Christmas

I can't believe I'm thinking of this already!

As the temperature heads up towards the mid 20s, I've been contemplating buying the dried fruit necessary to make christmas cakes and puddings, and on Sunday I ordered this:-

I wasn't actually planning to buy it just yet but had one of those panic moments where I envisaged leaving it until my Amazon shopping basket until mid-November and then suddenly discovering I couldn't get it anywhere for love or money.  So I bought it.

My only beef with it is that while Jacob will adore this, Sam would much prefer a Lego City one.  But at that price, it's not going to happen!

Chuggers

Chuggers are an absolute pet hate of mine.  I loathe the way that they all seem to be Tigger Incarnate, bouncing up to you with bottoms made out of spring: "Hey miss, why don't you put down those heavy bags and just chill with me for a while?  Because I'm bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy, fun fun fun fun fun!"  If only they were, like Tigger, the only one.

I'm normally fairly adept at avoiding them - don't make eye contact, walk just far enough round them that you're not invading their air space, keep on walking.  But today I 'm operating on a bad night's sleep and not quite enough coffee, and the sign above my head saying "Pester Me" wasn't helping either.  Suddenly, they were descending on me and my death-ray glare was malfunctioning.  The words "No", "Still No", and "Get out of my way, RIGHT NOW" might have been mentioned.

Now when I say I'm adept at avoiding them, I'm not kidding - I've never actually been interviewed by one, but I believe the process is that they ask you a few leading questions about the services provided by their charity and at the end of that, you're given the hard sell to leave your bank account details with them so they can syphon all your cash out of your bank account as well as donating one or both of your kidneys, if the chugger is particularly persuasive.

For me, it's counter productive - it makes me hate the charities that do it.  I don't want to have to spend the time when I'm out in York trying to avoid chuggers, I don't want to be accosted by some overly enthusiastic 20-something who won't take "fuck off" for an answer, and I really really don't want to give my bank account details to some random person with a clipboard. 

And do you know what's even more annoying than chuggers in the street?  the ones who COME TO YOUR HOUSE!  Yes, they knock on your door and ask if you've got a few minutes to talk about something, and I'm standing there with an apron on looking harrassed so of course I've got a few minutes to spare for you.  Come on in, take a pew, here's my debit card, have a kidney.

Of course it's the charities themselves who are to blame for adopting these tactics; but to all would-be chuggers out there, I have two words to say to you:  bar work.

Cuisenaire Rods

I've started using these when we practice Jacob's number bonds - they provide a visual accompaniment to basic arithmetic - and they're already making numeracy homework a lot less stressful.

Homework

I can't ever remember getting homework at Primary School.  I'm fairly certain this isn't my memory playing tricks with me because I can remember the thrill of getting my first homework on day one at Grammar School (it was French and I got 8 out of 12 - probably the only time I ever got a decent mark in French homework).  I also remember having to trace a map of Mesopotamia into my history exercise book - I didn't know how to use tracing paper to do this so drew it free-hand, and the history teacher didn't spot the difference.  Feel free to now boggle at just how freaky my memory is.


But I digress.

My children are in Primary School and they have homework on a regular basis.  In Sam's case (he is 5), he has a couple of new readers most days, plus a work sheet (usually numeracy) to complete over the week.  Jacob's new school recommends that parents spend 10 minutes every night listening to their children read their readers and 10 minutes on their times tables as well as the weekly numeracy homework tasks and spellings to be learned for a test on the Friday.  It may not sound like an awful lot, but factor in that they also have swimming lessons, aikido, choir and Anchor Boys after school during the week, and their bedtime routine starts at c. 7pm every night.


I'm starting to wonder when they'll find time to play.....

Guinness is Good For You

I did a bit of proper baking today and made a chocolate and guinness cake; the recipe is one of Nigella's, and while I find the lady herself a wee bit annoying, she has provided me with a good handful of staple recipes over the years. 

 
It's a very easy cake to make; I like the look of it - the dark colour of the cake, coupled with the creaminess of the topping - and it really is a very "damp cake" (as Nigella describes it, making it sound incredibly rude).  Taste-wise, I'm not convinced that it's as nice as Very Moist Chocolate Cake (that's my go-to recipe for chocolate cake); that has filter coffee in it, which adds a richness and intensity to the flavour that isn't quite there with this cake. 

