Well Robin finally got me playing APB, a kind of cross between Second Life and GTA. I resisted but decided a) he spends so much time playing it I can either moan about it and feel neglected or get in there and spend time with him playing it and b) I actually will probably love it and be fairly good at it. I refuse to leave ther tutorial area for at least a week because I need to master my keyboard navigation skills after being away from gaming for a while. I like it anyway it’s chill. Booperkit is again resurrected – she’s back and she’s black (as usual) very scarred, very tall, and pointy eared, with white dreads and scary face paint. Oh fun!

Well what this has to do with insomnia is that one of the reasons I have not played it before, or been back in Second Life looking after my interests, or on the PS or Wii much is because I’m always so damned tired.

Yes being a mum is tiring, being a twin mum is – I quote myself “at times ridiculous”. but it’s more than that.

Several years ago I saw a shrink, only for one session, and not cause I was mad, but because I had a minor breakdown due to severe bullying at work – not my recent place of work, this was about 10 years ago. The guy bullied a lot of people and left quite a trail of emotional devastation, still is doing so from what I hear. Without going into details I was a bit messed up and my doctor sent me to see a psych.

I only went to one session as I don’t feel (rightly or wrongly) they can tell me much about myself. I’m a pretty self-examinatory person. However, he did alert me to something – he asked me about my sleep and I was amazed to discover that it is not normal to wake up 20 plus times a night. I was also amazed to find out that some people go to sleep and wake up 6, 7, 8 hours later. Amazed. On average I wake up at least once an hour.

My fiance at the time was with me and he was amazed I didn’t know that. He said “well you know I usually sleep through till morning unless you wake me up”. But I didn’t know that I just thought he woke up at different times to me and maybe not as often.

Some nights I only wake up 10 times, some nights I hardly sleep at all. Robin sometimes wakes during the night and says “do you ever actually sleep?”

Of course I sleep. We all do.

Last night I flicked over to another one of those programs about sleep. I wasn’t massively enthusiastic about it because I never hear anything that isn’t obvious or doesn’t work for me. But it’s always worth a look. Doctors never have taken this seriously and have always suggested early nights, not drinking any alcohol before bed, and sleeping tablets. Well sleeping tablets dont work for me and are dangerously addictive when they do (so I have been warned by ppl who rely on them). Sometimes a drink before bed (or several) gives me the only decent patch of sleep I get. Sad but true. Early nights mean either lying in bad reading for 4 hours until I fall asleep or waking up at ridiculous o’clock and staring at the ceiling for hours before falling asleep from exhaustion – in other words – longer in bed but not longer asleep.

If you haven’t experienced insomnia you can’t begin to imagine how bad it is, how detrimental to your everyday life. You are always tired, there is no such thing as a good nights sleep, just slightly less shitty ones, you always feel groggy for hours in the morning and would literally kill for an extra 10 mins snooze in the morning.

So last night on TV I heard this guy describe my night’s ‘sleep’ in bed perfectgtly – just what I wrote before. And when he sought help he was given some very different advice. Advice which I like the sound of and so tonight is night 1 of:

‘Insomnia Attack’

…otherwise known as Sleep Restriction Therapy.

I did a bit of reading and decided that I am not ready for an NHS fight to try and get this treatment, I’m going to try to do it myself first. I researched a little around the theory behind it and with a some adaptation have come up with a plan:

Night 1: Go to bed as late as I can make it and keep a notebook by my bed – jot down the time everytime I wake up.

Night 2: same

work out my longest sleep period – I’m guessing 3 hours, but it may be less.

Night 3: Decide on a wake-up time. I’m thinking 6:30am as the boys never wake up before that in the morning, usually it’s between 7:30 and 9am. Go to bed for my sleep period only (i.e if it’s 3 hours I go to bed at 3:30am) No naps at all in the day, not nodding off on the sofa.

Night 4: same

Night 5: If I manage to sleep for my sleep period I can extend it by going to bed 15 minutes earlier.

continue this until I start waking up in the night again. perserve for at least 1 month.

Another thing I realised and is obvious when you think about it is that I dream an awful lot for someone wjho doesn’t sleep much. this is because dream sleep isnt the deep sleep we need and you dont have to be asleep long to dream. Sometimes I have several very intensive dreams every nigth. This is because I am only ever reaching dream sleep. I am seriously sleep deprived.

I basically have to find a way to reach deep sleep and I believe that 3 hours of good sleep is better that 10 hours of broken sleep. The worst that can happen is I’ll still be sleep deprived and I’ll go back to napping and shitty sleep. The best is that I can retrain my sleep patterns and be a happier, healthier person throughout the rest of my life and play APB and Second Life – but not GTA as my XBOX got the red ring of death, shame on you Microsoft.

Wish me luck – to be continued…

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One Giant Blip and my offering SUPERNIAH!

…or what to do with the courtesy pack from Virgin Airlines.

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Now I have been giving the subject of IQ a lot of thought over the past year. It all started because of breast feeding – but I am not writing about breast feeding again for a while, except to say it was the claims of breast fed babies having a higher IQ that started me onto this train of thought and exploration. It wasn’t one of the reasons I chose to breast feed because I don’t believe in the concept of IQ.

These are some of the main points:

• IQ tests are based on the theory that intelligence can be quantified as ‘g’ – general intelligence.
• IQ tests were developed originally to identify under-achieving students, not over-achieving ones.
• Most modern day IQ tests are not IQ tests at all.
• Differences in IQ (which are very clear – in general whites have higher IQs than blacks men have higher IQs than women) rely on the concept of culture.
• The IQ you have is not a number, its a place on a percentile chart. The same person will have different scores on different IQ tests but their position on the percentile chart will stay roughly the same.
• Parallels between IQ and other factors are drawn but they may be mutually exclusive.
• There seems to be some agreement that at least some intelligence is hereditary.

… and this is my conclusion on each:

IQ tests are based on the theory that intelligence can be quantified as ‘g’ – general intelligence.

I do not believe that something as complex as human thought and action, the workings of our brain can be quantified as ‘g’ I do not believe that ‘g’ exists. This is the most important point because if ‘g’ doesn’t exist then what are IQ tests measuring? Without ‘g’ the whole concept of IQ is meaningless. Intelligence means different things in different environments and when facing different challenges. In some situations I am a very smart person, and sometimes I am incredibly dumb. I have a whole range of skills and experiences that work together, making connections that help me to solve problems and draw conclusions. My intelligence varies depending on where I am, who I’m with, what I have experienced, not just who I am. In another climate in another country, or in another time, I would need a different kind of intelligence. I don’t like the terms intelligent, clever or bright, I prefer smart. I can be smart at times. If I found myself in the middle of a war I do not know how smart I would be, but put me in front of a class of students and I’m very smart. If someone is an autistic sauvant they may be off the scale of intelligence with math, but way below with everything else. I know the tests are supposed to compensate for this, but still I wonder about it.

IQ tests were developed originally to identify under-achieving students, not over-achieving ones.

IQ tests were developed for a noble reason but then were picked up by the military and businesses and used to exclude people from certain jobs and promote people to new ones. Some businesses still rely on IQ tests when employing people, disregarding experience, personal and social abilities, and qualifications. Even if these tests are used in tandem with other skills and qualities, is that not a dangerous and silly route to take?

Most modern day IQ tests are not IQ tests at all.

…and yet we still do them. A family member used to boast about his high IQ all the time. What test was that based on? How often was he retested? Why did he think it was worth mentioning? Why do some people need a number to justify their smarts? If you are smart other people will notice, if you are beautiful other people can see it, you don’t need to tell them.

Differences in IQ (which are very clear – in general whites have higher IQs than blacks,  men have higher IQs than women) rely on the concept of culture.

Culture isn’t something that can be clearly defined. I am a part of many cultures – motherhood, womanhood, living in a Muslim neighbourhood, the culture of gaming, blogging, being white, living in the Western world. You can’t put me in a pocket and say you are a part of white English culture because I am not like all the other white English people. Some people live in council estates, some live in ghettos, some live in rural communities, some live in gay communities, some are criminals. I don’t have ‘a culture’ – I am a part of many cultures and influenced by many cultures because I choose to be. Some people are definitely more mono-cultural than others, but most of us move between several cultures at the same time or successively. Why would someone compare the IQs of blacks against whites or women against men? They are arbitary divisions of choice. We could compare the IQs of Christians and Muslims, gay and straight, English and American, city and country folk. Whenever we draw divisions we should ask why we draw them. Is there a purpose or is it because we can? Is it through lack of imagination or are there more sinister reasons?

The IQ you have is not a number, its a place on a percentile chart. The same person will have different scores on different IQ tests but their position on the percentile chart will stay roughly the same.

Going back to the family member – he shouldn’t have quoted an IQ number, to do so shows a lack of intelligence. But more importantly this means that the cultural comparisons I mentioned become even more meaningless. In order for the comparisons to be meaningful all participants would need to sit the same test at the same time in the same environment. Not possible.

Parallels between IQ and other factors are drawn but they may be mutually exclusive.

A great example from Jay Gould who wrote ‘The Mismeasure of Man’:

“measures of the changes, over time, in “my age, the population of Mexico, the price of Swiss cheese, my pet turtle’s weight, and the average distance between galaxies” have a high positive correlation, but that did not mean that my age goes up because the population of Mexico goes up.”

A cheeky little quote, but very clear. To bring in breast feeding for just a moment (sorry) – if children who are breast fed have higher IQs that does not mean there is any relationship between the two. Along with the choice / ability to breast feed are many other environmental factors that are known and documented – class, income, work / home life, age, education, health, family network and support. Confounding factors in other words. It’s meaningless to extract just one factor unless you have a point to prove that relies on the correlation of these two factors. That is called propaganda I believe. (Breast feeding may have benefits but IQ is a silly one to quote).

Definition of propaganda: “information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause”

There seems to be some agreement that at least some intelligence is hereditary.

Many if not most of the studies that I came across were carried out on unusual subjects i.e twins raised apart, cross-cultural adoptions. These are not commonplace, they are rare occurrences. The individuals studied are already in an unusual social situation and so any results gleaned from them – well how can they be applied to the populace as a whole? There are multiple other factors at play.

——————————————–

If indeed it ever turns out that white people are inherently smarter than black people, or men than women, God help us. Will we have to undo all the progressive equal opportunities work we have done? No more high flying jobs for anyone but the average white male. I’m being facetious of course, but my point is that it is dangerous territory that we should stay well out of. Why on earth would anyone want to prove that? Why indeed?

____________________________

Finally an insight from a close friend who knows a lot about theses and doctorates etc… Many of these research projects that give us the information we see quoted are written by post graduate students who are simply trying to find something new to research in order to gain their doctorate. They successfully defend their research in front of a panel because no one else has studied it before, then it gets printed. Then people start quoting it as fact because it’s a published research paper. Then it becomes accepted fact. All because a student had to find something new to write about.

___________________________

References to be posted later for my own benefit.

Minnesota twins study

Business IQ-testing company

Educational IQ usage

Culture and Intelligence

Culture fair IQ testing

Breast feeding and IQ

Wiki – IQ

Wiki – Mismeasure of Man

Wiki – Craniometry

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Ok I’m not mincing my words anymore. I have just been reduced to tears by reading the comments posted on an article. The article was shown me by my sister-in-law:

http://www.redbookmag.com/kids-family/advice/is-it-ok-to-stop-breastfeeding?

The woman who wrote this article had cancer – CANCER! She even came off her cancer drugs to breast-feed. This is the year 2010 and women have fought hard and long, and still do, to have choices. We have choices – one is whether we breast feed or not. For WHATEVER reason. I do not believe that there is any risk whatsoever of  ’formula’ milk (that’s cow’s milk by the way, with a few vitamins, not some drug-laden poison), that is correctly prepared in a sanitary environment. If I did I would not have offered it to my boys, my precious boys that were so long in coming to my life. How can any woman suggest such a thing? Lactivists, whoever the hell they think they are need to stop being so damn stupid and stop spreading unfounded survey results around. It is, I repeat, 2010, we have made many progresses in society to improve health, safety and freedom. Formula is not the right choice for everyone, nor is it an evil, necessary or otherwise. It is cruel and divisive to keep on attacking women who choose this route (or have no choice). These ‘lactivists’ have lost the plot, they have lost the point of nursing at all, they have lost the spirit of motherhood and sisterhood, they are trying to tighten the chains of women that have been so long in the loosening and I feel sorry for every one of their children – no amount of breast milk will ever compensate for the poison they have spread. If this pisses you off, good. Piss right off, I’m really angry.

N.B. The definition of lactivist is: “Lactivism (portmanteau of “lactation” and “activism”) is a term used to describe the advocacy of breastfeeding”.

It should be a good thing but the very term makes me shudder now. Well done.

Bitty.

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Ok I’m sure this post is going to upset some people because they won’t bother to read it properly. But this is something I feel, have always felt, very strongly about. If you do read it, read it properly, don’t fill in anything ‘between the lines’.

I have written about this topic before but this is going to take a slightly different approach.

Let me start by setting the scene. I exclusively breast fed my twins for a month, then I stopped breast-feeding Arlo and only continued to breast feed Niah. Arlo was never good at breast feeding, he lost weight, took an hour and a half for each feed. He and me were not enjoying it. The day I stopped breast feeding him he started to gain weight, bond with myself and my husband better, and generally be a happier, healthier baby. He crawled at 5 months, walked at 9 months, and at 19 months is speaking in sentences, be it short ones. My nipples also stopped bleeding. Niah was an amazing breast feeder from the first moment he was born and always a pleasure to feed. I stopped at 6 months purely because I decided it was time to. I mourned stopping breast feeding because it was a beautiful experience and I feel a great affirmation of being a woman and the function of my breasts.

