BARBRA

Barbra is coming to Europe! She must have heard that I went to all that bother to visit her last year so she's coming to visit me instead this time, nice of her! Because of Miriam's wedding it looks like I am stuck with either London, Paris or Vienna, though more dates are still to be announced. I must admit, Paris tempts me much more than London, but anywhere's an option. See ya soon, Barb!

PARENTING

playing ps2 car chases
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

Sometimes parenting is hard. They cry for hours because they are teething, sometimes you try to cook but they wander around at your feet wailing and trying to climb up your leg, sometimes they wake up in the middle of the night. Then they get bigger and they have tantrums, throw things at you, tell you you don't understand them and come out with cheeky, smart-assed comments. But sometimes they do something that reminds you why you had children in the first place... What? Well last night Pudge gave me a big wet kiss and said 'Mama uv ooo'! Awwwh

WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?

Now I don't want to sound like a Tory, God forbid, but what the hell is wrong with people these days?
I happened to need to buy a couple of greetings cards on Sunday morning and as we needed some shopping, I thought I'd pick them up in the big 24 hour ASDA in Govan. This is a huge supermarket so stocks everything you can dream of. The cards aisle is away off to one side and fairly secluded. I was standing looking through the birthday cards for my good friend Sheina who turns 40 on Friday, and through the condolences cards as I had just heard the day before that an old friend of mum and dad's had died after a 3 year struggle with diabetes. When you are looking at condolence cards, you are not in the mood to be pissed off by juvenile delinquents. The card aisle stocked everything for birthdays - candles, banners, cans of that spray string and party poppers. Three boys, maybe 12 or 13 years old ran into the aisle, picked up the spray string cans, opened them and started running around spraying them over each other, laughing and knocking things over. I was outraged. The other 2 or 3 customers simply crept away pretending not to notice. What is wrong with these people? They are as bad as the kids' parents who were nowhere in sight and letting them wreck the shop. I turned to them and suggested they paid for the goods they were destroying and got back a cheeky - 'We're rebels Mrs' from the 3 larger-than-me youths. I pointed out they were not rebels but 'both infantile and destructive'. When asked what that meant, I shook my head. I didn't see why these little toe rags should be allowed to continue though so left the aisle. They must have assumed I was slinking off like the other customers, so went back to their nonsense. This meant they were less than pleased when I returned 2 minutes later with both the customer services guys and the cleaner. I left as they were being handed a brush and pan to clear up their mess.
But you have to ask - where were the parents?

BEAUTIFUL CULZEAN

Culzean has to be one of my favourite places to go for a day out. Especially at this time of the year when all the bluebells are in bloom on the cliffs and in the woods. Yesterday Thomas and I spent a lovely 5 hours walking along the rocks from the castle to Port Carrick, then over the cliffs and round the Swan pond, stopping occasionally for a picnic or a seat. It was nice to spend some quiet time together for once. Afterwards we'd to rush back up the road to Glasgow to lend Derek my car as it has the largest capacity in the family and he had some beds and stuff to take to the dump. We stayed there and had a lovely curry and family evening. I hope Derek, Amanda, Mum and Dad enjoyed it as much as Thomas and I did.

YUMMY

Pudge eating
Originally uploaded by viralbus.

Léon was full of mischief tonight as he mixed pesto, pasta and chocolate mousse for dinner and ate them with glee. As I watch him some nights, I believe that babies must have different taste buds to adults. Some of what he eats is truly revolting but doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest.

OOPS!

Léon got several Easter eggs, one of which Auntie Amanda dropped off last week. I threw it in the car and have been meaning to bring it into the house for about 4 days now. Even today at lunchtime I noticed it sitting beautifully oval in its packaging on the back shelf of my car.
At 3pm I noticed the outside temperature was reading 16 degrees and decided I really ought to bring it in today before it melted...oops, too late - so it is in the fridge now solidifying - I guess Pudge is too wee to complain and chocolate tastes like chocolate whatever shape it is when you are 19 months old.

MOSAIC PUBLISHED

Millers have finally published the mosaic on the net - you have to click on mosaic, view final mosaic and zoom in to full magnification and then you can check it out properly by dragging the little yellow box around with your cursor. When you do you get a good look at all the photos used to make up the final poster, I counted around 50 of my photos, 3 of dad's, 2 of Derek's and 2 of Thomas's so I guess between us we made up most of the mosaic single-handedly - who needs a prize, huh?

POOR SCARED PUDGEMAN

Today is definitely not one Léon will note down in his diary amongst his top ten fun days. It started at 9-30am when I had to apply anaesthetic cream to the backs of both his hands and the inside of both his elbows and cover the cream with clingfilm stuff. He was heart broken - every time he looked at his little hands he burst into big sobs and eventually ended up pulling one of the patches off. At that point we decided a long-sleeved jumper was probably the only way to keep the cream on long enough to anaesthetise his little veins. 90 minutes later it was off to the hospital where they injected him with radioactive liquid and told us as he screamed the place down that it was probably best we tried to hug the wee man as little as possible for the next 24 hours till the Chernobyl effect wore off, wee man... Finally we'd to go back around 1pm when they strapped him into this dreadful machine using a foam and vecro strait jacket and took 2 photos each taking 15 minutes to expose. The first was worst as that was of the kidneys from above so Pudge was sandwiched in and panicking and screaming - enough to make any mother just want to punch the doctor and rescue her wee man, and for the other they rotated the camera to beneath him - slightly less scary but he was already so freaked out, there was no calming him. Of course 2 minutes after he was freed from his vecro prison, he was back to his calm, happy self - though he fell asleep, utterly emotionally exhausted, as the car left the hospital carpark.
I now have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for them to no doubt tell me what I have always expected and that is that the mystery virus from last October did not damage his kidneys - fingers crossed anyway.

FOR SALE - GRASS!

 

Are you ever really puzzled by something you see when you are out and about? The other day I was walking from Garnethill to the park to see Derek and Amanda and I passed this. Smallish 70cm square chunks of plastic grass with plastic flowers growing on it, for sale in a shop window. I hate plastic flowers more than most things but at least I can see that if you are a lazy git you might like to put them in a vase and display them tackily somewhere in your house, but plastic squares of lawn? Are you meant to buy a whole lawn's worth and stick them outside nailed to your front garden, or leave them lying decoratively somewhere in your house or what? What exactly are you meant to do with plastic lawn squares?

