he is a very bad man

Even though I rarely get time to sit in front of the computer for longer than ten minutes, I still want to know that our blog is here and people are still visiting each other and interested in each other's lives. I want to be part of that, so I hope we manage to sort the whole domain thing out and reappear as soon as possible and in the interim I'm going to see if I can get a few minutes to catch up with everyone else.

i am a bad man...

We have had a lovely afternoon. Mrs McMuffin's parents came over to look after Babycake for a couple of hours so that we could go out together. This is the first time we have been out together in 9 days. Of course, I have been out by myself several times, but poor Mrs McMuffin has been trapped indoors all of that time. She seemed a little bit overwhelmed by the pace of modern life. Everything just seemed faster than she remembered and there seemed to be more people too. I'm sure she will get used to it all again in no time. We went for lunch at an Italian restuarant in Bluewater. It was a gentle, pleasant meal. I made the mistake of asking for a glass of house red with my meal. The waitress looked at me blankly and said, "we don't do house wine." Fair enough, I thought, so I looked at the half dozen wines on offer, and I didn't recognise one of them because my Italian is crap. I asked the waitress if there was one that she would recommend. Again, she just looked at me blankly, and muttered, "I dunno..." In the end, I had a glass of Chianti, a large glass, which looked like a fairly small glass to me. It cost me £7.80. I know that this is how restuarants make their money, but it bothers me.

I have returned home to find that I have been lazy and ignored my emails from Typepad warning me that I had to remap my domain. I quickly set about this, but it appears that the new Typepad system may not be supported by my domain management company. Typepad is changing tomorrow, so there is a very real chance that we will disappear for a few days while I get things sorted. I haven't told Mrs McMuffin yet...She will not be happy. Please, dear friends, spread the word that we will be back, and do not forget us.

By the way, Babycake is becoming more lovely every day. I didn't realise how satistfying it would be to take his screaming, twisting, body from his grandfather, and for him to immediately become calm and still when I spoke to him. So this is attachment and bonding.

the return of the king

I was aimlessly filming Babycake today when suddenly he smiled. I thought you might like to see it. All I can say is, long live the King.

hello world

I have managed to swaddle the boy and get him out of my arms for the second time today. I miss normal life and those leisurely half hours reading blogs. I'm sure I'll get a chance again over the next couple of years. The boy is lovely, but I am knackered and finding it very hard to reconcile the advice with the reality. How can you sleep when the baby sleeps, if he will only settle on you and he's only supposed to sleep on his back in a crib, so you feel that you have to stay awake so you don't smother him? Mr McMuffin is far more relaxed about it all and reckons we should just go with what the boy is telling us he needs. So far that's a giant breast attached to a human pillow! It can't be all bad though as I still feel we've been blessed and find myself just staring at him for hours and hours. Bye.

still got time...

While poor Mrs McMuffin is already suffering from a lack of sleep and any time for herself, I have been finding the whole parent thing relatively easy. I get woken up a couple of times every night, but I can soon get back off to sleep. Babycake has decided that he cannot bear to be parted from her breasts. Apparently this is quite normal behaviour and goes on for a couple of weeks while he trains her to produce enough milk to meet his needs.

Having a baby hardly seems to have interfered with my routine at all. I get up at about the same time and play on the computer for a while. I go out shopping for a couple of hours every afternoon. I have decided that Mrs McMuffin will go shopping at the weekend for a couple of hours and I will keep the boy at home, and suffer any consequences for that.

Well, enough of all this baby stuff, this has been a good week for technology. I got myself a lovely Lacie external DVD writer. The Superdrive that is fitted into the Mac is now three years old and only burns at 1X speed, which was driving my a little bit mad. The new machine burns single layer discs at 16X speed and dual layer discs at 8X speed. A disc that used to take 50 minutes can now be burned in just under 4 minutes. The best bit is that it only cost £79. Wonderful.

I have also got us the new IPEVO phone, the first Skype phone for Macs. It is very cool looking and seems to work brilliantly. The only problem that I can see is that taking my telephonic technology into the future appears to involve a step backwards into the past. I now have a wired phone again. Surely it can't be that hard to make a bluetooth version of the phone?

Finally, I have found a really cool app. It's called CoverFlow. It does fantastic things with your iTunes cover art. You have to see it to believe it. You can download it from here.

poor slinky

We have tried and tried to make sure that Slinky doesn't get left out. He mopes around the house with a slightly depressed look on his face. I feel really sorry for him.

internet folk are lovely

First we get lots of people dropping by to wish Babycake and us well, then the presents start arriving! I am just so touched by it all. You are all lovely and I thank you all. Mind you, you're not quite as lovely as we are, but you are lovely just the same. Now that I am a parent I have started to worry about the risks that poor little Babycake may be exposed to as he grows up. I have already started to train him not to talk to strangers...unless he has met them on the internet, of course.

