Our Weekend
Didn’t go out on Friday night as had to stay late for a monumentally pointless conference call, which was entirely taken up with NY’s concerns.
But what a lovely weekend otherwise! Saturday was a bit grotty but when we descended from the clouds, the weather was fine enough for a trip to Shek O where we went to the Chinese Thai place on the corner by the roundabout and had: spicy salt and pepper squid, fried rice with salt fish, asparagus and garlic, kangkong belacan, fried kway teow and minced pork and tofu with whole black peppercorns. Ate until we were stuffed and still had to bungkus most of it. Then ho! for the beach. A tiny little old lady, who barely came up to my shoulder, accosted us in the carpark (Free Parking!) trying to rent us deckchairs and umbrellas. When we indicated our assent, she raced away and after keeping us waiting so long we thought she must keep her beach equipment in a godown in Stanley, she eventually re-emerged fully laden down. She had to commandeer the help of another beach umbrella person to help her with the deckchairs etc while we strode majestically over the sand, selecting the optimal spot for our setup. Ah, you don’t get this level of service from pensioners in the UK!
Got home and remembered I’d promised to bake biscuits for post-church bunfest on Sunday. Curly “helped” by eating the raw biscuit dough and licking the golden syrup spoon. The oven helped by going out in the middle of the baking, requiring me to enlist the help of LSS and his advanced firemaking skills to relight it.
Watching Spiderman 3 trailer. Curly sagely advised that there was no such thing as superheros. I told her that there are however people who are much more heroic because they are brave and good and stand up for what is right, in spite of the fact that they have no superpowers to protect them. This was borne out by the sermon on Sunday when the pastor told a cheery story about a Polish priest who starved to death in Auschwitz when he took the place of 1 of 10 people who had been selected at random by the Nazis for death by starvation in reprisal for something or other. They starved them until they needed the cell and then finished them off with carbolic acid. Words cannot express etc. Mo is doing WW2 this term at school. LSS is contributing by watching the World at War with him. So far they have watched edited highlights of the first 4 episodes. As Mo says plaintively: “Why do the British keep losing?”
Noticed a strange thing – when we go down on Sunday morning in the shuttlebus, all the Filipina helpers and I are holding on for dear life to avoid being flung hither and thither as we go round the curves. The children however just sit there, not holding on to anything, their feet dangling from the seat, not visibly tensing up, and they do not move at all. Are they too light to be subject to Newton’s laws of motion?
Sunday breakfast with the Ancient Greeks at the club, who are neither ancient, nor Greek. What nice people! Kept off the subject of American imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. Then swimming. Same hunky tattooed Latin guy was there from last week. I think we will be doing a lot more swimming at the club on Sundays! The entire family lunched off one of their massive burgers and fries. Back home, took the girls down to the Peak Galleria, where we sat out front by the fountain, ate orange ice-lollies and watched the people go by. Lovely. And free. Talked about dogshit:
Me: Do you remember last week when we came down there must have been about 10 steaming piles of dogpoo on the way down?
Larry: Yes, let’s not talk about it.
Curly: We kept on having to walk around it.
L: Yes, can we not talk about it?
C: I hope there’s no dogpoo today.
L: You’re talking about it!
C: I hate dogpoo.
L: Stop talking about it!
Etc etc
Two jokes from Mo:
Q: How did the Romans divide Gaul?
A: With a pair of Caesars.
Q: Where do bacteria go on holiday?
A: Germany.
But what a lovely weekend otherwise! Saturday was a bit grotty but when we descended from the clouds, the weather was fine enough for a trip to Shek O where we went to the Chinese Thai place on the corner by the roundabout and had: spicy salt and pepper squid, fried rice with salt fish, asparagus and garlic, kangkong belacan, fried kway teow and minced pork and tofu with whole black peppercorns. Ate until we were stuffed and still had to bungkus most of it. Then ho! for the beach. A tiny little old lady, who barely came up to my shoulder, accosted us in the carpark (Free Parking!) trying to rent us deckchairs and umbrellas. When we indicated our assent, she raced away and after keeping us waiting so long we thought she must keep her beach equipment in a godown in Stanley, she eventually re-emerged fully laden down. She had to commandeer the help of another beach umbrella person to help her with the deckchairs etc while we strode majestically over the sand, selecting the optimal spot for our setup. Ah, you don’t get this level of service from pensioners in the UK!
