Snot.

I spent most of the weekend in bed suffering from sinuses filled with putty, a toothache you wouldn't believe and a head with internal G clamps. I got the man flu. It's like normal flu but bigger and hairier. Iron John Flu. Grrr! Snot!

This happens to me everytime I play with kids. Play with kids = get sick. It's a simple cause and effect. Children are just little plague monkeys running from one place to another efficiently distributing the latest fashion in rhinoviruses. I have come to the conclusion that the recent traunch of rules and regulations and guidlines about how and what and where it appropriate, or not, to touch children is less to do with protecting the little buggers from saddos and perverts but more to do with protecting the adult carers from weird random sweatfest illnesses like the one I've just got.

As I said, I spent most of Saturday in bed, asleep, occasionally waking up to read another chapter of the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by PK Dick, which I was reading for the bookgroup over at Palimpsest. Much as I love Mr Dick's earlier funnier books I will readily admit I haven't got a clue what is going on in most of them, even after several readings. Tackling the 3Stig of PE while half asleep and in a demi-delerium didn't make things any clearer.

So, sleep patterns all buggered up, I wasn't surprised to find myself waking up at 3 am and reaching for the bedside note book to scribble down half-formed stupid ideas that arrived in my sleep.

This is what I found the next morning:

"Several Reasons Why Great Literature is Not as Good
as Playing With Your Willy (or Lady Bits)"

It was 3 am. Raskolnikov dreamt of Death and Cruelty, Coleridge dreamed of Xanadu, I dream up knob jokes.

---

Fraser arrived this morning and announced that due to some cock up he could start work on the roof tomorrow. The plan is to completely scaffold the gable end, strip the bargeboards and leadwork, pull all the slates off for at least a meter back from the edge. Rip off all the sarking. Replace at least 2 roof timbers (possibly more), re-sark, re-slate over new leadwork and replace the existing bargeboards, which are original to the building and in not that bad nick for 122 year old bits of wood. He reckons he can do all this in under two weeks. It's going to take all the house repairing budget for the year but it needs done. To be honest it needed doing at least 3 years ago. Everytime we have a gale round here I expect to hear the whole lot rip off and land in the garden. I doubt if it would stand another winter.

Mummy, We're Going To Sell Daisy On eBay!

That's it for another year.  My annual working with kids for money stint is over and now I'm suffering from my annual post working with kids for money cold.  Kids are great but they are the vectors for every known form of snifflebug known and unknown to man.

In two weeks time I start rehearsals for the annual touring round the high schools of Scotland delivering A MESSAGE to the assembled spotty yoofs.

Another weekend has flashed by. What happens? This weekend we were mainly...

Saturday ... going to the continental Market in the High Street and spending way too much money on stinky cheeses and dry-cured wild boar, and duck sausages all covered in that strange white powdery stuff that foreign sausages always seem to be covered in - what is it? (That was a rhetorical question by the way - as I get older I find the less I know about what I'm eating the happier I am.) The kids loved it and ate vast quantities of sweets.

Sunday ... going for lunch down at the TIC * and then having a walk in the quarry with the kids and finding a lizard - actually Holly found the lizard - I think she peed on it.

Monday ... getting paid to play with kids again. Ilona got stuck in Birmingham. She was on holiday in Aberystwyth (a town 'famous' for The Aberystwyth Electric Cliff Railway, "the longest electric cliff railway in Britain") but due to some fuckup on the trains (I know, it's hard to believe, isn't it?) she missed her flight back north. This meant I had to run the first set of workshops today by myself. Panic. Responsibility avoidence technique number one (ie find, and defer to, a more competant female) was now redundant. I coped.

... getting offered and accepting another acting job. Same show as last year (maybe same part? almost certainly the same money) but several weeks work driving around Scotland arriving in a school doing 45 minute play, 45 minute workshop go to next school, repeat, then go to pub, restaurant, or whatever. Mucho time to do reading of books.

It's gone midnight and I should have been in bed ages ago but I'm sitting here writing this and waiting for Daisy to wake up. She's been having these strange crying fits in the middle of the night for the last few nights, Usually around midnight. Last night she was inconsolable. She just screamed and screamed. She was really terrified. Whether these are night terrors or just bad dreams we don't know but, fingers crossed, she hasn't woken up tonight.





* I would like to make it abundantly clear I had NOTHING to do with the 'design' of that web page.

I used to drink. A lot. But then I stopped. I don't have a problem with booze at all any more, just as long as I don't drink any of it.

But...

I realised last night that I have developed a substitute brain-wrecking addiction. Midnight last night after a long and sweaty day I was running a bath. I flip through some of the free to air movie channels as I waited for it to fill. Then I stopped flipping went to the bathroom and turned off the taps, flopped on the sofa and watched Return of the Killer Tomatoes till three in the morning.

I took my bath in an advert break. Dived in, did my pits and tits, and out again to watch the rest of the movie wrapped in my dressing gown.

I think I may have a problem.

At least I didn't have a hangover this morning.

It Hurts Like a Bee Standing On an Elephant

Last Monday returning from the Fort after a hard day's playing with the kids I stopped and gave a couple of hitch-hikers a lift. A man and a woman. They were heading for London where they were catching a bus to take them back to somewhere in Slovakia. We had a bit of a chat but their English wasn't great and my Slovakian is non-existant. They had been fruit picking and had climbed Ben Nevis. I dropped them off at the Glencoe crossroads and pointed them in the general direction of south. We waved goodbye.

On Tuesday Merriol found their camera in our car.

How do you trace two foreign hitchhikers? I didn't even know their first names. We handed the camera in the the police (after carefully making sure the bag wasn't stuffed full of hash, I mean we didn't want to get these guys into any trouble). So, if you were the hitchers, or you know who they were, mail me and I'll get the camera back to you. If it isn't claimed in two months we get to keep it. which doesn't seem very fair but, if that happens, we can then see if there are any photos in the camera and put them up on the web. Maybe someone will recognises them.

Flash! A- Haaaaaaaa!

Spent most of this morning filling out my tax return online. Every year I haver, and dither, and put it off, and put it off, and put it off, only to find, when I finally do get round to it, that the process of filling the form out is nothing like as horrendeous as I remember. Then I remember it not being as horrendeous as I remembered last year and wonder why I hadn't remembered that earlier.

Now I've filled that in, we can go on and fill in the Insanely Complicated Tax Credits Renewal Pack and hope we still qualify. If we don't we shall have to sell one of the children - in which case we might qualify and have enough money to buy her back. (Maybe we could just pawn them...)

Tonight I flopped on the sofa and fell asleep watching Flash Gordon, a film I remember seeing at the movies when it first came out. What an enjoyable piece of junk! I'm sorry I fell asleep. It had everything I admire and look for in a movie: wooden acting, corny dialogue, cliched set pieces, dodgy SFX, scantily clad people being tied to things and whipped in an unenthusiastic manner... oh I'm easily pleased.

how can you not like a movie with lines like:

"No! Not the bore worms!"

or dialogue like this:

Hedonia:
(Offering the captive Dale a drink)
It has no name. Many brave men died to bring it
here from the Galaxy of Pleasure... It will make
your nights with Ming more... agreeable.

Dale Arden:
Will it make me forget?

Hedonia:
No, but it will make you not mind remembering.

Got up, went shopping, came home, watched a bad movie, went to bed.

That about sums the day up.

It rained.

I went back to the doctors today to discuss the saga of the miniturised submarines poking about in my brain; the discussion boiled down to the simple facts:

If I have the scan and they find something worth operating on they will want to operate (why else do the scan?). There will then be a 20% risk of something happening. 'Something happening' being anything from me having a mild, recoverable stroke, to being 100% irrecoverably dead.

If I have the scan and they find something and I don't have anything done about it there is a 10% risk of the same 'something happening' in my lifetime. ie anytime between now and when I die, from whatever cause, which could be anything up to 40+ years from now. (Optomist)

If I have nothing done there is nothing I can change about my lifestyle that will make a blind bit of difference. If it is going to happen it will happen. All that will change if I know about it is I will be concious of the fact that I have an aneurism and all the attendant worries that will bring.

I think I am going pass on having the scan. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. The maths has convinced me that this is one of those sometimes.

I Had a Sausage Sandwhich for Lunch; I'm Not a Vegetarian After All

I'm being paid to play with kids again. Great fun. As part of some Highland Council money spending scheme I get to spend 4 days this week playing silly buggers with a whole load of 5 - 11 year olds. Nominaly they are called 'Drama Workshops' - but it's playing. I'm only assisting this year, which is a great relief, avoidence of responsibility being a really big part of my entire adult life, but it does mean I'm not getting £20 an hour which I did last year - less that a third of that in fact. One of the best bits about it though, is getting a break from Holly and Daisy for a few days. It seems perverse, playing with other people's children being a welcome break from playing with my own, but it is, and I am grateful for it.

This blog will be a year old next week, the longest time I have kept any form of diary in my life. I'll bake it a cake

I've Been Glued to The railway Track by a Dragon! - Quick, Get Your Dragon Glue Disolver!

