HOW QUICKLY THEY GROW

Today is Halloween. That is why baby Pudge is wearing a spider suit for his nursery Halloween party where he apparently enjoyed dooking for apples, a popular Scottish Halloween game, though the mind boggles as to how you make babies play it (and stay alive)! And Charlotte has been dressed as the ever-girlie Darth Vader all day, though, much to her disgust, the helmet wasn't allowed for school in case it frightened the younger kids (of which, of course, she is one!) - she even wanted to take along her voice changer! Marcel however isn't wearing a Halloween costume because apparently Halloween is 'for kids'. :-( So he turned up at school wearing only a T-shirt sporting a skeleton design.

FOOTACHE

I mentioned back in May that I tore some ligaments in my foot trying to eat a chocolate cheesecake (incidentally the worst chocolate cheesecake I have tasted in my life). It has been sore all year. Every time I stand after sitting, get up after lying etc it hurts for the first 3 or 4 steps and then just niggles at me gently most of the day. I have noticed however that since the end of autumn is starting to hit here in Glasgow - the weather has become wet, windy and cold, my foot is slowly becoming torture. Even sitting with it up on the couch is painful. It throbs all day from the ankle to the little toe on the left side and nothing eases it (although there is no visible injury and my foot even fits in my shoe now). How long is it going to take to recover from that 3rd class cheesecake? :-(

A DREAM

Last night I dreamt of New York - big whoop I hear you cry! When I was really there I only used surface transport because alone with a baby in a buggy going downstairs to the subway was a hassle and of course not only had I already seen the tube on TV often enough but I knew I wouldn't pass any fancy touristy buildings down there. So I left it on my 'to do next time' list. So last night in my dream I seemed to be alone, Pudgeless even this time in NY city. Thomas had lent me his DSLR and I was taking photos of vagrants etc in the subway tunnels and stations. In one station I got off a train and there were a pile of 6-8 horses asleep on the platform, their brown hair gleaming in the light. I am not a great horse fan but I am sure I got some superb photos of those horses sleeping on the platform! (Pity I didn't upload it before I woke up ;-) ) Eventually in one station I met a little African looking girl - she looked about 3 and seemed to be alone and homeless with beautiful brown eyes and very big hair. Naturally I picked her up and sat her on my hip, and took her with me on my travels. I guess you don't need to be a superstar in your dreams to adopt a needy, homeless child!

SMELLS AND NOISE

These are two aspects of New York that none of the films or TV capture. The traffic, the taxi horns, the many different languages you hear as you walk down the street and the smells that make the place alive: chicken, lamb and sauces being barbequed on street corners with noodles or rice, sweet nuts being roasted everywhere - cashews, peanuts, coffees, and pastry smells - delicious!

CHEAP CLOTHES

Another rant about prices: if I had known how much I would have to pay for T-shirts in NY, especially baby T-shirts like this one I bought my nephew Gordon (whose parents are lawyers in case you are wondering), then I wouldn't have bothered taking any clothes with me, I would just have taken an empty rucksack. Some shops were doing 5 T-shirts for $10 and I think I paid $2-50 for Gordy's T-shirt.