As you can imagine, this little boy's first few days on earth have been closely documented. We have been taking quite a few photos of the boy. We even made a movie of his birth. Of course, I won't be posting that, but here is a bit of audio stripped from the movie. It's the sound of Babycake's heart beating inside Mrs McMuffin a couple of hours before he was born.

thank you...

...so much for your kind comments. As you can imagine it's all been a bit of a shock to the system, but we're gradually getting used to having the boy around and he is good at letting us know when we're completely useless parents and take too long to do the simplest things. He really is a lovely little chap and Mr McMuffin is already using him as an excuse as to why he doesn't need to hoover or change the bedding, apparently we're just too busy! So far, the boy has been a real pleasure to have around, so we're not going to send him back, but we have reminded him that he's still on trial.

I have to say the biggest thank you ever to the midwives from my local health authority and raise a glass to the NHS, they did me proud. I was blessed to have two lovely women who understood my determination to have a home birth and went beyond the call of duty to help me to have one. Mr McMuffin and Gypsy Tart were amazing and sustained me through the whole thing.

I have to confess to an enormous amount of stupidity about birth. I thought that you were only in labour when you couldn't hold a conversation between contractions and they were coming every five minutes or so. Not true. By the time the midwife came out to me, she told me I was fully dilated and immediately offered me gas and air. I thought I might as well try the drugs seeing as they were free, but actually felt a bit of a fraud as I thought I should be in much more pain to have pain relief. Now bear in mind I'm no kind of high pain threshold martyr type, but I really had swallowed some of the horror stories about labour and because I wasn't drooling with agony thought I wasn't even close to the event. Anyway, the midwife thought the boy's arrival was imminent, but we had about another eight hours to go because he didn't want to untuck his arm and come out normally. Needless to say it wasn't pleasant and I was knackered, but again not as bad as I was led to believe. However, if I'd been told at the beginning that I'd be nineteen and a half hours in labour, I probably would have screamed for a caesarean from the start and who's to say that wouldn't have been a lot more sensible.

So, anyway we have the boy and he is just gorgeous despite his funny little hairy ears. Part of me can't quite believe that we get to keep him and I really hope that we can give this tiny little person what he needs to have a happy life.

welcome to the world

Babycake McMuffin was born today at 11:23. He weighs 7lb 12ozs. He is in fine health, with enormous feet. I suspect Mrs McMuffin of having an affair with a Hobbitt. Mrs McMuffin is knackered, but doing well too. Ms Gypsy Tart has been a brick throughout the whole affair. I am happy.

pushing and pushing

Good grief, she is still pushing. The threat of going to hospital seems to have worked wonders. The baby has crowned. He really will be with us any minute now.

soon...ish again

She is still pushing. I can almost see his head. I can't believe that Mrs McMuffin is now sitting in our new leather chair. The baby will be here any minute now.

push more

Still pushing...

push

She's in the pool. Pushing...Regretting it all. She has had enough. More to come...

soon...ish

The midwife is here. The pool is being filling as I type. Slinky is wondering what is going on. Ms Gypsy Tart is keeping everyone plied with tea. Not long to go now...I think.

no rest for the wicked

At least I managed to get about three hours sleep. Mrs McMuffin has been up all night suffering the torments of labour. Her waters have now broken and her contractions are now coming every five minutes or so. I've phoned the midwife and she is on her way. I also phoned Ms Gypsy Tart and she has popped over to check on her sister. Mrs McMuffin is now relaxing in the bath. She has given up on the TENS machine, judging it "just too irritating." More to come, I'm sure...

aaah...relief, of sorts

We've cracked out the TENS machine. Leaving to one side that it was a bit torturous fitting the big sticky pads to either side of Mrs McMuffin's spine, and then removing them because they weren't in the right place ( I didn't realise that Mrs McMuffin had such a hairy back. At least that's one less thing for her to worry about now.), and the sudden jolt of electricity that Mrs McMuffin suffered when she swapped the channels while the thing was still live, it seems to work. We're off to bed now. Mrs McMuffin is clutching her machine. Hopefully we'll both be able to get some sleep before the hard day that is likely to be ahead of us.

oooooohaaaahhhaahhooooh

I think he might be coming soon. Mrs McMuffin's contractions are now about 10 minutes apart. The pain causes her to catch her breath. I have been a good husband and given myself over to back rubbing duties. She's in the bath now trying to relax. I'll keep you posted...hopefully.

milking it

Mr McMuffin says I am being a drama queen and just hanging the whole thing out and it's time to confess that the boy arrived last week! Of course he didn't really, he's still very much a wriggling bump, but he might decide to hurry things along to avoid being crushed by the increasing amount of contractions today. They're still not that regular, so we're carrying on as normal and will probably go to the cinema again this afternoon. Mr McMuffin has caught the cleaning and fixing things bug and at this very moment is cleaning the window in the dining room and muttering about painting the door. I'll get worried when he wants to scrub the kitchen floor, that's obviously my job.

another day of waiting

We have no idea what happened to the site earlier today, but now it is restored I can tell you that the Bairn is still hanging in there. I've been having more contractions on and off today and feeling quite sorry for the boy, he must be getting truly squished. I had one this morning which was so strong I couldn't move from my prone position. I managed to yell for Mr McMuffin to come and help me get to a more comfortable position, but he was downstairs on the phone to Gypsy Tart joking that he hadn't seen me for an hour or so and I could actually be in labour, so he couldn't hear me.

