Friday 11th April – Deer with Torches for Eyes

May my halo choke me.  I was  very kind today and helped to take the children bobbing with Jason.  The family swim time was 1-4 at the new pool they  checked out last night and they lured me with tales of a lazy river.  It wasn’t bad actually.  Jason did manage to manhandle the children for five minutes while I did a couple of lengths in the lap pool.  I am so unfit it’s shameful.  I used to swim a mile three times a week, now two lengths and I’m beached and gasping for breath.  How depressing.  I must do better if tried harder.  It’s just a question if ‘if tried harder’, when I get home I guess.  Still, Oscar absolutely loves the water and has no fear whatsoever, so perhaps if I take him for lessons in the day he will become the next Duncan Goodhew and he can motivate me to get fitter.  Maybe might be as Tallulah would say.

The pool was the nicest one we’ve visited so far and we’ve tried about three or four.  It hasn’t got a slide which I think isn’t too bad, as it dissuades all the swimming equivalent of joy riders who think that regular swimming is boring and for girls along with embroidery and flower arranging.  It had a good baby pool with lots of toys for Oscar to play with, and a decent training pool.  More importantly it was very quiet, and we had lots of space to splash around in without bumping into our neighbour’s armpit or anything.  There was us and about half a dozen pensioners, most of whom looked terrified and promptly moved out when we got in.  That’s the spirit.  The lazy river was o.k. but the current wasn’t strong enough for me.  I still had to bob the kids about, but with less effort, which is why I suppose it was lazy.

We actually got a fairly long swim time in as well, as I decided to buy Oscar one of those baby wet suit things, and it keeps him much warmer than usual.  He looks rather like a little brown sausage, but he looks like a warm brown sausage, and that’s what’s most important.  We managed forty five minutes before his lips went blue, which is much better than the usual twenty.  They also have family changing rooms with en suite showers, which is much more bearable than sharing your hair and spit with random strangers, although I still don’t like it.  I want to be independently wealthy and have my own private pool please, so if whoever is in charge of that could sort that out I’d be very pleased indeed.

My trade off for agreeing to go swimming was dragging everyone to the city art gallery this morning.  Actually Jason stayed in the car with John Grisham and a packet of Marlborough Lights, but me and the kids went round the art gallery.  They had a really great collection of Japanese woodcuts, some of which I was very covetous of.  What was most annoying was the fact that they didn’t have any postcards or posters of these.  They are terribly proud of a woman called Emily Carr who lived in Victoria and did a lot of painting, which people insist on referring to as mystical and beautiful and which they say really sum up the island’s spirit.  Me, I think they look rather brown a bit green and a lot swirly.  Not my thing at all.  Sadly I could have had gallons of her posters, which seems a tad unfair.  I wouldn’t have even used them to paper the loo.  I have seen worse to be fair to her, but I wouldn’t want to live with it.  Which is probably what people think when they see me and the kids, which is why we’re not for sale.

They also had a very unnerving installation in the gallery which the children absolutely loved.  It was by an artist from Saskatchewan, which now I’m at the pc I can’t remember the name of, Woodroe I think.  Apparently in deepest, darkest Canada, towns are being deserted by people through lack of work opportunities etc, and this guy wanted to explore what it would be like if his town turned into a ghost town.  He has created all these eerie models of buildings with holes punched in them.  The lights go on and off and music plays and there are little video screens of model people doing things like bowling and playing quoits.  In the midst of all these houses are strange model deer with torch eyes which skitter about making weird noises and lighting up.  It was actually very cool and very surreal.  Oscar loved one of the deer sculptures which was a collection of these furry beasts on something that looked like a birthday cake, all gazing eerily with their beamy eyes.  He wanted it so badly I had to steer his buggy away.  The real deer were eating their breakfast in our garden this morning (consisting mainly of our garden), and now he’ll be standing on the deck shouting at them because they don’t light up properly.  Poor boy, I’ve really messed with his head now.

So we had culture, and we had exercise.  Then there was food.  We went to Ogden Point Cafe for lunch.  Ogden Point is a big breakwater at the ocean with spectacular views of the islands across the water.  The food is good, but nothing special, standard cafe fare apart from the biggest cinnamon buns I’ve ever seen in my life.  One cinnamon bun is about the size of a small family car.  It’s insane.  I didn’t eat one.  It was too unnerving even for me.  It is definitely worth going there, if not for the sight of the spectacular buns for the views.  Today the clouds were low across the sea and the mountains rising up out of the clouds with snowy peaks looked really rather beautiful and strangely Japanese.  The kids didn’t notice, too busy stuffing their faces with sausage rolls and bagels, but I had a good look, albeit stuffing my face too.  Jason was a bit depressed.  He wanted pancakes but they had stopped serving breakfast and he had to make do with a roast beef sandwich instead.  He grumbled quite a bit, but still managed to wipe the plate clean.  I’ve promised him pancakes for breakfast tomorrow if I can get the mix right this time!  Bless him, he’s suffering from pancake withdrawal. A man shouldn’t suffer so.

I cooked halibut steaks for dinner.  The kids had pasta.  They don’t like fish much unless it comes with a photograph of the good captain Birdseye and some breadcrumbs.  Actually Tallulah likes salmon, particularly smoked salmon (good girl), but other than that they are very wary indeed.  Poor Jason is also very wary, but I’m the cook and if he wants pancakes tomorrow it’s halibut tonight as the saying goes (one I just made up that is).  It was really, really nice, except for the fact that the whole house now smells of halibut, despite the fact that I roasted them in the oven, rather than frying them.  This allied to the fact that I smell of chlorine, is rather unpleasant.  I don’t think Dior are planning a new perfume mingling the two scents any time soon.  In fact it is almost as unpleasant as febreze and damp dog.  I feel the urgent need for a shower coming on.

The kids have been hideous today.  They’re all really tired from the fresh air and exercise.  They didn’t get home from their swim until nine last night and they were up at eight this morning.  Oscar and Tallulah have had a particularly trying day.  They just have not been able to play nicely together at all.  Oscar pinched Tallulah in the armpit after breakfast, which understandably made her scream quite a bit, as he was cheerfully hanging off of her when I went to investigate what the noise was.  Apparently he didn’t want to play restaurants with her.  Hopefully he will get less physical as his vocabulary increases or we really will be in trouble.  I ended up having to send them to play in separate rooms.  Later on in the day when they were playing pirates on the bed something awful happened where Tallulah gave Oscar a whack in the face.  As they had carefully closed the door on us, it cannot be said for sure whether it was by design or accident, but it necessitated another parting of the ways.  All in all it has been a day of violence, tribulation and separation, which is always nice.  Tilly is the only one who has said sorry for anything and she hasn’t done anything wrong (yet). 

Luckily nana is taking the girls to see The Little Mermaid tomorrow so things might be a little more restful.  I’m delighted.  I hate the story of the Little Mermaid.  I hate all Hans Christian Andersen stories.  How they can be classified as for children is quite beyond me.  They are all utterly, utterly miserable and heart rending.  One of Tilly’s favourite stories used to be The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and I used to dread reading it, it was so sad.  Still she takes after her mother, thinking about the girl in the French dictionary.  Some of us obviously feel the need to be melancholy.  Actually I expect the version they will see tomorrow will be Disneyfied and cheerful and no doubt involve singing crabs and tridents that light up in the dark.  Nearly as depressing as the original for my money, but then I always have been hard to please.