A Donkey on the Edge

Clementine has been learning to write these past few years and I was buying stamps at a stationners in Farnham when I came across this pen. I first heard it mentioned by Richard Binder and since then have thought it would make a great addition for Clem. She's visiting her Nan right now but I'll present it when she gets back (with "Clemmie" on the cap, not "Thomas" of course).

It's slightly tricky, Jed--my dad--is a talented calligrapher and I can manage some fluid strokes myself when I need to. The temptation is to try and get Clem writing like I was taught in school (in France we were taught 'joined-up' writing from the get-go using the the redoutable "Stypen" best known for leaving puddles of ink everywhere) but that's exactly what my dad tried to do and it got me in a bit of muddle on the handwriting front...

So I'm going to bite my lip for now and help her with her non-cursive letterforms:-)

So Charlotte wants me to spread the web2 love re ex-classmate Dirk Blackman's new production Outlander and why not? (that's our in-house Viking Haldane on the big-boy climbing frame over there on the left for our family readers)

As Eva Metalios puts it:

Subject: Fw: Dirk needs our help
Hey all -
After working in the Sisyphean task of being a writer in LA for over two decades, and the three year odyssey that OUTLANDER took to actually be made, the movie our friend Dirk Blackman (Columbia class of '85) authored with his partner and the project's director Howard McCain, is coming out. It is a sci-fi take on the Beowulf legend, nach.

C'mon, we are talking Dirk here. This is not
your daddy's Viking movie.

And Charlotte makes the point

Douglas,
the Norway thing, the Columbia thing, the media thing...

Well, yes, she's got a point I guess (and only Charlotte and my mother can get away with calling me Douglas).

The Norway thing huh? well we named our boy Haldane in an attempt to ping him into investigating his Norse roots... He is named after King Healfdene (lit. "half-dane") whose name has survived from myth into modern Danish under the popular form Halfdan

I initially wanted to call Hal Healfdene but worrying got the better of me and in the end I didn't want to relive a boy named Sue so tried to anglicise it some. We could have gone with Haldan, also in use in modern Danish but in the end we settled on Haldane (also good because it's a Scottish name).

Oh, right, back to the link love;-)

• the Morwen character is in development here: G4 video
• Healfdene Goguen is as far as I can tell the only man online to sport the BW original spelling
• and here's another site about Outlander
• here's the trailer on Youtube

Judging from the amount of traffic already generated, Dirk's project doesn't need any help but I liked Eva's closer make the Weinstein Company to feel the noise. Take that Harvey!

I've been trying to get Nick interested in personal branding after listening to @garyvee at Seed3. Gary made a bunch of interesting points and got me thinking about how Nick should develop on her work so far as a journalist. The woman has huge amounts of life experience and when fueled, can tell many an exotic tale of Argentinean vineyards, Tuscan raw-food cooking or tea tasting in the Indian Ocean...

Tim says

...and translate it into an action model for your personal bottom line--how your brand will generate personal wealth ( Me Inc. ) and how you will create social impact ( Me.org )...

Which really resonated... Does Nick settle on a business partner or employer who can work with her to create value using whatever existing methods they might have in place and picking and choosing from a small selection of Nicki's mojo as required?

Or does she choose to leverage her whole experience and develop on her own, working to distribute her mojo-assets socially to a large audience?

I can't help thinking that option one sounds like a bit of a waste...

Well, actually her first go on the GS was a couple of years ago in a Paddington car-park but today we got her into some jeans and strapped Nicki's old helmet on. We didn't go far as the fun-fair was only a few streets away but she kept her feet on the pegs and held on like a trouper.

Not something I'd want to do again before getting her a proper Clemmie-sized helmet but it's great having the other travel option available.

That, and her driving doggems for the first time and hopefully she's had an interesting evening:-)

Couple of weeks ago I was on hols in Avignon with the whole extended Falby clan and we all wrote games for the evening's entertainment. Margaret, Nicki's mum came up with a devilishly difficult Balderdash (I knew only two of the ten words) and I did a pub-quiz.

Don't know if you've set a pub-quiz before but this was my first go and and was way more difficult than I had anticipated. It's not enough to find things people might not know--you need to try and prevent folk getting bored and you need to make the questions relevant to your audience. In my case I had an audience of three 70-year-olds, three 40-year-olds, two teenagers and Clemmie who is six now and was supposed to be in bed (she helped by numbering the questions and that's her below trying her first diabolo menthe).

Tricky stuff.

At the end of the evening Billy--who knows about these things--reassured me that I had got it about right as the two teams scored better than average but not so much as to make it seem easy.

I'm on the flight back from Chicago listening to Laura Cantrell's version of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald while flying over Lake Erie (which is kinda weird) and was going to do a little work (and write some stuff about Seed) when I found the quiz questions in my bag.

So I thought I'd share them before dropping the sheets in the bin:-)

1. In United States law, which branch of the government declares war. The supreme court, congress or the president?
   (for 1 point)
2. Who were the last captains of the RMS Lusitania and the Edmund Fitzgerald?
   (for 2 points)
3. What do Lorne from Angel, Raven from Teen Titans, Peter Petrelli from Heroes, Pru and Phoebe from Charmed have in common with Betazoïds and for a bonus point who the missing character in this list?
   (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
4. Where would you find your "minor arcana"?
   (for 1 point)
5. What connects Danish physicist Neils Böhr and Eels frontman Mark Everett?
   (for 1 point)
6. Name two grape varieties common in the "Côtes de Ventoux" appélation and for a bonus point what do Côtes de Ventoux winemakers call their terraces?
   (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
7. If you've just passed Governor's Bridge and The Cutting and are half-way to Creg-ny-baa what are you doing?
   (for 1 point)
8. How many goalposts are there on a regulation quidditch pitch?
   (for 1 point)
9. Which motion picture won "Best Picture" at the 1968 Oscars? Two bonus points available for naming one or both of the two "more worthy" runners up that year.
   (for 1 point with 2 bonus points)
10. In the 1994 San Marino Formula One Grand Prix Ayrton Senna carried a furled flag in his cockpit. Of what country was the flag?
    (for 1 point)
11. In French cooking, what do "nappé", "petit boulé" and "grand cassé" refer to?
    (for 1 point)
12. What is the waltz from Tchaïkovski's fairy-tale-inspired ballet of 1890 better known as?
    (for 1 point)
13. Who first invited Harry and Stein to the Bronx? For a bonus point, who took his place in the video when he was sick on the day of the shoot?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
14. What did King of France Louis XIII create in 1622? For a bonus point, who succeeded Richelieu as Cardinal?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
15. Excluding Rockall, what is the Northernmost point of Scotland?
    (for 1 point)
16. By German law, how must Weißbier be fermented? For a bonus point, what is "botrytis cinerea"
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
17. Who broke the production motorcycle land-speed record for the rolling kilometre at Nardo on 29 September 1985
    (for 1 point)
18. What was the first film Alfred Hitchcock directed (title and year)? What was the last film he directed. For a bonus point, which film did he direct in 1935?
    (for up to 4 points and bonus 1 point)
19. What problem did John Harrison solve to win £20,000? For a bonus point, what was his solution made out of?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
20. First Babakoto then Mojo Pin then Dear Eskimo. Who is this? For a bonus point, what is this person's current label?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)

Well, of course with the interweb y'all have the answers to hand, but (as Barney the Purple Dinosaur would say) it's fun to try and guess them the hard way first...