UP TO NO GOOD!

Isn't this such a sweet photo? Pudge is fascinated by phones, and Gordy got his hands on Derek's wallet. I can imagine the text: Oh look Léon, I found my dad's credit cards! Cool, I'll ring for pizzas - what do you fancy - cheese and tomato? Extra mushrooms?

OH PUDGE!

5pm can be a fairly stressful time of the day. Three tired kids want to eat. The two big ones react by niggling at each other and winding each other up. They both want to sit on the same chair, neither accepts the other's choice of TV show, etc. The little one reacts by following around at your feet, his two arms sticking straight up in a 'lift me now' gesture while he whines just annoyingly in the background. I decided the other evening that toast would serve the purpose of getting them all off my back long enough to allow me to cook. I made 3 slices, took out a brand new unopened half pound of butter and spread them each a slice and went back to cooking. Silence and happiness from the next room at last. But after quarter of an hour it suddenly struck me - they were too silent. I went through and found Marcel and Charlotte watching the Simpsons happily on the couch but Pudge was still at the table - toast untouched, but silent and happy as he ate his way through handfuls of butter. He had consumed just less than half of the butter. And worse still there were little Pudgy hand prints all over my dry-clean-only green jacket that I had hung over the back of the dining room chair.
I guess I know how to keep him quiet though at least!

BIZARRE EVENING

Finally the night of the big photo competition arrived. I ran the olds into town, then went home to pick up Thomas. Already things went a bit wrong. The 5 minute drive to the venue, with 15 minutes to spare started to look a bit tight when some idiot broke down in the middle of Great Western road and simply decided that abandoning his car in the middle of the road was an okay option. So as Thomas frantically texted mum with the news that we would be late, I fought my way through traffic to the West End.
The soirée was being held in the Oran Mor - the old church on the corner of Byres road that has been converted into a bar. On arrival the bouncers told us that if we were here for the photo competition, we'd to go in the side entrance. No problems... We rushed round to the side, flew up the stairs and burst into a rather sedate room, filled with pensioners - weird... an old man came up and asked if we had known the deceased - oops! gatecrashed a funeral - back downstairs we found the other side entrance, leading down, not up a flight of stairs, phew!
Mum and Dad had recruited Steve and Joyce to come as spare guests - figuring they might be somewhat interested in an open bar. The 4 had managed to get in without me to sign them in and had found us a wee table and about 320 free bottles of beer. Everyone else in the room was between 18 and 25 with messy chewed-up hair and funky clothing. After much faffing and munching on canapés (2 hours of faffing to be precise), followed by a very loud wee singing girl (Amy MacDonald somebody), some teuchter bloke got up and made a speech about this wonderful university competition. University competition? He announced that all of Glasgow's students had put their heart and soul into the competition and the overall winner would receive the much-deserved £500 worth of photographic equipment for their place of study! Huh?
This was truly bizarre - I reread the web page today. Nowhere does it mention universities or students. It simply says: We are going to wrap a key building in Glasgow with an iconic image celebrating your city. The iconic image will be created from a mosaic of photos, taken by you the people of Glasgow. This is our invite to you to get involved and be part of this unique work of art. No students mentioned, no prizes mentioned. And because it was being run by an alcohol company you had to give your date of birth to enter, though not your place of study. So it seems that Dad and I had made it through to a final that we were ineligible to win, given we couldn't give the prize money to our place of study. The press had even done an interview with dad so they knew for sure he wasn't a student! Weird.
Anyway, needless to say we didn't win. I thought Mum, Dad, Joyce and Steve would be disappointed but after 5 hours of free beer, they rolled down to the train station, their pockets and handbags filled with more free beer and seemed less than disappointed with the competition result. Dad has now emailed the jury to ask why 2 ineligible finalists were put forward to the judges, though thanking them profusely for the free alcohol. So if he finds out what exactly it was all about I will enlighten you.

Oh and for the record, the winning photo was a portrait of 5 or 6 students smiling into a camera. They looked happy enough, but iconic image of Glasgow? Huh? This photo said smiling students to me, not Glasgow - they could have been from anywhere in the Western world. I guess I must be getting old, I just don't get it.

BLYTHESWOOD SQUARE

Aren't the trees in Glasgow pretty at the moment? :-)

TINY THIEF

fresh pesto?
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

Isn't this so sweet? My wee bitsy man watched Thomas make homemade pesto, then decided to stick his wee pudgy fingers in and have a taste. He decided it was so good, he had a whole plateful with spaghetti. Charlotte, of course, had one spoonful and announced she wouldn't be having 'barf sauce' on her pasta!

THE SOLUTION

 

Well, on close inspection, the whole of the front of Marcel's hairline was so short after his scissor escapades of Sunday night that the only solution was to go for a very cropped hairdo. Hopefully once this grows back he will decide to leave hairdressing to the professionals in future :-)

JUST WHEN YOU ARE BEGINNING TO THINK YOUR OLDEST KID IS FAIRLY GROWN-UP AND SENSIBLE!

Unfortunately the full horror of what he's done isn't quite visible on this photo. I must try taking another in the daylight.
It started at bedtime. Charlotte went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. 'Who's shaved?' she shouted. Bizarre question I thought, given she and I don't shave, Marcel and Léon are too young and to my knowledge Thomas doesn't know what a razor is on a Saturday or Sunday. So that ruled out everyone in the house. 'The sink is full of hair' she elaborated. Marcel then appeared in the doorway - his hair approximately 3-4cm all over, except around his fringe where it had mysteriously shrunk to 0.5cm. 'Mum, can I maybe go to the hairdresser's this week' he asked nonchalantly. Normally I have to drag him to the hairdresser moaning his face off so asking is unheard of. I immediately noticed what it was he wanted correcting and asked for an explanation. 'Well it was getting too long and tickling my eyebrows so I cut it with some scissors', he told me, ' but I am too short to see in the bathroom mirror so I just cut it without looking!' Give me strength! Cutting it even if he could see would have been crazy but blindly? Oh well... I guess his school mates' laughter tomorrow might be enough to stop any recurrence in the future of this folly.

