What is your favourite photograph. And why?

It can be your wedding day, your children, walking in the park/on a beach/hand in hand. It can be your back garden on a frosty morning, a holiday photo, the day you met someone famous, the day you met your other half.

It can be a lost relative, a family gathering, a picture of you in your youth.
Post it, say why it’s your fav then invite someone else to do the same.

It’s as simple as that.

Well this is mine…

It was taken in Wembury, Plymouth, in August 2008 when Miss E was 8 and Miss M 3.  It was just a moment, but I love it.

My two little girls, standing together, staring out at the sea, at the big wide world beyond them.  It gives me this feeling of them looking towards the future (which is a bit scary), but I also love how their closeness shines through, and how their little legs are the same shape, and how good it makes me feel that they have each other.

This was our last summer holiday as a two parent family.  My girls do still have two parents who love them dearly, but they, Miss E and Miss M, are the constant, the ‘whole’ that Mr B and I both have to share.

The picture below, Miss M’s First Day in Reception from September 2009, was a close second, but the beach pic just gets me right in the heart…mostly in a good way.

So many people have already been tagged in this, but I’m going to go for lovely Potski Mumski, who I owe a meme to, and because she’s just one of the nicest bloggers I’ve ever met as well as being a fabulous writer, and, the equally fabulous and one of the nicest bloggers I’ve never met, Iota who will be starting a very special meme soon.   (And sometimes ‘nice’ is a perfectly ok word if it’s written with warmth and good feeling, which these are.)

Looking forward to ‘blumming marvellous and very clever and also good at pulling faces at yetis’ Erica’s photo montage of all the pics Tara has gathered so far.

Imagine its owner, dressed up looking pretty
All smart and refined for a night in the city

Imagine her hair, all straight and not curly
Her demeanour says class, with a slight hint of girlie

Imagine a pub, then imagine another
Imagine the language, so coarse for a mother

Imagine her friends all embarassed and drear
Who lift her once more as she falls on her rear

Imagine said shoe, and the strain it is under
As she totters about with her ankles asunder

Now imagine that harlot who walks with a wibble?
Imagine no more, for it is Rosie Scribble

After much poking and prodding, the removal of skirting boards, the uncovering of that area round the back of the throne that I probably don’t clean as much as I should, and the employment of a small plastic jug, it has been decided that the reason for the January 2nd 2010 Beaufoix  Kitchen disaster is….

..a leaky pipe behind the bog  lavatory.

Therefore it seems that it may well have been caused by our bottoms. 

And as Misses E and M have small bottoms, and I myself have the tiny bottom of a minature hamster, it can only mean that the other regular user, Ms Rosie Scribble and her tiny small daughter, have caused this lamentable malfunction.

I know I know, even though Ms Scribble is author of posts such as this, cough, she does seem otherwise normal, so it may seem cruel and somewhat unfair for me to be pointing the finger in her direction as the cause of our toilet troubles, but having visited her house today and seen evidence of her idea of wall art,

Well I wouldn’t put anything past her.

For now I am still at my parents with limited internet access as they have not got wireless and my Dad works from home.  But at least things seem to be moving in the right direction.  I have decided that in the future Ms Scribble will only be allowed use of my outside ‘facility,’ so am fairly confident the problem will not reoccur.

In the mean time thanks so much for all your concern.  You are a lovely lot.

It’s a lovely one, and as most of the work has been done by my children it’s been quite an easy one too.

So without further a do, I give you, Picture Perfect, portraits of Mummy (me) by Misses E and M.

Enjoy

Sighhhh.  My eldest child thinks I am a Princess, even in my dull, old, black hoody.   Fabulous.
(And I actually do have a face shaped like a wooden spoon, ok?)

And Miss M presented me this, alongside one of those leg hugs that is part love part nose wipe.

Look at my lashes?  I am so glam, snort, and my neck is so long I look almost swan like.  That’s what you were thinking right?

As for the big black button nose, well let’s just ignore that shall we??

When I was a kid I had plans to head off to the big city and make my way as a writer.  I’d live in this leaky and yet some how cosy flat, with fifties decoration and an eccentric but loveable old couple next door who’s cat would sometimes poop in the hall but who were always smiling.  I’d be working for Smash Hits Magazine (obviously), interviewing popstars and wearing kookie clothes, and no one would mind that I was a little…different.

Except I was only that person inside my head.  In real life I didn’t believe enough to try.

