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.)