to keep him locked in the house for the whole day. Sure, he'd end up seriously cross, but more-or-less sound of body.

Halfway through the day, Julia knocked on Ma's door asking where Orlando was. It seems one of the more anxious contestants (it would be, wouldn't it. This was never going to happen to Miss Super-confident, was it?) was on the verge of tears because, during her performance, having erred twice already, she made her third and most calamitous mistake because a small but vivid streak of ginger zipped across the riding school, dug itself a hole and crapped in the corner.



And we were worried about Orlando?

ps this story isn't nearly as funny as the one about Rose at the end of this post, but it's the best I can do.

Damn and Blast

Isn't this a dinky little camera? (The one on the RIGHT. The other one's my mobile, for scale. Pay attention.) It has lots and lots of megapixels, an startlingly fast reaction time, a very easy PC interface and fits snugly into my hand. It is also a relatively recent model, so the budget may well have yelped a little.

And in exchange? My residence on the moral high ground, and no crowing. Not any more, ever.

What the hell - I was getting altitude sickness all the way up there anyway, and crowing makes my throat sore.

Happy Anniversary.

I dunno - what day is it today?

The big hoot in our family is How Mummy Can Never Remember The Date Of Her Own Wedding Anniversary. Oh how we laugh.

It is true, for the first few years of our marriage July rang a faint bell, but the years go by, new synapse paths become well-trodden, and the expression 'June Bride' takes on a more pertinent significance. And now, many years of married bliss later, actually I can give you the actual date two times out of three.

Ha ha, I thought, I'm going to be that prepared this year! (Well, not to the extent of going to any actual effort, you understand.) I happened to be passing our local Wine and Vinegar emporium, a total necessity for any small village high street, and splurged on a bottle of whiskey. (It's smarter than it sounds. The whiskey comes in casks, and is hand-decanted into the fancy bottle of your choice. So there.) I also arranged for Ma to baby-sit tonight, rather than Saturday. (Pirates of the Karabiner, since you ask. Well, only if you ask Sid.) I was SO set to go into the whole 'Oh no! I forgot! Oh well, maybe you'd better just have this lovely bottle of hand-decanted whiskey I just happen to have lying around! Oh darling, what a lovely present! And so expensive!' routine. I was looking forward to it.

So this morning, in the two seconds we coincided in the hall between him dropping Beri off and me taking Sid out the door, Jeremy, wild, wet, rumpled and aghast, and clearly having only just remembered himself, asks me if I know what day it is. In the remaining 0.75 seconds, I belt upstairs, drag the bottle from its hiding place, shove it into his startled hands and head out the door play-group-wards.

Not even time for a triumphant cackle. That hubris, it'll get you every time.

UPDATE: Later That Same Day. Jeremy at a loss as to what to get me (WHY?) but actually, giving me the moral high ground, and the opportunity to crow about this FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES, is gift enough.

Saraband

*sigh*

I suppose it had to happen. My adorable daughter rushing in, and presenting me - ME! - with a bouquet of fresh flowers, individually chosen and tastefully arranged. Aah. Until I notice that it contains not only daisies, but Rose Campion. My beautiful Lychnis Coronaria, decimated. Decimated, I tell you. (Decimated. I counted.) How to tell her that
a) it was so thoughtful to give me flowers,
b) some garden flowers are for picking AND SOME ARE NOT and
c) Never Never Pick Anything From The Garden Without Mummy's Express Permission.

_____________________________________________

We seemed to have reached another tipping point in the way our family functions. Last Sunday, after church, it took me a while to realise that I was cooking lunch, Jeremy was off doing something manly, and the three children were - well, amusing themselves. Not bugging us. Playing some game, contentedly, the three of them together. A picture-perfect family. Made you wonder where on earth the 'Hello' photographers were when you needed them.

Kit was a total and utter star yesterday, as I took the three down for their first real visit to the dentist. Both Beri and Sid had expressed the strongest reservations about the whole procedure, but when they saw Kit calmly getting into The Chair, being raised and tipped back, (WOW!) opening his mouth and having his teeth counted, WITHOUT A MURMUR, they both followed suit. Very cheerfully. I could kiss him. He just won't hold still.