That said, the cream cheese/icing/double cream topping is a real winner (and with those ingredients, how could it not be?).  I'm thinking that by adding some cocoa powder, I can use that as filling next time I make a VMCC.  The only problem is that there is a real danger that it might just make peoples' heads explode with the sheer gorgeousness of it all :)

Many thanks to Solveig for recommending this recipe; I'm always on the lookout for new stuff to try.

Giant Chocolate Buttons

We did some baking this afternoon.  I use the term loosely :)

I got the kids to draw some circles on baking parchment using some jar bottoms as a template - they used a big black marker so that they could still see it easily when the parchment was turned over.

I then melted 100g of dairy milk, and in separate bowl, 100g of white crispy chocolate (it was supposed to be just normal white, but the Co-op didn't have any other sort).

I then dropped a blob of the melted chocolate into each circle the kids had drawn and let them spread the chocolate out using a clean paintbrush.

We then covered them with sprinkles and put the parchment on a chopping board and then into the fridge to set.

Voila!  Easy peasy, not too messy, the kids enjoyed doing it and there is no way you can muck up the taste because it's still Dairy Milk at the end of the day :)

Opticians

Both Doug and I are short-sighted.  I'm - 8 in both eyes (that's the technical term for blind as a bat) and started wearing glasses at age 7.  So when Jacob announced that he was having difficulty seeing things from a distance, we both feared that son #1 had inherited our rubbish eyesight.

Two trips to the Opticians later, what we've realised is that Jacob just fancied getting a pair of glasses - there's nothing wrong with his eyesight at present.  So, a little irritated with him for lying to us, but relieved that he's ok for now.

Here he is with weirdly assymetrical pupils as the effects of the eyedrops that the Optician put in start to wear off:-

White Belt!

Jacob had his first grading in Aikido last week and we found out this week that he passed!  He's is now a white belt - 6 Kyu 1 Mon, to be precise.

Swimming

We've had mixed success with swimming lessons over the past couple of years.  We've been going to lessons in the Junior School pool that is five minutes/15 minutes walk from where we live - all wonderfully convenient.  The small snag is that they teach breaststroke, pretty much to the exclusion of every other stroke until Level 4, and try as he might, Jacob just can't do that stroke.

He is perfectly confident in the water -  he'll jump in, go underwater, swim on his back, go down water slides etc without any problem at all.  If he doesn't attempt to do any particular stroke, he can swim some way (unaided) on his front and further on his back, but watching his attempt to do the breaststroke is a painful experience.  It's all very well saying that it's the survival stroke, but if you can't swim it, it's not much cop as a survival tool.

Finally, after being handed the slip of paper from the instructor saying that Jacob would be in Level 2 again this term, I'd had enough.  Time to go further afield and stop being seduced by the sheer convenience of swimming lessons just down the road.  So, starting yesterday, we had swimming lessons at the aqua park just to the north of York - a five mile drive on the ring road in the rush hour, slightly more expensive lessons, but hopefully a good investment.

My initial impressons are positive - the pool is bigger, they can learn proper water entry and jumping/diving as well as swimming.  The floor of the pool is adjustable so it can be raised and lowered to the appropriate level for the classes, the teacher made an initial impresson on Jacob and he was really trying hard to demonstrate his abilities, and most importantly - they don't teach breaststroke until the kids can actually swim.

Sam's lesson was less impressive - they were down by one teacher due to a hospital emergency, so there was just one teacher to try and look after 10 small kids.  Watching Sam swim with floats is like watching someone have an epileptic fit.  But next week, he'll be in a group of five with a teacher to pay more attention to him, so I'm hopeful he'll be making progress soon.

Fingers crossed.

Lake Garda

A change of location for our summer holidays this year, and rather than a package holiday, we cobbled one together ourselves. Flights from East Midlands (excellent airport - not as busy/overpowering as Manchester or as desolate as Leeds Bradford) to Verona, car hire and a drive of 30 minutes to a campsite in Cisano on the shores of the Lake. Our accommodation was an air conditioned mobile home, courtesy of Thomson Al Fresco; not huge (and if we'd been cursed with bad weather, it would have been very cramped), but well appointed and comfortable.