We went to see another film and for some strange reason I decided at the last minute that Jarhead was probably going to be crap and we should see Memoirs of a Geisha, as on balance I'd enjoyed the Geisha book a fraction more. Huge mistake on my part and we couldn't be bothered to stay until the end as it was just too boring. If the boy still isn't here tomorrow, we'll try and see another film and make the most of the adult cinema experience.

I told Mr McMuffin about the eviction notice that Dooce wrote for her baby and he has been inspired. You will probably see what he's done tomorrow as it's getting a bit late now and we're tired after being woken bright and early by Slinky defending his cat flap from an intruder. By the time we got downstairs he was outside slashing and screaming, clumps of fur all over the place. I'm pleased to report that the arthritic, one eyed monster that is Slink managed to emerge the victor. He's been a bit quiet all day, but has finally got his purr back.

what it is ain't exactly clear

Apologies, I couldn't resist slightly altering the title of yesterday's post to fit in with today's (although not enough to make it completely accurate), but I'm hoping there's no need for a man with a gun tomorrow. Last night was a little tiring as I kept being woken up by strange stirrings and crampy like nastiness (nothing to do with Mr McMuffin!), but it's all slowed down again now and practically stopped.

In an attempt to distract myself from the events taking place in my very own body I have become an expert in sublimating my anxieties into cleaning the house and washing everything in it. Mr McMuffin has been very tolerant of this activity, but drew the line when I wondered aloud whether it would be offensive to tell people to wash their hands before they touch the Bairn. I have to say that I wouldn't touch a newborn without washing my hands as their immune systems are so immature, particularly someone else's, but that just might be the Howard Hughes in me.

So today will be another day of waiting, but I'm staying in the house and will try to rest up and not notice what needs scrubbing again, and try not to chase up another load of washing.

something's happening here

I completely forgot the midwife was coming round this morning, but was quite pleased to see her as I'd had a show last night and another one this morning, so at least had something to tell her. If I'm not delivered of the Bairn by Monday she will come and do a membrane sweep, which not only sounds rather unpleasant as an intervention, but as if I am gathering dust. If the Bairn still refuses to come out and play, then we're talking induction a few days later. However, Mr McMuffin has been doing his best to help with those old fashioned remedies, with the exception of walking, of course.

I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions apparently, only I thought they would be a bit more dramatic than they are. I remember a friend's partner going on and on about them, so I thought they'd be a bit more spectacular than slight cramping and tightening of the muscles, but my midwife pointed out that I was having one when she tried to measure me today and I hadn't even noticed. I suppose I'm not one of those women who is highly attuned to their body's workings! I hope this means I have 'no sense, no feeling', but I bet I'm not that lucky.

so popular

Waitrose is obviously the place to be on a Monday afternoon. Within the space of twenty minutes Mr McMuffin and I had bumped into three neighbours (including Rock Cake) and the nice Ukrainian woman from my antenatal classes. I was pleased to hear that the nice woman had a healthy little boy weighing 9lb 8oz just before Christmas. She proudly announced that she'd had a normal birth with no pain relief and I couldn't help noticing her completely flat stomach. Now she's either an inspiration, or she's taken all the luck and there's someone in the group who's going to be delirious with drugs throughout labour and the owner of a jelly belly for the rest of their lives. Please don't let it be me. Still no sign of the Bairn.

no sleep until the bairn is born

We went to bed a couple of hours ago, but neither of us can seem to get to sleep. It's now nearly 2am and I am sitting in front of the computer writing this and drinking tea. I wonder why we can't sleep? My mum phoned today and didn't even bother talking to me. Apparently, she was very nice to Mrs McMuffin, telling her that it was perfectly normal to be anxious. She also said that she had been very anxious when she had been waiting for me to arrive, but my dad had been a great support and had helped calm her. It was a bit strange hearing that. He was never that great at being a parent, but it's nice to hear that he played his part well in the beginning. I wonder what kind of father I'll be? Not like my dad, I'm sure, but I imagine I will have my own little foibles. Nothing too terrible, I hope. At least I will be able to introduce him to the joys of Mac and rock and roll music.

