It’s around this time of year that I always like to talk about the abundant foliage that springs forth from every nook and cranny here in the countryside, delighting the eye and offending the nose, if one happens to suffer from hay fever. However, there is one particular plant that I feel that I have to mention every year because of it’s rather notorious aroma.

My walk to work, if I have the time to take it, is such a pleasure on a day much like today, when the sun is high, but the breeze is cool and I have the assurance (thanks to factor 40 sunblock) that I will not crisp on my 5 minute journey. The smells of May in England can be heavenly. I amble down the path thinking,

“Mmmm, lilac.”

And then a little further,

“Mmmm, hyacinth.”

And then just around the corner,

“Mmm..ACK!”

Smack bang into the olfactory real estate of a Stuff Tree.

Stuff Trees are actually members of the Berberis family, characterized by dark, reddish leaves, yellow blossoms and the aroma of an adult movie theatre after the 12am showing of “Amateur Butt Babes III”. Mr. Clive Murray kindly invented an appropriate name for the offending shrub several years back; spoogebaum.

We no longer live next to one of these hedges as we did back in our boating days, but several grow in the field opposite and lie in stinky wait for me to pass by.

It’s no wonder what the pagans used to get up to in the springtime.

When I get an idea in my head, I don’t pussyfoot around. All I can say right now is that my ankle hurts.

A few weeks ago, I professed my profoundly embarrassing love for “reality” series, Miami Ink, chronicling the life and slightly staged times of the Floridian inkers at Love/Hate Tattoos in South Beach and the effect that these nightly forays into the world of body modification was having on my willpower to not have any more work done. The Rock Star was already getting some ink to commemorate the birth of the Prawn, so I couldn’t very well let him have all the flesh scarifying fun. After a few days of playing around in Photoshop, I came up with a design that I was happy with and today, the two of us trotted off to the local inkery to get marked for life. (The Prawn was safely and temporarily ensconced with the Barmaid so that she didn’t spend the duration of our appointments tearing flash off the walls and decorating the floor with as many different colors of ink as she could get her mitts on.)

Tattoos always seem to be a great idea until the moment the needle touches your skin for the first time causing a sensation akin to someone viciously and repeatedly stubbing a very fine cigarette out on you. And then doing it again, and enjoying it. This is not to elicit pity, because asking for compassion following an entirely unnecessary and self-inflicted hurt would be just a tad foolish, but it doesn’t change the fact that it hurts like the proverbial motherfucker. It’s lucky for me that my inker is not only tremendously talented, but a fast worker, so the agony was a relatively short one and I came out the other end with a rather lovely bit of art on my right ankle with should heal up in relatively short order.

The Rock Star went second and offered up his arm to the needle to be adorned with the initials of our daughter. The area of the hands, for my husband, is a bit of a delicate region. In fact, such is his squeamishness about his digits and their outlands that, if given a choice between hand surgery and losing one or both testicles, I think his boys might have a run for their money. I was expecting at least a bit of pallor, but he took it like a man under the quick hand of our artist and was soon in possession with a very cool set of initials in a great font, ironically called Skin Deep.

So, here we both sit, blogging our experiences and nursing the niggling pain in our extremities and enjoying our new bits of ink.

Until the next time.

This is the one time of year that I get to post “don’t you wish your countryside was hot like mine” pics. Our local bluebell woods was remarkably quiet this afternoon. It’s a shame that this isolated and quiet spot turns into Disney World when the flowers come out, complete with shouting children, quarreling adults and rambunctious dogs.

This is the Prawn’s second visit to the woods an the site of her first smile a little over a year ago. This time, she got to navigate the paths under her own power.

Relationships are difficult. But OTHER people’s relationships always seem to be mystifying.

Anyone who’s ever experienced the joys of condo living will know what it is like sharing your aural space with people who may have very different ideas about what is pleasant to listen to and when it is pleasant to listen to it than you do. Like those college girls downstairs in the apartment below yours (paid for by daddy, of course) so that they’re not accountable to harsh campus restrictions, like, oh, I don’t know SHUTTING THE FUCK UP BY 3 AM, who like to throw parties for 237 of their closest friends on weeknights. Or the small group house who’s stereo system (the effects of which can be felt by microscopic organisms at the bottom of Lake Vladivostok) butts up against the floor of your room and vibrates objects right off the desk.

The Rock Star and I got lucky this time. Apart from the apparent complications of living in a first floor flat with a toddler (lugging said toddler and all accoutrements up two flights of stairs), we decided that we were old enough not to want anyone stomping on our heads. (So, instead we allow aforementioned toddler to build large towers of blocks and knock them over, probably causing apocalyptic acoustic disturbances below. Luckily, our neighbours are out during the day.) Although it took us almost a year to invite them up for tea, they’re a nice, friendly young couple who like a lot of the same things that we do and are getting married sometime in fall.