The campsite was enormous (1000 pitches?), with playgrounds for the kids, bike hire, tennis, badminton, ping pong and crazy golf all available. The swimming pools were probably a bit too small for the campsite, but they're apparently building an aqua park on site for next summer - and there's always the Lake to swim in.

Driving round the lake was a very sedate affair - it took us an hour to drive the relatively short distance to Malcesine - so the Garda ferries were very useful. There was also v little parking in the towns around the Lake, and as we'd been upgraded to a mahoosive Alfa, that limited parking options even further.




We ventured onto the rotating cable cars to the top of Monte Baldo and took in the view, as well as watching the madmen paragliding off the top of it. It was a sign of just how hot it was that even though we'd been told to take our jackets to the top because it was normally v chilly at that altitude, when we got to the top it was still in the mid-twenties.




We also went to Sirmione and climbed to the top of the Rocco Scaglieri (in 38 degree heat, because we're idiots). Beautiful views from the top. We didn't manage to get round to the Groves of Catullus, unfortunately - it was so unbelievably hot that the thought of walking any further than the town was a non starter.




We also took in the Botanical Gardens in Gardone - beautiful gardens redeveloped by the artist Andre Heller which abound with art installations by the likes of Roy Lichenstein,




and the surreal Il Vittoriale - a monument to fascism that includes a battleship perched halfway up a mountain. (Un)fortunately for us, because the house was shut, that meant we couldn't walk up the side of the mountain to get a closer look at the boat - we stuck to walking round the gardens and observing the strange fascist symbolism in the ornaments.




What's good about the area is that although the further up the lake you go, the more mountainous it becomes, at the south of the lake it is very flat and there is a slew of stuff to do all in the same area. Garda Land (Italy's Alton Towers), Movieland, Sea Life and Park Aqua situated next to each other about five miles from our campsite, with a Safari Park another few miles along. The safari park was excellent - even though the wolves were in hiding - and we managed to wear out the kids completely by about 3pm.




So we didn't exhaust the area completely, leaving it a possible holiday destination for 2012. The older the kids get, the more likely it will be that they'll enjoy a day trip into Venice, for example, or a look at the centre of Verona. This year, we decided that if we went to Venice, Sam would probably fall in a canal - he is that sort of child :)

Back to School

I think sometimes that I'm more excited about the kids going back to school than they are. I like the structure that a new school term brings, the start up of after-school activities like swimming and Anchor Boys; I'm ludicrously excited about them getting new year planners and homework books, and letters from school informing us of what they'll be doing this term.

I loved the first morning of school term when, after six weeks of wearing shorts and crocs, they donned their uniforms and new school shoes - they look so smart! And then in the time it took us to walk to school, Sam's new shoes were scuffed and dirty and he'd got grass stains on one knee of his trousers :)

This time, Jacob has a new school - we have the relatively unusual situation where the Infant and Junior schools are separate; two different head teachers and different buildings (separated by a fairly large playing field) although, thankfully, the same uniform. We're not quite into the swing of things yet - our drop off/pick up routine has changed somewhat, and the Infants playground is full of mothers in the same boat muttering how they can't get their heads round having to commute between Juniors and Infants. Jacob hasn't really been forthcoming about how he's finding it, and as yet he hasn't brought home any readers or spellings books, so I'm not sure yet what is expected of him (us!) this year.

Sam is delighted to be in Year 1 - he hasn't bemoaned the lack of playing time that accompanies the shift from Reception, and seems most happy to be back at school. I'm waiting to see what readers they send him home with - he had just started on Level 5 (Green) before the summer holidays, so unsure whether his new teacher will just carry on with those or do her own assessment of reading abilities before handing out any new readers.

And the boys have their swimming lessons tonight - a new swim school and a new venue, so a bit nervous how this is going to work out. After two and a bit years of going local with very little to show for it, I'm making a bit more of an effort and taking them to lessons at Waterworld at Monks Cross - hopefully, they'll make some progress and make the slog round the ring-road in rush hour worthwhile :)

Holiday Reading

Just back from a fortnight in Italy and have found my holiday reading transformed by ownership of a Kindle; last holiday, Doug and I needed a small suitcase just for our books - this year we each took our Kindles and dropped our luggage weight by about 15kg.

