In At The Deep End

We all went to my parents for a week and a bit, which all seems like ages ago now even though it was last week. Mum and Dad have a nice big house and garden, so there was football and helping Grandad to pick the vegetables and feed the fish. He also gave them some rides in his wheelbarrow, which was well-received. J had a go at cooking some of them (the vegetables, not the fish!) into a veggie shepherds pie (with Katy and my mum as sous-chefs) which was very tasty.

We had a trip to The Lowry in Salford, and met up with three fifths of Stepping off the Path. I must confess to not being the biggest Lowry fan in the world, but it had some good bits to make it more than just an art gallery. J had a go at drawing me by looking through an empty picture frame that was fixed up like a window frame, and then Katy drew him and K - all very good pictures. Further round there’s a bit where you can try on hats and draw yourself by looking into a mirror, as many of Lowry’s pictures had people wearing hats. More drawing by J, which is always nice and especially so when it happens spontaneously. K had fun doing a pairs matching game of Lowry paintings. After shuffling round the gallery we went into the shopping centre opposite and found a shop selling extremely large and comfortable bean bags, where I could have easily stayed for the rest of the day as you could try them out (and they really were very large and very comfy).

Quarry Bank Mill is nearby, and we combined a trip to it with a mini sling meet. (A meeting up of people who use slings and so on to carry their children, so they can try each others out and chat.) The Mill was great as you get to see everything from cotton plants with their fluffy bits on through to finished cloth. There was a woman doing hand spinning and weaving, and then you got to see the machines that made people like her redundant :(. The noise must have been unbelievable - there were two machines running every so often and you had to shout to make yourself heard, but when the Mill was fully working there would have been whole floors bigger than tennis courts clanking away. Also, some of the machines were cleaned by having children sweep up underneath, but the cleaning happened while the machines were running which sometimes had horrible consequences.

Some of the stuff we skipped as it was for older children - things like social change, slavery, trade and so on. But there were lots of excellent big things to look at or play with to do with water and steam power, and some printing too. All very educational, and enjoyable too.

A micro-sling-meet (a micro-meet of slings, not a meet of micro-slings) at someone’s house meant that the children and I could watch Finding Nemo and Katy could talk slings and baby ponchos. This was on the far side of Manchester and on the way back we stopped off at the Science and Industry Science Museum.

More fab steam engines, some steam trains (including one cut open so you could see the innards), a surprisingly interesting exhibit about sewers and more printing. Also there’s an excellent hands on section where the boys lifted a Mini using gears, a pair of goggles that reversed left and right, and a hall of mirrors. Plus there was an excellent talk, just at the right level for our lot, about what Martians would be like if they existed (tall, thin, red, furry, with broad feet, big eyelashes and closable noses like camels). This included a Solar System parade, where J was Saturn (holding an exercise ball), K was the Earth (holding a tennis ball) and I was Neptune (football) and Pluto (marble) and we learned the mnemonic My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets (Mercury -> Pluto) although this is now shot to pieces by the IAU ruling about Minor Planets.

We missed out an awful lot of the museum and so have promised to return next time we’re up North. We also didn’t have time and energy at the same time to visit Jodrell Bank which we pass on the way home, so that’s on the cards for next time too. All the trips around Manchester involved the tram, which went down well, and will definitely be repeated next time.

A nice coincidence was that a friend of mine from school was getting married nearby while we were up, and we had a lovely time despite occasional rain (thanks to a very large marquee in her parents’ garden). There was a ceilidh at the end, and the boys joined in as did L (most of the time strapped to Katy or me!). There was a whole roasted pig which made K a bit puzzled (”Why do people eat pigs?”) but there was plenty of excellent food for herbivores like us too.

On the way back home we stopped off at large park in Peterborough so that Katy could meet some of her imaginary friends at another (non-sling) meet. The boys and I had a wander in the wild bit and found some mushrooms and different flowers that I had no hope of identifying (other than dandelion ).

Sorry to ramble on, but this is partly to help me remember before it all leaks away.