I spent most of today laying concrete paving slabs around Mike and Morag's oil tank - something to with it being a condition of sale of their house, I'm not sure exactly why I was doing it but I promised I would, so I did - and I enjoyed myself. Today was the first time I have been away from the kids for a whole day, for ages, I can't remember how long it is since we had a rest from each other. I love my daughters, I really do, but lately things have been getting a bit tetchy between Holly and I. No one can spend 12 hours a day 7 days a week, for weeks on end in somebody else's company and not get a bit fed up with them from time to time - even if they are four and easily distracted.

Holly and are getting like that. It's hard. 'Living with a four year old', as someone smarter, funnier, and almost certainly better looking than I am once said, 'is like living with a psychotic dwarf.'

I'm working all next week and then again a couple of weeks later. I hope the break will do us both good. I love Holly very much but sometimes lately I have found it hard to like her very much. It hurts.

I Don't Like the Tomato - Go Away Tomato!

It is hot and sticky here at the moment as oposed to just plain hot like the rest of the UK. Down in England roads are melting and whole areas of the country are using water faster than the water companies can pump it to them. Here it is humid and I think that makes it worse. We're all wandering around like Tenesse Williams characters, fanning ourselves with whatever comes to hand and watching each other sweat.


It's too darn Hot.

Back from holiday!

Only took 10 hours to drive back and, as Merriol is going down with the snottynesses and not feeling to good, I drove the whole way myself. Furthest I have ever driven in my life. It is now several hours since we arrived and I still can't stop moving. I'm totally jittery. Everytime I shut my eyes everything comes rushing at me. It's a bit freaky. So, the kids are in bed, Merriol is in bed and I'm wandering around reclaiming my territory. Metaphoricaly peeing in the corners and pacing the bounderies growling at the other beta males. That sort of thing.

Grrrr.

Eleven hours to get to Sheffield - eleven sodding hours. Three quarters of one of them was spent stuck in a 'move five meters then switch off the engine for a bit, then move another five meters, nose to tail, type traffic jam on the M74. We could see the line of traffic appearing and disappearing over the hills away into the distance. We're in the center lane. It's hot and sticky real thunderstorm weather. Right on cue Holly says "I want a wee wee".

The thunderstorm broke as we arrived at the rented cottage high in the hills on the edge of the Peaks.

Huge flashes of lightning light up the sky. Thunder cracks. Wherever the lightning is hitting it is pretty close. Rain suddenly pours out of the sky in unbelievable quantities as Merriol and Len scurry backwards and forwards getting stuff out of the car and into the house as fast as they can. I have copped out of the getting wet game and stay in the house try and organise the incoming luggage out of their way, as soon as they lob a bag through the door, I whisk it away into the kitchen, living room or the bottom of the stairs.

At last everything is in. Merriol changes her trousers which are sodden and clinging to her in a very attractive, but uncomfortable manner and we flop on the sofas. We open a couple of beers. We are on holiday! After all the travelling, and driving, and keeping two hot bored kids amused in the back of a car we are finally on holiday.

We raise our beers in a toast, and as we do so there is a final Godallmighty crack of lightning outside and the electricity dies.

0 - 0

The power of thought. Engerland are out of the Whirled Cup and with British 'hopefuls' getting themselves thrashed out of Wimbledon as fast as they can it is now safe to go down south.  Unless of course the Tabloids come up with some 7 year old sporting wonder kid in the International Tiddlywinks friendly with the Faroe Islands.

No Laughing and No Bending Down! But Smiling is Allowed

Oh it's a good day for spotting things: This from here

In 1801, Thomas Young elegantly demonstrated his double slit experiment. The experiment showed that light also behaves like waves, because it interferes with itself.

Ohh-err Missus!

and this mindbogglingly obvious piece of advice from the intructions on a box of Early Learning Center face paints:

Using Face Paints
You can paint your own face or that of a friend. If you are painting yourself you will need a mirror.

No shit Sherlock! Who writes these instructions? I thought it was patently obvious that anyone who had managed to master the concepts of face painting and reading would be aware of the difficulties of painting your own face without being able to see it. Idiots!


Merriol and the kids and I are off for a few days down to the Fleshpots of Ingerland. (I hope they get knocked out of the Wurld Kup or whatever it is called soon because Ingerland in full patriotic We're backing the boys, Gawd bless yer Ma'am, earwig oh, earwig oh, earwig oh! Kraut, Argie, Wop bashing frenzy is as one of the Inner Circles of Hell to me.

Cheese Is Still Not A Colour

Aha! All the women have all gone!  Now to walk around in my underpants and fart and do MAN stuff in MY space. 

I may watch Dr Who.

.

Cheese Is Not A Colour

The house is full of women and I'm trapped upstairs. Not the stuff of puerile fantasy but a grim reality. Merriol organised a get the girls around and have a couple of bottles of wine and sell each other overpriced cosmetics / tupperwear / lingerie / Sex in the City props. This time it was perfumeries. Anyway the woman running the party baled on them for some reason but Merriol decided the fun bit was having the friends around and the wine. So I'm hiding upstairs, desperate for a cup of coffee listening to fucking awful music from the glorious 365 days Project
There are loads of slightly drunk women doing slighty drunk woman stuff between me and the kitchen

Yesterday Mike...

<Waffle Mode>

This Mike isn't 'Morag and Mike' Mike, but another Mike. I do know other people not called Mike but I'm finding it easier, as my brain gets more and more enfeebled, due to prolonged exposure to children, if all my friends have the same name.

</Waffle Mode>

... and I (but mostly Mike) chopped down the bloody big sycamore tree that was threatening to bring down a great section of my garden wall. Tomorrow I will drill a bezillion holes in it and fill it with tree killer. Not very ecological I know but I don't have the patience to trim off the new shoots week after week till it finaly gives up the ghost.

AHA!!!

Solved the Coffee problem. I just phoned downstairs. Merriol is on her way up with a cup soon - I hope.

Can I Lick Your Hair?

Today's Utterly Alarming Question from Holly
(See also Worm Sorters are Very Important ):

Holly:
Daddy, can we make a buggery?

Me:
A WHAT!?

Holly:
Can we make a buggery? You get two bits of plastic you can
see through and put dirt and weeds in and put some bugs in
and they come out at night and you can see them.

One of these days she is going to say something like that in front of a Social Worker and I'll have to live the rest of my life in a dustbin somewhere - possibly in South America.

Cuddle Me Backwards Again

Most of the day was spent without electricity. We've known about this for weeks, that they would turn the leccy off between 9am and 5pm. 8 hours without internet access? Twitch twitch.

It's amazing, when you start to think about it, and I had a lot of time to think about it today how much of the stuff around you becomes totally redundant without electricity. The fridges, the freezers, the central heating, TVs, radios, CD players, the computers.. and so it goes on, all pretty obvious really but today I noticed all the other stuff. There were all the CDs, the video tapes the DVDs - the LPs! There was so much stuff in our house that was utterly useless without 240v 50 cycle AC on tap.

The books still worked.

When I woke up the pooter after the juice was restored it had somehow managed to loose all firewall settings. Took me an hour to work that one out and will take us a couple of days to teach it what is what again.

Cuddle Me Backwards

The thought of people poking about in my brain has been occupying my thoughts for a lot of the day. Actually that's a fib - the film Fantastic Voyage has been occupying my thoughts. If you don't know the film the basic plot is that a surgical team is miniaturized and inserted into a dying man to try and blast a blood clot in his brain with a laser. They have 12 hours or something before the submarine they are in reverts to full size again, so they have to be outside the body before then. As usual Things Go Wrong for the scientists (played by Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, and Donald Pleasence etc.) and they have to take a short cut out of the patienrts tear ducts. What has always puzzled me about that movie, even as a kid when I first saw it, is what happened to the bezillion gallons of miniturised water the submarine was sitting in when it got shrinky-dinked? Surely that would revert to full size at the same time.

I spent tonight round at the parents playing scrabble with them and Dan, and trying to design a low-tech homemade midge catching machine. We've just hit the hight of the midge season here and the little buggers are as horrible, and ubiquitous, as ever. Midges are attracted to sources of carbon dioxide (mainly tourists) but last night I noticed there was an almost solid swarm of them over the compost heap. I guess rotting vegetation gives off a lot of the right sort of smell. Commercial midge eating machines work by pumping out CO2 made by burning Propane gas and sucking the attracted creatures into a little cage. They retail for around £400 - which is about £395 more than I can afford to spend at the moment. It occured to me I already had a CO2 source in the compost heap. All I needed was something to suck up the gathered beasties. Current plans involve some plastic waste pipe, bits of cannibalised computers (chip cooling fans, and relevent transformers), and a pair of old tights. Alternatively I may just take the vacuum cleaner out there on an extension cable.

Bucket

Saturday: Cuil Bay. A family outing. Merriol and I, our kids, Morag, and her kids have a lovely hot sunny seaside day. As we are packing up to go home Merriol spots something small and green floating out to sea.
"Isn't that Holly's bucket?"
"Looks like it."
We looked at the little bright green blob bobbing on the waves. The thing was way beyond wading distance and I don't swim.
"Ah well, there's not a lot we can do about it is there?."
"No, not really."
At which point Holly sees it and bursts into tears: "My Bucket! My Bucket! I want my bucket!" She's inconsolable. She was less upset when the cat died - mind you we did have time to prepare her for that one - we should have sat her down before we came to the beach. " We're going to the seaside Holly but maybe some of your toys aren't coming back..." But we hadn't and there we were with a distraught child and nothing to do to save the situation.

