Chez Spud

Glum. Despite the very welcome presence of some sunshine today, and glorious warmth…and the blossom and the birdsong and that lollipop super moon, just rising as I’m writing this. Should be a skippy day but The Sick Bug paid Diggy a visit last night and that put paid to our weekend plans to skip away for a night, just me and MrSpud, to celebrate our 40th birthdays (since he finally turned 40..he took a few months to catch me up. Lazy). This is now our third aborted attempt to have a night away from the boys for the first time. I feel unreasonable gutted about it, verging on the distraught if I’m honest. I really am beginning to feel like we will never, ever have any time on our own ever again.

To compound The Glum, my beloved Nikon is dead. I don’t know what’s happened to it. One minute I was taking gorgeous photos of my gorgeous boy in gorgeous light, next minute it was dead. Needs to go to the Nikon Hospital but I am not happy, not at all happy. I feel like I’ve lost a limb which is obviously ridiculous and over dramatic. In the scheme of things, it’s no big deal. It’s ‘just’ a camera, just ‘stuff’…it’s not life or death. But given me The Wibble to add to The Glum.

So I will plod on with my Photo365 using my iphone. The photo up top was snapped yesterday. I’ve loaded up the wife’s Pentax with film, ready for a film swap project. But now I wonder if she’ll let me use it while the Nikon is repaired and resuscitated. Look how vast the D700 looks, makes the Pentax look dinky. But the Pentax is WORKING and Nikon is NOT WORKING. I know which one is winning in my book right now.

I like snapping with my iphone, I love it for on the hoof ‘catches’ like these of a local shop front (fortunately/unfortunately the shop was shut or surely the entire contents of the window would be mine mine all mine by now?) which caught my eye this week:

They’re fun and have a nostalgic kind of air about them. But they can’t compete with the Nikon for colour or clarity…here’s a little moment from the boys’ crafty creating this week…

MrDiggy, pre Sick Bug…serious…tongue out…I think it balances the weight of the pen in his hand or something?

He is so determined and single minded at times which is as delightful as it is exasperating. Today he howled and cried big fat tears of frustration over origami. “I just want to do it all by myself” he sobbed. I tried to explain that it’s just too tricky, he needs a little help at his age but the words made no sense to him. “But if I try and try with ALL MY MIGHT I can do anything that I want to, can’t I Mummy?”

How do you respond to that? Where’s the balance between encouragement, the power of self-belief and realism? “Hmmmmm”, I replied. I thought that kind of covered it.

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