In-car entertainment

What do you do on a long car journey when you are 17 months old? Well, you totally ignore toys and books that Grandma thought would entertain you and who wants to look out the window for cows all the way to Devon?Toes are much more interesting.

This looks quite promising, too.

Always read the label carefully.

What can be better than a bottle of water? Two bottles of water!

You can play lots of balancing games with them.

And when that gets boring, you can take over the driver's seat.

Out you get, we've arrived.

Ten days of Millie fun coming up!

While I was distracted

I have been so distracted by the new baby in the family, my summer camp and the exciting Test Match that I didn't notice this intruder.
Thanks to erp for pointing him out! Normal service will be resumed after the cricket.

Outa space

My house (pictured here c.1940) was built around 1700, a time when life was simple and uncluttered. The farmer and his family lived in a room at one end of the cottage and his cattle lived at the other end in the linhay. The records show that the property remained reasonably untouched until 1948, when the thatched roof caught fire and the owner used the opportunity to modernise. If you know anything of the materials available, the standard of workmanship and the "modern taste" of post-war Britain, I need say no more about the changes he made.

I am grateful that he installed electricity and running water and I have added my own modern touches with central heating and carpets (those straw-strewn floors were the devil to keep clean!) and I confess that I have a love of gadgets. The problem is finding space to store them. There is neither cellar nor utility room so everything has to be kept in the kitchen. This is the ledge where I keep my everyday gadgets:
While I was in Bristol last week a new toy arrived for me: a steam generator .

My sister-in-law has been singing the praises of hers for several years but I couldn't see the point of replacing my perfectly sound steam iron. Then perfectly sound turned to spitting and leaking and a frayed cord, so I drew in my breath and ignored the fact that there was an extra zero on the price tag and ordered this beautiful piece of space-age technology.

Yesterday, I carefully unpacked the box, read the instructions, filled the water tank, set the temperature and waited for the green light. I was half way through the pile of shirts, marvelling at the light weight of the iron and the smoothness of the ceramic soleplate but wondering at the lack of the remarkable results that sister-in-law had promised. That extra zero on the price tag started to nag. Then I noticed a dial that I hadn't seen earlier - back to the instructions - I hadn't turned the steam on!
Seconds later I was whizzing through the ironing with the promised professional-looking finish I had been promised. It was worth every penny of that zero! BUT...... you see my problem - out goes the old steam iron but where does the new giant system go?Perhaps I should go back to using the old flatiron that came with the house?

One week old

Here she is ... one week old today, gorgeous from head to toe and adored by all!
Just back from a few days of doting on this lovely little one. I was rather surprised the first time I witnessed the modern method of burping baby and I'm not sure that Charlotte Emily was terribly impressed. But it works amazingly well!

Ready for grandparents to admire.

Little Miss Brit

Charlotte Emily was born late last night. It has been a long wait but all is well.

I ordered this basket of flowers for our lovely daughter-in-law via Interflora. However, I had a very kind and courteous call from them this morning to say that the hospital does not accept flowers. I could turn that into another Meldrew Moment but that would spoil the day, so I've asked them to deliver the flowers when Mummy and Baby are home. We will be spending next week in Bristol, being Very Proud Grandparents. Back soon.

Daddy has posted a picture here.

Still waiting!

Thank you for all your enquiries. We are still waiting for Baby Brit to put in his/her appearance. The latest news is that "something should happen this evening." Watch this space!

Meldrew moments

I have been trying really hard to resist the temptation to become a Grumpy Old Woman but there have been so many "I don't believe it" stories in the papers recently that I give up.

Rant#1
Today's papers report that in the past 12 months the Criminal Records Bureau has wrongly classified 1,500 as having criminal records. This is just a statistic to the government but 1,500 real people have had career, reputation and possibly whole life ruined by Big Brother State incompetence.

Rant#2
The Criminal Records Bureau doesn't just make clerical errors, mixing up people with similar names, ticking a Yes box when they meant No and all those other little glitches they like to describe as computer errors, they also make their own judgement about criminal intent or activity when the party concerned has not been convicted, or even accused, of a crime. I read about a woman who took her children to the local park and left the older ones to play for a few minutes while she and the youngest child went into the shop to buy ice-cream. When she came back, there were two policemen waiting with the other children and she was told that she should not have left them unsupervised. That is outrageous in itself - I'm not aware of any law that says children must be supervised at all times - but the story gets worse. Some time later this mother offered to help in her local church and had to apply for a background check by the CRB. It came back showing she had committed an offence against children - those policemen had, without her knowledge, recorded the incident in the park and that will prevent her from taking a job or a voluntary position involving children or vulnerable adults.

Rant#3
A refuge for battered women is to close because local council officials think it is politically incorrect to deny men access. You don't believe it either? Read it here.

I rest my case. The world really is as bad as Victor said.

The Help

Thanks to erp for recommending The Help by Kathryn Stockett. At the time, it hadn't yet been released here and I had to wait for my pre-ordered copy to arrive. Now it is my turn to recommend it to everyone in the UK.

The Help
Kathryn Stockett
Publisher Fig Tree (23 July 2009)
Paperback 464 Pages
£12.99

This novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, turbulent times as the civil rights movement gathered momentum. The photograph used on the cover of the English edition of the book was considered too controversial for the American version; forty or so years is not, after all, very long for old prejudices to die out completely or for old hurts and sorrows to be forgotten. Kathryn Stockett, who grew up in Jackson, uses the voices of three very different women, each courageous in her own way, to give a real insight into the complexities of a segregated community.

Aibileen is a black maid, who does the shopping, cooking and cleaning for the Leefolts, a young white couple. Like all black maids, she has the responsibility of raising the children of the family; she loves looking after babies and little Mae Mobley is her seventeeth charge. Aibileen only stays with a family until the children, who have loved and depended on her while small, become racially aware and begin to treat her differently.

Minny is her friend, another maid, famous for her caramel cake and her unfortunate temper. She is used to losing jobs because of her "sassy tongue." At the beginning of the novel, she is maid to the rich, elderly mother of Hilly Holbrook, the leading light in Jackson Society, who uses her influence to make it impossible for Minny to find another job.

The third voice is that of Miss Eugenia Phelan, known to all except her mother as Skeeter because of her long, leggy resemblance to a mosquito. Skeeter, Elizabeth Leefolt and Hilly Holbrook were best friends at school. Elizabeth and Hilly married immediately after school but Skeeter went away to college and has just returned to find a mystery at home: the disappearance of Constantine, the maid who brought her up. No-one will tell her where Constantine went or why.

It wasn't long before I felt I knew these three women well and cared very much about what happened to them. Their lives become entangled following Hilly's insistence that the Leefolts build a separate bathroom (outside the house) for Aibileen. Black maids can look after the children but not use the family bathroom. Overhearing this conversation leads Skeeter to begin to think about the way that maids are treated and to wonder what they feel about their lives. She begins to investigate, not realising what danger she will be exposing the maids to and the consequences for her own life.

I won't spoil the story (I do hope no-one listened to the ghastly adaptation on Woman's Hour), but I promise there is mystery, tension, brutality, snobbery, deceit and enormous bravery in store for the reader. There is also tenderness, affection and a lot of humour. It is a long book but one that I couldn't put down.

Thanks, e!