I have just spent the last hour wading through yards of information on Masters Degrees, on various university websites. My brain is a little boggled. Since I did my Honours (in 1994) a vast amount has changed out there, up to and including the way a university degree is structured. All I want is a clear statement telling me what is offered and how to apply. Would be good if it said how I could tell if I was eligible too...

I am finally at a point in my life where I think I could go back to study again. I would so love to actually have a professional qualification and be able to do something constructive with my life and time. Don't get me wrong; being a mother is a very constructive job and it sure takes up a lot of time, but as we don't plan on having any more children, pretty soon I'm going to need to be something more. I'd like that to be somehow connected with my degree, which was in Psychology. (And in Journalism, but I never went to any of the lectures. Shame on me). I finally feel old enough and weathered enough to be able to carry out the role of psychologist (hmm. Does that immediately disqualify me from being one?? Interesting thought) and if I could just figure out what exactly I'm applying for, and how to do it, well, I'll be on my way.

Wish me luck.

Ding Dong, the Muse is Dead

Oh dear. I have been overcome by the mundaneity of everyday life, and cannot think of a single interesting thing to say to anyone. Life feels like an endless round of rushing about lately!

I am looking forward to Christmas (which is tomorrow!) and then after that I need to get my brain into New Year mode. I don't believe in resolutions as such, but I find my mind re-evaluating everything at this time of the year, and I don't think this year will be any different.

Hopefully that will kickstart the muses!

Festive Sevens

Ohhh, Mud tagged me about a week ago, and it's taken me this long to do... I've been adding bits as and when, but I'm afraid this reveals what a boring person I am! Oh dear. Well, here goes..

7 Things I Must Do Before My Parents Arrive

We'll be going to them... but the principle holds true, I think.

Buy presents for them

Buy last presents for kids. Jamie has two and Nicky, so far, only one. My Virgo soul rebels at the unfairness of it, although I doubt Nicky will notice.

Buy a present for my husband! Only he won't tell me anything he wants and as his birthday is at the end of October, I feel like I already got him everything. Besides, the stuff I'd like to get him would necessitate mortgaging the house.

Wrap the presents. This is not as easy as it sounds as I have a three year
old and an 18 month old trying to get in on the action. They LURVE sellotape.

Make sure I remember to open all the doors on the Advent Calendar,
preferably day by day rather than 10 days in a row. Too much chocolate.

(Too much chocolate for a three year old and an 18 month old, that is. There is no such thing as too much chocolate when you're a 36 year old Mommy. Trust me on this.)

Go to the dentist. Convulsive shiver. Do not admit to ANY chocolate eating while there.

Host a braai for my husbands computer group. Oh, and remember to actually send out invites to it so that people show up.

7 Things I've been Doing Instead Of Preparing For Christmas

Having new pool pump installed

Having new buit in cupboards built in our bedroom. Oh, I love my new cupboards!! I feel so grown up all of a sudden!

Having a new loo put into the guest bathroom after the old one Stopped Working.
Capitals deserved.

Having new satellite installation thingie installed over the granny flat

Settling new tenants into the granny flat

Frantically arranging playdates for three year old bored out of his mind now
playschool has finished.

Watching Stargate Sg-1 Season 8, 9 and 10 on DVD. Tee hee.

7 Things I Can't Do This Christmas

Go for a walk wrapped up in a coat and scarf

Pick holly from the garden

Eat turkey and/or goose

Go to Midnight Mass and the preceding Carol Service (2330 with toddlers?? Are
you nuts??)

Sleep in!!!

Spend it with everyone I'd like to. Thank heavens for email, Facebook and VOIP phones, hey?

7 Christmas Wishes

For my little family to be safe, secure, happy and healthy for the year to
come.

Less political intimidation and violence than expected in the run up to our
elections here

For my very special sister in law to have the baby she so desperately wants

For the economic situation across the world to stabilize

And, purely selfishly, for Nicky to be out of nappies by next Christmas!

