Smokey the Magnificent

Today the pigs and I were chillin’, and Tiny Miles let out a belch to wake the dead. The pig had been jumping about, not paying attention, but stopped and said “What was that, a growl?”

“It was a huge boip,” I said.

The pig started jumping again and said with satisfaction, “It was MIRACULOUS huge!”

So anyhoo, yup, that was awesome. Also, it is now 2012, an uncannily futuristic date. And this year I shall be 26. Soon I shall be dead, And Tiny Miles will be one, which is just absurd.

I celebrated New Year’s Eve with a shindig, at which I served ice cream sandwiches and won a game of poker. My method for success is to sit out most of the hands in order to milks Miles to sleep, thus preventing myself from frittering away chips; and then to come back and go all in on a straight. I recommend it. Sadly, everybody left the party at 11:30, and the pig woke up at midnight having flashbacks to ‘Nam from the fireworks, so it wasn’t a terribly auspicious beginning to January.

Nevertheless, I am full of new-yearly vim and resolution. I started piecing an Irish chain quilt of the pig’s, the fabric for which I bought two years ago. I made resolutions in a nifty list. I bought a diary (after the New Year, for the discount, though it pained my soul to wait) and filled it with reminders about church lunch, birthdays and the need to pull weeds out of the garden. I joined a challenge online to complete 52 crafting projects. I bought a new dress, in order to swish through 2012 chicly instead of slobbing around in an ex-maternity tunic that doesn’t allow me to breastfeed in public. (On second thoughts, I should probably have bought two dresses. I am extremely short on clothes.) I chose a colour scheme for our new interior walls in two seconds flat with Helpdesk Man, although I am now having second thoughts. Colour is not my strong point.

Also: we watched Green Lantern. My word. It was awful. Usually halfway through a terrible movie I can relax into a resigned torpor and just go with it, but not this time. Even five minutes from the end, I was casting longing glances at my sewing machine. It was almost as boring as this one time Helpdesk Man bought cable ties.

Also, I have discovered a new principle of life: there is no foodstuff which cannot be used as a term of endearment for one’s baby. Helpdesk Man and I have been testing it out, and it’s utterly true. Miles is my wee pumpkin muffin, my tikka masala, my little pierogi, my wee scrap of biltong, my fat wee haggis, my little can of beetroop, my schmear of cream cheese upon a bagel, my little stack of hotcakes, my fat moussaka, my wee chipolata sausage, my tiny crock of kraut, my suet duff, my little dob of wasabi, my boysenberry, my snickerdoodle, my little TV dinner, my hybrid tomato, my little garlic naan… I could go on. I defy any of you to come up with a foodstuff that doesn’t work. Venison pasties? Pan-fried dumplings? Carpaccio? Sashimi? See? It just cannot be done. Gape with awe.

This is Miles.

.

You will notice Miles is a catfish.

Miles mocks you with his eyes.

No, I jest. He likes you.

Miles don’t take no guff, though.

Miles fears no Commies.

Miles fears nothing.

Yet this tough exterior cradles the soul of a poet. Sometimes, for instance, Miles feels a pang of melancholy in the produce section, because he gave up brassicas. For Lent.

Miles is a delicate soul. Sometimes things that amuse coarser mortals shock him to the core.

Then he silently judges.

Take, for example, his large, tiny sister.

His sister has body art and drives a motorbike.

She is pretty hardcore.

Miles recoils from some of her lifestyle choices.

But he still likes her.

Sewing for the snortlepig is more complicated than it was. I spent the past few days frantically finishing a summer dress for her Christmas present. I tried to be subtle about it, hiding the pattern and so on, but she’s no fool. Before I’d even sewn the bodice to the skirt, she said “Mummy, will my dress be finished at Christmas?” I said in a jolly tone, “You know, this might be a dress, but it might not. It’s a surprise, you won’t find out until Christmas”. There was a moment of tactful silence, and then she said “Mummy, will my dress be finished at Christmas?” I miss the days when I could be binding her quilt right in front of her face while she capered around going “Is it a skirt? Is it a pretty dress?”