This is being written way after the event, but with a mucked-about-with date so it appears at the right point in the flow of things.

English Heritage organise a Festival of History every year, and we heard about it via an email list that Katy’s on. It was pricey and the military side of things looked a bit more prominent than I would have liked, and the weather on the day was looking border line, so I was feeling a bit anxious that the ticket I’d bought in advance was going to be a waste of money. Then, on the way, we hit some very hard rain and I managed to get us lost so we were half an hour even later than we’d planned, so it didn’t get off to a good start.

But I’m very glad we went, and the children all want to go again next year because they enjoyed themselves so much. We took so many photos that one set on Flickr was too clumsy and we even managed to bump the “you have uploaded X% of your limit this month” thing above 1%. This is because it was a day long photo opportunity, which I shall try to remember the details of now.

The basic structure was re-enacters representing different periods from Romans up to World War 2, camped in the grounds of Kelmarsh Hall. They took it in turns to break camp and go and do something crowd pleasing in one of the arena areas in the grounds, and then there was a large march past of everyone at the end on the main arena.

As we hadn’t bought a programme (well worth it next year) we had little idea what was going on, and stumbled across lots of Vikings and Saxons about to recreate the Battle of York, where the Vikings wanted to come into York and the Saxons, who were there already, didn’t want them to. It took a little while to get going, and reminded me of an American Football match once it had, as there were periods of little activity (but much posturing) punctuated by mindless violence. The Vikings won (I think - it’s hard to tell as they look fairly similar from a distance) and the battlefield had lots of pretend dead on it at the end. I suppose it’s much like children’s games of war, except with period costume and beer afterwards. The dead had to rise at the end to make way for the Romans, who stood waiting like a column of Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

The Romans were very impressive, and just went through a drill rather than pretending to fight anyone. The commentator was interesting and informative, and gave lots of details like the cavalry didn’t have stirrups as they hadn’t been invented and had saddles with four pommels instead. The infantry fanned out around the perimeter to do an air-stewardess-giving-the-emergency-briefing act as they went through all their gear while the commentator described it. There was some cavalry slicing up cabbages on horseback (no, it was the soldiers on horseback, not the cabbages), some impressive artillery, and my favourite bit was when the infantry did the tortoise thing with their shields. It really looked impregnable, and the re-enactors were very disciplined. The whole thing was rounded off with a horse race - again without stirrups but with funny saddles instead.

After that we saw some civil war people going through musket drill and then pike drill - this too had a very good commentator. There was a very nice bloke with a cannon who talked to the boys about all the bits and let J feel the weight of a half-size cannon ball - still rather heavy. I got talking to a very authentic-looking and slightly eccentric gent who was a polar explorer, complete with knitted balaclava, and a sledge with chests of Bovril etc. and a Union Jack on top.

The only low point for me was the World War 1 aviators. The wind was only just calm enough to allow some planes of the period to take off and stage a mock dogfight. (Surprise, one English bi-plane saw off two German mono-planes even though it flew at about half their speed and was often in front of them.) The planes themselves were fine, but there was an unpleasant commentary from people pretending to be British pilots of the time. They were authentically hostile to the Germans, but I would have preferred less authenticity for the sake of less hostility.

A definite crowd pleaser was the jousting. The knights had full armour on, there were lots of bunting and flags, and the nobles hammed it up a bit so that we didn’t think we were watching something from It’s A Knockout. There was a jester who was rather crude for something including young children, but fortunately that didn’t get in the way of the action - the chairs for the nobles did that as we weren’t early enough to get a good seat. The lances had been fixed so that the end four feet or so splintered on contact, which produced impressive showers of wood. I think our knight lost, but it was good nonetheless.

Then there was some very good Morris dancing and the big march past at the end. I’ve almost certainly missed things out - see the photos on Flickr.

Even with the World War 1 stuff I was left with a very positive feeling from the day. There were lots of people interested in preserving our roots and bringing them to life, who were friendly and informed, and all jumbled together so that you saw a Roman Centurion walking between some Civil War musketeers and a World War 2 US marine. The children all got a lot out of it I think, so we might consider doing Kentwell again next year, which will be a bit full-on with children in tow this time.

