Rome - Day 4

We had thought about visiting the catacombs, but discovered that they were several different sets of them, and all were well outside the city walls. What sounded like the best ones looked like they would be shut anyway, so we thought we'd stick to seeing some more sights nearer to hand.

We started by heading back across the Forum to take a look at a piece of brick and cement work.
This was the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine, a set of huge arches that we'd seen in the distance on previous days, but hadn't gone right up to.
This type of dome work, inlaid with hexagonal patterns has been copied over time around the world (we saw a few examples in the Vatican), but these are the originals.




Past the Colosseum again, then headed south west.

"What did the Romans ever do for us"
"..err the Aquaducts?"



We passed a couple of people getting married, having their picture taken - so we may have featured stumping past in the background.

A short walk along a dual carriageway and we were at the Baths of Caracalla.
Because it was Valentines day, the admission fee was two for the price of one.

These are huge ruins. The floors have all caved in, but the walls are pretty much at the original height, so you get a good idea of the scale of the place when it was fully in use. As usual any decent artefacts have been robbed out a long time ago, but you could still see, and walk on some of the original mosaic floor.

We even managed to do a bit of "excavation" of our own - we discovered pieces of mosaic floor underneath one of the gravel paths that we were walking on.







It was a bright sunny morning, so had a pleasant time wandering about, and sitting around in the ruins. Started to get mushy in the sunshine, so I was told that it was time to go.

We followed the line of one of the old city walls, through a suburban area - everybody lives in flats. We got our first sight of the pyramid that we were looking for - this is in the picture at the top of this post.

This is the Pyramid of Caius Cestius - a chap who had spent some time in Egypt, and who freed his slaves on his death, so they built him this splendid funerary monument.







Behind the pyramid is the Protestant Cemetery this is also known as the "English" Cemetery, and is in fact a "Non-Catholic" cemetery. We took a look inside (request for donations in a box at the entrance) and hunted out a few Dead Poets.

This is the grave of that famous whinger Keats. He didn't want his name on the tombstone, so the chap who paid for it - the artist Joseph Severn - who died years later and was buried next to him, put it on his tombstone instead.




Shelley's ashes lie under this stone (which reminds me that there's a picture of his funeral pyre in the Walker Gallery in Liverpool)



and this is the grave of Goethe.



On from the cemetery, and a circular route back towards the city centre took us the site of the Circus Maximus. We were expecting a layout of streets on top of the site, but were pleased to discover that the site is a park. There's not much to see in the way of ruins, but the layout of the track is really evident. We sat and munched crisps for a while, then walked along the track, figuring out the turning circle of a chariot.




Since the camera battery had ran out the previous day we decided to walk back along the Tiber to the Castel Sant'Angelo, to take a few more pictures of the castle.

We passed the Portico of Octavian which must have been a rather splendid fish market in Medieval times (it may have been Octavian's Forum, before he became Augustus and built a new, better one).




Walking this way we got to see the Jewish Quarter - this is the perhaps the original "Ghetto". This looks like the area where the Italian's come to eat, rather than the tourists.

Finally arrived at the Castel Sant'Angelo again, and took the extra snaps.




We spotted this little piazza on the way back, that we thought was worth a photo.



Valentines Day - so definitely a night for dining out. We decided to walk to the top of the Spanish Steps and go up the Via Veneto - which is the setting for the film La Dolce Vita. We walked up as far as Harrys Bar where the Rough Guide says Frank Sinatra and his cronies used to hang out. The street is all big, expensive looking (but probably very touristy) hotels. The restaurants are all "glass bubbles" on the pavement outside the hotels. We walked back down the street and picked what looked like a decent restaurant.

The food was good, and not too pricy. The walls were groaning under the weight of pictures of the owner photographed next to an array of celebrities - most in the restaurant itself, but quite a few not. He's probably some sort of celebrity stalker. They looked like they were having fun in some of the photos' with drunken partying in the middle of the road.

Rolled back down the Spanish Steps and back to the hotel.

