Feist

Ken writes: Dot bought a couple of new CD’s the other day. Herbie Hancock’s River, which is a tribute to Joni Mitchell. It is a collection of covers and adaptions of her songs done in collaboration with among others Norah Jones, Leonard Cohen and Tina Turner. I’ve only listened to it once so far, but [...]

Advertising piety

Dot writes: here’s a thing that I had never come across before moving to Ireland: in the local free paper (the one you pick up at the supermarket that tells you about the local incinerator and whatnot) the small ads pages contain a section for prayers. In the current edition of Southside People, for example, [...]

Recent snapshots from the life of Prawn

Dot writes: Ken has his computer at home for the weekend so I can seize the chance to post some photos. (The camera and my computer will NOT talk to each other. All attempts at mediation have failed.)
Hugh demonstrates his new skill of rolling:

And prepares for another go:

Enjoying the Saturday newspaper with Daddy:

Uninformed Opinion II

Ken writes: I will make a prediction about the US presidential election.
The US is not ‘ready’ for a black president, or at least the influential democratic superdelegates will fear that it is not ready for one. This is obviously racist, but there it is. Has any Western country had a black head of state or [...]

Uninformed Opinion I

Ken writes: Ireland will hold a plebiscite to decide whether to sign the Lisbon Treaty (the successor document to the failed European Treaty) in June. As a foreigner, I do not have a vote, but I do have an opinion. Here it is:
The treaty is supposed to be around 500 pages long. Most people will [...]

Searching

Dot writes: this week I have been mostly interviewing childminders. It’s oddly difficult, because after the swift practical questions have been asked – when are you available and how much do you charge? – the task is to invent things to talk about while trying to work out if I, and more importantly Hugh, could [...]

The other half

Dot writes: today we had a meeting of the yoga mums. It was hosted by a woman I haven’t seen since the last pregnancy yoga class I attended and I hadn’t been to her house before, so I used the map to get there. When I arrived I thought at first I must have made [...]

First of the face plants

Ken writes: I feel terrible. I was helping Hugh practise standing, it was my idea, and he pitched forward. I tried to pull him up, but I was only holding him at the waistline and I think I only exacerbated things. His trunk kept toppling over and his face got planted in the wooden floor. [...]

Wriggle and roll

Dot writes: Prawn rolled over! Hooray! He’d been a bit short-tempered all day, possibly psyching himself up for the grand event, but when the great moment came (at 6.10pm, on his playmat) he was quite calm and collected. First he twisted his upper body over to one side and lay like that for a minute [...]

New Zealanderthals?

Ken writes: The New Zealand herald carries a story speculating that neanderthals may have sounded like New Zealanders. I bet this will go down well in Australia.