Over tea last night J said something about Gloucester and I asked him if he knew how to spell it. This led to a discussion of place names and how you can sometimes guess that the Romans or Vikings lived there by the form of the name. This turned into talking about the reconstructed battle of York at the Festival of History, between the Saxons and the Vikings, and how the Vikings came from Scandinavia to the north part of the country. J then asked “Why did the Vikings come and attack England?” to which we replied they wanted more land and to be in charge of somewhere else too. J then asked “Why do countries keep on taking over other countries, and why do companies keep on taking over other companies?” (We’ve talked about things like Nestle buying Rowntree in the past.) Katy replied “Because they want more money and power” which I think was a very good answer, but he didn’t ask any more questions after that. I imagine the gogs started whirring inside his head, and look forward to his revolutionary manifesto when he hits 15.

Spent Saturday at the Festival of History, which was fab!

Fantastic Romans, took loads of photos and generally had a great time
Will blog properly later!

It was the second of our “school friends” picnics on Friday; an attempt, thinly veiled as half-birthday parties, for J and K to keep in touch with their old friends.
Alice (”our teenager”) came along to help us today, which made a huge difference to my mental and physical well-being!
We were running late (as usual!) so she took the boys to the playground in her car while L and I finished off, then we took the picnic stuff along when we were ready. Not a great turnout from schoolfriends though All of one - but he made up in quality for what he lacked in quantity We also had a friend from parents and tots and E, O, M and F came along all the way from London. It was not the greatest of weather, but that didn’t seem to deter the children from playing happily while the mum chatted. Alice was great at entertaining too, so it was a nice easy day, all in all - just a little disappointing for J not to see schoolfriends. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a better turnout at the last one (brunch on the first Saturday in September)…

Sooo tired on Thursday morning that Bob took the morning off and went with K and L to do parents and tots for me so I could stay in bed - how’s that for going beyond the call of duty?

J was really taking his time about getting ready, so in the end we decided that Bob should just take the two little
ones and leave J with me. I set him up with some Singapore maths and an email to write to Z in Canada and went back to bed. Came down an hour or so later to see how he was doing: “I’m just about to start the maths, Mummy!” (from the depths of a book, as usual ) - so lots of dedication there Once he’d got the maths done we grouted some bathroom tiles, which may have been a mistake as it completely wiped me out, but at least it’s done now

Bob came back and got lunch for everyone, then went to work, leaving us to a quiet afternoon together. The children spent most of the time upstairs playing quietly in their room - or so I thought - while I dozed on the sofa. We had one brief foray out to the post office; L was starkers, as is her preferred state just now *sigh* so rather than having a clothing row we went for the easy option of using the Leo Storch to do a full back wrap cross and she tucked her arms in *grin* - I don’t think anyone noticed her lack of clothing.

Discovered rather later in the day (when children weren’t exactly in a hurry to come down for tea) that while I thought they were playing nicely upstairs (and was feeling well-disposed towards J as a result) they were actually trashing their room and scoffing the entire box of chocolate tasting club chocs DH and I treat ourselves to every few months

We then spent a fair part of the evening trying to thrash out a punishment (and restraining ourselves from thrashing the children!) which both we and the children think fits the crime. So far, they’ve suggested no treats or chocolate until Christmas, which I think may be asking a bit much and giving up pocket money - but only J gets any and that’s only pennies so could take a long while so it got changed to selling enough toys to raise the money to buy a new box of chocolates. Actually, we could do with a serious clear out, so I think I’m going to enourage that one and back it up with no treats (especially chocolate!) for a week and no playing in their room for a week.

No, I’m not talking about my stomach, as then I would have put “Roundness” or “Flabbiness” as the title. I’m cheating a bit as I’ve already put some of this elsewhere in blogdom. A nice thing about technology is when it lets you separate out bits of the world so that you can appreciate them.