By the way, although I had planned to download the new iLife 06 suite from one of those free sites, I just couldn't be bothered waiting. It looked as if they were having some difficulty splitting the apps, so I thought I would go and buy my very own copy. It is an amazing suite of programmes. You just seem to get so much for you money. It is probably worth the money for the huge improvements they've made in iPhoto alone. The iWeb app is a little bit basic, but nice enough, I suppose. I have already worked out how to modify the site templates. The best bit about the whole suite though is how well integrated it all is, the apps with each other, and with .mac. You really need to have a .mac account to make the best use of iLife 06. I can see how that might get very expensive. If Apple had their way, we would be uploading tons of stuff onto their servers. It's probably just as well that it is really easy to buy extra storage space.

Tonight I have been messing around with Garageband's podcast studio. It's great. I am now sorely tempted to start creating some podcasts. Maybe I will, if I can think of anything to say. It has occured to me that I could broadcast a recording of Mrs McMuffin giving birth, but who would want to listen to 8 hours of her swearing and abusing me. She has a foul mouth on her sometimes, and I wouldn't be surprised if she allows it free rein when the time comes.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention iWork, a 30 day fully functioning trial comes with iLife 06. I was initially very positive about Pages last year when it was first released, but quickly grew tired of it's limitations and very poor performance. I eventually became so tired of the spinning beach ball that I put it away for good. I still had time for Keynote, though. I often use it to make pretty charts rather than use Excel. Anyway, I have spent the day preparing a report for work, and I have done it all with Pages 2 and Keynote 3. Pages just seems to work now. It's responsive and feature rich. It now has all the features we expected in the first draft. Mail merge, easy arranging of pages, different layouts on the same page and so on, it has it all. A very nice update, and definitely worth the £55 Apple are asking.

I better go to bed now or else my day will be torture tomorrow. Goodnight to all of you, wherever you may be.

b-day has arrived

Today's the day. The Bairn should be making an appearance. Mrs McMuffin is fit to pop. We have bought everything that any self-respecting child could want. But, we've obviously missed something because he just will not come out. I hope he realises that the longer he stays in there, the pointier his head will be.

us in south park

Karan has introduced us to the joys of the South Park Studio. Don't we look lovely?

super duper heroes

Once again, I'm probably the last person in the universe with internet access to find this, but even if you've seen it before, I'm sure you'll agree it's well worth looking through again.

jim noir

Jim Noir's new album, Tower of Love is my favourite album of the moment. I've been listening to it practically non-stop for the last couple of days. It reminds me a lot of the Beta Band's 3 EPs album of a few years ago. In fact, it is Noir's first 3 EPs too, and a couple of new tracks. It's all whimsical nonsense of the kind that only the British do really well, for some reason. It is just lovely. Here are a couple of tracks for you. The first is I Me You I'm Your and the second is The Only Way.

we shall tell all

Just to reassure our readers, some of whom are my own flesh and blood, that despite our notorious unsociability on occasions ( we really do mean to return the messages you leave on the answer machine, honest) we shall let you know when something starts to happen with the Bairn.

He's not due until Sunday and Mr McMuffin and I think he might bide his time and decide to show himself the week after this. We have no idea why we feel this might be the case, although it might be wishful thinking on my part-he's so much easier to look after where he is right now, so I'm not in any desperate hurry to go through the ordeal of childbirth just to satisfy my curiosity, he'll come along when he's good and ready. I hope he's not too late though, as my midwife did say something about inducing after 12 days over the due date and I'd definitely have to deliver in hospital then.

At the moment we're both just trying to relax and wait things out. My version of relaxation has been frenetic cleaning, tidying and organising of all our rubbish, but that's fine as I've still got some energy and I continue to sleep better now than I have done for the last five months. Mr McMuffin has been a sweetheart and indulged me with umpteen shopping trips for all those last minute items that I'm sure the boy cannot survive without. Tomorrow we're going to see a film and carry on just enjoying being the two of us, for as long as that lasts.

the best computer application that i have ever seen, ever...

Have a look at this. It's free and will run on Windows and OSX. It is absolutely mind-boglingly fantastic.

macbook pro

I want one.

our beautiful neighbourhood

Well, they're all lining up to live in McMuffinland. We have Ms Ginger Cake moving into the house adjacent to us in February and now Gypsy Tart and Rock Cake have decided that they like this street so much they're going to buy a house on it. As their landlady didn't want to sell the house they are renting, they have kept their eyes open for houses for sale down the street and have put an offer in one today. Sadly they're not going to be just opposite us, but round the corner. Although we could still yell out of our bedroom windows at each other, if we really wanted to. We always thought we would like to encourage a little community of nice people in this neck of the woods and it seems to be working. Who's next?

a lot like love

We just watched Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet in A Lot Like Love a surprisingly sweet romantic comedy with a lovely soundtrack. There is a real chemistry between the two leads which serves to fill in any gaps that might exist in the script. A very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

cocorosie

It's been a good day. I've discovered some more new music. This time the band are called CocoRosie. Difficult to descibe their sound, but I guess they are a little bit like Portishead, but without the beat. I think they are hip and trendy New York lesbians who are very friendly with Antony (and The Johnsons), in fact he sings on one of their songs. Here are a couple of tracks from their most recent album, Noah's Ark. The first is the title track, Noah's Ark and the second is the very effective Teckno Love Song.

the hold steady

I've discovered some new music. The Hold Steady are a rock band from New York who make music like they used to. They've released a couple of albums. Their most recent one is called Separation Sunday, a loose concept album about the trials and tribulations of strung out Halleluiah. They make solid rock and roll music, with a nod to the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Alex Harvey, but it's all in the delivery. The lead singer, Craig Finn, comes on like a demented preacher. Here are a couple of tracks for you listen to. The first is Cattle and the creeping things and the second is Crucifixion cruise.

damn...