Fortunately, it turned out pretty cutesome. And I even managed to get her messenger bag finished in time as well. It wasn’t quite all I’d hoped, but she likes it. In fact, she was pretty enamoured of all her gifts - and well she should be. Gran and Grandpa bought her a sand and water play table. Nana and Grandpa gave her a wooden magnetic ballerina with costumes, like a paper doll. Helpdesk Man and I gave her the summer dress and bag, a sweet wooden Noddy stool, and a complete set of Beatrix Potter books, as well as some craft supplies. Various other friends-and-relations contributed a Disney princess puzzle, Where the Wild Things Are, a lovely wooden Noah’s Ark, hair clips and sundry other items of delight.

Miles was less impressed with the socks and onesie the pig gave him, but liked the taste of his zebra. Christmas seemed to inspire him - he celebrated by eating an entire egg yolk, sitting up (albeit briefly) unassisted, and saying “Dada” on cue. He then went on to say “Dada” loudly and constantly while we were trying to watch things, and threw up all his egg yolk flamboyantly over the sheets, two pillows and his own head; but still.

It is now rather late on Boxing Day, and as usual after Christmas I am feeling twitchy and inspired. Today I forced Helpdesk Man to help me write out a list of 52 things we could do next year to make us Better People, which I then typed out, cut into strips and put in a jar. Then we sorted through both pigs’ old clothes, dropped two bags off at the op shop, swapped round the pig’s clothes baskets with Miles’ chest of drawers, baked a chocolate cake, cleaned the kitchen, did crafts with the pig, filled two boxes with paper and cardboard for recycling, and made a vague attempt at turning the pig’s old jeans into shorts (which failed, because Helpdesk Man couldn’t cut straight. I will fix them tomorrow, but they might be more Daisy Duke than originally intended). I also made a rough draft of my New Year’s Resolutions and finished a truly fascinating book called Who Wrote Shakespeare? - so, a good day.

Also, the other night the snortlepig met the nieces of Helpdesk Man’s best friend, and one of them was five. And they were all watching a nature documentary and a bunch of flamingos came on. And the five-year-old stared at them and said “Are those eagles?”, and the pig, who is normally coy and standoffish around other small children, said scornfully “No, they’re flingos“, thus establishing herself as the alpha female and inspiring a Helpdesk Man-and-Smokey-composed song to the tune of Copacabana, beginning “Her name was Lola/She was a flingo”. The pig is pretty awesome, really.

Also, I bought Helpdesk Man a steampunk Nerf gun, and he’s been stalking around shooting us with it ever since. When he shoots the pig, she looks affronted and says “Excuse me?”

Also, our car died.

Also, we will be moving house in slightly less than three weeks, and I still have to dig all the dirt from the raised beds into garbage bags and take them to the new house, and resow grass at the old one. And, I suppose, clean the oven. This will be the third time I’ve moved house since getting married, also the third time I have cleaned an oven. Then again, that is like, infinitely more often than I have killed a man.

Merry Christmas all! Or a moderately decent Solstice, because I am broad-minded, but not, you know, very.

It is 16:51. At 17:00 a representative from Nosh will either ring to inform me I have won one of the categories of the pavlova competition… or not.

There’s a lot riding on this. I accidentally left the baking paper and red food colouring up in Auckland (we were icing cookies at the hospital), so I had to buy more this morning, as well as raspberries and some yoghurt to replace the stuff Helpdesk Man callously used up in a smoothie. Once you factor in three blocks of chocolate, seventeen eggs (’cause of the practice pavlovas) and a $10 thingy of vanilla paste, I’ll need at least a runner-up prize to break even.

Worse yet, we dropped off the pavlova today at the exact moment some reporters from Hamilton Press were having a slow news day. So the lady took a bunch of photos of me holding my pavlova aloft and beaming at a point beyond her shoulder (for the light - I know, seemed odd to me too); and the chap, who didn’t seem to be much of a culinary whiz, stared dubiously at the pavlova and said “So, did you use, like, a recipe?” and “How did you do those swirly things?”

Which is all very well. Fame comes naturally to me - I once served a chap at Rialto who I later heard was an All Black, and Harry Sinclair himself once gave me a dirty look. If I win, this will just be another gilded paving stone on my road to immortality. If I win.