BABIES BACK!

My babies come home today! They have been to France with their dad to visit their grandmother, aunts and uncles because they were off school for the week. You'd think you'd get loads done with no kids around for a week, but you don't because you miss them so much, you just mope about counting the minutes till you can hug them and feel their warmth and smell their kiddie hair. Roll on touch down! :-)

HOW COULD I FORGET?

A few weeks ago my beloved hp Pavilion - you know the one whose DC socket was fixed in November, December, January and February - developed two new faults! It started overheating, the fan would come on, it would tell me it had reached critical temperature and it would shut itself down automatically usually between 30 seconds and 5 minutes after I turned it on! Then the on-off switch started only working every 10th attempt. I probably didn't blog it at the time for fear of my children being exposed to a rather long list of expletives! Anyway - the diagnosis was another £140 bill, on top of the £70 the DC socket had cost. I didn't trust them to fix it again, nor did I fancy them having it on and off for 4 months until it finally worked again, so I bit the bullet and ordered a nice new Lenovo laptop complete with windows VISTA. I have spent the last week installing most of my stuff on it - which wasn't fun - as the old computer only stays on 5 minutes at a time before switching itself off, backing up my whole system in 5 minute chunks was fairly tedious. Fortunately I had backed up most stuff in January so it was feasible. I am now very happy with my new acquisition - hopefully it will not give me reason to blog-rant in the near future at least.

With the kids away visiting their Oma in France this week, I have spent the first few days on the computer on a top secret, for now, assignment - possibly the most surreal thing I have been asked to do in a long time, but I can't mention it just yet though ;-)

FIFE AGAIN

Too tall for Fife!
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

I'm not quite sure how I got talked into it but just 3 days after my hopeless wild goose chase round Fife, when I vowed never to return without satnav, I got talked into another day out in that neck of the woods. Considering I have only been to Fife about 8 times in my life, twice in 3 days was pushing it. This was, however, a much less stressful experience - we 'multimapped' and printed out a list of places to visit and as the weather was beautiful, it was the perfect choice.
First stop was Culross (pronounced weirdly 'Cooriss' or something similar - (don't you just love Scottish - Milngavie, Strathaven and all the rest?) What an astoundingly beautiful little place (see my photos on flickr) - I felt like I was somewhere in France or the likes, not Fife with all the pretty coloured buildings - though I guess the natives are fairly short, as Thomas had a bit of a problem!
Then we saw Crail - a pretty fishing village - though more Scottish.
And finally we stopped in Anstruther - a place which patently has the best fish and chips on the planet - though we decided to forgo the 2 hour wait and simply bought our supper at Mearns Cross on our return.

STILL ON FLICKR

Mummy, what's daddy doing to you?
Originally uploaded by Mirm..

I came across this - they aren't shy, are they, these bugs ;-) I particularly like title the photographer chose for it.

FIFE IS FUN!

 

Until today I thought that satnav was for stupid and/or rich people! I mean, why on earth would anyone pay 1 to 5 hundred pounds for something that tells you where you are and where to go when there are road signs everywhere anyway? I have driven since I was 17, all over Europe - lefthand drives, righthand drive, manual, automatic, I've taken buses in the States - believe me - there are road signs EVERYWHERE...except Fife! Now I know why satnav was invented - it was invented for any poor bugger who even attempts to visit Fife! This morning I took a quick glance at a map, saw my route was Falkirk, North Queensferry and figured - piece of cake - 45 mins tops. 90 minutes later and after 4 trips through the centre of effing Falkirk I was so in despair I got Marcel to text Derek at work and ask him for directions! You see once you get to Falkirk there are no sign posts for anywhere in Fife - not Kircaldy, N Queensferry - nowhere - just Glasgow or Edinburgh or Grangemouth - and I knew I didn't want those! Grudgingly, I ended up going from Falkirk to Edinburgh and crossing the flaming Forth road bridge though knowing that was an utterly stupid route. 

At least the way back would be easy - I mean Glasgow is a big place so would be signposted, surely??? Nope. From North Queensferry there are no signs for Dunfermline 5 miles away, from there, none for Glasgow though plenty for Rosyth and Kircaldy - you see once you are ensnared in the trap that is Fife, they don't let you out again! Fife is obviously for Fifers and people with satnav - they do nothing to make it easy to get there and nothing to help you escape either. 

I am glad to report we made it home safely - eventually. And I won't be rushing back (not till I buy satnav anyway) though Dunfermline and North Queensferry were very pretty.

GUMSY GIRL

Strange things happen over pizza!
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

Two observations about the tooth incident yesterday.

Firstly one that surprised me a bit: as we were watching a movie last night I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Charlotte was writing something - when I looked more closely I saw a letter which started 'Dear Tooth Fairy' - given she announced after listening to Bandaid's 'Do they know it's Christmas?' at the age of 4 that there couldn't be a Santa if he didn't bother with Africa, I was more than surprised to contemplate her believing in a tooth fairy, but there you go - I did say she was a complex child! Anyway - she wrote to her that she had lost her tooth, apologizing profusely and intimating it was fine if she checked in her mouth while she was asleep, fine. This morning however I was woken up with Charlotte shouting - 'Muuuuum is there an 'e' in money? 'Yes, dear, why?' 'I can't find any money' (odd I thought - there was definitely a pound under your pillow when I went to bed ;-))
I later saw the second letter to the fairy. It read 'Dear Toothfairy Please can I get some MONEY now???'' I guess she's not going to be someone to mess with when she gets bigger! ;-)

HIYA GORDY, FANCY MEETING YOU HERE!

Hiya Gordy! fancy meeting you here!
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

It really is a very small world some times. For only the second time in 3 years I decided to go to Calderglen country park in East Kilbride. As Marcel was at Sam's birthday party, we couldn't go until 2pm, so arrived around 2-15pm. On approach, I could see the beautiful weather had drawn a bigger crowd than usual as the overflow car park was in use and cars were lined up in their hundreds. Imagine our shock as we got out the car and immediately walked into not only Derek, Amanda and Gordy but also my parents. My parents who haven't been near Calderglen since last July and Derek and Amanda who have never been at all! What are the chances of us all arriving in the same park - 10 miles from all our houses unarranged at exactly the same time, especially given there are dozens of parks closer to all our homes. My kids were, needless to say ecstatic at the discovery of this unexpected company, though I'm not sure the others were as thrilled. Given my parents see more than enough of my kids at the best of times and Derek and Amanda had had all 3 overnight for the first time ever just 2 days ago - they had all probably sneaked out to East Kilbride assuming it was a fairly safe Gautier-free zone! Haha - got you! Nowhere's safe!

