Heavy rain

Heavy rain
Originally uploaded by tcatcarson

Oh man, that was wet.

When toys were good...

This is all Mum's fault, mentioning Maskatron.

Let's also pay our respects to...

Star Wars - too obvious, but very few people remember Nien Numb, the strange vagina-faced co-pilot to Lando Calrissian in Return of the Jedi. What makes him special is that you had to save up tokens for him, send them off then wait like a, well, hyperactive impatient child until it arrived. Even now I can still gauge the quality of a Star Wars character by how it feels in your hand... TIE Fighter Pilot - good, AT-AT Commander - bad. I also have fond memories of having to make the characters stand at 90 degrees to each other because they couldn't hold their guns straight.

Micronauts - apparently the mission of the Micronauts was to put the eyes out of children across the country, such was the number of pointy firing things they boasted. This was the Force Commander which I remember owning. See those red rockets and the bullet in his belly button? They fired out, fast! Most of the rest of my Micronauts were hand-me-downs but that didn't make them any less lethal.

Evel Knievel - cunningly modeled on the real Evel in that it would career wildly round the living room crashing from skirting board to skirting board before collapsing in a heap under the dining table. Unless it wasn't correctly engaged in the "gyro energizer" in which case it would miss out the skirting board bit and go straight to the collapsing bit.

Zoids - I got this Zoid on my P7 trip to Edinburgh. I also bought a real fountain pen which felt very sophisticated in P7. I actually left both of these precious items in the hotel, but they forwarded them onto the school, which was nice of them. Zoids were wind up robots based on animals which you chose, bought, unpacked, assembled then left in a hotel room.

Transformers - the link shows "Hound", my first Transformer bought in the wee toy shop which used to be at the top of the Eastgate Centre in Inverness. The box had coded stats on it, only visible when you used the mystical "red cellophane"...quite expensive now, like. Special mention should be made here to the Rock Lords, who could transform into...rocks. Very impressive when all rolling down a hill into battle, less so the rest of the time.

Action Man - I wasn't huge into Action Man, but I think a special mention should go to the well meaning person who bought me the Action Man deep sea exploration outfit. Nice looking it may be, but where is a 7 year old boy supposed to play with this? The bath wasn't nearly deep enough so mine ended up clomping his way round the garden in Fort William looking more like a charity marathon runner than a man of action...

...and then this baby arrived on the scene and nothing was ever quite the same.

Swimming

We spent this afternoon splashing about at Leith Waterworld having spent the morning watching the rain splash about in the garden. Kit is unbelievably confident in the water. We began with me supporting him on his front which makes him kick his legs in an "I'm doing it!" style, before plonking him into his inflatable thing for a trip round the rapids and on to the wave area. He likes this, but he like watching the girls more... His confidence really showed when I took him back out of the inflatable and allowed him to crawl in the shallows - every time he took himself deeper and deeper until I dragged him back as he spluttered and gagged on mouthfuls of water. Confidence is another word for lack of experience, I suppose. Any way he was happy enough to be ducked under the water (it's good for him) and certainly made an other little boy look like a bit of a wuss when he gurned his way round the pool.

And the best bit about the trip? We got a proper changing room this time, with a special seat to strap him into while I got changed. Aah, it's the little things...

Luke...I am your father

I have just made an advanced order from Amazon for the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I can't wait to find out that Harry dies......

If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.

So...

Lorna's off to Amsterdam for the weekend! She owes her current PhD student a visit to an international conference so they left yesterday morning and will be back on Monday night. But they are working hard - they have been to the Anne Frank museum, Van Gogh museum, on a canal trip, out to dinner.......eh? Do Napier realise what they're up to?

That leaves Kit and I to fend for ourselves for a few days, and so far we are managing I'm pleased to say. He now stands unaided (at 13 months I should hope so, but he is a lazy git and is in no rush to walk anywhere) and enjoys any thing musical or on wheels. We bought him a xylophone last week which he loves, though he does tend to play in a "punk" style. I have managed to drop him off at nursery (8am) and make it across town to QPS before the bell. This was my main worry so I can relax a bit now.

