23 March 2014
This morning I badly needed a decongestant, so the timing of the gift could not have been more appropriate. Purists (and those who abhor the practise, however infrequent, of drinking alcohol before 10am) look away now…
I had it with hot water, maple syrup (the squeezy bottle of honey had solidified due to lack of recent usage,) sugar and a few drops of lemon juice (yup, Jif, from a bright yellow squeezy plastic bottle.)
And it was lovely. Please disregard the fact that I’m currently sat here with Earex drops in both ears to hopefully clear the temporary deafness, and both ears are plugged with toilet paper (there’s no cotton wool in the house.)
Laphroaig is a fantastic drink. It takes time. It’s best approached along a long and winding path. I confess I worked my way up through a lot of the blended Scotches, through the easy-on-the-palate single malts, and thought Talisker was the pinnacle of Scots’ liquid refreshment achievement, until I found Laphroaig. I’m not a drinker, it took a serious amount of time.
Incidentally, my previous Scottish pinnacle, ‘Irn Bru’ has now, though marginally, been beaten into third place.
The best summary I’ve heard of Laphroaig so far from a drinker of blended whiskies: “Ugh, it tastes like medicine!” Medicine? That works for me, and has in the past been an often-used excuse^H^H^H^H^H^Hreason for getting the glass out. Forget Cask Strength and other marketing ploys designed to extract the unwary buyer’s money… The best Laphroaig by a long distance was the 15-year-old, now sadly not marketed.
I was introduced to it (thanks ‘Bob’ the builder) on a cruise down the Nile. Transported in so many ways to a more relaxed world (for society’s elite of course) and broad as the following statement is, I really cannot think of any combination of 2 things that, when combined, are more redolent of the luxury I imagine existed in the bygone age visitors to Egypt expect to encounter.
14 March 2014
My children’s discipline is a constant source of frustration to me. I’ve spent the last few years being consistent in my approach to it, even with the obvious discord it engenders. I’ve honestly thought I’ve being doing the right thing. Apparently not.
Today though, something remarkable happened…
For a long time I’ve been threatening (yes!) to throw toys away. My wife hates the idea and, even when I’ve implemented the threat in the past it’s ultimately failed for a number of reasons - not limited to rescuing whatever’s in the bin or forcing (yes!) me to do it. I’ve apparently been unreasonable.
Perspective may be a worthwhile thing to introduce at this point?
We’re overrun with toys of all shapes and sizes, spent paper & card, paint pots & brushes, pens & pencils. Every room in the house apart from the ‘master’ bedroom, toilets and bathroom has mess wherever the girls (nearly 7 & 4) finish what they’re doing. Bedrooms are occasionally, in a very real sense, impassable - bedclothes, dressing-up clothes, toys strewn across the floor, beads and sharp pointy things underfoot to cause maximum discomfort to unwary adults.
One of the very worst things to deal with is the horrendous number of stickers that appear on every surface in the house. They stick to furniture, floors, are run through the washing machine, clog the vacuum cleaner, stick to work clothes, to bare feet and cats…
It’s been going on, as I mentioned above, for a few years now and despite my best efforts the lessons I’ve been trying to teach simply haven’t sunk in. It would be fair to say that my wife and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on matters of child discipline. You could say I’ve gone way past the point of being reasonable about it, but without any visible improvement using other methods (naughty step included) I thought it would eventually pay off.
Today though I’d just had enough. I’d asked the girls to get all of their art stuff together and make a pile of it, and put everything else in another pile. We’d then figure out between us what to keep and what to throw out. It worked until I figured out I’d got in the way - at which point I’d made the mistake of believing both girls’ suggestions they’d have it done soon.
An hour later, and 2-1/2 hours in to the exercise, and after frequent reminders I gave up. No, I hadn’t expected concentration for that amount of time, there’d been breakfast, juice, a bit of telly as a temporary reward…
So, all of the stuff not already sorted into the ‘art stuff’ pile went in bin bags, ditto all of the other toys. All this while the girls watched and asked awkward questions.
Then, the remarkable thing: my wife didn’t stop me, nor did she suggest the toys shouldn’t be binned. You could have slapped me down with a small wet fish! Amazing!
To spare my oldest daughter the pain of seeing her toys going into bags my wife decided to take her shopping - there’s a rather important milestone-y family birthday party next weekend, and we’d also nearly run out of ketchup! My youngest daughter can still be bribed with TV, so that’s what happened whilst I ‘tidied up’ in the back of the kitchen.
The back of our kitchen has in the past been called ‘The Morning Room’ (previous owners) and by us ‘The Breakfast Room’ (though we’ve never really used it as such), and now it’s ‘The Area’ (christened thus by the girls) for art and general messing around. It’s been allowed to fill up with colouring books, sticker rolls, beads, aprons, discarded paint pots, brushes, and especially completed works of art…
So all the paper and card and felt and plastic went in bin bags, and with it anything I deemed unusable. Anyone more sentimental than I would have baulked at destroying their children’s precious memories, but not man-of-steel here, no. I thought about the implications, of course.
My wife and oldest daughter returned home from the shop some time after I’d finished. I helped with the unpacking, feeling good about something for the first time in a week-and-a-half.
We had another brief chat about what I’d done, she suggested sorting through the toys later - a not unreasonable thing to do given the circumstances - and I put the last bits of shopping away.
You could say that the morning had occasioned a cathartic response in me, the result of which is the 4 (yes four) bin bags (items taken only from the front & dining rooms and ‘The Area’) waiting next to the outer door in the utility room for my wife to sort out later. And, more-importantly for my sense of well-being, a sense of a job well-done and a feeling of an achieved consensus.
