Training required

I went to two events today at which face painters were present. The quality differed.

The first was at a party, and clearly she did a lot of face painting. This was Ethan after the painting and before he'd managed to rub most of the paint off.



It should be pointed out that Ethan did ask to be a blue animal, and there aren't that many to choose from, hence the blue tiger.

The second was at a Church fun day thing, and these were clearly ladies doing fund-raising for the church.



It should be pointed out that Hannah requested the same design as her best friend Harriet.

But it got me thinking. Someone must teach face painting. So I started to investigate training courses or workshops. I quite fancy learning how to do it well.

And then I thought who needs real training when there's YouTube?

Spiderman pirate

We went on a Pirates and Princesses Treasure Trail today.

Ethan didn't want to be a pirate. I spent most of yesterday afternoon trying to persuade him that he should be a pirate.

He wanted to be Spiderman, and he was an immovable object.

This morning we had reached a compromise: Spiderman Pirate.

I don't know why he was being so awkward but I'm sure it has nothing to do with credibility; because cool kids don't eat ice cream like this.

Go fly a kite

We went kite making and flying today.

Equipment needed:

Large bin bag - preferably not black

2 garden sticks (the green kind)

Thin string

Hole punch

Parcel tape

Scissors

Pen

Wood stick about pencil length with diameter roughly 1cm

Here's how to make the kite:

For a better view of these instructions, click here.

And this is what the finished product looks like.

Improve your technique

Having done some interviewing today, something I do rarely, I think I can offer some advice to people preparing for an interview.

Firstly, do your research. Learn about the company and its products. Try and find examples of any marketing or PR activity. Visit the company website.

Look at the skill set required and compare it with your own experience and abilities. Identify the areas of your resume that will demonstrate your relevant capabilities and where there are gaps. Think about how you might address or overcome those gaps.

Be honest. If your interviewer needs to know whether you can speak Portuguese, and you can't, but you did go to the Algarve once, don't claim to be fluent.

Expect the unexpected. Your interviewer may be quirky and have a strange view of what makes a great interview question. You may also find that some interviewers see an interview as a kind of trial that you must survive to win.

If you are asked "If you were a sandwich, what sandwich would you be, and why?" then just keep your cool, don't panic, and think about your answer.

If you feel you are on the receiving end of a bad attitude with an extra dollop of rudeness, then retain your dignity and composure. You may want to consider whether this really is a company, or department, that would be the right environment for you.

If you are asked personal questions that have nothing to do with your ability to do the job, then choose whether to answer. There's no rule that says you need to answer all questions. You can also choose to be economical with the detail.

Don't be afraid to ask an interviewer why a question is being asked. If you know why a question is asked, it can help you compose the perfect answer.

If you have questions for your interviewer, then take a list into the interview with you. It shows you've prepared, and it also ensures you don't forget what's on the list.

Smile. It makes you and the person on the other side of the table relax.

Doubly lucky

When the gazebo disaster happened my first thought was "bugger!" and my second thought was "thank goodness nobody was hurt."

Later in the day the task of disposing of the wreckage reared its ugly head.

I wandered over to the campsite office to explain our disaster and to ask advice on how to dispose of the frame.

The man behind the counter had a glint in his eye and told me to leave the frame where it was and he'd crush it. (The woman with him said "Any excuse to use the crusher.")

We then spoke about the gazebos miraculous flight and how lucky it was that nobody was hurt, and then someone said "And you were lucky it didn't hit a car." That hadn't even occurred me. We'd been fortunate that people, cars, tents and caravans weren't hurt in the making of this bank holiday weekend.

It could have been worse

We are complete wimps

The weather forecast threatens near gales for tonight in Sandwich. Gales, or near gales is what we experienced last night.

The result was one broken tent and a flying gazebo.

Our gazebo was the pop-up kind. We bought this because we're lazy and wanted something that didn't require any thought. It was quite a substantial construction, and definitely heavier than the unusual non-pop-up kind.

I would show you a picture but I'm not sure I have a picture showing it erected. I do, however, have an image of our gazebo after it had been lifted by the wind, travelled 20 yards across the campsite (luckily not hitting anyone, or anything) and been stripped of its cloth cover.





To give you a better idea of distance travelled look for the black car at the far right hand side of the picture. That's roughly the point from which the gazebo travelled.

Wedding video

We've got a gadget thingy. It takes the signal from a VHS player and enables conversion into a digital format.

Great for the wedding video, except I don't have a wedding video. I do have this though:

http://tinyurl.com/6nrsx4

Would you do a Trevor?

I have a friend who is on the singles circuit. She's sickeningly pretty with a great body and personality. She also looks younger than her years...not that I'm jealous.

I hope this sets the scene.

