Our kids aren’t really fussy eaters. We try to give them a taste of everything. and persist but after a fair few goes we do finally give in. They don’t do too badly. fruit is a bit tricky, but the real issue is mushrooms.
Number 1 used to love them. from an early age she couldn’t get enough of them.
Gran, who loves to pretend that she is giving them healthy food latches on to the latest fruit or veg they show an interest in and plies it down their throats. which is then followed up by loads of “treats”, ‘cos they did so well.
This time it was mushrooms.
one lunch she had made a plate full of mushrooms, thinly sliced and lightly sautéed.
Gran was very proud, number 1 was wolfing them down. mouthfuls of them. it didn’t look like they were being chewed a lot.
there must have been an overload some where between number 1’s mouth and stomach.
Before we knew it a projectile mass of semi-digested but intact mushrooms returned into the plate. there were also some extra bits. but pretty much it was the previous contents that had come back. that just smelt a bit bad.
number 1 has never eaten mushrooms since. and we haven’t really pushed it.
one of the useful things about having 2 kids, is that when the eldest gets given a competitive challenge at school, you have a second bite of the cherry with number 2.
well, the 4 wheel 2 axle challenge came around for a second time.
we had learnt a lot from the first time.
the “best colour scheme” trophy was a false hope. We had to go for broke and not rely on the vagaries of a colour blind judge who still thinks lava lamps are hip. we were going to break some sort of land speed/distance record this time.
there had been a bit of churn in the competition, Mr Forumula 1 had departed, Team laser had lost interest, but Fusion reactor was still about and getting cagey about his latest effort.
But we had resurrected the test ramp, and invested in some fancy axle lube. this time there would be no superfluous drivers with un-aerodynamic hair – just a finely tuned, low friction vehicle capable of heading in an optimal straight line.
This was my last chance of taking this title home. There were no more kids in the pipeline. At all.
we did lots of testing, different weights, different axles, different lengths.
we had a good formula. testing had gone well.
but we had to make one compromise – it didn’t look very nice. and everyone could see inside the transparent lemonade bottle. and check out our ballast distribution to optimise down force and axle load.
i succumbed to number 2’s demand for a makeover. we went for a multi-coloured stripey effect. sort of go-faster-stripes on acid.
The big day came. bright sunshine, even a bar was laid on. apparently the PTA had received a few comments about the lack of adult refreshment. In these tense high octane sporting events a bit of light refreshment is necessary. and i think the PTA sensed it was easy money.
Mr tannoy was in full flow.
the competition had upped its game. lots of streamlined racers. not many kids did this years entrants.
there seemed to be a food theme going on. Mr Fusion reactor had gone for what looked like a Paella. There was a fairy cake (cupcake if you want). a sort of squid like fish thing. it was a competitive looking assortment.
the first few where well short of our test run distances. we were feeling like it could be our day.
Cup cake put in a pretty good effort. but we had more in the tank. we were sure.
we got the call. a quick check of the wheels, a final dab of lube. all in order.
these few seconds would define our primary school experience.
3-2-1 go!
number 2 let it go down the ramp.
it was a great launch down the ramp. good momentum. the trajectory was straight. things were looking good. the spectators had to scuttle out of the way as the track wasn’t long enough. the crowd was cheering. they could sense it was something special.
the distance was good, but just a bit of a veer to the right spoiled what was a very very good run.
I caught the eyes of a few parents – that approving look – nice effort.
the only real contender was Paella Express – Mr Fusion reactor.
Paella express takes gold. number 2 gets silver. cup cake bronze.
Due to the enormous quantity of hedge plants required and the lack of IMF scale funding needed to fill the gaps, my plans to restore the territorial boundaries called for an Industrial hedge growing plan.
Cuttings was the obvious answer. But we needed a place to grow them. And a big area.
1 tonne of top soil, plenty of well decomposed horse manure (from the field next door), some old planks, and a couple of days forced labour from the unwilling kids saw the architectural master piece constructed.
The Wife suggested that it didn’t look that nice. The gardens of Versailles it is not, but it is in the back of an overgrown field in the middle of nowhere and only cost a bit of arm twisting for the labour and a bag of nails.
But I think the Wife got into the swing of it when we had to collect the cuttings and start to plant them. Plenty of nice neat rows.
Just hope some of them actually grow and can be transplanted next year.
I was at a trade fare in Germany. Doing some essential market scoping and competitor analysis. The suggestion that I needed to get away on a company jolly is completely unfounded.
I must have made a wrong turn as I ended up in a huge hall full of people selling hospital beds.
The first bed is a bit interesting. After 3 or 4 it gets a bit difficult.
While trying to collect the cool free-bees, which is tough in a hospital bed convention, I stumbled on a really weird stand.
It wasn’t even clear why it was in a bed trade fare.
It had to be Japanese. And they had been doing serious research to validate their claims.
If you are feeling a bit lonely the robotic seal will respond to your commands.
It doesn’t really do much. It only flaps about and nods its head.
Apparently it helps lonely people.