The thing is….we hear things.

Not the sort of things that you’d imagine. Not the normal headboard- banging- on- the- wall- oh- my- god- are- they- having- sex? kind of noises, but rather more angry ones. The most puzzling thing is that these disputes are often heard earlier than our alarm clocks are set, which leaves one to wonder, how do you get THAT upset by 6.30 am?

“The only way I could imagine being THAT pissed THAT early is if one of them took a dump on the carpet before bed and the other found it when they woke up,” commented the Rock Star.

The majority of these verbal volleys take place in the bathroom and bedroom, where we can hear more clearly, which leads to another question, which is, who fights in the bathroom? At 6.30? Does this mean that one of them is in the shower at the time of the arguments? I don’t know about any of you, gentle readers, but being angry, naked and wet at the same time would seem to me to lessen one’s position in any sort of disagreement.

Some couples thrive on the constant tides of conflict in their relationships. One has to wonder, however, about the long term viability of a relationship that relies on provocation for it’s sustenance.

At any rate, the wardrobe doors need to stop slamming before breakfast.

It occurs to me that it has been far too long since the last Prawn Cuteness fix, so, for your viewing enjoyment, here she is.

This is a relatively new trick; the headstand.

The tiny trampoline was a birthday gift and a great toy success.

A moment from The Prawn’s visit to the farm; getting to hang with the calves.

Just woken up on the right side of the bed.

Prawn and mummy.

Things have been a little manic in Potamusville of late. What with the Prawn now being a fairly sentient human being who demands books (not that I’m complaining; it’s awesome. She could want to watch Lazy Town all morning, which would obviously kill me) be read to her RIGHT NOW on pain of “Peepo Baby” flung with amazing viciousness at your crotch and almighty tantrum, it’s a little harder to get a chance to sit down with a cup of tea and a natter with the beloved internets.

The other activity taking up much of my time has been a renewed and fervent interest in my hobby, which is jewelry making.

I wish I could tell a story about how metal working always called to me or how exerting my will over base metals makes me feel like I’m in touch with the beating heart of the planet. But both of those things would be total horseshit, because the reason I ACTUALLY got into it was because I wanted to spend a spring college semester screwing around and jewelry making sounded like a fun and relatively easy elective. It actually turned out to be terribly addictive and all the screwing around got put on hold while I JUST SOLDER THIS ONE LAST JUMP RING TOGETHER. During that semester, I made a couple of lovely pendants, a nickel ring and a “locket” for my friend Rosco that was heavy enough to be used for basic self-defence.

I didn’t pick up a jeweler’s torch again until a year or so after I moved to the UK when I discovered a nearby adult education course in jewelry making and thought it might be nice to reacquaint myself with the basics. Again, I managed to get totally sucked in and was soon busy crafting items to be sold by my saintly mother to her friends and colleagues under the heading of “My Aphrodite Jewelry”.

My mother has been my greatest saleswoman and cheerleader. So much so that early on, she let everyone at her church know that her daughter was selling jewelry on the internet at www.myaphrodite.com. While this was partially true, my website address is actually www.myaphroditejewelry.com, so we had a quick gander at the former site only to find that it was, in fact, a purveyor of sex toys. This early mishap spurred a frantic flurry of phone calls to ladies whom she’d alerted to the 20% off sale on “butt plugs and other anal stimulation devices”. (It is now some sort of erotic search engine.)

My work over the years has become more precise and professional in appearance. I get far fewer burns, rarely melt anything, get negligible fire scale and do a lot less swearing, however, I still do occasionally cut the top of my finger almost clean off with a jeweler’s saw on a semi-regular basis and spend a lot of time on the floor looking for beads or clasps that I’ve dropped before the Prawn can eat them. Although my mother still has a few “Stones and Scones” parties in the works, I’m trying to move the majority of my business onto Etsy, which has been a glorious find for me and hundreds of thousands of other small artisans. I’d encourage anyone to take the handmade pledge for a year and buy all of your gifts from the site. If you want felt mice dressed as pirates, you’re in luck. If you want a plush uterus, you’re sure to find one. If you’d like a wallet made of duct tape (WAY cooler than it sounds) with a photo of Bettie Page on the front, go for it. From the ridiculous to the sublime, everything that you could ever want under one roof, you WILL find it on Etsy.

Of course, I’m there too.

Our friend Mr. Steve told us the other day that when all else has failed in the pursuit of entertaining Coneass the Barbarian, he often turns to YouTube for endless videos of trucks and diggers. This fascinates Coneass to no end. So, yesterday, in an attempt to make her jaw go slack enough to shovel some food in her mouth, we perused the endless source of entertainment that is YouTube for Prawn friendly material.