We were discussing why shadows aren’t completely black and I didn’t come up with a good explanation beyond the fact that light usually gets to a particular point e.g. the floor via many routes, bouncing off other things or going direct from the sun or lightbulb, and usually the thing casting the shadow only blocks off one of the routes. I then found a video showing the effects of radiosity, which is the term (in computer graphics, at least) for light bouncing off things and going on other things. Most of the video is showing how whizzy some product is because it works out the radiosity instantly, but towards the end it shows what happens if you do computer graphics to show a room without worrying about radiosity.

The result is unrealistic and flat - obviously computer-generated. It turns out that to capture reality is really hard! The spotlight (in this case) shines on loads of different surfaces in the room - each surface is more or less shiny, has a colour, and is at a certain angle relative to each other surface in the room. The spotlight shines on a given surface and then some fraction of it (depending on how shiny it is) bounces off. What the reflection hits depends on the angles things are at and how far away things are from other things, and what colour the light is depends on the colour of the first surface - white light shining on a green wall will give only a green reflection.

The trouble is, this process repeats and repeats, with light bouncing all over the place. It’s limited mostly by the fact that the surfaces don’t reflect 100% of the light as they’re not perfect mirrors, so eventually it all peters out. Doing all this in a computer involves lots of maths (beyond me), and the video is saying “Look, we can do this maths really quickly”. I showed the video to the boys, who were impressed more by the music than the pictures *sigh*. To be expected, I suppose.

I really liked The Incredibles DVD - the story was fab (the children loved it too) and there were some nice extras. One of the extras was for geeks like me, about the computer graphics. They deliberately aimed for a cartoon kind of look, but there were some things that they worried about, such as the hair and skin. It turns out that the surface of skin traps the light falling on it a bit, so that it bounces around inside and makes it glow slightly. If you don’t model this in your computer graphics it looks like plastic rather than skin.

Radiosity reminded me of being in a sound-treated room in a linguistics lab, where nearly all of the echo was absorbed by the walls. (In a way radiosity is like the light equivalent of echoes.) We take echo so much for granted, but without it the world seemed flat in a very off-putting way. It’s hard to describe for people who haven’t experienced it - the closest is 2D sound rather than 3D - but not mono vs. stereo. I guess we subconsciously use echo to keep track of how far away things are, and without echoes our brain flails about as it doesn’t know where things are so well.

So tired I’m just dragging myself from day to day and activity to activity
As might be expected, the children are picking up on this and reacting accordingly, so mammoth tantrums from J and L. K continues to be his usual good-natured self, with just the incessant questions which I know I shouldn’t complain about, but they do get on top of me at times! On Monday we came incredibly close to taking J to CHEF sports in just his pants, as he took so long to get up and get dressed. In the end we were half an hour late, with him finishing dressing and eating breakfast in the car on the way - and then throwing a wobbly when we got there because he didn’t want to join in. Fortunately Gina was able to intervene and persuade him while I ran round the corner and flung myself into a little miserable heap to calm down for a few minutes! Of course once he joined in he loved it and I didn’t see him again for the whole session

After the sports session it was medal-giving for the Sports Day a few weeks ago, which the boys were both seriously chuffed about, then we went to visit our friend with the twins and ended up staying quite late so that the boys could play for a while with her older boys and I could help her a little with bedtime. It was lovely, but set us up somewhat for another tired day on Tuesday - fortunately nothing planned that day except for Alice “our teenager” coming to help. She’s on holiday from Uni, came round last Friday and the children were really pleased to see her again plus Bob and I found out she was free because her holiday job fell through, so we asked her to come and help out for a couple of days int he holidays. She did a great job of looking after the children while I managed to get lots of tiling done in the bathroom She’s coming again on Friday, so hopefully I’ll get the grouting done then, although it’s also another picnic in the park so she’ll help with that too. The temptation to just leave her with the kids while I sneak upstairs and sleep is great, but not a great use of money, I fear. At least if I tile or tidy I can see what I’ve been doing! If I carry on feeling the way I do though paying someone to babysit while I sleep may become a necessity…

