The Rosie Project

I took a chance on The Rosie Project, it looked a little bit (and sorry, I know this can be a derogatory term) ‘chick-lit’, even though it was written by a bloke, but I am so glad I took that chance because I fell head over heels in book love within about a minute of starting the audiobook and it did not disappoint (other than a minor niggle) throughout the whole story.

The Rosie Project is about Don, an Australian genetics professor who has undiagnosed Aspergers, he doesn’t see that he has Aspergers, despite giving a lecture on it early on in the story, but he does admit that ‘he’s wired differently’. He has trouble relating to women, so he decides to start The Wife Project, to find a partner, he does this by creating a lengthy questionnaire so that he can eliminate any potential partners who have traits that annoy him; such a smoking or being fussy about ice cream. Whilst in the middle of his wife project, Rosie walks into Don’s office, at first he thinks she’s a candiate for The Wife Project and they go out to dinner with hilarious consequences and despite Don realising pretty quickly that Rosie is totally unsuitable, he has the time of his life. It turns out though that Rosie is there to find out who her real father is, Don agrees to help and so begins The Father Project.

The Rosie Project is sweetly (but not sickly) romantic, it’s uplifting, poignant and a little sad, everybody deserves to find love, but for some it is trickier than for others. People with ASD vary as widely as ‘normal’ people but I saw a little of Boy Lacer in Don, particularly with both being the class clown, it is obviously a long time before Boy Lacer starts on a wife project of his own but I hope that this book will still be around by then, even though Boy Lacer may find it a little ‘girly’, it may give him some hints!

***** (out of 5)

(And the niggle? Due to my background I guessed the plot twist pretty much straight away and I would have thought Don would have also have seen this pretty early on in the book due to his background to but you know how it goes, if he had, it’d have been a pretty short book!)

Focus and Simplicity

I started this piece a bit before Christmas, it was a pretty manic time as just before Christmas always is, aided by the additional complications of the final stages of the builder courtship. So the mantra ‘focus and simplicity’ helped keep me going. Steve Jobs was a pretty wise man, I think it can be very true, simple can be harder than complex but when you’ve broken whatever you’ve got to do down to truly what you have to do, not what you think you ought to do, etc. etc., then life gets easier.

I think it’s a quote that can mean different things at different times, for example that quote meant something different to me before Christmas, in the mad Christmas rush and the final builder preparations because then it was about choosing my actions and decisions wisely or at least trying to. Now after Christmas, as the builders near the end of the building work and me and Mr. Lacer start thinking and planning about moving back into the flat, it’s about making some changes so that we make the most of the work we’ve had done and so that we can adapt the flat for us as a family now (as opposed to a flat that’s been dragged kicking and screaming along with us on the bumpy ride through babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers, infant school kids) and so that living in the flat (which building work or no building work is still fundamentally too small for us) is as pleasant as it can be for the remaining time we’re living there before we have no choice but to move out. So now the focus and simplicity is about rearranging our furniture so that it works better, learning from mistakes in the past (whether that’s definitely not buying anymore Ikea chest of drawers or making sure there’s more room around my desk) and making sure that we have enough storage space so that certain key work spaces throughout the flat remain clear of clutter.