These are some of the examples that we found that made the Prawn spit out her dinner. NSFW, although not in the traditional looking-at-titties-at-your-desk kind of way, more in a god-that’s-loud-what-the-hell-are-you-watching? kind of way.

It’s been a bit quiet here at Prawn Central recently. Since starting on my meds, I’ve been trying to keep my head down, take deep breaths and get on with things.

The Prawn has developed into quite a little conversationalist recently. It’s been convenient for those moments when I need to get something accomplished in the kitchen and am always able to pinpoint her location in the flat from the endless stream of chatter that issues forth. There are a few words that are clearer than others. Her first word, guitar, is a clear favorite, said at varying levels of inflection depending on the mood of the speaker. “geeTA,” for instance, can conceivably mean, “Look, mother, there appears to be a guitar hanging on the wall.” “GEEta,” is more like, “Father, you appear to be playing a guitar. Allow me to assist you by stealing your pick and attempting to ingest it.” Whereas “GEETAAAAA!” generally means, “Attention parental units: you decision to remove the guitar from my sticky-fingered grasp is one that you are likely to regret imminently.”

We’ve also made our first linguistic forays into the world of barnyard animals. Her favorite playthings, ever since the age of 6 months or so, has been a set of DK picture cards, which feature many toddler favorites such as “cat”, “dog”, “sheep” and “sweater”. (For some reason, “sweater” keeps turning up in the animal box, leading us to make up fantastic stories about vast herds of winter clothing that live on the prairie.) It occurred to me that this admission might lead people to believe that we are “those” parents who consistently shove flashcards underneath their progeny’s nose, determinedly willing them on to academic excellence despite the fact that they’re still predisposed to eating week old Cheerios from under the sofa. I swear to god that we’re not. Our holiday companions Mr. Steve and the Danish Muffin brought some along for their 2 year old and the Prawn seemed fascinated, so we picked up a pack for ourselves. DK is marvellous when it comes to children’s stuff; the bright pictures and textures are baby gold. The only ill conceived card in the packs as far as I’m concerned is “jelly” which featured (notice I use the past tense) a sticky blotch in the middle of a photo of a piece of toast. Of course, the sticky blotch remained sticky for all of 15 minutes and was quickly un-stickified by hair, carpet fluff and spit.

The Prawn seems to dig on animals. At the moment, she seems to have a “cow” thing going on, so we were thrilled to have a chance to take her to a dairy farm last weekend that a friend of ours works on to show her the real thing. Our friend, The Colombian, is possibly the most laid back person we have ever personally met in real life, and seems to very much enjoy his job, despite the fact that it drags him out of bed at 4am every morning. He refers to his cows as his “ladies”.

As soon as we hauled the Prawn from her car seat, she pointed at the nearest cow and shouted, “MOOOOOOOO!”

We were lucky enough to be there at a moment when one of the heifers was about to calve, so the Colombian invited us into the stall to watch the blessed event. I was vaguely hesitant as the stall also contained about 16 other cows and a 1.2 ton bull. “Oh him?” the Colombian said, when I asked him if he was sure all would be well, “Tommy’s okay.” This is not entirely fitting with my experience of bulls, nor of the Colombian’s (he was once attacked by another bull on the farm twice in about 15 minutes. “It was like being hit by a car and then having the driver realize he didn’t hit you hard enough the first time and then coming back to run you over again.”) so I was still a little wary taking the Prawn into the bovine domain, despite Tommy’s glowing character reference. However, Tommy seemed to take much less interest in the proceedings than the rest of the herd, quietly retiring to a corner to possibly contemplate his absolutely enormous testicles.

For The Colombian, birthing calves is like doing paperwork, so he chatted to us merrily while elbow deep up the backside of a clearly uncomfortable cow. (One wonders what it must feel like to try to give birth to something with 4 legs.) “Hello, mate!” he exclaimed, as the calf’s head became visible, “Welcome to being a cow!” The Prawn, at this point, was unimpressed and desperately squirming in The Rock Star’s grasp in order to be allowed to roam freely among the beasts and among their many leavings. “Dude, this is the miracle of life happening right here,” we kept trying to tell her. “Dude,” she seemed to say in return, “I see some cow shit that I would desperately like on the knees of my jeans, so hands off!”

The calf, a little bull, was finally delivered. “You want me to take your picture with him?” asked the Colombian, reaching for the camera I was holding. (which happened to belong to future sister-in-law, Trumpet) “Erm…” I said, shrinking back, “maybe you should wash your hands first.” He looked down at his hands, covered in every conceivable cow fluid imaginable, in surprise. “Oh, yeah!” he laughed, going to dunk them in a not much cleaner water trough.