The sharp eyed among you will spot the new link on the right to my SQH blog. I have been accepted on to Edinburgh Uni's Scottish Qualification for Headship course, involving 26 months of homework and soul searching. Two weeks ago was the introduction to course 1 which meant 3 days at Peebles Hydro, which was nice if a bit overwhelming.

Oh, I have finally set up a Flickr account so feel free to check out my pictures and make me a buddy, or whatever it is you do on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcatcarson/

I am reading A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (again). It's dead good.

Kit Carson

DSCN2213
Originally uploaded by tcatcarson.

Well, what else would we dress him up as? About to stop the great train robbery...

Kit's surprise big sister...

Well, half sister I suppose. Now how do I explain this away to Lorna?

It seems the CSA (Child Support Agency) have finally caught up with me. I received a letter this morning from them - all correct with my name, address and even National Security number emblazoned on it.

It says...(my asterixes / asterices?)

"Dear Mr Carson,

I'm writing to tell you that the application for child maintenance is no longer in force, for SUMMER LOUISE B***K C***NS" born on **-**-2004.

This application for child maintenance ended on 29-03-2007

If there is any child maintenance still to be paid we'll be in touch.

The reason why the application is no longer in force is as follows:

the other party told us they don't want the application or case to continue."

Well, that's a fecking relief then, isn't it? So, if this is an April Fool letter then it is the most convincing one I have ever seen. And if it's not...? Well, I know what I never done. This would just seem to be another example of our great government stuffing it up at the touch of a button.

I'll keep you posted once I find out more...

We have picked another good one...

A communication from our summer cottage lady...

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Carson,
Please could you e mail me your address and telephone no. as I am getting increasingly more worried about my computer, it was struck by lightening sometime ago and it is not working as well as it should, so if it fails completely I will have another form of contact."

Eh? Lightning?

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live.

Hmmm, haven't been here for a while. Nothing to blame except bone-idleness but let's move on... I am staying late in school tonight to sign-off the old School Board and usher in the new Parents' Forum. I would actually welcome anything which gets more parents involved in their children's education, and I think the School Board has for long been a shadowy closed shop arguing eternally about the cleanliness of toilets and parking outside the school gates. I reckon a published agenda, given to all parents well in advance of a meeting, could draw some in. Then we can pounce on them and tell them to help their child learn to read...

Christopher has grown loads since the last post, of course. He now does pulling up, fast crawling, opening doors, teeth (2) and a nice routine of babbling sounds most of which, I have to be honest, resemble "dada". That didn't go down too well on Mother's Day, mind you. He is now a well established member of nursery and the daily report we get is always filled with tales of trampolines, toast and treasure boxes. My half day Fridays means I can usually collect him and it's always nice when he recognises me and gives me his smile. Nice touches like a Mother's Day card, home baking (eh? he baked?) and walks along the canal side have confirmed we chose the right kennel. I mean nursery.

Of course, his big news is being nearly one - gulp. It's too boring to say "The time goes so quickly" but there you go, I said it. Spring is definately my favourite time of year and now reminds me of joking with Lorna about giving birth to a lamb, and watching as the daffodils began to flower, her signal that baby was nearly here. So we are off to Applecross for his birthday, though that may be the last time we stay at the inn - they have put their prices up from £30pp per night to £45 - an increase of £60 for the two nights B&B. Too rich for us I'm afraid.

Speaking of holidays we have 2 more planned for the year, but I have to confess I'm not brave enough to venture abroad with the boy yet so we are strictly Scotland based which I have no problem with. The biker couples have booked a 10 person cottage in Appin for a week in April, so we are going to do one of the weekends. The exciting news? It has a pool table, woo! Of course it is the ride up I'm looking forward to...but more bike grumps in a moment... Our summer holiday is to be a week at a cottage on Mull, with at least one visit to Iona but mainly to get "away from it all"...meaning it has no TV and certainly no computer. Betting on who will murder who first will begin in June, with Lorna being the hot tip to smother me on night 3.

