MODERN SHOPPING

DSC01123
Originally uploaded by glasgowmarc

When I was young supermarkets were tiny places with 4 or 5 aisles - like your city centre Tesco or Sainsburys these days. You were lucky if two trolleys could pass each other. They have got bigger and bigger over the years culminating in the opening of Scotland's largest supermarket last year: Tesco in Silverburn. I knew it was big as I found it harder and harder to walk round last year, the more pregnant I got but today I realized it was definitely too big. While standing between the clothes and the vegetable department, a little old lady came up to me with a trolley full of goods and asked: Excuse me pet, you don't happen to know where the checkouts are or where the exit is in here? - I just can't find them, and I've been all round the shop! Awwwh!

EAST RENFREWSHIRE COUNCIL

You can't fault their consistency! For the second time this month I have phoned them and paid £20 for a bulk uplift of refuse (some cut-down trees this time), and for the second time the nominated day for collection has come and gone without them showing their faces - well done them! Grrrr!

29 FEBRUARY

Thomas and I
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Feb 29 was always a special day in my family - Granda's birthday - he made it to 18.5 before he died - I was 22 then! Later my  French niece, Isabelle, was also born that day - she's 7 today! Happy birthday to her!
I'm sitting here listening to Jeremy Vine on radio 2 at the moment. It is all about how 29 Feb is the day that traditionally girls should ask their special men to marry them. People have been phoning in proposing on air - and fortunately no one has refused yet - phew! I guess if my divorce had been through already, I'd have liked to have gone to New York today, I'd then have taken Thomas up the Empire State Building, and once on top I would have asked if he'd mind being stuck with a wrinkly old pensioner like me for eternity - but given it isn't, I suppose, I won't :-( 2012 seems a long way off though :-(

DVDS

Léon on the coffee table
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I have just remembered the real reason DVDs were invented...
All week our satellite system has been down. We have also been plagued off and on with monsoon weather so I had to come up with something to replace Léon's daily dose of the Night Garden. I usually let him watch that while getting Anna and I dressed in the morning. I went to look out a DVD only to realize that because my oldest child is 10, all my kiddie movies are on video, not DVD. I thought Léon might like Toy Story, so dug it out. He thought it was great and asked to watch a bit of it each morning. This morning, the same happened. I turned on the video and got the message ERROR 03 running across the screen. The video recorder is 15 years old, I don't have the manual any more. What is an error 03? Well apparently after a 15 minute investigation an error 03 is the current video being jammed in alongside two Simpsons DVDs. It is all coming back to me - the little video locks you used to have to buy to keep the little people from using the video recorder as a toaster or a bin.
And when I got everything out and turned to Léon, he was standing holding the video by a handle he'd made by pulling out a bit of the tape - AAARG! Surprisingly both the video and the video recorder still seem to be working.

PLAYING WITH UMBRELLAS

Anna on the coffee table
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I've been trying out my new portaflashes to see what effect they have on portrait photography. My first batch were all taken with one silver-coated umbrella at each side of child, at child height. As can be seen here, the definition is very good and you can almost count the hairs on her eyebrows. This weekend I might try putting the two brollies above the kids at 6 or 8 feet to see if that makes a difference. I decided that might be the optimum height for child photography simply because when I passed Boots the Chemist today, Pixifoto were in doing kiddie portraits and trying to flog them for a fortune with their light set-up arranged like that.

CLEVER WEE MAN

Léon has been potty-trained since January 10th, although he's skipped potties and gone straight to the toilet. Given past experience, I was assuming that'd mean I could take off his night nappies maybe late summer but having noticed he was dry 2 or 3 mornings recently, we decided to bite the bullet and have him sleep without too. Success! Today he woke up dry with no nappy on, after 12 and a half hours asleep. Not bad for a wee guy who isn't even 2 and a half yet! So that's us back to having only one nappy user in the family!

HAMAMELIS X INTERMEDIA DIANE?

The garden in our new house is little more than a worn lawn surrounded by various muddy patches and some boring grey stone-filled borders - quite a contrast to the flowers and terracotta-tiled patio I lovingly tended in my last house. Fortunately Thomas is proving to be a keen gardener, planting new fruit trees and bushes every week. I have a few favourites I am trying to track down for here, but not being much of a gardener I know what they look like but not the names, unfortunately. Last week my description of a 'droopy tree with fluffy pink balls' drew looks of derision in Mclaren's garden centre, but I did end up with an ornamental Japanese flowering cherry tree - eventually. This week they looked even more puzzled when we tried to describe my favourite autumn tree. I knew it was small - 4 feet or so, had brilliant colours in autumn and fluffy balls in spring - this one stumped them completely so I gave up and spent an hour wandering around till I finally found a Hamamelis x intermedia 'Diane' just as I was on the verge of giving up. That was it - my favourite tree! So now I am set to trawl the internet for somewhere selling it at an affordable price.

COPYCAT

Anna has started copying us! At first she stuck her tongue out when we did and now when we make clicking noises she copies those too! I know parents are always biased but she does seem to be a bright little thing.

LEXMARK X1290

About a year ago Thomas bought a Lexmark X1290 combined scanner and printer as the kids often need to print out homework. We printed a photo or two but the quality wasn't great for photos. It then got packed up for the move.We reinstalled it last week and it printed one page of homework before it told us it had run out of cyan. I bought new ink for a tenner, installed that and it printed Marcel's one sheet of homework fine on Friday. Today, we tried to print another picture only to be told it was out of cyan again. What a load of rubbish! Poor quality, faulty ink feeds, expensive ink. I think it is time I dug out my clumsy old but reliable HP 1315.

SHOWERS!

