Chez Spud

Way, way, way back in 2000 I had a dream date to end all dream dates. It went swimmingly, there was laughter, there was banter, I was hilarious, he didn’t do too badly keeping up. Frankly, it was a triumph.

A watched phone never rings...not even if you watch it for 8 years

I spent the next day mapping out our future life together, named our children, named our dogs, checked his surname didn’t sound ridiculous with my first name and practiced my new signature a few times while I waited for him to call.

I waited, and I waited, and I waited some more. And when I was fed up waiting it dawned on me that OF COURSE he had lost my number and was probably engaged in a frantic hunt for me. So I rang him, left a message. And still he didn’t call back despite me repeating my number at least 3 times and remembering not to call him my ‘hubbie’ or anything.

Either he’s never going to call or he’s engaged in some kind of extreme version of The Rules and he’s playing really, really hard to get.  My ego likes to think it’s the latter.

No matter as I have the fantastico MrSpud anyway who, thankfully, has never read The Rules and is far too little for any kind of extreme sport anyway xxx

Bonus outtake shot ;-)

Hello? Is that bonkers anonymous?

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I thought I’d play along with the  ‘Corner View’ theme of ‘out your back door or window’ so I got a few snaps of Chez Spud today. No Baby Spuds in the shots as they’d been put away for a few hours for a nap while I debated the relative merits of tidying up v lying on the sofa drinking tea and scoffing cake. Not much of a debate I must say…

The front garden

Chez Spud

View from the back door

Chez Spud

It’s a peaceful kind of place, good for the spirit, good for the soul…all is order, all is calm. Hmmm, well maybe not ALL is order, calm etc etc because this is the view inside Chez Spud:

Hell...earlier today

Oh no. I had to shut the door on it and hoof it to a still, small voice of calm kind of a place in the house to restore inner peace. What’s your favourite little spot in your home? Show me your nooks ‘n’ crannies, I’m nosy like that! Where are the little places that raise a smile? Here’s mine, the chair in Diggy’s room. Love that Dwell Baby cushion, and the oliphant with his kitsch little flower in his ear. I don’t know what it is about that spot, I just like it.

Little haven of calm

So I’ve shown you mine, now you show me yours!

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Oh my, I so SO got busted taking the shot for this post, waaaaaah. I knew sooner or later I’d be caught ‘in the act’ but ideally it wouldn’t have been dressed like this. I knew it was risky, the farm was very busy today, so I cheated and got MrSpud to take this shot in the interest of speed. But our neighbour spied us anyway. Oh…the…shame….outakes and shots of being caught in the act are at the bottom of the post.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen...lend me your ears

Back to the secret – I speak Latin and Ancient Greek. Actually I don’t speak them as such, as no one does. “Ave” (Hello) is probably the extent of my spoken Latin, followed by “Caecilius est in horto. Caecilius est mortu, eheu” (Caecilius is in the garden. Caecilius is dead, alas). It’s not much of a yarn is it…not much in the way of drama and suspension? Nor plot, for that matter.

I absolutely loved Latin at school and my love of the language was in no way linked to a crush on the Latin teacher, oh no. I loved it so much I took it as my second subject at university and this was in no way linked to a crush on a fellow Latin student. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? I sometimes think my whole live has been shaped by a succession of crushes. Of course Michael is the Crush. The others are merely crushettes.

I’m not sure my costume is very authentic? Was nylon around in the Olde Days? Ideally I’d have ditched the wellies, not sure Romans wore Hunters? Although perhaps Caecilius did when he was ‘in horto’, but perhaps not when he was ‘mortu, eheu’.

So, right after the shot on the left was taken I heard our neighbour Adrian shouting YOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!! And I was busted. MrSpud jumped in to action with the camera as best he can, bless, and snapped the folllowing:

Invaders? Right, let's face the enemy

So how do I look?

I know! Looking good...

Retreat! Retreat! The enemy is laughing...

Assume the position...