POOR SICK PUDGE, 4 BATMANS AND FRED FLINTSTONE

Poor Pudge has been sick since he started nursery about six weeks ago. His immune system has been tested to the extreme. He has caught colds, coughs and has had three chest infections. I seem to remember that is par for the course. It makes you feel bad but the advantage is that their immune systems have usually met almost everything before they start school at five and so they never miss any school once they have started. And of course he had that dreadful allergic reaction in NY 10 days ago. At the time I asked the docs if it could be an amoxicillin allergy, given he had finished a course of antibiotics 2 days earlier and given that Marcel is also allergic to amoxicillin, although Charlotte isn't. The doctors on duty that night all ruled it out but they were fairly young and inexperienced. I had my doubts, but often believe a parent of 3 kids could probably fake their way an average GP shift as long as the patients were all small children. So tonight I took Léon to the doctor's again because he's been sleepy, roasting hot and not eating again for another 2 days. The doctor said it was a viral infection but when I mentioned the allergic reaction he said he was 90% sure what I had mentioned was an amoxicillin allergy. He even described the symptoms to me. He could of course be wrong but at least I can now ask my own GP to do specific allergy tests and therefore hopefully avoid another week of this:
Driving back from the doctor at 9pm on the Saturday before Halloween was an experience, that over and above the potential allergy diagnosis, was in itself interesting. I passed 3 Batmans or (should that be Batmen?) walking along the street hand in hand beside a Fred Flintstone complete with one large, hairy club. An interesting choice of costumes - I would have imagined that if four friends had decided to go out to a Halloween party together they would either have gone as 4 Batpeople, or alternatively Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty. I then passed several brides and grooms, some with daggers through their heads, assorted witches and ghosts and Superman who seemed to be out for a walk with a man wearing a karate suit. It is just a pity you forget to take your camera when you nip out to the out-of-hours doctor's surgery with a sick baby!

COFFEE, CROISSANTS AND DANISH PASTRIES

So here it is in Manhattan - large coffee with a bagel, just $1-25. So why do we numpties in Scotland pay 4 times that much here for the same thing? Today I was in Tinderbox where a 2-drips-in-a-cup espresso costs more than that without the bagel :-(

TIMES SQUARE - AN IMPRESSIVE SIGHT

I don't know what it was about Times Square. I assumed with all that hustle and bustle and neons, Léon would find it fascinating. However, for some bizarre reason, every time I took him there, 5 times in all, he fell asleep! Maybe he'll find in more interesting next time round.

FEELING OLD - A PHYL'S BLOG LEITMOTIF?

So I was driving into town with all 3 kids in the back of the car tonight. They asked me to put on the cd of High School Musical. 'Is that your favourite record at the moment guys?' I asked. Blank stares. 'Record?' 'Surely you have seen a record - you know like a big black cd?' I asked. 'No never', they both replied. Oh my God, how old am I? It is funny to think both my grandmothers died before ever hearing the word cd and yet my kids don't know records. My Granny even worked in a record shop when she wasn't playing piano in a night club! Anyway they eventually remembered they had once seen a record on an episode of Tom and Jerry. When were they made? 1950s?

Oh and Tom and Jerry itself is an odd one. Everyone in the world knows they are both boys but my kids insist and have done all their lives that Jerry is a girl. I thought that they were confusing with the name Geri, but no it is more cryptic than that! Being French bilingual they know it is un chat but une souris but the non-French part of their brains uses this information to assign gender, something a real monolingual French person would never do. How cool is that?

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

I went into a chemist on 5th avenue an hour after arriving in Manhattan. It looked spookily familiar - it could have been Superdrug. The lay out was similar and the brands the same: pampers, colgate, ultrabright, snickers, mars bars, Rimmel, Max Factor etc etc you name it. There were fridges along the walls with cold drinks and packaged sandwiches, cosmetics, off-the-shelf painkillers and toiletries in the middle. The one odd distinguishing feature though was at the checkout: cigarettes - this looked really incongruous to me as a Scottish person, where basically smoking has been banned everywhere but in your own house or outdoors because of health implications - a chemist/tobbacconist combined - weird!

LIFE'S REGRETS

Straight after lunch one day in Manhattan I passed this place near Times Square. I was full and Pudge was asleep so I noted it mentally (everyone who knows me know I am more than partial to a slice of cheesecake - preferably chocolate, but blueberry or pineapple also cause me to smile a bit) and vowed to return later in the day. Imagine my disappointment when I forgot and only remembered once I uploaded the photo back in Glasgow :-( Oh well, guess I need to go back.

