I Ain't Dead...!

Wow.

Almost a year.

It's crazy how quickly time goes, really, when you think about it.

This time last year... well, I didn't even know I was going to have a baby (and was about to get a bit of a surprise!). Since then, I've done morning sickness - oh, how I did morning sickness - and being all slow and lumbery and generally pissed off with life.

And then I had a baby boy.

And then it really all went nuts.

So life's changed in a pretty major way - time for a change of scenery. Morgalou's taking a break for a while - but would like to introduce you to Mammabird instead. She thinks you might like her.....

Choices

Sometimes, you just get those questions in life which are too difficult to answer without deep thought and soul-searching contemplation.

Such as: weighing up the cost of re-plastering the kitchen walls and ceiling (which desperately need doing before, as the BW so delicately puts it "the baby comes") against the possibility that we'd be getting a friend-of-a-friend-who happens to be a fireman in to do it.

Hmmm. Yet more debt, versus a fireman up a ladder in my kitchen.

Life's, like, hard.

Cat of the Day

There's something about this picture that just makes me laugh.

It's not Luteus, but it's the kind of thing he does. These days, the sound of one of us opening the fridge is always followed by a feline chirrup, and an irritated human saying, "Not for you."

Just thought you might enjoy it.

By the way, after 6 months or so of no updates whatsoever, there's some new stuff over at Squeaky Ginger. You know, just in case you're interested.

Pic taken from http://icanhascheezburger.com/

*Insert Typical East-End Saying Here*

I remember someone telling me a while back that they'd seen a picture of a tower block that looked like our old home in an article to do with Pete Doherty.

At the time, I couldn't find a copy of the story, so I couldn't tell them one way or another - but as part of their exhaustive Kate'n'Pete coverage, This Is London have printed another picture of the building, naming it as the drug-addled one's East-End hideaway.

And yes, it is the one we used to live in. Which, I guess, means we didn't move down to Surrey a day too soon..... If one must live near to a drug-addled musician, one would much prefer Keith Richards to Pete Doherty.

It's very strange, though, seeing the 'Heights in the paper (albeit a virtual version) - I mean, we lived there for, what, 3 years? I didn't go back in between the day we moved out and the day we finally completed the sale - after what ended up being months of impossible buyer demands (replace the windows? Not likely, sunshine.). There's a strange sort of sinking feeling that goes with "We used to live there". It's not exactly nostalgia - by the end, I couldn't wait to leave. If I really put my mind to it, too, a lot of the memories I have of it as a place are actually either quite sad or just difficult, maybe because that's what sticks. I don't know.

Weird.

Bad Baby

I made flapjacks this afternoon.

Really, I wanted to make fairy cakes, but we didn't have enough flour, and what with the World's Biggest, Scariest Thunderstorm going on overhead, I didn't particularly feel like going to the cornershop to buy supplies - so flapjacks it was. I make them from time to time, in a hit-and-miss-if-it-sticks-together-it's-a-flapjack-if-it-doesn't-it's-granola sort of way.

However, I've never before felt compelled to eat a third of a tin of Golden Syrup while standing in the middle of the kitchen.

I think we know who we can blame for that.

My head feels a bit funny. Sort of.... zingy.

The sugar comedown should be spectacular.

Meanwhile: LOLcats.

Shambo

Just outside Carmarthen, where I grew up, is the Skanda Vale community. It's a fairly small, but well-established religious community, set up by Guru Subramanium and dedicated both to the worship of Skanda and to palliative and hospice care. So far, so hippy.

However, like much of rural Wales, Skanda Vale also has a working farm - which is particularly important in a Hindu community because of the sacred status of cows within the religion. One of Skanda Vale's bulls, Shambo, is being threatened with slaughter as he is suspected of carrying bovine TB. For a wide variety of reasons - not least political - DEFRA has refused to undertake further testing to determine whether Shambo actually is infected, preferring instead to kill what could be a perfectly healthy animal who falls outside of the normal regulations and precedents - he is not part of a standard farming model; nor is he in any way in contact with animals which enter the food chain.

Clearly, due to his status within the community, Skanda Vale believes this is unacceptable, and have launched a petition to save Shambo. Please consider signing their petition today, as Friday is the closing date for an appeal. And even if you don't sign, say hello to Shambo on the site's Moo Tube.

Mr Sandman

You know how it is: every now and again, you have an exceptionally long and complicated dream which - against all the odds - you remember when you wake up. You lie there for a couple of minutes, staring at the ceiling (or the inside of your eyelids, depending on your morning MO) and gradually, it dawns on you that even by dream standards, last night's dream was a David Lynch inspired surrealist masterpiece.

Take the one I had last night, for instance. No, I won't cover the whole thing because, frankly, I'd even bore myself. But the bit that interests me was towards the end: it was in the front of my old school, where a bunch of bikers on massively overdone bikes turned up in a sort of gang stylee, led by someone who was obviously supposed to be Kenickie (always so much cooler than Danny, you know) and then roared off down the road. Shortly after, there was some slightly unfortunate -and very deliberate - screwdriver / face action going on between said motorbike gang and another motorbike gang, headed up by Kenickie-type's son.

Now, I have no idea where this came from. Firstly, I don't remember watching Grease lately, nor do I remember coming across QOTSA's Go With the Flow video of late, which clearly inspired much of the bike artwork in my head (and which is still one of my favourite videos). But it made me wake up scratching my head and going "What the hell was that all about?"

Any ideas?

It Shouldn't Be This Funny

... but my goodness, it is.

Tick Tock

Now, for starters, here's something I know.

I have time. Lots of time. I am, in fact, positively made of time.

So where does it all keep going?

For the third day in a row, I have almost completely failed to do any of the things I told myself I was going to do. Except renew the buildings insurance (quite important, that one) and buy vegetables for a chicken casserole (which admittedly, I forgot to soak the beans for until lunchtime, and which I have yet to go down to the kitchen and make, but I bought the vegetables so the point still stands).

And now I've just lost the best part of an hour idling away on the Mothercare website. Dangerous place, that. I have images of what is currently euphemistically known as the "dressing room" (ie: the room where we put the spare wardrobe, the archery kit and all the assorted stuff that doesn't have a home) becoming a gorgeous, tasteful nursery: a symphony of soft greens and creams with a hint of silver and beech.

No nasty plastic or neon colours for our baby, no siree. But I know, deep down I just know, that it will, in fact, end up being a higgeldy-piggeldy room full of bright pink or blue and, knowing the BW as I do, one of the new Tickle-Me-Elmos.




At least he'll be in good company: he can join my red Ziggles (who used to scare the living bejeesus out of me in my room in college when he went off in the middle of the night) and - somewhere, the BW's talking Taz (when squeezed, he starts shaking and shouting "Me Tazmanian Devil!" followed by an indecipherable stream of Taz-like grunts and snorts. He was very popular in the BW's college hall...).

I suppose I should hope for the pink & blue plastic option. Knowing this baby's genetics as I do, the worst case scenario could be an emo-petrolhead child.....

Do Mothercare make black nursery products, do you think?

Today's top track choices:

- Travis, "Selfish Jean" (not because I like it, but because they keep playing it on Radio 2, and I always think it's going to be "Lust For Life".
- Don Henley, "New York Minute". I still think The Don is massively underrated and undervalued. My god - I'm turning into the Paternal Unit.