holiday fun

driving the boat, originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

hello dear readers! i have been receiving complaints from some of you that i have been remiss in my blogging of late for which i can only apologise. we have been away on our hols and since getting back herself has been completely manic with 101 projects, none of which she ever finishes. i have finally pinned her down with the laptop under the threat that i will be sick on the sofa if she doesn't update my blog.

our hols were in suffolk. in the picture you can see us on a boat on the norfolk broads. my boy is driving. while it looks like himself is blocking my ears in case any expletives should damage my tender sensibilities, in fact i am half way through being stroked.

the hols got off to a bit of a shaky start. regular readers will know that the peeps are in the habit of camping. this is a laudible way to holiday, being both environmentally sound and also healthy. however there is a lot of kit involved. getting the car filled up and setting off can be a little stressful, so much so that the peeps would nearly always end up having a major domestic before even leaving the house.

herself decided a couple of years ago to purchase a trailer. the idea was that the trailer would be kept permanently loaded with the camping gear so that when we were going away it would simply need to be attached to the car and off we would go, grinning inanely just like the families in the adverts on telly. herself is nothing if not a sucker for images of happy families.

as the peeps had no-where to keep the trailer out of the rain it was also necessary to purchase a shed for it to live in. mick the builder was prevailed upon, as he was involved in some mad scheme of herself's at the time, to fashion a little ramp down which the trailer could be rolled, on account of it being too heavy to lift when fully loaded.

so when the time came for the peeps to go off camping the trailer was duly loaded up. herself called himself to help pull it out of the shed. as it rode over the lip of the shed there was a sudden pop followed by a loud hiss. the trailer tyre had found the only nail in 100 yards and got a puncture.

himself hit the roof. "oh well, thats it then! we can't go now! f***ing thing! " and more of the same, all at too loud a volume for the drive. herself is making a superhuman effort not to react when himself loses the plot. it is because of his dodgy kidneys rather than because he is an evil tyrant. she therefore, as calmly as possible, told himself to go indoors. she then got the trailer emptied again and took the wheel off. she drove down to the local garage and asked if they could repair it. it sounded unlikely but the man said he would try. herself pulled over on the way back and rang mrs prof, who the peeps were due to meet, to alert her to a possible later eta than had been planned.

when she got home himself had calmed down sufficiently to engage his brain and suggested they simply go in 2 cars. herself jumped at this suggestion. the domestic on the drive at the beginning of holidays has a habit of being repeated throughout the journey, with postmortems on who started it.

my boy was asked who he would like to travel up to suffolk with. "i'll go with mummy in case daddy goes nuts again," he said firmly, "and mummy lets me play music in her car." i pulled the short straw and got to travel with himself, although he tends to be much nicer to me than to herself. she jokes that i think i am his wife. this is obviously rubbish - he never shouts at me and he strokes me all the time and smiles at me and makes cooing noises, none of which seems to be the lot of a wife.

herself and my boy went bombing off towards the a12. on the m25 there was a huge traffic jam. my boy rang himself a couple of times to tell him that the 2 cars thing was working well as himself would have been snarling at the traffic and winding herself up. it seems my boy and herself were playing loud rock music and wagging their heads, much to the amusement of other drivers. they got this habit from flat eric, a yellow creature of dubious provenance who lives in my boy's room.

when they finally got out of the traffic and onto the a12 my boy persuaded herself to stop so he could have a pee. they swung into a service station. "oh god!" said herself, "this is where we got the lorry magazine for you last time!" what she meant was that this was a trucker's garage and as well as lorry magazines there are a lot of magazines with ladies wearing gear that would be more suited to bull terriers. my boy had made loud remarks about these on the previous visit, causing a swift exit.

luckily there was no-where to park. herself promised my boy they could stop in a lay by and went to what looked like the exit. however this turned out to be the drive-thru for macdonalds. not only can macdonalds not spell 'through' properly but they make what my boy calls plastic food. the only time herself has eaten in a macdonalds in her life was in hong kong when she had a sudden desire for scrambled eggs and hash browns. the detour via the drive-thru therefore caused much mirth.