No one could help me to get Arlo to feed properly. One midwife said it was my fault but could not explain why Niah and me could do it so well – in the words of one of the NNU staff “you could be in a video demonstrating breast feeding, your technique is so perfect”.

So, what’s the problem? Well firstly because I nearly gave up breast feeding both of them as it was thoroughly horrible having no more than 30 mins sleep at a time for the first month of their lives. Because my nipples felt like someone was ramming needles down them at every feed. And it was all avoidable. I was so determined to breast feed because I had been brainwashed into thinking it was the be all and end all and anything less was not fair on my babies. Because that’s just not true.

The midwife that visited me on the day after the boys were brought home didnt even know ‘formula’ is cows milk. I guess she thought it was some kind of magic fairy dust.  It’s not evil, it’s natural with a few added vitamins and thank GOD I live in a country where formula is available or Arlo might not be here today.

If I did it again I would combination feed right down the line , every woman I know that has followed that route (surprisingly few) kept on breast feeding for longer and was generally much happier throughout the process.

The purpose of this post is not to rehash all this though, it’s to show how some mothers are being so hateful and unhelpful to other mothers, moms who are trying their best to be good moms, and for whatever reason can not or will not breast feed. Good moms who feel guilty and inferior for no good reason.

Why do they feel that way? Probably a multitude of reasons, but one of the reasons, certainly one that I (as a breast feeding mom) found incredibly hurtful was because of what I call The Mummy Brigade’ for want of a better term – but I though ‘Lactivist Nazis’ might be going too far.

The following comments are honest comments taken from one such group. They are generally untrue, unproven, unhelpful, hurtful comments that I can only imagine are intended to upset other moms. Maybe I’m wrong but I doubt it. I hope you find them as shocking as I do. If you don’t please don’t revisit my blog ever because you will sadly not like what you read.

Here we go…

“Most mums don’t know the risks of formula when they decide to start formula feeding, so how about printing the risks on the carton, a bit like they do on cigarette packets!

Your baby is twice as likely to die of SIDS if you feed them formula!

Formula fed babies are more likely to be overweight and suffer heart problems later in life!

Mums who don’t breastfeed are 5 times more likely to get breast cancer!”

note – there are no risks in a sanitary household where instructions are followed.

“I imagine the government probably wouldn’t do it - but I’d be game for it if there was anyway to enforce it! Is there? can we petition for it?”

note – enforce?

“DEFINATELY Love that idea and if came from a trusted source (IE the NHS etc) then ffeders wont blame us militant pro breastfeeders for making them feel guilty! or ramming how wonderful mummy milk really is down their necks.”

note – us and them – how divisive - where do the combination feeders fit in?

“Should we be writing to the NHS board to petition for this idea? considering it would have their best interest at heart? reducing the need for admittance or use of the NHS – I mean thats mainly why the smoking campaigns are around isn’t it? because the government/NHS realise the burden that smoking related illness have on the system?!”

note – breast feeding reduces the admittance to the NHS? formula feeding is as harmful as smoking? hmmmm

“I believe that formula cartons are required to have words to the effect of “breast is best” printed on them somewhere. Perhaps we should campaign to have this backed up with some statistics as well.”

note – well you’d be hard-pushed to find statistics are no study has ever been properly carried out scientifically, you can’t lock babies and moms in a lab for 3 years.

“Ohhh, great idea!  And there are so many health aspects to choose from, too – both mother and child related.”

note – any they are? come on people I need to know…

“I did see my OH cigarette packet this morning with a picture of a pre-term baby hooked up to machines – suffice to say I then thought “it didn’t stop the woman in my office smoking 20 cigarettes a day” turns out she had her little boy this morning 10 days overdue weighing 7lb 5oz – I figure thats a healthy weight but who knows if that poor baby will have breathing problems or other problems not yet determined?!

If they printed the SIDS evidence on the box – I would expect the rates of FF to drop dramatically! and I mean DRAMATICALLY! first time parents (and even 2nd/3rd/4th parents) all worry about SIDS so it would probably half the number of parents FF”

note – evidence people!!!! They are pretty scary things to state without backing them up.

“Hi, I’m also crashing – was just wondering (like Ronnie) about those stats. My main question is do they relate just to babies that are formula fed from birth? Do your risks of cancer decrease more if you breastfeed longer? Or breastfeed more children? And what about SIDS? If you stop bfing at 4 months will your child automatically be more likely to suffer SIDS?”

note – oh a person willing to raise a question at least…

“This paragraph may be of interest to you;

The advice, released to launch FSID’s cot death awareness drive Save a Baby Month which runs from 1-31 May, is based on research which showed that babies who were at least partly breastfed were one-third less likely to die as a cot death than babies who were never breastfed (1).

The fact that you began bf reduces the risks of SIDS.”

note – ok this is true in terms of yes it’s officially printed and ‘researched’ but as breast feeding mothers are self-selected how can any such research ever be fair and unbiased? Think about it. I refute this research 100% and will happily have a very very very long chat with anyone who wants to know why.

Here’s the ‘research’ that was being discussed.

http://fsid.org.uk/Page.aspx?pid=571

“The study concluded that if women had an average of two and one-half children and breastfed each child an extra six months, 5% of breast cancers would be prevented each year. If they breastfed their child for an additional 12 months, 11% of breast cancers would be prevented each year”

note – read on further honey – ” “Although childbearing is known to protect against breast cancer, what contribution breastfeeding has on this protective effect, if any, has been difficult to determine,” the authors said.”

“Thanks for posting those links.

The risks are never black and white, and breastfeeding is just one factor among many, especially with SIDS. I believe smoking and overheating are the biggest risks for SIDS, and FF babies can reduce their risk by having a dummy at night (although this can have other implication for dental health and speech development – nothing is ever simple!)

As for the breast cancer quote, if I remember correctly, the actual statistic was,

“Women who have breastfed for at least 2 years are 80% less likely to get breast cancer than those who have never breastfed at all.”
It don’t think it matters whether that is one child for 2 years, or two children for one year each, and I’m sure that it is a sliding scale – the longer you bf, the lower the risk. And again, there will be other factors such as age and genetic predisposition.”

note – a reasonable and educated perspective

“Thank you, I have never thought about it like that before.”

note – I can see.

“I was shocked to discover that by age 8months, an artifically fed baby will have consumed a whopping 30 000 more calories than a breastfed baby!!”

note – your point being? Ever baby consumes vastly different amounts. I thought breast milk was supposed to be calorie rich and I thought babies were supposed to consume a lot of calories. Seriously you lost me…

“There are loads of interesting and informative reports out there discounting even one bottle of formula and stipulating BFing should be the ONLY food a baby should have for at least 6 month”

note – one bottle? seriously? Links? This was from a thread about a woman who is trying to deny her ex-husband access to their new born because she wants to exclusively breast feed him.

“its all i ever seem to here from people. MV/MV or doc advised to put him/her on to formula or introduce top tops. it makes my blood boil”

note – why so upset? Oh I know – I felt it too, I was also brain-washed.

“My best friend is a midwife and gets really upset by this sort of thing. She really understands the importance of breastfeeding and the risks of formula, and hates to be tarred with the same brush as all these so-called professionals with their terrible advice. If only more midwives were like her I’m sure we’d have a much higher breastfeeding rate in this country.”

note – again I want to know what evidence exists for these risks.

“- unfortunately although they will have had training, alot of people succumb to their own personal opinion on the issue of breastfeeding and that is when it all goes horribly wrong, their personal opinion cloud’s their medical knowledge (or lack thereof in some cases) or they use the term “no medical benefits after…” so they abuse their position – they don’t even attempt to find out if they are right or wrong (but wrong they are)”

note – no personal opinions there then…

“A new product has recently been released onto the market that completely eliminates the need for urination, and is almost as healthy as the real thing!

Originally developed to help those who were physically unable to urinate, it has now been released for use by healthy adults who just don’t wish to urinate.

The product is completely safe – research so far has shown that the risks are extremely small, and the number of deaths that have occurred in the UK and can be attributed to using this product is vanishingly small.  Only a very small number of studies have shown any risk to long-term health.

Urination can be embarrassing and inconvenient – some people need to urinate 6 or 7 times a day, or even more, and if this product is taken instead that need can be completely removed.  Night-time trips to the bathroom can also be a thing of the past (although it may be necessary to take the product during the night to achieve this).

With this product, what was once a biological function can now become a lifestyle choice – and for only £40 per month!  This product may also prove invaluable for those who find urination extremely painful and whose HCPs are too useless to find the real cause of the pain.

(Note: Urination is best. Once you start taking this product, it may prove almost impossible to change your mind and go back to full-time natural urination, even if serious side-effects are discovered.)

What do you think?  Fancy it?”

note – a rather witty-less piece of analogy about bottle feeding. Sad.

“my mum breastfed me exclusively and i had asthma, my nephew and neice had a few weeks of breast then formula, one has asthma one does not. ***** has only been sick once since being born and was formula fed from day 4. i have been repeatedly sick the entire year and she has been fine. i think a massive lot of it is genetic (hubby is never ill either) so she must take after him? she has the constitution of an ox and if they get the mothers immune system then i think i must have saved her from a lot of bugs as she would have got no immune system from me!! im a walking disease haha”

note – fair enough

“If you look at the studies about the “benefits” of BF, most of them are from the late 80s onwards.  That’s because it wasn’t really until then that computers were sophisticated enough to detect the variants and collect the statistics.  To understand the “benefits” of BF, it’s important to look at a population, not an individual.  That doesn’t mean no benefit, just that each individual is only one person.”

note – no computer can calculate accurate statistics based on people giving an honest answer, the data by default is potentially inaccurate.

—————————————————

Let’s suppose we wanted to do a study of people’s sexual partners… some will exaggerate for prowess, some will deny because they don’t want to admit to being a virgin. Very good analogy in my opinion. This is not research. These are surveys. I suggest that unless you can put a large number of mothers and babies in a controlled environment for 3 years you cannot call this scientific research. I am in no way denying there may be extreme benefits to breast-feeding but I refuse to acknowledge that they have been in anyway proven and therefore this mummy brigade needs to stops bandering around snatches of survey information in order to make other moms feel inadequate. Being a mom is the hardest job in the world and we need to support each other in the choices ‘CHOICES’ that we make.

I don't know if I'm brave or stupid posting this picture...

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Customer loyalty is THE most important factor in long term success (in my limited business experience), but sadly so many large companies penny pinch and alienate good loyal customers especially where things go wrong i.e faults and complaints. Think of a brand you won’t buy from simply because you have had a bad experience or knowledge of the brand, be it second hand news, even though you may like the product itself. Spurred on by the following article which turned up retweeted in my time lime the other day, and coinciding with a couple of events that were already bugging me… today I will be discussing my feelings about not ‘Brand Awareness’ but ‘Customer unawareness’. For the delight of my huge following I will be interviewing the talented and voluptuous Elixa Voss – Virtual Worlds builder and business woman.

http://www.dmnews.com/customer-loyalty-gets-most-marketing-dollars-in-social-media-study/article/177686/

Me: Good morning Elixa – how is your headache this morning?

Elixa: I woke up fine thank you.

Me: You shouldn’t have had that half glass of beer on an empty stomach. So could you introduce yourself.

Elixa: I came into Second Life because I heard you can make money. I started as a lap dancer and some other naughty things. Then I saw some things people had built and I thought why waste money buying when I can make things myself. Some time later I met a shy man called Loki Rinkitink and he introduced me to my best friends out of world. One day, maybe 3 years ago when we were playing Guitar Hero and having a drink Booperkit came up with the idea for me to make bags because she makes this wonderful hair.

Elixa Voss

Me: Who is this Booperkit you speak of? She sounds awesome.

Elixa: Anyway I started making bags. Second Life introduced sculpties so I have to give it a go. I got a really nice store at Booperfunk (by the way there is land to rent now).

Me: Great. So what happened this week that you managed to get booted? Was it the lap dancing again?

Elixa: Well I still do that a little, but no it wasn’t that. I was working on a building project when an avatar called me about renting at Booperfunk (because we have the best prices). While standing there, I’m using Emerald viewer btw because it has tons of cute gadgets, perfect for building, when suddenly in the radar Removals Linden came into the Sim…

Me: Removals Linden?! You’re kidding me.

Elixa: Removals Linden came up to me and I got told that I have been locked out of Second Life. Well I thought I had I crashed and I tried to log back in but I was not able to. I logged in with an alt and he could log in so I asked the emerald forum and an ex-linden there was really helpful. She told me that if Removals Linden approached you its because you have an infringement.

EB BAGZZZZ

Me: But they didn’t tell you that when they logged you out?

Elixa: No I just got a mail afterwards, I received 3 mails in total. The ex-linden told me I have been accused of infringement and I should check my mail.

Me: Can you summarise the mail please.

Elixa: blah blah blah (reads out all the emails)

Me: So they are saying they needed to lock you out for 30 mins while they checked your account to see what the infringement is?

Elixa: Yes I was banned for 30 mins. My second mail said my account was re enabled.

Me: But you still didn’t know what it was about?