This just in from Billy:

Finally, Kiloh discovered that Boris's full name is Boris de Pfeffel Johnson so we came up with an ad campaign based on the Dr. Pepper approach: 'Boris de Pfeffel, what's the worst that could happen?'

Doctor Pfeffel, I like it :-)

Hey, Jed's on TV :-)

Helping Clem with her homework. The brief was "what would you do" and the required media was "any" which I felt was vague and demanding for a 5-year-old.

Undaunted, Clemmie wanted to make a film but I had to point out this was going to be a little challenging given the time we had. We ended up with a Keynote file. She made the time machine slide herself and did all the thinking. The words are all hers. My contribution was to suggest a structure and be her dtp operator:-)

The cool bit was watching her work out what was needed both to make her machine (lots of levers) and to actually get to Laura's place. It took a couple of minutes but she eventually worked out she needed to know both a place and a date (the date is spoken to the time machine using the on-board microphone and the map of Wisconsin is included above the catering tray).

Wow, John Hardy and David Coates aren't just medical doctors, they're voice-over artists:-)

John offered me this fantastic arthroscopy footage after my operation. The arthroscope is hooked up to a video encoder which captures live footage for post-operative review. When I first received the disk it was just raw footage. After hearing about the number of arthroscopies on YouTube, John (who is not only a world-leading Orthopaedic surgeon but a painter, internet guru, web marketer and now film editor and voice-over artist) decided to have a go at an edited version.

The result is a complete transformation, a view of the whole op from me on very powerful drugs to the final phases of the joint smoothing, the whole thing narrated by the two doctors.

Oh, and before I forget, John was mortified by my earlier "before and after" pictures. He wanted me to point out that the surgery is very non-invasive and the recovery is usually very speedy. The following shot of my knee was taken roughly two weeks after the operation, the stitches are out and you can barely see the entry wounds:

OK ma p'tite puce je te souhaite bon courage pour ton examen :-) Grosses bises et super-maxi-câlins de ton Papa!

Well, this morning I've noticed a couple:

• the great (if slightly over the top) music that accompanies tv series, movies and historical reenactments. There's something about mentions of Molière and Richelieu that brings me back a medley of pleasant, childhood memories
• the formal acknowledgment given in lifts, restaurants and a bunch of other public places. I'm increasingly dissatisfied with the "let's just ignore each other until one of us gets off the lift" thing we do...

france inter > 駑issions > 2000 ans d'histoire

So Clemmie's cousin Apoa is learning Photoshop in art class:-) Check out this montage she asked Clem to sit for.

Well, in the end, the damage to the knee was worse than the scans had suggested and the knee arthroscopy took a lot longer than planned.

I had apparently damaged the front of the knee joint by overdoing it on staircases and the overall state of the cartilage and meniscus was pretty poor. The meniscus tear had a horizontal element which was unseen in the MRI scan and took a lot longer to trim.

The primary meniscus tear was a sudden incident. I was behind third base at a TMW softball game and was determined to not let the side down. I never did catch any balls but the stop-start without warm-up took care of the cartilage. Talk about stupid boy, not only was the accident avoidable, but I was busy at work and never took the knee to the doc. I had company health insurance at the time and could have had the whole thing sorted (retro-kicking myself as I write this grrr).

I'm guessing the damaging stair action might have been getting very pissed and lugging an entire photoshoot's worth of lighting and camera gear up to the top of the Positano cliffs (in a oner) from down on the seafront. Lugging Sven's camera gear up to the top-floor studio at Jubilee Place for a year probably didn't help either...

Needless to say, the op was considerably more expensive than I had planned for. Basically, without health insurance and having lost mobility (I had been limping for three weeks) I needed to get it sorted very quickly. As well as the obvious need for going to work, I didn't want the damage to reduce my future mobility and ability to play with Clem and Hal.

The major onset of pain was triggered by teaching Clementine to skateboard. We'd been looking at videos of Tony Alva grinding pools and planning a trip to North London's three decent skateparks. The thought of not being able to share this with her was a real blow:-(

In any case, I'm crossing my fingers that with only three weeks between re-injury and op, I've managed to not grind or scratch the knee too much...

So I've now had the pleasure of being slid into an MRI and in a few minutes, a man called John Hardy (my trusty orthopaedic surgeon) is going to regularise a tear in the meniscus in my right knee (thank you TMW softball).

08:36 scratch that, doc and anesthetist (sp?) have a full-on knee replacement in theatre before me. Will need to wait a bit longer. On the plus side, I should get a DVD from the orthroscope which I will get up on YouTube as soon as poss.

09:16 JH and sleepman David Coates are doing a knee replacement I'm next in the queue.

09:51 anti-embolism stockings. I'm told to treat them like silk stockings

10:47 still no news :-(

Well, shortly before 11:15 David Coates injected me with a quart of martinis. The next thing I remember is having the best n
ap in the recovery room (boy, I'll bet recovery-room staff have got some juicy material for a book) and then Nicki showed up next my bed :-)

Have now seen the physio and am waiting for nurse to redo dressing before heading home.

Thanks to all who tweeted, called and texted the messages really helped.

Not sure how this happened, but I seem to have turned 45 today and Kilohapoabillyohna spotted the event and sent me this lovely card.

Thanks:-)

Well, it's not very Christmassy but Nick was transferring photos and contacts to her new handset and in the process sent me this photograph of Clementine playing in Nicki's wedding outfit. Shame about the item in the background but I love the expression on Clemmie's face, I think we should all feel like that 'round this time of year :-)

(Family thoughts, you tech readers may want to skip this post)

So the rain is damaging down, the best-of-classic-motown cd is skipping like a techno track and I'm looking out the window of the Sancerre onto the Square du Temple. I'm dry, I've just been handed a glass of Brouilly and I caught the last metro before the strike started (at 20h) so all-in-all feeling very relieved.