But every time I go to London now I feel like that kid again.  Not in a bad way, but in a wide eyed, hopeful, entertained kind of way.  It makes me feel fresh, I suppose because it’s a place of discovery, and when you’ve lived one place your whole life there’s not always that much to discover, or you forget how to look.

One of the things I love most about the big smoke is the people.  Not the grumpy ones who bump into you and don’t seem to have learnt the words “Oh sorry, my bag just knocked your head a little askew.  Would you like me to summon a physician?”, but the others, you know, the ones you can’t help but see.

Like ‘Hat Man’, cleverly named because he stands on the platform of the Picadilly line wearing approximately 5 trilbys, all perched neatly one on top of the other in a surreal balancing act.  Varying in colour they draw the eye and raise such questions as:

• Why is that man wearing all those hats?
• Does he swap them round each day?
• Is one his thinking hat, one his dinner hat, one his clean out the rabbit hat and one his look really tall in a tube station hat?
• Does he know he’s got them on?
• Is he dangerous?
• Would it be wise to keep staring at him?

My favourite ‘people moment’ is the encounter with the big shoes and the tiny small man.

Again I’m standing on the edge of a platform on the Piccadilly line.  I don’t get into the first train with Hatman.  It is stuffed to bursting and I can’t quite face ‘oozing’ into the liquid mercurial mass.  Another tube is due in 5 minutes so I step back a little and wait.  Beside me there is a young emo couple.  Tall and broad in a mish mash of dark fabrics and textures, the girl stands to my left, her back margined by two long dark plaits.

To my right, there is a tiny, tiny business man.  Short and square in a navy pin striped suit, his eyes are rooted to a spot just in front of the yellow safety line.  I follow his gaze and see them.

The boots..

That’s why she’s so tall.  On emo girl’s feet are things that look a little like caterpillar boots, but with the most enormous soles ever.  Seriously, it looks like she’s sporting a couple of black shiny hovercrafts, a bit like the ones below but with a much wider platform.

I glance back at the tiny small man and he is still looking.

I check my watch, look again at the man and he’s STILL looking, and it’s then I see it, just behind his eyes.  Cogs are turning, pistons pumping and he’s thinking, “If I had them, I would be tall.”

His eyes widen slightly, then meet mine briefly and we both look away, but when I look back he is once more coveting the boots.

Sighhhh.  It was a moment.

Anyway, finally there is the enormous pigeon and the man dressed as a haddock that I mentioned in yesterday’s post.

You know, the post about honesty, integrity, and keeping it real?

Except, well, I didn’t.

I lied.

Because there was no giant pigeon, and nobody was dressed as a haddock, which is probably a good thing, otherwise the giant pigeon would undoubtedly have eaten the man sized haddock and that would have been unpleasant.

So you’ll forgive me right?  Because apart from that, I never lie.

Honest.

Which is why I will be completely truthful when I tell you that yesterday, as well as being interviewed by Shiny Red, I also got the chance to meet (though briefly) the very lovely and engaging and ‘not at all as feisty as she is on the telly’ Lowri Turner who freely admits to burning food, being scared of spiders and occasionally forgetting how many kids she is supposed to be picking up from school and therefore leaving one behind, (breathe), and, the fabulous team behind new ‘real Mums’ website Super Savvy Me, a site already featuring the writing of our very own yummy Mummy ‘Tara Sticky Fingers Cain’.

AND, I got to have lunch with one of my bezzie mates in the hold world ever Rosie Scribble , yummy Tara, a very slim and healthy looking  Single Parent Dad (who enthusiastically took home my Pampers Gift of Life parcel – it was yours Rosie, but then it was mine), lovely Tim from Bringing up Charlie (with Charlie), the fabulous Dulwich Divorcee, gorgeous Susanna aka A Modern Mother, twitterer extraordinaire Who’s the Mummy, and the wise and wonderful and very, very kind and lovely Potty Mummy.

There’s no wonder  I’m shattered really is there?  Sighhhhh.  And it’s 1am and I have to pack for a weekend away in Spain, and a few days in Scarborough, and for my girls two nights at Granny’s….and, and, that’s why I copied and pasted all your links Rosie.  In case they looked familiar.

See, honest.

Add friends…

And warm drinks…  
(Miss Rosie manages to avoid the camera again.)

Sprinkle on a few pieces of yummy things…

And what do you get?

Well ok, apart from that, what do you get?

Sighhhhh, perfection.

Happy Birthday Miss Lucy

Love ya sweet cheeks.

And ta for a lovely time at The Walk