A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve

I'm currently enjoying this fourth novel in a quartet (quadrilogy?).

A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve

Despite what the cover notes say, i.e. "defies classification", the genre is most definitely steampunk.

e.g. Traction cities - mobile conurbations powered by huge steam engines that roam around the globe hunting down smaller, weaker settlements for their resources. Municipal Darwinism - it's a town-eat-town world.
Airships, flying machines, "old-tech", zombie cyborg stalkers, steam powered limpet submarines.

It's supposed to be a children's book. This means that there's violence and gore, but no sex.

Burns Night

Well we had a Haggis, some "tatties" and a glass of Scotch Whisky for tea, so I guess that we've had a Burns Supper of sorts.

Next year I'll try and do the toasts. Though I might skip the bagpipes and the Scottish Country Dancing. :)

Label or Tag Cloud

My list of Blog Post Labels is getting long and cumbersome - due to a large number of labelled posts, many with a label that's only been used once.

To make this a little easier on the eye I've added a Label Cloud (aka Tag Cloud) to this blog.

A Tag Cloud is a visual depiction of tags/labels used on a website or blog. The Tags are listed alphabetically, and the frequency is shown using font size and/or colour.

I used the easy to follow instructions found here to set this up.
Setup and configuration for New Blogger Tag Cloud.

I've decided to only show labels in the cloud that have been added to 2 or more posts.

Blow Painting

Quality time spent with the children today making Christmas "Thank You" cards.

Blow painting and fold over paint blots have worked well.

Thanks to Mister Maker for the idea.

Torchwood Series 2, Episode 1.

I'd kind of given up on Torchwood towards the end of the last series, however the first episode of the new series was a hurricane of fresh air.

Great performance by James Marsters.

"That's a Poodle". "Nice!"

Good News and Bad News

Bad News:
Today should have been the day that we had a wall knocked through from the kids playroom to the garden and a set of French Windows fitted, plus a new front door.

I took a day off work for this. The people doing the job were due to arrive in the morning and take a day to do the job (plus a bit of warranty resealing on the windows that we had fitted a few years ago).

No show by 10:30, so I rang the installation supervisor - no reply. Customer care line 1 - no reply. Customer care line 2 - an answerphone message - left a message. The salesman who did the deal - no reply, left a voicemail message. Finally the showroom number. I'm smelling a rat now. A calmly spoken chap took my details and said that he would get somebody to call me back.

Eventually the salesman called back. The company has gone into liquidation yesterday!

Oh Joy!

There may be a solution - the salesman says that he can to get another company to do the job, at no extra cost for us. We're going to find out more when we see him on Saturday. Hopefully we can do this although, it could be another month before the job gets done.

Good News:
New BIG TELLY arrived today - 32 inch LCD.

Too early and too expensive to get a High Definition DVD Player at this stage, due to the format wars going on between Blue Ray and HD DVD. So I've found the next best thing - a standard DVD Player that can upscale the output up to 1080P (and it only cost 50 quid).

Still getting used to it - compared to the old telly, the image is sharp enough to shave with.

Birthday Cake

Novelist Supermum's birthday today.

Frodo and Samwise gave her a selection of DVD's, and I gave her a fistful of book tokens.

Samwise is still too young to be able to keep a secret for more than an hour - so he gave her a bunch of flowers yesterday (too difficult to hide and keep alive). Then he let slip that we'd bought her a cake.

He didn't let slip what type of cake it was until this morning, which didn't matter as we'd decided to show her it before obliterating it with candles.

Samwise chose the cake, and decided that what Mummy would really like was a Dinosaur cake featuring a Velociraptor. It's "officially licensed" by the Natural History Museum, and featured a Velociraptor sculpted in icing, with a Jurassic background. It also came with a bunch of Dinosaur stickers, and a competition to win 200 quids worth of Dinosaur stuff (we're entering it now).

We took the cake round to Grandma's house, who treated us all to a Birthday meal.

So just 1 birthday cake, a cheese selection, some biscuits, a few crisps, half a bottle of Coca Cola & Lemonade and 8 bottles of Mexican Beer to finish off before we begin the New Year's healthy diet and exercise resolution.

Panto Season

Took Frodo to see his first ever pantomime today. A matinee performance of Aladdin at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool.

He tends to shy away and hide from clowns and other children's entertainers, so we weren't too sure how much he'd enjoy the full 2 hours of a panto. This year we thought that he might be ready for it.