Elixa: No. And then 15 mins later I got the BIG mail. It is called NOTIFICATION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY COMPLAINT. The mail said I was using something without permission.

Me: Did it say who?

Stars and Stripes sim by Elixa

Elixa: Yes It said Coach had complained that I had infringed their intellectual property environment in Second Life.

Dear Elixa Voss:

Linden Lab has received a complaint from Coach, Inc. claiming that you have infringed its intellectual property in the Second Life environment. In particular, Coach, Inc. has complained about your use of its intellectual property in COACH.

Linden Lab respects the rights of both Second Life residents and intellectual property owners. Accordingly, we ask that you discontinue any use of the COACH intellectual property, in the Second Life or XStreet SL environments. You must not use the intellectual property of others unless you have their permission to use it.

To address Coach, Inc’s concerns, Linden Lab has disabled certain of your Second Life and XStreet SL content including the following:

Description of Work(s):
* EB BAGZZZ ‘n SHOEZZZ Aydria Coach bag set ( Bolsa, Cartera)

Me: So do you accept that you infringed intellectual copyright?

Elixa: Well not really I didn’t copy any design and it was my own texture.

'that' bag

Me: Should you have used their trademark?

Elixa: Well the bag was made by special request and I did think about this. I didn’t want to get in trouble, I didn’t want to get sued and I changed the name from Coach to Adria Coach.

Me: You thought Coach bag was a style of bag?

Elixa: Yes.

Me: So did I actually. I never even heard of Coach.

Elixa: Well I knew there was a Coach Bag, but I looked online and there are many infringements, but my bag is called Adria Coach and does not have the coach and horse logo. Also the bag design itself was my design.

Me: Maybe they like your design and want to use it?

Elixa: That has been suggested.

Me: So is this Coach in Second Life?

Elixa: NO! It’s the Real Life Coach, that aren’t even in Second Life. I don’t know even how they knew about it?

Loki: Maybe they did a Google search?

Me: lol (goes into a rant about social media tools)

Elixa: I don’t understand why they didn’t just contact me personally instead of getting linden labs to lock me out and go through my private inventory.

Loki: What they don’t realise is that its free advertising. They think it hits their bottom line, but it’s just free advertising.

Me: That’s exactly the point Loki, good morning by the way, you don’t look too good (Loki digs into last night’s curry and a Stella). What’s your view on Coach now Elixa?

Elixa: I would never in my life buy Coach. If I was a cheerleader I wouldn’t call my Coach Coach.

Me: I feel the same just by listening to your experiences and I know nothing about Coach. It seems not only petty but really unintelligent. They could have had people walking around in virtual worlds doing some free advertising, instead they have lost at least two customers.

Loki: Why don’t you remarket it as an imitation of a bag that is not a coach bag?

Me: A not-a-coach bag?

Elixa: I’m going to call it an up-yours-coach bag.

Shukran: If Coach were smart what they would have done is contacted Elixa directly and said “as we don’t have a Second Life presence, why don’t you make some more Coach bags for us, advertise for us, and we won’t even have to pay you.”

Loki: If they were really smart they would buy a sim and ask you to run it. Give you rights to use their trademark and maybe even pay you for any new designs you make.

Me: But they obviously aren’t smart are they? So anyway thanks for giving me your time Elixa, Loki. It’s obviously all driven by greed, but also it is very stupid, these companies are really missing the point. I have two family members in Marketing and I’ll be interested to know their take on this.

———————————–

If you have read this far please feel free to stop. The rest is just a bitter rant.

My own experiences of customer unawareness go a little something like this:

In October 2008 I bought a very Bebecar expensive stroller from Pramworld. I took a very long time choosing it – a specialist twin stroller with some unique features. The only one of its kind in fact. One of the features which was key was it’s two lie-flat pram seats – suitable from newborn right through to age 3 years. Anyway… we ordered the stroller a couple of months before the twins were born and so it wasn’t used until February. When the twins were 4 months old this stroller went to my parents house to be used as a secondary stroller and I bought a second-hand Phil & Teds because I needed to use public transport after failing my driving test … we won’t go into that right now. So this Bebecar stroller received only light usage after 4 months. When we had had it for 6 months one of the reclining seats broke so that it was stuck in a permanently upright position, usable but not fit for purpose. To cut a long story short neither Bebecar or Pramworld would fix it free of charge or even collect it to examine it.

After months of wrangling, resulting in my quoting the Sale of Goods act at the store, it was indeed collected and fixed free of charge. The outcome: I love my stroller, it’s massively over-engineered and very bulky but I love it, its the most sociable and comfy stroller I have even seen and the boys actually love being in it. I will never buy from Pramworld again, or Bebecar. I have updated my very glowing review on Babycentre about this stroller and some people have decided not to purchase one as a result. Many, many people asked while we were out and about why one of the twins was sleeping in an upright position – their comments about what a wonderful stroller because a little less wonderful, and their view of this brand. I will never recommend this brand or store.

They HAVE lost money, who knows how much, but was more than whatever it cost to courier and fix the broken cable in the seat. They have lost loyalty, respect and time. I also lost time and the full use of my stroller for 9 months.

How stupid and how easily avoidable.

In contrast, I bought a new vacuum from Vax a few months ago. It’s a good machine, no where as good as my last one, but good for the price. After 2 months the telescopic tube broke and I phoned Vax and told them, preparing for a battle. The assistant simply said “it broke? Oh we are so sorry, I’m sending you a new one out now – it might take a few days to come, please accept our apologies.” Amazing – but actually isn’t that how it should be? I would certainly buy from Vax again and recommend them wholly based not particularly on product but on customer service.

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Niah in the Summer Garden

Niah in Grey

Arlo eating frozen broccoli while we were cooking

Italian Potatoes

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I was holding on tight but the current was pulling me out. Not again. The first time you nearly die you are supposed to learn from it. So why was I out of my depth, being thrust out another 100 feet at every swell … again?

The first time my fiance saved me. “Just surf in” he yelled – “you know how to, stop panicking and surf!” And I did. I flew to the shore, struggled to my feet, went grey – according to my friends, and promptly fainted.

That time we were on a surfing holiday, 7 of us packed into a caravan, wet suits hanging everywhere and a constant queue for the shower. A weird little holiday where everyone knew us but no one knew each other. It was so much fun – a lifetime ago before responsibilities.

He saved my life and I remember watching from the shore, I came around and stood up and looked for him – struggling to find his way back in – he did, a strong swimmer and surfer and he made it. It could have put me off surfing but I made myself get back in the water – not that day. Tentative and nervous but I surfed a little more that week.

Years later, married to another guy, on a weekend to the same old place and what happened to possess me to go again out of my depth… to be caught by the swell…?

This time my husband was there and panicking too, we yelled, we screamed, people were close by but couldn’t hear us – we waved our hands for attention – they waved back.

I gave up and just held on tight to the only thing keeping me afloat, my husband gave his last ounce of strength to push me into the next breaking wave and I surfed. I surfed all the way…clutching that board so tight. This time there were no friends to meet me – just passers by looking bemusedly on.  I stood, I saw him. He found his way to me. When he reached the shore he held me so tight and said “I thought I lost you – I shoved you and you disappeared, I surfed in not knowing what I would do without you, I thought you were gone”. I laughed “I was on the front of the wave, I was fine” We laughed, but that night we had flash backs and knew – our surfing days were definitely over.

Cornish Surfers

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We sat in the doctor’s surgery waiting for the call for injections. The twins pottered around the cosy room bringing me books and I flicked through outdated magazines on fishing and home-making. An African woman sat opposite with a toddler daughter. I asked how old she was, the daughter, and in broken English she replied “9 month”. The little girl with multi-coloured bands in her hair coasted across the surgery chairs. Arlo watched her, just a little older at 13 months, he toddled over. They stood and stared. They moved closer. They kissed – Arlo with his open donut-mouthed sloppy kiss. Niah stood by and watched, what is my brother doing?

We laughed, her mum and me. They kissed again. We smiled and wondered at their openess and connection. Then the nurse called us in.

After the injections were over they were gone, the little African girl and her mom. Arlo and Niah, snuggled up in the stroller and ready to go home, probably never gave her another thought. But I thought … what if that was Arlo’s true love of his life right there?

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My 3rd tattoo in Minnesota, the week I met my husband in 2005. I remember the pain, the place (where I had my 4th tattoo) and what a weird time that was.

tattoo butt

Same week – we found a big stone ball and I sat on it. One of those moments…

Boop ball

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…is what you are…

apparently In used to say that all the time when I was little.

Anyway, I wanted to make a blog record of the boys language at this time. Theye are 18 months and 3 weeks exactly.

In my typical teacherly style I will produce a table. Just the one table because they tend to say the same stuff as each other and if one learns something the other picks it up in a day or two.

Niah signing 'finished' at 6 months

Arlo signing 'finished' at 18 months

A lot of the words are far from perfectly ennunciated – I know I understand a lot more than anyone else does, but they make them selves understood pretty well and the better I understood the less the tantrums are that’s for sure.

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(A quick ode to someone I don’t see anymore and miss every day)

Sorry I betrayed you

Sorry we fell apart

Sorry I was so very heavy-handed with your heart

—

Thanks you for the memories

Thanks you for the time

Thanks you for the patience so much ever more than mine

—

Remembering the laughing

Remembering the cries

Remembering the closeness but forgetting all the lies

—

Missing your friendship

Missing your sweet face

Missing your style, your words, your grace

—

Regrets in my head

Regrets in my heart

Regrets for a future to be spent so far apart

—

Knowing it would happen

Knowing it was meant

Knowing it was time inevitably spent

—

Think about you always

Miss you everyday

Happy in the end that it happened anyway

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Imagine climbing a huge snow-capped mountain. Imagine it’s so hard to climb and so cold you don’t think you can do it. Imagine the fear with each step of reaching that point of no return when the supplies are only enough to carry on, not to turn back, where all choices have gone, only one direction left.

You keep holding off getting past that point of no return, you camp up for weeks on end. You get colder and weaker and hungrier, and now you hardly have the strength to go on with the climb anymore. The route back down is much easier and also very appealing because you are tired and weak and hungry and back down there you can be safe and warm and well fed and back to where you were before this ordeal started.

Why don’t you just go back then?

Well, why did you decide to climb the mountain in the first place … simply to reach the top … to see what’s on the other side … to find out something about yourself … who knows?

It’s not that there was anything wrong with where you were before, but one day you saw this big mountain and you knew you had to climb it, knew that you would always want to climb it and if you didn’t continue up the mountain you would end up going through this all again later because you still wanted to climb this mountain deep inside you.

So imagine you muster all your strength to continue climbing the mountain. There are no guarantees you’ll make it, no way you can be sure you’ll ever be able to get back down, or will want to. You may lose everything you had before and the mountain could be a huge disappointment. But still you make the decision to climb it cause if you don’t you will always be drawn back to it, you will always regret not attempting the climb.

So you climb it.

It’s so hard, so scary, you’re alone most of the journey, you barely have enough food and you’re not nearly as fit as you thought. What happens? Well… you learn to live on less food, you get stronger, you develop muscle, you have to focus on getting there cause you’ve past the midway point and can’t go back down now.

You get hardier and start to find it less tiring. Sure, at times you feel like giving up but you are stronger and more determined now. Do you reach the pinnacle? Do or die, it doesn’t matter, you gave it your best. Whatever happens you climbed that mountain and became stronger in the process.

At worse you get stranded and die … well you can die in your own back garden. At best you realise you have found the most amazing view and get to stand on top of the world and hopefully share that moment with someone else as amazing and brave (stupid) as yourself.

‘Starting Over’ by me.

(or ‘why I’m married to this guy and not another one’)

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Trail to Kawishiwi Falls - Ely

Northern Minnesota

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“I must congratulate Derry and wish them every success in 2013. We may not have the title but rest assured we will continue to be a city of culture. We have every reason to be proud of our bid and the way people and groups across Birmingham pulled together to promote cultural activity. This was a city-wide effort with arts groups, the media, communities and individuals playing a part.Now we have to make the most of that passion and commitment and, with significant events like the magnificent new library opening, Birmingham will still be a cultural capital in 2013.We will continue to focus on the importance of culture as a force to enrich and unite people and communities across the city.We’ve used the bidding process to draw-up a new cultural strategy for the city – a strategy that will serve the city well for years to come. So we have a very tangible outcome from this process.The campaign has undoubtedly raised the profile of culture within our city, with media coverage alone worth in excess of £4 million. There were over 70 million opportunities to see or hear our campaign, with a London poster campaign proving particularly effective.Our aim from day one was to make this a campaign from the grassroots up and that has certainly been the case. Online we’ve reached thousands of people, through blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Our Big Culture Blog reached 7,500 people in just 24 hours while supporters sent over 1,000 messages of support as we pitched to the judges up in Liverpool.Cllr. Martin Mullaney”

via Birmingham Culture – City of Culture Bid 2013.

Ok – Birmingham has a population of millions, how is 7500 a number to be proud of?

“London Poster Campaign” – mind boggles.

“There were over 70 million opportunities to see or hear our campaign” oh ok – that’s why almost everyone I mentioned it to didn’t even know we were bidding. Oh ok. What the hell does that mean – 70 million opportunities…wtf!

We deserved to lose. Sorry but we did. I love Birmingham – a lot more than those promoting it I think.