...and, thank you and good night

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Please excuse our appearance. We’ve just moved from wordpress hosted to self-hosted and right now we’re using a horrible temporary template. Yuck. A new whizzy one is on its way, just as soon as I can crack the whip a little harder and get MrSpud to sort it.

In the meantime, here’s a shot of our pigs (well one of them is ours), as it’s looking like a pig sty round here right now. Nasty…

Chez Spud - the Pig Sty

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Inspired by Christina’s blog today, 10 simple things that make you happy on June 10.

1. The first cup of tea of the day

Tea & Cake

2. Stripes

Stripes

3. White things

White on White

4. Order

Order

5. Heart shapes

True Love Ways

6. The colour purple

Violets

7. The beach

Mr and Mrs Spud on Shingle Street

8. Nostalgia

9. Sunshine

Sunshine at Aldeburgh

10. Sleep

Sleeping Diggy

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When I was a child, I really really wanted to be a nun. I was quite a devout ‘Litttle Catholic’ as my grandmother used to call me, always bothering the Lord, fiddling with my rosery beads, toting round a small Tupperware box of holy water from Lourdes (seriously), singing hymns, making up my own prayers and colouring in pictures of Jesus.

Sister Spud

I had a picture of the Pope on my bedroom wall, and used to turn it around when I got undressed at night, in his case His Holiness suddenly developed an All Seeing Sense and was offended by my Wombles knickers and Holly Hobbit nightdress.

I can’t remember when it tipped in to ‘I know, why don’t I BE a nun’, or when I realised perhaps I wasn’t up for getting me to a nunnery after all. Quite probably the realisation that I might have to have a man’s name and the fact that nearly every nun I knew was actually quite vicious…Sister Joseph Mary where are you now, with your ruler slapping across the backs of knuckles and yells of “Spudballo…I’ll..slap…your…LEGS!”. What a lovely, Christian woman she was.

As a child my mother thought there were three sexes: men, women and nuns. Nuns sounded like women, but didn’t wear make up and had short hair hidden under their veils, wore long black dresses to the ground (in those days), but had big heavy ugly black lace up shoes. So, men, women and nuns.

Mind you, my mother’s judgement shouldn’t be relied on. She also thought that the reason men go bald is because they run out of hair as it grows from the top of their heads, down in to their beards and eventually they just run out of hair altogether…it’s all been ‘bearded’ out, as it were.

The Lord and I aren’t quite so pally these days, since I ditched the chance to be a Bride of Christ in favour of being a Bride of MrSpud (nicer clothes and less rules).

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Awww, look at us, the happy couple…enjoying a joke. Michael is amusing me with his legendary sense of funny, and he’s looking pretty tickled too. Or is he laughing at my dodgy growing out hair? No matter, I’m sure whatever it is he is laughing WITH me at not at me.

Me and my 'other' husband

We’ve been together for 24 years now, since I developed a lasting and stonking crush on him as a teenager. Naturally, like any couple, we’ve had our ups and downs but in the end we love each other very deeply and will be together forever.

There is the ‘slight’ knotty issue of his wife and family, and MrSpud and my boys, but the course of true love never runs smooth does it?

I’ve never actually met Michael Palin, I will admit it. I have come very close on two occasions, both book signings. The first time, early 1990s, he was doing a signing in Selfridges and I got as far as the lift before my heart started pounding so fast I thought I was going to faint so I had to go home. Waaaaaah!

The second time I took reinforcements in the shape of various colleagues from work. Got to Waterstones, same thing happened, I was completely frozen to the spot. Someone shoved me forward and, squeek, HE LOOKED AT ME. That was it, I turned on my heel and ran back to the office, completely overwhelmed.

Recently I read an interview with ‘my husband’ and the interviewer commented on the longevity of his marriage, and how rare that is in celebrity world. Michael said that someone had caught his eye once or twice, but in the end family is more important.

HE MEANT ME!!!! HE LOVES ME TOO!!!

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Brain..can’t…compute..eyes see a Canon lens, but brain knows only Nikons live Chez Spud. So what is this intruder doing here?

