WHAT'S IN A NAME?

COOP
Originally uploaded by fr0g

Interesting how certain laws are woolly in this country. When I decided to revert to my maiden name a month ago, I was told that legally a married woman who took her husband's name can revert to her maiden name at any time and doesn't need to wait until a divorce is granted. Given how hard it is to get a divorce in this country, I wanted to change name now so baby Bart-Lisa could be a Buchanan-Widmann, rather than a, perhaps inappropriate Gautier-Widmann. After reading up on the pitfalls of name change, I reluctantly decided that paying £70 to change by deed poll was safer than just reverting. My lawyer thought I was mad to pay but guess what, it seems I am right! Although I have a legal right to call myself Buchanan, there seems to be a problem with financial institutions in the UK not accepting that right. When I wrote to my bank to have my name changed on my current account this week, I was informed that they would only change my name on my cards after seeing either my divorce papers or my deed poll documentation. I feel this anomaly is very unfair. Grrr!

JUSTIFICATION AT LAST

My allergy nightmare: Dust Mites
Originally uploaded by orcagirl

I come from a family of bed makers - they hop out of bed every morning and straighten up the duvets to look like an exhibit in Ikea or Marks and Spencer, whereas as I keep bed making to a strict minimum - ie vaguely straightening a duvet if I think the Queen might drop by, or my house is up for sale. I never ever understood the need for wasting 5 minutes a day making a bed when inevitably, I am going to end up back under the duvet, messing it up several hours later. Life's just too short. I always thought I was the duvet black sheep of the Buchanan clan but today I hear I am actually the one who has got it all right! Cool :-)

BABY BRITANN ROSE?

Into the final stretch now - 2 months to go today! Arg, it really is time we offloaded the 2 mortgages if I am going to reach 14 December without a nervous breakdown!
Mum made me laugh the other day by suggesting we should name our daughter Britann Rose. An odd choice I thought but she went on to explain - these celebrity types like to choose either place names (you know Brooklyn etc) for their offspring claiming often they were conceived there. Mum thought given we lived at Rose street at the time - that would give us 'Rose' but to make a place name we could combine the two granny's first names: Brita and Ann, to make a pseudo-place name: Britann - hmmmm am not convinced she'd be happy going through life as a Britann!

NOT QUITE THERE

I am more than impressed to see that with 2 matches remaining in the Euro 2008 qualifiers, Scotland is still above both France and Italy. To listen to the radio and TV, you'd assume we'd already qualified. Am I the only one still feeling a sense of doom and gloom? Both France and Italy are only a point or two behind and can still qualify - one of them still has to play the Faroes for heaven's sake, couple with that Scotland's amazing ability to fall spectacularly at the last hurdle. Sorry to be a merchant of doom - but I predict we won't get through!

IT'S A QUESTION OF AGE

A matter of record: vinyl magic - soulful 45's
Originally uploaded by rigilbert

When I look at a single - you know a vinyl 45 - (apologies to all under 25s who don't know what I am talking about), I think of it as something small - because I know lps, in fact I am even old enough to have seen my grandparents' 78s. Today while unpacking, I came across a very old pile of ABBA singles from the 70s. I left them in a pile on the living room floor. Charlotte came upon them later in the day and exclaimed in a mix of horror and shock - those cds are enormous! She didn't even really know what they were! I guess I am now well and truly one of yesterday's generation.

DORIS'S PRIZE

Nice to see Doris has finally been recognized as a brilliant writer. Not before time, I've been a big fan ever since I discovered the Children of Violence series back at age 20! I did have to laugh when I heard her candid interview on radio 2 though - she pointed out that at 88, the Nobel people had probably decided they'd better hurry up and award her something as Nobel prizes can't be given posthumously and they probably figured she was on the verge of 'popping off!' I guess she has all her marbles about her and still likes to provoke!

CHICKEN SOUP ANYONE?

All the way to work this morning they were warning us to be prepared for long motorway tailbacks and delays because over a thousand live chickens had escaped onto the road before rush hour! This must have inspired Marcel subconsciously, as he asked if I could make a pot of chicken soup this weekend! What a sight that must have been! Given my drive to work takes just under 2 hours, I was eventually starting to tire of the radio DJ's poor why did the chicken cross the road jokes!

SANDALS IN THE SNOW?

sandals
Originally uploaded by glsims99

Since moving half our stuff, or to be more precise 80% or my stuff and 30% of Thomas's to the house, I have been desperately hunting for more appropriate footwear now the colder air and wetter weather is here. On Friday, I found a huge bag of shoes, but was less than pleased to discover neither my brown flat boots which I have been hunting to wear with my denim skirt, nor my black ankle boots, which I tend to wear all winter with all trousers. Today, however, during one of my searches, I was thrilled to find both in a little rucksack in the kitchen. Problem solved...or maybe not. First I tried my black boots, and my poor swollen feet could get in what are usually my comfiest boots, then I squashed my feet into the slightly larger brown boots only to find the zip wouldn't pass either my swollen ankles or legs. Waaaaah! Remind me to have all future babies in the summer! (Only kidding!)
I guess I might be stuck with sandals in the snow this year! Ho hum...

SHIRLEY VALENTINE

I've just re-re-re-watched Shirley Valentine. I guess I first saw it when it came out in 1989, and then thought of it as relating more to my parents' generation than my own. I re-watched it about 18 months ago, and was surprised to hear her say she was only 42. That made it so close to being me, I could almost touch it. It really is one of those deeply thought-provoking pieces. It always strikes me as amazing that it could have been written by a man, especially 20 years ago. I can think of so many friends I'd love to sit in front of it and make them watch. Isn't life funny?

A SCENE FROM AN UPCOMING HORROR MOVIE?