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I find the topic of Nature a hard one. What I mean is… at what point did humankind become ‘unnatural’ ? At what point did that which we create become ‘human-made’ rather than natural. Other animals use and fashion tools too – Chimpanzees use spears, Gorillas use measuring sticks, also birds, elephants, otters use tools and sometimes keep them for future use – have they crossed the threshold yet to ‘unnatural? I guess it’s because my theory on everything is all about continuum and there is no ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ – just a slow gradual move between the two. I over-analyse I know, but that’s why the topic of Nature is a difficult one for me.

That’s why I’m writing this on Wednesday evening when I should have posted this to the Gallery on Wednesday morning…

…I didn’t know what I should take a picture of – a flower? a bird? a tree? I toyed with finding some examples of nature reclaiming what was once her own…weeds in a parking lot, that kind of thing…

I gave up. I’ll miss this week out I thought.

However, later on today I took Arlo Barlow to the park – I am staying with my folks for the week so have the luxury of being able to go out with just one twin sometimes – I love it – no stroller! Just me and Arli off to the park. He took me to the swings and I sat on the ground just close enough to push him and have the occasional shoe to the head.

I sat there talking to him and making ‘woooooooo’ sounds and as I looked down at the ground I was reminded that the playpark was covered in ‘play bark’. That was, I knew, the photo I was waiting for. Something so perfectly and completely natural as wood bark being used instead of a hundred and one ‘unnatural’ alternatives because it is as good or better. Something natural imitating something unnatural …and yet…imitating nature – as trees do indeed shed bark and form natural woodchip mulch, possibly where the idea came from.

Awesome. lol. Well I like it and so does my mum.

Hot Chips in Alrewas

I took two others but my husband is always telling me off for not just choosing one good picture, so I’m adding them but small, see that’s compromise. Oh it’s not like anyone but me ever reads this anyway.

Hot Chips in Alrewas

Hot Chips in Alrewas

…taken with my mobile phone using the amazing app. camera 360 deg. and lomo cyan / lomo cinematic effects.

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Does anybody know a sign for poop? Anyone? Arlo does.

A few months ago Arlo began to take an unearthly (but possibly normal for a toddler) interest in poop. Niah does lovely well-formed pebble poops and they have always been a source of great fascination for our Ah Bah who can only manage curry splats. He was going through his ‘ball’ phase and performed a bit of clever association in concluding that Niah’s poops do indeed ressemble balls. From that point on he would make a point of always inspecting his brother’s nappies, and indeed is overjoyed when Niah poops in the shower (a phase that seems to be gladly passing with increased bowel control).

My toddlers pick up new words literally every day, but some worlds are really hard for them or difficult to distinguish from other words, or they simply seem to have a resistance to saying them. Poop is one such world. Arlo says ‘shoe’ and ‘two’ (du) but won’t say poo, neither will Niah, it’;s not the ‘p’ as he says ‘pee’ sometimes, although only copying, not in context.

Anyway – I always wanted to do baby-sign and I did try but it just didn’t seem to be going anywhere and so I stopped trying. We did learn a coupl of signs, well actually made them up and they stuck – one for finished, eat and drink. They stopped using them but still knew what them meant. As they reached toddler-hood – somewhere around 14 months I guess, I could see they were desperately tgrying to communicate verbally and decided to ‘toddler sign’ with them. This made more sense to me – to supplement a fast-growing vocabulary with signs and let their little mouths take a break. Plus our brains work in such a way that signing together AND saying is going to make things stick in our heads.

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Ok so I’m really late posting an entry. I was reading the prompts on Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop and couldn’t resist this one. This is my husband in St Ives the weekend before I sent him packing off to America for good…only it was 4 years ago and he wasn’t my husband then, and obviously it wasn’t for good, cause he’s back again now and we have little twin onions. The most beautiful and most sad weekend – I think heaven might be a little like that.

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A bit of soul searching which made me cry today.

Last night I had an epic dream, much like I do every night. I usually wake from the throes of my dream being still emersed in the emotions I was feeling. Within moments the memories of the dream fade but the emotions sometimes linger on for hours, even days. Some days I awake with no recollection of having dreamt at all but then later on, minutes later, hours later… something will trigger the memory of it and it will return to me like the tsunami of a missed lifetime, momentarily taking my breath away.

An epic dream is one that spans days and weeks, one that is layered with so many characters and symbolism that it would be impossible to recall it all. I awake being unsure as to whether I have dreamed that dream before, been to those places before many times…or just this once. Sometimes I confuse the dreams with real events and it takes me a while to unravel the confusion. I have such elaborate dreams I would like to write them down but they fade so fast. Sometimes like today they stay with me though, making more and less sense at the same time as the day moves on.

When I have tried to explain or recall my dreams to Robin he says he understands why I can’t write them down, they are too complex – it would be like trying to write down a month of your life in an hour – but focussing on the detail rather than the events. I wish I could video record my dreams.

Last night I dreamt about trying to fall in love - at least that’s what it felt like superficially. I have had these dreams increasingly. A longing for affection? Not feeling the passion and excitement of a new romance anymore? Is that what they about? All relationships change over time – you get married, have kids, work hard, feel tired all the time. But deep down I knew this wasn’t the theme. I have had more complications in love than I have ever wanted and have no inner desire to have a new and exciting romance, I have everything and everyone I want. I have looked inside myself and I know that for definite. So what is it about? Well, I am delving into my dream memory right now for the images that will enable me to explain what I realised this morning. I had an emotional epiphany from this dream – it upset me actually, and if I don’t write it down I will lose something.

The characters in my dreams are either real people but in the wrong time and place and knowing each other when they shouldn’t; totally made up people just filling in ‘roles’; or amalgamations of people – I don’t know who they are but they are reminiscent of someone or several people. My dream was riddled with characters from my past – friends, kind of. People that I called friends but weren’t quite, most people I’ve ever known actually. The few people that were true and loyal friends were markedly missing, they usually are. I guess they have nothing to teach me.

These ‘friends’ were mostly female and from school, college and university. They were all about the age I had known them at – somewhere in their 20s, and so was I. There were some blokes in the dream, they weren’t exactly friends, and they were older, and I knew them well or they were friends of the ones I knew well. The events of the dream aren’t too important – there was some tattooing, a school trip, primary school children, a lot of recycling (I know why that snuck in), and a lot of cliques.

I remember being really upset, destraught in fact that I was just never a real part of any cliques. I remember trying to explain it to someone – “If there were 5 friends hanging out and everyone had a best friend and needed a partner – it would never be me.” There is some truth in that statement, I have always been a bit of a fish out of water – call me unique, call me odd, call me Billy-no-mates… makes no difference to me. I have also had some of the most amazing best friends throughout my life but I have also always ran away from them before they had a chance to ‘dump’ me so to speak. This is not my epiphany – this I have known for all my life and not been able to change it, and in recent years not particularly wanted to.

In my dream, however, and increasingly over the past few months, I have had dreams where I have awoken feeling horribly rejected and excluded, sometimes remembering a little of the dream that made me feel that way, sometimes just waking with a feeling and an essence of that dream.

This morning I remembered so many of the people and not just the dream, but real events where those people excluded me and made me feel like an outcast. I don’t blame them – too much – we were young, I was awkward, it always took a very determined person to get past my prickliness and get to know me well, those that did were very loyal, and I would do anything for them, except be there in the future – my loss. In that dream there were two particular men who were very important – one was like a weird avant guarde version of my Robin, but he was actually a young Nigel Havers. The other was a very rugged, wind-swept, personally confident but quietly spoken guy who looked a lot like a friend I had at Uni called Bruce (not THE Bruce, another Bruce) but less flaky. What they both had in common was that they were my friends. I remember that I loved them both, my two best  friends who accepted me for what I was. I remember wanting to decide which one I should try to fall in love with, not knowing if that’s what either of them wanted, but knowing they were my friends, that they loved me, and that they weren’t probably that fussed either way. It didn’t make sense, it was all about feelings and only the essence of happenings.

I believe I was in the process of opting for Nigel Havers, I didn’t find him as attractive, but he made me feel secure and wasn’t distracted by the desperate efforts of the other girls. I don’t remember much more about the events of my dream, just the minutia, and the feelings that are lingering on in me today.

After I got out of bed this morning, and had brought the boys down for a nappy change and breakfast – you know the morning bits and bobs, I was in the process of recalling my dream. It just started coming at me. I was wanting to explain it to Robin but knew there was no point – it was a jumble of stuff emerging into my consciousness in no particular order and full of loaded emotions. Then –  I had my epiphany and it brought tears to my eyes…

During my life I have had two long relationships - This one with Robin,  my husband, for 5 years so far, not including the rest of our lives to come; and one previously that lasted 14 years. Both were different kinds of relationships with two people who couldn’t be more different, both were / are full of love and silliness and rockiness…  and both were with my best friends. I realised that I am not married because I want a husband but because I want a best friend who won’t let me down, who wont find another bester friend, who wont betray me, will love me for who I am, and will always put me first. I’m prickly and independent and I tell myself I don’t need anyone – but actually I’m probably the most needy person there is – I need people so much that I push them away because I don’t want to be rejected. I’m so needy I don’t know how I ever managed to hold onto such amazing partners for so long.

There we have it – I’m needy (I know it but it’s like an AA thing – admitting to it is something else), so needy that I married my best friend so that I would always be his best friend. Is that tragic? It may me cry to realise it.

A picture? I’d like to add a picture… hmm…got it!

These people were good good friends from a lifetime ago (solid 80s hairstyles to boot) - Toby, Louise and Andy, Good people.

Still giggling to myself about Nigel Havers after just seeing him on Corrie, funny. I have a cat that looks like Nigel Havers.

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I love love love reading. I have been in love with reading all my life. When I was breast-feeding the twins I read at least one book a week during those long sleepless nights. When I think of a book I really love – It takes me back to a hot day on a beach in Greece, to journeys on the bus to and from work, to a bed in a house I have long since left, to dreams that emerged from those books. I love reading.

Clockwork Dreams

I can only think of three books I didn’t finish and really didn’t rate:

• For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
• The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
• The God Delusion (ahhh – I hated that so much I can’t even explain. Why does Richard Dawkins hate religion with such passion?)

Others may love those books, but they werent for me. We’re all different thank heavens.

My favourite books in no particular order:

The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood

The Heart of The Matter – Graham Greene

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Oscar & Lucinda – Peter Carey

Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood

The whole Maya Angelou autobiography series ( I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings etc)

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

On Beauty- Zadie Smith

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak

Birds Without Wings – Louis de Bernières (have to say I loved it with a passion but I was glad when I got to the end, that book exhausted me)

The Harry Potter Books!!!!! – What an inspiration is JK Rowling?!

…I could go on forever…. BUT one of my all time favourites is A Clockwork Orange. I usually love read big fat books – I hate it when books end, but A Clockwork Orange is teeny tiny.

I really don’t like seeing films made from books, they rarely do them justice and some just miss the point completely – as in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – they miss the beauty of the story – hardly suprising – how can you fit weeks of reading into and hour and a half? However, I only even knew about A Clockwork Orange because of the imfamy of the film, I didn’t actually see the film until a few years later and what a disappointment that was. It missed the point and then some. The underlying theme in A Clockwork orange is that music is evil and warps the teenage mind and makes it do bad things – written in 1962, in a time when people honestly thought that about Rock and Roll. The music in question was Beethoven. The film just seemed to roll right over that theme, an amazing theme that still has relevance today.

Anyway, I read it in a day. I was living in Worcester and staying in student accommodation. I remember it well, it was 1991, I had just started an exciting new relationship. I started reading it, I had bought it a week before, and I just sat there in bed and read it till I finished.  It’s an odd book, you start off not knowing what the hell is going on – it’s like a foreign language, but before long it all makes sense, too much sense!

So here are my pictures for A Clockwork Orange. The boys and me had maybe a little too much fun doing this. I even edited them on my phone using Photoshop Mobile (what a flipping geek) in the early hours of my insomniacal morning. My husband thought we had all gone mad and says I’m trying to turn the twins into drag queens (I’m not but I can think of worse careers…)

Arlo Orange

A Clockwork Niah

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Smarin Design, Stéphanie Marin, mobilier intérieur et extérieur.

Click on the red dots to see some of the most amazing cushion designs ever…

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… well in our back yard anyway.

On Thursday we decided to have a day at home, the weather was fantastic so we played, ate, and generally hung out in the garden.

My house is an old Victorian house, built around 1900, it is long and thin and so is the garden – but it’s not particularly spacious. A couple of years ago my husband decided to landscape the garden and it’s looking good although the grass is taking it’s time to grow back and there is a pile of rubble remaining from where he broke up the old path. While the garden looks loads better now it’s very windy and there’s not a lot of space to pitch a tent – not that I often want to pitch a tent in the garden, but sometimes I might. Thursday was that day.

I opted for the small dome tent because there’s no way a bigger one would fit in the garden now – and we only just about managed to fit the dome tent in, it’s on a slope with one end over the path, and there’s not a lot of clearage to get past it, but it’s pitched. When I brought it out the boys were obviously intrigued. As it started to take shape they realised it was just like the one in their rumpuss room – a little pop-up tent that came with a tunnel, but bigger. They were in it as I was putting it up, roaring with laughter and crawling in and out the sides as well as donutting into them. When it came to putting in the inner tent they were amazed – this was sophisticated stuff! I threw in some sleeping bags and a blanket and we all sat inside. I unzipped the door just leaving the mosquito mesh zipped up and they thought that was great, pressing their faces onto the net and giggling. I asked if they wanted toys in the tent and Arlo nodded so I went and got their basket of soft toys.We sat and played in the tent for a while until they decided they wanted out, I was personally a bit hot in there so quite relieved.

