Rachel

Annoyances and pleasures

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:57:30 GMT

I thought I was getting better, but today has featured the return of the unstoppable headache. So I have bought my 4th weekly bus ticket since "getting over" the flu and am cutting back again on such frivolous activities as walking and laundry. I was really hoping to get back into walking my 3-cornered commute, especially after massive bus fail yesterday, but apparently it is not to be.

On the good side I had my first Christmas meal yesterday (with work) and we are going up to visit my mother and stepfather this weekend. Most of the present shopping is done (subject to delivery) and we should get a move on with wrapping too. We assembled the new small fibre-optic tree this evening, but Charles keeps taking it apart to look at the rotating coloured disc that drives the fibre-optics. I don't know if cards are going to happen yet (and we've already missed some last posting dates), but there's still time.

Charles has two advent calendars (one from my grandmother's cousin, one from his childminder) and seems to be getting the hang of them with regular encouragement.

Last weekend and this

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:02:47 GMT

Last Saturday we went to London to help my stepsister Rebecca pack up her flat to move a few miles down the road. My mother and stepfather had travelled down the night before and had clearly already been hard at work for some hours by the time we arrived. My contribution was mostly to pack the wardrobe and then supervise Charles. Tony motored steadily through the kitchen things. In the evening we recovered over a good Thai meal before the Finch contingent headed back to Cambridge.

Rebecca's looking for a lodger if anyone London-based is interested.

My post-flu thing seems to be slowly lifting. I bought my third weekly bus pass this week and I hope it will be my last, but I'm not going to try to be a hero about it.

Yesterday afternoon both Tony and I took the afternoon off and had a wonderfully indulgent afternoon and evening with Flash & Mike to celebrate Flash's birthday, along with a few others. We met up at the St Pancras champagne bar, although on the way there we got distracted, first by the newly-opened Northern Ticket Hall, and then by the Foyles outpost. The champagne bar itself is quite fun, with many booths running alongside the Eurostar platform. They have heated seats, which was useful in yesterday's chilly weather. I drank more champagne than was strictly sensible, followed up with a lethal gin and champagne cocktail and generally enjoyed myself a great deal talking with interesting people.

Flash had booked us a table in Pizza Express for dinner, which was also lots of fun, although noisier and more crowded than I had expected. We got the last bottle of Prosecco in the restaurant. Afterwards Tony and I toddled off, caught a horribly over-heated train and were just in time to catch the last bus home from the station. Jonny had been babysitting Charles while we were off carousing, and the darling child had refused to go to sleep until we turned up shortly before midnight. So today has been quite muted and tomorrow will probably be similar as we catch up on usual weekend things as well as try to get a bit more Christmas preparation in.

(In Foyles I noticed that Sandi Toksvig has a book in the children's section: Girls Are Best is aimed at the 10-14 audience at a guess and is "history pointing out all the important women". Several glasses later, it emerged that Ms Toksvig was in the bar opposite but I retained enough self-control not to go and drunkenly fangirl at her, or accost her for an autograph.)

The Unmissables

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:07:52 GMT

Most books I read are bought from charity shops, given/lent by friends and (since it reopened) borrowed from the library. There are many authors whose books I generally enjoy but I'm happy to leave until I spy them in the library or a charity shop. But there is a small and select list of authors for whom I will not wait - the moment their book is out (in paperback, drat my RSI and the already-full bookcases) I will buy it, or preferably have it pre-ordered to arrive with me as early as humanly possible.

In no particular order my current "unmissables" are:

Terry Pratchett
Elizabeth Bear
Lois McMaster Bujold
Jim Butcher
Sarah Monette
C.E. Murphy
Charles Stross

The authors in bold are also unmissables for Tony. I wonder if it's significant that all our shared unmissable authors are male, and all my unmissables are female.

Who are your unmissable authors?

The headache that won't die, and other things

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:09:49 GMT

I've had a headache all week that won't quite die: it gets better when I'm lying in bed and worse when I'm walking around. It's nothing like my experience of migraine and it's not even particularly debilitating, though it is distracting. Neither paracetamol nor ibuprofen do a thing for it.

