April Fool

I didn't realise it was April Fool's Day today, until I'd attempted to set off for swimming and my car fooled me into staying home by making some scary noises at me, leading me to reverse back onto the drive way and call the AA, who arrived in less than 5 minutes (seriously, wtf?!) and spirited the car off to a garage to have some TLC applied to its coil spring. Apparently potholes+cars don't mix. I recall making some sweary-type noises recently when the car fell into a particularly large pothole, which all roads seem to be riddled with at the moment, following the snowy snow days over the winter. I can't recall where that particular pothole was though, or I'd sue the council.

Anyway, when I noticed the date I thought maybe the car was playing a trick on me, but the £250 bill from the garage seems to add validity to its complaint.

My favourite April Fool of the day is the Playmobil Apple Store. Go and check out the a-ma-zing attention to detail. In particular, the ipod dock where Playmobil Mr Jobs can give a nice presentation as though it were a proper screeny-thing.

I didn't have Playmobil when I was little (my Mum tells me it hadn't been invented. I don't think that's strictly true, I think it more likely that my obsessions for Flower Fairies and My Little Pony probably stopped anything else getting a look-in), so I'm quite enjoying having a second childhood discovering its joys with J-cub.

At the last NCT Nearly New Sale, J-cub was having an AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH-I-don't-wanna-be-here-any-more moment from his vantage point on my back, just as we passed the book stall. I told Jamie to grab a book and give it to him. 20 totally-absorbed minutes later, I finally got to see what had enthralled him for so long - a Playmobil Play Feet book. It cost 20p, it was totally awesome, and we had a good week of fun playing with it. Then J-cub ripped the cover off it, and tore some of the pages out, and I haven't seen it since.

In googling it to try and find a photo for this blog-post, I discover that actually they're fairly rare, and therefore fairly valuable. Oh.

Still, toys are for playing with, and board books are for loving and ripping and fostering a keen sense of reading being the most totally awesome activity on earth. In our house, books are for reading, not for keeping pristine on shelves (Jamie wouldn't agree with me on this point. He would much prefer I used bookmarks, and left his books alone. Whatever.). All of J-cub's books are chewed, and tattered, and torn, and sticky, with broken spines, and creased pages, and cheerios stuck to their fronts, backs and insides. And he loves to read, for hours on end. He reads to his bunny, and to the cats, and to me, and he loves to wrap himself in a blanket and lie on the sofa with a pile of books in happy solitude. He's so much like me in this respect.

I remember being at primary school, sitting outside in the little courtyard thing where we had logs to sit on (which the dinner ladies would tell us not to sit on when it was cold, or we'd get piles) with my whole class, reading our books. A while later, I suddenly came to and realised that it was totally silent, and when I looked up I was alone - my class had been called back in and I was so totally absorbed in my book that I hadn't heard.

So I don't really mind that J-cub destroyed a hundred quid's worth of book, not really ... it's not like I could have brought myself to sell it anyway. Although I think I'll take the time tomorrow to find all the pages and repair it nicely, so it can sit on a shelf for a few days, before I give in to his begging and give it back.

In the meantime, I've been stalking ebay and have started amassing a collection of Playmobil bits and bobs for J-cub.

He especially likes the mummy with a baby in a sling ("Mummy back!"), the mummy with hair just-like-mine ("Mmmmmmummy!"), who carries a bag ("Bag!"), and the guy with a cape and a Fez. Why not.

Playmobil totally rocks. All donations welcome.