Month: December 2006

Christmas as seen by three children

L opened up the dressing up costume we’d bought her: “Wow! It’s a net curtain and some wings!” Utterly chuffed to be receiving a pink net curtain with little flowers on, plus some pink wings. Her delight didn’t diminish when I showed her that the net curtain was part of a fairy dress, and the wings attached to it.

We got her a steering wheel thing to plug into the computer so that she could play simple driving games on it without getting frustrated with the keyboard or mouse. It came in a box about a foot cubed. She saw the box and said: “Wow! A big stone!” Still excited when I explained to her what it was. (She now has a bit of unaccustomed power as she has something that J and K want her to share with them, rather than her wanting to share something of theirs.)

We could have saved a bit of money if we’d just bought her a net curtain and a big stone, and it appears she would have been just as pleased!

On Boxing Day we headed over to Katy’s uncle and aunt to see lots of nice relatives and eat lots of nice food. At lunch today, out of the blue she said to Katy’s aunt “When I was sick Mummy gived me some alcohol to make me feel better.” Fortunately she knows us all well enough to know how to interpret that i.e. to smile, say “oh really?” and then ignore!

K had been asking for a remote control Thunderbird 2 (without even checking that they existed :roll:) and unfortunately one couldn’t be located in time. There was a substitute waiting in his stocking as left by Father Christmas, and when he found it he said “Wow! Look J! A remote control Thunderbird 2!” (Slightly related aside: J has bagged ownership of Thunderbird 1, and so is Scott in all Thunderbird games. K is happy being Virgil and being the pilot of Thunderbird 2. I think L is usually Lady Penelope.) Anyway, Katy and I groaned inwardly and weren’t sure how to bring him down gently. I went over to him and said “Oh wow! A Thunderbird 2 torch!” This then prompted “Look J, a remote control Thunderbird 2 torch!” Over the course of Christmas Day the “remote control” part was gradually dropped with no loss of happiness, so I think we’ve dodged a bullet :).

Katy had bought some stocking making kits from the Early Learning Centre, which we made up on Christmas Eve. They were really good – pre-cut felt with sewing holes ready made, with a nice blunt plastic needle and lots of wool to put it all together. Katy ended up doing L’s for her, K did the easier bits of his and then I finished it under his direction, but J did all of his apart from the tricky knot-related bits. Katy showed him how to do whip stitch (something I learned too 🙂 ) and he did a really good job.

His protracted journey to bed included putting out some coffee in a thermos mug, a mince pie and a mint for Santa, and a parsnip, a pear and an orange for Rudolph. At some point along the way he said good night to his stocking, and at one point came downstairs again saying he’d forgotten to give his stocking a cuddle goodnight. This seemed to be an earnest request to cuddle his (empty) stocking, so I obliged and packed him off to bed again :roll:. He stayed awake for ages, which made our rummaging through plastic bags outside his room seem even noisier.

Hail thou ever-blessed Morn!

I hope Katy or I will fill in the details of the last couple of days, but this is before I forget. This morning we tramped off to church, arrived during the first hymn and then had an unusual way of keeping the children quiet and occupied during the prayers and readings. J took off his jumper and put on his new wizard cloak and hat. K took off his shoes and jumper and put on his new Mr. Incredible costume, complete with fake muscles, gloves and eye mask. L took off her jumper so she could fasten the (pink) wings onto the (pink) fairy dress she was already wearing. The minister is a seasoned professional who didn’t bat an eye-lid at our family turning the pew into a changing room.

It went a bit pear-shaped later in the service when L got bored and noisy and so had to take her out to the crèche, but before that as we were singing the joyful hymns and hearing about the reaction of the shepherds, the angels and Mary in the Christmas story and the remembering the children’s faces when they opened their presents earlier, I thought that what Katy and I really were giving them was joy. The physical presents were just a vehicle – they weren’t the latest, greatest, most popular, most whizzy or anything like that (being free from the power of the playground helps!) They reflected Katy’s knowledge of them (she bought the presents), and love for them. It sounds very corny and hackneyed, but doesn’t stop it being true – the greatest gifts you can give your children are love, joy, a sense of wonder and of security, self-discipline, respect for others and so on. And, unlike the latest trainers or electronic frippery, are what every child deserves.

Loopy pizza, bendy light, twisty buildings and not my bug

I like the sound of this new pizza, although the price is a bit off-putting.

Time to pre-order your invisibility cloak? I wonder what a pair of glasses made from this stuff would do.

