Perennial Anna

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 18:37:30 GMT

Happy birthday legionseagle

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Mon, 04 Oct 2021 16:10:42 GMT

Happy birthday, oursin !

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Tue, 21 Apr 2020 12:41:36 GMT

Happy birthday dear ankaret !

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A Thing

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 16:06:33 GMT

I know it sounds like the very worst kind of Internet Thing, but I really actually literally do know someone who is an academic doctor of pain relief for babies and children.

The paracetamol-v-ibuprofen advice? He is very strongly in favour of paracetamol.

(It's actually standard advice for babies receiving vaccinations these days too, but that doesn't exactly qualify as Common Knowledge outside a very small cohort)

ETA It's not that ibuprofen makes symptoms worse, but that paracetamol is always the better choice for fevers where the inflammation is the body's own defence. NSAIDs are better for inflammation caused by injury, such as trying to juggle two laptops and wrenching a ligament when one starts to fall...

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Joining in the merry song

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 22:20:13 GMT

To say - happy birthday, lilliburlero !

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Fri, 30 Aug 2019 20:41:13 GMT

Happy birthday antisoppist !

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These boots are made for walking

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 22:29:57 GMT

(had to be done, sorry)

My current favourite most comfortable boots are from Clarks, and their only drawback is that they are not waterproof (they're not exactly terrible if caught in the rain, being from the side of the shop associated with masculinity, but they aren't designed to be waterproof and I don't expect them to be).

Turns out they come in a Gore-tex version. More than that, they come in a Gore-tex version in my size in the sale.

I'm going to have to do this bloody walk now. Especially as Millets have OS Explorer maps at 40% off (I have an up-to-date copy of the Norfolk Broads one, which covers the first few stages, but I didn't have the two that take me round the corner into North Norfolk).

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Advice sought (but not necessarily followed)

Sun, 03 Mar 2019 17:41:48 GMT

I am planning to walk to Walsingham from my front door, because the vast majority of the way is along the newly completed Norfolk Coast Path, turn inland at Wells-next-the-Sea. Not all in one go, either - a day here and a day there, depending on public transport and time without children. 12 miles or so a day, very rarely two consecutive days.

The trouble is footwear. I've never had a pair of dedicated walking boots or shoes that have really fitted or been comfortable, and I have extraordinarily wide feet. For everyday purposes, I wear a G width, but that is only just a passable fit. Last time I had them measured the size chart gave up and refused to admit my feet were possible.

It's going to be flat - this is Norfolk, and a lot of it is along the beach.

Should I stick with the casual boots I favour from the children's section of Clarks? They don't have amazing amounts of grip on the soles, but I'm not planning to climb any mountains or parade through bogs, and they do leave me with comfortable feet after a full day of errands hither and thither on city-centre tarmac.

Are there any wider-fitting brands of proper walking boots or shoes that don't cost an eye-watering amount?

Should I just buy trainers?

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Convalescing

Sun, 24 Feb 2019 17:45:02 GMT

I didn't go to church today, but I did watch the whole of the first series of Grantchester in a sitting (with a lunch break), which isn't quite the same thing. Thoughts (this is series one and series four has already been broadcast. The spoiler ship has well and truly sailed):

1) You do not get muscles like that from occasional scythe-swinging to express one's manpain.
2) No, masculine muscles still really aren't my thing. Put a vest on. And then a shirt. And then a nice tweed jacket, most of this is blatantly filmed in chilly spring pretending to be golden summer.
3) Speaking of golden summer, isn't it supposed to be 1953? Wot no Coronation? Wot no notoriously rainy summer?
4) SO MUCH MANPAIN.
5) Amanda is exceptionally dull and lacks any kind of inner life.
6) Hildegard deserves three cheers for deciding she had already wasted quite enough of her life on a man who would always have to stop and think before crying out a name in extremis. So thanks for solving my first husband's murder, I have a life to lead, and a ruined city is a better bet than the echoing emptiness of Sidney Chambers' head.
7) I am going to have to keep bloody watching, because Leonard (and Mrs Maguire). The inside of Leonard's head strikes me as a far more interesting place to spend time. Will the writers let us dally there? I do not think so for a moment.

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Tue, 19 Feb 2019 19:57:40 GMT

Happy birthday, lilliburlero !

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Olivia Colman Squee

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 17:16:00 GMT

By which you shall gather that I finally did get my arse to a cinema to see The Favourite. Which is magnificent. Ducks! Wigs! Storytelling through astonishing costume design! Men very peripheral! Olivia Colman AND Rachel Weisz AND Emma Stone!

Incidentally, there is a Frozen joke in there, but I think I am the only person I know who has seen it to have a daughter of the right age to allow me to pick up on it. When Anne and Sarah are reminiscing about not being allowed to play outside in the snow, so they opened the ballroom windows to bring the snowstorm inside - that's the opening of Frozen right there.

