Dear Zoo

Happy Birthday!

I've passed my half century, along with my First Ever Best Buddy Beth, Cerys Matthews of 6 Music, and the Open University. Balloons and cake to us all!

Like your typical eight year old fifty year old, I made the excellent decision to take a picnic to the zoo.  I say zoo, I mean the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster which is a friendly and excellent place.  It functions partly as a normal zoo and partly retirement home for animals no longer in the zoo breeding programme. It's one of my favourite places and somewhere all five of us enjoy.

Feeling pretty lazy, I bought a pack of fondant fancies to serve as a mini birthday cake. Feeling hungry, I made spanokopita to take with us on the picnic.

Leeds used to have a place called Salt's Deli, and their spanokopita was to die for. They vanished some years back and I really had a hankering for the lovely spinach and filo pie. As usual, I turned to Felicity Cloake of The Guardian for recipe advice. I roughly followed her recipe here.

I reduced the spinach from 1kg to 750g and would recommend increasing the feta to 350g. Chopping and massaging a tablespoon of salt through the fresh spinach did work, but I had to put it in a colander with heavy weights on to help remove the excess liquid.

It was a pretty easy recipe and I highly endorse it - it was delicious and kept me in lunches for several days. My VEM Kirsty had a taste and went home to cook it herself.

We had a brilliant time at the Wildlife Park. The baboons were busy with new babies, and freaking out about a male mallard that was somehow terribly threatening as he swan serenely around the pond. There were fights over a stick, brawls over getting too close to the babies, sibling jealousy, male posturing and female impatience with all this crap.  Pretty much like the rest of us. Except for the mallard phobia, obviously. That was just weird.

The painted dogs were remarkably laid back in the face of their neighbours' noisy chaos. I'd swear one of them was rolling her eyes, but anthropomorphising is too easy. 

One of my great delights is visiting the polar bears in their 10 acre playground. Polar bears are HUGE. Really, really huge. Not "gosh, that's big" type of beast, more "Holy Geez, look at the the size of him!" It's hard not to want to go in and give them a cuddle, even if they'd eat you - they are gorgeous and hey, a bear's got to eat. You don't get to be the world's largest land carnivore without a heck of an appetite. This is beautifully demonstrated by the sign on the staff entrance to the bear enclosure "Do You Know Where The Bears Are?"

Victor is my favourite. He's a behemoth of a bear - old, wonderful, father of 10,  grandfather of many. He had a lovely swim in his lake and spent a lot of time blowing bubbles because he can.  

I love the capybaras and the maras; if a rabbit and a deer had babies, they'd be maras. For my 40th birthday my Best Woman SJ bought me a hutch and two guinea pigs (Lola and Lotta because they were small and very funny) and it's hard not to see the capybaras as giant free-range guinea pigs, happily bimbling around and dozing in the sun. They *definitely* want a cuddle and a scratch on the back.

Guinea pigs on steroids

We were delighted to see the tiny baby anteater, Licky Minaj, having a cuddle with her mum then having a little wander in the outside world. She's ridiculously cute. Top work crowd-sourcing the name, YWP. No Anty McAntface for you.

Our big surprise of the day was discovering that armadillos go jogging. Watching them trot in opposite direction around their well-worn circuit had us transfixed for ages. Sure, the marmosets were cute, and it was exciting last time when they escaped, but jogging armadillos are adorable.

After our picnic, a visit to the tigers and giraffes, total failure to find the Amur leopards and a pause to admire the black rhino standing to attention, we met with Elvis the Emu. Elvis is under the misapprehension he's an ostrich. No one wants to hurt his feelings, so he lives in the African enclosure and hangs out with the female ostrich who's too polite to say anything. Maybe it's in the name.  We adopted a hen called Elvis from my good friend Lisa recently. She and her lads all refer to Elvis as "he" despite Elvis laying eggs daily.  Emu, ostrich, boy hen... Live your best lives, Elvis.

It was a lovely day spent with my best people. Dinner at Salvo's and home again to indulge in another birthday treat - watching the live-action Peter Pan from 2003, which remains one of my favourite film.