A very nice friendly doctor checked me out yesterday and eliminated swathes of scary things I don't have and thinks it's most likely a tension headache, caused by stresses mental and physical (e.g. having had flu 2 weeks ago and a full-time job and a small child). I am instructed to sleep more and rest more and go easy on myself. Try codeine to see if works any better than the NSAIDs (which I haven't yet but might this evening). And go back if it hasn't gone away in 10 more days.

So I have continued getting the bus where possible and walking slower-than-usual (which means I need a coat) and slacking off on the housework. I do feel much more myself this week though, which is great.

I have spent the last year working on basic healthy lifestyle habits: eating 5-a-day, getting enough sleep, and regular exercise. I decided this week that 5-a-day is now pretty thoroughly embedded in my eating habits and can be marked 'done' (though of course I need to keep monitoring).

Sleep is improved but not quite there: I now average around 7 hours a night rather than 5-6 but I could really do with more like 8, and to be in bed by 10pm more consistently. Exercise is improved but not quite there. Flu and post-flu have helped the sleep, but taken me backwards on the daily exercise ... but I have an exercise plan to work on when I get better.

I have started counting calories again. This is not a "omg I need to diet" thing, but more a sign that I finally have enough grip on my life (nearly 4 years after getting pregnant) to do the data collection required. My plan is to spend the next 8 weeks "just measuring", though of course the act of measuring will cause some changes in what I actually eat, and always has. 8 weeks will take me to early January, past all the seasonal indulgence and hopefully with flu a distant memory and daily routine back to normal. Then I can start deciding whether I want to make changes and what they will be. I'm not interested in weight loss for its own sake, but as part of a general improvement in fitness, along with the sleep and the 5-a-day and the regular exercise.

I'm hoping that in turn will translate into more energy for daily life: some days I can feel very ground down by my daily routine, I'm frequently very tired and I get ill too often. Some illnesses can't be helped, but catching every cold going around seems a bit of a warning sign that All Is Not Well. I'm pretty certain that sleep is the real key here, so I am determined to keep working on that.

Nooooo

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:28:48 GMT

Charles has reached the "Why?" stage. My explanatory talents are being stretched.

Flu and jab

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:24:40 GMT

Charles was offered the pandemic flu jab due to his heart defect (the one I'm supposed to be forgetting about for 5 years) putting him in a high-risk category. After some thought I decided to accept the offer: he's had a mild response to all other vaccines, flu can be very nasty and he is still small. His life is pretty social, what with his friends at J's and lots of children using the same playground, so I've been planning for 'when' not 'if' he catches flu. It would be much easier all round if he didn't though.

We picked him early from J's to take him to the surgery, and he didn't want to leave and he didn't want to ride in the buggy and he didn't want to sit nicely in the waiting area and he didn't want to take his jumper off and he didn't want to sit still for the nurse. Who said she was worried about hurting him if he couldn't be still, so I had to be a mean ol' mummy and grip his arm in place top and bottom to stop him wriggling it and then the jab itself was over before I knew it. Then we had to wait 15 minutes on the premises before leaving and he was even more manic and prone to running-off as we went back to find Louise and he didn't want to sit quietly on the bus but at least I got him to stop screaming before anyone threw us off.

So that was complete palaver and I wasn't very surprised when he fell asleep fairly soon after we got home. He then was a bit subdued for the next day or so but no other observable reaction. We have to do it all again for the booster in 3 weeks or so (not yet booked).

I'm over my own bout of flu apart from the post-viral exhaustion. My normal weekday routine involves walking a mile to work, another 1.7 miles to collect Charles and at least another 1.8 miles back home again (longer if we run any errands on the way). All this week I've just about managed the walk into work but it's been exhausting rather than the usual pick-me-up. A bus cuts about half the walking out of picking up Charles and a different one brings us most of the way home but my days have basically consisted of "go to work, get Charles, get home, flop" and Tony has continued having to do almost all my share of the housework. It is very boring and I have spent the weekend resting as much as possible in hopes of getting more back to normal. We shall see tomorrow.

Family gathering

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:08:30 GMT

Last weekend we hosted a Finch gathering. Louise had arranged to visit us for a long weekend and all of Tony's sisters came to meet up with her, with their respective husband/boyfriends in tow. We had a late celebration of Charles's birthday and a current celebration of Sarah's new job after a few months out of work. Most of the work fell on Tony and Louise because I was still getting over the flu, but it all seemed to go fairly well. Charles was delighted in the attention from "all my aunties" and it was great to see everyone and catch up a bit.

