BLUE CHEESECAKE

I had forgotten this phase of childhood until recently when Charlotte entered it. Marcel skipped it but Lots is much more of a chemist than Marcel. I'd define it as the foodcolouring phase, where nothing can be cooked or baked without adding some hideous shade too vivid to be found on the rainbow. Last week we had a blue cheesecake, yesterday I had to negotiate her out of dyeing a carrot cake green - we compromised on green lemon and mascarpone icing. I remember it from my own childhood too. I have recollections of Derek's horror when I made blue scrambled egg for breakfast once... In my memory I was older than eight though - maybe the chemist phase is quite a long-lived one...

HOME-GROWN POTATOES

When I was a small child my grandparents lived in a little flat with a shared garden. As there were only 2 storeys, one neighbour owned the back garden, the other the front. My grandparents had the back. Granny grew rhubarb and little white and lilac alpine flowers, Gramps grew cabbage, lettuce and potatoes. I remember digging out potatoes with him. They seemed to taste unlike any other potatoes in the world - buttery and delicious - so good I almost wanted to eat them raw from the ground still with the dirt on. I wonder why it never occurred to me to grow vegetables when I was living with André. I grew tomatoes once in a little plastic greenhouse but we never made a little kitchen garden. Thomas, on the other hand, thinks almost everything in a garden should be edible and last week we had our very first home-grown potatoes. They were almost as good as my old Gramps's.

GREENOCK TOWN HALL

Town hall
Originally uploaded by jimmy2yk

Thomas and I were at a wedding on Saturday in Greenock town hall. We had received the invite (verbally a year ago) and officially about 6 weeks ago. I didn't think another thing about it.
Last weekend we were having dinner with my brother who works down that way so I asked directions to Greenock town hall. On Saturday we followed google's directions, Derek's directions and with a little help from this tall tower on the skyline we finally found Greenock town hall.
After the ceremony, which was held in one of the side rooms, we were shown into the main hall and it hit me. I've been here before. I looked at the coat of arms, the blue paint, the decorated ceilings, balconies and cornicing. It took me forever to place it. How could I know this room? As far as I could remember I had been to Greenock to visit André in the 80s when he had a student bedsit there, I had often visited my friend Shona in Forsyth street and I had been to my brother's lawyer's office in Union street. So how could I know the inside of the town hall?
Then it hit me - I had taken part in the Greenock festival in 1975, representing my school as a singer in the annual competition (Do they still run it?) It was suddenly clear as day. We'd left Crookfur primary in a single decker bus and driven to Greenock. I was wearing my favourite creamy white winter coat and had felt very important!
Oh, and did we win the singing contest? No, not by a mile but hey I still have it tucked away in my memory after 33 years so it can't have been all bad!

FIRST MEMORIES

My very first memories are of shoes. I wonder if that is because your eyes are closer to your feet as a small child?! I remember being 2 years old and wearing bright red sequined slippers. The next shoe memory is wandering about in my mum's powder blue and powder pink court shoes at 3, feeling like something out of a 1950s American dream. I wonder if Léon will remember these photos being taken when he is 40!

CHILDHOOD

IMG_0370
Originally uploaded by memeeps

Over the past 6 months it has been striking to me how much shorter childhood seems to be now compared to when Derek and I were children. I see that Marcel is behaving more and more like I did at around 14, (he is ten and a half). He sits looking fierce, watching TV ignoring me sometimes. He grumps and growls if I dare to suggest a walk round a nice park, though condescends to accompany me if I let him walk behind me, hidden in a hood, hooked up to an ipod. He sits on Bebo and giggles over sexual innuendo with his friends. But the thing that alerted me to the difference was the sudden realization that he seems to have skipped an essential part of male growing-up. This morning I remembered that Derek and his friends spent most of their summers probably from about 8-12 catching bees and wasps in jars and watching - in the name of science - whether they would fight to the death. This was something I particularly hated Derek doing - not because I was a great bee or wasp lover - I was simply afraid I'd be the one they'd sting should the escape his jar in an enraged state. Marcel has never once, to my knowledge, caught a wasp in a jar for the fun of torturing it. Wee boys just aren't wee boys any more.

ALWAYS EXPLAIN THE OBVIOUS TO YOUR KIDS!

Chameleon
Originally uploaded by ucumari

I was just discussing lizards with Thomas. Anna was reading a book about lizards, you see!

It reminded me of a traumatic experience from my childhood I thought I had already told him.

When I was 5 my school took me on a school trip to Calderpark zoo, Glasgow's zoo that closed down about 5 years ago. When I was 5 there were only 3 TV channels, no Discovery Channel. And our TV had been black and white most of my life. So I wasn't as clued up as today's kids - I knew cats, dogs, cows, horses, elephants and tigers but I wasn't au fait with chameleons, iguanas and the likes.
It was a rainy Glasgow day and most animals were hiding in their shelters. They took us into a building marked Reptile House. I didn't know what reptiles were and no one explained it to us. I was a sweet wee girlie girl. I skipped in excitedly hoping to see cute little fuzzy animals like tiger cubs or polar bear cubs only to come face to face with a large iguana. I jumped back in horror. What had happened to this poor animal's fur? I wondered. Just as had happened with the clowns, I was too shy to ask an adult why all these animals looked liked that, so I puzzled it through in my naive 5 year old head and concluded there had been a fire in the reptile house and all the animals had been burned. For weeks I woke up in a sweat every night as cute furry little animals burned in my dreams and turned into ugly chameleons. What an imagination!

