Kink's birthday. 19. Incredible. Sent her some acrylic paints. She wants it in 500ml pots, which seems an awful lot and costs a ridiculous amount of money. I only got two.
And colours - I stood in the shop trying to get inside her head. A dangerous place. "Buy mixers" I thought. Primary colours.
She was very pleased and I got it exactly right. Spoke on the phone for an hour at lunch, during which time I also confirmed with her sister that she can come down with her boyfriend the week before Christmas. That will be a weird thing. I've met him a couple of times before and he makes enough effort to impress me. Apparently he knows all about us and is expecting a manic couple of days.
He won't be disappointed…
For the last couple of days we've tried an experiment with the evening meal becasue it has been degenerating lately. More and more food is being wasted and the kids are each getting more selective than they ever used to be. Decided its to do with them being starving after school and then eating too much so not hungry at five. We've moved dinner to 5.30 and they are now only allowed fruit after school. Its been ridiculusly easy to implement and both today and yesterday everyone has eaten everythng. Trx has also been deliberately serving food she knows they like, to get them used to the ideas. That'll be pasta then…
Again…
Stan will only eat carbohydrate and nothing green. Alice eats only enough to feed a small flea. Elsi only eats things she can skwish and Flo is getting picky about potatoes and tomatoes. That's quite new - she has usually eaten anything and everything.
SPoke to my sister this evening - we're invited there on Saturday.
Its been ages, and will be good to catch up properly again. And find out what the boys want for Christmas.

Had a phonecall at the office today from the Debt Recovery Agents we have sent in to collect our money from DCM. It was tough decidng this was the right course of action, and whenever I think about it I have second thoughts - I'd more or less forgotten that we are using them. It seems they have tracked him down (to Exeter???) and got a commitment from him that a cheque was posted to us on Monday. It should have been posted to them, and the agent wasn't very happy that DC said he was sending it to us, but at least they have made some progress. We weren't even sure that we'd hear from them again, so that's a bonus in itself. Would be great to get an extra thousand in before Christmas.

Should get a few more press cuttings this week. John's response to the website has been rather muted, his only significant comment being that there isn't anything in the media archive. And an exasperating claim that his email is "down" so the last few weeks correspondence haven't been dealt with. Why not just admit you haven't done anyhting about the emails yet, instead of going for "the cheque's in the post" option? He really can be infuriating!
Anyway, to address the media archive, we are busying transcribing, editing, scanning and proofreading articles, reviews and interviews from the Ultravox period which also suits Artful who want copies to source information from for the Island sleevenotes.
Two birds. One stone.
Aim carefully.

Cats need to go out.
It's really cold.
They protest.
But look at all the twinkly stars - it is a beautiful evening.

Biosphere again. Substrata.
And then some Cocteau Twins.