Chez Spud

I really wanted to play along with Jane of Spain Daily’s ‘Corner View’ project – and this week it’s ‘Street Fashion’. A leetle beeeet of a challenge when you live in sleepy Suffolk and the predominant fashion du jour is, well, beige. Beige beige beige everywhere you look, not really a surprise given that our town has a gracefully aging and rather gentile feel about it. I had doubts I’d find anything remotely colourful or interesting to shoot, and decided to leave the Nikon at home in favour of the brilliant Camerabag application on my iphone.

I absolutley LOVE this app and have had a lot of fun shooting candids and street photography with it when I’m working in London. It does crash with boring frequency but it’s so cool you forgive it. Basically it applies various filters to your iphone’s camera, and lets you view the various treatments on a photo before you save it. My favourites are the helga (a kind of holga effect), lolo, instant and cinema. It’s a fun little app which helps detract you from the fact that the iphone camera is pretty rubbish – although I hear the soon to be launched new iphone will rectify this. Huzzah, I neeeeeeeeeed one. You know, for my ‘art’.

So back to street fashion. Here are a series of snaps from my archive, all taken in London, in and around Soho where fashion is already out of fashion. Look how dark they all are, black, grey, gritty, urban….kind of dirty?

Nice bag, Paul Smith? This is ’1974′

Naughty smokers…this one is ‘cinema’

This one is very cool..check out that huge sunflare! Plus union jack, ra ra ra…this is ‘instant’

Legs eleven…here come the girls…’instant’ again

And finally, from London, this cool statue…actually this was taken in the City…statues, love it. This one is ‘Helga’

So back to today and the sea of beige. I really thought I’d have to give up when all of a sudden little glimpes of COLOUR started appearing:

Oooh, another nice bag…Cath Kidson? Check out the 6th formers in the background…

Oh, yet another nice bag…spotted in the bakery…check out the cakes in the background

This is more like it! We’re on a roll now…this little girl was in full princess outfit. Her mother gave me ‘that’ look when I smiled at her. The weary ‘It wasn’t worth the argument, she can come out in her pyjamas for all I care as long as she behaves’.In the bakery again…a cake may accidentally have fallen in to my bag while I was there…

Oh, special, ankle socks and colour…and all on a grown woman…special mention for effort I think…although also a possible entrant in to the ‘crimes against fashion’ category (possibly a future Corner View theme?)

But, drumroll, the winner is….these fabulous pair of red shoes…ah, no wait, that’s me…those are my shoes…taken in a desperate moment when I thought I’d come home with only a Sea of Beige to show

No the real winner is this fabulous GUY. Oh, he was smart he was sassy he was stripes he was gold buttons he was burnished brown lace ups he was tall he was handsome he was slim he was winsome he was foppish he was dandy and, oh, he was also about 18. Damn, another Street Crush crushed by the mortifying realisation that the Object of Crush was young enough to be my son.

Well, this is as much of him as I snapped before I melted in to a puddle of crush love on the pavement. I love this photo, stripes, blue, angles..it’s all going on.

So, lovers of street photography who have an iphone, embrace Camerabag. Or, splash out, and get yourself to Photojojo and buy yourself a Spy Lens. Go on, because you’re worth it.

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I know, I know…EVERYONE thinks they are a good driver. But, really, I am. I read the road, I anticipate, I even know the width of my vehicle. In short, I rock.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The only person I could ‘possibly’ concede is better than me is my Dad. But then I passed my driving test first time, but he didn’t (despite going on to pass his advanced driving test, the police driving test, the HGV driving test…you get the picture). But then, as we all know, passing your test the first time is a sign of natural driving genius. So perhaps I’m better than my Dad too?

Dad of Spud...quite a good driver..for an old bloke

I’m definitely better than MrSpud who drives at Old Man Slow speed everywhere, and looks out of the window when he gets bored (meanwhile somewhat veering towards oncoming cars). I should probably just do all the driving but then I wouldn’t get to play my favourite sport of ‘Sniping at MrSpud’s Driving’.

He once had a very very expensive ‘little prang’ while in a queue of traffic crawling along at about 2 miles an hour. Apparently he was ‘thinking happy thoughts’ (sic or should that be sick?) and drove in to the car in front of him for no good reason. Naturally, this being MrSpud, who is not the most organised of people, his car insurance had run out without him realising. These days such an event would have me rolling my eyes and shouting ‘Oh HONESTLY you are SO annoying’. But this was right after we first met, and the ‘happy thoughts’ were about me. So I let it go…ah, young love.