As always, the sheer quantity of food a gathering of 10 adults can eat is a bit disconcerting when you are used to catering for two-and-a-bit. The booze consumption likewise - we went through something like 20 bottles of wine, 2 bottles of fizz-for-toasting and about 20 bottles of lager among 10 adults (one of whom, me, drank about 1 glass of wine total).

Possibly as a result, Sunday was rather subdued - the two couples who'd been in the B&B got their own fryup and Simon cooked for those of us in the house. Sarah and Paul left first and the rest of us took Charles to the playground for a while and then pottered down to the Carlton for a late Sunday lunch (we tried the Ranch but they were being unhelpful about food - at 2:30pm the Sunday menu had mostly run out but they wouldn't take orders for the main menu before 3pm). Then the Sheffield contingent had to go and I got an early night.

On Monday I went back to work for a half-day before joining Tony and Louise for a Chinese lunch and a bit of Christmas shopping. We took Charles for his flu jab (which was a palaver and a half, but that's another story) and by the time we got home after that we were all tired and in need of tea. Louise made fabulous carrot soup and we enjoyed a quiet evening together. The next morning Louise's taxi came shortly before I left for work and Charles waved her off a bit sadly.

Charles's night-climbing adventure

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:39:13 GMT

Yesterday Charles was grumpy and wanted a nap instead of going to the playground when it was daylight, and wanted to go in the dark when he'd woken up. In the spirit of solving the actual problem (it's too dark to see what you're doing) rather than just saying "no, it's too dark", I found my climber's head-torch and adjusted it to fit him. It took us two goes to get to the playground because the rain was harder than I'd realised so we had to go back to put Charles's waterproofs on.

It was great fun walking over: Charles in his lovely new Kiba dungarees and hooded jacket and wellies, and head-torch over the hood, and me with my see-through umbrella and a shopping bag for afterward. Neither of us minded the rain and Charles kept up a running commentary all the way. He figured out the torch very quickly and it worked exactly as required on the climbing frame: the torch throwing a little bubble of light for him to see what he was doing, just like grownup climbers do.

The climbing frame has two slides - a plastic spiral (which Charles calls "the windy slide") and a straight metal one with a bump. Unfortunately, the combination of rain on the slide and slippy waterproofs meant he went much faster than usual and fairly flew out of the end of the slide onto the woodchip surface with a bit of a thump. Being Charles, he had to test if both slides did this. After I'd helped him clean up the second time he very seriously told me that he'd done enough sliding and we should go home now. We went via Iceland to restock on pizzas and he carried his very favourite cheese+tomato pizza all the way home himself, carefully not dropping it in any of the puddles he sploshed through.

The box was all soggy when we got home, but when I'd unwrapped Charles from his waterproofs and hung them to drip-dry in the utility room, the pizza inside wasn't affected. He ate more than half of it once cooked, which is practically a record. Tony ate the rest some hours later, when Charles was fast asleep.

Small pieces easily lost.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:51:09 GMT

This morning I found a USB key that I'd been vaguely worried about for a few weeks. It's one of a pair which I use to do backups of my main data at home (which reminds me: back up your data!), and I was wondering if I'd left it somewhere silly. No, just the bottom of my rucksack.

Unfortunately the hunt which found this was triggered by the discovery that my 3G dongle isn't in its usual home (the netbook bag). Due to flu and other excitements I haven't used it for a couple of weeks so I'm struggling to remember where I last had it. Maybe Borders or the pub. Any ideas?

My appetite's back

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:12:56 GMT

It's like a big switch flipped and suddenly yum please lots of food now please. Also my head is clearer and I haven't ached since this morning; also I can do rather more before needing to sit down and rest. If this continues I may try leaving the house for a short walk tomorrow.

I have had flu several times before and I have never gone from as awful as I felt on Tuesday night to as not-bad-actually as I feel tonight in 3 days. So either it was really wimpy flu, or I am susceptible to the placebo effect, or there is something to taking antivirals after all.

I'll sleep on it.