Aqua Shower
Originally uploaded by Mikeleus

Have I ever ranted about showers? I hate showers!
I think there are shower people and bath people, just as there are nightdress and pyjama people. Just as you won't ever catch me in pyjamas, you are also unlikely to catch me in a shower. Well in a shower at home to be more precise.
In a garden centre in Fréjus I was once told that olive trees really don't grow well north of Avignon. I also believe showers are something that don't go with the climate above Avignon. South of Avignon, I love showers - you come in hot and sweaty and a lukewarm shower refreshes you. But here in Scotland in February, showers are torture. You take off your clothes to climb in and already it is cold. You turn it on and it skooshes you with 2 minutes of freezing water before the temperature soars to the other extreme scalding your freezing skin. Of course you try to avoid this by reaching in tentatively with one hand before stepping in but you can't quite reach round the shower screen so you soak the floor or your nightie in the process. Once scalded you turn the temperature knob less than a millimetre and once again the shower switches back to freezing, and the pressure fluctuates too. In the meantime your soggy feet are wrinkling on the cold floor. Thomas swears by them - says he needs one every morning to waken him up - of course he does - nothing wakens you up more abruptly! It is a toss up between sticking needles in your eyes or standing under the water.
Let me ease myself into a warm bath and lie there cosily for half an hour every evening to relax after all the little people go to bed - heaven! And leave showers to the US and southern Europe where I can truly enjoy them.

THE MOST PROFOUND QUESTIONS IN MY UNIVERSE TODAY

Why exactly has Anna decided to feed every 2 hours during the night since Monday? Why exactly did Léon decide 6am was the optimal time to get up on a wet miserable day like this? When can I go back to bed again?

FOUR!

A baby with 4 grandparents!
Originally uploaded by PhylB

It occurred to me last week when Brita and Peter were over that Anna is the first person in my family to have been born with all four grandparents alive for generations. I'm not sure about her greatgrandparents but every generation since then has been missing at least one grandparent. My parents were each missing at least one at birth. I came closest in 1968, missing my 4 by just 6 days, when my grandmother died at just 50, leaving me nothing but her name. Even my other 3 children have only 3 grandparents (we lost André's dad at the start of my pregnancy with Marcel). And Gordy too, unfortunately has just 2. Sadly, if people continue to have their kids later and later, Anna may also be the last for generations to be able to boast this feat.

I'VE SPRUNG A LEAK!

Since Anna was about 2 weeks old, I seem to have a leak in my left breast. It only happens when it is really full but it does happen consistently when she sucks hard. It never happens on the right hand side, and it never happened in the more than 6 years I spent breastfeeding my other 3 kids. It really is quite strange. It hurt at first so I thought it might become infected but now it just slowly and painlessly drips milk as she feeds early every day. Funny, I wonder if it will dry up at some point!?

NOT NORTHERN ROCK

Since most people will be blogging Northern Rock in all its outrageousness today, I'll leave that to the papers and comment, instead, on the passing of Alain Robbe-Grillet. I studied contemporary French literature as part of my Masters degree back in the last millennium - yeah it is that long ago. I studied that amongst other more traditional French literary gems - you know the usual Descartes, Pascal, Zola, Baudelaire, Chateaubriand, Madame de Lafayette etcetc. I was the only one who admitted to preferring the contemporary stuff. The dark Céline was unputdownable, the Gide too and Camus made me smile with his dropping of the much-loathed past historic tense. I was probably a little too young at 20 to quite grasp the ins and outs of Sartre's ideas, but relished everything by his better half a few years later and even spent a long 6 months studying the clandestine literature written under the French resistance. But Robbe-Grillet was definitely hard going - I wasn't really sure what he was trying to do in 'Dans le labyrinthe' at first - it wasn't like a real novel - it never seemed to start or end, character and narrator seemed to blur into one, or maybe be the wrong way around. I found I was never overly interested in the long descriptions or the fate of the soldier. It was the one novel on the contemporary list, that I felt perhaps, just a little too stupid to understand! It seemed almost like a meaningless experiment in the norms of the formation of the modern novel. Maybe I should go back and read it now I'm older and wiser, to see if it has caught up with me yet. The tutor we had at the time, Dorothy, enthused so much about it, I felt pained to admit it was the one novel that had failed to captivate me!

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH GRAMMAR

I love watching how my kids acquire language. The bi-/tri-lingual dimension makes it extra-special when you are linguistically-minded, but I'll leave Thomas to document today's sweet Danish development. Today's simple English puzzle was two-fold: irregular verbs and phrasal verbs. Léon dropped something and wanted to say: It fell down. Simple enough, but he has already worked out that past tenses should end in 'ed'. The adverb confused him further, so we ended up, not with the expected: It falled down, but instead, the rather cute: It fell downed!

LÉON'S SORE NOSE

Léon learnt an important lesson of childhood yesterday: if you run down a hill too fast towards an ice cream shop, you sometimes trip up and go skidding nose-first along the pavement :-(

A BIGGER JOB THAN I THOUGHT

Goodbye to the scabby old trees
Originally uploaded by PhylB

When we moved into the house we decided this row of scabby old trees had to go. They were so tall they blocked all light in the garden, they were so thin at the bottom that Léon could easily walk out the garden on to a main road and they were plain ugly evergreens whose roots would eventually up-end the house.
Our tree cowboy friend happened to be passing this morning and given the weather was nice, asked if I wanted him to fell the trees I had asked him to come back and fell in the spring. Why not?
As I watched them for the next 3 or 4 hours, I suddenly realized quite how big a job it was and was glad Thomas and I had not attempted it with our chainsaw and my car as we had originally planned. Surprisingly, it wasn't the felling that was the big job - that took them about 15 minutes a tree, it was the cutting up and disposing of the trees that took hours, as they chopped and heaved bits of them into their van and disappeared off to the dump twice for every tree.
Now we have a scabby, bare, open back garden, so we need to get the planned fence asap. Then Pudge will be safe and Thomas can finally start planting his shrubs and bushes as planned.