Another Apple wireless keyboard bites the dust. This is the second time that I have had to buy a new keyboard after throwing a cup of coffee over it. I let it dry and everything, but it just doesn't work. I don't think you can put these keyboards in the dishwasher. It's just as well that Apple dropped the price a while ago.

mostly i have been...

Mrs McMuffin is right, this has been a strange few days. Waiting and waiting and waiting. I had to have something to entertain myself, so I've tried to sort out our DVDs. The problem for us was that they were just taking up too much space. I decided to take a leaf out of Steve's book, although Mrs McMuffin would never let me spend lots of money on another computer gadget. I bought a very nice CD/DVD storage box from Maplins instead. We'll need a couple of them to start with, but they still take up a lot less space. I've found this great little app called DVD Cache which created a superb catalogue, filled with all sorts of details, of all our films. You type in the name of the film and it downloads tons of info from the internet. Very, very simple and very, very fast. It only took me about a day them all in. It also does books and music in the same way. The app can also produce some interesting stats too. It turns out that we have 242 DVDs with a total of 362 discs and they cost us about £4462.20 over the last four years or so.

DVD Cache also adds a picture of the DVD box to the entry, and I've spent the last couple of days playing with them. I ran the images through Downsize (another very useful app!) so that the images were of a uniform size, more or less, and I rounded the corners and added a drop shadow. I then used Galarie to create a nice little web site, although I had to play around with HTML to make it look nice. I uploaded a zipped folder of all the images to a Typepad photo album, opened all 11 web pages created by Galarie in Dreamweaver and did a global search and replace, making sure that all the image links pointed in the right direction. I then uploaded the web pages one at a time into Typepad, they're only a few kbs in size, so that didn't take long. That wasn't so hard, now was it?

You can view the finished masterpiece here.

All we have to do now is write the index for the boxes.

Now, where is that baby?

priorities

With the imminent arrival of the Bairn, you just have to wonder why Mr McMuffin has prioritised cataloguing our DVD collection and leaving them in piles in the dining room (where the birth pool is due to go) and I have decided that it is absolutely necessary to throw away half my shoes and leave them in a big IKEA bag in the new spare bedroom (Mr McMuffin and I decided to swap bedrooms yesterday, including beds). The whole house is in uproar as we feel the need to reorganise and throw away everything. I assume this is normal nesting behaviour, but we are both very messy and dirty birdies and a good clean up is now needed.

blue day at the beach

I forgot I'd taken this photo. We went down to see my brother and his partner in Eastbourne on Boxing Day. We had a lovely time with much drinking and merriment, including an exhausting hike around the town. The following morning at around 7.30am I looked out of our bedroom window to find that it had started snowing, and everything was a steely gray blue. The sky, the sea and the beautiful pier. Everything was blue.

i'm such a bozo

Mrs McMuffin will look at me differently from now on. My self-proclaimed technical prowess has suffered a serious dent this evening. If you remember we got a lovely new LCD TV a couple of months ago. The picture is great with DVDs but has always been a little bit grainy with SKY. It was my understanding that this had something to do with the signal not yet being good enough for the hardware. Mrs McMuffin accepted my explanation with barely a murmur because I promised her that all would be well in a few months when SKY started broadcasting in HD. I found out tonight as I was playing around with the SKY menus that I had the screen size set wrong. I changed it and, as quick as you can say high definition television, the picture became clear and sharp again. It's a funny old game, life...

my year

I started the year in a job I hated, surrounded by a fair number of people who hated me. Within six months I quite liked the job and the people conceded that I wasn't so bad after all. Obviously, I then got a job doing something else, but I'll be back to the original job when I go back to work.

In April, Mr McMuffin and I decided that it was time to try for a baby again, after feeling very sad for three years about losing our honeymoon baby. I got pregnant immediately, which was unexpected and made me curse Mr McMuffin's little swimmers, as I had assumed we'd have a little more time to prepare. I then suffered and made everyone else suffer for four months until my exhaustion and psychotic behaviour abated. Since then, I have felt fantastic, healthy and energetic. I have also lost all personal modesty and am happy to drop my clothes at the drop of a hat for Mr McMuffin's series of iBump photos. We had a couple of scares during the pregnancy and I had a big shock when we found out the Bairn is a boy after assuming that I would have a girl. I am now very happy to be having a little boy, even though I shall be a bad mother and make him sit down to pee.