That's only five. I find wishing difficult.

7 Things I Say As Christmas Approaches

What? Only TEN days to go??

No, I have no idea what I want :-(

I MUST get a Christmas tree...

Heavens, we've forgotten to open the last five days on the Advent Calendars!

Christmas is when Jesus was born, so Father Christmas brings us presents to
celebrate. (Well, I'm not Catholic and no-one has ever given me a manual on
raising Catholic children. I'm making it up as I go along!!!)

No, Nicky's dashboard is for Christmas - he can't have it now! Share yours!!

Good Lord, I'm tired...

I must must must get to the shops and buy presents for you all...

PLEASE try and think of just one thing you'd like???

7 Celebrities I'd Invite For Christmas Dinner

Hugh Jackman. Self explanatory

The entire cast of SG-1. I've just finished watching the box set. Besides, they look like fun people :-)

Richard Dean Anderson on his own, if the rest of the cast couldn't make it. Again, self explanatory. Can I keep him??? Please????

I've been racking my brain to think of a political type person to invite, but actually, I don't want any of them. I don't feel like fighting at Christmas time. I just want fun conversation and eye candy. Beside, if the whole cast comes, that's my seven.


7 Favourite Festive Foods


Hmmm. I have favourite Southern and favourite Northern festive foods. An amalgam, then...

Mince pies (Northern. Too hot in SA)

My Mom's ham (Southern)

Goose (Northern)

Marinated Mushrooms (very Southern)

Three Bean Salad (ditto)

Trifle (North and South)

Ginger Wine !!! Does it count as a food?

7 Other Bloggers Who Can Play Festive Seven (if they have the time)!

Oooh, I don't have seven - I think everybody has been tagged already. BUT possibly

Zinkwazi Reflections

Cat-a-tonic

Mutable Time

Time seems to be such an elastic thing. I've been reading about it for years now, fiction and non-fiction, and trying to understand the various theories surrounding it. It seems as though it may, on a quantum level, be mutable enough that some travel within it may be possible. Of course, the quantum level and our level are very different, but sometimes, I've felt I might have managed it, might have had a glimpse of the past.

Like my ghosts, my glimpses have tended to be audio. I stood under an archway of the London Wall, at Tower Hill, and I heard the tramp tramp tramp of feet above me, and the clatter of something metal on stone. Only for a moment, but it was very clear.

I stood on a flat square patch of tarmac on part of Clapham Common, without any idea of why I suddenly heard planes overhead. Some three weeks later an elderly lady I met on my walk from the Tube told me that the tarmac covered the old air raid shelters, which had been filled in some years previously. She remembered being rushed out of her house by her father, and carried down into them. She remembered the noise of the planes.

When I was a child, we stopped once on a trip from Johannesburg to Durban at the wall where Piet Retief's daughter wrote his name on an overhanging rock while she and his party of trekkers waited for him to return from the meeting with Dingaan. He never did return. As I stood there I clearly heard the snorting and blowing of horses, and the rattle of their bridles. But when I climbed over the rocks looking for them, there were none there.

So perhaps the quantum bleeds into the reality we live in every now and then. At an old racetrack in Surrey, near Woking, I was struck with this thought; what if those people from the Roaring Twenties, racing round their track on glorious Spring days and Summer mornings, glanced up and saw, not the Surrey countryside gleaming before them, but the Services, stretching over acres of space, full of cars and people and tarmac and trucks. Would they have driven off the track, thrown completely by the brief vision of that space occupied by its future time?

Perhaps, though, they would only have heard it. Like me.

Cathedral Peak, Drakensberg

Pure magic!

Philosophy

There seems to have been some gloom around the last few weeks. I keep reading beautifully written blog posts all over the bloggersphere dealing with sadness. Someone suggested it was Mercury retrograde... could be.