A scene from an upcoming horror movie?
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Flickr never ceases to amaze me. You upload pretty photos of yourself (well as pretty as you get at my age), your kids and your family and in the first 24 hours you get 2, maybe 3 hits. You upload something as horrendous as this - but which contains a small scrap of human flesh covering everything you would cover at the public beach anyway, and even though it isn't tagged as being in any way naked, you get over 200 hits in the first 24 hours. Odd. Firstly how do people find it? And secondly, why on earth do they want to see it? I must say it has me puzzled, though also amused. Maybe I should try walking down the beach at the moment wearing nothing but a bikini and a face mask to see if it provokes the same reaction?!

LIMBO'S GOING TO BE BURSTING AT THE SEAMS!

Limbo Dante
Originally uploaded by El Código

I was listening to a talk programme on BBC radio 2 today. Did you know that the christening rate for children in England and Wales has now fallen to 16%? It was quite an interesting debate. I remember as an unchristened child in Scotland (which I can't imagine is majorly different from England except perhaps in catholic circles) in the 70s being a bit of a freak. Schoolfriends had already worked out that I couldn't join in the the chats about what aunts, uncles or cousins had bought me for Christmas as both my parents were only children. Often, to compensate, I'd be asked what my Godparents had got me - sorry - didn't have any of those either...weirdo! Anyway I was fairly surprised by quite how low the figure was just 35 years on - I'd probably have guessed 50% off the top of my head, though given I don't know anyone who's had their children christened in the UK, maybe I should have guessed! The ensuing debate, anyway, seemed to centre round the 2 extremes - people saying their children could feel safe and happy and you could cover all eventualities for their future with a will so a Godparent was superfluous, and others saying that Godparents were necessary. Interestingly, however, half of those who claimed to be religious still said the most important role for a Godparent wasn't religious instruction but as a back-up parent, should the real one be run over by a bus. If that's the case, why does religion come into it?
Anyway, I guess limbo is going to be full to bursting by the time I and my unchristened offspring pop our clogs! (well as long as we manage to live a fairly saintly life ;-) ).

PHYSALIS

Tonight after dinner we had some cape gooseberries. They were much appreciated, given how much I like fruit at the moment - as a very vegetable, non-fruit person when I am not pregnant, I never cease to be amazed how nice fruit is every time I am pregnant, though unfortunately it usually reverts to tasteless straight after birth. Anyway, I have always called cape gooseberries cape gooseberries but I noticed on the packet their real name was physalis. Why would you call a fruit after an STD? I'm afraid my small brain has a real problem separating physalis and syphilis mentally, so I am going to have to stick to calling them cape gooseberries.

A NEW START

I decided a while back to revert to my maiden name (Buchanan), but given we were in the process of a mortgage application and house buy, I didn't think it overly wise to revert to a name with no credit rating on the country's national databases until all that was done and dusted. Given we got our keys last week though, I figured a new month was as good a day as any to break with the old and embrace the older. I feel years younger already!

A RARE SIGHT!

 

 

Charlotte was more than horrified to see I had taken this today. I think her exact words were You can't upload that - what will people think if they see me holding a doll!. Bizarre - they'll probably think you are a girl with a doll, of course, you silly child! In all honesty, she was not playing with this doll, Léon was and she asked him just off camera if he wanted her to take its clothes off as they were too fiddly for him, but I couldn't let the only opportunity I have had to photograph her with a girlie toy in 5 years pass me by - could I? ;-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LÉON!

Blowing out the 2 candles
Originally uploaded by phyl1

Léon surprised us all by knowing exactly how to blow out the candles on the chocolate birthday cake Thomas baked for him. When it was brought in he looked so happy and shy as he realized it was his special day. He's such a gentle wee guy. He also had fun with his new lego, trucks, cars, digger and pedal car he could drive himself. Later we took him out for dinner - just Ikea meatballs but enough again to make his day special.

MARZIPAN BABIES

We were, oops I of course mean Thomas was, making Pudgeman a birthday cake this morning and as he was piping on the icing using a bag, I commented that that wasn't something we did a lot of in Scotland, whereas in Denmark apparently everyone over about 5 knows how to ice a cake using a bag! He then commented that we were better over here with marzipan however, which reminded me of an email I'd once been sent. I guess he's right on the marzipan front!

NOT VERY NOUGHTIES

Today was a bit surreal. I had a big ante-natal appointment and then we had the option of attending an ante-natal class. There are 2 options for these classes:

1. The new parents class - where neither party has been through childbirth so both are told what to expect, and the guys are advised on how they can help and support their partner.
2. The parental refresher class - where both are already parents so mums get to come along for a 2 hour refresher and partners are excluded.

Hmmm - what do I do about that? If I choose option 1, I am so overqualified, I could stand up and give the class myself. If I go for option 2 Thomas is excluded when he is the one who wants and needs the class. And given André never attended an ante-natal class for any of the other 3, I can't even relay what the guys are taught.

So we had to go for option 1. I felt very strange listening to that, I can tell you. But if it is the only way to get support, then so be it. The thing I find odd though in this day and age when so many people have kids in a second marriage is why the hospitals are still so 1960s in their outlook!

WHO LIVES IN A HOUSE LIKE THIS?

The house we're buying
Originally uploaded by viralbus

We got the keys to our new house on Friday and after a weekend in and out to DIY and move things I am beginning to find it a bit of an odd house. It is nearly 40 years old and yet not only do the bathrooms not have toilet roll holders and towel rails, they have no signs of ever having had these items on their walls. There are no nail holes in the entire house, as if no one in 40 years has ever hung a picture or a mirror either! Thomas is beginning to speculate it was previously owned by vampires...personally I think they just got in a plasterer to do it up before putting it in the market...here's hoping I'm right!

