So it’s my 35th birthday! It was a pretty chilled out day. My presents so far have mostly included chocolate and tea which is most pleasing and appropriate, though I’ve also received a couple of rather lovely pieces of crockery for my new (super old) kitchen dresser: a gorgeous Persephone Books bowl featuring a pomegranate design from Alisa, and a TARDIS teapot from my honey.
Raeli gave me a beautiful piece of artwork – a sketch depicting our family in the Trojan War, playing Sparkly Monopoly, napping together (that is, me and the girls piled on top of each other reading books while their Daddy naps deeply beside us which is ENTIRELY ACCURATE), and a family portrait of us as fairies.
Lunch, some actual reading time (shock!) and I also probably spent more time than I should have working on a post about A Song of Ice and Fire. I got a single lovely child free hour thanks to my honey taking Jem for a walk to buy CAKE.
Jem went through a slightly frantic and stressful (for me) art period in the afternoon – MUST MAKE ART MUMMY – which involved clue and paper curls and cutting random bits of paper and oh gah, artistic children. Lovely but also messy and inconvenient. I am proud of her love of art but there are times when I just want her to go watch some nice tidy television instead.
But the really cool thing is that before dinner, my whole family gathered together and watched all 5 episodes of The Mind Robber (1968) with me! I’d always thought that the ‘books and fairy tales’ theme of this story would make it a Classic Who my girls were likely to enjoy despite the whole black and white thing, and I was right! Not only my three-year-old Hartnell fan Jem watched rapt but after one episode of casually playing Minecraft while glancing up occasionally, Raeli was hooked too.
It helped a lot that Raeli’s on a massive Greek Myths kick at the moment, so the guest appearances of the Minotaur and Medusa were a delight to her. Jem was quite freaked out by Jamie losing his face and being played by a guest actor (we’ve all been there, love) but adored the White Robots, and decided Zoe was the best. Hard to argue with that.
I love The Mind Robber so much. For years it was the only Troughton story I watched and rewatched regularly so apart from The War Games, most Troughton Doctor Who baffles me a bit because it’s not quite enough like The Mind Robber. But no other Doctor Who ever is anything like The Mind Robber! It’s all word games and riddles, Rapunzel and Karkus and the lovely, lovely Lemuel Gulliver. Also it’s gorgeous to look at, one of the prettiest and most dramatically-designed of the black and white episodes. I love nearly every frame, and it made me ridiculously happy that it kept my children entertained for two hours today.
Dinner was, as most of the dinners have been lately, a delicious thing from the new slow cooker I requested for Mother’s Day – we had chicken mini-roast with leeks that had been cooked for EIGHT HOURS, omg, leeks should always be cooked that way. And cake, of course, because that’s what birthdays are for.
At bedtime, Jem started crying because she hadn’t wrapped a present for me, and she had really wanted to. I tried convincing her that actually the lovely time we spent together all day counted for more than presents, but she countered with I WANTED TO WRAP SOMETHING and really, there’s no arguing against that. Eventually Raeli took her away and they wrapped up a plush purple octopus that I have owned for years. Problem solved!
Now the children are asleep and it’s Elementary and designer chocolate from my mother, and blogging. A lovely day.