wiped out

I have been writing something for the last week to go here however due to the fact that I have been working days and nights on a project at the moment, every time I look at what I started my mind turns into puppy food.

So, everyone is, for a day or two, spared the brilliance of my son, Oh He Whose Nappies Shield The Light Of The World.

You can tell I'm not thinking straight.

We are trying to ditch those nappies, by the way. It's going GREAT guns I tell you. The other day, he actually managed to sit on the potty and emit a little posterior squeak after much effort. I think it was only for show however as moments later he created his own personal Lake Victoria about two feet away and stood there saying 'Uh Oh!' very smugly. When I pointed out the obvious, he squealed and ran laughing into the bedroom where he climbed under our duvet and posed coyly while I willfully ignored the trail of damp footprints he left behind him. Well, he was on the Frog's side anyway.

After wiping it all up while he helped by spreading it around with a set of meeting notes I had improvidently left in a binder on a shelf in another room, I practically threw him into the bath - however about five minutes later he was throwing the bath back at me and I was back to wiping up.

I seem to spend a lot of my time at the moment wiping. I never knew that wiping could take so much effort and all of a sudden I am becoming the sort of woman who might appear on a television commercial rabbiting on about a sponge. I have pretty much settled on those big flat thin sponges as they seem fairly absorbent and have the added benefit of not hoarding cat hair that they can shed later when one is wiping somewhere else. There, you see? I have reported on sponges. It's just that my son has reached a stage in his life where he seems to attract and eject an enormous amount of fluids. There is cereal milk, juice, more milk, water from the cat bowl, drool, water from the hose, water from the watering can, stuff that comes in on the soles of his feet from the garden, raisins, bits on the floor where he's been experimenting with blackboard chalk, is that a half-eaten bee?, cat sick, breakfast, lunch, dinner, yoghurt, bread crumbs, cheese, fingerprints on mirrors, fingerprints on walls, fingerprints on windows and tell me just how did he get his fingers there??? I'm sparing you the obvious wiping up of the spud's face and other regions to clean up Things That Come From Within. No wonder that half the chemist these days seems to be shelves of wipes.

Anyway, back to the project. Even the cat is snoring right now, at least nobody is going to need me to wipe anything up in the next few hours.

Where's Lou Reed when you need him?

When the frog got home this evening, the spud and I were already locked in combat over whether or not I was going to be allowed to install a night-time nappy on his ever-increasing bottom. Not, however, that it has increased as much as that of his best friend next door who's mother confessed to me recently that, during a recent 'all hang out' trip to the paddling pool, other mothers were laughing and pointing, because apparently he has a whole other bum under his top one.

Anyway, the Frog arriving home during the final moments of the spud's bedtime hour is a fairly normal thing round our way, with the frog playing the role of Daddy Hero rescuing a benighted little bean from the perils of going to sleep - however, the Frog normally arrives home an hour later. Yes, folks, that's right, my son, my son with his hundred tiny hands and his pudgy little duracell legs, my son went to bed on time tonight.

Furthermore, he has slept through the night, with the exception of a few midnight nappy changes, for five days in a row. Not that I'm counting... except obviously I am counting because the first time his son wakes in the night, the Frog will be complaining that he 'never gets a good night's sleep' and so I am announcing the new number every morning at volume into his good ear.

I didn't realise, before I gave birth, that having a baby would be such a mathematical experience. And I'm not referring to the endless subtractions one has to make from one's bank account here but rather to the equation in which 'n' equals a good night's sleep. The main factors appear to be food, sleep, exercise and health and the equation looks something like this:

(food)y + (sleep)y + (exercise)y
____________________________ = n
teething - poo

I say 'something like' because I am certain I failed maths in high school, however I am perpetually trying to solve for 'y' when I have no idea what on earth I am doing. This means that I carefully question our childminder on all known factors and then try to work out what might be missing (did he only eat (food-1)?) so that I can try to fill the gap before bedtime. Thus, we can sometimes be found out in the playground long after most children have already been gently tucked in with their ironed pjs and Thomas the Tank engines; just me and all the other Bad Mothers trying to exhaust our toddlers before social services come around in their unmarked vans. Other times the Frog comes home expecting dinner and a smile and the spud and I are sat in the kitchen debating the merits of various food groups (how about some carrots 'No!' well then, some cereal? 'No!' What about a banana 'No! Tha! Tha! Tha!' 'Ah, a biscuit - go ahead, take three'). All this in the hopes that I will one day solve for that mythical event, the Perfect Day, leading to that most ellusive of creatures, the Silent Night.