Rome - Day Three

Just finished blogging about Day 3 of our trip to Rome.
Because I started the post on 9 March (saving it as draft and editing) the post is back here

Haven't blogged for a bit.

I really must get back to blogging again. Further updates on our trip to Rome also to follow soon - hopefully before we head off on the first of this year's two trips to Snowdonia.

Not been up to much over the past couple of weeks. Wished a couple of old friends (who are getting older) Happy Birthday - which was cool as we got down to some text and email chat. Found out where they were and what they're up to now.

Red Nose Day came and went. As always, we stayed up for the comedy, got upset by the pictures of people much worse off than ourselves, and bunged off a donation to pay for 10 lifesaving mosquito nets. A few days later I recieved an email to say that our donation had bounced. Being wary of a possible phishing scam I've carefully checked this out, and it looks like they genuinely didn't get my donation, so I'll have to send it off again.

Had the car MOT'd yesterday. I've yet to drop a vehicle off at the garage and have it pass first time, even when I've also requested a full service. Needed a new track rod/bearing joint this time. Went to Nationwide at the top of Penny Lane/Smithdown Place who have been OK in the past. The car is out of warranty now, so there's no point in going back to VW who would charge the same price just for the oil change, without doing any work, say they've taken the wheels off and had a look - without even taking the hubcaps off and then try to charge me for a bottle of "top-up" screenwash fluid - even though the screenwash is full.

Frodo had a major joint assessment yesterday - i.e. he was examined, tested and discussed by his teacher, headmistress, educational psychologist, speech therapist and school doctor and parents. He's making progress, and looks like he will continue to make progress, but really needs to have a boost to assist his language difficulties, which are probably holding back his progress in other areas.

Had to fob off the idiot doctor chairing the meeting who was suggesting the use of drugs to increase his attention - Frodo is not hyperactive so they wouldn't be appropriate. Apparently the drugs have similar effects to cocaine - hmmmm maybe I need to sort out my attention difficulties...

Net result is that it's recommended that Frodo attends a school next year that has a dedicated language unit to help him, with a view to bringing him back to his current school when it's appropriate to do so. The school's that have these resources tend to be in the most deprived areas, so that they can get the funding (the more "free school dinners" you have, the more money you get!). He could go into the mainstream of the school with the language unit, but that would be a school that is 97th in the league tables, whereas his current school is about 4th.

Next we've got to visit a school or two, and have another meeting with teachers, advisory teachers etc - to make sure that we think this decision is OK and see if a place can be sorted for him for next year.

Happy Birthday Cha0tic

Not blogged here much lately - mainly because I've been composing the next instalment of our trip to Rome. My intention was not to interrupt the flow with blogging trivia, but since this is taking me ages to write up and load up the pictures I thought I'd just get back to blogging. (You can use the labels to collect the pieces of the Rome stuff together anyway).

Wishing Cha0tic a very Happy Birthday today - and in keeping with the sort of mushy sentiments that are customary on these occasions...

"May the Gnome of good fortune festoon the dank cellar of your life with the fungus of happiness."

Rome - Day 3

We set off early the next day, to walk westwards across the Tiber for about a mile to the Vatican City and St Peter's Square and Basilica.

St Peter's Square is one of those large impressive pieces of architecture that you can't see until you're right inside it.



Something about seeing priests travelling in large groups, and posing for photographs in the square (you can just about make out a group in the photo below) made me think of "Father Ted".



Queued for about 20 minutes to get inside St Peter's Basilica. Apart from the richly carved doors, the outside of this building only gives a few clues as to how over-ornate the inside is. Too much detail for the eye to take in. I soon began to realise that rather than being a big fancy church the whole place is in reality a splendiferous Papal Mausoleum. A bit like the Valley of the Kings, but for Popes, rather than Pharoahs.

I couldn't help but think that here's a religion that's really missing the point. The people that built this place would have definitely picked the wrong cup from the choice of possible Holy Grails.





People were falling down at their knees in front of altars to various deceased Popes. Some seemed to be more popular than others. At one point during our exploration we descended to the basement and tiptoed past a large crowd, kneeling at a big white slab under which lay the last John-Paul.