If I don’t, they’ll probably select the most manic-looking photo of me and publish it with “LOSER” written underneath in 72-point type. And I’m not sure I could bear the shame.

17:01. Silence. Hmph.

17:05. Oh, come on. Seriously, people? There were raspberries stuffed with yoghurt and melted chocolate on that thing. I invented that. (Quite nice, in case you were wondering.)

17:09. Maybe the judges are still in paroxysms of delight over the beauteousness of my pavlova.

17:13. You know what? Nosh has an underwhelming selection of sharp cheese anyway. That’s right, I said it.

18:24. Well, I took the pigs and went to view the contestants, and it turns out I won runner-up for Best-Dressed Pavlova. A somewhat hollow victory, but I did get a nice basket of smeg out of it, containing (among other things) some rather nice olives and a fancy-looking bottle of olive oil, which pleases me. In the interests of Class I shall refrain from muttering about my competitors. Nosh really does need to get more tasty cheese in, though.

Well, here I am, aground once more and more or less intact, save for a splitting headache that probably indicates intracranial bleeding, but is acceptable because Jamie has a similar headache, thus preventing him from being all “Typical Smokering, having an intracranial bleed” at me.

I feel I should share photos of the event, but they are a little scanty. Getting a professional photographer to take three photos and a DVD cost about a hundred and fifty dollars extra, so we declined; with the result that we have before and after photos, but not during. (At least, not of us. Helpdesk Man, the snortlepig and Miles were waiting on the ground, and the snortlepig took an arty photo of Miles’ knee at approximately the time I was plummeting through the skies. But it doesn’t quite convey the scope of the occasion.)

So, you know. Not exactly a visual treat. But there are plenty of YouTube videos of skydivers prettier than ourselves, with rock music to boot, so you can always pop over there to get the general gist.

This is us getting suited up.

This is a chap called Max checking my fixings. Max was a gung-ho, daring-older-brother type chap who introduced himself as “I’m Max, I’m your guy” and spent the entire skydive trying to get me to do the thumbs up and give him high-fives to indicate I was having a jolly old time. About ten seconds after he pulled the chute he said “So do you think you’ll do this again?”; that sort of chap. Nice, though.

The suit wasn’t exactly flattering. They should have made it white, to give a kind of Princess-Leia-in-The Empire-Strikes-Back vibe. That, or they should have gone with the dieselpunk theme suggested by the hats. Costumed skydiving; it could be the new thing.

Anyway. This is us by the plane. The snortlepig saw it and was all “Whoa, it’s HUGE!”, which, no. Helpdesk Man did try to take an arty from-behind shot of us walking to the plane like a ragtag group of astronauts, but the thing about ragtag groups of astronauts? Their suits don’t sag around the hindquarters. So we will omit that one.

Then we went up. It took a surprisingly long time. We got above some nice, puffy cumulus clouds, and I thought “Whoa, look how high we are”, and then Max tapped me chummily on the shoulder and said “We’re at 5,000 feet now - 10,000 more to go!” We ended up going up past the next lot of clouds, which were thin and blankety, and rather obscured the view. It was high. We had to breathe through oxygen masks for a while, although Max eventually stowed mine away and I began to feel a bit funny. (I assumed it was protocol, but the others, who were sitting behind me, said they got oxygen right up until they exited the plane. A thrifty chap, that Max: not a quality I was especially seeking in my skydiving partner, but no doubt it will serve him well during the recession.)

Then we jumped out; except we didn’t, really. By this time I was intimately strapped to Max and unable to walk, partly because my feet would have been a foot off the ground, and partly because the wee plane was extremely crowded. So we shuffled along the bench onto the floor, dangled our legs over the side of the plane and just sort of fell out. It wasn’t the sort of situation in which one would cry “For Gondor!”; more like “Oop, there goes my sammich”.

Free-falling wasn’t all that fun. My eyes watered like billy-oh under a pair of painfully tight goggles, it was cold, pieces of ice got stuck to my face and it was generally somewhat painful and buffety, and not improved by Max expressing frenetic exuberance with his thumbs (presumably in case I had let my mind wander to the Sunday roast and was missing the fact that yes, we had just fallen through a cloud). I mean, yes, the fact that one was hurtling through the air at 15,000 feet was kind of neat, but it was more awesome in theory than sensation; somewhat like reading War and Peace.