He was a little overawed as we entered the theatre, and took our seats, looking around at the sets and the stage lighting, and getting a little worried as the place filled up.

At the Everyman you're close to the stage, no matter where you sit. We were 2 rows back on the "benches" on the left hand side, so we were fairly well amongst it when the action started (Never sit on the front row for the panto, unless your prepared to become part of the act). Straight into the first song (it's a Rock 'n Roll panto) which started out with 3 drummers bashing out a rhythm. This got Frodo's attention straight away, although he was still a little wary of what was going on.

He really perked up a couple of songs in, when the pantomime Dame appeared to do some "gardening". 2 plants came up from trapdoors in the floor, and then squirted the audience with water. The dame then ran round spraying everybody with an array of ever increasing in size water emitting devices (plant spray, small hose and supersoakers). Frodo thoroughly enjoyed getting wet. A lady who may have thought she was relatively safe about 4 or 5 rows back was right in the path of one of the plants and got drenched as the song ran it's course.

After that Frodo clapped along with the songs and joined in the fun, booing and hissing at Evil Uncle Abanazer, and laughing at all of the "fart" jokes.

Some poor guy in the front row called Tony got "picked on" by the cast, and was the butt of a number of jokes, culminating with getting him up for the "audience participation bit", since he hadn't done it well enough the first time.

During one of the songs I got to sing a word into the Dames microphone, as I was sat on the end next to the aisle - everybody should be famous for 3 seconds, so I guess that was my moment.

As always, as well as the theatrics the cast provided the musical backing, as well as the theatrics. They all swap instruments, or take turns whilst another is singing - which really makes for a great show.

Frodo got to see several trapdoor disappearances and reappearances, smoke effects, coloured lighting, glitter ball lighting and flash bombs.

Two small motor-scooters were used on stage at one point - Aladdin let his fall over (not part of the act) and almost crashed it into Princess Willow's scooter when riding it around afterwards. The lights went down and the scooters appeared again as small flourescent models flying above the stage under Ultra Violet lights.

Another scene had the cast disappear into a set of Tardis doors, and reappear on the other side of the stage in 1975. Frodo particularly enjoyed the genie of the lamp, who sported a pink afro wig and riffed on an electric guitar when he appeared.

Previous panto experience proved useful as Aladdin was left trapped in the cave of wonders and the lights came up for the interval. Novelist Supermum was despatched to purchase 3 ice-creams, whilst I legged it with Frodo to the toilet. We beat the queue for both and were quickly back in our seats munching the ice-creams waiting for the second act.

Everybody was on their feet for the finale, although Frodo was flagging a little by this point. He looked a little tearful at the end, but only because it was all over. He seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed it, so we'll take him again next year.

Samwise is just a little too young for a panto at the moment, so he stayed at home with Grandma - although we reckon that he'll be ready for it next year.

We've been for the last few years without children, so no beers in the Everyman Bistro afterwards this time.

Really glad that Frodo enjoyed it - he was telling me about the genie of the lamp when he went to bed.

Useful Origami

Came across this useful Origami today - a way to fold an A4 sized paper sheet in order to store safely up to 2 CD/DVDs.

Took Frodo swimming today. He discovered how to use his goggles to see underwater and transformed into "Fish Boy" for a while.

Got back to find further progress had been made on the back garden, and a retaining wall for the soil has now been built, using breeze blocks recycled from the demolished garage.

Samwise came out to have a look, and play at "Secret Agents" with Frodo. They communicated using pretend walkie-talkies, and saying "over" after every sentence. Frodo was "Agent 1" and Samwise was "Agent 5". When we asked Samwise what had happened to Agents 2, 3 and 4 he quickly gave the answer "They're out an a mission".

This Old House

According to the deeds that we were given by the Land Registry, our house was built in 1908. So this year our house is 100 years old.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2008 everybody!

Capital of Culture - here we go!

Watched Jools Holland's Hootenanny on the box. Went out to watch the fireworks as Big Ben bonged the midnight hour. Got asked in to a spontaneous party that was going on at one of the neighbours houses. Nipped back for Novelist Supermum and we both went round for an hour or so.

Got back in time to see the last couple of songs on the Hootenanny. Good to see that Seasick Steve was on again - who I remember enjoying this time last year

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to all!