Just then the motor boat that had been buzzing about off shore for a while came right in to the beach. People jumped off. I had an idea and ran down and collared the boat driver (is that the correct nautical term?). I told him the story and pointed at the near invisible floting blob. "Yeah, I'll go get that for you," he said - and off he roared.

The people who had jumped off the boat started humming the Baywatch theme. The boat neared the general area of its target and driver peered around looking for it.

Jokingly I said to one of the people standing next to me:" I hope it IS my daughter's bucket after all this," and as I did so the the guy in the boat pulled the thing out of the water - and I saw that it wasn't.

The thing the bloke had retrieved was his own son's toy boat which none of them had noticed was missing.

Holly's bucket was in the boot of the car.

---

Last night my Morag said she wanted to send me for a CAT scan or an angiogram. She has been meaning to talk about this with me for a for a while, well ever since Dan had his Hemorrhagic stroke (a blood vessel burst in his brain) a couple of years ago, but the timing was never right. Statistically there is a greater risk if a close relative has had a stroke - though whether this is a genetic thing, or because of similarities in environment and upbringing - I don't know. She wants to see if I have a similar, pre-existing condition.

If I do turn out to have cerebral aneurysm/s they might stick wires in my brain via my leg - it's a long bit of wire - and cut off blood vessels. This is what they were going to do with Dan after his first bleed. A plan that went out of the window when he had the second and they had to do the emergency operation.

This all a bit scary, the though of having people poking things into my brain is very disconcerting - I demand a miniaturised submarine!

‹(•¿•)›

Woke up yesterday morning to find the water was off.

A quick phone call to the neighbours reassured us (and them) that it wasn't personal; the whole village was off. Electricity off on Tuesday, no water on Wednesday, Mike - the neighbour I had phoned - is convinced that the gravity will be disconnected on Friday. I then spent ages trying to find the phone number of whoever is in charge of making the water come out of our taps while thinking up ingenious ways of getting some water from the river to our toilet cistern. Three people, one toilet, hot weather? I wanted to be able to flush it - tying a rope to the handle of a bucket and bunging it off the bridge seemed the easiest solution.

Eventually I found the number, and got stuck in one of those:

"If you are a not an existing customer and want to report your frustration at being held in a queuing system, please press hash followed by your 27 digit customer number"

things.

Eventually I got a recorded message saying:

"We are aware of the problem with the supply in Ballachulish
- you have wasted 15 minutes of your life listening to a robot".

I phoned Mike to tell him that they were aware of the problem with the supply in Ballachulish and I had wasted fifteen minutes of my life listening to a robot.

He told me the water had come back on twenty minutes ago.

I am starting to tie things down before Friday...

Please Can I have a Boyfriend To Be Married To?

Typing fast. The power has been going on and off all night. This happends sometimes during the summer. Sudden unexplained power cuts. So, a quick post before the lights go out and the computer becomes just a heavy useless lump of metal and plastic.

Vegging on the sofa tonight watching bits of Futuramas between blackouts tonight Merriol and I opened and, with the lack of will power that only the opening snack foods or chocolate can generate, consumed a whole packet of Pioneer Original Turkey Jerky 'Natural Smoke Flavour Added'. Phoebe and Tyler bought it over for us when they visited.

Later, I was reading the back of the packet. (Life tip: always read the contents of foreign snack foods AFTER you have eaten them) when I came across this:

"The meat contained herein is for personal use only and not for sale". What does that mean? And why is it on the Export Statement? Are Americans allowed to use Turkey Jerky impersonally - and sell it? I really am feeling baffled - and slighty queasy.

-----

Tallulah Blankhead

I have no idea why I thought that was funny or why I thought it blogworthy but I did and I have. Please accept my apologies.


Merriol took the kids out for the day and I spent most of the time working on the second of three revolving standing stone for Ilona's show. Ilona, if you are reading this keep breathing. It will all be ready in plenty of time. Trust me.

Worm Sorters are Very Important!

Today's Unanswerable Question from Holly (she must lay awake at night thinking these up):

"Can eggs climb trees?"

Today's Random Alarming Statement from Holly (and I'm sure she spends hours on these):

Holly:
"Daddy, I like porn!"

Me:
"What!?"

Holly:
"I like porn."

Me:
"Erm, what's 'porn', Holly?"

Holly:
"It's little bits of meat. You can
have it in pies - yummy tummy!"

I have absoloutly no idea what she was on about but I may have to start playing her Fifi and the Flowertots DVD backwards looking for hidden messages.

A short (true) story I submitted to Unmadeup.com was put up today. I feel a bit chuffed. On the downside I watched "It Came From Outer Space 2" last night and need a new brain.

---

Thing Thing Thing Thing Thing Thing - I am getting far too fond of that word in this blog. That was today's quota used up.

And Lo!

At some point over the last couple of weeks, I forget quite when, I took the carpet brushy bit of the hoover to bits (you can see why the date isn't etched in my mind).

For quite a while the lever things on the back that push the brushy bits on the bottom up and down (just skip to the next paragraph if this is getting too technical) had been getting stiffer and stiffer and just not doing what it was supposed to do. It felt like there was something in there obstructing the motion of the levery thingies.

With reluctance I took the whole carpet head thing to bits. I say with reluctance because I know from past experience (and if you've been following my gripping adventures in housekeeping here you'll know too) that any task that involves any dismantling or repairing anything around here invariably ends up involving plumbing, a trip to the timber yard and the exessive use of power tools up scaffolding

I took the metal plate off the bottom of the thing, and carefully placed the screws in a safe place followed by some little springs that I discovered behind it. (Amazingly, they hadn't flown across the room and disappeared behind some heavy piece of furniture.) Inside was a heavy quite complex felt gasket. I lifted it out. There was nothing else in there. With the gasket removed the lever things moved freely.

I fitted the gasket back in and reassembled everything. I tried it. It was just as bad as it had been. I opened it up again and took a long look at the gasket.

It may say something about the state of my mind and my general tiredness but it was a good 10 minutes before it struck me that it was extremely unlikely that the Vacuum Cleaner Division of the mighty Panasonic Corporation would manufacture a felt gasket the exact shade as the average of my carpets. I had carefully reassembled the thing with a 10 year accumulation of compacted fluff. I threw the gasket away and the cleaner works a lot better now.

---

Holly decided she was God tonight.

She came in from her bath to the kitchen and said "Let's pretend this is a Church and someone is God!"

She then promoted herself to the post and processed around the kitchen with Daisy trailing along after her like an accolite* chanting: "Where are your wishes? Where are your wishes?"

Why do they have to grow up?

*New AccoLite!
50% less fat than your average disciple!

OK! OK! A Title! - Damn You! You Stupid Machine!

I sometimes wonder how people coped with having children before CBeebies, disposable nappies, and automatic dishwashers.  I would be buggered without any one of them.  As it is I'm buggered at the end of the day anyway.  I have been less tired after a day's work on a building site than I am looking after my daughters all day.  They just never stop - unless I plonk them in front of the television which is evil and fills me with such guilt that I finish whatever it is I have to do at breakneck speed and rescue them. 

Finally starting to make progress on the set I am building for Ilona's National Theatre of Scotland thing. 3 weeks to go and I've finally got my act together.  Between the kids and everything else I'm only managing to get an hour or so at this each night - but it's starting to take shape.  One of the things I was trying to get to do before I started on this was to clear out my workshop.  I have a 25 square meter workshop that is so cluttered it is impossible to work in it.  I haven't been able to get to the wood lathe in over a year and I have to stand out in the front porch to run things through the circular saw.  It's pathetic that I let it get into such a guddle but I have, and it is, and life is exremely everso more complicated because of it.

I'm building the set in the porch which is also full of junk - including a 1950s electric cooker (functional) and a late 20th century photcopier (totally dead).

I need to get a grip.

I invented a new branch of science the other day:

Arhythmatics - the only known equation for which is:

A1, A2 + A123

I know: "Don't call us..."

My Blogging Tool Requires That I supply a Title; Who Am I to Disappoint a Machine?

It's Tuesday.

How do people have the time to update their blog every day? (Avoiding having children and not living in a building site would be good places to start).  Here it is Tuesday and I'm making my first entry this week.

Not that I have a lot to tell. So far this week my deepest thought has been:

"Subversive".  I know that 'sub means 'below' as in submarine and submerge, so what's a "versive" and how would you get under it?

I think having read two Perry Rhodan Novels, and watched both Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and the Eurovision Song Contest (and voted for the winner) this week has totally fucked whatever brain I had.  Please kids, don't attempt this at home.  I have had years of experience watching bad movies and reading drek SF.  I know what I am doing.  This could have been a near fatal overdose in the hands of less hardened dross addict.

Smell my Bum!