She hasn't had the best of luck with men and has tried a number of strategies to catch her man. That sounds terribly calculating but I think every single would agree they have an approach they adopt with the opposite sex.

Well her latest strategy is multi-dating. This is dependant on more than one man being interested but the idea is that dating is not exclusive and men are dated in parallel.

As a big start to this new approach my friend went to a club on Saturday. She caught the eye of someone who made it clear he wanted to get to know her better. She played hard to get until eventually he asked if he could give her his number. She advised him that she didn't accept numbers from men, to which he replied "Can I have your number then?"

He'd overcome her (rather lame) defences and she provided her number, which he promptly rang, presumably to check the number was real.

At the end of the evening she said goodbye to him, and he told her his name was Harvey, and that might have been that.

Harvey is an unusual name and conjures up an image of a tall white rabbit.

Over the next few days there has been an exchange of texts. Harvey has been pushing for a date and has been meeting with resistance. He might have been meeting less resistance had he not admitted his name wasn't really Harvey, but Trevor.

My friend has a test for men. It's the "Oooo baby do it to me XXX" where XXX is replaced by the man's name.

Harvey didn't really pass the test. Trevor definitely doesn't pass the test.

But, guess what? Despite the test failure, a date is planned for Friday night.

...to be continued

Clutter

Yesterday I had a card through the letterbox advising me that Royal Mail were holding a package that required a signature.

This morning I nipped into the Royal Mail office to collect the parcel.

I wondered whether there were enough notices on display providing customers with important information.

Patience and being normal

Yesterday it appears I displayed some impatience. It seems that I wasn't giving my blog page time to load. Oh well.

It's not the first time I've demonstrated an inability to wait, and it won't be the last. Today I picked up a new car.

One might imagine that this becomes mundane for someone working for a car company, especially as cars are reordered when they are about five months old. Normally I would agree. Today however I behaved like a normal person.

I think people are normally excited when they get a new car, private purchase or company car. I was so excited about collecting my car today. I couldn't wait to rid myself of EO57 LLW.

So today I welcomed EK08 PBV into my life.

Give me my stuff back

I was just checking my blog, as one does, and someone's stolen bits of it.

There used to be lots of "stuff" running down the left hand side. From memory there was a Flickr carousel, a Breast Cancer click through, an enormous tag cloud, a subscribe via e-mail option, a blog roll, Urban dictionary word of the day and other stuff.

Well it's gone and I want to know who's nicked it. I'm not amused. I can't get it back.

Normally it would be something dappy I've done but honestly everything is plugged in and I didn't put it in demo mode or leave the lights on or forget to switch it on.

So it must be one of you? Who do I phone? Helpdesk, police, ambulance, fire service? Now there's a thought. On that subject I might have the subject of a post for the girls tomorrow.

Easy peasy

Easy Peasy Pizza Base

This is really a pastry base but it's here because it's easy.

200g SR Flour
50ml olive oil
100ml milk
Smattering of dried or chopped fresh herbs (optional)

Sieve flour into a bowl. Make a well in the flour and add oil and milk. Use a fork to mix and make a dough.

Divide into four and roll into pizza shaped thin crust bases.

Cover with passata or tomato pasta sauce either homemade out of a jar and whatever pizza toppings are your favourite.

Bake in pre-heated oven at 160 Celcius for 14 minutes or earlier if it looks done.

The trouble with family

My stepbrother has discovered he doesn't benefit from Dad's will.

He and his wife seem to be the only ones who find this surprising.

I know how Dad viewed the pair of them and it's clear that they have no idea about the lack of esteem in which they were held.

I have discovered that there are two ways to challenge a will. The first is to claim that one was a dependant of the deceased and the second is to claim mental incapacity of the deceased at the time that the will was written.

I have received legal counsel that encourages me to think that my stepbrother has no valid claim. I think any solicitor doing a good job will advise my stepbrother the same, but I think that the challenge will happen anyway.

I think that, even in the face of almost certain failure, Richard will look to contest the will. The cost of such activity will not trouble him, but the personal hurt and financial pain that he will be able to inflict will provide him with great satisfaction.

In fact, the more he continues in this vein, the more I understand why Dad did what he did, and the more I am encouraged to defend my dad's decision.

Poles apart

There has been a lot in the press about the migration of Eastern Europeans, especially the Polish, over to the UK.

Well, for some of them, it doesn't always work out.

Today we said goodbye to someone who came across to the UK to make a new life for herself. Whilst here she met and married a man and they had a little girl.

The marriage failed, as many do, and she found herself struggling as a single mother without the support of family.

So today, with her five year old daughter, she said her farewells to friends.