This whole process of the refurbishment has been a massive learning curve; not just about really odd planning regulations and how to offend a builder (suggest they install something from Wickes) but it’s been very much about our priorities. Our temporary flat is twice as big and although I wrote at the beginning of this month that I didn’t like that the flat was screamingly ’80s, we all soon fell in love with its location (a lot closer to the town centre) and the space and it made me doubt our, ok my, steadfast clingy-ness to our tiny actual flat. However a bit of doubt can be good because it makes you think through again why you made those decisions in the first place and it was good to see that the reasoning behind those decisions still stands fast. We’d never be able to afford the flat we’re currently renting, even now I don’t really want to think how much we’ve spent living here this month, ok, should I say we’d never be able to afford the flat we’re currently renting in this location and that’s the nub of it, it’s not so much our flat I’ve been clinging to, it’s the part of London we live in that I’ve been clinging to, because we could go and move away, live somewhere else and buy a flat this size, heck in some places we could buy a house but it wouldn’t be where we live now (by the way, although I say we fell in love with the location of the rented flat, it’s more or less the same location as our actual flat, there’s only a mile between them). And that, depending on how far away we moved, could possibly mean changing schools and that is the true nub of it, we don’t want to do that to the kids. Even if we moved just far enough away so that the kids could still just about attend the same school, it’d be a bit of a nightmare, even just moving a mile away this month has been a little awkward and I have really missed having that network of families in the streets surrounding where we normally live that act as a back up for childcare emergencies, not that, touch wood, as we’ve still got a week to go, we’ve had childcare emergencies this month but just having that help there is a life saver, which even a mile away is not there, there’d be no dropping off Girl or Boy Lacer at a neighbours whose kids also go to the same school here. My dad can be a bit of one track mind on this subject, “move to a bigger place, move to a bigger place”, with the variation “there are good schools elsewhere, there are good schools elsewhere”, nope, yes there are good schools elsewhere but we’ve hit on such a magic combination with the kids school, how many ‘good schools’ out there can guarantee that they’re ‘just right’ for my two children who both have very different needs, we’ve found one in their current school, a school that is both academic and nurturing towards children with special needs, we’re extremely lucky to be there, not giving it up. Besides, in London house prices immediately shoot up in the catchment areas of good schools, in my area if a property is near the kids school it’s the first thing they list on the property description, so to find another ‘good school’ we’d be just moving from one area with inflated house prices to another.

So, anyway, I’m not sure where the focus and simplicity is in that, I think maybe in that our focus is on the kids’ education, that’s our priority, so if that means living in a small flat, that’s what it means and we’re working with what we’ve got, that’s the simplicity bit.

Anyway, the mountain pattern is from Sublime Stitching, a column of mountains is missing on the right hand side as I ran out of blue thread (floss also by Sublime Stitching) and the hoop was photographed in my new mini photography studio. It’s the first time I’ve used it, I think I need to do some tinkering (and rereading that craft photography book I reviewed last year) but I think I managed to improve on todays dismal light.

Happy Birthday Boy Lacer!

It has been quite the birthday weekend for Boy Lacer, although his birthday is today (and he is oh so pleased it hasn’t fallen on a school day for once, whereas conversely Girl Lacer, whose birthday normally falls over the half term holiday, is so excited that this year it doesn’t), his party was yesterday, as one of Boy Lacer’s good friends happens to share a birthday with him (born same hospital and everything, Boy Lacer is about 12 hours older) and I didn’t want the parties to clash. So Boy Lacer had his party yesterday; nearly all the boys in his class for an extremely noisy two hours in the local gym, complete with bouncy castle, relay races and the most important of all, three very lovely ladies who managed it all for us. Boy Lacer had never had a ‘big party’* before, his previous two birthdays he’s had a few friends over for tea but that has been that. To be honest prior to this year, he very probably wouldn’t have managed a big, noisy, active party, particularly one where he was the centre of attention, so he deserved a big party and in a way it wasn’t just a celebration of him turning 7, it was a celebration of the fact that he could now have a party like that, he has so progressed over the last year, something I will always be grateful to his class teachers last year for.

Anyway, parties of course need cake, so this is what I made . . .

