The Gallery - Expressions

It's Tara's Gallery once more and this week the demand is 'Expressions'. My entry is created via a marvellous iPhone app called Pocket Booth. I was introduced by Laura on a boozy night out in the Fighting Cock (we're so sophisticated). It recreates the photobooth photo strips of old. I love this app - it is so pleasingly retro.

My boy has an alarmingly rubbery face for one so cherubic. I often wonder whether a Lee Evan-esque career awaits him...

Ninjas - The Gallery

It's Gallery time again. The theme is Children - I can't wait to see the photographs submitted.

I've picked these two ninjas. The curly boy is O and the lovely girl is Laura from Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy's 6yo. We were camping in the Lakes and the children were ninjaing wildly by the side of a beautiful lake...

Silent Sunday - a boy and his puppy

Pop on over to Mocha Beanie Mummy for more quiet moments...

The history of time according to O, aged 6

O, sat at the table eating his tea:

"So, first of all there was God *waves arms all around* and he created the universe and alternative universes with stars and dead stars. Then there were dinosaurs and then the meteor killed them all. Well, apart from the mammals. Then the Ice Age came and it was really cold and then people came. Then it was 1000 years later and baby Jesus was born and then people did all sorts of stuff and then 2000 years later we are here now. And that's it."



(Hard at work, playing Club Penguin)

Santa Baby....

Another Silent Sunday. One picture, no words - head over to Jay's at Mocha Beanie Mummy for the photo fest...

Black and white - spot the difference...

This one's for the Gallery over at Tara's. I've had a little rummage and there are some amazing photographs this week. In fact, they are really fantastic every week! Please pop over and have a look...



Spot the difference between these two little boys. One of them is my son, the other is his dad. Loads of people say that O is a little mini-Mel, but here I see that he really is his daddy's son...







There is the same cheeky glint in the eye. The wayward hair sprouts perkily on both of them and they are both sporting glorious knitwear. How things run through the generations.

M is going through some tough stuff at work at the moment. He's weighed down with cares and worry and is very quiet and introspective. When I look at his baby picture, I see the boy he once was and I see the gleam in his eyes and the happiness in his smile and I long more than anything for the light and life to return to them.

 Meanwhile, we'll get through as best we can...

An Autumn wander...

A few weeks ago me, M and O went for an Autumn wander through the woods and around the lake. It was one of those perfect Autumn days - cold and fresh. The trees were so beautiful - after looking through these pictures again, I feel mournful for the loss of that beauty. It did seem to be a particularly stunning Autumn this time around - I think it may be my favourite season. Plus I don't have to worry too much about shaving my legs - hurrah for black opaque tights...

The teeth are coming in!

I cannot describe the whirling that occured here...

My Autumn boy

Hard at work in 'The Library' (a tree named by the children where much fun is to be had)

Creeping through the trees...

I also took some moody black and white ones - the troll bridge is particularly sinister...

*spooky music*

Looking up through the canopy

Show me the funny - O's comedy thang

It's Gallery time again over at Sticky Fingers and this week Tara's asking us to tickle her funny bone and spread the laughter throughout the internet. So without further ado, here's my funny, gurning, daft little O doing his comedy thang...

Wearing Great Gran's comedy teeth

The Egyptian

Mother and...gurn

Still smiling after throwing up in the maze and taking half an hour to find our way out...

Even his socks are funny...

Back to school - The Gallery

This is for the wonderful Tara Cain's Gallery. Please pop along and have a look at the treasures posted this week.

Two pictures. Thirty years apart. Two four year old children on the start of an educational journey.

This is me aged four in 1979. I loved school - loved the reading and the writing stories and playing with my friends. I didn't like being teased - that used to make me cry and retreat into my shell - a shell I still struggle to come out of on occasion. But I was a happy child and loved learning.

Education for me has been an up and down experience. A bright, top of the class girl for most of it until I reached GCSEs and A-Levels. Then I messed about, didn't try and carried that on until my degree, when I didn't get my 2:1. It was a colossal wake-up call and when I did my Masters, I really gave it my all and did myself proud. I don't think I'm done with education, but the thought of studying again brings me out in a cold sweat. Never say never though...

I look at the little girl in this picture and I can remember the picture being taken. I loved that dress with the embroidered flowers on. Mum must have picked it especially. I look at her eyes - my eyes - and think where life has taken that little girl that was once me. It has been so hard since breast cancer, but I think life's still good. I wouldn't have picked this path I've found myself on, but I'm trying to kick my heels and dance the rumba once in a while as I trundle along it.

