Welcome

Welcome to our family website, a look into the lives of the Walker-Smith family, well thats the idea

To find out more about us read the whoweare page, to find out more about this site have a look at the colophon... hmm which doesn't yet exist

This site as it stands at present looks excellent on Mac, with Sarari, Netscape7.1, and Mozilla Firebird0.7, and now IE. If it looks bad in your browser, either buy a Mac or upgrade to the latest browsers!

This is a work in progress, I hope to turn the whole site over to this look and feel over the next few days, so this site may not be working 100%, esp in those pesky window browsers.

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Reviewed

• book: James Bond in the Man with a Red Tattoo, Raymond Benson
• Hybrids, Robert J Sawyer
• Havana, Stephen Hunter
• The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons
• Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
• Hyperion, Dan Simmons
• Cloud of Sparrows, Takashi Matsuoka
• The Teeth of the Tiger, Tom Clancy
• The Last Samurai
• Time's Eye, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
• Ilium, Dan Simmons
• Closing Time: The Sequel to Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• Film: Just Married
• book: Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson
• book: Bios, Robert Charles Wilson
• book: Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke
• book: A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch
• book: James Bond in the Man with a Red Tattoo, Raymond Benson
• book: Red Thunder, by John Varley
• Film: Kill Bill
• book: Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson
• book: Colony, by Rob Grant
• book: Chronoliths, by Robert Charles Wilson
• Film: 28 days later
• Film: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
• book: Pale Horse Coming, Stephen Hunter
• Films: three good ones
• book: Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• book: Humans, Robert J Sawyer
• book: The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
• Film: Terminator 3
• book: Blue Horizon, by Wilber Smith
• book: Evolution, by Stephen Baxter
• book: The Physics of Consciousness
• Matrix Reloaded: Theory

Words

• minutia
• Perfidy
• Necromancer
• ephemeral
• bete noire
• etymology
• heliopause
• agitprop
• entr'acte
• allegory
• ameliorate

Recent Entries

• We're Londoners
• book: James Bond in the Man with a Red Tattoo, Raymond Benson
• Indy at six… months
• Its a bit unnerving...
• Hybrids, Robert J Sawyer
• Havana, Stephen Hunter
• The Jimny, bought July 1999 – sold June 2004
• Hmm Apple Juice
• Options
• The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons
• Uncle Toms Fotos
• My many faces
• Mass Destruction
• Being left by ...
• minutia
• Daddy, where have you been all this time?
• Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
• Certified Geek
• Green Delight
• Perfidy

Archives

• August 2004 (1)
• July 2004 (2)
• June 2004 (7)
• May 2004 (7)
• April 2004 (5)
• March 2004 (9)
• February 2004 (17)
• January 2004 (24)
• December 2003 (21)
• November 2003 (15)
• October 2003 (20)
• September 2003 (25)
• August 2003 (15)
• July 2003 (32)
• June 2003 (51)
• May 2003 (12)

In the eye

In the middle of the mayhem of being a parent there is the calm, if you are lucky like me, when you are in the eye of the storm. When all around you other parents in other houses are ripping out large pieces of their hair wondering why their baby cries non stop without rhyme or reason, or what is that spot on his face, and is that noise is it really the normal noise of a baby (ours whinnies like a horse, go figure); sometimes you though are in the eye. Indiana, is asleep, it’s 2240hrs and mums sleeping not 56cm away from this computer as I type. We, well I - I’m the only one awake to experience it - am in the eye.

We have not been in the eye of the storm all day of course. The day started with a cry and a good one at that – a cry for milk. Followed by a non-stop morning for Andrea of eating and crying and very little sleep or rest for both. I on the other hand missed this part. I was out getting our “Permision de circulacion”, which is Chilean road tax. Note to all people living in Chile: Do not wait till March to pay, pay in February, there is no, zero, zilch queuing to be done. I was in and out, like a well oiled piston (I could think of something else to say here, but seen as it’s been a while I shall not (however in a roundabout way I just did, doh)), and then for the rest of the morning making our little Jeep look like a drug barons car with blacked out windows – Indiana does not like the sun. On arrival back at base camp I came into the storm, there was a quiet period for lunch. Indiana does seem to give us that part of the day to ourselves, as long as his belly is full of course, and his nappies are not full, and clothing labels are not digging into his skin and is not annoyed by any other little detail. Usually though we get lunch to ourselves. I bet tomorrow will be a different story; I spoke to soon.

This afternoon was spent going out. Something that as childless parents, in our pre-Indy days was easy. But as parents know it’s no little undertaking - it’s like going into battle. Tie on the webbing, attach bayonets, and don’t forget the baby wipes, over the top we go. Two doctors visits. One for Indy and one for Andrea. Fathers might as well forget about being ill, there is no time. Indy did try and suck people into his hurricane storm like existence whilst at the Doctors with a little low level crying, just the hover jet mixed with helicopter blade sounds. Where do they manage to get such power from, oh I know the constant feeding of course.

Then home for bath time. I thought he would take to water like his father. Perhaps in a way he does. I seem to remember my dad dunking me in the sea and I getting very upset about it and the possibility of jellyfish and seaweed, to which today I still don’t like (I am actually still scared of the two organisms). Indiana does not enjoy his bath time. He hates it even more when his father makes the water too cold. First try and he rejected the water. The storm grew wilder, until that was I put some more hot water into the bath, whence he screamed at normal jet engine level, not the supersonic level he can achieve when quite annoyed at his father for not quite getting the water just right. Andrea is Chilean, I British; we have such different ideas about temperature. I am just worried Indiana will turn out to be a Chilean wuss when it comes to low temperatures. Not that his father would go anywhere near cold water neither can he stand the heat.

I know this eye in the storm, the calmness, cannot last. In fact if it went on too long like a good parent I would wonder what is going on, why is he not feeding and need to call several Doctors at once, and warm up the medivac teams just waiting outside our door. I shall put back on my all weather gear, a fix bayonets and go yonder into the storm with my wife, together. She is the one really doing all the work of course.

Oh and I do have ironing and washing and the soup I am cooking awaiting some stirring.