Then he pulled the chute, and I got to steer the parachute here and there, and we went round and round, and it was pretty oose. Max said “Woo-hoo” a lot, and I felt I should say it as well so as not to disappoint him, but I couldn’t quite muster the chuff; so we twirled round a bit and headed over the lake a bit and back again, and eventually came to land in a surprisingly precise spot back at the hangar.

Whereupon the snortlepig, who had been watching with Helpdesk Man for a very long time, came running out to meet me.

Apparently she was pleased to see me.

And then Miles was like “This is all very well, mother, but I require the milks”, and we went off to find a restaurant, but the first one was shut and the second one had a moosehead in it, so we traipsed all round town looking for another one, which we didn’t find, so we went back to the second one on the proviso that I could sit somewhere where I didn’t have to see the moosehead. And somewhere along the way Miles kicked off a sock. And all was back to normal. We spoke judiciously of the event and decided that we might do it again if there was an awesome view and/or a special on, but that next time we should try hang-gliding.

And then we went to the Huka Falls, and the pig was all “Does it got a plug in? How does it go by itself?”, and I realised I could not explain the mechanism of churning waterfalls to a three-year-old (or, indeed, anybody). Maybe I could have before the jump, but not now. And it occurs to me that this could be a handy excuse to use in later life. “Oh yeah, sorry, I fell out of a plane once at 15,000 feet and ever since then I haven’t been able to do my taxes”.

PS: The waiter at the restaurant mocked me openly. I said “Do you do iced chocolates?” and he smirked and said “No”, with a tone that implied “Duh” and also “Ew”.

As of three days ago, I am Off Sugar. There are several reasons for this, the most interesting being that Pioneer Woman is doing it, and am I not a better man than she? (Actually, maybe. I’ve been reading a bunch of anti-Pioneer Woman blogs after my little sister, who I feel shouldn’t know about such things, informed me of the existence of anti-Pioneer Woman blogs; and while for the most part they are, yes, petty and small-minded, they make some good points about her business practices. Don’t read them, though. Bad for the soul.)

Helpdesk Man, incidentally, is not Off Sugar. His attitude during the past few days has fluctuated from “I suppose I’d better do it too, or you’ll get skinnier than me and laugh at me” to “I guess I’ll have to do it too, because you won’t be making any cupcakes” to (five minutes ago) “You want to go for a walk? Ooh, we could go get ice creams”.

In the mean time, aside from reflexively going to eat a shmallow before remembering I shouldn’t be eating shmallows (moot, willpower-wise: Helpdesk Man had eaten them), I haven’t noticed any of the changes that are supposed to come with such a diet - radiant skin, vibrant energy, superpowers etc. Then again, I haven’t been strictly strict; we have some pears that need eating through, and I’m still having carbs. But on the upside, a year ago I wouldn’t have grasped the significance of carbs in a no-sugar diet at all; so I guess I have grown as a person. (Which is, of course, largely the problem.)

In other news, I have been making things.

This, for example, is a messenger bag. I made it out of quilting cotton and a placemat - making bags out of placemats is quite the thing these days, which I never really understood until now. Good and sturdy. Unfortunately, this bag came to a rather dismal end. I made it for the birthday of a certain nephew, hence with a manly demeanor - it’s a bit hard to see in the photo because Helpdesk Man was being arty with the tungsten setting, but it’s forest green and beige and has impressively masculine topstitching. Unfortunately I had not reckoned on the nephew’s father; a man who, despite wearing suspiciously arty shirts, has such a horror of femininity that he refuses to wear his own sons in the Ergo, which is, I might add, black. I once offered to make him a leather one with buckles and studs and spikes, but he felt that even this would be a blow to his manly pride. I know, right? So anyway, Nephew Pig opened up the present and it was greeted with a shout of “Noooooo!”; and my protestations that it was a Manly Messenger Bag went for naught, especially when the snortlepig, who hadn’t been paying attention, found the bag and held it up to Nephew Pig, saying excitedly “This is for you, it’s a HANDBAG!”

