Chez Spud

To my boy, on the eve of starting school: Five…the number of years you so nearly are….five…the number of years we’ve hung out together…five…the years which are the most formative of a child’s life … five….the number of years it’s been since I parted ways with corporate life for you…five…the minutes that it seems like [...]

Mr Bertie, hotfooting it across Cromer beach and weaving through the pillars of the pier. Reminds me a bit of Don’t Look Now with that red top and the fleetingness of the composition. Shudder. I love all the funny mispronunciations the boys have had in their vocabulary along the way and so wish I’d kept [...]

I’m very late with this week’s Gallery entry, partly because I’m enjoying being mostly analogue this week but mostly because I really struggled with this week’s theme: “memories”. How to choose? Like every life mine is filled with huge highs and huge lows as I look back. There are precious moments, painful moments, days I’ll [...]

Gone Camping, originally uploaded by *spudballoo*. I am not here. I am there. Or here. Depending on your viewpoint. I am eschewing bricks and mortar for canvas and the charms of cooking over a camp fire. No electricity, no TV, no laptop. No stress, nowhere to be, no timetable. Just me and my boys hanging [...]

Bertie, Digby and Imo in Colin the Caravan who is looking VERY splendid mid refit. Can’t wait to see him finished! Kind of 70s, sunshiney processing. Kind of 70s sunshiney kind of day. That is all. 0

Mr Diggy, a smidge under 3.5, learnt to swim totally solo this week. He’s been swimming under water for a while but, you know, sometimes you have to come up for air and swim ON the water. And now he can. I’m so proud of him, he’s only had 3 lessons and he refused to [...]

I am frantically clutching at these last few precious weeks of having two pre-schoolers, just knocking about at home, pottering around together, chewing the cud and testing my patience to its very limits… Today we decorated spoons, made houses for pandas, built improbable flying machines, ‘biffed’ a legion of imaginary Romans, invented our own version [...]

Bertie went to his Big School today for a ‘settling in’ morning. I’ve no idea what it involved other than ‘a drink, a story, playing in the dragon’s cave and then you came to get me’. That’s a big improvement on his usual response to, ‘What did you do at nursery today?’ which is, ‘Nothing’. [...]

Please excuse my dark and moody processing. Just trying something. Just getting out of my comfort zone (oh WHY do I have “I went to the danger zone” from Top Gun playing through my head as I write that? Embarrassing) Here’s Mr B, gripping on for dear life whilst scaling the scallop on Aldeburgh beach [...]

I love the 70s. The older I get the more I love the 70s….the fashion, the music, the photos, the cars. I love the 70s, shoot me if you must. Neatly, I was born in 1970 so the 70s, for me, were all about my childhood from 0-10. I guess it’s normal to look back [...]