Student days

My sister who is 9 years younger than me has just written a blog about moving into her second year house (read it here) and it's got me reminiscing about my student days again. I am very blessed to have a wonderful husband and an adorable son, and a job that is fairly fun.... but it's been a long time since I've done studenty things like tried to see how many pegs I could get on my face.

Although I bet I could get more on now that my skin is old and wrinkly.  Being a student is all about experimenting. I wasn't that bothered by the normal things students experiment with, so I tried a few other things out. So here are some ideas of things you could do this year Sarah and chums:

1) Wrap yourself up in cling film or paper

2) Make your banister into an extra housemate 

3) Have a chalk fight

4) be a hippy for a day, it involves having green hair, playing instruments in a park and smoking parsley.

4) make a cup of tea with your future husband while on stilts.

5) Do balloon modelling with a condom

...Because there's no other time in life where you can get away with stuff like this so make the most of it Sarah. xx

10 years ago

It's ten years since I moved to Liverpool as a student to study "Fine Art". 10 years! It was my second choice uni option, I really wanted to go to Manchester, but I sort of messed up that interview...they asked what option I would like to do; painting, sculpture or printmaking... I kind of wanted to do all of them but in the interview I said "probably painting" which was the wrong answer seeing as you actually had to decide before you started and only stick to one discipline and really know everything you were going to do before you start. The fact that I said "probably" kind of implied that I didn't know that or really anything about the course.

Then I went to my Liverpool interview and they were a lot friendlier and seemed to be genuinely interested in some artwork in my portfolio that I had done about Israel and Palestine. (I spent a few months of 2005 there.) Then he asked "who would you naturally side with" and I thought "this is make or break whether I get into the course" if he sides with the same as me I'll get on it if not I won't. So I very hesitantly said ...."the palestinians"*, and he seemed happy and I got on the course. If he'd have been a strong Israeli supporter my life might have turned out completely differently.
*Just so you know I don't hate Israelis or support suicide bombings, I just really like Palestinians.

I have been reminiscing about how I've changed in these 10 years. Here are some of the ways:

Stinginess
I was properly stingy in 2005, I'm not really sure why. I mean I was poor but I could have chilled out a bit. I think I have a much better balance now. I'm still quite thrifty but also I can relax a bit. Some thing are worth spending extra money on, like Ben and Jerry's and buying 1 decent bike instead of 5 rubbish ones, and hoovers that don't have flames inside them when you turn them on (I know you shouldn't expect much from a Tesco value hoover but "no flames" is kind of one of my essentials on my hoover tick list).

Craziness
People who've only met me in the last couple of years probably think I'm pretty crazy, but really I'm very responsible now. Not compared to the average parent but compared to 2005 me. I'm not sure you can get away with riding in a shopping trolley from Asda to Greenbank park to do some fire spinning at 4am as a mum.

Welcoming in 2007 just before the police came for a chat with us.

Technology
I sort of half hate technology. I think the internet is, at best, as good as it is bad. I don't have a T.V. or a smart phone. But in 2005 I didn't have anything, everyone else in my halls house of 5 people had a T.V and laptop, I didn't have either, I didn't even have a desktop computer, I had only just a month or 2 earlier got an email address. I had a green and black screen nokia phone, and digital camera but I didn't know how to get the photos off it, not that I had anything to put them on. I didn't have any digital music or a usb pen. This is why I have virtually no photos to share from this era. So this is the nearest thing I have: a piece of art from first year. I could write some rubbish about what it means and say words like "identity" and "consumerism" but I basically just cut up Boots magazine, it's what they let kids do in nursery but done better.

Confidence
On my first day at uni we all had to talk about our work in front of about 60 people and for some reason I had to go first and I hated it. I said one tiny sentence and then answered with just yes or no to every question. In general I wasn't really sure on my opinion on things, I was quite easily swayed by people and never confronted anyone about anything. Whereas now if I don't agree with something I'll tell you.

Family
I'm going to put an actual serious point here which I virtually never do on my blog. In 2005 I could not wait to leave home! I was well ready in 2004 when everyone else in my year left home, but the problem was I wanted to do art, and for that you normally need an art foundation course which is a free course but you can't get a student loan to cover living costs. So, I had the dilemma of doing art but staying another year living in a boring village near Coventry while all my friends went away and had exciting lives, or doing a course I didn't massively want to do just so I could leave. So I stayed in my boring village where I kept failing driving tests and therefore never had any independence.

