a question

I have a question. We've just been watching Kerrang TV, and it has left me wondering if it is it true that all people in Germany dress like The Scorpions?

a lovely day out

Yesterday we decided to go out for the day. We headed up to London to visit Borough Market, a haven for foodies everywhere. I had never been there before, and I was slightly taken back by the variety of lovely food on display. The first thing we did when we arrived was go and have some lunch. We were tempted by the fantastic smelling food on offer in the market, but opted instead to have lunch at Fish!. Fortunately we had Babycake with us, he was able to use his power to charm the pants off any woman™ to get us a table in the very, very busy restuarant. The food was okay, I had a swordfish club sandwich and Mrs McMuffin had haddock and chips with mushy peas, but the atmosphere was lovely. It reminded me of the bussily market outside. And the waiting staff were lovely too. Very attentive, but in an unobtrusive way. I'd definitely go back. It just doesn't do to look at food on a full stomach. I wandered around the market, enjoying the sights, but alas I saw nothing that I just had to have, so I ended up with nothing. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention how Babycake worked his charms once we had been seated. As we were trying to eat out lunch, he was his usual bouncing self. All he wanted to do was stand on my lap and bounce up and down. An elderly lady on the next table offered to hold him for us while we ate. Wasn't that nice of her? I had noticed that she had been in thrall to Babycake for a few minutes, and for a second it did occur to me to ask her, "how much will you give us for him?" But then I thought, "who will look after us in our old age?" We decided not to take her up on her kind offer.

After lunch and a wander through the market, we headed off along the river, ending up at the Tate Modern. It is just such a fantastic building. Never mind the art, go to look at the building. Babycake insisted on going off on his own, so we left him while we went to have a look around the gallery. We saw some paintings and stuff. To our surprise Babycake was in exactly the same place when we returned two hours later. He claimed he was enjoying the view too much to move, but I think he was a little embarrassed to admit that he didn't know how to walk.

All in all, a very lovely day was had by everyone. I love London.

the road to hell

Mr McMuffin and I have been appalled at our seeming inability to take five minutes out of our day and write a post, let alone visit other blogs. We are both reluctant to stop, as we've enjoyed our electronic lives and diary a great deal, so we have set ourselves the task of each posting daily.

You'd think that distance from events would focus the mind on the most interesting experiences, but the more time that goes by without writing, the harder it is to remember anything that's happened, interesting or not. This last week has had the pall of sickness over it. Our own little super bug developed his first illness, a little cold and promptly infected Mr McMuffin and I, leaving us feeling pretty dreadful over the weekend. This was most unfair, as I had been looking forward to a night out with Mrs Carrot Cake, Single Cookie and Gypsy Tart in the murder capital of South East London and had to cancel. Mr McMuffin bravely worked on despite sniffles, sneezes and snot and fortunately we both recovered by Sunday afternoon, just in time for me to return to work.

We still haven't decided where to go on holiday, but I think we've narrowed it down to Rome or Florence, or Granada, or possibly Lisbon...Now we just have to sort out when we go and agree on how much stuff we need to take with us to be prepared for any eventuality.

let me be the last to say...

I want one and I want it now. I own four iPods in a variety of flavours and yet I find myself strangely drawn to this minimalist beauty. It is almost too lovely for words. Oh, and while we are on the subject, I want one of these too. I know it's almost too crass for words, but what can I say...other than, "I did it my way."

tables and chairs

I told you a while ago that we had got ourselves some lovely grow up garden furniture, and I said I would post a picture of it at some point, well here it is. It really has made a difference to the way in which we've used the garden this year. I love it and sometimes I find myself absent mindedly stroking it's fine teak grain in appreciation. Even Babycake loves it. He will sit in his little chair, running his hands over the surface for a minute at a time (and let me tell you that is a very long time in the life of a seven month old baby). Like father, like son, I guess.

beautiful boy

I give you the heartachingly beautiful Babycake. When I look at this photo I can understand why John Lennon had to write Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) for his son. I still think it's a crap song, and the lyrics make me cringe a little, but I think I get it now.