Good grief - just realising quite how long it is since I blogged! I find it very hard when exhausted to sit down and write/type coherently. Everything gets tainted with how bad I feel,so I’ve not been doing it. Now I can’t even remember what we’ve done, apart from not enough “work” because J throws a tantrum every time I suggest it might be a good idea
I read in a child development book that 6 years old is a very problematic age because children are just starting to see that there are two sides to an argument and this leaves them feeling very unstable. They’re no longer able to be certain of anything, because they haven’t yet learned to distinguish properly between the two sides they can see, so everything is confusing. I guess it’s therefore no surprise that they are argumentative, combative and contrary! Praise is lapped up, but criticism, even if only perceived rather than real, is unbearable, and they will fly off the handle at the slightest thing. This described J’s current behaviour to a T! I guess it helps to know it’s a phase, a developmental stage, rather than something awful I’ve done to him! The same book said that 7 year olds can be incredibly helpful and eager to please adults, so I’m looking forward to that

Having said all that about being so tired, why is it that I found myself sat in front of the computer before 6 am today? I don’t seem to be able to get back to sleep once I’ve woken up, no matter how tired I am. L is now in her own bed, at least nominally - in fact she is in her own bed from when she falls asleep until she first wakes, which could be anything from 1 to 4am, then she comes in with us. I then feed her and eventually get back to sleep, then she usually wakes again and I feed her again and then can’t get back to sleep. Used not to be a problem, but it seems the more tired I am the harder I find it to get to sleep Just can’t get comfortable and can’t stop all the things I’ve not done from running through my head. Maybe I should try keeping a notebook by the bed to write them down and see if I can sleep then Anyway, unable to sleep after L woke me up at 5:15 today I finally gave up and came down to catch up on emails, write some cheques I need to post and blog! Perhaps I’ll sleep better tonight without all that on my conscience!
I wonder how the mums at today’s P&T would feel if I just went in, opened up the doors and toy cupboards, sat myself in a corner and told them i felt too poorly to do P&T today, but they’re welcome to do it themselves?

I was reminded of something tonight. The son who picks up information like a hoover, asks me all sorts of questions about science (”Why did people know that if a helicopter had just a main rotor, the helicopter would spin round?”) and often has his nose in a book is also the lad who is still the right age to occasionally want to make a bed specially for his teddy bear and tuck it in goodnight.

I was reminded of something else this afternoon. We were walking back from town, it was very sunny and K had a green balloon which was casting a green shadow on the floor, even though our bodies were all casting normal black/dark ones. K asked “Why is the shadow green?” and we said that the sun shines on the path but our bodies get in the way and act like a wall because they don’t let any light through. The sun shines on another bit of the path and the balloon gets in the way… K immediately piped up “It only lets the green light through” J then asked the very sensible question “Why are our shadows not completely black?” and I was still a bit staggered by K’s understanding that I fluffed describing light bouncing off other things like walls to get to the path. I was reminded that I have two sons with a brain.

I wasn’t reminded as such, more learned, yesterday that L throws as well as her brothers. Very impressive.

I gave up three lunchtimes this week being masochistic. I actually invited salespeople from three different double-glazing companies round to talk me into buying their windows. It reminded me rather unpleasantly of how bad salespeople, and double-glazing salespeople in particular, can be. To be fair, only one of the three - representing a large well-known company - was this bad; the other two didn’t make me feel stupid for rejecting a “this offer leaves when I do” deal because they’re not made to do that by the company they work for.

I’m glad I waited for a while after blogging about this because now the anger has subsided and I won’t waste words on behaviour I find objectionable. I can console myself by thinking I kept him out of other people’s homes for an hour, so I was doing a public service.

Something useful did come out of this though, which was a good chat with J and K about pushy salespeople and payment by commission, which continued with just J into buying and selling, profit, competition and advertising. It helps that Katy has some relatives who run their own business, so J and K can see that not all people who sell for a living (among other things) get Daddy foaming at the mouth.