Even better than that...!

Ok, so I send Husband to Lidl to get some wine. We have friends staying, and I should know better than to send two men unaccompanied to a shop, but I was a bit harrassed and I thought there would be safety in numbers. So off they go, clean handkerchiefs and shiny faces...

An hour later they're back with three boxes of wine. Sensible choices, so far so good.

Then they vanish. They're not in the garage or the garden, and not downstairs in the house. And they're very quiet. I smell a rat. I go in search. I find them in Husband's office huddled over an object.
'What's going on here then?' I enquire.
They leap apart as though caught with a bomb. No-one speaks.
'So, you got the wine, then?' I start conversationally, trying to draw them out...
Husband's eyes light up with a maniacal glow.
'Even better than that!' he says, 'We got a microscope! And it's got a camera for the computer!'

A microscope. I ask you. Never mind that we're a no-income family at the moment, until said Consultant Husband actually does some Consultancy.

Don't let them out alone with a cashcard. You're asking for trouble...

I am now a mother....

I now feel well and truly initiated into the world of parenthood.

I Knelt On Some Lego.

God, it hurt.

I can forsee years of stumbling through lakes and oceans of Lego.

And, as my eyesight diminishes with each passing year, so the sodding pieces of Lego get smaller and smaller....

What kind of cruelty is that...?

Reading habits...

I am a reader. I would love to be an avid reader, and used to be one when I had the luxury of time, but unfortunately there just aren't enough hours in the day. I am also a terrible buyer of books. I have a whole shelf of lovely new books waiting to be read, but if I see another one in a shop or online that I think I might like, I just have to have it. I'm definitely addicted to buying books in the same way that some people are addicted to buying face creams or designer jeans. Like them, I believe that this will change my life. Although I reckon I have a better chance of a book changing my life, than a cosmetic product... So I'm quite defiant about my addiction really....

You may ask, why doesn't she use the library? Well, I do that as well, although slashed library boook budgets are making the selection less and less appealing...

But there is something about owning the book, being the first one to open the pristine pages, smelling that new book smell, feeling the paper.... This brings to mind the fact that I am also a bit obsessed with notebooks, and actually pretty dislike having to write in a new one. So maybe I'm just fixated on paper - perhaps I should become a book binder...

Now, what do I read? This post was actually conceived of when I was reading an interview with the children's writer Eoin Colfer on the splendid Bookwitch blog (http://www.bookwitch.wordpress.com/)

He said that when he was in his twenties he went through a phase where he read nothing but serial killer books, but now he is older he has become squeamish and doesn't like it when people get hurt.

This is SO me! I used to read Patricia Cornwell and all sorts of murder stuff. Now, since I had my own children, I can't stomach anything like that at all. I can't even watch Prime Suspect or anything that remotely has anything bad happening to children... And I really cannot understand why anyone would want to read a misery memoir. That's just voyeuristically wierd, in my view.

I have definitely gone soft, and it doesn't bother me on a personal level, as I have adjusted my reading habits to cope. But I do worry about my writing a little, as I wonder if all my characters are just destined to be 'nice', and the main action may just involve them all having a nice cup of tea and a sit down. God forbid if I ever have to kill anyone off - they may have to live to 96 and drift away in a nice soft bed surrounded by their nearst and dearest...

Ah well, soft I may be, but children and puppies and kittens are safe with me...