This sounds like an impressive skyscraper, but I can’t help worrying about how they’re going to connect up the electricity, gas, water and sewerage… Even if each flat had all of its floor, i.e. was a complete ring, would you have to wait until the toilet lined up with the sewerage pipe in the axle and so only go to the loo once a day? Or is there going to be some kind of circular trough thing around the outside of the axle?

Not my bug (try rebooting?)

Hail to the Lord’s Anointed!

I went to Germany again this week – up at early o’clock on Monday, nightmare journey to Heathrow, missing the flight and then our rearranged flight was delayed more than once. The time out there is a bit of a blur, but it involved very long days, keeping the customer just about happy enough, some menacing apple eating by a big cheese, lots of smoky restaurants and bars trying to find veggie food on the menu and lots of nice free fruit juice, lebkuchen and hot chocolate and even more work to do when I’m next in the office. Back late on Friday without being able to buy any presents for Katy or the children (this seems to have gone down OK), utterly exhausted but very glad to see the children asleep in their beds and to cuddle up to Katy in ours. Katy had somehow managed to do the job of two parents while I was away and wasn’t wanting to strangle anyone.

Yesterday was J’s second mini-football session and the last for the year. He enjoyed it a lot again and is gaining in confidence. They all got certificates and he wants to go back next term, which is a very good sign. Then we walked around the corner to a sling meet at someone’s house, where some new people were indoctrinated into the power of baby wearing. It was very nice and we lost the older two and gained young D (about L’s age) as D’s mum was taking our boys plus her daughter to London to see a children’s version of the Magic Flute. This is one of the many cultural blind spots I have, but it sounded like a Good Thing. Much wailing from D until he got to our house and saw lots of lovely toys, then I fed everyone and whisked L and D to the swings so Katy could finish off her sermon for this morning’s service. At the swings I met someone who was Danish and living in this country to avoid paying Danish 63% tax!

When J and K returned with their hosts they told us how excellent it had been and then J displayed his tiredness and hunger (despite being offered a huge bowl of pasta) by playing up enough that he went to bed before K.

More busy-ness today, with Katy preaching at a local village church that we go to only when she’s down to preach there, which is about every year or so. That seemed to go OK, although I was on child care duty much of the time. One bit that I was in the church for was Katy doing the children’s address. She got the children jumping and shouting for joy, which they managed very well and they were much better than the adults. It was all about Gaudete Sunday (rejoicing), which led nicely into Tell Out My Soul.

Almost immediately after the service (it wouldn’t be a proper service without tea and biscuits afterwards, and we didn’t want to incur the Lord’s wrath by defying Tradition 😉 ) we piled back into the car for lunch en route and the second service of the day, which was the christening of the youngest child of one of Katy’s imaginary friends. This was 2.5 hours’ drive away across the Thames (Dartford crossing is always a crowd pleaser, as is the Just So Stories tape in the car). Minor panic when trying to find the way into the church and the dashboard decided to light up like a Christmas tree and so the car stall at the head of the queue at a junction.

We got there OK, the service went well and little R ticked all the baptism boxes:
look cute in gown? – yes
keep quiet during the hymns and prayers and sermon? – yes
keep quiet even when assaulted with smelly oil and cold water? – yes

After the service I managed to get us well and truly lost in the mile and a half to the venue for the reception / party. When Katy read the map we went straight there 😳 At the party R ticked even more boxes:
still look cute in gown? – yes
keep contents of stomach in stomach and not all over gown? – yes
sleep happily for most of the time? – yes
be very cuddly and go back to sleep when cuddled? – yes
allow strange man to relieve mum of cuddle duty while she ate, fall asleep without a murmur, allow strange man’s wife to turn the cuddle into a sling-enhanced carry while staying asleep, not wake up when strange man decides to sing along to beautiful cover of Mad World playing on the hi-fi thinking it would be a nice lullaby? – yes

J had his usual whale of a time playing (football) with R’s big brothers and sisters, and K and L did something or other that they enjoyed (colouring, I think). It was one of those occasions when you felt completely happy letting them wander off as you knew they’d be safe and happy doing something you approved of. Katy got to chat with imaginary friends in person, we all ate lots of lovely food and we were the last guests to leave apart from R’s godmother.

The children finally fell asleep in the car on the way home, after K insisted that he’d seen some UFOs. Handily they were taking off from Gatwick airport – how did they get their clearance from the tower?