But anyway I digress, the point is I couldn't wait to leave and have fun in a big city where buses were more frequent than every 2 hours and crime was more serious than someone stealing someone else's wellies from their shed (yep that actually happened I read it in the neighbourhood watch magazine).
My mum cried when she dropped me off, but I was so ready to live in a new place and never go back. Which is sort of what I did, for at least 3 years I went back the minimum amount and even stayed in Liverpool in the summers. I did that slightly annoying early 20's "I'm so grown up that I don't need you anymore thing". Sorry family. But now that I am the grand old age of 29 and I actually have grown up, I realise that I do have a good family and I enjoy their company and I even enjoy going back to my old village. I had this revelation after living in a quite high crime area for ages that actually- LOW CRIME RATES ARE A GOOD THING! Who would have thought it?!

Next blog I want to write about the very special people I met in my first weeks in Liverpool.

My Life In Cartoon

I've not blogged for a while, I've started a cartoon paper diary so now I'm doing the laziest blog post ever, pictures from my paper diary. They're not great pictures coz I just do it in 1 minute before I sleep and I don't do it in pencil first or anything, like I would if I was trying harder, but here are a few snap shots from my life.

So here is the diary it's a really nice mini one from paperchase.

 I wanted one without lines, ruled paper stifles creativity with its unnatural imposing structure that makes everyone conform to a boring way of life. It makes me angry. and for some reason this book looked too beautiful to be lined. But when I got home and took the plastic wrapping off..............Arghhhhhhhh!!!

But I got over it and started my diary.

Some interactive comedy I preformed proving that my 6 year old £10 phone was better than the iphone. Thanks Oli and Gemma.
See it here

Percy had an outdoor bath and leant to splash

Some more comedy. I made people dance the YMCA in arabic again (sorry Zac)

When your baby is wearing just a nappy and is coved in food and you think "I know I'll just rip the nappy off and put them straight in the bath" but then *SURPRISE* there's a cheeky poo.

We got Katie and Mike to babysit and went out for a date and then they invited people over and we came back for a mini party.

Dan's sister Lydia came back from 3 months in New York wearing a pineapple t-shirt which later inspired some pineapple art.

We had Joe Munrow round for a meal, and for some reason I asked what picture comes into your head when you think of a year and it was very interesting. Maybe it's one of those things where you had to be there.

If dressage is horses walking sideways then crab dressage would be crabs walking forwards. Just one of the many things we chat about in bed. In case you haven't guessed that's a crab with a plait.

I started my pineapple art.

I saw a bit too much of Alastair Clark at his comedy gig.

I had my wisdom tooth removed and got sedated which I sort of looked forward to as Percy has been getting up at 5am every day and an afternoon nap was lovely.

I went to Centre Parcs, Dan got me a nose clip for going down the rapids. I got half way down and lost it. It was a bit my fault as there was a big sign saying don't go head first. But when I see signs like that I take them as a challenge.

Some kids at Centre Parcs did not understand physics.

I took Percy to Keshia's and he got licked by a dog.

Percy learnt to wave and waved at Dan as he got home from work. He waves in the style of a Chinese good luck cat thing.


And that is 3 months of my life except for the more personal and possibly interesting bits that I left out. Thanks for reading.

Hanging with the Hawks

This blog is mainly about one of our favourite families the Hawkridges. We have to say "one of" because yesterday Dan was telling his mum how we sort of look up to them as a family and they were his favourite family and then he quickly backtracked to say how great his own upbringing was.

They live in Morocco "which is safer to read about than go to" according to my Grandads very old, slightly racist book about the world. Most places are safer to read about than go to though aren't they? Reading is a very safe activity, unless you combine it with driving or something.

They have 3 kids probably ages 7, 5 and 2ish. Their kids are amazing, the oldest told me on Saturday that we should have 7 children: 3 boys, 3 girls and one boy/girl and we should all become dog walkers. The Hawkridges have the highest level of stress tolerance I know. Before they had kids they bought a pub and made it into an art commune. When they moved to Morocco they bought a van and drove there from Liverpool with a baby (it was their baby they didn't steal a random baby). They don't have regular boring old jobs they are artists with unsecure work. They own a tiny little shop/studio space thing, they buy reptiles to live in their garden and they're considering sending their kids to a hippy farm school in Morocco.  They go on a family trip to the ice cream shop every Friday, that is definitely something that we should make a family tradition.