Chinese Whispers

We spent the weekend in Essex - friends of Jeremy's celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary with a garden party. A memorable party, in that it was quiet quiet. While there was lots of chatting going on, at least half of the 100-ish guest were deaf, and signed. The children were fascinated, having enough memories of the early signing they did, to see it in action. And they were able to thank our hostess appropriately!

There were quite a number of children too, and their entertainment was spectacular. Ling usually works in much bigger venues, but as she is a friend of the family, found herself strutting her stuff in a back garden. The children were captivated. (And me too.)

And *big sigh* another source of ensorcellment was a blimmin' chocolate fountain. Not that I have anything agin these calorie bombs per se, but not only could we not get the children away from it, they all ended up with long chocolate streaks down their fronts. Which would have been fine if they were naked. As I licked their faces clean (mine children. Not anyone else's.) chests wouldn't have posed a problem, but as it is I have two bucket loads of clothes soaking in some environmentally hideous solution in the hopes that they will wash. Also one of my favourite shirts, because some little beggar wanted a cuddle before I had a chance to appreciate the extent of their chocolateyness. Bah.

I forgot . . .

We also went to the Science Museum on Saturday. We didn't get much past the Space Flight hall, which is new since our last visit. Kit loved the rockets, and Beri and Sid loved running around yelling. My personal favourite were the Astronaut Nappies. I kid you not.

Finally, I found some hard information on how astronauts 'go' in space. Peeing, naturally, is the easy one - hose, airlock, and whoosh, outer space gets a nitrogen boost. If only it were a compost heap. The 'other' involved a recognizably loo-shaped apparatus, with the addition of a bar to fix across the thighs. Without this bar, the poor astronaut would find himself in the middle of a most unfortunate demonstration of Newton's Third Law of Motion - the one that states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite . . . - you get my drift. The 'results' would then be parcelled up, taken back to Earth and analyzed. Eeuw.

Only one more thing to tell you (thank goodness - otherwise I will run out of single quote marks!). What about EVA, I hear you ask? (Extra-Vehicular Activity. Go and read some science fiction THIS MINUTE.) Inadvisable to get caught short in a space-suit, dontcha think? SO, they donned nappies. Big, heavy-duty, man-nappies. Eeuw, and eeuw again. Honestly, they looked like proper washable nappies only in a very manly terracotta colour. I suspect, however, that the astronauts didn't spend their leisure time scraping (and parcelling up) and rinsing and washing and re-using.

In another part of the museum, Jeremy took the boys to see dinosaurs in 3D in the Imax, while Sid and I got to see Bob the Builder. Teresa, where were you when I need you!

Teresa also asked why I never posted pictures of Kit. Here's why: the wretched boy took them into town with him and wore them most of the time. People were pointing. And giggling. But look what he built - isn't it splendid.

Half Term - so last week

Boo hoo, half term is over. And I'm not even the one who has to go back to school! But oy vey, the lunch boxes, the PE kit, the homework (homework! HA!), the yelling - gah.

Oh oh oh HOMEWORK! At the beginning of the week, Kit did his Maths homework like a model student. We were so proud - no pressure for the rest of the hols, an angelically conscientious child - our just reward for being fantastic parents. Then, last night - yeah, Sunday night, 7:30, half an hour before bedtime and the OFFICIAL END OF HALF TERM, I get a call from another mum.

OTHER MUM:     My daughter has just told me about this project homework she has to do, and she says Kit knows what to do.

ME:                         KIT!

(Better than Kit's best friend Toby, who announced that he had this homework to do at 7:30 this morning.)

If only I didn't remember doing the exact same thing to my parents when I was Kit's age.

Zip-e-dee-doo-dah!

Jeremy's booked my ticket to South Africa, hooray hooray! I'm so excited. It's six whole months away, so I will have time to get quite jaded and blasé, but in the meantime - Yippee!

In other news, Beri wept and howled when he spilt his (really quite big) bottle of bubble mixture. I wept and howled when I discovered the sticky mess not on the patio as I first assumed, but On The Kitchen Floor. Annoying on how many levels? Still, it looked jolly good as Jeremy watched me being a good housewife mopping the floor, with no idea of why I was doing it.

Bugger. I think he reads this.