CHANGING NAMES AND HOW THAT'S CHANGING

When my mother got married (1965), the woman took the man's surname in the UK - that happened more or less 100% of the time - give or take the odd film star. When I got married in 1991, again it was more or less just what you did. By 1998, when Amanda and Derek got married I did hear the odd friend question 'are you going to change your name'? And now in 2008, I have several friends sporting different names from their husbands. Some kept their maiden names, some even kept their first married name though they are on their second marriage. I began to wonder what was changing. At first I wondered if it was simply a feminist thing but although I think that does come in to play, I believe hassle and, to a lesser degree, expense are the real reason fewer and fewer women are changing their names.
I decided to change back to my maiden name before I had Anna because I wanted her to be allowed Buchanan as a surname, rather than a meaningless middle name. Firstly that meant paying about £80 for deed poll documents (obviously this isn't an expense you incur if you change your name on marriage) but I then got the list of who all you had to inform of your name change: employer, tax office, HM land registry, electoral register, TV licensing office, Internet service provider, pension company, all your insurance companies, doctor, dentist, bank account, savings accounts, credit card accounts, council tax, anyone you hold a loan with, mortgage lender, DVLA, passport office, EHIC office, and many more - the list is endless! In my case, because I have kids I needed to add child benefit office, schools, etcetc.
After you have written to all 40 or more addresses providing documents to prove your change of name, obviously you can't do this simultaneously as many don't accept copies of documents but want to see your original marriage certificate, deed poll, or divorce certificate so the process drags on months. For 6 months you operate under two names - you have problems getting loans because one of your names doesn't have a credit rating and they aren't yet fully linked and so the hassles go on. Your credit card has one name, your passport another so Ryanair has a nervous breakdown when you turn up to board a weekend flight to Paris or wherever.
You also have personal eaccounts - like my blog, email and flickr are all under the surname Gautier. Sure I can create a new email address in 5 minutes but I then have to tell all 113 people in my contacts list about it, I use my email as my login for Blogger, Flickr, Amazon, Nisbets and 100 other online shops so I need to change all these too. I could create a new flickr and then spend a year moving over all 6000+ photos, I could create a new blog address and everyone would assume I'd just stopped blogging as nothing new would appear on the old one (hence the 3 things I have resigned myself to not changing are my email, flickr and blogger accounts).
The expense factor for me (over and above the deed poll) is the passport. I had a new Gautier one in 2005 which cost me £72, they simply bin it and ask you for another £72 for a Buchanan passport. And if Thomas and I marry when my divorce comes through this year then I need to pay another £72 for a Widmann passport if I change my name - £216 in passport in 3 years - madness.
In my mum's day you married young, before you had a dozen credit cards, a mortgage, a driving license etc. Changing your name was a minor 2 week hassle. Nowadays, I believe we are going to see a rapid increase in women not changing their name on marriage because of the major headache it causes. It will be interesting to see if we then introduce a centralised system as in Denmark where you only inform one address of a name change and they inform everyone else or if the trend continues.

SPELLCHECKER

Blogger's spellchecker seems to have stopped working for me :-( Is anyone else having this problem? I know, given in I am a dictionary editor, I shouldn't need a spellchecker, but although spelling is one of my strong points, typing isn't, so I always spellcheck my posts to check for wrods I hvae gto in the wrnog odrer ;-)

MORE ON PHOTOGRAPHY

The Sunset Waterfall
Originally uploaded by Wolfman86

Another thing I miss is having time to go out experimenting with unusual exposures and other artistic photographic methods. In fact I haven't even tried a slow water shot since I went digital - I am always in such a hurry :-\ I must try this. I wonder if my big kids can be tempted into a photographic expedition...?

LEN SCAPS AND BETTY BOOP

You know I'm a bit of a photo freak - always have been since I was elected Eastwood high school photographer back in 1984!
Back in my pre-kids days...were there pre-kids days?...they are hard to remember, I loved nothing better than going round Glasgow centre or the West End with all my SLRs, lenses and other quirky nonsense weighing me down, taking pictures of the dear green place. These days, the emphasis is, of course, on the kids, but hopefully one day I will be able to get back my meanderings through the city, maybe with Charlotte (as she is a keen photographer) along. In the meantime, I take great pleasure at looking on flickr for Glasgow photos. I think my two favourite photographers on there at the moment are Betty Boop and Len Scaps.
Have a wee look at their lovely photos if you are at a loose end.

MASH

Mash Potatoes from Tavern on the Green
Originally uploaded by amoraleda

For years I've been trying to find decent potatoes for making mash. Annie (André's mum) makes the best mash I have ever tasted and yet after years of watching her make it, I always end up with something waterier, less fluffy and less creamy somehow. Last week however, Thomas finally made something close to my beloved French mash. On investigation, it turned out he was using a type of potato I had never heard of: Wilja! It is definitely showing potential.

CHILD PHOTOGRAPHY

bright eyes
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Did I ever mention I'd love to be a child photographer?

FORTY-ISH

my cake
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Some of you may have realized I was celebrating a rather significant birthday this week. For weeks I've been asked what I wanted to do to celebrate - this question was usually huffed and growled at but Monday came around all the same!
Celebrations started on Friday when HarperCollins threw its usual birthday party for me in the Marriot hotel - for some reason they call it Collins' New Year party but it is always at my birthday weekend, so I assume it is my birthday party. That consisted of some sushi and a Chinese meal.
Next my old breast feeding group turned up from the distant places they have all moved to - originally we were all Glasgow West Endies (though Cynthia is American) but nowadays we're in Bridge of Weir, Lancaster, Inverkip and Newton Mearns. They brought me this lovely cake and some pretty picture frames, but more importantly they cheered up my mood with tea and coffee and tales of the old days. I still miss our Friday afternoon chats like crazy all these years on but know we'll all always be there for each other - truly special friends.
Then the gruesome day arrived. Thomas took the day off work - probably to experience my grumpiness first hand! He bought me some studio flashes so I can do better portrait photography - he's obviously worked out what is close to my heart.
We went for a Japanese lunch - inspired by the sushi at Collins 'Chinese' night! That was nice though a little stressful as it was Léon's first trip to a restaurant with no nappy on. Some sushi, a Japanese curry and 12 toilet trips later we picked up the kids from school and went to ASDA to buy a roast for dinner.
Thomas had invited my parents, my brother and sister-in-law to dinner. He then proceeded to cook a delicious prawn cocktail, a roast beef and a home-made lime mousse for dinner, while I ran around snapping at everyone as the house was in a bit of a state, but I calmed down in time to have an absolutely lovely evening with my man, my kids and my family, with beautiful gifts of an amber bracelet, a DKNY watch and a new mobile phone - oh and several bottles of bubbly.
Pudge announced to everyone at the end of the meal that it had been positively yummylicious - think that's a thumbs-up for Thomas's cooking.
Now my only plans are to read the studio flash manual and try not to change decade again in the near future.
Thanks to all for a lovely day.

