Moshi and Mumtaz

Now, if you instantly know what a Moshi is I suspect you are a parent of a child aged somewhere between 5 and 10. Any younger they'll be into Peppa pig and Toy Story, any older they'll be into mooching around shopping centres, looking through their fringes and texting. My son is 9 and therefore right in the middle of the Moshi demographic. When on the laptop he'll be in his Moshi room, feeding his monster and completing his daily challenge. His school bag always has a wee bag full of frighteningly overpriced plastic Moshi figures. Basically, he loves it as so do all of his mates.
Today we went to the National Media museum that was about to finish its February month of Moshi activities. I like the Media museum: it has the original toys from Playschool and Rainbow. You can watch Pipkins in a pod and scare the crap out of modern kids: that programme was dark, man. I have to admit to a sense of trepidation about a day of Moshi monsters but it was pretty good.
The highlight was the clay animation workshop where my son made a Furi model and then animated it. I'm hugely impressed by his artistic vision which you can see it here: Moshi animation
He also got to do a trail based on Internet security, appear on a green screen TV animation and play on Moshi monsters. He loved it.
It wouldn't have been a trip to Bradford without a great curry and I finally (and pretty much by accident) found the legendary Mumtaz restaurant on Great Horton Road. Their food is utterly incredible: it is not even comparable with the bleak yellow slop so many British curry houses turn out. It's utterly delicious and we had a scrumptious and outrageously cheap lunch.
Moshi and Mumtaz. A surprisingly good combination.

A brief history of time

Today we went to Swanage. When I was a baby we lived here and I have flickering half memories of my early childhood. I've been going there most years ever since and always love the little town.

For the past few years Durlston Castle has been covered in hoardings whilst the Heritage Lottery fund redevelops it and I was really impressed by their achievements. Outside there is a time walk to introduce you to the start of the Jurassic coast. Inside is a new art gallery and a fabulous display called The Rock which explains the paleontological remains in a huge slab of Purbeck limestone. There's also a lovely café which serves great cream teas.

Egypt, China, Casterbridge

Today we went to the Tutankhamen exhibition in Dorchester. I've seen the adverts for this museum many times over the years but this was our first visit. My son has been studying Egypt this half term so it seemed an appropriate trip. The museum replicates the antechamber and the tomb, along with recreations of treasures such as the death mask, statues and thrones. Even though nothing originated in Egypt it was still fascinating and brilliantly constructed.

Afterwards we went to another museum which recreated the Terracotta army of Xian (or at least about 5 of them). There was a great 70s video about the first Emperor of China,Qin Shi Huang, who not only unified China, he ordered the Great Wall to be joined together and had the Terracotta Army built; whilst only ruling a unified Imperial China for 10 years. It was really interesting as it's a historical period about which I knew practically nothing.

Upstairs was the Teddy Bear museum where I got to chortle at some dreadful puns (Abearham Lincoln and Che Bearvara) and enjoy being reminded of the brilliance of A.A.Milne and Pooh's immortal view that 'my spelling is wobbly. The letters wobble and go in the wrong place'.

Finally, we sated my Hardy obsession by walking past the house that is immortalised as Michael Henchard's in The Mayor of Casterbridge.

A million is just a statistic

Today we went to the Bovington Tank museum in Dorset. I always find museums dedicated to war a difficult place to visit: I'm not sure how one is supposed to feel. Personally I tend to feel very morally conflicted and a sense of awful ambiguity in mooching around such a monstrous concept. When I was young I was a firm conscientious objector and vehement in marching against the conflicts that my country participated in during the 90s. Nowadays it's hard to have that moral certainty I had when younger. At 23 I wouldn't have visited a tank museum but at 40 I go to bear witness to sacrifice that I wish no person was asked to make. The display which chimed with me most was the awful quote from Josef Stalin 'one person's death is a tragedy, a million people's deaths are a statistic'. Maybe in visiting museums such as Bovington it gives the ability to look at the scale of death in the twentieth century and try to move from statistic to the personal.

The exhibits that chimed with me most are below: the UN Peacekeeping force's armoured car. Whatever the UN's failings in Srebrenica, Somalia and Congo the fact that the world has a peacekeeping force gives me hope. I was also interested by the recreation of Da Vinci's tank concept. My son loved Dad's Army's car.

Snow reason to moan

There is one thing that unites the nation. Disunity. Particularly about snow. As soon as it falls you will see every social network going mad with joy / horror / indifference and people posting it's here / it's not here / why on earth are you telling everyone it's here?

