At Dionne’s tonight to see her new flat (which is marvellous and still surprisingly tidy). Aidan is on top form, witness this:
Dionne: You’re right Aidan, I stand corrected
Aidan: No you don’t Mummy, you stand wrong. I stand correct.
Do you laugh or tell him off for being cheeky?
I don’t really do holidays. I don’t have the knack of that much forward planning. It might be because growing up, we didn’t have family holidays. You know, where Mum, Dad and kids go away for 2 weeks every year. We did that 4 times. All of them a nightmare, let me count the ways:
1) Norfolk – Camping
Why? No-where to plug in her hairdryer, no fridge for ice to put in the gin. Mum was not amused, my Dad was irritable and my brother managed to stick his hand in a fruit machine, it got stuck, it was nasty, I think there may have been a trip to A&E.
2) Devon – Don’t smack your lips
Notable for Dad being irritable (apparently Ben and I were noisy eaters) and leaving us in the car, on a beach, as the tide came in (Mum couldn’t drive). Fun. Also I got sunburnt, really, really sunburnt….
3) Mallorca – We nearly died
Grandad came. Dad forgot that they drive on the other side of the road, he remembered as the lorry came towards us. Grandad nearly had a heart atttack. Dad was irritable.
4) Cornwall – The triumph of hope over experience
There had been a gap of 10 years or so, I was 16, Ben was 14. Dad was irritable. I think we must have listened to the Greatest Hits of Don McLean, a thousand times, also The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and more worryingly, Rod Stewart.
I did go on holidays though, I went on PGL holidays every summer, school trips, Ireland with my aunt a couple of times, summer camp, so it wasn’t a holiday deprived childhood.
As an adult, I just never got around to sorting out a holiday. It was almost as if, I thought that holidays weren’t something that grown-ups did. And when I did go away, I didn’t get excited about it in the same way my friends did all that counting the ‘sleeps’ etc.
This year, though I am going on a Holiday, with a captial H. I am going to see Josephine in the Cote d’Ivoire, in May. Tickets have been booked, I’m off to have a Yellow Fever injection in a couple of weeks and all I have to do now is apply for a visa.
And I am quite excited, not counting the days excited, but getting close. I might have to go a bake a cake to celebrate…
I watched my first presidential inauguration back in the 90’s (I was doing politics A level and choose the US political system option), and then and every time I have watched one since I am amazed by how moved I am by it (yes even when it was Bush).
It’s a powerful symbol of what is best about America.
People choosing who represents them. America chose to be represented by Barrack Obama, they feel that he represents the best of them.
That makes me hopeful.
But it also makes me jealous. I want a say in who represents me, I don’t want it to be the Queen and I certainly don’t want it to be Prince Charles. (I also want to live in a country where the Church and State are separate and religious schools aren’t funded by the State but that’s another argument).
In the UK, we are subjects to the Queen. You can argue that these are only a form of words and aren’t really true anymore. I disagree. I think the form of things is powerful and we absorb the form of things.
I’ve been reading about the English Civil War, where the idea of religious freedom, led to the ideas of the Levellers and was struck again by the power of Thomas Rainsborough’s statement in the Putney Debates in 1647
“For really I think that the poorest he that is in England have a life to live, as the greatest he: and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.”
In the UK, the people exercise the right to vote and the Queen then invites the leader of the party with the most seats in the Commons to form a government. The government of the UK is Her Majesty’s, not the people’s. The armed forces are HRM not the people’s.
Can you truly believe in equality when the role of the Head of State is decided by if you were related to the last one?
I don’t think you can.
So Sarah and I finally got together the Sunday before last and we were going to go the the V & A but ended up eating cake at the Hummingbird Bakery.
Conversation included Sarah’s new hoodie, Christmas, how bloody cold it was and Ralph Fiennes being twitchy in Oedipus (which I had seen the day before – and my he was twitchy!)
I may have mentioned this before but I love to read, I love books and I love YA fiction, I never grew out of reading it and while I read plenty of adult books, I love the directness of good YA fiction, it gets straight to the story and never talks down. (This does not mean Twilight, I threw that book across a room and real vampires do not sparkle…)
Anyway, Dooley Takes the Fall by Norah McClintock. I loved this book, it’s very noir and it’s been said by others but reminded me of Brick, I couldn’t stop reading even though I sometimes wanted to, when I really didn’t want Dooley to muck it up and was totally convinced he would or something really bad was going to happen…
Just go read or if you have teenagers recommend to them.
And there’ll be another Dooley book next year….fabulous
Jillian is 60 tomorrow.
She keeps looking at me and asking how it is possible. I always want to reply ‘Well Iris and Frank had a special cuddle…’
Mostly I’m thankful that she’s here. Her mother died young and my dad’s been dead a while now….
There’s a dedication in a book that sums up how I feel about her. (I can’t remember the book but this stayed with me)
‘All that you have
All that you think you have
All that you may have
I have her…so I win’
Happy Birthday Mum
Saturday was four years.
1460 days. 208 weeks. 4 years.
Some days it’s like he never died and it’s all raw and horrible. Sometimes it seems like forever and that can be just as horrible. Most day it just is….and I am not generally unhappy with my life.
But I still miss him. I hate that Helene and Luc don’t have their father, that Michael doesn’t have his son and that the life we wanted to have, didn’t happen and cannot be.
Mostly I just miss what he made me feel.
Life feels much harder without him……
Forgotten how much I like this
I promised the guys at work that before I left I would bake them a cake. I also promised my cousin Ellis that we would bake, because he wants to learn how to cook. (Given how much he eats, learning how to cook for himself is the next step!) He did a pretty good job…
I also had two new recipes that I wanted to try. First up is Sarah Rundle’s Lemon Drizzle cake. I’ve eaten this a couple of times and it’s amazing, so when Sarah give me the recipe I had to have a go.
The picture is before icing and it’s pretty good as is…Sarah has given me permission to ‘spread the love and the hips’ by posting the recipe, so here it is:
4oz unsalted butter
6oz golden caster sugar
6oz self-raising flour OR 6oz plain flour & 2 level teaspoons baking power
zest of two lemons
juice of 1½ – 2 lemons
two large eggs, beaten
a few tablespoons of milk
1½ -2 oz crystallised ginger chopped into pieces about 1cm / ½” wide
a lot of icing sugar – at least half a box
Got back on Tuesday. It was fun and thought provoking and I did forget something, my socks in case you were wondering!! And on Tuesday it didn’t all fit back into the suitcase!!
It’s overwhelming, even though compared to most festivals it’s very small. Partly this was because I was with the guys from Grace, most of them have been going to Greenbelt for years and know loads of people there, so I did feel a bit ‘nic no mates’ and partly because if you do it right, the talks etc should make you think, which they did. That I survived and enjoyed it, is largely down to Kathy and Adam. Kathy took time to show me where everything was (including the best loos!!) and they both came to my rescue when it all got a bit much, for which I am very grateful.
The Grace service was on Monday and photos of it can be found here, I will eventually sort out the ones I took, but when I am less full of cold.
Beth Rowley was fab…
