This news item had come to him not as rare and refreshing fruit but more like a buffet on the base of the skull with a sock full of wet sand.

Hello everyone.

This feels so funny, writing for an unseen, unknown (though, granted, I probably know most of you) audience: did a writing assignment with the boys today in which they had to create characters that kids their own age would like... which was actually quite hard for the boys, who, last writing assignment, respectively created characters named 'Fat Hog' and 'Big Pig'...
I came home early today because of severe nasty gastro-like symptoms that I won't describe in great detail. Let's just say it was not, in any way shape or form, pretty.
Also, re-watched Mulan 2 with Taiya, because she insisted on us watching it together. She cried! My sister cried in a Disney sequel! Bahahahahahaha. I'm never going to let her forget it.



Finished reading 'Orthodoxy'. One of the best books ever. Read it! Read it!

Random clip from QI: this is another moment in which I recommend something absolutely brilliant. Twice in the one blog already!

1000 awesome things, is, by default an awesome website, but I almost cried with happiness at finding this awesome page. I especially recommend the Norah Jones one (in which she bemoans the breakdown of her relationship with the letter 'Y'), the James Blunt one (similar to Norah Jones, except that his friend was a triangle.) and the Feist one. The ones with Robert De Niro, Neil Patrick Harris, and Andrea Bocelli are good too, but a bit weird. The 'Slimey to the Moon' one freaked me out as a kid - Slimey actually never came back, that I remember. Sesame Street holds a very special place in my childhood memory: indeed, I was watching Sesame Street when I lost my first tooth! Happy days.

One thing that has really been worrying me lately is the disturbing reemergence of floral patterened tights. I don't mean groovy, funky tights with cool stuff on them, (like in Jessie's blog) I mean floral patterns. Actually, any kind of pattern. Leopard skin is the worst. Ugh. And apparently the 1990s are coming back into fashion! Only last year I was looking back at some photographs of meself as a young tacker; shuddering in stylistic (and therefore metaphorical) agony at the matching jumper/tights combinations that I wore. Pink and purple zigzags. With flowers on them. The mind reels. And everybody always looked so bad in them. They made your legs look short. They made your legs look fat. They shouted and waved multicoloured flags in the direction of any fat your legs happened to be bearing, be it ever so slight. So why, in the name of all that looks a little bit OK, would anyone in fashion ever wish to relive those years, those horrid years, which seceded the 80s as the second ugliest decade in living memory? I can't say.

Another thing, a fad, a fashion; which, so far as I know isn't coming back: saxophones. And I'm glad. I don't like saxophones. There are few musical instruments that I am actually prejudiced against and one is the saxophone. The sound of a saxophone, to my ears, is what a baby elephant would sound like if you ripped its toenails off, slowly. They don't sound sexy. EVER. End of discussion.