Fridays are Spud days. I don't work and so the two of us spend the entire day together tooling around and having play dates. Sometimes the spud even gets to play. Today we firstly went to see a friend from our antenatal class who is two weeks past due having her second child (I am trying to solve for that equation too but I can't get past 'Frog=Non'). Her first child is a month younger than the spud however, as has been previously reported, he is bigger and taller and nicer and has been sleeping through the night since he was 8 weeks old. I know. AND she gets to have another baby. I would feel terribly, terribly envious about all the sleep she's had except I happen to know she had a dial-up Maternity nurse pushing her around during the first few weeks of motherhood when one is particularly open to suggestion.

Anyway, because Tall Friend is still, effectively, on his fancy dancy maternity nurse schedule, we were effectively on it too and it was like entering a completely different world. Lunch was eaten on time and then we left just before nap time. We said goodbye, me crossing fingers (and, secretly, my legs) for my lovely, soon-to-be-mother-of-two friend and the spud then had the perfect nap, waking ten minutes before He Of The Two Bottoms came over with his older brother to play exhaustively for a couple of hours. Then, because once one has entered the routine, it seems one stays on it like a bedtime travelator, he downed his entire dinner before 6 and we had running around and playing until the perfect bathtime. It was like watching my own life through a soft filter. We danced, we sang, we put things away, we splashed, we giggled, we fed animals in the zoo... when the frog came home, the spud was hiding from his nappy so sweetly under the duvet that I could feel my pancreas starting to give out. He slipped into bed so happily and went to sleep so soundly that... that... well, that I think today, maybe just for today, we managed to solve the equation.

Of course, this means he's going to be up at 5. But that's ok. It's my turn to sleep in. Oh yeah.

Istanbul ate my shoes... but blogging ate my brain

If anyone can translate the Turkish part of this sign I'm agog to find out how this works...

Aplogies for the long delay here, but since getting back from Istanbul I've been playing catch-up... along with 'Don't Kick Mummy', 'Come Here', 'Go Away', 'Give Mummy the Keys' and 'Leave Sammy Alone'. They're from a book I found hidden under the Spud's mattress called 'Make Mummy Mental'.

I'd quite like to go back to Istanbul and see the city properly. It's bonkersly enormous, by which I mean that it must be bigger than Greater London and absolutely packed with endless, endless apartment buildings crushed cheek-by-jowl. It's modern and run down and quite fabulous. My big hint to the ladies however would be 'don't wear heels'. I walked a single block to and from lunch and when I got to the office my shoes were completely ruined - I swear they had teeth marks on them.

The main problem I had while I was there however was that the entire time I could hear a little voice running commentary inside my head and I realised that I was... writing my blog. Not this one, you understand, but an incisive, pithy, intelligent one about the comparitive differences between London and Istanbul peppered with economic references... because when faced with the array of 3-for-2 offers at airport bookshops I have a need to feel superior to the sweating hoards fingering Jackie Collins' back-catalogue and inevitably reach for something outside of my intellectual capacity. Which means I've been reading all sorts of popular economics books. Ask me anything. I am Clearly An Expert.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that whenever I am doing anything interesting such as visiting Istanbul or... or... er.... anyway, I can't enjoy anything first hand, as it were because I seem to have a corner of my grey matter (I have plenty to spare) which is constantly re-purposing events for blog material, or rather, cod travel pieces for the Sunday Times. This is hardly new for me, mind you.

I was in the park the other day watching the spud go up and down some steps a few hundred times and while I pasted an indulgent smile to my mug and tried to radiate 'Good Mother' vibes I naturally ear-wigged on the conversation of a nearby group of Mums with older children. "I'm obsessed with what to make for dinner every day" said one. "I know" said another "as soon as I wake up every day I'm worrying about what to cook for tea" and they all made sympathetic clucking noises. I turned and openly gaped at them as if a new species of cat, say, one with five legs, had just tottered by. 'Is this lurking in my future' I thought? Followed, inevitably by 'Am I A Bad Mother?' (one should never listen to other Mothers in the park). This did, however, raise a glimmer of recognition from my blogging brain, because in that over-heated little closet I Blog Every Day, which requires Things To Blog About.