I have also suffered unsolicited advice posing as instructions I must follow, complete strangers giving me shit because I have a bump, horror stories from thoughtless gits about pregnancy and labour (apparently so and so's sister was in labour for six months, you know and then they had to cut her in half to get the baby out and glue her back together) and strange comments about how small the bump is for my dates (even though I'm on the 95th centile for size!). I have now given up and decided that the time for being the object of other people's projections is over, which is not much of an achievement given how close I am to the main event. After yet another ultrasound scan this evening, I can confirm that the boy has his head firmly down and is not breech. Mr McMuffin and I now have to get the house good and ready, because I've seen the hospital delivery suite and am more determined than ever to try to avoid it.

I have also given up fags and booze for the last eight months, cut down on coffee and denied myself some cheeses and pates. I have eaten non stop for six months and despite the cake and chocolate (not my usual thing) have also eaten very healthily. I have slept very badly for five months until this last week and despite the constant toilet trips, am getting a reasonable amount of sleep now.

I have tidied and cleaned the house on more occasions than is good for me and threatened Mr McMuffin with divorce if he persists in walking on clean bath mats with his shoes on and making them filthy on the very day they're put down clean. I have finally accepted that I shouldn't be lifting things after doing myself a mischief and am frustrated at Mr McMuffin's slothfulness at adapting and tidying the house for our baby. Apart from this and the strange McMuffin traits he may have contributed to the Bairn, I am delighted that he is the father of the boy and will be raising him with me, I don't think I could have chosen a better man for the job. A tidier man and more industrious man, yes, but not a better one.

Poor little Slinky made a fantastic recovery from losing an eye and seems back to his normal obnoxious self. He's been a bit under the weather recently as he's still squaring up to other cats and getting infected from their scratches and at the moment has conjunctivitis in his one good eye. Mr McMuffin and I have become quite the experts at sneaking up on him and putting ointment in his eye. We make a very good team if you want to hire us to deal with your pet.

We all worked very hard to give Gypsy Tart and Rock Cake the wedding they wanted and all the friends and associated family contributed so much time and effort that it really touched me to see how loved my sister and her husband are. It was a wonderful day and definitely worth all the anxiety and trauma. My sister was truly beautiful and they both looked absolutely overjoyed to be married.

Mr McMuffin and I had a gorgeous time in Paris and I'm really glad that we made the effort to have some time on our own. I only wish it could have been longer and we'd gone to Poland as well. Still, the Bairn will be old enough to leave in about 18 years, so we'll try and go then.

Apart from feeling a slight twinge about continuing world inequality, terrorism and natural disasters, it's been a very good year overall for me and I'm very excited about 2006 and meeting the wriggling bump and finding out whether he really does have Grandfather McMuffin's nose.

...and finally, I really don't have that much trouble getting out of the bath. As long as I don't let the water drain before I get out, I can just about use the buoyancy to help me up. Now socks are a different matter. I would also like to point out (I'm still insecure and vain) that the iPop photo has both my legs in it. My arase and thighs may be bigger, flabbier and have an interesting texture that they lacked before, but they are not that big. (Ladies, I'm sure you'll know why I felt the need to say that.)

leeks with capers and salmon

I keep meaning to post about this recipe. I found it in a cooking magazine a few weeks ago and I have become quite obsessed with it. I can't remember which magazine it was in. The recipe is so simple that I didn't need to keep it. Who would have thought that leeks and capers were soul mates. Here goes:

Finely slice about 1lb of leeks and place in a small roasting tin. Add a small jar of around 150gm of capers that have been preserved in white wine. Give the whole lot a generous dousing of olive oil, and season to taste. Mix it all together, and place four skinned and seasoned salmon fillets on top. Give the salmon a little bit of olive oil too. Cover with tin foil and cook in a medium oven (I don't know the temperature. Our oven is crap and the numbers have all worn off, so I set the dial to around one o'clock, if that's any help.) for about 40 minutes. Remove the tin foil for the last 10 minutes of cooking. I serve it with a lovely creamy mash into which I stir a couple of spoons of pesto and some oven roasted tomatoes. This makes a very satisfying meal. We're having it tonight, in fact.

2005...a personal review

We had a lovely New Year's Eve. We had some friends around and we spent the evening chatting and drinking and eating. We dranks lots and lots of margaritas. I had to stand at the food processor for hours squeezing limes, but it was worth all the effort. We had round a couple of friends, who don't have cake names, but they know who they are, who had some fantastic news. They are going to have a baby. Congratulations to them both.

Well, it's that time of the year again. Here is a little review of the year I have had. It's in no particular order.

