THAT'S not what you said in the Jeffries' Tube

… for hot breakfast. We seem to have got into a bit of a rut with daughter, where it's either bacon OR sausages OR American pancakes. She doesn't like scrambled eggs, sadly. Anyway, I'd like to add some more things to my repertoire. What hot breakfasts do YOU eat?

(FCC report later this evening for those anxiously awaiting it, btw)

So, when I put Holly to bed tonight she told me she'd like to show me a game she had "written in Notepad". I was thinking she had maybe written a story that had some choose your own adventure elements, cos she's been reading a few choose your own adventure books of late.

"I did two," she said "but the first one's not very good."

So I sat down and she started up her laptop and opened a Dos window.

"I found a video about how to do this on YouTube" she said, as she typed in the filename and hit enter.

And it was a text-based adventure game, but not like a book. It was like those text based adventure games we all used to play as kids. Press l for left, r for right, etc. With plot and humour and twists and silliness and... And this was just the first one! The second one was even better - about four times as long, with proper consequences to your choices, starts directly from windows, and when you've finished the game and hit exit it says "Batttteeerrrryyyy ddyyyyyyying........ goodbye" and then closes the Dos window.

She had a snow day from school today, and this is what she's done with it. Decided she wants to make a game, realised that she doesn't know how to code, researched how to code on the internet and then written TWO games by typing code into Notepad and then running it. In one day. ONE DAY!

This?
This is my stunned face.

Firstly, the lack of pumpkins in Brighouse did not faze me one jot. Behold the Halloween Butternut Squash of doom!



Second, Miss Holly wanted to be a vampiress. She did her make-up all by herself!

... to all who contributed to Miss Holly having such a super birthday today, including my mum and dad for inviting her for tea, and all the people who bought her presents, but especially (for blog purposes) Andrew and Holly for the Little Endless storybook and the Sarah Jane CD, and to Dave Godfrey for the Funnybones dinosaur book, all of which caused much excitement.

She got quite a haul of lego from me and Mat and Mat's mum and Dad, and an Avengers book and DVD from James, and lots of books, and The Blue Planet David Attenborough DVD set, and a pair of purple shades from her school friend Isobel. And a bunch of money which she's deciding how to spend from various other friends and relatives. And a mighty battler Hulk to be friends with her mighty battler Thor.

She has gone to bed a very happy Holly, and taken Hulk and Thor with her. As I left the room I heard Thor's in the meadow... Dee dedee dedee... Thor's picking flowers... Dee dedee dedee... Hulk sneak up behind Thor... HULK SMASH!!!, and then much evil cackling.

That's mah gel.

Had an SEN meeting with Holly's teacher yesterday. She's a very sensible lady, and has set some useful targets for Hol's social and behavioural development, and has been keeping records of her progress. The interesting thing is that, because Holly is now on the SEN register, they track her academic progress alongside the stuff she got put on for, because there's boxes for that and you have to fill in all the boxes.

Thus, yesterday, we found out that her reading age is 13.9 (she's 8) and she would be quite capable, academically, of going to senior school now.

I was talking to my cousin about this recently, and she works with primary school children. She is of the opinion that just like some people are bad at spelling, and some are bad at maths, being on the spectrum just means you're not so good at doing what most people expect in social situations. I do worry about Hol being medicalised, but I am supremely relaxed that her teacher is handling it in the most appropriate way.

Those of you who have known us for a while will know that Miss Holly likes to have the radio on to go to sleep. Unfortunately she also regularly "forgot" to put the sleep timer on. Some weeks ago we hit on the idea of having her listen to Big Finish stuff. She loves Doctor Who, we have lots of CDs, and most importantly, each CD will finish after a maximum of 74 minutes...

We started her with The One Doctor last week, which she LOVED, and has now listened to several times. While I was away at conference she decided she'd like to try a new one, and matgb let her pick one out. Obviously, because she's 8, she picked the one with pirates in, and Mat wasn't familiar with the story...

When I put her to bed tonight it was disc 2 that went in and I left her laughing delightedly at The Gallifreyan Buccanneer. Part of me hopes that she will just enjoy the piratey bits and not pay attention to the deeper ramifications of the story. Part of me hopes she DOES get the deeper ramifications. Part of me hopes she falls asleep before the sad bits... But I think I may have to answer some questions in the morning.

I feel strong in my conviction that at least Mark Gatiss will have no questions about my parenting decisions....

I read this this morning, and my immediate thought was YES!

Part of the reason I never got on with Russel T Davies' vision of Doctor Who was that it was so clear he had grown up wanting to be the Doctor's COMPANION. I never wanted to travel WITH the Doctor; I wanted to BE the Doctor. I wanted to be Dennis the Menace and Batman and Mr Spock and Judge Dredd too. And I wanted to be Freddie Mercury and Alice Cooper and Bruce Dickinson. And later I wanted to be Rumpole, or Paddy Ashdown. Like the first commenter on that post, it never occurred to me (and I thank my Dad for that) that because all my heroes were boys, I wasn't supposed to want to be like them, I was supposed to want to be WITH them, to be their soppy female helpmeet.

My Holly wants to be a Green Lantern.



At least that's a narrative possibility - there ARE female green lanterns, even if they are generally peripheral to the male ones.

I hate this world, that it tries to frustrate her dreams of awesomeness and give her dreams of playing second fiddle instead. My little girl is amazing, and she deserves to have amazing heroes to look up to and dream of emulating. Why is there still, after so many years, only a handful? Why do Ripley and Wonder Woman have to shoulder this burden alone? DAMMIT, WORLD, GIVE ME MORE FEMALE HEROES!