Oh and and and! Kit's halfterm homework required himn to investigate wildlife habitats - the sorts of creatures who inhabit soil, and leaf mould, and other varieties of filth. I know, I know, it's not filth - it's good healthy stuff. But when he brings a bucketload of said stuff into the kitchen and tips it out onto the kitchen table, and then stirs it around looking for wildlife, then it's filth.

Ha ha ha ha I win!

Look at my lovely beanpoles! You could argue that's they are the happy resolution to a series of disasters, but I prefer to think of them as the culmination of a series of horticultural experiment.

Having missed the window of opportunity for planting seeds, I caved and bought baby plants of sugarsnap peas and french beans. (And got very annoyed at having to dispose of the expanded polystyrene containers. Bah.) Knowing that these legumes climb, I also bought very fancy one metre high poles for them to climb.

Well. My mother informed me, luckily before I had done any planting, that the beans would grow to six foot, and the peas would only reach 18 inches. She recommended bamboo poles, which she has, and very charming and rustic they look too. So off I went, complaining children in tow (WHAT! The Garden Centre AGAIN!) and found these completely wonderful spirally jobs. Six quid for a pack of three, but just how beautiful are they! (And a pack of six very fancy 50 cm metre high poles for the peas.)

When my mother heard how much I had paid for these things of beauty and joys forever, she was aghast. Aghast, I tell you. 'WHAT!' she wailed. 'But that's waht my bamboo poles cost!'

Half Term

Phew. We can all stop for a bit. This education lark doesn't half take it out of the children, and we are all glad of the break. Of course, what with the weather being so lovely last week and all, it's going to spend most of our week off raining, but hey - that's what TV is for.

I jest, of course. The children have playdates and parties, and Beri in particular is very much looking forward to our trip next Thursday to visit the Science Museum.

Jeremy abandons us for the day tomorrow to attend his godson's confirmation in our old university city, Exeter. I know it'll be a thrash, there and back in one day, but I quite envy him the trip - he will get to spend time with old friends, and maybe find time to re-visit old haunts.


Overheard during one of those fantastic games they play when all three of them are getting on extremely well, those games which arise totally spontaneously around 7:30 of an evening, seconds after I have bellowed 'Right! Time to go upstairs!'

KIT: Beri, do you want to be the Flying Chicken Man?

Look what I can do!

Sid at 11 months, Christmas chez Jane and Ian.

Time Off for Good Behaviour

It's looking distictly probable that my sister and I will go to South Africa for my cousin's (third) wedding at the end of November. (YEEEEE-HAH!) It's in Johannesburg, where I grew up, so while there is little there to interest first-time visitors (like Jeremy and the children) I will get to revisit my old house, my old school and my old church, as well as spending lots of time with family I haven't seen for years. It's a quietly dizzying prospect.

(Blimey. I started this post hours ago, and got side-tracked by the state of my keyboard. Because the computer is in the kitchen, it gets REALLY GRUBBY. So, starting at the right hand side, I remove each individual key, give it a spit and polish, scrape out the gunk underneath it, and press the key back into place. Resulting in long rows of #################################### and [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ and ////////////////////////////////////////////, which I have to delete. And all this time I am not getting on with posting. Bit like the Forth Bridge - when I finally get all the way over to the left hand side, I have to start all over again. Ugh.)

This last weekend has been party, party, party. Two children's parties on Saturday, one for Kit and one for Sid (Beri managed to wangle places on both. How does the boy do it.) and a christening on Sunday. The christening of Amelie Iris Dickenson. I was tickled to find, in the garden centre, a new Nemesia called 'Amelie', and a beautiful reticulated purple Iris. Not too often a baby girl gets pot plants for her christening, I'll wager.

Also discussions between Jeremy and me about our weeks ahead. He is expecting a job offer he doesn't really want, but he may well want a different post within the company, so we have been discussing possible strategies to achieve that. Me - well, I will no longer be shopping at Sainsburys, and will start shopping at Waitrose. Golly.

Damn and Blast

The whole idea is that, with this Firewire card, I can upload footage from the video camera and post it here, so you can see - oh I dunno, Kit playing his guitar, Beri going off on one or Sid being cute.

One whole evening later, I established that the tape I was attempting to upload was faulty, and the process worked perfectly with another tape. 11 o'clock is also a fine time to discover that for a one-hour tape the process lasts well over two hours. Groan.

