Funny

Indian Summer

Wednesday 14th October 2015Friday 16th October 2015Baggie

Thought I would try to sneak in a quick update between Amélie’s fifth birthday and Éowyn’s seventh. There is not a great excuse as in past years, but considering the Indian Summer that we are enjoying then it seems only right and fitting that I celebrate it on the website.

The girls have been at school for over a month now and are settling in nicely. For Éowyn it is a matter of getting used to being one of the youngest children on campus (even though she is one of the oldest in her year) and for Amélie it is simply being in full-time education.

As you may recall Amélie was getting upset each morning, complaining (mainly to Lucinda) that she didn’t want to go to school. We spoke to her teacher about this and she said that Amélie was never upset at school. She walks through the door each morning with a smile on her face and takes an active part in all the day’s activities. Therefore, our suspicions that Amélie was getting upset not about going to school but about what she was going to miss out with Lucinda seemed to be true. The fact that Amélie only got upset with Lucinda and not with me, strengthened this suspicion since she wasn’t going to miss out on anything with me, as I was going to work. She was hoping that the waterworks would work with mommy. They certainly had an effect on Lucinda, I had to be the bad guy.

That phase is now past. Amélie doesn’t get upset in a morning, well not that often, there are the occasional wobbles but on the whole she quite happily gets ready and heads off to school with a smile on her face.

As I mentioned in an earlier update, the school have employed not only a traffic light system for disruptive behaviour but a similar system for good behaviour. There is also a reward system for the class as a whole. Individually, they can can receive a bronze, silver or gold reward for positive behaviour and as a group the class can earn tokens and when they have reached a pre-agreed amount (1000) they will get a class reward. Both girls have earned their respective classes token and both girls have been put on bronze multiple times.

In addition I came home from work last Friday to be greeted as I walked through the front door to be told by Éowyn that she had earned the accolade of ‘Star of the Day’. This was obviously excellent news and Lucinda and I were extremely pleased and told her so. However, not wanting to be outdone by her big sister Amélie came home on the same day with the news that she was the ‘Star of the Week’, well what could one say? So as I am praising my two daughters Ezra comes up to tell me that he has earned a butterfly sticker for good behaviour at playgroup. What a way to end a week!

As the title alludes and the opening paragraph states, we have experienced somewhat of an Indian summer. This coupled with the fact that I now, for the first time in many years, have two out of every three weekends off we have been able to take advantage of the unseasonal warm temperatures. We decided that we would also take advantage of our National Trust membership and visit nearby Runnymede.

As anyone with a soupçon of English history will recognise the name Runnymede. On the 15th June 1215 (800 years ago) King John was forced to cede to certain political reforms by rebel barons incensed by the taxes that King John had levied on them to fund unsuccessful wars against France to regain the ancestral lands that he had lost to King Phillip II. This agreement was known as the ‘Great Charter’ (Magna Carta in the language of law: Latin).

The Magna Carta carries little weight in modern law but one of its remaining legacies is right to a fair trial by jury. Therefore, when Surrey County Council and the National Trust commissioned Hew Locke to install a permanent artwork on the ancient meadow to commemorate the 800th anniversary of that historic document the result was ‘The Jurors‘. A dozen bronze chairs each decorated with panels representing significant struggles for freedom and equal rights face each other as if waiting for occupants to sit and debate some topic of importance. The public are encouraged to sit in the chairs and engage with thoughts that they invoke.

Admittedly it was probably a little too highbrow for the baguettes (teach ’em young) however they did enjoy sitting in the chairs and for some reason Ezra somehow gravitated toward the chair with the panel representing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (see the photo below). Was it just random? He wasn’t too interested in the panels on the other chairs. Or did he just know? I haven’t quite made up my mind on that one! Perhaps we’ll just go to Legoland next time!

