That Old Cake Thing Again.

So the best friend with baby Tilly asks me, a day or so after my sister's wedding, if I wouldn't mind making a cake for Tilly's Celebration party.

"A single Cake I say. I don't mind making just one cake. But I'm not making loads like we did before."

"Cool," she says, "Excellent. Can it have icing strawberries on it?"

"Icing strawberries!" I say. "What a wicked idea!"

So that's what we've been doing for the past week, my Mum and I. Making icing strawberries and strawberry flowers and leaves and bows and butterflies all for a pink cake, which is also pink and cream marbly sponge inside, and which has strawberry icing. Yum.

So here it is, Ta-da!



The star of the party probably won't be impressed since she still prefers baby rice, but hey, she might like the pretty colours and I'm glad to make it for her.

Still, the sense of satisfaction I get from doing it is disturbing. I am becoming increasingly terrified of turning into one of those sugarcraft women, who have frilly aprons and badly permed hair.

*Shivers.*

On The Problems Of Listening To Radio Programmes And Why I Think Monty Don Is A Bit Of A Guru.

Last week, after dropping Harry off at school and whilst driving to Sainsbury's I heard a Radio 4 programme called Devout Skeptics. It was so interesting and so gripping for me since it was directly about something I had been thinking about for a while now that when I got to Sainsbury's I sat in the car park in my car for 25 minutes in order to hear the rest of the programme.

The guest on the programme was Monty Don, the gardener, a fairly unassuming slighlty famous person whom I have never paid a great deal of attention to other than the fact that I read his column in the sunday paper. But anyway. On the radio he was talking about how he felt about religion. Or rather irreligion. Or rather any conversation that encompasses being, eternity, oneness, reason and life.

And he said this:

"The problem is that in the Western world we are linguistically ill-equipped to describe what we mean."

Which really struck a chord with me.

Basically what he's saying is that we simply do not have the words. In Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism for example, concepts such as (having trouble finding the words here, hahahahaha) the 'eternal oneness that is all things' have proper descriptive words that enable students to discuss these things fully. In the Western world, because our concepts are generally reductivist, (i.e. we tend to try to reduce things down to a single meaning) it means we cannot translate those Eastern concepts succesfully, and the language barrier (in terms of character) makes transliteration difficult too.

So yes. I've been thinking about this for a bit, and then I happen to hear a programme on the radio where someone happens to suggest that the problem is the fact that Westerners are linguistically stuck, and well, it just made the connection with me.

So I want to find it again to quote him.

How does one find old radio programme transcripts? Or even download the actual programme itself? Is this possible? I believe it is, since I have a friend who appears to think so.

And can one do it on a 56k modem or will it cost thousands of pounds, cost hundreds of lives and take tens of hours?

Bad Karma, Snail Murder And The Warped Web-Fu Of My Brother In Law.

So yes. To back track a little, The Beautiful Man and I are staying at my sister and my brother-in-law's flat (where the Hand Incident happened) and we find a pot in the garden with a wooden lid on it. So we lift the lid and inside we find about 20 live snails.

So we ponder this snail prison which my sister and her husband (who shall henceforth be known as The Snail Torturers) have created, and then The Beautiful Man goes and gets a marker pen and writes Camp X-Ray on the top of the lid. And we snicker for a bit and we think no more of it.

Then The Snail Torturers come back from their honeymoon and are obviously doing a bit of gardening because I get a text message from Snail Torturer A (my sister) saying, "I can't believe you wrote Camp X-Ray on the snails!" Which makes The Beautiful Man and me laugh quite a lot, because we had forgotten he did it.

So then, a week or so passes and we get an email from Snail Torturer B, (my brother-in-law) saying this: "Its not just me! I'm going to send them a picture of Camp X-Ray..." And he links us to Snailhausen.

Snailhausen!

I mean, Snailhausen!

Apparently, there is a couple (Mr and Mrs Wheatley) who are so upset by garden snail invasion that they have set up Snailhausen. And made a website about it. They've named the snails - currently the population of Snailhausen is only two (Miguel and Shaun) but worse than that is that Mr and Mrs Wheatley are asking the public to vote on which snail should be executed first.

And people are voting!

So I try to place a vote for 'neither', but it will not allow me to choose 'neither', I have to choose one or the other. Either Miguel dies, or Shaun does. Which is slightly upsetting.

I mean it's funny for a bit, but then it's not because I start to lose it, and my head starts to get all 'Big-Brother-Gone-Wrong' and 'The-Slow-Decline-Into-Public-Murder-Games-Begins.'-ish.

Because alright, it's only snails we're voting on now, but what about next year? Will it be people next year? I mean it could be, couldn't it? Where do you start? You start with snails right? I mean next year Mr and Mrs Wheatley could be running a production company which makes a TV show whereby people who have done something wrong are entered into a nationwide public vote in order that we may all decide which one of them should be executed.

Maybe you think I'm exaggerating, over-reacting, but how do you know that Mr and Mrs Wheatley won't have developed a taste for power by then, and won't have created a monster out of their little Snailhausen joke-ette?

Hmmm?

Hmmm??