Now my parking, I will admit, is less than good. While attempting to parallel park the other day and huffing and puffing and making a right old dog’s dinner of it a little voice pipes up from the back “Mummy, the problem is that you’re not getting it right. You’re not getting the car in the right place. You’re getting it all wrong… AGAIN!” So my 3 year old is already sniping at my driving. He learnt it at his mother’s knee.

I prefer this photo to yesterday’s terrifying bloke called Len shot. Plus, I just noticed, it’s demonstrating three previous secrets: my strange arms, my chunky ankles and wonky teeth.  Bonus points!

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After the dazzling success [queue hollow laugh] of our Camping At Home experiment on Saturday night, we thought the best thing to do with two grumpy boys was drag them out to the beach for the day on Sunday. We’re so lucky to live near a number of wonderful beaches, but my bestest and favourite is Bawdsey Quay. It’s a funny little place, not really much of a beach, quiet and quaint and rather old fashioned. While we were there the cafe owner, more of which later, told me that people often describe it as a ‘Step back in time’ as it has a 1940s feel to it…just boats and children paddling and crabbing..with a small ferry pottering across the river to Felixstowe Ferry and back. It’s a sleepy kind of place. I love it. The boys love it. We all love it.

Here’s Diggy demonstrating what he likes the best, ICE CREAM! Currently he’s going through that ‘particular’ stage of childhood where he can’t stand to be messy. A pity, as he’s the messiest child on the planet. Chuck in an ice cream and it’s mayhem. He wanted me to wipe his face, his hands, his sunsuit…THE BEACH….every 5 seconds.

Mr Messy

And here’s MrSpud, slacking off as usual

Mr Big (Nose)

Mr (not) Angelic

Bertie, so serious as ever

Blah blah blah blah, beachlife, yeah etc etc. But the best bit is the CAFE, it’s the Best Cafe in the WORLD! As The Motherhood Years roll by I’ve realised that the old ‘happy mummy happy baby’ is so true, so I tend to seek out attractions and diversions which suit me best. Because it’s all about ME you know. And generally that means somewhere that I can feed my face with tea and cake to my satisfaction. And this place is the best.

It’s in the old boathouse, it’s light and airy, it’s oh-so-tastefully decorated, it looks over the beach and the quay, they make everything from scratch…cake, sandwiches, strawberry scones, local crab, local smoked fish and, did I mention, cake. Plus the sisters that run it are Angels from Heaven…I forgot to bring cash when I vistited a few weeks ago and they couldn’t have been less bothered “oh just drop it in when you’re next down here”. These women are angels! And they have very good taste in cutlery buckets. And cake. Did I mention the cake already?

Nice buckets...but where's the cake?

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Waaaah! I thought I was going to suffocate during this very hasty photoshoot today…either from laughing so much or the stocking over my head restricting my breathing. I must have a big fat head as it was such a struggle to get the stocking over it.

Cabbage Patch Robber Spud

I think this the ugliest photo of me I’ve ever seen. It would be even worse if it were in focus – question, how DO you get self-portraits in focus? Please can someone tell me, otherwise there are another 15 fuzzy self-portraits coming your way as I zoom towards the end of the 30 secrets in 30 days project.

So, I can’t say the word ‘burglar’. It comes out as burgular. Every time. I just can’t say it right, unless I stop for a moment to get my head around it. Instead  I work around it by saying ‘robber’, which makes me sound like an 8 year old boy.

Alas ROBBERS have featured in my life too many times. I shared a house with 4 other girls at university and we were repeatedly broken in to, I think about 5 or 6 times in the end. Once they squatted and did unspeakable things on our carpets, another time they stole our washing machine and tea towels (having emptied the house of almost everything by that point). Seriously, tea towels.

Then MrSpud and I were ROBBED about 4 years ago. They carried off laptops and all my jewellry in a pillow case. And you know, I was absolutley furious about the pillow case…absolutely raging in fact as it was one of a pair. But,then, I was pregnant and bonkers at the time. My ‘loot bag’ in the picture is the one they didn’t take. Still makes me seethe when I see it.

Do you like my jaunty top knot on the top of my big fat ugly head? A burgular with style, that’s me that is.

Tell me what words you can’t say, or couldn’t say as a child, or what your child can’t say! Tell me something to take my mind of that ugly old snap of me…looking like a big bloke called Len.

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When I was pregnant with Bertie, our eldest child, I rather hoped for a girl on the basis that ‘I know what girls are like’. By any reckoning this is bizarre thinking, must have been pregnancy bonkerdom I guess. Because now I am actually a mother and have an inkling of the responsibilities ahead – and I’m thinking of the teenage years -  I am VERY glad not to be the mother of girls because, as per the above, I know EXACTLY what teenage girls are like because I used to be one. Doubtless teenage boys have their own issues, but I’m currently blissfully ignorant of them.