as they approached the area where the campsite was the phone rang. herself was listening avidly to a programme about discalculia. this means you have a bit of an issue with numbers. herself needs a calculator to add up how many toes she has so she was very interested in why this might be. my boy interrupted. "its daddy," he whispered. "tell him i'll call him back," said herself, turning up the radio. "he insists on speaking to you now!" said my boy.

herself said she would not be bossed around like some 1950s housewife and would ring himself back. there was a lot of swearing and yelling. what herself did not know was that himself had been trying for the last hour to erect the tent with the prof and mrs prof in a force 9 gale and that he wanted to know where the tent pegs were. he tried, through gritted teeth, to explain this to my boy over the phone.

my boy tried valiantly to distract herself's attention. "don't distract me! i've wondered why i can't add up for 50 years!" she said, neglecting to mention that she has only been alive for 48 years, and for some of those she did not yet know she could not add up. i suppose such mistakes are to be expected in one with discalculia.

anyway, they eventually arrived at the campsite, with the tent pegs, and for the next half hour the peeps and the profs hung gamely onto a corner of the huge tent each, trying not to get blown away. i was left in the back of the car in the warm, which i was very grateful for.

no sooner had the tent been tamed than the wind dropped and the sun came out. the peeps got things sorted out and then himself went along to the washing up place to have a look around. he came back much reassured.

"there were these two guys washing up who looked like bikers. one of them was saying to the other one 'the person at the stores told me to go down the road and kill it. i couldn't believe it when i got there - it was a level 16 hydra!' " whereas most people would be alarmed at sharing a campsite with murderers, himself knew where these guys were coming from. apparently it was some reference to a computer game. he had found some like-minded folks...

here's where you will find me:

the musings of a lurcher

it'd be nice to see you!

helium heaven

cat and mouse
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

a rather worrying trend is developing. my peeps are getting a social life. don't get me wrong. i think it is good for them to get out of the house now and again. it keeps them off the computer and helps them develop their social skills. its just that they keep forgetting to take me.

they come back, roaring with laughter, going on about what a great time they have had, while yours truly has been stuck at home with no-one but metal dog to talk to. metal dog is a rather dull character who has a springy neck and just nods at me whatever i say. once i said he should be turned into a frying pan and he just nodded sagely as though i had paid him a compliment.

anyway, the peeps have been off galavanting without me. they went to visit their friends round the corner. the captain was off flying a plane, as captains do, but the other friends were there and it would appear a wild old time was had by all. it seems mrs captain made some really ace grub and as usual a certain amount of wine was taken. mostly by the "grown-ups" i hasten to add. heaven knows what my boy would be like given too much wine.

it would appear that mrs captain has a special helium laugh she can do without even breathing in helium, which has to be better for her. my boy's friend is learning how to do it as well. himself was even persuaded to do his "special speaking italian into a glass" trick, which always has them in stitches. as he can't speak italian he has to resort to reciting the names of italian dishes into a glass but the effect is very good. his italian accent is entirely plausible so no-one would notice that he is talking about food. mind you that is pretty much all he talks about in english...

it seems the friends round the corner had already invented their own version of this trick. they do flight announcements into a glass. i suppose they were taught how to do this by the captain. it is most comforting to know that my peeps are not the only ones who talk to glasses round here.

the evening was rounded off by a fine impression of a mouse by the young lady of the house. here you can see her terrifying a rather aloof looking cat. in fact maybe the cat is why i don't get to go round there...

the gadget queen

blackberries
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

there has been another lull in the photography this week. somewhere herself saw an ad for a thing called a blackberry pearl. this seems to be a type of phone. herself had a perfectly good phone which came free last time she took out a mobile phone contract. the contract was about to run out so herself saw this as the ideal opportunity to tell the nice people who let her use their network that if she didn't get a new phone she would throw her toys out of the pram.

they appear to have told her to take a hike at first but herself is nothing if not determined and eventually, worn down by the forensic legal mind, they capitulated and said she could have a new toy.

