little baby...

I thought you would like to see how the bairn is coming on. He seems to be growing before our very eyes. I swear that he's bigger each morning. I took this photo today in the briliant spring sunshine, with him lying on the garden table. Doesn't he look lovely.

i do the mummy thing

Having learned the required conversational formula, today I asked a woman how old her (rather cute) baby was and was rewarded with a big smile and an eager response. I shall fear being caught out no longer, I have passed as a Mummy. Tomorrow I shall explain just why bad things should happen to Ralph Lauren.

as one might have imagined...

...the Community Safety Dept. merely signposted other services such as the graffiti hotline, calling the Police, contacting the licensing people to discuss concerns about selling alcohol to underage drinkers and trying to identify the yobs. So far, so much common sense, but where is the integrated response they advertised?

Anyway, as I spend so much time around home at the moment, I decided to find out a little bit more about the area. So yesterday I walked into town to have a look at the local museum. It was rather dull and Babycake fell asleep instantly. However the curator was very helpful and rummaged around in the storage area until he found a couple of ordnance survey maps of the area, including one from 1868 which even showed our old outside toilet. It was amazing when we compared the map of 1834 with the 1868 one to see how much building had occurred in the area in which we live and I wonder if the locals moaned about all the development back then, as we do now. I'd love to know a bit about the people who lived in our home and imagine what their lives were like, so I think I'll go back another day and make full use of their resources.

Part of the reason that I became obsessed with finding a comfortable carrying sling for Babycake is my prejudice against pushchairs and prams. I hate them with a passion and until this week had only taken the pushchair out twice. I'm not sure why I decided to give it another try (Possibly as Babycake now looks older, less people want to touch him, so I feel he can be a bit more exposed to the world) and I now realise that Babycake really likes being in it and I have been depriving him for the last few months.
However, it now makes me fair game for comments on the boy and questions about him and marks me out as a Mummy. Now, of course I'm aware that I am the mother of a child and I love him very much, but I am rubbish at doing the Mummy thing. It was painfully clear at the clinic yesterday (where Babycake has his weight measured) that I just don't have the conversational skills to talk with the other Mummies. Bless the woman who persevered with talking to me as I have now learned that the topics are rather prescribed: Child's age, weight and whether they sleep through the night (apparently they should sleep through from six weeks, someone had better tell Babycake!). You should also comment on how much the child resembles the mother and on no account raise any areas of difficulty. Finally, do not breastfeed past a couple of months or you will probably be thought of as some hippy, babywearing freak. Frankly, I just wanted to scream out loud that a good 10% of the time I am bored out of my skull and in sore need of stimulating conversation and I'm sure all the other women did too. But we all sat there, chattering and smiling and pretending that having our children weighed wasn't just another dull event in our dull days.

green things and yobs

I have been trying over the last week to get the garden into shape and have been ably assisted in destroying the triffid-like lavatera by none other than Gypsy 'smash and chop' Tart. She really is the girl you need to know when it comes to destruction and it was the work of an hour to dig up this monster bush and chop it into small pieces. It was pretty much dead anyway, having flowered through the winter, it decided to expire in the spring and I now have to find some new plants to fill the rather large gap.

I also started some work on the front garden and planted some lavender. It was just as well I didn't get round to the other half of the garden as a young yob thought he'd drape his skinny and spotty little body all over it and roll around, at least his friends had the grace to apologise, even if the offender was too stupid to string a sentence together. We seem to have a swarm of yobs at the moment as two nights ago we heard stones being thrown at our front window and found another incoherent and intoxicated yob and chums. They had the gall to still be standing outside the front of the house looking very pleased with themselves when Mr McMuffin went to investigate the noise. This yobbery has all gone on for far too long now and the petty vandalism seems to be increasing. My theory is that since a troubled estate went all CCTV'd, the yobs have moved off into other areas and ours is just one of them. I think it's now time we moved them on to a different area as I'm getting fed up with their antics and it's only going to get worse as the weather improves. As I've got a few weeks of maternity leave left I think I shall become the scourge of the local council and Police force and get some value from all the local taxes I've paid. Right, I'm off now to give them a ring, wish me luck.

four things...

1. It is that time of year again. I have managed to mess up our computer and am in the process of reloading the whole system. For some reason I seem to have lost bits of it. Fortunately, no important data has been harmed in the making of this mess. I must admit, I quite like it when it goes wrong. I learn something new every time.