CREAM-CRACKERED!

removal chaos
Originally uploaded by phyl1

I am absolutely exhausted after probably the most strenuous weekend since - well since we finished diying here in the flat. Moving house when you have no professional removal squad is so much harder than you imaging. Finding some semblance of order when your ex has randomly packed shoes with books, toys, and kitchen items and often shoes and bits of toys or jigsaw puzzles separately in different boxes in mind-boggling. Then you try to spend one overnight in the new place you aren't yet living in, only to find a futon is torture when you are nearly 7 months pregnant - (I need 2 hip replacements now) and your other baby wakens you up at 3am staring at a dining room (the only place we could put our bed and his) he doesn't recognize, quietly sobbing: Hug! Hug!
Tomorrow I have to get up at 6am, do the school run, the nursery run, go to work, be home in lightning speed for a flat viewer, who will probably not show up anyway, do the school run and then DIY and unpack till coming back here for dinner as the new kitchen is cookerless! I can hardly wait...put me down now! :-(

PUDGE'S SELF ESTEEM

cousins on a chair
Originally uploaded by phyl1

I love it when the little people start talking. Léon now parrots everything I say in English, everything Thomas says in Danish and everything André says in French. Last night we let him sleep in Marcel's bed instead of his cot as Marcel was sleeping over with his grandparents. Léon obviously felt very happy and grown up, as he was able to get out of bed himself and come and look for us when he woke up. Sweetest though had to be his opening comment. As he walked in, I asked: Where's mummy's gorgeous boy? He replied: I'm gorgeous, I'm special! No trouble on the self esteem front there!

THERE HAD TO BE WOODCHIP HIDING SOMEWHERE!

There had to be woodchip hiding somewhere
Originally uploaded by phyl1

When I bought my first flat in the West End of Glasgow back when I was about 25 (funny nowadays 25 year olds can't afford Glasgow's west end thanks to rising house prices and static salaries...), we didn't pay much attention to the decor so were horrified to find 3 metre ceilings with dreaded woodchip wallpaper on the walls. Anyone who has ever tried to strip woodchip knows that when you do, the top layer comes off then all the little woodchippings stay firmly stuck and you have to strip them again, then you end up with a floor full of splinters you are still getting between your toes a year later!

When I bought my second flat in the West End I vowed it wouldn't happen again. I was sure I took a mental note of the decor when I viewed it so was quite shocked when I got the keys to find out all 4 huge main rooms had it again, worse still I stripped one room painfully to find under the first layer of woodchip there was actually a second layer! Who in their right mind would wallpaper woodchip on top of woodchip?

When I bought my first house I really did check every room for the hideous stuff - none of the bedrooms had it, nor the living room or dining room - phew! I had checked well that time - all would be fine...I got the keys and immediately found the hall to be full of it - how had I missed it? I guess I hadn't thought of the hall as a room.

Today we got the keys of our new house. I walked in confidently knowing I had left no stone unturned, I had even checked the cupboards this time. Not even a square centimetre of the wallpaper fiend. We got down to work immediately. The first task before moving our furniture in was to throw out the built-in wardrobe in Marcel's room as his bunk beds wouldn't fit around it. I bet you can guess what was on the walls behind it! :-\

SIGN COMPETITION

Some of these signs made me smile. We live in a bizarre world!

NAMING BART, OOPS LISA

I am beginning to wonder if I should write a baby names book, or site. There seem to be several types on the market, but they aren't right. You get the tiny gem sized books that cross-refer everything to everything else - you are told there's no difference between half a dozen names Lisa see Liza see Elizabeth etc, so they just frustrate you. The big ones are so full of nonsense (Did you know Brixton, Clapton, Docklands, Fulham and Wembley are now all supposedly acceptable names for wee boys in the English speaking world?) that you fall asleep by half way through letter 'a' each time you attempt to name your kid. Are we going to end up with a nation of kids all with names beginning with letter 'a' or 'b', simply because their parents ran out of energy? If you go onto an Internet page, you get offered 7000 names - the first 15 all beginning with Aa, come on - give me a break! Consequently, we are getting nowhere. Maybe sites asking questions about likes and dislikes, offering lists of names people should like if they like another would help. Though according to one list I found - if I like Charlotte I should like: Arabella, Celia, Clementine, Colette, Norah and Sophia....erm nope, sorry! Maybe Bart would be nice for our wee girl...

AM I GERMAN?

Germany Flag
Originally uploaded by ClausM

Something rather strange is going on this evening...Blogger has decided I am German - firstly it asked me if I want to view my blog in einem anderen Fenster - odd - but sure ok, if you insist. Now half an hour later I try leaving a comment on Thomas's blog and it in forms me Sie können HTML-Tags verwenden, z. B. , , but rather unhelpfully, if I am actually German, goes on to tell me that: This blog does not allow anonymous comments. I haven't blogged anything in German, and I haven't blogged anything about German, so why this suddenly assumption of my native language? Bizarre!

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? :-(

A NEAT PLAN

 

 

We had a neat plan for the afternoon. Marcel was invited to a friend's house for 2 hours to play and the sun was just coming out when we dropped him off, so we drove to Newton Mearns, parked the car and went for a walk through the woods eating the beautiful ripe brambles from the bushes, following the little stream to the swing park. It was idyllic - the rain had stopped, the woods smelled wonderful, the kids were happy. We were less than 10 minutes from the car when the first raindrop hit, no problem...Then the rain got so heavy we were soaked through to our underwear, the road flooded so walking back to the car necessitated a wade through a shin-height puddle. We couldn't go anywhere in that state so had to pay an impromptu visit to my parents and sit in our underwear (not a pretty sight at 6 months pregnant!) on their couch while they dried our clothes over their radiators! Not quite the afternoon we'd been expecting!

OOPS BART'S A LISA!

4D scan
Originally uploaded by viralbus

Finally we reached the 26 weeks milestone, after which they are happy to 4D scan you. What a difference from the once exciting, now boring 2D scans that were the only option when I had Léon, Lots and Marcel. For half an hour we got to watch Bart suck his fingers, wave, yawn, stretch etc. We got to see him stretch his toes and fingers and finally we got to see his bits only to find out he didn't have any so maybe Lisa would be a more appropriate name henceforth for our Bart! Not sure the kids are too pleased yet - I think they are slightly worried the house may potentially end up full of Barbies and fairy costumes rather than the acceptable trucks and power ranger toys they expect Pudge will soon want. By 10pm, however, they were already coming round to the Lisa idea.
I have to say she looks very peaceful and pretty in there at the moment - hopefully she'll not have a Tasmanian devil streak in her when she hits 2! Mind you - if I coped with Charlotte, I can cope with anything!