Over coming weeks I've a series of workshops, courses and performances to enjoy as I continue my bid to make this a year I look outwards rather than in. Textile printing, glass work, sewing garments, seeing ballets and shows... 50 has a lot to look forward to.

I'm handsome and I know it

To the half century.. and beyond!

Nearly 3 years ago I wrote a list of happiness-inspiring things I'd like to try before the end of the year I turn 50. It all seemed reassuringly far away, I had loads of time to do it all. 
2 years ago I updated my progress, and then completely forgot about it.
Last week my mother-inlaw reminded me of my list, and asked if there was anything on it she could facilitate as my birthday present.
I'm 50 in 3 weeks.
Better get my damned skates on.

Here's the list, which I could add to as I found new things I wanted to do. Those I've done are highlighted with white:

Venice is incredible.

1. Go fishing  
2. See the Giant's Causeway - Still haven't arranged it
3. Try salsify and Jerusalem artichokes
4. Go rock pooling again - somehow the opportunity hasn't arisen
5. Sing in a choir - I'm a wuss. Nearly gone to 5 different ones and always bottle it
6. Grow cut flowers 
7. See live music 
8. Visit Hadrian's Wall 
9. Spend all day at the movies  
10. Learn to apply make up properly 
11. See the Northern Lights 
12. Go whale-watching 
13. Learn a new range of cooking 
14. Sew something I can wear  
15. See a new ballet company 
16. Learn to play a song on an instrument 
17. Go birdwatching on the Farne Islands 
18. Return to Paris 
19. Cook a decent roast dinner 
20. Build sandcastles - not done that in ages, and I like it
21. See Venice while it's still there
22. See at least one of the birds on my most wanted list 
23. Visit Petra - never going to happen, but it's the ancient wonder I'd most like to see
24. Start another business
25. Find a fossil

Each of those I have done has given me such a sense of achievement or pleasure. Seeing a Bearded Tit (keep your sniggering to yourself) at St Aiden's wildlife park the other week had me grinning for days - such a tiny bird, and so glorious! Venice was beyond my expectation of beauty and impossibility. Except for the eating of octopi it was perfection itself. (Octopi are probably smarter than we are. It's rude to eat them.)

weeks of sweetpea bouquets

I'm so glad Mark's mum reminded of my list.

Moving forward, I've found a workshop to achieve No.14 at the charming Hello Workshop in May. If I can make myself a T shirt someday I might be able to make myself jersey tunics, and I LOVE tunics.

M's parents are kindly treating me to a train ticket and ticket to see the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden - WOW! - so I can achieve No.15 as well as seeing one of my favourite ballets, Romeo and Juliet.  I'm ridiculously excited at the prospect.

My parents generously offered money for a trip.  I'm clearly horrendously middle aged as I decided I'd rather use it getting new stuff for the garden. Isn't that a lowering thought? It's true though; I spend all my daylight hours outside once the weather is half decent and eat most of my meals in the garden. Replacing our rickety, collapsing table and chairs with something better will give me many more hours of happiness than a weekend break, even if I were visiting the Giant's Causeway or Lisbon or somewhere else wonderful. Being in my marvellous garden is my easiest source of happiness. It's often scruffy but it's wonderful.

Obviously the trickiest is to start another business. I loved being self-employed, and I would be delighted to be so again. I need to think of something I can offer that other people would pay me to do. I'd say 'watch this space' but I feel I'd leave you hanging a good while.

What should I tackle next? 

The music? I have access to a ukulele, guitar, recorder, keyboard and clarinet, but can't play any of them.  Probably the wisest "play a song" route is the uke or the keyboard. 

Finding a veggie/fish - friendly roast dinner to prepare? Mark always does the roasts here. I prefer non-English food myself (if it doesn't start with garlic, why even bother?) so I've not been motivated to learn to do a roast properly with all the trimmings. Actually, asking Mark to teach me how to do it would be fun, we like cooking together... until I remember how critical he is of my knife skills and that I inevitably tell him to sod off about it. 

Perhaps not.

Planning a day at the seaside for rock pooling and castle building is easy enough - I just need the seasons to turn. I'll put a reminder in my diary and arrange it.

