EXCELLENT...WELL ALMOST

For years now I have been pointing out to the council (East Renfrewshire) that this is a residential area that people move to to get their kids into decent schools and as such most families around here have kids. Kids drink a lot of milk, water, diluting juice, coke, fanta etc all of which come in large plastic bottles. They eat a lot of yogurt from plastic cartons. They get dirty outside so use a lot of shampoo, clothing detergents etc which all come in large plastic bottles - so why the hell do they recycle everything except plastic???? Every time I have rung them or emailed them since 2001, they have told me they are 'looking in to the matter, and the service should be available later in the year'.
So this morning I am sitting here with my coffee, when a wee leaflet gets posted through my door by the council telling me their new refuse policy. Excellent, I thought... well until I read the small print - your 110 litre bag will be emptied monthly. 110 litres monthly???? Are they insane? I won't be able to get out my back door for 3 of the 4 weeks for the mountain of milk bottles. Ho hum.

NISSAN MICRA COUPÉ

a wee red car
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I saw this in ASDA car park today and fortunately had my mobile phone on me. I instantly thought of dad when I saw it.
Dad has had Alfa Romeos for a while now but has been talking about buying something else once he gets his pension this year. He seemed to be tossing up between a Jaguar and a new Fiat 500 (Stop laughing! He's a sweet, if eccentric man!)
Anyway, I thought of dad because mum is constantly complaining that if he has a small errand to run he steals her little red Nissan Micra, as if he almost prefers it to his Alfa, citing fuel economy etc as the real excuse for constantly borrowing it.
Here is the sporty Nissan Micra Coupé, so it is like a dad version of my mum's car.
Better still, it has one of those hard tops you can press a button and fold away into the boot. Dad claims to this day that his favourite ever car was his old Sports Honda Civic with a fold-away roof.
Come on Daddy, I think this would suit you more than a boring old Jag, (though the Fiat is cute).

IMPRESSIVE

Apparently the pound has now fallen more under Brown than it did on Black Wednesday. What an astoundingly impressive politician! :-\

HE'S CALLED PETER, YOU KNOW!

Sometimes bilingual kids have a different outlook on life. I was singing to Pudge the other morning: Incy wincy spider climbed up the spout. Down came the rain, and washed the spider out. Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain So Incy wincy spider climbed up the spout again. 'He's called Peter, you know!', he replied Huh? Apparently the Danish version of the nursery rhyme is called: Lille Peter edderkop (Little Peter Spider).

Oh and incidentally - there are about a dozen different English versions - I must sing the whole repertoire every morning to gain me an extra half hour under the duvet!

ANGRY

Humans and their arrogance anger me sometimes. We make judgements about others' situations when we ourselves have not been it their situation. What am I talking about? The case of Chantal Sébire of course. (Here is an article in English too if you don't speak French). What gives people the right to say to someone who is terminally ill, blind, with no sense of taste or smell, in agony and facing a worse day every day that they should grit their teeth and bear it? We don't treat animals this badly.
When my own Gran died in her 60s of a brain tumour her very last words to me were ' I wish I was a rabbit' - The tumour had confused her so I had slowly become used to her talking nonsense over the preceding 6 months, she was a week from death, lying in a hammock because bed sores meant she could no longer even lie on a bed. But she wasn't confused that day - she was scarily lucid - she elaborated: 'then I could choose when to run into a trap'. I was just 16 years old and it frightened me that she had chosen me to confide in. It seems to me that when we get to that stage, often dignity is much more important to us than staying alive a few extra unbearable days.
I, for one, salute Chantal's courage and her decision to kill herself despite Monday's legal fiasco and feel only shame that we make people go to these lengths.

DENTAL HYGIENE

Lots is determined to get out her wobbly tooth
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I had my six-monthly teeth cleaning appointment yesterday with the dental hygienist - you know - where they pick at your teeth, floss them and brush them with a little drill thingy.
While lying there for that ten minutes staring at the bizarre posters of frogs glued to the ceiling, I started to wonder what sort of person becomes a dental hygienist? I wonder if they are all failed dentists or some people actually set out with the goal in life of just picking at other people's dirty teeth? I can just about understand why you'd become a dentist - I mean mine is in his 40s, works a 25 hour week, has 3 days off, can afford two kids at private school, child maintenance for 2 ex-partners and drives one of those beautiful BMW jeep-shaped cars, but unless picking people's teeth pays better than I imagine, I fail to see how anyone ends up as a dental hygienist.

