Father & Son...

Aida and her mum are in Libya since Sunday due to the death of a close relative of my wife, it was a rush decision, we decided that Aida should go with her to keep her company, so we took a week off her school and next week is half term anyway, they will be away for 2 weeks.

Amir, my lovely little boy is staying with me, he did ask why he was not going to Libya and I told him that they were going to attend a funeral which means a sad event not a holiday, he accepted that and actually was happy to stay with me.

I was a bit worried that he might get upset, especially that he has to go to school while his sister is away, he actually exceeded my expectations of him, MashaAllah, I know it has been only 4 days but he has been so good that I can not describe it, I am enjoying my time with him, I even started playing games on the Wii console with him, something I have never done before as I am really rubbish at video games and tend not to play them, of course he is showing me what to do and how to do it, how do kids learn all these complicated moves?? I am still rubbish at games but he is teaching me.

He had a treat on Sunday when we went to watch Bolt in 3D, it was funny and the graphics were really amazing.

My only problem with him is actually food, I am a bad cook and can hardly cook anything so it has been lots of takeaways which is getting boring, maybe I should try and make something but what if he doesn't eat it :o)

All I can say is Allah bless Amir, he has been as good as gold and he is filling my life with his wicked jokes, laughter, energy and noise, lovely :o)

Museum Of Childhood, London.

Last Sunday Amir stayed with me while mum and Aida went shopping with friends, it was a freezing day and I thought I would take Amir and visit the Museum Of Childhood in east London, we got there early as it was filling up, the museum is housed in a huge beautiful building and exhibits toys that children played with hundreds of years ago to this day.

Old Rocking Horses (all exhibits are behind glass, that's why the pictures are a bit fuzzy)

Amir looking at Star wars figures

Cinderella and the ugly sisters, I thought they all looked scary and freaky!

Great Dr. Who toys

more freaky dolls

the little Chinese doll was the cutest in there

an Original Golliwog doll, of course the term Golliwog is now considered a racist name as it is understandably offensive to black people yet in the museum they used the original name to describe the doll, here is how Carol Thatcher got into trouble recently for using this name

The ultimate doll house, every little girl's dream

Raleigh Chopper bicycle, every boy's dream in my time, sadly I never got one :o(

Great rocking horses for children to play on

This poster had little stories in many languages, in the middle right section there something written in Arabic about Ali Baba.

Old board games

this is a bit embarrassing for people of certain age! that's what us boys wore in the 70s, how awful lol

these are the 2 dresses worn by the 2 young girls you see in the painting following this picture (1933)

Beautiful old baby furniture, that potty looks like a throne

The museum was fun with lots of exhibits and things to do, they had many interactive games and gadgets for kids and adults to try but with all the high tech toys and video games available for children these days, the activities in the museum were not that exiting for the children.

There was a large number of English people visiting the museum, many of them were this sort of new age environment concise people that like to think of themselves as middle class, you can usually spot them out because their kids tend to dress in horrible second hand bought clothes and sometimes they ride wooden bicycles yet they are well off!!

as on other occasions, I find most of these people very rude and full of crap, their children were rude to each other, they were very rude to Amir on many occasions right in front of their parents who did not do anything about it, in fact some parents encouraged their kids to be rude by letting them push other kids and take over the toys that were there for all to play with, Amir is a very peaceful boy and did not want to get in trouble with anyone, unlike me, I usually end up arguing and making a fuss over things like that, however on this occasion I did not want to upset Amir who didn't like arguments and had to swallow my tongue and move over but not before giving a tongue lashing to few people, as for the mother who let her daughter push Amir when he tried to get on the rocking horse and encouraged her to do so, I did nothing except call them trash and then when Amir finally got on the horse and the same girl came back for more, we did make her wait and wait a long time. middle class!! middle class my foot! what a joke, they need to learn manners before they try to even pretend they are better than any one else, now I feel better that I got this out of my system :o)

On the other hand, the majority of people there English or otherwise were nice people that treated everyone with respect.

The Big Freeze!

They have been waning us for 2 days that arctic weather was moving in from Russia and that it was going to snow heavily, yesterday was a very cold day, by night it strated to snow.

This is what the cars looked like last night

This morning at about 7am, the street completely covered in snow

Yet again it seems London got caught by surprise, strange since a weather warning was issues 2 days ago! many people are angry here that everything came to a stand still just because of heavy snow, well it certainly was a happy day for kids in London, all schools shut down and they got to play in the snow.

Transport was heavily affected, all of London's buses were cancelled, train service almost at a stop and hardly anyone driving, how a city as big and as important as London become so afftected!!

I took Amir to the park and some of the neighbours were there too, they all had a great time snow ball fighting and making snow men, everybody loves the snow.

Amir made this little cute snow man and put a hat on it

Amir with his creation, seconds before he smashed it to bits with his plastic Narnia sword

It is about 2pm at the moment and it is still snowing heavily, not sure if things are back to normal tomorrow or not?? it really can be just like a third world country here sometimes!