herself already has a blackberry phone for work. this is rather a clunky peice of kit and i have to say i was surprised that she wanted one at home, given the old phone was quite a cutey. but the new blackberry is something else. it has a little lighting up thingy which you can roll (well at least if you don't have paws you can roll it - i didn't find it that easy). it seems with a blackberry you can get your e-mails wherever you are and even find out what you are supposed to be doing.

so if herself is in court and the judge wants to list a case, she can check to see if she is having a haircut that day or getting the car fixed. this has to be a good thing. she was driving around with no brake lights at all for a week recently because she couldn't get to the garage when it was open. the boot in her car is small enough without it getting stuffed in by someone driving too close to see her non-existant brake lights. i'd have to go on a diet.

anyway, the new blackberry is rather clever. but it works in an entirely different way to the old phone. this has necessitated hours of poring over the manual, surfing the net and even collaring the extreme programmer when he visited to get it working. every day she has regaled himself with tales of its feats. "i can make it dial a number now" "very nice dear". "i've downloaded a chicken ringtone" (the latter sounds like a chicken being strangled which i suppose it would do if it was sqaushed into such a small device). "i can get my e-mails at last" "that's nice dear. you can do that on your computer you know".

it would appear that herself has been distracting all her poor colleagues as well. nothing new in that but there seems to have been a surge in crime which co-incides with the new phone. i hope the home secretary doesn't get to hear of it.

the one thing it doesn't do is make a good crumble...

the dialysis nurse visits

the dialysis nurse visits
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

well, readers, you may wonder what this is. i certainly did. a lady arrived with a little wheely suitcase to see the peeps. she seemed like a nice lady. didn't bat an eyelid when i gave her the usual lurcher greeting. she was wearing trousers, which i find helps. a cold nose against the thigh seems to be a bit much for some of the more sensitive ladies. she told the peeps she has a dog at home so she is probably used to this sort of thing.

out of the suitcase she pulled a lot of very interesting stuff. there were pipes and bags full of liquid and little packets with taps in. it seems this stuff is all part of the blood hoovering thing that himself will have to do. there was a certain amount of talk about dogs and germs. she was at pains to point out that it was not so much me personally that would cause a problem but my hair. i have to say this gave me a bit of a start. was i to be shaved? i look very silly in my birthday suit. not only is my fur black and white and grey, but my skin underneath is also black and white and grey. so without the fur i am very splotchy and resemble a bit of abstract art. i think other dogs might well point and possibly even laugh.

however it seems i do not have to go bald. himself simply has to do his blood hoovering thing in a room where i am not allowed to go. suits me fine. i don't want to have to watch all this anyway. it looks very scary.

my boy is made of sterner stuff than me. he was fascinated by all the kit and asked some very penetrating questions of the lady. then he dragged her off to his room to show her his computer game where he races round in a car and shoots people. the lady seems to be very good at this sort of game. it sounds as though she has a boy a bit like mine at home. i think we will all get along just fine.

alls well that ends well

autumn sunlight
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

today turned out better than i expected. i started the day in disgrace. this was as a result of a little digestive trouble in the night. not my fault herself decided to give me a treat and pour mushroom juices and whole garlic cloves over my tea.

the mushroom thing arose as a result of one of herself's website ideas. "now why doesn't that surprise me?" i hear my long-suffering readers sigh. how it came about was that herself is helping someone design a website. part of the theme of the website was pictures of herbs. herself for some reason did not among her 5,000 odd photos have a single picture of a herb.

not being someone who is easily deterred, she spent a happy half hour out in the garden among the rather sorry plants that are trying to settle down in peace for the winter. she snipped a few sprigs of herbs and then spent quite some time taking what turned out to be not very good pictures of them. so she was left with quite a few herbs with nowhere to go.

they soon found a role in life. she found some huge mushrooms in the fridge, glooped an embarrassing amount of olive oil over them, threw in a few garlic cloves and bunged the pan in the oven. a little while later a rather nice aroma wafted out and herself sat down in front of daytime tv (which she secretly likes) and munched her way through the fungal feast.