Sean and Eleanor

Den building with the kids

I like to think me and Dan are fun and interesting. The day we met we were in a 4 tier human pyramid, we celebrate the new tax year, we've twinned our arm chair with an armchair half a mile away, I once dressed as a pond as part of my comedy act and we cycled to Kuwait once for lols. But now we have a baby and are looking at buying a 3 bed Semi I'm worried we might start turning into "those people" people who try and live near good schools and have life insurance and listen to radio 4, and recycle and read parenting books. Snore.... Although I'm not really against this per se, I really am against those things taking up so much time that we forget to celebrate the new tax year with some wacky tax themed games.

That's why I'm happy to have the Hawkridges influence in our lives. While they were over we made a cup of tea while I was on Dan's shoulders and I tried something I'd been wanting to try for ages. Unicycle pram pushing... it's amazing! It's faster than walking with the pram and more stable than just unicycling.

8 months

Little Percy Jones is now 8 months old, and is turning into a cheeky little boy. Here are a few things that have changed in the last month:

His two bottom teeth have grown through, he was a nightmare with them! For about 5 days he stopped eating and woke up loads in the night and was generally not fun.

He's stopped puking so much Hooray! It was getting me down that I always had to have a muslin constantly protecting anything within firing range. He is still sick but only a couple of times a day.

He's learned to splash violently, he's always loved the bath but he now goes crazy as I lower him in even before he touches the water.

He's learnt to drink quite well from a sippy cup, he's still not got the hang of how you have to tip it up much more when it's emptier but he generally gets it. He's not really got the hang of spoons yet, I give him a spoon of stuff and he puts it in his mouth via his shoulder, sometimes the food falls off on the way and then when I take the spoon off him to reload it he cries and is like "why are you taking my food away!" he doesn't understand that spoons are not eternal food sources.

He can sit up, this is great because a month ago he could only sit up for a few seconds so I always had to sit behind him.

He can make the sounds mama and dada but I don't think he's using them in context.

He is trying to crawl and pull himself up to standing.

He has not yet learnt anything about fear and danger, he'll hit himself on the head with a toy and then cry seemingly without realising why, and he'll try his hardest to nose dive of sofas. He thinks he's invincible.

It's getting increasingly hard to take these photos that I'm doing every month it's almost as if an 8 month old child doesn't want to sit still and pose with a tile. Here are some out takes:

"Hmmm"

"What does this toy do again?"

"I'm actually feeling a little self conscious now"

"Ugh Mum just take the stupid photo, I want to get on with my nose diving off the sofa."

Percy's Favorite Things

Little Percy is now almost 7 months old, it's gone so fast but it also feels like we've always had him. Here are some things he loves:

Swimming

I think he actually thinks he can swim, he kicks his legs like a frog and splashes with his arms while I'm holding his tummy up, he seems frustrated that I'm holding him I've been tempted to let go but I don't think I will just yet. I think his natural chub helps to keep him afloat. A mum at swimming asked me "does his swimsuit have floats built in?" and I had to say "no, he's just chubby."

Bath time

not surprisingly he loves bath time too, he loves to splash and is fine with me pouring water over his head.

Animals

We were in the park once and some dogs came up and started sniffing him. I was holding him tight trying to protect him, I'm a bit scared of dogs, but he was laughing his head off. He also loves to "stroke" our rabbit. He's a bit grabby with her at the mo so me and Dan have to do it together, one of us is in charge of protecting the rabbit from the baby and the other is in charge of protecting the baby from the rabbit. Lola copes incredibly well, she once had her ears pulled and didn't really react.

Silly voices

The way to make Percy giggle is to sing a song in a silly voice or give a toy an accent. My mum knitted him a dinosaur and a monkey. We have given the dinosaur a Scouse accent and the monkey a posh accent. Originally the dinosaur was always trying to start a fight and then I pointed out that this was negative stereotyping so we switched them round and now the posh monkey is always inciting violence and the Scouse dinosaur is an activist for peace.

All food

We started weaning Percy at 6 months, we went to a baby led weaning workshop which was really good. If you don't know baby led weening (or as my Dad calls it self-directed eating) is all about giving babies finger food and letting them feed themselves. After a few days we started giving him some mushed up food too because a lot of the finger food is ending up on the floor. He's tried more veg than the average adult now...carrots, broccoli, parsnips, courgette, butternut squash, avacado, cucumber, tomato, sweetcorn and peppers. He's also had fruit, natural yogurt with oats, Weetabix, rice and toast. Soon I would like to try him on potatoes and meat.

Day one of "eating" -throwing broccoli everywhere

GIVE ME MELON!!

I love my parsnip face mask

Songs

He loves when I sing nursery rhymes to him, especially ones that involve me jiggling him up and down.

His hands and feet

Sometimes he moves his hands about slowly as if he was the queen waving and he just stares at them for ages working out how they move. He also loves to hold or eat his feet.