This isn’t the only historic subject that Éowyn has been learning about of late. At school she had to take in the ubiquitous building block of any school project the empty cereal box. Each member of the class brought in said box and had to make and decorate a Tudor house. Éowyn really enjoyed this display of art and duly earned a trip to Bronze for her efforts. We thought that this was just one of those things that the children do and then they bring it home and you have keep it in a prominent place until they have forgotten about it and dispose of it at some ripe opportunity. Not so, for Éowyn’s Tudor house.

Not really the Tudor era (although undoubtedly there would still be Tudor house around), Éowyn’s class is also learning about the Great Fire of London of 1666 (another of those historical dates that the majority of people born in these isles would know). To demonstrate the devastation that the fire wrought and why it spread so quickly the year 2 classes placed their ‘houses’ in streets in the school playground and the teachers set a fire in one house and watched it spread around the cardboard London. What a great demonstration and something that they will all remember. When I found out what they were doing I was disappointed that I had to go to work and couldn’t stay and watch the fireworks. I quite enjoy a good fire!

Building Tudor houses hasn’t been Éowyn only display of artistic tendencies of late. She also decided to write a song for ‘Show and Tell’. A photograph of the first draft can be seen on our Flickr pages replete with musical notation for the percussion solo (a homemade shaker – a plastic bottle filled with toy beads), ignore the atrocious spelling. The transcript (with correct spelling) is in the postscript to this update. Not a Lennon and McCartney but not a bad first attempt I am sure you will agree.

Éowyn’s spelling is getting better as she has a weekly spelling test in addition to her daily reading and weekly athletics homework. She has been recently moved up a level in reading and thus the books are a little more difficult. Nevertheless she reads them quite well and blends the words that she doesn’t know. However occasionally there are slips of the tongue which are quite amusing to the 9-year-old inside of me. The mis-reading of the word busy as busty and the phrase solid bed as soiled bed, made me smile and made Éowyn guffaw when I explained the joke. Bad father, I know!

Amélie has also begun reading and it is now nice that we have to sit down with them both and help them to read. It is something that we both enjoy doing at the end of the day as it gives you a little bit of quiet time with just one of the children without feeling bad that you are not attending to the others at the same time. Lucinda and I take it in turns so that the other can focus on the other two allowing that special time for some one on one learning.

Before I leave you today it has to be noted that the earliest recorded Bewick’s swan has been sighted on our shores. This Siberian visitor overwinters in the UK to escape the bitter cold of its homeland. An early sighting normally heralds a cold winter. Indeed there is a Russian saying: The Swan brings snow on his bill and this is because they tend to be just ahead of the cold weather. This is not that far off the truth in the fact that although we are still enjoying sunny days it has turned much colder lately and heavy snow has fallen across Poland and Germany and France, Belgium and the Netherlands have had snow fall. So put aware the summer clothes, turn the heating on and get the winter coats out of the wardrobe, as the Starks would say: Winter is Coming.

Peace and Love

Baggie

PS. Éowyn’s song in full:

When I woke up I saw a butterfly and a bee flying sweetly, aren’t they precious?

They made me smile, smile, smile.

Come on and celebrate and sing to nature ???

Celebrate and smile, smile, smile ?

Sing, sing, sing ?

Come on and we can celebrate,

Celebrate and sing to nature

And everyone will see that nature is beautiful.

Like my song?

Like my glasses?

Like my hat?

Is this what you do?

Or is it like this?

Mommy

The Baguettes

Running around in a circle

Ice Cream!

These are cool

This is my favourite

Just getting comfy

Let me take a photo

Let’s have a look

Not impressed

We like this one

Read this one Dad

Still reading?

Alien Monkey

Close up

Cheeky Smile

Monochrome Auntie Liz

Masterchef Judge

Hmmm Nutella

A trio of wins

Sunday 27th September 2015Monday 28th September 2015Baggie

Although you have had three updates this month it seems an awful long time since I have given you a detailed summary of life in chez Bagnall. Let me see if I can put that right.