A sort of giant Tamagtotchi.
Perhaps when you are in a hospital you need a seal to keep you company?
The Wife is a very cautious person and likes to keep a watchful eye on everything. This not only includes me but also our digital security. We thought we were doing quite well with our passwords against the kids. they were too young to read with any speed. plus they couldn’t work it out as a keyboard is not the normal alphabet.
Our first password for the home laptop was something quick and easy for both The Wife and I to remember. And it kept the kids off the computer. Unfortunately number 1 learnt to read and she got the hang of the password quite quickly.
we should have made it a bit more tricky than – home
all lower case which was an oversight. As number 1 held it in great delight to proclaim that she had worked out the password.
“i can read, you know!”
We decided to beef up our digital defenses and we upgraded to a fiendish mixture of alphanumerics with symbols. including a personalised acronym and a key date, summed. The Wife made it using her own logic and reasoning. DeepBlue would take a million years to crack it.
We slept very peacefully in the knowledge that our 2 offspring could never roam the internet and empty our bank account while playing Pokemon on our laptop. oh happy days.
Some time later, probably many months, if not dozens of months later I did a double take as i saw number 2 playing away on the laptop. This could not be possible.
I quickly confronted her and asked how she had got in to the laptop.
“did mummy let you go on her computer?”
“i’ll ask her…” I said with my – you know i’ll ask her and if she doesn’t agree you’ll be in really big trouble look.
number 2 says sheepishly, “no”
the look worked.
“so how did you get on it?”.
“I know the password” number 2 admits.
“do you?” i ask mystified.
“yes”
I can’t even remember it as it is so complicated. How could a five year old?
“how?” I asked.
“oh, I kept watching and remembering the next number”.
“and i wrote it down in my maths book so i wouldn’t forget”.
not sure when this new disciplinary technique turned up. definitely wasn’t about when i was a kid. six of the best was a fairly common occurance when dad came home.
but the naughty step is certainly all the rage now. Obviously it only really works if you have steps. As we lived in a flat with a long corridor it was not very practical to implement. Plus all the neighbours would see how often the kids would be sitting there and would jump to conclusions that we couldn’t control our offspring.
The eldest is a bit stubborn and usually ended up in trouble. Some say she takes after her mother. I don’t make that comparison. But others have.
Our solution to the naughty step was the “naughty corner”. The benefit of this is that almost where ever we were there was generally a corner close by where she could be placed. The only place we ever came unstuck was at the circus.
One Saturday morning she had been playing up again and ended up in the kitchen corner.
At some point in the morning some friends popped over for a quick chat. we lived in a lively part of town and often had people pop in for a free coffee and biscuit rather than pay at one of the local cafes.
we were having a good old chin wag when the mate returns from getting some more biscuits from the kitchen and says “is it normal that number 1 is sitting on her own in the kitchen?”
“oh yeah, she was being naughty this morning”
“but we arrived 2 hours ago, she hasn’t moved all this time?”
We might have forgotten she was there. But you can’t get enough discipline.
when i was a kid we had simple aspirations. I wanted to be a train driver, some of my mates wanted to be footballers or astronauts. real tangible jobs that did something.
now, it might be true that none of us actually did what we dreamed about; some are lawyers, no one did anything sporty, one lad did time for insider trading, and i make powerpoint slides. But at least we are real.
At my primary school, a JMI (junior mixed infants), we didn’t have an end of year school book. I think they only did that in America. but now our kids spend the whole year thinking about what they are going to put in it, I need an epic selfie to go in the EYB.
I don’t know what previous years put in theirs, but i am sure that we could tell a great deal from the “my dream job” section. The current crop of millennials would be interesting to revisit. I wonder if they put in their “my dream job” bit: feckless, pseudo-multi-tasker, pulling sickies with RSI from excessive texting.
Number 1 finally left primary school, and much to my dismay there were no prospective train drivers, no astronauts/jet pilots and only one footballer.
but, out of a year containing 47 kids, 9 put as their dream job – youtuber or social media star!
19% want to be a youtuber!!!!!!!!!!
i don’t know where it all went wrong. but it has gone seriously pear shaped.
Those 19% are so going to be disappointed with PowerPoint.
We were at a friends house for an impromptu diner, which we had really just turned up a little before diner knowing that they are very gregarious and would offer us some hospitality. Which we gladly accepted.
We also had another family in tow who were staying with us that they vaguely knew. Luckily they live next to the Co-op so we nipped out to get some extra pizzas and Prosecco.
As the evening developed we moved on to a new game we had just bought. We brought it with us in the expectation that we would be staying for a while. It is quite a simple game, a load of thin strips of card with a simple question written on it. The first one to give the correct response wins. A sort of cheap unsophisticated version of Trivial Pursuit with out the faff of deciding on colours and throwing dice.
The questions are fairly straight forward, it is juts a question of speed. An example, name a capital city beginning with P.
After a few glasses of Prosecco things move along at a fair old lick.
The kids decided that they wanted to see how people could be laughing so much without watching a youtube video, and joined in.