A photocopier accessory

Despite the universally accepted truth than Nikons are better than Canon, my neighbour insists on lugging round a big ‘ol photocopier with him. Bless. He takes great photographs but I was shocked to learn he doesn’t have a trusty nifty fifty in his armoury. It took me about 10 seconds to persuade him to buy one and today I took delivery of this little baby.

Mmmmm, pretty…look at its fastness, its bokeh-ry goodness, its compactness, its toner tray and ink cartridges….if he’d gone for the f1.4 it probably would have had an automatic stapler function.

Naturally I had to take it out of the box as I needed a couple of copies of some documents. Also, it needed a CLEAN. How can a brand new lens, right out of the factory, need a clean? I got busy with my Giotto’s rocket blower thingy and now it’s sparkly clean and ready to copy.

Joking aside, I’m so excited. I adore my 50mm and have to wrench it off my camera sometimes just to shake things up a bit. I can’t wait for Adrian to get going with his new lens as I know he’ll be hooked in minutes and won’t be able to understand how he lived without it.

I love that feeling of letting people in on a secret, adding something to their lives that you just KNOW is going to be a hit. Which got me thinking about book recommendations, when you can’t believe that someone hasn’t ready xyz book and you implore them to read it. And they do, and they love it, and you all bask in the shared wonderfulness of the discovery.

For me, it’s A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I get a thrill when I come across someone who hasn’t read it but I’m also a little bit jealous as they are about to get to read Owen Meany for the first time. Bitter sweet. A bit like watching West Wing or Mad Men – it’s so fabulous you can’t stop watching it but at the same time you want to slow time down because you know at some point The Last Episode will come.

So what’s the book, the music, the programme, the ‘discovery’ you have that you love to share with people. Share it with us, we all need a little joy!

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Early Morning Poppies

There are very, very few benefits to having to get up early every single day of your life once you have children. Admittedly I don’t have to get up ‘that’ early since I make MrSpud get up with them if they wake before the internationally approved Get Up Time of 7am. I totally resigned from getting up with children once I stopped breast feeding them on the basis that I’d done back to back pregnancy, breast feeding, breast feeding AND pregnancy, breast feeding for about 3.5 years. I’ve done my time.

Anyway, I found this wonderful poppy field up the road from our house last week and it’s been niggling at me ever since. It’s screaming to be photographed…snap me..snap me….SNAP ME!!!

But the weather and the light have been rubbish, and I was getting wibbly that the moment of the poppy field glory would pass before I could get up there.

So Bertie got up at 6am today and got in to bed with us. Out of the corner of my eye I could see sunshine peeping around the blind, so I dragged myself out of bed and up to the poppy field. Huzzah! The poppies were still there, but very battered by heavy rain.

I didn’t really get the shots I wanted, but then it’s pretty much always like that. But this is quite nice. Shot with a Nikon D70, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 AT-X for the people who care. At f22, 15mm.

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At the grand old age of 38, I still have two of my milk teeth. The incisors. So far, so weird.

But, weirder and rather alarmingly, when they do eventually fall out…there are no adult teeth waiting to come down. I’m completely missing a pair of teeth. Not my adult incisors in fact, as they are next to my front middle teeth i.e in the wrong place. My dental arrangements are pretty complex.

More alarmingly a recent x-ray showed that the milk teeth are hanging on by a thread, i.e their demise could be imminent. So when they do finally come out, I will have large gaping holes. Children will point and stare and run back to mummy, and I will inadvertently whistle when i talk like a mad old lady. Might as well grow a beard while I’m at it.

I'm still due two more visits from the Tooth Fairy

On a more positive note, that means I’m due two more visits from the tooth fairy. Yay! How much do you get these days? At least a quid, surely?

So two of our finest British pounds as compensation for becoming gappy, whistling bearded woman? Definitely worth it.

I’m hoping the Good Hair Fairy might take pity on me soon. Although the Ken Dodd look as shown here might divert attention away from the dental issues. Although the beard might balance it quite nicely?

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