September has been dominated by the return to term-time routine for Éowyn and the start of full time education for Amélie. For Éowyn this means a new teacher, in Miss Bernath and a change of campus. It is also a slightly earlier start and 20 extra minutes at the end of the day. She still seems to be enjoying school but now there will be more homework. In addition to the mathletics and reading homework, she will, from next week, have a weekly spelling test. This is probably her weakness at the moment. She finds maths relatively easy (or at least the maths that she has at the moment) and her literacy is very good and is always praised for her imaginative writing, however her spelling is awful. It will be interesting to see how this improves as she receives more spelling homework.

Amélie on the other hand is no longer enjoying school. That is not exactly true. She enjoys it when she gets there and speaks fondly of it when she comes home but is getting herself upset when she is thinking about have to go to school. Indeed in a morning, and on occasion before she goes to bed, she has been crying saying that she doesn’t want to go to school, because she has no friends and it is too small. It is true that the classroom is smaller than she was used to at pre-school, but I think it is the former that is more the issue. Amélie is not backward in coming forward in introducing herself to people but most of the class have come through nursery together and so have already formed friendships that Amélie is not party to. This will take time but we have no doubt that it will happen but it is not easy to see your daughter so upset.

The school have always employed a traffic light system for behaviour. Everyone starts on green and depending on your behaviour then you can be put on blue, yellow or red depending on how badly you have behaved. This is good for making the children think about their disruptive behaviour but doesn’t reward children for good behaviour. There have always been stickers for good work (and both girls have received a number of stickers for good work so far this term) but nothing for good behaviour or sustained good work. Hence the school has introduced bronze, silver and gold for good behaviour or good work. I like this and am pleased to let you know that not only have our girls remained on green they have both been awarded bronze level so far this month.

The girls are not the only ones who have received a reward for good work. As I mentioned earlier this year, NBC (the Premier League rights holders in the United States won an Emmy in the 36th Sports Emmy Awards for Outstanding Technical Team Studio. NBC were gracious, not only to recognise the fact that my department assist them in their technological endeavours but to include me and a number of other IMG staff members on the official list of winners. I was very touched by this kind gesture and NBC had no obligation to include us in their win nevertheless it means that I am an Emmy winner and entitled to say so in perpetuity. However, just saying it isn’t enough and as an Emmy winner I am entitled to buy a statue, so I did. This has now arrived and sits with pride of place in the lounge. It also means that I have become the second person in the world to be the proud owner of an Emmy and a Blockbusters dictionary – Stephen Merchant being the other – a very elite group.

The second weekend in September sees the annual Broadcast convention at the RAI in Amsterdam. This is the chance for techie people of television to see the new gadgets that will hopefully become industry standard in the coming years. I flew in on the Friday morning and caught the flight back home on the Saturday evening and the majority of the time in between was filled with meetings. At many of the stands there were pots in which to put your business cards for draws for various company related prizes. I usually toss one in and think nothing more about it, and so it was when I threw one into the SIS draw for a Rugby World Cup official ball, signed by the England squad.

Imagine my surprise when I received a call a week later to say that my business card had been drawn and I was the proud winner of the ball, complete with plastic display case. A fine addition to the Emmy (and Blockbusters dictionary)! This completes a trio of wins for this year with the trip to Austria that I won in the raffle at the Austrian Embassy at the Eurovision Song send-off party. An impression triumvirate of prizes that I would swap in a heartbeat for things of more importance.

Since I was away from the familial bosom for an evening it seemed only right and fitting that I should return with pressies, especially since, because my flight was delayed, I had some time to kill at the airport. A trip to the toy shop and 40 euros later the girls had a ‘Fright-Mare’ each and Ezra a cuddly minion. Unfortunately my minion knowledge isn’t great so I was unable to definitively pick out his favourite (Bob) from the shop, so just randomly picked one. I need not of worried for the reaction from Ezra was priceless. I pulled the minion out the bag and his bright blue eyes lit up and he whispered in awe, ‘A minion for me?‘ took it off me and gave it a big powerful hug and took it to bed – this is highly unusual as Ezra doesn’t usually take toys to bed, unlike his sisters where there is often so many toys in their bed that they can’t stretch out. Ezra’s reaction was worth the total and indeed it doesn’t matter how much things cost when you get a reaction like that. The girls were also delighted with their Fright-Mares which took pride of place among their toys.

