Quite honestly, he looks as if there was never a time he didn’t wear glasses. My handsome little man.

The snap in the air seems to have progressed to full autumnal chill.

I stepped out this morning with jumper and coat, expecting to be surprised and swelter as it looked so sunny outside, but was soon zipping up my coat and forcing the kids to walk more briskly to generate some heat. Still, as long as its sunny, I don’t mind the autumn – it’s the thought of dreary days ahead which makes my heart sink a little.

Its not just my mood that suffers when the light is low. I feel like I’ve hardly picked up my camera the last few weeks and I want to get back into the habit of it, without the inspiration or enthusiasm to go with it.

Worse, I seem to be filling up the memory card with photographs, then having to discard all of them due to basic stupid errors such as camera shake, poor focus and dismal composition – all of which are exacerbated by the poor light conditions. Not so good when I’m supposed to be writing photography tips for the Fotonomy blog. Don’t do what I do guys, do what I say.

But today I went out (not far, just my back garden) with a tripod and a plan. I took a total of eight photographs and I was pleased with three of them. Maybe I’ve broken past my photographer’s block.

Now all I have to do is keep the momentum going. Oh, and get back on track with the tip writing.

On picking up Li’l Bhaji from nursery today, the mother in front of me in the queue was almost knocked over by her enthusiastically reunited son.

“Mummy, Mummy, I’ve made you a CAKE! Here, it’s all yours!” he said, urgently pressing the cat decorated cupcake onto his parent. All the adults went a bit gooey-eyed and said “aww” at this demonstration of love from a pint-sized toddler.

“There’s no way Li’l Bhaji will share his cupcake with me!” I said confidently to the member of staff as she called Li’l Bhaji’s name. To prove me wrong he bounded out and declared “I’ve made you a cake, Mummy.”

The staff member looked at me, about to point out how I had underestimated my son, I’m sure, when he burst out: “Can I eat it now?”

My baby needs glasses.

It’s not a great surprise – both his parents were short-sighted from late primary school, we’ve been told for a few years that he’s slightly short-sighted and his sight may suddenly deteriorate. Even so, it feels like a milestone moment.

His teacher mentioned that he was struggling to see the whiteboard even though the letters were written very large, so that was the cue to get him checked out again. We had a bad experience with our previous optician involving the optician holding down a screaming Akra Jr trying to put drops in his eyes and a complete lack of empathy for how children work so we were relieved that the new optician I chose (D&A) were fantastic – everyone from the receptionist to the optician were great and reassuring and most of all fun. Akra Jr was extremely brave as he had to have eye drops again, but with a lot of bribery and plenty of space for me to calm him down it wasn’t really an issue.

So he’s chosen his glasses. He’s got an interim prescription to get his eyes used to the difference, so the staff were keen to stress that we should go for the free frames and plain plastic lenses as any money spent would be wasted (he needs to be reassessed in 3 months time). He immediately veered for the only plastic set of dodgy plastic glasses (designer apparently!) that just gave me too many flashbacks of my first NHS specs and he switched allegiance to a pair of blue metal frames which look very cute on him.

6 years old just seems so young, though. I was around 10 when I had my first pair.

He has to wear them all day at school (which I’m glad about – I had visions of him losing them on the first day) but only for long distance stuff at home so his eyesight doesn’t become more short-sighted. I’m a little concerned because I remember myself that I was just too lazy to remember to take mine off for different activities, and I can’t see Akra Jr bothering. I guess we’ll just have to play it by ear.

Fortunately, glasses seem fashionable these days, and certainly a greater proportion of his peers seem to wear them. I so hope he’ll get admiration and not jeers.

But also, I feel trepidation. You never want your children to suffer the same design flaws as you do yourself, do you?

This is advance notice that tomorrow, the server this blog is hosted on is due to be down for maintenance.

Hopefully, if all goes smoothly, it should only be for a short while, but planned maintenance duration is 10.00 to 22.00 GMT so don’t panic if you find that the Prattle has disappeared for a while!

In addition to that, I’ll also be without email for the day. I’m hoping the withdrawal symptoms won’t be too severe this time.

