Hackette in Colchester

Books on the loose

2011-10-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

I signed up for the Bookcrossing site back in 2003, excited by the idea that you could release books into the wild and track their journey as people picked them up and read them. After registering a grand total of two books and attempting to leave one in the gym, I quickly realised that I felt too furtive and socially embarrassed leaving anything anywhere, and also noticed that the vast majority of books seemed to disappear without trace as people found them but didn't register them on the site or they got swept away into lost property or whatever. Also the act of printing out a label proved too much for me, I didn't have my own printer (this is eight years ago we're talking about) and, well, lazy.

In the meantime I signed up to Readitswapit.com, which appealed because you post the books and it just felt generally more user friendly, although less exciting. Although I have recently realised that there is such a thing as a "library" which is kind of similar except you don't have to pay postage.

Anyway, last week I was in CO1, the "church cafe" opposite the library in Colchester, and saw they had a Bookcrossing shelf. What could be easier than picking up a few books (although still with the social embarrassment in case someone thought I was nicking them) and registering them online, now internet access is everwhere. And then I can take them back again. Of course the books haven't travelled far, but rather than taking a "balloon race" attitude to the whole thing I am starting to think it is actually a great way to meet other book lovers in my new community, by exchanging comments about books on the site. I see there are local meet-ups, which will be nice in 20,000 years time when the children sleep properly. In fact I was pleased to see that Colchester has more books "in the wild" than any other Essex town. Go us.

Freelancing and blogging: a question

2011-10-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

I have a confession. This is not my only blog. I actually have three. One is buried in the mists of time and no-one will ever retrieve it, besides it only had about three entries. This one was supposed to be my all-things-to-all-men, thoughts on motherhood, journalism and where I live, type blog. It was also originally supposed to be anonymous as I felt more comfortable that way, but since HackneyHackette, my photo and my real name are linked up all over the web (because I am incapable of coming up with more than one nickname) it doesn't take Einstein to work out who I am. Especially as I keep linking to it from Facebook and Twitter. So I don't really mind.

My third blog is the one I want to talk about. I started doing it when I was online editor of the magazine I used to work for, and have continued since I went freelance. It is under my name, with my photo, and is much more professional, supposedly covering the media portrayal of children and young people but actually other issues in that sector as well, with a personal slant.

This was fine when all the freelance work I was doing was for that magazine but now I wonder if it is a good idea to continue or not. On the plus side it keeps my name alive as an "authority" (no, really) in that sector and I was hoping it would help get work not only from the magazine but potentially organisations working in that sector. Also I like doing it.

On the minus side, I wonder if it could be more of a hindrance to getting work than a help. Will it put commissioning editors off from commissioning me if I seem so linked to a particular magazine? I don't work for direct competitors to that magazine anyway, and I can see it won't put off those from a completely different sector, say marketing, but I'm thinking of those in between - not about children and young people entirely but sometimes covering similar areas. In fact, the very commissioning editors that are most likely to commission me.

I'd appreciate any thoughts - especially from commissioning editors, although I doubt any read this. I have already taken the link to my blog off my Twitter profile as I have started to follow editors of magazines I am interested in writing for, but I will continue to post links to it when I write new posts, as quite a lot of my followers are in the sector. Do you think that's OK?

Story sabotage

2011-10-07T02:43:00.000-07:00

HackneyChild usually demands stories on the way to nursery. I have invented, or rather adapted from a game I used to play with my cousins, some characters called Seraphina Concertina, Antonio and Plum, and these children have quite dull adventures based on my own childhood. HackneyChild enjoys the known - holidays, fetes, decorating rooms - and is not too keen on scary things.

This morning however I couldn't think of anything so I started out to adapt The Enchanted Castle by E Nesbit. "Seraphina Concertina, Antonio and Plum found a hole in the hedge. They crawled through and they were in a beautiful garden. There were statues - one of a huge dinosaur, one of a pretty lady - a lake, and a cave."

HackneyChild interrupted firmly and suspiciously. "There was NOTHING living in the cave, and the statues did NOT come to life."

Ah, OK then.

WATTER!!!

2011-10-06T03:16:00.000-07:00

HackneyBaby calls all beverages "water", in the same way I am told by Scottish-born Hackney_bloke that all drinks north of the border are referred to as "juice" (only by some I am sure).

This can lead to confusion. "WATTER!" "You want milky?" "WATTER!!" "You want some juice?" "WATTER!!!" "Oh, you actually do want water. Here you go then."

Bodies of water are also "WATTER!" so it can also mean "sea", "pond", "puddle", or in fact "wee". It also sounds a bit like his word for cat ("CATTA!"), so life at the moment is a constant guessing game, and the conversation above could equally well end with: "Oh yes, the cat has come over the garden wall." It's fun.

It's like having the South Bank in Colchester

2011-09-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

Kind of. Well, we paid a visit to Firstsite, Colchester's new, much-delayed, way-over-budget shiny golden arts centre, on its opening day last Sunday. I'm not the huge-est fan of the design, but it's striking, you have to give it that. HackneyBoy said "Why is it all slantwise and over-y?" which is a good question, the answer to which is presumably "because the architect wanted it to be".

We missed the 10am opening (apparently there was some rugby on) but got down there in time to see some Morris dancers doing their thing on the patio bit outside. Don't get me started about Morris dancing, we learned it at primary school but only the boys were allowed to perform because it was not authentic to have girls taking part, like it is authentic to have eight year olds doing it anyway.

The kids loved the wide spaces and the seating ("comfy stones!"), and there was drawing taking place on massive bits of paper over the Berryfield Mosaic, and outside in the sunken garden that used to belong to social services they were making bendy stick sculptures, mosaics, and drawing with weird chalk bags. The kids had also decided that climbing trees was art as well, and were getting on with that.

The exhibitions themselves were to me frankly a blur on the edges of my vision as I followed HackneyBaby around suggesting that the nice art people might not like it if he chalked all over the gold walls, but I saw enough to suggest I would love to go back without the children, or with a sleeping baby. I especially liked Aleksandra Mir's HELLO Colchester, a wall of pics of pairs of Colchester residents stretching through time in a Six Degrees of Seperation linky way.

I am also excited by the family games that will be taking place at weekends, and the drawing activities on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I like the sound of some of the talks, especially Camulodunum, Image and Reality. In conclusion, despite mixed feelings engendered by my mother's experience of working next to the building site for what seems like decades, I am liking Firstsite.

"Which way should the money go? Top discs or Oxfam?"

2011-09-27T03:24:00.000-07:00

One of the hazards of moving into a bigger house is you get back all the boxes that your long-suffering parents have been looking after for you all these years. I was pleased to receive three carrier bags (they are keeping the box, apparently) full of all the books about which I have spent the last ten years vaguely thinking "I wonder what happened to that book?". There are loads of old favourites like Camerons at the Castle (which appears to be going for about £35 on Amazon :-o ), the Chimneys of Green Knowe and brilliantly, the Star Trek The Motion Picture Pop Up Book. You can make Mr Spock raise his eyebrows!

I also am now reunited with my school hymnbook, minus cover. I appear to have been trying to organise a kind of betting syndicate on which hymn would be sung at any given assembly, judging by the odds penned in next to each title, but it clearly didn't get very far. I am confronted again with the oddness of the book as a whole - traditional numbers like The Lord's My Shepherd mixed in with a load of trendy/ political/ angry 60s songs which really haven't stood the test of time but that I really wished we could sometimes sing, back in the day (we never did).

I like to read them all in an enraged Billy Bragg type voice. For example (I assume to the tune of Pop Goes The Weasel but since we never sang it I don't know): "Polaris subs, atomic bombs/ Germ research in progress/ That's the way the money goes/ What price, the poor folks?". Possibly the headmistress felt this was too political for a Tory-leaning grammar school. I am also disappointed that we never got to sing: "I met you God last Saturday, when a group began to sing/ Mini-skirted girls weaved patterns, boys did a Jagger swing." Every assembly, I would wait with bated breath in case we heard: "Now girls, turn to hymn number 107, "As Israel and Egypt stretch their borders again/ The people of the Gaza strip once more will suffer pain", then sigh with disappointment when instead we got "Now, number 77, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise."

Not what you want for your birthday

2011-09-23T03:35:00.000-07:00

It's not actually HackneyBoy's birthday for another month, but he received a big card through the post today. A big cheery card, with Happy 4th Birthday on it and a purple monkey with a cake (with three candles, oddly).

Who could this card be from? Opening it up, we read: "Congratulations on your child's fourth birthday. It is now time for your child's immunisation boosters against diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella." Thanks NHS North East Essex! I'll be sure to pass on your best wishes to the lucky birthday boy.

Luckily HackneyBoy has already had these boosters, after we were sent an actual letter about them some months ago. HackneyBaby had his one year old ones at the same time. They were both very brave. I am in favour of encouraging vaccinations, but it does seem a tad unfestive - also we should really have been taken off the database once the injections had happened.

Random Free Stuff To Do

2011-09-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

One of the things I thought I would miss when moving to Colchester was Random Free Stuff To Do. Where we used to live, you couldn't round a corner without tripping over a recycling festival, an anti-racism fair, a tasting trail, a random art installation or some kind of cultural celebration.

But luckily Colchester has Random Free Stuff To Do in spades. Why, only last weekend HackneyBoy was having his hand stamped with a big red F for Felon at Wivenhoe Church Ale while we learnt valuable information about the medieval court system - can it be true that six year olds could be hung? Also I bought six birthday cards for a pound, which is particularly useful when your entire family seems to have been born between October and December.

The weekend before we all jumped on a vintage bus waiting outside Castle Park and were spirited off to the Hythe, where we explored the Colne Lightship, watched carnival dancers and a community choir, then were driven back to the castle which had free entry for Heritage Open Weekend.

We have also enjoyed two children's festivals, a bagpipe display and a cycle race among other things. I don't know if this will continue into the winter, but so far, it's looking good.

Packed lunches 80s-style

2011-09-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

It's not something we have to worry about until next year, but seeing photos of two of my nephews on their first day at school, as well as various children of friends, made me remember my first day back in the (very) early Eighties.

Leaving aside the whole "you aren't actually registered with a class because your mum sent you to this school despite being told not to as you aren't in the catchment area, so when the whole year gets their name called out and moves one by one to their designated teacher you will be left sitting alone in the gym" scenario (it wasn't traumatic, mum, I only put two and two together about 20 years later) there was also the "homes, dinners, sandwiches" register.

Basically, once it was established each child was present and correct every morning, our school read out everybody's name again, and you had to reply "dinners" if you were having school dinners, "sandwiches" if you had brought a packed lunch, and "homes" if your mum was picking you up to feed you lunch at home. The roll call on the first day went something like: "Alison Abberton?" "Sandwiches." "HackneyHackette?" "Dinners." "Nicholas Brown?" "Sausages." "Sorry? " "Sausages." "No, Nicholas, you have to say sandwiches, dinners or homes." "But I don't have sandwiches. I have sausages." He did as well.

A road too far

2011-09-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

There is a school in Colchester that people around here speak of in hushed tones. A legendary school with a one from Ofsted that seems to be the only thing on the minds of most of those with school age children in the surrounding area. So what did we, the most rubbish pushy middle class parents ever, do when moving out of the inner city? We moved to a house one road out of the catchment area.

Conversations with people (lovely people) that I have met since moving here have generally gone:

"You moved here from Hackney? I expect that's because you knew the schools here are really good?"

And my reply is always: "We are one road out of the catchment area of School X".

And their faces change, and they go: "Oh. Well, that other school is really good too. Even though it only got a three. It was very unfair really. I'm still sending mine to school X of course."

We didn't actually move because of the schools, I would have been happy with many of the schools in Hackney as it happens. But possibly we could have thought harder about catchment areas.

The perils of hyper local blogging

2011-07-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

Or something.

I can't help but notice that it has been rather a long time since I posted anything. The reason for this is that, with very mixed feelings, in December I moved from the heart of the people's republic of Hackney to the Essex town I went to school in (Colchester). I miss the buzz of London, the not-knowing-what-you-are-going-to-find-round-any-corner, the random art, the great (yes, I know, surprising) early years services. But we have gained many rooms to replace a two bedroom flat, a garden, and nearness to family and extended family (on my side at least).

Trouble is, what do I do with this blog? I can't keep calling it Hackney Hackette. It's annoying as I got listed on a lot of other sites but to be fair, I assume they want to read about Hackney which is going to be unlikely. Do I continue here but change the name (can you even do that), or start another blog and link it to this one? And what can I call it? Colchester something? The Voyage Home? Something to do with Romans and castles, Twinkle Little Star or Old King Cole? I'm sure you can't stand the suspense. And what are you still doing here anyway? Wasn't it a bit dark and lonely all that time?

Anyway I shall now be writing about being a mum in Colchester rather than Hackney, which I anticipate will be less trendy, but you never know - half our street seems to have moved here from London Fields so perhaps we too will have a cafe, a cupcake shop and a fill up your own bottle of wine place before you can say "Wilton Way".

BrightMinds.co.uk - science for boys, art for girls?

2010-10-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

The first time I saw the BrightMinds catalogue I was impressed, and pointed anyone looking to buy a present for HackneyChild towards it - the toys were fun, educational and good quality. The company is founded by an ex-teacher and makes a point of the educational value of what it offers.

Flicking through the latest catalogue in search of presents for winter-born nephews I didn't at first notice what was going on in the Science & Discovery Section. But after 20 pages of chemistry sets, weather stations, telescopes and electronics comes a two-page section called In the Pink - beauty salons, perfume making kits, a kaleidoscope, pink Meccano. Hang on, I thought, this is special Girl Science? Who was all the rest of that section aimed at?

