A New Arrival...

Nikki is very excited. And I kind of want to know what all of the fuss is about, so so am I...!

Let me try and explain...

Last Saturday, Nikki went shopping. Not just any kind of shopping, either - to the big Mothercare thingy in Croydon. There she ordered a Stokke Xplory. Ok, so you may not know what one of those is. Well, it's this fancy thing below. See? I told you it was fancy!

Well, Nik has tried one of these out, and has told me (quite often now, actually) how good it is. It's Scandinavian, for a start, and they seem very clever over there - they seem to get comfort down to perfection without nasty little frilly flowery cushions or lace everywhere. (I have half a suspicion that Nik has ordered it to arrive before Saturday, so she can make me push her around Kew on it...!)

It's pretty high-tech for a pram-cum-push-chair (it does both, if you're wondering - the chair starts off as a pram, and can the convert... It can face either back or forwards, you can adjust the height, and it even comes with its own fancy pop-up shopping bag. Hmm. Advert over.)

And it should be arriving before Saturday.

Like I said, we're incredibly excited.

(I can't believe I just wrote that much on a flipping pram/pushchair...)

On Badger Watch

For the last three nights I have been staying with Nikki, and I've had my first encounters with badgers. A plate of dog food and a sprinkling of raw peanuts seem to attract badgers better than anything! Wednesday night we had three at the same time, hoovering up all the peanuts and then scoffing down the dog food. Thursday night there were a couple who came up and hoovered up some of the peanuts before being scared off by something, and then a group of five all bundled on to the patio, right up against the patio doors to eat the food. Again, they went for all the peanuts before the dog food, but it was really good to see some badgers for the first time! Some of them are really quite bold, coming right up to the doors, putting their paws up on the glass to see whats going on! It's fun to watch - they really don't seem to be phased by people and light being around.

Tonight, though, the rain seems to have stopped them coming out for a bite to eat. Maybe another night...!

My Birthday

I had a really nice birthday on Tuesday, so I thought I would share it…

On Monday night, Nikki and I went up to London, and we stayed on the Sunborn Yaght Hotel - a four-star floating hotel permanently moored in the Docklands. It was lovely - we got the DLR to canary wharf and saw a film (The Pacifier - not really as bad as people think, but Vin Diesel does not suit roles where talking is involved, as he looks well out of his depth, and I still think he’s just a meathead who can fight...), then had a nice remainder-of-the-evening in our hotel room, having some dinner, watching TV and falling asleep on a very comfy bed!

The next morning I woke up to a pile of presents on the table - that makes it sound huge, but it was four or five... I got given a Darth Tater (a Mr Potato Head in a Darth Vader costume, basically), some fruit jellies, and Lemony Snicket's An Unfortunate Series of Events and the Incredibles on DVD... which was good!

Then Nikki went and had a shower and I started playing with the Tater (ever the grown-up). There was a knock on the door, so I ambled over and opened it. Outside was a woman holding a tray covered in breakfast-type food. "Did you order room service?" she asked.
I was a little shocked by this, and muttered something like "No, I don't think so..." and looked confused. So did she, and she looked at the number on our door and then back at me. Then this voice chimed out from the bathroom, "Yes we did!". So the woman came in and put the tray on the table.
When she had gone, I burst into the bathroom and a shocked Nikki looked up from under a towel and asked me what was wrong. "I had my Darth Tater all over the table! It was so embarrassing!" I wasn't embarrassed about answering the door in pajamas or anything, no, just that my toys were spread out across the breakfast table. By the time the woman came back with the hot chocolate for Nikki, Tater was safely stowed away in his box...

So, we then had a nice, leisurely breakfast and left the hotel about 10.30ish, and made our way across to the opposite side of London - to Kensington. We went to the Science Museum and went in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy exhibition, as you already know. It was cool - thoroughly worth the £7.95 fee...

Then we made our way back across town and went to Covent Garden - and to Forbidden Planet. I bought myself a gun. For the first time ever. It's not your usual kind of gun, though - it's a replica of Marvin's gun from the HG2G movie (not that I remember him having one, but Nik assures me he did). Anyway, it fires foam darts with suckers on the ends and makes a loud laser-gun-type noise when it does it. I am very proud.

Then we went to HMV and I got a few bits in there, and then we went home. Well, almost. We went to Nikki's because she said she had one more present for me. And she did - a Spongebob Squarepants cake! I was very happy when I got home. Nik came round for dinner, and she actually allowed me to watch Top Gear (and I think she enjoyed some of it too, but don’t tell her I said that…!)

Anyway, that was my birthday. I had a really nice day!

I wish I had as much time on my hands as them...

Here is a story I found on the BBC comedy site. Someone has set up an internet petition to get the phrase "yeh-but-no-but" from Little Britain put into the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Apart from the fact that the dictionary lists words and not phrases, this is ridiculous, surely!

For one thing, it doesn't mean anything.

There are better quotes from other programmes that should really be ahead of this in the queue (for example "you're about as edgy as a satsuma" from the Mighty Boosh, and "Smell My Cheese" or "Jackanackanory" from Alan Partridge - and they all have meanings...)

Ok, so the person's a fan of Little Britain, which is understandable, but really. How much time must they have spare to think this is a good idea?! It'd be interesting to see just how many people sign the petition though... Even if its so we get a good idea of how hard we'll have to work to get through to people these days!

Oh, and by the way, I think I have been proved right with the whole Big Brother thing. I was listening to an interview with the producer of BBC2's Springwatch, and somebody said that they were expecting more viewers for the last episode than Big Brother. At last, proper reality TV with interesting subjects (nature) has won over the trash!

