Horrors and public transport

I planned this title on the way home.  Should it be horrors of…? when in fact I am a card-carrying (well, bus pass carrying) bus user, or horrors on…? There are many of these, particularly the ones who listen to music tracks at double speed on their mobiles, at full volume.

The thing is, neither.  The real bugbear at the moment is the number of horror films that are being advertised on the side of Edinburgh buses, in full view of children, and equally people like me who prefer to avoid horror films, particularly first thing in the morning and at the end of a working day, which is of course when I wait for buses, ride on buses, see the sides of other buses etc.

Saw IV has been particularly nasty, and on seemingly 1 in 3 buses before we went on holiday.  Coming back, the number is fewer, but some have now been replaced by Shrooms, next in line.  Yes, a picture of a skull is a bit easier to take than a picture of a head with a mantrap around it, but really, it’s not about the choice, is it?  The whole issue is the lack of choice, as a pedestrian, as a commuter.

I don’t have a problem with film adverts on buses – it helps me have a vague idea of what’s going on at the cinema, and then I can find out more on T’s film blog in due course.  I do have a problem with the nature of the pictures, the excessive number of them.

There was an article in the paper – I braved a broadsheet, and actually read bits of the Herald main section today – about trying to have a ban on advertising products that are overly fatty or sugary, until after 9pm.

Nothing new there, except they are trying to widen it to include programmes on after 9 that are particular popular with younger audiences.  There seems to be some sense that things which could be considered harmful are on after the watershed.

Difficulty with the buses is there is no watershed.  There is no choice.  Except turning your head away, time and time again.

Comfort food

Now for once, this post isn’t about food.  Caught you there!

Sunday does seem to be a day for comfort food versions of TV though.  One of the Channel 4 repeats channels had wall to wall recent Jamie Oliver episodes – everything to do with the veg you’ve just grown (so I guess food does come into the picture again, unsurprisingly).

Equally, there’s this newish channel called Dave which shows lots of episodes of QI (hurray) but equally doesn’t stint on Top Gear (can do, but less what I’d choose to put in).

Nothing like Sunday night for a travel programme, and as that nice Mr Palin has done his stint in Eastern Europe, it’s over to Charlie Boorman and Ewen MacGregor to get down and dirty riding motorbikes from the north of Scotland to the tip of the African continent.

More swearing than on PalinTV (though there may be a certain amount off camera, one would anticipate), but also some heart – Ewen going off camera when affected by how many children face living in areas with landmines, on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border.

Our regular comfort food TV for a Sunday – West Wing repeats – have been moved over to a Saturday slot.  The things they do when they hear you’re out of the country, eh?  They even mucked about with the TV format in the Saturday Times TV section, which has until now been one of the clearest to read.

Lest it be said that we spend all our free time watching TV, I would note that a good TV guide makes it much easier to work out what you DO want to watch, rather than channel hopping via the selection onscreen.

Dan’s version of comfort food TV would probably have to include black and white Sunday matinees, as a result of spending time at his uncle and aunt’s while younger.  Not a bad investment when you grow up and discover that knowledge of black and white films offers a certain level of trendiness…or so we are still led to believe.

For those of a certain era, surely the testcard would have to be the final option in comfort food TV (though Dan has also watched Open University programmes put on at very late/very early times, another of those store cupboard staples of programming).

Whatever your meat (or poison), hopefully such stuff allows you to be suitably soothed on a Sunday night that you can face the week ahead.  So far, so good.

This year’s catch phrases

Having spent a week with 4 children, felt the need to capture a few of this year’s catch phrases from them.

As we now see them (and their parents) about once a year, what they can say and do moves on a lot.  We continue to use last year’s phrases, brush them off and bring them out again when we’re there, and then the parents realise that they’ve forgotten all about them saying that.

The eldest is now reading fluently in English and Italian.  However, we were able to teach her ‘sausages and chips’ as a game for saying things with a straight face.

She’s hugely enjoying jokes at the moment, and we also taught her ‘life is but a melancholy flower‘ (try singing it to the tune of Frere Jacques, and you’ll see what we mean).  Her favourite knock knock joke is the Irish stew one…yes, you know you remember it.

(What’s scary, or probably reassuring, is how many of the jokes in her joke books I remember from my own childhood, and how they are still funny to her.)

Next in line is now into horses as well as ponies…and is starting to read a bit in English. She is also inventing her own jokes, though these don’t really quite work yet.