For about 18 months now, I have been wanting a hat. This might sound like an easy quest, but I have a weird-shaped head, and it's very difficult to find a hat that I don't look a total pillock in. On Monday, I found it. The friend that I was with at the time made a contribution to the purchase, knowing my financial situation, otherwise I would not have been able to justify buying it.

It's the perfect hat.

It's exactly what I wanted.

( ...and my seven year old daughter looks way cooler in it than I ever will. )

DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN.

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I have love for a lot of people. Many of you reading this will be people I have said "I love you" to; I say it a lot, and every time I say it, I mean it. I love Mat and James. I love my mum and dad, and my brothers. I love Andy and Debi and David and Liz. I love my doggies. I love Imogen and Nicki. I love lots of people, and I am lucky enough to be loved in my turn by lots of people. All these loves are powerful and motivate me to do stuff I wouldn't otherwise do.

But there's not one of those loves that's more powerful than a candle next to the burning star of my love for my daughter. I'm having a sleep over in her room tonight, which means I get clutched and snored at, and find it difficult to sleep. I am lying here composing this blog entry on my phone, trying hard not to disturb her, and I don't care about sleeplessness, or money, or yesterday, or tomorrow, or anything else other than her.

I never wanted children. I am not the maternal type. I still see myself as not the maternal type. But if I wasn't an atheist I would thank God every second of every day for the amazing person that is my daughter. I am lying here crying tears of gratitude at 4am for the sensitive, generous, intelligent, witty, beautiful girl I have been blessed with, and through me the world.

I'm a fuck up. I know I am. I haven't touched my potential. I have all sorts of health issues - mental and physical - which mar what remains of that potential. I can't give her everything she wants or deserves, because I haven't achieved what I should have, and it tears me up.

But what I can do, and what I will do, is give her everything it's in my power to give her. I will fight for her, and I'll fight tooth and nail and blood and bone, because NOTHING is more important than her. So bollocks to the Daily Mail and the right wing tossers, and my own guilt and feelings of inadequacy. I'm going to claim those benefits, and I'm going to spend them on getting her the stuff that she needs. She is more important than my stupid pride.

When I got home from work this evening, worn out after an evening's serving of customers, I went to the bathroom and found a note on the cabinet. It read as follows:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

my tooth came out tonight and I tried to wash it for you, but I dropped it down the drain. Can I still have my coin?

love from Holly

How cute is that? How sweet was it of her to try to clean the tooth? Bless her.

So, obviously I wrote a reply saying it was very considerate of her to try and wash the tooth and of course she could have her coin and signed it from your tooth fairy, Violet because one is never too young for a little Pratchett reference.

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When we picked Miss Holly up from her dad's tonight she was a bit down, and was reluctant to tell us why. Eventually, I got out of her that the end of this week's Doctor Who had upset her. ( spoiler! )

was the problem, not in itself, but because she really identifies with Amy, and she is worried that she will ( spoiler )

. We talked about it for a bit, and she seemed a bit better, but still worried. I asked her if there was anything I could do to cheer her up.

She asked if she could watch some old Doctor Who. As a comfort thing, she wanted to cuddle up with her mum and watch old Doctor Who. How sweet is that? She asked for one with daleks, and one with Sarah-Jane. But she didn't want G of the D. This left me with only one option, really...

So, we've watched The Five Doctors. And she loved it. She loves Bessie, and she loves the Brig, and she thought the old school cybermen were fab. When it finished she wanted to watch another one, and I had to break it to her gently that it was two hours past her bedtime and she would have to wait till tomorrow.

So, one with old school cybermen in for tomorrow. Do we think she's got the attention span for The Invasion?

:D

Those of you who have been following my adventures in parenthood will know that one of the things amazing_holly likes best is stars. She loved George's Secret Key to the Universe, and she has a bunch of books about stars from Zoo in the Sky to Cosmos, and she likes to sleep with her blind open so that she can look out at them at night.

Her lullaby, therefore, for many years now, has been Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Tonight, however, she decided she wanted something different, and she asked for something funny. I thought for a few minutes, and then I came up with this:



She loved it. I think it'll be a little while before I let her see the video, though.

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This week's headline figures:

• 494 absolute unique visitors (down slightly)
• 1593 visits (up 100)
• Busiest day: Monday
• Readers' favourite browser: Firefox, 52.54% (up a tiny bit)

( more Google Analytics statporn under here )

Exciting stats not from Google Analytics:

• # of unread emails: 17
• # of websites requiring work: 5
• # of blog posts I am committed to write that I haven't written yet: 10
• # of logos/headers to design: 2 (still one for Sarah at Same Difference, and one for next month's sponsor)
• # of Dreamwidth Invite Codes Available for handing out: 2
• # of people added to reading list this week: 3
• # of people removed from reading list this week: 0 (man, mark, please hurry up with those reading filters...)
• # of times I forgot to take my happy pill this week and ended up taking it late: 1
• # of times I have had a panic attack and ended up crying on the bed scratching myself to pieces today: 2
• # of times I have burst into tears in gratitude at how wonderful my friends are today: 3 (so far)
• Amount of shit to put up on eBay: approx 1 million metric fucktonnes.
• Amount of shit put up on eBay so far: 0 (but hopefully this will change by tomorrow)

I'd like to say thank you to all of you guys who have helped me through today's various crises. You are awesome, and I couldn't cope without you

* group hug *

The other thing I'd like to tell you about is amazing_holly's school report, which I received this afternoon. It's excellent The attainment ranks go from 1-5 and the effort ranks are A for above average, B for average and C for below average. She got 1A for most things (including literacy, numeracy, art, science, and music) and 1B for most of the rest, except for listening to the teacher, in which she got a C for effort and ICT, in which she got 1C - i.e. she is well ahead of the rest of the class, and therefore doesn't put any effort in and finds it boring.

She's so much like me it's uncanny.

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