Bike woes? Well the Suzuki has been back at the dealers for 5 weeks after refusing to start and flashing me a "fuel injection" warning! After exploratory surgery they told me the throttle bodies needed to be replaced! This is very serious, especially on a 1000 mile / 5 month old bike. What's more, while they were in there they discovered the wiring loom had "lost its integrity" - what? Well, apparently part of the wiring looked like it had acid spilt on it, exposing the bare wires...the battery was intact, so who know what all that is about. Anyway, Suzuki keep all their spare parts on an asteroid past Saturn, so getting them takes weeks of patience and phone calls. I have a loan bike from them, but that's not really the point, is it? I wrote a nice stroppy letter to them last night so we'll see what comes of that.

And on the other bike front - I still cycle to and from school, and I'm enjoying feeling fitter and stronger as I cycle breezily up hills that previously used to make me want to puke. And I'm getting a new bike, a nice off-road suspension job for summer evenings I hope. Toys toys toys.

Ok, that's the update. If anyone is still there drop me a comment to encourage me to keep the blog going :-)

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.

2006 was a pretty big year. Despite having the same number of days as many other years, we seem to have squeezed rather a lot into it. Lorna and I have tried to start a tradition of climbing a hill overlooking Edinburgh and doing a review of the year - a bit like they do on telly except without so many competing egos.

It was the year Christopher was born, of course, but also the year Daniel Stark rolled a six and was allowed to be born too. We lost Gran Carson, but not before she got to meet her great grandson. Thomas was born safely in Cambridge, and is keen to remind Diane of this fact every morning at 2am... We bought a car, and a motorbike, and finally got round to decorating the house. And buying a shed. Dad only moved house twice last year, and introduced us to Donna, while Gill introduced us in turn to Gary. Jimmy got his pacemaker fitted allowing him to climb stairs again, forcing Jess to hide the chocolate biscuits somewhere other than on top of the cupboard. Lorna spent 9 months out of work, lounging around and flitting from one baby-related social event to the next. Bill, Dale, Jamie and Eliza made the trek from "down under" to "up over" during the summer, enjoying a range of events from standing in rain in Bo'ness to queuing for chips in Anstruther watching England's exit from the World Cup.

If 2007 is even half as eventful we will be knackered by 2008. Along those lines, who says the French have no sense of humour?

We had a great Christmas and New Year, finding the balance of family gatherings and quiet reflection to our taste. Kit spent the two week holiday mastering clapping, waving and crawling. Luckily he announces when he is about to crawl with a gasp of excitement and a squeal of anticipation; this makes it easier to keep him away from wires and fires. It won't last, however, so baby-proofing the house will be an early job for the year. He has already found the video player slot so it won't be long before we find jam sandwiches in there. Speaking of which he is also taking tentative steps towards "finger foods" - this is where he takes a piece of toast and rubs it all over his face then drops it on the floor to gasps of admiration and pride from his mother.

And so...Lorna goes back to work on Thursday! Is she looking forward to it? Well, yes, sort of, she enjoys her job and is looking forward to getting back into it. But it also means Kit starts nursery too - gulp. He had a half day trial on Monday and loved it, squealing with delight at the sight of the other babies. His daily report card (yes, really) announced that "Christopher has had great fun playing with the rattles and the soft bricks". Hmm. Well, I want him potty trained by 15 months, please.

We have booked Applecross for a couple of nights this Easter, but they have put their prices up to "who are you trying to kid" levels, so return visits will have to be curtailed for the sake of food and electricity.

Happy Christmas Everyone

Have an excellent holiday, I promise to update you soon about Christopher's first Christmas with revelations about presents, his travels and how he doesn't really know what's going on...