ANN SUMMERS

Sometimes Lots just creases me up. Today while walking down Sauchiehall Street we passed the Ann Summers shop. She looked in the window, then turned to me and said - I wouldn't want underwear like that! I thought she meant she didn't like it because she's a bit of a Tomboy and it was too feminine, but no, she went on to elaborate, 'cause you'd look silly wearing a bra that says 'sale' on it. :-)

YOU GOTTA LAUGH

Looks like dad had a good day on Thursday ;-)

THE DUEL IS ON!

Just got an email from the judge in the Miller competition saying I made the final too! So it looks like the fight is on to the death with dad. Anyway we have both been invited to a party at a secret location on 19 April where judges will reveal the winner, and apparently we will be interviewed next week by the press! Cool! Watch this space for news.

LONDON IS THE CENTRE OF THEIR UNIVERSE

Westminster, London Eye, Waterloo Station, West End
Originally uploaded by Luigi Rosa.

I was listening to radio 2 a couple of weeks ago, nothing new there. The travel report came on in the middle of Jeremyś show. Nothing new there either. Generally the travel report is of little interest to me as it tells me about broken down lorries on the M6 or M25, however this was a snowy and windy day so Sally-Traffic had news about everywhere. It was then that it hit me once again how London-centric the BBC news still is. It was lovely to hear her warn me of hazards I may encounter - because they had gone as far as getting Scottish news, however, being so full of their own self importance it hadn´t occurred to them to look up how to pronounce anything up here, they just take it for granted that they know, or they work it out from their own weird pronunciations - such as Greenwich. So I was warned of snow in Greenock, Arrochar and Forfar. The only problem was that her pronunciations were so off that while I understood but scoffed at her GRENock, and FOURfar I actually didn´t have a clue where aROACKa was until I drove through it last Saturday and suddenly realized that she must have meant Arrochar. Give me strength!

SLEEPY ME

I read this article about sleep deprivation on the bbc this morning. I hadn´t actually realized the extent of it - 2 months a year. Given I was the only one to get up during the night when my babies cried, even when I was working full-time, and given that neither Marcel nor Charlotte slept through the night until they were 15 months and Léon didn´t until he was about 14 months, then I guess I must be owed somewhere between 6 and 9 months extra sleep by now. That would explain why I am definitely wrinklier than I was 10 years ago! (Not that it wasn´t worth it - they are such precious little people)

It does make you worry about how awake half the drivers on the road at rush hour are, though, doesn't it?

ANOTHER COCK-UP

So of course I entered the Glasgow competition. They chose 55 of the 70 or so photos I uploaded to be in their final selection (stick 'phyllis' in the search box to see which ones.) I then mentioned it to my dad and asked if he had any Glasgow photos. Not overly interested, I, myself went through his photo albums, signed him up and sent in a couple of his, not particularly interesting, as I thought, photos (stick 'dougie' in the search box to see these). As I had signed him up I used my mobile number, password etc for his application. I later got an email to say I had been shortlisted for the prize. Dad then got an email saying the same. The final 20, out of 2500 would be notified by phone. That was a problem - in the rush to sign up last week I skipped the phone number box on the form! Dad, of course, has now had a text on my mobile telling him he's in the final. I, on the other hand don't know how my photo was rated as they don't realize they need to phone what they think is my dad's mobile to tell me how I got on. I have a feeling I should definitely stop interfering in my parents' business this week!

A BIT OF A COCK-UP!

A couple of weeks ago mum asked me to order 2 books from the office to complete a series she had been reading - I think there are 5 or 6 in the series and she was missing 2. I had bought all the others in the discount bookshop we have in the office. I went in but was told we no longer published the books in question. That´s a bit of a bummer, I thought, poor mum will have read her way half way through the series and will now never find out what happened next. I went onto Amazon at lunchtime figuring they´d more than likely be available on Amazon used and sure enough the 2 books popped up at 1p each - a real bargain, so I ordered her them and figured delivery to their house, given they are retired and at home all day was more sensible than me having to get them at home. A day or 2 passed, and then I remembered mum would be wondering about the books so I emailed her that we no longer stocked them but I had found and ordered them on Amazon instead...or so I thought! It turns out that what I actually emailed her was that they had them cheap on Amazon. She of course then went on to Amazon and ordered them at £5 each - brand new up-to-date copies. You can guess what happened next, of course? My old edition, used copy turned up the very next day at mum´s house - she was thrilled at their prompt service and delivery but not best pleased when she opened the package and found a used version. She got onto the seller she had ordered them from and explained that although she was very impressed by his delivery time she was not best pleased that the supposedly new copy looked rather worn and not worth the £5. He thought she was barking mad of course and a whole series of emails ensued, until yesterday afternoon, she emailed me to ask if I knew anything about mystery books arriving in her letterbox. Oops! That´ll teach me to try to be helpful.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

Little Red Riding hood in the forest
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

Isn´t this sweet? Wee Léon was so happy to walk way ahead of us in the forest the other day - he just reminded me of little red riding hood in his little red coat- I half expected a wolf to jump out from behind a tree at any minute!

SPRING IS IN THE AIR

Is it just me or have we finally turned the corner out of that dreadful, deep, dark part of the year I so loathe? The past few days have been glorious, the smells are different, the warmth from the sun is finally penetrating our clothes and there are buds on all the trees and flowers everywhere - what a breath of fresh air. And I so glad we´re finally back on summer time - I love the light evenings and crisper mornings - it truly makes me feel happy to be alive.

TIME TO GET THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE?