The year started well because I found a new job after only a few days of unemployment. Left my job after only 11 weeks. Received the worse reference in the history of references. Still haven't written my dissertation. Managed to acquired 111 albums released in 2005. Gazed longingly at the new G5 iMacs. Went to Madeira for the fifth time, my first long holiday with a group of friends. Became obsessed with eBay. My therapist decided that enough was enough and emigrated to New Zealand. Spoke to my brother for the first time since his wedding last July. He tried to play games with me, so haven't spoken to him since. Loved Mrs McMuffin too much and we made a baby. Spent the best part of the summer helping to plan Ms Gypsy Tart and Mr Rock Cake's wedding. Helped Mr Rock Cake create a concrete platform in our garden. Ms Ginger Cake and I catered for the wedding of the year and received lots and lots of compliments. Slinky lost an eye in a fight with another cat. Spent three months unemployed. Began to sink into depression. Lost interest in our blog. Found a new job. Quickly came out of depression. Found another new, better, job with the same company. Struggled not to gain weight. Celebrated my third year of marriage to Mrs McMuffin by going to Paris for the second time. Climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower and didn't once wonder what it would be like to jump off it. Recovered some interest in our blog. Despite growing a goatee beard which I stroked for days on end, I'm still no further forward with my plans for world domination. Started to clear out the real room of shame, the room where we have stored the stuff we brought with us from our our other house five years ago and never taken out of the boxes. I have been cutting down on my drinking. Drank approximately 100 bottles of red wine, 10 bottles of white wine, 6 bottles of pudding wine, 1 bottle of Ameretto (and another couple of bottles of various liqueurs and spirits) 3 pints of bitter, 45 gallons of tea (milk but no sugar), 145 gallons of coffee (black, instant, expresso and cafetiere)... Ate 68 lbs of chocolate. Smoked 10950 cigarettes. Attended the Mac Expo with Ms Victoria Sponge. Bought a new iPod with video, but couldn't use it for the first few weeks because I was worried about scratching it. Got a case for my new iPod. Listened to music on my iPod every single day. Saw around 900 films, both new and old. Read 3 novels. Read 45 Mac magazines from cover to cover, adverts and all, twice. Spent about 1500 hours playing on the computer. Ate out 3 times, apart from holidays (why eat out when I cook so much better than they do). Filled the dishwasher at least 300 times. Emptied the dishwasher at least 120 times. Rewashed dishes in the dishwasher at least 50 times. Changed bedding at least twice. Wiped up Slinky's poo 4 times. Suffered the indignity of Slinky jumping on my chest one morning and waking me by pissing in my face. Slept around 2190 hours. Lived with semi-psychotic wife for best part of nine months. Tried hard not to use anything in the house after Mrs McMuffin had tidied up. Tried to learn how to levitate so that I wouldn't have to walk on the kitchen floor. Still haven't become independently wealthy. Still loving Mrs McMuffin. Had around 420 baths or showers. Washed my hair 380 times. Had my hair cut 5 times. Loved Nip/Tuck and Weeds. Loved Lost for the first few episodes until I lost interest in the whole thing. Was awed by the fantastic sound of the £15 Sonic Impact Class T-Amp. Started to learn about electronics so that I can put the amp in a better looking box. Got some lovely new speakers for Christmas. Looking forward to the birth of our son in a couple of weeks.

I hope you all have a great year.

more christmas

As well as having a lovely relaxing Christmas morning, I got some great presents. My speakers, lovely Kef Q5s, are just as good as I had hoped. I have mounted them onto the wall with very neat little bracket things. I have actually done this twice because Mrs McMuffin was unhappy with where I put them the first time, so I had to take them off, repairing the damage caused by the screws, and put them on the opposite wall. I have had a little bit of trouble with the speaker bracket things (I am calling them this because they are not really brackets, but more two little knobbly things, one fits to the wall, while the other fits to the speaker) because although they are supposed to hold speakers that weigh up to 6Kgs, my speakers only weigh 3.5Kgs, I just couldn't bring myself to belief that they would support the weight. I am now quite convinced that if the speakers fall off the wall then it will be because of my poor handymanship.

It is all very neat, but the problem I now have is that the speakers boom at loud volumes, so I guess no really loud music for me. Mr Rock Cake and I were lamenting the poor choices we have made in the wife department the other day. We have married two sisters with very sensitive hearing, both of them hate loud music, loud TV, loud voices, generally anything that is loud. The only thing is that both Mr Rock Cake and I are very loud people. We love to talk loudly, we love the TV up loud and more importantly, we just love our loud rock and roll music. Apparently, Ms Gypsy Tart has told Mr Rock Cake that he shouldn't be listening to loud music now because he is older, and older, more mature, people only listen to music quietly. He didn't say, but I can't imagine that they didn't have a row after that remark. Although, he did allow her to make him throw away two speakers from his four speaker system when they moved into their current home without so much as a mutter under his breath.

Anyway, the speakers are great, and for the moment, I am still allowed to listen to music without headphones. This seems like a good time to quote a little bit of Ronnie James Dio.

