BAKED

Léon
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Now here's an interesting study. Given that when Baked is born, she'll have heard a lot of English, Danish, French, German and even a little Italian while in the womb, then this suggests she'll be so confused as to how to cry, she may just have to lie about quietly smiling for fear of getting it wrong!

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO PARENTING

At Rouken Glen Park
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I have noticed that parents, or at least the ones I know, seem to fall into two categories.
The first group seems to try to fill junior's every waking hour with fun activities and sports and their parent runs around like an exhausted taxi driver skipping meals to get them from A to B. In my experience, this type looks rather blank when you ask how junior ever fits in helping around the house.
The second type tries to give junior an insight into the life that will soon be upon him while still trying to make sure childhood isn't all boring chores.
I have several friends who roll their eyes in disbelief when they hear me ask the kids what they want to cook on their respective cooking nights, or when I ask Marcel if he's ironed his shirt for school. Tonight Lots made homemade meatballs in bolognese sauce and spaghetti, while Léon and Anna helped to peel the garlic and pick the parsley in the garden.
Of course my kids may bitch when they are older that their mother was a slave driver and their friends were all out learning tennis, but I would prefer to think that on their first night alone in their own flat they won't need to ring me, as one student friend did to me back in 1987 when we left home, to ask how you cook a cabbage because her parents had never taught her to cook...

A SWEET BILINGUAL ERROR

Dinosaur biscuits
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Last weekend the weather was so dire, we hardly set foot outside. To distract the kids I got Léon and Lots to make biscuits together. They used a Danish recipe. Thomas told them they had to roll the pastry out fairly thin and bake the biscuits for just five minutes. After five minutes I wasn't sure whether they were cooked through because I wasn't entirely sure they'd rolled them thinly enough. Go and ask Thomas what colour the biscuits should be, I told Pudge. He returned and proudly replied pinkish brown! Pinkish brown??? What the hell is pinkish brown, I wondered. I know Thomas never speaks to Léon in English so I translated in my head the words pink and brown into Danish and suddenly I understood. Danish for pink is lyserød, literally light red. I had expected Thomas's answer to be either light or dark brown. Of course Thomas must have said lysebrun (light brown) but when Pudge heard the lyse the only colour he knew beginning lyse was pink. He's obviously never analysed the meaning of the word lyserød and has simply taken it to mean pink, no more, no less. Sweet!

AUTUMN

Anna
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I quite like autumn really. From a colour point of view it is the prettiest season... when you are somewhere further south than Glasgow anyway.
Until I lived in France I didn't really notice autumn. In the Glasgow of my childhood autumn had always seemed to last just one weekend. The leaves turned brown and were blown off the trees in a gale within 24 hours, 48 at the most. In France I watched in amazement at 20 as autumn (a fairly warm and sunny season) lasted weeks and weeks.
Since then I have tried to be more aware of Scottish autumn.
You have to start watching out for it the second week in October, with the first weekend in November usually being the optimum photo weekend. This year must have been windier as the trees had already reached week two of November stage when I was in Glasgow today with my camera - bummer. But the colours on the ground were beautiful, even if I had missed the best tree stage. Anna wasn't too sure whether she liked her feet disappearing under the leaves and I think she'd have felt more comfortable kicking them about if she had been wearing boots.
The only unfortunate thing about autumn is the inevitability of winter following it.

POOR SUNFLOWERS

Sad sunflowers
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I think we planted the sunflowers a little too late in the season in our garden. We waited all summer for them to make an appearance and we'd nearly given up when suddenly in September they popped out to say hello. Unfortunately, the last week has seen some rain and gales that they don't seem to be coping with. Weighed down under the constant deluge, they've simply given up the will to live and have gone to sleep, resting their weary heads on our lawn, looking pretty much like the rest of us are feeling. I feel almost like I should rush out and wrap them up in scarves and hats to cheer them up!
I must remember to bring out the seeds earlier next year.

HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

Garlic press
Originally uploaded by bercired

I've had a long and stressful day and something was bound to be that final straw that broke the camel's back...
How hard can it be to make a bloody garlic press that you can actually use to press garlic? It isn't exactly building a spacecraft to circumnavigate Jupiter after all!
The one I had been using decided to disintegrate - every time I pressed a garlic clove, the garlic turned greyish blue probably loading the baby with lead poisoning or similar. Despite my meagre budget I decided to invest in a new model yesterday when I was in ASDA. They had one - similar to the one pictured. It didn't break the bank at a couple of pounds. I decided to make spaghetti tonight deliberately to try it. First issue - the little holes were flat - not sharp in any way so the garlic simply squashed against rather than through them causing an M8 at 8-15am type garlic traffic jam. I used my unremarkable strength to push the two handles together to force it through - and the result of course was a lump of garlic still in the press and two bent and touching handles. For crying out loud...