The cake is Bill Granger’s Cake For a Crowd, which I’ve made a lot of times before, which is therefore weird how this time it came out a bit crumbly, I have no idea why that happened and it’s a bit unfortunate that it did considering the event. Me and Girl Lacer (both avid Great British Bake Off fans) spent quite a lot of time staring at it, trying to work out what happened, trying to work out “what Paul would say” (probably not something particularly complementary). Also unfortunately the icing turned out to be, oops, a little alcoholic. *Hangs head in shame*. I’m hoping it’s just because I have an extremely sensitive sense of taste and I could detect it but I only realised after I had a slice after the party. You’re all wondering what on earth I did to make the icing taste alcoholic, well you see in the Great Drip of 2012 (aka the leak through my kitchen ceiling), I managed to loose my shelf of baking goodies, the drip itself didn’t reach them, it’s just that when a plumber finally fixed the leak, there was one last final almighty gush which flooded out of the kitchen ceiling, threatening to bust our light and soaked all my baking goodies with dirty water. Soooo I had to replace my vanilla extract and I happened to be replacing my vanilla extract in Waitrose where the only variety of vanilla extract is posh and so I treated myself to some nice looking Australian organic stuff, which it turns out smells absolutely wonderful when you open it and is pretty good when you cook it in a cake yet tastes alcoholic when you put it in icing. I dunno, I only used about 1/2 a tablespoon, label (which I of course read afterwards) said 35% alcohol, so I doubt I was in danger of getting the kids with their tiny portions pissed but still, the alcohol taste was a little off putting. Also I totally forgot that it was likely that some of the kids at the party wouldn’t be able to eat gelatine sweets (of which yes, there turned out to be some kids that couldn’t), I should have gone for the cake I made today . . .

Because actual birthdays need cake to, I made this whilst Boy Lacer was out at his second party birthday party of the weekend (his friend’s, which apparently had pretty much the same crowd of kids as yesterday, their class teacher is going to be faced with half a class of exhausted kids tomorrow). The recipe is from Jane Brocket’s Vintage Cakes and is the simple chocolate cake recipe from Jane’s daughter Phoebe (I love following Jane Brocket’s blog, particularly for the photos of her daughter’s sweet laden cakes, the birthday party cake was inspired by Phoebe’s cakes to). Vintage Cakes is a new acquisition in my cook book library and I will review it properly a little later (quite a few cakes I plan to make from there) but so far so good, the simple chocolate cake did exactly what it said it would, in that it was billed as being gratifyingly sweet and appealing to both young and old alike, i.e. not too chocolate-y, even though it looks it and yep, it looks a really chocolate-y but actually wasn’t, even Mr. Lacer could eat it and he hates too chocolate-y chocolate cake. This will definitely be a recipe I will go back to again and again.

Girl Lacer helped me with the icing on both the party cake and the birthday cake, I’m really loving how as she grows older when we do something together like this, it is more as a team rather than as more of a control and supervisory thing.

Other than eating cake and partying, Boy Lacer has had his grandma come to visit, been out for pizza, got some very cool presents (he’s got his own Paper Jamz guitar now, thanks to a very generous friend, which he is extremely chuffed with, as Mr. Lacer already plays and me and Girl Lacer are learning, so he’s got his own guitar now to place with our three guitars^) and has been shopping and bought a whole shed load of books, so I think he’s had a good weekend, as evidenced by the fact that he’s now getting tired and a little stroppy, time for bed (and an apt entry for what turns out to be this blog’s 2000th post).

PS This weekend I also had time to make a little bunting, like you do

* We’re always very mindful that we try and treat Girl and Boy Lacer equally, which I know can be difficult at the best of times between two siblings but it can be especially tricky when one of them is autistic. Girl Lacer had her ‘big party’ (where we invited the whole class and then some) when she was 5, something she’s a little sulky about now, as she can’t remember it but I have always wanted to do the same for Boy Lacer.

^Girl Lacer is also learning to play the cello, as she’s now in the year at school where everyone gets to learn to play a musical instrument for a year. There’s no choice about which instrument you get and Girl Lacer has been given the cello, I suspect because she’s one of the tallest in her year, however compared to her schoolmates she probably lives in one of the smallest homes and do we have the space for a cello for a year? . . . Not really, it’s bad enough with the three guitars. But it’s one of those things where you just grin and shrug your shoulders, I actually like the cello and I’m a tinsey bit jealous, as I was always attracted to the cello when I was younger (in my musical youth) and at least this isn’t one of the years when the whole year learns a brass instrument.

4 go to Cornwall

We’re just back from our holiday, 5 days in Cornwall, it would’ve been 7 but the amount of annual leave I have left is a bit pitiful and as most of my shifts are at the weekend, we went just Monday to Friday, which in the end worked out ok as the weather turned real stinky on the Friday and I’m not sure I could have stuck it out in a field much longer anyway, yep we went camping.