I was listening to good old Jeremy Vine as always today on my way to pick up Léon from nursery. The topic up for discussion was the paedophile hysteria that some parents seem to have when it comes to people photographing their kids. Now I don't mean child pornography - just simple parents in a group of other parents taking a photo of their kids playing football together for their school or whatever. More and more schools and the likes have banned parents from photographing their own child because, if they happen to catch another child, God forbid say their kid's best friend in the shot, then that child is somehow in danger. I am a parent and a photographer so I feel qualified to comment. If Marcel's pal's mum wants a photo of them playing football together not only would I not try to have her arrested, I would positively encourage her because that is the stuff childhood memories are made of. Anyone banning this isn´t protecting their child from abuse from a stranger, on the contrary, they are the ones harming their child - they are depriving that child of pleasant evenings 30 years from now mulling over an old pile of school photos with his own kids saying - I remember that day when we won at football, I remember that kid - he was a great mate etc. That is tantamount to child abuse in my book. Most cases of paedophilia sadly happen in the home, they are kids being attacked by family members, not strangers, and whether or not someone´s parent takes or doesn´t take a photo of you dressed in a football strip and covered in mud isn´t going to make any difference at all to your safety. So get a grip and stop ruining our kids' lives with this nonsense.
As a footnote, I have to tell you about the last call from Jeremy´s show - it was astounding. After many calls from irate parents who had had their cameras confiscated for photographing their kid playing football or performing in a school play, the last bloke to ring in had the best story. Peter someone, I think from down south. He had a 5 year old granddaughter who had just started ballet classes. She asked her old Gramps to come along to her dancing display. The kid´s mum and old Gramps turned up and were about to take their seats when the dancing teacher came in. She politely asked the mum who the old man was. She replied: my father in law - you know little Rachel's grandad. The teacher replied - we don´t have permission from the other parents to let someone who is not a parent watch the other little girls in their tutus, so I´m afraid you´ll have to stand behind a screen and simply listen to but not watch the little girls dance. How do you listen to a ballet display?? Now this man didn´t even have a camera - he wasn´t even allowed to watch little Rachel's classmates - so what was achieved there? Yes of course - sobbing, heartbroken little Rachel because Grandad was sent out, hurt and victimized Grandad behind a screen, and a class of parents and little girls who would more than likely not have given a damn whether or not little Rachel´s Grandad could see their tutus. This is an outrage. If this had been 30 years ago - my grandfather could have watched and photographed me and maybe today (on what would have been his 86th birthday) I would have looked back fondly on that photo and remembered childhood, ballet (not that I was much of a ballet dancer myself) and my old Gramps. What a sad, sad place we are making this world - and completely UNNECESSARILY.
Oh and finally I hope you like the photo above of Marcel playing football with his schoolfriends: Robert, Gordon, Duncan and Cameron, while being watched by his other friends Eleanor and Sarah!

THIS IS MY GLASGOW

While looking through flickr groups today I found a link to a Glasgow photo project and competition. Needless to say, I'll be on there as soon as the kids go to bed tonight to upload all my old favourites and I might even take some new ones, who knows since it runs for another week or more!

QN ST STN 0.2m

Thomas and I were discussing sign posts the other day. He happened to point out how they can be obtuse to say the least. I noticed they often abbreviate road signs, but in a way that a native to the area can easily understand but that kind of defeats the purpose, because of course a native to the area already knows where things are. We spotted the sign I quote above for example in West Graham street. To me, a native Glaswegian, this sign is very obviously 'Queen Street station 0.2 miles', however to someone whose native language isn't English and who doesn't know the names of all the stations in Glasgow and who thinks internationally that m means metres, they must be stuck scratching their head!

Another of my favourites is the use of the word 'alight'. How many times do we use the verb 'to alight' when speaking? I mean you can hear it now, can't you? 'Where are you alighting today?' 'Oh I think I'll alight at Hillhead and go for a coffee in Tinderbox' - no one has ever said the word alight out loud, have they? And for that reason no one under 15 knows it, and no foreigners either, so why do we persist in using it on sign posts? 'Cowcaddens station - alight here for the Tenement House museum' what is wrong with 'Get off' every one would understand it then and actually end up in the correct place, rather than seeing this obscure word, puzzling over it, and finally (hopefully) getting off after guessing its potential meaning.

Am I the only person who hates silly signs? I speak some foreign languages. I like signs in those languages to be understandable - no bizarre abbreviations, no Shakespearean era vocabulary. Can't we do the same here?

MORE D.I.Y.

Wee Pudgeman likes to D.I.Y. too - here he is trying to lay an oak floor! He seems to know just what to do with the hammer though he hasn't quite got the strength to do it. I think he's going to be like Charlotte when he's older. She's a great one for assembling IKEA furniture and the likes.

A DAY OF D.I.Y.

It is hard to type when your fingers don't bend anymore and your right hand has a big blister between the thumb and the forefinger from nibbling the edges off tiles! But I have definitely achieved something today. I have finally found the time to finish (grouting one wall aside) a tiling job I have been working on since February 3rd. And very straight it is too - I'm quite surprised at my own brilliance - though it wouldn't look half as nice if mum hadn't spent nearly as many hours as me cleaning the tiles up after I cut them and stuck them on.

AN EXPEDITION TO EMBELLISH

Ever since our little tyre problem a couple of weeks ago, we have been driving past the exact spot where the tyre blew up on the motorway, looking at an upside-down 'embellisher' (that's a hubcap to a normal person) on the grass verge, wondering if it is the one our car lost - the problem being of course that we can't see what make it is. Tonight we went on a little expedition to retrieve it but there is infuriatingly absolutely nowhere nearby to stop, so even if it is ours, failing a 3am trip down the motorway, it looks like we'll have to just resign ourselves to buying a new one.

A COMPLEX CHILD

Charlotte has never been the easiest kid to fathom. From she was fairly small she has been quite afraid of dogs, and more than indifferent to most other pets - she would not have a cat, hamster or gerbil if you paid her. I don't know where exactly this dislike of animals comes from since, although as a family we aren't great dog-lovers, we have had various cats over the years. So when we visit a pet-owning family, Marcel plays with the animal while Charlotte tends to stare at the pet with something between indifference and loathing. So when Marcel asked to hold a snake at Glasgow's Amazonia zoo the other day I was slightly taken aback, when Charlotte too queued up, arms outstretched for a python. I knew for sure if the guy was holding a kitten or a fluffy yellow chick she'd have been out of there quicker than a tornado. However the tarantula was even more surprising. While Marcel hesitated and asked initially just to touch one of its legs, looking vaguely apprehensive, Charlotte stepped up even before Marcel and asked to have it sit fully in the palm of her hand. I guess she is always going to be a kid who astounds me.