Wow, the rain is now moving from dismantling to total continental submergence, but the tape has been changed and I'm now listening to Stevie Wonder (the guys at the Sancerre only ever seem to play two tapes... "ma cherrrie amorrr") which is cheering me up some.

Nicki and Haldane and Clementine are back in London at the new house (the last one was "The Yellow House"--don't know what we'll call this one) in Whetstone. I'm missing them already and I've been feeling really protective of Hal and Clemmie ever since the move, watching them soak in the new surroundings and settle into their new rooms.

Clemmie in particular I worry a little about, she comes up with worrying statements which I'm never entirely sure how to evaluate. She is the same age I was when my folks moved from Connecticut to Paris and in the years that followed I was moved from school to school and across a few borders (actually not that many, just Paris to Milan and back to Paris) and I don't remember being that upset by the process. Of course maybe that's a problem in itself, but that's another story. Hopefully the fact that Clementine is staying in the same school should iron out most difficulties.

It looks like we've moved into Budleigh-Salterton-on-Thames. It's a quiet suburban street and neighbours east and west are over 65. Just to rub the point in, a scan with the trusty N95 reveals not a single 802.11 signal (bizarre!) so yeah, hopefully we'll find some locals with kids.

Finally, and so I've got a note of it, the move went great, happened on the 9th November 2007--four very nice men from a company called Ward Thomas:-)

Anyways, the rain is slowing now so I'm going to make a run for it down the Rue des Archives and try and squeeze a little wireframing in before bed.

Well, I didn't have the camera with me but this morning we put the pedals on the bicycle and Clemmie pedaled away. She can ride a bike, yay!

It's great, actually, because I've been feeling a bit like I've been letting the side down in the parenting department. All the travel to France and the doing second projects on weekends means I haven't been able to spend as much time with Clem and Hal as I'd like to. So knowing she can swim a length of the pool no problem and ride a bike makes me feel a bit like I've helped some:-)

Clementine, il s'est passé quelque chose d'abominable aujourd'hui. Je te l'indique ici pour quand tu reliras ces pages, tu t'en souviendras peut etre...

Parmi les Sept Merveilles du monde figurent les jardins suspendus des Batignolles.

Et qu'est ce que j'ai galleré pour le passer, mon bac... (Les perles du bac)

Yeay:-) She wobbled it for what feels like weeks and she's soooooo unbelievably psyched she can't sleep.

So tomorrow morning little Clementine is going to wake up and be five years old. Forgive the cliché but darn she got big quick... We're at Rebecca and Tim's place near Perpignan (strangely correctly identified on the N95's GPS system) and Jed has just set up a follow-the-string treasure hunt for tomorrow morning.

So how did I get talked into this one;-) Family friends Christine and Michael Bland spend a large part of the year catering fabulous afairs on the pebbles of Budleigh beach (100 yards South of the nudist beach, near the gentlemen's club...). This is the first year that the Dug and Nicki branch of our little family managed to get our shit together to get out on the beach (Jed and Billy actually swam in the same freezing waters just yesterday) and I was way impressed: hot food, hot wine and a functioning Victrola!

(Clem, Apoa and Kiloh sing away in a manger and Clemmie really goes for it)

So I've been in Paris all week. I was here last week and will be here for three days next week. I'm so totally sad, I've been commuting out to the burbs on the RER, working all day and then coming back to the hotel and working the evenings as well. I've had to cancel my going to LesBlogs3 and have done no strolling around soaking up the sights, no catching up with folk, no doing Christmas shopping etc. all a bit weird really...

Anyhow, I haven't had a mo to publish much and I've been grabbing the odd snap en passant but the Shozu uploader is disabled in roaming mode to prevent me having more bandwidth-related punch-ups with mobile phone companies. Normal picture stream behaviour resumes Friday night (geolocation by Plazes).

Trying to score Nicki some perfume in the Galleries Lafayette yesterday and came across this chap. Great poster next to him with a guy reclining in a bulge-accentuating pose. I figured I should definitely get myself a full-body see-through outfit and then the mental image had me running for the escalator:-)

Great morning, was up til all hours looking for missing passport, sorting IT (or should be IS) bollocks and just generally not managing to get to sleep. Then up at 04:30 and into the shower where with a head full of Pantene's finest (I think it was), the boiler decided to stop making hot water. Enjoyed military standard ice-cold shower (note to self: write to Pantene product development types about ability to rinse out product in sub-zero temp. water) and finally escaped the house's gravity at 5:30.

So here I am on the Eurostar, I think une sieste is in order:-)

(photograph of breakfast to follow)

Well I meant to say I had a bit of a medical thing happen last Sunday and I've been spending a lot of time in bed with my brain turned off. Normal service should resume next Monday.

Best,
Dug

Encore enfant, je devinais que ce sourire très singulier représentait pour chaque femme une étrange petite victoire. Oui, une éphémère revanche sur les espoirs déçus, sur la grossièreté des hommes, sur la rareté des choses belles et vraies de ce monde. Si j'avais su le dire, à l'époque, j'aurais appelé cette façon de sourire féminité... Mais la langue était alors trop concrète. Je me contentais d'examiner, dans nos albums de photos, les visages féminins et de retrouver ce reflet de beauté sur certains d'entre eux.

Car ces femmes savaient que pour être belles, il fallait, quelques secondes avant que le flash ne les aveugle, prononcer ces mystérieuses syllabes françaises dont peu connaissaient le sens: pe-tite-pomme... Comme par enchantement, la bouche, au lieu de s'étirer dans une béatitude enjouée ou de se crisper dans un rictus anxieux, formait ce gracieux arrondi. Le visage tout entier en demeurait transfiguré. Les sourcils s'arquaient légèrement, l'ovale des joues s'allongeait. On disait petite pomme, et l'ombre d'une douceur lointaine et rêveuse voilait le regard, affinait les traits, laissait planer sur le cliché la lumière tamisée des jours anciens.

(The passage is quoted from Andreï Makine's "Le Testament Français" which I will now have to struggle through)

Arrrgggg my specs broke. Bloody things cost a fortune and they're less than a year old. My optician lined me up with these reading glasses undt jedst meiner name ist Dieter:-(

Jed sent me this drawing a while back. Just came across it again and thought I would post a shot. For those that haven't met Jed, he draws. He sketches constantly.

