Oscar shares his thoughts on violence

Oscar: ‘Hitting each other is not very nice, is it mama?’

Me: ‘No, it isn’t.’

Oscar: (nodding sagely) ‘Yes, because it hurts a lot.’

Me: ‘Yes, it does.’

Oscar: ‘And when me and T were having an egg and spoon race at nursery and we stopped to have a fight and we threw the spoons at each other’s heads, that really hurt a lot.  So you must not do it.  And Donna told us off.’

Me: (stifling laughter by putting hand over my mouth and making big owl eyes. Don’t ask me why, it works) ‘Well, quite.  That is one of the main reasons to eschew violence.’

The wages of sin are death, and spoon shape bruising to the forehead.

Empirical fact.

It’s award season here in the blogosphere

I have been blessed with another award, from my lovely blogging friend, A Modern Military Mother.

Apparently I have a blog with substance.  I find this surprising. Mostly it is hot air held together with ribbons and spit, but I am happy to accept it, as it is sent with love and friendship.  I thank her profusely.

I also have to sum up the essence of my blog, my motivation and philosophy in five words. For those of you who are regular readers I now excuse you so that you can go and roll around on the carpet, aching with mirth.

I think it would have to be:

I like talking about me.

Yep. That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.

Now, I am supposed to pass this on to ten other bloggers.  I have nominated tons of people recently, as this does indeed seem to be award season. So I make this award a universal one, a bit like the last episode of Buffy where all the slayer power was given to every girl on the planet simultaneously.  If you wish to claim the award simply cut and paste the icon and follow the instructions and enjoy yourselves very much.

I am impressed that I didn’t burst into tears over this one. I am clearly moving away from the Gwynneth Paltrow Oscar moment.  Thank the lord.

Bugger – I am slightly heartbroken – possibly

When we first decided to apply for permanent residency in Canada, just after we got back from our holiday there, we called a company who help you navigate the thousands of pitfalls you run into during the lengthy visa application process.  They said that it would be good for us to get our application in as soon as possible, because at the end of June the Canadian’s were going to change their visa requirements lists, including the careers they were looking for people to have.  As it stood, Jason’s job was on the yes list, but it might not stay there.  We were told that as long as we got our application in beforehand, we would be fine.

So we did.  It took days, and days.  I am not exaggerating.  You try finding out all the addresses you have lived at since you were eighteen.  It’s not easy.  And the forms have to be filled in in black ink, perfectly, or you have to start again.  I got writer’s cramp in my hand the process was that lengthy.

Anyway, we got our application in, along with a huge, fat cheque, and we are now currently compiling a list of documents as thick as my forearm, which they will need next, if we get through the first round of paperwork.  This is also a costly process, as we have to have solicitor certified copies of everything at £5 per document. Ouch!

Anyway, we have been working hard at this, and feeling fairly confident about it, when this evening we got an e-mail from the company who are helping us.  It showed us the job list the Canadians are now looking for, and Jason’s job is not on it.  We would be fine if he was a plumber, but no dice with IT professionals anymore.  It also said that although we put our application in on time, the Canadian Visa people have not yet processed it, and as such they may decide that it is not technically processed before the cut off date and send us our cheque and our forms back and say goodbye to the Boo family before we have even set off.

We will not know either way whether our application is now going to fall at the first fence until the end of the week.  We just have to wait, and the galling thing is that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.  We moved as quickly as we possibly could, we did everything that was required of us, and it is entirely down to the length of time it takes the Canadian Visa people to process their paperwork, which we have absolutely no control over.

We are pretty gutted to tell you the truth.  Making the decision was monumental for us, and now it may come to nothing.

I have waited months to tell you about our application, and yesterday I felt so very buoyant and excited that I decided I had to share it with you, and now I have to tell you this.  I feel like it is my fault. I should have kept my mouth shut that little bit longer.

I know that’s bollocks by the way.  It’s just how I feel.

Still, there is still a slim chance.  So please, raise a glass of maple syrup for us and send all your good thoughts in our direction.  If we get there I promise to send you all a baby beaver in a box as a thank you gift.  Honestly and promisedly I do.

Tallulah’s Morning

The girls are staying at their dad’s. He has been away in Spain, so they were very excited to see him when he picked them up yesterday for two whole nights of daddy time.  This morning he texted me this conversation he had had with Tallulah:

UE: ‘Well, haven’t we had a wonderful time together this morning?’

Tallulah: ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me.  Why don’t you go and ask a chinchilla or something?’

That put him firmly in his place, eh?

