Halloween & Pumpkin 2009

I promised the kids I would make a blog post about the pumpkin they worked hard on for Halloween this year. Last year I seem to remember pumpkins were in short supply, but this year there were positively oodles of them. We got ours in Sainsbury's - here he is:

And from the top:

Georgie cat decided she wanted to 'help':

And when I told her she couldn't, I was rewarded with her 'yeah, yeah ... whatever' expression:

The kids drew up a vague 'design' of what they wanted to do ... drew it on the pumpkin and I did the sharp knife bit. Once the 'lid' was off, it was time to scoop out the innards.

Which are pretty spiders-web-ish themselves, aren't they?

They painted the lid with a reddy-orange paint (actually it was face paint as we haven't got any poster paint at the moment), and then added gold stars and glitter:

This is how he looked when they'd finished:

We put a night light inside him and sat him outside the front door:

We had a bowl of goodies ready for any visiting trick or treaters:

No.1 went to a Halloween Party at a friend's house (dressed as a devil)on 30th October, and had a great time apple bobbing, bouncing on a trampoline and generally being sociable. On the 31st she went out (dressed as a witch this time) trick or treating with friends (I tell them they are only allowed to knock on doors outside which there are pumpkins, or other decorations. I know lots of people don't want to be involved in this American custom and I think it's only fair they are left in peace). At one house she and her friends were offered 'chocolate truffles'. It was only on biting into the treats that they discovered the treats were, in fact, chocolated coated raw brussels sprouts. :-D At another house, they were greeted by a man who said 'what's the trick?' When they replied that they didn't actually have any, he said 'Oh, I'll have that then" and promptly shut the door in their faces. His wife very quickly opened it again and gave out the goodies, but I must admit it made me chuckle.

No.2 had his friend over for a sleepover, and got dressed up too. Here he is:

A proper little monster. ;-)

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Monthly Round Up (October 09)

Flippin' heck - these round ups are coming round quicker than things which come round quickly!! The end of another month, and here we are hurtling towards winter at a rate of knots. It's been cold and wet, and I don't like it. The heating has finally been switched on, and there is washing draped over the radiators because we don't have a tumble drier. Roll on spring, that's what I say!

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Right, October means a birthday in the family - No.2's birthday. For the third year running he opted for a football party (surprise, surprise) and thus it was that we had the dubious pleasure of 14 small boys aged between 7 and 10 all eager to kick a ball around. Thank goodness for leisure centres, eh? The tea party bit afterwards was a success, especially since one of the TV channels happened to be showing 'Jurassic Park' which absorbed bouncy boys beautifully. There was much supersonic opening of presents:

So now we have even more footballs and Wii games, and No.2 is well blessed in the money-to-spend department. I must particularly thank (through gritted teeth) the friend who gave him the remote-controlled mini helicopter. What fun No.1 and I have had trying to get round the house without being decapitated at any given moment.

The cake (made by my mum) was devoured in a matter of minutes:

Birthday cake photographed prior to being decimated

The end result was one happy (but tired) boy. I guess I have to start thinking about the 'C' thing now - I never let myself think about it properly until his birthday is out of the way. That plan was somewhat hampered this year by the fact that No.1 has a friend who announces every day how many days are left until the 'C' thing. It's not big and it's not clever and personally, I think someone should gag that child.

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I now want to thank Tacha of Hanies who sent me a lovely parcel. It all started when I posted this picture at Flickr:

Yes, a Crunchie. (I have developed a bit of a 'thing' for photographing food. I don't quite know how or when it got going, but I now have a lovely time browsing Waitrose or Sainsbury's for 'models'. The kids have got wise to the fact and No.1 is not beyond using the 'ooooh, this would make a lovely photo mum - can we get some?' line when something catches her eye!) Anyway, I posted that picture of a Crunchie and Tacha commented. The poor thing can't get Crunchies in Germany, so I sent her over a little care parcel. She was most pleased, and a little while later was very naughty and sent me this wonderful needle case:

Isn't it fab? I love the colours, the piecing, and most of all the fish in the middle. She also sent fabulous German white chocolate and a card. Thank you so much Tacha - x - you didn't need to do that, but I'm thrilled with it.