Clearly, I don't post every day as luckily for everyone out in the real world, my blog brain is in direct competition for limited resource with my motherhood brain and so, while I would love to be a daily blogger, it's simply not to be. My motherhood brain, on the other hand, is clearly Taking Over. I found myself thinking, while passing a cafe in Istanbul and therefore many hundreds of miles from my son, thinking, mind you, in my head, to myself, 'Should Mummy go in and have a coffee?'.

Perhaps Mummy should have a lie down.

Later edit: so, the sign translates word by word to: "Please necessary water expenses resist in second time bacillus" I think in Turkish it's telling one NOT to flush twice but am a bit worried about the bacillus bit!!!

...ain't nobody's business but the... er...

***Grandparent Warning: Non-Traditional Post Alert... almost no news about the spud... nothing to see here... move along, move along***

I am posting from the exotic confines of a zero-star hotel room in Istanbul. I'm here on business for two days which is absolutely not exotic or fabulous in any way despite my high hopes.

It all started off well, if you don't count the hour flight delay, as I was met by my client's driver in a Jag and whisked through downtown Istanbul at breakneck speed to be handed over to a swish hotel lobby. I was feeling all smug and under-dressed until I was led to my room. Via the cellar.

I will leave to your imagination the state of things in Sparx central and furnish you only with the following words: dirty, small, scuffed, 70s. At least the pillows are new and the sheets clean.

I do feel very provincial having never been here before... and with no visits to the old town, to the bazaar or any palaces, to Hagia Sophia or the museums, I am not doing it justice. What I've seen is 100% from the taxi window and very much airport-traffic-hotel-traffic-office. Like a bad wine tasting... "I'm getting hints of the Vancouver airport area... is that an undernote of Paris? Oh, it's redolent of Tunis and... perhaps just a zip of Brussels?"

Modern highways, hotels and highrises give way to run-down 70s apartment buildings patched with character and hung with laundry; between them hide the odd deco or even nouveau buildings, often just husks. Some streets seem completely sterile while others have so many shops and businesses packed into them that there is nowhere safe to look, but I love how scaffolding here is covered in planks of wood so buildings under construction look like big old pirate ships about to sail into the street.

The one thing I hadn't realised is just how enormous Istanbul is - 17 million people and the third largest city in the world apparently. Shame that all I can think about is that 'They Might be Giant's remake of 'Istanbul not Constantinople'

This evening I went for a walk and while I didn't make it across to the old town, at 9pm the streets were packed with people doing what looks suspiciously like the Spanish promenade - walking slowly around, sampling dishes from stalls, talking, laughing, racing their engines. I ate a small meze and on the way home bought some lovely ripe, sweet cherries so that I don't have to repeat my experience of the hotel breakfast table.Sadly though it is no great culture shock to be here: I finished off my evening, cherries in hand, walking past the starbucks near the hotel.

Home tomorrow to see my little menagerie. I spoke to the spudlet on the phone today and all he did was give it back to his father. Sigh.

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A walk in the park

If I write the words 'Summer has finally come to England' in this blog then tomorrow it will surely rain. Today however, one could be fooled into thinking that this was finally true - although I'm not saying, you understand... not saying anything. Now, I know all you doubters out there across the pond... you can't believe that we actually get sunny days and heat waves over here, you've heard too many jokes and watched Mary Poppins too many times to envision this fair country with a heat haze and parched grass but it does happen. Sometimes.

My mother will deny this hotly in the comments section. She's been here four times in the last two years and will swear up and down to you that it has rained the whole time however this is simply not true. Not, you understand, that I am accusing my dear Mum of being a pants-down liar. But you know. She has a somewhat selective memory. It did, I admit, rain a lot when she was here this time but only for the final week. And a bit in the middle. But we did see the sun. Really. Anyway, so the entire country is happy today as we can talk about the weather without grunting.

Moving swiftly on, the upshot of all this sunny business today was the sort of day in which one takes ones offspring outside.

Firstly we mowed the lawn together, him with his favourite mower and me with the one that spits lawn clippings all over one's shins. Then we hung out the laundry, him handing me things from the washing machine while I dropped his nappies in the new lawn clippings. Then we had our lunch together while the Frog cracked off to do some grocery shopping. We sat outside in the sun swapping fingers of PBJ and hommous/carrot sandwiches and cut up peach. Then we watered a few things, set up the furniture and sat beside each other, covered in factor 40 sunscreen, each with our watered-down juice and a book. Once in a while he'd squint up at me and say 'haah' and when he was bored he got down and practiced his climbing skills on the back of the chairs.