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

I've been lucky recently in that I have had good books to read, and time in which to read them. It can take me months to read a book; if I don't like it I'll leave it lying around, refusing to be branded a quitter but really wanting to quit. But sometimes I have a good run, like now.

Attention All Shipping is written by Charles Connelly, a Bill Bryson wannabe looking for an angle, who decided to visit each of the areas mentioned in the Shipping Forecast. Undaunted by the fact that some areas have no land (he had to content himself with flying over parts of the sea and ticking the box) he visits not just some of the most desolate and isolated parts of the UK, Iceland and Scandinavia, he finds himself on barren sandbanks and strange platforms in his quest complete his journey.
The closest he gets to my locality is a fleeting visit to Cromarty - he didn't venture over the bridge to the north of the Firth, missing out on the delights of Evanton and Invergordon, possibly as the result of some thorough research.
The book improves throughout and goes from copying Bill to not quite competing but certainly challenging him as an eye-rolling traveller shuffling rather than striding his way round the world in the search for little snippets of history and heritage.

Next on The Book Tower this week, the man himself. An inspired choice of birthday present from Muriel, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is essentially Bill's autobiography, but only covering his life in the 50s. If you have read Made in America you'll know how 50s obsessed he can be, and each chapter is loosely based on aspects of this decade and the results he saw within his family...and how his dad was a skinflint. It was good, but I can't help thinking that Bill has wrung himself dry now. Neither Here Nor There and The Lost Continent were the results of years of experience, research and observation and as a result are two of the funniest, most informative books I've read. But other Bryson books seemed rushed - especially the Australia one, and now that he's spilled his guts in Thunderbolt, what's next?

My final offering, and the book I am reading just now, is Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. Another gift, I recoiled at first from reading about teaching, cos I is one. For the same reason I don't watch "Teacher TV" on cable. I haven't read any of McCourt's other books, and haven't seen the film. Teacher Man is actully really good. Born in New York, he grew up in Ireland but then returned to New York in his youth and after a series of manual jobs embarks on a career teaching literature to American teens. It is really well written and his power to deviate from the storyline and give interesting tiny details would make Ronnie Corbett green with envy.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time

It's important to be able to laugh at yourself, right? How about to giggle at yourself in such a way as to unnerve school cleaners and frighten school children? While wearing lycra leggings.

On Monday I cycled to school as usual, dressed to impress in my waterproofs and leggings, which for the record the QPS staff have banned me from wearing other than immediately after, or immediately prior to riding the bike. Even the fetching red stripe and reflective panels have failed to sway them. But once I arrived in my room I realised to my dismay that I'd forgotten trousers to change in to...I'd taken them home on Friday to be washed (a rare enough treat for them) and neglected to pack them again. Were I a pupil I would have simply blamed my mum and worn a groovy pair of trousers from the lost property box, but considering I had 3 schools to teach in that day, including the High School up the road, leggings or cast-off half-masts were not going to cut it. I needed to have my shower then get up to the supermarket to buy a pair of trousers.

The shower is joined to the school office, and connected to the school corridor by means of a short passage and a door to which I have a key. Locked in, I showered and and went to my pannier to find my towel, also taken home for washing. And also left there. So now I am naked, showered and standing with no towel and no trousers in the school office. Can you see the headlines yet?

Question - how many paper towels does it take to dry someone roughly my size and shape after a shower? Answer - 9. Who'd have thought.

Dried (of sorts) and dressed (in a fashion) I had about half an hour to go and buy trousers...plenty of time. I dumped my stuff in my room and fetched my wallet from my bag, or would have, had it not also been safely tucked up at home. This is where the giggling started.

I had to borrow money from another staff member, walk to the shop in my lycra while greeting every pupil and parent on the way, and buy a fetching pair of brown cords. Mmm, £15 well spent.