***

*Breathes.*

So that's somewhat scary.

***

And then I start to think about how Snail Torturer B managed to find a website which would back up his case for torturing snails and I begin to wonder how long it took him to find something that would justify their actions, and I really start to think about what the Sam Hill he typed into Google in order to find it...

This? - 'Snail Torture'?
This? - 'Other people who torture snails like me'?
This? - 'Snail Camp X-Ray'?

THIS? - 'The snails must DIE, DIE I say KEEL them, KEEL them NOW'?!

I mean first there was 'Camberwell Camp X-Ray' and now there is Snailhausen.

It's all very worrying indeed.

Why I Wouldn't Be Any Good At Being A Fingerbobs Puppeteer At The Moment.*

Oh I feel miserable.

I've got a problem that I can't talk to anyone about but yet it would be nice to talk it through in order to clear my head of all the wispy bits of thought about it that are currently floating around. I hate things like that. I just keep batting away the thoughts as they flicker through my head and instead I am trying to distract myself from the whole rather pointless cycle of thinking about things I can't solve.

The trouble is distraction can't take the form of anything artlike, since my finger is still bent. It curves slightly to the left and is bent over like the top curve of a C and no matter how hard I try it just won't straighten. It doesn't hurt, it just doesn't work which is a little annoying because it is making my writing really messy, I can't really hold my paintbrush very well so I can't start the tree painting I want to do and I'm too scared to pick up a pencil and try drawing just in case it's all fucked up.

I can't mow the lawn since it's raining, and although I guess I could go and hang up all the clothes that are currently strewn all over my bedroom floor, it's not much fun and distraction tactics are supposed to be enjoyable, aren't they?

* Fingerbobs puppets rely on having your middle finger out straight to be the head and all the other fingers bent downwards at right angles in order to make the puppets legs. Since my ring finger won't bend downward anymore than it will straighten, my Fingerbobs puppet would therefore have one gammy looking leg and would probably scare small children.

On Stereotypical Sexual Comments And Why They Get Me Riled.

Becki (the Judas Kiss new girl) on Big Brother, nominated Dan (the beautiful, clever gay guy) for his 'squeamish and horrible comments about female genitalia.'

I am most upset about this. Not because Dan has been nominated, but for the reason why.

I so hope it wasn't the women = fish line. I know that line, I've head it from several friends of mine. It upset me then and I shouted at them for being so narrow-minded and plain nasty, and it upsets me now.

Listen, Dan, and everyone else who thinks that line is so funny: Women don't smell of fish. WE DON'T. (Only the girls who rarely wash ever come close to smelling of fish.) Saying women = fish is as low as the taunts children make about each other in the pre-prep playground.

Grow up and start accepting that people may not all share your particular preference.

I mean, some people like fish.

Hahahahaha....

Harry had sports day today and just to set the scene, last year he was so last in the sack race that he stepped out of his sack with a big grin on his face and hurled the sack over the finishing line. About 20 minutes after everyone else had crossed it.

But he's been practicing.

And this year, this year he came first in the running race, first in the egg and spoon and second in the sack race!

Oh, but how I cheered for him as he was doing them all - I didn't know I cared so much about whether he won or lost. My throat is sore now from screaming, "Come ON Harry!" so much.

Hmmm.

So anyway, I was going to write this: To be fair to myself I wanted him to win so that he would be proud of himself. But actually in retrospect, that can't be true.

Because, you see, he's so zen that he doesn't care whether he wins or loses. He says, "Well I tried my bestest, and that's what matters Mummy."

So I must have wanted him to win for me...

Which is weird.

Just call me competitive Mum.

Found Dog!

Hurrah!

Got a phone call this morning from the farmer's daughter saying, "Your dog's in our barley field!" So we drive like a mad thing round to the field and sure enough there he is standing right in the middle. The farmer and his wife and daughter are all standing at the entrance, occasionally calling his name to try to make him stay there till we get there, because they knew they can't catch him and he will only come to me.

So Harry and I run into the field shouting, "Pickles, Pickles" and suddenly his ears prick up and he comes hurtling towards us and I bend down and he leaps right into my arms.

Ooooooh! I am so pleased.

He's very muddy and tired but the vet thinks he's fine and he'll just sleep lots for a few days.

So Yay, for that.

*Grins lots.*

On The Political Opinion Of Six Year Olds And How Osama Bin Laden Can't Possibly Be Hiding Behind A Tree.

So we're eating our tea whilst watching a news item about Saddam Hussein and obviously this pings the naughty man = terrorist link in Harry's brain because, mid-mouthful of spaghetti, he asks, "Mummy, have they caught that naughty man who crashed the aeroplanes into the buildings yet?"

"Osama Bin Laden?" I say. "No, not yet."

"Oh." Harry says. And then with a tone of awe in his voice he adds, "He must have a very good hiding place. Not just behind a tree."

"Yes." I say. "I expect he's hiding in a much better place than that."

And he twirls his fork in the spaghetti, looking very thoughtful.

And then after a minute or so of thinking, he says, "Or maybe he is behind a tree and they're just really bad at seeking."