What became of the bag, I do not know. Presumably Uncle Man poured bacon fat on it and set it alight with his own alcohol-infested vomit, or however manly men kill things these days. A sad thing, anyway; it was a nice bag.

Somewhat more successful was a wee jacket I made for Tiny Miles. (Incidentally, Tiny Miles is rarely known as the Auxiliary Pig in real life. He generally goes by either Tiny (on account of being big); the HMS Tastyface; fizzypig; The Chaowld (snortlepig pronunciation); Fatcheeks (after his sister)  or the catfish, because when he sucks his two middle fingers he looks like one. I shall endeavor to take a photo of this at some point; it’s blimmin’ uncanny.)

The jacket is green and hooded, like your eyes,  and was fairly successful given that the sleeves nearly drove me to innocentpasserbyicide on several occasions. I eased, Gentle Reader, like no man has eased before.

Here is Miles in his jacket with his grandpa. (Heh. Sounds like Cluedo.) I like this photo. When Father kicks the bucket, as he undoubtedly will, I’mma lobby to have it on the slideshow. Do you think there’ll be a slideshow? Probably a bit technologically heretical for our church. Maybe a nice collection of woodcuts. He’d look good in a woodcut, Father. Anyhoo.

And then there’s this object here.

Now I see it lurking like that it comes across as pretty sinister, but it’s actually a hydrangea cake based on the far snortlier one by I Am Baker. My hydrangea colours are more realistic, I think, but hers look more… edible. It was yummy, though; carrot cake with cream cheese icing - after piping which, incidentally, I may never use buttercream again. Buttercream is sadistic and needs to be quashed.

Also, you know what’s awesome? Fabergé eggs. I just read a book on them. Now I’m reading one about Madame Tussaud, which is equally oose. Apparently pre-Revolutionary women “of a melancholic bent” would adorn their pompadours with little urns and coffins. I told Helpdesk Man all about it - both the fashions of Versailles and the pinnacle of technical perfection and creative excellence that is the Winter Egg - the other day on a walk, and his eyes glazed over. Then I told him he didn’t love me. Then we bought a cauliflower.

Finally, here is another photo of Tiny Miles, for the benefit of his hemisphere-hopping aunt. Is he not a fine and goodly child? It was all the fermented cod liver oil I consumed, I think. And for that, he owes me.

Helpdesk Man and I have been experiencing a bout of penury. Ever the helpful spouse, I got out Living Off the Smell of an Oily Rag in New Zealand from the library and read a bunch of thrift blogs. The results have been largely unhelpful.

I don’t know what I expected, really. There are only so many variations on the save-more spend-less theme, and I’ve been baking my own bread and using cloth nappies (not personally, you understand; for the pigs) since the dawn of time anyway. I think I was secretly hoping to find a website that suggested “Look in the linen cupboard; I popped a tenner in it last time I was around”; but nope.

Tips, I have found, can be categorised thusly:

The Privileged: “Go out for lunch instead of dinner. Share an entree. If you’re really worried about paying your beach house decorator, order water”. Any helpful suggestions to sell one’s boat or to eliminate 200 or so television channels also come under this category.

The Naive: “Maybe your mother could watch the children while you take on a part-time job”. “Try asking your landlord for a reduction in the rent”. (I’ve considered ringing mine and saying “Will you charge us half-rent if we actually keep the place clean?”; the pig sometimes bargains this way and, while it shouldn’t work, sometimes it does.) “Knit potholders to sell at craft fairs”. “Perhaps a friend will let you house-sit for a few months”. “Why not dust off that novel you’ve been working on?” “Start a blog. You can make a lot of money, like Pioneer Woman!” Etc.

The Bleedin’ Obvious: “Buy cheaper cuts of meat”. Well, by gum. You mean to say they cost less than the expensive cuts?

The Frankly Sad: “To save on water, stand in the shower and turn it on for 10 seconds to wet yourself; better yet, dampen up by using the dregs of water from glasses people have left lying around the lounge. Turn shower off. Tip a packet of Borax over your head and rub in vigorously; this way if you lie around the kitchen at night you can also deter roaches. Borax doesn’t clean body odour very effectively, so you’ll need to use a little elbow grease, but that’s okay; it will save that costly gym membership! Turn the shower on again for 20 seconds to wash off the blood and Borax. If you keep a bucket over the plughole, you can use the runoff as a nutritious soup. Turn the shower off again. Using this method, my husband was able to save 60 gallons of water a day, before he shot himself.”