Looking back, sure enough in the 20 pages preceeding, and the 12 pages following, the "pink" section, there are 22 pictures of boys interacting with the products (not including the packaging) and two pictures of "Dads". There is one picture of a girl, and one of a mum (bizarrely under the headline "Made by Dad and Me"), and one of a child whose gender is not clear. (There is also a mum and a girl on a video fridge magnet that a boy is looking at).

So where are all the girls? Oh, here they are, bless them, in the Creativity section. Nineteen of them, and not a boy in sight.

This would be bad in a mainstream high street toy catalogue. In a catalogue that touts its educational nous it is appalling and unacceptable. I am affronted on two fronts - as a woman I am incensed that girls' science toys are ghettoised in a two page pink section, and as a mother of sons and aunt of four nephews, I am disappointed that boys are steered away from creativity and art. I had a chemistry set, my sister had an electronics kit. If we were young today would we be making perfume and jewellery boxes instead?

I have nothing against these products, they sound fun, and I'm sure girls, and maybe some boys would enjoy them. I have nothing against products that are mainly targeted at boys or mainly targeted at girls. And I can see that some specific products in the creativity section are boy-friendly. But to have 22 boys and two (at a push) girls in the science section, and 19 girls and NO boys in the creativity section is really saying something disturbing about just who should be taking Chemistry and who should be taking Art.

They say it's your birthday

2010-10-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

Time, where have you gone - five minutes ago we were at the zoo for HackneyChild's second birthday and suddenly we were celebrating his third with friends and family. Wetherell Children's Centre was the excellent venue - the centre allows under-fives to use one of its rooms for a party in return for an unspecified donation, and the staff are very welcoming. In return they hope to get more children registered with the centre which I was a bit rubbish at facilitating on the day due to the unforeseen stress of hosting, so I am now running around after guests trying to get them to fill in forms.

HackneyChild seemed to have a lovely time and when our games organising energy ran out the small guests were able to play with the many toys in the room. As most of his friends are from our NCT group, they all have their birthdays at the same time, so next week we will be at third birthday parties all weekend. I'm quite looking forward to parties where I don't have to provide food or games though.

Police crash

2010-10-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

The sound of sirens is so usual round here that we don't give them a second thought but when the usual nee naw nee naw was followed by an almighty CRASH on Saturday, I nosily ran outside with HackneyBaby, Hackney_bloke, Essex Brother-In_law and Number One Nephew to see what was occuring.

It was this

Secret garden

2010-10-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

Today we went to Wetherell Children's Centre's Green Fingers Garden Project for the first time. The centre, which backs on to Victoria Park, has a great spiral garden packed with things to inspire and interest children, including a story den made out of willow, herbs, strawberries, a scarecrow and a compost heap.

The staff were very friendly and welcoming, and HackneyBoy absolutely loved the session, grabbing a wheelbarrow straightaway and getting stuck in with some weeding. I was really impressed with how the project workers treated the children with respect and engaged all their senses pointing out colours, smells, spiders and snails, and so on.

When we got there a number of child-friendly tools were laid out. After the weeding, the children made a picture with leaves and flowers, and then had "snack" and a story (Give Me My Yam) in the den. I could see from HackneyChild's face and the way he responded to the project workers that he was having a great time.

I hardly like to big up this session as when we went there were only two children, which was great for HackneyBoy who can be quite antisocial (luckily he took a real shine to the other boy who he has seen around before, and kept asking where he was going afterwards). But obviously it would be better to reach out to more children. The project workers said the sessions used to be crowded but now they take place in the early afternoon when most children are napping - also, the weather was threatening rain all day although in the end it just lightly showered.

All in all the Green Fingers project is a great example of the best that a children's centre can offer. And I gather the garden either already offers or will be offering sessions to local nurseries and schools so it is definitely reacing more than the two there today!

A tube with a view

2010-09-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

Today the Hackney family made the trip down to the Olympics site, to the View Tube, a viewing platform giving a view of the ever-more-completed-looking stadium, swimming thing, cycling thing, and so on. HackneyChild always enjoys a good look at a digger, so he was happy. HackneyBaby screamed the whole way there, but stopped when we arrived, so perhaps we can infer he too was happy.

There is a nice cafe there made out of a container. I always like there to be a nice cafe wherever I am.

The UK Youth Parliament was having a meeting in the room above the cafe, and a lady called Gemma came down and asked a woman sitting on our table to pick a name from one of her two hands - they were having a ballot, she said. I don't know what the ballot was for,but it might have been simpler and involved less maths if the Labour Party had followed suit and just written EM on one bit of paper and DM on another, popped into the nearest cafe and asked someone random to pick.

A step too far?

2010-09-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

Until I had two boys I was very much of the nurture camp in the nurture versus nature gender argument - I had the opinion that boys and girls were genderised by society rather than innate differences. My train, car and digger loving, non sleeping, rock climbing first son has slightly changed my mind, but I still believe that while there are some differences between the average boy and the average girl, gender is on a spectrum and is pretty much influenced by society. (To that end I will be intrigued to follow the experiences of Pop, the non-gendered Swedish child.)

I haven't gone that far but I have tried to ensure that despite the number of trains and cars he owns HackneyChild also has a doll, a tea set, and so on. I have painted his nails and let him rummage through my jewellery, I read him Milly Molly Mandy as well as Thomas the Tank Engine. But my principles were faced with a big test this week in the confines of Clarks on Mare Street, and I am sorry to say they crumbled.

Charged with choosing new shoes, HackneyChild headed straight for the sparkly pink ones. "Look!" he said excitedly. "This one has a birthday cake on it!" I am ashamed to say I went: "Uh...oh look! This one has dinosaurs on it!" I just couldn't buy him the pink shoes. They were so very pink. I really wish I could.

But I don't think its just my social cowardice. I am saddened by the pinkification of girls and ASBO-ification of boys, as evidenced in the inescapable "sparkly princess"/"here comes trouble"-type slogans on clothing. It was so obvious which shoes were girly and which were for boys in that shop. I may be dreaming but I am sure when I was a little girl things were not so gendered - I remember having the same dungarees as my friend's little brother.

They didn't have the dinosaur ones in HackneyChild's size. He now has shoes with diggers on them.

Baby puree or dip?

2010-09-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

With HackneyChild we did everything by the book. Not a sliver of solid food passed his lips before six months and one week, as per guidelines. (We were on holiday the week before). I slavishly followed Annabel Karmel's timetable in the Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner, with baby rice giving way to the proscribed vegetable of the day.

With HackneyBaby we have been much more lackadaisical. He has already had a suck on a green bean, bits of cucumber, apple and banana, although he hasn't really ingested any, and at five and a half months today he had his first spoonful of baby rice. (HackneyChild said "It smells disgusting".) Any worries I had about starting too early were banished as he grabbed the spoon and started to enthusiastically shovel it into his mouth himself. Baby rice again tomorrow, then onto the wide world of fruit and veg!

On the subject of baby purees, I was at a barbecue yesterday with my lovely NCT friends, three families who have children the same age as HackneyChild and now all have another one as well. As I was filling my plate with meat and salad I saw two bowls of dip, a green dip and what looked like a kind of salsa. "What's that?" enquired my friend. "I don't know, but I'm having some," I said, spooning it onto my plate. It was the one-year-old's baby food.

Tube tracks and pirate ships.

2010-09-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

HackneyChild currently loves maps and is never happier than when pointing out all the hospitals on the A to Z. He also likes the tube map and can match most lines with their colours. When we got onto Bethnal Green platform last week he pulled away from me and ran over to the track, saying "What colour is it?" He was most disappointed to find it was not red in real life.

We were on our way to the Princess Diana Playground.It is superb - massive pirate ship, sand, water, little houses. It's enclosed, and you have to buzz to get through the gate, which is excellent, since it was only a few days since HackneyChild disappeared on me at Highbury Fields, and I had to enlist the help of the local children to track him down. I only have a few quibbles - firstly the cafe is remarkably un-child friendly for a cafe in a playground - the only child option seems to be a small pizza, with even the sandwiches being massive baguettes. Secondly if you have a buggy and sleeping baby it's hard to get near enough to the pirate ship and other things to be near your other child, as they are surrounded by sand - but that is part of the charm so it is hard to think what could be done about that really.

Can't wait for the influx of New Yorkers

2010-09-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

This is just getting silly. Our street's trendiness, previously chronicled here, has just gone stratospheric with a mention in the New York Times.

"The quiet streets north of London Fields are lined with tidy, modest Edwardian row houses, and at first glance one of those streets, Wilton Way, looked like a quiet business district. But then I noticed that the storefront post office was actually an art gallery called Posted, and that the Wilton Way Cafe had flea-market furniture and a booth in the window from which a Web broadcast emanated."

Let's see if we can work the same magic on the street we are shortly moving to. Currently a quiet Victorian residential road, by the time we leave it'll be crammed with boutiques, cafes, markets, art exhibitions, and a canal will have appeared out of nowhere.

The Siblings' Busy Book - review

2010-08-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law had a copy of The Siblings' Busy Book and I really liked it,so I bought my own. Basically, it is 200 activities that children can do, with sections in each activity focusing on what you can do with a baby, toddler, pre-schooler and school age child. It's an American book so some of the activities are quite US-focused, for example making paper hats for Columbus Day, but the only one that you really couldn't do in the UK (unless you lived in Dartmoor) is letterboxing, as this doesn't seem to take place here (I may be wrong).

You might say, as some have, "surely you can just think of things to do with your kids anyway", and it is true that, especially in the "let's pretend" section, many of the games are things you might play anyway - shops, doctors, and so on. But even here, it is helpful to have new ideas to prolong a game, or make it relevant to different ages, or just save your sanity from having to go through exactly the same motions for the nth time. While we play shops all the time, for example, I wouldn't have thought of playing "libraries", which has become a great game to play when I am feeding HackneyBaby ("HackneyBaby would like a book about squirrels. Do you have one you can recommend? What happens in this book? Is it short or long?").

It's also useful for when your brain is entirely blank at the end of the day. Other sections include music and movement, outdoor adventures, learning and exploring, in the kitchen and rainy day fun. As well as libraries, we have played "mail for you and me" (again, I would have thought of playing post but this gave added ideas like making postcards and using stickers for stamps), Diddle Diddle Doo, and apple printing. The next thing I want to do is make ice bricks and build with them, and do bark rubbing.

A lot of the activities are really for babies over six months ("your young baby will like to watch his siblings during this activity" it says quite often which is not true for HB for any reasonable period of time) so I'm hoping that the book will really come into its own over the next few months.

Funnily enough, HackneyChild keeps wanting me to read him the book itself, rather than do any of the activities. "What is this game called? How do you play it?" he keeps saying. Me: "Would you like to play it?" "No."

On repeat

2010-08-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Kids love repetition. They really, really, do. It's most obvious in the books for little'uns like That's not my kitten/ dragon/ princess but older children respond well to series like Malory Towers, where a lot of satisfaction is derived from the repetitive set pieces like New Girls Visit The Head; Midnight Feast; and Lacrosse Match.

So I should have realised when HackneyChild demanded a "story about shapes" (?) that this would not be a one-off. Au contraire, we have stumbled across a winning and not-to-be-deviated-from formula, which I shall now provide for you in the hopes that I can spread the pain. We have had this "story" ten times today alone.

Once upon a time there was a little XY (where X is colour, and Y is shape - eg blue rectangle). The little XY lived in the land of X2Y2 (another colour, another shape). He was quite happy but one day he started to feel a little lonely, and began to wish he had someone to talk to about Xness and Yness, instead of having to go on about X2ness and Y2ness all the time. So he decided to try to find the land of XYs.

At this point the X2Y2s can be dismissive or encouraging, it doesn't matter, as soon the little XY is packing a bag filled with an array of random food and drink and setting out on a mode of transport (car, helicopter, street cleaner) to find the XYs. First he discovers the land of [new colour/ shape combo] whose inhabitants are unfortunately unaware of the location of the XYs, but suggest he try the [yet another shape/ colour combo]s who live by the Prominent Geographical Feature over there. This can go on until your brain rots and the little XY is finally reunited with other XYs like himself. He can then live with them forever or live with them for a bit but then go back to the X2Y2s who have been so kind to him (or both, if HackneyChild is telling the story).

Shakespeare this is not. I remember in What Katy Did Next the eponymous Katy is forced to relate the incredibly dull adventures of two little girls called Violet and Emma to the little girl Amy she is travelling around Europe with. "Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of moisture had been squeezed." So she kills them off, to the distress of her young charge. I really feel for Katy at this point.

Go market researcher!

2010-08-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

I will review the excellent The Siblings' Busy Book properly when I am not about to go to bed to try to get some sleep in case tonight turns out to involve another 2am trip to Tesco to buy Calpol (or something similar, clearly we already have the Calpol. And I must point out it wasn't me who went, but there was still a lot of screaming for many hours).

But back to the book - HackneyChild has quite taken to one game in it which involves professions and music. You have to say a little rhythmic verse, altering the profession each time, something like: "Hey diddle diddle, Who's in the middle, When you want some bread? A baker, that's who, diddle, diddle doo. Go baker!" (It's an American book, as you may have guessed).

HackneyChild liked it so much that we quickly got through all the child-friendly professions - firefighter, teacher, doctor, etc. So I was forced to turn to family and friends to try to make up new verses. It made me realise that modern day jobs are quite resistant to being summed up in two or three words, like "Who's in the middle, when you want to gather information about markets or customers? A market researcher, that's who - go market researcher!".

Or: "Who's in the middle, when you want to read an article about promotional T-shirts? A trade journalist, that's who - diddle, diddle doo - go trade journalist!".