She is very clear on music, and refers to particular songs as “X’s song” because they are no. 7 on the CD, and that’s the age of her sister!  Any queries on Womble themed songs should be addressed here, except when she has the “Womble Tidybag Blues”.

The boy of the troupe is now 3, and is fluent in mechanical machinery.  When I suggested one of his toys was a digger, he told me no, it was a snow plough…

Another good one was when we all went out for a walk around a hill town an hour away.  Seeing woods nearby, his dad asked him if he thought there were wolves nearby.  “Oh yes” came the cheerful reply, as he toddled off.

The youngest is only 2 and a half months old, so can’t really be held to much in language.  Never the less, there are good amounts of arm waving, and making noises back several times so that it sounds like a conversation.

She was also introduced to being read to by me, by dint of being wedged against me while I read ‘Mr Tickle’ to her brother.  We reprised this later with ‘Elmer’ and all 3 older children on the sofa, which seemed to go down well!

As for our own achievements, we have become acquainted with “Dora the Explorer” (We did it! We did it!).  It’s not as good as last year’s “Chicken in a school” quote, but I’m sure we’ll remember more from this year as we settle back in to life with fewer small but cheerful distractions.

Taking stock

Back to Edinburgh yesterday, after a couple of weeks’ holiday.  The crunch of coming back is not so bad, although the quality of greyness this morning made me realise why some people decamp abroad for the entire winter…Admittedly, we’ve been spoiled, with quite a lot of sunshine and heat in the south of France, followed by sunshine and warmth in the north of Italy.

Decided we’d have the weekend at home, so doing a certain amount of pottering.  This has even gone to the lengths of clearing out dead spices from the kitchen cupboards.  Not so exciting, but it makes me realise my ‘anticipate exciting food by buying herbs and spices’ habit needs to be checked up on every now and then.  Thankfully none of it was crawling out of the cupboards by itself, but our bin will smell of a weird combination of flavours for a little while, no doubt.

I guess that when we’ve been away, it’s nice to get to know one’s home again, and pottering about helps in this.  Seeing it all with fresh eyes also helps for clearing out stuff that you’ve been putting off doing before going away (if not for months before, I suspect).

One aspect of taking stock is to think about doing something with the garden again, rather than looking out the window at it, feeling tired, and going off to do something else.  Having been inspired by our friends’ veg patch, and having rediscovered a few pots for growing things on window sills, perhaps I’ll start small over the winter, and actually get some gardening done in the spring.

One exciting discovery today was what’s on offer for food digesters.  Rather than leaving it to me and Dan to digest everything (ha, we’ll give it a try), you can get bin things for the garden which allow you to get rid of food waste, even bones, fish skin, etc, rather than bin it.  This immediately suggests an end to our kitchen bin getting smelly, a surge of interest in cooking roast chicken regularly, and provides a further incentive to create a new bit of the garden in front of our shed, where it gets the most sun.  I suspect in practice it will involve prevailing on my mum and Dan’s, who actually know what they’re doing in the garden, but it’s another reason to feel positive about the garden.

Talking to Dan’s mum on the phone today, aware that I have less of a sense than usual of what will be waiting for me when I get back to work, now that there are new colleagues to return, potential to give away a further chunk of work when I’ve tied it up, and some new activities in investigating staff learning for the wider team I’m part of. Maybe it will mean I genuinely can have a bit more time at home too, plan for things, rather than work always dictating what’s possible in my home life.

Taking stock.  Moving on to making stock tomorrow. 

Hail fellow, well met

This post is dedicated to Nico van Loenen, who died on Wednesday.  Nico and his family lived two doors up from us when I was at secondary school.  Our families became friends soon after we moved to Malvern.

Nico and my dad would hang out together on Tuesdays, when I, my mum and Nico’s wife Daphne went off to choir.  Their evenings involved wine, sometimes gruesome films, arguments that they both enjoyed a lot.  And probably much more…I wasn’t there to see.

After Mum and Dad moved up to Scotland, Dad would still phone Nico.  In the last few months, when we knew that Nico had terminal cancer, Dad continued to phone on Tuesday nights.

No one wants an ending, but we all have one anyway.  In Nico’s case, huge numbers of family and friends came to say goodbye, from many different countries.  We had time with him in April, and had to say our goodbyes face to face at that point, but I’m glad Dad continued to speak to him.

“Hello my girl…” was Nico’s regular greeting.  It seems strange to think that I won’t be greeted in that way again – I even hear him say it when I think of him tonight.  Goodbye, my father’s friend, and also mine, I say.  Hail and farewell, ave atque vale.