The camping was a freebie from a company that I use regularly, who are diversifying into camping on their farm, I’m not going to name them because I’ve noticed that if you type in this particular company’s name plus the word camping into Google, it doesn’t come up with many hits other than their own pages and the last thing I want is for me to write “oh my god camping at x was absolutely awful because the toilets were a hole in the ground that stunk, there was hay everywhere (the other half of the field we were camping in was being mown (?) for hay at the time) and the hay was nowhere near as bad as the money spiders and baby slugs that infested everything (honestly, one day we got back to the tent and the entire ceiling was black with tiny spiders, anytime you went in the tent you’d be literally picking money spiders out of your hair) and that’s not to mention the military helicopters that flew so low overhead every night that you could literally hear the wind in the helicopter blades as well as the very loud engine noise”, no I don’t want that appearing on Google because they’re a really nice company and to be honest, I’m a bit of a camping wuss (in case you couldn’t tell), so I’m not the best person to go and review a camp site. And anyway, the stinky toilets (a pit in the ground covered by what looked like a very large box crate divided into four, each section containing a toilet seat) were ‘eco toilets’ apparently, there are worse things than money spiders and baby slugs (big spiders and big slugs), watching the hay making certainly lead to atmosphere and the military helicopters were quite cool. And also the camp site just happened to be located in a really brilliant part of Cornwall (the Lizard Peninsula) where there was so much to do within just a few miles, which was fantastic considering Boy Lacer is getting so bad in cars again that we were ‘forced’ to travel down separately; Mr Lacer in the car with the camping gear and me and the kids by train (where I had failed to reserve seats which has to be one of the stupidist things I’ve done in ages). And besides the campsite had chickens!

And the most gorgeous, friendly cat, who followed the kids round everywhere.

With the lengthy travelling time, were were really only there three days; the first day we went to Flambards, a small theme park which left the kids very amused and me and Mr. Lacer slightly fuming that considering how expensive it was to get in, just how many of the attractions you had to pay for once you were there (basically the big stuff was free once in but a lot of the small stuff wasn’t and with Boy Lacer not being into the big rides were were having to go for a lot of the small stuff).

Now I’m not a big fan of theme parks (Disney Land an exception), so it was a relief the next day to go and see what we’d really come down to see, the sea.

The first beach we went to was Kynance Cove, one of the National Trust beaches (I never knew they did beaches – a handy hint if you’re holidaying down there and if you’re a National Trust member, bring your membership details, as then you get to park free in their car parks, not that we’re National Trust members anyway, there aren’t enough National Trust properties within easy reach from home to justify it). The car park at Kynance Cove is a bit of a walk from the Cove itself but it’s a spectacular walk and it fills you with anticipation, as you walk along the cliff top and round the corner to see the cove. When we got there of course the tide was in (it always is on the rare occasions we get to go to the beach) and we sat outside a lovely cafe admiring the view, eating (what tasted like homemade) gorgeous flapjack. The kids were impatient to get down to the beach though, even though it was still very rocky, so we headed down and they played in the stream running through the beach and clambered over rocks, as more and more people gathered on the rocks and waited for sand to appear.

Me and Mr. Lacer were beginning to wonder if sand was ever going to appear, we had seen some pictures of the beach in the cafe with sand on but we were beginning to suspect that the pictures may have been getting on a bit, as we could hear people around us talking about how a few years ago there had been much more sand. But then sand appeared in the distance and by the time me and Girl Lacer made it to the tiny stretch of sand we could see, ok by the time I made it to the tiny stretch of sand we could see (the beach is extremely rocky and difficult to cross, if like me, you’re not that nimble on your feet (I blame my pes cavus personally)), so Girl Lacer was way ahead of me. But by the time we got to the sand, wow, there was so much of it and what had been a rocky, dramatic, beautiful piece of Cornish coastline, had some how transformed into a beach out of James Bond, the sun even came out!

