Not A Spoiler But A Hata

We found ourself adjusting Violet's cot at quarter past ten last night, when she should have been asleep. Why? Because as Hubs was reading her bedtime story she decided then was a good time for her to learn to stand. She'd been grabbing the top rail of the cot and hauling herself to her knees to peek over at us for a couple of nights, but last night she managed to find her feet and stood up. Standing, the rail as it was only came up to her belly so we quickly had to drop the mattress down so she won't fall out. She also hates being on her back for more than a couple of seconds and is very good at twisting herself over and crawling away now, which makes nappy changes interesting to say the least.

Windscreen is still buggered - the RAC people are coming to fix it tomorrow. Luckily, Next Door are lovely and are letting us keep the car in their little fenced off spot until it's done. Don't want any horrible chavs to see the smashed window as an invitation to further smash it and try to nick the stereo or to trash other windows. Welcome to the Monkey House, boys & girls.

Oh, and I've decided to make artwork for decorating Vi's room myself! Posters are ridiculously expensive for what they are, so I'm illustrating Baa Baa Black Sheep and Hey Diddle Diddle to make into friezes. And I'm going to do a Naughty and scan in Spike Milligan's illustrations to the Ning Nang Nong and make that into a poster for her as well.

BTW, nobody need avoid my Elljay for risk of Potter Spoilers. I don't read the damn things. Don't even like the films.

An Open Letter

Dear Nice People At Apple,

I understand that in our current culture of wastefulness, flimsiness and disposable trends that some people would purchase one of your expensive branded MP3 players simply as a fashion accessory, only to replace it with an up to date model after a few months.

This, however, is no excuse for selling £200 devices with a life expectancy of only 2 years. I care nothing for Brand or Image. My husband paid a lot of money for my little iPod for my birthday present a couple of years back because he knows I love music, and love listening to it whenever I go on a trip, for a walk or do some exercise. I enjoyed my iPod for two years.

And then it started to die. I needed to charge it more and more just to get a couple of hours play out of it. Then the menu button broke and I was only able to skip back to the menu by locking and unlocking it, or putting it back on to charge. It now only works for 20 minutes at a time, if I'm lucky and just leave it on shuffle.

To put it bluntly, Lovely Apple People, It Is Fucked.

Since my husband paid a lot of money for this and one would usually expect an electrical appliance in this price range to last for at least 5 years, can I have a new one, please? Either that, or could you unlock the songs I fucking well paid you 80p a pop to download onto my computer so that they will play on an MP3 player that wasn't made - and hideously overpriced - by you?

Lots of 'love',

Your Customer

Scribbles xxx