Tuesday, December 23, 2008

On Sunday – after a trip to the Rothco exhibition at Tate Modern (how many different ways can you draw a brown square?) We had our annual mulled wine and mince pies do – with the mincemeat made to my mum’s recipe, the pastry made to Sam’s and the mulled wine to Jamie Oliver’s. We didn’t have any cake baking tins so we cut the pastry into squares and made mince pie pasties – nobody seemed to notice.

It was a really good do – with lots of people having a really good time – and some surprising good news from Russ… which I can’t reveal until next year… Stay tuned.

After the party we watched A Wonderful Life and all cried!

Lisa’s parents were up for the weekend as Lisa’s Mum had to go and work for her brother today – she went over to his flat in Docklands late last night only to find he was in, but wasn’t answering the door – so she had to come all the way back alone at midnight.

He phoned this morning at about 8:30 am to ask where she was – but I told him he could wait until she got up. He’s not in anyone’s good books right now.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Nothing if not adventurous, we spent Friday night at a salsa class followed by a music-hall-hip-hop fusion review. The salsa class run by a mad couple in lurid green spandex took us through a few basic moves which I totally failed to master – or at least I managed to clomp through the steps by the end of the class in a John Sergent sort of way. When the class ended, we went on to the revue – a Christmas show by an Australian who took on the character of an elderly woman blending the likes of “doing the lamberth walk” with hardcore rap – actually quite successfully as it happens.

Sunday was the Mark and Debs’ Christmas mulled wine do. George made a lot of friends – mainly because Mark and Debs have daughters who all wanted to play with him. As a father, Mark is amazing to watch – he always manages to find time to give the children attention without seeming to be constantly distracted by them. It’s quite a skill.

Gearing up for Christmas, I took George to the nursery Christmas party while Lisa was at her work’s do. The party was basically a few of the mothers of the nursery’s children along with about a dozen babies. Actually, it was less stressful than it sounds. The babies were all well behaved, and played happily while we sat on the floor and ate ice-cream. George had his MMR vaccine this morning, along with an extra bonus pneumonia injection - but it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down.

Earlier in the day I had wanted to get a bit of last minute shopping done, but failed totally because I couldn’t get George’s pram into any of the trendy, gifty overpriced shops I Lordship Lane. Not because they were full of people – they weren’t – but because they’d all ordered in extra quantities of pointless gifty nonsense which nobody was buying, so it was all crowding the shelves and isles, making the shops inaccessible.

Funny thing, this recession. I think retailers – or at least advertisers have got the wrong end of the stick over it. Just because the statistics are showing that spending overall is going down, there are lots of sales on – fair enough – but I don’t think that’s how it works. If overall spending goes down 5% that doesn’t mean anyone’s spending 5% less – it means most people have still got their jobs so they’ve got exactly the same amount to spend as they had before, but some people have lost their jobs and have no disposable income at all.

A sale means the first group buy the things they were going to buy anyway, but cheaper, and the second group couldn’t buy them if they weren’t on sale, and can’t buy them when they are. – so it may be counterintuitive (as the Americans say) but I’m not sure sales actually help the economy. Except, of course, if the shop down the road is having a sale, then you’ve got to have one too.

Another case of the free market shooting itself in the foot – which it seems to do more often than the political mood of recent times would like to admit.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Crushed by the wheels of Industry

At the weekend, we went to a concert in Brighton featuring 3 of the best electronic bands of the 80’s: Heaven 17, ABC and the Human League (who I’ve seen before – just after sitting my A-levels 22 years ago!).

I never liked ABC much, but the other two had great music which sounded new and different then and now.

This kind of retro concert is a real winner. Want to see Britney spears, but don’t want to sit in a 50,000 seat stadium? – simply wait 20 years, and she’ll be playing on the same bill as Eminem and the cast of High School Musical. Believe it.

Plus you’ll be able to get to the front because there won’t be a massive crowd – and those that are there will be too mature and middle class to push.

We’d hoped to be able to meet up with Grace and Igor on the way home from Worthing, but both of us have very slight colds, so we thought it best not to risk it. We don’t want to pass anything on to them.


George is on his feet
George is now walking – well, tottering – well, standing for a few seconds and then pitching forwards. Every day he manages to stay on his feet for a second or so longer before tipping over, and he’s now quite controlled about how he does fall.

He’s very very close to being able to balance, and he’s happy going up stairs and increasingly confident going down. He’s also fast – very fast – at crawling.

He’s getting noisier too – constantly burbling to himself or to anyone who will listen. Not words yet, but a wide variety of sounds which he seems to have some control over.