UPDATE ON THE DEAD BODY

It seems the police have discovered the identity of yesterday's body - a young Polish girl: Agnieszka Zabel. I guess she fell from the scaffolding on the building that is being renovated a few doors up from Derek and Amanda. Heaven only knows what she was doing up there, or whether her fall was intentional or accidental.

L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE

Thomas and I watched a sweet movie a couple of months ago called l'Auberge espagnole. I think the reason we both enjoyed it so much was it took us back to our student days dropping us into the type of flat and lifestyle we had both known so well during our numerous stays abroad. I would recommend it to anyone in a nostalgic-for-your-uni-days mood - though it is probably most relevant to language students in this country as few others spend months at foreign unis. Last night we saw the sequel - Les Poupées russes - another sweet movie.

ANOTHER UNUSUAL DAY

I got up thinking I would take Léon and Anna to the beach or the park given the weather forecast was for sun and 10 degrees. I phoned to ask mum if she fancied coming along. She explained she had to babysit Gordy at lunch time to let Amanda visit her sick aunt in hospital, so I decided taking all 3 to Kelvingrove park might be fun. I arranged to drive mum in. While I was driving up to pick up mum, she phoned Amanda to let her know we were both coming. Amanda explained something weird was going on outside. She said police and an ambulance were outside the flat. By the time we arrived in town, at 11 something, police had erected two tents and blocked the road in two places. I tried to drive into Park Quadrant - no way José said the police officer on the line. Can I enter the street from the other end? (it is a one way street) I asked. No one is getting in or out, he replied. Hmmm - I was beginning to realize it was a serious something. After explaining we had to babysit for a relative, we were finally allowed in - but were told no one was being allowed to pass the police lines. As we went upstairs, two neighbours were arguing with the police - pensioners, they needed their car to attend a hospital appointment - again - no way and no info. They walked off into the distance to hail a cab. After a walk in the park we were followed into the close by the CID - they wanted to interview the Buchanans - they had found 2, but not the right 2. They said they'd return at 4pm. They turned up at 4-15ish. Amanda said she had heard a bang the night before around 11-30pm- like someone closing the boot of their car a little more roughly than usual, but nothing more. She had looked outside to check her car was ok, it was, so she had gone to bed. The CID must have been short of info because they stayed asking Amanda every second of the previous night, taking 4 pages of details down and speaking for nearly an hour and a half. Amazing! Mum and I stayed to keep Gordy out of Amanda's hair while the police spoke to her. We were really great at babysitting. At one point I thought mum was next door in the bedroom with Gordy, Mum thought I was next door in the living room with Gordy - Gordy of course had shut himself in the bathroom, climbed on the toilet, opened the bathroom cabinet, and had squeezed the entire contents of Amanda's Chanel body lotion over the bathroom floor. He knew however that wasn't on because at that point, Derek got home from work and asked if he'd been a good boy, to which he sheepishly replied 'No!' Over the course of the afternoon, we had been supposing that a young male had probably fallen off the scaffolding on the adjacent building and been killed, so we were surprised to hear it was a young woman's body that had been found. Anyway, after the police left I found this on the BBC. I guess we might hear a little more over the next few days. I uploaded the photos I took to flickr. It feels a bit eerie to think Amanda may have heard a young woman die last night, and that she may have been lying there not quite dead half the night... sends shivers up your spine.

ALWAYS EXPLAIN THE OBVIOUS TO YOUR KIDS!

Chameleon
Originally uploaded by ucumari

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

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

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

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

HNCDEFPCICSTMHOSLBSTTPBBR!

Alphabet 03
Originally uploaded by Leo Reynolds

What? yes - that's the new alphabet! Léon has an aquadraw toy, and around the edge are pictures in alphabetical order to help teach the alphabet. I asked Léon what the pictures were of to see how he saw it.
The actual pictures are shown here in blue - Léon's interpretation of each is in red: aeroplane (hoiplane), bananas (nanas), car (car), dog (doggy), elephant (elephlint), frog (frog), gift (presents), hen (crocodile), ice lolly (ice cream), jelly (chicken!), koala (snowman), lorry (truck), mouse (mouse), net (haler = it is what he calls his asthma inhaler), orange (orange), penguin (snowman), queen (lady), rocket (broken boy), submarine (space ship), television (TV), umbrella (træsko = Danish for 'clogs'), violin (piano = a generic term for any musical instrument for Léon), xylophone (box), yacht (boat), zebra (reba).
I guess this shows the importance of clear, rather than trendy drawings when you try to teach kids things!

