men behaving mildly
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Cars abandoned by the road nowadays often bear a notice saying 'Police Aware'. Maybe one could slap 'Poet Aware' on a beauty spot or even on some particularly touching vagrant.
Alan Bennett, Untold Stories



*logorrhoea n pathologically excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness, prolixity [Gr logos word + roia flow, stream]
blogorrhoea n online manifestation of the above
men behaving mildly
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Cars abandoned by the road nowadays often bear a notice saying 'Police Aware'. Maybe one could slap 'Poet Aware' on a beauty spot or even on some particularly touching vagrant.
Alan Bennett, Untold Stories
and this one fades in quietly...
Friday, May 26, 2006
As the Cocteau Twins' 'Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops' twongles to an end*, Becca turns to me and coments 'Oooh. That was a nice song.'
*we're listening to the John Peel tribute album over lunch.
book of the week
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Best yoga book I've come across so far: Babar's Yoga For Elephants, found today in our very own Johnsonville Library.
another one from the archives
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Taken a couple of months ago, on a day when, for some reason, I decided to dress her as a Royal on holiday at Balmoral. All that's missing is a shooting stick and a brace of corgis.

localisation
Friday, May 19, 2006
Oh dearie me. I've just realised that I now know which Wiggle is which.
Never mind. Here's a picture of our own mini-Sarah Ulmer, taken at her Nana's over summer.

morningtown ride
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Just a quick one 'cos I'm meant to be working. Rebecca and Daddy play on the not-quite-derelict railway at Staglands.


After a few trips back and forth, half a dozen other kids saw what was going on and piled in for a free ride.
creeps the garden snail
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Thanks to two days a week at nursery and the weekly cavalcade of socialisation slash pedagogical activities I subject her to, Rebecca is slowly, very slowly, coming to grips with the concept of taking turns. All well and good, but the trouble starts when she attempts to apply her newfound wisdom in the adult world. So a couple of times lately we've been stuck behind the slowest person in the queue, and Becca has begun to pipe up with 'Mummy's! Mummy's turn now! Mummy's! Mummy's turn now! MUMMY'S! MUMMY'S TURN NOW!' at ever-increasing volume. Quite frankly if we were still in the UK this sort of anarchistic behaviour would have got the responsible parent, i.e. me, lynched by now. Or at least tutted to a pulp.
tune in two weeks from now, and miss next week's episode
Her father and I have decided it's time to start Becca on the Muppets. Initially she thought Gonzo was a parrot, but I think we're over that now.
zoo zoo zoo
A family trip to the zoo when my parents were down for her birthday in March:



Becca's grandad being storked

I once caught a fish...
getting in early
Saturday, May 13, 2006

Another Geneva pic: Becca, Mummy, and J-J R.
Views from the cathedral

Lac Léman/Lake Geneva



Meh. Calvinists.
pretty lady!
A few pics from Cat's wedding in the Bay of Plenty in Feb.

Enter Cat on her dad's arm. How about that for a backdrop?

The new Mrs Bish.

And Mr Bish (Dom).
Rebecca and the 'pretty lady'.

Detail from the back of the pretty lady's frock.
Obligatory family shots:


the sound of one hand typing...
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
(not what you think: becca's perched on my lap helping me post today's pic. feel like archie the cockroach sans shift key etc. will link that last ref when i get my left hand back.)

here's the pair of us on one tree hill in nov. (that's early summer here, for you northern hemisphere types.) note scary matching outfits. joo--ii--n uuu--uuu--ssss!!!!

rebecca decides she has had enough of posing.
flashback
Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Another Geneva picture from last September, taken at a local wine/harvest festival. I believe we were watching a man with an unfeasibly large horn.

Ah yes, there he is.


Rebecca with Auntie Charlotte, who we were visiting.
rhinestone cowgirl
Saturday, May 06, 2006

Well it was worth a try. Taken in Geneva last September, when there appeared to be a fake cowfest in full swing. (See how embarrassed Rebecca looks. I have a feeling I'm going to be seeing that expression again.)
enough about me...
Thursday, May 04, 2006

... here is a pic of Rebecca, her bunny, and a giant corrugated iron gumboot. Yes, that's right: a giant gumboot.
age and guile beat youth, innocence, and a bad haircut
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
I'm 39 today (or, as Jack would have it, 'nearly dead'). It's not so bad: like motherhood, it isn't nearly as scary as it sounds from the outside. In fact only this morning in the shower I was mentally crafting a sage but pithy little piece about how being in fine physical, mental, and emotional shape beats being merely young. And pointing out some of the reasons why, for instance, I'm glad that I've been able to leave motherhood until my late thirties. However it turns out (as usual!) that Lisa and the Grauniad have beaten me to it. (Say it, sister! Testify!)
So here instead is a picture me and my lovely daughter, whom I had when I was a couple of months shy of 37. Elderly primigravida, my arse!
(I never intended to marry and reproduce, you know. I was going to be a spinster academic. I had the blue stockings and everything.)
'sup! 'sup! 'sup!
Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Rebecca gets down in Auckland last summer

Rebecca and Jack meet a Rajah Brooke's Birdwing (Troides brookiana) in Kuala Lumpur last year.