In which the younger generation surpasses us ;)
Looks like the book review will have to wait another day, as something slightly more unusual has happened. ;)
It's something of a tradition that I meet up with my parents for a meal around the time of my birthday. This year they had my niece in tow, as my sister and her husband are both out of the country with their respective schools for half term ski trips, so the two sets of grandparents have taken a sproglet each for the week.
I suggested that we meet up near the South Bank Centre, yesterday, where there was a children's festival going on. Various things to climb on and a food market proved briefly entertaining to my niece and we then walked to Covent Garden, where the painted people pretending to be statues were a big hit and we had a fairly decent lunch in a faux-American diner. The main advantage of the whole accompanied-by-hyperactive-sproglet thing is that we didn't get a lot of time for proper conversation. By the time I'd given them a brief run down of the Paris trip, there wasn't much time for too much conversation about the job situation, and I gave myself a pat on the back for not getting angry when my dad, in reference to my forthcoming freelance translation stuff, asked whether I was still going to look for a 'proper job'. After we'd finished lunch, we took a detour via Trafalgar Square on the way to the tube station and pointed out to my niece the lion statues, the golden rocking horse currently upon the fourth plinth and the icicles which had formed from the water in the fountains.
Fast foward to a phone call from my mum this morning, in which I leaned that, upon purusing their morning paper today, they saw that there was a photograph of one of the aforementioned fountains. They showed this to my niece, who rightly observed that it was also a photo of her. Lo and behold, upon visiting my local newsagent, it became clear that my niece and I are both in this photo, as is my dad, slightly further back. From the angle, it seems that the photographer was on the other side of the fountain, which would explain why we didn't notice that we were being photographed. I shan't name the paper, as it's not one I generally condone and I wouldn't want to encourage traffic to its website. I will note, however, that I was eleven before I first appeared in it, in a letter to the children's letters page which I can just about stand by to this day despite my growing up into a bleeding-heart liberal. My niece is not yet six. They grow up so fast...
It's something of a tradition that I meet up with my parents for a meal around the time of my birthday. This year they had my niece in tow, as my sister and her husband are both out of the country with their respective schools for half term ski trips, so the two sets of grandparents have taken a sproglet each for the week.
I suggested that we meet up near the South Bank Centre, yesterday, where there was a children's festival going on. Various things to climb on and a food market proved briefly entertaining to my niece and we then walked to Covent Garden, where the painted people pretending to be statues were a big hit and we had a fairly decent lunch in a faux-American diner. The main advantage of the whole accompanied-by-hyperactive-sproglet thing is that we didn't get a lot of time for proper conversation. By the time I'd given them a brief run down of the Paris trip, there wasn't much time for too much conversation about the job situation, and I gave myself a pat on the back for not getting angry when my dad, in reference to my forthcoming freelance translation stuff, asked whether I was still going to look for a 'proper job'. After we'd finished lunch, we took a detour via Trafalgar Square on the way to the tube station and pointed out to my niece the lion statues, the golden rocking horse currently upon the fourth plinth and the icicles which had formed from the water in the fountains.
Fast foward to a phone call from my mum this morning, in which I leaned that, upon purusing their morning paper today, they saw that there was a photograph of one of the aforementioned fountains. They showed this to my niece, who rightly observed that it was also a photo of her. Lo and behold, upon visiting my local newsagent, it became clear that my niece and I are both in this photo, as is my dad, slightly further back. From the angle, it seems that the photographer was on the other side of the fountain, which would explain why we didn't notice that we were being photographed. I shan't name the paper, as it's not one I generally condone and I wouldn't want to encourage traffic to its website. I will note, however, that I was eleven before I first appeared in it, in a letter to the children's letters page which I can just about stand by to this day despite my growing up into a bleeding-heart liberal. My niece is not yet six. They grow up so fast...