Improvements

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:04:08 GMT

Temperature has come down some more. Aches are still there but not as bad; ditto general cold/"flu-like" symptoms. Exhaustion remains, as does lack-of-appetite - I managed a small amount of porridge for breakfast to take my tamiflu with. So far none of the common side-effects are manifesting, hurrah. I managed to have a shower before completely running out of steam, which is a big improvement on yesterday (perhaps for everyone else too!).

No-one else has anything more than mild cold symptoms, which makes me happy. First family visitor arrives today - I shall be a somewhat distant and reserved hostess but I know she'll forgive me.

Woe, plague

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:53:52 GMT

Charles and I both had mild coughs on Monday evening. Yesterday morning I was a bit borderline as the cough was worse but went to work as I had a presentation to give. Felt fine while doing presentation, felt much worse as soon as it was over, left work a little early as a result. Charles apparently fine all day with J.

Yesterday evening I developed high temperature, shivering and all-over muscle aches along with the rest of the cold. The online assessment says hello flu, here is an antiviral code for you. I will send Tony or Jonny for them today.

Charles coughed a bit last night and then spent most of the night feeding. Now he is full of beans with very mild cold symptoms. Meanwhile I still ache all over, plus the rest but the temp has dropped a little. Ironically Charles is due a flu jab next week because his heart murmur makes him "high risk" for catching flu. When I can cope with phone calls again I may ring up and check whether we should postpone/cancel.

Everyone else in the house is fine and we are following basic hygiene precautions to keep it that way. Half the family are visiting this weekend; as long as Tony and Charles don't succumb I think it's not worth cancelling, but I will have to be antisocial until I'm asymptomatic. It's not a completely disastrous time to be off work, but fairly inconvenient. Bah bah bah. I want my brain back; also to stop aching now please.

Potty untraining

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:46:00 GMT

I don't like the phrase "potty training" as it implies to me all sorts of systems and regimes and reward charts and so on, none of which we are doing. We're just teaching him stuff when he's interested and trying to remove barriers in the way of him feeling comfortable using what he knows.

Anyway, whatever it is we call it, here's how it's going.

All summer we've done no-nappy-time at home mornings, evenings and weekends when we can, and most noticeably this has cut our nappy washes down to about 3 a week from about twice that. Charles is very confident using the potty to wee, but was much less so about wearing pants or even pj trousers without a nappy underneath, because he was worried he would wet them. It's getting a bit nippy to be running around with no bottoms on, so I tried doing a bit of "let's pretend you need the toilet, what do you do" just after he'd successfully used the potty (this meant he wasn't worried about wetting his pj bottoms). After acting it out a couple of times happily, he suddenly clicked and is generally happier wearing pyjamas or pants now, at least if he's willing to wear clothes at all. We got some new Thomas pants for practicing in and they've proved popular.

I think our next steps will be some easy-off trousers over the top of the pants and maybe even a daring walk to the local shops and back, with a loo visit first.

Also he still asks for a nappy to do poos in, and I would really like him to feel able to use a toilet or potty for that, because he's had some really nasty poo-related nappy rash recently. One of my colleagues told me about persuading her son to poo in the potty using fake poo and pretending the teddy had done it; I may have to investigate the local joke shops soon.

Charles update

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:41:36 GMT

Charles has fairly recently got the idea of phone calls, just in time for all his relatives ringing to wish him happy birthday. "Hello auntie Lucy! Yes, we did and we saw a teeny tiny railway and I didn't want to get off and I cried." I am in awe listening to his side of the conversation sometimes. He likes to make pretend phone calls to people too which can be even more awesome.

He loves Thomas the tank engine and all things trains (both books and tv shows) and was very impressed with the children's area of the new central library because it has a big low bookcase in the form of a long train. He approves of going to the library and likes helping me use the self checkout/return facilities.

When he wants to he can be very lovely indeed. When he is feeling defiant or wants to push boundaries he can be infuriating. My temper control is being tested quite strongly.

We had his 3-year health check from the health visitor this week, for which he fell asleep 10 minutes before she arrived. I did all the answering questions part of it and then tried to wake him up so he could be weighed and measured and observed playing: instead he threw a massive tantrum and was only partially mollified by a feed and some Timmy Time - he sat clingily on my lap and refused to even look at the health visitor. She didn't seem to mind too much anyway.

His favourite hat is this one that j4 made for him ages ago and still going strong. (A much earlier photo is here for comparison.)