Not content with this level of general humiliation I had an appointment at another primary school at 11.15 and had decided to try out a new cycle path to get there. The route I have used previously is all on road and though it only takes 20 minutes to get there I thought the path might be a bit faster and a bit quieter. The path started off promisingly - well surfaced, old railway line, nice Autumn day. But not for long - it descended into a bog, rutted and muddy with no signs and eventually no apparent way to get off it. My "street" tyres, with no grips, just spun about as I tried to cycle, spraying mud and mulch over my back and head while my shoes and the bottoms of my super new trousers, sticking out from beneath my waterproofs, went from smart-casual to tramp dirty-protest. Arriving at the school I wasn't sure why I was getting such curious, pitying and scathing looks until I went to the toilet to wash my hands and saw that my face and hair were covered in mud too.

The rest of the week didn't bless me with luck either - Wednesday saw the wettest day here for a long time, and was the day I took the motorbike to work. A training course until 3pm, then a splash back to QPS for a meeting 4 till 6, then off to Bo'ness through torrential rain for a 7 to 10 rehearsal left me wet, cold and quite possibly rotting. Luckily I had taken it easily on the back Borrowstoun road as rounding a corner I encountered a huge puddle, well, a flood, right across the road. Even at 30mph or slower the bow-wave went over the bike and down my jacket. Really.

Lorna is out tonight - ladies' night for some of the mums from her various meetings. Kit's new pleasure is being dangled upside down and for extra laughs, swung around.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

The nights, as they say, are fair drawing in. I now cycle to and from school wearing an impressive assortment of reflective, hi-viz and illuminated accessories looking like a renegade 80s background dancer from The Hit Man and Her. From my flashing ankle strap to my bright orange vest, every inch of me screams "I am here, please don't park on my head."

Having said that, I had to take the GSXR in to work today as another spoke has broken on the pushbike. Now, I don't weigh that much so have enjoyed a polite conversation with the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-Op suggesting that their bikes are pish and that they really should mend it for me. I have been invited for a summit meeting with a manager on Saturday morning where I will lay it on the line for them, then dance about, negotiating a suitable settlement before handing over my bank card and paying whatever they have asked me to.

The GSXR continues to me a mind blowing piece of machinery, more so now I am allowed to rev it higher. To pinch an overused phrase from various bike mags it does not so much accelerate forwards as thrust the world backwards. You know those dizzy spells you've been having these mornings? That's me and my bike, that is. It now has about 800 miles on the clock - the most recent big trip being a scoot to Glencoe for lunch with Kev and Claire. It was brilliant fun, loads of bikes out and about, though waiting for Claire to demonstrate her new bellypan scrapin' brake pedal bendin' cornering style proved fruitless.

Lorna has settled in a real routine of social gatherings sporting Kit like a passport to fun and lunch for a secular club of mothers in the know. Monday is Mum and Baby group, Tuesday Baby Yoga, Wednesday lunch with one of the assorted stream of new and unfamiliar names she keeps mentioning (oh, I'm seeing Julie and her wee girl Pannacotta today - you remember them, the one in the blue jumper from the antenatal classes we attended in March...), Thursday is now Baby Singing (£5 to sit in a circle with other hippies and sing Baa Baa Ethnic Sheep Have You Any Fairtrade Organic Wool?) and Friday remains cinema day. I was lucky enough to attend the Filmhouse's screening of The Break-Up during the October break. Looking behind me during the film was like the bit in the Muppet Show when you caught a glimpse of the audience...all the strange faces and jerky movements from other people's babies as they watched the film.

Kit's new tricks are (in no particular order) - sitting up, screaming, squealing, eating lumpy food, having a reach which is twice as long as his arm, being left-handed (doh!), enjoying singing more than ever and staring at old ladies on buses until they freak out. He has also found a new toy, one which all boys are blessed with and which will give him a lot of pleasure for many, many years.