Wednesday… and Thursday

Last B-a-R before Christmas and J wanted to take home-made chocolates for all the helpers (especially Dave, his favourite) so the first job today was shaping chocolate ganache balls and rolling them in cocoa and/or icing sugar 🙂
Unfortunately Bob woke up ill and J woke up crabby so not as good a start to the day as we’d hoped, but eventually we had a couple of nice packages of freshly-made chocs to take and three children actually dressed and wearing socks, shoes and coats. Thought we’d be horribly late, but the day started to improve as we reached the end of the road just in time to catch the far more direct bus (which only goes every 40 minutes at fairly random times, as opposed to the other which goes every ten minutes – in theory anyway – so that really was a good feeling!) and so were able to get there at about the time we’d expected to without the strops, the hunt for missing socks (where do they go?) etc etc.
Chocs went down very well (Dave wasn’t there, but J made them promise to save him some 😆 ) and the children all enjoyed doing lots of craft (making glittery angels on straws to turn them into puppets) and then K and L joined in songs and listened to stories while J made even more angel puppets and chatted to friendly grown-ups. We couldn’t stay until the end of tidy up time, which he was a little disappointed about, but the promise of drama (brought forward by an hour, hence the not being able to stay) induced him to leave without too much fuss.
Drama was good (L, who is not officially part of the class, hovered by the door in such a way that when the teacher asked someone else to come in and sit down she was able to convince herself that she was included too, teacher didn’t seem to mind and L was then picked to play the part of Cinderella, lines and all! K was fairy godmother because he had his own wand, well glittery angel on a stick 😆 ) and looks set to continue next year too – good news for the children if not for my purse!
After that we wandered towards the shopping centre to see what Santa’s Grotto looks like this year, going via the bakery where we hoped to get gingerbread men. Bakery was closed, so we consoled ourselves with a trip to a couple of charity shops where J spent his (accumulated because I keep forgetting to give it to him) pocket money on a micromachines lorry (£3 well spent, as it turned out when we got it home 😉 ) and also managed to find a pair of salopettes in his size which should make up for the disappointment of having outgrown his snowsuit last year 🙂 Oh and a video of Le Roi Lion, which we figured must count as educational!
Since the cake shop was closed as well we had no choice but to go to Millie’s Cookies and make a selection there, including a double chocolate cookie for Bob “to make him feel better” 😀
Sadly, Santa’s grotto had been vandalised so there was no animated show to watch 🙁 and we then had to walk home in the cold and dark – not so pleasant, although the cookies helped…
We were supposed to be helping to decorate the tree at church in the evening, but with Bob really not feeling up to going out decided to give it a miss, then suddenly remembered that there was a local preachers meeting at 7:30, which both of us are supposed to attend (I have a three line whip as a local preacher, while Bob has an open invitation as a worship leader) and it was too late to send apologies. Children had eaten, but not us, as we had intended to get a curry or something equally comforting later, so I had to quickly grab something to keep me going and then leg it, leaving Bob with boys in bed but L still wide awake. The meeting was good (got there at 8, but managed to sneak in quietly) and was followed by a study session on overseas aid and theology by Stephen Plant (who helps to run local ministerial training college and whose wife is director of MRDF, so he’s well qualified!) which I had intended to miss in favour of food and sleep, but ended up staying to hear. Was glad I had – lots to ponder on, but not here and not now…
L was still awake when I got back *sigh* so no chance of an early night, which I guess means I shouldn’t be surprised at how tired I was today 🙁

