Just in case you're all rushing off there on the 11th of January.

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———- Forwarded message follows ———-

STOP PRESS The 'Children & Language' film programme at Tate Britain announced earlier this week has been rescheduled due to refurbishment of the auditorium space: the new date is Sunday 18th April 2004.

The screening is free entry and there is no need to book. For information on how to get there, please see the Tate website

For further information on the programme, please contact me at this address: Mike Sperlinger, Distribution Manager LUX 3rd Floor 18 Shacklewell Lane London E8 2EZ. Tel. +44 (0)20 7503 3980 Fax. +44 (0)20 7503 1606

LUX will be closed from 19th December to 5th January - please do not return film prints during this period

———- End of forwarded message ———-

As with the last two, the effects were amazing with, inevitably, one or two disappointing moments (nothing as bad as the broomstick stuff at Hogwarts, though).

But if they've done such an amazingly good job of dealing with the relative sizes of the characters, why did the whole cinema erupt with laughter at the end when there were a couple of shots of hobbits next to Gandalf's knees?

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Yesterday morning Kiloh said 'this is the best birthday I've ever had' and also said that we'd given her too much so could we give her a bit less next year?

We went for pizza in the evening and she went in first and explained to the waiter that she had a reservation in the name of Kiloh. Then we went to see Lord of the Rings 3 at Muswell Hill Odeon where, sadly, the sound isn't great and we were miles from the screen. It was fun, but after 9 hours or whatever it was, I've now decided that this just isn't my kind of film. It's amazingly impressive film-making but I spent hours sitting watching yet another fight and not really knowing or caring much who exactly was fighting who or why, and wishing we could get back to a bit of interaction and maybe a joke or two. I also felt the jokes were sprinkled in rather than organic. I think I'd prefer something a bit more like Metropolitan where maybe the four hobbits sit around for an hour or two drinking from their flagons and chewing the fat.

We all showed remarkable endurance, finally leaving the cinema around 11.30 with only one or two naps being snatched during the film. Tonight we've got the real party to look forward to in the wonderful world of Quasar.

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Luella has just updated her website. She has done a LOT of stuff, including one character who keeps popping up on my screen at home (clue: 'he's dour, he's French, he stands beside the bench...')

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We overslept this morning. Seems we're going to have to go back to the beeps as the radio makes us go back to sleep every morning. Kiloh has warned us not to do it tomorrow. It's her 9th birthday tomorrow so I've got a feeling there might be a human alarm clock in the house.

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This looks unmissable (and it's free).

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I went to the opening of the Dead Bird Show at the Whitechapel Project Space last night (20 Fordham Street, E1 1HS if you're interested, tel: 020 7377 6289). The theme of the show is the fact that architects have been building buildings which don't allow animals to live in, on or near them (the gherkin being an obvious example, with no nest-building possibilities. A number of artists contributed work, including Sarah Lucas, paul Hamlyn, Peter Doig, Abigail Lane, Chris Ofili and David Harrison who's also the curator. The brief seemed to have been taken fairly literally, especially by Patricia Jordan's contribution 'Dead Bird' (can you guess what it was?) It was a really good, lively show. I felt a bit guilty arriving an hour early and persuading the curator to open the door to me. Within 5 minutes, there were about a dozen people inside which I guess means it all began an hour before he was ready.

Meanwhile, in another part of London city, the plight of birds in an urban habitat was also a theme at the Trafalgar Square plinth event

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Kiloh mentioned to me that she took a Beckham-style free kick at football club yesterday, curling the ball round the wall to see it bouncing off the post. My enthusiasm has made her wish she hadn't mentioned it.

Where football and kids are concerned, I have a tendency to turn into Brian Glover in Kes

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The biggest events at the weekend were the christmas craft fair at school on Friday evening where I managed only to spend around 12 quid and then we went to a Children's Classic Concert at the Barbican on Saturday.

It seems that these are regular events where the audience has kids in it and they get to be noisy. At this concert, they screened two new animated versions of Oscar Wilde stories, 'The Nightingale and the Rose' (message: women are bad, well at least some women are) and 'The Selfish Giant' (message: don't be grumpy, let all the kids in the neighbourhood come and trash your garden as much as they like). We were told we could come dressed as princesses or as giants, and to bring flutes, recorders or percussion instruments. A lady in a wizard's cloak introduced it and told us when to make a noise. It was blooming noisy when everyone got going. And the older (13-14 year-old) kids joined in quite happily.

The films were good and the music that went with it was great as well, in a fairly traditional lyrical way. It was conducted by Debbie Wiseman who also composed it.