Crushed by the wheels of Industry

At the weekend, we went to a concert in Brighton featuring 3 of the best electronic bands of the 80’s: Heaven 17, ABC and the Human League (who I’ve seen before – just after sitting my A-levels 22 years ago!).

I never liked ABC much, but the other two had great music which sounded new and different then and now.

This kind of retro concert is a real winner. Want to see Britney spears, but don’t want to sit in a 50,000 seat stadium? – simply wait 20 years, and she’ll be playing on the same bill as Eminem and the cast of High School Musical. Believe it.

Plus you’ll be able to get to the front because there won’t be a massive crowd – and those that are there will be too mature and middle class to push.

We’d hoped to be able to meet up with Grace and Igor on the way home from Worthing, but both of us have very slight colds, so we thought it best not to risk it. We don’t want to pass anything on to them.


George is on his feet
George is now walking – well, tottering – well, standing for a few seconds and then pitching forwards. Every day he manages to stay on his feet for a second or so longer before tipping over, and he’s now quite controlled about how he does fall.

He’s very very close to being able to balance, and he’s happy going up stairs and increasingly confident going down. He’s also fast – very fast – at crawling.

He’s getting noisier too – constantly burbling to himself or to anyone who will listen. Not words yet, but a wide variety of sounds which he seems to have some control over.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Christmas meal
this weekend was basically about eating. I guess I won't be much of a surprise. Most of our weekends tend to feature eating on some scale or another. This one was a couple of what are becoming traditional Christmas dos having nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever.

The first, the Doctor Who fans Christmas meal (this year hosted by James in Guildford) steered us well away from Christmas into a local Indian restaurant. The same restaurant, in fact, which we ended up in on the evening of my stag night.

It was a really good night, marred only by the fact that I had somehow got the timing wrong, and the meal was taking place a lot earlier than I thought. Consequently we couldn't get a babysitter to cover it and so Lisa to stay at home and miss it.

It sounds like John and Cathy aren't having a terribly good time. John's work, seem to have decided to move his department, lock stock and barrel to India. They suggested there might be the opportunity for John to go out and help train the people replacing him. But he's not keen, not least because they're moving to Mumbai -- the scene this week of the biggest terrorist attack since 911.

Mind you, they have given John, about six months notice. So doesn't need to panic just yet.

Sunday's food fest was Nick's now traditional Christmas Mexican lunch. To which everybody was encouraged to bring their own home-made Mexican treats. Ours was Quorn Mole -- a sauce made from chillis bananas, tomato and chocolate. Sam bought along (as well as the obligatory margaritas) scallop seviche – or raw scallops in lemon juice. Scallops aren't cheap, though, so we all had to make do with an “amuse bouche” - Sam's favourite expression of the moment. An Amuse Bouche is the tiny mouthful of food you sometimes get offered in very posh pretentious restaurants while you wait for your starter to arrive. It's supposed to cleanse your palate - or some such nonsense



E-mail from Gareth.
I got an e-mail, this week from Gareth's e-mail address -- obviously purporting to be from him. Here is the text of it. Take a look at this and see if you think it comes from someone who works as a sub editor on a national magazine:

Hi friend: Introduce you a good website;* www.xmas-buy.com * My friend introduce me this website, it is a large wholesaler who trade mainly in all kinds of electronical products. To my surprise,their products are very low in price and high in quality. I bought an iphone from this website last month, and the iphone works very well! I think it is a shopping paradise which can bring you much benefit, so i want to share it with you!Christmas will come soon,won't you want to present your friends/family/colleague/ etc... the brilliant gifts ?It is really worthy to have a try.Their contact information is: Email: xmas_buy@vip.188.com MSN: xmas-buy@hotmail.com Merry Christmas in advance! best regards!

Hmm… I don't think it's really from him.

Peter’s Christmas drinks
Peter, Lisa's uncle, held his regular Christmas party last night. We took George along, and he spent most of the evening. Crawling around the floor giggling at people. He’s becoming a very sociable baby seems able to remain happy, right up to the point where it falls asleep. Peter's party is always full of characters. One regular there always repeatedly points out how much she loves Sam. Another never fails to miss an opportunity to call Zimbabwe “Rhodesia”. Among the party are always a few people wearing sharp pinstripe suits (Peter lives in an apartment block at Canary Wharf -- somewhere that never quite seems like anybody's home -- you have to sign in reception). I resisted the urge to take a poll in the room of who thought they'd still be in work this time next year -- or next month.