I'm not really one for blogging about issues in the news, but a friend just posted an article from the Telegraph on Facebook that has made me revise that idea. Have you heard the latest on the horsemeat story?
The news is that they have discovered that IKEA meatballs have contained (or do contain in some cases), but maybe not all countries, up to 75% horsemeat. Aw, crap.
Horrified? Totally. My baked potato and cheese started churning in my stomach. But then I got to thinking, maybe all it proves is that I like horsemeat. Because I really like IKEA meatballs. And really, I know I have eaten hotdogs at outdoor events in the past, and I *KNOW* that they usually contain pigs eyelids, and bumholes, and penises, and that's got to be worse surely than just eating a bit of decent horsemeat. Then I remembered the bit where they described it as "horsemeat offcuts" (under the article photo helpfully showing a horse next to a big juicy horseburger) and I felt a little bit sick in case I've been eating horse eyelids, bumholes and penises. God, that baked potato is creeping up my throat.
It get's you thinking doesn't it? I read in the comments about someone saying "well, that's the middle classes affected now!", and while I had previously quietly patted myself on the back for not signing the kids up to Sodexo school meals last year (Sodexo are also mentioned in the article), I suspected prior to today that there was a good chance that I probably would have eaten horsemeat at some point. I can't recall the last time I ate a Findus lasagne, but no doubt I have, and no doubt horsemeat has been used in processed meat products for a long time. Who knows. Ah well, there you go.
What are we going to find out next though? What about the IKEA hotdogs that they sell near the exit? They're only 50 cents or something! If there's a report out soon that they contain mice bumholes cause that's cheaper then pig bumholes, well, I guess I won't be surprised. I might be a little sick in my mouth, but I won't be surprised.
Monday, 25 February 2013
Saturday, 23 February 2013
Save water, bath with a friend
I love our bath. It is a real saviour and time eater during holiday times. It's the place where Orla & Hamish can actually get on and not argue for 10 minutes allowing me to wash the dishes or unpack a few boxes without having to involve me in everything they do.
Orla and Hamish have had lovely long, decadent daytime baths all this week. When all else has failed, when all the craft projects have been done, when I can take no more of the bickering and whining about who's not being nice to whom, "How about a nice, deep bath?" restores calm.
Grumpy children become the best of friends again once they both have bubbly beards. And I have just about unpacked all the boxes and watched a fair amount of catch-up on iPlayer while they've been in there. Bonus!
So while I barely ever have a bath, much preferring showers, I have realised in this past week I am a total bath convert. There are some things about this house which I totally love. Maybe I am coming round to life in Blighty.... slowly.
Monday, 18 February 2013
Plasticine rainbows & rock bugs... it's half term, not an acid trip.
It's the first day of half term. In fact it's only 11am and already we've had our electricity meter changed for a nice new digital one, made rock bugs, plasticined a rainbow, secretly devoured some chocolate crispies before breakfast, and played trains. They've only been up 2 and a half hours! How am I going to fill the rest of the week????
Aaaahhhhhhhh................... crap.
Friday, 8 February 2013
The Mummy Project
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| I used to live in a giant Rice Krispies box. |
Yesterday I heard in the playground that the 'house' project was due in today, and when I asked her teacher about it, it turned out that either we hadn't been given a letter about it, or Orla had lost it. The teacher helpfully suggested that 'we' give it a bash anyway. Orla on the way home started wailing that she HAD to have something to take in, as she COULDN'T be the only one without a house. Scouring the internal Pinterest boards of my brain, I figured we could rustle something up relatively quickly using a cereal box, and if I couldn't find my paints (still in one of the many boxes in the living room) then we would use the emulsion we're using to paint the house. Easiest building to make? - Berlin apartment block.
Unfortunately, I still had a lot of de-siliconing to do on the shower cubicle which I had propped upside down in the spare bedroom, and Orla had to do a piece of writing about her house, so time allocated to the making of the model was an hour. Squidged in between the writing part and the completion of the making of dinner. But of course, Orla started getting tired and distracted and very quickly the writing was abandoned, and I got left with the making of the house.
Let me just say, it is so much harder to make something that looks like it has been made by a 5 year old. (And I doubt any 5 year old would have the patience to be bothering with 27 windows) And I am vowing that I will never do it again. I could see that a lot of mothers had also been up late making houses, but when I was at school I never thought that was fair, especially as I had parents who weren't very good at this sort of thing. Anyway, I will do all the fancy dress costumes and such that are required of me, but that's it.
But it's so hard to say "Tough - you either get on with it, or you have nothing to take in" when there's a wee sad face looking at you in the rear view mirror.
What's your view on mothers doing their kids projects/homework?
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
The manual of accidents and mistakes
And a happy World Nutella Day to you too.
I feel a little bit homesick for Berlin knowing that, even though Nutella was banned from our household by Stevie who seemed to think that once it crossed our threshhold it would rapidly become the only foodstuff we'd want to consume.
Anyway, here we are, and day to day life continues apace. The plumbers are here as I type. I'm hoping it looks as though I am working from home. To sit on the sofa watching 'The Real Wives of Orange County' strikes me as looking far too much like what I really do, which is full time web surfer and tv watcher and occasional crisp eater. And patently we can't have that! The plumbers are fixing the leaks in the bathroom which will hopefully put an end to people spitting their toothpaste residue into the bath which is slowly but surely driving me nuts. Well, it's not so much that but the fact that once I have scrubbed the bath of toothpaste spittings, the next time I visit someone else has been in using the bath to wash out their paintbrushes and rollers and I have to stop myself from throttling someone with my Cilit Bang chemically-burned hands (which actually are starting to heal now that I have discovered a pack of latex gloves in one of the boxes).