I also found a tip by a woman who swore you could make stew by putting boiling water, chopped veggies and bits of meat into a thermos. I doubt it.

The Vaguely Illegal: These tips involve saving pennies at the expense of by-laws or one’s fellow-man: in other words, cheating. One should, apparently, check the stamps on all one’s mail, so that if the cancellation stamp missed its mark, one can cackle with glee and go write a letter to one’s aunt, on The Man. Similar tips include dumpster diving (which I would totally do, incidentally); selling home-baked goods in defiance of food health and safety laws; pretending to one’s electricity provider that a rival electricity provider offered one a better deal, and if the first electricity provider does not top that deal one will pack one’s toaster and be gone; and contesting perfectly valid speeding tickets.

The Stanky: I probably shouldn’t get too precious about these ones, because let’s face it, I do use homemade deodorant and haven’t looked shampoo in the face in years. But I did come across one tip in which a lady told us how she collects roadkill, places it on a rack in her yard with a tray underneath, and as the maggots drop off, feeds them to her chickens. And well, for the record, I don’t do that.

The Brag: These are not in fact tips. These are unreproducible, jealousy-inducing anecdotes about someone’s sweet haul from the thrift store/dump/wealthy neighbor. “I enter competitions, and the other day I won $500 worth of free skincare products just by writing a sonnet to the T-zone”. “I found a $50 bill in the carpark”. “Today in the Salvation Army I found a set of limited-edition Disneyland teaspoons, a Moby wrap that was only slightly puked on, and a ten-dollar bill in the pocket of an old fur coat”. “I attended a taxidermy closing-down auction and got all my Christmas presents for a steal”.

The Ideological: Sometimes the tips themselves aren’t bad, but one is left with the distinct impression that the tipster isn’t so much wanting to save you money as make you a better person. “I became a vegetarian for financial reasons and my colon has never been lither. Best of all, I’m not participating in the brutal slaughter of our cloven-footed friends; their blood does not spurt in my dreams. You too can be murder-free for the price of a cube of tofurkey”. “Cloth diapering isn’t just better for my wallet; every child in disposables creates a pile of dirty nappies as tall as the Empire State Building, which will stand tall long after his meagre achievements have been forgotten and his phthlate-ridden corpse has festered under a parking lot”. “I started eating only rice on Mondays to empathise with the plight of the Haitians. Not only do I save a ton, but it gives me a spiritual connection to these people who I bet you don’t care about, because you don’t eat rice on Mondays. Do you? Do you care about the Haitians? Say it with RICE!”

There are doubtless other categories. After perusing these for a few days, we were still not rich. I decided to write my own list of frugality tips. Of course, just like building your own home (which the Oily Rag book blithely suggests you do if you are, and I quote, “handy with a hammer”), it turns out it’s not as easy as it looks. After much thought, I have come up with only one tip, and I give it to you now.

CHEAP ENTERTAINMENT: Arson.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Donations gratefully accepted.

1. The snortlepig has invented a new word: strinky. After some investigation we discovered it refers to anything wrinkly, corrugated or ridged; raisins, for example, or one’s fingums upon emerging from the bathtub. Or Morgan Freeman.

Also strinky.

The pig being a minor, I give the Internet this word on her behalf. So next time you’re inspecting the roof of a shanty house or the texture of a fine corduroy… or Morgan Freeman… you can be all “Hmm. Strinky.”

2. Today Flatmate Man left a lone sausage festering in the frypan, so Helpdesk Man and I tied a ribbon round it and left it on his pillow. He was less appreciative than you’d think.

3. The weather is unseasonably dry. Helpdesk Man’s lips have gone all strinky.

4. I have just spent the better part of an hour trying to take a photo of Tiny Miles. It is harder than you would think. Firstly, my photography skills are non-existent and I was sitting in a room with the curtains drawn; secondly, I had to hold Tiny Miles up with the one hand to prevent him plummeting to his doom; and thirdly, every time I held the camera up he would cease his adorable smiles and stare at the camera with the fixed intentness of a magpie; and that was not attractive. Also, sad to say, he has inherited the family lack of photogenicitude. In real life he is toothsome and comely, a marvel of chins and cheeks and more tender fleshy bits than his anatomy strictly requires. In photos, though… well, he could be anyone’s pig. This was the best I could get:

5: Ten minutes ago.

