Photo Stories

On Dalekophobia: Yikes!  Ye great gods of terror!  My lovely little boy, fully aware that I’ve never grown out of my irrational childhood fear of Daleks, thought it would be fun to surprise me at bedtime last night so he did this:

Yes, I realise it’s not real . . . that it’s just a teeny tiny replicated dalek but it’s what it represents that makes me shudder.  Every time I see one, I hear that high-pitched shrieking voice…..“We will exterminate!”. 

Just look at the horrid little thing, trying to freak me out.  I’m going to start a Revenge group and I’m going to call it the Kill-A-Dalek Association.  Oh bugger!  I can’t!  I’m a pacifist.  Then I shall start a self-help group and call it We-Will-Not-Be-Exterminated-By-Stupid-Lumps-Of-Screeching-Metal.  Yes I am.

*

On poetry: I gave this beloved book to my first child on her sixth birthday and if it were possible to wear out ink with reading, this book would have all but disappeared by now.  Look at how tatty and worn it is with its curled-up corners.  That’s how children’s books should become.  A tell-tale sign of being much read and loved. It’s one of those books that you can pick up time after time and find something new.  A family treasure.

We had a vote and all three of my kids chose “The Tale of Custard the Dragon” as their  favourite (mine too) but there are many more great poems in there that my kids had me reading to them over and over. 

It feels quite satisfying now when I hear my middlie reading random poems from the book to her younger brother because she reads them in the same expressive and dramatic style that I often used when reading to her.

*

On growing up: This is middlie in her much-loved Baker Boy hat.  I got it for her when she was eight and it soon became attached to her.  She wore it everywhere she went and people would often tease her about it . . . “Is that hat glued to your head?”  And if there was ever a time that she forgot it, people would tease her some more . . . .  “Who’s this girl?  I don’t recognise her.  Something’s missing . . . . “

What’s sad for me is that I’ve slowly come to realise that she hasn’t been wearing it for some time now.  The other day, I suggested that she wore it when we were off out somewhere and she ever-so-casually said, “nah“, totally unaware of the effect it would have on me,  you know - those *I’m-too-old-for-that-now* moments that all parents dread.  Drat and Double Drat!  I’m crying again!   Mind you, on the up-side, I did test her and suggest that if she wasn’t going to wear it anymore, we should put it in the charity bag and she was most disgusted with me!  She snatched it from me and held to her heart saying rather indignantly that she would be keeping it forever.  So, even though she might not want to wear it anymore, she still cherishes it and wants to cling on to this little souvenir of childhood which, rationally-challenged trout that I am, is rather comforting for me too.  I do hope dear middle child here isn’t as hard on me as her older sister is.  Sheesh!  She is such a challenge.

*

On Reading: Despite a reading list that is just not going down, I’ve just discovered, via a blog that I can no longer find hence the absence of a link, two more books that I want to get hold of:  Earth Abides by George R Stewart and The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

And this is a snap of all the other books in my house that I’ve yet to read:

 

Some more short story snaps to look forward to of my vegetable garden when it’s (hehehe) off the ground established.