Poetry in motion

This Friday, the boy is going to his girlfriend's birthday party. It's just dawned on me that she'll be 14, and he's still a baby 13. Toy boy! He'll never live it down.

If I have my way.

The impending party meant that last w/e was largely taken up with trawling the shops for a suitable present. I had to guide him away from the ski maintenance shop...on the basis that that was a present that he might want, not her. Surprisingly he agreed. Better add that to his birthday list. I did suggest a ski hat with fur...but he didn't think that was quite right. We wandered into gift shops, gadget shops and every other kind of shop. Eventually I suggested a book might be an idea. He suggested the antique bookshop.

So off we went, and we spent hours amongst the dusty cobwebs until he found a beautifully bound book by Walter Scott. A book of poetry. They may not be love poems, but they are poetry. The perfect present. And just £5 to boot.

Hope she enjoys it. A truly romantic gesture. Say aaaaah....

On a plate

I don't want another baby...one was enough work thank you very much. But this appeared on the gadget website Gizmodo and I just felt it has a place in my life. I'm not sure where. Perhaps I have to wait for the boy to grow up and have his own children. But until then it can reside here, just because I think it's a great idea and would have made my life so much easier 13 years ago.

Here's what they said:

Labeled as "gravity-defying," this spill-resistant bowl uses gyroscopes to avoid spillage, no matter which way kids turn, tip and flip it. Impressive, but I'm sure I can still find ways to create a mess.

In fact, the other day as a kid—while eating my sugary breakfast cereal—I would jump on my bed with my bowl still in hand: Spillage. Then there were those times I'd throw my bowl across the room when my mom would make me eat brussels sprouts: Spillage. Granted, those bowls didn't have the same type of technology, but gravity-defying? The Loopa gyroscope-equipped bowls probably would only be able to resist spilling to an extent, but anything involving kids and food cannot be 100% spill-resistant, can it?

Although it seems like just another gadget for gullible mothers, with a $8.95 price tag, it still might actually be worth giving the Loopa spill-resistant bowl a shot.

can't cook won't cook

We've been working hard over the last year to make meals more interesting...I used to cook a reasonable amount, but when I was single and living alone, my cullinary skills deteriorated to opening boxes from Sainsbury's. With the boy around creating something has become a challenge. The boy himself has always enjoyed being in the kitchen...and encouraged by his mum he used to rustle up pizza from raw ingredients, could bake a cake and probably if pushed boil an egg.

I can't remember whether Grandma in Cyprus ever tried to pass on her culinary skills to either of her offspring, but I do remember her keeping herself busy in the kitchen. I do recall the odd Vesta meal...which were all the rage in the new age of pre-prepared meals. They were indeed odd. I also remember that she would occasionally serve tinned ravioli to her two boys. In those days...or maybe it was just her way of doing things...the trick was to warm the tin gently in a saucepan of boiling water. One day she got distracted, leaving the saucpean to boil dry - redecorating the entire kitchen with Heinz sauce, pasta and meat. In the interests of getting fed the next time we head off to Cyprus, I will point out that Grandma in Cyprus now serves delicious, fresh, beautifully prepared meals.

the boy's repertoir is now heading towards student meal fodder....beans on toast and so on. But he has developed an enviable ability to cook a mean stir fry. His technique seems to be to empty everything from the cupboard into the frying pan, but the end result is always delicious. But it does take me a couple hours to clear up after him.....(perhaps he's learnt the GinC ravioli technique)

Last week we bought everything he needed for chilli con carne, and in an overt demonstration of 'I have complete faith in you' I left him to it. I should mention that unlike most men he has the ability to multi-task...so whilst cooking he was also chatting to his girlriend on the phone. 40 minutes later I was summoned for supper. There was one missing ingredient. Rice. Completely abandoned. So the water was put on and 20 minutes later I was summoned. Fabulous. But one other missing ingredient. Chilli. So we had a delicious meal of chilli con carne sans chilli.

As they say, practice makes perfect.