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David Blaize

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 17:28:54 GMT

I have made an icon! All my own inky splotchy work, which is why it isn't very good. It is free to anyone who wants it (if I need to do anything to make it lendable, please let me know. Like I said, I'm not very good at icons).

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Sat, 21 Apr 2018 16:01:56 GMT

Happy birthday ankaret !

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Books Finished in 2017

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 16:50:43 GMT

Some were begun the year before.

A Little History of the World - E H Gombrich A
We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea - Arthur Ransome R A
Bloodlands - Timothy Snyder
A World Gone Mad - Astrid Lindgren, translated Sarah Death
Exile for Annis - Josephine Elder
Cherry Tree Perch - Josephine Elder
Strangers at the Farm School - Josephine Elder
Winter - Various, edited Melissa Harrison
Desert of the Heart - Jane Rule
Secret Water - Arthur Ransome R A
Being Christian - Rowan Williams
The Idea of North - Peter Davidson
Sharon and the Great Horse - Sheila McCullagh R
The Popes - John Julius Norwich
Evelyn Finds Herself - Josephine Elder
The Scholarship Girl - Josephine Elder
The Scholarship Girl at Cambridge - Josephine Elder
The Word in Winter - John Lewis-Stempel
Romeo Fails - Amy Briant
The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry
The Canary-Coloured Cart - Christina Hardyment
The Big Six - Arthur Ransome R A
Fathomless Riches - Richard Coles
The Horse in the Furrow - George Ewart Evans R
Hidden Nature - Alys Fowler
Missee Lee - Arthur Ransome R A
The English and their History - Robert Tombs
My History - Antonia Fraser
The Road to Emmaus - Helen Julian CSF
Shakespeare on Toast - Ben Crystal
The Picts and the Martyrs - Arthur Ransome R A
Rising Ground - Philip Marsden
In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians - John Dougill
Hobberdy Dick - K M Briggs
Great Northern? - Arthur Ransome R A
Conclave - Robert Harris
Old Glory - Jonathan Raban
Knit One, Girl Two - Shira Glassman
Fearless - Shira Glassman
Passing Strange - Ellen Klages
The Hobbit - J R R Tolkein R A
Spring - Various, edited Melissa Harrison
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower - Rumer Godden R A
The Fellowship of the Ring - J R R Tolkein R
The Two Towers - J R R Tolkein R
The Return of the King - J R R Tolkein R
Lesbianism Made Easy - Helen Eisenbach
Little Plum - Rumer Godden R A
Consider the Fork - Bee Wilson
My Naughty Little Sister - Dorothy Edwards A
More Naughty Little Sister Stories - Dorothy Edwards A
Cranky, Beautiful Faith - Nadia Bolz-Weber
The Bible - NRSV translation
The Bible Challenge - Various, edited Marek Zabriskie
Spell It Out - David Crystal
A Traveller in Time - Alison Uttley R A
A Grave Talent - Laurie R King
Bewildering Cares - Winifred Peck
Excitements at the Chalet School - Elinor M Brent-Dyer R
Middlemarch - George Eliot R
The Cruise of Naromis - G A Jones, edited Julia Jones
Finn Family Moomintroll - Tove Jansson, translated Elizabeth Portch R A
Weeds - Richard Mabey
The Moomins and the Great Flood - Tove Jansson, translated David McDuff R A
Odd Girl Out - Ann Bannon
Blood and Roses - Helen Castor
Love in the Sun - Leo Walmsley
I Am A Woman - Ann Bannon
Unnatural Death - Dorothy L Sayers R
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club - Dorothy L Sayers R
Strong Poison - Dorothy L Sayers r
The Five Red Herrings - Dorothy L Sayers r
Comet in Moominland - Tove Jansson, translated Elizabeth Portch R A
Have His Carcase - Dorothy L Sayers R
Women in the Shadows - Ann Bannon
The Exploits of Moominpappa - Tove Jansson, translated Thomas Warburton A
Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L Sayers R
The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L Sayers R
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L Sayers R
Busman's Honeymoon - Dorothy L Sayers R
A Scandalous Life - Mary S Lovell R
Journey to a Woman - Ann Bannon
Moominsummer Madness - Tove Jansson, translated Thomas Warburton R A
Landing - Emma Donoghue
Beebo Brinker - Ann Bannon
Moominland Midwinter - Tove Jansson, translated Thomas Warburton R A
Patience and Sarah - Isabel Miller
Bess of Hardwick - Mary S Lovell
Uprooted - Naomi Novik
The Invisible Child and The Fir Tree - Tove Jansson, translated Thomas Warburton
A Notable Woman - Jean Lucey Pratt, edited Simon Garfield
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J K Rowling R
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J K Rowling R
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J K Rowling R
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J K Rowling R
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J K Rowling R
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J K Rowling R
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J K Rowling R
Literary Allusion in Harry Potter - Beatrice Groves
Women and Power - Mary Beard
Joan - Simon Fenwick
Accidental Saints - Nadia Bolz-Weber
The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante, translated Ann Goldstein
Widlfire at Midnight - Mary Stewart
The Traveller's Tree - Patrick Leigh Fermor
The School at the Chalet - Elinor M Brent-Dyer R
Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday - Carol Ann Duffy
Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sacred Tongues - David Scott
Ice - Ulla-Lena Lundberg, translated Thomas Teal
The Rule of Benedict - commentary by Joan Chittister

