unseasonable!

Look at that, it’s sunny outside!  That’s… well, it’s annoying because I have a coat as well as a jumper today.

Jumper.

Heh.

That makes me sound about eight.  Jumper.  Pullover.  No, there’s simply no grown-up word for it.  Sweater.  Nooo.  Top.  Top is lame and boring, and what you call an item of apparel for which you have no other word.  Well, one that you wear on your torso, anyway.

I watched my daughter roll from her front to her back on Wednesday.  That made my week, that did.  A first!  And I witnessed it.  Distressing thought – her first word will probably be to a nursery staff member.  Frowny face!  Must make a deal with them so they don’t tell us even if it does happen, so it’ll seem like we heard the first word.  That’ll work, right?

My daughter likes trees

Okay, so she’s 15 weeks old so there’s not a lot of actual evidence for this claim, but she does watch them until they are out of sight when out in her buggy (a bugaboo bee, buggy-fans, I can’t recommend it enough).  Also she will quiet down when presented with a gently swaying mass of leaves.  I’m hoping this will continue and be a “thing”.  Like “Oh, yeah, she really loves trees”.  That’s cute in a toddler.  Ok, maybe not in a grown-up.

That time already?

Is it really only a week since I did that BB update?  Gosh, seems like ages ago.  How fast the summer recedes.  How I’ll know it’s summer if no-one picks up BB for 2011, I have no idea.

E has a cold.  Her first illness!  She’s not suffering too badly, bit of a snuffly nose.  The odd sneeze. The biggest problem is that she can’t breathe when placed on her back, which means she can’t sleep!  No sleep for little baby.  Therefore, no sleep for mummy and daddy. Except that she slept for about 10 hours last night, but that’s thanks to the magical power of Olbas Oil and a well-positioned crib.  But the night before, before her very clever mummy worked out the problem, was a dreadful night!  I was standing in the middle of the room, holding her against my chest, in the dark, at 4:30am, thinking “This is it, this is how I am going to have to say for the rest of the night!”.

Madness.  I forget how I solved that.  Maybe I’m still there.

Another year older

Big Brother ten ends tonight, another summer of excellent telly over.  This year’s show has been one of the most interesting for some time, a subtle ebb and flow of win and fail muddying the waters and making it impossible to call a winner until the very last minute.  It has also – despite their having been around 18 housemates overall – felt small, intimate, with a fixed “cast” which dwindled down to the final five in a soapy, satisfying narrative unafraid to shamelessly play with the emotions of the viewer (usually, to be fair, anger, hatred, pity and more anger).  Early favourites were exposed as trivial annoyances, those who made a bad first impression have emerged as front runners and for the longest time there seemed to be a distinct possibility that the winner could be a man who looked like a flabby Wolverine and did nothing all day but swear and masturbate, ensconced in a duvet.

For a show fighting for an audience – indeed for its very survival on the channel of its birth, a fight it lost before it even aired – it has been very low-key and lacked the OTT attention-grabbing antics of earlier series.  If anything, it was closest to perhaps the second series; after the show had found its feet in series one, it was building to the twat-a-rama of the later seasons while still new and shaky enough to feel fresh and innovative, populated with housemates with more idea what to expect than their predecessors but still defining what it is to be a Big Brother contestant.

This time, of course, everyone knew the score.  Some much better than others, of course, but all eyes were open.  So it became a battle of wills between the participants and organisers, a redefinition of the rules of engagement was in process.  The freakshows were being done away with, replaced by almost a new format.  Rules were bent, broken and abandoned.  Nominations discussed openly, with permission, and frequently didn’t happen.  Housemates left the house on day trips.  Written communication with the outside world (in the form of Tweets) occurred.  There was a massed breakout into the camera runs.  The authority of Big Brother was questioned, disputed and ignored.  It was a different show.  A new show.

And next year, it’s over.  Our loss.