SNORTLEPIG [while drawing at the table]: Mummy, I stomped on Miles before.

ME: Don’t stomp on Miles.

SNORTLEPIG: He liked it!

6. Helpdesk Man, the pigs and I are currently watching TNG. (The pig likes it; I was most impressed the other day when she saw the spaceship in Forbidden Planet and said “That’s like the Enterprise!” On a recent playdate, however, she found a toy saxophone and said “Is this a trumpet?” and I said “It’s a saxophone; you know, like Riker plays on Star Trek?” and the Other Mother found it hilarious, which shocked me a little, because when one is insulated in a cosy cloud of geeky friends it’s easy to forget how the other half lives. This is the friend who said, just prior to the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, “Ooh, I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, I’m so glad to meet someone else who likes it!”, and then it transpired she hadn’t even seen the last two movies. Lovely girl, but really.)

Anyhoo. I’m not generally a fan of digitally remastering old films (coughLucascough), but I think I have hit upon a method for making TNG distinctly more awesome. They need to go back in and add a character whose sole function is to follow a certain Acting Ensign and say “Shut up, Wesley” every time he speaks. I shall provide a few examples so that you can see how it would improve the show.

PICARD: There’s no greater challenge than the study of philosophy

WESLEY: But William James won’t be on my Starfleet exams.

SOMEONE: Shut up, Wesley.

Or

WESLEY: We thought we could do it. We thought we could do anything. We were wrong. And Josh died.

SOMEONE: Shut up, Wesley.

Or

WESLEY: Sir… you don’t know this. No one knows this. Because I’ve never told anyone. All of the things that I’ve worked for - school, my science projects, getting into the Academy… I’ve done it all because I want you to be proud of me.

SOMEONE: Shut up, Wesley.

Don’t you see how it improves the flow?

7. Panna cotta is my new big thing. I’ve just discovered it, courtesy of David Lebovitz, who is now practically my favourite food blogger even though he routinely annoys me. I’ve made vanilla bean, raspberry (with freeze-dried raspberry powder I bought at the food show - intriguing, but underwhelming in the clinch), double-layer coffee-caramel, and (last night) double-layer chocolate and coffee with a thin layer of chocolate ganache on top. I am now harboring a tentative plan to make rosewater-coconut cream panna cotta, but I doubt I actually will. I am hampered by what a nasty man on the internet once called my parochial upbringing. In this respect I am not unlike my mother, who recently in a fit of daring painted one of her bedroom walls aubergine, but is clearly both proud of and a little embarrassed by this act. We neither of us would survive in LA.

Today the pig and I - and also the auxiliary pig, in a mei tai - wended our way to the local Playcentre. Playcentres are sort of like kindergarten for commies; parent-run collective deals which are handy for mothers like myself, who feel vaguely that their pigs ought to socialise but once worked in a kindergarten and are aware that toddler conversation around the playdough table would make a sailor blush. So instead of dropping off one’s pig, one hovers about it in probably-psychologically-damaging helicopter fashion and schmoozes the Other Mothers for playdates.

The pig was a bit shy going in, and would possibly have thrown a tantrum, except that the Playcentre had helpfully provided two tiny shopping trolleys. Instant bliss. The pig spent nearly the entire morning either pushing one around, playing cautiously with another toy with the trolley at her elbow, poised to leap up in case it made a dash for the border, or listening dubiously to my soothing monologue about Sharing and I’m Sure He’ll Be Finished With It Soon.

There was also a slide. And a mother more awesome than myself who dug through the earth-maker to find slaters and snails to show to the pigs. And a large, flabby, thuggish-looking boy, to whom I tried to be nice, thinking “Poor lad, everyone probably thinks he’s a bully, but he may have the sensitive soul of a poet”; only no, he turned out to be a bully after all, which prompted interesting reflections on my part. (If my nose had been calmer and more classical as a child, would I have been serene? Probably.)