What I would give to have a compilation of all the postcards he's ever created:-)

Mucking about in the Pyrenees. On holiday and offline (largely). Back on Monday:-)

Just had breakfast with Clementine. It feels like I haven't seen my family in ages

Hopefully won't be working so late next week...

Hi Hal, it's half-past twelve in the morning and you finished struggling with your insides about half an hour ago (looks v. sore, lots of grumbling and crying). You're almost three weeks old and are sleeping in your little chair on the dining room table. I'm doing some writing at the same table and giving your wee rocker a nudge whenever it looks like you're stirring...

Just wanted to write this down because the house is dark and quiet around us and I'm happy to be your dad:-)

Well it's been a week now and Hal is eating non-stop (even makes sucking noises in his sleep, Nick's nipples are taking a serious battering) and developing well. Last night early this morning I had a session with him and he managed to look me in the eyes. His limbs are still all folded up and we're swaddling him, but I'm guessing (because my memory of Clemmie as a baby has been erased by her growing up...) he'll limber up soon.

It's funny having a cesearian baby, when he came out, his head wasn't squashed (Clem came out looking like a butternut squash) and a couple of skull plates were lined up in preparation for the big squeeze. Over the last few days, the plates have settled down and he now has a perfectly formed wee head.

Another thing I'm experiencing differently to when I was caring for Clementine is beeing peed on. I was warned about the 'little fountain' concept and was ready with a strategically positioned wipe when he went for it. Of course the other difference is the guy has a huge, uncut cock. His testicles are like ping pong balls! This whole boy thing is going to take a little getting used to...

OK all, no time to reply to emails, have just woken up and must rush back to hospital. The potted bits:

• Haldane Edward Falby born 04:30 04:52 on Feb 8 2006 (why is it always in the middle of the night? Maybe to prep you for not sleeping anymore)
• Weight 7lb6oz
• Delivered by emergency ceasarian section at 8cm dillation (why they ask you to spend all day suffering to get dillated and then just cut it out. Could have c-sected at breakfast and cut out the contractions bit!)
• Both boy and mother are doing well (except that Nicki feels like she's been run over by a bus)
• Visiting status not yet sorted, but prob ok from this pm onwards and it looks like Nicki and Hal will be on the ward for at least three days

Thanks to everyone for the messages and emails:-)

So Clemmie, it was a Tuesday afternoon, the 7th of February 2006. When I got home early you didn't seem surprised and you didn't notice that Mom was writing times down on a piece of paper and bouncing with intent on her large rubber ball.

We put you to bed at seven. Mom spilled the beans and told you that Dug and Nicki were going to the hospital that night and that donut (you christened the bump) was going to come out tonight.

Well, it's eight thirty, you're still jumping up and down up in your room (and playing with the princess Aurora lamp you picked out in Homebase when you were three-and-a-half) and Mom is having 60 second contractions every six minutes. With any luck, you'll have a little brother by morning.

Still, does Apoa know she's got a portrait in the V&A?

V&A - Day of Record: Notting Hill Carnival 2003

Well, tomorrow we pack and on Thursday, after more than 10 years on West End Lane, we finally move house.

I take 100 daft pictures a day with the N70 and ain't it just typical I don't have a camera on me today.

Nicki and I dragged our dead cooker to the dump this afternoon and I saw the sky for the first time. There's a giant column of darkness to the North East and a blanket of dark haze goes from there, over London and off to the East. At 16:00 this afternoon, it felt like the war of the worlds (or the chimney-sweep scene from mary Poppins) with eddies and swirls of foggy, hazy cloud picking up strange colours from the seting sun. Very, very weird...

Little Clem was playing at her friend Sophia's house yesterday when she came down with some serious temperature. Nicki kept her medicated all afternoon and put her to bed early.

Last night was rough--most problems you sort of know what to do, but when your kid starts whimpering and clutching her tummy the choices are peppermint tea or a trip to the ER. So 3am it was a little touch-and-go but she's sort of settled now.

Still pitiful and heavily medicated, Clemmie is hugging baby Anabel (Charlie, Mary?) and watching Mary Poppins...

Well, today is the last day of Book Week at Clementine's school. The kids were asked to go in fancy dress--picking the costume of their favourite character--and little Clem has gone as The Little Red Riding Hood:-)

It sort of amazes me that with all the fanfare around Clementine's birth (readers may rememember the blow-by-blow of her mother's labour)--and the fact that this blog was initially set up to track the goings on in my head about becoming a dad--that I haven't felt it necessary to mention Nick and I are going to have a son.

That's one baby boy due 2 Feb 2006 if all goes well.

Between now and then, we need to move house and get Clemmie into a school for next year (So no pressure then)...

This piece over at Digital Dad™ made me chuckle. Clemmie isn't a toddler anymore (she's three) but she's been obsessed with computers, stereo, iPods and telephones almost since day one.

She now has an account on the G5 workstation and she demands time at the keyboard by saying "Daddy, I need to do some work now, OK?"

Clementine had a great afternoon today. She was totally terrified by the Museum of Natural History's T-rex model (it lunges and roars and comes complete with dry-ice and mood-lighting) but couldn't break away.

It's that funny thing that kids actually like getting scared. It must of taken Nicki and I a good twenty minutes to drag her away form the exhibit:-)

Just love this picture. Not sure why exactly, but it's something to do with the freshness of the whole thing.

Took Clemmie to Whipsnade yesterday and had my second "I've lost her" moment in the playground. Tom, Isac and Clem took off over a hill at high speed and I went running after them. Just as I was catching up with Tom and Isac, Clemmie and Tom made a break in different directions. Looked behind me and saw Isac's dad Les catching up with us so tried to point out Tom and Isac to him while keeping an eye on Clem. Turned towards Les for one second with Clem entering the playground in the corner of my eye and then she was gone.

I ran into the playground and scanned all the slides and climbing frames but nothing.

It must have taken a good two minutes of nervous searching and calling (scanning the distant horizon in all directions for a little red-headed girl) before I finally spotted her. She had climbed right to the top of the highest tower and was hiding behind the clapboards and looking at me through a gap in the planks.

Damn.

Spent the whole day at IKEA (both Wembley and Edmonton) not buying a mattress.

The day was made bearable by imagining Michael Corleone's entourage getting bogged down in circular arguments with IKEA store staff as they try and find the goods so they could 'go to the mattresses'. The thought was prompted by a shop assistant saying why yes, we have 21 in stock and me thinking of Luca Brasi's relief:-)

Note for Falby family: Clementine's swimming pics are now in a flickr set so you can view them as a slideshow.