FOOTBALL

I was going to blog it last night but I had a migraine. Scotland has only gone and beaten France in France - how surreal is that?
I went round to Derek's to watch as it was only on Sky - for some reason the terrestrial TV thought us Scots would rather watch the England match - don't start me - grrr! I know the French team well, having spent at least 10 years supporting France, not only because half the family is French but also because Scotland failed to qualify for anything for at least the last 10 years! So it felt odd watching what is supposedly my team, who I didn't recognize, play my other team who I know well! Anyway Scotland beat them and gobsmacked them all in one. We then had a problem getting home as Sauchiehall street had turned into an impromptu party, with singing, dancing and horn tooting, blocking the whole street - even my kids finally accepted that it was ok to support both France and Scotland - unlike the floods of tears we got last year when Scotland last beat France. I think as long as both France and Scotland qualify all will be quiet in my household, but if the evil Italians, who my kids still accuse of cheating France out of the last world cup, qualify instead of one of their teams, life will not be worth living!

NOT BEFORE TIME

I said it at the time and I'm saying it again - show me where to sign up for this and I'll gladly sign my baby up for it. I never want to go through another minute of pox in the Pudge style.

WHAT A CHEEK!

I turn on my computer to blog something that has enraged me at least 8 hours ago (not to mention for the 35 years since I first entered a UK primary school), only to find bloody Thomas has blogged it first! Without even obtaining my permission! What a cheek!

What on earth is going on on the metric/imperial front now? I started school in 1972, I was taught centimetres and kilos. Weights in corner shops and market stalls back then were in pounds and ounces, and milk came in pints. I had no idea what a pound or ounce was, a pint I worked out by looking at the milk bottles on my parents' doorstep. As I grew up I was taught to measure myself in centimetres - for schoolwork, for my passport, for hiring my university graduation robes, for my medicals when pregnant - I am 160.5cms. I think that's around 5'2'' or maybe 5'3'' - but why should I have to work that out? It is of no use to me or any authority measuring me. I learned to weigh everything in kilos. Recipes, apart from brown-paged ancient books belonging to my 23-year-departed granny are also in kilos, grammes. I don't need to know ounces. I am not even sure how many are in a pound, and how many of those are in a stone - I know 16 and 14 or is it 12 come into it somewhere but it's definitely some perverse system you can't count on your fingers. I only know my weight in kilos. When I had babies they weighed them in kilos and measured them in centimetres - so why do I have to google a conversion chart to work out they were 8lb, 7lb2, and 7lb13.5 respectively? I always thought this stupidity would die out with my 'transitional generation', but now I hear my kids will be stuck with this pigheaded nonsense forever. So they'll measure themselves in kilos, then Charlotte will have a baby one day and I will instinctively understand its kilo weight but she'll be obliged to memorize some combination of 12s and 14s for god knows who...stop it now!

It's bad enough we were too stubborn to swap sides of the road back in the postwar era when it was still cheap enough to do so, causing us to close our car sales and push the prices through the ceiling. It is bad enough half of the tourist market we could entice every year goes elsewhere because they are too scared to attempt bringing their European cars here to drive on the wrong side of the road, costing us millions. But why torture another generation with this imperial nonsense. If we want that system, introduce it and teach us it like in the US. Otherwise please just let's use what everyone under 50 has learned at school and stop bamboozling us with 12s, 14s and 16s now!

BUGGY BOARDS

While I'm in a ranting mood, I might as well have a few more moans...When I had Marcel and Charlotte 29 months apart, I first thought I would need a double buggy so I bought one of those telescopic side by side buggies complete with rain cover that cost an arm and a leg. Of course, I hadn't foreseen it was wider than most shop doors, so took to wearing Charlotte and pushing the buggy containing Marcel, which worked but didn't do wonders for my newly post-natal back. I next looked at tandem buggies but they folded up so clumsily that they didn't fit in my car! Eventually, a few months in, I settled on a buggy board (left). Marcel rode on that while Lots sat in the buggy and although it meant overstretching my arms, it did seem to be a nice compromise. But the one thing that pissed me off then and is pissing me off again now I am trying to find a new buggy board so Pudge can ride on Bart's back is the price. To me the main piece of transport is the buggy and the extra bit is the buggy board, so why does it cost £48-97 to buy a board to stick on the back of a £35 buggy? :-(

SOMETHING TO CHEER ME UP

With 2 mortgages now just 2 weeks away, still no maintenance after a year and maternity leave now a maximum of 11.5 weeks away, I have been a bit of a grumpy cow over the weekend, to say the least! That was until Marcel stuck on the DVD of the Mrs Richards episode of Fawlty Towers. God that's funny! It has to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I remembered it almost word perfect, I had seen it so often as a student, but it still creased me up. A real tonic! I think if I watch the whole series and dig out my old Billy Connelly with his name in pink video, I might just get through the next few weeks!

PUDGY MAN

The BBC seems to think Pudgeman is cute! Check out number 5! :-)

THINK IT THROUGH!