It's Friday. The kitchen worksuface is in and stinking the house out as I liberaly slopped it over with polyeurethane last thing. Tomorrow Sue and len are taking the kids all day and my Mum and Dad are taking them all night. 24 hours (- ish) without the children. Gasp! What are we going to do with ourselves - apart from sleep a lot and indulge in the annual crapfest that is Eurovision!

So sad, so sad.

Still hint waiting hint for hint Phoebe to hint tell the hint world via her blog.

I want to, but it's not my news!

Hint Hint!

Because You Are Not A Mysterious Fish - or - What Can You See Through A Tomato?

Rewiring of Kitchen Done! Hoo-Bloody-Ray! Yet again I have ended up lying flat on my back under my floor boards in the pitch black with the torch turned off (to save the battery) while people poke bits of wire at me through gaps in floorboards. Anyone would think I like this sort of thing.

Mind you, it was interesting down there.

It turns out, despite my strongly held belief that whatever I do to this pile involves me getting under the floor at some point, that I haven't been crawling around down there for about 3 years. I spent an awful lot of time under there before that - making the underfloor supports, that hold up the pillars, that hold up the new upstairs but I haven't been down there since the central heating was installed. I had no idea there were so many new pipes! God knows what they all do, and why I have so many stopcocks down there, and what I'm supposed to do with them, is an utter mystery.

Plumbing is weird.

...

From fellow palimpsest.org.uker Kumquat's Blog:


1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Ok, done that:

'The cable is wrapped up in its own little package as well.'

Not sure why I did that. I don't usualy go in for these chainy maily things. I have this idea that someone somewhere, the person who started this, is waiting for X amount of time to pass before Googleing all the results and assemble a novel out of the (semi-) random sentences.

If they don't, I will. The lawsuits for plagiarism alone will keep me busy for the rest of my life.

Ceiling of kitchen taped today. I hate taping. I'm totally crap at it. It's a cyclical feedback thing: I hate it because I'm crap at it and I'm crap at it because I hate it. Halfway through I ran out of tape which was a bit of a bugger but luckily Sue came to my rescue with a couple of till rolls she just happened to have in the caravan. It's weird but it worked.

Wednesday. Holly's school was closed for the day to let the teachers attend a seminar on paperwork. Lucky people. I took the kids and Sue to Oban for the day. It was a lovely sunny day the first time I had been out in the 'big town' when it hasn't been tipping it down or about to rain for ages. Quite a few people about all dressed as badly as only the British can be when the sun comes out. Pink flesh bulging out over the tops of too tight trousers, grubby grey bras as the bottom layer of that strange thing women do in warm weather of wearing 3 or 4 things with thin shoulder straps. Living in a small village I forget about things like this.

The kitchen is edging towards - something. Between the kids and this and that and the other (which this week including digging a drainage ditch for the parents) I have been averaging about 2 hours a day on this job. Tonight I got the plasterboarding finished. At last. Taping and sanding still to do, then make the work surfaces, do the rewire... I should be finished by Christmas.

No news from the Solicitors about the vergey thing but on Saturday one of the agrieved parties in the parking dispute started to work on the planters the Community Council have decided would be a good idea. They stopped when we pointed out that we might own it and we're all just twiddling our thumbs now.

I stocked up on long French movies yesterday; there were a pile of them in a Charity shop in the Fort at £1.50 each - anything to break this bad movie loop I seem to have got myself stuck in. While I was there I also bought a video compilation of classical ballet highlights for Holly who, when she isn't being a mermaid, is "going to be a Ballerina when she grows up". Last night we watched it. I'm not a ballet fan. I just don't get it, don't understand why they are doing it. I like some of the music - though according to Holly, only The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is "Real Ballet Music" - and I can admire the athletisism, skill and dedication of the performers but I just don't get storytelling through dance. Apart from the ocassional "Wow!" moment, which I equally ocassionaly get watching ice-skating, or gymnastics, or the opening stunt of a James Bond movie. I just just don't get it.

I'm waffling.

So there we are sitting watching skinny women and well muscled men gracefully prancing about the stage. The "Balcony Pas-de-deux" from Romeo and Juliet comes on. Juliet swoons on the balcony. Romeo sweeps onto the stage. Their eyes meet. Juliet sweeps down the stairs. They run to each other, they part, they tentatively embrace. They part again. Hesitantly Romeo kisses her hand. She acquiesces to his entreaties. He leaps across the stage in a series of impressive bounds. Holly says: "He wants to kiss her hand. Why doesn't he just stop dancing and kiss her?" I don't think Holly really gets it either - but then she is only 4.

Fish Tennis

For weeks now I have been avoiding getting involved in (or even hearing about) a long simmering row that has been going on up the street from where we live. A near neighbour has been parking his car on the verge of the road alongside our house much to the annoyance of other neighbours who have complained to the council about the possible congestion etc. etc.

Today the neighbour arrived on our doorstep asking my permission to park just where he has been for weeks.

"Why are you asking me?" I said, "It's nothing to do with me, it's the Council's land. Part of the public Highway."

"Not according to the Council," he said. "They say it belongs to you." He produced a letter from the council saying just that.

Bugger! I'm involved.

The whole of the grass verge up the roadside, between my garden wall and the road may be ours. We apparently own 120 square meters more of Scotland than we thought we did. 120 square meters with a streetlamp, a telegraph pole, 2 roadsigns, and a mains sewer running the length of it.

I sort of kind of wish this isn't true. If it isn't true, and the land does belong to the Council (or someone else) the long simmering row will go on simmering without us being involved. I've only lived in this village 15 years; I haven't been here long enough to take sides in any rows not of my own making.

On the other hand. If it is true and we do own it, are we then suddenly responsible for the upkeep of the roadside? Do I have to mow the grass? Pay the Council to mow the grass as they have been doing? What happens if someone hurts themselves there? Can they sue me?

I will have to talk to my lawyer about this.

How the hell does this happen? Every time I do anything on this house it ends up taking fifteen times longer than I planned and always becomes three hundred and thirty two times more complicated than I could have ever imagined. Tonight, as a direct consequence of putting a skylight into the kitchen two weeks ago, I have decided to move the cooker - which means completely rewiring the kitchen.

The blocking up of the wall continues. Pa and I are managing a course a day and we are now over half way up. We're getting to the point where those rocks technically known as "The Big Buggers" are too big to get up into place without stupid and complicated amounts of work so we are using "The Little Buggers". This takes a lot more fiddling about to get them to fit but it's less likely to knacker our backs.

What's the most stupid thing you did this week? I ran out of heating fuel just as oil prices are at their highest point for years. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! A delivery of dyed Deisel is coming tomorrow - at which point I will realise I have absolutly no idea how to relight the boiler and no idea where the manual is.

Still, you gotta laugh ain't cha?

Scribble Scribble

In complete contrast to yesterday's stone whacking adventures, most of today was spent as far away from being a Neanderthal as I can imagine. Mike and I spent the entire day finishing the 30ish minute play we have been pecking away at for the last few weeks. It's hardly Oscar Wilde but it makes us laugh. Actually it's nothing like Oscar Wilde at all, it's more like an attempt to see how many times we could use the word 'arse' on each page. The word 'arse' being the funniest word in the English Language - next to 'Wankel Rotary Engine', of course, but Wankel was German, and a proper noun; so it doesn't count.

It was amazing how quickly we fell into working together. Both of us quite happy to loose things if they obviously didn't work, and quick to suggest new ideas. I had fun. And it was amazing how quickly we fell into the cliched stereotype habits of all those bad 40s movies we both must have seen over the years. Two writers at work hammering out the screenplay, one pacing, cigarette in hand, outlining the action, the other, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, hat pushed back on his head, pounding the keys of a battered upright Dell. Hoagy Charmichael over the way tinkling a melancholy tune, Joan Blondell wise-cracking as she delivered the latest in an enless stream of urgent memos from the front office and putting another pot of coffee on the stove.

"How do you want it, guys?"

"Like I like my music baby, Hot and Black."

Hoagy lets out a muffled sob and plays three bum notes.

"What's the matter, Hoagy? What's that you playing?"

"Nothing boss, just a little something of my own."

"What do you call it?"

"I dunno - I guess I'll call it Jazz."

Mike snaps his fingers:

"Hey! That gives me a swell idea for the opening number..."

Cut To:
Close up of Cab Calloway in white Tux, baton in hand.

"A one two, a one two three... "

Something like that.

Grunt Grunt

Most of today has been spent moving chunks of granite around my garden and trying to figure out how to jigsaw them into the hole where the door was. We're having to trim some which is bloody messy work involving grinding slots into the bits we don't want and hitting them with big hammers till they fall off. Very dusty and messy. Dead Neolithic. Pa knapped a small rock to make it fit a space. Held it in his hand and whacked its edge with a hammer till it was the right size for what he wanted. As I watched him I thought "That's one of the first things people ever did that made them human. Someone held a rock and hit it to make it a different shape. 4 million years of evolution later and we're still doing the same thing. Still hitting rocks." This isn't an original thought. I have it quite often - but it's still a true source of wonderment to me.

I also rediscovered today the heather smells nice. I was raiding the rockery for a triangular bit about "that big" when I became aware of a wonderful, very nostalgic smell. I was scrabbling about under on of the heathers which are in flower at the moment and the aroma was wonderful.