One of the spookiest, and most unbelievably fantastic sights is a monument to Pope Alexander VII by Bernini. Over a doorway to a chapel is what looks like a drapery of cloth - but is actually carved from marble. Not quite fully emerging from the cloth is a skeleton carrying an hourglass.




Most people were spending their time wowing at this sculpture, and completely ignoring the alter next to it, that commemorates the spot where the concept of the Immaculate Conception was defined.

Here's a picture of me. The chap wearing the crown that I'm standing in front of is Atilla the Hun



One thing that I didn't want to miss was The Sistine Chapel. It took us a while to figure out that you couldn't get to it from St Peter's, but instead had to go out of St Peter's square, and around the walls to the Vatican Museum - the Chapel features as part of the Museum - therefore attracting a fee to get inside it.

As we walked around the walls of the Vatican we came across a few beggars. We'd seen some the previous day too, hanging around some of the major sites. Not nearly as many as I remember from the last time I was here, but that was in the middle of the summer, and this time we were "off-peak".



We stopped off at a post office to post some postcards back home. Two were for Frodo and Samwise, with pictures of Gladiator helmets. Sat in the queue hastily trying to look up the Italian for "Stamp". It turned out to be "Stampe".

Paid our Euro's to get into the Vatican Museum, and started our trek, following signs for "Capella Sistina", through gallery after gallery of statues, paintings, frescoes, mosaics, pottery and other booty that the Popes have looted and stored throughout the centuries.

As is often the way with large collections like this, much to much to see and take in. You follow the crowd like herds of sheep heading for the Sistine Chapel, which is situated at the very end of the Museum.

We were really impressed with the Gallery of Maps - where the whole of Italy is painted as relief maps onto the walls. No pictures here, but we liked this place so much that we bought a book. There was a particularly good fresco of the Battle of Lepanto

After the Gallery of maps was a choice - either a shortcut to the Sistine Chapel, or a tour through the apartments of the Borghias i.e. the Raphael Stanze
We went for the tour. Glad that we did since the frescoes in these rooms were fairly spectacular. No pictures allowed again here (understandably). My favourite was The School of Athens, which is a who's who of artists and philosophers. The rest were various battle scenes, depicting the victories of Constantine, plus some other historical wars (I think that our pal Atilla featured again). Muscle bound blokes wearing gossamer shorts were a recurring theme - we tried to figure out if the shorts had been painted on afterwards as some sort of modesty adjustment.

Finally we arrived at the large, barn-like structure that is The Sistine Chapel. Immediately we joined the throngs of people milling about, getting a stiff neck by looking upwards. Michelangelo's ceiling artwork is everything it's cracked up to be - Literally as you can see where a couple of lumps have dropped out. The most famous centre piece with the Hand of God giving life to Adam has obviously dropped away in the past and been repainted by somebody else. The colours are really vivid, and the style is better and different to anything else that you've seen up to this point.

Obviously no camera shots allowed in here. There are seats around the edge of the chapel, so we found a gap and carried on gazing.
One picture was amusingly described in the Rough Guide as "God creating the Sun and Moon (and inadvertently creating a second Moon)".

On one of the end walls is a fantastic fresco called The Last Judgement. The blue of the background first catches your eye (the picture in the link doesn't do it justice), then you simply spend ages looking at the angelic and demonic figures fighting over posession of the figures representing souls.

There's a constant murmuring in the Chapel, as everybody discusses what they're looking at. This murmuring rises in volume every two or three minutes, at which point a loud "shhhhhhhhhh!" is issued by the Chapel guardians, and the murmuring dies down again.

We had about half an hour or so in here, before we were chased out. The Vatican museum closes at 13:30 in the early season, and on particular days, and at 15:30 on other days. We were visiting on a 13:30 closure day. Luckily we'd seen all that we wanted to see, unlike some who were arriving a little late and barely had time to step through the door, before they were ushered out of the other side. At least we got to see it. I've heard from relatives, and others that they'd missed seeing the Sistine Chapel because they got there too late.