It was just the sort of beach I remembered from my South Welsh childhood, full of rocks and little pools (and not so little pools), it was perfect. There was even another beach around the corner that could only be reached at low tide, a little stretch of sand with the crystal blue sea at both sides.

The next day we went to a different sort of beach, a more family friendly one, which I think the whole family thought, after Kynance Cove the previous day, equated to being a bit boring, but still, a beach is a beach and we don’t get to see them that often, so we had fun.

Gunwalloe Cove

The next day we had to go home and it turned out that trying to pack up in a torrential rain storm, not that much fun. 

Overall I had a nice time (it was worth the overcrowded trains, stinky toilets and being dragged round Flambards for just Kynance Cove alone) but ooh when my feet hit the platform at Paddington, ooh they were happy feet, there is nothing like a holiday to make a Londoner appreciate London even more. (And the kids really liked it, nothing beats beaches, theme parks and the freedom of a field to run round and animals to talk to, they both want to move to Cornwall now).

End of an era

When I was pregnant with Boy Lacer and facing the prospect of being a stay at home mum for quite some time (not that there is absolutely anything wrong with that, even now, even with pretty much full time hours with the main part time job, I still consider myself, in a way to be a SAHM because I work from home during my child free hours), I needed some money, so I joined a couple of agencies and started working as a freelance private tutor and I’ve effectively been doing that ever since. Some years were good, lots of clients and good money considering I was only working when Mr. Lacer was around to look after the kids, so I didn’t have childcare costs to worry about. Other years were pretty bad with virtually no clients sometimes. The academic year of 2010-11 was particularly good however and for the first time in a long time I was actually earning enough money to be able to splash out on a few things, no more trying to eek out a wardrobe which consisted largely of clothes I bought before I fell pregnant with Girl Lacer. And although it wasn’t loads of money, again no childcare costs, so it felt like more. However I, now I’m tempted to write the word hated here, but that’d be too strong, did not like doing it, at all. Not so much the actual tuition sessions but the large amount of preparation for each lesson (as of course each student was studying a different syllabus) and the fact that after a day of doing x, y and z of stay-at-home-mummy stuff (particularly when both kids were smaller and still home for most of the day), it was exhausting at the end of the day to have to go and grab my bag, head out in the dark, wet, cold and traipse somewhere in south west London to see the client. It didn’t help not being able to drive, so I was dependent on buses and that meant that unless I left for work ridiculously early, I was guaranteed to be late, as I could never, ever depend on the buses turning up on time. And of course sometimes the buses did turn up on time, so I’d get to the client’s address way too early but unfortunately being a private tutor is not one of those jobs where if you’re early for work you can just head into the office and make a cup of tea, I had to be at the client’s front door not a minute late and not a minute early either. So that meant when I was early I was reduced to having to prowl around the neighbourhood of the client’s house desperately trying not to look like a burglar casing out possible jobs, as there was never anywhere to go and wait (except for one client, the year I was pregnant, who lived happily close to a Krispy Kreme). So of all the jobs I’ve done in my working life; private tutor was fairly low down on the list of jobs I liked doing. So at the start of the 2010-11 academic year, when amongst the large amount of clients I picked up, I picked up M, a client who I unusually committed to for 2 years, instead of the normal 1, I vowed or should I say hoped, that by the time those two years were up, I wouldn’t have to pick anymore clients up because I’d be doing something else.

And, as I’ve mentioned quite a few times on this blog, I managed to get a ‘proper’ (as in actually being an employee with actual job advancement prospects and everything) job last July, a year earlier than I had hoped for. So when academic year 2011-12 started, I didn’t pick up anymore tuition clients but I still had M, well M’s exams start in a few days, he doesn’t need me anymore, so good luck M and yay me, as of tonight, no more traipsing out in the cold, wet and dark (please no one remind me I still have to do that for ballet lessons, I’m living in dreamland right now), no more of the dreaded prepping and just one job, one’s enough*.