R = re-read
A = aloud, to one or both children

For comparison:

2008 - 144 books (full time job, no children)
2009 - 94 books (pregnant and very ill for much of the year, caring for a newborn from November)
2010 - 169 books (maternity leave, hours and hours of breastfeeding a baby with severe feeding difficulties)
2011 - 142 books (back to work part time, second half of the year pregnant again, consciously reading to escape)
2012 - 110 books (maternity leave, caring for a baby and a toddler, but lots of breastfeeding reading)
2013 - 130 books (still breastfeeding)
2014 - 118 books (still breastfeeding)
2015 - 99 books (the year my marriage ended)
2016 - 80 books (the year I got divorced and began getting to grips with this single parenting lark. One child at school, one still at home for most of the year)
2017 - 111 books (both children at school. Started the year volunteering in the local library, ended it working in a school with half hour bus rides to and from work for reading time)

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Happy New Year!

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 23:17:31 GMT

Not quite here yet, but I am on the point of retiring to bed with something coldish-feverish-achy-and-foul.C is picking up the children straight after breakfast tomorrow, the house is full of food, I can stay in bed for two days, which might just make the difference between a bug I get over fast and one that drags on and on and on for another whole half term.

And Happy New Name!

Sillymouse was chosen in a hurry a long time ago, and to be honest I felt rather like an easily confused rodent at the time. But it increasingly failed to fit what was happening and who I was turning out to be, so the time was ripe for a change to something a bit more enduring (perennial, in fact, like the bloody bindweed). After all, the first half of my name is "Vivi", and that means life, enduring life. Anna because the second half of my name is "enne", and I've always taken a slightly slapdash approach to vowels. So that's how my brain works.

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To redeem the lack of a card...

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 13:14:11 GMT

Happy birthday, dear antisoppist !

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Rare Public Post (sticky when I can remember how to do it)

Mon, 22 May 2017 19:52:40 GMT

99% of entries are locked and are likely to remain so. I am fairly freshly divorced, there are children to consider, it takes a while for me to trust people enough to let them into one of my main venting spaces. It's not you, it's me.

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Someone here is bound to know

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 16:28:33 GMT

Monica Dickens, Last Year When I Was Young.

I read it years ago, and don't have a copy handy. I remember that it follows a youngish male nurse from private patient to private patient, but in my memory his wanderings start when his wife dies suddenly, electrocuted in the kitchen.

Except that that seems to be pretty much the plot of her much earlier Flowers on the Grass, which I bought today and would swear I hadn't read before. And all of it is getting mixed up in my memory with A. S. Byatt's Still Life anyway.

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Wed, 06 Jul 2016 06:27:37 GMT

Happy birthday, tree_and_leaf

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Thu, 21 Apr 2016 09:49:48 GMT

Happy birthday ankaret ! A lovely day for it (well, it is up this end of the country).

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Worn to a ravelling

Sat, 26 Mar 2016 21:26:12 GMT

The children have been ill, jointly and severally, for the past four weeks. We have had fevers and coughs and throwing up and whinging and unexpected naps and the collapse of civilisation. I think I have been ill too in amongst it all but I haven't entirely had time to conduct a roll-call of symptoms for myself. We're still not quite out of the woods, because after a good start to the morning with an exceptionally bracing walk along the beach ("No, we are not paddling today. Because the waves are bigger than mummy, that's why"), by lunchtime they were both lying on the sofa and glaring at each other after a fight I could not untangle about who wanted which blanket. Moreover, we still have a few more days of close monitoring, after two children in L's class came down with scarlet fever. Fortunately it has a short incubation period (one to seven days), and it is very treatable these days - but it does need treating with actual drugs, not just calpol and a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD. L's teacher had to take yet another week off work when she was perfectly healthy, and is wishing the class could try coming down with something that isn't very bad news for pregnant women for a change.

