Digigran

What a shock to get back from here to find that Spring had not yet sprung. I was expecting daffodils and bird song and just saw lumps of grey and damp stuff. What have you all been doing ? I bet it's something to do with all those trillions of plastic bags weve all been using, and their ability to contribute to the destruction of the environment See. My renewed green consciousness has arisen from my visit to the Galapagos Islands which was idyllic. The skies were heavenly blue with only the fluffiest puffs of clouds floating by occasionally, the scenery stunning as sen from a high point, like this:














No one is allowed to take any thing to eat or drink onto the islands themselves except for bottles of water to keep hydrated and all visitors are sworn to picking up any waste plastic or paper wrapping that does escape. Everything therefore seems so pristine and unspoiled and the animal life which attracted me there abundant and contented and unafraid. I went because I wanted to see these:









But entered up being much more impressed and interested in these fascinating birds with the endearing name of Blue-footed Boobies. I took loads of pictures of them, some with their eggs, some of them making their nests on the ground, sometimes even on the paths used by the visitors, because they are so unafraid of humans. I chose this picture to show you because of the display of the wonderful eponymous blue feet. There are two other kinds of Boobies endemic to the island- the masked booby and the red -footed booby, but this little fellow is the most endearing. They are such maladroit creatures too. Sometimes they misjudge landing on their perches and crash into the cliffs. They also allow the predatory frigate birds to rob them of their fish as they come back into land. This is a picture of the robber-bird in full flight.



The male frigate birds is displaying to attract a mate. The great red balloon is a kind of wattle beneath his throat, inflated during the courtship ritual. I had seen the birds at the coast while working inTobago, but never witnessed their courting rituals, or their brigand activities before. They attack and hold onto the Boobies when flying into shore with their catch and force them to drop their prey (fish) which they then catch in mid-air and bring into land . Poor little boobies, I can identify with them having encountered a few academic brigands in my time and having suffered several crash landings too.

I also snorkled in very deep water with sealions- one of my mates is shown below Both of us look less than elegant on land, but in the water half a dozen sealion puppies came rolling and turning round me as I swam, biting my flippers and staring through my mask. Astonished, I glided over turtles,

and floated with the fishes.

So it's a little hard to be adjusting to life back home with Edward and the garden to see to, as well as the marking and the report to write and a growing envy of my colleagues, Dr Kate, Dr Joolz and Guy who are all getting ready for their big show at the AERA . Ah well, we can't have everything, though despite their protestations about the writing, theirs is a very big adventure.

This little BLOG may however one day serve to show Alexander where I have been. I sent him his first postcard home- just in time to mark his first quarter of a year old. Also wrote myself a postcard, inspired by this book:

which , if you haven't read it, might make for a good read on your American flight, though I did find the in- flight movies irresistible, myself. The writer, Alice Steinbach, is a bit self indulgent and writes too much about her social successes in high society, but it's good on why travel is good for one's sense of identity and serves as a reminder of the more adventurous selves we all once owned. So enjoy your trip to San Fransisco and be sure to wear flowers in your hair in memory of less drab times.

