Work. Again.

I will stop wittering on about it at some point. Probably when I've perfected the recipe for chocolate ice-cream.*

In the meantime, here's 20 types of work available to freelancers, which I've just come across, and which made me smile. Still looking for number 1, mind.

*although it's looking likely that tomorrow's trial run will be banana, for the simple reason that there's not enough chocolate in the house.

It's all work, work, work, you know

I've got a bit of a love-hate relationship with work at the moment. On the one hand, I start panicking if there's no work to do. On the other, I like to whinge when I've spent every evening for the last two weeks working on stuff for clients.

Boo hiss. There's no happy medium. It's probably a control thing, somewhere along the line. It usually is with me.

Anyway, aside from the work (which has to be finished by Saturday, when I hop off to sunny France for a week), I have

• sat in the Free Trade's beer garden on Saturday, with an old school lemonade and lime
  
• eaten a picnic in the sunshine at Aydon Castle on Sunday
• shivered around Jesmond Dene and pets corner on Monday (only being revived by tea and a ridiculously large scone in the cafe)
• scaled huge walls on Monday evening (I climbed three 5bs! Hurrah for knackered fingers!)
  
• spent the afternoon reading terrible, terrible children's books in Gateshead library yesterday (moral of this tale, never let the two-year-old pick)
• collected an ice-cream maker from a lovely Freecycle member today
  

I can see that the last one is going to be ideal procrastination fodder over the next few weeks, surpassing even the making of cakes. Let the ice-cream battle commence...

On blogging. Again.

Aaaaaaargh. Yet more 'mummies and blogging' - thanks, Patroclus, for the heads up. It does indeed appear that to have any form of prominence in the media as a blogger and a woman you need to be (a) sex-mad or (b) writing about the delights of slumming it with children in London or the outer wilds of Northumberland.

Yes, I know I'm probably not best placed to talk, given that this blog is, after all, called View from Nappy Mountain, and I do wiffle on about my daughter in it, but I'd be very disappointed if that was all anyone saw me as. To be honest, there's very few of the 'mummy blogs' that I ever read - I spend my life trying to avoid the inane parenting chatter that passes for conversation at every toddler-based activity, so why would I want to read any online (or worse still, buy the book?).

It really would be rather nice to hear some other points of view, for a change. How about some older women for a start? You never hear anything about women in the 50s or 60s or older - it's like they've disappeared from view. (And if anyone can disprove it or point me in the direction of some cool older bloggers, please let me know...)

Fishy

We tottered down to the Quayside today (after an exhausting morning collecting parcels, mowing lawns, painting, glitter pens and sticking - you know, all that suburban nonsense that goes on at the weekend) to the Fish on the Tyne Weekend (part of Eat! NewcastleGateshead).

It was a diverting way to spend an hour in the sunshine - lots of stalls selling fish and any variation on fishy food (paella, fish and chips, pizza), a couple of salmon sculptures (I especially liked the scales - see left), two Cornish blokes doing a comedy fish routine (very, very funny, and guaranteed to horrify and amuse small children), and a tent full of cookery demonstrations.

We wandered about, ate a pot full of shrimps (the other half having spent his formative years on the beach in Whitby with a newspaper cone of the things), and wondered why the whole event was so relentlessly middle-class (us included). You couldn't move for small children in mini-Boden (it was almost as bad as the Alnwick Garden) - and the highlight of the afternoon was one very smartly dressed lady with a very posh voice bellowing "Asriel, Asriel, come back here..." into the distance as we looked on, mouths agape. You couldn't make it up.

And more books

Actually, on the subject of books, I've come across the BookMooch site, and am going to give it a go. The idea is you list the books you want to give away (and are prepared to post), and then each time you send someone a book, you earn a point (which you can then spend on a book from someone else).

So far I've mostly listed cookery stuff on my wishlist. I'm finding it harder and harder to get through novels - my problem is I speed read so much stuff for work, that it's really difficult to concentrate on the text as I just want to get to the next bit of the action. Fine for kids books (did you know I did a mean abbreviated version of The Tale of Mrs Tiggywinkle? God, that Beatrix Potter doesn't half go on sometimes...) but not so good for Salman Rushdie.

I'm quite looking forward to a week away shortly, where I'll actually be able to practice reading in an orderly fashion again. In the meantime, it's back to perusing Moro by Sam and Sam Clark.

Books, books and more books - or how to set up a publishing company

Simply inspirational.

(and she makes me want to head straight for the library)

Incongruity

M hops round excitedly, wearing a very pink party dress (passed on from a friend who was a bridesmaid) and glitzy tiara and clip on earrings (thank you, Grandma), ready to go to a five-year-old's birthday party in a castle. (We'll leave aside the disastrous princess overtones for now, suffice it to say it won't be happening again for a while...)

"I really really like Jimi Hendrix", she says.

That's my girl.