Then the frog came home and after he had his lunch, we went to a garden centre and I carried a fast-asleep spud around which was good for the frog as it stopped me from buying a host of hostias and other plants about which the he was being very French... all shrugs and moues and mumbles.

Once the spud was up we offered him a trip to the park to which he gave his standard 'Yeah' ('Would you like a drink Spud?' 'Yeah'; 'Have you dyed your hair Spud?' 'Yeah') and since the paddling pool has opened, when you're talking park destinations There Can Be Only One. And this means that the rest of day went something like this:



This is the kind of day we like... and yes, that is my pin-head shadow with the deformed tummy. I was carrying a bag, people! People!

And then, after that we walked hand in hand down to the duck pond where the spud decided to lead me cross-country through the stand of trees where the parakeets live, under their rawcous squawks and up through the field to the tennis courts, then back down the hill to the playground where, part-way there, he begged to be carried. So I picked him up and we walked to the playground where he decided that maybe he had just a little drip of energy left and climbed everything at least twice but didn't in fact complain when I picked him up to leave. The park was gorgeous, elder-flowers, rhodedendrons and mock orange in bloom, irises by the duck pond, deep, cool grass with flower-heads waving, the church spires at either end looking positively bucolic. Families picnicing, marquees up and flying flags, big groups of people with food and wine and hundreds of kids laughing and running and shouting.

The spud went on to eat a big dinner and fall asleep after three books, followed by a short cuddle on his sofa with him dragging my head down so I could bat my eyelashes onto his cheeks and make him giggle and yawn at the same time.

Not a bad day, in fact. And this, folks, this is Brixton

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Don't tell him when he's older...

...but the spud has had a slightly over-emotional week this week.

I don't know why I'm using euphemisms like 'slightly over-emotional'... I guess I'm thinking that one day in the far future he may want to read these blurtings and I wish to spare his blushes. This is ridiculous as I am clearly about to spill All The Beans There Are and euphemisms will be out the window in the next paragraph. So, I'll start again.

My Spud has been a teensy bit possessive of me this week. Even my Motherhood brain, which becomes over-stimulated at the slightest movement of the spud's smallest finger, is a little taken aback by it all.

I think it all began when his childminder took on a new child a couple of weeks ago and, while he seems very fond and brotherly towards the new arrival (a nine-month-old girl) the problem is that his minder can no longer come to fetch him from the house and we have to drop him off. This is quite a big move as our spoiled little Prince Edward Island potato has never ever been left behind - people always come to get him. She comes to get him from us, we come to get him from her... in his mind, people love him and keep coming to get him. So this new thing where we take him to hers and desert him has taken him by surprise and we are getting the full-on arms-round-the-ankle-please-Mummy-don't-go hysteric treatment every time we leave him behind.

While this is to be expected, there have been a couple of unexpected side-effects to this and one of them is that he has reverted back nine months and wants to breast-feed again. This sounds very sweet, a little sad and no doubt medically and psychologically understandable but the upshot is that I can no longer pick him up for a cuddle without getting a sneaky little hand down my bra. My boobs, in which he has always maintained a somewhat proprietary interest have once again become His Property, as has everything else in the flat. I read a comedy 'Toddler's Rules' thing the other day which said 'If it's in my hand, it's mine, if I like it, it's mine, if it looks like mine, it's mine; and everything else is mine too' and I think my boobs qualify for at least 3 out of those 4 statements for spuddy boy. The worst part is that we have reached the stage where Mummy must no longer get dressed in the morning in front of her offspring as he stands wide-eyed in front of her pointing at the puppies shouting 'That! That!' or just pointing and jeering, as though I was suddenly 13 and caught naked in the playground.

I say that having to get dressed in the loo is the worst part but I lie again. Firstly, there is nowhere in our flat which is sacred or secret and the trick is to manage one's ablutions while one's partner is In Sole Charge of our offspring or one finds oneself with one leg in and one leg out of one's knickers while the door slowly opens as if directed by Hitchcock.

Secondly, however, there is The Incident which sparked my sudden retreat into the closet, as it were. Imagine, if you will, the telephone ringing while one is getting dressed. It's a call one has been waiting for and therefore one downs tools and rushes to the phone. Now. One, ok bugger it I, was sitting topless in the livingroom armchair hoping my hair would disguise the worst of my sins while happily chatting away when up comes the spud, sweeps away my hair and... latches on. Latches on, I tell you. He latched on! He's not been breastfed for over nine months and yet... all that time he was harbouring a memory. All those little pinches and prods at my boobs which I thought were just vestigial mammaries (sorry) were, in fact, Hopeful Little Hints. He was very cautious, I have to say and after gently and unsuccessfully sampling both of his old friends he looked at me reproachfully and walked away. Perhaps this was a good thing as he seems completely uninterested in my boobs now.