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I am going to relay here the tale of an event which happened this month, and which should probably not have made me laugh, but which did. If you think I'm being awful, just think it privately, ok? The story centres on a woman - a work colleague of my friend 'F'. This woman is, by all accounts, quite a difficult woman, (my friend likens her to Miss Trunchbull from the film 'Matilda' - one of No.1's most favourite films) but that's by the by. She lives alone and one night went to bed having forgotten to lock the front door. She was woken at 2am by a noise downstairs and went down to find a man in her hallway. (This is not good, I realise that, and this isn't the part at which I laughed).

Being the woman she is, and feeling affronted at the intrusion (and who can blame her for that?) she punched the man (who seemed somewhat stunned) and pushed him into her sitting room before quickly calling 999 to report the matter. (Whilst a little surprising this is also not the part which made me laugh). By the time the police arrived, all was quiet in that sitting room and as the police gingerly opened the sitting room door, knowing not what they would find, they discovered the man had taken off his shoes and was slumbering gently on the woman's sofa. (This is the part that made me chortle. Very much.)

Don't you just LOVE the fact that he'd taken off his shoes? What a well brought up intruder he must be! The woman is by all accounts quite shaken up by the incident, which isn't surprising I guess. But I do wonder about that intruder ... was he just out looking for somewhere warm to sleep, and like Goldilocks looking for a bed, was trying all the front doors to see if he could find one which opened? Had he been thrown out of home by his family? Perhaps they tired of him wandering into other people's homes for a nap? I am intrigued, I must admit.

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No.2 and I had a conversation this month. It was about music and musicians generally, and I'm not sure how, but it meandered its way to me telling him about Buster Bloodvessel - that famous frontman of the British ska band 'Bad Manners'. I was telling him about Mr Bloodvessel and how he used to stick his long tongue out a lot. The remainder of the conversation went thus:

No.2: I've got a long tongue too - have you?

Me: Yes, fairly long.

No.2: How long exactly?

Me: Well, I can touch my nose with my tongue

No.2: That's nothing. I can pick my nose with my tongue!

Me: :-O

Here's a tip for you. If any of you were thinking of showing your children a video on YouTube of 'Lip Up Fatty' by Bad Manners, please be aware that you will then have said silly song in your head for at least a week afterwards. It's been driving me mad!

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On the subject of No.2, I went to parent's evening at school this month and am happy to report that his teacher is very happy with him. No.2 is now on the 'top table' and is apparently a pleasure to have in the classroom. I must say, this teacher has been really good for No.2 - he has a role model to which he can aspire since the teacher and he are actually quite similar in character (as the teacher himself admitted: "He's just like me ... sport mad and a bit of a show-off"). It's nice isn't it, when someone else says nice things about your kids? :-D

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I want to advertise here a new group on Flickr set up by the lovely Mrs Jelly (some of you may remember the blog Jelly*belly*Jelly*brain). Once a fortnight the group offers a 'challenge' in the form of a keyword or prompt, and us members go out and take photographs (or use old ones we already have) to upload to the group pool. It's a friendly group peopled by photographers of all abilities and it would be lovely if some of you bloggy peeps who are handy with the camera would come along and join up.

You can find the group here - if you're already a Flickr member then just click to join up. Hopefully it'll give us all a bit of focus (no pun intended) as well as provide some fun and friendship. The first challenge was 'Graffiti' - do you know, the youth of my community are sadly lacking in the field ... I couldn't find ANY! Luckily I eventually found some on a shopping trip to Oxford. Only had my compact camera with me, but at least it meant I could add something to the group pool.