Dinosaurs and diggers

2010-07-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

Quick, measure your child, and if they are under 90cm hurry to Milton Keynes before they have a growth spurt, because those under that magic number get in free to Gulliver's dinosaur and eco farm park. Unfortunately HackneyChild is 95cm it seems, and no amount of slouching could get us in for free.

Gulliver's World, bless it, would probably be the first to admit that it is no EuroDisney, or even Alton Towers. But I love slightly eccentric British "theme parks", having magical memories of visiting Black Gang Chine as a five year old. Gullivers (which also has a main park, which we didn't go to) is definitely of that ilk. There's something a bit homemade about it, a bit amateur, which is not to discredit it at all.

For example the staff were charming but hadn't quite got the hang of the "have a good day" schtick. One ride attendant confided in me, as I idled around in the drizzle with HackneyBaby waiting for Hackney_bloke and HackneyChild to come off a boat ride, that his partner had left him the night before, taking their child with her. "Enjoy your day with us," he added, sadly.

HackneyChild was in heaven as there were so many of his favourite things in one place - diggers, tractors, dinosaurs. He was particularly attracted to a motheaten cat that was part of a singing farmyard scene. I liked the way you were given a seed on entry which you could then plant in a potting shed, the fact that there was no queue for anything even during the summer holidays (although it was raining in the morning), and the way the dinosaurs peered over the foliage in the background of the farm.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

2010-07-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

Having been a features editor myself I realise that magazines commission this stuff just to annoy people and get letters (Is the British middle class an endangered species?) But I'll bite anyway. I would have done this on the article itself but it doesn't seem to have commenting available.

"Their three-bed house needs work...They own one 10-year-old car. 'We don't talk about money. We just know we haven't got much.'... The family summer holiday is one week in France.. 'I would like to have a decent holiday.'"

Oh please. One week in France? My heart bleeds. In what universe is that not a decent holiday? What do you want, three weeks in the Maldives? I would be irked even if it had said: "The family summer holiday is one week in Cornwall/ Kent/ Norfolk", as it's not only possible but easy to have a lovely family holiday there, but France?

Anyway, Hackney gets a shout-out as an increasingly middle class area, which is true: "The neat, middle-class enclaves of Edinburgh or Leeds, with their almost wholly middle-class streets and playgrounds, offer a different life from scruffier, more socially mixed but increasingly gentrified Hackney or Lambeth."

Disclaimer: I am myself almost certainly middle class, although it's hard to tell these days, but I would consider a week in France to be a top holiday, considering I am currently getting very excited about a possible off-season week at Butlins.

A Deepness in the Sky - review

2010-07-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It took me forever to read but that's because I had a baby in the middle. Last time I had a baby I was reading the same author's A Fire Upon The Deep so I thought it appropriate to follow up with the prequel. I preferred the first book which I found kind of hallucinatory but that was probably due to lack of sleep. This one was brilliant too, but the first was more ground breaking in its view of the universe I thought. I read a review that complained that the aliens in Deepness were too un-alien, but I think that is the point - you do find out in the end why that might be, that the book is basically filtered through another point of view and not everything the Spiders do is to be taken literally.

I found the depiction of ordinary (and not so ordinary) people living under a dictatorship, and how they come to terms with that, to be very interesting, and I enjoyed the portrayal of the ultra-market-led Qeng Ho and Pham Nuwen, although I'm not sure I would enjoy living in a society so driven by market forces.There are many moments of genuine horror here as well, and they slap you in the face unexpectedly - such as what happens to Qiwi's mother and how Qiwi finds out. All in all, great book, easier to read than Fire I think (or possibly I have an easier baby this time). I hope Vernor Vinge is writing more novels, and I would like to read his short stories now.

View all my reviews >>

Telling off other people's kids

2010-07-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

At Clissold Park's LolliBop on Sunday, which was generally enjoyed by the whole Hackney family I was watching HackneyChild bounce on the inflatable farm with half an eye and looking at a chair with the other eye and a half, wondering if I would be allowed to sit down on it. Suddenly there was a wail from the inflatable and a mum started shouting at a child: "HOW DARE YOU??? HOW DARE YOU HIT/PUSH ANOTHER CHILD LIKE THAT?? YOU ARE A HORRIBLE CHILD!!".

From my chair coveting position I couldn't see who she was shouting at but I assumed her own child, probably quite an old one, had hit another. Even with that caveat it sounded a bit over the top but parents do get harassed and who knows what the little darling had been up to previously that day. But shifting positions nosily, I saw her carry off a weeping toddler while the child she had shouted at (aged three or four?), clearly not her own, looked kind of traumatised and stood there for the rest of the bounce session not bouncing and looking worried.

Now I didn't see what he did, but I still wondered what my reaction would have been. It's always a dilemma, telling off other people's kids, especially when their parents are right there but perhaps didn't see what their little one just did. I felt sorry for the hitting child. Then again, maybe he won't do it again and I do think we must all have the right to "tell off" children if they behave unacceptably in public, especially if it is impacting on us or our children. I guess there is a line somewhere. What do you think?

Questions children ask

2010-07-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

After the "what is die?" debacle, I realised I am not prepared for such questions. So I was pleased to find in the library yesterday a book by Miriam Stoppard, Questions Children Ask and How to Answer Them. It gives different approaches depending on the age of the child, which I like. I am also impressed with the range of questions and the truthfulness yet simplicity of the suggested answers, especially the section on sex. I think it is really important to answer children's questions truthfully, but on the other hand you don't want to worry them.

I have Miriam Stoppard's Complete Baby and Childcare Book and generally find her to be pretty sensible. It seems, as I suspected, I was completely wrong to say dying was "not being here anymore" as children think the person will come back. The suggested answer for two to four year olds is "'dead' means a person or animal stops breathing and their body doesn't work anymore. Usually people and animals only die when they have grown very old."

Now I just have to wait for him to mention it again. Probably this won't happen now, but at least I am prepared!

Call yourself a writer? Meme response

2010-07-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

Way back in the mists of time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the stars were in different constellations, Freelance Unbound tagged me in a journalism meme. It's only taken me slightly less than a year to get round to doing it.

Which words do you use too much in your writing?
"Lovely", in my blog/ social networking writing - although it's not a word that crops up much when writing about youth policy or social work. "Young people" - but I can't help that.

Which words do you consider overused in stuff you read?
In raw copy, "launched a new". I hate that.

What’s your favourite piece of writing by you?  
Being a hackette for hire, things I write don't tend to stay in my memory. I read past articles and think "Blimey, I knew a lot back then." But in my first few weeks at uni I contributed a feature length interview with Liam from the Prodigy, arranged off my own bat, to the uni paper. Looking back it is embarassingly studenty and written by someone who doesn't know rave from ballet, but I was very proud of myself at the time. But perhaps my favourite is this Star Trek/ Harry Potter pastiche

What blog post do you wish you’d written?
Much like my own work blogs are quite ephemeral to me so I read, enjoy, then forget. Perhaps Come Dine With Me In The Tardis.

Regrets, do you have a few? Is there anything you wish you hadn’t written?
Nothing has come back to bite me so far and while I'm sure there have been complaints (although I can't remember any - oh, I recall a company once complained about me saying they had gone bankrupt when in fact it was some fiddly near-bankruptcy thing) nothing has been so inaccurate that I have been sued or anything, so no, unless it was so traumatic I have erased it from my memory. Possibly spending the first half of my career writing about how to market to children (among other things) and the second half writing about the pernicious effects of marketing to children (among other things) wasn't the best idea, but hey.

How has your writing made a difference?
Hopefully some things I have written have helped youth workers, social workers etc to do their job. Also I do think some of the articles I wrote as part of a general campaign to make writing about young people more positive, or at lease less negative, had an effect. People were always quoting our survey even when it was ancient.

Name three favourite words
Crystalline, champagne, chocolate

…And three words you’re not so keen on
"Wherefore art thou", when used to mean "Where are you?" in a headline or standfirst. IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT.

Do you have a writing mentor, role model or inspiration? 
I want to be Zoe Williams. She gets to write about TV and being a mum, and gets paid for it. Polly Toynbee is an inspiration in my less shallow moments. When I was younger I wanted to be Polly Vernon but she annoys me now. Who cares what she bought this week?

What’s your writing ambition? 
To write a novel. It's about mysterious goings on in the cinema I used to work in. It will never happen.

Plug alert! List any work you would like to tell your readers about: 

Nothing of mine. You should read A Typical Essex Girl, she is great.

I can't tag anyone as it's much too late. ATEG, you should do it - the questions pertain just as much to general writing as journalism. Anyway, Yo! magazine counts as journalism.

Wardrobe fail

2010-07-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

Obviously packing for a weekend away is no longer the relatively simple affair it was when I just had myself to pack for. Friday morning I was packing HackneyChild a case for his sleepover at my mum's, which had to include combinations for every kind of weather and emergency it might be possible to experience, ie short pyjamas, long pyjamas, Iggle Piggle, a headless Tango man (that was his request), shorts, trousers, t-shirts, a rain coat, and so on. Also I had to pack for HackneyBaby a case that would meet the requirements of a wedding and a hotel room and constant sicking and pooing, thus including sleeping bags, many different vests and outfits, etc.

Finally I had to pack for me something that would make me look vaguely presentable at three months post partum with a lot of weight to lose and amusing Dolly Parton style boobs, and that would also allow for breastfeeding. The resulting outfit was more summer picnic than wedding but I jazzed it up with a hat, shoes and a necklace.

And we were off - first to Essex to drop off HackneyChild (where, incidentally, HackneyBaby screamed so loud and long that I thought we might be going to A&E rather than a wedding, but then he stopped so goodness knows what that was about). Then to Cambridge to check into our hotel. A cooling shower later I was ready to don my outfit and hit the wedding - but wait! Here's the shoes, hat and necklace - but no clothes for me. In the rush they were sitting nicely in my wardrobe at home waiting to be packed last so they wouldn't get squished.

Cue a hot and sticky run around the shops of Cambridge, where the lady in Monsoon completely earned my undying gratitude by steering me straight to a dress that was both flattering and allowed breast feeding (although not very discreet b-feeding I have to say). So thanks to her I was able to not attend the beautiful wedding in grubby shorts and a T-shirt with holes in it. I know they say no-one is looking at you, everyone is looking at the bride, but I think I would have stood out a bit.

Celeb spotting

2010-07-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

In the playground that HackneyChild calls the "digger playground" the other day, I heard a familiar voice. It wasn't a mum I vaguely knew through singing or drop in or whatever though, as is so often the case, but lovely Cerrie from CBeebies with her daughter.

Immediately I was torn. I wanted to go with my usual instinct when confronted by a celebrity, treat them like anyone else (ie ignore them) to show how cool I am/ not invade their space (a technique I also used to use on boys I fancied, to limited success surprisingly). But then again if I was standing right next to any other mum in the playground I would definitely say something to them, and had already conversed with random mums about the age of our children, the best kind of scooter to buy, the relative ease of second children (not) and so on. So I was filled with confusion.

Instead I addressed a remark to the little girl to the effect that she looked like she wanted to chase the pigeons. Clearly this was a faux pas as Cerrie immediately looked horrified and backed away from the now flying pigeons. So consumed with embarassment I retreated back into ignore mode. I shall assume this as default if confronted with a celeb in a playground again. Unless it's Hugh Laurie of course.

HackneyChild by the way showed no sign of recognition, and I wasn't going to encourage him. It must be a nightmare for the poor woman in playgrounds - she must know that every mum there knows exactly who she is and probably half the kids as well. It's like David Tennant trying to hang out at a Doctor Who convention unnoticed.

Lies we tell our children

2010-07-07T00:32:00.000-07:00

HackneyChild, who I am currently trying to prise away from Milkshake to eat his porridge, has just told me that the TV turns off by itself after Thomas. I can only assume this is some magic Hackney_bloke has previously worked with the remote control. I shall follow in his footsteps.

Body Works

2010-07-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

There's an interactive exhibition at Hackney Museum (under the library on Reading Lane) called Body Works, which we have been spending some time perusing, usually after toy library on Tuesdays. The museum is fun and educational with a bus (no 38 of course) to play on, a replica boat like one dug up in Hackney with reed baskets full of fish and fruit to trade, bricks to build tower blocks and demolish them and much more. Body Works is a temporary exhibition but it's even better than the general museum. There's a heart tent, a sensory walk for bare feet, a skeleton to rearrange, and a cabinet of curiosity -basically loads of drawers with things in like instruments, feathery boas, masks and the like. You can draw pictures, look in mirrors and press buttons to get sounds. And there is a chair made of stuffed animal toys.

I am impressed by the implied trust in children and their parents which lets them rampage round this hands-on exhibition, touching, feeling, listening, taking stuff out of drawers and putting them back in. It is looking a bit worn now, mainly the bit where you put your hands in to feel different textures as children seem confused about where their hands go, but it is still great.

It was a shame though that the nursery class we saw there today weren't getting as much out of it as they could have. There were about 12 four year olds (I'm guessing) and three adults, and while the kids were having a whale of a time screaming, charging round the exhibits, and generally causing havoc, I don't know if any of them even knew it was an exhibition about the body. The adults were no making any attempt to engage them with the exhibits, one of them was just sitting in a chair watching and the others were limited to "Stop running! Put your shoes on!". It's a real shame as there is so much learning to be done there, in a fun way.

Conversation on walking through a churchyard today

2010-07-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

"Don't climb on that [tomb], HackneyChild."
"Why?"
"It's disrespectful."
"Why?"
"Because that's where people go when they die."[realise immediately have opened can of worms].
"What is die?"
[oh dear.] "It's, er, when someone isn't here anymore. [lame.] Like great grandad, he was here and now he isn't."
"Where has he gone?"
[can of worms part two.]. "Er, I don't know."
"Maybe the supermarket."
"Er, yes. Maybe."

