The last few days

The last few days, in random order. Yesterday K was showing me how wobbly his tooth was (utterly gross seeing it bent over to that angle) and then it came out, with a minimum of blood. He was so chuffed that he hadn’t swallowed it (unlike the first one). He sang a happy losing a tooth song while bouncing on the tiny trampoline.

Earlier in the day, Katy had the children out in the back garden in a little paddling pool. Frozen tubes of fromage frais turned into water squirters and much fun was had by all. The camera somehow stayed dry, and so there are photos and video (gasp) on Flickr. Video was easy-peasy on Flickr – excellent.

We now have a modest crop of strawberries from the plants that Mum and Dad brought. Nowhere near the bounty of The Beans or the Off The Path crowd to be sure, but immensely good nonetheless. J and K want us to grow lots of things, and maybe get an allotment. Given the state of the garden, having extra land to worry about sounds like a hassle rather than a good thing.

On Saturday we all tried sushi for the first time. Katy thought it would be slimy or otherwise yuck, and I thought it was always fishy, but there were some packs reduced to 30p in the local Co-op so we tried it and we all think it’s fab.

Yesterday we had another power cut. We’ve had loads since we moved in, and I’ve complained to EDF and got a sorry letter back. Normally it’s just our phase, so our neighbours are unaffected which is weird. This time it was the whole town, plus the two neighbouring towns and made the local news. Fortunately it was over in time for a not-too-late tea.

Sunday was interesting with people being at the right place at the right time. J went to Duxford with cubs (for free), so needed to be at the school the cubs meet at for 9.30. We then were aiming to go to the church we used to go to, but we were running behind and so slipped the children straight into Sunday School and then stayed on for coffee. It was the golden wedding anniversary of a very nice couple in the church, so there was cake and general nice feeling. We met up with Big Alice, went via another friend’s house to pick them up (we should have given them a lift, but our car was so full of stuff that Alice very kindly helped out) and finally onto another friend’s house to be Tudor to local home educating families.

Katy, K, L, A, Big Alice and I all changed and Katy talked about some food she’d made. This was pottage (vegetable stew), posh bread and not-so-posh bread, soft cheese and chive balls, soft cheese balls rolled in chopped apricot, and frumenty. This last one has also cropped up on the excellent Supersizers Go… on TV, and M, who is married to a Kurd said “Oh that’s 23904rwo;ijfa0w3ur” (I’m afraid I couldn’t catch and so have forgotten what she said, but I guess it was Kutia).

We’d brought all our spare bits of clothing, and so there was lots of trying things on, the adults chilled out in the garden, the children watched excellent juggling from one of the dads or disappeared playing, steam tractors pootled past every so often (in a pleasantly slow and noisy way). We had a fantastic authentic soundtrack of Dave, Gina and friends playing Tudor tunes on hurdy-gurdy and recorder, although as Dave was busy mending their house and Gina was busy with S it was on a CD rather than live.

Part-way through I had to disappear off to pick J up, as we wouldn’t be home in time for him to be delivered. I chickened out and half changed back to modern clothes (I also didn’t want to be the embarrassing dad in front of cub friends). We all had so much fun that it was much later than planned when we finally left; the kids had a late tea and then off to bed. J stayed up till gone 10 reading, the irritating thing, and so was crabby yesterday.

K seems to be developing a skill for dropping glass containers on the kitchen floor, which in case you’ve not seen it, is hard tiles. The containers have so far always still contained things – a full bottle of olive oil the first time, and a jar of stuff from the fridge today. With A crawling about it’s even more tedious than usual.

At work, it’s one step forward and two steps back where it comes to doors. There’s a door between my area and the nearest kitchen. For some reason, from one side you need to press a button to get through, and from the other you need an electronic key. This is even though we have a security card about 20 metres away, and there’s another locked door (locked with a different electronic key) between the first door and the outside world / security guard. Today we finally had the lock taken off, so I have less hassle when I want a cup of tea.

The two steps back are the new locks on other doors. If you keep one of these doors open too long (about 10 seconds!) a loud alarm starts. It’s got to the point where we all give it a Paddington hard stare when it goes off as it’s so frequent and loud enough to derail your train of thought. A colleague of mine uses crutches or a wheelchair, so we’re hoping to use disabled access as a fairly strong reason to get the 10 seconds increased to something sensible like 5 minutes.

I caught some of a TV programme where one of the Dimblebees was going on the Trans-Siberian railway. I hadn’t realised that Lake Baikal was so big – bigger than all the US great lakes combined, over 20% of the world’s fresh water.