and when did she get so grown up?

She finally has enough words to warrant a list for the record, though we are still mostly at animal noises and made-up (yet consistent) words. It’s quite interesting to compare with M’s list, which was much longer at much younger and did not contain television characters or junk food:

baa – sheep
dawdaw – dora (the explorer)
ssh – fish
(dog noise)
dog
(pig noise)
(monkey noise)
no!
bi – (scuit)
gokgok – chocolate
toast
js – drink
cake
mummy
daddy
car
key
whee
clip clop (horse or high heeled shoes)
rarat – rabbit
boo – nappy (“poo”)
dododo – hen (cockadoodledoo)
moo
spoon
buzz
bee
bear
teddy
cot
clock
rah – (lion noise)
beebies
baby
gok (sock)
duck
owl
ba – marmite
sss – snake
book
uh-oh
hiya
allgone
ball
moon
tea
up
there

It’s green, but if you can get past that it is good (I suppose if it bothered you you could peel the courgettes. But I kind of like green cake.) Recipe ripped off from somewhere, obviously, but I can’t remember where to give credit.

200g butter
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
150g courgettes
200g plain flour
pinch salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
large pinch cinnamon
100g sultanas

Set oven to 180C and line a loaf tin.
Cream the butter and sugar; mix in the beaten eggs. Grate the courgettes, squeeze to remove any excess juice then stir into the mixture. Add the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon and mix well. Add sultanas; put in tin and bake for about an hour*. Cool in the tin before turning out.

*The hour was definitely from the recipe – it takes about 40 minutes in my oven.

Pittenweem art festival last weekend. Mixed weather; Tamsin dislikes sand; most of the art the same as usual (in a good way) though I was enormously disappointed that Susan McGill‘s gorgeous black and white ceramics sold so quickly – mostly at her preview – and had to settle for a necklace instead of a candlestick. Hope she is there again next year. Saw Aunties Irene, Catherine and Rachel, and took the children to a ceilidh – it took M a while to want to join in but she enjoyed it once she did. Auntie Irene managed to charm Yoshihito Kawabata, one of the invited artists, who had made a stone circle on the pier, into presenting her with one of his pebbles but we failed to see him at all.

Back to the to-do list again once we got home, then on Friday I went into Liverpool with some friends to see the Klimt exhibition. It was not quite as I expected – my expectations being based almost entirely on this picture, which adorned the wall of nearly every student flat I ever lived in. It wasn’t there (but others were, which were similar and lovely, alongside some of his landscapes, which were lovely too, and a load of random articles by other members of the Viennese Secession, some of which were lovely and some not so lovely and none of which really seemed to have anything to do with Klimt apart from being made by people who knew him. And some other paintings by him, some of which were interesting and some not so interesting). Afterwards, dinner at Etsu, which has got all sorts of people talking. (The restaurant, not us having gone to it.) The word on the street, which I can back up now I have been myself, if that it is not posh but it is very authentic. We eschewed the Brit-friendly starter and main course set up and ordered plate after plate of starters; stuffed ourselves silly with gorgeous Japanese food and came home very happy indeed. Though I make better gyoza myself.

Japanese food again on Saturday as we went to the Hanyuda-sans’ leaving party. I feel very spoilt. And very full.