HOMESICK

Dordogne
Originally uploaded by PhylB

You can't spend 20 years in French family, speaking French and living between France and Scotland without getting homesick once the French life is over.
Of course I miss my family every day, especially my other mum - they were old fashioned - divorce doesn't happen, so they couldn't stay in touch with me and André too. Maybe one day we'll find a way to become friends again. After all it wasn't them I fell out of love with, and I couldn't stay forever just to keep the family I saw twice a year.
For the first time since I was 16 I have not set foot on French soil for over a year and I ache with homesickness - for the smells, the sun, the buildings, the language, the food, the way of life.
When André and I split he kept all the French music, I got the books. I didn't mind because hearing it would hurt too much. Two years on I decided I needed it back - I found my favourite half dozen cds on amazon.fr/used and bought them for less than £20. The first one arrived this morning and it feels so good to listen to - even if all that old stuff: Maxime le Forestier, Brel, Piaf, Barbara, Aznavour, Guichard makes me a dinosaur! That music is part of me. Listening to Maxime now I have to resolve to improve Léon's French level - if André won't take him and speak it to him, I will make sure he doesn't need a dictionary to understand these poetic lyrics when he's old enough to understand them.

CHILDBIRTH

5 mins old
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I have just been reading an interesting article about childbirth on the BBC. I sounds like things are a wee bit different down south but I believe everywhere has got it wrong. And childbirth is definitely something I know about! I have been considering the best way to approach it since I heard an American describe giving birth without epidural as 'doing it the old fashioned way'. In France too epidural is the norm - with it being taken for granted unless you ask to opt out. I feel having been through it every possible way (except caesarean) I am qualified to comment.

I have to agree with the first statement. Of course women go into childbirth the first time underestimating the pain they are about to suffer - that is because you can only describe that intensity of pain to someone who has already been through it, by which time it is too late to describe it to them - maybe someone who has fallen into a mincing machine and crawled out in time to be run over by a truck could just about get what you mean if you try to describe it, but failing that everyone is going to go into it first time round wearing rose-tinted specs and then panic.

Here in Glasgow what seems to happen is that they teach you relaxation methods and tell you about the pain relief available. That is to say they tell you you can get an epidural which will anaesthetize you, morphine which will take the 'edge' off the pain or a tens machine which they let you try. They make it sound sweet and idyllic - like it will be sore but as long as Mr Right is there holding your hand you'll be fine. I think in the back of their minds they assume that once the pain hits the mum-to-be will simply ask for one of the pain relief methods, probably epidural and they will hand it out with a knowing smile.

Anyway here's what I would do, if I was in charge. I would mention the relaxation methods because they definitely help when panic hits, if you have moral support. I would then send each mum-to-be home with a DVD of a real birth - and I don't mean 2 minutes in a taxi as you see on the likes of Eastenders - I mean an average 12 hour screaming, crying, yelling birth. I think as a woman looking into that stranger's eyes you would get a much more realistic view of what she is about to go through. I know some satellite channels show birth these days, but they only show you the last 10 minutes, (and from the side!) - so you have no idea of the hours of exhaustion that precede that point. That would be step one. The advantage to this method too would be that if you did go for pain relief, you certainly wouldn't feel like you had failed in any way, and neither would your partner if he watched it with you.

Step two would be to mention the pros and cons of each method of pain relief. I think telling you about them 4 weeks before birth rather than during birth would give you more time to think them through. I would say you can have an epidural but you could end up with pain in your lower back for a month every time you sit down, every time you sit against something. It will make you feel uncomfortable every time you breast feed for the first month but it does take away the contractions for the 8 hours it is in. I would mention you can't feel to push so you push exhaustedly until the forceps or ventouse are called for but again this interception won't be felt because you are anaesthetized. Of course, it will be felt for months afterwards if you need stitching because of the forceps. I would mention you can have urine problems after an epidural and need catheterised for 2 or 3 days. And that you can end up shaking all night after the effects wear off. I'd say that sex might make your eyes water for months because you have been sewn up so tightly but it does take away the pain for those 8 hours.