THE WHINGNING WORLD WE LIVE IN

Am I the only one fed up with all the negativity in the world? I came across this article today on the BBC website. Ok so Ryanair does have cramped seating, crumbs on the floor, extremely grumpy staff, oh and a ludicrous and infuriating baggage policy into the bargain. (And maybe it has delays flying out of Stanstead but having flown out of Hahn twice, Paris once, and Prestwick 3 times this year with all 6 flights taking off on time and arriving ahead of schedule I have no complaints about their punctuality.) Anyway am I the only one who still remembers the world pre-Ryanair and the likes? I used to spend 30 hours on a Eurolines coach to the East of France having paid more than I now pay for a 2 hour direct flight to Hahn at least 3 times a year. For the kids to visit Oma even 5 years ago I used to pay £1000 to fly to Frankfurt via London, or to Strasbourg via East Midlands, Paris and Strasbourg. That took a whole day and you still had to rent a car at the other end, but hey the cabin crew smiled and you got a dod of scambled egg and a sausage and even a free coffee on each flight! But now thanks to Ryanair my annual visit has been able to become a 3 or 4 times a year visit because I rarely pay more than £200 for a whole family to fly and off peak can even get myself and the 3 kids to Oma's for less than £100. The kids' Aunt has managed to visit them twice because as an unemployed pensioner she can afford Ryanair, but she can't afford BA. Ryanair, Easyjet and all their little brothers and sisters have opened up most big cities in Europe to us average earners as a weekend or holiday destination. We will all visit places in the future we wouldn't have seen in our lifetime without Ryanair. I am going to Latvia for 2 days in a fortnight for - I think it was £24, but pre-Ryanair I would never have seen Latvia. Yes we'd all love BA service on a Ryanair flight but I know which is more important to me - it being affordable or it being comfotable? So all I have to say to all the glass-is-half-empty people in this world is would you please 'haud yer wheesht'!
Ok rant over!

WE ALL LOSE IT SOMETIMES

I guess someone had a bad day at work! :-)

DAD'S BLOG

Dad says he's going to stop blogging since no one comments on his blog :-( Come on everyone - start commenting, please!

DRINK

Another astouding thing I found about America is how cheap everything was - the food, the drink, the clothes, the gas. WHY exactly do we put up with the climate here in the UK and pay such inflated prices? (Oh I remember, it is to get away from George Bush, isn't it?) But excepting that - us crazy Europeans pay ridiculous prices for cans of coke etc from street vendors and the likes when in the centre of Manhattan, this double-sized can of grape juice cost me just 99cents. So tall, it was like one of the skyscrapers itself, and such good value Léon and I shared 2 a day :-)

DELI FOOD

One thing I really loved in NY was those food places where you could go in and fill a little plastic tub (or even a big plastic tub) with everything from steak to noodles, to rice or mashed potatoes and then take it to the little park in front of the New York library and eat it at the little tables set out for that purpose. On our last day Pudge and I shared a tangy shepherd's pie, some mushrooms dripping in butter and various beautifully steamed veggies in the sun. Yummmmm.

ABSURD!

It's that time of the year again when all us boring Brits start looking forward to Bonfire night and fireworks displays and such like. When we celebrate Guy Fawkes night, we are celebrating an event which took place in 1605. To my utter amazement however I turned on the radio yesterday in time to hear the second half of a news story. Apparently after 401 years something new and astounding has been discovered. The newsreader was saying that because they had discovered that fires were dangerous!, the council (I unfortunately missed which particular bunch of numpties they were referring to) had refused to grant a licence for this year's bonfire, so instead they would set a fire under controlled conditions, film it and then on Bonfire night project the pictures of the burning fire onto a large white screen at the firework display. I wonder if the fireworks will be real or if they too will be created using torches and drums.

This world we live in truly is an absurd place!

EVER SO SWEET

This shop window in Ayr is just so British Seaside, isn't it? You can almost see your kids teeth rot just looking at it, can't you? I looked at the fry-up in the middle in particular and thought yeuch, just as Marcel and Charlotte said in unison, 'Look at the ham and eggs, they are soooo cool!'

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.

APPLE UPDATE

Léon tried his hardest to reach them earlier but still couldn't so unless we get a ladder or a broom there is soon going to be a cider factory on dad's garage roof!