Forget War - Eat Cake

Watching War Horse and Birdsong this weekend left me wondering about the point of war.

Why didn't the first world war end all wars? Why didn't those men come back (the few who did) and say, "No more!" And what did it solve that couldn't have been sorted out over a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake?

The best answer I came up with was population control.  Cake can't reduce the number of people in a country so drastically that there are no problems of over-crowding.

I have always struggled with war propaganda.  I don't get why someone is brave because they killed someone. Surely, the brave thing to do would be not to take a life! Eight year old boys love war.  They are always crawling around on their bellies trying to shoot each other.  Do they not understand the reality or has the conditioning gone so deep that they can't feel like a true boy unless they are excited by killing people?

 

It's not really individual servicemen and women, I have a problem with but the people who make the decisions to go to war.  There has to be better negotiating skills at the top than, "let me have that piece of land or I'll send millions of men from my country to die and kill millions of men from your country!"

While I'm being controversial, can I say that I was a bit disappointed with War Horse?  Although, the cinematography, music, casting, screenplay were all brilliant.  I did think there were some timing issues.  The beginning was quite slow and then when you were just thinking about having a good sob it was all over. I would have like a bit longer to get the tears flowing properly.  What happened to the goose at the end? I'm sure when I read the book I was blubbing when the goose appeared and made me fall into a very painful bout of laughing and crying simultaneously.

The film left me questioning the morality of man.  Why are we so keen to believe that it was the Germans not the British who were cruel to their horses and why do we believe that only the Germans shot their deserters, while the British chap decided to get shot himself rather than shoot his fellow men?

My favourite part of the film was the co-operation scene and probably not just because it appeals to my pacifist nature but also because Toby Kibbell's performance is captivating.

My daughter predicts big things for this actor!

As for Birdsong, maybe the appeal of war is all the sex but if you look very closely it was the same sex scene repeated over and over again.  I think they probably only did it once!  Someone put on twitter that they were too distracted by counting her moles to really enjoy the scene anyway.

Lying - Another Skill for the CV

Being an expert liar is probably not something you should put on your CV but it is a skill that shouldn't be underrated.  It shows an ability to think on your feet and keep a clear head.  You need to have an excellent memory to be a good liar too.  If you tell a story that is true it is easier to repeat it accurately if asked again but one that you've made up has not real life anchors to hold it in place.

I have lied to so many people over the past week and enjoyed every moment of doing so. You get to an age when your brain craves any kind of novelty and a chance to flex it's muscles.  Planning a surprise party was the most exciting and scary thing I've done in a long time.  We started to think about it at Christmas and finally decided to go for it 2 weeks ago.  With the help of a few of my daughter's brilliant friends we made a guest list.  As soon as the invitations went out I started to panic.  "What am I doing," I thought, "I'd hate a surprise party!"

Amazingly, everyone kept the secret and she didn't have a clue. 

The guest list was the first tricky thing to organise.  When you are the parent of a teenager, you hear lots of names but you don't know them all.  Organising parties for 5 year olds is so much simpler.  You know what Chloe or Abbey or Ellie looks like and you know their parents.  When they are 18 you have glimpsed the slight blond girl but you don't know if she's a Sophie or an Ellie or which Sophie or Ellie she might be.
Living in a family of nuts helps when staging subterfuge.  Trying to get one of my daughter's friends on her own to ask her to give out some invitations was a team effort.  "Can you go and see Dad? He's fussing about something I don't get what!"  He then said, "I don't know why your mum couldn't have explained it!" Although it was odd it was no stranger than many of the conversations she's used to. Being an enthusiastic Facebook and Twitter stalker also helped.

Then I had to make and hide the cake.

As I keep cake tins on top of the cupboards, hiding the finished cakes wasn't too difficult.  To hide making it we made another cake for her to take out for a meal on her actual birthday.

On Friday evening we dressed up to the nines and headed off to orchestra practice.  Telling everyone who told me I looked nice that I was off to the Blue Strawberry, allowing a few orchestra members to leave early because they were off to visit 'a friend' and making my Dad leave early because he was 'feeling unwell' were all beautifully told lies.  So convincing that when my Dad arrived at our house people were surprised that he looked so well!

There were so many jobs to do before we could leave orchestra and the stress levels were rising about being late for our table reservation.  I was surprised that she wasn't suspicious that I didn't want to unload the car and insisted that she entered through the side door but after being very shocked and a few tears of joy she loved it. Phewwwwww!