Trekked back out of the museum, past lots of cabinets full of Papal Treasures that the staff were busy closing. We had time to eat in the Vatican Cafe before we left the museum - there wasn't a lot left, we had pasta, a cake and a drink. Couldn't help noticing that a couple of Priests on a nearby table, served by the same person, got a significantly larger portion than us.

Left the museum via a fantastic spiral staircase.



We left the Vatican and headed for the Castel Sant'Angelo. This was originally Hadrian's Mausoleum (ye knaa, the gadgee that built wor waall), but later became a treasure store for the Popes (there's an enormous treasure chest in one of the rooms), and a fortress.



I'd been here once before in 1984, probably because it's free entrance to students. A spiral tunnel, that was originally the funerary processional entrance leads into the heart of the castle.

You then find yourself wandering around several rooms, levels and bastions. At one point there's an enormous, stone ball flinging ballista.



There's a few museum pieces of armour and weapons. I was pleased to discover one that I remembered well from my last visit. It's a sword that has a flintlock pistol built into the handle, so that you can sneakily draw a sword, then shoot your opponent.

Finally we ended up on top of the castle, where there's a huge statue of St Michael drawing his sword (he was supposed to have been spotted up here, doing this at the end of a Plague).



There are some good views of St Peter's from here.



This is looking across Rome towards the Colusseum (although a dirty great 20th century monument gets in the way).



In front of the Castle is a bridge over the Tiber, The Ponte Sant Angelo, adorned with statues that reminded me of Charles Bridge in Prague.



The camera battery was drained at this point, so we didn't get any more pictures.

Headed back to the hotel. Decided we were too knackered to go hunting out a decent restaurant - so bought some snacks from a nearby shop and ate them in the hotel room, then debated what we would do on our last full day before we crashed.

Rome - Days 1 and 2

It's almost two weeks since we got back from Rome, and I haven't blogged much about the trip.

Here's my first post about what we did and saw on Day 1 and 2 of our 5 day visit to this ancient city.

We set out early on Sunday 11 Feb to drive down to Heathrow. Not being too bright eyed and bushy tailed at 06:00 in the morning I took a wrong turn after going over the Runcorn bridge. It took us about 15 minutes to find our way out of the unsignposted trap for the unwary traveller that is the area around Runcorn railway station, this involved going back over the Runcorn Bridge until we could find a place to turn around.

Panic over, we got down to the "Pink Elephant" car park at Heathrow by 09:00 with loads of time to spare for our flight at 12:30

A bumpy flight across to Rome (lots of turbulence) with the worst air passenger in the world sitting next to me and crushing my hand we arrived in Rome's Fiumicino airport around 16:00.

We usually save ourselves money when we can by not bothering with arranging airport transfers at extortionate prices - e.g. 37 quid each for a pre-arranged taxi as opposed to a train and tube journey for about 8 quid each. This invariably means that the first foreign word we have to learn on arrival in a country is the "ticket".

This didn't take too long to suss out, even though there appeared to be four places you could buy tickets from. We picked the one that looked like it belonged to the train company, rather than a newsagent/gift shop.

Clutching our "bigliettes" we boarded the train. We then realised that the ticket had to be "validated" (i.e. punched) but there was no machine on the train to do this, so I found myself legging down the platform, finding a yellow machine, punching the tickets and dashing back onto the train with a minute or two to spare before it left.

Half an hour later we were in Rome's Termini railway station. More fun negotiating the tube - sussing out the machines to buy a ticket from, and the right platform.

We got out at Flaminio tube station and turned the corner into the Piazza del Popolo which according to the guide book is the best first view of Rome that you should have if you can arrange it - it's an ancient entrance to the city from the North.

Our hotel was just off this square. The Hotel Piranesi on the Via del Babuino, which is on the left of the church, behind the obelisk in this picture:



After checking in, and sussing out our room we went for and evening stroll. The hotel is at the top of il Tridente, three streets that fan out from the north of the city centre and lead into the rest of Rome.