At the end of the day we have one row of blocks in. The doorway has been filled to a hight of 8 inches! (We are working in Imperial this week not Metric 'cos Pa is doing the 'working out what we need to do next' and he "doesn't do Metric" unless forced to. And sometimes it's just easier, though I don't admit that to him. This building was built in Imperial measurements and all the spare rocks and slates we have been using were all cut to Imperial measurements and well, let's face it 8" is a lot easier to remember than 203mm.)

Tomorrow we are going to put another row in. I unearthed a HUGE piece of dressed granite in the pile that ill do almost an entire course by itself. If we don't use it tomorrow there is no way we are going to be able to safely lift it high enough to use. I've been gathering every bit of dressed and semi-dressed granite I have found for years now and dumping them in my garden on the off chance that one day I would need them. Over the years I have collected quite a pile, all overgrown now with couchgrass and moss. Well, the day to use them has finally arrived. The first thing I did today was roll over one of the largest rocks in the collection to measure the face on the other side. I rolled it over onto a tussock of grass that wasn't a tussock of grass at all but another bloody great lump of granite with grass growing over the top of it. A fact that became painfully apparent as I mashed my left pinky between the two . Blood, swearing, and severe pain. Great way to start the day.

Oh God - I'm OLD!

I have just found out, obscurely, via FriendsReunited, that one of my classmates, Tony, is a Grandfather! A Grandfather! I'm not old enough to be a Grandfather - am I? No way! No way! No way! Lalala! Fingers in my ears and up my nostrils Lalalala!

"But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near; "

No, I can't hear you! I can't hear you! La la la la laaaaa !

Oh Fuck! I'm going to have to go lie down...

Economics. Me No Understand It.

The stuff for the new kitchen is ordered. For this (and a couple of other jobs) we need some sand. About half a tonne. The builders suppliers don't sell sand by the half tonne. They sell tonne bags and 25 kg bags:

Me:
"How much is a tonne?"


The Man at The Builder's Suppliers:
Forty-three pounds - plus VAT.


Me:
How much is half a tonne in 25 kg bags?


The Man at The Builder's Suppliers:
Erm... Hang on. I'll have to work it out...
(muttering and muffled stabbing at a pocket calculator)
That comes to... er Forty-two pounds. Plus VAT.

Me:
So if I order a full tonne, I'll be getting
twice as much for only a quid more?


The Man at The Builder's Suppliers:
...plus VAT, yes.

Me:
I'll take the full tonne then.

Anyone want to buy some sand?

My Life Has Come True - That is the Name of the Shop Where You Wash Ducks

Easter Sunday 2006. All over the world people are going to church, eating copious amounts of expensivly-wrapped, cheap chocolate Easter eggs and the manufacturors of novelty Bunny Ears are going on expensive holidays. Nuclear families are joyously rolling two point four brightly coloured, hand-painted eggs down grassy hills in pre-Christian fertility rituals. A happy time.

In our house it was the day I ripped out the kitchen.

With the new velux flooding the place with light it became horribly obvious what a ramshackle bogging shithole it really was. I decided I would have to do something about it - so I ripped it all out before I could change my mind. For good measure I didn't stop till I had also ripped out the unused door that led from the kitchen to the outside world. Unused because about 5 years ago I put shelving and a worksurface in front of it rendering it pretty damn useles as a door and pretty ineffectual as a wall. The wind used to howl in round the edges and water drove in underneath it. The space where the door used to be is now filled with a sheet of polyethalene stretched around a frame made from some old 3x4s. It's more weatherproof than the door was . One of these days I will have this place finished.

2

Window number two is in! Merriol took before and after pictures. Fraser and I had the thing in and watertight by 3.30 pm. That's three hours faster than Tuesday. It rained nearly all day so now I have an empty, wet kitchen with no ceiling and two dehumidifyers whirring away trying to soak up some of the sog.

It also smells like "the attic" according to Holly, though how she knows what an attic smells like is a mystery to me.

The window in our upstairs bathroom is in! Well, when I say 'bathroom' I mean the space where our upstairs bathroom will be one day - when we can afford it. We are sneaking up on it slowly. When we put the upstairs into this building we laid all the pipework ready behind the wall, placed the radiator and the lighting and light switch as if the wall was there but ran out of money before we got to putting all the expensive bits in. Putting the Velux in brings it another step closer.

The Veluxs were salvaged from a demolition site. I got five of them for 150 quid. Three of them got fitted three years ago when we did the last major works to the house; the other two, the two we are fitting this week, have been sat in a shed ever since waiting for this moment to arrive.

So, Tuesday; after several hours choppping a hole in the roof, stripping away slates and cutting away roof timbers we had the frame in place and instead of being inside passing tools out to Fraser, who was on the scaffolding, it was easier for me to work outside on the scaffolding with him. I climbed up. I looked at the velux we were fitting. I looked over at the one we had fitted three years ago and realised we were missing the metalwork that keeps the window waterproof. I had no idea if we had it or where it was if we did.

Total blank.

We had spent several hours making a, very neat, hole in my roof and I had no idea if we had all the stuff to fill it up again. And it was raining.

I found the stuff eventually but it was a real "How the Fuck could I be so stupid!?" moments.

Today, Wednesday, I spent the almost the entire day taking everything out of the small kitchen. Half an hour ripping down the ceiling and two hours shoveling up the mess. At least it was a plasterboard ceiling and I will only have black snot for a couple of days. If it had been a lath and plaster ceiling my snotters would have been black for a week. No idea how this works but even with a mask on ripping down ceilings always has this affect on me

The day and a half spent at Ilona's was great.

I slept.

Merriol threw me out of the house on Friday. She'd borrowed Ilona's house keys, Ilona and Andy being away for the weekend, and told me to go and get some sleep and do fuck all for a day or two. I went. I slept for 12 hours, got up did my eMail and a couple of other bits and bobs on Ilona's computer, ate then went back to bed for another 24 hours. I didn't sleep all the time. Slept, woke up, watched a crappy movie, slept, woke up, watched a crappy movie etc. I feel so much better now. Caught up on my sleep at last. Caught up on my craapy movies too.

As I arrived home on Sunday night Fraser came over and said he could start the roof windows on Tuesday! Which meant totally rearranging the week but as we have been waiting for him to get round to doing this for about 6 months now we were not going to put him off in anyway. Daisy is no longer sleeping on the balcony but Holly's room. A situation they both took in their stride.

I Love my Kids!

I'm on Holiday

Merriol has packed me off to sunny Kinlochleven to Ilona and Andy's house for the weekend. They are away somewhere else so I have been sent to sleep for a couple of days. A couple of kid free days.

Sleep.

Sounds so good.

Then what hell am I doing typing this?

'Night world.

I'm Pushing it Down Hardly

Nothing exciting happened yesterday, so I drew a cartoon...

I know, I know

I still think 'Blogging' Sounds Like Something Rude in Welsh

Don't you? Come on, admit it:

Start humming Men of Harlech to yourself and then read the following:

"Well it was like this see, Hew Davies, Dai the Flab and I were blogging Bronwen Jones up the alley when we hears this noise, see."

I rest my case.

---

Holly has been a monster all day, took herself off to bed this afternoon for a long nap and just howled and kicked and screamed all evening when we got her up for her tea. After a very short, very splashy bathtime; she and Daisy kept waking each other up all evening. We just got one sorted and settled - and the other would start howling. It took both of us three hours to get them both off to sleep simultaniously; that's getting on for an entire working day just to get two kids to sleep.... Christ! No wonder I'm knackered.

And that's about it. That's the most exciting thing that has happened to me all day.

Mike and I have started writing this stupid 30 minute play idea for a festival in Glasgow. It gives us a deadline which I think we both need. he rang this morning to cancel today's scribbling session because his eldest, Finn, has succumbed to a sudden bout of projectile vomiting. I can now fully understand why I see the lines "XX took up writing after her children had left home" on so many Author Biogs. Because it is neigh on fucking impossible to get anything done when they are still around. Mike and I must be crazy to try and do this.

Damn all this technology!

Tonight I was going to finally sit down and write a long entry. All About all the humourous and jolly things Phoebe, Tyler, Merriol and I got up to when they were here but what happened? I sit down in front of the computer and someone presses my Auto-Distract Button - ooooooh! shiny....

... before you know it 3 hours have passed and I have signed up to four new, free, online services which I will never use but, by virtue of my having signed up, have become just that tiny bit more sellable to Google. ("Hell yeah Mr Google sir, we signed up Nifty-three* brazillion new customers in the last three days alone!"). But dammit, I will use their servers for something. So here is a link to this blog's brand new, shiny, out the box Frappr group!. Frappr is an interactive map thingie that uses Google maps and lets you stick a little pin in and say "I am here! - Hello, can anyone see me?" - I'm sure it does a lot of other stuff as well but I will find all that later - or you could find it. Click the link, add youself to the map and have a poke about and see what is to be done there. If it's any good let me know.


Mike and I started work on a new play today. We had so much fun writing the Panto that we're going to see if we can come up with something of our own. There's a new writing festival in Glasgow in June that's asking for submissions, so we have a deadline to work to and a limit on time, cast, and budget. We already have a workable idea, a rough idea of what the set looks like, and have a few jokes written - why do I suspect that we are never going to write anything serious. We have 20 days to get it finished and posted.