The Old School Bench

There are times when laughing is inappropriate.  As much as you want to snigger when a young violinist says, "Miss, my G string's gone all floppy.", the explanation of why you are laughing would be just too embarrassing.
Children don't need much encouragement to giggle at rudeness.  Today we sang about bottoms wriggling on chairs and the bosom of Abraham and both caused a few titters.

School PE benches are really badly designed.  Whilst being brilliant for sitting lots of children on there are two lumps at each end of the bench where the feet are fixed and so two unfortunate children have to sit on them.

Today one of the unlucky children announced, "Miss, I'm having trouble fitting between the two knobs!"

Did I giggle? What do you think?

Good Shopping

Now, I can finally blog about buying my daughter's birthday present; something I've been itching to do for a while but couldn't because she reads this rubbish.

We wanted to get something that would last but was also practical.  Next year she will be living away from home and there are things every student needs.  Without a camera how are you going to have fuzzy photographic memories of drunken evenings at the SU bar, or proof that your favourite band did play at your college before they became famous, or pictures of the floor of the bathroom that you have no idea how they appeared on your camera?

But I hate shopping. The long-suffering husband did his research to try to find a good compact camera in a pretty colour.  He couldn't find a nice pink one so we hit the shops to see if the purple alternatives were any good.  Every shop we went in made me cross.  I hate to be 'sold to'.  We knew what we wanted to look at and found it incredibly frustrating to be told, "You'd be better off with this camera, madam!"  That wouldn't be annoying if it wasn't a lower-spec camera at a higher price!  And before you've even bought the camera they are trying to sell you extended warranty.

Then we went to Camera World in Chelmsford.  This was the most exciting, rewarding shopping experience I have ever had.  The staff were passionate about cameras.  They got excited when you told them what you were buying and who for.  Were were served by a young woman, who understood exactly what we were looking for.  Although, she didn't have the camera we had thought of getting (in purple) she made really good suggestions. She showed us a camera that could be used for taking good pictures of yourself.

But finally we settled on an Olympus camera with a 10x optical zoom (great for getting a close-up shot of Jack Whitehall) in red.  It was also a really good price and no extended warranty. She didn't push us to buy extra's like a card (we already had one) either.  

If only all shops were like that.  

Mother of an Adult

Tomorrow morning at 7.40 I will be the mother of an adult.

At this time 18 years ago I was on a really long walk.  I walked from 1 until 4.30, came home did some knitting, ate something, had a bath and went to bed.  When I woke up at 3 it crossed my mind that I might be in labour but decided to go back to sleep.  Waking again at 5, it was time to tell Mr All-Trades.  He said, "it's not time yet, go back to sleep." "I've tried that," I replied, "would you mind calling the midwife?" The midwife arrived and out the baby popped.

Soon to be the mother of an adult is making me feel old and tearful.  I wish I could be more like the long suffering husband, who says when he thinks about being the father of an adult he just feels proud that she has grown into such a wonderful person.

The Wrath of God

Apart from being omniscient and omnipresent God is also meant to be quite a violent chap.

 When he sees the Devil in humans he is meant to be able to punish them. Not content with a spell on the naughty step he sends floods, fires, plagues and sometimes gets a bit creative;  Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt, which is quite a trick. In the Old Testament, the Israelites get killed the most often (no wonder they feel persecuted), sometimes just for complaining about being punished.  Most bizarrely, a bear is sent by God to maul 42 youths to death after they mocked Ellisha's bald head (the long-suffering husband might like to point this fact out to the children!).  He seems to get kinder in the New Testament and just sends the angel of death to a few people who fail worship him.

Maybe he has become even kinder now and just puts splinters into the non-believers.

At a beautiful memorial concert at a local church, my daughter slid along the pew only to get a rather large splinter in her leg.

The Pew - The splinter was thrown away quickly but the hole it left remains forever.

I don't know what she has done to deserve it (and I'm not going to ask) but she is usually good, kind, hardworking and generally quite lovely (apart from an obsession with cats) and so I think I should take extra care at the moment because the punishment for this blasphemous blog may be much worse than a splinter.

Surely Not Sherlock

There's been a lot of buzz around Sherlock and so, feeling a little left out, I watched all three episodes in one go. BBC i-player is fantastic when you can't sleep.