this is how i came to have the leftover oil and garlic on my tea. and very nice it was too. but that much garlic plays hell with an old chap's digestion and i'm afraid the garlic cloves gave an encore on the bedroom rug at about 4am. so there she is in the middle of the night scrubbing the seagrass flooring, which it has to be said is not the easiest stuff to get, well stuff like that, out of.

herself is not one to hold a grudge so i was still allowed to go for a walk with her and mrs prof, who is down for the weekend. we walked all the way along the downs in glorious sunshine and back along the river and ended up in a very nice pub for lunch. well, the ladies had lunch. i lay on a rather chilly stone floor waiting for himself to come and pick us all up, or "scoop up the drunks" as he calls it. they weren't drunk as far as i could see but maybe its a figure of speech. come to think of it if he tried to scoop either of them up he'd end up in hospital with a hernia, so it must be a figure of speech.

did meet a rather sweet little pup called pebble who tried to climb on my back. herself tried valiantly to take a picture but the little chap moved so fast they all came out blurry.

so tired now i can hardly type. good job herself gives me a hand...

moving on

herself is getting a bit irate at the blogging thing going haywire. so it seems my blog may be moving to another place. it looks pretty much the same to me except the pictures are a bit bigger, which will be nice. my rather distinguished features will be more clearly visible to my public.

so if you would like to keep up with my news, you can find me here!
it might be worth you adding a new bookmark so you can find it. or even clicking the little orange thing in the address bar which i am told is a live bookmark. you will have to ask someone else what they are but hopefully they don't eat your books.

i will also try to keep technically challenged folks up to date if herself can get this old blog to work...

phew!

bonfire
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

i am pleased to report that the new spray helped with the old nerves. still a little shaken by the loud bangs and crashes but managed not to disgrace myself. the peeps has company for dinner and in spite of several attempts on my part the most i managed to glean were some prawn shells. couldn't get near the delicious smelling fish stew and even more wonderful beef stew.

the burping pineapple had a brief outing but had to be confined to barracks after burping too much. but a fun time was had by all...

fireworks

at the vets
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

a most unsettling start to the day. rudely awakened by herself at about 10am. i usually like a lie in on a saturday but hereslf craftily waved the lead at me to give the impression we were off for a run. however, it swiftly became clear that a run was not what was planned.

there are a very limited number of places that i can be taken for a run. this is because of the incident with the car. some years ago i was out with himself in some woods near where we live. a rather foolish deer ran right in front of us and of course, my genes being what they are (a chap's at the mercy of his genes) i had to give chase. the problem with lurcher genes is they also have a setting which switches off all the useful controls such as pain monitoring and road sense.

all of a sudden boof! there i am lying on the road with a crowd of people round me. a large pool of blood is rapidly spreading which it dawns on me is from my front leg. there is an old man whose car it was that hit me and some younger people talking into phones. then herself and my boy arrive in what can only be described as a manner more suited to a car chase in a computer game. i am put on a blanket and into the back of the car and whisked to the vets. what follows is a blur. it seems i had split an artery in my leg which would explain the extreme lightheadedness and the copious amounts of blood.

it appears that my boy was a complete star. people with beefburger syndrome find change difficult. things happening out of the blue are not easy for them. but because my boy knew herself was helping the vet stem the blood he just stood where he was told and didn't attempt to take anything apart in the vets surgery, thus allowing them to fix me up. the next few days were touch and go and herself had to sleep on the floor with me the first night. but slowly i recovered and i'm now right as rain apart from some new scars for my extensive collection.

the upshot of this was that i am no longer allowed off the lead anywhere near roads. so i knew this morning that we were not heading towards a walk. au contraire, we were going to the vets. the vets is not my favourite place. there is nothing wrong with the people there. it is just that every time we go there they stick needles in me and put nasty things in places they shouldn't to see if i have a temperature.

i have been to the vets more than most, largely due to incidents such as the one i describe above. as well as having troublesome genes, we lurchers also have thin skin. if you add to this recipe living in an area with a lot of flints you will begin to get my drift. i have had more cut paws and legs than you have had hot dinners. herself is forever saying how glad she is that she took out vet insurance for me.