Overheard Conversation

Two women, deep in discussion.  One woman is very passionately narrating a list of wrongs that someone else has perpetrated upon her person.  The other listens, interjecting only occasionally.  Eventually the stream of evils done dies down, and X says:

X: ‘And so.  And so.  Anyway.  I’m going to ring him up and tell him that I’m just not talking to him anymore’  (said in a tone of deep satisfaction)

Y: ‘X?’

X: ‘Yeah?’

Y: (hands on hips) ”Ave a word with yourself won’t you?’

X: ‘What? What do you mean?’

Y: ‘You’re forty two years old.  And you’re going to telephone someone to tell them you’re not speaking to them?’

X: (Defensively) ‘Yeah!’

Y: ‘Your five year old son has got more sense than you, and he’s an idiot.  You can’t bloody well ring someone you’re not talking to, to tell them you’re not talking to them.  You’re not bleedin’ talking to them are yer?’

X: (Deflated) ‘Oh!’

Y: (extremely self satisfied), ‘You’re not in the bloody playground now you know.’

X: ‘mmmmmm….I spose so.’

Y: (shakes head) ”Ave a bleedin word with yerself.’

An award. For little ole me…

One of my very best favourite bloggers, Liberty London Girl has given me an award.  I was quite overcome. Really.  It’s a big deal to get approbation from someone whose writing you really admire.  So, thank you very much.

It’s a ‘your blog is beautiful’ award.  I would post the little icon doodad, but LLG’s site is currently undergoing maintenance and I cannot fish it off yet.

I think the general gist was that I have to tell you seven things about me that you don’t already know and nominate between ten and fifteen other bloggers to receive the award from me.  This has been posing quite a headache for me, frankly. It’s not the nominating other bloggers thing. It’s the finding seven things about me that you don’t already know.  As I blog about everything from my shoe size to my inside leg measurement compulsively I think it’s going to be a challenge.  I have been thinking about it since yesterday and I’m not entirely convinced I can do it.  After all, when I have already told you I used to have a crush on the Milky Bar Kid, there really isn’t a lot left to say, is there?

Still, it would be rude not to try:

I once got caught climbing back through a window I had climbed out of in class, to try and rescue a counter I had accidentally chucked out the window. The teacher never saw me, it was just unfortunate that the head teacher happened to come into the classroom just as I was half way through.  Curses!

I can’t remember if I’ve told you this before, but at my university we used to celebrate Christmas Dinner Day before we broke up for the Christmas holidays.  My friends and I made a giant papier mache husband and wife and a christmas dinner, complete with crackers and presents.  Then we stole a table and chairs, kitted ourselves out in black from head to toe, and hauled the whole lot onto the refectory roof in the middle of the night, setting it out as a tableau.  When everyone straggled across to the refectory to have their lunch they were greeted by this impressive sight.  We were justly proud of ourselves.

I do not drink tea in the traditional sense. I drink green tea and jasmine tea, but not English builder’s tea.  I cannot stand the stuff.

I have recently acquired some real, paid work, that has not been given to me by relatives. I am writing blog posts for an online marketing company. Anything you want to know about French polishing, do drop me a line.

I am a qualified practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming.  I never, ever use it.  UE is one of the world’s foremost NLP trainers. He once stayed in Paul McKenna’s house. I was impressed by his integrity. He refused to snoop through Paul’s underwear drawer for me. I still maintain that he wears black posing pouches, possibly studded with diamante. Paul, not UE.

My brother and I used to own rabbits, Daisy and May. My mum was always going on about animals being cooped up in hutches, so she built a big pen out of chicken wire.  The rabbits were always trying to escape and one day they made it.  About two years after they had legged it, during a particularly cold winter, we opened the back door to find one of them huddled on the step.  We sheltered her over the winter and set her free again in the spring.

The biggest news for last.  We are applying to emigrate to Canada.  We have enough points, and are applying for permanent residency.  The process takes months and we are still filling out forms like crazy people, but there you go.  By this time next year, if all goes well, we will probably be lapping maple syrup from the paws of tiny beavers and learning all forty eight verses of Oh Canada.

And after that bombshell I nominate:

Boxofmisc (and not just because she’s my mum)

Mrs Jones (and not just because she’s my brain twin)

Watchthatcheese (and not just because I am so coming to visit soon)

Life Happens Between Books (because I hope this will prompt Lucy Fishwife to write more, more, more, please)

Homeofficemum (because she inspired me to keep on blogging all those years ago, just by being her)

and that’s all for now my dears.  Not that I don’t love you all, but I gave a load of awards out the other day and I don’t want to repeat myself.