Bob still ill (another day off work) but able to help us get ready for parents and tots, as long as he knew he’d get the chance to sleep later. P & T was very quiet, in a number of people sense at least. We had known that J and E wouldn’t be there, but hardly anybody else came either. One of our regular mums arrived with her little boy, but left shortly afterwards because he was bored 🙁 I think the main problem there was that he likes to roam (forever in the kitchen under my feet 😆 ) and with the hall still blocked off and rather limited space he was wanting to go up and down the stairs instead. Mum didn’t want to keep following him up and down but didn’t want to let him go alone either (fairly vicious stone steps) and there was no one else to distract him (J and K sitting doing maths and L playing quietly by herself) so they gave up. Some time later another regularish mum appeared, with a daughter who was happy to just potter with L, then an HE boy with his mum and that was it until snack time, when Rebecca and R came and then Lucy arrived (for the first time) with her three, which livened things up considerably (especially when they found the box of noisy instruments I had foolishly got down from the cupboard and proceeded to set up a marching band up and down the aforementioned stone stairs 😆 ). The younger older children also spent a fair bit of time playing with K’s micromachines fire engine, while the older ones made snowflakes (and lots of mess on the floor) and we all did lots of stencilling and colouring to calm down at the end – mostly using lovely wooden tree decorations from yellow moon last year which turned out to be ideal as Christmas templates 🙂 Oh and J made a complicated pattern for Bob to trace “to help him forget his pain” – only a bad cold really, but nice idea!
No Gina so no piano 🙁 but we came home “to look after Daddy” instead, which turned into Bob looking after me as I was so exhausted that I just stumbled up to bed leaving him to supervise lunch.
Went to collect B and F with just J (K and L curled up on settee with Bob), which turned out to be just as well as weather was foul and B kept us waiting outside his classroom for 15 minutes – goodness knows what he was doing 🙄 – and then had forgotten his bookbag so had to go back! F was really tired (as usual) so ended up having a carry from about halfway home (good job I’d taken a sling just in case!), which really made me notice the difference between a child who is used to being carried and one who is not. There is not a huge difference in size between F and K, but he is far easier to carry because he uses his body to help. F loves to be carried, but either just sits there or leans back 😯 – it makes her feel much heavier and even slightly unstable.
When we got in we warmed up with frothy hot chocolate and filled up with nachos because everyone was starving, then made F a pouch sling to carry her baby (and had to make one for L too because hers was in the car and Bob had taken that to go into work to get his laptop so he could catch up before going back to work tomorrow) and then I decided to give in and just sit them down in front of a DVD for a bit, since they were getting a bit tired and hyper. Bob came back with pizza (yay!) so we reached a suitable stopping point in Jonny English and ate, then their au pair arrived before we could get back to JE – probably not a bad thing or we’d have been under pressure to let them watch to the end.
At least with everyone being so tired they were all in bed and asleep well before 7:30 (official bedtime), leaving us to collapse and do nothing much, even though we should be trying to catch up on work/housework/sorting 🙄 and I think I may just go to bed now myself…

Monday… and Tuesday (and a Jolie Ronde ramble)

Monday

No J and E today (I hope, cos otherwise we missed them :shock:) but CHEF sports, which the boys enjoyed, then off to the park, which I think they enjoyed even more 😀 L seems to have adopted SB as an honorary big sister and spent a lot of time playing in her vicinity, if not actually with her.
Then we came home and did a bit of a manic tidy, as well as some Maths and English which suddenly became incredibly appealing when mentioned in the same breath as tidying up 🙄
Friends who are moving much nearer very soon came along here for tea (after collecting keys to their new house 🙂 ) and lots of increasingly riotous play.

Tuesday
Maths and English passed off relatively painlessly today, then we pottered, made lots of (very glittery) Christmas cards, the children did some online activities from the Natural History Museum website and I finally got round to cancelling my ATL membership – usually I only think of it when we get the DD notification, which is too late! I shall miss the mailings and magazines (not that I have time to read them all anyway) but it’s silly to keep paying for something we don’t need. Although, having said that, I’m thinking very seriously of doing a Jolie Ronde franchise, so may decide to take up ATL again anyway. Ho hum. Jolie Ronde is fab! The boys have both done classes (J still does, but there isn’t one currently for K’s age group) and learned loads whilst really enjoying themselves too. Unfortunately the franchise is not cheap and even once the up-front fees are paid you still have to buy materials through them (fair enough) and pay a royalty per pupil per class (so classes would have to be charged for even if I did them as an HE activity iyswim) – and then when you finish all teaching materials have to be returned 🙁 I’ve been canvassing CHEF to see if there’s enough interest (you have to have a minimum number of pupils to start too) and it looks promising, but I think to make it worth doing I’d have to find one or two ordinary classes to teach as well, where I wouldn’t feel bad charging enough to start to recoup some set-up costs and where I would have a straightforward group of children of similar ages and abilities. The course is set up to run in fairly strict (school) age groups, with a few years of entirely oral/aural work and then gradual introduction of reading and writing from about age 6/year 2. I know that some of the children in those age groups interested in an HE group would not yet be reading/writing, plus there will be children who have not done any French… A good reason, I guess, for it to be an HE parent who takes on the teaching rather than a “normal” teacher 😉
Anyway, I digress :frog:
So, Tuesday…
After lunch K sat in front of a large pile of shoes claiming to be unable to find his pair until we were late for dance, at which point I gave up and got them for him (clearly my eyesight is far better than his 😛 ) and we then had to drive in order not to miss the class 😳 but salved our consciences (well, mine) by collecting three heavy boxes of books from Bob to save him having to carry them home over the next three nights. The class was good, apparently, and K came out full of beans 🙂 L had said she wanted to go, but changed her mind when we got there so we spent the time reading our way through the pile of books some kind soul had left on the windowsill while J worked his way through a magazine (an educational, age-appropriate one, honest – can’t remember the title but it was so good we’re thinking of taking out a subscription) and we all cooed at baby R 😀
Just enough time at home to open the boxes and see which books were to hide, which to put aside for other people’s present and which could be looked at straight away and then had to rush out to J’s French club, where L and I huddled under our lovely new babywearing poncho and read more stories with K – oh and excavated my handbag to find lots of only slightly fluffy mini Smarties from some long-forgotten party bag, which made K and l very happy 😉
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig, via a pop to the Co-op to get ingredients because we suddenly remembered that it is the last B-a-R of term tomorrow and J wanted to make chocolates to give to all the helpers, then back home to watch Blue Peter and make truffles of various sorts – the ganache ones can’t be shaped until tomorrow, when the chocolate mix will be set enough to roll into balls, so that will be a nice start to the day :cheer: until we suddenly realised how late it was and had to phone Bob to bring chips home for tea ( 😳 but we did have lots of veggies with them 😉 ) or we’d have starved and had to eat all our freshly-made chocolates :norty: 😆
Just as they were going to bed J remembered that we had mentioned St Nicholas’ Day when talking about Advent a few days ago so they all had to get shoes out to put by the front door with apples and carrots in for his horse – and now Bob and I have to scour the cupboards (or perhaps pop out once again to the good old Co-op) for something to put in them…

