Dub

Today I have mostly been listening to dub reggae.

It’s mainly due to AmberG who has taken to wandering around the house saying “dubbadubbadubba” to herself.

 

A question answered

People often say to me, “Stu, what’s your favourite brass band cover of a Depeche Mode song?“

“Brass band cover?” I ask, just to clarify.

“Yes, Stu.  I know you enjoy the brass ensemble--”

“Well, that’s a given,” I interrupt, “who doesn’t enjoy the low mellifluous sound of the brass band?“

“Of course, Stu, of course; but what’s your favourite Depeche Mode cover?“

And that, my friends, is easy to answer: it’s this one –

Not least because they appear to be conducted by Brian Blessed!

 

Imagination

Got rid of the beard this morning (although my sideburns are mysteriously bigger than previously…).  AmberG this morning looked at me with narrowed eyes for a couple of seconds and rubbed my cheeks anyway – just to check.

Millie was very very tired this morning – probably from where she woke up crying a couple of times last night; I had to sit and stroke her head till she went back to sleep.  This morning while I was in the shower she walked into the bathroom to ask if she could put on some music to relax to.  Five minutes later I found her in my bedroom listening to Bark Psychosis (which I suppose is quite relaxing, but also quite dark), having turned the computer on, opened foobar2000 and started music playing all by herself.

Anyway, ignoring the usual requests for Buffalo Soldier (but, strangely, not for Mama Mia, her favourite song by a country mile lately) I put on this -

- Saint-Saens’ Aquarium from Carnival Of The Animals, which Millie’s never heard before, but which she quickly described as “like somebody running up and down the stairs in a scary castle” and asked me to play it again.

I know she’s my daughter so I naturally think she’s the cleverest child that has ever existed in the history of humankind ever, but I thought that showed a fair bit of imagination for a four-year-old.

She takes after her dad, that one.

 

Beard

I’ve got a fortnight’s worth of beard at the moment (for a variety of reasons, chief of which is probably laziness) and AmberG is quite entranced by it – I may have to grow one more often.

She keeps rubbing her hands around my face, saying “byurd” and laughing.  She laughs even more when I gently rub my cheeks against hers.

Sometimes it’s the simple things in this life that make us happiest.

 

Not much.

Hmm, bit of a blah blah blah post today.  The Lovely Melanie and Amber are both at home not very well; nothing life-threatening, more quality-of-life threatening, really (although, to be fair, the Lovely Melanie did have to come home early from work yesterday).

They both have a bit of flu.  Amber’s seem to ebb and flow however – sometimes she’ll wander happily about, pushing buggies, trying on my shoes and asking persistently for juice; at other times she’ll be lying on the sofa looking all forlorn and reproachful coughing her little guts up.

Fortunately (as I said to our parent friends Paul and Mahala while taking Millie to school this morning) we have a gentleman’s agreement in our house whereby only one adult and one child are allowed to fall ill at a time, so Millie and I are OK at the moment.

Millie has got two new party dresses, too.  I know this because she showed me them at 7am this morning while I was sat groggily on the loo.  They are, of course, both pink, and I’m sure she’ll look adorable in them both.  If she can choose which one to wear, that is – she does struggle to make decisions at times…

 

Proper write-up of the weekend

I’m quite proud of London, that’s why I made it my adopted hometown, so I always enjoy showing it off to people when they come to visit us – revealing sights and places that you just won’t see elsewhere in the country.  So it was a double treat for me to be able to show our very good friends the Mays around it at the weekend.

What a shame, then, that it rained so bloomin’ much on the day we took them “into town”

Still, I think you can see by the pictures I posted below that everyone had a good time in our nation’s capital on Saturday, even if it was rather a whistle-stop tour!  In four hours we walked up the South Bank, saw the Millennium Wheel, explored the South Bank Centre, crossed the Thames (twice!), saw Trafalgar Square, visited the National Gallery, had some delicious cakes, fed the giant pigeon of Covent Garden and polished it all off by seeing the Christmas decorations in Covent Garden Market.

Which was quite an impressive run, I thought.

AmberG was almost rugby tackled by a guard in the National Gallery when she vaulted over one of the ropes in front of a painting and tried to add just a little dab of cake to one of the Old Masters there.

Damn, but that girl’s got a punk spirit in her!

If you were young Jack May – whom Millie is missing now they’ve gone home – then the list was even more impressive, since he got his first trip on not just a double-decker bus but also (almost unbelievably) on a train.  Our kids are unimpressed by public transport since they use it practically every day, but Jack was charmingly blown away merely by being upstairs on a bus.

Shame about the weather though.  We had some of the worst rain of the entire year on Saturday, but that’s another of the beauties of London: there are plenty of (free!) things to do outside and plenty of things (also free!) to do inside, as well.  Just as well, because we’d have died if there had been no shelter.  On the way home Millie had to be wrapped up in my cardigan as her lips were starting to turn blue.

I do wonder about Millie’s concentration span sometimes though.  Last night we were watching Spider-Man 2 on TV – the one where he fights Doctor Octopus (the guy with the big robot arms) and about three-quarters of the way through, whilst Peter Parker was talking to MJ, she asked “Where are his robot arms?“

ME: Robot arms?  What robot arms?

MILLIE: His robot arms.  Where is that man’s robot arms?

ME: That’s Peter Parker, he’s Spider-Man, he doesn’t have any robot arms.

MILLIE: Yes he does, I saw them.

ME: No, poppet, Doctor Octopus has got robot arms.

MILLIE: Who is that man, then?

ME: He’s Peter Parker – Spider-Man.  Like the title of the film.

MILLIE: Where are the robot arms, then…?

So, overall everyone had a jolly nice weekend.  The weather seems to have done for the Lovely Melanie and Amber, however.  Amber spent yesterday either asleep or curled up on the sofa, whilst the The Lovely Melanie is at home with a nasty dose of consumption flu today.  I’m having to work from home to take care of her and collect the girls from school and nursery.

Which is a bit of a pain as this evening I’ve got tickets for The Superhuman Condition: New Trends in Superhero Comic Books, which is at the ICA (five minutes down the road from where I work), thus necessitating a journey into town anyway.  Doh!

The Superhuman Condition: New Trends in Superhero Comic Books