This is not all, however. No, the spud evinced one more possessive bit of behavior this week which I shall refer to simply as his 'Alpha Male' moment and which involved him coming up to the Frog and I during a little huggy moment, breaking us apart with a push to a parental chest, clutching my hand tightly and giving me a big kiss on my cheek while staring reproachfully at his father.

Hopefully all this will die down as he becomes used to being left behind and once again becomes comfortable with his status in the house however meanwhile I will be the one dressing and cuddling my spouse in the loo with the door locked...

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Farming around

I can’t quite believe it’s been this long since my last post – hello hello, anybody out here? Anyway, so we are back from Devon with a much improved little potato.

During the first few days he only wanted to play in the car… I know, but he’s a city boy and he’s never allowed to play in the car because it’s parked in the street. In Brixton. Anyway so there he sat there for hours on end making ‘brmm’ noises, yanking on the steering wheel and honking the milk right out of the cows. This changed however which is a Good Thing for the interior of our car which was getting a tad on the sticky side...

Our cousins nearby also have a small farm as well as a very, very Big Dog who thinks she’s a small child. She therefore absolutely loves ‘other’ small children and the sight of this massive Alsatian nosing playfully around my son would have warmed my heart if it hadn’t already been in my mouth getting gnawed around the edges. He thought she was the best thing ever needless to say and after that he gave up on the car and was all about the animals. We would turn around and he would be gone, to be found five seconds later pushing bits of hay through the barn gate at some frankly terrified calves, or standing fearfully as a giant piglet leapt up at him to snort hopefully in his direction.

I think he liked it – most of all I think he liked the sense of freedom which allowed him to run heedlessly away across a field without me following him or swooping him up to drag him back. I don’t think he could believe it to be honest.

Since we’ve been back he’s been a lot more independent. He’s more comfortable playing on his own, he runs less like he’s about to fall over and when he does, he gets back up without much in the way of histrionics. He walks more and the other day he picked up his reins, walked with me to the park, played for a while and then decided all by himself that it was time to leave and we walked happily home together without any of the usual arguments.

So, a week in the country. A Good Thing. Now can someone detail my car, please?

Placecard

This is a very quick illegal post from the depths of a Devon farm... luckily enough we have lovely cousins near to the cottage who have a wifi connection and under the pretense of setting up the laptop for Mum to send some emails I thought I'd put together a quick post.

Not quite the trip we were planning, we ate something very dodgy at a restaurant on the way down and contracted food poisoning which put us under for two days... the spud didn't share in the veggieburger joy and so has been full of beans, not perhaps what one needs when one is ill but at least he was full of beans and not losing them from both ends...

Today has dawned sunny and warm and gastric-upset free and we are resting as much as possible and trying to contact our loved ones to let them know we are still alive and well - with no reliable phone signal here either we've been rather incommunicado. Well, we can get a reliable phone signal but you have to leave the cottage and go and stand by the cow pasture which when one is still in one's pajamas and running a fever is not the greatest option in the world.

Here we are though and today is lovely. We went to a local farmers market and I was suddenly catapaulted back to my childhood - nothing it seems has changed about Devon farmers markets in the last 30 years. The effect was exacerbated by the bookstall, filled with old Enid Blyton books, Paddington bear, Whiskey Galore and various moth-eaten old tomes which haven't seen the light of day for many a year... the sudden intrusion of the South Beach Diet alerted me to the fact that I am in fact over 40 and where is my son again?

Anyway, time to run so that Mum can send some emails and I can go and introduce the spud to the horses. He can reliably say the word 'Cow' now, something which is bound to be very useful up in London.

Hey ho.

A few more things we've learned...

We're off tomorrow, the spud and I and my Mum, who is currently somewhere over the Atlantic trying to cram her 6 foot long legs under the seat in front of her... they ought to make her check those babies in as extra baggage or at least buy them their own aisle. I pick her up in a few hours and tomorrow we drive down to Devon to a little cottage on a farm somewhere near the edge of Dartmoor, leaving the Frog and Sammy to luxuriate in a Spud-free week. No little bear to wreck the stereo or pat an old boy a little too hard on his fuzzy head... or torment the cat at that... I reckon that by the time we get back they'll have changed the locks and be ensconced in front of the telly with a pile of seafood pizzas, happily shedding into the sofa together.