It was interesting hearing her talking about the court judgement that is enabling her to take her daughter back to Poland. It mentions the need to have internet and Skype access for the daughter to maintain contact with her father. It allows communication by letter, phone, e-mail and text message. And with the cheap flights available with low cost carriers, the judge was easily persuaded that it was just as easy and inexpensive to visit Scotland as Poland.

Bye, bye Magda and Anna. Good luck.

Party season

This is party season. It's the time when the kids are going to parties almost every weekend on both Saturday and Sunday and also it's the time when I end up planning parties for both of them.

For the parties I have to run I plan to take the best from previous efforts and add to them.

The tentative plan for Hannah's party: party bag decorating (plain cotton bags and fabric decorating crayons), party bag shop, treasure hunt (we've done wool and ribbon so I need a new plan for this year, maybe money for the party bag shop), bouncy castle (need to negotiate with Ian), pass the parcel (maybe but this can get out of hand especially with 40 kids), hedgehog game, party food picnic boxes, balloon modelling.

Whereas Ethan's party is shaping up as follows: treasure hunt (probably eggs given I have about 100 plastic eggs in the loft), trampolining, bouncy castle, egg and spoon race, sack race, party food picnic boxes, party bag shop, pass the parcel, musical bumps, balloon modelling, half time ice creams.

One other item for consideration is newspaper construction of some kind (last year was make an outfit from newspaper and sellotape).

In any event, I need good weather and volunteers to help it all run smoothly.

Spouse advice

I wore a dress to work yesterday, which is a rare occurrence. The other thing that was rare was the fact that dress exposed knees.

I had worn the dress before and knew it came with problems. I knew that if there was a breeze the dress needed to be kept under control to prevent it doing a Marilyn Monroe.



The dress behaved if the breeze came from just one direction because that pushed the dress against the body. Any Marilyn problems only occurred when the wind changed direction quickly.

As I left the house with Dave and walked towards the cars the skirt fabric started to show a tendency to misbehave.

Some husbands might suggest changing the outfit, some might suggest holding the skirt to keep it in check but Dave had a different response. "Are you wearing nice knickers?" he asked. "You should be in that dress."

Innovation

A friend alerted me to an invention that helps to even out the differences between the sexes. She sent me a link to a video that highlighted the product benefits of this invention.

I thought it was a fantastic spoof, until I checked out the not so fake weblink at the end of the video.

It's real. I think it's fantastic and clever. I'm just not sure I'd ever use one.

Excuse me

It was a hot day today on the trains.

I sat in one of the only available seats; a squishy one in between two fat, hairy commuters. OK, they weren't actually fat and hairy but they might well have been given the comfort levels I was experiencing.

At Stratford a few passengers got out and I took advantage of a space on a seat for two, which affords much more comfort than the three-seater.

As passengers got off, new passengers got on, and a very pregnancy lady sat where I had been sitting. When I say very pregnant I would estimate she was about seven months pregnant.

She was the second pregnant woman in our bit of the carriage, and I thought it odd that, on a hot day, neither were taking advantage of the free upgrade to first class that can be enjoyed by all expectant mothers.

I looked at the woman in front of me. It really was unfair to expect her to sit in our hot and crowded carriage. She was no spring chicken and I found myself thinking she was very brave having a child at her age. I thought I was old when I had my children but she looked at least fifteen years older than I'd been, pushing the boundaries of the physically possible. I wondered if she was an IVF mum. In any event I decided she needed to know about her free upgrade.

I leaned forward to talk her. "Are you pregnant?" I asked.

"No. Why?" she replied.

I panicked. "Er only there's a lady over there who's pregnant and I'm wondering whether she knows she can travel first class with a free upgrade." but it was too late. The damage had been done.

"It'd be a miracle if I was pregnant. I'm 62, nearly 63."

I cringed inwardly and asked lamely "You certainly don't look it....what's your secret."

"I'm a bit fat. My daughter's 40 you know."

I resolved never to speak to another pregnant woman offering help or advice unless I'd seen incontrovertible evidence that bump was baby.

Spot my tree

Last week someone prompted me to think of my favourite tree. Luckily I had decided on a favourite just the day before.

We had our picnic today and all enjoyed ourselves. But can you spot my favourite tree?

Picnics

There are two ways to do picnics; there's The Easy Way and The Hard Way.

The Easy Way
Go to the supermarket just before the aforementioned picnic and buy everything ready prepared: sandwiches, pork pies, picnic eggs, cocktail sausages, sausage rolls, salads in pots and bags, cut, peeled and chopped fruit and ready mixed drinks.

The Hard Way
Prepare everything from scratch.

Having just endured several hours of The Hard Way, with some more hours on the horizon for tomorrow morning, I can recommend The Easy Way.