There's no money in it if it ever gets put on but it will be something else for the CV and we'll have had some fun. Hmmmm, I wonder if there are any (paid) acting jobs going at this thing....

*Nifty n. maths N times 10

Honk!

Phoebe and Tyler are away off back to London and then back to the USA (Tyler is due back at work on Monday). I'm going to miss them. After a week of concentrated Hanging Out and catching up with the last season of Dr Who and introducing them toThe Mighty Booshand breeding new strains of the common cold from samples gathered from around the world using only our bodies and that of our children as test subjects. A week wasn't long enough!

Test of the new Blogging Tool

Performancing add on for Firefox

I Caught Your Fart and Put It In My Interesting Fish Bag

I love bathtimes.

My interesting fart was later taken out of the Interesting Fish Bag* and "a man put it through an interesting sorter" after which it went down the plughole and "ended up in the sewage".



*or, more correctly, "the Interesting Interesting Interesting Interesting Interesting Interesting - (pause) - Fish BAG!"

There's a Piglet Sticker in My Shoe

Phoebe and Tyler arrive tomorrow! We got a phone call last night to say that they would be coming up on the Sleeper on Tuesday Night. This gives me exactly 24 hours to get this place looking like it has been tidied up at least once in the three years since they were last here.

I'm too tired to tidy up. 90% of my time is spent wiping snot off Daisy's face. I have no idea how small children can produce so much snot. It's incredible. More comes out than goes in. Astronomers have been long puzzled by the thiness of matter in the universe. If current comsological thinking is correct there should just be more stuff in the Universe than we can see. Nobody knows where this missing stuff is, this so called "Dark Matter".

I know.

It's up babies' noses waiting to come out.

Phoebe and Tyler are both here! Phoebe is wondering the streets of London mugging Drunken Irishmen for hats and I guess Tyler is just wondering what day it is! Merrio and I have been mailing, texting, and phoning between the two of them.

Phoebe is arriving in the UK on Friday! Tyler the day after.

OMG!

This will be the first time I have seen them since the weddingish, over three years ago, and only the second time we will have met for real since Phoebe and I collided somewhere on the wonderful worldwide interweb (beta).

I hope they are not disappointed by the domestic chaos that my life seems to have become. Did I once have dreams about doing something important with my life? I can't remember. I just know that being here and looking after the kids and Merriol is all I want to do at the moment. I am doing something important with my life.

Having said that; I am getting this terrible itch to write again...

More baaaaad SF coming soon.

The previously unconcidered hazards of having children Number 432:

I have forgotten how to run a hot bath. After 3 and a half years of running baths of a suitable temperature for kids I have lost the abilility to make myself a hot bath. I set one running then nip off to to X, Y, and Z; timing my tasks nicely so that I return in time to find a full bath. A full tepid bath. Again! Cold tap running full pelt. Every fucking time. And if there are two facts everyone knows about luke-warm baths they are:

1. They're no fun
2. It's impossible to add enough hot water to get it comfortable. (The whole boiling a frog slowly thing.)

Bugger Bugger Bugger.

Air Is Just Very Dry Water

Busy busy week doing house stuff. Merriol is signed off work for two weeks and is abed, ordered to stay there for as long as possible doing as little as possible. This means I am doing as much of everything else as possible, which means I am neglecting the blog something chronic. Sorry about that, blog.

Meanwhile Holly has discovered a rich seam of random surreality which has, so far this week, manifested itself in the very strange "Snail Dance", and something called "Fish Pumping". Neither of which bear repeating in polite company.

There are moments though when I wish I had a video camera permanently strapped to my head, or maybe not:

Holly:
There are two Boys in my nursery called Lewis, aren't there?

Me:
Really? What's the other one called?

Holly:
(Long, long pause as she stares at me and wonders if this
idiot she calls 'Daddy' is really related to her) - Lewis?

Me:
Duh!

...and That is How You do the Broccoli Dance

More Later...

Yesterday, lured into action by the fact that it was not raining and we might actually finish something we started, Len and I hauled half my half-finished kitchen worksurface out into the yard and relentlessly sanded it with a big belt sander for a couple of hours. The work surface is made from thick thick tongue and groove pine floorboarding and in the year or so it has been sat, unfinished in my kitchen it has slowly warped into something resembling a ploughed field. Ridge and furrow ridge and furrow. Yesterday we got the bugger flat again.

We bought it inside and using copious amounts of glue (most of which went where we wanted) and a couple of sash cramps and every large G cramp I have we got glued together and flat. We left the glue to harden overnight.

Today too was bright and sunny. We freed it from its clamps, hauled it back outside again onto the tressles and sanded it once more with the belt sander but with a finer grit paper this time. Then we sanded it by hand with an even finer grit paper. It's not perfect by any means but has a nice smooth finish now. I brushed it down, then wiped it with a damp cloth to get rid of the last of the fine saw dust. Then I gave it a good coat of clear polyeurethane.

Then a bird shat on it.

I survived the teaching gig and got paid. Merriol's Mum and Dad arrived last night and Holly is not feeling too well. That pretty much sums up the last couple of days.

Oh, we went to a car boot sale today and I bought 23 CDs when Merriol wasn't looking. I have to get a grip, I have to get a grip. I wonder if there is such a thing as CD buyers anonymous...

She's a Normal Person, Her Name Is Invisible And She's Not Feeling Very Well Today

Another Blog entry within two days? - The man must be indulging in online displacement behaviour. Correct! Give yourself a pat on the back, a cocoanut, or a Kewpie Doll depending on how you are feeling today.

The truth is that tomorrow, as part of a day long reading day at the local High School, I’m supposed to be teaching three classes of 11/12 year olds the joys of reading. Another job I owe to my pimp Ilona. Thanks Ilona.

My lesson plan at the moment (with less than 12 hours till I actually have to face the first load of the little darlings) is to run into the room throw some books at them and run out again shouting “Read more books, you little buggers!” .

I’m supposed to be introducing them to the joys of reading Movie scripts on the tenuous basis that I worked in Post Production on a couple of movies and know which way up to hold one. Oh God. Why do I do this sort of thing? (If you didn’t say “Money” hand back the cocoanut now!). Oh crap! I’m running out of things to footer with. Last night I actually managed to convince myself that watching Thunderbirds are GO was a sensible thing to do.

THEN! I had to write a review of it for the IMDb….

I was about six when it came out and I remember a friend of mine having a huge plastic “Zero X", The Spaceship from the movie. I was so jealous. It was the sexiest thing I had ever seen (this was long before I knew what sex was or what 'sexy' meant).

I loved the TV show (I was six I was a boy!) but I never saw the film and when Merriol bought me a DVD copy at a garage sale, I was awash with nostalgia. A feeling of warm happiness that lasted for at least 7 minutes into the film... my god, it's so incredibly boring! After a while the only entertainment value I could drag out of it was spotting new ways the filmmakers avoided having to have their characters walk anywhere. During the TV shows walking was suggested by having the character puppets jog up and down as they moved forward. Fine within the limited frame of a TV screen (especially the scritty little fuzzy Black and White things we peered at back then) but a similar motion on the big screen would, at best, look ludicrous and, at worst, induce motion sickness. In a film where supersonic aircraft stay rigidly in the centre of the frame having the "actors" bounce around like ping pong balls causing pre-teen moviegoers to vomit over their neighbours would be distressing.

Tonight I find myself edging towards a Polish film M from Palimpsest sent me as a swapsie for a William Gibson book she couldn’t get in Poland. I love knowing nothing about a film before I watch it. This one I can’t even read the title, let alone the blurb. All I know about it is which way up the DVD goes in the machine… and it’s in Polish - with English subtitles. That’s the only bit of the box I could read: “English Subtitles”.

OK, It’s now getting LATE and I HAVE to do this thing…

I can't get that fucking image out of my head! It's the shoes - the little girl is wearing wellies for chrissakes! and the suits wrinkle up below the knees - so either they aren't their suits - they've just borrowed them for the weekend from some other equally weird (but taller) family - or they weren't meant to be worn with any footwear. So where could you wear them barefoot? In the house? Then why go outside to have the photo taken?
On the beach? You'd roast! Maybe not in a cold climate. Maybe these are suits for southern nudists to wear while visiting their friends in the north.
"Come on Pedro let's take the kids for a brisk walk along the nudist beach."
"But Sven! it is freezing outside."
"No it isn't. It's hardly snowing at all. Tell you what - I'll lend you lot the fuzzy suits..."

That works for me.


I spent this afternoon in the Fort watching Markens grøde - Norwegian silent movie with live orchestrial accompaniment. Lovely way to spend a wet Sunday afternoon(and I get to pop the cherry of another movie on IMDb.com)

I was going to write a long, informed, and interesting blog entry tonight but I saw this photo and I have totally forgotten what I have spent the last 12 hours doing. Be warned: this is very disturbing on all sorts of levels...

http://fantasygoat.livejournal.com/424.html

Mummy, Did You Wear These Slippers When You Were a Dinosaur?

