Torchwood: Children of the Earth episode 1 (mild spoilers)

Oooh that was good! Thank god Russell T Davies is just a humble script writer and not actually an alien overlord because that is the way to mess with the populace’s collective head everytime, go for the children and we’re truly powerless. A great set up episode, with a feeling of greater openess than the normal closed feel of Torchwood, it felt like it was going to be epic, which I think it probably will, yet also with a depth of intimate touches, who’d of thought, Captain Jack is a dad (well, actually it’s not that surprising) and we get to meet Ianto’s sister “Have you gone bender?”.

Normally I’d say can’t wait for next week, but hang on, can’t wait for tomorrow!

Nursery induction evening

It was the nursery induction evening tonight, so that’s the third year in a row I’ve been to a nursery and /or reception induction evening at the school. Of course the first two years were for Girl Lacer, my uber-confident eldest, but now it’s Boy Lacer and it’s a whole different kettle of fish. I had gone tonight expecting to be bored, to be honest the prime reason for going to these things beyond the first one, it’s as an easy opportunity to buy uniform (me, today at the uniform stall “Right, what’s your biggest size? I’ll have that,” and then getting shocked when the person I handed the cheque to, who I didn’t know from Adam, when writing down my address on the back of the cheque I had just given her, knew . . . exactly . . . where . . . I . . . lived, without me telling her, actually it’s not creepy, I love the sense of everyone knowing everyone round here). The first two years the speech from the headmistress was identical but this year there was a ‘school DVD’ and call me daft and soppy but it actually brought a lump to my throat, it was just a collection of photos of kids from the school but every kid was happy, smiling and most importantly they looked comfortable to be there, it summed up the school so well.

Then on to a tour round the nursery, which wasn’t exactly new to me. I’ve been sort of waiting for ‘that talk’, the one about how they were going to deal with Boy Lacer and it hasn’t happened yet and it didn’t happen tonight. They will be doing a home visit, but only about a week before he starts. They have alot of information about him though and he’s already known within the school, I think they’re going to make their own mind up about him, which is fine by me.

A little bit of Star Trek in my hand

I grew up, as with anyone who’s got even a trace of nerd in them, with Star Trek. I’m more of a Picard girl, whilst Mr. Lacer being ah hem in his forties is a diehard Kirk boy, but still, it is always exciting when something you saw on your TV screen as a kid, comes to life when you’re an adult.

Yes, my new iPhone came today, which surely is the closest we have to a tricorder? Ok, it’s can’t scan you and tell if you’re an alien (yet – s0meone’s probably working on the app) and you didn’t have Kirk and Spock playing games on their tricorders but surely if Rodenberry and foreseen the rise of the app, they’d have been doing just that?

So, I love my new iPhone, as does Boy Lacer, who probably thinks it’s his. I had him by my shoulder for the whole set up process and he was very impressed when I downloaded a few free music and drawing apps for him. I was very impressed with how quickly it set up and how it synced with my Outlook (having the option to sync with my bookmarks on Chrome and not just Internet Explorer, would have been good to, what’s this, Apple in league with Microsoft?). I think I’ll be using my iPhone mostly for texting (I tend to text more than phone), listening to music, not getting lost, running (I’m going to start again, now that I, thanks to the iPhone, have a GPS device), watching iPlayer in bed, using it to take notes for stories and craft ideas (I’m terrible for remembering to bring along a notebook, but I’ll always have my phone, I think I’ll more likely use the voice memo facility, as I’ll be able to get my ideas down whilst staying on the move / keeping an eye on the kids), keeping better track of my diary, taking photos and video and finally entertaining the kids (under close supervision!). I’m going to try very hard not to go down the paid app route, as this is costing me enough as it is, but some of those free apps, hmmm. I may be paying for Crash Bandicoot next month, used to play that one when I was a kid!

Boy Lacer has new wheels

Boy Lacer has new wheels! Finally! To recap, we were a two pushchair family, a main buggy and an umbrella fold stroller that we could fit in the car for travelling. Then the wheel fell off the umbrella fold stroller and we discovered that we couldn’t buy a direct replacement as Boy Lacer was now over 10kg above the maximum weight (and we wonder why the wheel fell off). Not an immediate stress, as we still had our main buggy, but you can’t fit the main buggy in the car and put anything else in it at the same time, so our upcoming ‘holiday’ to North Wales was going to be a problem.

