Before every party, I Google my guests

The spy who went out in the snow.

Ssssshhhhhh..... the neighbours might be listening!

There are moments when I think that it would have been wise to have thought about this whole blog thing prior to starting it off. At times I have my regrets that I have used my own name and used photos of myself and the kids and all that malarky, and obviously if I had done that I could talk about anything I like without worrying about people I know either Googling me and finding out things about me that I wouldn't really want them to know, and I could have a good old moan about all the people who thoroughly annoy me, and I could talk about other things that I'd like to talk about but which I am rather reticent to because I want to keep some things a little more private.

But I didn't. And it's not that big a deal really. Sometimes though there are little moments when people say things to me and I jolt thinking, "How did you know that?". Sometimes I am surprised by the people I know from real life who read my blog. It's never who I think it would be.

Last night I spent some time trying to find out how strangers see my 'timeline' on Facebook. That was a whole lot of not much fun. For yesterday afternoon we went to a New Year/New Baby/New Neighbours party (yes, really, it was 3 times the fun) downstairs in our building. And about 30 minutes after we arrived the hostess and I had the opportunity to chat for a bit and her opening line was "I know your daughter is at the British School, but your looking at ###### School, aren't you?".

I couldn't help but be shocked and ask "How did you know that?". There was a slight pause and then she gave me an answer which didn't really answer my question, and eventually took it off topic. I could have pressed her, but my brain had already bolted back upstairs and was logging into Blogger, searching posts for references to this. It was just my body that was locked into being polite, and stayed drinking coffee for a while longer, and comparing apartment sizes with the rest of the neighbours.

For there is no way that this woman should know this. I haven't mentioned my plans to any of my neighbours, and I don't believe that we share any friends that would have mentioned this fact. So, the first thing I did once we got home after stopping Orla from crying, getting Hamish a drink, making the dinner, getting the kids ready for bed and settling Hamish down, was check out my blog and when I found no reference there, I checked Facebook. And then I considered that the apartment might be bugged. (Which led to some really bad dreams)

So, I might be a little more cagey about what's happening with us and our staying/going/relocating plans for a while. At least until things are little more settled.... and I have checked the lightswitches for tiny microphones.

A day out in Britzer Garten

Part of the bridge at Britzer Garten where we saw a crab/lobstery -looking thing crawling in the grass at the edge . I couldn't be sure as there were too many people around poking it with their fingers.

One of the many mosaic things for the kids to enjoy hiding in.

Hamish is in the middle of acting out a little pirate story. Aaaaarrr!!

They even had a little mini-Oktoberfest going on. German expats - can you name the song ?

There were even owl and eagle displays!

I was totally impressed by the kazillion seats dotted around. 

I lost the kids in the maze. 5000 tiny sharp stones in my sandals and I'm running after nobody.

Some of my babies were really tired. Maclaren do triple buggies, right?

A very happy belated German Reunification Day to you! I hope you had a good one. We considered heading to the Brandenburg Gate on the bikes for a few hours or beer drinking, wandering, and pretzel eating, but as we'd been last year, and with the weather so good we thought we'd either head to the coast or visit Britzer Garten for the day. Much as the kids love the seaside, I couldn't really be bothered with the drive, so we decided to try our luck closer to home. We'd heard of Britzer Garten through some friends, as a great place to take kids as it has a little railway. And we'd all tried to go there, but it was incorrectly Googled and instead we went to Sudgelande (a park where there are old steam trains hidden in amongst the bushes and paths made from disused track. Ah, now, did I not post the photo of me doing my bit to revive silent movies??).

Anyway, this time we got the right place. It's at the Tempelhof side of Neukölln, in Berlin. And it's fantastic. There's just so much to do there. There are flower gardens and nice nature-y walks, and simply tons of things for the kids to play on. So much in fact that the kids could quite easily walk for miles and miles because around each corner there would be something else for them to play with, whether it was a swing hidden in amongst the trees, climbing bars, little houses and huts, mosaic elephants, sand and water play, it was the best park I have been to for having things for the kids to do on a walk.

Aside from that there were also animals that you can pat - goats, donkeys and sheep, and there was a display of birds that you couldn't pat. Owls and eagles and other things (must brush up on my ornathology really) that made squeaky noises. We also passed a boating lake with lots of (mostly grown ups) sailing remote controlled boats, which Hamish rather enjoyed. And as we were walking we heard a band playing and headed towards the noise where we discovered they were holding a little mini-Oktoberfest. It was really good fun.