So, I am of course grateful that due to earlier career decisions that at the time didn’t seem to work out to well, they enabled me as I became a mother to be in a position to do this work for the last 6 years, as it enabled me to continue to be a stay at home mum, something that for me personally was important and for the family practically, specially when Boy Lacer was younger, was vitally important (as I still can not see how I could have juggled an ASD preschooler with a normal job and childcare). But I sincerely hope that I never have to do that type of work again, as I love my main, now only, part time job and can see a long term career in it. But if necessary the tuition will still be there to fall back on.

So although no more traipsing out in the cold and dark (I know, I keep mentioning that part, bet you can’t guess which part I really hated the most), I am still working evenings, as it’s the nature of the job I do now (and early mornings) but I count my lucky stars that I’m still working a job where I can still fit in work and be there for all the childcare, at least during the week days anyway.

So, what to do with all ‘this’ time (she laughs), actually with only one client this academic year, the main part time job has taken the vast lion’s share of my time for some time, so not much difference (and the shift pattern for my job is already altering so I can work a longer shift on Thursday nights, the night I used to see my client). But no more prepping or marking will be a big change, although I won’t miss it, I will miss my last link with my past science career (up until my current job, all my jobs as an adult have been science related). But no prepping time does mean that if I want to find the time to sit down and write it won’t have to be about ionic equations or soy sauce manufacture, so maybe writing of other forms may come back, no pressure.

*you know my Etsy shop may just start having a bit more stock in it …. eventually.

PS Above picture is my May embroidery journal piece (my own design, it did look better when I initially drew it on my iPad, but I use the Paper app, that makes everything look good). I thought it appropriate for someone finally quitting^ teaching (hopefully) for good.

^ There will be a good chance, *ahem* that I’ll be teaching a series of embroidery classes in June, so ummm, not really quitting.

3 tattooed ladies, 2 swim bags and 1 cool pair of tights

My apologies for my absence; the hours on my main part time job vary from month to month and currently I’m working the equivalent of 4 working days a week (although it’s spread out over 7 days) and will be doing so until the end of September, but most of those hours are for a really cool project that I will literally be able to tell my grandchildren about, so work is busy but all good.

However I may be busy but that hasn’t stopped me embroidering, in fact it’s encouraged more embroidering because in my much needed breaks, my idea of the perfect relaxation is a spot of embroidery with a good audiobook, so I’ve been embroidering but I haven’t had much chance to get to the sewing machine to finish things off but I managed to today, so first up *drum roll*, three ladies who’ve kept me very amused in quiet moments over the last month or two.

The patterns are by Sew Lovely, from a lovely big detailed pattern set and they were a pleasure to stitch, so much so that I don’t even mind that they *whisper* don’t even go with my sofa (eek) but I’d always planned these for the bedroom. Really I need a guest bedroom, these would make fantastic guest bedroom cushions because as lovely as these are going to look in my bedroom, my bedroom is very much a working room and I can imagine I will probably be spending most of the time fishing these cushions off the floor (nothing new there). But none of that matters because these were such fun to stitch, I couldn’t resist!

Next up something of a slightly more practical nature; Boy Lacer starts swimming lessons at school this week, which is an extremely big deal, as he’s very nervous of water (going as far as not even liking rain, although he is getting better). I am confident though that he is in the best possible hands, his swimming lessons have been discussed at a number of meetings and I know he’ll have 1 to 1 support from the class’s extremely talented TA. He’s already had several preparatory visits to the pool and although he admits he’s nervous, he is not currently as freaked out as he could be (right now he’s more concerned that I’m going to forget the letter I need to write requesting that he wears swimming goggles).

Anyway, so, just as I made a swimming bag for Girl Lacer when she started school swimming lessons, I wanted to make one for Boy Lacer, I made a start on it over the school holidays but as I, on instructions from the school, was not meant to be telling Boy Lacer that he had swimming lessons the next term (so as not to freak him out over the holidays), I couldn’t ask him what design he’d like. I fell in love with this design from Urban Threads

but I was concerned that considering he’s so scared of water (although like I say, getting better), it might freak him out a bit but on the other hand, it’s such a fun, adventurous design, it might make swimming just that little bit more fun and exciting, specially as I paired it with some cool pirate fabric on the back. But just in case he didn’t like it, I knew I had to make an alternative as well. Now I’m not going completely mad, as although I don’t swim much, I could do with a swim bag as well, as Girl Lacer’s swim bag has worked so well over the last two years (she still uses it) and the shower curtain lining has worked to make it really waterproof and that has been useful. So I made a second, safer design, knowing that whichever one he didn’t want, I’d have.

