A Sad Day

My uncle died today. He was out jogging and suddenly keeled over, and despite the best attempts of the ambulance service to restart his heart, it sounds like he was dead by the time he hit the ground. I don't know if it was a massive heart attack or an aneurism.

He was in his early 60s, very active, always on the go; he ran the London Marathon several times (I used to go and cheer him on at the corner of Northumberland Avenue, at about 23 miles when the road suddenly goes up a slight slope), he was the Chairman of the Governors at my old school, a long-standing member of the church council, involved in the Gideon Society and for the past few years, a lay preacher. He liked to do his bit, to be involved - a real pillar of the local community.

I saw him a couple of weeks ago when I went to visit my parents. He looked fit and well, and was really enjoying watching Jacob and Sam pootle about; he was especially amused by Jacob's chatter.

Although I'm in a state of shock about this, it being so sudden and unexpected, I'm already sifting through my memories of him. As you'd expect, they're from when I was much younger and lived at home; he was was married to mum's younger sister and our two families were very very close as I grew up.

Having thought about it, my over-riding memory of him will be him sitting on my mum's sofa on Christmas Day, almost weeping with laughter at the Morecambe and Wise christmas special. I'm not sure which was funniest, M&W or him laughing :-)

I've been driving in my car

I've been driving both on my own and with Doug and the boys in the car. My general driving is fine, but the clutch on the Peugeot is giving me major grief; its nowhere near as finely tuned as the car I've been learning in. I've gone from being able to control the car with minute movements of the clutch to being completely unable to control the car during manoeuvres like reversing and parking - because the Peugeot needs a bit of gas to move anywhere, I now need all three pedals to manage manoeuvres that I could previously do with just one (two if we were on a slope or something).

Yes, I know, it'll come with practice. Its just a bit difficult getting in the practice when I've got the kids in tow - its stressful enough as a new driver trying to get the car to do what you want, without the boys twittering/crying in the back.

The thing thats amused me already is having spent ages during lessons trying to perfect a reverse bay park and eulogising to Doug (untaught in the ways of bay parking) about how much better it is to reverse into your space is that having found myself with limited clutch control; having realised that if you spend anytime in Morrisons car park lining up your point of turn someone else will nick your spot; and most importantly the horror of realisation that you're suddenly going to have to park next to OTHER CARS (which they never teach you in your lessons), I've decided that its going to be far better all round if I just drive forward into a parking space. At least until I get a car that has a clutch that actually has a biting point that you can find....

Iggle Piggle Iggle Onk, we're going to make...

..... a Pinky Ponk!!

I've finally got round to making a birthday card for Jacob to send into CBeebies to (hopefully) have read out on the big day (21st May, seeing as you asked so nicely).



Its a Pinky Ponk (from In the Night Garden), with a picture of Jacob behind the door.

I made it last night while I was watching the football (we beat West Ham 4-1 - I can tell you're interested). And, this is the best bit - because I'm so unbelievably organised, and because I know that if you send your card into Cbeebies you don't get it back, I've made another one!

The other one doesn't have the Happy Birthday stuff on, its just a straightforward picture of the pinky ponk, and because it doesn't have a picture of Jacob at the bottom, I'm going to stick some pictures of the Tombliboos and Iggle Piggle etc there as well.

I've already shown it to Jacob, who thinks its fab, and its now sitting on top of the tv next to Mr Crocodile who we made out of an old egg box and some white card yesterday. I was obviously Biddy Baxter in a former life.....

Yuk!

For the past couple of days, I've noticed an unpleasant smell in the hall. Having elimated the nappy bin in the garage and the glue on Jacob's latest playgroup creation (no idea what its supposed to be) as the source of the pong, I decided that Jacob must have dropped an apple or something down the back of the telephone table and that was causing the smell.

So I investigated. Only to find a half eaten, mostly rotted mouse. Unfortunately Doug wasn't back from London to dispose of it for me, so I had to get half a tree's worth of paper towel to pick it up and get it into the wheelie bin.

Bloody cats. If they're not vomiting on your duvet, they're not eating the things they bring into the house. Actually, its cat singular. Monty. Little Cosmo only eats dried cat food, maybe a little tinned tuna if its offered. If you put him in a room with a roast chicken, it'd still be there an hour later.

There's a bit of a funny smell in the family bathroom. I was putting it down to the drains needing seeing to, but maybe I need to start looking behind cabinets for decomposing vermin. Or maybe Doug can. Much more his line of work.....