On home education

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:25:24 GMT

I enjoyed reading this article in the Irish Independent, featuring a home-educating mother I know. For values of 'know' that mean 'have met on the internet' :)

I still think we are going to send Charles to the local primary school in 2 years' time, but it's really interesting reading about alternatives, and bearing them in mind. My cousin was home-educated for some time too, I should probably talk to my aunt and uncle more about that.

I think I have a book problem

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:48:52 GMT

About a month ago I stepped into Oxfam to check if they sold donated VHS tapes, and came out with:

* a box set of 9 Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" books
* the latest Marian Keyes paperback
* the latest Sue Grafton paperback (T)
* a book by a Fellow of my old College set in a fictional but similar women-only College

A month later I have read one, count it, one of these (the Sue Grafton). My to-read pile is measured in triple-stacked shelves, and yet I still struggle to not buy books I like the look of if they are in front of me. My buying habits were formed in the teenage years where my local bookshops were WHSmith and the charity shops. Then my disposable income roughly matched the incidence of finding books I wanted to buy and the rate at which I read them. My disposable income has grown and my spare time to read has shrunk but I don't seem to have adjusted.

I am hoping the reopened central library will help here. It is 5 minutes at my pace and 10 at Charles's from where I pick him up each evening, so we should be able to pop in once a week or so to change books. I can take out my quota of New Shiny Books (and at the moment it looks like every book is new and shiny in there) without costing myself money and more space than 10 books at a time. I am hoping this will displace at least a little the urge to buy up "everything good" in the Oxfam bookshop every few weeks.

Decluttering catchup

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:51:07 GMT

It's 6 weeks since we came back from holiday. I have nearly filled a notebook page with notes of things coming in and out, though I confess to hanging on until the numbers might look better.

Date	IN	OUT
Thu 27th Aug	3 jiffy bags, 7 books, 1 swimsuit, 1 tshirt
Wed 2nd Sep	1 book
Thu 3rd Sep	3 books
Fri 4th Sep	1 sheet, 2 pillowcases
Sat 5th Sep	5 dvds, 3 jiffy bags
Fri 11th Sep	2 dvds, 1 jiffy bag
Sun 13th Sep		1 keyboard returned
Mon 14th Sep	1 combi-microwave
Wed 16th Sep	12 books, 1 pair shoes	1 book, 1 jiffy bag to BookMooch
Sun 20th Sep		1 microwave to tip, 5 videos to Freecycle
Mon 21st Sep		1 slow cooker, 2 curtains to Freecycle
Tue 22nd Sep	2 books
Wed 23rd Sep		4 videos to charity shop
Thu 24th Sep	1 doll, 3 books
Sat 26th Sep		15 clothes & 2 folders to recycling, 2 things binned from junk room
Mon 28th Sep		3 large pieces bubble wrap to Freecycle
Thu 1st Oct	2 cds	3 videos to friend
Fri 2nd Oct	3 books, 1 towel	2 CDs to friend, 9 books to charity shop
Sat 3rd Oct	2 puppets, 1 game, 1 book
Mon 5th Oct		2 bags to Freecycle
Tue 6th Oct	1 box pencils, 1 bendy bus, 1 ninky nonk	1 sunglasses bag to Freecycle
Fri 9th Oct	1 umbrella	9 clothes to charity shop, 2 bags packaging to bin (failed 3 times to Freecycle)
Sat 10th Oct	2 monitors	8 clothes, 9 books, 1 dvd to charity shop, 7 books to Bookcrossing, 34 clothes to recycling
TOTAL	66 IN	125 OUT

Totals so far:
IN: 368, OUT: 651, Net out 283 on day 221
IN: 424, OUT: 776, Net out 352 on day 283

The biggest help has been decluttering Tony's clothes (with his permission!), which account for over 50 items all by themselves. And as a bonus putting away the laundry has got much easier thanks to the extra space.

Autumnal

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:06:40 GMT

Today was the first day I breathed steam on the way to work. Cars had frosted windows, making it really easy to spot the non-residents (the local streets are popular with commuters who park and ride/walk the rest of the way into town).

It will be dark when I drag Charles out of the bookshop and away from the toy trains. Soon it will be dark before we get home even if we don't stop to play or do errands on the way.

