Having finally been seduced by the 10% discount on offer, I collected my ‘Eating at Warwick’ card this afternoon from Rootes.

I am fairly confident that in real life I do not look like I have some rare and peculiar form of skin disease. It’s just a shame the digital camera Warwick Hospitality is using to take the photos for these cards disagrees.

Edited to add: Him has also pointed out that I have a halo in the picture. Great. So now I’m an angel with big red welts.

I have learnt two important things from my sister in the past few weeks. The first is that you should never compare your baby to other people’s. The second is that although a baby brings you incredible joy, it is also the case that nothing can prepare you for how difficult it’s going to be.

I related the latter to Him this morning, deep in philosophical mood.

Me: Al says Caitlyn is such a joy but also not easy to take care of.

In typical form:

Him: So she’s a choy?

Him has discovered that the quickest way to put me off shopping is to trundle along behind me at two paces and then look disinterested when I look at him. It looks like the Exile Route he normally takes may quickly be shelved, especially as he’s cottoned on that by doing so every weekend we may well cut our credit card bill significantly.

In other sneakiness:

Me: Ok, are you going to go on your exile route now?
Him: Can’t, I’m a P.O.W.
Me: Eh?
Him: Prisoner of Woman.

Yesterday Him got mistaken for a Chinese takeaway delivery driver while waiting outside the building to pick me up.

Mwahahahahaha.

I’ve been away for a while, as you might have guessed. First with bouts of illness (now tentatively better, but get-well presents always welcome) and then I quit the country in mid-December to have the privilege of meeting my little niece for the first time – more on that, perhaps, in another outing.)

Anyway, it’s old news now (this post has been in draft stage for about a week while I’ve been off doing more productive things!), but in other news, I’ve been reliably informed by the BBC that the mysterious ‘Ming’ I have been hearing about on the radiowaves is none other than Sir Menzies Campbell. Which looks an awful lot like ‘Ming’, now that you mention it.

I once mulled over the possibility of naming a potential future female sprog ‘Siobhán’ after a dearly-loved tutor, but checked myself because at the time we were probably still going to be moving back to Singapore (which is looking increasingly less likely) and the poor child would have had enough to deal with growing up with me as a parent, let alone saddling her with the inevitable years of torture having to respond to teacher’s: “Er… see-ob hahn ah?” “See-ob hahn! Stop talking!” &c.

This has echoes of the Elene/Caitlyn saga…