Success!
The very last item out of the very last shopping bag - another pack of stickers.
10 March 2014
I don’t read enough. I bought 3 novels a few months ago with the intention of making time. Of course it didn’t work! To help speed things along I’m thinking of narrowing my focus somewhat - to something I’m certain can start this process off. At the dawn of the UK’s home computer revolution I bought a book about computers.
A key phrase from it still resonates: something like “computers are fast rule following idiots”, then the obligatory “garbage in equals garbage out.” It seems that those words are both truer than ever and at the same time subject to disproval based on what we see every day. But that’s a topic for another time…
I’d like to re-acquire a copy of the book.
A quick trawl through the histories of various computers and computer companies from that era indicates a publishing date after 1977, and before 1982. It’s a fairly big window given the massive progress being made at that time, so how can I be sure?
Well, 1977 as I’m certain the Tandy TRS-80 was mentioned in the book, as was the Apple ][. 1982 because when my first computer (a 1K RAM Sinclair ZX81) arrived my focus narrowed from the previous theoretical ‘what if’ to the more practical ‘eeek, what now?!’
I wonder, can you help me find it?
Some help:
- It’s heavily slanted towards the U.S., relating to both that country’s computing history and its then-contemporary devices. That’s not surprising.
- It has a picture or a photo of a computer on the front.
- The colour beige or orange features predominantly on the cover.
- it’s the same size as a thick novel.
- Er… I know it’s not much help!
So, how about it? Have you got what this quest needs?
05 February 2014
I’m not a blogger, not really. Why? I have a blog, I post stuff to it, I have extended periods of time without activity (in the blog and real life.) So, why do I consider myself not a blogger?
I arrived on the Internet in 1997 - at a time when the term ‘Information Super Highway’ was still in common use, and before it was referred to humorously (but accurately) as a series of tubes. I’d spent around the previous 15 years messing about with computers but electronically-isolated from the rest of the world. BBS’ were for Californians and graduates of MIT, obviously. The UK, as far as I was concerned, was isolated and that was fine with me.
People for whom the Internet has always been a part of their life, and who may have been the merest of glints in their parent’s eyes when I stepped out into the slow lane of Information Super Highway, may grasp what I’m trying to say but not actually relate to it. That’s fine. Anyone of my generation or older (cringe) may share the same perspective. This one:
I don’t write for an audience.
Though this statement is demonstrably not true given the fact that my new posts automatically notify a couple of social networks and I’ve an RSS feed, the only clarification I can give is this: I don’t write for a big audience.
Hello.
02 February 2014
My oldest daughter is often challenged by her homework - there’s way too much for a 6-year-old, but the school gets good results and we don’t want to rock the boat, at least not just yet. The latest batch has what I presume is an exercise related to imagination.
The brief being to create a monster, describe its likes and attributes, and draw a picture. The most important bit, the one daughter 1 was most challenged by, giving said monster a name.
It should be easy, it’s only a name. Right? But we’d only recently finished with the weights and measures homework, moving together throughout the house finding objects for me to illustrate what things weigh. Brain full.
- 5kg was easy for her - 5 bags of sugar.
- 100g less easy given perfectionist daddy’s insistence in diving into the miscellaneous food items drawer. But we got there.
- 63kg is what a mummy weighs. Not this mummy here you understand, as I noted at the bottom of the page to the teacher, in a pitiful attempt at humour and face-saving.
- 30g is a packet of crips (chips if you’re the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean.)
So, a name for the monster? She didn’t know. So I explained what it must be like being one. “Just imagine what life must be like as a monster,” I said. “Everyone’s out to get you simply because you’re going round the countryside eating small children and sheep. And, do you know, that’s wrong.”
She looked at me for a moment. And then looked again.
I continued “Imagine all you want is a quiet life, to just go down to the shops and buy some nice food, go home at the end of the day and sit down with a cup of steaming hot chocolate. And you can’t because the villagers are out to get you, stab you and set you on fire.”
At this point daughter 1 opened her mouth and said something very appropriate: “?”
Ok, non-verbal communication is indeed very powerful, but let’s move on…
“So,” I said “let’s pick a name now. Please.”
“Flib-blob-floo-boo,” or something very close, was her reply. I’m still not sure if as an answer or because I’d melted her brain. But I pushed for an answer - it was past her bedtime.
“How about Buttercup?” I asked. “Just because it’s a monster doesn’t mean it has to have a horrible name like Raaarg or Snaarlf.”
“No.” came the emphatic response.
“Snowdrop?” was met with a giggle. On our way now, I hoped, but I’ll spare you the despair I felt when each subsequent pick was rebuffed. Close to giving up or getting her mother to help I gave it my best shot: “Jim-Bob?” (her name) “or Ag-Ack-Ack?” (her younger sister’s name.) Incidentally I’m not in the habit of divulging my family’s names publicly. Apart from the cats.
Simply “No.”
My patience wearing thin, inspiration arrived: I asked her to pick a letter of the alphabet to start the name off.
“F” she smiled.
Imagine my thought bubble: “Uh-oh.”
“i” arrived quickly, much to my relief.
”s, h, l, e, g ,s, !”
Done, at last!
And here she is:
I have what’s been called a well-developed sense of humour. Ok, I’m putting a positive spin on it. Being frank, a lot of people think I’m a bit weird. And some think I’m a lot weird. And, do you know, I have no problem with that.
I do have a problem with the dangly bulbous-ended thing between Fishlegs’ legs. I dare not ask, especially as I made the assumption a girl would pick a female monster.
…
“A tail?” you say.
Naah, she’s seen my willy.