Freddie has changed his name to David Bailey. Last Sunday we had Barney, Debs and their little girl Katie round, and right at the end of the afternoon I heard Debs say 'Freddie, what are you doing?'. I turned to see Freddie standing in a corner with his back to us, up to something. On investigation, Debs discovered our digital camera in Freddie's sweaty hands, which must have been snatched up at some point by Mr Tickle himself, intent on no good.
After the guests had gone, we took at look at the photos stored on the camera, and this is what we found: The World According to Freddie, shot from two and a half feet (probably grossly inaccurate. I'm all metric, now, don't you know), and intriguingly informative about the workings of the mind of the mini photographer. Here we have Mummy and Daddy standing together, tall as giants, looming over Freddie, a look of amused impatience on their faces. And there's Mummy, still as tall, hands on hips, probably about to scold or try to remove the camera. And Katie and Barney, mostly their legs, sitting on the floor. In fact, lots more of the floor and our old-lady brown carpet, in all it's swirly floral glory. And the toy box, spilling over with all the favourite things. And, of course, Angel Bear, found snuggled beside the hoover in the corner, behind the door. You didn't think he was lost, did you?
But the best shots, I think, are the ones of Barney, several of them, all fitting well into the frame (as opposed to the headless Katie in other pictures, poor thing), showing an impressive patience and willingness to pose for our little David Bailey as he shouts 'Smile!' and angles another view, and listens to the satisfying Click of the button. Barney pulling a brilliant comic face, then another, then smiling, then smiling again. The willing model to our demon snapper. And then the following day, on picking up on the admiration of friends and family at his photographing prowess, Freddie proceeded to grab the camera at breakfast time and start again, to shouts of 'Ooooooh! Alpen!', which was followed by, you've guessed it, many delightful pictures of Freddie's breakfast, standing proud in the middle of the dining table. Bless him!
xxxxx
Friday, 15 May 2009
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
May Mornings
The soft flutterings of blossom brush our cheeks like confetti and catch on our tongues, as do the seeds of just-blown dandelions and the tiny snowdrop scatterings of styrofoam from our skip. Oh yes. The infamous skip, that prompts exclamations of 'Still got builders there, then?' from local mummies at playgroups and a knock on the door from our Neighbourhood Watch representative. Oops. Not our fault, of course, that the skip is still there and that the contents of it keep spilling out onto the pavement in an unseemly fashion. No sooner do we pick it all up and put it back in, than that dratted early May wind whooshes it straight back out again, to the chagrin of Mr Neighbourhood Watch, smiley though he may be in his ticking-off. So I call Jason from Stress Management, to tell him about how the man from the skip company appeared earlier in the week to remove our big yellow eyesore, only to disappear about two minutes later on deciding that the skip was in the wrong position for him to be able to take it away. And that was the last we saw or heard of him. Jason is duly shocked and disapproving, and goes on to explain that the skip company is full of foreigners who don't know what they're doing. I never know quite what to say to this kind of remark, but in any case by the sound of his accent I think Mr Skip Man was in fact born under Bow Bells, gobbling on a plate of jellied eels and watching Eastenders.
While we wait with baited breath for the Return of Jellied Eel Man, Tom patiently clears up the outside mess and then turns his attention to inside. Forget Spring clean. We have All-Year cleans in our house. Oh yes. Although I'd like to rename them Fling Cleans. A Fling Clean a la Tom Ridge, consists of much clattering and rustling issuing from the spare room, followed by the appearance of boxes, both plastic and cardboard, deposited on the living room floor. Then a frenzy of activity ensues whereby items many and various from across the house are tossed into said boxes and shoved somewhere extremely high or out of sight to places only Tom knows about. And, no, this is not child-proofing or the squirreling away of late birthday presents for me (yes, a Standing Ovation please, all who forgot my birthday. It is, after all, no mean feat to be still alive at the grand old age of thirty-six. At least, not when you consider what went on last year... Only kidding! No cards, please. No really).
No, this is an ingenious game invented by Tom to keep me busy in dull moments, which involves me walking all round the house several times each day in search of Something Very Useful Which Has Now Vanished. One day it might be toothpaste, another it might be Freddie's hairbrush, another it might be the telephone. It's a bit like a treasure hunt, or Challenge Anneka. I have to gird my loins, pick up the phone if it's there, email if not, and receive clues from Tom as to where the sought-after item might be. And the prize is the satisfaction and relief of finding, perhaps, the tupperware in the wardrobe, or Freddie's comb in the bike-equipment box, or the batteries in Tom's sock drawer etc etc. All in a day's work...
