Childish Games and Becoming A Follower…

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Since we’ve been on the subject of children’s activities of late (you know with my big Disney extravaganza and all that), I thought I’d continue the theme with a visit back to yesteryear and that all-time favourite, Mousetrap…remember how carefully we had to build it all up just to feel smugly satisfied at the successful capture of the mouse at the end?

Well there are some people that just never grow up…check this out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zudydE4Uuw

Britain really does have talent!
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ps…for those of you who have been receiving my blog posts as an auto email, I’m chuffed that you like them – but I have now added an easy-peasy link on my actual blog page so that you can become a follower of my blog – then you can set your own settings about how you want to be notified when I add something new.  This will make make me look less like a desperate scotty no-mates and more like the interesting/fascinating/witty person you all know and love (too much sell??? Sorry…) So go there now –  www.kymhamer.blogspot.com – and make me look good  🙂

The Happiest Place blah blah…THE RIDES!!!!!!

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Badge lovingly hand-crafted by J for me to wear…all day…

Returning to my big 40th birthday Disney extravaganza (yep it’s still all about me on this blog!) this one is all about….
THE RIDES
So hang on tight people…
It all began with a gentle tour around the Disney Park aboard the Disneyland Railroad…

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…followed by a visit to Phantom Manor

…dropping in to Indiana Jones’ Temple of Peril and cruising past the underground Blue Lagoon restaurant with the Pirates of the Carribean.

The thrills really started inside Space Mountain: Mission 2…

before levelling off again with an annoyingly uni-lingual flight with Star Tours (commentary all in French!!!!) and a cheese-y sojourn through It’s a Small World.

And that was day one…

Day two was in the Disney Studios Park with even more thrills and spills…there was the Studio Tram Tour…

followed by the Armageddon Special effects experience, the Motors Action Stunt Show Spectacular (not really a ride as such but just as thrilling – more on this later) and then the ultimate thriller…

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror…

Our final day saw us start with the Rock n Roller Coaster (and a few choice phrases directed at ‘the big man upstairs’ – after all it was a Sunday!)…

followed by a few tamer experiences…Flying Carpets of Agrabah

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and The Adventures of Pinocchio…
and last, but not least, the giant teacups (or in its more official capacity, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups).
Turning 40 really was one hell of a ride…….

Blackberry, blackberry…

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Just a small diversion from the Happiest Stories on Earth for a moment to let you know that lately we have been pigging out on juicy, fresh-picked blackberries…and no I did not grow them (although the patch has started to provide the most AMAZINGLY sweet tomatoes). These blackberries grow wild in our car park and just down the hill on the roadside – yes, that’s right – in suburbia.

I have never eaten fresh-picked blackberries before – only restaurant delivered-on-a-plate ones – these are so-o-o-o delicious. J managed to fill an ice-cream container on Saturday with his not-so-slim pickings and has put half in the freezer for prosperity (of our desserts anyway).

Why did no-one tell me about this?? This is definitely the first important lessons of my 40s…

The Happiest Friends On Earth…

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So I was wondering how to write about our Disney extravaganaza – we squeezed so much into 3 days and managed to come back with almost 600 photos between us (god bless digital cameras eh?) and so many wonderful memories it’s actually quite hard to make ‘sense’ of them in the interesting, witty yet abridged manner befitting this ertswhile blog.

But really, the first thing that everyone said to us when we got back was ‘did you meet Mickey Mouse?’, ‘what about Donald Duck?’ and ‘say hi to Goofy for me’. So what better place to start than some of the new friends we made while we were there…






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So first Donald himself was on hand at the Sante Fe Hotel, helping to keep the long check-in queue ‘in check’ (geddit? in check/check in…witty eh!) and giving every kid in the room – including us – the first of many ‘oooh it’s…’ experiences and gasps of joy of their visit…here are our gasps.


Meeting true Disney royalty with Mickey ‘n’ Minnie themselves…oh and Prince John too…
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There were some shenanigans (that is hard to spell!) amongst the boys…









…and last but not least, a couple of cuties for the birthday girl…awwww!








Now that’s a birthday party people!!!!!

Stay tuned for more updates including It’s A Small World, the Tower of Terror and and Space Mountain…too cool…..

5 Sleeps To Go…Success Is

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It’s only 5 sleeps to go until my 39-ness comes to an end and I embark on the journey into my forties. Not that I particularly believe that one birthday (or day for that matter) should mean more than any other but somehow turning 40 has become a milestone with some significance…

There is no party planned…rather the celebrations are developing more out of quiet joy and thankfulness as opposed to any huge ‘whooping it up’ and while the big day is yet to arrive (and the presents are still to be opened!), I find myself feeling so very grateful…

…for my wonderful man and our extraordinarily special relationship…

…for being blessed to know and love his kids and be accepted by them…

…for my family who miss me hugely and support my life across the other side of the world anyway…

…for my friends who lean and are leaned on…you know who you are…

…for discovering life’s simple pleasures – in nature, laughter, tears and home…

and

…for having the courage to find ‘myself’ and to believe I can make a difference, everyday.