Everything is starting to improve. I might finally be out of the woods with the DVLA, and hopefully will be in possession of a nice new driving licence by next week. Of course last Thursday it would have been nice to have had one, when after parking in the little car park in front of Sainsbury's I watched a woman not look as she reversed out and swing her car round and right into the side of mine. She looked at the car, then looked at me, then continued reversing to where I thought she must be parking up, but as I got out of the car to walk round and survey the damage (which admittedly was minor) she looked at me again, shrugged, and drove off! Outraged? I'll say! I think the factors that made me more so were the facts that she was in her 60's and looked very middle class and decent, and I was horrified by the sheer lack of good manners.
I phoned the police despite the fact that I wouldn't be making a claim and also wasn't sure I had got the last letters of her number plate right, and spent some time the following day at the police station reporting it in person (which is a requirement) in an area where I was sure the car would come to more harm than it had in the accident. The police were very nice and have told me to keep an eye out for the car as I am bound to see her again at the supermarket and when I do to note the number plate and let them know and they'll hopefully go round and have a chat with her about how bad mannered it is to just drive off after hitting someone's car. So obviously now I am scouring the roads to see this woman in her car again and no doubt will not rest until I have tracked her down.
Not having a driving licence to show the police worried me a bit, but I did have my drivers number and it seems they did check that I was ok to drive with the DVLA, for the DVLA have sent me a lovely letter to brandish stating my validity to drive and aid me in my fight against crime caused by the elderly.
The plumbers have finished and left me with this...
I think in modern circles they call it a wet room... well that's what I'll have as the shower enclosure is in the spare bedroom. Turns out the leak has been caused by the poor fitting of the enclosure in the first place, so Stevie and I have a joyous evening of stripping silicone and cleaning the whole thing up before stuffing a gap with silicone and refitting it again.
I've also just taken delivery of two bits of furniture that have been with the french polisher. I am amazed. The man is a genius. My coffee table and console table got scraped and damaged during the move from Germany amongst other things and while he managed to fix some things in situ, he took a couple away. I nearly wept with joy when I saw the coffee table again it's so beautiful. He's even managed to get rid of the well established paint stains that the kids have caused that I couldn't. So all in all, I'm happy. While it's rotten when things get trashed and broken, there's so much pleasure to gain from seeing things fixed and working again.
I feel a little bit homesick for Berlin knowing that, even though Nutella was banned from our household by Stevie who seemed to think that once it crossed our threshhold it would rapidly become the only foodstuff we'd want to consume.
Anyway, here we are, and day to day life continues apace. The plumbers are here as I type. I'm hoping it looks as though I am working from home. To sit on the sofa watching 'The Real Wives of Orange County' strikes me as looking far too much like what I really do, which is full time web surfer and tv watcher and occasional crisp eater. And patently we can't have that! The plumbers are fixing the leaks in the bathroom which will hopefully put an end to people spitting their toothpaste residue into the bath which is slowly but surely driving me nuts. Well, it's not so much that but the fact that once I have scrubbed the bath of toothpaste spittings, the next time I visit someone else has been in using the bath to wash out their paintbrushes and rollers and I have to stop myself from throttling someone with my Cilit Bang chemically-burned hands (which actually are starting to heal now that I have discovered a pack of latex gloves in one of the boxes).
Everything is starting to improve. I might finally be out of the woods with the DVLA, and hopefully will be in possession of a nice new driving licence by next week. Of course last Thursday it would have been nice to have had one, when after parking in the little car park in front of Sainsbury's I watched a woman not look as she reversed out and swing her car round and right into the side of mine. She looked at the car, then looked at me, then continued reversing to where I thought she must be parking up, but as I got out of the car to walk round and survey the damage (which admittedly was minor) she looked at me again, shrugged, and drove off! Outraged? I'll say! I think the factors that made me more so were the facts that she was in her 60's and looked very middle class and decent, and I was horrified by the sheer lack of good manners.
I phoned the police despite the fact that I wouldn't be making a claim and also wasn't sure I had got the last letters of her number plate right, and spent some time the following day at the police station reporting it in person (which is a requirement) in an area where I was sure the car would come to more harm than it had in the accident. The police were very nice and have told me to keep an eye out for the car as I am bound to see her again at the supermarket and when I do to note the number plate and let them know and they'll hopefully go round and have a chat with her about how bad mannered it is to just drive off after hitting someone's car. So obviously now I am scouring the roads to see this woman in her car again and no doubt will not rest until I have tracked her down.
Not having a driving licence to show the police worried me a bit, but I did have my drivers number and it seems they did check that I was ok to drive with the DVLA, for the DVLA have sent me a lovely letter to brandish stating my validity to drive and aid me in my fight against crime caused by the elderly.
The plumbers have finished and left me with this...
I think in modern circles they call it a wet room... well that's what I'll have as the shower enclosure is in the spare bedroom. Turns out the leak has been caused by the poor fitting of the enclosure in the first place, so Stevie and I have a joyous evening of stripping silicone and cleaning the whole thing up before stuffing a gap with silicone and refitting it again.
I've also just taken delivery of two bits of furniture that have been with the french polisher. I am amazed. The man is a genius. My coffee table and console table got scraped and damaged during the move from Germany amongst other things and while he managed to fix some things in situ, he took a couple away. I nearly wept with joy when I saw the coffee table again it's so beautiful. He's even managed to get rid of the well established paint stains that the kids have caused that I couldn't. So all in all, I'm happy. While it's rotten when things get trashed and broken, there's so much pleasure to gain from seeing things fixed and working again.
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