More food weirdness

There are certain meals which I have to eat in specific ways: Fry-ups - these have to be carefully divided up to ensure that there is a piece of every item in every mouthful. I can estimate the number of pieces any given ingredient will be split into, and plan ahead accordingly. Meals with peas/sweetcorn/beans/carrots - vegetables must be consumed first - strays must be hunted down, lurkers must be wheedled out from their crannies, and nothing can be consumed until the veg is eaten. Spag Bol - this must be eaten with spoon and fork with evenly distributed sauce to pasta ratios. Sometimes I wonder whether I have some deep seated issues, and then I speak to other people about food and realise I am actually quite low-maintenance in comparison, so I should just shut up and be grateful!

Books I want to read

1. A prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving 2. Anna Karennina and War and Peace - Tolstoy 3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 4. More Sartre generally (Being and Nothingness, actually finishing Nausea) 5. Some Descartes 6. For Whom the Bell Tolls (I started this a while ago and only got to about page 7, but OCD laws dictate that I now finish it come what may!) 7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera 8. Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevski 9. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig(think I might regret this one!). 10. Don Quixote - Cervantes 11. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 12. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (so keen to read this after listening to the tapes when I was a kid that I just went and ordered it - can't wait!) I will add more as I think of them, and hopefully some of them will soon appear on the list of 'Books I wanted to read and Did' list. Update to reveal that I am cheating and already listening to one of these (Tom Sawyer) as an audio book - a much easier way to digest some of the weightier tomes I have promised myself I would read, but also fun to listen to real Americans reading classic American literature like Tom Sawyer, although I have yet to hear enough to know whether I actually enjoy the book or not.

Why?

Why were the Ninja turtles names after artists? Why do people always cite the same novels when asked for the best opening line - 1984, Pride and Prejudice, a Tale of Two Cities and the one about bloody Manderley? Why don't people use their indicators to indicate where they're going? Why does the post person come half way through the afternoon during the week, but never fails to wake us up at 8am at the weekends? Why can I never remember the name of a single song I want to add to my playlists when I get to Finetune? Why do people say 'getting along like a house on fire'?

Fix it by breaking it

The Boy Wonder has a brilliant technique he uses to ascertain the seriousness of technological failure in our household appliances. I call this process 'Fix it by breaking it' and it usually involves a little swearing from him, followed by some laughter from me, then some more in depth swearing from him and finally my collapse into giggles whilst asking 'have you fixed it by breaking it yet?'. Despite the fact that the Boy Wonder is very good at most technological things, something about our TV service or websites which require the user to follow simple instructions send him into a state of complete denial about his abilities and render me useless through laughing. I try to help by pointing out how much better it was before he started fixing it, or reminding him of how long since he started fixing it, which I think he appreciates.

Things I hope to do with my future children

I often see, hear and think about things that would be really cool to do with kids, and since my anger at ageism is unlikley to manifest itself in a way that is actually practical, I thought I would capture my ideas of things I hope to do with my kids one day: Midnight treasure hunts - half an hour tramping round the woods in the dark following clues and finding something fun hidden away just for them. I secretly wish someone would wake me up for something like this, so am already quite excited about that one. Camping in the back garden - my brother is the indoorsy type, so never really made any demands for this kind of thing, and I didn't want to stay out there on my own, so this is another thing that I would like to have done myself. What other point is there to having kids? Time capsules - the Blue Peter ones were always so boring, presumably because they were for someone else to find, but I prefer the idea of ones for their future selves to remind them of how much they have changed. Messages in a bottle/balloon - who wouldn't want their words of wisdom to be released into the world? Might actually do this myself next time I'm near the sea. Keep scrapbooks - I am a part-time hoarder, and I reckon that if I can bring kids up to keep only what can be taped to a page of sugar paper then we might not have to have a room full of crap in our house. Visit to the Houses of Parliament - I would like to bring up my children with an interest in the world around them, plus I missed the class trip myself, so have never been in. Watch a trial/court case - obviously nothing too disturbing, but I think thinking about all the things that were considered too scary for me compared to the things my iagination dreamed up, I think sheltering kids from this kind of thing is counterproductive as it does mean they have a silver screen idea of what goes on in the world. Sure there are more, but now I'm trying to think of them, they're slipping away, so I will have to come back and add them as and when they occur to me.

Bing

Microsoft e-mailed me today to let me know about their new search engine, two days after I had already played with it on the advice of one of my many geeky updates I get from the world of online every day. I'm not impressed. I can't see the point of having another search engine which is not as good as Google, but I particularly can't see the point of one which seems designed to give its users less control over their results. I know I am unnaturally in love with Google, but I'm not sure to whom Bing is designed to appeal, plus it took me a long time to use 'Google' as a verb, and I am certainly not going to give up Googling things to start 'Binging' them instead.

Grange Hill

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch Grange Hill by my mother in case it made me too scared to go to secondary school. I remember thinking that secondary school must be really dramatic if it was anything like the illicitly watched snippets I saw at people's houses. Despite the fact I think I had already gained an understanding of how TV and real life weren't necessarily identical, my Mum wanted to ensure that secondary school was something to be embraced. I was also specifically forbidden from watching The Bill, which presumably was either to make sure I wasn't too scared of the police to commit crimes, or to protect me from the overexcitement of people shouting at each other woodenly about crimes which always turn out to be intricately interconnected with one another and fortunately reach complete resolution by the end of the episode (unless it's a two parter where you can guarantee a cliffhanging volte-face at the end of the first half). I assume I will probably impose arbitrary rules on our future children's viewing habits, but I like to believe that I will at least embrace the arbritraryness and pick forbidden programmes based on the font of the titles, the name of the lead character or something equally fatuous.

Ageism

When the sun shines and the days are long, it seems pointlessly perverse to continue the winter tradition of staying in bed till it gets dark watching TV, so I make more valiant efforts than usual to scour our hand-delivered copy of our local parish magazine for events that might get us out of the house and encourage us to appreciate our local environs. Usually there are plenty of activities that suit my requirements for entertainment and learning, but without fail I find myself thwarted and angry when I read the 'small print' and discover that pond dipping is only for accompanied children, that bug spotting is for under 9s, and that only families are welcome to come along to 'spring fun' featuring biscuit decorating, ladybird hats and other stimulating-sounding fun. I feel aggrieved that this kind of thing is only for kids - I'm sure I could turn up, but a) I'm not sure the Boy Wonder would want to be the only 30 year old accompanying his 28 year old wife to an event intended for small children so I would have to go on my own and b) Kids ruin stuff when you're trying to have fun - they scare animals, make noise, get leakage on stuff I might want to touch and generally demand that they should be at the front/first to go whenever something good happens, so people like me are supposed to 'hold back' and let them, even if I have been waiting longest. So screw kids, and screw the people who put on events which even have a suggested age group - all I want is to crouch down and poke around looking at bugs and pond life without people acting as though I should have had enough of that when I was a kid.