Later I tried again with a feeble explanation involving flowers, but he didn't seem that bothered, thankfully. I don't know if a supermarket based afterlife would be heaven or hell. Maybe it depends if it was Waitrose or Tesco.

Ah ooh, paddling pools of Hackney

2010-07-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

That title is supposed to be sung to the tune of Werewolves of London, by the way.

For the last week we have been enjoying the sultry weather by visiting different paddling pools,so here is a highly scientific review of them all.

Victoria Park paddling pool

Vicky Park boasts the most exciting paddling pool so far, with different levels and cascading water. It's located in the adventure playground near Queen's Gate. I don't know what the opening times are but I imagine the same as the park itself. I have been there 11am on a weekday and it was open then.

GOOD - Afore mentioned different levels and cascading water make it exciting; it's pretty big so doesn't seem crowded even on a hot Sunday (today); room for picnics around the sides; different "rock pools" have various depths for various ages and abilities; the pool is in a playground so there are swings and slides for when the kids get bored of water

NOT SO GOOD - Not much shade on the pool although shade around about. The different levels can cause slipping and falling, and the design means you can't stand in one place, say with a baby, and watch your toddler, as they keep disappearing from view. The playgournd includes massive slides any self respecting child will demand to go on, but you have to be seven. Not easy to find. No nearby cafe, although there is an ice cream van.

ALL IN ALL: A brilliant pool but best to have one on one adult/ toddler

London Fields

London Fields paddling pool is located next to the Lido and tennis courts at the park end furthest from Broadway Market. It is closed on Mondays and Thursdays and opens at 11am, purportedly, although I have had to wait til 12 before. It's a normal kind of squarish pool with some trees around it.

GOOD - Well, good for us as it's a mere five minutes away but that doesn't really translate for any reader. It is fenced and gated making it difficult for toddlers to abscond. There is shade around the pool and usually a bit of the pool is shaded. The Lido cafe (Hoxton Beach cafe) serves among other things Lebanese meze, sausage toasties, lollies and the best coffee I have ever tasted, although that only happened once - usually it's just normal coffee. There's a friendly atmosphere with kids sharing toys (sometimes under sufferance).

NOT SO GOOD - It is relatively small so can get crowded at weekends and on Fridays for some reason, also after 3pm when the big kids arrive from school. The opening hours are erratic.

ALL IN ALL: This is our default option. I like it as you see the same people there all the time so it feels friendly.

Clissold Park

Clissold Park paddling pool is located next to the deer park on the Church Street end of the park. At the moment Clissold Park is undergoing a lot of regeneration work but the paddling pool doesn't seem to be affected.

GOOD - It's a large pool, the size of a swimming pool, with a slope at one end like a beach (no sand). Plenty of green around the pool for sitting. There's a playground nearby with a sandpit. Clissold Park cafe is lovely but currently being renovated, however there is a temporary cafe which serves a really good range of food including a children's menu by the playground and an icecream van. Tehe pool was not at all crowded when we went on a weekday. I don't know the times but it seemed open when we got to the park at 10.30am. It might not have been though - we went to the playground first.

BAD - The cafe is not cheap, but what in London is?

ALL IN ALL - It's a bus journey for us so I wouldn't go there especially for the pool, but the pool/ playground/ cafe combo is quite winning.

There's a party going on right here

2010-07-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

Or ten doors down anyway, at the launch of Get Posted, the exhibition I wrote about previously. There is free alcohol, as I had hoped, although I'm limited to one glass sadly. We took HackneyBaby in a carrier, and HackneyChild, and had our pictures taken for Hackney Today, so look out for us...
HackneyBaby started screaming and Hackney_bloke got told off for flicking through a book on the Post Office counter - it's not a book, it's art - so they went home while HackneyChild and I perused the vintage shop a few doors down. Hackney Child says his favourite thing in the exhibition was the "birdy in a jar" and I liked the writing desk and the melting typewriter, if that is what it is doing.
I brushed my hair as a concession to going out but felt a bit wrong in my maternity T-shirt (still!) and three day old trousers with assorted stains from sandpit, lunch and baby sick, when surrounded by arty types in vintage clothing and things in their hair. Said arty types are now spilling all over the road. Hackney_bloke has moved the car.
Lovely though it was to have a free drink I'm not convinced that handing out free booze to the denizens of Wilton Way and randonm passers by is a great idea. I predict a riot.

On Play Dough and Play Doh

2010-06-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

In my mind there are loads of fun and educational activities I would love to be doing with HackneyChild - baking cakes, creating family trees, bark rubbing, reading long books, making indoor gardens, having pretend camps and parties and discos - but the presence of rather demanding HackneyBaby makes this difficult if not impossible. This makes me sad, although I'm hoping in a few months HackneyBaby will be able to watch happily from a high chair or Bumbo without getting tetchy.

In the meantime, I did manage the other morning, while HackneyBaby and Hackney_bloke slept, to make play dough with HackneyChild. I remember my mum making shedloads of this as she ran a playschool, and I remember the salty taste so I must have been eating it, ugh. I had picked up a recipe from the local children's centre, and we duly mixed all the ingredients together. But it wasn't doughy, it was practically liquid. After adding more flour to no avail, I decided the children's centre had brilliantly missed out the instruction "and then cook over a slow heat". It's not the most brilliant play dough in the world but we made cakes in paper cases decorated with, er, lentils and pasta, as all the best cakes are. Next time I hope to use a proper recipe like this one which sounds lovely from Nurturestore.

From play dough the thing to Play Doh the brand - the people at Play Doh kindly sent us a Fun Factory, like the one I had when I was little, so even if all my attempts at making it fail we still have the factory version. The good thing about it is HackneyChild can play with it by himself, although he's not very adept at turning the wheel to get the different shapes - he is six months younger than you are supposed to be though. He likes to make noodles and press the dough (or doh, I suppose) onto the patterns.

One of his first actions was to mix together the colours to create a kind of purple, and I had to bite my tongue and let him - it's his Play Doh after all. I'd hoped my attempt at play dough would be useable in the toy but I don't think it will be, it's too gooey.

So, the home made and the branded in fierce competition - I'm not sure which he likes best, but I'm sure there's room for both, just as with the home made puree versus jars.

Posted

2010-06-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

Our street just gets trendier and trendier. Excitingly, we have been invited to a private view of an exhibition at the former Post Office, called Keep Me Posted, which is all about "our postal history and heritage". I particularly like the idea of the hand carved seat on which visitors can write a letter and post it in the "elegant George V pillar box" that stands outside the post office.
This invitation is very good news as we never get out anymore what with HackneyBaby and all. Maybe there will be alcohol! Also, maybe the footfall of visiting artists and art lovers will be such that one of them will see the For Sale sign outside our flat and want to buy it. You never know.
Despite the fun-ness of Keep Me Posted, however, I'd rather, on balance, have a Post Office.
Next I would like someone to take on the closed fish and chip shop and turn it into a yummy fish and chip shop, like Faulkners, please. Or maybe someone will take it on as another exhibition space on the history of cod.

Questions questions

2010-06-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

A conversation when going through the park today:

"Mummy, do dogs do wees?"
"Yes"
"Do cats do wees?"
"Yes."
"No!" [incredulous laughter]
"No, they do. It's true."
"Do cats have winkies [penis]?"
"Yes."
"Are all cats boys or all cats girls?"
"They are some of each."

I have no idea what drugs they put in Smarties these days.

On coping with two. And voting.

2010-05-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

I am living a life of extremes. At 11am this morning I was sweatily lugging a screaming baby round the front room, still in pyjamas with my bra undone while HackneyChild pooed his pants, feeling like rubbish because I couldn't cope with two while mothers everywhere seem to manage OK. By 2pm, having taken them both to the park and voted, I was chowing down on glamourous cupcakes and coffee in the garden of our road's new trendy bakery feeling like a model family. If anyone had seen us then they wouldn't have thought that three hours ago I was the picture of not coping. I try to bear this in mind when I see mums looking like they are coping really well and when I am not.

The fact that Hackney_bloke works from home is a huge help though, I don't know how I would manage otherwise. People say that mums are very judgemental of each other but personally being a mum has made me much less so in many ways - anyone who has a baby and has managed to keep it alive and themselves relatively functional is doing well in my view, and anyone who is a single mum or whose partner is away a lot I bow down to in awed admiration.

Yeah, voting - I enjoy it even if the result is likely to depress me. (Nationally I mean - I think Hackney will stay Labour). Personally I would vote for any party that promised to fund research into colic and pledged that under their government all babies would sleep through the night, but failing that I still think Sure Start is a Very Good Thing and so my vote is still red. HackneyChild spent the morning thinking we were going in "a boat" and after I had disabused him kept asking "What is vote? Where is vote?". Also this morning I discovered that both baby and child "enjoy" (ie one stops screaming temporarily and the other says "again. again") The Nutcracker Suite, which is nice, even though we had to listen to the march over and over.

Dr Who, hey, Tardis.

2010-04-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

Due to colic monster baby I have very limited access to two handed typing, so must write three blog posts all at once when by happy chance he is sleeping and not SCREAMING. [Any colic solutions welcomed by the way. HackneyBaby is transformed at 4pm every day into monster child. I think transporter beams may be involved.]

So my thoughts on Doctor Who so far as I'm sure Teh Internet is just gagging to hear them. I am far too tired to look up the names of the episodes so probably have them wrong.

The Eleventh Hour. Thought the "eating random foods" bit was very child friendly and wondered if we were seeing a metamorphosis into more of a children's show, but no. I liked how Matt Smith Doctor first met new companion when she was a little girl, so the relationship starts with him being older and more authorative and even when she is then older this feeling continues - otherwise with the actor being so young it might have felt more like two equals. Really like MS and Amy Pond is looking like one of my favourite companions ever. But what do I know, I liked Adric.

I went on to dream there was a sinister crack in HackneyChild's wall, but it turned out it led to a Salvation Army hostel filled with Australian backpackers, and our main worry was that they would wake him up.

The Beast Below. Really really liked this in terms of style and atmosphere. What I love about this programme is the Britishness, there's enough US sci-fi, so UK-in-space rocked. But the plot was pants. Why keep feeding children to the beast if it doesn't eat them? What was the point of the Smilers? Still really liked it though. I love that Amy took about ten minutes to get captured in the grand tradition of companions.

Er, that Dalek one. Not so keen. Liked Spitfires in Space. Liked the robot. Liked Daleks making cups of tea with teeny Union Jacks on. But a bit bored of Daleks now, even Smartie coloured ones. And what's with Amy having a crush on the Doctor; why do they all have to have feelings for him? Been there.

That Angels one I love River Song. I have no idea if this is a popular view as my internet surfing time is limited, but as with the Adric thing I suspect it is not. I like the idea of a relationship where the first time you meet your "wife" she dies. The angst. I look forward to the next episode.

In conclusion: I am liking the Moffat era.

Trendy cafes are breeding on our street

2010-04-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

Now we have not one but two trendy cafes on our road. After the opening of Wilton's last year now comes Violet, a cake bakery and cafe - at least somewhere you can get a cake and coffee - which is apparently set to open very shortly. This is very exciting, as cake is one of my favourite things.

It is bizarre that we now have two trendy cafes, a gastropub, and an arty vintage shop, when none of these things were here when I moved here, let alone Hackney_bloke who moved in some years before he let me join him. Back then we had a weird and very random shoe shop and a dodgy pub, and Hackney_bloke's scooter was set fire to outside our flat.

Of course, the bookies next door is keeping it real. And it wasn't that long ago we had our front door knob stolen - twice. But cafe owners and arty people, we appeal to you, keep up the good work and let's see those house prices soar ;-)

East London Line

2010-04-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

I am loving, loving, loving it. Today was due to meet NCT friend and fellow new mummy of two for lunch and running very late because HackneyBaby did a massive poo just as I was about to leave. But see, the East London line whisked me down a lift at Dalston Junction, sped me through Haggerston and Hoxton and deposited me on Bethnal Green Road (another lift!) in plenty of time to chow down on Thai green curry ( I really hope HackneyBaby is OK with this once it is translated into milk) on Brick Lane.

Meantime Hackney_bloke took HackneyChild on a ride to New Cross gate and back as he was sorely disappointed when we turned up for the launch yesterday and couldn't get into the station. This was because Boris Johnson was faffing about with dancers etc and generally taking credit for something which was nothing to do with him, as the Labour protesters standing outside were pointing out. I wanted to get a picture of BoJo and HackneyChild as they have very similar hair but it was not to be.

It's a shame there is no lift at Whitechapel station, it would be great to be able to get there quickly.

Books for breastfeeding

2010-04-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

My memories of breastfeeding HackneyChild are of course mainly from the latter stage of his career, so I remember deftly doing things with one hand while supporting him with the other. I had forgotten that little new babies need careful positioning and adjusting, so my plans to both catch up with my own reading (at night) and read to HackneyChild to keep him happy (during the day) have been knocked a bit.

Still, I am managing to reead to HackneyChild a bit and I am choosing long books in chapters to keep us both interested, mainly from my own childhood. He likes Milly Molly Mandy, and so do I - I find the writing charming, and I think it is amusing to introduce words like "skein of silk" and "tea cosy" into his early vocabulary.

I also have Meet Mary Kate from my own childhood, which I don't find quite so charming but he likes the story about Mary Kate being ill and having her room redecorated particularly, I don't know why. I'm having to do a bit of editing while reading - Mary Kate's "black doll Bobo" is either just a doll or has a proper name, and the story where Daddy interrupts Mummy who is cooking to get her to sew a button on comes with the line "Of course, he could just have done the sewing himself". (I remember my Mum doing the same with the Famous Five ("Julian is being very silly. Of course girls are as good as boys.")