Then I would say morphine can make you feel nauseous, and claustrophobic and faint. I would mention it doesn't actually do anything other than skim the surface of the pain of childbirth but yes it too is available.

As for Tens machines - yeah they work for the first couple of hours when you think the pain is bad but by the time you reach the bit that is actually painful you can't feel the Tens machine, so yeah use it but don't believe it'll make things go swimmingly.

No we wouldn't have our teeth pulled with no anaesthetic because that hurts but if having them pulled without anaesthetic would mean you hurt a lot during the procedure but avoid 6 months of pain - would we maybe consider it? And as for dying - sure people die in childbirth but from the complications, not the pain!

As I went through about 20 hours of labour with Léon and about 4 with Anna I got through the pain by knowing that when it stopped, it would be over - the unbearable pain of childbirth just stops when they hit the bed - you know then you've made it. I would advocate natural child birth not because I like pain but because afterwards your world turns upside down, you don't sleep, you suffer exhaustion like you can't imagine so the last thing you need is more pain.

WE'LL NEVER HEAR THE END OF THIS ONE

Soooo close to that Hole-in-One !
Originally uploaded by The Scudder

Here's a photo of dad's 2 friends laughing at him when he missed a hole in one yesterday by 1cm! He didn't look like the happiest bunny and blamed the weather of course! Golfers are weird folk!

CLEVER ANNA

 Anna slept from 10-45pm to 6-15am! Wow! I would feel almost human... if I hadn't had the day I had yesterday, and if Léon hadn't decided to get up at 7-15am this morning!

A SHITTY AFTERNOON

Léon and Gordon playing together
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Amanda invited Léon over today to help teach potty to his wee cousin Gordy, 3 months his junior. Gordy had had his first nappy-free day yesterday so Amanda is fairly housebound - there are only so many people who want you visiting with a nappy-free, un-house-trained toddler, there aren't many places you want to drive to either with a nappiless child in a carseat.
We arrived at 11 and things didn't start too well - both had got up too early so were overtired. We got half an hour of 'mineminemine' and 'gimmegimmegimme', with a bit of crying and stamping thrown in. Half an hour in, things calmed down and they decided to be best buddies as usual. Phew! Gordy had used the potty a few times when his mum had asked him to before our arrival, but after, playing with Léon was too much fun to bother with potties.
Around 12, Léon asked to go to the toilet so we thought this was a great opportunity to show Gordy what to do. Léon did a pee and a poo. We asked Gordy if he wanted a look - so he looked down the toilet, and seemed impressed. Amanda asked if he wanted to try: No! Gordy walked to the living room and promptly peeed all over the floor. I tried to keep Léon from walking in the swamp while Amanda mopped it up.
After lunch Léon managed another pee and poo, again I showed Gordy, again he peeed his pants! While Amanda and I chatted in the kitchen the boys played in Gordy's bedroom. Amanda went to check after two minutes. I heard her say - oh you've had a wee accident, don't worry. I assumed it was another pee but it was a poo. Amanda suggested to Léon he leave the room while she cleaned the carpet. Léon drove out on Gordy's tractor, Amanda waved him goodbye - maintaining an amazing level of calm - I remember potty-training stress all too well from January. Anna started crying for milk. Then Amanda realized Gordy hadn't done one poo, he'd done two poos - the one she was picking up and the one Léon had just driven over with the tractor and was squelching into Gordy's green bedroom carpet, the patterned - hard-to-see-poo-on - hall carpet, the wooden living room floor and the beautiful, expensive hand-woven wool rug (also various rusty shades) in the living room. Of course the offending tractor was immediately flung in the shower room and both Gordy and Léon's feet were checked for poo - negative. By now a lesser being would have been hysterical and on the floor but Amanda ran around with a basin of soapy water while I removed chunks with baby wipes and left lego blocks as markers on the rugs denoting where needed shampooing. Anna started screaming for milk. I sat down to feed her two minutes. Amanda finally finished the task in hand, stood up and walked into the hall in time to see Léon driving up the hall on the tractor he had retrieved in the shower room while Amanda crawled about on all fours. The tractor was re-flung in the shower room, the carpet was re-shampooed, the boys socks were re-checked for poo.
When I left at 2-15pm, after just 3 hours, there was a pile of 4, maybe 5 pairs of wet pants, a 25 metre trail of shampooed carpet and a very authentic looking tractor, complete with manure-covered wheels, two happy boys and two very stressed, tired mums.
Amanda must have been so glad Léon came round to share his wisdom with Gordy!