Seven Dials

Jason is downstairs wincing at the television (Germany have just scored a spectacular goal). The children are running around the garden throwing buckets of water at each other, and I am upstairs, alone, in peace.  It’s marvellous.  I have absolutely no interest in football whatsoever. I impressed myself that I even recognised Alan Shearer on the television earlier. I do not know how I know this random footballing fact.  I must have inhaled it over the ether or something.  I’d rather learn Lithuanian than sit around watching men in nylon shorts galloping up and down a patch of grass kicking an inflated pig’s bladder.  It’s why I’m a girl.

My house is now clean.  We can haz guests, but only for about half an hour, nowish.  It will surely all go horribly wrong later.  Still, it doesn’t matter that nobody else but me will appreciate it.  I do appreciate it, more than words can say.  I’ve even changed the bed sheets.  I love sleeping between clean sheets. It’s such a luxury.

That has been my day.  That and laundry, endless amounts of laundry, and cooking.

It’s all far too domesticated for me.  I shall swirl myself back in time and take you on a little photographic tour of some more of London.  This time I am in Seven Dials.

Seven Dials is sandwiched between Covent Garden and Charing Cross Road, sort of.  It’s not a very big area, but there are some lovely things to see.  You know you are in Seven Dials when you reach this:

It is a monument in the middle of the road where the seven roads that make up Seven Dials meet.  Just to confuse you, it has six sun dials on it, not seven.  Nobody said it had to be perfect.  It is also not original.  The original one was knocked down by an angry mob in the 18th Century. Presumably they were unimpressed by sun dials. This replica was put up in 1989.

According to the ever faithful Wikipedia.  It was designed by the architect Thomas Neale, in the 1690′s.  Originally it only had six roads converging, hence the six dials.  Then they added number seven, just to be difficult.  Originally it was incredibly well to do and a very fashionable place to live.  By Victorian times it was one of the most notorious slums in London.  It didn’t really pick itself up until fairly recently.  Now it is home to lots of lovely, shiny shops, hotels, restaurants and boutiques.  It is a lovely place to potter around and as well as the shops there are some nice bits of architecture to gawp at, should you be that way inclined.

Here are some of the things that caught my eye;

I love roads that do this. They remind me of wedges of cheese.  I also like the fact that the road curves round, in a very Georgian fashion so that you can see the buildings beautifully.

Here’s another one.  All the roads round Seven Dials taper like this.  Apparently all the buildings at the thin end of the wedge used to be pubs.  There’s only one left now.  This is a Radisson Hotel.  Never mind.  The one pub that is left has some lovely Art Nouveau tiles with grapes on:

I love Art Nouveau.  Look at this beautiful doorway by Patisserie Valerie in Covent Garden:

I want it.  I thought about trying to steal it, but there was no way it would fit in my bag. 

I am also quite partial to a bit of Art Deco.  Look at this building, coming out of Seven Dials towards Leicester Square. It’s going to be one of Jamie Oliver’s chain of Italian eateries.  The tiles are to die for, and the architectural fluting looks like it is made of metal. I don’t know whether it is or not.  They were renovating it, so I couldn’t get near enough to ‘it it wiv an ‘ammer.

Then there’s the beautiful Egyptian inspired stonework here, between Seven Dials and Great Russell Street where the British Museum is:

Anyway, we must get back to Seven Dials.  We are beginning to wander.  Great shops include Coco de Mer and their exciting sale on disembodied penises as blogged a couple of days ago.  Also Orla Kiely:

I love Orla Kiely. She did a range of stuff for Debenhams once and I bought a tweed, patchwork handbag which I used until I wore holes in the bottom. I wanted to take a photo of her shop window, which was fantastic. It had a huge, retro style telly in there with footage of models prancing about in her things, but the double glare from the window and the television screen meant that all came to naught.

Here is the shop Tatty Devine:

Who do wonderful, offbeat jewellry.  This woman in the shot, was there for the best part of twenty minutes, standing like a statue.  I was most annoyed. She got in the way of the bunting.  I was far too British to ask her to bugger off and stand like a statue somewhere else. Apologies for my reticence.

Here is the ultra scary window of a chic hairdressers:

I used to have one of these dolls when I was a child.  It had a string coming out of the back of its head and when you pulled it, the doll’s eyes changed colours.  It was unnerving then. It has not improved with age. I shall not be asking someone to coiff my do here.  I shall be running away. Fast.

Here is an excellent opticians though:

As a Shakespeare enthusiast, I am always in favour of a terrible pun, and Spex in the City pleases me hugely. As does the huge silver pair of  John Lennon specs dangling from their shop sign.  Very nice indeed.

