Playmobil Babylon

A four year old son enriches your life in many ways, but surely the pick of the bunch is providing a great excuse to play with quality toys. Anyone who tells you that toys are just plastic rubbish these days is nuts. Leave the arty wooden farm animals to the wankers and get stuck in to Lego and Playmobil, that's my tip.

Playmobil is well designed, durable, and ... well, actually a bit weird on occasion. Here's my (ahem) Playm-odd-bil top three:



1) BOY WITH SINK "Only 5 in stock - order soon!" says Amazon. Erm, maybe.



2) DOCTOR WITH BABY INCUBATOR - Surely that's Alex from A Clockwork Orange?



3) LAUNDRY SET - Strike a blow for the sisters.


And a close runner-up:



Deer.

Pea on a Fork

... is the joyous description our friend W gave to the sleeping pose of a baby - arms thrown up either side of head. Makes me smile every time I think of it.

Spinning

It's true. I take part in the least heterosexual form of exercise on the planet. You sit on a static bike in a classful of others. To your front is a staggeringly fit instructor wearing a Britney-mic, yelling commands and encouragement as you pretend to climb hills and sprint along flat bits, using resistance on the bike's wheel, to the accompaniment of loud music. Sound a bit silly? It certainly is.

But then it's the best exercise I've ever done. I begin to match the dark red studio wall behind me within 5 mins and at the end of the session I'm saturated with sweat. A few other observations:

1) By god the music helps. Cheesy euro house does the job fine, but I always find a bit extra for that drum n'bass remix of Outer Spaced by The Prodigy.

2) It can chafe.

3) The Friday instructor, despite being about 5'3" is so fiercely fit (and in fact simply fierce) that she actually gets the back of the heavier-than-me bike to hop up when she accelerates.

Chocolate

Right well it's been several months since last post. Pity I didn't have the energy to blog daily about the excitements and strife of a new baby... but I didn't. Not even close.

So instead it's straight back to random posting.

Over Easter I discovered that S is not alone in her inability to countenance a sweet snack without accompanying tea. My brother in law B spent his entire childhood fielding cup after cup made by his mum, and finds the action of putting on the kettle her most characteristic gesture to this day. He, like S, just can't deal with a piece of chocolate, cake or a biscuit, without tea.

It's the sheer perversity of this that amuses me. The fact that both of them would deny themselves the confectionary rather than have it tealess. Beautifully illustrated by V, recounting B's reaction to her thoughtfully arriving back from a petrol station stop on a long drive with a creme egg for him. "What am I supposed to do with that?!".

Tube nightmare

Very shocking event at Warren Street tube at lunchtime. I was heading down the escalator as an elderly indian-looking couple got onto the up escalator. The husband was immediately in trouble - like he'd never been on an escalator before. Thinking back I reckon he was trying to hang on to the metai, stationary bit rather than the moving handrail. He kept stumbling and eventually fell over, followed by his wife.

By this stage i was at the bottom, so I dashed up to help. I was shocked to see this octogenarian lady sprawled on the steps with her feet uphill, as it were, flailing about in great distress. I managed to support her as another man came down the escalator to help the husband. I shouted for someone to hit the button, which thankfully they did, then we managed to manhandle the lady onto her feet. At that point other people (relatives??) came to whisk them away. I was really shocked by the look of dispair on the lady's face. It was oddly as though she wanted the horror of the situation to be acnowledged more than she wanted to be helped. She even showed me her hand which was smeared with a bit of blood whilst I was heaving her up to sitting. Very unsettling.

... and then a bit silly as I slowly made my way back down the stationary up escalator, only to speed up markedly as I realised they could switch the power back on any second...

Overheard

A lady on the King's Road talking on her mobile: "yes, then you get off at the stop after, by the Town Hall ... Chelsea Town Hall. WHERE WE GOT MARRIED...

Collected Sayings

It's probably futile to record your child's endearing or (unintentionally) humorous utterances, because, like a recounted dream, they are almost guaranteed to underwhelm, or in extreme cases nauseate, your audience. I know this because D is forever "regaling" me with genuis sayings of his two kids, and if he can't achieve a better than 50/50 hit-rate armed as he is with natural storytelling ability and a right pair of nutters for offspring, then there's little hope for the rest of us.

But then what the hell is the point of a blog if not to indulge yourself? B made me grin in the bath tonight by insisting on shampooing his own hair then looking at his hands and saying "look at the state of ME" (resounding silence from the stalls. I know. But he's only three, and and and it was really funny yeah?). Mum's favourite was when they were playing doctors and he decided he needed to take of her shoes for an examination, then exclaiming with a sort of dissaproving wince and shake of the head "those feet..."

Less funny, but quite striking, was our conversation on the swings where B and I fell to discussing his friends at nursery and what they do when they're annoyed. He pulled an expression of downward curved mouth - "this is what Isabella does when someone has made her cross" - then a furious frown - "this is what Archie does when someone makes him cross". What, I asked him, do you do when someone makes you cross? "Catch them in my web". Course you do.