Jules, a young space geek tried in vain to work in planet related answers, Mars being a general favourite.
The questions rolled on until we got to: “name a waterfall beginning with V”
As quick as a flash Luke, a teenager, shouted out “Viagra Falls”
ROFL
This did raise some questions such as why would a teenager get these type of spam emails? Has he been looking at his dad’s email box? Why is he thinking of Viagra while playing a family game?
Luke didn’t give any credible explanation to his answer.
At the side of The Wife’s grandmother’s house is what is left of an old hedge. Probably hundreds of years old.
For several years I have lamented at the sorry state of what must have been a fine and very practicle boundary. No one seemed to care that it has fallen into disrepair and neglected. Albeit there is plenty of other stuff to do in the old rambling house. The hedge is way down on the to do list.
So, for the last couple of summers I have taken it upon myself to restore the hedge. I did a bit of research on different types of hedges and found a (non-indigenous) quick way to make a hedge barrier by carefully half-felling saplings to form a “living” barrier.
The next visit was quite an anxious affair as my hedge reputation was in the balance.
I shouldn’t have worried as it worked a treat. Everything was alive a sprouting as it should.
The only problem now was that there were plenty of huge voids and not enough trees to fell to plug all the gaps. Plan B was required.
A bit of “in situ” problem solving was undertaken. I needed to find a free source of bushy hedge type plant. On an industrial scale. The hedge is more gap than plant.
After stumbling through the wild undergrowth for a couple of hours I had come up with two options: some Holly bushes (plenty of this but is a bit scraggly) or some sort of green prickly bush thing ( no idea what it is but it grows in fairly large clumps all over the garden).
Leaving nothing to chance I went for both options.
The Holly was a pain to dig up and didn’t fill many of the holes. The green bush came up pretty easily when you hacked bits off the side of a clump.
Planted several to test and see if they would survive my replanting technique.
The next visit was a year later. Plenty of time for them to take hold and flourish.
It was a long wait. But finally we returned and after a few quick hellos it was off to the end of the garden.
It was difficult to see where everything had been planted as it was all over grown with weeds and stinging knettles. Not a great sign. As my hedges should have been towering above everything else. I carefully cleared away the weeds to find my hedges.
The little things had not grown at all.
But at least they were still alive. And looking healthy. If a bit small. I think they did actually grow a few centimetres. But at that rate global warming will have turned the garden into a desert and I won’t have to worry about hedges.
Plan C is needed.
I can’t think of anything now but will reflect. This will not defeat me.
Summer hols. Lots of sun, sandy beaches and sea, clearly not in Blighty. Small touristy port near Bordeaux.
The Highlight of the stay was the annual Sardine festival.
Essentially a big knees up based around the theme of Sardines. The posters and flyers were all over the port which must have mobilized most of the able bodied inhabitants to execute. It looked like it was going to be big.
We even came back from the beach early to get ready, which meant I had to have a shower and use soap. Apparently the shower at the side of the beach doesn’t count as a real wash.
We missed the initial bits and prize giving, somehow we got the wrong location in the port, which is quite impressive seeing as you can walk from one side to the other in about 15 minutes. We are not sure what prizes could have been give as they don’t catch any sardines nor was anyone dressed up in a sardine outfit. But sure it was well deserved whatever it was for.
We did manage to get there for the massive queue for the all-you-can-eat grilled sardine banquet. The menu was quite simple – piles of grilled sardines, and a bit of bread. Which is great as I like grilled sardines and bread.
The queue was long but they did give us some thimbles of Sangria to ease the pain of the wait. Which was the other odd thing. We are in the middle of Bordeaux wine country, and all we had on offer was Sangria. Thankfully it was chilled which was quite nice and refreshing as it was still fairly warm in the evening.
It was worth the wait, lovely crispy Sardines in a fresh bit of baguette. A true feast.
But the real highlight was the DJ and dancing. It wasn’t quite David Guetta. I think the DJ might have played a couple of tunes from this century, but that didn’t seem to stop everyone from dancing. One lady “of a certain age” even needed help getting to the dance floor. But still managed to shake a leg all evening.
There were even “slow” dances. Which was a strange experience as I only recall doing that kind of caper in a darkened scout hut, not in a public village fete dance. I think The Wife was also a bit surprised, but I like to keep her on her toes and keep a bit of spice and excitement in the air. Plus I reckoned it was cheaper than a Spa mini break.
Number 1 was very embarrassed, although not as embarrassed as when I started cutting shapes to some unknown 80’s French pop tune. Number 2 was a bit more philosophical, “shouldn’t you sit down now, as you do have a bad back, and it might get worse with those kinds of movements – but I suppose it’s OK as it might be the last time?”
We all had a great time. Some good old fashion cheap fun, with not a screen in sight (no wifi).
A memorable evening with a load of local French fishermen pretending they were in Spain.
Essentially a big knees up based around the theme of Sardines. The posters and flyers were all over the port which must have mobilized most of the able bodied inhabitants to execute. It looked like it was going to be big.