We went found the Spanish Steps, then carried on until we found a Roman column that looked remarkably like Trajan's, but turned out to be the column of Marcus Aurelius. We took some pictures on the following day.





Found somewhere to eat just around the corner. This was probably the first most touristy place we could find, but it looked easy enough for a first meal when we couldn't be bothered going further afield. Food was OK, but I think the waiter was taking the piss by giving me a stein, and a beer for the lady, rather than the two beers that we ordered. Decided just to drink it anyway (I was on holiday after all).

Breakfast was in the basement of the hotel. They made up for not having a roof terrace by painting a mural of a rooftop view of the hotel surroundings around the wall - kept us out of the rain that was drizzling down from time to time.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. Two funny things actually:

We went out and discovered the speediness(not!) of Italian banking when we changed our first travellers cheque. This was after walking into a building that had the words "Bank" carved into the wall on the outside only to be told "this is an office". I suppose if it was in the UK I'd have been trying to change a travellers cheque in a trendy wine bar.

We decided to visit the Trevi Fountain, which we passed on the way to the Forum. The last time that I was here in 1982 doing an Inter-Rail tour with a bunch of pals, I chucked a coin in this fountain. My return here thus proving the myth that chucking a coin in the Trevi Fountain ensures your return to Rome (even though some Italian urchins with magnets on strings probably retrieved the coin moments later).



Because it was first thing on Monday morning there was no water in the fountain, and a couple of blokes were mooching around the empty pool with a hosepipe and a broom.
We weren't disappointed with this, as it's a sight most visitors are unlikely to see - besides which it was easy enough to return later in the week.



By 10am we were at Trajan's column which Pope Sixtus V has adorned with a statue of St Peter - this particular pope seems to have renovated Rome, sticking his name on any antique or ancient building that he could find.



We spent the morning wandering around the building sites that are the Forum of Trajan
and the Forum of Augustus"




We also took a look at the Forum of Caesar



This is the back of the Senate House, so I reckon that this is the spot where Julius was stabbed to death by Brutus and co.



We entered the main Roman Forum which is just at the bottom of the Palatine Hill and wins the prize for packing in the most ancient Roman ruins in one spot.

Here's the House of the Vestal Virgins



This is the temple of Antoninus and Faustina. There are a number of temples like this in Rome, where they've used the original temple structure and formed a church out of it. Some had just bricked up the gaps between the columns. This one just plonked the church in the middle of the temple.



You can see how the Romans built the big temple steps here. Instead of spending loads of money on huge marble blocks, they built an arch of bricks, then faced the curve of the arch with marble steps.



These are the front doors of the Temple of Romulus.



We also took a look at the spot in the Temple of Julius Caesar where his funeral pyre was alleged to have been. There were indeed bunches of flowers laid at this spot - as the guide books says. Odd to think that he's being worshipped to this day, although I suppose the name has continued through time Caesar - Kaiser - Tsar etc - even though it just means "hairy".

Although it was a drizzly Monday morning, by midday the place was full of Geeks with guidebooks so we headed out of the forum at the south end and got our first view of The Colosseum




After fobbing off some middle aged Italian blokes dressed in Roman fancy dress costumes, who charged for you to take photographs with them, and ignoring the guides who were trying to persuade you to hire their services and jump the queue (which only took about 15 or 20 minutes) we entered the Colosseum.

Spent the afternoon wandering around this famous amphitheatre.

Novelist Supermum pointed out that although the place was a historical killing ground where thousands died there was no atmosphere of horror or sorrow about the place (I've been to Auschwitz, so I know what she means).

She was right.

My theory is that perhaps this is because it was primarily a place entertainment ("Are you not entertained?"), and people are still going there to be impressed by the scale and grandeur of the place, and the excitement that went on there, rather than to dwell on the terror.






A flame haired she-warrior.



Bought a few postcards in the Colosseum shop, to send back to relatives, plus a couple depicting gladiator helmets to send back home to The Hobbits.