This one is a September House design from the first issue of the &Stitches magazine (which I’d highly recommend by the way).

And which one did his choose?

……. the Urban Threads one. Quite relieved actually, as much as I think the Urban Threads design is cool, September House’s fish are far more me. But either way, both patterns were again a pleasure to stitch, I loved using just one colour for the Urban Threads design (a very dark brown to give it an old sepia look), just as much as I loved the genuine excuse to use some variegated thread on the water in the September House design and I always love doing a spot of chain stitch.

And finally, just because I couldn’t have a blog post title with the numbers 3 and 2 in, without a number 1, these are the tights I’m wearing today.

I think they’re really cool (and they’re from M&S).

Update 25.4.12 - school rang, Boy Lacer had his first swimming lesson today and guess what . . . he loved it!

Educating young eye balls

When Boy Lacer was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder at 3, one of the things that I thought was the saddest was I thought that he would consequently probably always struggle with reading, something that I personally had always gained great pleasure from. So it is with great joy that it turned out to be absolutely not the case, in fact *whisper* he is almost certainly a better reader than Girl Lacer was at his age.

As with every school, they have book levels and when Girl Lacer was in year 1 and for a large part of year 2 to, it was a bit of an effort to get her to progress from level to level, whereas Boy Lacer, all you have to do is blink and he’s gone up another level. He recently progressed to a book level which is now only two levels below the mythical ‘free reader’ level (where you get let loose in the library). So when Boy Lacer announced recently that he’d made this leap up another book level and there was all the subsequent metaphorical high fiving and “Who’s a clever boying”, Girl Lacer piped up “Is he going to get a book? Because you bought me a book every time I went up a level.” Actually, I had forgotten about that, the book buying for Girl Lacer every time she went up a level was a form of bribery to get her to work on her reading and later, especially, on her fluency (as not only do you have to be able to read the book to move up, you have to be able to comprehend it and to read it fluently and she had been struggling a bit with the fluency bit for a while). So, in short, I hadn’t been buying Boy Lacer a book every time he went up a level because the bribery hadn’t been necessary (not that I don’t buy both of them books, one of the great pleasures of mummyhood is buying my kids books).

But, as it happens, one day this week, when me and Boy Lacer had been walking home from school (Girl Lacer still at school in an after school club), Boy Lacer, was, as usual, filling me in with what he’d been doing that day and the particular highlight of that particular day was that his class teacher had been reading them a book called The Magic Faraway tree, which he seemed to really like (he filled me in with great detail on the plot so far). And I was ecstatic, because you know what? The Magic Faraway Tree had been one of my favourite books at that age and it had been a series I had tried to tempt Girl Lacer with, but she hadn’t been remotely interested, so to find out that Boy Lacer liked it, I was a bit pleased. So I had told him anyway that next time I went shopping I would buy him a copy and we could read it at home (at bedtime now, neither kid really opts for picture books any more – although their bedroom still has mountains of them – we did have a sort out a few weeks ago, when I went through each picture book and asked them if they wanted to keep it, about 90% of the books stayed, a lot due to sentimentality from both of them I think, but nothing wrong with that but if you hear of a book avalanche in Kingston, you’ll know why). Boy Lacer’s favourite bedtime books are currently Roald Dahl, Horrid Henry and The Trouble With . . . series, which we read to him, as he’s not quite ready for officially reading chapter books himself but I do know that he sometimes tries to read chapter books himself during quiet time before lights out. (For anyone interested in how we gave Girl Lacer a boost in her reading, I have two things 1) Roald Dahl (I defy any kid not to like his stuff, so a big thank you to her year 2 class teacher Mrs. S for introducing it to her) and 2) turning a blind eye to any unofficial reading at night when they shouldn’t be, as I think it’s at that point when they’re reading because they want to read, not because they have to, do they really start to explore and find pleasure in books). So in the end Boy Lacer did get a book for ‘moving up a level’ but *sssh* I was going to buy it for him anyway

