Baby musician plays guitar

Youngest grand child is such a happy child, secure in a loving family with confident and content siblings. Here's a video of her listening to her musician uncle as he experiments with my old guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0es8YNkuvNM

What's amazing is that such a young child can sit and concentrate for so long when so many children even years older than her cannot. It must be something to do with her ease, her comfort, her health, her security in her family.

Family video

Oldest granddaughter went around with the flip video and took this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CNtqbMa0ok

Surveyors

SD#2 is training to be a surveyor. She's already a qualified engineer but architecture and buildings fascinate her. So she arrived for Christmas and noticed the roof of our laundry house, which her father had retiled a few years ago. See the photo. She's never seen one like that before. She says that the tiles are supposed to be in two layers so that they overlap, but that it's probably okay on a laundry house. Her father points out that it means 40% fewer tiles, so is economical.

Economical might be what surveyors are in some cases. Our surveyor for this house missed a few small things, death watch beetle being one of them. Getting a couple of special surveys done to check what to do about the DWB and then fixing the problem cost us a big £five figure sum, which added considerably to the cost of the original economical-in-facts survey. SD#3 says that surveyors are corrupt, and they get bribes from people who want planning permission - I might believe her. Surveyors must have connived at the estate agents' suggested prices and the banks who gave mortgages. Estate agents get a bigger fee if the house price is higher. Mortgage givers will make more money if they lend for a bigger mortgage. Surveyors might have put some brakes on the house spiral, but didn't.

End-of-rant

Organist plays mandolin

We have an old mandolin that my mother-in-law gave me. It is decorated with ribbons that have German on them, so I wondered where it came from. During Christmas son-in-law, who's a professional musician and an organist picked it up, tuned it and started playing it. So I asked MiL where it came from.

Before the war, Rudi Hieak came over from Austria with it. He had been in the Vienna Boys Choir, and was a tenor singer in London, living up the road from MiL in Reigate Hill, and later moving down to Devon. When he died, about three years ago his widow gave it to MiL.

SiL has a musical sense of humour, not malicious, but fun, so for example, if you know what he's doing you might hear that rather than playing some solemn church music he's playing a some frivolous piece disguised underneath. Late husband had a school friend with the same clever sense of musical humour. Once at school, he tuned the school piano so that every seventh note was half a tone flat, then waited for assembly. Those who were tone deaf couldn't understand the laughter of those around them.

Visitors gone

House is quiet, quietish, again. SD#2 and husband have left for her in-laws, and Chinese Post grad has returned home to write up her first draft of her thesis. Having her to stay was fun. Daughter enjoyed her company, like having a big sister. SD #3 felt important and appreciated and helpful because she made up CPg's Christmas stocking and possibly SD#2 & SD#3 were slightly better behaved because of CPg's presence. And CPg knew who I was talking about if I mentioned people from work, and that was nice.

Daughter and I and CPg went shopping, and daughter had to slow down, not run, because CPg's heels made her wobble. Even SD#2's husband noticed her amazing stiletto heels - ever so high - see the photo.

Christmas day

Ten o'clock in the morning. All is calm. Husband and I have prepared the sprouts, he has prepared the goose which is now sitting in the oven waiting to cook. Son, daughter and visitor are still asleep. Son and daughter went to midnight mass, but although visitor & I meant to go, we were both so sleepy that we backed out, I literally at the front door with my coat on and yawning.

Visitor is a Chinese girl, a fellow PhD student who is desperately trying to start writing up her research. She's collected thirty interviews, transcribed them and then translated them but she's running late so working over the Christmas break when the university is closed. We've done her a stocking - or rather SD#3 mugged her dad for money and went and got stuff for her, like bouncing putty, a tiny flower press, a red scarf, some highlighter pens - useful for study work. I found her a head girl badge and added the traditional chocolate coins, apple and satsuma (why can't I find satsumas? I had to use a tangerine!)

SD#3 has spent the night over at her sister and husband's. She went to carol service with them and held the notes on the organ - she rang at 8 o'clock this morning to tell her dad not to get frazzled and that they were coming to see him not eat his food. I think he might be frazzled at such an early phone call!

How to make Xmas pud

Husband was stirring the Christmas pudding today. I took a video. See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw6Ozk5IUnM
and later I'll work out and remember how to make this a direct link.

Diabetic pains

Grumpy husband grunts as he tries to get his b* insulin sorted out.

• He doesn't get enough blood out of his thumb for the test strip
• The test strip won't sit well so as to leave a visible hole on the meter
• He can't get the blood on the pad

There's not a enough blood anyhow, so the test doesn't work, that strip is wasted and he has to start again! And he's hungry too and now has to wait longer till he can eat until he's sorted out how much insulin he needs.