The shops are stocking up with Newtonmas supplies already. Mince pies have been around for weeks: in fact I've decided that mince pies are not actually Christmassy at all but merely herald the approach of winter and Charles's birthday. He doesn't like them very much, or we could make mince pies his official birthday cakes.

Happy birthday Charles

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:04:49 GMT

Charles is 3 today. This is probably his first birthday that he has understood to be A Special Day For Charles.

On Saturday we had a family gathering at Belton House near Grantham, which I picked for being a plausible day trip by public transport for most of the outposts of the extended family. We had a bring+share picnic and spent rather more time in the adventure playground and rather less time in the lovely grounds than a non-child-party would have done. It was a Coleman party as various Finch relatives were unavailable, but we will catch up with his Finch relatives before too long.

Annoyingly I left Charles's rucksack of toys and books and present-from-granny on the bus on the way home. The bus company located it but want retrieval in person from their base in Lincoln. I have appealed to a nearby aunt to see if she can get it; if not Jonny gets to have an Exciting Day Out at my expense.

Today we opened cards that had arrived, and a special present from me and Tony to Charles (a toy Ninky Nonk), and made a fuss of him. And he knows that his childminder has bought a special present from him that he chose, and today is the day he can bring it home.

Housekeeping

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:22:07 GMT

Yesterday evening I went around and moved all the ground floor windows that were locked in 'slightly open' to the 'fully closed' position. The heating is not yet on though I am beginning to wear jumpers in the evening. It will be interesting to see how our gas consumption changes this winter compared to last year, with the double-glazing in everywhere.

Today I've been playing around with figures from my accounting program (Accountz), partly prompted by coming surprisingly high in the IFS "Where do you fit in" income distribution, and yet still having to juggle money more than I'm happy with. The obvious answer is "we're spending it all" but I wanted to get a better idea of how and on what. Unsurprisingly, the huge mortgage is the main culprit, but after that our biggest spending is on food, followed by travel (primarily train), general household stuff (including some recent purchases of new things), and power.

There aren't many obvious targets for big reductions in spending. We can save a bit by switching energy supplier as I've not done that in a while. I was going to say that this was frustrating but perhaps it's something to be pleased about, that I've already done all the easy stuff and we're not being obviously wasteful.

Almost all our food, travel and household spending (i.e. the top 3 after the mortgage) is done on the shared credit card, and although I set a nominal budget for that in Accountz, we've exceeded it most months this year. I haven't been doing any kind of enforcement on that budget and it's probably time to start. For now, I'm going to start making sure both Tony and I know each week where we are, and hopefully just being kept informed will be enough to bring us back into line. I really don't want to get into setting detailed targets if I can avoid it, especially not on food as I already have to think about food more than I want to.

Mongolian breastfeeding

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:01:59 GMT

From the time Calum was four months old until he was three years old, wherever I went, I heard the same thing over and over again: "Breastfeeding is the best thing for your baby, the best thing for you." The constant approval made me feel that I was doing something important that mattered to everyone - exactly the kind of public applause every new mother needs.

As my son approaches 3, I can only dream of getting that kind of support for still allowing him to breastfeed. I enjoyed reading the whole post very much, laughing out loud in places. A lovely example of real cultural differences.

Half-day

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:13:00 GMT

I took a half-day today, last of the academic year. It was lovely. I cycled into town to lunch with Tony and colleagues; halfway there I ran into an old friend who I see about once every few years. I love Cambridge for those kinds of coincidences.

After lunch I went up to Advance Performance on Huntingdon Road to get some proper running shoes for powerwalking in. They do gait analysis, filming my feet on the treadmill. The first nice thing was that my feet are naturally neutral - they don't roll in or out, though they do point outward a little. However my natural walking pace is spread evenly over the heel, rolls cleanly forward and is even across the toe coming out of it.

We tried a number of different shoes, all of which got the gait analysis. One of the supposedly neutral shoes managed to cause my feet to roll inward, so they were discarded and different ones brought. Eventually I tried each of the 3 "shortlist" pairs on for a quick powerwalk up and down the carpark, and settled on the pair that felt comfiest. Then I coughed up the large sum for possession of them.