I also want to get from my Mum and Dad's Aurora and the Little Blue Car (seems to be out of print), a tale of a Norwegian little girl who lives in a towerblock and whose Daddy looks after Aurora and baby Socrates while Mummy works in an office (again it's all tiny things that are big adventures to children - they make jam, they ride on the mechanical horse at the shopping centre etc) and Matthew's Secret Surprises (they get the car cleaned, they get a new cat). Oh, and Tales of Joe and Timothy (tower block again, also has a character called Aurora, strangely). I wonder if there are any similar more modern chapter books about the small things that children do, that other children like to hear about? The Harry and the Dinosaur books are similar and we like them very much, but they are shorter.

Welcome to the world

2010-04-15T06:33:00.000-07:00

I wrote this blog entry already once, at about 3am, but the internet seems to have eaten it. So...

Alexander Philip, hence to be known as HackneyBaby, made his way into the world on Easter Sunday like a particularly hefty chick (9lb 7). You may feel the name is needlessly Macedonian, but actually Alexander is for Scottishness and Philip for my dad and uncle. (different sides of the family, it would be weird calling both your sons Philip).

Homerton hospital has improved greatly in the last two and a half years; it has a new birthing centre with spacious and clean showers (last time was a miniscule shared shower), double beds, birthing stools and pools. The midwife was brilliantly supportive. The community midwives have been much better than last time too, they actually checked my stitches which I didn't get before and helped me breast feed.

Unfortuately they blew it by losing my delivery notes for seven hours leaving me champing at the bit to get home (after the 24 hours I had to stay in anyway because of Strep B). It's not so bad if you know you have to wait that long but every hour it was "oh yes, nearly there". In the end I burst into tears as HackneyChild was plaintively saying "Come home now mummy!", cueing the most vastly inappropriate response from the ward midwife: "Why are you crying? [Me: "because I have just given birth and am very hormonal and you have lost my notes and I don't know when I can go home"]. I had some sad news today you know, my colleague has just died." OK, that trumps me.

Re: Strep B, I was dismayed when told I would need to be on a drip during labour, but actually it was only for half an hour, so anyone worried about that shouldn't be. The info you get in advance is confusing but the drip doesn't take four hours as everyone seemed to be saying, the antibiotics last for four hours and then you get some more.

A worried little gnome

2010-03-31T03:08:00.000-07:00

I don't want this blog to become "kids say the funniest things" (or not as it turned out) so after this I will cease and desist, but it cracked me up.

My pleasant dreams were again broken at 6.20am this morning (James Marsters this time - my brain seems determined to revisit old crushes before the baby comes) by a wail coming from HackneyChild's room, followed by the child himself.

"I'm a worried little gnome", he cried. "I'm a worried little gnome!"

My heart melted in a bemused way. "Poor worried little gnome, come in bed with mummy!" (Sotto voce to partner: "Where did he get that from?" Partner: "No idea.")

Climbing into bed the little gnome sobbed "Wipe it!". "Huh?" "I've got a runny little nose! Stop laughing!"

Dreams and proto-stalkers

2010-03-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy is supposed to result in very vivid dreams, although this time round I haven't noticed it as much, probably because my sleep is likely to be interrupted by cries of "I am feeling a bit sad" or "I need more milk". I have had the "I have given birth to two tiny tiny thumb sized babies that I keep losing and forgetting to feed" one, and also two where Hackney_bloke brought a new wife home (one time it was Delia Smith...), probably this is me sublimating how HackneyChild will feel about the new addition. Or fretting about my cookery skills.

Last night though I had a, cough, "romantic" dream about Hugh Laurie (he was Dr House but nicer), which reminded me of how me and Lovely School Friend used to stalk him back in the day (we were mocked by those who preferred Jason Donovan or Bros, but who's laughing now he's a sexy American doctor, eh?). This was before the internet/ Twitter/ Heat magazine and I'm sure today's teen girl stalkers would mock the rubbishness of our stalking techniques. Here is HackneyHackette's guide to being a rubbish celebrity stalker.

1. Identify that your chosen celebrity is appearing in a play in London. Go and see this play as often as your meagre resources and distance from London will allow. After the play hang out by the stage door for your snatched conversation and autographs. On way home tut disapprovingly at the forwardness of girls who asked for a kiss. Never realise that you could actually save money by not seeing the play, just going to the stage door.

2. Discover that your chosen celeb lives in "Camden". Spend half a day touring what you believe to be "Camden" keeping a sharp look out for said celeb's car, the numberplate of which you memorised while engaged in 1. Have little idea of what you would do if you spotted this car, apart from a vague plan about pretending to do a Geography project and knocking on doors.

3. Write to celeb with an amusing quiz for him to fill in and be delighted when he charmingly replies saying "You are very funny, please stop it, the last thing I need is more competition." Actually that was all Lovely School Friend, I lacked the initiative and in fact the funniness.

B-day

2010-03-29T12:07:00.000-07:00

So today was supposed to be HackneyBaby's due date - s/he has 4 hours to make an appearance. Today two people on Holloway road stopped me within five minutes of each other to tell me what sex of child I am having - hilariously one said a boy and one said a girl. Are the people on Holloway Road particularly psychic/ deluded/annoying?

Went to Mothercare to pick up last minute essentials - sheets for the Moses basket as a loft monster seems to have eaten all the ones we had last time, and a changing bag - I thought I'd manage with a normal bag but suddenly decided it had to be a "proper" changing one. I was finagled into filling in some form for "money off vouchers" ie "please send me direct mail forever". "Oh, you've put today's date instead of your due date," they said. "No, that is my due date." "You're due today? Go home! Get out of our shop!"

HackneyChild fell asleep in the car on the way and slept soundly while Hackney_bloke did the food shop and I waited in the car, then I did the baby shop and vice versa. He was sorely disappointed when we got home and he had missed the shopping, and had a big tantrum. I tried to talk him out of it by saying "Let me read you that book." "No! That is not a nice book! Someone gets eaten up in that book!" It's a nursery rhyme collection, no-one gets eaten to my knowledge. I also tried Milly Molly Mandy but it appears the same applies, although we couldn't pin down exactly who gets eaten - not Milly Molly Mandy or Billy Blunt apparently.

Coram's Fields

2010-03-03T07:04:00.000-08:00

HackneyChild and I went to Coram's Fields near Holborn yesterday. The weather was amazingly springlike considering that today it is back to being cold and grey, and HackneyChild was being angelic, even though the bus journey was stop starty most of the way, so we had a brilliant time.

It's a great place for children with three or four different playgrounds for different ages, goats apparently wandering free, chickens, ducks and rabbits, a drop in for under-fives (we didn't try that) and a vegetarian cafe - no inside tables so wouldn't be great if raining but a good reasonably priced selection of foods children actually eat like normal sandwiches made from sliced bread (hummus, egg, tuna, cream cheese - not all together, even I think that would be disgusting and I am pregnant), pasta, and fruit. We also liked the wooden sheep and the summer house/ bandstand type thing.

Will definately try to go back in the summer, it looks a lovely place to have a picnic and nurse baby while HackneyChild runs around. I guess it might get crowded when the weather is good though.

Cinnamon Kitchen

2010-02-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

Our "curry club", a fluctuating but lovely group of uni friends and others, has now racked up quite a good number of visits to various Indian restaurants in London. In celebration of one of our number's sadly brief visit to the UK from Argentina we went last night to The Cinnamon Kitchen by Liverpool Street, an off-shoot of The Cinnamon Club in Westminster, which I have been to twice and loved.

The food at Cinnamon Kitchen was delicious but the staff were weirdly stressy. I have never been to a restaurant where the staff stressed so much. Firstly making the booking my Visa details were taken and I was told there would be a £20 charge per person (!) if we cancelled without giving 24 hours notice; at the same time I was told I must inform in advance if the number of people attending was to go up or down. Maybe this is common practice but I've never had it happen before.

Then when we got there one lady got in an incomprehensible stress about whether we were going to use the A La Carte or Specials menu, as I hadn't specified when booking (hadn't been asked!). There were confusing instructions about being sure to inform the waiter which we were ordering from (the specials menu was exactly the same as the a la carte but with fewer dishes). Then someone else came along (while there were still only two of us there) to inform us that "what I will do for you is I will give you some of all the starters so you can share them." Now this would be quite nice if it was an option but it was presented as a fait accompli. ArgentinaGirl had the presence of mind to ask how much this would be and it turned out it would be more than each ordering a separate starter, weirdly.

On the up side though there was one lovely waiter who was very helpful with dietary requirements and putting orders in before everyone arrived. And as I say the food was delicious - I had fat chillis with spiced paneer and tilapia curry. I would have had dessert, there was something chocolatey that looked nice, but I didn't as noone else was and I didn't want to look like a greedy guts. Thanks goodness for that restraint, as it was I spent half the night in heart burn city due to the foolishness of eating spicy food at 35 weeks pregnant. HackneyChild decided to throw a massive tantrum at 12.45am as well and decided he would only go back to sleep if I came into his bedroom not Daddy. His best comment was "I don't like my bed! You must get me another bed!"

Back in the saddle again

2010-02-24T05:12:00.000-08:00

It's so weird being fulltime carer again. Today we went to Piccolo at Hackney Forge which we used to go to every week, and it was as if we had never left, apart from not recognising so many people. Then we went to the toy shop on Victoria Park Road, where we invested in some glue, scissors and paint brushes for future craft activities, Victoria Park playground and the Pavilion for scrambled egg, smoked salmon and chocolate brownie, with HackneyChild informing me what his usual routine with Daddy was : "I usually have a little plate. And a spoon." After lunch HackneyChild said: "Didn't we have a nice morning?" and he was right, apart from having to bribe him to leave the house with a biscuit and the inexplicable failure of his pull up half way house nappy pants things to actually stop the wee from wetting his trousers.

I had forgotten how easily you start talking to people when you have a child with you which is really nice - talked to two girls on the bus about cravings in pregnancy, and mums in the Pav and at singing about random things. I am always stymied though by my inability to tell whether a child is male or female - they say "ooh, how old is he" and I say "two and a bit. How old is, er, your one?" It just feels rude to say "And is that a boy or a girl?" so I end up addressing my questions to the child "And can you walk yet?". People keep coming up and saying "We know your little boy but he is usually with his daddy" so obviously Hackney_bloke made an impression on the mummies of Hackney.

Hackette no longer

2010-02-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

Well, for the next year at least. Probably. Unless dire economic straits forces me back to work before that. I'm now on maternity leave, starting from last Monday, which means I'm now full time carer to HackneyChild and Hackney_bloke is full time freelancer/ wage earner. It also means we have withdrawn HackneyChild from his nursery, which I feel guilty about as he was getting on really well and they can offer such a lot of things that I can't like sand and water play and outside play(we have no garden); also HackneyChild was just starting to socialise with his peers and now I drag him away.

I did have some issues with the nursery (TV and food) but all in all they are brilliant, and getting HackneyChild's development books with all the notes about how he was progressing made me appreciate them even more. And I'm a director now - first meeting next month.

The main theme of this week has been potty training, and on Monday we went to Mothercare and bought a new potty (the first one was so tiny), and 14 pairs of pants. It seems to be going well - there were no accidents today - although I am wimping out when it comes to supermarket trips etc and putting pull up nappies on. We have also been to Discover in Stratford again (nice time but major tantrums on way back as I forgot to take dummy); Hackney City Farm (love it), London Fields playground, and the library. I need to get reaquainted with all the drop ins and stuff.

Big fat spoilers for David Tennant's last Who

2010-01-04T06:18:00.000-08:00

I came to the New Years Day Doctor Who episode a bit late as I was bathing HackneyChild when it was on, I think - or washing up. Something.

Anyway, I liked it, although I see from a quick trawl of Teh Interweb many didn't, for varying reasons - they love David Tennant and he's going, they hate David Tennant and he was too emo, they hate Rose and she was in it, they love Rose and she wasn't in it enough...

I did have some issues though and there was one thing I did hate. Here are my thoughts in handy wipe-clean bullet-point format.

I love the idea of a world full of John Simms but it was very silly. What about children and babies, did they become little John Simms or full-size John Simms? Also, The Master isn't great at taking orders and I would hazard that this would be true even when it came to taking orders from himself. I can't see squadrons of Masters shouldering arms and saluting, as they did. But it was a chilling and at the same time funny thing to happen.
The thing I hated was Donna's arc. I didn't like it when she had her memories wiped before, because it resets her to being the annoying shallow person she was in the runaway bride episode and I really liked how she changed - in fact she's one of my favourite companions. But getting a lottery ticket and we assume shedloads of cash in the end from the Doctor just seemed like adding insult to injury - here you are shallow person, have some material goods, that'll compensate for having your personal growth and memories of the stars taken away from you. I suppose there's history for the memory wipe, with Jamie and Whatsherface - Zoe? - getting dumped back in their timelines also losing all personal growth. But I didn't watch them in realtime.
What is it with huge planets appearing in the sky to no apparent ill effect? It happened in the Star Trek film (ooh I can see Vulcan blowing up really clearly but it apparently isn't doing anything to the planet I happen to be on), and again here as Gallifrey loomed massive in the sky, but seemed to do little apart from cause a few bits of building to fall down. I'd expect massive tidal waves at least.
I assume we are not supposed to know who Mysterious Woman is but I hope its Susan, even if it is probably Mum of Doctor.
I liked how The Masters madness was all the fault of the evil Timelords. The angst! And I liked the Doctor/ Master bonding although "you could be as beautiful as a rainbow" or whatever it was was pushing it a bit.
I didn't like David Tennant to start with. I didn't like him and Rose together, thought they were too cliquey and annoying. And he was kind of horrible to Martha and Jack. But I thought he was great in the Donna episodes, and I love him now. Maybe it will even be a retrospective love if I watch past episodes, but not the werewolf one, he's really annoying in that. And, you know, I'd have liked him to continue as long as Tom Baker. But did he really have to draw out his regeneration so long? The other Doctors just keeled over and woke up as Peter Davison or whoever. Why is he suddenly so angsty about regenerating? Maybe its because he's getting to the end of his regenerations?
Martha/ Mickey - huh? Wasn't she engaged to the doctor from the last time the Master took over the world?
And finally - I liked the new Doctor much much more than I thought I would. I liked his "Trust me, I'm the Doctor" from the next season trailer. And I'm pleased River Song appears to be returning. But "Geronimo" is kind of a stupid catchphrase.