BULK REFUSE AGAIN

Plank of Wood
Originally uploaded by laungmai

So they finally came as promised on Monday... I thought at first they'd taken everything away but then noticed they'd left behind one plank of wood. Odd! All was, however, explained on a hand-written note through my door: We have left your plank because it is too large for our lorry... The bulk refuse department had left my bulk refuse because it was too bulky. Cool - must phone and ask what their plan B is!

SECOND-HAND ROSE?

green babies
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I always thought Marcel looked just like a wee dolly in this home-made woolly suit. Today I realized I had a photo of all 4 in it - pity I don't have one of Gordy too. Anna may feel like a bit of a second, no third, no fourth-hand Rose in it, but I can assure her each of her siblings only wore it 2 or 3 times, given they all grew out of it at 6 or 7 weeks.

HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY!

Happy Groundhog Day!
Originally uploaded by Flatbush Gardener

Hey, apparently today is groundhog day (we're in for 6 more weeks of winter according to Phil this year, by the way). Anyway, more importantly, if we're going to get stuck on today, we're never going to reach Monday - wouldn't that be tragic!?

NOSTALGIA

nostalgia
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I've been tidying out a lot of old boxes today and I found this. How fondly I remembered it and its many hours of use over the years. I went to throw it in the bin, knowing sadly, it would never ever be used again and then suddenly wondered firstly how many people would actually ever have seen one and know what to do with it if they had one, and secondly whether there might be some sad nostalgic nut out there who might pay for one on ebay now or in the distant future - just for old times' sake. I think I'll put it in the loft for now just in case.
:-)

CALL ME PSYCHIC

Call me psychic - I almost blogged this yesterday morning, sure it would happen before it happened but stupidly I gave them the benefit of the doubt!
Last week I was indignant to find out that East Renfrewshire council expects me to pay for a bulk uplift of rubbish I didn't want to take in my car to the dump (a fridge, freezer etc). Indignant because Glasgow city council doesn't charge and I have only just moved back to this council district.
Anyway - after 3 days tripping over an unsightly pile of fridges, freezers and packaging in my back garden, suddenly £20 seemed an easier option than 3 trips to the local dump with 4 kids in the car.
I rang them Tuesday and inquired about their refuse pick-ups. I was told I should pay £20 for 2 men to work in my garden for 15 minutes. Hold on then, I thought, a fridge and a freezer don't take 15 minutes so I booked the council, got a job number and asked them to pick up all the rubbish in my back garden, assuming I could make quite a pile by Friday. Oh no - they said, you can't say that - we only pick up things specified because otherwise they might accidentally take your garden table or kid's trampoline and you'll try and sue us - whatever happened to common sense and human judgement? Ho hum... Ok I'll make a list and get back to you, I told them. Be sure to quote your job number and you have to ring before Thursday at 2pm so we can draw the lists up for the vans, they replied. So Wednesday Dad and I moved some planks, some shelves, a kitchen worktop, a sink, and an old door onto the pile, and despite the rain and gales I even added a chair and a stool. I paid Marcel £2 to neatly arrange my pile by gathering rubbish from all over the garden in the freezing cold so the numpties couldn't miss it. I rang at 5pm Wednesday, I gave them my number. I asked them to read the list for that job number - a fridge, a freezer, some packaging. I told them to add some planks, some shelves, a kitchen worktop, a sink, an old door, a chair and a stool to the list. I made them read me back the list:
a fridge
a freezer
packaging
some planks
some shelves
a kitchen worktop
a sink
an old door
a chair
a stool
On Friday morning I opened the curtains - the fridge was gone, the freezer was gone, everything had been moved a metre to the right and the packaging had been taken from the bottom of the pile. I rang them and gave my job number, I asked them to read me my list, assuming the Wednesday numpty hadn't saved the complete list and common sense had taken flight when the guys were moving my rubbish off my rubbish to get to my rubbish but no, she read my whole list. Oh I'm sure they'll be back she replied. (Too bloody right they will!) By 4pm they weren't back - she insisted they still hadn't finished for the the day but if by any chance they still hadn't taken the rest by the end of the day, I should ring again Monday and she'll send them back free of charge. Given I am not likely to be in the best of moods Monday, as it is my unspeakable birthday, they bloody better!

IL PAVONE SUD - OVERPRICED CULINARY MEDIOCRITY

I forgot to blog this the other week, or rather Thomas and I both discussed blogging it and in the end neither of us got round to it. When we sold the flat we decided to go for a nice meal in the Village Curry house, for the 3rd time in as many weeks, taking my parents and Thomas's sister and family too. That night 6 adults, 3 kids and a baby ate an outstanding meal for £95 - amazing, no? A few days later with everyone gone, the kids with André for the night and both our fridge and freezer broken down, we decided a quick meal out for two would be an easy option. Figuring it was too soon to go back to the Village, and both feeling tired, we opted for the local Italian place - Il pavone sud. I had eaten in the Glasgow branch 10 years ago and it was fine so was quite looking forward to my dinner.
It didn't start wonderfully well. It was 7 o'clock on a Thursday night but there were only about 3 tables taken up despite the fact they had 20-30. We decided we wouldn't bother with alcohol as we just wanted some food, so ordered two cokes. When they brought the cokes they were in glasses about a third the size of your usual restaurant glass and half full of icecubes - no big deal. We looked around and were amused by the fact that they were mightily over-staffed - one chef for each person eating there that night, 3 waiters available per table and a restaurant manager wandering around. Maybe they expected it to get busy later.
For starters Thomas ordered the pâté and salad, I ordered the mushrooms. The pâté came discoloured, with less than half a slice of toast cut thinly and a tiny salad. My mushrooms were quite odd - they were boring button mushrooms that had been fried though not in much butter, but they came on sweet brioche bread with hollandaise sauce which was a bit like overthick garlic custard! Interesting - I'll try anything once.
For the main course Thomas had lasagne and I had risotto. The lasagne was unaccompanied - no salad, no garlic bread and about the size of portion I would serve Léon in the house. Thomas ordered a side portion of garlic bread to supplement and it came as two small slices (and was charged extra). The risotto was bland - the rice was cooked to the right consistency but had little or no butter or parmesan in it - like they were trying to make that fattest and most rich of Italian dishes into a healthy diet food - a bad move... give me one of Thomas's risotto's from Jamie Oliver's cookbook any day!
The dessert was cheesecake and though on the set menu, was charged £3 each extra. It was quite nice - green with a sprig of mint on top - but the actual cheesecake was not obviously a particular flavour - it might have been mint because it was green but it might even have been pistachio - I really don't know!
After all this we decided to opt for coffee at home instead.
We asked for the bill - 40 something quid. Not particularly overpriced, though nothing like the value we get at the village...until you consider the starters were hopeless, the maincourses were child portions and we had no alcohol or coffee.
Next time I feel like an easy meal and find myself in the shopping centre in Newton Mearns near Il Pavone sud, I will remember that I can have tiger prawns and two of Marks and Spencer's best steaks with a bottle of wine by walking a few steps further.

