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Archive for September, 2008

How to cope with a looming kitchen inspection

Posted in Food, Fun, State, tagged , , on 25 September, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Mrs Discoman sent me this Youtube clip, which made me smile this morning. It also lessened the stress caused by the prospect of having my kitchen checked out by someone who knows about catering and hygiene.

I particularly liked the line “He loves me when I waste my time by writing silly songs”. But sadly no line with “He loves me when my kitchen is filthy”.

PS The kitchen inspection is not another nanny state extension announced in Gordon Brown’s Labour conference speech along with nursery places for two year olds. It’s because I’ve just started baking for a cafe and they need to check that I won’t poison the public.

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Concealing my age – some chance

Posted in Family, tagged , on 16 September, 2008| 3 Comments »

It was my birthday last Sunday and the Curate very kindly wished me a happy birthday during the notices at church. He mentioned that I was twenty-one again. However, my children were keen to put him right. Straight away and very loudly.

‘Not TWENTY-one. She’s FOURTY-one’ they chanted from the pew. Good to know that they know their numbers…

It reminded me of the time that a friendly local shopkeeper asked a very chatty Joker his age a while ago.

‘I’m three, the Queen is four and Mummy’s thirty-eight’ he informed the grocer.

I think I might just get a large badge announcing my age so the kids don’t feel the need to tell everyone.

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RML

Posted in Faith, Family, School, tagged , , on 11 September, 2008| 3 Comments »

As a concerned Christian parent, I am always pleased to hear when my child is being taught truth from the bible.

So I was extremely impressed when I was told by his Year 1 teacher at our church school that the Joker is studying RML. This course is well known to Anglican Evangelicals for providing excellent in-depth bible study at St Helen’s Church in the City of London.

Eventually my brain clicked, since we were talking about the Joker’s reading and writing, and I twigged that she was actually referring to his literacy programme (which is very good, by the way, synthetic phonics and all that). Hopefully once he’s completed his first RML, he’ll be ready for the other one.

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Toys

Posted in Family, tagged , , , on 6 September, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Our new church assistant arrived a couple of days ago. Gentle is in his mid-twenties and has joined us from Ghana. He’ll be here for a year to help the church in all sorts of ways and, hopefully, to learn something of our culture and more of our Lord.

Last year’s church assistant, Gambit, was here and we were sitting around the kitchen table discussing the recent tragic loss of the Joker’s much-loved toy dog (don’t panic, a replacement has now been sorted, thanks to eBay.fr). Both Gambit and I had tales of lost soft toys in our childhoods and then I asked Gentle if he’d had a favourite toy when he was growing up.

‘Not really. In Ghana, children don’t have toys,’ he said. ‘There isn’t the money for toys.’

I looked around my chaotic kitchen, stuffed with children’s toys and games and felt a mix of emotions – guilt, gratitude and excitement at the prospect of learning more of life in Ghana, where kids have no toys but the Sunday school classes are packed.

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The Olympic Effect

Posted in Family, tagged , , on 3 September, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Well, it’s been the holidays and so I’ve not been posting. My brain goes to mush when the hoards are around. Anyway, I have a great list of things I want to blog now school’s back and my brain is recovering some rigidity. We’ll see how it goes.

Today’s summer tale is of the Queen and the Joker having a tussle in the back garden of the holiday house we were staying in. They were laughing their heads off and pulling each other’s clothes. The Queen made a particularly vicious-looking grab at the crotch of the Joker’s shorts.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Jojo, Mummy.’

‘Jojo?’

‘Yes, jojo, you know, like on the Olympics,’ said the Queen as she successfully threw the Joker to the floor in what I took to be an ippon.

I was just pleased they weren’t practicing escrime instead (amazing what useless new vocabulary you learn when watching French telly).

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