Sunday's highlight was a visit from Tim, Imogen and family who have moved to Bristol but luckily keep coming back because they haven't managed to sell their place here yet.

I capped the weekend by spending a couple of hours at Peter the school newsletter editor's house failing to upload pictures I'd taken at the fair onto his computer. Grrr!

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Mr Frost came in the night so my head froze when I went downhill this morning. Now I'm worrying about what it's going to do to my skin. Is there a product that protects skin from cold weather (other than a balaclava, I mean).

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We've just tried to do something about the fact that visitors to the Lecture List site have been left a bit confused about what the point of it is. Have a look and let us know what you think of it now. Has anybody got a nice picture of a lecture theatre or a seat in a lecture theatre or an ohp or anything?

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I finally saw Tanja last night. We decided it was 14 years that we'd let go by since we last saw each other, so there was a lot of catching up to do. I think Tanja's developments were definitely more dramatic than mine but we've both had exactly two kids in the meantime. We had both been under the impression that Apoa was a bit older than Jan but in fact he's about two weeks older than her. She couldn't believe that I'd forgotten the night of the 6am dog attack. I do remember bits of it, but I enjoyed the bits she filled in for me.

After their stage two exam Apoa and two of her pals bounced through the front door full of beans. The normally placid Apoa had her volume button up to 11 and they were all speaking simultaneously at great speed. (The other context where Apoa gets like this is during a card game.) The main thing that amused them about the exam was the formula question where everyone else had said the answer was:

3x + 1

but Apoa had put:

x + 2 + (x - 1 + x)

which, you'll realise, is a rather complicated way of saying 3x + 1. Hope the examiners realise that.

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Tuesday night was our Woodcraft pea fair, which means the kids worked in groups to prepare games or activities and then we dished out some peas to everyone and they went round paying with peas to take part in the activities.

I'm not completely sure what it is about trading or market forces that we're trying to show them but there were some interesting developments. The grownups didn't have enough peas and halfway through the evening half of the kids had run out. So the pea collecting stallholders swapped places with those who had spent their peas and we carried on like that for a while. The Bank of Pealand then announced a devaluation of the pea but still some kids were left pea-less so another announcement came which said that since 'this is woodcraft' some voluntary redistribution was in order.

The other main lesson was for the grownups. On a usual Woodcraft evening we struggle to keep 20 kids focussed but on Tuesday around 50 kids just got on with everything while the grownups stood around chatting.

My main contribution was to look after the hall users group's bric-a-brac stall. In little over an hour I took in around 12 quid for them.

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dug thinks we should all go here and vote for this.

So I did.

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Another example from the cognitive linguists:

There was a similar one in a Randy Newman song ('The World Isn't Fair'): 'If Karl Marx were living today/he'd be rolling around in his grave'

It kind of reminds me of Samuel Beckett's line:

If I had the use of my body, I'd throw it out the window

Got this from the cognitive linguistics email list:

Rather interesting use of mental spaces here:

[Michael Jackson's defense attorney] said that if the accusations were true, 'Michael would be the first to be outraged.'

—NYT, 11/20/03

That's what Ray Harryhausen said when I finally managed to get him to sign my book yesterday. We went back to the NFT for a workshop where we got to meet him, see a real model skeleton and dinosaur from his movies, hear how he made them move, and then the kids got to make their own skeletons from pipe cleaners and make a little animated movie of their own. It was great fun, especially for the older audience who seemed more impressed and excited to meet him than the kids were.

After he got over the shock of 'Apoa' I hit him with 'and Kiloh'. Just when he thought it was over, along came Oisin with his 'don't forget the foda' Irish name just to put the icing on the cake. I liked his reaction to Apoa's name. It reminded me of the times when people used to ask us the perfectly balanced question, 'Apoa, what kind of name is that?' Kiloh's womb-name was Spenglu which also got some interesting reactions.

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Had a nice thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, Thursdays being too complicated for people who work in a country where they don't celebrate it. Ohna made all the food, including pecan pie and brownies, and even made danish pastries which she baked on Sunday. I hope this is going to become a habit. We had a nice bunch of visitors, including Clemmie, who charmed everyone and then decided to spend the night. Apoa did a particularly good job of looking after her before she returned to her usual circumstances at the moment, with her dad following her round all the time reminding her to do her homework.

Robbie terrified me by revealing that he had discovered yet another embarrassing recording of me in my younger days, sitting around with Alec in an adjusted mental state listening to the Rocky Horror Show. He's now threatening to let me hear it one day. But he also emailed some nice pictures from Dug and Nicki's wedding. He's obviously been finding time to sort out his archives.

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