SILLY SHUTTERS

Having spent large parts of my life in France, where people close the beautiful shutters on their windows when it is too sunny, or when they go to bed at night, I find this peculiarly British version of house shutters to be the utmost in stupidity. They don't cover the windows so can be ornamental at the very best. Here are 3 crazy houses in a row - why don't the owners rush out and pull these ridiculous things off the walls? Part of me wants to take on extra jobs in the hope of buying one of these houses, just so I can remove them, before even unpacking the removal boxes!

ALZHEIMERS

I tend to listen to Jeremy Vine on my way home from work with Pudge these days, having finally accepted I am indeed old enough to listen to radio 2. His show usually discusses something topical - today for example it was the German incest case. Yesterday, amongst other things, he had on a very brave man, facing something I guess we all might face some day - Alzheimer's disease. He had written a letter to his family before he was no longer capable of doing so and had asked to read it to them on air. Having watched a dear relative slowly die from this ten years ago, I have to say it was truly moving. For those who missed it - both the transcript and the audio version are on Jeremy's website.

RED MOON REVISITED

Here's a photo from Saturday's lunar eclipse, taken by Chris.

THE MIDDLE EAST? NO GLASGOW!

I have noticed over the past few months that several of Glasgow's most offensive 60s and 70s disasters of architecture are being pulled down. First the building opposite Habitat in Bothwell Street made its exit. Then, pictured here in this shot which is more reminiscent of a day in the middle East than Glasgow city centre, over the past few weeks we have witnessed the demolition of the old Strathclyde Regional Council Eyesore, sorry Headquarters. I wonder what they are planning to build instead. It will be interesting to watch, given they seem to have decided to incorporate Glasgow's hallmark sandstone into most of their very recent additions to the skyline.

STROMBOLI

Don't you just find volcanoes fascinating? I was looking at these photos today of Stromboli. I guess since I heard the story of Pompeii in primary 3 (ie age 7) I have always found all things volcanic interesting, probably culminating in my week's stay on Santorini back in 1995. Truly beautiful, in a sinister sort of way.

WEIRD CRASH

Now, I drive 1000s of kilometres a month. I have been driving since I was 17, so I thought there was nothing I hadn't seen, until I saw this newspaper clip the other day! How in God's name did anyone manage to crash like that? If anyone saw it, I would be more than fascinated to hear!

RED MOON

Last night we got to see a full lunar eclipse over Glasgow. At 8pm, we were a bit dubious given cloud cover but we were in fact lucky enough to see most of it from 9pm through till beyond 11pm. I was going to upload the photos we took out the living room window but the camera battery is dead and I can´t find the charger. If you want to see a more impressive view, you should probably look at msn or bbc's shots, anyway.

NASDAQ & DOW UPS AND DOWNS

I was reading yesterday about the black day for the world's stock markets. The Dow dropped over 500 at one point yesterday and the NASDAQ was pushing 100 points down. That is quite some drop for one day. I was into market analysis big time back 3 or 4 years ago and was sadly able to quote the majority of share prices on the NASDAQ, the biggies on the DOW and even some of the NYSE on a daily basis back then. I even remember one of the kids being able to draw the stock price graph for Cisco systems or the Qs before they could read or write! It is interesting to see the collapse originated in China - for a while Chinese stocks like SINA, SOHU, CHINA were jumping up in leaps and bounds (but also occasionally falling flat on their faces) so you really needed a strong constitution to stay in them for long - I had a few shares in each for a bit but bottled it between 2001 and 2003 when post 9/11 was hitting the fan. I do remember even on its worst days (9/11 excepted of course) that a fall of around 40 points was bad so to watch it drop by more than double that yesterday must have been vomit-worthy for those still in. I do occasionally still miss the adrenalin-surge of the New York markets but I sleep more soundly at night I guess. Maybe one day I'll have enough money to play City chick in Times Square once more, we'll see where destiny take me.

BT BUILDING, GLASGOW

I don't think I am completely reactionary when it comes to architecture - sure I love old buildings like in Paris or the tenements in the West End in Glasgow, but I don't mind some modern stuff too (60s and 70s rough-cast monstrosities omitted, that goes without saying), however what on earth is this nonsense? I mean someone was probably paid more than my annual salary to design these 5 varyingly-coloured turds blocking the entrance to the BT telecom building in central Glasgow - come on - when did this become art?

NO IMPROVEMENT

Well the week isn't improving yet - Charlotte got sent home from school today with a viral something which is manifesting as a bad headache, a temperature and no appetite. Meanwhile Pudgy still has something green and disgusting oozing from one of his eyes. But I guess my psychic powers must be working as I sent myself a day´s work home before I left the office today, just in case I needed to work from home tomorrow.

A 'TYRING' START TO THE WEEK

I guess if I try to look on the bright side of things - this morning was light, dry, sunny and warm. I was not driving alone with Marcel and Charlotte in the dark on the Kingston Bridge at 50mph at 7am, rather stuck in a traffic jam at 8am with Thomas, who unlike me did have the strength to unscrew the bolts on the wheel, it was payday so I could buy a new tyre and because of the speed, the car didn't skid out of control. However, I can think of easier ways to start a Monday morning, and I would rather still have that £111 in my pocket :-(

Oh and the Citroën handbook was a great help :-\ The first instruction it gave us two, not-very-adept wheelchangers was to 'remove the embellisher'. It was 8am, we'd just had a tyre blow up on the motorway - we stood there like a pair of numpties scratching our heads - the what??? Then suddenly re-reading how to remove it, I suddenly realized they were actually referring to the hubcap - I write dictionaries for a living - I have done for 16 years and I have never once heard the word 'embellisher' used to mean hubcap - so a blowout can be very educational - I made an instant mental note to add a category to the next big dictionary - a definition reading something along the lines:

embellisher n (=hubcap) an obscure term used in car handbooks to puzzle stranded motorists: 'Before jacking up your car, first remove the embellisher'

I wonder how often statistically you have a tyre explode anyway - this is my second in 22 years of driving. So that is approximately 1 blowout ever 110 000 miles, not too dangerous I guess!