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I would like to end this month's round up by thanking all those of you who left really sweet comments on my September round up in which I wrote about the death of Tracy. At the Digital Spy forums there was a thread containing comments of people who knew and cared for Tracy. My lovely friend Bertie printed it all off, bound it, and had it sent on to the family of Tracy as a book of remembrance. Another forum friend Bob (aka Eagle) had a pal (named Sam) who ran in the Great Northern Run, raising money for Cancer Research. Sam wore a vest which bore Tracy's name and once that was washed, that too was sent up to Tracy's family. I know I'm not the only one who is thinking of her family every day and hoping they're bearing up.

This picture of an Osteospermum (which I took this month) is for Val (dottycookie), periwinkle, Janet, C.Rag, Jane (Sew Create It), Twiggy (peasticks), Trasha Lou, Reasons to be Cheerful 1,2,3, Ron (Warped Mind of), Emma (Bagladee), Josie, Jackie, JuliaB (Marmalade Kiss), Maree (Farmyard Crafts), Malach (the Merciless), Clare (clare's craftroom), sharon, Gina, Lesley (tintocktap), Wonderwoman, Tracy (Pink Purl), Yvonne (Country Bliss), Thimbleanna, Elaine, K (Slovonske technobe), Claire (Quiltdude), Ali, Meggie, Julia (Primrose Corner), Reluctant Blogger, Linda, Michaela, Kate (North), Moogsmum, Emma pebble, and julie (LCR).

You are lovely people, and your words were so kind and comforting. Thank you very much - xxx.

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Neighbours ..... Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

... So goes the lyric to the theme tune of that old Aussie soap 'Neighbours'. I used to watch it many moons ago, in the days of Jim Robinson, Madge Bishop, Charlene and Scott, etc. Does anyone else remember Daphne, the stripper who married Des the bank manager? Then there was Nell Mangel ... I'm amazed I can remember any of it to be honest - although I definitely remember a lot of them had big hair, so it must have been the 1980s. Do you know, I googled 'Mrs Mangel' and what I found was a very sad story about how the actress who played her (Vivien Grey) suffered such horrible abuse from people unable to distinguish between her character and her as a person, that she gave up acting and left Australia. She apparently now lives quietly in Shoreham, Sussex. Anyway, as usual I digress.

Having good neighbours does improve the quality of one's life, doesn't it? Or at least having bad ones can make life less than enjoyable. I've been lucky on this score for most of my life. As a child, we had the sort of neighbours who welcomed me into their home, and my parents welcomed the neighbourhood kids into our home as well. I'm still in touch with one of the girls who lived next door up until I was about 10. As an adult in my first home, I had an elderly couple on one side of me who didn't make any noise at all and had the most beautiful garden. On the other side was a family who were friendly and pleasant. In our last home the kids and I enjoyed friendly relationships with all our neighbours; we looked after the next door neighbours' hens and cats when they were away, and they let my two go and bounce on their trampoline. The family who lived behind us had two kids of the same flavours, in the same order, and of similar ages, and that worked well for all concerned.

As I have written before, there are a lovely family next door on one side of us in this house, and on the other side is a single man who is very friendly and helpful. So ... all should be fine on the neighbour front shouldn't it? But it's not.

These houses are built on what used to be allotments, and access to them is past a row of old cottages which were probably here long before even the allotments (and the owners of which, presumably, sold off some of their land to the developers in order for these houses to be built). From the road, you cannot tell that the houses in which we live are here ... you have to drive past the cottages and bear round to the right behind them, and there we are. There is a signpost bearing the name of our 'street' (which isn't really a street) rather confusingly placed in front of the row of cottages, yet those cottages aren't included in our 'street'. It's a bit of a recipe for confusion, isn't it?

One of those cottages bears the same number as our house, and ever since we moved here various things have been delivered to the couple at the cottages instead of to us. The lady made it quite clear she wasn't happy about the situation, but what could I do? She would bring post down here and stick it though the door ... I offered to go to her place once a week and pick up anything that had been delivered erroneously. No, she didn't want me to do that. I rang the Post Office and told them about the mistake and they assured me they'd look into it.

