The Gallery - 2 (or possibly 45, or 36, or maybe even 12)

This isn't a new photo on my blog, but I couldn't think of anything else that so perfectly fulfills Tara's numbers brief:

2: perfect babies inside me. I was sorting out my pictures recently and it struck me anew just how big I was...
45: inches round the middle (and that was before supper. I measured it another time that week and it came out at 48! That's four foot!!! I reckon if I'd gone to term (I was 36 weeks at that point and not allowed to go any longer) I'd have been close to being more around than I am tall (I'm quite short!)

Or maybe:

12: hours until I met them, and my life changed forever.

See the rest of the Gallery here.

Moving house aged 2 3/4 : the visit

We went to see The House today. All of us. A grand deputation consisting of B, me, L, A, S and my parents, flown up for the day to see what they're losing us to.

I've been hyping L up about The House since our offer was accepted, trying to get her excited about the prospect of moving in the hope that it will make the transition easier.

And I think we can say it was a complete failure.

We arrived, after two hours in the car, L crotchety:

"No. This isn't my new house. I'm not going to live here"

That was the high point. Each room we went into she found something else she didn't like, or something else that was wrong, or some other reason why this was not, adamantly not her new house. And all the while I desperately tried to enthuse her, while feeling my enthusiasm for the place ebb away...

We left and I realised that now I didn't want to live there either.

Now, I know that's ridiculous, and I know that she's two and doesn't understand, and I know that my jollying her along will only have made her more determined not to like it (she was in that sort of mood) but I'm also really worried that the transition is going to be much harder than I expected.

L and I had a little chat later on. I realised that she probably thought that we were buying and leaving more than just the bricks and mortar. So I explained to her that the man was going to take all his stuff away, and we were going to bring all her toys and clothes and her bed and our sofa and put them in the new house so that it was like the old house only bigger and better. And she said to me:

"and he's going to take his dogs (L not a big dog fan)...

...but he's going to leave the cat for us."

Hmmm . Am now wondering how high a cat-shaped price we're prepared to pay for a smooth ride (I'm told that she'd prefer a pink or yellow one - there's a whole nother disappointment to come there.)

So I thought we were ok. But then she had a night terror. She won't, apparently, remember it in the morning, but I will. And I will keep worrying about what it means for her to have her home taken out from underneath her. And how, if at all, we can help.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone (and Scotland!)

The finished product!

Second post in ten minutes. Because I just had to post this:

Conspirators - the book at blogtime

Michael Andre Bernstein's Conspirators is split into three parts.  A brief prelude in 1925, a longer middle section (he probably calls it something proper, but I can't remember what it is and I can't be bothered to go upstairs and find out) set in 1913, and a coda back in 1925.  He poses a question in the prelude, explores its background in the middle and then doesn't answer it in the coda.

Did I find that annoying? Well, thinking about it now, yes.  Very.  But when I finished it last night. No, not really.  Somehow, the question, which seemed so important at the beginning, just wasn't at the end.  In fact, I find myself, now, wondering why he bothered with the prelude at all. 

Essentially, this book is an exciting spy thriller set in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  Unfortunately, for me the plot was befuddled with lots of digressions into the internal thoughts of the characters.  There are, undoubtedly, some readers who love that sort of thing: The Times commends the "considerable imagination [that] goes into developing the interior lives of all the characters".  Sadly, I'm not one of them. 

Or at least I thought I wasn't. But then, weirdly, I enjoyed it.  Yes, I found looking at a several double pages of print without a redeeming paragraph break rather off-putting (honestly, I'm not as thick as that makes me sound - but really, paragraphs are a good thing.  We all know that, don't we?).  But I found at the end that I really knew these characters.  I understood their fears, their loves, their needs and their motivations, and as a result, even though they were, in many cases, unpleasant, I empathised with them.  And yes, I did feel that it dragged at times and I wanted to get on with the story.  But once the plot gathered pace, I couldn't put it down.  And it made me think, and it will stay with me.  

Which I suspect is less likely to be true of my next book:  Sophie Kinsella's Twenties Girl.  I need a break of easy reading and light hearted fun after two weeks of political assassinations, torture and doomed empire and I love Sophie Kinsella, so I'm really looking forward to this. I suspect I may have to ration it, if I'm not to be writing another booky post tomorrow!

The Gallery - Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner...

...but only for a few more short weeks... that I'm beginning to feel nostalgic for this amazing, sprawly, angry, busy, friendly, noisy, indescribable city that I've been lucky enough to call my home for the last ten and some years.

So when I saw Tara's new meme/theme/gallery, and realised that this week she wants photos of Beauty, I ended up deciding to post this:

It was taken on my phone last Saturday, so it's not the world's best picture (it was taken by me, so it was never going to be the world's best picture anyway!) but it reminds me that even here, in the centre of London, surrounded by more than 7 million people, there is beauty. I love the the sunset and the tree and the crocuses, and L dancing carefully so that she doesn't tread on them, and then the fact that you can see the rows of Victorian houses and the fifteen stories of hideousness that is the hospital and you realise that yes, this is London, and I will miss it.

Oh, and ps, I wanted to post this one too,

 

because L asked me to take its picture so that she could remember that although it looks purple, inside it's "lello". And I realised that I haven't really looked at a crocus in years.  And I should.

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The rest of the amazing photos in the Gallery are here!!

Spot the difference

A and S are identical.  There are differences but you have to know about them. A has a double crown and a little blue mark on her nose.  S makes S faces, and is slightly smaller.  But if you don't know that, you might be excused finding it difficult to tell who's who.

B and I can now (since about their first birthday) pretty much always tell the difference straight away. They just each do things that are totally themselves.  A is incredibly kind.  S is incredibly cheeky.  A can stand up on her own;  S watches.  S can go downstairs backwards; A sits at the top and whinges.  And for those that don't know? Well, I dress them differently, and I'm quite happy to explain that S is wearing red and A purple, or whatever.

But L still can't tell.  She calls them "my sister" or "that one".  Or  says "is that one S?" and when I say "no", says "that one?", as though there were more than two options. I thought that this was an age thing.  She's only little after all.

But her friend F, at the advanced age of just 3, knows.  And he knows all the time.  In fact, he corrected me yesterday when I got them wrong.

Which leads me to wonder - is she doing it on purpose?  

Millinery - week 7

A rather bitty day today. I stiffened my straw and wired its brim. Which is useful, but sadly not photogenic (it looks exactly the same as it did last week). I also started a buckram fascinator; which at the moment looks like nothing so much as a soggy hankie, so not really photo material either, disappointingly.

And I sewed my felt back together, stitched on its petersham trim and started attaching my daisies. It looks pretty similar to how it did two weeks ago, but it's actually MUCH improved. Honest.

Here it is:





Finishing all of that lot in two weeks sounds Herculean... And I've only got one, as we're in Scotland next week. Whoops.

- Posted using BlogPress from the bus. It's now a Monday ritual...