knock knock. Who's there?

Tonight's the night. You can feel the sonic crackles of
anticipation.

A new series of Dr Who will hit the screen at peak 
viewing time and the only families that won't be watching
are those where the adults spent their 60's childhoods in
Hong Kong or Sao Paolo, haven't a clue what the fuss
is about and didn't spend their Saturday evenings lurking
behind the legendary purple draylon sofa.

Dr Who hysteria is clear psychological evidence of how
parental values influence young children.

This British institution is rooted entirely in the reactionary
nostalgia for all things past that is part of our culture.

....And yes, we'll all be glued to the set, eating fish and chips
round our Victorian fireplace.

The Prisoner

I walk down the street. I turn the corner. I walk. I cross the road
Iwalk down another road and I'm back where I started.
The buildings look strange but familiar. I know there is no escape.
I am not a number, I am a free person.

There's the posh sweet shop...and the shoe shop, the poodle
parlour - I mean hairdresser and the triple gift shops that smell
of parma violets. I stop by the knick-knacks-for- the-home
-that-can-be-purchased-with-disposable-income shop. Sinister
people in 60's style suits approach me.

'You are middle class. You cannot leave. Your world view is
based on received information from the Guardian newspaper.
You buy organic butternut squash, you think omega oils will
make everything alright. You think there are more interesting things
to do than housework, but you don't like humus on the carpet.
You have never been hungry. You believe reading is more
improving than watching TV, but you crash out in front of
unfunny game shows. You like your children to have interests
and you drive them to and from their interests leaving a carbon
footprint the size of Greenland. You would like to live a stylish life
in a house gutted by minimalism - but there is ketchup on the walls
and old socks and crisp packets under the sofa.'

You cannot leave.
Here comes the giant ball.....rolling down the street, squashing
art gallery owners and people selling unusual olives. Teenagers
in pink crocs run screaming.... Japanese bottled beer spills
onto the pavement outside the tattily trendy bar.

There is no escape

Taking Health for Granted

Sorry, everyone I've not blogged as been rather poorly with an orrible illness
that used to be very good at reducing the size of Victorian families.
Some kind of lung thing where you feel as if you've been stabbed every
time you take a breathe - and so drift around in a toxic miasma of
painkillers and antibiotics.Thank heavens for antibiotics.
Or Alexander Fleming (Phlegming) actually, but I expect
he was divinely inspired.  

You could have partied at my blog - but the ambience might have been
 that of old tissues, daytime TV....and me upstairs- mad aunt rats-taily
and wheezing about noise levels.

The point is that one day you can be running the London Marathon
and the next day feeling to weak to pop a Nurofen out of it's plastic
bubble.

Another of life's little reminders to get on with it while you can.

And thanks everyone who rounded up, fetched and fed small
people. What would I have done without you!

'From Kuzhnisk, the world appeared faded as if through a nurses stocking'

Have just finished 'Ludmila's broken English' by DBC Pierre.
So I do actually read - not just manage children and their 
homework. Feel that literary types, apart from those that know
me better - are deserting this blog. Arggh have been labelled a
saddo that writes about kids as nothing else in life.

Anyway, right. I read this book right. (And it did take me weeks and
I did have to renew it 3 times. And once upon a time could
have finished it in a day....and been hunting round for something else.)

It was worth hanging on in there - because this is a novel you can
stand your spoon up in.

The story is a mere posturing, anorexic clothes horse, but it wears it's
prose like Kate Moss. Each page is packed with bizarre similes that seem
to have escaped the refining process and jump instantly from instinct to page.
Boy are they quick. Loads and loads of living description and conversations
that are still writhing on the paper as you attempt to pin them down.

After a while it is totally indigestible and you just have to stop to process everything.
Sort of the opposite to reading a children's story.

I think it has a happy ending.