2. I have bought myself a Cowon iAudio2 MP3 player to record my therapy sessions with. I got fed up waiting for someone to release a microphone that would work with my iPod video. My old iPod has quietly died a dying battery death. I will replace it at some point. I got a really good deal on the iAudio on eBay. It only cost £52, brand new. Most dealers are selling them for twice that. It really is an excellent little machine. It plays a variety of files, has FM radio, voice recorder, and linein recording. The recordings can be stored as MP3 @ 128kbps, which is not the best quality, but pretty good for voice recordings. It's not an Apple design, and it shows a little bit, but a good little machine. Definitely to be recommended.

3. I just watched the Korean film, A Bittersweet Life. A brilliant action...thriller...balletic violence...Tarantino...blah, blah. This time it's all true. Excellent film.

4. Babycake laughed for the first time and we were both there to hear it. He was sucking Mrs McMuffin's finger, smiling at her as he was doing it, when suddenly he just let rip a full throated chortle, twice. Funny thing really, but it made my day. I want to hear him laugh again.

I'm off to get ready for work now. Maybe Mrs McMuffin will post at some point.

my apologies for the previous post

I'd left it lying around and Mr McMuffin must have thought I'd finished, so he published it. I am very sorry about the content, I write masses of dull posts about nappies and poo that I never put on the site, so I'm very sorry that this one slipped through the net. Colin is absolutely right though, terries are not better for the environment, a fact I was very excited to hear as it made my wish to use disposables less of the selfish bitch destroying the planet type and more of the really cares about the world her son will grow up into type. I shall return when I have something less faecal to talk about!

great to be back home

After panicking hugely at the thought of Babycake on the move and desperately not wanting to go, we did have a nice time and it was great to see our family and friends. Mr McMuffin forgot to mention that York is certainly somewhere worth visiting and we had a lovely afternoon there with my big sister. Since we've been home, Babycake's evil wind seems to have improved very slightly and having some respite from the pain, he actually sleeps away from my arms for longer than five minutes during the day.
(For some reason, if Babycake has a daily poo he seems to be a lot happier and I think I can credit my sister with this minor miracle as she proved herself to be the poo whisperer and helped Babycake deliver some lovely, heavy, value for money nappies. I like these ones best as they don't have any cartoon characters on them and they are made from a high proportion of recycled materials, so I can kid myself that they're positively beneficial for the environment.)

Anyway, it's lovely to be back, even though...baby!

back home...

I thought I should finish off my account of our trip to Scotland. We really are the worse tourists ever. Once I had made the decision to stay for another couple of days and cancelled my work for the rest of the week, we headed out for a look around the area. St Andrews sounded nice, so that is where we went first. It was quite pretty, but we kind of saw it all in just over an hour. Very, very dull. So, we decided to head over into, what turned out to be, the heart of the bird flu epidemic. Fortunately, we stopped off at a Woolies to buy a map and Mrs McMuffin spotted the headlines. I was still up for going, but Mrs McMuffin was worried that Babycake might get infected. By the way, Scotland appears to have another claim to fame, apart from the fact that I hail from there, it looks like the bird flu originated on a farm in Aberdeen in 1959. How the f**k can they possibly know that? I'd just about had enough of all that open air and managed to persuade Mrs McMuffin that we really needed to visit a city. Dundee was close by, so Dundee it was. What a dump. If Perth is the Prague of Scotland, then Dundee is its Croydon, except Kate Moss could never have come from Dundee. We stayed an hour, just enough time to buy some new underwear from M&S and have a cup of coffee. We didn't even take any photos.

The journey home was a leisurely affair. We stopped off in Berwick Upon Tweed and Lindisfarne before spending the night in Durham. Berwick was dull, dull, dull. We didn't even use up our one hour parking ticket before heading off again. Lindisfarne was dull, dull, dull. A tiny little island accessed only by a causeway that spends much of its time underwater. We debated whether we wanted to see the main building, but concluded that once you had seen Mont St Michel there hardly seemed any point looking at another building on an island. Lindisfarne is a bit like a two-bed semi in comparison to Mont St Michel's stately home. Although, I have to admit that there was something impressive about the bleakness of the place. It amazed me that there were people living on the island. Not only that, but there had been some new houses built. I couldn't help but wonder who paid for them to live there, they certainly couldn't have ordinary jobs off the island. After all which employer would pay someone to turn up at work around 12 noon, when the causeway is clear, sometimes depending on the weather and the time of year. Also, who paid for that three mile stretch of road that is so essential to maintaining their isolated livestyle?

