ttfn

This blog has gone to summer school. See you in August xxx

it's all going horribly wrong

I need a time turner. I have a pile of work to do, several overdue assignments for my course, meetings to go to, kid/s to look after, the house is a mess, I'm playing Single Parents for a week while Rob's at a conference, I have to get everything finished by Friday cos I go to my summer school first thing on Saturday. So naturally I have been spending every spare minute reading the new Harry Potter book. Finished it last night, feeling most smug that my guess at the identity of the Half-Blood Prince (made before I started reading) was correct.

Oh, and I have also been stuffing my face. Bad bad bad. Why is it that when I start to panic, I immediately feel the need to stuff my face?

coming out-rage

I am this: angry.

Today I found out that a neighbour's son is gay. Hopefully you know me well enough to know I'm not angry about that. What I'm angry about is the reason I found out was when his dad rang me to cancel a meeting we had arranged, because he had to go visit his son in hospital. Because his son had been queer-bashed. Unbelievable. It wasn't in Manchsester but in another large English city. I somehow fondly imagined such things don't go on anymore but they do. Bastards. I've known the lad since he was 12, now he's 19 and studying medicine at university and seems to have grown into a nice young man. He's going to be OK and will probably be out of hospital tomorrow, but he shouldn't have been there at all. The idea that someone would beat him up for any (or no) reason is bad enough but for it to happen because he's gay makes me so sick and angry.

I am also this: stunned. By the fact that the London bombings seem to have been carried out by some lads from Yorkshire. I don't know why that makes it worse than them having been carried out by some highly trained Al-Qaeeda cell from Abroad, but it does. Maybe cos I know lots of lads like them, second generation Asian lads, and can't begin to imagine how one of them would become a suicide bomber.

do believe the hype

I'm so excited, only 4 days to go till I can read the new Harry Potter book. I don't think R realises I am actually serious about being in the book shop at midnight to get my hands on my copy. I know it's all a bit of a hype, that the HP books are rather derivative, that there is better children's literature about. But. I still love the HP books, I need to find out what happens next and most of all I'm glad to live in a time when people can still get so excited about a book.

Tour de Cheshire

Cycled 47.5 miles today, earning nearly a day's worth of points hurrah. We won't mention the ice-cream stop hem hem.

CB kindly donated me a spare pair of cycling shorts in size mumble mumble. I was most grateful, both for the extra padding in crucial places and for having shorts in this weather. The people of Cheshire were probably not as grateful to see my lycra-clad @rse pootling through their lanes, prompting the local youth to shout 'humorous' remarks as they zoomed past in their max-power mobiles. Yes I have a fat arse but I'm on this bike working it, whereas you are just sitting on yours.

horrible day

It's still very confused, hard to know exactly what's happening, looks very much like bombs have gone off in London on the underground and the buses, people killed and injured.

Thinking of everyone I know in London, emailing to check they're OK, wishing people with blogs would update them with a line to tell us how they are. Hoping everyone, and everyone they care about, is safe.

begin the day with a friendly voice

Woken early this morning by banging and loud music, and began cursing my new upstairs neighbour until I realised the noise was coming from downstairs and from inside our house. While looking for CBeebies on the digibox, O had come accross Kerrang Radio and was happily pogoing round the living room.

My mum and my sister are coming today to help me choose new glasses. I can't tell what suits me by myself, and R was no help, he just said 'fine' or 'do you like them?' to all the pairs I tried on. At the moment I have quite chunky plastic frames but I might go for something light and metal. I've always had to have plastic cos of a nickel allergy, but now the titatium ones are in my price range wooo.

Eating has been going OK. Not brilliant, as I've been over my points most days, but much more under control and I am pointing (mostly) so going in the right direction. FatClub tonight eep.

Boondoggle?!?

Everyone coming here looking for info on making scoubies might want to take a look at this - it's the new black, apparently. Which reminds me, I read this article in my parents' Sunday Telegraph (the shame, the shame) which sounds eerily familiar (can't link it cos stoopid Torygraph insists on login to access articles) ...

Like life, you start with 'DNA'

Making a Scooby may be child's play, but it sure ain't easy.

"Now, just watch me this time," instructed six-year-old Mia Seabrook. "Make a white loop. Now make a blue loop. Put the white string through the blue loop, put the blue one through the white loop. Now pull all the strings."

She gave the threads a yank and added yet another perfect segment to her keychain.

I was in a north London garden for a crash-course in Scoubidouing. Mia and her four friends were surrounded by garish key-chains and bracelets. With guides like this, how could I fail?

I followed Mia's example, made my loops and gave the strings a pull. The threads slipped helplessly past one another. "You have to concentrate really, really hard," said Mia.

I concentrated really, really hard and failed again. The girls began to laugh and my self-esteem plummeted.

"A Scoubidou pattern's always a big challenge when you first start," said nine-year-old Georgia Hayden. "That actually makes it more fun. And then, once you've learned how to do it, you can teach other people."

The other girls nodded. "Now try it slowly," said Mia. I went slower than a sedated pensioner in a Robin Reliant. I gave the strings a cautious tug. Suddenly the scoobies were irreversibly tangled in an ungainly knot.

"Tony, I just don't think you're ready for the square Scoubidou. You should probably try something a bit easier," said Georgia.

And with that I was unceremoniously demoted to the "DNA" model. DNA might be pushing it - the pattern looked more like a winding staircase than a double helix - but at least it was much simpler.

"Hey," I cried. "Look. I can do it. I can do it."

The girls were supremely unimpressed. "Of course you can," said Greta, Georgia's little sister. "That one's easy."

Children can be so cruel.

Lots of bike stuff on the cards today, tho not actual riding thereof. All our gears need their indexing sorted (all hail Mighty Sheldon, who knoweth all things) and we'll be watching stage 2 of le tour.

it had to happen

sooner or later I knew it would happen, but it still hurts when your child criticises you for being fat. I asked O why he plays games with N's mum but bans me from his games. "She's not so fat as you" was the answer. I don't think that's really the reason (and I'm certainly fitter than N's "greener than thou has a bike but drives 2 miles to the organic shop" mum). But it is true and it hurts.

On a happier note, in between feeding kids and trips to the park, I've been looking for where we should go on holiday. It's not certain we can go - R has to pay a lot of travel expenses for conferences up front, and if he doesn't get the money back in time we won't be able to afford to go anywhere - but hopefully we will be able to stretch to a week's camping. I now have my heart set on going to this part of Pembrokeshire, there is perfect sounding campsite there.

make capitalism history

Live8 leaves a bad taste in my mouth. In what way is fatcats paying £599 to listen to Dido going to change the world? The original LiveAid didn't. It's not about making really change, it's not addressing the real inequalities in our world that make people poor, it's not saying anything about the wars ravaging parts of Africa, it's not telling people that if we want 'them' to have more then 'we' might have to have less.

Live8 ain't the only game in town, pop along to Dissent Network, G8 Alternatives and Indymedia for 100% ageing rock-star free protest. Me, I'm staying home and running a creche so parents can go protest. O is going to be so p1ssed off to find out some parents don't make their kids go on demonstrations with them. We've done our (tiny) G8 bit by going on the G8 bike ride critical mass. I couldn't go cos of work boo but R and O went, I think O even enjoyed it.

OK so that's what I won't be watching on TV today. Guess what I will be watching tho? Hurrah for the power of digibox!