Soviet Short Stories

2009-12-22T05:35:00.001-08:00

Soviet Short Stories: Parallel Text by Peter Reddaway

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I bought this back in the mists of time when I thought I would be learning more Russian than "my brother is an engineer". It has the Russian down one side of the page and the English translation down the other side, and is designed to make it easy for the student so the translation is pretty literal rather than literary.
I avoided reading this for a while (15 odd years) as I thought all the stories would be about tractors and collective farms. But actually I enjoyed them, as examples of writing from a particular culture and time, and I found the notes useful. My favourite was Making Snowmen, where a teacher supervises her class making, well, snowmen, and is led to muse on their futures after a sullen child proves to be an artistic genius in the making.
"It is true they are no good at making snowmen, but there is some other thing which they can do splendidly and inspiredly, something as yet unknown to me or to themselves. At the moment they have in their hands snow, plasticine, coloured pencils, building bricks, wooden pieces of construction kits - so little! The time will come when they have at their disposal all materials and all the elements, the open spaces of the earth and of all creation, all words, all sounds. And who knows what it is given to them to create!"

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A 1930s Christmas

2009-12-22T05:05:00.000-08:00

Extreme gift buying stress (don't try to buy anyone a special holiday for a special birthday without involving them in the buying of it is my conclusion, in case for some reason their nearest and dearest are unaware that the date you have chosen together is the one date of the entire year that they apparently cannot possibly leave the country, leading BA to demand an extra monkey on top of what you have already paid for the privilege of changing flight and hotel times ) has led me to return to a more festive age. Well, more festive for some.

The Perfect Christmas, published in 1932, is my heritage Christmas Bible. Here are some things I should be doing over Christmas, according to its hallowed pages:

Persuade my guests to eat nothing but fruit and salad on Boxing Day, ostensibly for the sake of their digestion but actually because its the servants day off and I have no idea where the kitchen is let alone how to turn the oven on
Put a package together for some "come down in the world" at the workhouse, containing things I'd like to have in their situation - razor and shaving soap for example (?) and a pack of cards. Clearly those who have been poor all their lives deserve nothing.
Be absolutely sure I have enough soda water
Send out the Christmas Pudding in good time to sons and nephews in regiments abroad
Entertain my house guests with jolly wheezes like the Underground Game (rival couples set off in opposite directions on the Tube - kind of assumes you live in London) and the Woolworth's Game (supply guests with a sixpence each and challenge them to buy the best bargain, bargains to be chortled over after tea)
Invite my poor country cousin up for Christmas but be sure to pay for her train journey and give her a black lace evening frock (or the money for a permanent wave) so I can be seen out with her in public. She will also require a gas fire and a hot water bottle in her room, apparently these country cousins feel the cold.

I must be off to buy some more soda water.

Swine flu immunity

2009-12-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

I have just been vaccinated against swine flu. Ha, take that, swine flu! A wait of half an hour to see the nurse, which is pretty standard fare at our GPs. Bet the one time I am late though they are running on time.

The injection didn't hurt at all and I so far have none of the swelling arm/ immobile arm/ painful arm others have reported, touch wood. Have to say, our medical services in Hackney are not doing much to promote the jab - I had to ask the midwife what I should do to get it and she sounded a bit surprised I wanted it at all - "oh, they'll be really pleased to see you" she said, implying there's not that great a take-up. Well, maybe if you, you know, actually contacted pregnant women and told them it was available and how to get it, you might get a better take-up? Just a thought.

The last midwife I asked, before the vaccine was available, was actively discouraging: "ooh, it's so difficult to know what to do isn't it, with these new vaccines" she said, helpfully.

Of course I still feel a bit weird in case there's something the matter with the vaccine that noone knows about and I have put my baby at risk. The whole thalidomide thing is never far from the mind when a new vaccine or treatment comes along for pregnant women. But I had to make a choice and this is the choce I made. Bit scary.

Edited to add: Obviously the wood I touched wasn't sufficiently woody, as six hours after the injection my arm started to stiffen and ache. It's still a bit achy, but not so bad, 24 hours later.

I discovered Discover

2009-12-07T06:02:00.001-08:00

Why didn't I know about Discover in Stratford before?It's brilliant! We went there on Saturday with HackneyChild and two of his chums (and their parents of course, I'm not capable of looking after three two year olds even with the help of Hackney_Bloke).

It wasn't a great start when HackneyChild wept bitter tears at being forced to get off the train at Stratford instead of continuing for half an hour or so to Essex which is what usually happens, although he enjoyed the many diggers going about their business on the Olympic site. And we were a bit dubious about being directed around a corner that looked like somewhere the drug dealers of Baltimore might ply their trade. But no, Discover is the best thing that you can do for £4.50 (or something, the payment system is weird) on a rainy Saturday.

I can't begin to list all the things that make it great, although HackneyChild keeps asking me to do so (he is under the impression Discover is actually the house of one of his friends - he's going to be really disappointed when we go to her house for real). It's hard to describe, but the laid-back atmosphere combined with the real imagination and creativity that has gone into designing the place makes it amazing. There are lights that you can jump on that make noises, a pirate ship with little caves and treasure, books everywhere, craft activities that you can take up and leave of your own accord, things to climb, things to post, buttons to press...

Also, you can bring your own food (well, you kind of have to) and it is brilliantly located on the line from us to Essex so any Essex-dwelling friends and relatives could meet us there for a great day out (hint). My only downsides are it's a bit pricy once you have paid for a whole family (you can get a year pass for £40 or something, which I guess would pay for itself after five visits with child and parent), and the presence of the shop just as you go in does tend to make children think they can play with all the toys in there, since they can play with everything else. But they didn't seem to mind HackneyChild appropriating handfuls of cars and fish which we put back later.

It would be a great place to go with a baby and a toddler as you could plonk yourself down with baby and toddler isn't going to come to much harm hurtling round the pirate ship. The only thing stopping me from doing that when HackneyBaby arrives is coming back I'd have to somehow get over the bridge between platforms at Hackney Central with pram, or take a long bus ride.

Filming at Town Hall

2009-12-04T02:50:00.000-08:00

According to Hackney_Bloke "they" are filming another period drama at Hackney Town Hall. I wonder what it could be.

I Heard The Owl Call My Name

2009-12-03T04:39:00.000-08:00

I Heard the Owl Call My Name: by Margaret Craven

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I thought this was a gentle, evocative book which I enjoyed for its descriptions of the Canadian Indian (there may be a better word but I don't know it) culture.

At first I thought the book lacking in dramatic conflict - the main character the young vicar is so nice, and seems to be accepted pretty readily by the village even though the book suggests tension over whether he will be or not. But the drama actually comes from the conflict betwen young and old in the village and the village culture and the outside world. The key message comes when the vicar goes to see the salmon returning upstream to spawn, and one of the girls cries at their death, but the vicar says that they have fulfilled the purpose of their lives so their death is not sad.

So, a lovely easily read book which I may read again; I just feel there could have been a bit more conflict in the main character rather than making him all good and other characters who are clearly set up to be his foils, like the teacher and the anthropologist, all bad. Maybe the character of Mark could have had some of those traits internalised in himself. But then maybe the book would not have been so gentle.

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Dinner with the ministers

2009-11-26T06:13:00.000-08:00

Tonight I am sharing a dining table with Ed Balls, Dawn Primarolo and our managing director. It is the managing director who is causing me most concern.

In other news, the lift is still broken.

Lift palaver

2009-11-19T06:51:00.000-08:00

I am pregnant. I work on the sixth floor. The lift has been broken for the last three days. But never fear, we have an antiquated two-door system postroom lift that I can use.

But wait, what's this? The lift doesn't work when someone leaves the door open on another floor you say? You'd think then that anyone using it would be careful to shut the door properly.

What they definitely wouldn't do is leave it open ON PURPOSE for their own convenience so that they could do something or other and the lift would be there waiting for them when they came back. And then, when I phoned my colleague to get her to see where the lift was stuck and Lift Woman had to come down again to get me, to come back up to the sixth floor with me and tell me not to shut the door becasue she wanted to do it again!

Rant over.

PS Don't ask me why Lift Woman had to come down in the lift to get me then go back up again. I guess she just wanted to make sure the lift was never out of her sight.

A Bit of Earth

2009-11-16T05:47:00.001-08:00

A Bit of Earth by Rebecca Smith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
When a book is called A Bit of Earth and the main character has the surname Misselthwaite (spelling?) it is obviously trying to link itself to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (the hall is called Misselthwaite and there is a chapter called A Bit of Earth, as that is what Mary asks her uncle for). So I was expecting a book about the healing power of nature, which isn't really what this is about. There is less about the garden than I thought there would be.

But although there are obvious similarities with Secret Garden (a man whose wife dies (not in a garden) neglects his son) I preferred the grand strokes of the children's book to the quietness of this book. It was OK. I just wasn't that enthralled. I didn't like Guy, I thought his treatment of his son was worse than the book seemed to suggest (perhaps because I have a little boy).

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Jamie's Italian

2009-11-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

We went to Jamie's Italian in Canary Wharf for lunch at the weekend. We were the ones hanging about outside at 11.45am waiting for it to open so we could keep HackneyChild's energy levels up. It is fun and child-friendly, with crayons and an impromtu (how do you even spell that?) display of men on a cherry picker reparing some lights downstairs, which impressed HackneyChild, although I don't think the restaurant arranged it for us.

The gimmick of putting the children's menu in a 3D viewfinder is cute but stupid, there are just pictures of the food with no description or price.

I didn't realise until we got there that of course HackneyChild's name chimes with the restaurant name. Every time I called to him I felt like either a mad Jamie Oliver freak fan who had named their child after him or a mad mum who insists on dining at restaurants named after their child.

Vicky park fireworks/ Tower Hamlets hates the Welsh shock

2009-11-09T05:13:00.000-08:00

We went to the Victoria Park fireworks with HackneyChild. I probably wouldn't have done off my own bat as he's only two and I well remember whinging constantly through a Rugby Club firework display when I was four about how I couldn't see, there were too many people and it was much better when we had fireworks in the garden. But I was happy to go when friends invited us, as I love the fireworks myself.

Didn't see loads of them as HackneyChild freaked out at first and required moving out of the crowd and cossetting while they were going on. However he now claims on a daily basis that he "liked the fireworks" so that's good. I liked how there were hearts, and stars inside circles. And that it was free. But the organisers could probably do with not having a massive funfair blocking the exit, requiring a huge crowd to filter though carousels and things before they can get out.

I was also entertained when asked to fill in a questionnaire on the way out. It seems Tower Hamlets ( I suspect it's them not Hackney) are keen to make sure their fireworks are attracting a diverse audience both in ethnicity and sexuality, judging by the questions. Bless. I can just imagine them going "Our fireworks aren't attracting enough gay people! How can we make our fireworks more gay-friendly?!" Also, there were boxes to tick for English, Scottish ("We are not attracting enough Scots! How can we make our fireworks more Scottish?!") and Irish (does this include Northern Ireland?) but not Welsh, which seems a bit unfair.

Things I really hate in journalism, part 1 of 3,679

2009-10-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

When "writers" start a sentence with said. Said chief executive Roy Rogers: "blah blah blah"
Why do people do this? Why? No-one talks like that in real life. Where do they get it from?
That is all.

Bye bye Spurstowe, hello Wiltons

2009-10-16T13:42:00.001-07:00

It's all go in our part of Hackney. The Spurstowe Arms appears to be closed, although I don't know why, it always seemed rammed as far as I could tell. Shame, we liked having a trendy local, and I have fond memories of the time I slipped the leash of baby rearing in the early days when it seemed like I was a prisoner in my own home and nipped over the road for an illict glass of wine and a book for an hour. (HackneyBloke seems to have formed some memory that I didn't drink at all when I was breastfeeding, but I think he's thinking of some ideal mum that isn't me).

But one door closes, another opens, and we now seem to have a trendy coffee shop three or four doors down rejoicing in the name of Wiltons. And - and! - a local radio station, London Fields Radio, broadcasting "from the window of a independent coffee shop behind Hackney Empire" (quite a long way behind). I think it might be a bit too trendy for me and Small Boy, but we shall see. Maybe they would like me to do a show on the exciting developments in facilities for the under-fives in the area. I know all the hot spots.

Top 10 fictional couples

2009-10-14T04:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't have a book with me on the bus today so I had to compile this list instead. Who have I missed out? Tell me!

1. Beatrice and Benedick - Much Ado About Nothing. They hate each other! But they love each other really!

2. Mulder and Scully - The X-Files. Aw, they are so touchy feely. And yet not Doing It. Until they are. Or are they? I don't know, I gave up when David Duchovny stropped off.

3. Holmes and Watson. You can't tell me they are not a couple. Well, you can and you'd have some evidence on your side, like Watson's (two?) marriages. But they are, you know. IN MY HEAD.