The fuss is well deserved.  It's perfectly written, updated to modern day Baker Street, without loosing any of the essence of the real Holmes.  Benedict Cummerbatch plays Sherlock as an aloof, slightly dysfunctional, a-sexual character who clearly has Aspergers and that just seems to make him even more attractive.  The floppy hair cut, nice shoes and great coat also help.   Whereas, Martin Freeman (who in my opinion is an enormously underrated actor) makes Watson just like the rest of us; muddling through every day life, making mistakes and being just occasionally brilliant. 

A Scandal in Belgravia was edge-of-the-seat-telly.  The story was so gripping there was no time to even think about working out what was going on.  It never occurred to me that the high-class call girl wasn't dead the first time but now that we know Sherlock saved her she must be involved in the final episode even if we didn't see her.  Maybe she's the person on the bike, although if she was I'm glad to think she was wearing a few more clothes. 

The Hounds of Baskerville was not quite as gripping or expertly written and gave me time to think about the solutions.  Quite early on I had worked out that Dr Frankland was the bad guy.  I didn't work out that it was caused by a hallucinogen in the fog.

The Reichenbach Fall episode was really clever.  Using the reference to Turner's Painting and making Moriarty's alias Richard Brook (a translation of Reichenbach from the German) and linking it all to Conan Doyle's The Final Problem was inspired.

But I think I am the only person on the planet who never believed that Sherlock fell.  I always thought it was brilliant misdirection.  Watson was pushed by the person on the bike at the moment of the jump, where I believe he was given the hallucinogen from the HOUND project (cue fuzzy pictures), this gave Holmes time to  put his clothes and ID on Moriarty and push him off.  When the body landed Watson saw what he expected to see - Holmes and so identified the body.  

Stephen Moffat (writer) is having great fun in the press, giving interviews and suggesting that everyone has missed the most important clue.  He says that no one has guessed the answer, either.

Surely my theory can't be right.  It can't be that simple, can it Sherlock?

Rainbow Child

This morning, on Radio One's Chris Moyles' show they were trying to explain a rainbow.  They got in a complete tizz with it and ended up saying that it's because the light reflects in the raindrops. Even though it was radio it was possible to visualise Chris sitting with his fingers in his ears singing, "la, la, la, la, la"


It wasn't the best start I've ever given my daughter to her day.  I'd gone into her room (the only room that allows Radio One in the house) only to start shouting, "REFRACTION.  IT'S REFRACTION YOU IDIOTS.  LIGHT IS MADE UP OF SEVEN COLOURS. THE RAINDROPS REFRACT THE LIGHT!"


I'm a fan of rainbows.  How can anyone look at a rainbow and not smile?

After shouting at the radio I realised that my knowledge of rainbows is also seriously lacking.  I don't know why they are curved.  If you shine light through a prism or a crystal the rainbow is a straight line.  Why do loads of individual raindrops make a bridge?


Looking for the answer on the internet has made me want to join Mr Moyles with my fingers in my ears, singing, "la, la, la, la"


This is what Yahoo answers has to say on the subject:

“The reason why the rainbow is curved is because all the angles in the water drop have to be just right for the drop to send some sunlight to you, standing on the ground. So, with the sun *behind* you, only those water droplets that have the same angle formed by you, the drop, and the sun (this angle happens to be approximately 42 degrees) will contribute to the rainbow. Other droplets send their light somewhere else, and if you move to a different location, new droplets are needed to make the rainbow you see in the new location. This is why you can’t go to the end of a rainbow to find the mythical leprechauns and pots of gold; anywhere you stand, the rainbow is formed by faraway drops of water reflecting and bending sunlight. The rainbow is curved because the set of all the raindrops that have the right angle between you, the drop, and the sun lie on a cone pointing at the sun with you at one tip.” 

Then I found this site.

http://milesmathis.com/rainbow.html

It says that the above explanation is out of date and that it is all to do with something called Alexander's band.  

At last something I can understand - I know a song about Alexander's Ragtime Band!

There's a New Age Theory that there are some children (called Rainbow Children) who have been sent to earth to help us.  Apparently, they are born after the year 2000 and they don't quite fit in.  They smile a lot and make other's smile and are prone to psychic events. Today, I started to wonder if I am teaching one of these children.  During the lesson she suddenly shouted, "It's raining!"  The rest of the class looked out of the window and discovered it wasn't and then all of a sudden the heaven's opened.  She does make me smile.