So we have a very large bath.

As far as I can tell, the thing must hold about one-and-a-half cubic meters (1.5 tonnes of water). It's not so much huge as deep, like a plunge pool (it was marketed as a 'Japanese' bath). Clemmie and I have been taking baths in there pretty much since she was born. A big part of bath play used to involve me going "1,2,3" and then plunging her underwater, and this has continued at the swimming pool where from very early on I let go of her and let her sink. An instructor at the pool in Leighton explained that it was OK to chuck your child in the water as long as you looked comfortable, and that through any gasping and wheezing, you always maintained a beaming smile (as in: gosh, wasn't that fun) which apparently communicates to your baby that all is well.

So fast-forward eight months. I took a gig in Salisbury and ended up commuting five hours a day so essentially never saw Clem on week-days. Our regular pool sessions faded off and she's now much to big to dunk.

Nicki has taken our little Ariel to proper swimming lessons and what a star! Clemmie can effectively swim. I say effectively because there's no actual coordinated kick-and-stroke going on, but she's diving off the side of the pool, diving to the bottom to pick up rings and pushing off from he side of the pool and gliding face-down like a rocket.

I am actually really, really, impressed and am officially a very proud father:-)

Apoa and Kiloh bond with the rozzers at this year's Notting Hill Carnival :-)

Sitting here chopping some complex css and Eminem's Mockingbird comes on and I start blubbering like a baby. This happens every time I hear the song (i.e. it's nothing to do with css...) I wonder what's making me so emotional?

(Pupuce, plus que tout au monde, je tiens à ton bonheur, que tu soit libre, enapoui et heureuse.)

So I'm sitting here at my desk, it's 5am and I'm trying to get some writing done, but my eyes are killing me.

Clementine got herself a case of conjunctivitis on Tuesday and I gave her a goodnight kiss that evening. I can't believe this stuff could be so contagious that a single peck on the cheek would be enough to transmit the bacteria...

I woke up Wednesday morning with my eyes all puffy and I'm pretty sure they smelt funny as well. Which was great, because I had finally managed to get a meeting with a key, senior relationship marketing expert at a big fmcg company and I was due to do my spiel about brands reaching out to the digital consumer at 10:30 that morning.

In the end, the meeting went well. This company isn't going to start a revolution tomorrow, but they're very smart and understand the earth beneath their feet is starting to move. Turns out they're keen to listen and keen to learn, so hopefully we'll be able to do a bit of work together.

This is great news for the internet, as big brands have traditionally been the biggest wasters of bandwidth. If they start to engage and participate in internet culture, that should benefit us all.

There has been a real grassroots effort by the parents of kids at Asquith Court West Hampstead. It got so bad we moved Clementine to a new nursery (which she calls her "new nursery" which is kinda cute...).

It's amazing to see what a group of pissed-off mums can achieve once they start communicating.

If your child is at an Asquith school or nursery, you should consider setting-up a parents association. We've listed all the Asquith nurseries who have a parent's blog at the main association website if you'd like a site set up (free to parent's associations) email Dug

Just about to drive back to London.

Had a good week with extended family down at parent's place in Budleigh Salterton. Had a couple of rough commutes, on Thursday, I slept two hours then got on the bike and rode 180 miles to Dorking, did a presentation then had to head to Salisbury for an afternoon meeting. Got out of the office at 17:00 and then had to make my way back to Devon--almost 400 miles in bad weather on two hours sleep. Not something I'd want to do every day :-(

Strangely, I still get a kick out of crazy bike rides with great views. I drove past Stonehenge in the mist and fog on my way in on Tuesday, and Thursday's travels took me on some ancient Roman roads. The approach to Salisbury from the west is great--you're on this ancient, absolutely straight road and you see Salisbury cathedral approaching in the distance in much the same way a foot-traveller would have experienced it hundreds of years ago. The whole countryside between Winchester and Salisbury is just magic, lots of deciduous trees, oaks all bent out of shape, collapsing thatched farms and dirt tracks everywhere, if you stopped for a minute you could have travelled back to 1412...

Yesterday, Clemmie got to ride a horse for the first time. When I say 'ride' I mean in the saddle, stirrups adjusted for her wee legs, holding the reigns and a helmet on her head. She just walked up and down for Fifteen minutes but I'm pretty sure she was thrilled :-)

Anyways, off to suit up for London.

So that was fun, if utterly exhausting (started my day 06:00 on Friday and got into my hotel bed at 01:30 only to be kicked awake by little girl at 06:30--and it went downhill from there on the sleep front).

So in brief, A'dam with a 2^5/6-year-old:

• trams
• playgyms (very mental)
• hotels
• museums
• and a zoo

OK, back to work...

Wey hey! Nicki has scored our little familly an all-expenses-paid press junket to the Dutch capital. Nick and Clemmie left earlier today and are currently enjoying that particular kind of Dutch hospitality (brusque?) while I'm flying on a later KLM flight.

(am typing this on a T-mobile hotspot in Heathrow T4 which lets me use my various smtp servers and hasn't rebooted in two hours use--not bad...)

We did a day trip to Manchester this Saturday to pick the little girl up. Clem spent the week with her cousins Holly, Tom and Eve while Nicki was in Hong Kong and it looks like she barely noticed her parents were missing. Saturday was Eve's birthday and I grabbed some snaps at the party. Not meaning to get all Dianne Arbus or nothin but I love this photograph:-)

The latest from Andy and Michaela :-)

Dear All.

sorry for taking this short cut, but this is just to inform you that our new addition to the family has arrived in the early hours of Tuesday morning, February 8. Luisa Katherina was in quite a hurry and we arrived at the hospital with only 25 minutes to spare. Most trips to the dentist last longer than that (not sure about the physical discomfort though), and both mother and baby were back home by 10.00 in the morning, when daughter No.1 greeted the new arrival with the classic phrase: Hello Babylu, would you like to do a puzzle with me? I guess we are truly blessed.

Best wishes
Andreas

Congratulations !!!

Family members may find it amusing to know that little Clemmie Falby is appearing on the cover of a promotional music CD thus continuing a long Falby family tradition of using one's children in one's design pieces:-)

I'm guessing when you read this you'll be quite a lot older and no doubt these ramblings will be served up in some as yet unimagined way. In any case there's been a lot going on recently that I haven't recorded.