All their toys, however, pale into insignificance compared to the iPad. The favoured toys of the early 21 century is a constant feature in the baguettes lives. They come down downstairs in a morning to play games or watch cartoons via Youtube. We have drilled into them the importance of looking after such expensive items and they are very good with them. This is usually because of the fear of dropping them and the screen smashing, we did not realise how they can be used a weapon.

Éowyn was carrying the iPad horizontally and walking downstairs to show the others something that she had found. Ezra heard Éowyn’s excitement and came running out of the lounge. Unfortunately the height that Éowyn was carrying a horizontal iPad and the height of Ezra’s eye was equal and the corner of the iPad took a chunk out of Ezra’s cheek just under his eye. In Éowyn’s defence she was extremely upset and in Ezra’s defence his didn’t really cry despite blood pouring from the wound. You can see from the photos below that he had a significant injury and it developed into an impressive shiner. It had healed well but he still has a bit of a scar, hopefully it will fade in time, but nevertheless it will remain an impressive war-wound for future stories.

Ezra is going through a rapid growing phase. His speech is coming along extremely well and is progressing well with his potty training. He is always proud of himself when he does something on the potty and wants to show you. He was particularly proud of his first potty poo. Unfortunately he was less than impressed with Lucinda when she flushed it down the toilet. He threw a tantrum (a rare event) bemoaning the loss of his poo. How could his mother do such a thing?

He is also now refusing to have an afternoon nap on some days. When he refuse a nap it does have an effect on his behaviour as he is tired and grumpy by the end of the day. He also used to sleep in each morning. That is no longer the case and, in addition, to the occasional night visits he will wake at 0600 and want to go downstairs.

He is normally pretty good at going to bed although recently he has been taking advantage of his good relationship with his oldest sister. We will put him to bed and go downstairs. You then hear little feet across the landing and then bigger feet in the opposite direction. Ezra will have gone into Éowyn and Amélie’s room and asked Éowyn to read him a story. It is not something that we are going to stop. Éowyn enjoys reading to him and it is good practice for her, Ezra enjoys the stories when she reads them to him and we don’t have to walk up the stairs and tuck him back into bed. Everyone’s a winner!

Everyone may be a winner in that scenario but if the latest doom and gloom eschatologists are correct then there is not long left for the world! The latest line in nonsense warnings from people who really need to get out more is that tonight’s lunar eclipse, which will occur as the moon approaches perigee, will herald earthquakes and a rain of fire ushering in the apocalypse. This is, they say, because it is the last of 4 ‘blood moons’ (because during a lunar eclipse the moon appears reddish) over the last 18 months and we have had a blue moon (see below for a definition) this year. Amazing scientific reasoning!

They really should do a little research before spouting such balderdash, it is possible to have as many as 7 eclipses (a mixture of solar and lunar) in one year! Indeed this last happened in 1982 and will happen again in 2038, when 4 of them will be lunar eclipses. If you are lucky enough to still be around in 2132 there will again be 7 eclipses, 5 of which will be lunar eclipses. So 4 lunar eclipses in 18 months is nothing to concerned about. Neither is the fact that we have had a ‘blue moon’.

The definition of a ‘blue moon’ has changed over the latter part of the 20th century. The original definition of the term ‘blue moon’ came from the fact that the lunar and calendar months are different. Folklore named each of the 12 full moons in a year according to its time of year, therefore the occasional 13th full moon that came too early for its season was called a ‘blue moon’, so the rest of the moons that year retained their customary seasonal names. Thus the third moon in a four moon season was the ‘blue moon’. However, with an increasing amount of the population divorced from the farming traditions and reliance on the changing seasons it now has come to mean the second full moon in a calendar month. This is not as uncommon as one would be lead to believe, a ‘blue moon’ occurs once every 2 years 261 days (or thereabouts) yielding a frequency of 1.16699016 x 10^-8 hertz.