4. .Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester - Jane Eyre. The model for many a future Mills and Boon.

5. Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy - Pride & Prejudice. Yes, obvious, but I like Elizabeth, so shut up.

6. Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler - Gone With the Wind. Oh Scarlett, can't you see Rhett loves you, not that drippy Ashley? Luckily all's well that ends well, if you believe Scarlett and wait until Rhett is practically ninety or something.

7. Spike and Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He loved her so much he got a soul! Unlike Angel who had to have one forced on him, and still can't keep hold of it for more than about five seconds. Also, much better chemistry.

8. Katherine and Vincent, Beauty and the Beast. He comes from a secret world far below the city streets! She, er, something about her world, a world apart from his. They cannot be together (because he looks like a lion?) but they will never, ever be apart!

9. Jo March and Laurie Lawrence, Little Women. I don't know what Louisa Alcott was thinking pairing Laurie with Amy in the end. It just results in a union of unbearable smugness - and Bess.

10. Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I can't believe I forgot them. I love Harriet. And they are proof that you can still be an interesting couple once married, although admittedly only just so.

[edited to get rid of Lois/ Clark - peter and Harriet are much sexier]

And two that nearly made it but I thought were a bit obscure, also I can't remember the names: Girl and Sorry (?) in The Changeover (they are telepathic!); Girl and Robot in Silver Metal Lover (good to have obstacles in the path of true love, and what better obstacle than one of you being a robot?).

I'm sure there are loads I like better then these, especially Little Women and Superman, but I can't think of them right now.

JK Rowling and Thomas the Tank Engine: a literary partnership

2009-10-09T06:06:00.000-07:00

Now, JK Rowling's literary borrowings from various sources are obvious in many ways - the structure of school series like St Clares, with each book having the "lacrosse/ Quidditch game" the "new teachers" and so on; shades of the Worst Witch and Wizard of Earthsea etc. Nothing wrong with that.

But I think I have unearthed a new and previously undiscovered source of Rowling's creativity - Thomas the Tank Engine. Can it be a coincidence that on the back of the Thomas books which list all the other titles in the series, Arthur ( a red train) is next to Molly (a yellow train), reflected in Rowling's choice of Arthur and Molly Weasley as the names of Ron's Mum and Dad?

Not only that but other titles include: Percy (Ron's brother); George (Ron's brother); Freddie (kind of Ron's brother if you lose the ie); and Bill and Ben (Bill is Ron's brother). The only Weasley family members not represented by trains are Ginny and Charlie. What can this mean? I feel a PhD coming on.

PS Don't start telling me that both the Rev Awdry and successors and JK tended to pick traditional British boys names and there's not that many of them - I shall just put my fingers in my ears and hum.

Radio gaga

2009-10-07T07:42:00.001-07:00

I was on the radio this morning. BBC West Midlands, for some reason. So all the good people of Birmingham and surrounding area got to hear my thoughts on how young people get a negative press. In fact many probably woke up to them, since I was on just after the 7am news. Sorry about that, if you were one (although why you'd be reading my blog I don't know).

Have to say the host Phil Upton sounded absolutely fascinated by what I had to say (not). "Thanks for that HackneyHackette...now Afghanistan!" Or something.

Thought I might have to hide small boy in a closet but Hackney_bloke distracted him with porridge.

It's me, I'm Cathy, I've come home

2009-09-01T03:16:00.001-07:00

I really wanted to like ITV's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, but it was pants. I have no idea what was going on at the end and I have read the book. Unless it was mentioned in the first five minutes which I missed, nothing was said of what happened to Isabella, who presumably died; Heathcliff seemed to be auditioning for the part of Snape in Harry Potter and was not at all sexy (in fact if he had been Snape in Harry Potter, or at least Alan Rickman's version, he would have been sexier); no-one appeared to age at all apart from in a big leap from child to adult (couldn't they at least have greyed Heathcliff's hair?) .

Worst of all I thought there was absolutely zero chemistry between Cathy and Heathcliff. When they said "my love" it sounded like they were saying "cup of tea" or "bus-stop". Despite snogging the faces off each other I just wasn't feeling the spark, and that's what the whole book is about. Without it Cathy is just a spoilt child and Heathcliff is a brute, and that's about what they were.

I want to re-read the book now, though.

Confusing cousins in kidlit

2009-08-07T05:18:00.000-07:00

Having just "read" (skipped through) What Katy Did Next, just after "reading" What Katy Did and What Katy Did at School, I can reveal in a nitpicky style that "Cousin Olivia/ Mrs Page" morphs from being Katy's mamma's cousin:

"Mrs. Page was your dear mother's second cousin; and at one time she lived in your grandfather's family, and was like a sister to mamma and Uncle Charles."

to Dr Carr's cousin:

"But we must treat her politely, you know, Lilly; her father is my cousin."

Susan Coolidge, this is carelessness! And what is it with children's authors that they have such problems keeping up with cousins? Enid Blyton has the same issue - George, Anne, Dick and Julian are all called Kirrin, so we must assume that their fathers are brothers. But then Kirrin Cottage, Kirrin Island etc are said to have belonged to Aunt Fanny's family. Was she also called Kirrin before she got married? I don't think Enid was paying attention.

The other thing that annoys me about the Katy books is that Clover's hair starts out straight but by the time she is 18 it has turned wavy. I wouldn't mind, but they make such a big deal about it being straight:

Clover's thick, straight locks required to be pinched hard before they would give even the least twirl, and to her, Saturday night was one of misery... In consequence of these sufferings Clover hated curls, and when she "made up" stories for the younger children, they always commenced: "The hair of the beautiful princess was as straight as a yard-stick, and she never did it up in papers--never!"

Then in WKDN: Her thick, brown hair waved and coiled gracefully about her head.

I should be deported immediately

2009-08-07T05:04:00.000-07:00

I have failed the UK Citizenship test with a score of 50 per cent.

I expect the knock on the door tonight.

No-one wants to see two hot actors making out, apparently - must be why Brokeback Mountain did so badly

2009-08-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

I can't help feeling the new Sherlock Holmes film will be dreadful, directed as it is by Guy Ritchie. This makes me sad.

On the other hand, I do like this. And I love this quote from a film critic that Fox News dragged out to put some kind of homophobic angle on it all. "Who is going to want to see Downey Jr. and Law make out? I don't think it would be appealing to women."

How little you know women. Although I could wish Watson was someone other than Jude Law.

Surely now it is just moments before someone dramatises top romance My Dearest Holmes, or even better the fanfic that has the excellent line: "Watson, not only have I been dreaming for years of doing things to you that would shock your conscience, turn your stomach, and outrage your medical sensibilities, I have for the past month been paying a male prostitute to impersonate you while I do them to him."

Gullbert and Gullian

2009-08-05T05:24:00.000-07:00

We have two baby seagulls living on the roof of the house opposite. They peek out every now and then and make a noise like we live by the sea. It's very disconcerting to wake up to the cry of the seagulls when the nearest beach is probably 100 miles away.

Gullbert (or Gullian) is currently going a bit nutsoid flapping his wings and trying to launch himself off the roof, so I shouldn't think they'll be with us much longer.

People of the Book

2009-07-26T12:23:00.001-07:00

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don't know why people compare this to The Da Vinci Code, I think it's a lot more like The Love of Stones by Tobias Hill, which similarly takes an object and traces its story. I think the main difference from The.. let's just call it Code... is that Code implies that while the past is a mystery, if you have the right clues you can find out what really happened, whereas People of the Book shows that the past cannot be known - the main character can guess at some things but only the reader knows what the clues really signify.

I realy liked the book, although the violence was a bit harrowing. And it was a bit depressing, showing violence caused by religion happenign again and again over the years, right up to the present day. I especially liked the last section with the girl who did the illustrations.

It was a bit of a massive coincidence the way the book came to light again though.

View all my reviews >>

Perhaps the worst book I have ever read

2009-07-26T12:15:00.001-07:00

What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I know writing about heaven/ utopia is much more difficult than writing about hell/ dystopia, but really, this is the most Daily Mail, banal, bathetic version of heaven I have ever come across.

Detailed description of how great the furniture is in the after-life? Come on. Hell was a lot more interesting but by that time the damage was done. Basically when you are in heaven you hang out in a really nice house and go to some lectures. It also really, really irked me in the preface where the author basically says "this is all true apart from the characters". You cannot possibly know that unless you have died already.
And how come the narrator's dog was with him in heaven? Are all animals there or just the ones that are lucky enough to be liked by a human? Where were all the scorpions and spiders?

I can barely describe how cross this book made me. I can't believe it's the same guy who wrote I Am Legend.

View all my reviews >>

You Have Been Watching

2009-07-20T03:45:00.000-07:00

Spent Sunday evening sitting on an uncomfortable chair at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith at the filming of You Have Been Watching.

I now have a weird crush on Charlie Brooker, but definitely not on Frankie Boyle, (the only guest I recognised) who (whom?) I think is funnier edited.

There were a lot of very lame giraffe jokes. I don't know how may will make it to the final cut. I mean rubbish jokes, not jokes about lame giraffes although there may have been some.

I thought I saw Oliver Burkeman, who I remember from Cambridge, next to us in the queue but since I'm pretty sure I have mild face blindness, not great for a journalist, I didn't say hi, in case it was not him but someone vaguely famous who I didn't really know.

Torchwood

2009-07-09T03:30:00.001-07:00

Do you think John Barrowman has a contract with Torchwood that says at least one character must say something like "God, that Captain Jack's good-looking isn't he?" at least once an episode? It must be a brilliant ego boost playing Jack Harkness.

"In a strange, wild frenzy he has fled the ship's bridge"

2009-06-30T04:44:00.000-07:00

Last night lovely school friend came round, which is a nice thing in itself, but she brought with her the gift of Star Trek. Specifically, she has shelled out about £3 on eBay for two episodes (City on the Edge of Forever and Trouble with Tribbles) and a documentary stunningly packaged in an oh so realistic “tricorder”. God I love that show. Having not seen an episode for years, I was ready to cringe through them, but no, although we were chuckling along a lot of the chuckles were meant to be there (a lot weren’t – but I like to think they were friendly chuckles. Yes, Star Trek, we’re laughing at you not with you but you’re just so cute! It’s like laughing at a toddler’s funny antics!).

And its not all laughs, I did find I was still interested in the characters and stories too. Why is Star Trek so loved, mused the Shatner on the documentary, and decided “mythology”, and “characters” which is exactly what I was thinking. Kirk=Ulysses, tricking his away around the galaxy. And ripping his shirt a lot to show his manly chest.

It is amazing how everyone, from the actors to the director and the guy who does the music seems to think they are on a stage in a theatre rather than on TV though. It’s like they are making a show for people who are sitting about 20m away from the TV so all gestures, music etc has to be emphasised to the factor of 20. All the scenes are blocked like they are in the theatre, and they actually have scenes, and acts. It’s a strange experience when we are used to more naturalistic acting, faster and more fluid cuts, and incidental music that you don’t even notice.

Summer fashion

2009-06-24T04:39:00.001-07:00

I know it's a cliche, but the Brits really can't do summer workwear. On the way to work this morning on the Tube I noticed a number of "looks" being "rocked", few of which were both pleasing and appropriate.

The Scruff (boys): plain shorts and crumpled shirt for those making a bit of an effort, shorts and manky T-shirt for those who really don't care

"I haven't invested in a new summer wardrobe/ acknowledged the fact that I have gone up a dress size since last year" (girls): Very tight skirts or straining sleeveless dresses.

"I do not acknowledge changing seasons"/ "I work in an Artic air-conditioned office": No concession made to the fact it is not winter apart from no coat - suited and booted for the lads, black suits and opaque tights for the girls.

"I am going to the beach" - Revealing/ floaty summer dresses (girls), garish shorts and T-shirt (boys)

"I am thrown into a massive quandary by the hot weather and must put together an outfit based on random items from my wardrobe"/ "We have had more than two hot days in a row so all my summer clothes are now in the wash apart from these weird things" - I really can't describe these outfits, they are just strange. Examples include odd fitted black tuxedo style waistcoat with sides cut out that pushes out wearer's cleavage, and ...actually I was so taken aback by that I can't remember the others.

Since you ask, I am sporting a long dress-type top over jeans. Not really workwear at all, so I would add myself to the list of people who can't dress for summer.

It's in the stars

2009-06-24T01:39:00.001-07:00

Am I the only person who as well as reading my own horoscsope reads that for the baby I would have if I got pregnant this month, or rather the sperm and egg that it currently may be?

Today's for example, in the Western Mail: "Let people come to you, Taurus. Quite a few potential paramours can be circulating, but don't be too influenced by someone's apparent genorosity. This is a time to keep your options open."

OK, it's just me.

Islands in the road, that is what we are

2009-06-18T07:21:00.000-07:00

For several evenings last week a young woman (not always the same one) sat on the traffic island at the corner of Navarino Road and Wilton Way. She had with her a mat and, I think, a book, and sat there for a few hours at a time. What on earth was she doing? Anyone know?

Tube strikes are no fun

2009-06-10T03:14:00.000-07:00

You know, I'm a big fan of unions. And industrial action. "Go unions!" I say, while humming Billy Bragg songs. "Workers unite!"

But even I think the tube drivers are taking the p. And its all very well Boris purportedly laying on extra bike racks, but I'm not cycling from Hackney to Hammersmith. Even if I hadn't given my bike away on freecycle to make room in the hall for a Bugaboo. I got the overland, and at Willesden Junction there was such a scuffle to get on the 8.20 to Clapham that some poor woman lost her shoe down the sizeable gap between the train and the platform. I think she must have got on the train anyway, as I didn't see her retreive it - she must have hopped to work.