I also asked about running shorts in my size - most running shops stop at about the equivalent of a size 16, and it's been a very long time since I was that small. Apparently wanting shorts at this time of year is strange, but I get hot when exercising. There was one pair of leggings in my size in the shop, and they fit ok but the "straight-cut for a slimming look" causes the ends to flap annoyingly below my knees, so I declined. At least I know that these things do exist if I'm prepared to spend time hunting them on the internet.

The whole time I was in the shop, one of the staff was being trained in how to fit MBT shoes - in a strange coincidence the back specialists from whom I bought my Stokke kneeling/rocking chair were pushing their MBT fitting service in an email last week. I think the name is annoying but the shoes look interesting, for when I can next squeeze a large sum of money out of my monthly spending-on-me budget.

I spent the rest of my afternoon off gently breaking in my new shoes on a spot of shopping with fanf. It was great. I should take an afternoon off more often.

Afterwards Charles and I investigated the long-awaited new central library, and it was quite fun right up until he started seriously misbehaving due to a badly-needed nappy change. I need to get better at spotting the nappy-induced naughtiness really. We didn't get any books this time but I will be back to try again tomorrow.

Informal childcare and the law

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:17:56 GMT

Today in the office, we were getting incensed over this issue, where apparently if children are being looked after by non-family members, then the looking-after adult needs to have the full Ofsted inspection applied to childminders and nurseries and other childcare-for-pay arrangements.

A quick survey of the office reveals that most of the parents are now or have broken the law as laid out by the BBC article - and one person who couldn't actually tell from the news coverage whether he was or not. Most of us are caught by the "after school play date" - more than 2 hours before 6pm on a regular basis. I have definitely done this in the past; some of my colleagues do this on a swap basis with another family once or twice a week. As the BBC article says, "Ofsted would not be likely or able to pursue such arrangements, but nevertheless .... that is what the law sets out." If the law isn't likely to be used, then it shouldn't be in force - it should be better-written to avoid criminalising perfectly normal and common behaviour.

I also sputter a bit at the exemption of immediate family: I can think of at least some cases where the homes of near relatives are far less suitable for caring for a child than the home of a friend-of-the-family with a child of similar age. There's nothing magic about being related to a child that makes them safe with you, and parental judgement ought to be trusted a lot more than this law allows.

Overbearing, interfering, badly-written legislation leaving no room for parents to find alternatives that suit their families - and totally undermining of parents and communities. There's a petition (isn't there always) for us to register discontent and get a patronising response from the government when it closes.

Quiet weekend

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:27:55 GMT

Since we came back from holiday I've been coming home from work tired each day and shattered by Friday. It's one of the peak times of the year, and my holiday was slightly mistimed really, catching up from being away colliding with the workload ramping up.

This too will pass.

But anyway, I've had a very quiet weekend hanging out at home, reading a favourite book or two, faffing on the internet, and having a couple of bursts of decluttering. Charles has mostly been co-operative, and Tony and I have had nice hanging-out-together time. I was a bit full of cold this morning so I have been even quieter today and hopefully I'll be ok for work tomorrow.

Charles was conveniently asleep for long enough today that I was able to watch the first two episodes of Torchwood: Earth's Children. All 5 episodes have been lurking on the electric monk since early July, but I've not often been in the mood to watch them when awake and Charles is asleep. There are usually so many other competing calls on my time, but actually sitting quietly watching fun tv was exactly what I needed today. I've enjoyed the first two episodes even more than series 2, itself a massive improvement on series 1.

I have new blue velvet pyjamas. They were made for Sunday lounging around.

VHS giveaway: original Star Wars & animated Batman

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:05:00 GMT

Before I haul these videos down to the charity shop, or offer them on freecycle, does anyone want them? Note that these are available on DVD and I've replaced them where I care rather than purchase a working VHS player:

~~The three original Star Wars films, special widescreen editions released in 1994 (Han shoots first, no slug by the Millennium Falcon).~~ Now claimed

Animated Batman series:
Batman The Animated Series, vols 1-6
The adventures of Batman & Robin: Bumper Collection
The adventures of Batman & Robin: A Fight to the Finish
The Batman & Superman Movie
(in Italian) La Maschere del Fantasam/Subzero

I'm happy to deliver/be in for collection in Cambridge, and to hang on to them for next-visit-to people out of town.