When daddee came out a few hours later he was quite surprised to see the tent and pleased so I suggested that maybe we could have a barbeque and a campout as a sort of practice for ‘the real thing’ whenever that may be. We didn’t do it that night cause we didn’t have all the supplies for a barbecue ready, but on Friday we gathered together what we needed, dusted off the grill, and visited the store for food and coal.

We couldn’t quite agree which was the best way to approach this. Our boys have excellent sleeping habits most of the time and at 6:30 (later sometimes for Niah) we carry them upstairs and place them in bed and leave and they go straight to sleep with scarcely a moan – they like their beds (oh boy it wasn’t always that way it took a lot of hard work to get to this point). Daddee thought we were going to do the same thing but in a tent, I thought we were all going to stay up for the barbecue. We decided to do it daddee’s way this time – I took Niah into the tent and lay down with him, after a while when he still wasn’t asleep daddee brough Arlo in and did the same. We all lay there for ages, eventually Arlo dropped off.

Niah closed his eyes a little later and I was fairly sure he was asleep – but as soon as I moved he woke up and no matter how hard I tried he wouldn’t sleep again (he knew I was going to do a runner as soon as he did I think). I carried him out and went and got the stroller, brought it into the garden and lay him in that, making a little den over it with blankets like we did in Spain – I was fairly sure he would sleep that way.

I rocked that stroller for ages, daddee prepared the grill.

Nope, not sleeping, and when he started throwing his comforter out I knew the battle was over and I hadn’t won. He wasn’t upset he was happily chit chatting under the blanket, but he had no intention of sleeping.

About an hour into the ‘campout’ we saw movement in the tent too, Arlo was wandering about inside! Also not at all upset, probably quite bemused.

We decided it was a good first time effort but it was time to cave and put them to bed which we did. They were overjoyed to be in their cots and went out like lights. Daddee and me went back downstairs and carried on with the barbecue (which was lovely!). We decided to try again tomorrow.

Well tomorrow came and this time we were doing it my way. It was the weekend so we got up late (no surprise as they had gone to sleep late) and had a very late extended breakfast. We had a late (4pm ish) lunch, and so dinner could be late too – all part of the plan. I prepared the food while daddee showered the boys and put them in pjs and wellies. Then daddee prepared the grill in the garden with Arlo. Niah helped me chop by supervising from his hip sling – we made up a new chopping song. We listened to Arlo caused havoc in the garden and terrorise his daddee. Then the boys sat at the table in the garden and did some colouring and stickers while we cooked the food on the barbecue. We had a lovely late evening dinner – 8pm ish (not late for us but late for the boys). After we had eaten the boys were getting very tired so we took them into the tent and this time sat with them lying in our laps. Daddee had his iphone to play with, mine was flat so I grabbed the only reading material handy – a Waybuloo comic (you have to understand I don’t like Waybuloo, I find it creepy). I actually read the whole thing and did all the sticker activities, getting so engrossed in it I carried on after they had both fallen asleep.

With the boys taken care of me and daddee went back out and sat around in the garden enjoying a drink and some banter.

They slept for maybe a couple of hours and then Niah woke up. He has been cutting his molars for a few days and hasn’t been his usual chipper self and when he woke up he was pretty pissed. I whisked him out and cuddled him for ages. Daddee persuaded me to put him to bed and then he became hysterical. He did eventually go to sleep – I know the crying was all about being over tired. Arlo stayed in the tent until about midnight when I went out and scooped him up and took him to bed too, he didn’t even wake up.

This morning they woke up at a reasonable time and were happy chirpy little souls. Arlo’s having a nap on the sofa with daddee right now – and me…I’m back in the tent where Niah is sleeping like a log and has been for over an hour… he crawled in himself and lay down; he looks like he’s never been so comfy in his little life. What’s that all about? Weirdo.

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It’s wrong to eat lamb.

Actually I think it’s wrong to eat meat period, but I don’t preach about being vegetarian, it’s just what I am. Many meat eaters over the years have desperately tried to break down my convictions or preach at me, but vegetarian is what I am. I was, however, a meat eater for 20 years of my life, half of it – I loved meat but started to have ethical issues with it as an adolescent.

I had horrible eating habits as a child, hating vegetables and cheese – and this in the days before meat substitutes were easily available, so becoming a veggie was a slow process in some ways. In other ways it wasn’t. At the age of 20 I was so uncomfortable with consuming meat that I just stopped. I remember the time and place perfectly – I was at uni and sitting on my bed in my student house, I made myself a corned beef sandwich – one of my all time favourite foods, and I looked at it and just about retched. I made myself eat it and felt truly ill. I can’t explain why but that’s how it happened.

I fell off the wagon a few times over the next few years – a sausage roll on the beach at Weymouth, tuna fish took a while to give up, and a late night lamb kebab after a night’s hefty clubbing and drinking.

Each time I hated myself.

My children are vegetarian and will be until they can choose to eat meat. My husband is vegetarian and so was my ex-fiance – both of them because of me – they realised that a) if they wanted meat they would have to cook it themselves, b) that I’m a great cook and they didn’t really want it after a while, and c) after you haven’t eaten meat for some time your body doesn’t want it anymore.

I am an ethical vegetarian for the reasons of animal welfare, but more recently because of environmental issues. This is the closest I come to preaching – writing down my own reasons on my own blog. If people bring it on I’ll bring it back, but what people choose to eat is their own business. Yes I do wish everyone was vegetarian and I do think that vegetarians are more humane and compassionate people in general.

The lamb issue is different however. It’s wrong to eat lamb. I didn’t just decide to blog about this for no particular reason today, something spurred me on to it.

Every day I receive so much ridiculous junk mail and flyers that I throw straight in the recycling and at least 70% of it is flyers / menus from local restaurants. The ethics of this horrendous waste of paper and generation of litter is a while other issue – but tonight I received a menu from a new restaurant. I was amazed to see the following offered as ‘specials’:

• Paya (lamb’s trotters) £6.95
• Half lamb roasted £65
• Full lamb roast £110
• Lamb leg roast £40
• Lamb stew £18.45
• Lamb Karahi (lamb on the bone) £17.50
• Nehari (a piece of lamb) £6.95

It seems the credit crunch didn’t affect the lamb-eaters.

Eating lamb is plain wrong and here is why…

1. Baby lamb comes from a sheep that is 6 – 10 weeks old – YES WEEKS!
2. Spring lamb is 5 – 6 months old.
3. When people refer to mutton they refer to a sheep that is old – but it is actually only over 1 or 2 years, while sheep naturally live for about 15 years.
4. Wool only accounts for less that 10% of a sheep’s profitability, most of it is from lambing.
5. It is not unusual for sheep to get pregnant and produce 3 or 4 lambs a year, each pregnancy is 5 months (they have 1 – 2 lambs at each birth). They are pregnant pretty much all year round and yet their babies never grow up.
6. Much lambing is carried out indoors because sheep naturally would only give birth once a year in the spring, we force them to lamb all year round and lambs born in the winter will not survive unless they are lambed inside, so it increases intensive indoor farming.
7. Almost 30% of wool in the UK comes from slaughtered sheep, usually lambs (if it says lamb’s wool …)
8. Some people say that they eat lamb because mutton is tough, bear in mind mutton comes from young sheep, you know this is rubbish… and in many countries people prefer mutton. So is it perhaps that its so much quicker and easier to breed lambs and so much quicker and easier to slaughter them? Who knows?
9. Lambs, when slaughtered, are usually still breast-feeding.

And if you still aren’t convinced…

...I was going to post some links to awfully graphic sites here, but decided not to, my mom might be reading this, she’s not vegetarian but she wouldn’t contemplate eating lamb. If you want to know more it’s not hard to find out. If you like the taste of lamb and don’t care that it’s wrong, fine, carry on.

I won’t be eating at Ulfat’s desi grill.

Arlo & Niah my beautiful, vegetarian, (almost) 18 month old twins.

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Gmail – Joint unions public meeting: NO MORE ACADEMIES – DEFEND STATE EDUCATION – booperkit@gmail.com.

I may not be teaching anymore at the moment, but I am getting my fat arse down there! Who’s joining me?

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We took the twins on their first ever holiday to Pego in Spain when they were just over 5 months old, it’s a smallish Spanish village where my parents have a town house. We took them on their 3rd ever holiday to exactly the same place, exactly one year later when they were a little over 17 months old – we came back last week in fact. The 1st holiday was a holiday of several firsts. We started weaning them, they started crawling – Arlo went there as a non-crawler and came back as a crawler. It was their first holiday, their first plane flight, and when they started to sleep in separate rooms. It was the first time they experienced the ocean, mountains, a barbeque, and the first time they stayed up till 2am. They saw parades, festivals and fireworks. This year they returned as fully fledged toddlers who eat anything and everything proficiently with spoon and forks, have been walking for almost half their little lives, have been on a much longer flight to America, have big boy cots in their own rooms, are no longer breast fed, and have a quickly growing vocabulary. How much has changed in one short year. I am lucky enough to have a massive photo library of their lives and so on the topic of ‘holidays’ I realised I have a lot of ‘then and now’ pictures. So here goes…

Niah's first yoghurt

A yoghurt profissionado

Little Nipper Arlo at the municipal pool

Little Nipper Niah on the balcony (same suits still fit!)

Arlo with his first taste of chocolate

Arlo with his first fully fledged chocolate icecream

Beach late evening, introduction to the ocean

Beach late evening building sand castles with daddee

Arlo's first dip in a mini-sized paddling pool

Chilly skinny dipping in the pool with grandpa (and yes them can fill it themselves now)

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We have 4 cats and every evening my husband goes out into the garden and lays down 4 tin bowls and shares out a tin of cat food between them for their evening meal. It’s basically a head count, check they’re all here.

Every morning, well when the weather is fine enough, I take the twins into the garden, either for breakfast or just a wander around or a play. Every morning I pick up the empty licked-clean bowls and stack them and place them on the cat house roof. Yesterday morning Arlo, my 17 month old banshee twin, came out in front of me as I carried out the breakfast tray and leaned down, stacked the bowls one by one, and carried over the pile to the cat house, placing it carefully on the roof.

It never ceases to amaze me the little things that they see and observe carefully every day, do they learn more from the freedom to roam or from focussed activity? Both are important for sure.

30 minutes later, I was working on my netbook, keeping a casual eye over their activities, knowing full well they were digging out plants, eating dirt and rocks, pulling off leaves from the bushes and chasing the cats, I heard “chink, chink”, I peered over the table and saw that they had got the cat bowls down, laid them in a sort of circle and were sitting feet to feet around them tossing tiny pebbles into them in turn. They played at this for about 10 minutes while I sneakily peaked on, and them Arlo charged off and Niah collected up the bowls and toddled off to return them to the roof of the cat house. Funny little weirdos.

Today we went through the daily breakfast menu. I ask them what they want and I sometimes get a nod or a shake of the head. I get the suspicious feeling that they are humouring me and don’t really care what they get (apart from Arlo’s toast ‘dost!’ – that’s quite necessary to start the day, like mama’s cup of tea). We settled upon vegemite on toast (brown bread), pear, and malties (chex as daddee calls them), with a nice cup of water. I don’t use baby bowls for cereal, I use tiny cooking ramekins – and just after I had finished my (very healthy slimming) cereal they both picked up their almost empty bowls and drank the last drips and clogs of milk and soggy chex from the bottom. Ummm…. they don’t get that from me, I never drink the milk out of the bottom of the bowl when ‘no one’ is looking, not every day, honest…not me…well, maybe just…nope, not me.

slurp, yum

what?

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When I was 35 weeks pregnant I developed Bells Palsy. I diagnosed myself. It was horrible. In the words of my husband “It was hard coming to terms with the fact that you might be like that forever (it’s like having a stroke in your face – you dribble, slur your words, and can’t eat properly), but it made my heart go out to you, it was an external reflection for the world of how hard it was on your inside” In my memory the worst thing was the lack of photos of me with the babies when they were first born. I looked horrible, I felt worse, and everyone knew it. The few photos I have don’t even begin to show how bad things were, but I can now at last look at them without too much pain. They are all I have and special for what they are.

Mama & Niah - 1 day old

Mama breast-feeding Arlo, Nana with Niah - 2 days old

Over a year later and my boys are my life.

Mama with the boys at the Safari Park - 14 months old

The next two photos are my boys I took this week. We have fun. They are amazing. There was a light at the end of the tunnel and it is very very beautiful. Nothing more to say.

Arlo painted the shed - 16 months old

Niah at his new garden table - 16 months old

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Birmingham is trying for the ‘City of Culture’ award & yesterday we spent the day out experiencing Birmingham’s culture at it’s best. We went to the Vintage Fair at the Custard Factory. Their web site is here.