You may wonder why he is wearing anything furry in the middle of summer. Mrs McMuffin is to blame for this fashion faux pas. For some reason she has insisted that he wear a furry dressing gown when he gets ready for bed, regardless of the fact that the poor wee sod is sweating like a pig. She thinks he looks cute in it. Don't worry, because I take it off him at every opportunity. I never thought that our first major parenting conflict would be over whether the baby wears a blue furry dressing gown. Life takes some strange turns sometimes.

bargain

I've just been shopping with Babycake, and came across a bargain that I couldn't resist. I've always been on the look out for a set of cheapish portable speakers for my iPod, and Logitech recently released into the wild a lovely looking bit of speaker kit based on the NXT speaker technology. It's been getting good reviews everywhere and, at around £50, it seemed right for me. I found a set in Maplins for only £29, which was just too good to pass up. I bought them without listening to them, but I didn't need to worry because they're excellent, bearing in mind what they cost. They look very cool and sound great. If you're looking for some cheap portable speakers, then you could do a lot worse that buy yourself some of these. That's me sorted for the holidays then.

he wins

Mr McMuffin boasted about writing more than one post today and keeping up his end of the bargain, so I've just spent the last ten minutes trying to write something about age, melancholy, Aberfan and expressing milk. I was also going to say something about little Slinky going to the vet with a cut tongue on Saturday, but having written reports and emails most of the day, I just can't face writing anything else. Perhaps I'll do better tomorrow.

sitting here with tons to do but...

I'm posting this on my mobile from work. I have hardly said anything about my job for ages. I don't even remember if I mentioned that I got a new job. I've been the manager of a night-time social work service for the last year. It should be very interesting but its not. I'm sitting here wondering what to do. I shouldn't complain too much because the job allows me to look after Babycake and I only have to work 7 shifts over 2 weeks and then I have 2 weeks off. Oh, and I do most of my work at home. Let me summarise: it's a doss job, and it hardly feels like I have a job at all! So why am I complaining? I should probably get ready to go home for the evening, to spend a hard night working in front of the TV. We are working our way through the final season of The West Wing.

i don't believe it...

We need some work done on our house, but the struggle to find a decent builder has meant that we have put off doing anything about it. Imagine our joy at seeing an advert for 118trades.com. They take all the pain out of chosing builders and the like by checking out the company and getting references. I went through their directory last week and emailed half a dozen companies, but only one person got back to me, and that was the wife of one of the builders telling me that her husband had died recently, so, unsurprisingly, he wouldn't be able to do any work for us. Today, I was being lazy and just Googled 118trades to find the website again, and I was surprised to find a number of other hits come up too. It would appear that 118trades.com is a con! BBC Watchdog has a big spread on them. Now I am in a bit of a quandry. Are these just the usual setting up mistakes that companies make or is there something more sinister involved? I might have known, it all seemed too good to be true.

strange froggies indeed

Earlier in the year we promised some of our frogspawn to a neighbour, for her mother's pond. She then said she didn't actually want the spawn, but would take a few tadpoles when their back legs came through. We're still waiting to see those legs. In the meantime, these tadpoles are bloody enormous and swim around the pond looking like the creatures in Alien Resurresction and refusing to move out of the frog equivalent of early childhood. When we see our neighbour she is too polite to say anything to us about her request and I have to confess I'm not really sure how to broach the shameful subject of our mutant tadpoles, so nothing has been said.

Now, Babycake will be mobile next year, so we have to do something about the pond. I've always been reluctant to get rid of it and wanted to find a way to make it safe and keep the frogs. However, now we have freaks of nature living in our back garden, I'm not so sure.

little miss sunshine

Ms Gypsy Tart kindly looked after Babycake this afternoon so we could have some time together. We were tempted to spend some time giving each other special cuddles, but decided instead to go to the cinema. We went to see Little Miss Sunshine. We bought seats in the Gallery, which, for those of you who don't know, are very expensive seats at the back of the cinema. Basically they charge you a premium for a comfortable chair with some leg room. I always have to tamp down the embers of rage that I feel at the thought of paying extra for something I thought I had already paid for. Anyway, the film was fantastic. A very, very funny film. The whole cast are great, although I have to mark out Greg Kinnear and Steve Carrel for special mention though. There was one little problem though, I think our cinema audience was broken. While Mrs McMuffin and me laughed our heads off, it quickly became apparent that hardly anyone else in the cinema was laughing. What was that all about?