today's trip was one of the less traumatic ones. it seems all we were there for was to get some spray. this is to calm me down while the peeps are at tonight's firework display. it will be sprayed on a sock and then fixed on my collar and i will slide into a state of tranquility. this is good. the fireworks are very loud and even a laid-back chap like myself can get the collywobbles at times.

so peace and love dear readers, have a thoroughly chilled and karmic evening...

backgammon

i had to wait until after lunch for my walk yesterday. not sure if this is a development i welcome. usually i get to go first thing and then again before tea. the reason for this neglectfulness on the part of the peeps was that they went to lunch with their new friends round the corner. these are the people with the wild girl who likes my boy's burping pineapple.

it seems that the wild girl may also have beefburger syndrome but the people round the corner are waiting for a doctor to tell them for sure. i have never understood why it is necessary to have doctors to tell you this sort of thing. it seems to me that the people who live with a beefburger person would know pretty soon what they were dealing with. you would only have to listen to my boy talking about harmonic vibrations in the kitchen table while having his hair cut by our visitng hair-slayer to know he was something special. however it seems that you need a doctor to say so in order for the outside world to believe you.

i must say it is very nice for the peeps to have friends round the corner who understand beefburger syndrome. it means they don't have to spend the whole time apologising for my boy's occasionally eccentric behaviour and they can get on with relaxing and having a good time. the people round the corner also have a son who is the same age as my boy. they have become firm buddies. together they spend hours building shopping malls on the computer and altering the code in all the games to make them more exciting. personally i find the games plenty exciting enough but, hey, what would i know?

anyway, the peeps went round for lunch. i believe wine was taken. herself thinks it is very cool to have found a friend round the corner who drinks wine at lunchtime. she does have other friends with equally decadent habits, mrs prof to name just one, but none that live within walking distance of the house. to my mind this is the start of the slippery slope. usually herself has to drive to wherever she is meeting her friends which precludes her partaking in wine. i forsee all sorts of debauchery. luckily she is usually at work which keeps her on the straight and narrow but this week she is on holiday, hence the slackening in standards.

as well as spending hours eating lunch when she could have been striding across the downs in the pouring rain with me, herself has taken up backgammon. when i first heard about this i was thrilled. herself has refused to eat anything furry for years. recently himself has started bringing rather nice meaty things into the house and i occasionally get to eat the leftovers but these tend to be rather scant. regular readers will recall that himself is on a special diet which means he can only eat meat and mustn't have anything healthy so he does tend to wolf it all down with scarcely a thought for yours truly. the thought of herself taking up a gammon habit sounded very promising.

but my joy was short-lived. it seems backgammon has nothing to do with back or gammon. it seems to be a very complicated game involving moving in a random fashion round a board with little counters. it also involves being able to count which i would have said puts it way above the capability of herself, particularly if drink has been taken. however she is persevering with trying to learn. which meant himself drew the short straw and came with me on a mercifully brief jaunt into the storm.

divine justice

sleeping (b&w)
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

it seems that herself is finally getting her own back. for years, and boy do i mean years, himself has kept the walls of the house trembling with snoring that can only be described as biblical.

for a long time himself refused to believe he snored, in spite of evidence of tape recordings made by herself in desperation when she couldn’t sleep. witnesses in the form of insomniac visitors did nothing to persuade him. even when camping, when the people in the neighbouring tents glare at him in the mornings having been kept awake by his nocturnal rumblings, he refuses to believe that he snores. on one camping trip, friends of the peeps who were camping next door, went for a late night walk round the campsite. from the other end of the place, about 100 yards away, they could still hear him. but himself remained unconvinced.

my boy blissfully sleeps through all this. in a rare moment of lucidity when he was a little pup the peeps decided that creeping around trying to be quiet would lead to him being a light sleeper and that he needed to be conditioned to noise so he would sleep through it. so they crashed around and played loud music and sure enough, my boy can now sleep through anything. even himself’s snoring.