GIVE ME THE STRENGTH TO GET THROUGH ANOTHER DAY WITH THE LITTLE PEOPLE

I should have known Léon was too quiet. He bounced on my head at 7-40am then disappeared. I fed Anna for 10 minutes then got up. 'Léon - where are you?' I shouted. 'Just painting' came the ominous reply. I clung to the hope he simply meant he was looking at the mural I am in the middle of painting on his bedroom wall but as I opened the bedroom door I saw he'd accidentally overturned the pot of brown paint Charlotte had been using on his tree trunk last night and had left on his toy box. The wall (the low blue bit) was splattered brown, the carpet was covered in brown, Léon and his pyjamas were brown. There were brown footprints all over the hall carpet. Léon of course was as happy as Larry. I guess laminating Léon's bedroom floor has now moved from maybe some time in the future to as soon as possible.

POSTMAN PAT

Once or twice over the past month I have found soggy letters addressed to me half way up the garden path. I assumed they'd blown out when the front door was opened in the recent stormy weather or even that a postman had dropped one or two sprinting up the path in the atrocious weather... until I was sitting on my couch the other morning in full view of my letterbox. The postman popped them through. Léon, who was playing with his train jumped up, shouted 'letters!' and dashed into the hall - I assumed to retrieve them, but no, he picked them up and posted them back through the door. He was doing the same as he saw the postman do, so wondered why I instantly started shouting at him.

BREADMAKER REVISITED

Apparently I am not the only one not to know what exactly a breadmaker does, as I mentioned the other day. Not only have several people said to me they thought the same as I did, but Pudge underlined the real ambiguity of it to me yesterday. I walked into the kitchen in time to see him tapping the window on the top. What are you doing? I asked, I'm trying to play music on this TV! came his reply. I guess he was confusing it with the mini hifi I listen to whenever I am cooking, but he didn't know the name for that. Imagine his surprise tomorrow morning when he finds Thomas has baked a banana loaf in that TV!

TRANSLATION ERROR

Spot the deliberate mistake!
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I know it makes me a sad nerd, but this kind of translation error on an imported box of slug traps makes my day. You see it has come from a language which doesn't distinguish the two species and the importer hasn't checked because they don't suspect it. I guess it is why I do the job I do.

FOOTBALLER

Charlotte was proud to come home from her friend Adam's party on Saturday. He had held a football party inviting 25 boys and Charlotte, who is known as a bit of a tomboy. At the end they held a penalty shoot out with an 11 year old goalie. It was a knockout competition and it came down to Charlotte and one lone boy. Charlotte won, of course!

THE PREGNANCY HAS COME TO AN END!

Yes, I know you are thinking: Yeah we noticed that 82 days ago... but today I realized for sure the pregnancy hormones had disappeared. Naturally I have thin, greasy hair that needs washing about every 36 hours. When I am pregnant, I have thick, dry hair that I can leave for a week without it becoming greasy, if I so desire. I washed my hair on Thursday, and noticed yesterday it was limp and greasy already :-( Waaaaah - looks like the pregnancy is officially over.

NÉNAW NEEDS TO COOK!

Léon insists on cooking most of our meals these days. He's the only 2 year old I know whose tantrums of tiredness tend to manifest themselves in his rolling about the kitchen floor sobbing: Nénaw needs to cook!

POETRY

Charlotte describes herself using her name
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I found this in Lots's schoolbag the other day. I thought it was sweet. I particularly like 'excellent' and 'extremely', of course. When I asked her about it, she replied that having a shorter name would have made for less work... but not necessarily easier work, as her little friend Max found out during this exercise!

NOT BEFORE TIME

Dad
Originally uploaded by PhylB

At last I seem to have convinced my dad to open a flickr account. Hopefully he'll soon find out all the fun he can have talking to the photographers of the world!