Here are a few links to peruse:

Guardian City of Culture Finalists

Liverpool City of Culture 2008

Derry’s bid

Birmingham’s bid

Vintage Fair Facebook Page

About the Vintage Fair

I feel passionately about culture and art, and even more passionate about Birmingham, the good and the bad. Birmingham I feel is a very real city. One of my biggest bug bears about Birmingham has been it’s inability to sell itself. The Artsfest, which I love, has gone from strength to weakness, rarely sufficiently advertised, same with the Vintage Fair. Our best features are ignored or hidden, Take my hood (lol) the Balti belt, or balti triangle. Several years ago a largish amount of money was invested into our culturally diverse and yet very deprived area. The plan was to turn this inner city sprawl into a tourist attraction. The government / council threw down some plant pots, pretty iron fences etc… then the money stopped. What they didn’t plough money into was street cleaners. We are incredibly over-populated in this area and even is most people are clean and respectful individuals, it only takes a few (many of whom are drive-through businesses dropping off their garbage on our streets), the make an incredible mess, mess means unhygienic conditions, rats, disease (no offence against rats, I love rats but rats the size of cats walking confidently up your street in the middle of the day while you are out walking your toddlers is a little unnerving. No one is going to come here to see plant pots. They will come here to taste the best balti in the world and buy from the most amazing selection of fabric and gold shops that can be found ( or something like that). A few weeks ago I heard about a ‘book bash’ for children at the newly reopened Aston Hall. I wanted to take the children. Could I find a schedule of events? …anywhere? The website said ask at the library, I asked at Solihull and Shirley libraries and they knew nothing, “go ask at a Birmingham library” – you know why I don’t go to our local library? I have better books in my loft, really. We don’t even have a swimming pool or fitness centre anymore even though they were always packed.

I guess I have two points here -

1. Birmingham doesn’t advertise anything well. I have no idea why. I wish it was my job.

2. The best bits of Birmingham are disregarded. PLEASE don’t spend anymore money of pointless sculptures in our city centre and having people clean up the streets before you even drop anything - instead could we have street cleaners once a day, once a week even in this area? Could we give a paltry amount of money to local businesses here and help them tidy up their store frionts? Could we maybe have a parking ramp? I know several vacant lots where it could go.

I summed up how I felt in this post on the Birmingham City of Culture web site the other day, where I replied to another poster.

anon

2 people liked this.

Matthews for lunch (Custard Factory)

Matthews for lunch (Custard Factory)

Matthews for lunch (Custard Factory) @ The Vintage Fair

Retro Skateboarding @ The Vintage Fair

Retro Skateboarding @ The Vintage Fair

Retro Skateboarding @ The Vintage Fair

The Vintage Fair

Retro Skateboarding @ The Vintage Fair

The Vintage Fair

The Food Market, Victoria Square

The Food Market, Victoria Square

…did I tell you about the great cupcakes at the vintage fair? Why did I not photograph them? (Homer-style drool) thanks to The Tea Boutique.

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…the dinosaur says ‘raaaaaarrrrrr!’ is recently added to our repertoire of animal (et al) noises and actions to join the dog, cat, cow, sheep, pig, cockerel, fish, horse, butterfly, snake, crocodile, flower, star, brush, poo, nana, daddee, arlo, niah, cup, apple… there might be more, every day a new one, toddlers are so cool … I digress. We started off the day with our basket of dinosaurs. They have 28 dinosaurs (including prehistoric mammals, a few dragons and lizardy thing), some inherited from my childhood (I always wanted to be a paleontologist) and some are new. Arlo likes to line them up facing him on the table or a tray. He likes to make them battle each other, and feed them raisins. He also likes to post them over the child gate to daddee’s office or into the cats’ water bowl. Niah likes the dinosaur hand puppets my dad bought them and charges around with them on his little paws. We did dinosaur play this morning because we were going to head out to the T Rex exhibition in Birmingham later. We packed lunch and drinks, grabbed daddee’s cash card and set out, first tidying up the morning mess, but leaving the basket of dinosaurs out for when we got home.

My snappy snap camera took a dive last week, and I didn’t want to haul the big camera around with me, so all the pics and videos I took were snapped on my camera, not helped by the dim mood lighting and the fact that I was holding onto one of both of the twins at any one time. In other words they are a bit crap, but they catch the memories. There was the predictable group of school children in there and Niah tried to disappear amongst them more than once (“oh ok everyone’s going that way, alright I’m there…”).

"woo woo"

The stuffed wolf elicited the obvious “woo woo woo” dog noises on entry. I wonder if they knew it was once a real ‘dog’ or thought it was a stuffed dog, or just a really really quiet & still dog in a big glass box?

Arlo is not entirely comfortable with the experience so far

I sat them in front of a TV screen for 5 minutes where there was some docu-saur stuff playing so that they would gradually notice the dinosaurs in the adjoining room, rather than me take them straight in, I expected Arlo to find it all a bit much. Sure enough as soon as he glanced around and saw 30 foot animals screeching and whipping their tails around he was petrified. He didn’t cry so much as moan, shake, and hold onto me for dear life. Niah just sat and watched the TV and then casually climbed off the bench and wandered off to find some buttons to press.

Where's the technology, I need buttons and flashy lights

We sat for a while watching from a distance and looking at the somewhat smaller but still very realistic looking dinosaurs in the first room until Arlo seemed calmer.

These ones were feathery like birds and kinda cute (that's my scientific explanation)

On entering the dimly lit den of T Rex, Niah wasn’t even slightly fazed, Arlo took about 5 minutes to let go of me then very tentatively moved closer. T Rex was the only model not moving, thank heavens cause he was huge and would probably have scared the bejeezuz out of me to had he started going.

Arlo quickly became more confident. I received several comments about how brave they were, and indeed saw other children a little older who were very frightened and clingy all the way through. Other children of a similar age to the boys were in strollers and not really being included in the experience. I’m sure some people thought I was cruel bringing them, or else mad letting them tear around.

Arlo gains confidence

I would like to mention that the museum staff are outstandingly helpful and love children, making us feel very welcome and talking to boys like the intelligent little things they are (weird but smart).

A very sensory experience

I realised that nightmares will ensue from this trip.

The exhibition was small but extremely well presented and thought out, not too much ‘blah blah blah’, mostly good old ‘wow look at that’, so it was perfectly suitable for any age, as long as you are prepared for a little anxiousness to start with.

A very confident Arlo watching T Rex tear pieces of flesh off his mate

Arlo was more scared when he went on the merry go round at the mall last week.

Some of it was quite gory, but my boys are old enough to understand that ‘the big dog is eating his dinner’, that got a knowing nod from both of them.

Nom nom nom

There’s a doobie little play area where they can launch lego around, and lots of ‘do touch’ signs, so we did; also a bunch of books to look at with the children, and comfy seats for adults and mini-me’s.

A pre-lego launching moment

Some lego launching had begun very surreptitiously at this pooint

www.flickr.com/groups/t_rex

When we left I thought they would be starving because they didn’t really eat any lunch, they were too distracted by the food market where we attempted to eat (Birmingham often has open street theme markets – like the German Christmas Fair). I stopped to buy some chinese noodles and as I turned round to get my purse – poof, both zonked, and they stayed that way for an hour! My boys rarely nap for an hour. They woke up at 4pm just as we were arriving home and were really hungry – and the noodles were still warm, and very welcome by all of us.

zzzzzzzzz, mama gets a nice peaceful latte for once

Great day out, good for about an hour, reasonable prices, baby changing facilities. I’ll be going again and taking the daddee, he’s so jealous..

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I came across Sleep is for the Weak Blog‘s Writing Workshop and decided to give it a go. I have had a super busy week and not a lot of time to blog…BUT I was out with the boys in the rain and the mud and the puddles and the mud and oh the mud… today and I was thinking about nicknames, as you do.

Puddles in Tolkien's park

I realised that nicknames evolve over time and change, some stick, some don’t. I wondered whether the nicknames the boys have now will stick or not. I know of many people who have nicknames that began in childhood – think Rain Man (Raymond).

So, anyway, one of the prompts for this week was simply the word ‘time’ so I decided to write a short and simple post about our boys nicknames. My twin boys are almost 17 months old now – wow! I made some mind maps – am I missing my teaching days? No…but I sure miss the mind maps!

Niah

evolution of a peanut

Arlo

AH BAH!

The Twins

Our boys

So it’s like this:

When the boys were born we had already named them . This was important to me, we used to talk to them, they had personalities already which are still recognisable now. We didn’t tell the family their names because you know…people might have had an ‘opinion’ on our choice of names for the unborn, but after they were born, well to say your name is rubbish is just kind of rude. As it happens everyone loves their names (incidentally Arlo is a very old Anglo Saxon name inspired by a book by mom told me about, and Niah is a made up name – a combination of Zephaniah and Noah – both of which are meaningful, a whole other story).

Arlo became Arlo Barlow within days of being born, within a few weeks my dad started calling him Arli Barley and from then Barley stuck for several months, this naturally shortened to Ah Bah, which is still used daily, and his brother calls him Bah Bah, as do I sometimes. Barley Sauce came out of this somehow and when we went on holiday to Spain when they were 5 months old we put them in Little Nipper swimsuits and hats and DJ Barley Sauce and Fat Boy Sauce were born. Donut refers to Arlo’s donut -like persona. To donut, doing a donut, donutting are all now common verbs in our family. My mom did a donut in House of Fraser the other week cause she was wearing silly shoes. Auntie Tiff did a donut straight into a ditch a few months ago when I alerted her to  the strange eyebrows on a horse while on a countryside walk (Auntie Tiff was visiting from the states and not used to our wonky countryside paths or weird looking horses). Harbo is a variation of Harhoo from In The Night Garden. Crab refers to Arlo covered in red-orange paint, another one that stuck for a while.

Crab

Melon Head refers to his very melon shaped head, inherited from his dad. Ah Bah (Bah Bah) has stuck.

Niah was first known as Spider Monkey because he was a skinny little thing all clingy like a monkey and all arms and legs like a spider when he was born. Monkey Duck came into being when they were 11 months visiting family in the USA, Niah invented a bizarre Monkey Duck Face (which my dad has on a T Shirt). Niah will do that face to order still.

Monkey Duck Face

Niah Guya and Ni Guy were just natural progression, play on word names. MC Ni Guy came about during the affore mentioned Little Nipper suit thingy (they looked like baby versions of the chemical brothers).

Block Rocking Beats

The porcelain punk also appeared on the first Spanish holiday when I used to spike his hair in a very cool fashion for a 5 month old – he looks still like a porcelain doll.

Porcelain Punk

Iggle Piggle refers to Niah’s blanket fetish and Pencil is to do with his great ability to pencil roll. Coconut head describes his coconut shaped and tufted head and Peanut is also from Spain when he was constantly wired and I called his cacachuete energetica con vitaminas addicionales (which was a very hefty nickname for a baby) shortened to peanut. Peanut is used universally throughout the family, I call him Ni Guy as well, me.

The twin names Onions and Minions – I have no idea where they came from but it was something to do with them being mommy’s little evil doers, carrying out my every bidding, and The Men is their daddee’s term for them, also of unknown origin.

I thought it was fascinating how all these names evolved, actually they all get used fairly regularly and they both know who we refer to when we use them. I wonder what they’ll call me when they learn to talk properly, I can’t wait to find out, bet it’s better than what they call their dad.

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Really just testing my blog app on my phone. Went to a lovely wedding party last night and we were supposed to be camping over but one of the barns freed up and so here we are. Rob’s having a snory lie n and I’m wondering where I can get paracetamol and a bar of chocolate from…

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So I know that !BooPerFooD! and Veggie BLW are still ion a state of disrepair, but I at least need to get !BooPerFunK! Hair & That a decent home… actually just an excuse because setting up blogs is so much more fun that migrating blogs. Anyway… gonna do a different theme for this one, don’t have Flash yet on my new mac so I’ll stick with WP and check out the latest doobie themes.

Boop in the sadly missed island store...

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…I photo blogged my day today. I do this fairly often but not with the intention of then writing about it. Actually my days out like this are all about me getting time to think.

Me pondering...hmm...

If I could blog as a went on long walks I would blog some great stuff, but I don’t, I just push the stroller and talk to the boys, practice talking with them, sing with them, until they fall asleep and then I think.

Fast asleep

Thinking is something I don’t get enough time to do these days unless I am walking. Even long bus and car rides tend to involve talking to the boys or, in the case of the bus, talking to endless people about the boys “yes they are twins” “yes they are cute” “yes they are good”.

My favourite house on this walk...I will one day own this house ;)

Very little clearage and a lot of scraping from the stroller (overpacked?)

So, I go on long walks – 30 minutes to 1 hour to get somewhere, time spent somewhere, and then the same amount of time to get home. When I go out for the day with the boys I am always out for between 4 and 6 hours. Most of the day is spent talking to them, getting one or both or them walking around, having lunch, coffee, library visits, supervising their playing etc… but the walk there and back is mostly mine, usually.

Niah getting under my feet and the wheels

So today we were off to the park for a picnic. It started out fairly chilly this morning so went out with a light jacket and my good walking Uggs that I bought in Minnesota that are pretty fleecy. Within 5 minutes of leaving it was warming up and by the time we reached the park it was boiling.

opposite directions - free at last

The boys weren’t dressed up too snuggly but they did have wellies on and warm hats. I have recently discovered that Arlo will wear a hat without any trouble at all if he gets to choose said hat. And sure enough, as the heat increases and Niah and me have shed ours, he refuses to remove his. Today’s choice is his Minnesota Vikings number. I love that hat, they both have one courtesy of the Winter family across the pond.

