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.