Last Saturday (22nd January) you went to your first ballet class. It was surprisingly fun--I joined in and did the tippytoes thing and the armflappy thing and so on. At first you seemed a little uncertain, but by the end of the class, you were doing the butterfly with the other girls. As you may have noticed, your Mom and I are not pushy parents (before other readers get the wrong idea). The ballet thing happened quite unexpectedly. Someone left a leaflet in your box at nursery and we took up its offer of a free evaluation class.

Since then you've been pretty sick. lots of vomiting both night and day, but luckily you also slept under grown-up bedding for the first time this week (you wont remember this but I sorted out your "big girl bed" a couple of months ago) so once you had vommed on all the sleeping bags we still had backup. The washing machine has been running solid all week.

Anyway, I thought I'd put a specific diary entry in here--which I haven't done in quite some time--as it feels like I haven't seen you for three weeks:-(

You see, your Mom and Dad have to work to make some coldharddinari to buy food and toys and trips to the zoo. Sometimes in this process, your Dad has to travel a bit. Mom does too, you may remember the weeks spent with Granma Ruth in Devon or the trips up to stay with Eve, Thomas and Holly in Manchester. These generally coincided with your Mom heading off to Sri-Lanka or Hong-Kong.

Unfortunately for him, your Dad gets to travel to far less exotic places like Guildford or Salisbury. For the last three weeks (and for another nine) your Papa has to leave the house at Seven and doesn't get back home until 19:30. Seeing as you are just opening your eyes at Seven, and are in bed with stories milk and Mummy at 19:30 this means that for these few months, our interaction is limited to week-ends and ten minutes of semi-consciousness during the week. Believe me, your Dad is not happy about this at all and is looking for a satisfactory work-around.

So today is Friday, and I'm already counting the minutes until I see you next. Have fun with Sophia today, and stop fighting over her toys (pretty please). Je t'aime immensément ma p'tite puce, à très bientôt:-)

• Temperature 6° overcast + foggy
• Icknield Way between Britwell Salome and Aston Rowant closed to vehicular traffic until summer 2005, but the old road cuts North West from Aston Rowant and continues to Chinnor where it becomes the B4009
• Spent hours on the boggy section South of the B4445
• Three lovely deep fords. First just a straightforward wet dip, the second small, but very technical with a bend and a difficult climb out of the sandy bed (almost visited neighbouring field but got the gas off in time and avoided large block of concrete farmer had placed at exit) and the third a bloody massive pool. I couldn't walk this third one as water was getting in my boots. In the end I leaned off the footbridge and shoved a stick in the water. Deep but definitely doable:-)
• GS in muddy bog to the axles (sump-guard skiing?) negotiating tractor tracks. Almost binned it several times but stayed upright all day. Quite a bit of embarrassing paddling in the deep mud, but by the end of the day I was gliding the beast around in the slick standing on the pegs. After the final gate couldn't resist whacking the gas full-on and got lots of lovely mud everywhere.
• I was worried about the front fender filling up (mud gets wedged between the GS's low fender which locks the front wheel) but in the end the mud sort of leveled off and it never got too bad.

On the way back, spotted other byway with this old guy Steve lighting the oil lamps on a tiny level-crossing in the middle of nowhere. Turns out he works on a steam train. Two miles down the track I get to open the next level crossing gates and wave a gorgeous old loco past (The Santa Express I think it was called).

So three fords, four spotted byways and a steam train--huge grin the whole way back to London :-)

I figured if I let Clementine paint my face as I painted hers, I would be able to make a reasonable likeness of a ginger cat’s face on hers.

In the end, my face was covered with red stripes and Clemmie had what could be mistaken for a rash on her forehead—not a very succesful attempt, but I imagine this face-painting lark has some miles in it yet, she’s only two-and-a-half after all…

So it’s comming up to three o’clock and I’m off to her nursery’s Halloween party:-)

…Boy Scouts and S&M fetishists both spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling with rope…

I mean I don’t have a problem with pain or yuckiness or whatever otherwise weirds people out about various fetishes, it’s just that I can’t get all hot and bothered about watching someone spend fifteen minutes adjusting cross-tailed toe-loops and half-hitches around a naked woman hanging from the ceiling :-)

Wow, more DJ spam. I must be the new hub of the online music scene. It’s the ususal enchanting copy, connecting their minds to their bodies I mean who writes this stuff ;-)

Luca Ricci is a talent to be watched. His sound and style make him a favourite anywhere he plays. His music has taken clubbers on a voyage - connecting their minds to their bodies with the drum beats as their guide.

For booking: djbooking@hotpop.com

and I love the way the emails always end with a hopeful 'bookings' email address. If this keeps up, I'll be taking bookings for Kittin ;-)

Today John Peel died.

:-(

This will have no meaning to most people, but if Bill Bissell reads this, on Saturday 23 October 2004, I finally made it to Sidcup.

In that I quite literally made it to Sidcup. On the bike. Down the A2. Had to visit a guy who needed help configuring his network.

Would you guys mind terribly debugging your frigging JS code before you slap it on your website? Please.

I have to run with JS error notification turned on most of the time and it’s getting increasingly difficult to browse without getting syntax error notification pop-ups. It’s not hard to do and it’s not too much to ask, so please get with the programme…

As the election looms, thoughts turn to another Republican congress. UK subjects act now while you still can:

• http://actblue.com/list/ipac
• https://secure.dccc.org/win/default.aspx?id=btnmc
• http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001436
• http://www.democraticaction.org/index.php?id=dtriptv
• https://ipaction.org/contribute.html

(thanks aaron)

A new feature has arrived on my desktop that prevents Nicki and I both using Suitcase at the same time. Until now, Suitcase ran happily in the background, managing font conflicts and opening fonts when required to do so. Great. Nice application. Problem solved.

Except now, I’m told by the support desk that to use the “fast user switching” facility in Mac OS X I need to quit Suitcase before I “fast switch” between users and relaunch it after the new user is logged in. This kinda reduces the functionality of a fast switch. If they insist on this stupid behaviour, the least they could do would be to put a “quit on fast user switch” checkbox in the preferences.

It really pisses me off, I buy software like a good boy and register and license it like I’m supposed to and then wham, upgrades mean less functionality:-(

So am off to find an alternative to Suitcase…

OK, wee un is now officially contributing to the Kerry cause.

And while I’m banging on about this, there are things non-voting folk like disillusioned Genx-ers, lapsed Democrats and Nader voters can do to help get rid of Bush. You can volunteer or donate — I know it seems crazy sending money across the pond to support the Democratic National Committee, but the Republicans can traditionally score loads more cash, so it make sense.

Just for today, take that tenner you were going to send to oxfam and donnate it to the DNC. In the long run, this will reduce third-world misery and in the short term might make the lives of European NGO employees a little safer on the ground, so I’ll bet even Oxfam would aprove.