So Bertie was born and I was thrilled to bits with him and couldn’t think why I’d wanted a girl. So much so that when I inadvertently got pregnant again (which is a whole other story) I was desperate to have another boy. And, yay, another boy was born – a bit more shouty, a lot more opinionated and waaaaaaaaay more clingy than the first one. But a boy. Two lovely boys…a brace of beasties.

The Brace of Beasties

There are lots of dreary practical reasons why two of the same sex is a blessing, mostly clothing related, but for me there is a truly wondrous advantage…more sofa reclining time! Not as yet, they are still too teeny weeny, but pretty soon I will be packing them off at the weekend for football and other such male pursuits WITH DADDY. And I get to lounge around on the sofa with a magazine and a glass of wine. Cool, huh?

On the quiet, I’ve been feeling pretty smug about this and have rejoiced at my brilliance at only conceiving male children.  But, apparently, smuggery never pays. MrSpud has been a-plotting and a-planning all on his own, the devious swine, and has completely outmaneuvered me. I hate that. He has played his trump card…camping. In a tent. In the outside. And it’s a Family Activity, so much fun for everyone, and it involves me. And I have to leave my sofa at home. Curses.

How could I be so blind? How could I not see this coming? MrSpud is one of those tiresome outdoorsy adventurous types, at one with nature blah blah. He sucked me in to his vortex of doom by mooting the purchase of an achingly hip  VW Campervan and, I will confess, my inner cool was aroused. But then somehow the van turned in to a tent. And the tent rocked up last week. Plans are afoot for a maiden voyage next weekend, but we had a dry (not so much, it rained, natch…this is England) run  at home this weekend.

Here’s MrSpud grappling with the tent, I think the tent is winning?

The Great Erection...boom boom

Bertie trying out his bed in the very cool ‘Kids room’

Arty tent against fluffy little clouds shot (got bored watching The Great Erection, snigger)

Fluffy little clouds

Boys testing the table and chairs at tea time, note very cool sunflare (total fluke)

Boys in bed, ready for their first night under canvas. All is calm, all is quiet, I could get used to this. Outdoor living? Bring it on..

Camp Spud…MrSpud has popped inside for G&Ts. Hoorah! I love this, I LOVE camping!

Camp Spud - G&T on the way

And then it all went wrong. Oh no, I HATE camping. Boys utterly refused to go to bed and we spent 3 hours herding them back in to bed with everyone getting more and more fraught until 10pm, at which point the heavens opened, and the boys were so hysterically tired that they begged to go to bed in the house.

So MrSpud and the boys kipped in the house and, get this, I lost my camping virginity and slept in the tent all by myself! I didn’t love it, but I didn’t totally hate it. I will reserve judgement until our inaugural trip is complete.

But I’m so busted, my smuggery was shortlived. Smuggery never pays, you read it here first. Thank you and good night.

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When I say ‘cheated’, I prefer to think of it as ‘improvised’ although deep down I know that it was cheating. Tut tut, tush and fie.

About a million years ago I read music at university. During our first year we had to do a number of tedious, compulsory ‘modules’ such as composing, conducting, orchestration and tape composition (more of which later). What an utter chore. All I was interested in was singing, playing the flute, floating around campus in my Laura Ashley skirts and hanging out in the medics bar.

Anyway I muddled my way through it reasonably well, but tape composition got the better of me. i just didn’t get it. Mainly it involved recording sounds like a door shutting, one beat of a drum, a dripping tap, a first year music student slipping silently in to a catatonic state through sheer boredom etc, on tape and then manipulating the sounds in to something vaguely toe tapping. Well what’s the point of that? Why not just pop on an LP (CDs very much in their infancy in those days) and listen to that instead?

I just couldn’t get my head around what I was supposed to be doing, and the studio terrified me…full of reels of tape, scalpels for cutting it,weirdy beardy sweaty ‘studio’ guys and scary signs ‘DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TURN OFF THE STUDIO WITHOUT TURNING THE SPEAKERS OFF FIRST OTHERWISE YOU WILL BLOW THEM’.

As the year rolled on it became apparent that I was totally incapable of putting together the 3 minute composition required of me for the end of year assessment. So I panicked, and then I improvised.