My favourite building in Seven Dials though is this one:

A Victorian French Dispensary and Hospital:

Which I believe is now a hotel.  Isn’t it lovely?  I wish they would build things like this nowadays.  Life would be so much happier for me, if not everyone else, and let’s face it, on this blog, it is me that counts!

Different for Girls

I have lots more pictures of London to bore you with, but I have decided I cannot wait for WordPress to upload each one this evening. I want to go and sit in the sun with my book and unwind from the cheek biting trauma of watching the last episode of Doctor Who.  It was truly exhausting.

I have also eaten far too much and am feeling rather groggy from a surfeit of Chinese food at my parents, and what is either going to turn out to be a migraine or is a spectacular bout of hayfever. I have yet to decide.

It has been one of those days where we seem to have been awfully busy and yet nothing much got finished.  I had hoped to clean, as I have a bunch of ladies coming round to my house on Monday night when I am hosting a make up evening, which will be run by the lovely lady, Barbara, who did such a good makeover for me in the spring.  God knows it wouldn’t be hosted by me.  The nearest I’ve been to lipstick in the last four months was Oscar kissing me when his mouth was smothered in tomato sauce.

I got up this morning with firm plans to make the place as neat as a new pin.  I got downstairs where I was greeted by a most distressingly awful smell, and spent the first few hours of the day emptying dustbins, washing rugs and seat covers and sticking my nose into odd corners.  If we had a dog I would have bathed it.  That kind of smell. I am still not entirely sure what it was, and it now seems to have gone, which is good, but it meant I blazed a rather haphazard trail through the house and you cannot really tell that I have done anything at all.

I also realised that I did not have any food in the house with which to throw together a meal, nor anything to tempt ladies who are coming to be pampered.  I spent forty minutes harvesting the Ocado site for the finest groceries money can buy, along with a random selection of wine that didn’t look too evil.  Then I remembered that as I am the only person in our house that drinks, we actually only have one wine glass to our names.  You can tell how much proper entertaining we do, no? 

I scuttled off to T.K. Maxx, where I didn’t like any of the wine glasses, so bought six tumblers instead.  They will just have to learn to embrace Bohemianism.  At least they match. It was either that or some plastic beakers we got in the picnic set last year, and which now have the children’s teeth marks etched round the top.  I also happened to buy a pair of duck egg blue, Converse baseball boots, because I have always wanted a pair and they were only £24.  I confessed to Jason when I got home.  He was not terribly impressed.  Still, I am wearing the boots and I am still alive, so he took it better than I expected.

We spent the afternoon at my mum’s.  The children ran round the garden playing a very complicated game with some spoons, a large, stuffed donkey and saucepans full of sand.  They were happy.  This was all that mattered.  We sat on the verandah with cups of tea and chatted desultorily in the heat.  It’s a good way to spend an afternoon.  I recommend it.

And now, I am off to read my book.  It is another book for Amazon, who send me things to review.  I have just finised reading Louise Wener’s ‘Different for Girls’, which they sent me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Wener was the lead singer with the Indie band Sleeper in the nineties, and this book records her growing up as a teenager in Essex and wanting to be a pop star, and then the years of fame with the band. It is funny, clever and very well written. 

I remember going to see Sleeper and The Boo Radleys when I was on a weekend in Amsterdam once, right at the beginning of my dalliance with UE.  We went to see them at a club called Melkweg.  It was a fantastic evening which ended with us being so drunk we completely forgot where our hotel was, and wandered round and round the canals getting more and more lost until we finally stumbled upon it at about three in the morning.  We had passed it about eighty times that night but it just hadn’t registered.  Luckily the large quantities of red wine we had consumed, and the fact that it was a gloriously warm summer’s night and we were in love, made it all seem like a fantastic adventure.

I bought the album Smart, when I got home, and played it to death.  I listen to it now and it takes me right back to that weekend; buying fresh watermelon from the wonderfully named Penguin Night Shop, sitting on a bridge eating it and spitting the pips into the canal.  Going to see Woody Allen films at the English language cinema.  Watching giant floating Buddhas bobbing on the lake in the Vondel Park.  Eating wonderful Thai food in a chic restaurant. Sitting in bars where the owner kept forcing us to try some of his eighty three different types of beer, and handing us postcards of a dog smoking a cigar.  All good.  All another lifetime ago.