Dom Ramsey has a brand new iPod Nano. It’s a rather sexy little gadget and you may well read his comprehensive review in awe and longing, but also wonder why this is relevant in my blog.

The answer is that he gave me his old one.

Well okay, I begged and pleaded shamelessly until he consented to sell me his old one for an obscenely cheap price. Same difference.

I’ve always hankered after an iPod, but really could not justify getting one at all. After all, when do I get the chance these days to listen to music? It’s hardly an essential in my life at the moment.

Yesterday morning, the package arrived and I’ve fallen completely and head over heels in love with it. All I had to do was sort out iTunes (it had got corrupted a while back and had duplicated all my mp3s and it needed updating) – and this was where I was reminded that with Vista as your operating system, this is never an easy task. After wading through a slew of “are you sure, are you absolutely sure” dialog boxes, I then had to get a command prompt up to enable VB Script to get Vista to let it install – why does installing anything on Vista always feel like a battle of wills?

That done though, everything was easy. iTunes updated the software on the Nano and added the songs I wanted. It got a bit slow on converting a handful of photos, but I wrote it off as due to the very large files from the DSLR. Anyway, I could take a few photos of it while I waited for this blog entry.

Too lazy to reach for the DSLR just for a snap, I got out the compact – batteries dead. Harrumph. Okay, I’ll use the camera phone. No problem. Uploaded the picture to the computer and then noticed that Nokia had released new software for the phone. I decided to update that while I was there. The installer warned me it would wipe everything on the phone so backed up all my data and installed the new software.

It wiped everything. No surprise. Restored the backup – but the backup didn’t appear to include games. Now, I won’t miss Snake particularly, but I’d paid for three games fairly recently and they were nowhere to be found and the site I got them from doesn’t appear to allow downloading stuff you’ve already paid for at a later date. Seriously not impressed.

Evenutally after a lot of swearing and Googling, I discovered them hiding in the Applications directory instead of the Games directory. Panic over. I still don’t have Snake, but as I’ve mentioned, that’s no great loss. It was, however, due to set the tone for the whole evening.

Just as I was about to shut down for the night, my computer decided to do a reboot and check disk. I hadn’t scheduled one as far as I remembered, but I shrugged and let it got on with it. Then the red message which said my RAID 0 volume was failing, back up now. That’s not really a message you ever want to see on a desktop less than a year old.

Many hours later and again thanks to Google, we discovered that this is a known issue with iTunes/Quicktime, Intel RAID and Vista. It seems that when iTunes was converting the photos it somehow put a strain on the RAID array causing it to fail. Here’s where I got lost, but apparently it’s something to do with the fact that Vista tells the Intel drivers that the machine is a laptop when it’s actually a desktop.

The solution? Latest Intel drivers, lots of reboots and check disk repairs and a registry hack to tell the computer that no, it is actually a desktop after all. It was a very late night.

On the plus side, I adore my new iPod. This morning, my chores flew by while I listened to some great BBC podcasts and songs I’d forgotten I’d even owned. I’ve realised how much I’ve missed a soundtrack to my daily life. Seems like a pretty essential gadget to me.

Even if I did almost destroy my computer and my mobile in the process.

It’s always lovely when your child gets a party invite – that is until the invite is opened and you see the dreaded words “Fancy Dress” and anxiety kicks in.

You see, I’m reluctantly creative – I’ll rise to the occasion if required, but mostly I prefer the lazy way out. If I can possibly find a cheat’s way out, I will.

The only problem is, the party invite specified a Dr Who theme – and for some bizarre reason, the licensing around this TV programme seems to mean loads of merchandise but NO dressing up gear. We know – we seem to visited every shop and have phoned around every costume hire place in a 15 mile radius this weekend.

We found a Cyberman costume in Woolworths, but it was £16 (and Akra Jr really isn’t in to Doctor Who at all, otherwise I wouldn’t have minded as it would have got some use after the party) and worse still the smallest size was a grotesquely optimistic age 7 (I held it up to 6 year old Akra Jr to find that the waist came up to his neck). Not terribly practical.

In Toys R Us, they had some paper masks – cyberman or gas mask – which we bought but when we got home it really did look like we’d made no effort whatsoever. Rather pathetic.