Sammy has recently had some sort of a rejuvenation it seems... just as he was beginning to worry us by sleeping too much and being a little vague he has perked up, packed on another pound and started begging for food, food, more food and the chance to lie on our chests blocking any chance we have of reading a book in bed.

The spud meantime continues as usual however with a few embellishments. One of his favourite things to eat is peas. Take a few out of the freezer, thaw them and put them into a snack pot and he will happily wander around munching them down like sweeties. I have been fondly holding on to the notion that I have a little health nut on my hands however recent events have indicated that peas must swifly come off the menu. Yesterday while pottering about in the kitchen as the spud sat happily forking up fish fingers and fingering up peas, I heard him sneeze. Several times. The Mums among you may have worked this one out already. After a few more hearty sneezes I turned around to see him with a finger up his nose and before I had any time at all to formulate thoughts about what he was doing he sneezed again. And a pea flew out of his nose. And then another one.

I went trundling over to him just as he was shoving another one up there at top speed. I bent his head back gently and there, lurking up his nostril was pea number three, stuck beyond finger reach. A swift go around his face with a damp cloth a gentle administration of mouth-to-mouth and I was rewarded by a snotty pea hitting me in the cheek. Just what I always wanted.

Peas, the snuff of the legume kingdom. Who knew?

Clementines are also good spud-quieters and today he thrilled me to bits by peeling one while standing in front of the open bin throwing away the peel. He also picked up a cloth and started wiping down the table and is obsessing over the broom so this is my second lesson for the week; that while he may not be speaking or particularly solid on his feet, my little darling has all the makings of a certifiable neat-freak.

*******

Later: Mum is here and everyone is asleep so I am heading to bed. Tomorrow the two elder statesmen of the house will breathe joint sighs of relief as I, my Mum, and the Spud, who is a match for both of us put together, head off to the West Country where my brother and I grew up.

Ted Hughes once said (or something like it) 'when you cross the Avon, you're leaving England' and while we may not be taking passports, I believe I may have to leave my sanity at the border.

lessons learned

It's our last night in Biarritz and we're learned a lot this trip. Mainly, we've learned that we need to have big toys over here to take with us when we go out, or the spud will see someone else's toys and we get this:



(* "Calvin & Hobbes" is copywright Bill Watterson and Universal Press Syndicate, view the whole archive here.)


We have also learned not to forget the buggy when it's his nap-time or he wakes up early and we get this:






...especially in restaurants who don't bring toddlers' food out with the starters





That's not all we learned. We, that is the spud, spent time with our French cousins and all of a sudden came out with 'Non', which is actually pronounced 'nonononononono'. Over and over and over. Whenever something unacceptable is placed in front of one as an option. Such as breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Or anything that doesn't involve ice-cream. Or a croissant.

The Frog and I are very fair when it comes to sleep-ins. We take turns listening out for the spud at night and we take turns getting up with him in the morning, meaning that one or another of us is often to be found in bed around the 9am mark which is heaven.

Yesterday morning it was my turn to sleep in however this was interupted by a small, fast-moving root vegetable who (now he is tall enough to reach the door handles in the French pad, curses) came powering into the room, slapped both hands on the bed in front of my nose and started bouncing up and down on his feet at top speed, whispering loving titbits into his Mummy's ears at the top of his lungs. His hair was practically on end. As the frog entered to remove him I asked what he'd had for breakfast. The frog came all over sheepish and admitted that the spud had been stealing croissant and then... dipping it into the frog's coffee. And eating it.

Can you imagine? Funnily enough, not more than three hours later the spud was having screaming arching tantrums in the restaurant. Now, I wonder what could have happened to cause that? ***cough *** cough *** coffee *** cough ***

'Come on spud, we've walked around this square five times in the rain, let's go back to the restaurant'... 'NONONONONONO'





Finally, we learned that the spud, who has always been a daring sort of a bod, has worked out all of a sudden how to climb things. I mean, really climb them.

Firstly, he managed to climb this (please turn your head sideways for this one, I dozily had my phone the wrong way up):





Which makes it absolutely no surprise that he has now managed to climb out of this:






I know that I keep saying this... but life as we know it must surely be ending.





Over and out.

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