It also didn't help that we ended up spending the best part of an hour sitting in the car park while Mrs McMuffin fed Babycake. Babytime really scuppers your day, that's for sure.

After three or four winding stops for Babycake, we finally arrived in Durham. Now, that's a proper town. We were heading towards a Travel Lodge on the outskirts of the town, but I sometimes forget how small everywhere is compared to London, and before I knew it, we were in the centre of the town. We found a lovely hotel, and struck a great deal for a suite for the night. The rooms were so lovely that we could hardly bear to leave them the next day. Durham is a great little medieval town with more than enough to see and do to justify a weekend break, if you're interested. While we were wondering around, we were shocked to find one of the first signs of the end of civilisation as we know it.

Sorry, but I know this is a bit of a ramble, so I'll stop for now. Maybe I'll come back and do a bit of editing later. I'll end with one of the cutest things I saw all the time we were away.

RIP...probably

This is the sight that greeted me when I went out into the garden first thing this morning. I don't know about you, but I kind of think that any bird who leaves this many feathers behind is not doing okay. Although, I did have a momentary fantasy that I had disturbed a little pagan bird ritual. The birds were all dancing naked on the lawn, and quickly hid in the bushes when I appeared. I have been keeping an eye out, just in case.

we are terrible...

Steve has pointed out that we haven't posted in 9 days. All is well, just busy. We'll fill you in on all our news tomorrow, hopefully. Oh, on Steve's recommendation, we did watch Coyote Ugly last night. Very glossy and watchable, but really a pile of poo. Life is too short, don't waste it watching this film.

what a day...

We decided to try to enjoy a little bit of the beautiful Scottish scenery yesterday.  We headed off to St Andrews, which is a pretty little university/golfing town.  Lots of history, but a little bit dull, so we only stayed a couple of hours before heading off to the big city lights of Dundee.  It was big, but dirty and slightly run down and not very nice.  We bought a few bits of clothing and had a cup of coffee before heading off to pay the final visits to the family.  Scotland really is a beautiful place.  There is a rugged dramatic quality to the scenery.  Practically every every bend in the road reveal some new breathtaking view.  I keep forgetting this when I am in England.  I am always amazed by the number of English people who have never been to Scotland, and yet rave about the scenery is this country or that country.  They don't know what they are missing.  The best bit is that this isn't the best bit of the country.  Try going a little further north, then you really will have your breath taken away.

The family were in good form.  I managed to collect lots of old photos from my parents, and some terrible stories about their feeding of me as a baby.  I've always had problems with eating and my weight.  It suddenly all becomes clear why this has been.  My mum breastfed me for the first couple of months before moving on to formula.  However, my dad didn't quite trust that I was getting enough and used to add a couple of extra scoops to my bottles, or a couple of crumbled Digestive biscuits to my bottle and a raw egg.  The best food stories involved feeding me huge bowls of custard and, on at least one occasion, six mashed up boiled eggs.  I'd bet anything that there was a bit of butter in there too.  I sat there smiling through their stories, but inside thinking, "you f**king bastards!"  I guess it was all well intentioned, but nevertheless...

I've put off writing about the terrible news that we received at the start of our day.  In someways it kind of set the tone for the rest of the day.  I must admit that when I think about it, I feel a little bit tearful.  We made friends with a lovely Canadian couple who were working in England for a while.  They were expecting a baby and were about a month ahead of us.  They had a beautiful baby boy last December, and returned to Canada to be with family.  They wrote to us yesterday to tell us that their little boy had died suddenly for no apparent reason.  As far as I am aware he wasn't even ill.  His little heart just stopped.  I've been thinking about them on and off since then, and I know Mrs McMuffin has too.  The news was made all the more shocking because I received two emails from them.  One was a joke and the other was telling me that their baby had died.  I don't know what else to say, it is just very, very scary.