Fast forward a few months to earlier this summer, and I was bringing the children home from school one day when this lady flagged me down - she had a box in her hand. I stopped the car and went over to her, taking the box and thanking her. What I got back can best be described as a rant: to say she was not a happy bunny is the understatement of the decade. She told me that she could have had loads of my Tesco deliveries and I'd never have known about it. Erm, the fact that the shopping would not have arrived, and I'd have contacted Tesco didn't seem to occur to her. She said things that were supposed to have been delivered to her hadn't been delivered to her because the signpost made it look like she didn't live at her address, but ours (if you see what I mean). She said that if she received any more post for me she was going to put it in the bin! She also had a good old whinge about parking spaces, fences, etc. and it became clear to me that there was a very 'them and us' attitude going on just a few yards down the road.

I rang the Post Office the next day and spoke to the Manager of the local Sorting Office. He admitted the 'box' in which our post was put was the same box that housed the post for the cottages. He assured me this would change. I spoke to the man next door who organises the residents' thing; he very kindly asked all the other neighbours if they too had encountered problems ... it seemed most of them hadn't, and if they had, it certainly wasn't a problem.

I went back to the woman's house and told her that I'd spoken to various bods. I also told her that her hostility was very unwelcome and didn't really help matters since I wasn't personally responsible for the problem. She didn't see it that way, but there you are. I don't think she and I will ever see eye to eye, and there's nothing I can do about that. A few weeks after her rant I received an email from her apologising for her outburst and saying it wouldn't happen again. It hasn't.

Last week I went into the local council offices to ask about our acquiring a green bin. I requested one when we first moved here, and have requested one on several occasions since - via the internet and by phone - but we still haven't got one. The lady in the offices looked me up on her computer. Apparently two green boxes were delivered to a house bearing our number, and had been 'taken in'. They didn't come here, and whoever took them in wasn't anyone who lived in this house ... would anyone like to guess who it might have been? I don't know for sure of course, but the council have been round and amended the signpost, to try to make things less confusing for delivery people. And I am to get some green boxes; at least that's what they said, but I'm not terribly confident. Watch this space.

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Some Local Gardens

Two or three weeks ago a local village opened up a few gardens of some of the residents to raise some dosh for charity. My mum is a real garden-lover - as you might tell from the pictures of plants in her garden that I've published here before. Anyway, ever eager for photo opportunities these days, I said I would accompany her on a tour of these gardens, hence this picture-heavy post.

The first house had the most wonderful log storage area - lots and lots of bits of wood beautifully stacked up. I couldn't resist a picture

That same garden had a most beautiful shrub that I've never seen before - Mum didn't know what it was either. It was fairly tall (probably around 7ft) and the leaves were turning from green to this amazing pink colour. The 'fruits' were like little open packages dangling down all over the plant. Do any of you know what it might be? I'd love to know. Anyway, whatever it is, it was stunning.

One of the gardens had hens roaming in part of it - this one caught my eye. She was good looking and knew it, strutting her stuff all over the place.

The place next door was very grand - this is the back door!

And in a corner of the garden was the cutest 'wendy house' you ever saw - made of stone, with a tiled roof, complete with roses growing up it and a white picket fence round the outside.

Even though it was September there were still lots of beautiful flowers to be seen.

There was a 'prescribed route' we were urged to follow to wend our way round to these gardens, but it turned out to be a hike across farmland. The only redeeming feature was this pretty stream. If we had known how much walking was involved I don't think we'd have gone, and if the same village opens its gardens next year, we definitely won't follow the route they suggest (or wear flip flops!)

There were some beautiful homes on show too - we are very lucky to have such picturesque villages nearby.

I'm sorry if this is a bit of a boring blog post, but I wanted to get some of these pictures into a future blog book. Does photography count as being creative? Yes. Crafty? No, I think not; back to the crafts soon I expect.

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