Achievement unlocked.

Handed my four year old a slice of ham for his lunch.

“Yay! Pink chicken!”

Now we know what he meant yesterday when he turned his nose up at spicy chicken and said “I like pink chicken!”

Spuds Up!

We harvested the last three of eleven potato bags at the weekend. A decent crop, and very tasty.

Highlights were regular watering and earthing up (using homegrown compost) with my kids, and big kid’s tenth birthday party where his friends got to (among other fun activities) harvest the first three bags and take home a potato bag each.​

Fond memories of going potato picking with my mum in the Lincolnshire Wolds in the early 1970s.​

Potatoes grown in bags ready to harvest.Kids harvesting potatoes Three bags of potatoes on the kitchen table

Well, the super secure new lock on our super expensive new front door failed catastrophically today.

I couldn’t get my key out of the lock. We couldn’t lock the door.

The local locksmith arrived within fifteen minutes, diagnosed the problem (“you need a new lock, £180”) and proceeded to spend the best part of an hour removing the broken extra secure lock (finally, reminiscent of the birth of my second son, “it’s out, I’ll have to charge a bit extra…").

£265!!!

Thankfully the lock is under warranty, but not the labour.

Big Kids' Sports Day.

Wide angle photo of school sports day white lined running lanes in the foreground, with uncut meadow in the background

My polling station was empty when I went to vote around 1:30 pm.

My nearly ten year old looked at the TWELVE names on the ballot.

“Don’t vote Labour, Dad”.

He looked some more.

“There’s Joe!” he said.

“VOTE FOR JOE!”

Election Fever

My inbox is full of people asking for my opinion and personal experience of this UK general election campaign and who to vote for.

(Un)fortunately, as I sat down to type the words from my fingertips, my four year old decided he needed to express his thoughts instead.

It’s obviously not to scale (he’s only four!), but you can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue. That they are a ‘uniparty’/two cheeks of the same backside is encapsulated in the red triangle atop the blue square in the centre.

The Green surge in vote share (in green, on the left) isn’t reflected in seats won, of course. In pink, you can see the rise of the independents, black is the Workers Party, and to the far right (in grey) is Reform.

The Lib Dems are an irrelevance (except in the South West) in yellow (this is where we had to stop, as he got very upset at the lack of orange).

Screenshot of my four year old's colourful drawing of squares and triangles

“…when you look at it on a personal level, if Nelson was your friend or your neighbour, you would absolutely agree that he should be given the immediate right to settle.”

You. Absolute. Bastards.

If anyone knows of a crowdfunder to support this man’s legal challenge, I would like to contribute to it.
bbc.com/news/uk-england-mersey

One of the reasons we never visit the place where I grew up.

“I just have to share?”?

Shared in "Caistor Memories", a Horncastle Police report from 1942 of a missing dog called "N***er*.

I’m so glad I ate my salad before reading about the Eunuch Maker.

Artfully arranged salad platter minus any cooked testicles