Philogynae. In A Nice Way.

Or, Not A Misogynae At All.
Fact One
Attentive readers – which is all of you, yes? – will have picked up the fact that Dire Rear is currently doing the rounds of the Hairies. We are not incapacitated or in pain, nor is every visit to the toilet a sickeningly liquid one – yet we have a confirmed collective [...]

Hi-ho!

I was going to kick this off by comparing us all to a different dwarf  – à la Snow White – but as soon as I really began to think about it, I realised that we are actually all Grumpy and Sleepy. I leave you to apply a judgement re: Dopey, yourselves.
John is grumpy because it has been [...]

He Can’t Join The Army

Agriculture starts with an A: so let’s start there. The BIL/SIL farm was bid to over £1.5m, but didn’t quite make the reserve they had set. They were attempting to sell their fairly small farm, which has suffered mortally from floods and bovine TB, complete with a cottage and huge moneypit 18thC manor house in a state of moderate disrepair, in order to [...]

Viscous Giraffe

In a desperate attempt to distract myself from A) the fact that John’s sister and BIL are selling their farm at auction tonight and the family is on tenterhooks, B) the fact that Harry’s Paediatrician’s appointment is tomorrow and I’m nervous already and C) Harry is resisting his nap today with OMG so much intensity and [...]

Fright Night

Well, I dunno about you, but even I’m depressed by this blog at the minute. Shall we change the record?
The sun is out, and this always cheers me up no end. We all went into Stratford shopping this morning (Stifle your gasps. I was taking John whiskey-tasting in order to buy his belated birthday bottle. The man had incentive.) and [...]

Syndrome

I found a new word to worry about last night. I had made a list of everything that was bothering me about Harry, and Google, the miserable algorithmic sod, started giving me answers. Bad answers.
Bleeding throughout gestation
Fetal distress
IUGR
Premature 33/40
Neonatal seizures
Ventricular Septal Defect
Impaired Balance
Head lag
Asymmetrical leg & buttock creases
Short stature <1st centile
Expressive language delay
Double hair whorl
? Tic
? High arched palate
Some [...]

Itchy and Scratchy

I have noticed a convention in the blogosphere whenever Bad and Shameful Parenting Mistakes are owned up to: the comments generally take the delightful form of bracing one-down-manship. There is always a baby who was dropped further – and bounced higher. The Bad Mother trophy is generally hotly contested by an assortment of piteously hair-shirted current care-givers [...]

That’s SO not a wolf

I thought John had got his middle-aged crisis out of his system some years ago: it’s thirsty, British Racing Green, the same age as him, requires arms like a fucking gorilla to steer, and does about 400 miles a year.

(I can see the thin patch. His mother can see the thin patch. I know YOU can [...]

Choice Eccentricities

If I had to list the aspects of the internet that I love with OMG, dangerous intensity – we’d be here a long while. But one of them is the fact that I no longer have to shell out money I can’t afford in order to read the broadsheets. Which… are no longer broadsheets, in fact, [...]

Abandon Hope, All Ye Innernets Who Enter Here

Visitors to Hairy Towers generally need something of the… well, the intrepid about them.
For a start, you must travel through Beyond in order to reach the Back, and then take a further right-hander towards The Sticks – whereupon you will most likely sail straight past the tiny and virtually un-signposted gap in the hedge. Then there is the road [...]