Sammiche detritus

It’s a 40 + minute walk to this particular park, and the first order of arrival is always food. Today’s offerings involved guacamole sammiches, boiled eggs still in the shells, and a bottle of salad cream, accompanied with a snack pot of dried fruit and a bottle of water. They did a good job on the food, but why does Artlo insist on taking a bite of each piece of sandwich? And why is Niah so happy to eat all the pre-chewed leftovers? Mystery to me – must be a twin thing.

Always time for more sammiches

So we were eating away and the boys were being very civilised on the whole. This is a fairly average day out for us. So well there were two things on my mind that spent some time pondering over. One was my blogging in general, and the other was more personal but very related to my feelings about blogging at the moment.

Eating out of the snack pot nicely...for now

My ponderances about my blog were simple – the usual ‘how do I get more people to read it?’ Of course that covers ‘how do I physically get more people to read it?’, but also encompasses ‘how do I make it so that more people want to read it?’. The main issue I have is that my blog(s) are all over the shop. In the last few months I have got them physically more or less in one place, at least the ones I’m most bothered about. I even managed to finally migrate everything off the annoying-in-so-many-ways HubPages and close that account completely. Still I have stuff on BabyCentre, most of it has been transferred over to WordPress but there are bits and bobs remaining. I still have my WordPress.com stuff out there and incomplete, a whole blog devoted to 3D design in Second Life which is totally out of date, a Blogger Blog that is years old and I can’t seem to delete completely. There is also the matter of the incomplete Joomla CMS site and the Flash site I set up and forgot to renew, they are in the ether now I guess. I used to have a cool Yahoo recipe site, and several educational web sites I designed while I was teaching, heaven knows if they still exist or not. What a trail we leave… In terms of content they really are all over the shop though. My content is very varied and I sometimes wonder if that is a problem. I have the old veggie recipe blog !BooPerFooD! and its little sister the Vegetarian BLW blog. My Central blog was just supposed to be a kind of hub for these and others to come, and a resting place for any other old rubbish I posted. However it kind of took over.

Little Wellies

I tried to focus on the mummy-type stuff, be it perhaps more on the contentious side of topics than average. I do want my blog to make myself and any others who wander through, think, not just enjoy. But I can’t help the fact that other topics creep in, it’s just me. To be a mummy blogger do I have to blog about being a mummy or just be a mummy? I’m not entirely sure, but if its the latter then it covers most blogs out there I guess, most people are parents eventually. I look at some of the really popular blogs out there and the most successful are undoubtedly fairly narrow in their field. They stick to a meme or theme fairly well, or fit nicely within a genre, their fans will pop back again and again and will know what they expect to find. I’m not just talking about MAD blogs here at all, all sorts. I’m sure there are many exceptions to this but I don’t personally know any.

uh oh - what happened to the snackpot?

I expect that is and will continue to be an issue with my blog and indeed with myself (come to that later). I guess what I’m trying to say is – I can join as many MAD networks as there exist, and I know loads of ways to interweave my blogs and Flickr, Facebook and Twitter blah blah blah. Getting people to see it is an ongoing process and I don’t have anything special to offer and I’ve not been accidentally ‘discovered’ so I won’t get any notoriety that way. All I can do is keep on doing what I’m doing and that’s fine and seems to be working ok. But as far as my content is concerned – do I narrow down my subject matter? or continue to be jack of all trades, master of none?

so much for the snackpot...

I think in my heart I know that is part of what I am. I am an expert in some things but they are not necessarily things I want to blog about just now, doesn’t been I won’t, just not right now. However, One of the things I am good at and passionate about is writing, so maybe that’s the meme, it’s just about writing, it doesn’t necessarily matter what. Maybe the people who will ultimately carry on reading my blog are also people that just like a good read and aren’t hooked on any particular subject matter – like me, that’s what I do. I like styles of writing, humour and visual asthetics. And there are styles of all three I equally don’t like. I suppose for now I’ll just as ever be true to what I am and carry on blogging my little heart out, I don’t know how long I can spin out this whole SAHM thing so I’d just best appreciate the opportunity to be able to do it at all. If I return to teaching my days will be numbered, teachers rarely get time for anything other than teaching and somewhere I have to fit in being a twin mom and having a poo.

el scorcio

The other ponderance was about me personally, but it’s related to my blogging in many ways. I have never been a confident soul about myself. I have never believed people like me for who I am, except my mom and dad and 2 other people in my life – my husband and my ex-fiance. They always loved me for who I am. but (maybe wrongly) I don’t count my folks cause they are my parents and any normal parents love their kids for who they are (see ode to my folks). My husband however has chosen to start a family with me and spend his life with me. My ex chose to spend 14 years of his life with me (and the rest if he’d had it his way). Those two people without the parental exception are the only people I’ve ever believed to love me unconditionally for who I am.

Afternoon tea at the CornerStone Cafe

This has been a huge problem because it prevented me from getting as close to people as I could have. I have had loads of close friends over the years but I would always at some point simply walk away. I always walked away from them before they had the chance to walk away from me. I always kept just that extra iota of distance because I didn’t want to be rejected. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know where this behaviour started. I know I do it with my husband too – when the going gets tough – I’ll try and make you show your true colours – go on prove you never really loved me. A bit heavy perhaps but true.

making friends

I am getting much better at being less paranoid, knowing that when people don’t get in touch or return calls sometimes its possibly for reasons other than they hate me. I am improving but deep down inside this part of me exists and the relation this has to blogging is pretty straightforward. I write and if I don’t get feedback I think a) no one read it b) no one liked it c) no one likes me. Every single time. What am I like? Well, I took some steps to tackle this stupid paranoia by installing Google analytics so I can see not only how many people visit but how long they stay yadda yadda. It’s better than I thought by loads, but still… I doubt.

Chillin' on the way home

Every week I enter a photo blog post into THE GALLERY and every week I have to check my site at least once an hour to see if I have any comments, and every time I don’t have any I think ‘is my post that crap or are they just seeing its me and not coming over?’ Last week I got so fed up waiting for posts I forgot all about it – the next day I had a very respectable number of really nice comments so I was indeed being stupid.

Quiet reading in the garden while mama writes her blog

I really hope that I don’t also end up walking away from my blogging because I think that too might reject me first in the long run. Oh well, in the words of a highly educated racist I had the misfortune to encounter in Facebook last weekend while researching for my Racists are Great post “who is this girl with her hai guise and her blogs? Doesn’t she know it’s not 2003 anymore?”

2003 was a great year!

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This week’s meme on Sticky Fingers is Still Life. I don’t take many still life photos but one picture I took a few weeks ago sprang to mind because I really liked the depth of field I captured.

Ultimate Seitan Sausage

I decided to set up a little studio with my camera, tripod, and a lamp, and gathered together some bits and bobs. I didn’t think too hard about what to photograph as the task was to take an ‘inanimate object and make it interesting’. I grabbed things with reflections, little details and funky colours. I took about 40 shots in all. My husband, an experienced and trained photographer narrowed in down to 15, and I choose 7 to upload to Flickr. It was a challenge, thanks to Tara for the inspiration because although I am an avid and crazy photographer, still life never appealed to me. It’s funny because I used to quite like painting and drawing still life…still I’m definitely a portrait person at heart, so this was really cool and I loved doing it. I had to post all the final shots because it was too hard to narrow it down to one for me. I’m so lame. I hope someone pops over and gives me critique.

The pictures are just about me, a few items that are my trademarks, a chunky necklace, huge shades, and my veedub. I looked around the room and saw these things that are always there and thought ‘they’ll do’ they are as good as anything else and they are me.

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or

…Witty Comebacks from Intelligent ‘normals’

I so like calling non-racists ‘normal’. Racists aren’t the only weird people obviously, there are also paedophiles, rapists, serial killers and those who eat eccessive meat. However, they are possibly the easiest to confuse and beat in battle.

“And like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation.” – Kent Brockman (and Jamie Wakeford)

So…following on from yesterday’s entry… Racists are great… I would like to troll through some of the brilliantly witty (and mostly correctly spelled / punctuated / basically sensical) responses. I had a lot of nice comments about yesterday’s entry, sadly most people don’t actually leave those comments on the blog (hmm…guys!) but I had some feedback and that made me happy. No racists have made any comments whatsoever - I suspect they were either too busy getting their flags out to read it, or couldn’t understand what it was about – probably off bragging down the pub to their mates how someone put their clever insults on a interweb page and made them faymus.

kindly donated and created by Jamie Wakeford

Back to the job in hand… with a special thanks to Andrea who set up a great Facebook group -

Do your research before you start complaining about immigrants

- and documented many great responses and offered to share them with me. Cheers mate! To set this in context, these people were going out of their way to be racist, and even if some of the comments don’t see very bad, they were being targeted in a very malicious way. These are all genuine and undoctored except for removal of names. Some of the responses are less witty than despairing, but they all made me laugh. It is genuinely quite impressive to see people be calm and witty in response to the 3000th post stating that it is now against the law to fly a flag. I have resorted myself to simply saying ‘moron’ more than once instead, guess I’m not so patient with ignorant idiots.

Stop The BNP!

Originally uploaded by Ray (Sparra) Everingham

*****************

Stupid Racist: “Since when was serving coffee that highly skilled we need to import workers?!”

Normal Person: I dunno. “When did the BNP become popular?”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “Just a quick thought you have roughly 3000 members and shout about it “I Was Born In The Uk So Why Do I Have Less Rights Then Immigrants” have a few more!!! i wonder how many of your 3000 members have a full time job and are not students or graduates without a job i would imagine a low percentage!!!”

Normal Person: “Just a quick thought, there’s a spelling mistake in the title of that group, so I would imagine the Admin’s not a student.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “another group of left wing homo’s”

Normal Person 1: “For the last time: I’m not gay. I’m asexual! Though you can get gay asexuals, I’m more of a straight one. Also, you could claim that I’m left-wing, and I am. But only just. Where did you reach the conclusion where we’re all left-wing, and all gay? Anything extremely racist, and you’re out. Because I is an admin”

Normal Person 2: “I’m central left as well just like Andrew up there and how does being left automatically make you gay? I’d love to know how you worked that out! ”

Normal Person 3: “It’s because we like everyone to be equal. And as this includes gays, we must by definition be gay ”

*****************

Normal Person: “anyone seen Abdul about???? sorting me a car bomb out for the weekend you see???”

Stupid Racist: “the closest that tw*t will come to a car bomb is a box of matches and a lighter”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “av jus cum from de corner shop to get sum cigs & dey asked me 4 id bloody p*kis!”

Normal Person: “Maybe if you scooped off that fake face you call ‘makeup’ and took ya chav hair style away, You wouldn’t need ID ”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “ENGLAND no no now its Polastan”

Normal Person: “Oh, you’re so clever, look how you merged the two words together! Someone give him a f**king cookie. It’s okay. BRITS WILL HAVE THEIR TRUE REVENGE WHEN THEY STEAL ALL THE CLEANING JOBS IN WARSAW!!”

*****************

Added to Stupidest quote wins a prize thread:

Stupid Racist: “not everyones a racist, infact its racist to pursume everyone in this group and others like it are racist”

Resulting conversation:

Stupid Racist: “dont see why its stupid,just a slap in the face to all those naive kids that say people who joins groups like this are racist,im not a racist but i agree with the group name”

Normal Person: “what”

Stupid Racist: “the first comment that someone wrote as a ‘stupid quote’ is something i wrote”

Normal Person: “F**k me, you’re actually admitting to that?”

Stupid Racist: “what was stupid about it apart from the spelling of some words”

Normal Person: “Uh, that is was wrong? You’re not a racist if you presume everyone within a group is a racist. This group isn’t a race.”

Stupid Racist: “never said the group was a race,but the type of conversation and disscussions going on in this group and other groups would make some people think that all that join them are racist,because of some certain words used.”

Normal Person: “That isn’t racist! presuming something isn’t racist unless it’s directed at a race!”

Stupid Racist: “the race been the people in the group,the racism is stereotyping the people in these groups,we aren’t all racists”

The comeback was deleted but involved much swearing and exasperation.

*****************

Stupid Racist: “I think its time the law was that evry fuka stays in there own country n if ur country is pooor then tough f*ck thats ur problem! Y is it that britain aint evn aloud 2 b f*ckin british anymore?? It mks me angry n sorry but i aint racist far frm it but if ya dnt like how we live fuk off bk 2 were u cum frm yea!!!”

Normal Person: “…any deeper and she would have started on about Aborigines”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “Then don’t f*ching look at it mate!!! It’s not all that hard really!! Thats what i do regarding your f**king face that looks a lot like my bull dog’s assss yea!”

Normal Person: “What are you talking about?”

Stupid Racist: “The comment on the GB flag mate, whats that all about?”

Normal Person: “mate, objectively, it’s a f**king awful flag. it is in no way aethetically pleasing. Compared to the staunch simplicity of the French tricolour or the dazzling pomp of the US flag, it is little wonder why the union jack is so absent from contemporary artistic expression.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “I’ll tell you what, I have black and asian friends who have voted BNP after reading their manifesto, maybe you should try it.”

Normal Person: “Liar.”

*****************

Normal Person 1: “Has anyone actually come across an intelligent racist yet? I mean really had a good debate about what’s actually happening in our country – with valid points and reputable informational sources???”

Normal Person 2: “Some borderline intelligence. No reputable sources.”

