Gradations of toast done-ness. My preference is for about 45 secs; Child K ranges between 45 secs and 1,45 min; Wife goes for a hardcore 3,15 mins every time. Plenty of scope for family dissent, depending on who’s making breakfast.
Found this on standingintheheartofdarkness via a reblog on the delightful letsjustwastetime whose author Vivien lives in Melbourne and is aged… well only click through and find out if you really, really don’t mind feeling your age:
Much as I loathe everything MacDonalds stands for, the fact that this ad got made by a major US multinational shows how tolerant Western society has become since the dark days of my early teens.
Back in 1963 gay love was still the kind that dared not speak its name – and acting on it could land you in prison. But today’s wider tolerance still doesn’t mean it’s actually easy for queer kids to find themselves and embrace their identity nowadays. The widespread use of “gay” among young people to mean useless or pathetic means the environment for coming out is far from friendly or accepting, even today.
The key message of hope all alienated teenagers need to hear is “You’re Not Alone” – and it didn’t reach my generation till our early 20s with the arrival of David Bowie:
Oh no love! you’re not alone No matter what or who you’ve been No matter when or where you’ve seen All the knives seem to lacerate your brain I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain You’re not alone David Bowie: Rock’n’Roll Suicide
Macdonalds ads are likely to carry on being made and reach mass audiences for the forseeable future. Whatever other cultural subtext they may carry, at least this one is also sending Bowie’s old message to a new generation of youngsters struggling with their sexual identity.
On Sunday Child K woke us up with morning tea on a a beautifully laid-out tray with a bunch of tulips for Mothers Day. Looking through the photos on my phone a couple of days later, found she’d used it to photograph the tray before bringing it upstairs for her mum. Nice work, that girl!
From the Children’s Historical Literature Collection,
University of Washington Libraries Struwwelpeter was first published in Germany in 1845 under the title “*Lustige Geschichten und Drollige Bilder” and was described as “one of the earliest and most successful author-artist picture-books for the very young.” Its author, Heinrich Hoffmann, was a German psychiatrist and the superintendent of a “progressive” mental hospital. This book, supposedly intended to be therapeutic, was written for his three-year old son. It was reissued as “Struwwelpeter” in 1847 with added stories and pictures. In 1848 it was translated into English.
Why did my parents think it was a good idea to give their infant children a book of 19th century horror stories for their early years reading ? I don’t know, but they did.
These gothic cautionary tales included characters such as Fidgety Phil (who could not sit still) and Little Johnny Head-In-Air. Not to mention The Dreadful Story Of Harriet And The Matches.
But most gruesome of all was the tale of Little Suck-A-Thumb, a tale of maternal cold-heartedness that so terrified my brother that the pages had to be permanently paper-clipped together in the book. I wouldn’t want to alarm you unduly, but if you’re over 18 you can click below at your own risk to see what happened to him… Read the story of Little Suck-A-Thumb
Came back to my work room after breakfast and found this, full-screen, ready to play on my computer, courtesy of Child K. I’d never heard of CharlieIsSoCoolLike, but it seems like everybody else has – including Stephen Fry – as you can hear from the endorsement at the end of this vid.
Browsing Charlie McDonnell’s Youtube channel, own website and Wikipedia entry, it turns out he has the UK’s second most subscribed channel on YouTube of all time. His videos have had 197 million – that’s 197 MILLION – views since he first started uploading in 1997 at age 17.
He found success within a month of starting when when his clip “How to get featured on YouTube” was duly featured on the front page of YouTube UK: his channel went from 150 subscribers to 4,400 in two days flat. Now 21, Charlie has bought a house with the share of advertising revenue paid to him by YouTube over the intervening years. All earned with little more than a camera, computer, a broadband connection and his own brand of naive – if slightly cloying – charm.
Certainly Charlie was blessed with good looks and, presumably, a comfortable upbringing. But his success in turning himself into a recognisable and popular brand is down to canny intelligence and his own intrinsic talent.