VW BEETLES

...And I mean the real Beetles 'of the people' as opposed to the Yuppie Beetles you can buy these days if you feel like spending twice as much on a little car as a car is actually worth just for ponce-value. I remember this one fondly - not sure why I photographed it in black and white (a teenage phase I guess) as it was a beautiful pale blue colour with a dark blue roof. It was the first car I ever drove - I had been nagging my dad from I was about 6 to teach me to drive so when I got to 16 I was fit to burst at the prospect of having to wait yet another year until I was old enough to get a provisional, so my dad, as a treat let me drive my mumś beetle (notice not his own Saab!) on my 16th birthday. I not sure that was a great idea in retrospect as it probably made me even more unbearable for the 366 days between my 16th and 17th birthday. Anyway like most 60s babies I have a soft spot for the original Beetles - they were the car of my childhood, the first old bangers we drove in the 80s. But by the 90s there were few left and we all missed them and secretly moaned. Then around the millennium they brought out the replacement yuppie Beetle - nice enough - they do stand out as different as the original did but the market was all wrong. They were aimed young rich singles, not families with loads of kids and little money. I still remember driving to Blackpool in a Beetle in '77 - 4 people, 2 suitcases, a tent, airbeds, camping equipment, where did we put it all?! (It had practically no boot) And they had those fake leather seats your legs stuck to on the one hot day every summer if you had the misfortune to be wearing shorts. That was what Beetles were really about, not those silly vases on the dashboard the new ones have. You are probably wondering my point by now? Just that 70s were Beetles driven by family men, 80s were old Beetles driven by teenagers, 90s were no Beetles and noughties started off as new poncy Beetles BUT in the past month I have started to notice them all over once again in Glasgow and around it - lovingly preserved Beetles of all colours - all around 1970 models. I have seen one or two every day for the last month, and all different ones - I would even kind of like one myself - well as a second car - for nostalgia's sake :-)

TRABI-DAY

It seems to be the Trabant's 50th birthday today so the BBC has a pile of bizarre Trabi photos. Seeing them just reminded me of the 6 months I lived in Germany, in Konstanz in 1989 - that was a very interesting year to live in Germany, remember? ;-) Oh and just for Charlotte since she's into blogging pink cars - here's a selection of pink Trabants!

CHILDCARE

I turned on the radio yesterday to hear that the headline news in Glasgow in February 2007 is that childcare costs a lot! This is news???? It hits the headlines in 2007 that many people are paying out more in childcare than in mortgage. I am astounded they've just noticed. It is almost 9 years to the day since Marcel first started nursery in the West end of Glasgow and even then my nursery fees were 30% higher than my mortgage. They wonder why the population isn't growing, why we are soon going to have more pensioners than kids in this country and in the same breath they mention that nursery costs on average one third of the average person's income per child. Well given most people need to pay more than just childcare - I mean most people have accomodation to pay, food, a car, petrol, insurance of various different types, heating, holidays, etcetcetc and they wonder why we can't shell out 60% of our salary for childcare for 2 under 5s. Give me strength. It isn't rocket science. If they want us to work and have kids then childcare has to cost less than your entire salary, no?

Pudge goes to a lovely nursery - I can't recommend it highly enough, but yes it does cost a third of my income to pay his 5 morning sessions a week :-(

WE ARE GOING TO THE SUN!!!!

Charlotte has decided to write a book - as you will be able to read if you go on to her blog today. I think her wee story is great - being able to write so many paragraphs after just one year at school is impressive. However one thing that I think is missing from the version on her blog is the cuteness of the original. You see she wrote it up by hand before putting it on her blog. The problem being blogger doesn't really let you spell things too wrongly. But the original is so sweetly childlike so I thought I would transcribe it here in spite of blogger's spellchecker no doubt throwing its arms up in despair as I do it.

We are going to the sun!!!!

This book tells you about rockets and planits. Furst I will tell you about the sun. The sun is a hot plas to go. If you go to the sun you will di becose the sun is the hotist thing in the eoonavers. Now I will tell you about the Eerth. It is a plas with lods of animals.

Now its mars is a rela hot plas but the sun is hoter than mars also mars is made of lava. It is now Joopiter. Joopiter is mad of lod of gas. I thinc that Joopiter is the onla Planit that has gas in it.

Now I will tell you about rockets. I thinc that a rocket to the sun wood tack about ten yeers. Now I will tell you about the Erth if you teak a rocket to Erth wood teak 7 yeers. Now its Mars. I think a rocket to Mars wood teak about 8 yeers. I thinc a rocket to Joopiter wood teak about 6 weeks.

Now thars tow aleeins. One of the aleeins gets eatin by a monster from Mars the uther aleein made a rocket and floo it to the moon. It can be yelo or gray. When the aleein went to the moon there was an asanot on the moon and the asanot spoc inglish but the aleein did not speec inglish so the aleein did not undrstand the asanot but after they traid to tock there sheeps brock down. They thot they had to sta on the moon forever but anuther rocket came and took them away but the aleein that was in the roket did not lete the astanot in the roket so the tow aleeins got bak to there on planit.

You have to agree that 'eoonavers' has to be the sweetest word you ever saw - you can just hear her sounding out every syllable to work out the spelling, can't you?

ALIENS FROM MARS THIS TIME?

I thought I'd come up with the perfect way to do that green-eyed Lotsie photo I mentioned the other day. I was sure I'd cracked it. But as you can see I still seem to be creating martians rather than beautiful artistic shots :-(

BUMBLE BEE (COLOURED) PHOTOGRAPHY

Stung by my failure to produce a stunning shot of Lotsie's green eyes, I did a quick colouring in (or colouring out as you actually have to do it) of a photo of I took of a bush near my garden last spring - just to prove to myself that I could actually master the technique. I think I have got the hang of it, now I need to find a more interesting subject or two.