It certainly seems to be universal. I've been hanging on wanting to come back here with a jolly, funny post about something jolly and funny, and two weeks have passed. Mind you, in my defence, I've been ill. Viral laryngitis followed by a week of cluster migraine which got so severe Jon had to come back from work and take me to the doctor to be made a pincushion of. Gah. I loathe, hate and detest migraines, and now that they're ba-ack I'm back to only just glancing at computer screens, not looking at faces for too long, not using mirrors, wearing sunglasses inside, keeping curtains drawn... anything to avoid triggering another aura.

I'm doing some other stuff too. I'm trying to relax, trying to lose some weight and get a bit more exercise, and I am NEVER EVER EVER again eating hard cheeses of any description. I know it triggers the migraines, but I got complacent, and ate cheddar. Boy, did I regret that.

So I have been a bit of a pale shade of blue lately. Just a delicate one. I used up my letting-off-steam coffee morning with Kerryn in bitching about politics, about which I am aware I know far too little to really be commenting on. I'm also guiltily aware that the other woman there has met me in a social setting precisely twice, and both times I've gone off pop about the same thing. I feel like I owe her an apology, and cherish a small, probably vain hope that she won't be saying to other moms she meets "Well, she's nice enough, but she NEVER stops moaning..." I don't usually worry too much about what other people think about me, unless I think I behaved badly, and, well, I do a bit.

Sometimes I envy these smug types*, with their certainty that the universe has a personal interest in them, wants the best for them, and can be pushed, prodded and prayed into a favourable position. My universe is far more independent, far less personal. I'm part of it, and a valued part, but I'm not the most important thing in it. When I was younger, this was enough. To be a part of a greater whole, individual yet joined together. I didn't need more than that. I had so so much less to lose.

I have a memory, of being 17 and of being in a combi being driven from somewhere to somewhere, and the driver going faster and faster. There were two of us standing on the seats with our heads out the sunroof, and we were whooping and laughing and loving every second. The feel of my hair (blonde then, much longer) whipping against my cheeks is very vivid. I miss that sense of power so immensely much sometimes, but it's gone. Absolutely gone. I am far more respectful, bordering on suspicious at times, of the universe now.

I know there is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, and I've had glimpses, but what, exactly, is it? And how do I stop being so afraid?

Who Do I Think I Am?

My mind is shutting down these days - Jamie is waking up before 4am most mornings and sleep is not really happening after that. That means bedtime is having to get earlier and earlier to just be able to function, and therefore time to myself is practically non-existent. I'm taking advice from Erma Bombeck though, and trying to live in each moment, and enjoy it for what it is. It'll all change soon enough.

I have nothing pithy or interesting to say today. I'm just making a note here of the fact that I know the names of all my great grandparents (and therefore the boys great great grandparents). I'm rather unreasonably pleased about that. I'd love to know more, but the generation before that is a bit sketchy. I know one of my great great grandfathers was called Benjamin, and one of my great great grandmothers was a Selena.

One day I'd like to track back further. To find the names perhaps of all the great greats, and then pick a line to go back on. I'm fascinated by genealogy, and think it is such an excellent way to help history come alive. Knowing that a direct ancestor of yours was actually present during what we now think of as dead and buried time, well, that's amazing.

The resources available for researching your family tree are huge, these days. Once again, it's just time that is in somewhat short supply! But I've made a start, with my eight greats, and I'm pleased about that.

Back to the Future

A blogging friend has been writing a book on our university years, those of us who were at Rhodes in the early 1990's. He has been posting drafts and it has made for amazing reading. I've laughed out loud, and I've sat and thought hard, and I've felt more than a bit weepy on occasion. Today I am sitting here, recovering from a nasty lurgy, with an aching hip and tired eyes, and I am thinking of that past. I'm looking at my sons and reminding myself how good it is to be here, in the future some of our contemporaries didn't get to make, a present they are not part of, except in memory.

When you leave home and go away to university, you feel like a grown up. You get given an awful lot of freedom in one fell swoop and this, coupled with the adolescent's belief in their own immortality, can be, shall we say, a trifle dangerous. You drink too much, take too many drugs, snog and sometimes sleep with unsuitable people. Sometimes you find yourself doing all of the above because everyone else is, sometimes it's such fun the first time that you just do it again and again (ah, tequila) and sometimes it is the only way out of a situation you wish you hadn't got yourself into in the first place...