Right. So that settles it then. Unless I can’t spell;-)

I know I’ve been a bit of a wreck these past couple of days, but I really surprised myself this morning reading Phil Mountain’s letter to Clark County in The Guardian. By the start of the second sentence I was sobbing violently into my coffee and had totally soaked my t-shirt.

Well, the shirts finally arrived:-)

Clemmie just left for school hoping to sway any undecided, or Bush voters that might be going to preschool in West Hampstead with her clearly stated political message.

“Karen Carpenter was of course famously anorexic but people forget that she was also a really good drummer” - Goldfrapp

I’ve just discovered that if you point the desk lamp straight into your face and stare at the bulb occasionally, you can go for days without sleep.

You know, there’s nothing I hate more than spam. So I really can’t figure out why I keep noticing the stuff and posting about it…

Just got this in the mail:

DJ DIVA appears in the house scene after 10 years of night work, serving drinks as a topless waitress and lap dancer in the best dutch establishments. At one of the clubs she gets the chance to try her skills on the decks and there she became the first female topless dj

And of course the note ends on an upbeat note: bookings femaledjs@yahoo.co.uk

Monique from Littleton in Colorado says her mommy wants a new president and your daughter should too.

Little Clementine Falby thinks so as well but wonders if those crazy Yankees will get her tee-shirt all the way over to London in time to sway the election;-)

Who would have believed that there were not one, not two or even three different nouns to describe the state of caramelization of sugar in the French vocabulary. According to marmiton.org’s cooking chart there are no less than eleven (11) steps to caramel nirvana;-)

La cuisson du sucre:

I can’t remember the last time I took a little ball of hot sugar between my thumb and forefinger—I may be misunderstanding the language but the above says asbestos-fingers to me…

OK, I’d really like to know what’s going on here

So yesterday morning, the thing that I wanted was a black, v-neck jumper and the chosen interface to get it was Mark & Spencer at Marble Arch.

Most of us grown-ups are pretty are familiar with the way a department store works, but between going through the front door with a pocket full of cash and waltzing out the same door in a smart new outfit, a few things need happen.

Imagine for a second that M&S was a website—first, let’s take a look at the store’s information architecture, the way laying out the shop’s stock in a particular way is supposed to guide customers to their goal. Here are some possible clusters (based purely on the stock-keeping-unit, the basic building-block of what’s on display, as opposed to customer motivation or sales increasing) for a guy looking to buy a jumper:

• all men’s jumpers together
• all black jumpers together
• all v-neck jumpers together

If the store manager didn’t like that layout, the architecture might reflect the stocking infrastructure or the scheduling of the shop’s ‘front-end’ display:

• all recent arrivals together
• all unsorted but barcoded knitwear together
• all returned men’s singles together
• all discontinued lines together

If the manager wanted to get a bit goal-oriented, she might decide to group things according to how the user shops:

• all workplace / uniform knitwear together
• all casual knitwear together
• all back-to-school separates together

I’m labouring through all this because now (actually six days after the fact) I still can’t work out what M&S’s ‘information architect’ was trying to achieve. Was he was trying to get me efficiently through the store, quickly reaching my targeted purchase?

I never found the right jumper, or when I found it, I wasn’t able—through a process of comparison—to ascertain if it was ‘right’

Perhaps the layout of the store (like the infuriating Italian motorway rest-stops that guide you through a maze of produce before you can exit through the only door) was trying to get me to purchase ‘accessories’ or ‘add-ons’—the extra bits that if I saw them on the way to finding my jumper I might pick up as well?

The more time I spent trying to figure out why shades of black, v-neck jumpers were spread across the four corners of the second floor the less I was inclined to browse the otherwise perfectly nice items on sale.

From a design point of view, the fact that I quit the application—I left the store without finding a jumper—means I didn’t find the thing that I want, that the application failed in its purpose. I’ve been buying black v-neck jumpers at M&S for years so something must be very wrong indeed:-)

The web allows shop designers to apply TheThingThatiWant design principles to their virtual shop floors. This means that all the various factors that impact on what is put where in the store (selling sweets at the check-out, avoiding ‘but brush’ in the aisles and so on) can be applied differently to different people. A crude example might be that as women tend to like to browse and men want to go straight to a given sku and leave, the store interface could include both a search by sku interface and a new this season browsing tool…

I don’t think this is the last time I shop at M&S, but the more I think about it, the more I need to shop online.

For a theoretically unemployed person, I seem to be very very busy right now. This is great because one of my iBook’s logic boards (I think it’s a logic board, due to the little beeps I’m pretty sure I heard yesterday but ignored—and decided not to back up my stuff) has just this evening packed up.

It’s very dead—I’m hoping it’s the logic board Apple just replaced. Fingers crossed…

Tom Hough recently commented on an older post about BT.

As with a lot of the “enraged mutton” posts, it was a bit of a venting session, but I’ll reprint the BT phone number here. I can’t garantee it’s still live, but here goes nothing;-)

…a very nice lady called Alita calls you and gives you a phone number (an 0800 number no less) that gets you straight through to customer care—no queue, no delay, no option-3, just straight through to the nice lady.

So got a problem with BT? Need to vent? Here’s the number:

0800 800 871

That ends this public service announcement…

Clemmie walked up to me this lunchtime and asked:

So big boy, are you good to go?

As clear as day—it just sorta came out. My guess is we really need to keep a lid on the swearing:-)

Ok, this made my day:-) It’s a proper Newton web server

No, really.

Until this evening, I didn’t know that the side pannel of the G5 is a four-millimeter-thick slab of brushed aluminium. On the inside of the panel, a stainless steel guide is attached with cross-head stainless steel screws. Set in a grove in that guide is a soft rubber gasket.

The side cover registers with the main housing via two large, stainless steel pins so that when you press the cover shut after installing your ram upgrade, you first feel a gentle ‘give’ as the gasket squeezes slightly into its housing. Then, as the pins register, the cover falls closed, its edge perfectly aligning with its mate, leaving but the faintest line to tell that the two pieces are not one.

(…swoon)

Right, let’s plug this mother in:-)

Having a 13.4 kilo little girl sound asleep on your left shoulder from 17:30 to 18:30 while trying to not wake her up and pick up her medicine from the pharmacy at the same time does wonders for your muscle tissue;-)

Clem now has eardrops to add to the fun--she is OK and currently asleep. This could go on another couple of days according to the doc.