At that point, we got a bit desperate. Akra Jr immediately vetoed going as any kind of angel, despite us reassuring him that the stone angels were really quite scary and impressive. Ditto the idea of a dalek when I suggested we could stick stuff on an old black skirt. Awkward child.

So resignedly, we raided our garage worth of empty boxes (let’s just hope I never get around to selling that pushchair after all). And, after a Sunday’s worth of effort here’s what I came up with. Not bad if I say so myself.

Now all I have to do is work out a way to keep it on the poor kid.

Oh, if there’s still anyone in the universe who doesn’t know who Doctor Who is, then you should educate yourselves immediately by watching this link: Doctorin’ the Tardis: Take 2

I realise that this post is slightly overdue, given that we’ve been back a week now. However, the start of term got in the way, and I’ve only just finished sorting through photographs and catching up with myself.

This was our last camping trip for the season. We lucked out with the weather again and had a fantastically warm and sunny week and most importantly, it didn’t rain.

This was our “fail safe” week – we booked the Forestry Commission site, Holmsley in the heart of the New Forest.

We’d been to Forestry Commission sites before (namely Christchurch and Bracelands) and knew that they were well run sites with good, clean facilities. The website described Holmsley as:

Ideally situated for your seaside break, Holmsley is just a short drive from the wonderful beaches at Bournemouth and Christchurch. Mainly grass and with loads of space for children to play, Holmsley is perfect for a family holiday.

Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat different.

The first thing we noticed as we drove up is that the site doesn’t feel like “mainly grass”. It’s an old airfield converted into a camp site – loads and loads of cracked tarmac. It was also massive and (as a bank holiday week) extremely busy. The standard pitches seemed okay, especially if you could find a nook in some trees but we’d paid extra for “premium” pitches.

Whoever called them premium pitches needs educating about the Trade Description Act. The electric pitches are based all around the old runways – yes, they’re on the tarmac bits. You have a teeny tiny patch of sloping grass next to the road and that’s it. More like a “sub-standard” pitch with consolation electric.

We were lucky that we had a folding camper – parked the trailer on the tarmac and put the awning on the grass and just coped with the fact that every meal eaten in the awning slid off the table. God knows how those with tents who fancied electric hookup managed.

Yes, the facilities are immaculate. Yes, there’s a great little shop and takeaway on site. Everything was well maintained. But the site had no soul – it felt like camping in a carpark and having to pay for the privilege. And to add insult to injury it was on an irregular flightpath which started somewhere around 5am, and then if you managed to finally drop back off to sleep and the kids didn’t disturb you, then the very loud rubbish lorry did the rounds at 8am.

Fortunately, the kids didn’t seem to care much. They got on their bikes at the beginning of the stay and had to be dragged off occasionally to eat, sleep and reluctantly go sightseeing. They made lots of friends and were gutted to leave.

I also have to admit, that it was nice being able to leave them to it in the afternoon to play while we sat out with a book and a beer, as well as seeing ponies and rabbits just over the fence.

But we won’t be returning. And we’ll be reading the impartial site reviews on ukcampsite.co.uk much more carefully before booking anywhere in future.

And today’s “No Shit Sherlock” award goes to the amazing announcement that food additives could have a link with hyperactivity.

I’m truly stunned that this has received the coverage it has – simply because this has been common knowledge of many parents for a long time, even back in the Jurassic when I was a child. Of course, not every child is affected and some are more sensitive than others, but once you’ve witnessed your own son bouncing off the walls simply because he’s been given a Fruit Shoot then it’s a fairly safe guess that one of the ingredients might not agree with him.

I can only assume that campaigners are trying to force the large food companies to stop using the additives in question, which is a good thing, but I do feel that the press could have reported on it a little more intelligently.

The runner up for the “No Shit Sherlock” prize was this feature on the big switch off environmental campaigners are planning to highlight energy issues and global warming. It turns out that the electricity surges created as a result will actually emit more carbon dioxide than leaving well alone. Now there’s a surprise.

I’d like to think that this news might make them change their minds and look for another campaign strategy. But then again, these are the same people responsible for the Live Earth debacle.