Grr!

Sadistic subum

The Subum (means teacher) at tae kwondo was a bit grumpy tonight. As people arrived a tad late he stopped the warm up jog and made us do press-ups until the new-comers were ready. He wanted to do pad work but not enough of us had pads - these pads aren't cheap, so a family of four tends to have only one pair between them all. So he decided to do the tae kwondo twelve days of Christmas instead, with an evil scowl on his face.

1. burpy
2. squat thrusts
3. punches
4. star jumps working with a partner to clap as we jumped
5. front kicks
6. press ups
7. sit ups
8. side kicks
9. double punches (means 18)
10. jumping kicks
11. some other kick
    
12. some other exercise - does Subum think we're still moving?
    

He tells us this all adds up to 365 exercises, and so one for each day of the year, but I think it's 362 - how nice not to have to do three more. It's
1 * 12 twice, plus
2 * 11 twice, plus
3 * 10 twice, plus
4 * 9 twice, plus
5 * 8 twice, plus
6 * 7 twice
-----------
which is 24 + 44 + 60+ 72+ 80+ 82 = 362
Don't tell subum, or he' ll think up some evil excuse to make us to three more.

Christmas preparation

Christmas preparations include getting the pudding ready. I was going to put a short video here, but I haven't yet got the technology right to show it.

I've been wrapping presents for the surprise parcel - half a dozen for one nephew and half a dozen for the other. They get to unwrap them at their parents' leisure, not on Xmas day. Aunty P used to do this for us, and we'd unwrap them on Christmas Eve, that quiet wet dull day when school has finished, but you can't have your presents yet. She would find, wrap and send to all four of us - and she also had to deal with her own five children - what a lot of work! She used to send me pencils with my name on - really useful, and an Enid Blyton diary - fab! (means cool in today's lingo)

Mummy's recipes

Every now and again, a step daughter rings up asking for a recipe out of their mother's red recipe box. Daddy reads it out over the phone. He suggested putting them on our family web site but step daughter #3 prefers to listen, not to read them. So I have put them on the web site, but they are sound files. I got their father to read them out and I recorded them. There's only a couple up there so far, but I'll put up more as they're requested.

To listen to these files you need dss software, which you can download from here. If the link doesn't work, you are looking software for an Olympus DM-10 audio recorder.

And to find the family web site, you need to google for two of our surnames.

Belly dancing

This is Waly Waly, the dance that our teacher, Shiraz, has been teaching us and thinks we can all do. Ha!


I'm not going to publish this, although our teacher's happy about me taking the video. I don't have her written permission, and more important I don't know the copy restrictions on the music that she's dancing to. It's a pity because I'd like to have somewhere to watch and learn what she's doing and my home computer's not fast enough to display it. And I've not got the space left on the default drive where the software insists on keeping .

Privacy and caring

Daughter is becoming more and more protective of her privacy. She'd have enjoyed learning from the British Computer Society (BCS) Xmas lecture yesterday at Oxford, where Kieron O'Hara spoke on "The Spy in the Coffee Machine". Yes - a machine that notes how often you use it and lets someone know. It's been developed in Japan, where older people drink a lot of miso soup and green tea during the day. If they don't use the machine, then perhaps they're not eating and drinking, and there's something wrong, so the person who receives the information from the machine can go and check on their parent or aged relative.

So it's not really a coffee machine, but same idea. And I guess if no one reads or cares about the information, the aged person will be just as uncared for anyhow. I'm feeling peeved that BT isn't caring for my aged relatives - it won't connect them back to their phone line that AOL have disconnected them from, and that was at the beginning of November. So I can't phone them, or email them and they can't read this. All they've got are mobile phones - and with older eyesight and wobbly fingers, mobile phones are not very accessible devices.

I've put O'Hara's book on my wish list, but perhaps I should get it for my daughter.

Business enabling technology

"The business enabling technology people have disabled some of my technology and I'm p*d off with it"

growled my chivalrous husband, dropping me off for work this morning. I don't think he was looking forward to his working day.

Digital chivalry at home

Chivalrous - that's what my husband is, For example, he will walk on the outside of the pavement expecting the lady to walk on the inside. He will also offer to take care of my computer. I can do this myself, being technically sufficiently able and confident that I'll eventually get it right and sorted. But I'm happy to allow him and will encourage him to look after it for me as it delegates my technical chores. In fact, he's promised to put a new mother board in for me.

Does our joint behaviour encourage my learned helpless? Or does it reinforce gender stereotypes? Or is it an exercise in power?

Jennifer Rode researched gender stereotypes in programming and who manages digital security in the home. She came up with the term "digital chivalry". It may be a contentious term but it tells a nice story that means something to many listeners and I can identify with.