Why does the government, and the Tories for that matter (witness last week's voluntary 6 week national service nonsense), come out with such shite at times? It's like they don't think things through.
My first question has to be why after 29 weeks? When everything is well-formed and ready to go, rather than the first trimester when the brain etc is being formed.
My second question is that if this money is not means-tested then are government officials going to take the poorer amongst us hand and hand to the supermarket to check we buy vegetables and not chips? Or maybe they are going to be forced subsequently to offer us this money in ASDA or TESCO vouchers , causing a national supermarket war rather than money into our accounts as suggested so we spend it carefully? I guess that will mean those who live in families are meant to buy mum-to-be nice food but the rest of the family the cheap stuff? Let's face it, if you are a silly pregnant 16 year old and you receive a £200 ASDA voucher, will you spend it in the food department on asparagus and salmon, or are you indeed more likely to wander over to the baby and clothes bit and pick your baby out some cute clothes, and accessories? Or worse still wander over to the cigarette counter and buy more of what will cause a premature and light-weight birth in the first place?
And of course my final question to the government also has to be - given that I have had 4 babies under the Labour regime, why are they introducing this 18 months too late for me to squander the notes on anything close to my heart, food or clothes-wise? :-(

RAISIN BRAN

Over the years, whenever I have been trying to be health conscious, I have tried to swap my chocolate cluster cereal or maple and pecan delights for boring old sultana bran. It's ok, in a chewy cardboard kind of way and makes you feel vaguely self-righteous. Then, about two years ago, ASDA introduced Raisin Bran as well. Raisin bran was a whole other story - it contained beautiful, huge, almost grape-sized succulent raisins. I no longer had to force myself to dump the choco-cereals, it was just delicious. So why the hell have they discontinued raisin bran in favour of boring old sultana bran. Where do I write to complain? Who should I sue when I am forced to put on 3 or 4 kg just because I've reverted to the chocolate clusters???? I am not a happy bunny :-(

BACK OR FRONT?

back court night1
Originally uploaded by chirgy

I was looking through flickr just now at Glasgow tenement photos (there are some lovely tiles on there btw) and what struck me was that 95% of the photos are of the fronts of tenements. I began to wonder if that means the photos were taken, for the most part, by people who were walking past these vertical villages, rather than the dwellers themselves. I mean I have always found the fronts extremely beautiful, and if I could afford a whole townhouse in sandstone in the West End I'd jump at it but I think real tenement dwellers love the backs equally, if in a different way. I haven't felt it quite so well in Rose Street because of the internal kitchen, but the nicest bit for me of tenement living, which I probably had best in Dowanhill, is that warm and cosy feeling you have, looking out your kitchen window at the backs of all the other tenements built around watching all those other people in their kitchens. I don't mean nosy, spy on your neighbour stuff. I just think that after dusk in a Glasgow tenement you feel almost like you belong to some extended family as you look across to all the other back closes and see everyone potter in their own kitchen. I think that is one of the great shames of converting tenements, the easiest way was always to turn the 2 huge bed recesses into and internal kitchen but you lose that vertical village feeling when you lose the window. I think deep down back closes make me warm and fuzzy :-)

CRASH TEST CAR

 

 

Léon seemed quite fascinated by this exhibit in Glasgow's Transport Museum. So fascinated in fact that when we turned our backs for 5 seconds, he ran under the barrier, climbed past the exploded airbag on the passenger's seat and got into the driver's seat. Given the entire car is covered in 'Do not touch' stickers, coaxing him back out was hughly embarrassing!

IS THERE NOTHING YOU CAN'T GOOGLE?

That child (Charlotte) never ceases to astound me. Today she asked me, very nonchalantly, as I was driving home when I was going to die. As most parents do when faced with this question from a small child, I tried to reassure her it wouldn't be until a long time in the future, when she'd grown up and left home, saying I really didn't know. Instead of being relieved by my woolly answer, she was positively let down at its lack of specifics, tutted and muttered: 'well can't you google it or something?'

OUCH!

Derek and Amanda used to live in Wilton Street in North Kelvinside. They'll be glad they moved, as I expect property prices may have taken a bit of a tumble last night! The photos are spectacularly horrendous. Considering the size of the flats in that street, I imagine the 4 that were destroyed must have been worth over £1.2M.

VUCK!

Van of Dreams on a rescue truck, Sary Tash, Kyrgyzstan
Originally uploaded by rtw2007

I was thrilled a few weeks ago when wee Pudgey man managed to point at a truck on the motorway and shout 'truck'. I was even more proud a few days later when he could suddenly tell the difference between a truck and a van and pointed out vans on the motorway. I was less than pleased today however when he saw both together as in this shot and instantly proclaimed 'VUCK!'

HOMEBASE

For the past year or so I have been driving past the half-built Homebase next door to Robroyston Asda every day on my way to work in Bishopbriggs. I am not a great fan of Homebase to be honest, I tend to find B&Q has a much better selection, however the fact that it is next door to a large supermarket, that I often frequent means I am going to find it useful for the odd pack of screws or piece of sandpaper even if I do stick to B&Q's larger selection for paint or beading or whatever. It opened finally on Friday and on Saturday during our DIY bonanza Thomas found we needed panel pins - an obvious thing to acquire in the new Homebase. I toddled out alone, leaving Thomas to paint the bathroom. On entering I saw two things that were going to appeal much more to Thomas than any B&Q - the first area you enter after the front door has a sign above it proclaiming 'cookshop' - Thomas is a kitchen utensil and gadget nerd (I mean he has a tool that slices fresh pineapples into rings and takes out the core simultaneously and the likes!) so he will be over the moon to check every shelf here to make sure he isn't missing anything obscure. But the second thing that will appeal to the language nerd but which I found utterly bizarre was the Gaelic signposting! Now we were in Oban over the summer, where the odd bank's name or street name appears in Gaelic under the English but that is 100 miles north of Glasgow and is probably only done to appeal to the tourists looking for that shortbread-tin Scotland that doesn't actually exist. They have the same in Irish in Dublin airport - signs like Welcome and Exit translated into Irish to appeal to the tourists but the real information signs are actually conspicuously only in English. So here I was standing in Bishopbriggs, Glasgow in a DIY store where not just entrance and exit were displayed in Gaelic, but absolutely everything - every department, every information sign - nothing was left out. But who is it for? It isn't there to fool the tourists - tourists don't go DIY shopping in the northern suburbs of Glasgow, it isn't there for Bishopbriggs' native Gaelic speaking community because there isn't a native Gaelic speaker within 200 miles of the place, it isn't even for the non-native Gaelic speaker because the chances of even one of them crossing their threshold per day is zero. So why? It must have cost money to have it all translated, it must also have cost to hang all these signs. It is truly bewildering. If it was to be useful to people using the store Polish would have been a more obvious choice with many Polish tradesmen in Glasgow at the moment. It isn't far from Sighthill either with its large foreign community so they could have tried French for the African refugees, or Arabic or even the more usual Urdu, Punjabi or Chinese but Gaelic?...weird, weird,weird!