BREADMAKER

Gersterbrot
Originally uploaded by hannes2002

I know this is going to make me sound stupid but I might as well blog it for all the other stupid people out there.
For years I have passed breadmaker machines in the supermarket assuming they were little ovens to bake bread in.
At the weekend Thomas came bouncing up to me in Tesco with one under his arm, reduced to half price (20 odd quid), so I agreed it'd be nice to have homemade bread, knowing he's the cook, so assuming he'd do all the kneading etc.
The first day he made a loaf and I ate it. The second day he called me through to watch him make it. To my utter amazement, he simply threw all the ingredients into the machine, told it when we were getting up and then closed it. A breadmaker turns out to be the baker and the oven! And it even makes it for breakfast - like a teasmade for bread. SUPERB!
Last night Lots made a loaf before going to bed.
Oh dear - I am going to get sooo fat!

A SHOWER OF ROBBERS!

I finally got to the bottom of my tree pile mystery. Four days after East Renfrewshire council was meant to take away my trees (and 4 days after they cashed my £20 payment), I get a hand delivered letter through my door explaining why they haven't removed them. When I booked the uplift, I was informed that the £20 covered 15 minutes of 2 men working, ie 30 man-minutes. When Thomas cut the (very small) trees down the week before, I watched him move them from all around the garden into a pile on the patio - this took approximately 12 minutes. I timed him because I knew the council's policy. So it took 1 man 12 minutes to pile up my trees. The council's letter claims that because my pile of trees is so big, it will cost me £70 to have them removed from my garden. As the distance is the same as Thomas moved them, they are telling me 2 men would take 52.5 minutes to move my trees, or 1 man would take 1hr45 minutes to move my trees the same distance as Thomas took 12 minutes to move them. I have to conclude that:

• The council employs 1-legged, 1-armed refuse collectors, or
• The council employs slow, lazy layabouts, or
• The council is a dishonest money-grabbing institution.

I'll leave you to decide which theory is likely to be the most accurate.
I phoned them and told them to re-credit my visa card with £20 as their quote was outrageous, explained the above to them and decided that if it is the last thing I do, I will spend the rest of year cutting these trees into little pieces and putting them in my brown refuse bin so that the council will slowly but surely be obliged to remove them all from my garden free of charge! Don't mess with me East Ren!

THOMAS'S DALEK

Invasion of the daleks
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I'm beginning to wonder how Thomas ever managed to live in a flat - he's such a garden person. First he bought a chainsaw to attack some old trees, then he bought some fruit trees and over the last few days a cultivator, hedge trimmer and some bulbs and seeds. He spends hours at the local nursery too. Yesterday afternoon Marcel went out to the shops, he was back less than 5 minutes when Charlotte decided to go too - but when she went out she came face to face with a dalek, about as big as herself - he'd obviously come up the path in the interim 5 minutes.
Thomas was thrilled with his new toy. Dad will no doubt have some comments on it, I am sure!

SNOW!

fun in the snow
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I woke up in the middle of the night to feed Anna and noticed it was snowing heavily. By 3 hours later, I was assuming it had been part of my dream. Wrong!
Anna fell asleep mid-morning so Léon and I went out and made a snowman. I thought I did reasonably well - my back is still sore from the pregnancy but I did manage to roll three balls of snow around the garden. I found a carrot, a plant pot and various accoutrements to make him look like a snowman rather than a pile of snow and felt quite pleased with the result. Pudge was pleased too, even giving him a hug. As the day went on, we had warm periods, blizzard periods and generally changeable weather, so by 4 hours later, he had unfortunately become more the leaning tower of snowman, than the upright soul we had created in the morning. I guess we don't get enough snowman-building practice here to perfect it.

THE GRADUATE

Tonight I was flicking through the channels when to my delight I found The Graduate. This has to be one of my favourite films. I haven't seen it in twenty years and yet I remember whole chunks verbatim. I have just cringed and giggled my way through the scene where Ben announces to his parents that he is going to marry Elaine.
Strangely though, the last time I watched this film I was 20 so equated myself with the character Ben, and thought of Mrs Robinson as being like my parents' friends. I just checked wikipedia and found out Anne Bancroft was 36 when she made this movie - 4 years younger than me, and yet I still think of myself more as Ben's age group than Mrs Robinson's - weird. When I look at Anne Bancroft I see someone a whole generation older than myself. Is that because she was my age a generation ago, or am I still in denial, or something?

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!