It's a steep learning curve. Add to this the freedom of living away from home, possibly having your own wheels for the first time, and of course, of being surrounded by people brighter, wittier, sparkier and more beautiful than you imagined possible; add to this the freedom to sit up all night talking about your lives, their lives, books, poetry, politics, dreams and ideals... well, that makes for an extremely heady, giddy, gloriously intense learning curve too. And what a time to be a young student at a South African university! The ANC was unbanned, the old order was falling apart and free elections were just around the corner. In the wider world, the Berlin Wall had just recently fallen, and communism was collapsing. The whole world was alive with new possibilities, and we were there, at the nerve centre of it all. Aren't you always, at 18??

Some of us didn't make it. Flew too high, flamed too brightly, burned too fast. John Leahy, jumping from a bridge during boat races, and falling so terribly wrongly... and his body, being pulled from the river 20 minutes later. Matt Jones, climbing onto a stationary train as a prank, accidentally hitting a live wire and all that glory lost...

Too many others, and I was so nearly one of them. It's a bit difficult, sitting here half a lifetime later, at 36, to recapture that sense of the numinous possible. Life in the greater world is just too hectic, just too rushed. We're too tired and, perhaps, too jaded, to appreciate the universe in the way we used to. So, for today, I'm using that ache in my hip as a reminder to be thankful that I'm still here. Older, tireder, still unsure of what I really want to be when I grow up, but here. In the future.

I'm very glad I made it.

Whisper, Croak

I haven't been here and written anything for absolutely ages and the reason is that I am ill (sniff sniff). I haven't had a voice since last Tuesday night. I was sitting at the pub for pub quiz when suddenly I couldn't talk anymore. I could croak, sure, but that's not much good during a pub quiz... And since then my voice has been basically absent. Some days I have had more of a sound coming out than others, but yesterday and today have been spent as a mute, to all intents and purposes.

It makes parenting very difficult. I hadn't realised how much I rely on being able to yell at the boys. Get off that! Get DOWN off the burglar guards! STOP headbutting your brother! NO Nicky, NOT the DVD player! (or fridge, or stove or any other miscellaneous item he's not supposed to fiddle with). STOP playing with the washing machine! Leave The Blasted Cat Alone!!!

And just the general instructions and comments needed to get through the day. Hands on the car while I get Nicky out. Hold my hand while we cross this carpark. But you LIKE Big Cook Little Cook, James...

Huff. I haven't been to a doctor yet. I thought about it, but the logistics of taking two small boys with me to the surgery, while Unable To Talk, was just too daunting, so I left it. I'm certainly not going to go today and pay three times usual rate for the audacity to fall ill on a Sunday. Tomorrow, however, I will grit my teeth, tie the boys to my belt with washing line rope, and go and get this seen to. Hopefully they will give me antibiotics and I will get better and reflect that, despite my worries about life in SA, at least I can still see a doctor when I want to and get prescribed medication that will cure my lurgy. I hope.

Interesting Times

Bugger. I just went back to look for a draft post I wrote some time ago, and I've deleted it. How very irritating of me. I let Jon read it, you see, and he said it was defamatory and slanderous, among other things. I thought, well, yes it is, but that's because I really want to defame and slander here, dammit. I didn't post it though; I thought perhaps he was right and I should just revisit it later. Hmmm

Basically the gist of it was that I distrust charisma. I don't like what charismatic people are able to do to a crowd. I mentioned Angus Buchan, and Jacob Zuma. Oh, and Tony Blair, who I wasn't very nice about. Should that be whom??