After work today we stopped in for 5 minutes so I could show Thomas this linguistically phenomenal DIY store...his first impression? Predictably, they've spelled 'furniture' wrong! I should have guessed!

MINCE AND TATTIES

Mince and Tatties
Originally uploaded by The Duke of Prunes

Just been over to mum and dad's to drop off the 2nd (or was it 3rd, I've lost all sense of time) carload of stuff from the flat today - we're 'decluttering' as advised both by common sense and the estate agents! We worked all day, pretty much like yesterday so this week is going to be a nightmare - I usually try to recuperate from my 6am weekday starts at the weekend but this weekend hasn't seen me sit on my bottom for more than 5 minutes :-( Today we didn't even have time for dinner so Thomas ordered a pizza online. I don't mind pizzas - no one has invented a foodstuff I actually dislike - but I am fairly indiffernt to pizza. Sure I prefer a pizza to no dinner but it came and was eaten but didn't excite me over much. We then walked in on mum and dad just as they were dishing out mince and tatties - now there's something that I would have liked tonight - I always try to do something more exotic with mince so haven't had boring old mince and tatties in my grandparents' style in years but I really fancied it when I saw it. I started to wonder why you can't order mince and tatties online for home delivery...maybe that's a business idea that'd work - for all those people bored of online pizza. Maybe it could slowly be expanded to online haggis, online cullen skink... Have I finally hit on something that'll make me a millionaire?

ZONKED!

 

 

I was going to have a good old moan about our day - 2 washings, 3 ironings, 1 trip to Homebase (which I'll blog tomorrow or the day after - it was just too weird for words), tidying under one bed, packing 3 boxes, 2 suitcases, doing skirtings, washing all the flat windows using a bloody heavy 3 metre long pole in the drizzle, painting bits of the bathroom - walls, pipes, tidying round the sink, unblocking a drain, shaving the bottom off one of the numerous ill-fitting doors in the flat, crawling about the front garden picking up two whole binbags full off litter kindly dropped by the lazy git brigade on their daily walk to and from Cowcaddens tube station, sweeping and hoovering what seems like all day...etc etc And some how getting to 10pm and still having as much to do tomorrow :-( When I was done ranting, I was going to attach a photo of me trying hard to stand on my very swollen feet, crippled with my very achy back but then I saw this old photo of Pudgeman and thought - that's how I feel - that says it all!

DANCING QUEEN

You Can Dance, You Can Jive....
Originally uploaded by copazetic

Not only did he come to see Barbra with me last month but this week he bought tickets to take me to see Dancing Queen at the Theatre Royal tonight. He's either crazy or he loves me. Neither of us had read what Dancing Queen actually was so assumed it was some kind of Mama Mia type stage play but it turned out to be more of a lavish Bjorn again type tribute concert with a bizarre 70s interlude in the middle - no matter - people were dancing in the aisles like crazy. We were in the front row of the circle and I was beginning to worry it would collapse in that old Glasgow theatre given the shoogling it was doing under the feet of the dancing spectators...it didn't. So it was a nice nostalgic evening, though it finished with a wee bit of a twist. As we walked down the stairs, the fire alarm started to ring, we strolled on then realized it was a real fire alarm so everyone was hustled outside quickly to make way for the 4 (or was it 5?) waiting fire engines. We're sitting here now wondering if we have just seen the last ever show at Glasgow's Theatre Royal, in true Glasgow Apollo style and if it is currently burning down, but unfortunately we are both too tired to walk the one block to check...maybe tomorrow...

Oh and Bart gave only 2 kicks during the entire performance which lasted from 7-30 to 10pm so I don't think (s)he's going to be a wee musical baby like Pudge, just a vaguely lazy lump!

IF ONLY I'D HAD A SHOTGUN!

Tonight was another glorious, sunny night so we opted for a picnic dinner - well fried chicken from Farmfoods, 3 bags of chips from the Oxford in Hill street, a big bottle of Irn Bru and a melon to make us believe it was a healthy picnic! It was nice to get to eat outside for a change, and the wasps weren't a problem yet, although it is the end of the season. It was even nicer to have no clearing up or dishes afterwards but I have to admit I found myself longing for a shotgun. We had a few chips left over and the seagulls were flying overhead squawking madly like they've been doing from 4am recently keeping me awake and putting me in a foul mood for the day. I knew that if I threw the spare chips to the ground, I'd have had a clean shot at a whole bunch of the squawking, flying vermin and potentially a night's rest but unfortunately no one seemed to have abandoned any guns in the local park, so I carefully bagged every last chip and put them in the bin fearing that if they could smell even one they might be back to dispute them at 4am.

NOT FOR THE SCATOLOGICALLY SQUEAMISH!

It just has to be a male invention - I know that is a sexist comment but there really can't be any other explanation. For starters, guys can better aim anyway with their attachment than we can, should they need to give a urine sample, which of course they almost never do, but these have to be the biggest joke of pregnancy. The opening is less than a centimetre wide and every 2-4 weeks they want to check for protein in your urine as pre-eclampsia can lead to eclampsia which of course can be fatal. They need to check for life-threatening diabetes-related sugars too. So if all these things they are checking for are so damned important then why to they give you this ludicrous receptacle? You can't see your feet, let alone your knee-caps by 24 weeks, your arms are too short to fit round the bump and between your legs and still you are meant to aim at an opening less than a centimetre in width to provide a sample that could save yours or your baby's life - hahaha - someone has a mighty sick sense of humour!