Freddie himself, meanwhile, has been working on his Get-to-Sleep aids, which now require him to be something of a contortionist as he settles beside Angel Bear and Piggy each night (and hush yee who cry 'Girly!' at the mention of a white fluffy bear with wings and a pink pig as bedfellows. I admit, the handbag phase caused something of a stir, but we're over that now, and back onto boy stuff, with lots of 'Grrrs' and karate kicks and playing with Mummy's lipstick and Granny's washbag and ...). Sucking the thumb and pulling the ear were, in retrospect, child's play in comparison to the antics of Bedtime Hour of late. We now witness, on a nightly basis, the simultaneous sucking of the thumb, pulling of the ear, fiddling inside the pants and picking of the nose (followed by eating the spoils of the pickings) with a mixture of bafflement and disgust but also to sighs of 'Bless him. It's nice that he can settle himself off to sleep like that, isn't it?'
Talking of sleep, I nearly fell straight off to sleep on Friday when I went to my first Cranial Sacral Massage, given to me by my Pilates teacher. She is training in Cranial Sacral Therapy and needs volunteers to lie on a couch for her while she practises her skills, and I was happy to accommodate. What could be more apt, thought I, on my 'day off' when Freddie is at nursery, than a nice, soothing massage. And off I went on my bike down the tree-lined avenue that leads to the university farm site. Where, nestled between sheep fields and some empty-looking sheds, I found two little cottages in one of which lives my lovely Pilates teacher and all her trinkets and flowers and plants and pictures and papers and so on, all higgledy piggledy upon her floors, mantlepieces and walls and shouting 'Creative! Alternative!' at you as if you couldn't already tell from the hair falling messily out of the teacher's ever-escaping hairclips and the giggle as she asks you what the time is and gasps as she realises it's all getting rather late.
I must admit I wanted to giggle too as the massage began, and I tried but failed to take seriously the teaching behind the therapy philosophy. '...And this is what we call the Life Force, which surges through you from your feet to your scalp...'. My mind kept wandering to 'Ooh, double glazing. That's handy for when the tractors get loud', or 'Crumbs is that cow manure wafting through the window or what?' etc. However, I have to say that despite my scepticism, the whole experience was very relaxing, and boy, did I feel spacey afterwards! The teacher did warn me that I might, but I frowned and said I felt fine and scooted off on my bike thinking 'spacey' was for wimps, little realising that several hours later I'd be wandering round the house in a daze,b not knowing what on earth I was supposed to be doing, while Freddie tried to remind me from the sofa with shouts of 'Mummy! Supper time!'. And most impressively, when the teacher did her thing (don't know how to explain it exactly) over my chest area, I got a strong sense of a circle swirling round, and then the teacher said 'That's interesting. The flow is almost in a circular motion...' and all she had been doing was sitting very still with her hand on my spine but not moving at all. It's all incredibly subtle. Incredibly. But good. I'm looking forward to the next one.
So, have you all got your siege supplies in place? I only ask as when I went to the nurse on Friday for my injection, she said 'So, um, you might be as well to get some extra food in in case you get swine flu and feel too ill to go out, or the shops shut down or whatever...' I expect they've already thought of that in Bedfordshire County Council, where they've decided to relocate to a nuclear-style bunker should the alert level reach Six. Hang on, aren't we at Six now? I guess too, they can have fun trying on their supply of two hundred and fifty thousand face masks when life in the bunker gets a bit boring... Come to think of it, will anyone actually notice that the Bedford County Counsellors have disappeared?...
I shall sing off, nay, sign off now (would 'Wind the Bobbin Up' suffice?) and tune in again some time soon.
Kirstyx
While we wait with baited breath for the Return of Jellied Eel Man, Tom patiently clears up the outside mess and then turns his attention to inside. Forget Spring clean. We have All-Year cleans in our house. Oh yes. Although I'd like to rename them Fling Cleans. A Fling Clean a la Tom Ridge, consists of much clattering and rustling issuing from the spare room, followed by the appearance of boxes, both plastic and cardboard, deposited on the living room floor. Then a frenzy of activity ensues whereby items many and various from across the house are tossed into said boxes and shoved somewhere extremely high or out of sight to places only Tom knows about. And, no, this is not child-proofing or the squirreling away of late birthday presents for me (yes, a Standing Ovation please, all who forgot my birthday. It is, after all, no mean feat to be still alive at the grand old age of thirty-six. At least, not when you consider what went on last year... Only kidding! No cards, please. No really).