Normal Person 3: “Intelligent racist is a juxtaposition! Doesn’t exist”

Normal Person 4: “Intelligent racist, an example of an oxymoron if ever I saw one”

Normal Person 5: “Hitler must’ve been kinda smart…”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “and binlardon wonts he bomb bk”

Normal Person: “‘Binlardon’ is actually on Facebook – but youll never catch him cos you cant type his name correctly.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “he is 1 fake mother f*cker he lives on this page cus he is a sad lost p*kki who is in da middle of a border dont no what 2 do man needs a life and acually cum off the page b4 it blows up on him 4 bein such a willy wuffter the magget”

Normal Person: “yeh blud braaap braaaap innit!!!”

*****************

Normal Person: “BLOODY IMMIGRANTS PUT MY COMPUTER ON CAPS LOCK THEN STOLE THE BUTTON! NOW EVERYTHING I TYPE MAKES ME LOOK LIKE A MORON! GRR!”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “y dont u all f**k off we are livin in uk engish people all the way! u smelly b**tards what dont wash f**k off 2 where u come from and stop milkin are country ur not f**kin welcome in are country SO F**K OFF AND WHO EVER DONT LIKE WHAT I HAVE WRITE ENGLAND ALL THE WAY”

Normal Person: “Grammar and spelling corrections, ‘Learn to understand English you f**king moron.’ It’s nice to abuse others and be grammatically correct! Otherwise you just appear to be an exceptionally dim f**kwit.”

*****************

Normal Person: “I think I might become a racist, then I can blame all my downfalls on turban wearing P*kis and rapey black men.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “you put nothing in but take a lot out. get back to your own country and see what they give you. nothing?

Normal Person 1: “I hate third world countries that give nothing back to their people just because they have no money and suffer from famine and political instability because countries like England colonised them and hacked them and their future stability to pieces. I hate those countries.”

Normal Person 2: “Is that the new lyrics of the Hokey Cokey?”

Brilliant! Flippin’ brilliant!

*****************

Normal Person: “I was just told by an imaginary copper to take my pretend flag off my fake car!”

*****************

Normal Person: “I was refused entry into this post club last night for having the nerve to wear absolutely not one single thing, despite it having a notice up saying `Clothes must be worn`….Well I was mortified!”

*****************

Normal Person: “My Friend is off to Australia on Thursday for 3 weeks!! It got me thinkin about the immigration points system they do and I wondered if the native people of Australia had that system in place when the brits went over 250 years ago?????”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “this is rubbish..needs 2 be shat on!”

Normal Person: “I’d hate to be your binman”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “All this cross of St George flag flying to follow the English Football Team in the World Cup has been brought on by the “do gooders” who suck up to the Asians. Check out the coverage of 1966 when we won the World Cup, it was the Union Flag everone was proud to be waving. These shores have been defended for centuries by our brave lads carrying The Union Flag………….. just imagine if the had’nt a p*ki with a German accent ruling this country !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Normal Person 1: “erm it was actually The sun that started this, if you want to stereotype, you will find that the ” do gooders” don’t read it, just morons who will believe any old crap, and i think this country has been defended with more than a flag, or what do we spend all that money on Trident for?”

Normal Person 2: “You looks a bit orange to be English…”

He did look very orange in his pic, it’s true.

*****************

Stupid Racist: “have i upset people wiv my comment well sorry but its not right that us ENGLISH get cast aside in our own country for being scared of being branded a racist. and yes all muslims hate muslim terrorists but they all start out as muslims dont thy ?”

Normal Person: “that made total sense. retard.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “U PASS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YRS HARD LABOUR, U PASS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY U GET SHOT, UPASS THE ENGLISH BORDER ILLEGALLY U GET A JOB, A DRIVER’S LICENSE, A PLACE TO LIVE, HOUSING BENEFIT, HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION, CHILD BENEFIT…NEED I CARRY ON??.THIS COUNTRY’S A F**KING JOKE!!!”

Normal Person 1: “ha ha ha ha ha - get your carer to type something new in for you please”

Normal Person 2: “think i’ve seen you in shameless. can i have your autograph?”

*****************

Normal Person: “I think we should introduce Shakira law to this country. That way if any MP’s try to fiddle their expenses their hips will give them away”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “Bet her majesty the queen hasn’t been told to take hers down!!!! who’s bloody country is it!! if we took any other religious or other countries flags down we would be racist!! there would be uproar but us, no we have to be so bloody PC about everything!”

Normal Person: “The Queen actually has been told to take her flag down. She’s been arrested because she wouldn’t. She’s now in prison. Don’t you bother to research things before you post about them? Gawwwd!”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “ive just been stopped on the m25 by a copper who told me i had to remove my red and white flags !!! he has cautioned me for bad languge ! and the flags are staying ! if in any way my flags offend u go back home !!”

Normal Person 1: “Was the flag draped across your windshield?.”

Normal Person 2: “bullshiteometer has just pinged.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “if u wana take our money and our benefits and just about take ova our bludy country then abide by our bludy rules …or go back to where u came from !!!!!!!!”

Normal Person: ” ‘darkie’ stolen your benefits? Shocking.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “IMMIGRATION!!! Yeah when the going gets tough in our own country lets just f*ck off to another one and take our problems with us. i.e ENGLAND”

Normal Person: “You’re right. Rwanda is a piece of piss to live in. They should just Man Up.”

*****************

Normal Person: “Where have all the racists gone? Is it giro day?”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “Proud to English…if you do not like it..well you know where the door is.”

Normal Person: “There’s a door?”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “I’m of Irish decent n Proud to fly my Flag!!! Has the government SERIOUSLY banned flying of the flag during the world cup?!?!?!?!? I can’t believe that!!! It’s 20104 fcuks sake!!!! I suppose those who’ve slagged me off 4 bein a Celt will know how the Scots n Irish felt when we were hanged 4 flying ours in our own countries eh???? & 4 wearin our national colours in our own country so think of that before you winge now eh???? Tiocfaidh Ar La!!!!”

Normal Person: “It’s 20104? Where’s my flying car?”

*****************

Normal Person: “I want to adopt a racists child and send him to Nigeria.”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “sai if your going to bye some bread, they get there first and take all the nice bread, so were left with sh*tty bread.”

Normal Person: “You must be joking, right…right?”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “Dont need to be educated to know your an elephant washing, smelly black p*ki c**n. Stick to shaggin your sisters and havin 18 kids. racist i don’t give a flying f*ck, cus all u tw*ts need the hitler treatment.”

Normal Person: “My favourite thing about “The Hitler Treatment” is that he wanted big, strong, blonde haired blue eyed German people. Whereas he was a short arse. black haired, dead eyed, stupid facial haired, Austrian c*nt”

Love that one and have to say it’s always baffled me too.

*****************

Stupid Racist 1: “shit…ive ran out of tiolet paper, stuck on the loo now, can anyone bring me a quran or a burkha please?”

Stupid Racist 2: “Why would you want to dirty your arse with a burkha?”

Normal Person: “If you run out of “tiolet” [sic] paper, use toilet paper”

*****************

- sent to a group admin in a private message

Stupid Racist: “there’s no cleaning jobs in poland because you are all dirty Bas%%%ds so happy your president had a nice plane ride, now get back to the fields and pick my salad”

Normal Person: “I’m not Polish”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “And I’m not being racist it just f*cks me off. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcome on England xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx lets be avin ya and I also f*ckin hate norwich and am racist to them pricks up the town.”

Normal Person: “Norwich isn’t a race”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “f*k the p*kies % the dirty somarleuns i hate u all f*k off bk 2 ya own country who agree wid me?????”

Normal Person: “hahahahaha omg thats the funniest thing ive ever seen in the group”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “It’s proven sweetheart” Was in the Sun. And yeh you are all radical muslims…

Normal Person: “You didn’t just reference The Sun, oh please tell me you just didn’t”

*****************

Stupid Racist: “dosent matter wat u name is, if u aint english u can stay !!!”

Normal Person: “WE CAN STAY GUYS, GARY SAYS ITS FINE”

*****************

And to end a few more “I’m not racist but…” cause they are always good for a laugh.

“im not racist but i will fly my flag n wear my shirt…. i wudnt go 2 there country n try n stop flags bein hung n stop them from supporting there country….”

“I’m not a ‘rascit’ but can we close the gates now!?!”

“I’m not racist, I just don’t want foreigners in my country.”

“I’m not racists, but I will look after my own people before them”

“im not rascit but send them home if they dont like a?”

“I’m not a racist because I have ‘coloured’ friends+family members!!”

That was fun.

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…fun and highly amusing people to bait. A few days ago several publications printed a story about a woman being asked to get off a bus because her son was wearing an England T Shirt. You can see one of the stories here:

The Metro

There were also some other stories about people being asked to take down their England flags. Now it appeared than the many highly educated racists across this country actually believe this and indeed there are several Facebook groups that have popped up based on these myths. The Metro story was totally untrue and I was also shown this link that I am told is the same woman.

Wiltshire news

It all started for me 2 days ago when I received a Facebook invite for a racist group called

…It’s funny how our flag offends you but our benefits don’t!!!…

(there are at least 9 groups called this – such is the imagination of the racist mind)

My first thought was that the person who sent it was crazy and I was about to unfriend her. However I took a look at it, curiosity I suppose. I was very confused by the posting but realised after a short while that the group had been totally hijacked by non-racist people. It is actually a great exercise in free speech. It seems that the task of putting together a coherent, correctly spelled and punctuated sentence, is impossible for someone with nasty racist views. While, on the other hand the ‘normal’ people come across as witty, sharp-minded and educated people. The language and comments being banded around could have been upsetting if it wasn’t actually so tragically hilarious. I wasted many many hours on this site, managed to get myself temporarily banned from posting, set up an alt account, and as my husband put it ‘got totally lost down the rabbit hole’.

Now I always knew that racists were stupid people. I mean they have to be – the very fact that the British are the original bastard race, descended from who knows where but definitely in part from invaders and settlers who did a lots of raping and pillaging; the fact that our language is a concoction of many others; the fact that as a ‘race’ we have no coherent eye colour, face shape, skin colour, hair texture etc…; the fact that not one of us can categorically fully trace our heritage; and finally – the fact that we all started out in Africa…kind of proves my point I think. Being racist, homophobic, sexist, ageist or any other ist is just a way for someone with too much hate inside to express it. I’m not an ist but then I was brought up in a loving family so I don’t have hate inside me.

To get back to the point…I collected (with help) some of the most ridiculous racist comments together to blog about. Why? Because I think it’s important. If you are reading this and are not racist I hope it will do for you what it did for me…it reaffirmed my belief that racists are dumb and I am better than them – that they are so stupid that they will never be in control of this country (trust me!). If you are reading this and you are racist, just a bit, I hope you will quickly want to disassociate yourself from these inbred idiots and rethink your views. What will probably happen is that no one will read my blog but me…and as always I’m fine with that – I just like putting thoughts to paper, it amuses me. If you do read it please leave a comment, whichever side you stand on – if it’s abusive of course I won’t approve it but I will approve opposing points of view.

As well as having my Facebook blocked (from posting) I realised that my 300 odd friends were going to think I’d gone over to the other side as I kept joining groups with titles like Take my England shirt off?…How about you take your turban off? so I posted a disclaimer on my wall (which amazingly I can still post on), but I realised some people didn’t read it so I am sure I will have lost friends over this. Never mind – it just makes me more hardcore I guess.

On a serious note, not only have several groups been completely overrun which is cool, but also a few discussions did end up in some quite hardcore racists rethinking their views somewhat. I was lucky enough to engage in one such conversation myself and the young lady in question ended up by saying’fair point’ and agreeing that if women ruled the world that yes indeed it would most certainly be a much better place. made me happy. It’s also been enlightening for me and refreshing to see the HUGE influx af superb individuals that hate racism and can so eloquently express this. Only a few Asian people were on that group, most people were white and incredibly passionate about defending their muslim fellow brits.

The hate is horrible, the passion is great. And racist baiting is soooo easy, it’s like squishing slugs after a rainfall – inevitable and it leaves a slimy mess.

Some of these statements are pretty offensive but I am starring the swearing out (note there were no stars at all in the originals). It reads like a list of bad jokes.

1. This is the group statement to one of the Facebook pages (unnecessary use of CAPS is a frequent theme)

“no one has said the easten europens are all bad thay just cant read or speck english so thay should not be on our roads ffs its not rock science”

“Its just been confirmed that there are more blacks in London than in Kenya according to BBC news. Time to shut the floodgates do you think??????????”

“Muslims don’t have to pay council tax if thay have a mosque in their front rooms.”

Still trying to picture this mosque…small mosque or big front room?

“Youu Know Izzy’s The Club In Witney they Have a Massive one Its Huge out side the club on the wall … They Have 20 Days 2 Take it down they have been told …. What a Joke …. Our Blooody country…. :p “

“yea cos it’s only been our flag since the 16 th century ok we nicked it of the French so wot it’s still our flag now fail to see your piont fact is it’s ours most off the people in the hole wourld know it to be the England flag the welsh have there’s the scotts have there’s n we have ours really is quite simple”

“for god sake, if u look at different site ON FACEBOOK u will see sites saying eg ” its funny how our england flags offend u but our benifits dont” i have heard it loads around were i live, it happend to my brothers mate she was in her car, and a police officer stopped her and asked her to take her englang top off she asked why but he never anwsered…”

“Im Born n bread ENGLISH.”

“This is ENLGAND”

“ If being pround of ENGLAND makes me a “racist” then I am proud to be one.”

“english and proud thats alll i gottta say ”

Thank God for that.

“All