I was going to include a link to my favourite of their songs, Hunch, but it doesn’t seem to be available.  You will have to do with probably their most well known song, In Betweener.  The video quality is not brilliant, but it is worth checking out because it has Dale Winton using Pringles tubes as maracas in it.  And you can’t say fairer than that:

I wouldn’t have thought about that weekend again if it hadn’t been for reading Louise’s book.  I am quite grateful to her. Sometimes I find it hard to remember why I married UE in the first place.  Not that I dislike him you understand, it’s just that this being divorced thing and having children in common, and trying to remain amicable, is not always as easy as it sounds (ha ha).  Something like this reminds me that we had some great times together before it all went pear shaped.

Saucy Summer Sales

It’s the season for summer sales.

I am trying to avoid going into any shops which might be too tempting.

Luckily, when I was out on Saturday morning it was too early for any of the shops to be open.  Not that it stopped me taking photos.  But they were free, so that’s alright.

There were some interesting sale posters.  Sometimes the advertising is as needful as the things being sold.  Sometimes, it is better.

Here is a wonderful sales poster I have in my bathroom. It’s from the London Transport Museum:

They have a fabulous collection of vintage prints for sale, if you’re into this kind of thing.  Which I am.  Well, apart from rice pudding, there’s not a lot I’m not into is there?

Anyway, the sale adverts I found on Saturday were not quite this tasteful, but they were funny.  Here’s one from a vintage shop on Great Queen Street:

I think I need this blowing up very large and printing on wallpaper. I shall decorate the downstairs loo with it.

This is the sale poster for the upmarket, women friendly sex shop in Seven Dials, Coco de Mer:

It made me laugh a lot.  Although I don’t think I shall be hanging the picture in the bathroom.  Cocks are not the most aesthetically pleasing piece of biological equipment we got handed out are they?

Or is it just me?

Oh! Chapeau

I love hats.

It’s a love I have proudly passed on to my firstborn, as you may recall from the sartorially glamorous fashion shoot I did of her birthday millinery.

I don’t wear them much any more, but there was a time when I wore hats pretty much every day, for years. When I went to Prague, not long after they had opened it up to the West, everyone else bought home marionettes, which is what Prague is famous for.  Me, I bought home hand made hats.  Looking back now, I wish I had kept them.  I had some beautiful ones.  But there are always things you regret getting rid of. It’s the law.  I have never quite forgiven my mum for keeping the Pucci inspired siren suit from the Seventies and throwing away the Biba going away suit she had for her honeymoon.  I don’t think she has either.  In reality it matters not. She was way thinner than me in those days.  I tried on the siren suit once. I looked like a psychedelic sausage.

So. The hats.

Here is me, on my wedding day to UE:

I have posted this picture before, but the point of it here is to inform you that I bought the hat first, and worked the outfit round it.  Not only that, but I had seen the hat months before, and tried to persuade another friend to get married so that I could have an excuse to buy it.  She refused.  I was delighted when UE proposed. What worries me in retrospect is whether I was more delighted by the thought of wearing the hat than getting married? Who knows?

On Saturday I was taking photos left, right and centre and found a wonderful vintage clothes shop on Endell Street in Covent Garden.  It was called Blackout II.  They had gorgeous hats:

Yellow really isn’t my colour. If I wore this, I would look like a fried egg.  It is gorgeous though.  I fell most in love with this one:

I adore it. It’s very Carmen Miranda crossed with those hats that Deanna Durbin used to wear in the films on Saturday afternoon on BBC2.  It’s a good job the shop was shut or I’d have been forced to try it on.

I wandered down Endell Street and turned onto Longacre.  If you turn right here you come down past Covent Garden Tube and towards Leicester Square.  If you turn left you find yourself heading towards this monstrous edifice:

It’s a huge, masonic temple.  I always find it kind of menacing, and also a challenge. Girls are not allowed in.  I sometimes feel like kitting myself out from one of the Masonic regalia shops around here, and trying to break in, just to see what all the fuss is about. I have no doubt it would be dreary beyond words, which is why I’ve never given in to the urge. It would be such a disappointment. They’re probably all doing the pools, drinking half a shandy and comparing the blue prints of their latest shed.

Anyway. If you go down the road which is to the left in the picture, which I believe is called Great Queen Street (fnar, fnar).  You will find some more lovely shops, including Stephen Jones, the milliners.

Here is what is in the window this season:

Which is very this year’s Royal Ascot.

These:

Which are delicious, but a little pale for me.

This on the other hand, is the crowning glory:

It is what I call needful.

Jason proposed to me again a few days ago in a fit of wonderful romanticism.  I said yes, naturally.  I doubt that we’ll get around to organising anything. It was just nice to be asked.  It’s also nice to know that there’s a hat on standby should it ever come to pass.