LIFE'S A BORE!

Today Anna got to meet her Collins co-bump. Julie, from the Production (no pun intended) department was about 3.5 weeks behind me all through my pregnancy and from half way through we both knew we were having little girls, so we'd planned to meet up once we were both on the other side. I was in the middle of a photoshoot when wee Aimée yawned, instantly Anna, who was staring at her, caught her yawn - I didn't realize that was an instinct that started so early (Anna is 6 weeks old, Aimée 3). It was a very sweet sight. When I showed this photo to Carol, another dictionary co-worker, her reaction was to ask if we'd shown the girls a dictionary or something equally boring - funny!

OH SHIT!

A little wet
Originally uploaded by carolclarinet

It's raining in our living room! The weather in 2008 has so far been rather gruesome - we lost a dozen roof slates 2 weeks ago and today, during yet another nasty gales plus blizzard storm something must have blown off the front of the house above the living room window because around 6pm a bucketful of water poured in above the window frame and then stopped as suddenly as it started. I guess the insurance company is going to be sick of us by the end of this winter - what with a break in at our other house the same week as the last storm damage claim :-\

HUMBLE PIE

The 3 little grandweans
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Today I dropped in on mum for a little while and Amanda dropped by too. As I hadn't known Amanda was coming, I hadn't brought my camera so I stole dad's for the obligatory baby photo shoot. When I uploaded them to flickr the same problem I had described last month occurred. But this time I had checked the camera settings so I suddenly realized the problem had to be in the flickr uploader settings rather than the Nikon settings. I checked them and quickly found that the uploader was downsizing dad's photos to the ludicrous 800x500 pixels. I know in the past dad has been guilty of trying to save his hard disk by taking minuscule photos but this time it looks like flickr is to blame, not dad. So sorry for the rant!

BEAUTIFUL SMILES

 

Isn't this a sweet photo of Anna smiling at Thomas in the mirror?
:-)

WHY SCOTLAND CAN NEVER SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT

Wednesday 20 June, 2007
Originally uploaded by Mellie*

I was in Primark yesterday buying some pyjamas for Léon. I had noticed the last time I was in that Primark had switched from plastic to brown paper bags in an environmentally conscious move. Once the shop assistant had finished packing the pyjamas into my nice brow bag, he then filled it with other identical bags. Huh? He explained that all week in the pouring rain people had been complaining that they had got half way down Sauchiehall street before their envirobag had disintegrated leaving their new clothes in a soggy puddle at their feet, so were now trying to cover shoppers by giving them enough bags to get back to their car even on a rainy Saturday in Glasgow! So plastic may be out but each shopper is now using 3 times as many bags!

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

What the hell is this?
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Today I decided that despite my cracked nipple and general hatred of expressing milk, I needed to make a start on Anna's initiation to drinking my breast milk from a bottle if I was to stand any chance at all of going to the Collins dinner dance next Friday.
It didn't start well. Apart from the obvious cracked, and aching boob, I went through the drawers and found all the bits of my much-detested Avent Isis breast pump - I loathe it with a passion - except the pumping handle, rendering it absolutely 100% useless. So I had to drag myself up to Asda at 9pm in the pouring rain and stormy wind. They had a new Isis for £18, which I knew would be the easiest manual pump, as it is actually the only one I have ever grudgingly got the hang of, but given how little I intend to use it, I figured the Tommee Tippee £10 pump was probably more sensible.
I came home, sterilised it, and sat for 20 minutes producing a pitiful 30ml. I figured that although that was very little, it would be enough to test whether or not Anna could work out how to suck on a bottle, given exclusively breastfed babies are notoriously stupid when it comes to bottles, lapping at the teats but not sucking and getting nowhere fast.
Half an hour and a whimper or two later Anna has got nothing out of the bottle except a great deal of frustration.
She's tired and very unhappy and considering seriously how to learn to shout 'Bugger off, dad!
The steak and haggis on Friday night looks like it might be hanging in the balance!

AVENT NIPPLE PROTECTORS

Today I paid £4-49 for a pair of these hideous things. They are made of fairly rigid plastic, stick out so far they catch the back of the baby's throat and make her gag, and encourage her to suck rather than lap at my breast in the usual way. They dull the contact with the baby so neither of you feels the same closeness. And they need to be sterilised - and given I don't own a steriliser of any sort, that meant cold water sterilising tablets which leave a yucky aftertaste of bleach. On the plus side, they mean I can try to allow my cracked nipple to heal while still breastfeeding but I sure wouldn't recommend them except to protect sore nipples.

LITTLE LEECH

Too much information I am sure, but don't worry, no photo attached...yes I have got cracked nipples for the first time ever. That little leech has totally destroyed the right one and partially grazed the left. Odd - the others never did that. Mind you, I have noticed recently she's not been opening her mouth widely enough but rather sucking it in lazily past her gums. My mistake was not to correct her, assuming my battleworn boobs could cope with anything the little people could throw at them. Wrong! Ouch!
I now have the challenge of trying to express milk - something I am not particularly good at and I hate doing with a passion - for next Friday complete with wounded boobs, as Thomas and I had intended to attend HarperCollins annual dinner dance for the lovely meal. And however much I enjoy a free meal at the Marriot, I am not willing to compromise my 'not a single mouthful of formula before solid food' motto that I have rigidly stuck to always as I hate the stuff with a passion and all it represents. I guess if the boob continues to ache, I could always wear something loose and hide her inside just till the meal is over ;-)

...lucky for me Thomas happens to have a tube of the antiseptic cream Danish farmers use on cows with sore udders...what?! Cultural differences between close European countries never cease to astound and perplex me!