There was an exhibition of Greek statues related to the Iliad inside the arches on the second level, plus a gladiatorial mosaic.






We also had a good view of the Arch of Constantine, which we'd looked at close up before entering the Colosseum.



Before we headed back to the hotel we went back into the Forum and walked up the Palatine Hill - since our Colosseum ticket also gave us access to this. Lots of orange trees up here, with oranges still on them - even though it was February.

We went down the Palatine Hill, back through the Forum and up the Capitoline Hill. There's a statue of a bloke on a horse up here, which I took to be Hadrian, from the word HADRIANVS, amongst others on the plinth. It's actually a statue of Marcus Aurelius.

Note that unlike General Maximus in the film Gladiator he has no stirrups. These weren't invented until the 4th Century AD - an anachronism which Novelist Supermum points out every time we see the film.



Had a snack and a bottle of water in a side street cafe before heading back to the hotel for a kip.

Woke up hungry again so decided to get changed, go out and look for somewhere to eat. Found a nice little Trattoria on the Via di Ripetta, not far from the hotel where we had a thoroughly decent evening meal, and a bottle of wine.

Picked up one of the books that I'd bought to read in Heathrow (The Malice Box by Martin Langfield), but passed out before I could get very far.

Hot Fuzz

If you like The Omen, Straw Dogs, The Shining, Mad Max, 28 Days Later, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Dusk 'Till Dawn, Bad Boys (II), Point Break, Commando, The Matrix, Superman (2), The Terminator and a host of other action films, if you thought Shaun of the Dead was OK, but you absolutely loved Spaced then Hot Fuzz is a film that you should not miss.

Even if you don't particularly enjoy the above, but you like a good laugh, with a lot of action, and some Hammer style horror thrown in, then you should see this film.

We went to see it on Friday. We laughed, we jumped, we laughed, we shrieked, we laughed, we were grossed out, we laughed, we shouted out the heroes response to the bad guy before he said it, we laughed, we named the reference to another film, we laughed, we kept on laughing, did I mention that we laughed?

Haven't enjoyed a film so much since the latest James Bond. I don't think that I've ever laughed at a film from start to finish as much as this one.

Went to see it with, amongst others, Novelist Supermum and impworks who both blog about the film here and here

Definitely one that I'll be getting when it comes out on DVD.

Shrove Tuesday

I've been meaning to blog about our trip to Rome last week - I'll get around to this later in the week.

In the meantime it's Shrove Tuesday which means that tonight I've been making pancakes.

I had two over-enthusiastic assistants, who helped stir the batter mixture. This resulted in two floury, sticky little boys.

They also seemed rather keen to see me drop the pancakes on the flour during the tossing process.

We applied freshly squeezed lemon juice and golden syrup and scoffed the lot! Yum! Yum!

Also made the annual promise of having pancakes again at another point in the year - somehow we never seem to do this.

Senatus Populusque Romanus

Here's the proof that we were there.

"What did the Romans ever do for us?"

"Er... The Drainage!"

(OK so I haven't rotated the photo - you'll just have to stand on your head).



Novelist Supermum has a couple of photos on her website as well.

All roads lead to...

Doesn't time fly?

It only seems like a couple of weeks ago that I was booking a short break in Rome.

That time has now come, Hoorah! Setting off tomorrow. I don't suppose that it matters which direction we set off in ;-)

Goldfish Rocks!

Almost exactly a month ago I blogged about a website design/editing/generating/publishing software tool that I had discovered - Goldfish by Fishbeam

I've been working on re-engineering Novelist Supermum's website using this software. The idea is that when I've finished she can use the software to edit and update the site herself - and she doesn't need to know much at all about HTML, XHTML, CSS, W3C etc to do this.

At the moment the software is only available for Windows as a Beta Test version (the earlier versions were for Apple Mac only) which means that I've come across a few bugs.