The movie one needs a confluence of events - enough films I'm interested in out at the same time, and not at a manic time of year like Christmas. We used to love our 3-movie days, in our pre-kids life. There are very few mainstream movies of the 90s I haven't seen, unless you include horror. (Remember, I'm a wuss) It would be a lot of fun to ditch being responsible and binge watch films in a cinema again.

So, newly inspired to seek out my adventures and about to hit my half century, I'm making plans. I'm not going to stay inside, letting my anxieties dictate the pace of my life. Spring is here and it's time to grow up and grow onwards.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions or advice, my lovelies. It's a big world and I do get a bit daunted.

Birthday Hijinks

December may be given over to Christmas (despite being the birthday months of my friends, father-in-law and the fabulous Miss B) but the party doesn't stop with New Year.  With more birthdays than you can shake a stick at, January is a busy month too.

Miss B has more birthdays than the Queen. She had her ACTUAL birthday in December, celebrated with just us, a party tea in early January with her best friend Olivia and our ace WildThing Family mates who came to visit, and her party with school friends in mid January, which was divided into a party for 7 and a sleepover for 3. More of that in a moment.

Zach became a teenager this past month. We went out for dinner as a family on the night itself. With mates he didn't want a big celebration, just some close friends to sleep over after gaming through the night. He wanted a black forest cake like the one mentioned in Portal and Portal 2, but everyone knows that cake is a lie.  It said so right on top of it.
(piped with not-properly-melted chocolate on not-quite-set icing as he came down the stairs, so it was pretty messy)

Two nieces, my brother and my mum all have January birthdays as well. I'd taken over gifts for Neil and the girls with the Christmas stuff, but was uselessly behind with Mum's present.  I was making her a padded iPad cover, nice and snug to protect it when she travels, but I messed up the measurements and made it 2mm too tight. So I had to start again, and thus post it a bit late.  Not exactly ideal, but at least the finished present was nice.

I was really pleased with Bonnie's party this year.  I wanted to keep it fairly low-cost while still being loads of fun and something a little different.  Knowing how much she  loves to dress up and preen, we decided on a "photo shoot."

I ordered some photo props on sticks made from card - glasses, moustaches, bow ties - through eBay for about £4.  We moved the big mirror into the kitchen, propped it on the table as a dressing area, and heaped costume jewellery, hair clips, scarves, hats, shawls and anything else we could think or up for the kids to play with.

Using a double duvet cover hung from a shelving unit as a backdrop and old bedside lamps to improve the lighting, we had our "studio."

 A couple of old frames with the pictures and glass removed and we were set for the party guests.  Of course, we needed a couple of practise models to make sure the lights and backdrop would work ok.    What can I say, I've a face for radio.

The girls had a fantastic time.  I took the pictures with my iPhone, nothing fancy, and kept a tick sheet next to me to ensure I got several photos of each child.  I didn't want to discover as I went to print them out I had 25 of Emily and none of Aaliyah (which nearly happened. Aaliyah is much the quietest of them all).  In fact, the person I got fewest pictures of in the end was Miss B herself.  She was so busy chatting, dancing and helping her friends create 'looks' she nearly forgot to be photographed.

One girl so heavily disguised even her mum didn't immediately recognise her!

I took loads of pictures in which the kids gurned, posed, went all Vogue and gangsta, and nearly fell down laughing.  It was great fun.

Then I put out the food for them to dig into before settling them down to watch Maleficent on DVD in one room while I edited and printed off the photos in the other.  Each girl got her photos as a party bag, along with cake and sweets. I bought 3-packs of those little perspex blocks that hold a crocodile clip for displaying a photo, so each party-goer got her own best shot displayed.  I emailed the others to their mums.

All in all, with the cake, sandwiches, brownies, mini-cupcakes, crisps, hummus, veg sticks, grapes, blackcurrant squash, party bag bits and photo paper, I think the cost of the party came to under £40.  My Very Excellent Mate Kirsty loaned us the DVD and most of the dressing up things were items we had already - especially hats.  We do love hats. One of the most fun and affordable parties I've done in ages. 

Before I took the photo studio down, Luke did a quick Zombie Apocalypse 3-D pose. Try not have nightmares OK? If you feed him pizza he probably won't kill you.