SIMPSONCALLAFRAGILISTICEXPIALA-D'OH!-CIOUS

Yesterday the kids showed me one of the best episodes of the Simpsons I have ever seen. A parody of Mary Poppins, which was fresh in my memory from having watched it with Léon at Xmas, this 8th season episode pokes fun at the US with some wonderful songs. Pity they didn't make a movie-length version! Oh and it even contains a brief spoof of Reservoir Dogs in it too! A classic - even better than the Mr and Mrs Smith spoof they showed me last month.

A PLANNING APPLICATION AND A LOAD OF RUBBISH

I've been having fun today talking to East Renfrewshire Council . First I had to phone them because of the kitchen saga. When I rang MFI yesterday for an appointment, they informed me they wouldn't design me a new kitchen unless I already had a building warrant to move my kitchen into another room - sorry? I have to pay the council money for a planning application to change the internal layout of the rooms in my house, to improve them for my own use, in a way that no one from the outside can see, and wait 8 weeks for the paperwork - 8 weeks in kitchen hell - give me a break!? (Oh this also applies to turning a cupboard into a toilet... must mention to mum and dad they live in an unsellable house with an illegal shoe cupboard!) A great start - grrr - bloody council.

Later today when trying to put out my bin, but being unable to, as it was full half way through the week as always, I got the idea to ring the council once more. This time I asked for the refuse department and asked how I went about getting an extra wheelie bin. Oh you can't, came the reply, we encourage recycling you see! Yes I know you encourage recycling - that's why I already put all my glass, paper, tins etc in my blue bin but you see 6 people create more than one bin of non-recyclable rubbish a week. I pointed out my bin was the same size as my parents' bin three streets away and enquired whether the little girl on the switchboard thought that 2 pensioners used the same bin capacity as 2 adults and 4 kids. Probably not but the only solution is to recycle more, she told me she could offer me a free extra blue recycling bin but no extra normal bin! So from now on I guess I need to buy beer instead of milk for Léon as they recycle beer cans and bottles but not plastic milk bottles. Oh and I should stick to tinned food instead of fresh as they'll recycle my tins but not fresh food packaging!

Oh and a final rant - I asked if they could make a bulk uplift from my address as my old fridge and freezer and packaging from the new one are currently making my garden look like a dump to save me spending a day driving up and down to the dump filling my beautiful car with dirty rubbish - sure they said - £20 per 15 minutes spent by their guys.

Remind me what it is I pay council tax for? Oh yeah - the decent schools...

ANNA

Anna aged 4 weeks
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I dressed Anna this morning and went about my business as always. As the day went on I remembered I had a photo of Charlotte wearing the same trousers back in 2000 but couldn't remember when it was taken. I dragged out my old photos from 2000 and began to think I was mistaken. By the time I had passed 3 and then 4 months, I really was at a loss. Imagine my surprise when I found it entitled: I'm taller - Charlotte August 2000!

NEW KITCHEN

We need a new kitchen desperately. Our oven doesn't work. Our gas hob has 4 tiny burners. The extractor is next to useless. The new replacement fridge and freezer are standing in the middle of the room blocking cupboard access and removing use of the work surfaces for a whole wall. The hideous doors are hanging off too. And the tumble dryer is in a different room from the washing machine. Derek told us about a Kitchens Direct and how he'd negotiated them down to nearly half their original quote when they'd installed his kitchen. I went onto their website and found they'd a half price sale. Perfect! I even arranged Derek to come round and use his legal skills to negotiate down the ridiculous price we would no doubt be offered, to one we were prepared to pay.
A salesman drove through from Edinburgh and started badly. Thomas and Derek showed him our new long extension room saying it was perfect for a kitchen, and he started explaining why the current small kitchen would be a better choice. They stuck to their guns and I even, at one point, heard him more or less suggest 2 kitchens - the current one with the washing machine, sink, dishwasher and tumble drier - a kind of wet room, and the new one full of cupboards - not quite my idea of the optimum kitchen triangle. Eventually they beat him into submission - we could choose how many kitchens we needed and which room to use. Result!
Two hours of measuring ensued culminating in an announcement that our kitchen would cost £13k...in their January sale. Wow, a £26k kitchen! I only paid £28k for a 2 storey extension of 4-5 rooms in my old house 3 years ago - even allowing for inflation, kitchens, to my mind, should always cost less than house extensions (especially when the house extension actually included an Ikea kitchen and all the plumbing and gas for it!) Derek then explained how much he expected us to have to pay, given the price of his own kitchen from the same company last year. Miraculously the kitchen fell from £13k to £10.9k to £9.2k over the next 10 minutes and our reply, of course... on your bike, we can get a kitchen in Ikea for £3k and there is no one in the west of Scotland who'd dare to suggest it'd cost £6k to fit it. All in all a disappointing evening.
I'm away to compare Ikea kitchens and B&Q kitchens with MFI kitchens now!
Having checked these now I feel invigorated, and sure I can soon have a perfect new kitchen for much less than nine grand :-)

New Kitchen
Originally uploaded by Thorin

BABY SNOT

Snotter
Originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/people/42225166@N00As you know our very own Banana Girl is now 4 weeks old. This phase of babyhood, I find, is marked by snuffliness. Tiny babies, probably up to 2 or even 3 months, from what I remember with the others, have such tiny nostrils, that their airways get completely blocked on a daily basis. They get anxious when they try to breastfeed as they can't breathe properly and eventually they end up sneezing out lumps of snot that even a fully grown builder would be surprised by. I have found from Marcel onwards, that you can loosen the snot and make them sneeze it out by dripping sterile water or saline solution up their noses and massaging olive oil or baby oil into their nose at the same time. I am forever astounded though that I have never seen baby snot mentioned in a single baby care book. I know it isn't a nice topic, but most first time parents must spend weeks at a loss wondering how to help their little cherub breathe and eat. I think I am going to start a Baby Bogey web help page ;-)