SEAPLANE

Seaplane Liftoff
Originally uploaded by msusmania

Wow! Apart from the fairly hideous non-ryanair-type price, I really fancy trying this, camera in hand!

LET ME SLEEP!

I am not usually a fan of rain but I'm happy to say the past two Saturdays have been amongst the wettest, most dismal August days I remember in all history. Why does this please me? Well at 9am both days I have been rudely dragged from my bed, although already awake, by that most nauseating of sounds, peculiar only to sad sectarian places such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, a mix of deep thudding drums and cheap squeaky whistles - a combination that can only mean the lunatics have escaped the asylum once more to parade their orange nonsense on our streets under my bedroom window. Why don't they just crawl back under their stone and finally realize that the world doesn't need this kind of negativity? I am happy to say I am free from religion and all its dark undertones, I did however come from a family that was Protestant a generation or two ago, and despite that spent years happy and loved in the midst of a French Catholic family - celebrating our similarities and differences. I don't think anyone can fully understand that sinister side of what was loosely termed religion unless they grew up in Scotland or Northern Ireland during the 1970s, watching night after night people killing and maiming supposedly for the sake of their faith. If that is faith, I am happy to have none. I guess the only heartening thing to be taken from the fact that these morons are still feeling the need to waken me up on a Saturday morning in the noughties is the size of the march. Anyone who saw a march in the 70s will be surprised to see the pitiful handful of people out the last two Saturdays. In my childhood a march could hold up the whole city's traffic for an afternoon, nowadays, blink and you'll miss them.

TOOTH GONE!

 
 

At last it is gone, thank heavens!

SPATIAL GEOMETRY

I'm slowly coming round to the idea that there are 3 types of Maths brains. When I was a kid, I thought there were 2: those who understood Maths at school and thought it a dawdle and those who could not do anything mathematical even if someone was pointing a gun to their head and threatening death, if the kid didn't instantly understand the finer points of calculus. I never understood that. Maths always seemed boring but simple.
My dad always struck me as a reasonably mathematical person, worked in engineering, understood all the calculating etc but then one day mum got him to install fitted wardrobes in their bedroom. I came home from school to a row that went something like: I don't care how much the cornicing cost, you'll have to re-order it... I was puzzled until I entered their room to find dad had cut all the angles wrong on the cornicing right round the room...not just a little wrong but completely inside out, and was trying to convince mum she was overreacting, and that she'd get used to it...needless to say the cornicing was reordered and redone. Now, at the time, this struck me as very strange. When I look at a corner in a room I see instantly which way the angle needs to be cut to meet in the middle, so how did my reasonably mathematical dad make such a colossal balls-up? Maybe he was tired, rushing or whatever...
Now we are trying to sell the flat in Rose street. Thomas, I have always considered, in the 5 years I've known him, to be extremely clever, highly intellectual, and amongst other things mathematical almost to a nerd degree. I've seen the computing database he designed in the office - even Einstein would have trouble following it, it is so complex, and yet he's standing here with two pieces of skirting asking which edge needs to be longest in a way that my dad would be proud of. The genius brain seems to seize up completely in the face of spatial geometry. I'm feeling quite intellectually smug for once (and probably for the only time). So I need to stop blogging now and go draw him a wee diagram to show which way round the angles go ;-)

CUTE BUT MAYBE I'LL GIVE IT A MISS...

What? Bergen in Norway of course.

You see, despite only having time to DIY and not being able to go out today (other than to several B&Qs on a skirting hunt), I have been lamenting the weather somewhat...well until Thomas mentioned he thought it rained more in Bergen. I checked wikipedia and learned from the paragraph entitled 'Climate' that it had actually rained continuously there from 25 October 2006 to 20 January 2007 - bloody hell! Scotland seems positively Caribbean by comparison, hush my mouth.

HIDEOUS WOBBLY TOOTH

 

I know I usually blog about the upside of parenthood, but there are definitely some downsides too. Charlotte's front tooth is currently attempting to beat the world record for hanging on in there way beyond the call of duty. For a start she's female and nearer 8 than 7 so the front teeth should be long gone. But worse still it has been wobbling now since May, by June the new one had grown in behind giving her a look akin to Ken Dodd in his heyday and finally for approximately the past 36 hours it has been hanging by one thread and yet instead of just getting it over with, she's refusing solid food and brushing only her back teeth - either in an attempt to avoid the 'pain' or simply to gross out the adults around her. Poor Thomas is on the verge of fainting and her new teacher - new to the class, new to the school, new to the profession had to contend with her wobbling it proudly at her today too!

UNDERSTANDING TRANSPORT

easyJet
Originally uploaded by blende6

Léon's vocabulary has mushroomed over the last month. He's reached that worrying 'I can repeat anything you say' stage. But now he's also making sense of things and his favourite topic at the moment is transport. As we drive to nursery, he points out every car, every truck, every van and as of yesterday, he even seems to be able to tell taxis from cars. I wasn't, however, prepared for his comment when we left nursery today. As we walked out the door, an Easyjet flew over quite low against a perfect blue sky. He looked up, pointed and said very clearly: 'Oh mum, a boat!' Funny considering he's been on only one boat in his life and yet has been on at least 20 planes, for hours on end.

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? ;-)

AN OLD FAVOURITE

When Marcel was a tiny man, this was his favourite book in the world. It had one clear advantage over most other books of this type, and that was that things were ordered by picture type, ie food, transport, clothes etc and not alphabetically. This was a very important difference when it came to learning, because he's bilingual of course. When you showed him most of these picture books, he started to associate a capital 'D' with the sound 'D' and the words beginning with 'D': dog, duck, door, dinosaur. We'd then open the French one and he'd be confused by dog and duck appearing under 'C', door under 'P' and dinosaur still at 'D'. Also when Marcel and Charlotte were small, I often simply translated their story books into French as I read them so using an English alphabet-based book didn't work when I translated. This big book meant one day I could teach the 2 year old Marcel or Charlotte all the words for food in English, the next day in French with no confusion at all. Léon, of course, is growing up trilingually, so re-acquiring this book will be even more important for him. Today he repeated every word Marcel said to him in the car as we drove along. Marcel then tried some of the words in French, he repeated those perfectly too. Thomas tried in Danish, same result, so I ordered it off Amazon tonight as he's obviously just waiting to read his way through it at least 3 times. Looking forward to that!