Tomorrow morning their father collects them for an overnight stay, and this time I don't have the excitement of going away myself to take the edge off it. I do have two days of meals they will hate planned, and I will use the time to block a very large shawl on my bed. Normally this would mean sleeping on the floor while it dried, but there will, after all, be two spare beds. I could also catch up on The Night Manager. Television after 8.30 hasn't been happening for weeks - well, it has been happening, but I have been fast asleep on the sofa while it has been happening.

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'Twas on a Wednesday Morning

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 13:01:52 GMT

The washing machine installers came to call...

And the sun was shining and the day was glorious, and like the Mole I wanted to tell all the housework to go hang. But I waited in for them, and now they have been and gone and the clouds have rolled over. Never mind. I did two miles through the park this morning, and it was all thick frost and bone-white plum blossom and periodic explosions of small brown birds from the shrubbery.

Still, the dining room won't hoover itself and, having moved everything to give the washing machine installers a clear path to the kitchen, I can see rather more of the floor than usual. Besides, everything needs to be back in place before the children return at bedtime.

Meanwhile, via Slightly Foxed on Facebook, a list of 19th century American novels of girls coming of age that I have read none of, but they all sound fascinating. I think I may need to go and poke Project Gutenberg.

ETA Last week legionseagle reminded me of 'Our Hearts Were Young and Gay' (highly recommended should you ever fall over it in a charity shop). I finally managed to find my copy today, filed next to James Pope-Hennessy's biography of Queen Mary. I found myself pondering that whilst Princess May of Teck would certainly not have gone to Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic may have been called upon to supply her governess.

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Horrible thought about the Anglican Communion

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 20:17:59 GMT

This idea being floated that we don't all have to be in communion with each other, as long as everyone's in communion with Canterbury.

Which I think I would cheer, but my personal bit is Canterbury, and if everyone's got to be in communion with us I can see an awful lot of "We can't do that because Church X would cease to be in communion with us" ahead. So no change in this particular bit of a small rainy island off the west coast of the European mainland. And yes I do have a horse in this race.

So how exactly does one move to Canada?

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A cheering thing for a Wednesday

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 09:35:56 GMT

Because I am stuck on the sofa with a small boy who insists he is not going to be sick again (I would like to believe this, but I don't). Which means Contact Time this week will be taking place here, with me also here, which I am not totally OK about, but there are a very limited number of places you can take a three year old with a stomach bug on a rainy day in autumn. And I am a grown-up and I will deal with it. Possibly by eating all the remaining blackberry and apple crumble for elevenses.

Anyway. The point. Those without small children who do not recognise the existence of any television that is not CBeebies (or Time Team, which produced howls from the garden last Saturday when I called them in for tea. They couldn't come because they hadn't backfilled their trenches yet) will probably have missed the genius that is Hey Duggee. The best episode is the Omelette Badge, so here it is (only for the next seven days, it says):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbeebies/episode/b050ng21/hey-duggee-13-the-omelette-badge

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Culinary And Household Thoughts

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 10:48:03 GMT

Because I had a lot of time to think while I was on hold to our gas and electricity suppliers (I refuse to believe that "Please can this Mr&Mrs account become a Mrs account?" is as complicated and unusual a request as they seem to think. Just as well I wasn't confusing them with Ms-not-Mrs and name changes, though those two will come).

How can a recipe that demands 200 grammes of plain chocolate be described as economy? Anyway, cocoa is the way forward for chocolate baking, not least because when you open the cupboard it is still there. Economy Gastronomy not entirely living up to the first part of its name there (£1 from charity shop).

So I have turned instead to A Girl Called Jack, which is less "You can actually make stuff from scratch, you know!" and more "Surprising uses for economy tinned beans!". Genuinely cheap and nutritious, though, and if I can persuade the children they like bean burgers I will be delighted, because my budget and my Strong Opinions about ethical meat-eating are getting a lot harder to reconcile.

And I might even turn the garden apples and some blackberries from the school run into a crumble, now I have worked out that this week's awful dopiness was not just the five and a half mile daily walk between school, nursery and home (up to seven or more miles if I do anything unusual like go to the supermarket), but also my buying the wrong kind of antihistamines by mistake. Cetirizine makes me very sleepy, loratadine doesn't, but when I was staying in House With Cat and discovering a compelling argument for not getting a cat of my own the Co-op only had cetirizine, and I had thought I might as well use them up.

And I have been recklessly extravagant and bought a new kitchen bin, when the only things wrong with the 17 year old kitchen bin he brought into the marital flat were its awkward shape that made it impossible to clean, and the fact that I have always hated the colour. It was yellow, as was the washing up bowl. I now have a red bin (to match the microwave), a red washing up bowl, a chrome draining rack and cheap frames for a couple of prints. I do love Wilkinsons. Like Woolworths was, only better.

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