Still, perhaps it's not a bad thing that the post is lost, because time has moved on. As of this last weekend a new set of lunatics are in charge of the asylum. And JZ, who I was moaning about because of his, well, you know, just about his everything really, appears to be not really in the loop at all. Worryingly, this man who is apparently the saviour of all, was not able to even stare down his supporters in the NEC and have his stated intentions followed (seems he wished to leave the status quo unchanged, with Mbeki in office till the elections). And if he cannot even stamp his authority in this matter, it would suggest to me that, far from being a charismatic leader, he is merely a cypher, a figurehead, a token appointment given the BMW but not allowed to actually make any decisions.

Wonder who is really in charge then? Time will tell... Seems like we are living in that old Chinese curse, Interesting Times.

Fishes and Milkshakes

A happier post, to replace the angsty one previously at the top of my blog.

Today the boys and I joined my folks at UShaka Marine World. We saw beautiful fish, scary snakes, were blown away in the gale blowing straight off the harbour, and had lunch at Jamie's favourite restuarant, the Wimpy. In fact, when I asked him just before bed what wonderful things we saw today, he answered, without hesitation, "Milkshakes!" Perhaps he's a bit young yet for marine life...

Thinking Aloud

I'm in a bit of a state. I've just been to Thursday morning Mass at church, and bumped into a friend there - she is a bit older than we are and has three grown up children and one laat lammetijie who is 13. Last month she was attacked in her home by four men, at one o clock in the afternoon, as she was sitting in her living room waiting for her youngest daughter to be dropped home from school by the lift club. She was tied up, and had the ropes tightened three times. She was beaten, and was told that, after they had ransacked the house, they were coming back to rape her. She was petrified that her daughter was going to walk in any minute... In a miracle she got one hand free and was able to hit the panic button, which frightened the intruders away, just before her daughter got home.

She is now "better", she says, although still terrified of being in her house, even of driving into her driveway.

Whats happened to her is a part of my worst nightmare. My children are tiny and are with me almost all the time. How on God's green earth would I protect them in a situation like that? And if I were killed, who would be there to even try to save them? I can't bear it.

I know there is crime everywhere, I'm not stupid. But I have never heard of an experience like this one from the lips of a friend in the UK. I don't know anyone over there whose mother was hijacked at gunpoint, like mine was here.

My husband is a realist and points out that there are four of us and it is his responsiblity to ensure we are kept housed and fed wherever we are. Certainly until Nicky is old enough for me to go back to work. There is a major economic downturn and property is not moving... except that I know someone, a mom from Top Tots heading for Canada, whose house sold in a week... I know we probably couldn't take our animals and would therefore have to put Campbell down because he won't rehome. I feel like I can't bear this either, but perhaps I can. Or perhaps there is a third way, such as taking him to Europe for six months and then getting him a pet passport.

I've been saying for a while that I want to look at the options and see what the move back would entail. I'm actually going to do it this time. And if anyone wants to accuse me of taking the chicken run, or overreacting, or betraying South Africa, well, unless they have two small children and are in their home alone with them during the days, or in and out the car with them, or unless they have seen the look on someone's face as she recounts being threatened with rape and knowing her beautiful teenage daughter is about to walk in, well, then you can just bugger right off.

Iconic South African Experiences

What child of 1970's South Africa doesn't remember doing this?
Our pool is non-functioning and the temperature is in the thirties today - it seems that noughties kids can have just as much fun with a simple sprinkler as we did back then!

Higgledy House

I love my house. When we came over from the UK in 2002, we had just sold Jon's flat in Earlsfield for a silly amount of money. In the UK it would have been swallowed up in a new mortgage, possibly for a place with two bedrooms. Here, it bought us 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 3 reception rooms, a dining room, "gym" room (sold to us as the fourth bedroom, but having no windows. Hmm), kitchen, double garage and one bed granny flat plus a pool. With a bit of work - a new ensuite bathroom, a french window and mini-stoep in our bedroom, a new picture window in the sitting room, tiling instead of carpets in the main part of the house - it was pretty much exactly what we wanted. We wandered through the rooms wondering how we would ever furnish them, let alone manage to make use of All This Space.

