Just pleasantly floundering around.....

As it was Mothers' Day I was in charge although Jed (6) said he was also a bit in charge. So with my new-found power, my request was that we collectively draw an alien-scape. It was mostly my and Jed's composition but Andy drew a fish in a wheelchair and an ant-dog which is pretty good for a 43 year old and Maddy threw a few pictures in the pot in between moaning about her homework (regular Sunday mantra).

I recently re-found this picture that my son did a while ago. I remember him absolutely absorbed in it as he drew himself as a secret agent in his HQ. HQs are very important places. No super hero, agent or any other significant can function properly without a HQ. I love kiddie's minds.

When I was a child my mum used to tear her hair out with worry about the possibility of me being malnourished. (There's certainly no sign of that now). You see there was loads I simply refused to eat. My most severe repulsion was towards brown, chewy lumps of meat - something my mum seemed to cook every other day. Being the 70s and having parents with war rationing deep in their psyche meant a) it was considered good fortunes to have brown chewy lumps of meat (in the large scheme of things I can see that) and b) everything definitely had to be eaten. My mother's way of dealing with my refusal to eat was to leave me sitting at the table for hours insisting I could not get down from the table until I had cleared my plate. I would remain at said table chewing the same morsel for what felt like hours. I could usually hear other kids playing out in my street and that would twist the knife a little further. I could, in fact, chew a single piece of meat until it no longer had any flav...

I remember reading somewhere that you have the longest relationship with your siblings. Pretty obvious really as you tend to be born around the same time, hang out in a shared building during childhood and hopefully die around the same time. But it's not just about time is it? Siblings share a dollop of genetic material and a very similar upbringing. No one else in my life has that. If I had been brought up by my parents without my older sister and younger brother present for dilution of parenting and moral support, I am not sure how I would have managed! The adult to child ratio was definitely in our favour. We had a lot of mischief to get on with so decoys were essential. My sister's teenage rebellion provided much needed cover for my brother's and my wrongdoings for years but mostly I think we worked on a rota system. Of course we had some sibling rivalry rattling about, enhanced by our parents need to continually - and sometimes brutally - compare us and in a family whe...

I can't resist congratulating my big sister for winning a travel writing competition in the Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/dec/27/europe-readers-stories-2009?page=2 Sadly my link thing never seems to work so it's a cut and paste job for anyone that's interested. Her writing appears to be taking off (a few articles here and there, and little snippets in the Guardian) and I hope it grows and grows, blossoms and reaches far out. xxxx

I had a bit of an accident yesterday. Several glasses of white wine fell into my mouth. It was remarkable. I was sitting, all civilised, eating lovely food in a fine restaurant with work colleagues, celebrating the birth of little baby Jesus, when I had the accident. It rendered me unable to speak or even walk properly. Funny thing is, I would recommend it, as I had fantastic fun - but not too often. So even though a hangover is somewhat like an old friend, it's not conducive to bountiful blogging. So my offering today is a poster my daughter made when we were decorating. Poor - I know - but I am still re-hydrating, rubbing bruises and moving in slow motion. xxxx

Death is one of our culture's taboos. We're not very good at death. You'd think there would be a useful protocols by now - we've been at it (dying) for eons! Because death's not really spoken about nobody appears to know what might help in such testing times - certainly not if my closest experience with it is anything to go by...... My dad was an unusual character - extremely unorthodox and very angry. We never got to the bottom of whatever made him like he was because the tiniest hint of digging below the surface always provoked an angry outburst. He could go from nought to full rage in less than a second and my siblings and I got very good at treading on eggshells as children. He was incredibly academically clever and capable: good at constructing things (made me a beautiful wooden magic roundabout), a practical scientist - could build radios and all sorts of gadgets, creative - pretty good at painting, a linguist (spoke Spanish, translated French documents for ai...

My dad died about a year and a half ago. There's much I could write about this but today I am focusing on funeral arrangements! Before he died, he made it known to us who his solicitor was and that she held information about the funeral. I realise, in my not-quite-functioning-normally head at the time that I thought this meant he had outlined details about what he wanted his funeral to be like. It turned out, all the solicitor had was 'cremation'. I remember feeling a little disappointed at the time. We made the arrangements for his funeral in a way that we partially thought he'd like but also with a clear idea of what we did not want: we had it outside amongst the pink rhododendrons, he was in a willow coffin, a silver hearse, the coffin bearers in ordinary suits, my mum, my sister, me and my brother all spoke (or had our words read by the humanist funeral chap). My brother's new-ish girlfriend by virtue of the fact she is Spanish, was asked to read some words a S...

I received and e mail from ancestry.co.uk suggesting a Charles Harvey Potter 23rd March 1931 - 8th May 2008 might be linked to my family tree. I have researched my genealogy and have drawn up quite an extensive family tree and I think I might have struggled had I failed to identify my own father! Still I guess he's well and truly and ancestor now!