I think the major reason is that there is something exciting about it. We are British: we are used to wind, rain and cold. But snow is different. Even the Scots (who yawn at English snow hysteria but secretly are just as excited. I know this, I lived there) don't see that much of it. My son has been really lucky to go sledging every year from age 6 to 9.

Today was a gorgeous day: powdery snow and blazing sun and we made the absolute most of it. For the record, as long as I don't have to drive and have the right clothes, I love the snow.

Like Janus, but not Samantha

You have to resist the urge to be all self-indulgent about Life, The Universe and Everything on January 1st as you can come across as a bit of a pillock. If you haven't gleaned yet, I am about to be self-indulgent and look back at last year and forward to next year just like Janus.

Last year was pretty amazing. My New Year's Resolution was to try to see people that I wouldn't otherwise see every month of the year. This worked out really well as I saw a whole host of friends over the year and got to visit people in cities as far apart as Exeter, Bathgate, Manchester, Newcastle, Watford, Stratford on Avon and Hatfield. There are still some friends from school, university and my previous career on the railway that I haven't seen in a really long time and I am going to make the effort to see them. One of my trips this year is definitely going to be to Glasgow to see a friend who I haven't seen in far too long.

As far as friendships go I also made a load of new and really important friends via Twitter. My family tease me about my iphone addiction but I truly find Twitter and the group I interact with to be amazingly funny, supportive, intelligent, hilarious and people whose friendship I genuinely treasure. There are plans afoot for a few tweet ups this year and I am looking forward to the moment that the avi comes alive. Who would have thought that so much can be expressed in 140 characters or fewer? Additionally, on a couple of occasions I have been contacted by my actual heroes: Andrew McCarthy, Nick Knowles and Evan Davis so far. I'm working on Duran Duran.

Then, this blog. I really enjoy the opportunity to see and remember all the great places I go with my son. My son is my life partner, my best mate, my conscience, my playmate and my guardian all rolled into one. I love going on adventures with him and we have had such a year. If I look back through the posts I can see all the great stuff we've done: hunting for crabs in Dorset; watching Take That in Sunderland; visiting loads of museums, galleries and historic buildings; attending the filming of TV programmes; watching different plays in lots of different theatres; being part of Dr Who at Salford; travelling to Venice and Rome. It's been brilliant. I'm very privileged to have such a life where I can do all this great stuff but it is going to these places with my son that makes it extra special.

In September I had scores of friends travel miles up a mountain to come to Eskdale for my 40th birthday party. All of them must have been strangers to me at one time but they are so dear to me now and I never have a moment of being tongue-tied or stupid with them. Then in October I went to a school reunion and talked to everyone and absolutely adored seeing old school friends, even though 20 years had passed as I was far less shy and self-conscious than I was at school. Maybe I might learn to be less tongue-tied.

Now I am looking forward to this year. I have some adventures planned already: London in March to see My Life Story; Manchester in April to see McFly; London in June to see Springsteen and then a trip to the Olympics to see the basketball and 800m and 1500m. I'm also investigating the cost of a trip to Greece to visit some of the great sites of antiquity: the Parthenon, Olympia, Delphi and Mycenae. At some point I am going to Glasgow and Cambridge. Additionally, I need to go to Canterbury and Hastings for both medieval history and friendship reasons.

I really believe that the way I see New Year in sets the tone for the following year. The most eventful Hogmanay ever was when I met the love of my life. This year I went to a truly lovely wedding, stylish and thoughtful and full of laughter and joy. Then one of my dearest friends came over with her 2 sons and my god-daughter and we had tapas, and played Trivial Pursuits, and drank and had fireworks at midnight. On New Year's Day we went to the Royal Armouries and then for an amazing lunch at Mumtaz. It was the best New Year in a long time and set the tone, I hope, for 2012: making my son really happy and me being with the friend that I love.

My New Year's resolutions are to see friends every month and to keep up with http://www.herlifestoryonepic.blogspot.com/ by posting one picture every day, all year.

Happy New Year and thank you for letting me be a self-indulgent pillock.

For the Winchester

Leaving Dorset was very hard to do as driving 6 hours back towards work and responsibility hurt. So, we took a detour via Winchester. It's such a great city: so much to see but very compact.

Our first stop was the cathedral. Mainly because I wanted to see Song II by Antony Gormley again but sadly the crypt wasn't flooded. However, the cathedral itself is breathtakingly beautiful.















Song II by Antony Gormley. The crypt floods and at certain times of the year the statue seems to be floating in the water, in utter stillness. But not today.



Afterwards we raced up to see the Great Hall and the enjoyably fake Arthurian round table







Then paid our respects to Alfred the Great.




No cakes were burnt in the making of this blog.

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