I could just imagine Trumpet’s reaction.

“Um, why is there after-birth on my camera?”

April is an inauspicious month in which to have a birthday in the UK. As we learned last week, one can never count on the weather to do anything other than whatever it pleases. One moment there may be brilliant sunshine and the next, you might have snow dumped all over your unsuspecting ass. The last few days, we seem to have had a recurring hail motif. LOVING IT.

Also inauspicious was the first email I received on the first morning of my 33rd year, firing me from my position with AQA, a text based answer service that provided drunk morons with information. I would be more upset about it, but quite frankly, I’d let my account slip into inactivity due to the fact that I was getting a little tired of answering questions like, “If u r so smart, what’s my name?” (To which I dearly would have liked to reply, “U jst paid a £ 4 this question. WHO’S THE DUMBASS NOW?”

33 was not an auspicious year for either Alexander the Great or Jesus Christ. As my friend Pablo pointed out, 33 is a numerical palindrome. It is also the International Country Code for France. There are 33 vertebrae in the human spine when counting the individual bones of the coccyx. It is the atomic number of arsenic. It’s binary equivalent is 100001. And the number 33 is printed on every bottle of Rolling Rock. Of all of the meaning that I’ve been trying to derive from the number, the later is by far the most significant. Maybe it’s just because I could really use a beer.

Lucky for me the Rock Star is taking me to dinner. While the dining establishment in question is unlikely to sell beer as utterly terrible as Rolling Rock (don’t get me wrong, I’d still drink it.) I’m sure I’ll be able to find an appropriate substitute.

The Rock Star and I often become engrossed in bad television. The things that get recorded on our Skybox are truly embarrassing. I hate to even admit that several years ago, we became completely addicted to a “reality” program that was about as real as “The Hills” called “Paradise Island” where a bunch of impossibly beautiful people (and one painfully unattractive, but wormy guy) were shoved together in an impossibly beautiful and luxurious villa overlooking the sea and, in time honoured format, were voted each other out one by one. Such was it’s stagedness, the “spontaneous” camerawork looked as if it were being shot by Martin Scorsese. It was a detestable piece of televisual shite, but because we are morons, we couldn’t get enough.

Lately, my thing has been a deep and abiding love for “Miami Ink” chronicling the life and times of the occupants of “Love Hate Tattoos” in South Beach. Such is the stunning realism of this particular show that every customer enters the shop OBVIOUSLY WEARING A RADIO MIKE and, if they are female, WEARING A BIKINI. I’ve actually been to Miami, and surprising as it may be, I didn’t see many half naked women downtown. Also, there seems to remarkably little blood involved in the tattoo process, and for anyone who’s ever been inked, you’ll know that getting a tattoo involves a fair amount of leakage on the tattooee’s part. Furthermore, when a customer examines their new piece of body art at the end of the process, there is a complete absence of redness or swelling of any kind. Again, a fresh tattoo has the same effect on the skin as having a drunken nightclub patron doodle on your flesh with a lit cigarette.

But pshaw to these little details. They do not hamper my enjoyment. And most dangerously of all, they make me want very much to go get another piece of ink.

Sad as it is to say, the world looks very differently upon tattooing in men and women. A bloke with tattoos peaking out above his shirt collar or out from under a short-sleeved t-shirt hardly receives a second glance or a moral judgment from passers by or employers. However, a woman with the same pieces of body art is likely to be looked upon as, at best rough and at worst, low or unintelligent. Were I a man, I’m pretty sure I would be bold with ink; a neck and back piece, maybe a sleeve with bright colors. However, being female, I feel obligated to keep my dalliances into the world of inkery in spots that generally do not see the light of day. The subversive part of me is keen for everyone in the PTA to know damn well who the Prawn’s mother is. “She’s the one with all the tattoos,” they’ll whisper. “YEAH?,” I’ll shout from the other end of the gym, “AND I CAN STILL KICK YOUR ASS AT MAKING RICE KRISPY SQUARES, BITCHES!” But that little annoying practical voice that I have to kick in the face every so often with a Doc Marten to silence still gets through saying, “Are you sure you can look at that for the rest of your life? Cause it’s NOT COMING OFF. Plus, would it kill you to stop picking at your toenails?”

At the moment, it is easy enough to ignore my ink as it’s almost all on my back. The two pieces on either of my feet are small and unobtrusive and generally only visible in the summertime when even broken glass on the pavement cannot compel me to wear shoes. Perhaps the level of subversion present in my soul is not at quite the level I would like it to be.

Meanwhile, I will dream dreams of descending swallows, blood red hearts and colourful, intertwining flower vines.