Tommy's Party

Audrey's friend Tommy turned 3 at the weekend. We were lucky to be invited to share in his family's celebrations. Both Audrey and Eli filled up on party food and had a great time. Audrey's known Tommy for quite a time and the two of them play together really well.

fun in the garden

Playing with blocks

Audrey's favourite toy by a country-mile is her building blocks. She is able to get absorbed in building intricate towers of different colours and interlocking shapes. It's great fun watching her work, even though it's perhaps less fun picking them all up off the living room floor at the end of the evening.

Here's Eli on his rocking reindeer - still his no.1 toy!

King of parrots

In amongst all of my talk of King of desserts, fruit, cheese, Spain etc I spotted a King Parrot in our garden the other day. They live on the East Coast of Australia and seem to visit Canberra during the winter where they gorge themselves on berries. They’re shy compared to a lot of birds that come into the garden (magpies, cockatoos and currawongs).

The males are mostly red with flashes of green and the females mostly green. I love seeing their flashes of colour as they fly across our garden.

Separated at Birth?

I was surprised to find that the Australian $10 note features Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy on it. I really think there's a case for putting Robert Redford/the Sundance Kid on the $20.

Alphaordernogood

Now the World Cup’s over I can’t wait for the start of the new football season. Despite being exiled 10,000 miles from the action it’s great that Wolves survived last season and finished in a lofty 15th place.

Added to that we’ve made some good close season signings and incredibly haven’t been tempted to sign some dodgy Nigerian centre forward who didn’t actually feature in their World Cup campaign but has been nicknamed (by his agent) as the ‘African Pele’.

I’m also becoming accustomed to looking on the BBC Sport website under ‘Premiership’ rather than having to scroll down to ‘lower’ leagues. The only problematic thing is that until teams have played one game BBC list them in alphabetical order.

It means that for many weeks leading up to the new season Wolves start the season in bottom place. Arsenal are top of the league, Villa runners up and neighbours Birmingham start in a remarkable (and slightly unbelievable) 3rd place. Blackpool, in their first season back in the top league since 1971 get a European spot and Man U are mid-table (something which might actually prove true once their gigantic debts really begin to take hold).

Regrettably due to the presence of West Ham and Wigan, West Brom start above the relegation zone. The only thing I can see ‘saving’ Wolves this future igmony of ‘starting’ every season in 20th spot is future promotion to the Premiership of Wrexham, Wycombe, Yeovil and York, something which seems a tadge unlikely. Alternatively perhaps they could take a Yellow Pages approach and become AAAA Wolverhampton Wanderers?

Audrey Painting

Audrey painting some works of art this afternoon...

A New Arrival!

Dora(?) and Boots

We own two female(?) guinea pigs (Dora and Boots). We’ve had them since the end of last year, but a couple of months ago Dora ‘went on holiday’ and came back from the pet shop with a slightly different coat on. At the time of Dora’s holiday we asked the pet shop to ensure that Dora was a female.

On Thursday I went to their cage and discovered a baby guinea pig in the cage (we’ve christened him ‘Tico’).

A friend of ours (Bob), suggested that we take a more liberal attitude towards the situation and that there was nothing wrong with lesbian adoption. Given that I’ve seen no paperwork being exchanged by our guinea pigs and guinea pig social services we suspect that a more likely explanation is that Dora (henceforth known as Dora/Diego) is in fact a dad.

Tico is very cute, but we need to do something about the situation before he is joined by other off-spring and we become overrun by rodents.

Tico!