I was going to add “…and good helping of plain old-fashioned dumb luck”. But in fact he clearly made his own luck right from the start: sooner or later he was always going to be successful.
Saw a P.E. teacher marshalling a class of 7 year olds at our local leisure centre a couple of weeks ago. Why was it so surprising to hear him address each individual child with basic human respect and general good humour?
My schoolmates and I took it for granted that all sports teachers were, in the natural order of things, sadistic bullying bastards whose sole mission was to make our lives a misery. The impossible brutality of circuit training, the dispiriting misery of cross country runs, the dull futulity of cricket, the physical terrors of the rugby pitch.
At no point did any teacher ever take the trouble to set out the reasons why we might actually WANT to achieve a basic level of fitness for our own health and enjoyent - and how it might benefit us in later life.
I love the wild whimsy of children. Billy Bones was dreamed up, drawn up and finally pinned up some years ago by Child K who figured we ought to have a skeleton in the cupboard under our stairs.
Constant opening of the door - not to mention dragging junk in and out of the cupboard every time the gasman wanted to read the meter - took their toll on Billy. Things could have gone either way - he was getting pretty tattered and might easily have ended up as a few scrappy bits of chalkmarked black paper in the recycling bin.
But last weekend an older and more skilful Child K took pity on him and got out the scissors, chalk and paper to do a thorough repair and rescue job. She even added a baby daughter skeleton to keep him company in his cupboard.
Sometimes kids get more pleasure from a cardboard box than the present inside it… so how much pleasure in 20 cardboard boxes ? These two seem determined to find out.
The garden’s full of newly fledged starlings almost as big as their parents – and equally capable of feeding at our bird table. But this one still follows its mum/dad around yelling to have the food shoved down its beak. And, with enough nagging, the parent eventually gives in…
This was the doorway to some of the wildest and most vivid memories of my younger years. I first glimpsed Jay at a crowded fringe theatre event in Notting Hill and coudn’t take my eyes off him. We were in our early thirties, both a bit raddled and the worse for wear but for me at least he had an electrifying physical attraction. He saw me looking, ambled over and casually, arrogantly, picked me up – taking me first to a Kensington nightclub so that his ex would see he’d scored and be jealous. [More]
“What Are Little Girls Made Of ?” The answer always pleased Child K as a pre-school tot back in the day when we used to sing our way through the books together: “Sugar and Spice and all that’s nice – and that are little girls are made of…”
We found my dad’s lovingly restored copy of The Baby’s Opera again the other day and went through it together for old time’s sake. Inevitably, the songs had greater sentimental value for me than they do for her now she’s 13 and too grown up for all that. Perhaps she’ll appreciate them again when she’s older…
Postscript: since writing this have found both of Walter Crane’s beautifully illustrated volumes of nursery rhymes are free online – thanks to Project Gutenberg – with lovely scans of the original pages: The Baby’s Bouquet and The Baby’s Opera
Drove to our local IKEA in Croydon with Wife and Child K, leaving Child A back home tidying his room and writing computer code. He did however ask us to buy him two cushions for his room, so I snapped a selection of covers and emailed them back for him to choose. Curiously enough he didn’t like this eyecatching retro 60s pattern, but it certainly made me feel all nostalgic.
IKEA furniture names have the power of making grown men in their 60s come over all Beavis & Butthead and snigger inanely at the weakest innuendo. It isn’t big, it isn’t clever. But it can’t be helped – this still struck me as funny enough to photograph.
Saw a P.E. teacher marshalling a class of 7 year olds at our local leisure centre a couple of weeks ago. Why was it so surprising to hear him address each individual child with basic human respect and general good humour?
My schoolmates and I took it for granted that all sports teachers were, in the natural order of things, sadistic bullying bastards whose sole mission was to make our lives a misery. The impossible brutality of circuit training, the dispiriting misery of cross country runs, the dull futulity of cricket, the physical terrors of the rugby pitch.
At no point did any teacher ever take the trouble to set out the reasons why we might actually WANT to achieve a basic level of fitness for our own health and enjoyent - and how it might benefit us in later life. 