Our October break was good fun, having Jon down for a bit then heading north to Tain. A lunch with the Inverness Eggermonts broke our journey and allowed us to marvel at how gorgeous Clara is, and at how Kane has managed to lose even more weight. The rest of the week was spent in an assortment of Franco-Scots situations as we chummed Jon, Mark and the French "Whisky Club" around their tour of Tainshire. We enjoyed tours of the Glenmorangie and Balblair distilleries, and clay pigeon shooting (I was second best out of us, though the excited border collie chasing the clays added a new sense of challenge to the proceedings). We joined them for a lunch of ham and cheese washed down with a bottle of Tobermory, some raw red wine and even rawer local moonshine and the trip culminated in a no-holds barred seafood and whisky feast at the Oystercatcher before gate-crashing a wedding at the local hotel. Admittedly this was made easier by the fact we sort of knew the bride, and that the French visitors had hired full Highland dress...sort of a wedding crashers camouflage, if you like.

I have accidentally become co-director for the next Barony Players production, a couple of suspense filled shorts from Lucille Fletcher, "The Hitchhiker" and "Sorry, Wrong Number". Being a director means the actors do what I tell them to which is cool for as long as things are going well.

Finally, the rowans are hanging heavy on the branches. And you all know what that means...

Oh, and Hans...click under this post where it says "Comments". Then make fun of me in the box provided! It's really that simple!

Who remembers The Flumps?

Pootle, anyone?

Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is probably parked

OK, bike talk...

Picked it up on Tuesday, and of course after days of clear dry weather the bus journey between the house and the dealer was all the time it took to cloud over and start to pour. Hmph, biking in Scotland is a proper journey of highs and lows. I'd really wanted to try to keep it looking nice, for a day at least, but so it goes.

Once all the pesky money side had been seen to I was able to ride it away. The dealer's forecourt is cobbled, mossy and uphill - not a delightful surface when you are wobbling away, in the rain, terrified to open the throttle for fear of enjoying your first powerslide in front of an audience of salesmen. And then knocking all the other bikes over like dominoes...

I needn't have worried because my perfect throttle control and precision steering allowed me to get home before locking the bike away. Two immobilisers, an alarm, a large chunk of U-shaped metal and a purpose built steel garage are all I can offer to prevent the bike ever wandering off in the middle of the night.

On Thursday I rode the bike to Glasgow, only restrained by the 6000rpm ceiling I have to stick to for the first 600 miles. Frustrating, though it allowed me 90mph in top which was fine, but on the M8 still leaves you being overtaken by cars, buses, caravans and lorries. I was able to lock it to a railing outside the car park attendants hut (thanks guys) and was delighted to find it waiting for me afterwards.

It's been cleaned twice which gives me the ideal opportunity to admire its lines and curves.

So, a summary to date...
It's uncomfortable, cramped, has a tiny range, no storage for locks or such like, expensive to insure, makes me permanently worry that it's being loaded into the back of some tea-leaf's van, requires great restaint to ride slowly......I love it to bits.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Bwaahhh ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa!

GSXR-750 K7, oh yes.

New bike - chosen!

Can you guess what it is yet?

What's noisier than a 5 month old with a cold?

A five month old and his mother, both with colds, of course....

Last night was a treat as Kit and Lorna sniffed, gargled and slurped their way towards morning. Poor things, get well soon, but please do it quietly.

The set, and costumes, for Art are pretty much sussed now - we get our pictures taken for the paper tonight, woo. Ticket sales still low - prepare to shuffle up to the front seats everyone. I have put the show onto every local and national website I could, even s1play.com (who managed to get our listing online after 4 submissions, 5 emails and even then they haven't got our phone numer correct...) to try to attract some "new blood".

My Suzuki GSXR600 test ride was called off on Saturday due to rain, boo hiss. It's the 750 I'm really interested in, but Saltire Suzuki only have a 600 tester - same size, shape and all that just a different engine. So, next weekend, then.