ALIENS FROM JUPITER

Tonight I had this great idea. After seeing Thomas's Blue Pudge in a grey world and yellow duck I got this idea that a simple black and white shot with just my kids' eyes coloured in would be nice - Marcel's are olive green, Charlotte's a lighter green and Pudge is blue so I thought this would work for all three. I went through all the steps in the GIMP tutorial but the eye colour was so pale against the grey that it simply still looked grey - I was more than annoyed so put on my thinking cap. I went back to the original photo, turned up the greens and down the reds till the photo was much stronger in colour. Then I swapped into black and white and set about erasing the grey mask over the coloured eyes, expecting my lateral thinking couldn't fail to result in anything short of a stunning shot of Charlotte's beautiful green eyes...Wrong again - I got this seriously weird result which was so far from what I was attempting that I felt it necessary to upload it anyway. I guess I should retry over then next few days - I'm sure my idea will work eventually - I just need to adjust my greens a wee bit.

SUNFLOWERS

I love sunflowers. I was out for a walk one day last summer in Southern France when a huge thunder storm hit - while everyone else ran for cover I decided the best thing to do was to run into a nearby field of sunflowers and try to photograph their beautiful yellow heads under a grey and menacing sky rather than the stereotypical blue one. And of course now we use digital rather than film, there was nothing to stop me taking over 50 photos in the hope I would actually catch a fork of lightning above my beloved flowers. As it happens I only caught one, here off to the side - but it is real - there was no cloning involved here!

BLUE PUDGE IN A GREY WORLD

This is a photo technique I have always wanted to try, and just like cloning it is a ten minute affair with the GIMP software. I can´t wait to have a look through my photos this weekend to find something I can try to partially colour like this!

EUROPEAN BOOBS!

While reading his Danish newspaper this morning, Thomas came across an article about breast sizes in Europe. He was more than surprised to see it quoted none other than Glasgow's own Daily Record! Following the story up, he went back to the original article in the Daily Record. Apparently British women have the biggest breasts in Europe :-\ This fact, he said, did not surprise him! However it did make me wonder after a problematic few days shopping. You see I don't seem to be able to find my swimsuit. With both the older kids liking swimming and Pudgy being so at home in water I feel like I should just let him go because he'd be happy to attempt to swim already, I feel they are really missing out on their previous weekly visits to the pool. So about 4 days ago I set out to buy myself a new swimsuit. I tried the usual obvious shops, and they all had reasonably priced one-piece swimsuits, bikinis and even tankinis BUT and it's a bit BUT in my case, they all had non-removable padded breasts. Given I spend half my life trying unsuccessfully to stop my overlarge chest from falling out of an E-cup bra, why on earth would I want padding in a swimsuit? I would look utterly ridiculous! So if British women do indeed need a D cup or greater in general, could someone please pass this important information on to the swimwear manufacturers so we don't all end up looking stupid next time we dive into a pool, please?

CHARLOTTE'S BLOGGING TOO NOW

Charlotte decided today she needed a blog - I hadn't signed her up before because with her only being in p2 I didn't think her literary skills would be up to it...WRONG! She looks like she could become quite prolific!
(Oh and unlike her girlie mummy, Charlotte's blog isn't PINK, it's predictably BLACK.)

DON'T SAY THIS ISN'T CUTE!

Flicking through the BBC's in pictures section as always I came across this collection of baby panda shots. Now you have to admit these are heart-warming, no? It isn't often you see this many baby pandas together, is it?

THAT 'PARALLEL-UNIVERSE' CHILD AGAIN

I was sitting at the traffic lights in Rose street the other day with Charlotte in the car in the front passenger's seat. She spotted this sign and immediately came out with: Look mum, if you take the 's' off that and change the 'r' to a 'y', then swap round the vowels then that sign would say 'Monday'! What???? Whatwhatwhat? did you just say? How and why does anyone think like that?

LOTS AND LOTS!

I saw this staircase in Kelvingrove museum on Saturday and just knew it had to be the perfect setting for a clone photo! Given Charlotte hadn't had a clone shot done, she was more than happy to pose as soon as Thomas took out his tiny tripod!

PRICELESS COMPUTING

I am sitting here typing on my computer. Its new cable is plugged into its new DC socket :-) I wonder how long this will last :-\ It is amazing the different treatment you get when you start explaining you'll be happy to take your computer to be fixed elsewhere using your refund if they will simply admit they aren't competent enough to repair it!

But I'm sure you'll be the first to know if this repair also fails - you may need to shield your eyes from a barrage expletives if it breaks down again.

MORE CLONES

Marcels playing poker
Originally uploaded by viralbus.

After encountering the multiple Pudges this morning, Marcel was more than impressed, describing it as positively the coolest photo he had ever seen and begging for his very own set of cloned siblings. I guess from his reaction to the result, he was more than pleased with the outcome :-)

I JUST HAD TRIPLETS!

Triplets
Originally uploaded by viralbus.

Thomas has been playing about with cloning and come up with wonderful shot of multiple Pudges. Can you imagine if it was real? Marcel, Charlotte, Léon, Gordon, extra Léon, extra extra Léon all hurtling around the livingroom at Granny and Pumpa´s house spilling all 3 red cups of juice! Photography really is fun these days. What will the wee man think when he sees this photo at 16 - will he wonder if he was one of triplets and if so what happened to the other two pudgy guys or will photography be much more surreal by then? We're still old school I guess - believing to a certain extent that a camera never lies - well it didn't use to but then we went digital!

BACK TO THE BLOG

a bath together
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

Haven't blogged for a few days - it's been a busy few. (And the bloody laptop socket has come loose AGAIN)
First I did some DIY - I tiled a wall in the kitchen and am impressed by how straight I managed to make it! (Photos to follow once it is actually finished and grouted).
Then I had a birthday - that's me 39 - how can that be possible when I still only feel 23???? I think I'll cancel next year's for sure - I can almost deal with 39, but 40 is just unimaginable - I still remember when it was my dad's 40th! I think I'll try living by Amanda's philosophy. She explained to me on Sunday that she turns 35 in 3 weeks - she's going to stick there until she turns 50 when she then might start admitting to being 39! Cool :-)
On my birthday the wee guys had a bath together for the first time. There's a whole series of shots, if you want to see them. They had so much fun. Being born within week's of a cousin definitely seems to make for a closer than normal relationship. Let's hope they'll still be this close 20 years from now (though hopefully by then they'll have better ways of amusing themselves than chasing each other naked up and down the hall in Gordon's house!)

WHAT'S TODAY?

First D.J.: Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.
Second D.J.: It's coooold out there every day. What is this, Miami Beach?