Got home and remembered I’d promised to bake biscuits for post-church bunfest on Sunday. Curly “helped” by eating the raw biscuit dough and licking the golden syrup spoon. The oven helped by going out in the middle of the baking, requiring me to enlist the help of LSS and his advanced firemaking skills to relight it.
Watching Spiderman 3 trailer. Curly sagely advised that there was no such thing as superheros. I told her that there are however people who are much more heroic because they are brave and good and stand up for what is right, in spite of the fact that they have no superpowers to protect them. This was borne out by the sermon on Sunday when the pastor told a cheery story about a Polish priest who starved to death in Auschwitz when he took the place of 1 of 10 people who had been selected at random by the Nazis for death by starvation in reprisal for something or other. They starved them until they needed the cell and then finished them off with carbolic acid. Words cannot express etc. Mo is doing WW2 this term at school. LSS is contributing by watching the World at War with him. So far they have watched edited highlights of the first 4 episodes. As Mo says plaintively: “Why do the British keep losing?”
Noticed a strange thing – when we go down on Sunday morning in the shuttlebus, all the Filipina helpers and I are holding on for dear life to avoid being flung hither and thither as we go round the curves. The children however just sit there, not holding on to anything, their feet dangling from the seat, not visibly tensing up, and they do not move at all. Are they too light to be subject to Newton’s laws of motion?
Sunday breakfast with the Ancient Greeks at the club, who are neither ancient, nor Greek. What nice people! Kept off the subject of American imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. Then swimming. Same hunky tattooed Latin guy was there from last week. I think we will be doing a lot more swimming at the club on Sundays! The entire family lunched off one of their massive burgers and fries. Back home, took the girls down to the Peak Galleria, where we sat out front by the fountain, ate orange ice-lollies and watched the people go by. Lovely. And free. Talked about dogshit:
Me: Do you remember last week when we came down there must have been about 10 steaming piles of dogpoo on the way down?
Larry: Yes, let’s not talk about it.
Curly: We kept on having to walk around it.
L: Yes, can we not talk about it?
C: I hope there’s no dogpoo today.
L: You’re talking about it!
C: I hate dogpoo.
L: Stop talking about it!
Etc etc
Two jokes from Mo:
Q: How did the Romans divide Gaul?
A: With a pair of Caesars.
Q: Where do bacteria go on holiday?
A: Germany.
posted by FBT at 4:22 am
11 Comments:
Did you happen to notice a tall, dark and dashingly handsome man down at the restauarant in Shek O?
That was me, that was.
Did you happen to notice a sarcastic mum, a fellow that looks like Mr Bean and 3 lunatics? That was us.
When is Mo getting his own blog?
I dream of the day when I can say "took the girls *down* to the Peak Galleria".
"Mo is doing WW2 this term at school"
I just love education the whole of WW2 in 1 term. Makes you wonder why it took 6 years to fight.
As an aside 600,000 men died at Verdun in WW1. As for the Somme whole villages of men were wiped away in a single morning. It always brings a lump to the throat hearing the last post at the end of the day at Ypres.
Perhaps history should be taught at a personal level.
As an example my father went to school and left at 18 instead of going to University. All this so he could join the fleet air arm during WW2. Instead he became a Bevin boy. His best freind died at Monte Cassino. The only time I have ever seen my father cry was when he found his best freinds grave 40 years later.
Maybe history is taught so we dont make the same mistakes, however instead of learning the dates we need to learn the sadness. After all you only win if you get to write your story as the victor, the loser has no heroes only villians.
fbt you cant have missed Troika he had something about a Shetland Pony on his forehead.
I think he said he was going to get it tattoed on his forehead it was fore something
Don't worry, Huge, when we're living in Balham, anywhere we go will be "up" from there.
I've been to Verdun. Lovely little town, no sign of all the corpses from WWI, although there are a shocking number of statues, even for the French.
I love that Thai place in Shek-O, the kids can sneak off down that lane to the park, which is nice if you end up wanting an extra beer or ten.
Oh and there's that one house on the lane that looks like it was picked up and flown in directly from Provence. I always peek in the windows, hoping they'll like the look of me and give me their house.
So many subjects in one blog entry, dogshit included!
Ah, Balham, gateway to the south. If you haven't already seen it, the Hungarian-language film "Fateless" offers a disturbing (and not in the expected sense) look at human nature by means of the Nazi death camps.
Indeed fun read.
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