but herself has fared less well. she was obviously not exposed to loud noise as a baby. although from what i hear of the grandfolks they weren’t above throwing plates at each other but perhaps they used plastic ones when herself was small. so herself is woken by pretty much anything. this by all accounts got worse after my boy was born.

my boy did not see the point in sleeping at night. or even in the day very much. the peeps spent many hours pushing him round the house in his pram. they never ventured out shopping with it, as it defeated them getting it through doors. but it was good for rocking him to sleep. however the minute they stopped he would open one eye as if to say, ‘well, why have you stopped?”

now they know he has beefburger syndrome and adhd it has all become clear. such people do not sleep much when they are pups. they need to be constantly moving. if only they had known that then. they could have simply built him a little treadmill and got him to generate all the electricity for the house. instead herself at moments of extreme sleep deprivation resorted to sitting him in front of the telly.

unfortunately in those days the peeps did not have sky tv. so all that was on the telly at 3am was horror movies. my boy was exposed to more zombies than most as a pup. doesn’t seem to have done any harm though. he can shoot the bad guys in his computer games without a backward glance.

anyway, i digress. herself has finally found out how to get her own back on the snore monster. at about 5.30am i was awoken by himself stumbling around getting dressed. herself was woken too. when asked what he was doing (the peeps are on holiday so do not need to get up this early) he said “i can’t sleep through your snoring!” it seems herself has a bit of a cold so in spite of sleeping on her front like a puppy she is still managing to snore.

i had to muffle a little chortle...

pompey

enhancement
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

we went over to grandma's today. herself has taken the week off as it is half term holidays so we all went. i always like going to grandma's as i get to see the girly dogs and play with all their toys. they have a new lobster which sqeaks rather fetchingly.

as we approached portsmouth my boy said "can we go to the pitch and putt?" pitch and putt is a sort of golf. i have never understood the point of golf. it seems you walk round a large field and now and again whack a small ball with a long stick. the main drawback is that you are not allwed to take your dog. whatever is the point to a walk without a dog?

anyway, my boy is chuffed to bits about going to play pitch and putt. "i love pitch and putt" he says, "you are allowed to say bollocks!" herself said this was not really the point of pitch and putt. "well daddy says it", says my boy. herself says "you might get thrown off the course by the lady in charge if you swear." "oh, no" says my boy, " you are allowed to swear in portsmouth".

herself then tried to explain that swearing was not such a great idea in case he offended someone, like small children. "oh they don't have children in portsmouth" says my boy " they are born as teenagers with fags hanging out of their mouths and funny caps". i don't know where he gets these ideas from.

the "bollocks" theme continued. as regular readers will know, my boy has a sitter. this is a nice lady who comes to visit so the peeps can go out. she doesn't actually sit on my boy but sits next to him which i suppose is almost as effective. she is from social services and every now and again another lady from social services comes along to see how things are going with the peeps and the sitter.

usually the peeps do a pretty good job of seeming like things are in control. they make a pot of tea and have a chat. today my boy decided to show the lady from social services his latest find on the internet. this is a website with loads of games you can play. the one he chose to share with the lady from social services is one involving a man called johnny vegas. a cartoon of mr vegas holding a pint of beer wobbles around the screen. with the mouse you have to control the beer to stop it spilling. if you are not too good at this, mr vegas spills his beer and shouts "bollocks!"

i think my boy made him spill the beer on purpose...

measuring the gourd

measuring the gourd
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

my boy has found a new way to torment the peeps in the mornings. he has taken up measuring a gourd. he does this at about 7.50am, just before his taxi arrives. i am reliably informed that the creature is in fact a squash, but my boy insists on calling it the gourd. he saw a film called life of brian some time ago where apparantly a gourd played one of the main characters and he fell in love with the word.

the whole gourd thing started a while ago when herself decided to start online grocery shopping. this was when himself was very poorly. himself normally does the shopping as herself is totally inept at it. for example, in some shops there are special offers where if you buy something you get a second one free. herself would come home and himself would say "where's the other one?" to which she would reply "we only need one". himself would explain that the other one was free but she had failed to grasp this basic bit of shopping lore. and when she goes to the supermarket there is a constant stream of phones calls. "where's the tuna?" "have we got any greek yoghurt?" "which sort of salsa does little man like?" "what sort of veggie burgers should i get?" himself gets steadily more irritable and starts to mutter.