I suggest maybe we should always explain things to little kids even if they see completely obvious to us adults! It could avert months of worry!

10 ISN'T WHAT IT WAS WHEN I WAS 10

Gordon Ramsay at Claridges
Originally uploaded by Catfunt

I definitely think kids are getting older quicker. When I was 10 I vaguely remember pretending to be one of Charlie's Angels and running around with a toy pistol solving bogus mysteries. Today Marcel and his schoolmate Robert were sitting in my living room discussing the new cookery series with Gordon Ramsay. They were discussing the immaturity of last night's restaurant owner, Rachel thirty-something, how she was a spoilt brat and how they wouldn't have helped bail her out financially, had they been her father! Amazing!

DEVELOPING ATTITUDE

I Like
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Léon has decided 2 is a milestone and seems to have found a tiny bit of temper, a tiny bit of cheek and a tiny bit of determination. Now, for those who remember 2002, I don't mean anything on the Charlotte scale - don't worry he hasn't got me booking into the funny farm yet. So far this week, I've had him burst into hysterical tears in the news agent's pointing at the sweetie counter and shouting over and over at the top of his lungs 'Chocolate for boys!'. I've also had Thomas hold his feet in the car and tell him firmly that he shouldn't kick the back of my seat while I am driving, only to have him reply looking fiercely down his nose at him: 'and Thomas don't touch Léon's shoes!'. I can hardly wait to see what the weekend holds...

SHRIEKS OF JOY!

shrieks of joy
Originally uploaded by phyl1

Remember when a trip to the park was this much fun? When do we lose that 2 year old love of life? :-(

OH GOD I'M ANCIENT!

I remember the early 70s well. Summers were hotter, I spent them skipping through the grass meadows and woodland on the far flung edge of Glasgow's furthest, deepest, darkest suburb: Newton Mearns, knowing that was more or less the end of civilisation till you hit Prestwick...shoulder-length golden hair, big brown eyes and usually sporting a Donny Osmond T-shirt, because as all little girls knew in the early 70s, he was the most gorgeous and wholesome thing on two legs. I turned on the BBC news tonight to have it thrust in my face that he, and most of the troop are pensioners, grandparents, too. Where did my sunny youth go? ;-)

OLD SCOTS

I've been toying with the idea for months that I should probably blog a Scottish word or two every few weeks just so my kids come to recognize them in years to come as many died out in active use in my grandparents' generation meaning I can understand them but my children will never hear them. Tonight when I blogged Cliff, I suddenly realized I couldn't bear to look a that hideous photo every time I logged on to my blog, so would have to post something, anything in fact, just so I didn't see it as the last posting! So maybe tonight would be a good night for a random Scottish word...hmmmm let me think...how about 'syne'. When I was little, sorry wee, after dinner on a Saturday night, we always had dinner with my grandparents, Matt and Jean, on Saturdays, Granny used to disappear into the tiny kitchenette, announcing she was 'away to syne the dishes'. I was puzzled. I understood that she was going to sign the plates and cups. Why on earth would anyone want to autograph the crockery? As usual, instead of asking I spent manys a long hour wondering what 'to syne' meant - I guess I was always destined for lexicography! Anyway for all you non-Scots out there - to syne means to wash or to rinse something, so now you know!

SHE SELLS SEASHELLS

I suddenly remembered today that when I was 7, during a gym lesson at primary school, my teacher called me to one side and asked me to repeat 'she sells seashells on the seashore' three times. I think because no one explained why I was being asked that at the time I had a vague notion the teacher had been abducted by aliens and replaced by someone who was perhaps mildly insane. The reason of course was that my two front teeth had been knocked out in an accident when I was two, you can almost see it on this photo of me at four, so I had a bit of a lisp in those days. Anyway I guess I must have failed the seashell test miserably as I was taken out of gym, told to dress and sent to a speech therapist for the next two years! But it worked - no lisp now.

CLOWNS AGAIN

What am I saying? - hid under my duvet! It was the 70s, I hid under a nylon, fuchsia pink candlewick ;-)

A MORBID FEAR OF... CLOWNS

When I was little, I was scared of clowns. I loathed clowns. Clowns didn't make me laugh - clowns gave me the creeps. They were terrifyingly sinister. I dreaded our annual outing to the Kelvinhall to the circus with the Cuthbert family because I knew not only would there be clowns but there would also be a revolting smell of animal sweat and pooh. Mum and dad didn't know I hated clowns, why should they - I never mentioned it! So because I was a good little girl they bought me a present. A painting about A3 in size of a sad-looking turquoise blue clown with a tear running down his face! Did I tell them it scared the living daylights out of me? Or did I lie awake under my duvet every night thinking: Can't sleep the clown will eat me! Crazy, screwed-up kid!
Donations kindly received towards all future psychiatrist bills, thanks. (Oh and for the record - I still don't like clowns - they are kind of on a par with monkeys (see posting: BLOG PROFILE) in my book).

RELIGION

Today a jeep zoomed past my car in the fast lane of the motorway. On the back was a large red sticker that read 'Jesus is my airbag'. I was brought up in a family with no religion. From my earliest childhood I remember being taught astronomy, science etc and although religion was a topic we learned about at school, we weren't taught what we could believe, more what others believed. Religion always belonged to other people. I was an outsider and always would be. I smiled to myself as the jeep recklessly overtook me and I thought: it must be nice to have an airbag like that, it must make life just a tiny bit easier :-)