No, this is an ingenious game invented by Tom to keep me busy in dull moments, which involves me walking all round the house several times each day in search of Something Very Useful Which Has Now Vanished. One day it might be toothpaste, another it might be Freddie's hairbrush, another it might be the telephone. It's a bit like a treasure hunt, or Challenge Anneka. I have to gird my loins, pick up the phone if it's there, email if not, and receive clues from Tom as to where the sought-after item might be. And the prize is the satisfaction and relief of finding, perhaps, the tupperware in the wardrobe, or Freddie's comb in the bike-equipment box, or the batteries in Tom's sock drawer etc etc. All in a day's work...
Freddie himself, meanwhile, has been working on his Get-to-Sleep aids, which now require him to be something of a contortionist as he settles beside Angel Bear and Piggy each night (and hush yee who cry 'Girly!' at the mention of a white fluffy bear with wings and a pink pig as bedfellows. I admit, the handbag phase caused something of a stir, but we're over that now, and back onto boy stuff, with lots of 'Grrrs' and karate kicks and playing with Mummy's lipstick and Granny's washbag and ...). Sucking the thumb and pulling the ear were, in retrospect, child's play in comparison to the antics of Bedtime Hour of late. We now witness, on a nightly basis, the simultaneous sucking of the thumb, pulling of the ear, fiddling inside the pants and picking of the nose (followed by eating the spoils of the pickings) with a mixture of bafflement and disgust but also to sighs of 'Bless him. It's nice that he can settle himself off to sleep like that, isn't it?'
Talking of sleep, I nearly fell straight off to sleep on Friday when I went to my first Cranial Sacral Massage, given to me by my Pilates teacher. She is training in Cranial Sacral Therapy and needs volunteers to lie on a couch for her while she practises her skills, and I was happy to accommodate. What could be more apt, thought I, on my 'day off' when Freddie is at nursery, than a nice, soothing massage. And off I went on my bike down the tree-lined avenue that leads to the university farm site. Where, nestled between sheep fields and some empty-looking sheds, I found two little cottages in one of which lives my lovely Pilates teacher and all her trinkets and flowers and plants and pictures and papers and so on, all higgledy piggledy upon her floors, mantlepieces and walls and shouting 'Creative! Alternative!' at you as if you couldn't already tell from the hair falling messily out of the teacher's ever-escaping hairclips and the giggle as she asks you what the time is and gasps as she realises it's all getting rather late.
I must admit I wanted to giggle too as the massage began, and I tried but failed to take seriously the teaching behind the therapy philosophy. '...And this is what we call the Life Force, which surges through you from your feet to your scalp...'. My mind kept wandering to 'Ooh, double glazing. That's handy for when the tractors get loud', or 'Crumbs is that cow manure wafting through the window or what?' etc. However, I have to say that despite my scepticism, the whole experience was very relaxing, and boy, did I feel spacey afterwards! The teacher did warn me that I might, but I frowned and said I felt fine and scooted off on my bike thinking 'spacey' was for wimps, little realising that several hours later I'd be wandering round the house in a daze,b not knowing what on earth I was supposed to be doing, while Freddie tried to remind me from the sofa with shouts of 'Mummy! Supper time!'. And most impressively, when the teacher did her thing (don't know how to explain it exactly) over my chest area, I got a strong sense of a circle swirling round, and then the teacher said 'That's interesting. The flow is almost in a circular motion...' and all she had been doing was sitting very still with her hand on my spine but not moving at all. It's all incredibly subtle. Incredibly. But good. I'm looking forward to the next one.
So, have you all got your siege supplies in place? I only ask as when I went to the nurse on Friday for my injection, she said 'So, um, you might be as well to get some extra food in in case you get swine flu and feel too ill to go out, or the shops shut down or whatever...' I expect they've already thought of that in Bedfordshire County Council, where they've decided to relocate to a nuclear-style bunker should the alert level reach Six. Hang on, aren't we at Six now? I guess too, they can have fun trying on their supply of two hundred and fifty thousand face masks when life in the bunker gets a bit boring... Come to think of it, will anyone actually notice that the Bedford County Counsellors have disappeared?...
I shall sing off, nay, sign off now (would 'Wind the Bobbin Up' suffice?) and tune in again some time soon.
Kirstyx
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