OMG! It a whole week since I posted anything here, where does all the time go? The schools are giving themselves a few days off this weekend so I get to spend even more quality time with my darling daughters - and take that note of irony out the way you just read that.

Tonight I sat down and watched: Maciste e la regina di Samar (1964) which sounds very impressive and interlechual, I mean, foreign films and that! But when I tell you it's English title is Hercules Against the Moon Men and consisted mostly of bad fighting between a well-oiled and hugely muscled italian bloke with a bouffant and about 7 stuntmen who swapped mustaches between shots you will understand where my brain is at the moment.
As I wrote somewhere else, this sort of movie is great for when you are too tired to think and you don't want to - even by accident.

Though, having said that, any movie that contains the line:

"Hurry! To the Mountain of Death! Hercules is already on his way! Let's go!"

Has got to be worth watching once.

We're Having A Conversation About Literature And Music - And You're Eating Foam!

Mike came round this morning with his boys, Holly, Daisy and Finn went upstairs and had a picnic and Mike and I drank vast amounts of coffee and talked about Music, and Movies, and Literature while Jude ate chunks of a foam toy while we weren't looking. A really good morning.

Merriol came home for lunch took one look at Holly and said "What are you still doing here?" - I had forgotten to take her to nursery!

Daisy spent the afternoon filling her welly-boots with crayons, then taking them all out again.

A typical day; though I did discover during the course of it that if, when asked the question "What are you doing?", a three year old answers "I don't know", it's a bloody good idea to go and investigate.

Testosterone Day!

For some reason I woke up this morning with Man Juice® flowing through my veins. I spent the day using real Grrrr! POWER TOOLS! and sawing wood and wearing plaid shirts! Grrrr!

Strictly speaking the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, and the dishwasher are power tools too but they didn't count today - girly power tools. Anything you have to put soap in was out. Whirring, pointy, dangerous, and messy were in. I spent most of the day in the kitchen turning half an old door and some bits of the original ceiling of the house into the bottom half of an antique church pew. Wouldn't fool anyone it's old for an instant but it does help stop the kids' toys from skiting about all over the place.

I feel great!

Tomorrow it's back to Mom Mode. Not Grrrrr!

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It is three years to the day since I had a drink.

Hurray for me!

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Spent last night in the Ballachulish Hotel in one of the posh rooms (just above the kitchens) using up one of Merriol's vouchers and having a night away from the kids. (Thanks Mum!) It was great. I slept like a log and Merriol stared at the ceiling. Or rather she stared at the light fitting which looked like a gilded dog turd and cursed me out for snoring.

Goodman VCR Problem shooting:

Problem:

The VCR no longer accepts tapes.

Solution:

1

Peer inside through the slot and get depressed about not being able to watch crappy old SF movies.

2

Unscrew VCR casing with the depressing thought that you are going to spend the next three hours trying to figure out exactly which of the three hundred and seventy-two moving parts involved in moving the cassette three inches that way and then down a bit needs bending back into shape.

3

Curse yourself for not keeping detailed notes the last time you had to do this.

4

Remove VCR cover.

5

Removed audio CD from inside VCR.

6

Replace VCR casing.

7

Watch crappy old SF film with sense of achievement.

I love having kids - at least it wasn't a cheese sandwhich.

Sometimes I have Bad Dreams. I Will Tell my Head: "Head, No More Bad Dreams!"

It's Merriol's birthday on Friday!

Only bought 5 CDs today from the Oban charity shops on my lightening dash to buy Merriol a birthday present today: 3 Placebo, a Morcheeba and a Foo Fighters and NO BOOKS! this is a record. I have will power!

We both liked the Placebo, the Morcheeba is going on the shelves to add to the huge pile of music I don't listen too (even, in the case of bands like Morcheeba, when it is playing) and The Foo Fighters is on its way to eBay 'cos neither of us liked it.

And I actually managed to buy her a present (not I hasten to add from a charity shop. I'm cheap but not THAT cheap) to replace the present I had bought last week but managed to loose a few days ago. At least I presume I lost it because the last time I remember having it it was in my coat pocket and when I went to hide it yesterday it wasn't there. I can only think it must have fallen out of my pocket when I ran to get help for an old lady who had collapsed on the road in the village. Someone was with her and a neighbour had called an ambulance but I had an inkling she was a resident of the care home round the corner so belted off there to get someone who knew her.

Hello much neglected Blog. Where does all the time go? If anyone has some spare time knocking about please send it to me - about another hour a day, that's what I need...

...

One of the great things about being a parent - well, one of the great things about being a human being, this isn’t just restricted to those of us with sprogs, though they do act as a hell of a catalyst - is that you find yourself saying, or rather hearing yourself saying things, that, if you had but a couple of years before been told you would at some point say such a thing, you would have instantly dismissed the notion as an absurdity.

(I apologise for that last sentence. I have been reading too much Victorian literature recently and it has started to affect me most profoundly.)

Thus it was today, when seated at the dining table with my beloved wife and my two darling children, I heard myself utter the words:

“Holly, don’t put cheese in your belly-button.”

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The rest of the weekend paled into insignifcance ...

The Girls went back

The Girls went back to “school” this week after the Christmassy Holidays and I was alone on Wednesday for the first time in what seems like ages. The house suddenly seemed incredibly huge. So I filled it with VERY LOUD music - which I am not allowed to do when the girls are around:

“Daddy Daddy! Turn your music down, it’s too loud!”

- I will remind her of this when she is 15 and playing whatever crappy boyband cloned pop drivel she is listening to too loudly for my aging ears.

What to do? What to do? The whole house to myself...

Several hours later half way through mopping the kitchen floor (it took me all morning to find the kitchen floor underneath the 34 tons of toys, Play-dough, dried-up felt pens, glued-on Cornflakes - and I suspect some of them were, literally, glued to the floor. Holly is none to tidy when she is “doing sticking”) so... there I was half way through mopping the kitchen floor, trying to work out what I was going to feed Merriol and the kids when they came home, when it struck me - I am so incredibly happy at the moment.

I love being a Mum.

Spent yesterday similarly alone for the day pounding crap into eBay to take advantage of one of their infrequent cheapo listing days. We have so much stuff I need to get rid of just to keep my sanity and to make room for all the other stuff that just appears. I don’t know where it all comes from. It seems to ooze out of the woodwork or something.

Kipple! It’s bloody Kipple!

From Wikipedia:

Kipple is a term coined by science fiction author from the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It refers to unwanted or useless junk that tends to reproduce itself.
Some of Dick's descriptions of it suggest an analogy to entropy. According to two characters from the book, John Isidore stated that the first law of "kipple" is that "kipple" drives out "nonkipple."; Buster Friendly liked to declare, "Earth would die under a layer — not of radioactive dust — but of kipple."

Other forms of the word used in the novel: "kipple-ized", "kipple-factor", and "kippleization". People can turn into "living kipple". An apartment can become "kipple-infested".

Save ME! Buy my Kipple! - please!

After I post this I'm off to leave someone Bad feedback on eBay.

A Hint: If you are going to tell someone you "will post the parcel tomorrow" and don't get round to it until a week later, make sure you stick stamps on the parcel and not one of those sticky printed lables they make behind the the counter. Because with a sticky printed label one of the things that is printed nice and clearly is the posting date.

With real stamps they have to frank them by hand with a smudgey rubber, inkstained and illegible blob.

Idiots! It's taken 3 weeks to get something I was seriously expecting to get before Christmas.

Spent hours last night crashing the pooter, and tearing my hair out, and eating vast quantities of pointy food (more El Cheepo brand tortilla chips) in a struggle to OCR a handbook for Merriol just to save her the effort of typing all 33 pages of it.

It would have been easier to type all 33 pages of it

- but I know how to do it for next time!

I finally worked out how to do it at about midnight (the thing had to be ready for the morning). I must remember to write it down some where where I can find it again before I forget.

(Expect a really boring Blog entry in the next few days...)

Rapunzel! Rapunzel! - I've got you some yoghurt!

Living with my kids is like living with a couple of weird, bonzaid Surrealists. Just before delivering the impassioned cry of "Rapunzel! Rapunzel! - I've got you some yoghurt!" Holly sang us a song at the dinner table. She often sings weird little songs but this one just creased us up:

I wish for a fish in the shape of a house

I wish for a fish in the shape of a house

I wish for a fish in the shape of a house

No No! it was a fish that had been made as a biscuit

It probably looks total pants cold on the screen but trust me, the moment was one of sublime hillarity. Especially when she started telling us it wasn't funny:

"It's not funny. It's not funny. Stop laughing and don't put your head on the table like that!"


And people wonder why I don't watch the television...

Finally got the last bit of my Ma and Da's Zmas pressy to the girls assembled this afternoon, after a lot of swearing and dropping of teeny-weeny washers they now have a swing in the garden - something else for me to worry myself sick about. Why do we pick the coldest days of the year to do this sort of thing? my fingers were numb after 3 minutes.

Went for a walk today up at the Hospital Lochan in Glencoe where the kids had a picnic and Holly rode her bike and Merriol and I had great fun judging the Miserable Bastard Competition that seemed to be happening around us.