But we have footage! On the computer, readily viewable in Windows Movie Maker! Two year old footage, but hey! Footage!

Lovely, lovely footage. Sid less than a year old, Beri at two and a half SO CUTE, I wallowed in nostalgia. Until I came to wondering which bits to post. And then, oh boy did I see the stuff with a different eye.

Where do I start? How about the dodginess of the lighting? The bad, bad, BAD composition? The AWFUL commentary? (Embarrassingly revealing how crap our parenting skillls were. WERE, I say.)

Still and all, I felt that ten seconds of a fat, naked, hairless Sid drooling over some Geomag would do as an entertaining enough experiment.

I dunno - maybe if I had more than ten minutes in a row I might have got to understand Movie Maker a little better. Or at all. I got precisely nowhere. So that is why, instead of some amusing anecdote from our action-packed weekend, all family-oriented and FUN, you are reading a RANT.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Wait a mo . . .

Blimey - a whole week with nothing to report. The babies are well over their pox and back at school, Kit has been invited to represent his school in a rugby tournament (tomorrow, Jeremy will stay there with him, and the weather report is really bad) and the local Football Club want to enclose half one of our big green spaces for a football field.

Oh yes! I've just remembered that, for the last couple of weeks, we have had what should be a functioning Firewire card in this PC! Hang on . . .

All sorted

The man, who lives in Corby, had a call-out to Birmingham, 61 miles and 1 hour 10 minutes away. From Birmingham he came to Chalfont St Giles, 100 miles and 1 hour 50 minutes away. Then, starting at 3 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, he travelled from Chalfont St Giles to Corby, listed by the AA as 82 miles, 1 hour 45 minutes. On a Friday afternoon? I don't think so.

At least four hours on his day, and all to fix our door. He had no idea how mother had done what she did - it should have been impossible. Well, there is one to tell his grand-kids.

Otherwise, Jeremy came home safe and tired, just in time for me to dash out to a fundraising party filled with friends and pink champagne. Lisa, Sue and Nikki will be doing the Moonwalk, and rather than dish out yet another request for sponsorship, held a wonderful party with a bar (serving everything pink), a raffle and an auction of promises. The evening raised over £2,000.

And I finally got my leeks, carrots, two sorts of marigold, reticulated irises and my Belamcanda lilies planted. In spite of the children helping.

A new ventilation system, hooray!

My mother babysat last night, so I could go to Book Club. (Bee Season, since you ask.) I was flying around like a mad thing printing out reading guides, brushing children's teeth, taking photos (I'll tell you about that another time) and panicking because my lift was arriving NOW when Mother Broke The Door.

*sigh*

The rear patio door, which is very up-to-the-minute, hermetically draught-proof and features a veritable host of safety features closes left side first, then right. Each door is locked by turning the handle up. No fuss, no muss.

A-HA! But back when my folks had their up-to-the-minute, hermetically draught-proof and featuring a veritable host of safety features patio doors installed, the door lock mechanism hadn't been invented yet. Oh no, you had to slide a metal tongue up the inside edge of the door into the jamb. Basically a fancy, countersunk bolt. Which is what my mother did - she slid the locking plate BY HAND. On the right-hand door.

Can I get it down again? Can I hell.

To the children's over-arching exitement, I dragged Peter (the bloke giving me a lift. Pay attention.) inside, thinking that with his (tall, blond, policeman) muscles he would put a lot more wellie behind the fork which was my chosen tool of attack. I mean door-mending. Obviously. Several barked knuckles later, and the entire contents of my toolbox dismissed as inadequate, we left.

When I got back, Mother had bandaged the door. Bless her, the only thing she could find to secure the flapping left hand door was Sid's bandage. (Which is her current toy of choice. Thank goodness she has the memory span of a goldfish with ADD.) (Sid, not my mother.) (Although . . .)

But there is still a gaping gap instead of a closed door, and in spite of keeping the curtains over the door drawn, (and therefore having to keep the kitchen lights on) it's getting pretty chilly in here. The door company won't come out until tomorrow afternoon - what's the betting they will leave five minutes before Jeremy gets back, and I will have had to write them a FAT CHEQUE for doing something Jeremy could have done in his sleep.