The Joy of Pointless Stuff

One of the joys of being a Granny is that you get to by silly stuff for your grand-daughter; the kind of stuff which you couldn't afford to buy for your own children when they were small. (However, I must say that I shall never buy Kayleigh anything as bizarre as the hat she turned up in yesterday - it made her look like a small, pink Shrek. Leane said it was the only hat she's got and that she will buy her another, more appropriate one immediately. Hurrah, said I - dodgy baby fashion should be rectified asap, and I'm just glad the child doesn't recognise herself in the mirror yet, because the therapy bills in the future would be too horrendous to contemplate.)

Anyway, today I got sidetracked into Mothercare on my way to Wilkos to buy a plunger, and ended up purchasing a Happy Safari Sit Me Up Cosy doo-dah, for Kayleigh to use when she comes a-visiting. Basically, its a happy-yet-slighty-scary looking monkey head attached to a giant inflatable tyre-effect thing that can be folded in half to make a prop up seat, or laid out flat to make a scoopy cradle thing in which babies who haven't yet mastered the art of sitting upright can flounder about without getting carpet scuff marks on their delicate little scalps.

Grandad Andy and I nearly died inflating the tyre bit. My lungs are still hurting. And then we realised we should have put the deflated tyre bits inside the attractively subtle, bright tangerine cover BEFORE we inflated the tyre, so we had to DEFLATE the tyre, put it INSIDE the cover and then RE-INFLATE it which was quite fun as there were two inflating nozzles and we ended up almost nose to nose across the cover like Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti.

To add interest to the tangerine monkey head tyre, there are three detachable safari animals i.e a rattley tiger, a rattley giraffe and an elephant with a squeaky bottom. I should like to point out that the tiger and giraffe are not rattley because they have asthma or dodgy knees. Added to the animals and the tangerine inflatable monkey tyre there is a huge green leafy thing for baby to lie and/or sit upon depending on their degree of muscle control.

Heather took one look at the fully assembled Happy Safari Sit Me Up Cosy and said, 'You don't half buy some rubbish,' thereby completely missing the point. Fat Phoebe cat, meanwhile, has taken up residence in the monkey tyre. I only hope she keeps her claws sheathed. If she doesn't there could be one almighty BANG any moment...

A couple of quick extras...

1) Amidst much sweat and stress, Andy built a complete bee hive stand last night. It looks good, and the fits the hive beautifully. This has got him thinking about building a top-bar hive. Keeping bees in a top-bar hive is becoming a very attractive proposition, and no doubt will be the focus of a blog in the new future, but not tonight because my eyes are stinging because...

2)...we had a practise lighting the smoker this evening. Lighting the smoker involved the purchase of a blow torch which means I shall probably have to start making creme brulee just to justify the expense. I thought perhaps a box of matches would have been adequate for smoker lighting, but I am assured that a blow torch is DEFINTELY called for; I can only think this is a man-thing. And I suppose the blow torch will be needed for hive cleansing next season.

Unfortunately, the smoke we produced this evening proved to be hot smoke, and not the prefered cool smoke. Hot smoke will fry the bees which would be a bad thing.

More smoker lighting practise needed, methinks.