Some time just before Easter, Babel and I spent a Saturday morning in nearby Hinckley, picking up some DIY materials for the house. Whilst we were doing so, we took the opportunity to wander around the town, and Babel happened to spot the most beautiful yellow duck, sitting in a charity shop window. We went inside to have a closer look and ended up being unable to leave without her Daisy has now taken up permanent residence on the arm of one of our leather sofas, where she is always ready for a cuddle. Unlike any of the local cats which keep invading our house, Daisy neither bites nor scratches, doesn’t require feeding with unpleasant fishy substances and, best of all, never makes me sneeze!

A couple of weekends ago, Babel decided to embrace middle age and put up some shelves Ever since we moved in, the best part of a year ago now, our telephone and wireless router have been living on the floor of our hallway. This hasn’t caused a problem in so far as they’ve been mostly behind the door in a position where it isn’t possible to trip over them, but nevertheless it’s not an interior design look you’d want to aim for. Babel has now happily solved this problem by acquiring a nice set of corner shelves. They may have been slightly more difficult to put up that he anticipated, but now that they’re done they look very good indeed. I was particularly impressed that he went out and bought a couple of tasteful flowers, which match with the shelf colours beautifully

There was originally a bit of a gap on the shelf with the wireless router, however, and Babel suggested that we fill it with an appropriately placed duck. He’d come across a shop in town which was selling very cute ducks at a reasonable price, so we were thinking vaguely of acquiring some. In the meantime, we were so pleased with the shelves in the hallway that we decided to put some more up in the corner of our bedroom, and suddenly we had even more empty space to fill…

The upshot was that one day I came home from work to find that Babel had purchased an entire family of ducks; a set of parents with two adorable children. We spent a happy mealtime trying to generate suitable names, which actually requires more brainpower than you might imagine, because we wanted the whole family to have names on a similar theme. Eventually we hit on the idea of names in the vein of “-illy” and had soon christened the two ducklings Billy and Milly, with the mother being Tilly. Whilst I was very satisfied with these names indeed, I was struggling to think of a suitable name for Daddy duck. In the end, the best we could come up with was Willy. I was slightly concerned that this name wasn’t suitable and that people might think it was rather an odd choice for a duck, but Babel reassured me that we were unlikely to be talking about Willy in isolation, and that within the context of Billy, Milly, Tilly etc it seems liked quite a sensible name.

The initial plan had been to put one of the ducks in the aforementioned gap next to our wireless router. Once we had our family assembled, however, it seemed rather cruel to split them up, and so we determined that the most logical solution would be to acquire a further duck, being a more distant relative, who wouldn’t be lonely sitting downstairs on its own. So it was, that yesterday Babel came home with cousin Philly, who is now taking pride of place in our hallway

It turned out that the shop had meanwhile extended its offering of ducks to include some further babies. Our bedroom is now home not only to Willy and Tilly, Billy and Milly, but also to Dilly and Jilly

In some happier duck news, Babel recently linked me to an exceptionally cool duck game.

Feeding The Five-Thousand

Cutest duck of the day

The duck in this picture above has got to be the most gorgeous of the day! He was particularly adept at catching bread in his beak

Look how pretty Bradgate Park is!

The final picture sadly isn’t a duck, but me standing with a beautiful backdrop of Bradgate Park. My boyfriend took it because he wanted the backdrop, and I just sort of happened to be in front of it As you can see from the terrible mess that is my hair, it was a little bit windy yesterday It really was a gorgeous place, and a magical day

The reasons we have not had a car before are numerous and varied. For a start, I’ve never learnt to drive. My boyfriend can drive, rather well in fact, but until last Friday his car was being used by his brother. When I first met him about two years ago, he had just given it away on the grounds that he was going to emigrate to South Korea. Happily he later changed his mind, although I hasten to add that that decision had nothing whatsoever with the fact that he had just met me Now his brother has a new car, and so we are no longer a slave to public transport It’s rather a strange feeling. I’ve never had a boyfriend who had a car before, but it adds a whole new dimension to life