Lots of weekend

It seems like a lot of things happened this weekend, but I probably can’t remember them all.

Up and out early on Saturday with J to go to (mini) football practice at the local sports centre. I don’t know who was more apprehensive – him or me – on the way there as he only started showing any interest in playing football this summer and so isn’t as advanced as other boys his age, some of whom have been doing after-school football clubs for ages. He enjoyed it a lot and wants to go again, which is great.

The instructor was very good – he knew the names of the regulars, and made newcomers welcome. He also got people divided up nicely by ability and age, so no-one got embarrassed or frustrated – a great de-motivator in physical education. Proper warm-ups, then dribbling skills, then a short match (two matches in parallel by ability and age). J saved two goals which was excellent and didn’t do the standard primary school football tactic of joining the large swarm of boys around the ball getting under each other’s feet – he marked people a bit (as he’d noticed some other people doing this) and moved into space. There was a boy there he knew, and I chatted to a colleague who was bringing his son for the first time too.

After lunch J tackled some maths and K did some writing with his leap pad. Giving J a short break from his maths has helped a lot – he seemed much more willing to get stuck in, and it was just about the right level of stretching him. We rewarded ourselves by cutting out, colouring in and then playing the Flushed Away board game we got free from ICE. J lost, so I distracted him from sulks by going through the rather good What Does a Civil Engineer Do? thing on the ICE web site. He thought that the artificial island built for the Hong Kong airport could have been built by thousands of mini-submarines each with a bucket of underwater concrete, and then divers in diving suits spreading it out to make the island. As Penry says: could be…

Then there was painting of the salt dough Christmas tree decorations they had made at Friday club the day before, and J managed to get a splodge of primary red in his hair (at the front!). They weren’t crafted-out, and so did some peg doll making with Katy. Somewhere during the day J discovered numerous v. annoying Crazy Frog videos via a Google search – good job we have safe search turned on. J, K and L all thought them hilarious; I thought they were mildly amusing for the first 2 viewings only. 🙄

After children’s bed time I added a new smiley (more smiley Morris dancing, I suppose) to the blog – can you tell which one? 🙂 Also, for once it isn’t one I’ve pinched from Jax and Tim.

This morning we had meant to get to the advent / Christmas service for the playgroup that all ours have been to for ages (when it doesn’t clash with other things). It’s run by lovely people who do an industrial scale playgroup and then throw an industrial scale free summer and Christmas party with amazing food masterminded by the vicar’s wife.