And what about this little man, pictured at the same age in 2008? (Love that Geoff Boycott side-smile). What does life hold for him? He's happy and enthusiastic and enjoying being a big boy of six at the moment. He's been through a lot in his short life already - when this Reception picture was taken he'd been through a very tough time. It's hard for a three and four year old to see Mummy bald and poorly and sobbing as she fights to beat breast cancer. But he's come though all that with the help and support of my wonderful M and my family and friends and is cheerful, kind and cheeky.

I look at this picture and I see the promise of my boy. I want so much for him, but most of all I want him to be happy and healthy and surrounded by love. Just like he is now.

I want more than anything to see the man he will become. When I'm laid in bed at night, thinking the bad thoughts, that is the thing that grips my heart with fear the most. The possibility that I might not make it to see him grow up. This is the reason for my blog. Just in case I don't make it, I hope the things that are written here will help.

*This post took on a life of its own - was not supposed to be this maudlin. I can only apologise!

Tonight, he's a rock 'n' roll star

Following on from the Gallery post I did about Oasis and Loch Lomond, O and I have been listening to the Oasis back catalogue in the car, as I relive those happy days. We love to sing along together, giving it our full 'Liam' as we drive to soft play places, the park, Granny's house, the supermarket - you name it, we're singing Oasis as we go there. He's particularly enamoured of 'Wonderwall' and 'Cigarettes and Alcohol' (bad mother alert) and really throws his heart and soul into the singing and rock and roll posturing.

I was a child who grew up in a music loving household. My dad was a lover of classical music, opera, rock and the blues. Music was all around us and I have fond memories of the Sunday dinners where Dad would slap a bit of 100 Ton Chicken, Rolling Stones, Maria Callas or Jimi Hendrix's 'Electric Ladyland' on the turntable as I tried to force the brussel sprouts down my reluctant throat. The music was amazing - the sprouts less so. 

Does anyone else remember that Hendrix fold-out LP sleeve with all the naked women on? It seemed so risque back then. I would creep to the hi-fi cupboard and sneakily peer at the saucy women while my little sister giggled in the background and threatened to tell on me. There was the Roxy Music album as well. Dad - I'm appalled!

I do feel so lucky now that I had the opportunity to experience all this different music, although that was not the always the case back in the old days. When Dad dug out the Emerson Lake and Palmer 'Pictures at an Exhibition' LP, my mum would protest vigorously, my sister and I would cover our ears and endure the prog rock stylings with a very bad grace and some terrible squealing until he took it off. Poor Dad...

It seems right to pass on this rich musical heritage to little O, especially as his daddy also loves music and has a splendid record collection going right back to the Swinging Sixties. O has inherited his Grandad's love of a good blues riff and a stonking guitar solo and loves to bash his mini drum kit in the style of Matty from the Arctic Monkeys who is his drumming hero.

When we're listening in the car, he knows that when I turn the music down and la-la-la over it that there are 'bad words' and happily accepts the need for the censorship. I am not sure how long this will be endured - but I'm hoping that it will be a while. I can do without him singing along to 'the band were f****** w*** and I'm not having a nice time' (Fake Tales of San Francisco, Arctic Monkeys).

This one's for you, O. Toniiiiiiight, you're a rock 'n' roll star!

Birthday boy - O's hit the Big Six!

Wow - I've got a six year old. That little blue baby who was placed on my tummy, not breathing or moving or making any sound on 16 July 2004 is today a big boy of six. He's mad on Sonic the Hedgehog, looking forward to the freedom of summer holidays and the heady promise of being in Year Two.

It seems like an ideal time to revisit some of O's best bits - his show reel if you like. I've said before that he's got a cracking sense of humour, tinged with the faintly absurd and downright odd. Without further ado, I give you O...

Aged 2 and a half
Me, O and M are in the car, travelling up to a bunk barning weekend, listening to The Smiths' Greatest Hits. 'How Soon is Now' is playing. Morrissey sings the classic lines:

"And you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry
And you want to die"

A little voice pipes up from the back seat, "That's like pre-school."

Aged 3 and a half
"It's a good job I've got bones in my legs. I need to run for a wee-wee."

Aged 5 and 363 days
Me, O and his best friend, W, are in the car on our way back from swimming. The talk is of being six, the funeral rites of W's newly deceased goldfish, Sonic, and all manner of things in between.