My boyfriend arrived to collect me from home on Saturday afternoon. This was rather a momentous occasion itself, because it marked the first time he had met my parents properly. He had previously met my sister for a coffee, and he had had admittedly seen my parents once before, but it was in fraught circumstances not exactly conducive to getting to know one another, so this was the first real meeting. As the time of his arrival drew near, I began to feel a little nervous about it, but in the end everything went surprisingly well. My boyfriend decided to suck up to my mother by buying her a bunch of flowers, and this went down predictably well, though I would like to point out that he has never bought me any flowers :cry: My mother managed to track down some sugar to make him a cup of tea, and there passed an hour in which he played his part so well that my parents emerged with the (erroneous!) impression that he is both charming and intelligent

His ordeal survived, I was soon whisked away to face mine, which I think was altogether worse I was invited to attend a surprise party in honour of my boyfriend’s cousin’s 30th birthday, and this involved being introduced to vast quantities of his family members. It also, rather obviously, involved attending a party, which to me is an horrific ordeal in itself. I am struggling to think of a party which I have enjoyed since I passed the age of eight… Having picked up my boyfriend’s sister and their husband, we drove to the place we assumed was the venue. To say it looked inauspicious would be putting it mildly. It was a very rough looking social club, with a selection of rather dubious youths sitting outside on picnic benches; the sort of place where you walk into the bar and everyone just turns round and stares at you. Slightly disconcerting was the fact that even my boyfriend and his sister didn’t appear to recognise any of the handful of other guests who were arriving, but we were nevertheless assured that this was the correct venue and made our way bravely inside.

Inside it was pretty much like any other unenjoyable party I have ever been to, except obviously that I knew less people. I was introduced to a long line of similar looking uncles, all of whom were probably very nice people but had the unfortunate appearance of someone who could earn a living playing the part of hardened crim on ‘The Bill’. For a while I had to stand around like a spare part in a rather excruciating manner, but luckily halfway through the evening I managed to get a seat in a darkened corner where I could sit unnoticed with a disgustingly warm lemonade and contemplate whether I should consider extricating myself from this relationship before my boyfriend’s slight tendencies towards baldness and a pot belly become so pronounced as those of his relations

In the end I decided that maybe I could offer to pay for his hair medication and gym membership and that this might solve the problem One of his uncles was actually lovely and spoke to me for a while about when he used to be stationed in Germany and the price of living in Amsterdam. After a while a band started to play and I passed the time feeling very sorry for them, because they were terribly enthusiastic but somewhat underappreciated by the audience. At one point there was some food, and I managed to grab some sausage rolls and crisps which prevented me from dying of hunger

About eleven, my boyfriend’s mother decided to take pity on us and said she would give my boyfriend’s sister and husband a lift home if we wanted to leave now. We both jumped at the chance to escape, and were soon heading back to his parents house where he repaid me five quid of his Slovakian debt and we half-watched a Transformers cartoon. The Transformers cartoon was a little beyond me; I found it kind of like a football match, where most of the time is spent in trying to determine who is on which side and then just as you think you’ve got it sorted, they all change, but perhaps I wasn’t paying sufficient attention.

My boyfriend’s parents were kindly letting me stay in their spare room, which is very nice apart from the fact that they live next door to a motorway, and all you can hear all night long is the ugly drone of traffic. It took me several hours to reach anything approaching sleep, as it’s a sound which makes me rather agitated. I woke up around seven, spent an hour or so trying to convince myself that I wasn’t actually awake, then gave up and text my boyfriend with a hint that he might like to find me some breakfast

Old John Tower

Me looking slightly demented

The best part of the day, however, was the ducks There is a very picturesque piece of water which runs through the park, and we found a pool with quite a collection of ducks. My boyfriend busied himself taking photos whilst I proceeded to feed them; they were really goregous, and one of them in particular was so tame that he would almost have eaten the bread out of my hand! A very relaxing way to spend a Sunday morning

Feeding the ducks

After that we were hungry, and stopped at the first pub we came to to refuel. It actually turned out to be a rather expensive sort of pub, but I had the largest burger I have ever seen, and very nice it was too Before we drove back to Birmingham, we stopped off at my boyfriend’s house to burn a couple of CDs, and spent the journey back listening to Michel Thomas Advanced German

All in all, it was such an enjoyable day that this morning I feel like I am coming back to work after having been on holiday! It is a big relief to know that my parents are going to get along with my boyfriend, and it is going to make such a difference from now on to have a car. It seems like things are only going to get better, and I am very much looking forward to it Hopefully this weekend will turn out to be what I would like to think of as the end of the beginning.