In the end we only managed the last talky bit and the last hymn, leaving Katy feeling cheated of a good sing of good carols (more opportunities ahead, I expect 🙂 ). This was because L managed to get a bead stuck up her nose! This is a rite of passage that J has experienced (with the torn-off and rolled-up instructions of the travel cot he was supposed to be having a nap in) but K has avoided. I was imagining a repeat of the unpleasant scene in Total Recall staged in A+E after a long wait and expensive car park charge, but fortunately the emergency doctor is just down the road from us and we were put to the head of the queue (of lots of children!) and L soon re-emerged with Katy minus a small blue bead. How it got there is still a mystery…

Katy tried out an early Christmas present from me, which is a baby-wearing poncho coat made by a sling-making imaginary friend of hers. L and Katy both seem to like it so I’m happy too. Don’t think I’ll be borrowing it though!

We finally got to the church, sang the last hymn, then cleared off while they transformed it from service-mode into children’s-party-mode (armies of students guided by plans projected from an OHP – yes, it’s that organised and it shows). Katy had seen an advert in Lush earlier in the week that they were going to have a party which we thought might be fun (and we might finally get treated to some freebies 😉 ). There was nothing obvious going on, lots of people milling about, and then we spied a small table next to the tills with a plate of biscuits, a carton of juice, some cups and a box of chocolates. After J had trailed an assistant round the shop, patiently waiting for her to notice him, then losing courage, then I asked her, we discovered that this was the party i.e. help yourself while I continue being not very busy. I’m not one to begrudge free refreshments, but maybe if they’d said it was going to be refreshments rather than a party that would have been more accurate.

The real party was very good as it always is. J and L got their nails painted and K got his face painted as an excellent dog (see Flickr). J and K made a Christmas cracker each, which involved sticking some glitter on a card shape, even more glitter on your hands, and bonus glitter on the floor and your clothes. I don’t think it would take CSI techniques to find the amount they managed to transfer onto me too! As J’s nails weren’t completely dry, the lovely purple colour was coated in an equally lovely layer of dark blue (glitter). Nice.

We walked home, collapsed for a bit, watched The Sword in the Stone (I love the wizard’s duel scene) and then it was tea-time and soon the end of another day…

Early reading memories

Tagged by Elizabeth (sorry it’s taken so long to get round to doing it!)

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you?
I started off at school in Africa (in my mum’s class!) and was nearly 6 when I came to live with my grandparents. I have no idea whether or not I could read by then (far too many other things going on!) but I do remember that my grandmother withdrew me from reading lessons because they used the ITA and she (a semi-retired p/t teacher at that school) felt it was such a confusing system that she preferred me not to be exposed to it. Presumably, then, I could already read, or else she taught me, because before I left that school at 8 I was off the reading age charts…

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library?
I inherited hundreds of books, left behind by my globe-trotting bookworm father and his younger sister 🙂
The earliest ones I remember having as my very own were probably Miffy’s Bouncy Ball (which I still have!) and a Richard Scarry Busy Book (Busy Busy Word Book?)

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money?
No idea, but almost certainly from a charity shop, as I used to haunt them regularly 🙂
Actually, I didn’t buy many books really, because both my grandparents’ house and my father’s house were crammed full of them already and I was a regular library user besides. At secondary school we could take 4 books from the school library, which I did at least twice a week, and 10 books form the town library, which I did at least weekly 🙂

4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often?
Yes! If a book wasn’t worth rereading it wasn’t worth keeping – and I kept a lot! Even now in times of illness/tiredness/stress I go back to old childhood favourites like the Willard Price Adventure books, Anne of Green Gables, My Naughty Little Sister, the Narnia books and, slightly later, Robert Heinlein, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen…

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it?
The first time I read a book definitely too old for me was at about 6 when I picked up The Lord of the Rings, read up to a scary bit, slammed the book shut and didn’t look at it again until we read it as a class book in school! Not really an adult book though, I guess. Probably Robert Heinlein (I think Friday was the first I read at about 8 or 9 – not entirely suitable, but my dad was a fan and used to leave books around all over the place!) or quite possibly Austen (Pride and Prejudice, maybe) at a similar age. Oh, and I went through a crime thriller phase from about 11: Dick Francis, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Taylor, Agatha Christie…

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones?
We had a few Dr Seuss, but I’ve only really come across the full breadth recently, looking for books for my children. Oh, and Winnie the Pooh completely passed me by until I was a student, when I joined the Sheila and her Dog Society, which basically meant lots of pyjama parties, drinking hot chocolate, eating Maltesers and reading children’s stories in silly voices 😆 After that we used to organise Pooh-reading parties for Methsoc 😀