In other, completely unrelated news, I was trying to teach small boy about spelling. "What starts with m?" I enthused. "Mmmm...milk! Mmmm...meat! Mmmm...mummy! What else?" He thought. "Mmmm..daddy!"

I think we'll revisit spelling later.

Slow news day in Yorkshire

2009-06-09T03:01:00.000-07:00

We get the papers every day in the office and I always agitate for the Western Mail and the Yorkshire Post. No-one can understand this, but I always say I already know what the national news is from Metro - if it's not in Metro, it's not news in my opinion.

Today the Western Mail had a full page on Charlotte Church's great grandmother, taken from the latest census to be released (I assume it's the latest and there is at least a sliver of news there). And the Yorkshire Post had a "news story" about how the next series of Ashes to Ashes would "reveal all". My first thought was: I'm sorry, but how is this news, or indeed related to Yorkshire? My second thought was, ooh.

I'm so sad.

Alternate universe or time travel? big fat spoilers for the Star Trek film

2009-05-15T03:35:00.000-07:00

Me and lovely schoolfriend went to see the new Star Trek film at the Leicester Square Empire last night (after a brief and mistaken foray into the casino. "A casino! A cinema! Countless possibilities!" the advert said, but I count two.)

I loved it - the crew were better looking, sexier versions while still retaining the essence of themselves, and hello, Chris Pine, thanks for making me remember why Captain Kirk was always my favourite character, something that got a bit hidden over the years under tubbiness and toupees. And your man from Heroes was brilliant - almost more Spock than Spock without doing an impression of Leonard Nimoy.

Apart from that rather shallow summing up, I was interested in what they did with the whole alternate universe thing (although it was a bit rammed home "So, we're now in an alternate universe? You mean, we're kind of living lives that we wouldn't have lived before? Our lives are going off in a different direction you mean?").

Clearly it was something that had to be done, as otherwise there's no dramatic tension - we know they all survive, even relatively minor characters like Captain Pike, we know earth is safe, we know Vulcan won't blow up...oh, hang on. At that point, I thought the writers were going to go down the "time travel/ reset" route, as in that episode of Dr Who where everone is enslaved by the Master for a year and then, er, isn't, or when Superman rescued Lois Lane by pushing the earth backwards (which led my Dad to ponder "but how can he breathe in space?". Well, Dad, how can he fly?)

But as the film progressed the emotional investment we had in the characters as they were began to outweigh the emotional investment we had in "returning" to the proper Star Trek universe, and a "reset" would have been emotionally unsatisfying as we'd have lost the characters we had come to know. So they stuck with it. And now they can redo the whole five year mission if they want to, cos it could all be different.

Some bullet points:

Not sure about the Spock/ Uhura thing although it was quite sweet and funny, and I suppose his Dad had basically given him permission.
The all-new, all-lovin' Spock kind of doesn't really have the interesting internal struggle between emotion and logic anymore which might make things difficult in potential sequels, but then I suppose he has the angst of having his planet blown up and his mum killed.
Dr McCoy was like Alan Alda with a massive hangover, but I still liked him.
As lovely schoolfriend said, the Romulans are the worst marooners in the universe - who maroons someone on a planet where a StarFleet base is 14 km away? And if old!Spock could see Vulcan blowing up from where he was, wouldn't that do very bad things to the planet he was on?
It was so obvious Jim would appear at the end in his gold shirt but very satisfying anyway.
What on earth was MumofJim doing on a starship in the first place?
I seem to remember Jim's mum is called Winona - and Winona Ryder was playing Spock's mum. Ha.

Well, that was long.

Helicopter frenzy

2009-05-07T04:16:00.000-07:00

I was just gazing out of the office window and saw 15 or so helicopters in close formation flying in a circle a few miles away. The office conclusion is there's some kind of naval celebration happening. I wouldn't want to be up in a plane right now though and suddenly see 15 helicopters scrambling around me.

They look really cool.

Swine flu

2009-04-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

I don't understand why we are supposed to be so scared. I haven't read anything that says swine flu is any worse than any other kind of flu in terms of virulence and deadliness. Some people have died who had it, but they may well have died because they had other illnesses as well.

Of course these words may come back to bite me when Survivors comes true and we are all dead or getting hanged as looters.

The coolest postcode in London

2009-04-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

Is E8 , apparently, my very own hood. Oh yes, "wander around at 11pm and the feeling is not dissimilar to being in the lower east side of Manhattan at its mid-90s peak." Not sure what Manhattan was like in its mid-90s peak; although I was there briefly at that time I spent much of the time trying to get a/ a car and b/ plane tickets to San Francisco.

2009-04-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

I have just received this email:

Dear Hackney Hackette (well, obviously it addressed me by my actual name)

Where will you be in four weeks?

Well, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing Hackney. Maybe at work, or down at the Mus of Ch or London Fields, or the City Farm perhaps...why?

We suggest joining your peers and other digital printing industry leaders who will be exploring new business opportunities, technology developments and emerging profitable applications at IMI’s 12th Toner & Toner Chemicals Conference on May 4-6, 2009 and 2nd Digital Printing Presses – The Next Era Conference on May 6-8, 2009 at the Crowne Plaza San Marcos Resort in Chandler (Phoenix), Arizona.

Whoa, slow down a minute matey. If you'd said "your peers and other distracted working mums" I might have flown with you, but I'm not sure I can count any "digital printing industry leaders" among my peers.

In these difficult times, are you taking advantage of new and developing opportunities as the world goes digital and toner-based systems compete with other technologies for market share?

No, no I'm not. I feel bad about it, but what can I do?

Please forward this email to interested colleagues and contacts and inform your associates of these unique and exciting programs.

I will do better than that. I will include it in my blog.

Words words words

2009-04-01T03:49:00.000-07:00

Do you ever find out that you have been saying a word wrong all your life? When I was at school (primary I think although it may have been secondary) we used to call the Portakabin-style classrooms "demantables". I have always, in my head, called them demantables, although never spoken it aloud since school I don't think. I never had any idea why we called them that or what the word meant.

Today I needed to use the word in print, Googled it to check the spelling, and found that we had actually been mangling the word "demountable" in our Essex accent. Are there any other words I have been saying wrong for 30-odd years I wonder?

My personal favourite is my lovely friend's belief that there were two words - misled, pronouced mis-led, which she only ever heard, and misled, pronounced myselled (kind of), which she only ever saw written down. "My lord, you have myselled me!" Much like I thought there were two different states, pronounced Ah Kansas and Arkensaw.

2009-03-25T02:40:00.000-07:00

How exciting. I am on Google Street View! Go me!

Books that changed my life

2009-03-23T04:29:00.000-07:00

I can’t say that many books have actually affected me in obvious ways, although everything you read adds to who you are in some way. That’s why it’s slightly worrying I still buy Heat every Tuesday. But these books did.

1. Thank you, school library, for bringing me into contact with Children of the Dust aged 11 and thus initiating decades of nuclear nightmares and waking paranoia. Thanks to this book, which I could never read again but used to sidle up to every so often and peek inside, I had to have the radio or TV on whenever I was alone in the house in case a nuclear war had broken out, I had a fun topic for anxiety dreams for the rest of my life where I was trapped with loved ones in a radiation ravaged front room watching everyone die, and I firmly believed for many years that every plane that went overhead could be the one that was about to unleash its payload of nuclear hell on the UK. Having slightly more understanding of the general political situation of the time may have helped, but then again, it may not have done.

2. The Making of Star Trek. I must have quite liked Star Trek already otherwise why would I have picked up this dog-eared American paperback at a Clacton fete? But the book itself was the catalyst for a growing obsession which give me a lot of fun during my teenage years, until the X-Files came along. The black and white photos also made me believe that William Shatner was fanciable, an idea which persisted strangely against all other evidence.

3. What Mothers Do Especially when it looks like nothing. Thank you so much (this is a real thank you not like my sarky thank you in point 1) to ATypicalEssexGirl for buying me this as it arrived through the post like an angel of light at a time when the “mum instruction books” I had invested in before the birth of my little boy were causing me to weep stormily and feel hopelessly inadequate. This book made me cry in a happier way as I recognised at last that I was the mum the author was talking about, and that I was doing the right thing after all, and the boy wasn’t some kind of freak baby who wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing. The NHS should prescribe this book to all new mums as they leave hospital.

Britney

2009-03-19T06:33:00.001-07:00

It amuses me that two other bloggers have "Britney Spears (what?)" listed in their favourite music.

That is all.

Doctor Who goes mad in Kirrin

2009-03-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

I tell you who would make a brilliant companion for the Doctor on his time travels (not really, obviously, as it would involve some pretty intense universe merging, but in the world of my mind). George from the Famous Five. She's already used to being regularly kidnapped, her dad's a mad scientist anyway so that won't come as a shock and I am sure she could battle aliens with the same panache she brought to combatting crime in Dorset. The downside is she'd probably want to bring Timmy the dog along, but there is precedent for a canine in the Tardis.

Why can't this happen? Someone write it immediately.

She could be the new Susan! But with less screaming. And more wanting to be a boy.

Thank you Hackney/Tower Hamlets village

2009-03-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Or something like that. I was thinking that the village that is kindly helping HackneyHack and myself raise our small child is:

Obviously the nursery that looks after the boy three days a week and his lovely key worker

Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood. It's free (suggested donation)! It has a great cafe with loads of buggy room, sensory area, sandpit, Lego, doll's house, loads of room for toddlers to bomb about madly and did I mention the cafe? And it's open every day of the week!

Hackney City Farm. Animals! An even better cafe! Also free (until you feel too guilty).

Lovely Stefanie at Piccolo, Hackney Forge. Not free, but worth every pound.

The excellent man who runs the baby gym at the Collingwood Centre (free!). Can't hold a tune to save his life but very welcoming. And the stay and play ladies.

Ann Tayler Centre's (free! apart from suggested donation for fruit) stay and play.

The Victoria Park One o'Clock Club ladies - don't use it often but nice to know it's there (and free!)

The Victoria Park pavilion and the Wild Cherry cafe, no-one cares if you breast feed.

Emily and the other physiotherapist whose name I have forgotten at the Royal London postnatal pilates course (which takes place in the amputees gym, cheerily).

And all within walking distance! Not to mention the parks. I shall miss all this if we ever move out of Hackney. Won't miss the health visitors and GPs, mind.

Squirrels, Sherlock and the apocalypse

2009-03-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

H'mm, well, I haven't written for ages as I have been tied up in creating my official work blog. But there are some things you just can't post there. Like this, for example.

A good friend of mine once confessed that as she took her daily walk through the park to the tube, the main thing on her mind was what would happen if squirrels ganged up and turned feral, and how people would have to wear anti squirrel wire mesh helmets and squirrel proof clothing. In honour of that here are the top three places my mind goes to in similar situations.

1. If Sherlock Holmes was brought forward in time to the 21st century, would he still be a brilliant detective or would he despair because all of the things he had spent so much time learning, such as the particular type of mud in Battersea, were pretty much irrelevant?

2. If I was to go back in time to the Elizabethan era armed with a goodly supply of some modern delicacy such as Lemsip or chocolate, would I be feted or burned as a witch? (Usually I think the latter).

3. Come the apocalypse what's the best way of getting out of London and where should I head? This is now complicated by having to pick small child up from nursery on the way.

Well, I'm glad I got that out of my system.

This is why I am not JK Rowling

2008-12-05T13:33:00.000-08:00

Why Harry Potter would be better if it were more like Star Trek

In another quadrant of space, a ship slipped steadily through the blackness. Its name, emblazoned proudly on its saucer-shaped hull, was USS Hogwarts. Its bearded captain sat patiently in his chair on the bridge, waiting for his science officer to report.

The science officer in question was staring irritably into his computer, greasy hair falling round his shoulders. He alternated this with glaring at the bespectacled ensign sitting in the helmsman's chair. The captain coughed gently.

"Commander Snape, the report?" he reminded.

At that moment the ship jerked violently from one side to another. Snape shot a look of pure venom at the helmsman.

"Ensign Potter! Twelve demerits on your permanent record for sloppy helmsmanship!" he barked.

The fresh-faced young ensign looked as though he wanted to contest this but was torn between duty and justice. Duty won. "Captain!" he cried. "There are Death Eaters on the starboard bow!"

This did not seem to faze the captain. "Death Eaters, eh? Good heavens. Put them on the screen, if you would, Lieutenant Granger."

"Yessir!" said the bushy-haired young woman sitting at the communications station, smartly.

The screen lit up to show a fleet of sleek black ships hanging in space, each one carrying the Dark Mark on its hull. The science officer winced and clutched the top of his arm, a move that did not go unnoticed by Ensign Potter, who hissed to Lieutenant Granger: " We can't trust Snape you know! He's half Death Eater! I don't understand why the captain allows him on the ship at all!"

"Now then, Harry," said the captain calmly as Harry flushed at being overheard. "It's Commander Snape to you. We've been through this before. I have a special secret reason for trusting Commander Snape implicitly and I won't hear a word said against him. He - "

"But Captain! He's trying to contact the Death Eaters and betray us! Look!"

Snape was indeed trying surreptitiously to send some kind of message from his console. Harry jumped up from his chair and ran to look over his shoulder.

"Captain Dumbledore! It says: 'The shields will be down at Stardate 2013.7 and the co-ordinates of Potter's bedroom are 369pluralQ-R. Good luck in murdering him in his bed'!"

"Oh Harry, " sighed the captain. "I'm sure it is all perfectly innocent."

Continued page 336

Hello

2008-12-05T13:29:00.000-08:00

So here I am in the blogosphere, only about five years late. Actually I did have another one but I will never ever tell where it is.
I'm a journalist, a mum, and I live in lovely Hackney. Also I like television. So there you go.
Hello.