Stevie was starting to wilt by this point and we decided to take a trip on the little train. You have to pay extra to go on the train (It was 3 Euros for S & I to get in to the park and it cost another 3 Euros for us all to go one stop on the train.) I'm not sure how much it is to go a full round trip, but we wanted to just get closer to the car park. In usual manner we got on the train going the wrong way and ended up at the furthest away point from our car that we could possibly be. So on the way home all my little darlings had a little snooze...

Number-crunching with 'boys in tights' at the 'Commerzbank' 'is giving me gip'

'Like' at your own risk, elf perverts!

Howdy dear readers, I wonder how you found me today? I've been meaning to write about 'stats' for a while but, well, you know, I'm always busy with something else. Don't worry though, I am starting to get on top of my mountain of tasks - why even as I write this I am on hold to the Tax Office. Actually, that's not true, I tried to write while I was on hold to them but their hold music/messages are so fluffy and hard to hear that I couldn't concentrate because I was never sure if I was still on hold or if it was an actual person. I did eventually get through to someone who told me to phone back in February or March, so I have effectively ticked that one off my list of things that really need doing (right now). So that's at least one thing slightly sorted, the rest can probably wait until after I get out of jail for failing to sort out my double taxation issues in January.

But where was I? Yup, stats. I'll try not to bore you, I won't actually give you any numbers or anything, I'm not that way inclined, but I thought I would tell you some interesting stuff from 'behind the scenes' of the blog. At least I find it interesting, who knows, maybe you'd like to hear more about the UK Tax System.

I've been inspired to write about this by Mwa who always has people landing on her blog via the most interesting search terms. I won't re-type them here, you can click the link in a minute and see for yourself. I said "in a minute"!! I am always surprised by the things that people type into Google. An awful lot of people find my blog via Google by searching for 'boys in tights'. Barely a day goes by when there's not someone looking for boys in tights. Or 'facebook boys in tights'. I wonder what it really is that they are looking for. I'm pretty sure it's not me, otherwise I would be gathering up followers like nothing on earth.

Incidentally if you search for 'boys in tights' in Facebook you find the list of pages above. Does anyone want to 'like' the North Pole Sexy Elf Boys for me? I also have a fair amount of people searching for more random things on a weekly basis. This week so far my favourites are "My piles are giving me gip" - and I hope they found comfort and a little relief here, and "The noise in my heating system is driving me crazy". Why would you even type all that into Google? Isn't it more logical to search for something like 'NHS Direct+piles' for the first one and perhaps 'heating system+noise' for the second?

Other peoples searches just have me wondering though. Someone in India (who do I know in India??) searched for 'fiona gray orla hamish'. That's a bit precise isn't it? I really don't think I know anyone in India, unless that's where the UK Tax Centre calls are directed to.

Someone else recently blogged about 'the lurkers'. The people who read your blog faithfully, yet never comment. People from strange far away lands. Well, not that strange really, America mostly. So I'd like to take the opportunity to say "hello & thankyou" to the people who check my blog every single day from various places around the world to see if I have written anything new. You're awfully shy though, aren't you? Why not leave a comment the next time you read (eh, this), or maybe something else so everybody isn't staring. It would be really nice. I'd love to know who you are.

My readers mostly come from America. The UK follows as a close second. Then Germany, then Russia, & then the Netherlands. Recently I've seen an upsurge in my popularity in China and France (Nia hao! (I only know that from Nia Hao Kai Lan) & Bonjour!). I also seem to be rocking in Belarus and Slovenia (but my language skills don't extend far enought to say hello properly).

In terms of what people like to read, well I find that a bit of an odd mixture too. My most popular post is the one about the 'old & new' Commerzbank. Like, by MILES! Why??? I wonder if it's because things go wrong in that one, but then they go much worse in the one where I get locked out the house, and then the Commerzbank waves it's magic wand and makes things a goddam nightmare.

Next up in popularity is 'Only her hairdresser knows for sure'. This is the one where you get to see some quite horrendous photos of me, and read about some expensive highlights that I thought were good at the time and then I saw the day after that they actually started half way down my hair in some places.

After that we have 'I bring my fish bowl home'. I like that one too, and I hope you are all sitting reading this with the copy of it you made from the photos displayed somewhere prominently in your house. (I wonder if I could buy a better one on etsy now?)

And then, then we get to 'boys in tights'. Considering how popular it is search term-wise, it makes things with the Commerzbank post even more unfathomable to me as people very rarely use that in their searches.

Anyway, I thought I would share that with you. I hoped you enjoyed it. While I'm off photographing boys in tights for a new post that'll have my stats going through the roof, I'd love to hear from you.