I passed my driving test today

The guy taking my test had a crucifix round his neck; I have a feeling that he might have been exercising some christian charity towards me because I drove really badly!!

Anyway, that's over and done with. At the moment, I don't feel like getting behind the wheel ever again :-)

Walking

I'm currently (and rather depressingly) watching Chelsea lose to Valencia in the quarter finals of the Champions League. I know I predicted that they'd be knocked out, its just depressing watching it happen. This must be what it feels like to be an Arsenal fan.

Anyway, just to take my mind off it all, I'm posting a photo of Sam taking a few steps.




The week at my mum's totally carpeted house meant that he's really got the hang of walking now. I think he was a little surprised coming back to the solid wood floors of our house and finding that it can really hurt when you fall over.

He's also got his first pair of shoes. I was a bit surprised that the lady in the shoe shop told me he was ready for shoes as when Jacob was first walking I found an official-looking website that said that first shoes aren't needed until they've been walking for 7 - 8 weeks. I was actually expecting to buy a pair of the pre-walkers that are a much lighter shoe and yet more rigid than pram shoes; certainly, going straight to proper shoes has troubled him a bit as suddenly he's got something rather heavy and rigid on his feet and he's not quite sure what to do about it.

I'm leaving him to walk around the house bare footed, but he's been out in the garden with them on and pootling around the tea gardens at the Balloon Tree Farm shop on Saturday.

And on other baby development matters, I've noticed today that his top canines have come through properly with the bottom two just about to erupt. By my calculations, that gives him 14 teeth with another two on the way; but as none of his molars or his eye teeth are fully through,
that gives him a grand total of eight teeth that he's cutting AT ONCE! Poor devil, no wonder he's dribbling like its going out of fashion.

And on that note, Shev has just equalised. Game on? Maybe.

Bah

I'm thinking about doing a birthday card for Jacob that I can send in to Cbeebies - see if we can get it on air on his birthday.

My plan was to draw the Pinky Ponk, the airship from In the Night Garden, and have a photo of Jacob behind its ramp, with various Night Garden characters waving from the windows at the front.

The only problem is that the Pinky Ponk appears to be the only thing from the programme that doesn't feature on the website. Which is going to make it a bit difficult to draw.

Hmm. Very irritating. I could always do a Ninky Nonk, but its a bit long.

Lindt

The company that makes Lindt chocolate is actually called Lindt and Sprungli. No wonder they decided on just Lindt; Sprungli sounds like something you get out the bottom of your dishwasher after a full load.

No, I'm not eating chocolate at 7.15am on Easter Sunday morning, I was just tidying away the remaining half of Jacob's chocolate rabbit before he sees it and decides that chocolate is a perfect breakfast food.

The Godfather

I go away for a week and return to find that Sky have been dicking around with their movie channels again - now we've got Sky Indie, Sky Comedy, Sky Action etc. And if you're watching something thats a 12 or 15 certificate, you have to key in your PIN code; bit of a faff, all in all.

Still, on Sky Modern (wtf?), they're showing the Godfather right now, one of my all-time favourite films. Everything about this film is great - the performances (Brando, just the right side of the self-indulgent nonsense performances you get in films like Apocalypse Now; Pacino, gradually losing his humanity; James Caan never better), the storyline, the pace, the soundtrack etc.


Now I know that the purists believe that Godfather II is the better film. And yes, the denouement in Cuba, Frankie Five Angels dead in a hot bath, Kay telling Michael she aborted their baby and most of all, "I know it was you Fredo", give me absolute shivers just thinking about them.

But still, its the Godfather for me. From the wedding at the beginning, Jack Woltz and the horse's head in the bed, Michael saving his father in the hospital, killing Solozzo and Capt McCluskey in the trattoria, the sojourn in Sicily (Speak Softly Love.... Boom!), Sonny dead at the toll booth, Brando dead in his tomato plants with orange peel in his mouth, through to the Christening montage (Mo Green, never a more deserving candidate for a bullet through the eye), everything is a joy to watch.

All that said, its nearly 10 o clock now and I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to stay awake for - its nearly time to go to the mattresses (ho ho ho).

Apropos this, it drives me nuts that I can't get a decent stills print from the Godfather to frame; they all come with the logo branding on them. The dining room has various stills prints from our favourite films on its walls, but I've got room for a couple more and the Godfather would be a prime candidate.