but when he was really poorly herself had to get the grocery shopping sorted out. so she decided to get things online. as she was surfing the website looking for goodies, she noticed that you could buy a veg box. this contained a random selection of odd vegetables. there were two problems with this idea. firstly, by the time she came across the veg box she had already added a huge number of vegetables to her virtual basket. it did not occur to her to go back and remove these now there was also going to be a box full of them. second, himself has a special diet to keep down the levels of phosphate and potassium in his blood as his kidneys can't get rid of it. the special diet seems to involve unholy amounts of meat (not that i am grumbling as i get the leftovers) and being banned from most vegetables.

when the online shopping turned up there was what can only be described as a plague of vegetables. some were very odd. there was also a gourd. well, technically a squash but as i said above, known in this establishment as a gourd. the gourd sat in the kitchen watching proceedings for quite some time. meanwhile herself tried to make inroads on the vegetables.

after a couple of weeks the gourd's turn came. she roasted it in the oven with olive oil and garlic and whizzed it into a rather luscious soup. even my boy liked it. however, the next day another grocery order arrived with another veg box. in this box was the gourd's brother. herself learns very slowly.

the following morning my boy ran in carrying the new gourd. "i am sure this gourd has shrunk!" "its a different gourd" said herself, "we ate the other one yesterday". my boy was having none of this. because it was in the soup it didn't look like a gourd. instead he developed a theory that the fact that he was growing was making the gourd seem smaller.

i suppose this is a bit like the theory of relativity. this is a theory developed by a man with beefburger syndrome (told you they were clever folks) called einstein. basically as you grow, your relatives seem smaller. in fact the very old relatives are really getting smaller but i'm not sure if he worked that out.

in order to keep a check on the gourd my boy started to measure it. we are now onto our third gourd (i told you she learned slowly) and here you can see my boy is carefully recording its dimensions. and you can also see that, according to his measurements it is indeed shrinking. herself pointed out that he might be measuring it at a different point in its tapering physique but the young scientist was adamant that he was not.

in any event, the gourd's days are numbered. some friends of the peeps are coming to stay tonight. roast gourd is on the menu. watch this space...

crumble day!

blackberries
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

at last! crumble day is over! the peeps have been in a state of high anxiety all week in case they forgot to get the ingredients. the recipe for the crumble has been in the middle of the table, right in the way, to remind himself to buy the apples and stuff.

yesterday himself came home with apples and blackberries and various other mysterious ingredients. my boy saw his chance to score a blackberry or two. "i think i should just make apple crumble" he said. himself did not find this amusing. my boy was persuaded that the best way of getting out of the kitchen in one piece was to drop this idea sharpish. the blackberries have been under an armed guard all night.

this morning herself as usual went in to wake my boy. my boy started up with the usual "i don't feel all that great today..." herself said that if he thought he was going to have the day off on crumble day he had another think coming. i think the words "carried in on a stretcher" may even have been used.

anyway, himelf laboriously weighed out all the stuff and put it into bags and pots while herself wrote my boy's name on the bottom of a dish. the peeps were mighty proud to be so organised. all the stuff was packed carefully into a bag. then herself remembered that she needed evidence of the whole business for my blog. so out came all the ingredients and the blackberries were asked to smile for a photo.

the day passed slowly. tensions were running high. would my boy pull it off or would the crumble catch fire? or worse, would he come home with an apple crumble having eaten the blackberries on the way to school in the taxi? or would he come home with someone else's crumble again?

4pm came and shortly after my boy arrived home beaming. he had won 5th place in the crumble competition. and lo, there were blackberries in it too! the peeps fell upon it like wolves and soon there was no evidence of the result of all the stress and strain except a pinkish dish. just as well herself had the foresight to take a picture of the blackberries this morning or my public would have thought i was making all this up...