I dug around in the studio bin and found a length of disgarded tape, someone else’s rejected work. I then recorded it backwards (cunning), sampled various bits, shoved those in, speeded up some bits and with a flourish of brilliance, added in my own ending. Job done. A 3 minute masterpiece of which approximately 10 seconds was all my own worn. Roll over Beethoven.

If I could have cheated in my Keyboard Harmony exam the following year I would have done. I finished ‘playing’ (think, plinky plonk, plinky plonk), got up from the piano and turned round to find all 3 examiners with their heads in their hands. I failed. Spectacularly.

Well, what goes around comes around.

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Digby, my younger son, has two middle names because he’s fancy like that. One of them is Elliot. Or is it Eliot. Or Elliott? Seriously I couldn’t tell you. Every time I need to fill in an official form I have to get his birth certificate out to check. MrSpud and I made our wills recently and neither of us were at all sure of the spelling – OH THE SHAME.

Diggy's Vital Statistics

Sometimes I have a wobble over the spelling of one of Bertie’s middle names too – Rafael – and have an ‘is it with a ph or an f?’ debate.  I have to google Rafael Benitez (Liverpool FC Manager) to double check it. Rafael was added to Bertie’s names after Liverpool won the European championship while I was pregnant. MrSpud made me stand in front of the TV, bump aloft, so that our unborn baby could “hear the roar of Anfield”. Yeah, blah, whatever.

Anyway, luckily my wonderful wife and BFF Lyanne designed the fabulous graphic above, and had it printed on canvas, for Diggy’s last birthday. It’s so clever and uses all his names, nicknames, initials, his date of birth and his birth weight. So when I need a quick reminder of how to spell my own child’s name I can just nip upstairs to his bedroom and check.

Here’s ‘the wife’ a wonderful portrait taken by our photographer pal Liz. Thanks for letting me use it here, it’s about 100 times better than any shot of her I’ve taken. It’s Lyanne’s fault I’m blogging actually, so if you don’t like what you see…please address all complaints to the Mrs. She’s a brilliant photographer and somehow got me started on it last Autumn and then I started to enjoy spinning the yarns to go with my snaps on Flickr as much as taking them. And thus A Blog was Born.

The 'Wife'

So thanks to my buddy I now have a ready reckoner of Diggy’s middle names for those ‘senior moments’.  I might just get his name tattooed on his forehead and be done with it.

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A few weeks ago MrSpud zoomed over to Spain with Bertie for his brother’s wedding. Alas Diggy had just had an operation and couldn’t fly, so I stayed home with him and lay on the sofa really cracked on with lots of chores while MrSpud went off galavanting.

Naturally, as per the internationally approved Mummy Job Description, the joy of packing for the trip fell to me. Packing for trips Chez Spud is known as ‘The Pack’, and is said in a slightly frenetic, high pitched voice…filled with the threat of tears and tantrums from me, and quiet resignation from MrSpud that he will be told at least twice that I am, “NEVER doing this again, YOU do it next time”. Naturally when he offers to take over I huff and puff and yell, “NO you’re NOT doing it!!! You’re not capable, you’ll forget everything.”. At which point he wisely retreats and I yell at him some more for not helping. Seriously, my husband is verging on sainthood for all the grief he gets from me.

Previous episodes of The Pack have been so fraught that I made MrSpud take two days off work this time so that he could entertain the boys while I huffed and puffed and blew the house down. But somewhere along the line The Pack has clearly got less onerus as it only took about 20 minutes without a tantrum in sight. Naturally I took the opportunity of MrSpud being around to lie on the sofa somemore really crack on with some chores.

Now MrSpud, like many men, isn’t the best at dressing our children in anything that even vaguely matches. Left to his own devices he will play it safe and go for, say, a green T Shirt with green trousers and green socks – so that they look like runner beans or something. I considered a Holiday Wardrobe Matrix to help him, stuck to the inside of the suitcase. On reflection I decided this was excessive and potentially a move that could be used against me at some point. So I let him freestyle, with the exception of the outfit for the wedding.

I carefully packed the wedding outfit together: shoes, socks, trousers, shirt and cardigan. And I showed Bertie what he was to wear to the wedding as I put it in the suitcase. Basic schoolgirl error number one: do not trust a 3 year old with critical wardrobe issues.

I considered showing MrSpud the outfit, but instead I described it to him and told him it was all packed together to make it easy for him. Basic schoolgirl error number two: do not trust MrSpud to be listening when you talk to him about critical wardrobe issues.