It's not fair!

I'm quite jealous, really. Not as a general rule, but at the moment I am... Nikki may look a bit like she's "swallowed a beach ball" (her phrasing, not mine...), but she gets to feel baby wriggling around and kicking.

I've decided - it's not fair. But it's life. And I guess I am getting away with rather a lot - I can't go through the same pain and discomfort that she is going through. I can feel the kicks sometimes if I put my hand on the bump, though, so at least that's something.

I think I saw somewhere that babies aren't supposed to kick just yet, but this one has been kicking for a few weeks! At least they're an early developer!

They (the baby) are already responding to our voices when we're reading stories, and certainly seems to love the warmth of the sunshine, as they do seem to wriggle around a lot more in the sun!

Nik's in some pain (and stairs are a particular problem), but apart from that, they're both well, which is good!

I knew there was something...

I was a bit confused after the press conference I wrote about last time - I swear I heard President Bush going on about the US's huge aid commitment, and using it as a reason for not wanting to commit any further resources at the moment.

Well, I found this story on the LA Times website which explains why I was confused far better than I could...

Good news for Africa?

Tony and George say they are close to striking a deal on 100% debt cancellation for African countries. On the face of it, that's brilliant.

But that's not the whole issue. There are caveats and conditions that the US are determined to attach to any debt cancellation. It was being reported that the US were happy to cancel 100% of the debt, as long as this was taken into account with a reduction in aid being given after the cancellation. (which, surely, kind of ignores the entire point of cancelling the debt...), and last night, in their press conference President Bush mentioned that they were reluctant to make a commitment to increase their aid payments just yet, as the US have recently tripled their aid giving.

Let's just put this into perspective. The UK aren't the wonderful leaders in figures that we're beginning to be in thought and policy. In terms of the percentage of GDP we give as aid, we're about sixth or seventh on the list (I saw a list earlier, but I can't find it again...) But the US are another four or five below that. These are two of the richest countries in the world.

It's sort of reassuring that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair certainly seem to be taking the good fight to the US and challenging them to meet us halfway, but was it really even possible? Bush talks about paying attention to the African problems, but seems to be happy to commit far more money to a seemingly unwinnable and infinite war which is only doing more harm than good than to try and address pressing problems. This is a president who has recently been condemned by more than half of the US citizens polled for not paying any attention to really pressing problems in his own country...

If Bush isn't prepared to come forward and back us on this issue, there really doesn't seem to be ANY reason for going to war to back up our "Best Friends" over the pond (not that any of the other reasons were convincing or even factual). If we risk a hell of a lot more to go over there with them and lose lives unnecessarily on their behalf in their knee-jerk reaction of a war, why can't they back us on something for once?

It's a good first step, and a positive one to make sure Bush and the US are getting involved, but I doubt Bush is showing the passion of his own people on this issue, and it's certainly not enough.

There's a long way to go as it is, but the road may be longer if the US stall and avoid putting their money where their mouth is. It's a first step in the right direction, but the G8 is still the biggest hurdle to cross.

WHY do people watch Big Brother?

Someone please explain why people bother with this. And Celebrity Love Island.

I mean, Big Brother may well have been genuinely interesting the first time round (until they staged the incident with "Nasty Nick"...), but really, it's becoming a bit of a zoo for idiots now. It has no point other than to humiliate and shock, and is just ridiculous.

If a "reality" show with celebrities is not interesting, why on earth would a show full of idiots and show-offs be interesting? (Hang on, I detect a smilarity here...) I imagine it'd be explained that these are "normal" people who are like us, and it makes interesting viewing because of just that. But in what way are these people "normal"? They're about as normal as the people who decide that the best way to resolve their problems is to go on Tricia to sort them out...

WHY is it so popular? WHY WHY WHY?!?! It makes no sense!

Celebrity Love Island is another class altogether. It's a celebrity show with no proper celebrities on it, and to make it worse, they are almost all the most excruciatingly annoying people ever to appear in public. Maybe they saw it as a nice way to get paid for going on holiday, but hmm. Don't get me wrong, I despise Celebrity Wrestling as well, but at least that requires a level of effort and preparation. But then, really, at least I have heard of most of the celebrities on Celebrity Wrestling... And that's saying quite a lot...!

Scan number two

Yesterday we went back to the hospital to try and finish the scan that baby refused to let us finish last week... And everything went well - they were curled up in another direction from last week, and the angle needed was just possible for the scan to show up the brain structure, and everything is developing nicely, and everything looks well.
I was slightly nervous before we went in, I have to admit. There hadn't been as much movement as usual recently, but just as Nik and I got worried about that each time, baby gave a hefty boot somewhere to reassure us. It looks like this was nothing to worry about, but we're still quite cautious seeing as the advice says that if you don't feel any movement for 24 hours to get yourself down to the hospital...

Oh yes, the sex...

Nope, baby wouldn't let us find out yesterday either... They were curled up with their knees clamped together, and the scan was remarkably brief (although the wait wasn't) - the woman who was doing the scan was very efficient but pretty cold and reluctant to chat, so it wasn't a great deal of fun this time. But the bones were much, much clearer this time round - the spine and ribs particularly clear and it was a thrill seeing someone being defined and growing in there.

I'm still shaking my head because I can't really believe this is all happening. But I am very glad it's not a dream!

PostSecret

PostSecret

If you have a few moments, have a look at the inspirational PostSecret site - people post their secrets anonymously to the address on a personalised postcard, and a lot of them are posted on the site. The secrets are funny, touching and shocking, but all of them are fascinating, and it may well just make you feel better about something you've never told anyone.