But it seems I can’t go into a bookshop and buy just one book, eek no, that’s impossible and I got very attracted to a big display of Usborne Young Reading Books. They seem to have had a bit of a makeover / have added new titles to their collection and I was particularly attracted to the fact that they’ve adapted some particularly cool adult books for kids, as I do think a lot of kids books (I’m not including YA here) are a bit tame (particularly ‘girls’ books *shudder*) and although I’m not trying to rush my kids into growing up, far from it, I do think they need books with an age appropriate level of danger / naughtiness / excitement, that some kids books are just missing. Which is why I think it feels sometimes that Roald Dahl is all that my kids read because his stuff has definitely got the requisite level of all three (as does JK Rowling, Girl Lacer’s other favourite). I sometimes wonder would books like George’s Marvellous Medicine, for example, be published in today’s too safe world if it were not already a classic? And remember, books are of course competing with far more than they used to when I was a kid sized bookworm, when you have the excitement of computer games, books have to be exciting to (and whilst I’m on the subject, does anyone know of any sci-fi-ish type books for kids? Again, I’m not talking YA. As far as I can see there is none and Boy Lacer would love a good sci-fi book or a book with zombies in (that was suitable for his age), actually I do know one series – Captain Underpants (Girl Lacer loves them) but anything else out there?). So anyway, I also ended up buying the Usborne Young Reading version of Dracula (I am no way trying to influence them with my personal favourite book of all time, no of course not – although actually Girl Lacer is currently in the middle of writing a long story at school (I love how they teach story writing there, they’ve been actually planning their stories, with beginnings, middles and ends and mind maps!) and she’s been telling me what’s going to happen in it and apparently it’s got vampires in it but from what she was telling me I realised she wasn’t completely sure what a vampire does, so you can call me getting her Dracula an educational tool ) and also the Usborne Young Reading version of Cleopatra (as Girl Lacer loves all things Egypt) and for Boy Lacer I got him the Usborne Young Reading Stories of Monsters and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Dracula and Cleopatra, are both level 3 and Stories of Monsters and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice are both level 1, both levels probably a bit too easy for both Girl and Boy Lacer respectively but sometimes I think you can’t always be aiming to push their reading ability up a notch and sometimes you have to just buy them books that you know that they will just be able to pick up, get in to and read with less effort, so it’s not so much about the act of reading but it’s all about the story.

And finally, I also popped into HMV today (honestly, probably about the first time in ten years, as I download all my music and before that, when I was still buying CDs, getting them from places like Amazon and (sorry) supermarkets), as Girl Lacer is going to be fashionably late at a movie party and the movie in question is going to be ET. Now I love ET, ET to me is one of those childhood defining movies, so I couldn’t have Girl Lacer’s introduction to ET as being her watching it from about half way through, so I had to go and buy a copy today, I can’t believe I didn’t have a copy already. And also, whilst I was in there, I ended up buying the complete first season of The Muppet Show. Now we already do have a best off Muppets DVD, so I’m sure there will be some sketches we’ve already got, but awww Muppets to me is up there with ET, so you can’t over do it on the Muppets and I know the kids will love it (they love our current DVD, specially of course the mahna, mahna song – who doesn’t?). Both kids (but especially Girl Lacer) have been particularly in to watching Challenge TV recently (?????) and have been enthusiastically watching such gems as The Wheel of Fortune and argh what’s that one where they have to guess what the audience voted for to win a vacuum cleaner? Anyway, going into my living room at the weekend at the moment is liking stepping through a time vortex and into my living room 30 years ago when I was watching that programme where they win a vacuum cleaner and I hated it then, (imagine how I feel about it now?), probably because there were only 3 channels and I was waiting for The Muppets to be on, so anyway I am fighting back, if the kids want to watch TV from my childhood, Muppets has got to be better than Les Dennis, right?