I suspect most of you didn't even notice I'd left. Well I have and I am posting this from the Hilton in Quito- feeling slightly light-headed from lack of sleep and the effect of the altitude. I don't think I've got that altitude sickness though just a little sad at heart because in all the wonder of a beautiful city we keep coming across examples of dire poverty and gross neglect of the indigenous people. I guess when we finally get to the Galapagos tomorrow we will see mainly widlife and tourists. However, that doesn't make the ridiculous spectacle of a Catholic Church spending God knows how much to re-furbish their churches with huge amounts of gold leaf, when outside the Indian population is not getting an education or the kind of healrh care to treat the most obvious illnesses and disabilities.. In the school day the public square was full of little boys trying to hustle a buck by cleaning shoes and little girls toting babies round in shawls, showing their faces to try to get a dollar. The guide remarked that education was no longer universal and poorer families often chose to educate only their sons and keep their daughters at home.
And they are so dignified these indian people and the churches in which they worship so groos, over decorated and oblivious of their need. They feature God and the saints as Spaniards and show hell fire pictures to frighten the vanquished into prayer. Ended up empytying my wallet od f one dollar bills.
Lost myself for the afternoon in the anthropological museum which is full of the wonderful artefacts of the pre- Inca periods. Gold to airy thinnes beat in breast plates and head gear, and a multiplicity of ceramic imagings of the human condition- some of them very rude indeed - but I coudn't take pictures in the museo so you will need to make do with the ones at the top of the page. Digidoc said a very wise thing; he said that he was struck by the beautiful simplicity and human-size clarity of the Indian art in comparison with the over-blown, suffocating, deadly sentimentality of the Spanish conquerors' rendering of Christianity. I hope we don't have to visit any more cathedrals on this trip or i might just have to vomit.
Anyway BLOGGING is a bit expensive at the Hilton so that's all for now. I'll see if I can BLOG again on our return. I think we are marooned in Miami for six hours on the return journey, so I can try then.

No not this:








but this:






It's the mature citizen's equivalent of the time-out gap year- only it lasts longer and is called:

To see these:

And these:

Perhaps on return I will even be able to upload some lovely pictures of my own.

Until then, a little vignette for the ethnographers among you.

My first boyfriend, whom I admired and adored as he seemed older and much cleverer than me because he was at Queen's College, Oxford, studying Russian and I was well to the bad impressed, once said I looked like a marine iguana! I was enchanted because the name seemed so lovely, like a heroine from a late Shakespeare play.

I was in the sixth form at the time and reading this:

I imagined myself as the lovely Iguana marooned on a coral island with Fred as a beloved Ferdinand. But I wasn't sure what they were so I went and looked them up in Central Ref- no google then young Alexander - and was surprised.

No wonder it didn't last, that friendship. I think he shacked up with a nurse called Ethel, or Hilary, or some such name. So where are you now Michael (Fred) Cunningham? At last I get to see them for myself now and they may prove to be more lovely than they look.

Dr Kate - I'll keep my eyes peeled for paddles and other interesting artefacts.

Dr Joolzs - I will try harder with my photography.

Bye for now.

This is not a photo of Alexander but of another babe with a comfort blanket, just like his.
See below for further details of the Noo noo

Bright angels beside my darling abide

They will guard thee at rest, thou shalt wake on my breast. (Brahms Lullaby)

I seem of late to have got a bit diverted from the main purpose of this BLOG which is to record the development of a digigran and her relationship with her new grandson. I guess this gran also has a lot of other things to think about too. However Alexander is never far from my mind and I melt every time I get to see him.
Visited him on Saturday and he has come on amazingly. He scanned my face to see if he recognised me- something he must have developed at nursey and a faculty all young babies have, as well as the ability to detect the number of people talking together. When I held his plastic mock radio out for him to play with he reached forward and twiddled the object that swirls round. He made lovely communicative noises with gees and gaas and smiles and stood on my knee smiling directly into my face. A genius!
However, I am finding visiting quite difficult because now he is accompanying his mum to the hospital nursery I cannot nip over whenever I am in Sheffield and, of course, this is not a good idea at any time ( see the Modern Grandmother guide by Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's mum!). Life is even more complicated because he is being brought up by the principles laid out by Gina Ford in this. Gina Ford has replaced Dr Spock and Penelope Leach as the guru of parenting. All her parents seem delighted by a system which demands a great deal of self discipline on the part of the parents and is totally different from the laid-back views of the generation who brought up these go-getting 30 somethings. Basically Ford believes in putting the baby down for sleep at set periods and having a very controlled regime of feeding and bathing and bedtimes so the windows of opportunity for visits in these early months are very small. Also it always seems that it is a imperative to keep the child awake if it is not an allocated sleeping time, and yet as all my friends agree, their memories of holding a sleeping baby mark one of life's greatest and transitory joys. No sleeping on the breast in Ford's regime though and she is certainly influencing a good number of new parents , extending her influence with a dedicated website (£40 to join). For a debate about her methods compared with a more child-centred approach see THIS. I'm for the continuum concept, myself, but then, at the time my children were small, I did not have a really demanding job, with tight schedules to meet. I can see that a well organised life style, with a contented little baby is very necessary to enable a less hassled, more relaxed mum, who can concentrate on her professional life. as well as giving qualty time to her child. So two cheers then for Gina Ford who is helping with this.