All in all, it was a great success, and we intend to go back. I did, however, commit a faux pas. (I nearly committed two - the cheerful lady who greeted me at the door gave me a leaflet and said “Now, you get three visits, and we like to tell you a little more about ourselves each time”, and I, just having read a book about the Moonies, was about to brightly say “Oh, like a cult!” when I realised I probably shouldn’t. Near miss.)

Miles was having the milks (at the kai table - it seemed apropos) and the pig, loth to stray too far from my side, was getting bored; so I pointed to some books in the corner and asked her to go get one. When she came back, I took a look at the cover and said “Oh dear, pig; this one’s in Maori. I can’t read Maoi”. Whereupon there was an ahem from the helper, and I was told in a tone of kind but gentle rebuke, “We like to encourage te reo here”.

“That’s cool”, said I, “but I’m afraid I don’t speak Maori.”

“Well, actually, we offer classes on it”, she said. “I’ve taken some, and I’m really confident at reading to the kids now.”

“Wow, you’re fluent?” I said, impressed.

“Oh, no”, she said, “I don’t speak it, but I can pronounce all the words.”

“Oh”, said I, somewhat nonplussed. “Well I can do that, but she won’t understand it…”
The lady gave me a pitying smile and waited, and eventually, being well brought up and/or insecure, I caved and read the book. In Maori. The pig was somewhat bemused, but trotted off to get another book. This one was also in Maori. The helper smiled smugly and said “See, a lot of the kids end up being really attracted to the Maori books”. I resisted the urge to point out that the pig, being three, couldn’t tell the difference between Maori and English text, and was going more by the cover than any childish desire to do her bit for Te Tiriti. Instead, we sat there and read two more books in less than fluent Maori, while the helper looked on approvingly. I’m still not entirely sure what the point was. I mean, I have nothing against the pig learning Maori, but I somehow doubt that this is the way.

1. Yesterday when we were all chillin’ in bed together, I told the pig that we were going to SaveMart to buy clothes, and she said “Do they got trolleys?” The pig is somewhat obsessed with trolleys at the moment, especially since she discovered brightly-coloured pig-sized ones at the Warehouse, and every outing is greeted with inquiry regarding their presence, availability and features - the kind with two seats, one for Miles and one for the pig, are vastly preferred because, as she says, she can pat him on the head. I have a feeling if I woke the pig up one morning and announced our intention to go to Asgard, a Nazi death camp or an experimental lunar city, the pig would simply ask equably, “Do they got trolleys?” And this is a pleasing thing.

2. A few days ago, the pig started gymnastics class at the Y. Last term she went to dancing class, but it was getting a bit samey and was way across town besides. So I thriftily convinced the pig that gymnastics would be an acceptable alternative, mostly by showing her YouTube videos of Olympics clips. This backfired a little, as it gave the pig the impression that all her family and friends would come to watch her “gym-snacks” and then “clap and get me hugs”. Nevertheless, we went along and she had a fairly successful first session, walking along both a low and a high balance beam and having a lot of fun on one of those super-springy gym-snacks trampolines. Halfway through bouncing she remembered how to say the word properly, and was soaring into the air shouting “GymNAStics! GymNAStics!”, in much the same manner as her habit of saying “Punch” when she punches you or “Walkie, walkie, walkie” when she makes one of her toys walk. Then she bounced a little too high, landed on her upper back in a position which flirted with quadriplegia, and ended up in a complicated heap. I was poised to rush to her side and offer succour, but the pig just untangled herself, stood up and said gleefully “THAT was a gymnastic!”

3. She has taken to referring to Miles as The Child. “Daddy can’t get me huge cheese, he has the child.” It is made more pleasing by the pig’s difficulty with long I-sounds. Not only is “Miles” still pronounced “Maowles” on most occasions, but he is “The Chaowld”. In general, the pig has coped pretty well with the arrival of The Chaowld; she does, however, have a regrettable tendency to slam her face lovingly into his head. A few nights ago, after many warnings, I eventually shouted “Pig! Stop pesking Miles!” and she shouted back in righteous indignation “But I HAVE to! He’s CUTE and SQUISHY!”

4. Say what you will about her morals, she’s cute in the face.