There is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson called Success Is – Mum always had this stuck on the back of the toilet door and I am still struck by its poignancy.
So I’d like to pass this on to you for all your moments of quiet contemplation…

10 Sleeps To Go…A Date With A Doodlebug

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Last Sunday it was off to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth with 3 generations of Scarlett men – J, his dad, and his son…

…’aaaah’ I can hear you thinking, ‘what a bloke-y day…all those big boy-toys…and Kym is going?’ and admittedly when we walked in to the main hall (not very big and filled with suspended planes and tanks and guns), I thought to myself, ‘hmmm…interesting, but how am I going to oooh and aaah over this for 6 hours!?’

But how wrong I was…the Imperial War Museum is a veritable treasure trove of exhibits and displays all hidden away behind the main hall…we were indeed there 6 hours…and we didn’t see anywhere near everything. We had to be satisfied with the Trenches interactive display and the Trenches experience (like walking through the trenches – smells and everything!!), a wander around the main hall (where I saw my first doodlebug – V1 bomb – see pic to the right), the World War I section and then the Holocaust exhibit – by our calculations this left World War II, the Children’s War and the Secret War for another day.

While all of it was interesting, the most powerful for me was the Holocaust Exhibition. To start, this actually took you through from the German’s loss in World War I and the subsequent Depression in 1929 and then to the ‘hope’ created by the National Socialist (Nazi) party, their election to power and the creation of Hitler as Dictator. There was also lots of footage talking about why the Jews were so hated (blamed for the German’s losing WWI apparently – broad shoulders eh!) and interviews with survivors interspersed with photos, ‘artefacts’ (for want of a better word to describe hundreds of shoes lining the scale model display of Auschwitz and the striped ‘pyjamas’ and SS uniforms worn in the camps) and lots of boards creating the narrative around this horrific event in world history.

It was fascinating and sobering all at the same time and the thing that struck me most was, at the time and in those economic circumstances, how ‘easy’ it would have been to believe in the propaganda, to see a little ‘hope’ in it for a better life. Not that I’m excusing any of it (just completely horrible – no words really to describe it) but I wonder – are we are all so very far away from this brutality? Can you imagine what the choice – of having your family killed or being part of the ‘solution’ – must have been like and what raw animal instinct people must have held onto just to survive and protect those they loved – on both sides?

Anyway, on a slightly more upbeat note, the museum also has a piece of the Berlin Wall outside (see pic) and I was explaining to J’s son (who is 13) what it was and what an important event the taking down of the Berlin Wall was in our lifetimes.

But then I stopped and looked at him and thought ‘hmm actually not in his lifetime’ – at 13, the wall actually came down 7 years before he was born! The same year I turned 20…

Just where did the time go?

15 Sleeps To Go…Science At Its Best

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One of the perks of temping for me is reading the Metro newspaper every morning over a quiet, pre-work soya cappuccino. It’s one of those free papers you get here in London if you are out and about early enough on a weekday and can manage to snaffle one before they all disappear (usually by about 7.30-7.45am). You really only need it for about 15 minutes and its combination of…well…interesting stuff provides a trashy and mindless read to get the brain just out of the trauma state induced by getting up so goddamn early and standing armpit to armpit with total strangers on the tube.

Anyway, I was quite startled to learn about the intricacies of camel courting this morning in the following snippet:


Hmmm…let me see…lip-curling dispalys of affection, a ‘certain ‘coolness’ in the morning…starting to sound ominously like some of the dates I’ve had.

However, imagine how excited a fella would be to have an ‘internal fridge’…be just another place to store the beers really…

Australian experts my a**e!!

18 Sleeps To Go…Zucchini Zucchini

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I don’t normally blog on back to back days as I want to give all of you a little time to digest my latest pearls of wisdom (or is that pearls before swine? Silk purse out of a sow’s ear? Might fly? Any other pig metaphors?) But I just had to tell you…

I picked my first zucchini (aka courgette) yesterday.

There was only one ready but rather than waiting for the others, I did not want to risk a repeat of the earlier Strawberry Pilfering incident, so I snipped, and brought my valiant little veg inside…

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Now what will I do with him? A summer veg risotto or pasta perhaps?

LOL! I’ve just realised that I have naturally assumed that it is a ‘him’…stop smirking – you are merely proving that none of us are ever too old to smirk at a naughty thought…

Anyone up for a banana?

(Sorry..couldn’t resist! 18 sleeps to go and still a child…)