MY NEW BEST FRIEND

Thomas is a master of the understatement. This isn't just a tumble dryer. It is a cherished family member already. It is my new best friend. My house no longer has clothes drying everywhere. I no longer spend every waking hour ironing. This is even better at drying and de-creasing than the Candy dryer I had in the house. I wonder how I survived a year and a half without one. I must have been crazy to even have considered it. With 6 people in a wet climate, it is the only way to have any quality time. Everyone should own one - it leads to a higher form of existential contentment! ;-)

WHERE POTTY TRAINING MEETS FARCE

Pudge has well and truly got the hang of the potty now, so there are no more accidents, no more missing the potty accidentally accidents anyway. Picture this... (you'll be glad I am not uploading a photo with this posting.) Léon did a large, smelly poo in his pink potty. He picked it up and brought it round the coffee table to show me. I had just ascertained I needed to go to ASDA on my way home from the schoolrun, so had just turned on my laptop to email Thomas and ask if he wanted to add anything to my shopping list. I praised Léon and suggested he should take his poo to the loo. Instead of walking back the way he had come - that is to say the shortest, most direct route to the loo, he took an unexpected step backwards, tripped over my laptop cable, fell bum-first into my open handbag, bum still all 'yucky' and stood up with my purse glued to his buttocks with the protruding poo! Yeeeeeeuuuuuuuch! I think I want a new purse for my birthday suddenly.

Thought I had to blog this one in brown!

LATERAL THINKING

Lots at 8
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Thomas and I were sitting moaning about the fact that the doorbell in the house is too far away from the bedroom to be heard. With Comet bringing us a new frost-free freezer and salmonella-free fridge tomorrow, neither of us want to get up at 7-45am only to sit and wait till 6pm for the unnamed-time delivery slot. As we scratched our heads, Charlotte looked at us, as always, as if we were worse than stupid and instantly suggested reversing the baby monitor circuit - ie putting the baby unit in the downstairs hall, and the adult unit in the bedroom overnight so instead of hearing baby snooze while making breakfast, we'd hear the bell from under our duvet. I guess I'm just not as smart as an 8 year old...

POOR PUDGE

Poor Pudge seems to have broken out in a terrible eczema rash in the last 36 hours. Who knows what has set it off, or what to avoid in the future - I just know I have to get him to the doc in the morning to get something to ease his itching, poor wee guy. And hopefully get some allergy testing set up so we can avoid this in the future. What a worry...

GOODBYE ROSE

Place of conception
Originally uploaded by viralbus

It went through! The flat sale finally went through on Friday at around 1pm. We got an email confirming they had released the keys to 'Eleanor', the new owner, and later in the afternoon, we passed her coming out of the front door (and interestingly going straight into the letting agency next door - curious!), so she must definitely have coughed up the money, even if it'll float around some intermediate place for a couple of weeks before finally showing up in Thomas's account so we can clear all the credit cards that have got us through since September 07.
What a relief... though I'll miss free(ish) parking in town and the ability to quickly run to Sauchiehall street for a quick shopping spree, or Cambridge street for an Italian meal.

YUCK!

I passed this yesterday on the south bank of the river Clyde and I must admit it turned my stomach. I know I am not much of a drinker but find it hard to imagine anyone could face 'Alcohol at 8am' except my old deceased Gramps of course!

POTTY ABOUT HIS POTTY!

At last! After a week of clueless pee and poo everywhere around the house, in pants and everywhere else, followed by a week of pee and poo in the wrong places but at least accompanied by an embarrassed look, Léon has finally got it! Completely. He says potty, he uses it, he pees over and over looking very proud, and wants to carry it by himself to the loo and even waves it goodbye as he flushes it away! And he poos in it too - hurray! We're definitely on the right side of the hill now - a week from now, I estimate, we'll even manage ASDA in a pair of pants - what a clever wee man :-)

DO BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN?

Having looked at this, I am absolutely convinced no one actually suits blonde hair - in fact I'm away to dye mine dark brown!

SNOW PHOTOGRAPHY

The BBC liked my pegs :-) (Number 7)

EASY TO PLEASE

As you know, the past 5 months have been difficult. Two mortgages taking the entire salary on the first day of every month, no child maintenance and latterly 4 kids and me on maternity leave, has left few spare pennies for enjoyment. Santa is crumbling under the weight of his visa bill at the moment. With the flat sale potentially going through tomorrow, (fingers, toes and eyes crossed), Thomas asked the kids where they would like to go for dinner next week to celebrate if they could choose any restaurant in Glasgow... Charlotte jumped in immediately with: Can we go for meatballs in Ikea? I am speechless - she really is a child of minimal ambition!

PROUD OF HIS BIG BOY BED

 

Now Léon is getting the hang of potty, we thought we'd let him move into his big boy bed, complete with car duvet as a way of acknowledging his achievement. It was love at first sight. He looked happier than he had on receiving his Xmas presents, and definitely more proud. He went happily to bed without a moan and fell asleep quickly.

POST-IRONING PONDERINGS

I've just been ironing for about 4 hours - why did I think a family of 6 was a good idea? Anyway, I know I used to ponder socks while dealing with laundry (I still do - I will blog my odd socks next time I have a spare minute). However what struck me tonight was the different stages kids go through with relation to underwear... depending on their age and sex. Now, I was doing about 6 days ironing, so as you may imagine the basket contained 6 pairs of adult female pants, 6 pairs of adult male pants, and even, slightly surprisingly 6 pairs of little 8 year-old girl pants - however there seems to be a huge difference between boys of 2 and 10 - and I am in doubt as to which is best! My basket contained only 1 (yeuch) pair of 10 year old boy pants, and 18 (yeuch) pairs of age 2 boys pants!

CHARLOTTE

 

Charlotte was thrilled to find it had snowed for her 8th birthday! Pity it didn't lie longer.