Fast forward to the day of the wedding. MrSpud unearths what he decides is Bertie’s outfit and attempts to get him dressed. Bertie is a bit grumpy post nap and refuses to take off  his pyjamas. “You can’t wear pyjamas to a wedding!” says MrSpud, attempting to jolly the grumpy one along. And then he proceeds to take off his pyjamas and, er, dress him in pyjamas for the wedding. Bertie made valiant attempts to tell his father that he’d selected nightwear for his outfit but his objections were brushed off with a, “No, don’t be silly – they’re not pyjamas, it’s a lovely outfit Mummy has bought for you.”

Pyjamas. My son went to his uncle’s wedding in pyjamas. MrSpud defended his choice by saying that everyone thought Bertie looked lovely and that no one noticed he was in pyjamas. Cross examination of a few guests revealed that, er, everyone knew he was wearing pyjamas.

Look at the picture; the T shirt has matching shorts. They are SO obviously pyjamas. And were worn with navy blue socks and red sandals. The whole outfit was a disaster. Check out my sister-in-law’s wedding dress, isn’t it amazing?  Later, she and MrSpud’s brother wowed everyone with a full-on, serious flamenco dance as their first dance. You can’t see MrSpud’s brother in this photo, he’s entirely obscured by my 3 year old…he’s, well, a little on the little side too. Runs in the family you see.

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This one isn’t for the sensitive or squeamish, or pregnant – if you fall in to any of those categories you may prefer today’s alternative gratuitous puppy shots.

I used to be a bag lady. Not the street living, life in a bag carrying kind…but the colostomy bag wearing kind. My ‘party bag’, as I preferred to call it, and I were constant companions, inseparable, joined at the hip (well, on the tummy to be accurate) for two, long years.

No one ever told me that a very rare and rather devastating complication of childbirth is a tear so bad you need a colostomy bag. I was reasonably prepared for the fact that childbirth would result in, well, a child. But never in a zillion years could I have imagined I’d be taking home a little extra something, a party bag, from the hospital.

This isn’t much of a secret as I never even attempted to keep it quiet – actually I bleated about it pretty much constantly. Having a party bag affects absolutely every area of your life, from what you wear, to what you eat. It nibbles away at your self-confidence, always nagging away, always present, always needing attention (hmmm, rather like small children then).

In many ways, though, it was the best of times and the worst of times. The best of times? MrSpud just SHONE in the way that he coped with the rather ugly addition to our relationship despite not having signed up for the “in sickness and in health, with a bag of poo on your tummy, or without” part of the marriage vows. He might be little in stature, but he is a BEAST of a man in my eyes. xx The worst of times? Well, it speaks for itself really.

I bade farewell to the party bag about 18 months ago. Can’t say I was sorry to see the old girl go, and I hope I won’t be seeing her again. The scissors in the picture are special, party bag scissors – rounded at the ends to help cut the bag to size for a perfect fit. I keep them in my make up bag as a little reminder of life’s ups and downs, a daily reminder to count my blessings.

It’s not all doom and gloom. 8 months after having Bertie, my first child, and despite medical advice not to have another child…I, er, had a massive Pimms and, er, conceived our second child Digby. He was a surprise, a shock and is an utter delight. Thought I’d share the photo of the Pimms that ‘done it’, giggle.

Pimms O Clock

Thus ends the serious secrets, back to comedy-ville tomorrow. MrSpud has queried whether I actually HAVE 30 secrets. Frankly, I take that as a challenge. Let battle commence.

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My secret for today (coming later) is a bit gruesome so I thought I’d take the edge off it with some puppy shots, for absolutely no reason than they are sweet and fluffy and cute if rather bitey. And there are NINE of them – 8 black and 1 brown labrador crossed with nobody knows as the mama got herself in the family way in secret.

Choose me choose me...I need a home

Yup, nine little balls of woofly wonderfulness. They belong to our neighbour and I’m working very hard to resist snaffling the remaining one which, sniff, is currently without a home to go to. I really don’t want a puppy; I have 2 pre-schoolers and I spend enough of my day mopping up bodily fluids without adding a puppy in to the equation.

But then I see them, and I WANT one.

I already have a home to go to....move along...nothing to see here

Snoozing puppies in the sun, perhaps I will have one after all?

No, wait, this is why I do not want a puppy…because they CHEW everything and that includes people. By the way, my legs aren’t actually 25 miles long as we have established that they are short and stumpy.

When puppies attack

Here’s the mama, Bella, who is pretty fed up of the puppies and who can blame her. Nine bitey needy kids? No thanks, two bitey needy kids at least one too many for me, possibly two too many in fact.

I snapped this just a few hours after all nine pups had finally been born

Enough of the puppies…on with the secrets…secret 11 coming soon.

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