Holiday snaps…

Half term in Cornwall, originally uploaded by nisuspi.

Are rubbish, I know. But look. Tabby wrote my name in the sand. Give me a break.

Happy new year

I haven’t blogged much over Christmas because it’s been spent mostly doing family stuff and catching up with friends. All of which was ace, but uninteresting to read. I’m putting together a longer post about how my feelings towards Johannesburg have changed since last time I was here, but in the meantime, here’s Tabby on the drums.

More rhythm than I have, any way.

How I (almost) got into a fight with Santa

What're you looking at?

Or his helpers, anyway.

Yes, today I failed one of the most basic parent tests and lost my temper at the Christmas grotto. I realise that every parent in the Western world – including my own – has had to bottle their rage while standing in the queue for Santa, and I’m the weak one who buckled under the pressure. This does not bode well for Tabby’s  teenage years.

Except that when I say I lost my temper, what I mean is that I returned a naff present with a very withering stare and walked off without paying and some muttered expletive  or another. It’s still pretty shameful, but before  you judge me, here’s a bit of background to show that I was, I felt, provoked.

For various reasons involving friends’ weddings and overseas trips, I have just seven shopping days left before Christmas already. I need to buy presents for my extended family, preferably by the end of next week. To this into context, I usually do most of my Christmas shopping on the 24th or 26th December. I’m finding it very hard and feel under pressure to perform.

So even though it feels ludicrously early, I took Tabby in to Brighton today to brave the surging Saturday shopping crowds, which are already getting in shape for the big one. After a couple of hours of not buying anything in the cool and funky shops around Seven Dials, we ended up in Churchill Square mall. For those who don’t know this haven of commercial wonder, it’s the usual chain-store-and-fast-food hellhole and it already has a franchised Santa’s grotto set up on the ground floor. Santa – Book online and avoid the wait! – sits inside a three storey plastic tree, and has an animatronic Cinderella and three sinister dwarves in his garden.

Outside the grotto door there are two foxes, one of which repeatedly headbutts its inanimate partner: I think they are supposed to be hugging.

Naturally, Tabby was enchanted and I was feeling guilty enough – having dragged her around Brighton in the cold – to start queuing.

Santa, though, wasn’t in: just a very bored looking elf on the main desk and her manager. They both ignored me for a couple of minutes before explaining Santa would be back in ten more – just enough time to take Tabby to the loo, three floors up.

By the time I got back the gates to the line-up were open and parents and offspring had started to take their positions. We were about fifteen kids behind the front, which seemed like a reasonably forward place to be. Twenty minutes tops, I thought.

Half an hour later, Santa finally ensconced himself and children began disappearing, one family at a time, into the door of his grotto. It was another twenty minutes before we actually got to the tree trunk entrance.

Even Tabby was bored of the wife beating foxes by this point, and as we got to the front of the queue, I read the price list. £4.50 to see Santa and receive a present, then a sliding scale of £5-£12 extra for digital photo prints in a nasty plastic keyring or leaky snowglobe*.

I was fairly sure that Tabby would be happy with the basic package. What I wasn’t expecting that a sacking curtain would be drawn back and another bored elf would usher us into a glowing red furnace that looked like a scene from Saw based on Dante’s vision of Hades. Santa, all white wig and red light uplighters, beckoned us inside.

Tabby screamed. And cried. And screamed some more.

I like to think that I’m quite laid back when it comes  to this parenting malarky, and queuing for 50 minutes for that sort of anticlimax doesn’t really phase me. I was happy to apologise to Satan/Santa and his elf and go on my way. I think Father C – who appeared never to have seen a crying child before, which I find hard to believe – would have been happy with this outcome. Not a bad Santa as such, but his voice was several octaves too high and he failed to do much hearty laughing.

It wasn’t, however, enough for the angry elf. She thrust a giftwrapped book into Tabby’s hands and – bless her – even offered to take a photo of Tabby and Santa. Talk about staying on script.

I declined, as graciously as is possible when there’s a river of tears and snot running down your neck, and made  for the exit. Hoping it was all over. This grotto, though, is pay as you leave. Presumably the hope is that parents who have steeled themselves to spend just £4.50 will be bowled over by the artistic merit of a poorly exposed inkjet print in which something that looks a bit like their child is standing next to one of history’s least convincing Santas. They’ll be only too glad to hand over another £8 for a seethrough keyring and a couple of inkjet prints to the mirthless crew.