A DECENT-SIZED FRIDGE

I already moaned about this house's cowboy appliances. We happened upon a thermometer in the flat the other day so decided to measure the temperature inside our dodgy built-in fridge - an impressive 11°C. Over Xmas Thomas had turned off the heating in both the porch and the kitchen-to-be in order to store extra drinks and vegetables for the big family meal on 26 December. We measured it - a slightly better 6°C. So I have just suggested we turn off the fridge altogether and move everything to the porch until we can afford a new fridge :-\

SIBLING GENETICS

Siblings are puzzling. Take Marcel and Charlotte. When they are sitting about downstairs with us, Charlotte appears on the surface to be more willing to help with setting the table, or tidying the living room. She argues and grumps less when asked to lend a hand. One might even be tempted to conclude that she is less lazy, more helpful and tidier. However, when you set foot in their own rooms, a whole other story shows itself. If I open Marcel's bedroom door, I may find the odd sweetie wrapper or empty coke can, and if I open his wardrobe, the clean washing I have asked him to put away is there inside neatly in piles of T-shirts, underwear, school clothes etc, all on separate shelves, much as I would do myself. Charlotte's room, on the other hand, if you can get the door open, is a minefield of dirty clothes strewn on the floor, her wardrobe has everything I have just ironed, thrown in together on one shelf and often mixed with dirty clothes she has put back in the wardrobe (arg). This is as far from my own personality as you get. Even looking in her wardrobe makes me a nervous wreck. I couldn't bear to live in such a chaotic way. I find it interesting that on the surface I feel she is more like me, while scratching it shows quite the opposite. I think Marcel is fairly lazy but likes order, whereas Charlotte, though dynamic and helpful, can tolerate a much higher level of chaos. It will be interesting to visit their homes as adults. I fear Charlotte's student dorm may be so scary, I may find myself twitching nervously for days after a visit! And to be quite frank, I think they would both do well to work hard at school, as both would function better as adults, if they manage to earn a salary high enough to pay for 'staff' ;-)
I wonder what Léon and Anna will bring to the chaos in a few years time?

SNOWMEN

As Léon mentioned on his own blog, he found his first real encounter with snow yesterday linguistically challenging. Over breakfast, he kept pointing at the garage saying 'snowman house', this was later followed by my car being described as a 'snowman car'. As the morning went on however, it became clear, Léon simply lacked the words 'snowy' and 'made of snow' in his vocabulary and was therefore using a word he knows well from Charlotte's early childhood fetish, assigning it these meanings!

EXTRA WASHING

In the washing basket
Originally uploaded by viralbus

I think it is fair to say we have now calculated, in real terms, the maximum number of inhabitants a house can have in winter in Scotland without a tumble drier and still continue to function. Unfortunately that number seems to be 2 adults and 3 children. At that point, doing a daily washing, using a clothes horse, all free radiators, door tops and the backs of the dining room chairs meant we seemed to have reached a static all in use always situation. Throwing a dribbly, pooing December baby into the mix however has made the status quo untenable. Roll on the flar sale so I can order the tumble drier!

ALL THE BUCHANAN GRANDCHILDREN

How likely is it that you get 5 kids, including 3 babies all sitting nicely and staring in the right direction for a group family photo? Amazing, no? So how bloody infuriating is it to upload it only to find out the silly plonker, whose camera you borrowed to take it, has it set on a resolution of a mere 800x531 pixels - ie something you can't even blow up to the size of a postage stamp to print for the living room wall or office desk. Now that'd be bad enough if it was taken with a 2 mega pixel mobile phone but it is a bloody Nikon DSLR no less. DAD ARE YOU INSANE????? Why buy a DSLR and set it on 800x531 as a standard?? Our Sony alpha is set at approx 3500x2323 standard, that way if you get a nice photo of the grandchildren you can blow it up to A4, and if you don't you can simply resize it before you save it. PLEASE stop using a Nikon DSLR to take photos at a worse resolution than Thomas's mobile phone - or swap him your Nikon for his mobile phone at the very least, you crazy old fool!

GLASGOW, XMAS 2007

The Great Santa Escape - Glasgow Santa Dash 2007
Originally uploaded by euan_pics

Pity I was too busy having a baby this Xmas to multitask - looks like I missed a bit of a photo opportunity in the city centre a couple of weekends back! :-)

POTTY TRAINING - THE UPDATE

Today's potty training didn't seem any better. Today Léon managed one pee on Charlotte's back, while playing horses, one pee on his aquadraw - making for an interesting shape, and one poo in a nappy during a trip to Tesco :-( So much for the nice new Bob the builder and Thomas the Tank Engine pants...

MONOPOLY, MODERN STYLE

monopoly, modern style
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Thomas's parents bought Marcel monopoly for his birthday in July. With a 2 year old and an 11 day old baby, we couldn't find a function to attend to bring in the new year, so decided letting the big ones stay up past midnight to play monopoly while drinking shloer, was a reasonable compromise. The first thing that struck me about the new monopoly was the inflationary hike in prices. My 1970s London version gave me £200 for passing go. This new Danish version gave me 2 000 000 Danish Kroner (about £200 000).
The chance cards were also more modern: I won a million in a reality TV programme and was fined for using my mobile while driving!
Even the tokens were modern: a mobile phone, a hamburger and a roller blade boot!
The hotels (see photo) are now NY-type sky scrapers, but the most radical, if you look at the photo has to be that there is no money any more! Thomas is paying his 1 million fine for landing on Marcel's hotel by VISA, and Marcel is registering it on his electronic card reader!
I feel old!

POTTY TRAINING

Potty training
Originally uploaded by bombhead

With us all home for the next 2 weeks, now seems like the optimum time for potty training. I had intended to start about 8 weeks ago but as I was completely unable to bend over to scrub the carpet, I decided it had to be on hold till after the bump arrived. So today we started. Two potties were strategically placed downstairs, old pants were looked out, bribes of chocolate were offered, we explained how big a boy he'd be to use his potty, how only babies needed nappies etc etc. And the result 12 hours on? No pees in the potty, 4 wet pairs of pants and, I believe absolutely no clue of what he is meant to be doing! :-( Tomorrow I am going to take him to choose some 'big boy' pants of his own in the hope that will inspire him slightly more...

DÉJÀ VU

German Wasp
Originally uploaded by markopoulos

Is it something about January? You may remember my rant when I was unexpectedly stung by a wasp in January last year. That was in the flat in Glasgow, so imagine my surprise this evening when Thomas came down stairs in the house holding another dead wasp, explaining he'd encountered it walking along our upstairs hall - give me strength. Is it global warming, or just victimization?