Of the people who went past (99% tourists) most of them didn't even acknowledge Holly's cheery "Hello"s let alone raise a smile. I suppose they were all too fucking uncomfortable in their crinkly, hot, expensive Helly Henson and Patagonia hill-walking gear to deign to notice a knited-poncho, Tweenie welly-booted, 3 year old trundling around on her bike - or maybe it was the 18 month old pushing the Shrek2 rucksack on the toy pram behind her that was putting them off their stride - whatever, there they were, all kitted out for the Great Outdoors, and there we were having a Sunday stroll (a day late) around the park.

It's not as if it was really raining that much either.

"Come To Scotland And Be A Miserable Bastard" - I think the Scottish Tourist Board is missing a trick somewhere.

No doubt they will all be back in their hotels tonight, congratulating themselves at having survived the rigours of nature while sipping 30 year old MacCallan's (because it's the only label in the bar they can pronounce) and tut-tutting over those reckless feckless parents who took their children out on the hill without the 'right equipment'.

Screw them all - apart from the tall baldy bloke and his missus who gave us a cheery hello and the couple who passed us and had a wee blether. Their gear looked like it had seen a few hills and hadn't come out the packet last week. Cheers guys!

Happy New Year World.

New year got off to a flying stop for me as, full of snot and pain, I retired to bed at about 10pm having foolishly taken some patent snot dryer-upper recommended by a friend. A bizarre and intermittently sleepless night followed with me at one point being woken up by this God-almighty Whoooooooshhhhhhh! from the garden. I opened my eyes and looked up through the skylight above out bed to see a bright red light hanging above me swaying gently then slowly drifting off. It was very pretty. It Looked like a UFO. No, it didn't look like a UFO.... UFOs don't have parachutes... It took my sleep beffuddled brain a few moments to work out that Merriol had sneaked downstairs and had set off one of the 30,000 candlepower signal flares some anonymous person (thanks Billy!) had left in our hallway that afternoon.

(Look forward to more photos of Morag and I hitting explosives with hammers soon - though this batch are less out of date than the previous bunch and, at least one of them has worked! which is more than could be said for the last lot.)

For the rest of the night I tossed turned and read Day of the Locust a couple of pages at a time waking up with my thumb still in the book reading another couple of pages then waking up again. I love reading books like this. I do some of my best reading when I'm ill. I seem to get much more involved somehow.

How to set up a Treo 600 on o2 Pay As You Go...

Go to Home > Prefs > Network

Make Service: O2 Mobile Web GPRS Copy
Make Connection GPRS
Make Password: password
Make APN address: payandgo.o2.co.uk

Click [Details]

Make Fallback: None

Click [Advanced...]

Make IP address: Automatic
Uncheck Query DNS [_]
Make Primary DNS: 193.113.200.200
Make Primary DNS: 193.113.200.201

[OK] [OK]

Click the Home Button

Go to Web then select Options

Make Home Page: http://payandgo.o2.co.uk

Click [Advanced] Click [Set Proxy] Check Use Proxy[_]

Make Proxy Server: 193.113.200.195

Make Port: 8080

[OK] [OK] [OK]

Make sure you write this all down and keep it somewhere safe - like on your Blog.

Switch off the expensive Christmas present - then switch it back on. Hurray!!!!!!!! The web in my pocket - or at least a cut down streamlined version of it...

Guess what I have just spent the best part of 2 days doing... A lot of head banging frustration and phone calls to nice chaps in India and poking and prying on the web and I finally got it sorted.

Oh, final thing. Remember to have more than 60p in credit on the phone... That last bit took me about 3 hours to work out. It's been a long day.

Merry Christmas

Just taking a moments break from the Christmassy doings to wish the world a Merry Christmas!

We a currently trimming the artificial Christmas tree Merriol bought the other day - apparently my 2 foot tall brown artificial Christmas tree is just “horrible” and was once likened to a collection of badly wired together used toilet brushes - so after 9 years living with it Merriol has finally put her foot down and bought a new one. The new one is six foot, cerise and the gayest damn thing you ever saw. It was instantly christened Pricilla Queen of the Forest.

Merry Christmas, World.

One of the unconcidered joys of having Holly at two nursery schools is that we get to go to two Christmas concerts.

On Tuesday we got to see our little darling singing in Gaelic and today she was the "Fairy" Gabriel in the nativity play. She made a good Fairy Gabriel. Needs a few lessons in stage craft - I mean facing the audience at some point would have been a good idea - but she was right in onto the stage, on cue (with a helpful shove from one of the teachers), and said her lines good and loud. I sttod there the whole time feeling dead proud and videoed the whole thing. I love being a dad.

Rotted what's left of my brain last night by watching a TERRIBLE 1951 movie called Unknown World. And I still can't work out why I do this. Why do I watch this drek?

Answers on a postcard please. I really would like to know.

OK... Nearly Resumed

I didn't get the job. It was a fun day though; I don't suppose all professional auditions are like that, but it was a good intro. Basicaly we played some games, did some improv, did a bit of singing... (now I wonder WHY I didn't get the job...?) and they were good enough to tell us on the spot who got it. I could see why they chose the people they did, the three who were chosen (there were 8 of us at the audition) worked well together - and they could all sing.

It would have been nice to have got the job but at least I won't be running around the country when Phoebe and Tyler are over in the spring.

The last few days have been trying to beat the mess moster that is our house into submission and doing Christmas shopping. The highlight of which happened yesterday in Oban. We were in Ottakar's bookshop when Holly spotted a book about the Nativity. She is playing "The Fairy Gabriel" in her nursery nativity play this week so all we have heard for the past week or two is "Baby Jesus this and Baby Jesus that...". So she sat down with this book and became engrossed in the pictures then suddenly she started singing Away in a Manger. When she finished a couple of people applauded! It was a... I don't know quite how to put it.. it was one of those moments that if I had seen it in a movie I would have reached for the sick bag, but because it was real and because it was my child it made me so proud.

I'm so glad I have kids.

Other stuff:

I'm thinking of becoming a school govenor. The Primary school here has an elected board of Parent Govenors - exept it doesn't because no one stood to be elected this year. So they've had to call another election and I 've stuck my head up and said that if no one else wants to do it then I will. I'm not sure what I'm letting myself in for, but if someone else stands then I will run away and let them do it.

I hate joining things.

Recent dialogue between Holly and me:

Me:
(pointing at the tabletop next to her computer)
Holly, where's the credit card that was there?

Holly:
I haven't seen it ...

(pause)

... it's in there.

And this is how I discovered that credit cards are just under 3.5 inches long. Just wide enough to fit sideways into the floppy drive of a PC ...

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I have an audition tomorrow.

I have to have an audition piece.

I have just picked it up and am starting to learn it ...

I am an idiot.

Do sexually frustrated Flower Fairies get the bluebells?

This "joke" will not be appearing in next year's panto

Normal Service is Resumed

Normal service is resumed. Thank you for your patience.

The Panto went well despite all the forgivings and qualms. All four shows were well attended. The biggest disappointment for me was that Holly burst into tears as soon as I came on stage and was inconsolable. She insisted on going home and missed all of it. Next time we do one (in two years), I guess she might be old enough to join in the fun. I hope so.

The other highlight of the week for me was realising one night, just before I went on as King Rat for the first time, that half my costume was in the wings over on the other side of the stage where I had left it the night before.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Ballachulish village hall was not really built as a theatre. It is more of a Badminton court with this square hole in the wall at one end. There is no way to get from one side of the stage to the other as in a real theatre unless you build a set you can crawl behind. If you exit stage left, you have to stay there, lurking in the tiny wings, in the cramped space between scenery stored over that side and the other three actors who walked off with you, until the end of the scene. We did not have a set I could crawl behind. I did not have a costume. I did have about 45 seconds to improvise something from whatever was lying around in the dressing rooms.

I improvised. Wrapped a chunk of material round my neck and went on. No one noticed. Apart from Kath who was in the dressing room as I burst in shouting “OmiFuck! Mycostumeisontheothersideofthe fuckingstagewhatamignnado????”

Oh yeah, there was also that moment when I had just struggled into the Fat Elvis suit for the start of act 2 when Bill came into the dressing room and said:

”You’re on!”

I looked at him. I looked at the stage monitor (a baby alarm gaffer-taped to the wall) I looked at him again.

“On?” I said.

He looked at me. We both looked at the baby alarm (why we looked at something that was only relaying sound I have no idea but we did).

“Yes,” he said, “at the end of this song.”

“Oh FUCK!!!!”

You have never seen anyone change from a Fat Elvis costume into a Rat King costume in as short a time as I did it. (Actually, you’ve never seen anyone change from a Fat Elvis costume into a Rat King costume at all, have you?) I got into the wings just as they were delivering the 2 lines of dialogue that follow the song:

“Oh Dick”
“Oh Rose”
Enter King Rat

I never want to be that close again.

Spent Sunday tidying the place up and hoovering the 15 pounds of glitter Merriol scattered around the place and then my body said:

“MY turn now, remember that cold you have deliberately not being having for the past 2 weeks? Well guess what... ?” at which point something turned a tap on inside my sinuses and something else whacked me one in all the major joints of my body with a baseball bat.

OW!