Clemmie has been sick all week. This has been a little tricky to handle, as Nicki has been sick all week as well (really bad ear infection) and when sick, Clemmie definitely wants her mommy. A lot.

Nicki took her to the doc's yesterday morning and watched her go through a fairly comprehensive exam which resulted in the doc stating that there was nothing wrong with her and that she could go to school.

That said, we're pretty sure there is something along the lines of an ear infection going on as Clem hasn't made it through the night without waking up screaming her little head off. I've always had a bad time with my ENT. I had chronic headaches when I was very young until one day when I was maybe twelve, on a long car journey on a very hot day, I felt a minor explosion under my right eye and a bunch of ickey fluid when down my throat. From that point on, the headaches were a whole lot less frequent.

My Dad has always had similar or related problems. While we both check out fine at the ear doctor's, we both have dodgy hearing and drive our wives mad with the volume control. This is the kind of thing that worries me because I can see Clemmie going through the whole Falby ear, nose and throat thing, and no amount of visits to the doctor is going to do anything about it. Where are the tame consultants when you need 'em? Maybe if we win the lottery I'll take her down to Harley Street...

• Stanley Kubrik's Napoleon (pdf file)
• The first Creative Commons video that explains the point of a 'commons' and why protecting everything forever might not be a good idea
• An update from the Creative commons team on where they are so far

What does a little girl who has just had a three-and-a-half-hour antihistamine-induced nap do when she wakes up? (alt-click to download vidjo)

What a day.

I'm not normally so hyper, I think I've been affected by the BBC1 Nurseries Under Cover programme (broadcast on 12 August). It really did reinforce all a parent's most primary fears. In one incident, a child is given food he is alergic to. As his condition rapidly detereorates, the staff are seen handling him and pointlessly fussing. No staff member thinks of dialling 999 and none was equipped (or aware enough) to keep oxygenating the child's blood with CPR long enough to get him to hospital. The nursery staff call the child's mother and wait for her to collect her nearly dead baby.

In a gut-wrenching (reconstructed) scene, the mother is left to rush her child to the local GP's office. The tiny chance of survival the kid had was whitheld from him by the nursery staff. He died.

So it's sorted
Lifesaver Baby and Children
Saturday 4 September
09:00 to 13:00
(in Romford)

Wish me luck :-)

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, little girl vs bee (or wasp, I'll never know). Have you noticed how this August, London has been overrun by wasps? A friend of mine has an alleyway down the side of his house where for the last three weeks, the floor has been literally carpeted by wasps. Apparently they eat the sap that drops on the pavement.

So Pamella (...all of our staff are first-aid trained... why do they need to lie and how do they do it so quickly and easily?) called just as I was heading out the door for lunch with Chris. She's the nursery manager at Asquith, where Clemmie goes three days a week and a call from her is generally bad news.

Clemmie has been stung by a bee and we need you to take her to the doctor

Quick call to our doctor: surgery's at four O'clock this afternoon, bring her around then which is nice, because Ruth, my mother, carries a syringe of adrenalin around in her purse so that when she gets stung by a wasp and stops breathing she can jab herself (I'm thinking Nicolas Cage in The Rock here...) and hope to survive the incident.

So now little Clementine's heart is going to stop and I won't be there to help (like I'm qualified--note to self: sort the ****ing first-aid course TODAY). I'm running around the house trying to find the car keys, Clem's blankie to keep her warm so she doesn't go into shock and looking for apple juice and biscuits and I call Pamela back from the mobile in a panic.

ring...ring...ring... pause... fax machine brrrruiiiiiiiii

So Clemmie is lying on the floor in the toddler room and everyone at Asquith is running around like the headless, under-paid, under-qualified chickens that they are and NOT ANSWERING THE DAMN PHONE so I rush out the door and try again on the mobile

Hello, Asquith Court Pamela speaking

So I scream at P that someone needs to stay with Clemmie every second that they need to be ready to rush her to A&E should there be any change in her breathing or swelling or...

So as we drive back from the Royal Free, with Clementine's tummy full of yummy paracetamol we dose by weight--the amount may seem a little larger than what you give her at home (13.4 Kilos) and antihistamine elixir Clemmie keeps asking for more pine nuts and drinks her apple juice with satisfied little squirts.

She was born at the Royal Free, she drove me over there two weeks ago when I tore my little toe open and held my hand when I got stitches, she keeps going back and we're getting to know the place quite well. I know it's corny, but for an under-funded NHS facility, it's brilliant. Everyone at A&E is friendly, patient, understanding and supportive and the separate pediatrics waiting room is brilliant. Seeing your daughter muck about in the ball-pool really takes the edge off a frightened parent's nerves.

So, Doctor Davina and Nice Italian Nurse Man, thanks:-)

Can be as confusing as it can be extraordinarily painful. I am having an uncommonly shitty morning and it really hurts--arse. Arse, arse, feck.

Just had a lovely morning in the rain with Clem. We were gonna do the painting thing, but then I remembered the stables at the London Equestrian Center (Clem liked Albert best I think--lots of fuzzy mane in the face etc) in Lullington Garth, Woodside Park (you know, near Finchley). Funny thing little girls and horses. In any case, this week is Pony Week at the L.E.C. and the place was packed with nine-year-old girls in very expensive leathery riding stuff so Clementine got a major close-up display of horse grooming with all the trimmings (droppings, mud and rain).

After that, the trip to Tesco didn't seem that exciting really...

As long as I'm messing about with the video capture on the ixus, one of the nicest things (well, one of many many nice things, but one that stands out in a particular way) about having a young child is the way they fall asleep on you.

More specifically, after all the time you spend reading stories, making hot milk, cajolling, singing, bouncing and otherwise exercising your most potent diplomatic muscle in an incessant battle to get the reluctant toddler to bed, one of the nicest things is the way your baby's hair smells when you wake her from her lunchtime nap and she nuzzles into your shoulder:-)

(alt-click on a picture to download the movie)

I mention Clem's adventures on swings in an earlier post. If you read this blog on your mobile phone (or indeed just download stuff via the web and then copy it over), you'll be able to see very bad Dad In Action (3gp format--86k)

(best with sound turned on)

I make tracy Island out of yellow play-do and get as far as the nice abstract blob of the island, the runway with the fold-back trees and am just starting on the Mies VDR square buildings when Clemmie attacks and eats the buildings.

She then eats them just as quickly as i can shape them...

So I've been thinking about making wooden toys. Here are some shots from the Thorpeness Toys Ltd secret development lab, where engineer Clementine Luz Falby is taking Mr Nay Nay through his paces.