Back to Christmas. I was lucky enough to get some great DVDs too. I got the box set of the first series of the new Doctor Who. I have managed to miss watching a single episode of this, and I am looking forward to wallowing in all things Doctor Who at some point this week. I also got the first series of the Ricky Gervais comedy, Extras. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was easily the funniest thing I have seen on TV all year. The episode with Kate Winslett had me crying with laughter and Ashley Jensen's character, Maggie, is quite lovely. I can't wait for the new series.

christmas...and more chocolate cake

I know Christmas has come and gone, but I thought you would all like to know that we had a lovely time. We went to Ms Gypsy Tart and Mr Rock Cake's for dinner on Christmas day. Mr Rock Cake prepared a fine feast. We stuffed ourselves and drank ourselves silly and then tried to play some games. I must admit, as much as I enjoy cooking for the hordes on Christmas day, it was great that I didn't have to do anything. We had a quiet restful morning opening presents and gently preparing ourselves for the day ahead. It was lovely. Oh, I did make some canapes and a big chocolate cake, for those people who can't stand Christmas pudding. I made a huge tray of blinis topped with smoked salmon, creme fraiche and caviar, and other bits and pieces. I completely overloaded the blinis but they looked, and tasted, fantastic. The chocolate cake was yet again another version of this cake. I think I really have cracked it this time. It was fantastic. Here is the revised recipe:

Butter and line the bottom of a 8-9cm square cake tin. Using an electric whisk, beat together 250g butter and 300g light muscovado sugar until fluffy. Added a 100g plain flour and 100g self-raising flour and 5 eggs. Beat it all together. It might look as if it's splitting for a second, but just keep beating. Pour 300g of melted dark chocolate, once it has slightly cooled, into the mixture and beat until fully combined. Spoon into the tin and bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes at 160C (fan) 140C/gas mark 3. The cake should be risen with a crust on top. Test it with a skewer. Let the cake cool in the tin for a little while before tipping it upside down onto a cooling rack. This will give you a lovely flat surface to cover later. You might want to put a board with a little weight on the cake while it cools completely as this will help to flatten the crispy bottom (top) of the cake. When the cake is completely cool carefully slice the cake through the centre.

The cake is covered in a beautiful rich ganache. It is very straight forward to make. Melt 300g dark chocolate, once it has cooled slightly, mix in 300ml of double cream. By the way, if the chocolate separates for whatever reason and it starts to look as if you have made a complete hash of mixing the chocolate and cream together (how hard can that be, I hear you ask) just keep whisking and it will gradually come back together. I have made this cake a few time now, and one of the other problems I have faced is my big bowl of ganache suddenly solidified. I solved this problem easily too. Stick it in the microwave for a few seconds and then whisk it back into shape. Be careful when reheating the ganache, you only want to gently reheat it, you do not want to burn the chocolate. If you over heat it and the chocolate starts going hard and grainy then you will need to start again, although the chocolate is still perfectly edible so don't throw it away!

Anyway, back to the cake. The cake should be filled with a thinnish layer of ganache, cherries that have been soaked in Kirsch, I bought a 500g jar of black cherries in kirsch from the supermarket, and oddles of whipped double cream. Drain the cherries, reserving some of the syrup. Using a pastry brush, gentle brush some of the syrup over both halves of the cake. It will probably take quite a lot of syrup, but be careful because you don't want to end up with a sodden mass that will break apart when you try to lift it. Once the ganache has cooled a little bit, spread a thinnish layer on one side of cake. Use the rest of the ganache to cover the cake once you have finished assembling it. Cover the layer of ganache with the cherries, then whip up 300ml of double cream with a little Kirsch, not the syrup, but the real stuff, to taste, and spread that over the cherries. Top the whole thing with the other half of the cake and cover with the remaining ganache.

This really is the best chocolate cake in the world. It really is just an updated version of the Black Forest Gateux of my youth, but it is very, very lovely.

ipop

I thought it was time to update this picture of Mrs McMuffin and her bump. The baby is due in only two weeks and she really is fit to pop. It has been a fascinating experience watching her get bigger. She can no longer do the simple things in life, like put on her own socks. I have to admit it is a little bit odd helping my wife to put on her socks. The whole getting bigger thing can be quite amusing too. I have discovered a new game that be played by a heavily pregant woman and a slightly sadistic man. The rules are simple. The woman can't know that you are playing it, while the man must never acknowledge that the woman is pregnant. Gameplay is even simpler. The man drops something on the floor and then asks the woman to pick it up for him. There are hours of cheap fun to be had playing this game. It helps me while away the long winter evenings.

Mrs McMuffin has discovered a whole new problem for pregnant women, a problem that you never see mentioned in any of the literature. How do you get out of the bath? She has solved this problem by allowing the bath to overflow while she gently slips over the edge of the bath to flop on the floor. I then help her to get up off the floor. It's an unusual solution, but so creative.