We are still trying to enjoy some kind of holiday, so we have decided to take our time travelling back home.  Today we are off to visit the historic walled town of Berwick.  We were going to stay the night there, but after visiting St Andrews we have decided it would probably only be good for a couple of hours.  Then we are off to visit the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne.  You can only cross the causeway to the island at certain times of the day.  Hopefully we will not get stranded half way across.  It is all very exciting.  Apparently, it is quite safe.  500,000 people visit each year, and most of them survive the visit.

I'll let you know how we get on.

still here

We went to my mum and dad's for lunch yesterday.  We were served up the legendary, at least in their household, Murray's pies and Heinz spaghetti.  I have to admit the scotch pies were quite nice.  Not the sort of thing that we usually eat, but nice anyway.  I have to admit to being a bit of a snob when it comes to the food that my family eat.  It is all traditional stuff containing the three of the five main Scottish food groups, fat, sugar and salt.  The other two are tobacco and alcohol.  The day went quite well, with poor Babycake being poked and prodded within an inch of his life.  It came as a bit of a surprise to me to find that my three nephews were beside themselves with excitment over having a new cousin.   Mrs McMuffin and I did notice something very interesting about my family.  There didn't seem to be the slightest hint of disapproval about anything we said that we did for the baby.  It was as if they had an understanding that whatever the baby needed was okay.  It is a strange thing, but we have often encountered a slight disapproval of what we are doing with him.  There is nothing overt, but more a slight, "oh, I didn't do that..."  It just hangs in the air.

Spending time with my family was surprisingly unstressful, or at least not as stressful as it usually is for us.  I think the main difference was that we hardly seemed to exist.  Everyone's attention was focused on the baby. 

We can't bear the idea of travelling home today.  It seems as if we have only just got here, which is true really.  I have decided to cancel my very full work day on Friday.  I'm sure there will be some fallout because of this, but how can we travel when the baby isn't well...(he's fine, by the way.)  I have debated just telling the truth, but really people want to be lied to.  They really do not want to know that I have decided to stay another couple of days in Scotland rather than fulfil my obligations to them.  Or do they?

We're off to do some proper exploring of the town today.  I'll let you know what we find tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, we have been inspired by the interior design of a Costa Coffee shop, and idea that may very well be seeing it's way into our home in the very near future.  I might go and take a picture of it today.

here we are

I'm sitting at my friend's computer marvelling at how clean it is.  The keys are nice and shiny.  It makes a big difference, that sort of thing.  The journey to Scotland was largely broken up by Babycake screaming.  The first leg was fine, and we thought we had it sussed.  We stopped every couple of hours and fed him, then he went straight back to sleep.  The second leg, however, was a little different.  He was all windy, and we had to keep stopping to get him burp or fart.  Now, if anyone had told me that I would be doing this a year ago, I wouldn't have believed them.

We're here now though.  I keep forgetting how beautiful Scotland is.  The scenery somtimes looks like something created by Peter Jackson.  It just doesn't look real.  The air is clear and the sun is shining in a clear blue sky.  It was lovely sitting outside having a fag this morning.  I also forgot how good the roads are.  Long, or just long enough, and straight with lovely smooth surfaces.  Just perfect for encouraging idiots to speed along at 100 MPH.  Of course, I didn't do that.

We arrived at my parents' home several hours late.  Apparently, the whole clan had been waiting for a couple of hours but had to give up to go about their business.  They had left behind an emissary in the form of my little nephew, Craig, who is five.  He was so excited about seeing his new cousin that he couldn't bring himself to leave.  He wanted to be the first to meet him.  Craig was very, very sweet.  At one point, while my dad was holding Babycake, Craig, who is my dad's No.1 grandson, told my dad that Babycake could be his No.1 and he would be his No.2.  How lovely is that?  My dad, surprisingly, was quite sweet too, he told Craig that he and Babycake could be his joint No.1s.  He then added that Craig's two brothers could be No.2 and No.3.  It is nice the way he manages to keep alive the family competition about who is the most loved amongst the children.

I am now debating with myself whether I was being a bit silly arranging to come to Scotland for two nights.  I think I just wanted to make the experience as painless as possible, and for me that meant short.  Now that we are here though, I am realising that this will mean that we can do absolutely nothing but visit my family.  There just will not be time to do anything else.  I have to be back in England for Friday, but I think I might cancel a few things, so that we can stay a bit longer.

By the way, Steve, I think I saw your house.  Was it the one with the conservatory by the motor way?  We waved but no one seemed to be at home.