ol' red eyes is back

I am a bit frantic today, as the deadline for some work has been pushed forward and there's no way I can not keep to it, if I want to keep my job. In the past I would have taken this in my stride, put in a few late nights at the office or stayed up late working and finished the thing off. These days I am forced to face the day bright and early and be a bloody lark when I was born an owl.

The real problem is that I just can't adapt to writing in the morning and it takes me all day to get into my stride before I have to down tools and get home to relieve Mr McMuffin of his Babycake care responsibilities. Tonight I tried to recapture the ease of writing at night and have failed miserably. Although I have produced a reasonable amount of work in the last hour, I am squinting because it feels as if my eyes are full of crumbs and my fingers are tingling with fatigue. I am giving up and going to bed, hoping that poor Babycake's teeth will stop plaguing him so that he doesn't wake for half an hour every two hours throughout the night, like last night. Life has never been better, nor quite as tiring. Ying, Yang, equal and opposite and all that and goodnight.

self pity is so unattractive

I was going to remove the previous post, but seriously got so busy I didn't have time! Anyway, the sun is shining a little brighter as I've written most of the report and just have the all important recommendations to bang out. Mr McMuffin has been a brick and I'm feeling very much in love with the wonderful man I married, which means more than likely we'll have a huge flare up in about four hours time.

We broke our own rule yesterday and didn't post, but in our defence we did the thinking and posed Babycake to illustrate a little post we had in mind. Fortunately he's too young to mind at present, but I wonder how other people manage the shameless exploitation of their own children for comedic gain.

testing

Just testing this new online word processor.

my hero

Mr McMuffin has been bloody marvellous in helping me with my report and I am very grateful. Three cheers for Mr McMuffin.

if only i had £36,000

I have found the best gadget in the world, and I want one. U Boatworx make a personal submarine. It will dive to a depth of 50 metres, and you only need three days training to use one. I want one NOW. I don't think that is too much to ask for.

god save the queen

Babycake and I went to the cinema this morning to see The Queen. I have to admit it was a little bit strange watching the film at 10am along with half a dozen other people and their babies. Babycake was wonderful and managed to sleep through the entire film, only waking as the final credits rolled. Who could ask for a better baby? The film was surprisingly good. I'm not sure what I expected, but by the end of it, I felt very sympathetic towards The Queen. Helen Mirren gives a fantastic performance, as usual. I think I would probably have been in the same state as HRH after Diana died, because I couldn't believe all that public mourning stuff either. Anyway, good film and well worth seeing.

babycake is a quiet baby

I was sitting outside this morning have a fag and cup of coffee when I heard a loud thud followed by Babycake screaming which was also followed by Mrs McMuffin calling for me to help. I rushed upstairs to find Babycake sobbing in his mother's arms. Apparently he had been exploring the bed around where Mrs McMuffin lay when he suddenly leapt kamakazi style over her legs head first off the bed onto the floor. Fortunately he seemed fine and quickly calmed down. Not a mark on him, as far as I can see, and he has been his usual self all day. I don't know why but this sort of stuff really frightens Mrs McMuffin, but I am much more laid back about it all. It just seems to me that we could drive ourselves nuts by worrying about him all the time. I am pretty sure that this is the first of many falls that he will have over the next few years. In fact, I don't know what I am saying, he has already fallen over a few time, and has the little scratches on his forehead to prove it.

how original

Mr McMuffin and I have become bored with our inability to book a holiday. On Monday we almost signed up for seven days in Florence and four in Rome, in luxury all the way, but I couldn't bring myself to spend almost two grand on a trip to Italy. Fortunately Mr McMuffin saw it my way and once more we are going to... Madeira! Yes, for a third of the price, we are having a week in Funchal and I have to say that I am reassured that our first venture outside dear old Blighty will be on such familiar territory.