One of the lovely off shoots of the sleep focus is this NooNoo- a comfort blanket, bought from here. Alexander's, which you see here, is called a woodbug comfort blanket. Ahhhh!

Isn't it adorable.
I do so love women's art in soft materials, usable and comforting weavings , tapestry and sampler, rugs and collages of materials, gossamer printed scarves - such lovely things to touch and hold!

To London of course, but before that to Blackburn to visit the Parallell Realities exhibitions with my good friend, digitalplayer. We had great fun. There was one amazing exhibition focused on games, where you could sit on a huge purple dragon, whose great nostrils were the source of a zapping action and eliminate alien monsters on a screen located directly opposite. Players had to scramble up to a seat about five feet from the ground and manoeuvre the monster by tilting its head up and down whilst simultaneously firing the zapper. Both of us took a turn. DP scored 220 (dead things?) and I scored zero. You see it's just not in my nature to kill and maim. I am typical of those girls I interviewed in my first study of computer usage who only wanted to save creatures from disaster They hated shoot-em- ups but enjoyed a game called Lemmings, whose purpose was to stop the foolish creatures from hurling themselves over cliffs.
It was however fun playing with the dragon, though few of the town's children had managed to cotton on to the idea that you could climb on to it, and the museum guards didn't seem to want to tell them, more the pity.
We also messed about with the pieces of a giant Korean Monopoly game which covered an area equivalent to a smallish dining room and scrabbled around on the floor to view a display of miniature plastic figures through a magnifying glass. These were set between the skirting board and the wall at about an inch from the ground. The guardian critic, Alfred Hickling, thought the display looked as if it could be 'the history of the world explained through the medium of cake decoration.' It reminded me of a display in the museum of childhood at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, where you are invited to peek into small displays, one through a mousehole! I shall take Alexander to visit there one day.
The gaming dragon turned out to be a very good preparation for my next trip to London, Emerald Street, to a seminar of the ESRC funded seminar series on Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures. The group describes itself as a ' bunch of academics; an international group who are variously interested in literacy, digital cultures, cultural studies, play, language, learning and chewing the fat over issues and theories associated with these, SEE. We heard presentations on all manner of gaming research. I was particularly engaged by the presentation of Valerie Ines de la Ville (now wouldn't you just die for a name like that!) from Poitiers. Poitiers University boasts a centre for children's products, based in the business school, which supports the development of new animations and their spin-offs. I was full of both admiration and horror of the account of the work there. Admiration because there exists a centre which takes children's concerns to the very heart of it's planning and thinking, horror because there appeared to be an unacknowledged element of colonialism and gender stereotyping in all that was shown. Take the latest animation figure Kirikou who presents an African child surviving in the jungle and is completely naked. One would wonder about the binary opposition of naked (savage) and clothed (civilised) thst haunts the imagery, as if France had not produced the most sophisticated theorist on the question. See Levi Strauss.

There, I need to have more time however, to explore the way in which commercialism reinforces hegemonic difference between races and genders. The boys and girls interviewed in the Making Games Project displayed very different attitudes to that very same question of killing an enemy. The girl interviewed showing her contempt for the boy's (a much more experienced gamer prediliction for exterminating obstacles in his path. It was something we could have examined more closely, I think.
I must however, once more return to the meat world of marking and e-mails and bxxx ethic reviews and more importantly get back to thinking of childhood pleasures with Alexander in mind. Next time I blog, I intend to concentrate on contented little babies. So good night and good luck. Now who did I last hear saying that ?