I bought a whole slew of books from Amazon before we left, some from recommendations on other blogs, some because I like the authors' other work and some because they were cheap (lets be honest - 99p for a novel is pretty good going). It also allowed me the luxury of being selective and I was able to give up on a couple of my purchases after a few chapters (happily, the 99p ones).

Anyway, in no particular order:-

Last Train From Liguria by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Set partly in Italy in the run up to WW2 and partly in modern day Dublin, it is the tale of Bella, a rather neurotic doctor's daughter, who becomes governess in the household of an aristocratic Italian. Her charge, Alex, is a strange child with obvious mental frailties and absentee parents; his mother is a wealthy German Jew, and as Mussolini's race laws take hold of the country, it falls to Bella to help him and his baby sister escape from fascist Italy.

I liked this book despite finding Bella rather tiresome, and I found the end of the story staying with me long after I'd finished reading. I liked the fact that there was no neat ending - the characters in the modern day do not find out the truth about what happened to the characters of 1938 - so often in a book like this, the author likes to tie up the "mystery" of the past for the characters in the present.

One Day by David Nicholls

I gave into the hype and bought this and I'm glad I did. To begin with, it resonated - I graduated from college a year after the main protagonists, so the films, the music, the tv, the politics that are background to the story are all familiar. Also, I worked for BBC TV in the 90s and so the character of Dex and all the people he works with are highly reminiscent of all the utter nobbers that I encountered over that decade.

I don't really think this is the wünder book that some people have described it as - I enjoyed it on the whole, but don't feel the need to eulogise about it's greatness to others.

The Warsaw Anagrams by Richard Zimmler

Set in the Warsaw Ghetto this has the unusual premise of being a murder mystery. I felt that I could have read this book quite happily without the mystery being part of the novel - the description of Ghetto life in the years just before the Nazis mobilise their Final Solution is fascinating and moving. This was one of my 99p purchases - I would have been happy to have paid full price for it.

The Moment by Douglas Kennedy

I'm a sucker for Douglas Kennedy novels; in his earlier books he usually creates a situation for the hero or heroine that is so breathtakingly unfair that I feel like beating the books against the wall until all the nasty characters fall out :) The last couple that I have read, however, have moved away from this type of plot structure - possibly to their detriment, as I haven't enjoyed them quite as much. This has a good story - a love story told in flashback, set in West Berlin in 1984 - but I didn't find myself caring too much about the main characters and felt almost indifferent to the outcome. I did like the setting, however - a divided Berlin, just before the fall of the Wall, and descriptions of life on both sides of it.

The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato

A tale of two halves - one of which I enjoyed much more than the other. The present day story - a descendent of a famous Venetian glassmaker returning to the city of her birth to make a fresh start - was a bit dull, a bit obvious. But the tale of the famous glassmaker who deserts his city to make the mirrors in Versailles for Louis XIV was fascinating, as were the descriptions of 17th Century Venice.

The Boticelli Secret by Marina Fiorato

A bit of a curate's egg this one - too long by half, for a start, and all a bit silly and Dan Brown-ish. Also, if you have the Kindle version and aren't able to access the internet, you don't have a copy of Primavera to refer to - I'm sure it might have helped me enjoy this a bit more.

That said, I liked the main character of the book - a young Florentine prostitute - and the pace and feel of the story up until about two thirds of the way through. But then the plot twist (introduced in order to eventually facilitate a happy ending, I guess) is just so ridiculous that it spoils the story from then on.

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe

Totally dated but utterly fascinating. I was trying to imagine how it must have felt to have read this when it was first published - fairly shocking and revolutionary, I imagine - but it's probably not completely off the mark to describe it as a 1950s version of Sex and the City. Some excellent characterisation, particularly among the minor characters, although a rather limp ending.

Nothing to see here

I could spend all morning fiddling about with the layout or writing a witty post about life in general. Or I could get up and dressed and do the laundry, go to Tesco, pay for swimming lessons etc. Guess which one it's going to be?