I’ve lost you haven’t I?

Let me just say if you are awake at 01:10am tonight and you happen to have clear skies look towards the moon and it should begin to turn red as it finds itself in the Earth’s shadow. That is it, there will be no earthquakes, fire rain or horsemen of the apocalypse. However, a blue moon followed by a blood red moon mixed together would make a purple moon, so maybe, just maybe, Prince, the time travelling Maya, with his purply music has saved the Earth once again from the planet Nibiru. It makes about as much sense.

I will leave you now to have a nose at the photos below and maybe get a nap in so that you can still be awake in the early hours to witness such a beautiful astronomical event.

May I also send congratulations to Matt and Sharon who got married on Saturday, trust that you had a fantastic day and are looking forward to beginning your married life together.

Peace and love

Baggie

Through the triangle window

Amélie and Ezra

Hello!

I like the iPad

I’ve been a naughty boy

Concentrating

The eye injury

Shiner

Still a happy chappy

My Emmy

See it is true!

Arty Emmy shot

A beautiful smile

Seesaw!

Just out of the shower

Sleep over!

Still smiling

Pile on!

Are you sure it is only six weeks?

Saturday 5th September 2015Baggie

August is always a lean month on Baggie and Lucy dot com mainly due to the start of the football seasons, which keeps me busy at work and the fact that, along with millions of other parents, the kids are to be entertained. Thus there is little time left for tinkering on computers and little time to keep you abreast of the trials and tribulations of the Bagnall family.

So with Éowyn heading back to school (Amélie has a few more days!), what has happened since the Bagnalls returned from Flookburgh and the Lake District? Six weeks is a long time so forgive me if there are omissions.

In an attempt to break the holiday up and prevent the girls from getting too bored we signed them up for a couple of courses. Neither of our girls are very strong swimmers, something that we want to rectify, so the first of the courses we signed them up for was swimming. Not that Éowyn really needed any encouragement but her best friend (from her previous school) Aaliyah was also signed up for the week. Thus the added incentive was that after every lesson she got to play with Aaliyah, a whole week of playing with her best friend!

It seems that the girls have inherited my swimming ability. It appears that I am denser than fresh water. In swimming pools (not the sea) my resting suspension is about 6 inches (15cm) below the surface of the water. Therefore to prevent drowning I need to keep swimming, hence I have never been a strong swimmer and it appears than neither of my girls have a natural affinity to water. Nevertheless it is an important skill to have and so once they are settled back at school we will be signing them up for more swimming lessons.

The second course, only Éowyn could attend for Amélie wasn’t old enough, and again attended with her best friend Aaliyah. Cheerleading isn’t the first course that one would naturally think of as a one week session but we thought that Éowyn would enjoy it. The idea of combining gymnastics with teamwork appealed to us as something that would also be good for Éowyn.

The culmination of the week’s work was a performance at the Rainbow Nursery summer fair in Lyne. Fortunately, the weather held off and so the field didn’t turn into a swamp. The girls’ performance was the first of many acts, which was nice as they didn’t get too nervous. Éowyn and Aaliyah were the youngest of the troupe and so didn’t do many of the over-complicated moves. Nevertheless Éowyn’s forward roll was executed to perfection and was steadfast as the base of the human pyramid.

Éowyn wasn’t over-enamoured with cheerleading, which surprised us somewhat, but it is possibly due to the fact that it was such a quick course: four days, all leading up to a performance. Therefore there was no time to develop the skills that she was lacking. If you could do a cartwheel, you did one in the performance. If you couldn’t, you didn’t. There was no time to teach them how to do a cartwheel, and I think that was endemic throughout the skills. In fairness, it was a taster session and thus wasn’t designed to develop skills but to use the strengths they already have but unfortunately it may just have put her off. We will see.

As alluded to above, August has not been the greatest of months weather-wise, in the UK at least. Temperatures below average, sunshine (and thus my electrical output) below average, rainfall: the fifth wettest August on record. Despite the Bagnalls usual stoicism in the face of such inclemencies even we decided not to incur the wrath of Indra (insert rain deity of your choice) that frequently and risk too many far-flung days out.