After my very negative experience of catching the bus, I finally arrived in Leicester at around quarter past one and made my way to my boyfriend’s place of work. One of his colleagues had agreed to come in early so that we could go to lunch and I could still manage to get back to Brum at a reasonable time for tea, so I’d bought him some chocolate as a thank you. My boyfriend said he had to do some washing up, so I followed him into a little room with a big sofa and some computers which seemed to be attached to a kitchen. I noticed vaguely that there was a pile of Faster eggs and a couple of big ducks on the sofa, but didn’t pay particular attention to them. I assumed that either the staff had been buying presents for their bosses, or the bosses had been buying presents for their staff, but either way I didn’t really give it a second thought.

Anyway, eventually my boyfriend came out of the kitchen and made some sort of comment which I understood as being to the effect that we ought to decorate my room like this. I was a bit perplexed as I wasn’t particularly a fan of the colour scheme and couldn’t recall any conversation which would have given the impression that I was. I indicated that perhaps that wouldn’t be a terribly good idea, and my boyfriend said that no, he meant having ducks sitting round it. I felt more kindly disposed to that idea and he asked me how many ducks I had. I’m honestly not sure of the answer to that question, but I do remember a Lenten exercise we once did at secondary school where we had to donate a certain amount of money each day depending on criteria which were pulled out of a hat. One day we had to give a penny for every soft toy we had in the house and I remember that I had to donate several pounds, so I guess I must have at least a couple of hundred Not all ducks though, a lot of them are bears and rabbits to which I am also quite partial

I don’t quite remember exactly what was said next as I soon descended into a confused sort of blur, but it transpired that the pile of things on the couch was my Easter present I was highly perplexed; it looked like at least three people’s Easter presents and I couldn’t work out which bit of it was mine! There were no fewer than THREE Easter eggs, and two of the biggest, most gorgeous fluffy yellow ducks which you have ever seen in your life I was absolutely totally shocked so that I temporarily appeared to lose the power of speech and couldn’t do much more than stammer an incoherent thanks. It seemed impossible to believe that it could all be for me…

But it appears that it was Or, at least, I have run off back to Birmingham with it all in carrier bags before my boyfriend changed his mind I don’t think I have ever had so many Easter eggs before in my entire life. In fact, I know I haven’t, because my parents refused to buy me a big egg as a child, prefering instead to fill a cardboard egg shaped container, decorated with rabbits in the DDR, with mini eggs and the like. My maternal grandparents always gave me money for Easter rather than chocolate, my aunt didn’t give chocolate on principle because she’s been on a permanent health kick for the last twenty years, and my great aunt for as many years as I can remember has bought me ill fitting T shirts designed for menopausal women from Marks and Spencers. So the only eggs I ever used to get were from my paternal grandmother in the now distant days when she was able to leave the house, from my godfather on the irregular occasions when he remembered that I existed, and latterly from my previous boyfriend with whom I used to exchange eggs every year. So yeah, three eggs is overwhelmingly exciting and I think I’ll have to share them round the rest of the household rather than eat them all myself

By far the best present is the ducks though. It’s wrong to have favourites with ducks of course but one of them in particular is incredibly cute and I think I am going to call him Billy. The other one has a very endearing tuft of yellow hair on the top of his head and so I’m currently debating whether or not I can call him Tufty, or whether I need to be more imaginative, seeing as that name already belongs to the real life duck I am sponsoring.

In any case, they are both totally adorable, as is my rather wonderful boyfriend who I still can’t quite believe went through the humiliation of walking into a shop and emerging with a great big yellow fluffy creature I love him very much; obviously regardless of whether he buys me Easter presents, but what he’s done is really sweet of him and gives me a welcome excuse to make all other females of my acquaintance feel nauseous by telling them at great length how amazingly fantastic he is. Thank you Babel, I’m very lucky to have you