But then of course, the wheel of the main buggy fell off to, we borrowed an old standard sized Maclaren from a friend, which Boy Lacer could hardly fit into, so the search for a new buggy was getting urgent. Some research showed that Boy Lacer really needed a special needs pushchair, although he’s getting better at walking, his stamina is not that great or his ‘reliability’ if we need to get somewhere promptly. We’ll be still using a pushchair quite a lot I think until Boy Lacer starts school full time, in just over a year but even then I think we’ll need a pushchair for family days out or if he’s ill. So we needed something to last him till he’s 7 or 8 and something that could fit in the back of the car, along with everything else, if we were going on holiday. So that basically came down to one model, the Maclaren Major Elite. Now Maclaren Major Elites retail in Mothercare for £250, we have never ever paid that much for a pushchair and we just couldn’t afford it, we tried contacting occupational therapy to see if they would provide us with one, but our local occupational therapy service seems to be in shambles now, so we had to find one second hand. Now to anyone with a Maclaren Major Elite sitting in a cupboard somewhere, that you’re no longer using, I’d advise getting it on ebay, because you’re going to get a lot of money! There are a lot of desperate parents fighting over a handful of Maclaren Major Elites on Ebay, I entered and lost two auctions on Ebay for a Maclaren Major Elite before I finally managed to get one and we picked it up on Friday. We’re really pleased with the one we got though, it cost us a lot, but any of the Maclaren Major Elites of Ebay would have cost us a lot, but the good thing about the one we’ve got is that it’s only been used once, I had been really worried about paying a lot of money for something that had been ‘well-used’, getting it home, using it for a few months and then something breaking and then we’d be at square one again. So hopefully that won’t happen with the one we’ve got.

As for using it, Boy Lacer loves it, it’s much taller than a normal pushchair and he has to clamber up into it, so it’s like a climbing frame pushchair. There’s lots of room, as you can see from the photo above, he took a long two books and a teddy on the school run this morning. For me the extra height makes it a pleasure to push, I’m quite tall and I’ve spent nearly six years bent over too short pushchairs, no wonder I have a bad back. It also feels nice and solid and is quite smooth to push, quite looking forward to trying it out in the park. I’m also glad to be pushing something so ‘obvious’, me and Boy Lacer have been getting increasing amounts of dirty looks in town, when his behaviour is not 100% ‘acceptable’, you can hope people may realise when they see the oversized pushchair, or they could still be just as equally dense.

Downsides are; I’m not sure how easy this will be to work with buses, as it’s wider than a normal pushchair. I may, if I want to take it on a bus, have to fold it up before hand, which isn’t the most easiest thing to do, you have to take off the foot rest, push up three latches and then push it shut, which ok, isn’t that bad but if you’re the only adult and you’re having to keep an eye on your young autistic child at the same time and then once the bus comes try and get the pushchair on (which is still fairly long and bulky when folded)  and your child who can’t make the gap between the bus and the pavement and may be freaking out because he doesn’t want to get on the bus because ‘it’s wobbly’ and possibly your shopping and keeping an eye on your other child . . . as you can imagine I think I’ll be taking the bus less!

Courgette pasta

I’m a bit worried about my courgettes, they’re growing but a lot of them aren’t getting very big before going a bit yellow looking. However, I had one decent looking specimen, so before anything happened to that (not only the mysterious yellowness but slugs, snails and the pesky pigeons as well) I thought I better eat it.

Now my standard, favourite courgette dish is grated courgette, fried with some chilli and garlic, mixed with spaghetti and topped with lots of grated parmesan. Lemon juice works really well here as well. But I thought I’d make my solo courgette a little more obvious, so I made roughly the same dish but instead of grating the courgette, I finely sliced it.

To be honest it was a little bland, even with the addition of some of my basil from the garden. My courgette, which looked quite big on the plant, looked quite small once I got it on my chopping board, so I could have done with at least one more. Plus I didn’t have any lemon juice this time and that always helps!