Lucinda took Amélie and Ezra to Legoland (Éowyn was having a play date). Fortunately, the rain deity of the day was looking upon the Bagnalls with kind eyes and it was one of the warmer days. Unfortunately, this meant two things: a) Legoland was packed and 75 minutes was not an unusual queue time and b) the wasps were out in numbers. Amélie currently has a real phobia around any kind of flying insect – to the point of hysterics if there is a fly in the house. Obviously, we can’t let that continue and are trying to help her overcome this problem, although with wasps she probably has a point!

Unusually for me in August, I managed to secure 5 days off in row. Unfortunately the weather was awful so we concentrated on jobs around the house and visiting friends in the local area. Nevertheless we decided that we would have at least one big day out. Initially, we thought that we would head to the seaside, however unsure that the weather would hold we decided to head to Frensham ponds.

Frensham Common and ponds cover about 1000 acres lying between Farnham and Hindhead. The common is heathland with two large ponds known as Frensham Great and Little Ponds, and great for wildlife watchers. But we headed there for its sandy beach and to bathe in the Great Pond. Angling and Sailing are also available for member of those clubs but there is a special area for swimming. Unfortunately, the weather was more Autumnal rather than Augustal (if there is such a word). Indeed shorts were a very bad idea as I sat freezing on the sand. Even paddling in the pond was out because there was a bloom of blue-green algae which meant that the pond was closed to the public. However, we made the best of the weather eating our picnic and building sandcastles and reflected that we were glad that we hadn’t headed to the seaside!

The flipside of 5 days off was that I managed to sign myself up for 9 days in a row. Therefore Lucinda decided to take the kids to visit Nanny Fran in West Bromwich. Although it was a flying visit (they were only there for two days) they all enjoyed themselves as they usually do in West Bromwich. I, however, was not having as much fun. I got home on the Tuesday night and decided to have a Chinese takeaway for tea. Now whether it was the Chinese takeaway (fingers point at the Prawns on Toast) or whether I picked up a bug I spent most of the night with my head down the toilet. Now, I now I need to lose a few extra pounds but that wasn’t the way I intended to do it. Unfortunately I had an important meeting the next day and so after a couple of hours of sleep I dragged myself into work, had the meeting then headed home. In a deluge. The rain was coming down so fast that the drains couldn’t cope and the car park at work and our street had inches of standing water. I got home crawled into bed and fell asleep until Lucinda returned home with the kids in blazing sunshine. For a split second I thought I had been asleep for days such was the difference in weather conditions.

The summer has also been a time for changes in the house. We have decorated our bedroom and en suite and Ezra’s bedroom. We have moved a couple of radiators around which has enabled us to change the furniture around in the house making the lounge more cozy and exposing the wall where we are going to have a chimney and wood burner installed. For if the summer is anything to go by we could be in for a cold and snowy winter and so the extra warmth from a wood burner would be most welcome.

The summer has also seen Ezra growing up. His speech is coming along and he is saying a new word nearly everyday. Although some of his phrases are rather strange. One that he spontaneously came out with was ‘I don’t like mayonnaise‘. Not sure why he said it, as we were not offering him any mayonnaise, so we laughed. This only agitated him further and started to get irate shouting ‘I don’t like mayonnaise!‘ I think we have the message!

This week is an important week in the girls lives. Éowyn will enter year two and the large campus of her school while Amélie will start full-time education. Both will be worthy of their own entries so stay tuned.

In preparation for Amélie’s first day, her teacher miss Snow came for a home visit. Amélie was very excited and showed her some of her favourite toys and more importantly her new school shoes. Miss Snow said that she thinks she has seen all of her new pupils school shoes. Must be something very important to all of the new starters.

With those teasers I will leave you there and keep an eye for those updates as well as the Flickr pages as there will be new photos uploaded in the next few days.

Peace and Love

Baggie