These were mainly in the correct rendition of text boxes in the WYSIWYG editor i.e. the rendition of the text layout sometimes screws up in the editor, although it's fine when viewed in the browser. Also in some yet to be determined circumstances you lose a hypertext link after editing it, and for some reason you have to destroy the text box and recreate it to cure the problem. This may be related to the text layout problem. I'm going to report this as bugs.

The generated code is supposed to be W3C compliant. I've found some bugs in the generation that means that it isn't, although it's pretty close. I also found a way of implementing a favicon (which isn't supported), and I have no choice but to include this code in the wrong place.

On the whole though it does what we want i.e. allow a non-geek to design a website, and generate and publish it straight from the design.

I think that the results are acceptable. I've released the site early (with one page outstanding to complete, and a single broken link) since we're off to Rome next week (Tax deductible research for a professional Romantic Fiction writer!), and an Ebook Challenge needs to be online before Valentines day.

Should be even better when they fix the bugs.

Anyway enough rambling - here's the new(ish) look website - www.romancefiction.co.uk

Reading Trauma

Frodo got a new reading book from school yesterday, but he was in tears when he came home with it.

It's only his fourth book, but they'd given him one with all new words in, and none that he recognised or knew from his previous books. Poor lad must have gone from thinking that he could read, to realising that he couldn't.

Managed to calm him down, print and cut out the 8 new words and go through the book with him, talking about the pictures and playing word matching games.

By the end of this he was recognising and reading 3 of the words, and having help with the others. He then went upstairs to draw and colour for a bit, so I dropped the new book onto his bed.

I little while later I was writing a note to the school to let them know that he'd lost his confidence because of the sudden jump to the new words. Frodo trotted down the stairs with the new book and read all of it to us - only stumbling over one of the words! I think he'd been reading it to himself upstairs on his own.

I saw his teacher this morning and told her what had happened i.e. that he may need a more gradual introduction to new words so that he isn't put off trying to read.

Snow Day

Thin coating of snow on the ground this morning. Enough to scrape some snow up, and make snowballs. Frodo was late for school this morning because Daddy was teaching him the rudiments of snowball fighting. Samwise was looking out of his bedroom window, so we lobbed a few at him - which he seemed to enjoy.

All melted away now. Novelist Supermum took a couple of photos from the living room window:

Sinking Ferry

Interesting view of out of the window at work this morning of a sinking ferry, the Sea Express 1. The news says that a cargo ship hit it in the fog. AIS says that the cargo ship was the "Alaska Rainbow" (can't find a pic of this one).

Right now there's a tug-boat (The Oakgarth) in place behind it (i.e. the end that's in the water), and their moving another tug (The Switzer Bidston) in front of it (i.e. the end that's sticking right out of the water).

All of the passengers got off OK - bit of a bummer for the people who's cars are still on board.

Will have to go and take a closer look at lunch time.

No Basketball Here

Cleared all the waste and rubble out of the now roofless old garage. Took the door that sticks when shut off it's hinges and removed all of the glass from the side window. Removed or hammered in any old nails and hooks from the walls and joists, then hosed the whole place down. Should be pulling down the walls that don't form the property boundary down next month.

In the meantime it makes a nice little enclosed play area in which Frodo and Samwise can kick a ball around.

Some kids are never satisfied. 2 year old Samwise asked me why his new playground didn't have any basketball hoops!

Frodo Reads His First Book!

Yesterday Frodo read all of the words in his first reading book - an Oxford Reading Tree Stage 1 First Words Story Book with the somewhat dubious sounding title of "Six in a Bed".

Spoiler Warning! Don't read on if you don't want to know the plot of the whole book! ;-)

Mum and Dad.
Mum, Dad and Chip.
Mum, Dad, Chip, and Biff
Mum, Dad, Chip, Biff, Kipper
and Floppy.

(note the sneaky trick of moving the last "and" to the last beach to catch out any kid who's spotted a pattern).

Fantastic! Today he's got a follow up book titled "Fun at the Beach".

Is it just my perverse mind, or is somebody having a Captain Pugwash Urban Myth style laugh with the titles? The others in the series are:

"The Pancake"
"A Good Trick"
"Floppy Floppy"