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Harry Potter is our new thing, it’s all wands and spells round here now (and the flying cars help, obviously)

The trailer for Toy Story 3 looks great in HD. It will be released in 3D as well, will that be H3D or 3HD or 3DHD I wonder?

I found this oddly-titled empty post in my drafts folder (today is Millie’s birthday, 30th September – looking forward to see how they’re going to top last year’s horse-show on Saturday, plus I have a few new dance moves).

I wonder what this post was meant to be? I’m still not really tall enough to do standing-up wees (except for toilets of reduced growth) so it can’t have been that. I wonder if it will appear at the top of my blog or back in it’s place in the queue? We’ll see. Perhaps the title was a typo. A typtle..

We were up at Monkey Margaret’s the other weekend while P&M were out dancing at a party (in embarassing stylee, no doubt). Super-Eddie my Super-Cousin took pity on me playing Daisy’s old pink Gameboy (Advance SP) which she doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of since she got her shiny new (and, yes, pink) DS for her birthday.

So Super-Eddie went up to his attic hellhole, and emerged with another Gameboy Advance SP in black, an original Gameboy Advance (the one without a backlight) and a bandolier of games. And gave them to me! What a super-dude. Thanks, Eddie!

I never had to be helped by the attendants – even when I crashed (because I wasn’t looking where I’m going, natch) I recovered easily. Some of these two and three year olds just weren’t very good drivers, I’m afraid.

My words are back now, they’re good, we’re good with my words. We’re not taking them for granted, but right they’re just pouring out of me barely pausing for my breaths. I have no ‘bees in my mouth’ right now (as my friend T says)

Some random episodes widdershins in my recent escapades:

We went to Hove Park today. I was the helicopter-fetcher in a boy’s confab around a little remote-control helicopter, a task I performed with zeal. Up till then, I was climbing on the Corporation Council Climbing Boulders – four or so hefty stones, one and a half dad’s tall, with hews (if that’s what you get hewn) where you can put your feet and hands. They’ve pitched it so if you’re a small child like I reluctantly admit I am (although I AM VERY STRONG, at least I say I am in my own kitchen) you need a hand to get up, there are no routes available to anyone less than 120cm or so. Given a start, of course, I just nipped up, it was easy. Daisy had been prevaricating, it was easy for her too, so she went up after that, though it wasn’t as easy to get down. One thing complicating getting up and down was the dozen or so Hove children draped across the rocks like feral spines on a dinosaur.

This morning we were at Mum’s Race For Life 10k run, a bouncy castle would have been nice but at least we got an ice cream. There was a fire engine in attendance but regretfully it had to disappear before we even got a sniff of clambering on it.

Back on Father’s Day we got out the Bolt DVD (this is a link to the trailer, if you haven’t seen it, or if you want the abbreviated version, animated hamster saves animated dog. Or cat. Or something. I’m not big on plot. With style! (*))

Anyway, we got it from the Ye Olde-Fashioned Video Shoppe (i.e. Blockbusters) on Father’s Day: watched once while Dad was snoring, once when he got up, and once when we got back from the park. Between time spent watching the film, I basically woofed it up (barking and playing Bolt and barking and…) for the whole day, some of the next week, and a good chunk of the following weekend: me and Daisy played Bolt and Penny loads as well (incidentally, the voice of Penny is Hanner Tanner who Daisy likes to watch on the Disney channel, so this added up to being a rare file we both liked). It was evidently easier to call me Bolt than James because all I would do was bark anyway. Anyway, I got over that, possibly because the film had to go back.. though I believe I have been promised that we will get the film. Possibly through iTunes, if we can still play it on our DVD player (??)

Over the last few weeks I’ve upgraded the video games I like to play: Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy and the infinitely varied game-space offered by the wonders of MAME (even though we only have A-D) have taken over from Spiderman 2 and Hulk. Although, to be honest, we all play the Mario games, it’s just me who gets engrossed on the likes of Cadillacs And Dinosaurs for as long as an Infinite Health cheat can keep me going, which can be a while unless someone kicks me off the MacBook.

(*) Toy Story 3 isn’t out until next year, too, just in case you – like me – we let to believe it might appear this summer. Can you you really buy film-related yoghurts more than a year before the film is released?

We went to Legoland again last Thursday, as Daisy’s school was closed for polling day. So were most of the schools in England though, and most of the parents had the same idea, and our queue had a computer failure.. might have well as gone at half-term like we did last year for time we spent queueing to get in, though in truth once we were it was a lot less busy, you couldn’t swing a Lego cat in there last year, and the waiting times were a lot less than they were. By the end of the evening (they stayed open till seven and we stuck it out) you could walk onto some rides without waiting.

The first thing we went on was The Dragon – it pooters through a sort of cave for a while before you go out in the open air and the cars seem to be climbing some sort of steep hill — AARGH! ROLLERCOASTER!! FEAR!!! — and that was pretty much it for me going on big rides. Mum and Daisy went on one and got wet though.

We went lots of other things, though, as unlike last year I have broken the magic 1.0 meter height-mark (if you’re less than that and you can walk, don’t bother going, there’s very little you can do). I liked the driving school best (I lapped most of the other contenders) and then there was a sort of racing video game (very heavy steering, my extensive practice at Mario Kart Wii wasn’t much help) and flying spinning helicopters and play areas and a picnic .. At first I found the Fairy Tale boat ride a little scary, but then we decided it was just a bit weird, as was the Giant Spider Spinning Web ride, which seemed designed to make you feel aphid and afraid.

The mini Lego cities I really liked – all that James sized transport tittering about, little boats and trains and cars running on wires and timers: one lad had marched over the railing and was standing in one of the mini town squares, towering over the buildings like Boyzilla, while his mother fairly hissed at him to try and get him out without shouting so loudly it would attract attention. He seemed to be under the impression he had accidentally and blamelessly wandered off the track and into Siena or Vienna or wherever, then again we all know that trick.

And home: I was wired, Daisy was tired, she slept the whole way back and straight to bed when we got home: I had a nap in the car, then sat watching the cars on the motorway all the way home and stayed up as long as I could, not wanting the day to end.

My cousin Felix gave me a Superman costume for Christmas: at the time, I was a tad underwhelmed, not having quite the understanding of superheroes I have now.

Today was it’s day, though: me and Daisy like to go through the dressing up box on Saturday mornings while Mum’s at work and Dad’s snoring in bed: I woke him up so he could dress me in said Superman costume, and I wore it all day, sockless and commando: I wore it to the shop to get lunch, I wore it to the park, I would have worn it to bed if Mum had let me..