That was 2003. Fast forward to 2008, and we realise we have virtually no storage space. The sitting room functions as a playroom and a study combined. The kitchen is appallingly cramped when you cram two flustered adults, two small boys and a large dog into it. We still love our house, but it doesn't feel quite so huge anymore. And as we live in it, wear and tear starts to show...

One of the kitchen cupboards came off in my hands yesterday. I don't think it'll be easy to fix either. James -the-Gardener (so-called to distinguish him from James-our-son) hit the soil pipe exiting from our loo with the lawnmower a couple of weeks ago, and cracked a big hole in it. There is a new, luxuriant growth of lush green grass around it now, testimony to a rather nasty form of fertilization and standing out starkly from the drab brown dryness of the rest of the garden. About three months ago the spare loo packed up. We have had three different plumbers to it, had it jetted, rodded and had weird cement like gunk, apparently guaranteed to eat anything in its path, poured down it. Nada. The only thing that seemed to make a blind bit of difference was putting a cup of pool acid down it and leaving it there for 24 hours. It's flushing better, but we're still too scared to put any loo paper down it, so it's not as though we really have use of it, or anything.

That's just the stuff that's broken. There is so much else that needs doing! So here is my list, for posterity, of everything that I would like to do to this house. I retain the right to add to it as and when things occur to me.

Put cupboards into our bedroom. It hasn't had cupboards since we re-did the bathroom in 2003.

Paint the exterior properly, filling in little cracks etc. Have the wooden window frames
Wood Guarded.

Paint the interior all through in something like Wheaten White, with white ceilings, doors etc.

Rip out everything in the kitchen and have a completely new one installed, including a gas hob,
electric cooker and gas salamander for Jonathan.

Failing that (!), rip off the cupboard frontings and have them sanded, painted and
re-attached. Even this option is probably way out of conceivable budget range.

Put up curtains in the sitting room. It hasn't had curtains since 2003.

Install a new, energy efficient, blanketed geyser.

Get the blasted spare bathroom loo PROPERLY FIXED!!!

Get the pool cleaned up and the filter set up with a proper timer so we can run it for two hours
a day and save loads on the electricity. Also so that the frogs which have taken up residence Go
Away.

Steam clean all the carpets. Should the budget ever become available, replace the carpet in the
sitting room. After five years of a Ridgeback and three years of babies, it has a rather
unpleasant life of its own.

Steam clean the sofas. See above

I feel better just for writing it all down. Now I'm off to buy a lottery ticket.

Nostalgia

Thanks to a blogpost read days ago, this has been playing in my head... Jon was good enough to sing it through for me and type it out :-)

Oh, will you never let me be?
Oh, will you never set me free?
The ties that bound us are still around us:
There's no escape that I can see;
And still the little things remain
That bring us happiness or pain.

A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces;
An airline ticket to romantic places:
And still my heart has wings -
These foolish things remind me of you.

A tinkling piano in the next apartment;
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant;
A fairground's painted swings:
These foolish things remind me of you.

You came, you saw, you conquered me -
When you did that to me,
I knew somehow that this had to be.

The winds of March that make my heart a dancer;
A telephone that rings - but who's to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings -
These foolish things remind me of you.

Gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow;
Wild strawberries, only seven francs a kilo:
And still my heart has wings -
These foolish things remind me of you.

The park at evening when the bell has sounded;
The 'Ile de France' with all the gulls around it;
The beauty that is spring's:
These foolish things remind me of you.

I knew that this was bound to be:
These things have haunted me,
For you've entirely enchanted me.

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations;
Silk stockings thrown aside; dance invitations;
Oh how the ghost of you clings -
These foolish things remind me of you.

First daffodils and long excited cables,
And candle light on little corner tables;
And still my heart has wings -
These foolish things remind me of you.

The smile of Garbo, and the scent of roses;
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes;
The song that Crosby sings:
These foolish things remind me of you.