O: Mummy, what year will it be in 95 years time?
Me (calculating wildy whilst negotiating sharp bends): Errrrr, 2105.
O: W, if I live to be 100, 2105 is the year that I will die...

Happy birthday, O. Here's to the next 95 years!

Mother's pride...

O's coming to the end of Year One. He's had a really good year and I can see the huge changes in my boy since September last year, not least the fact that he suddenly seems to be so much taller and wrestling is definitely much of a challenge.

This boy used to scream and cry if water went in his eyes or ears when I washed his hair. Now he disappears underwater for ages at his swimming lessons and is grinning when he finally emerges. He's even been picking bricks up from the bottom of the pool and finally managed to pluck up the courage to jump in with abandon this week. Such huge strides in such a short time.

Introducing Sno Hey Noods Fansant Hey... The Gallery

Or to give her full title, Sno Hey Noods Fansant Hey Meanchod Sackad Hey. She is a cuddly polar bear and was once called Snowy and once had pure white fluffy fur. Now she is grey and ruffled and has the most bizarre name ever given to a bear...

Motherhood - The Gallery

This week, I didn't think I was going to do The Gallery - I'm doing this so late, I'm almost wondering why I'm posting. The theme is Motherhood - emotive, precious and guaranteed to whirl up a maelstrom of emotions. I looked through the photo archives - there are so many photographs of my boy, but not so many of my boy and me. I remember sobbing on Friend from Way Back's shoulder a few years ago as I lamented the lack of photographs of me and O in his babyhood. I was too tired, too fraught, too caught in the headlights to want to be in photographs when he was tiny. And now I wish I'd just said 'sod it' and poked my weary face into the pictures a little more.

F******* toads and light to medium flow - the perils of phonic reading...

I am an insatiable reader and always have been. I was the kind of child who was always being urged to 'go out and play, it's a nice day'. All I wanted was to sit in my room and read about Darrell and her adventures in Mallory Towers, or hide away up in the bower with Katy and the rest of the Carr children and drink weak vinegar-and-water. I lived for Thursdays when my Mandy and Judy and Tracy comics would be delivered by the paperboy.

Two little boys...

Another week, another Gallery! This week the theme is friendship. I'd mentioned my friendships a few posts back, so thought I'd take a different tack with this one. O has a friend, a best friend whom he's known since he was weeks old. They met, along with their mums at post-natal group and have grown to the ripe old age of nearly six together. Although they are chalk and cheese, they are close as close can be and W is a special person in O's life. Here are some pictures of this fabulous twosome...


These boys are so small they can't even sit up! O is the chubby cheeked one on the left.

A sea of bluebells, a dwarf's arse and a dandelion clock...

We had the best day yesterday, just me, O and M. An impromptu picnic in the woods just up the road from us, complete with blue skies, a carpet of bluebells and shortbread biscuits. Sheer heaven.

The bluebells were wonderful - I needed to take pictures and made O stand in a patch of them, much to his chagrin. I can see he is slowly but surely changing into a BIG BOY and standing in flowers looking cute is not something that BIG BOYS do. However, the finished results did show that he is still willing to indulge his mummy, as long as there are no observers to witness his shame.

Friends, phallic objects, skinny dipping and a cheeky child...

Good old Laura from AWNTYM tagged me in this award, which I'd had a go at previously. However, this one said I had to pick seven interesting things using only the medium of photos. I felt I had to accept the challenge.

One of the rules is that I have to thank my nominator. Many thanks, Laura, esteemed Facebook Wife. I have enjoyed the challenge and will need a full body massage to recover from the epic photo trawl I have just completed. It's hard going this blogging malarkey...

I'm not sure if the thing are interesting, but as I picked my pics, the people in them seemed to be the ones that sent out a siren call to me...

So, without further wittering, here are my seven photos...

My skills are superior...

There's nothing like a good bout of Sonic and Mario's Winter Olympic Games on the Wii to get the blood pressure rising and the red mist descending. I have a reputation as something of a competitive sort which I know you may find hard to believe. Beneath the mild-mannered librarian exterior beats the heart of a raging warrior who DOES NOT like to lose. This competitive spirit is usually under control, but there is something about playing on the Wii which brings out my inner tiger. More specifically, it is downhill skiing and figure skating which turns me dizzy with rage.

The thoughts of O, aged 5 and 3/4

I've no broadband so I'm posting via my phone - so challenging, but couldn't let the blog hiatus linger any longer. It's been another long and difficult week in head injury land, but I'm not dwelling on it. Instead, here are a few random thoughts from my boy...