PLOP I spoke to my mother last night. Well, I listened and she rambled. The usual mix of weather reports, half understood news items and schizoid weirdness but this time laced with memories from her childhood. I found out a few things I never knew: 1. Her father was a miner. 2. Two of her siblings are twins. 3. The first word I ever spoke was "plop". There were other fragments but those were the highlights. When I was little more than a baby my father's father would take me for long walks (me usually wrapped around his shoulders) which were interspaced with plopping. This entailed keeping an eye out for suitable pebbles, collecting them and eventually finding the grating of a storm drain to drop them down through. We would lay down and listen for the plop as the pebble hit the sewer water. This was entertainment circa 1975 in Lancashire. I still remember those outings, perhaps my earliest memories, so it wasn't a surprise to hear that it made such an impression on me that it set off the landslide of my vocabulary. It was weird to hear my mother talking of me as a child though. Her phone calls are usually filled with the tales of the evil couple who attack her brain with laser beams... In other news we are supposed to be having our new TV/broadband service fitted tomorrow but I just got a call letting me know that BT are being their usual incompetent selves and are delaying the installation by refusing to let me 'migrate' on the date agreed four weeks ago. Bastards. Seeing as we are off to Oslo on Friday I'm guessing this will remain unresolved until at least then... Mike is blogging to: The Misfits