How strange, how sweet, to find you still:
These things are dear to me,
That seem to bring you so near to me.

The scent of smouldering leaves; the wail of steamers;
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers:
Oh how the ghost of you clings -
These foolish things remind me of you.

Ramblings

The wind seems to have migrated from the Highveld to here today, and we are being blown away... I really don't like windy days. It gets into my head and makes it ache. In England, where the wind was often icy cold, my ears used to ache so much I had to stuff them with cotton wool on trips. Most attractive!

And I have a gynae appointment today. I like my OBGYN, very much, it's just that I don't like check ups. I'd much rather be seeing him because I'm pregnant again than just going for a check up. And as I don't really think I want any more children, that's an indication of how much I'm not looking forward to today.

It's the only appointment I could get too - I booked it three months ago! Pregnant women get priority, so us "just an annual check-up" types have to take what we can get. It means that Jamie can't go to school today as I wouldn't be able to get back in time to fetch him. It also means that Tuli, who comes once a week to blitz clean my house for me, will be losing a couple of hours of blitzing time as she'll be at Westville Hospital watching my monsters while I'm in with the doc. Thankfully she has agreed to come along; I know people will probably think I'm mad but I really don't want to leave the kids at home with her. I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to them while she was vacuuming or something. It's just not fair to ask her to do TWO jobs (maid and childminder) at once. So the whole circus will be going to town - I hope Dr Payne's office is prepared!

Postscript: I'm back, I survived and it was all much easier than I thought it would be! Nicky slept in the car with Tuli and Jamie was astoundingly good for a 3 year old, staying in the waiting room while I went in, and entertaining the nurses. Thank Goodness!

Rugby Spring

My husband is refereeing a rugby match at the moment. He does it most Saturdays of the year, as, thanks to the fact that we are now a global village, there is rugby ON most Saturdays of the year. The Tri-Nations, the Super 14, the Six Nations, sometimes the World Cup... Thankfully he is not so addicted that he referees random matches - the Boks or Ireland and Scotland have to be playing. If they're not, he merely watches!

Today the Boks are doing better, and Bryce Laurence has been receiving some approbation from the peanut gallery in my sitting room. Jon knows the most obscure arcana of rugby law, and being him, knows most of this years Experimental Law Variations too. I'm just letting it all wash over me...

Falling Apart

My hips are aching horribly today. They have been for a while now. I need to make an appointment with an orthopod, get an x-ray, check that it's all ok and not the start of arthritis, or, worse, that the bone isn't necrotising... That sounds so alarmist, but apparently it can happen on old breaks. I hope I just need to lose the 8 extra kilos I've been carrying around since I had Jamie, and perhaps actually do some exercise now and then, and that will sort it.

I remember when I broke the hip, being told I might have pain "in 20 years or so". It seemed so immensely far away then. Well, it's over 16 years now, and I haven't done a single exercise I was told to do, to build up the muscle etc, so it's my own fault. It's not like I lug great flabby legs around, mind you, but there were all these specific things I should have done. And the fact is that I am off balance, just a bit, I limp when I'm tired and I over-compensate by placing more weight on my left leg. Hence that "good" leg now aches pretty much as much as the "bad" right one.

Rant rant rant. I'll call the orthopaedic guy. Soonish.

Pooh Days

This morning, I took Nicky's nappy off preparatory to dressing him. Stupidly, I got sidetracked by James before I replaced the nappy, and three seconds later I realised there was a ribbon of poo hanging precariously from Nicky's bum. I stepped back to look for the main part of said action, and realised immediately I'd found it without trying. The underside of ones bare foot is a horrible place to locate a missing No 2. Especially if, like me, you then lose your balance and step heavily on another, hitherto clean, patch of carpet. I lost it a bit, swore fruitily, and then had the pleasure of cleaning carpet (and duvet. Don't dump a pooey 1 year old onto a duvet) to the soundtrack of James chanting "Sit Sit Sit, buddy hell" as he bounced cheerily round the room.

We were late for playschool. Again!