Mirrors

Percy loves his own reflection. When I'm getting ready in the morning I sit him in front of the full length mirror in our room and he amuses himself.

Wiggling

He loves to move, he loves bouncing in the door bouncer. When I'm holding him he does this thing where he's sort of trying to get down as if he can just run off.

We're on holiday at the moment in Angelsey, we just arrived yesterday. We stopped off in Llandudno on the way and took Percy for his first trip to the beach and we also go to ride a train called "The Percy Express!" which he loved.

P.S. My friend Danni recently put on Facebook that she was doing some research into the differences between online self and real self and it made me think about what I write about Percy. I never really write negative stuff because I think people don't like a moaner, and I don't want to scare people who don't have kids yet.

So this is just a little disclaimer just in case you think that everything is easy and lovely. It's really hard a lot of the time, having a baby makes normal tasks like going out for a cup of tea into missions that you try and survive and get through. I have a lot of cute smiley photos of him but he is often grumpy and annoying. Having a baby really limits what you can do in a lot of ways. Some days I love being a mum, but some days I can't wait till my youngest child is like 4ish and I don't have to deal with babies anymore. I hope this doesn't come across as a moan, just a balanced view. I love him, but I'm looking forward to the day he can wipe his own bum.

Who shall I vote for?

It's election time... that time of year that I'm forced to vote because it's an easier option that trying to come up with a reason for not voting to my mum, and suffragettes and all that.

I am so far undecided and have little knowledge of what each party is offering, I thought I'd share my list of pros and cons for each party and if anyone wants to put forward a persuasive argument for either I'm quite easily swayed.

Ukip: 

I've started with them because they're the easiest Pros - nothing.

Cons- racist. I wish it was a vote off the worst party election and then I know who I would vote for.

Greens: 

Pros they're probably nice people, my friend Steph would be happy. They're pro Palestine and anti HS2.

Cons: I've heard a rumour they don't want people to own rabbits or chickens because they think it's cruel. They want to raise the minimum wage to £10 something. I know that sounds like a good thing but I'm not sure it is. If I had to pay a childminder over £10 an hour I couldn't afford it so I would look into other childcare options, and so would other people. So I feel like childminders and cleaners and people like that would be out of a job.

Ironically our rabbit actually supports the greens, see her express her political views here

Conservative:

Pros: I actually don't hate them as much as the majority of people in the north. I'm to young to still be mad about Thatcher. I think it's time we all get over that now, it really was a long time ago. Unlike a lot of people I think their cuts are generally a good thing. If you had a mate who was in debt and still kept buying you rounds of drinks in the pub and then one day he was like "I think I'm going to stop doing that now" you'd be a bit miffed that you got no more free drinks but really if you were a good friend you'd be pretty supportive. They took over at a difficult time and I don't think they've done that badly.

Cons: they want to make further cuts to welfare 12 million or billion ... something like that it definitely had a 12 in it. I know I just said cuts are kind of good... but I think it's a bit naive to think you can cut welfare more than it has already been cut. There aren't people sitting around twiddling their thumbs thinking "if my benefits were cut by another £10 a week I'd probs just go out and get a job" but I recon there are people who if their benefits were cut more would have to rely on either family or crime to make up that money. Me and Dan have both been unemployed at different points and it's only because we've not both been unemployed at once that we've survived.

Labour:

Pros: For us as a family rather than the country as a whole they probably will benefit us the most. They're very likely to get in round here so it's tempting to be a glory supporter. I quite like Luciana Burger. I've said hi to her twice, and she came to our church christmas service and got covered in fake snow and I respect that. They're against zero hours contracts which I have been on a lot of.

Cons: They massively overspent to the point where schools etc. were just wasting money. The lady who works at the children's centre I go to was telling me how they were just throwing money away under labour. Ed Miliband is an awkward public speaker. I don't think the mansion tax thing is very well thought through. I'm not against it in theory I just think it's a bit of a gimmick vote winner that rich people will find their way out of.

Lib Dems:

Pros: not terrible polices like increasing the personal tax allowance, I feel a bit sorry for them. I quite like yellow at the moment.

Cons: tuition fees liars. Although I'm past the age where tuition fees matter now so who cares. If you don't like the thought of paying back your loan do an art degree followed by a bit of self-employed work then have a baby. Also get married change your name change your address and don't tell them. I'm pretty sure I'll never pay that loan back.

So that is my not very informed view. It's between Labour, Lib Dems and spoiling my ballot I think.

P.S. These were my thoughts last election in 2010: http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/election-time.html