Start the year as you mean to go on... or not

New Year's evening in the Stroppy household. The Boy is in bed and looking bothered.

"Mummy, I've got a bad feeling about tomorrow. I think you checked wrong and there's no school". Note that most children would think the prospect of no school gave a good feeling, though thinking about it the idea of standing in the cold outside a closed breakfast club doesn't sound so appealing so I can see his point.

Quick dash to the fridge weher the letter from the school with the term dates is  on display, held by a superstrong red magnet. Much cursing ensues.

The Boy's father saved the day, volunteering the babysitting services of his wife who happens to be on maternity leave, 3 cheers for the pregnant one.

I guess I'm on track for the clueless mother of a school age child for 2007 and judging by the undistured look on The Boy's face when being driven around the South Circular in his jammas my child pretty much takes it for granted.

Happy New Year. 

 
2.1.07 17:52


Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

What better for a birthday outing than the British seaside experience? So on Saturday The Boy and My Favourite Canuck indulged me and we took the train to sunny Brighton for the day.

How did we do for authenticity? Not bad I thought.

  • Rain - check
  • fish and chips - check, though we probably failed by not eating it in the bus shelter while staring at the rain and having our fish chips and mushy peas sitting down at a formica table and it was rather nice indeed.
  • amusements - check, complete with feeding 2p coins from a plastic cup into the penny pusher (I am easily amused) and a game of whack a croc (no air hockey though disapointingly). The Boy and MFC managed to persuade me to go for a spin on the waltzer and derived much amusement from my terror (I don't *do* rides I prefer to watch other people enjoy them, the combination of sounds, colours, lights and expressive faces provides more entertainment in my book than trying in vain to persuade my body that I am not about to die).
  • walk on the promenade and the beach when the rain stopped for a bit - check
  • sticks of rock - check

and some nice extras thrown in: getting a table on the train, the joy of observing behaviour scattier than mine (deserves an entry of its own), turtle feeding time, sea horses, sharks, watching the waves crashing, giggling at pantomine posters.

 

 

 
8.1.07 20:40


Quiz

You are a grown up (not me for once, even *I* am not *that* scatty). It's feeding time in the dogfish tank You have just purchased a small cup of bait to join in the feeding.

Do you:

  1. Do as the Sealife Centre employee and the children did and take the bait in your hand and chuck it/scatter it?
  2. decide to hand feed a member of he shark family by dangling the chunk of bait in the water with fingers that smell attractively of fish blood and guts?

In the event of your prefered option being 2 for reasons that defy logic and you happen to get bitten do you then:

  1. go to the nearest toilet and thoroughly wash and dry the cuts and discretely ask if the centre have antisceptic and a plaster you can have and maybe check the bite is not venomous/particularly prone to infection?
  2. draw other visitor's attention to your plight, complain bitterly to a very young and incredulous employee and protest "I didn't know they bite"?

If once again you choose option 2, think yourself very lucky the young woman was rather professional and replied "pretty much everything bites and dogfish *do* belong to the shark family" rather than just the "DUH!" we were all thinking quite loudly.

Somewhere a H&S executive shakes his head and weeps knowing he will unjustly be blamed when a "don't stick your hand in the shark tank" is glued in on the side of the aquarium to avoid further incidents, obscuring part of the view.
9.1.07 00:58


Volume

The pictures in the flickr set do not really do it justice, especially since it is missing the sound and the movement of colour and 2D renders it all a bit flat. So if you are around South Kensington before the 28th of January and you have a few minutes to kill it is worth popping into the V&A and to see Volume having a go at activating the columns of leds.

Volume 3

 
14.1.07 23:07


choosing the path more travelled

Yes... I know, it's a meme (via Chasing Daisy)... so what? Here we go.

1. Elaborate on your default icon.
A cow sticking its tongue out, it was a present from PeterJ .

2. What’s your current relationship status?
Complicated. Very much loved up but with a few logistical issues.

3. Ever have a near-death experience?
Fortunately no.

4. Name an obvious quality you have.
Pass.

5. What’s the name of the song that’s stuck in your head right now?
Jean Louis Aubert's "On Aime (Comme on a été aimé ) "... "on n'apprend pas un sentiment, même si on veut faire autrement, on aime comme on a été aimé" and " On dit les chiens ne font pas des chats et que l'on n'est que ce qu'on connait, qu'on désire ce qu'on ne connait pas, un autre chien, un autre chat", dripping in sappyness but not minding the earwig at all and even considering playing it again. You can blame my cousin for making Telephone a fixture of the soundrack to my teenage years.

6. Name a celebrity you would marry.
I didn't know we were playing "kill, s**g, marry", if we are, depends who I drew and whose name is still in the hat I suppose.

7. Who will cut and paste this first?
No idea!

8. Has anyone ever said you look like a celebrity?
I lhave been told I laugh like Mutley from wacky racers, does that count?

9. Do you wear a watch? What kind?
A swatch with cherries on the strap that My Favourite Canuck asked Santa to bring me for christmas.

10. Do you have anything pierced?
Ears, once each.

11. Do you have any tattoos?
No. I like them on other people but have not found a picture I like enough to have it permanently on my person.

12. Do you like pain?
Nah.

13. Do you like to shop?
I am not a natural born shopper, though I enjoy window shopping in the evening when the streets are almost empty and I can spend hours choosing books or music.

14. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
Some plain yoghurt from the cornershop. I bought it to strain it as I want to have another go at the no knead bread recipe and I am hoping that replacing the water with whey will improve the way it keeps and the texture.

15. What was the last thing you paid for with your credit card?

I can't remember, probably my 1-6 travelcard on Friday.

16. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
The helpdesk at blueyonder to reset the password of the email account so I could check if I have received anything appart from spam since the laptop crashed, he was a lovely chap, very helpful, and the answer is no, so far it's pretty much all been spam.

17. What is on your desktop background?
A picture of The Boy sitting on my sitter's sofa feeding my nephew while my niece is cuddling up to him. It has been heavily photoshop to look like a bad painting (awwww).

18. What is the background on your cell phone?
A picture of the lunday lunch and a pint of beer at my local pub.

19. What was the last movie you watched?
I can't remember the last one I watched in full, if 2/3 of the way through counts I think it was The 51st State .

20. What was the last book you read?
Currently reading Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood (the French translation of it).

 
16.1.07 00:27


Perfect with a cup of tea

Having visitors is fun. Having visitors from overseas stay over is even better because they come bearing gifts. I have been showered with miniature peanut butter cups and with itsy bitsy little ones and I am now a Trader Joe's convert, way nicer than reese's (the pb is less grainy and the slab of chocolate on teh top part of the cup is slightly thicker) although I thhink I need to sample a few more of each, just to make sure.

They are not just for scoffing you know, they have artistic and educational value, yessir. The proof? The Boy incorporated them in his homework by adding a few of the foil wrapped ones to his still life.

 
22.1.07 18:37


Snow!

 

It was a case of blink and it's melted but The Boy seems to have made the most of it (as seen above holding his first second snowball of the day in his *aheum, bad, bad mummy* gloveless hand on his way to brekkie club.

I t had all gone by the time we walked home tonight but the excitement it brought was still going strong.

"We had a snow fight at first break, it was an extra long break and we were allowed on the field, at the begining of break it was called operation snowstorm, and at the end of break it was called operation slush puppie".
24.1.07 18:58


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