DOGGY SEATBEATS? I'M SPEECHLESS!

I was sent this ad today for dog seat belts by Lidl UK, apparently it is on special next week! Please, please tell me it is April the first and the world hasn't actually gone mad?

THE PUDGEMAN

Dad just sent me this. Isn't it cute?

ARE THEY 4REAL?

Thomas came in the other week with a brilliant book, called What Not to Name Your Baby, as you can see sporting a bitsy Adolf on the cover. Mum and I spent and afternoon giggling over why not to name your baby Luke or Fanny, Armani or China. (The synopsis on Amazon will give you a feel for it).

This week baby naming seems to have hit the headlines bigtime, with those cretin New Zealanders trying to land some poor baby unable to fulfill his life's vocation as judge or Prime Minister by saddling him with 4Real or Superman. This article made me laugh. Especially the Norwegians...do people really want to called their kids Chlamydia or Influenza?

DIY HELL

 

We've been DIYing like crazy for 4 weeks now so we can put the flat on the market so as to avoid paying 2 mortgages for the next few months. With only two sets of hands though and about 2 flatloads of furniture and books to move out before we could get down to it in earnest, I am beginning to fear that we may still be DIYing the flat when the mortgage on it is paid in full in 2030!

:-(

Maybe we should throw in the towel and just rent it out to some students before we kill ourselves through exhaustion! They'd probably like the level of mess...

WHERE DO ALL THE NAILS COME FROM?

Punctured Wheel
Originally uploaded by mholt

It isn't 4 months since the last time I had both a blow out and a slow puncture to pay for on my old Citroën, so I was less than happy when the tyre I inflated at ASDA last Saturday needed reinflating yesterday at TESCO and again this afternoon. Back to Kwik Fit and yes another nail through the bloody wheel, another £17-00 bill - poor Pudge will have to wait an extra fortnight for his new shoes!

4D ULTRASOUNDS

When I had the other guys they did 2D scans. They were really impressive to the parent-to-be but often left other friends and relatives scratching their heads and asking - which end is the head, dear? In the interim, however, 4D scanning has been invented. When Léon was a bump, it was new and only really heard of in the States, now, provided you go private, you can get a 4D scan, like this example opposite, even in Ingram street in Glasgow. I have to say, this is incredibly tempting, given the hospital's reluctance to scan further.

LARDER BEETLES

If there's one thing I hate about Glasgow tenements, it has to be larder beetles. Years ago when I lived in Dowanhill, I had a few of these little buggers show up in my flat. I phoned pest control and they assured me what I needed, from my description, was carpet beetle killer - I found this an odd solution, given I had no carpets, only solid wood flooring but tried to nuke the nasty mini-cockroaches to no avail. I finally got out pest control, only to be told they were larder beetles.
Yuck! They eat anything, multiply like there's no tomorrow and crustily wander about your floor like they own the place. (Some people hate spiders, I hate crusty bugs).
When the little buggers showed up in Garnethill a month or two ago, I instantly recognized them. I am beginning to wonder if they are lazy creatures at heart. They made it to my first floor flat in Dowanhill, and Thomas's elevated ground floor one but not to my old third floor flat off Byres road - I imagine they were eating their way through the crumbs two floors below so never made it up the stairs.
Today we sought out a large bottle of 'crawling insect' spray in B&Q, so hopefully their crusty little days are numbered...already bodies seem to be appearing along the edge of the skirtings so it looks promising.
Anyway, they don't seem to like houses, thank heavens. So successful or not, their stay under my roof is limited.

IS PUDGE GETTING TOO BIG FOR HIS BOOTS?

Visiting Niels
Originally uploaded by viralbus

Now I have heard the expression, to be getting too big for your boots but I am not sure that you can say it the other way round - not unless your kid has a bit of a boot fetish and starts trying on oversized adult boots while visiting friends for dinner! ;-)

RAINY BBQ

 

I guess you have to be vaguely mad to stand in the pouring rain for 25 minutes barbecuing fresh sardines, just because they said 'best before today' but they tasted very nice with wild rice and courgette, even if we did have to reheat them indoors after the rain cooled down the barbecue too much. Maybe Danes are just hardier because the climate is different over there...

LIFE IS FUN!

One of the best things about being a parent is rediscovering quite how exciting something new can be. Often we get up in the morning and drag ourselves to work, not even noticing the beautiful pink sunrise, or whatever. When little kids see something for the first time, they show you, in their way, just how exciting it can be. Here, Léon discovers how exciting car maintenance can be, even in Norwegian!

THE SIMPSONS

Tried to make Marcel, Charlotte and Léon into Simpsons for fun
Originally uploaded by phyl1

I had a wee go at Thomas's recommended Simpson creator program last night to see if I could transform the guys into some of their favourite characters. I think they will be pleased when they see the result! (though I couldn't work out how to add a skateboard or take off their clothes so they may be just a tiny bit disappointed!)

NOISY, NOCTURNAL FLYING VERMIN

Seagull taking off
Originally uploaded by viralbus

It seems I'm not the only seagull hater this week! Only yesterday I opened up the computer to rant about the airborne vermin, only to discover the pollen count was so high, I actually couldn't focus, so went to bed in a huff instead. Seagulls, I thought were things that lived at the sea? I mean they aren't called city-centregulls after all, are they? And when you google seagull images, they are all daytime shots, so why am I woken by packs of screeching seagulls every night around 2am at the moment? I guess they are midden-raking in the city centre and fighting over the booty, but I sure hope they are planning a wee holiday down the coast soon as I am having enough sleeping troubles at the moment between Bart and the hayfever!