Strangely, this ploy actually works. As we left, there was another queue. The grandmother in front of us was dutifully buying bespoke keyrings for each of her charges.

So we waited patiently with a fiver readied, and Tabby began to cheer up. The lone elf cashier finished her fancy scissor work, snapped shut the last fob and I stepped up to pay… only to be shoved out the way by a Pushy Mum who wanted to book her child’s place at Santa’s side in advance. Cue an absurdly long discussion between the checkout elf and Oblivious Woman around the finer points of what’s included for each price, and whether you choose the pieces of tat you to buy before or after entering the Devil’s Throneroom next door.

By this time, the father and son combo I’d been avoiding conversation with during the wait in to the grotto were out, and another queue had formed  behind me.

Finally, Oblivious Woman wandered off. I stepped up to the counter with a warm, limp fiver dangling out at arms length… and the grandmother returned; her keyrings already broken into pieces. The elf, naturally, demured to the old tradition of ‘age before me’ and turned her back to us.

At which point, I asked Tabby if she’d rather have a decent present**, put the still wrapped paperback on the counter and stormed off muttering something very unfestive under my breath. I didn’t exactly make a scene or fight Santa, but I’m fairly sure getting a free peak into the grotto and swearing at an elf in front of a four year old counts as a karmic depreciation when your sould is held up for judgement, even if you’re sure they didn’t really hear it.

Worse, they have CCTV in these places, don’t they?

* I really did see one returned because it was leaking.

** A packet of heart-shaped sweets from inside the head of Hello Kitty,  in case you were wondering.

Typo or phonetics?

I’m still getting to grips with the phonetic reading books Tabby is bringing home from school which complement the system they use. It seems to be working, she’s learning to read very quickly. I can’t work out whether this sentence is a phonetic learning tool or just a typo though. Kind of bad, either way.

Lost snowman

I should probably have posted this about 12 months ago, but Tabby just found a stash of 200 photos i’d forgotten about in my phone. Including this.

Hulk smash

I’ve been away this week doing family stuff, and joining in the ceremonial half term madness of touring round relatives that will define my life for the next 14 years. Shots like this make it worthwhile though.

Also, slowly realising that my daughter’s hair is just too damn blonde to ever get a really well exposed shot that doesn’t look blown out in daylight. Where did she get that from?

Drusilla’s zoo – last day of freedom

Who's a pretty boy then?

Tomorrow is Tabby’s first day at school. A 14-year-sentence with no chance of reprieve and in which you get extra time for good behaviour. To make up for this crual and unusual punishment, I let her experience her last taste of freedom at the zoo. Felt a bit sorry for the flamingos, but generally the animals seemedvery well cared for. Especially the owls. Only 5000 breeding pairs of barn owls left in the UK apparently. Took lots of photos, as usual only had chance to process a few and get them on Flickr so far…

Tiny, I tell ya

Circus photos

Look ma, no hands

Finally getting round to processing some photo sets and putting them onto Flickr. Starting with this trip to the circus a few weeks ago. Tabby loved it.

Brighton Children’s Parade

<<Hola>>

I’m not very good at this internet thing. It’s supposed to be instantaneous but I’ve only just got round to posting these shots from May 1st. It’s Brighton’s Children’s Parade, which opened the festival. Tabby was a cactus. Obviously.

Is this chicken pox?

Out, damned spot!

Tabby has become a medical mystery. There’s an outbreak of chicken pox at her nursery, and she’s covered in spots. The thing is, she’s had chicken pox twice already – a mild outbreak as a baby, and then a proper dose less than a year ago with all the flu and the scratching.

For the last three days half a dozen or so chicken pox-like spots have flared up on her face, but none have erupted in poxy blisters, like what the chicken pox do. And there’s only a few of them.

The question is, is this chicken pox? The doctor looked and said they’re definitely not bites (the cat was in a cattery a week ago while we were on holiday), but at the same time they don’t seem to be virulent enough to be chicken pox… Still, my inclination is that if it looks like pox and there’s pox around, then it’s probably pox. Even if some people argue that that’s medically impossible.

Whatever it is, it’s probably innocuous. The problem being that if it’s chicken pox she can’t go to nursery and has to stay home, in which case I can’t carry on cutting my way through the backlog of work from the holiday.

At least I haven’t succumbed to thoughts of “well, if it’s not chicken pox, maybe it’s… something… worse…” Yet.