Wit Over Ignorance

The desperate Swisswife

Now that Mrs Allen-Mills has transferred her professional allegiance to Switzerland (she works at the Swiss television bureau in Washington), the rest of the family decided she should advertise her new status.

Shipwrecked

They were cruising across the vast ocean, following the dolphins and uniwhales, in search of the Golden Lost Trinket, when suddenly their schooner was overturned in a squall. For months they clung to a piece of driftwood as it tumbled over waterfalls and down rock-filled rapids until it washed up on a forested shore. Then they went home for tea.

Horse and Hound

They move so fast these days, I can hardly keep up with them. So I couldn't believe my luck when they actually paused for a couple of nanoseconds after I picked them up from school today, and allowed me to snap them together.

Dramatis Personae - the Mrs

Last in this series is not least, but most. My wife is perfect in every possible respect except one. I have never been able to understand how so beautiful and intelligent a woman should fail so often to accept that her husband is always right. I suppose I knew, when I married a Frenchwoman, that I should not expect rational, sensible, coherent behaviour, and how right I was - as usual. Take for example, the issue of children's clothing. Anyone can see how pointless it is to waste good money on fashionable gear that the girls will grow out of in 5 minutes. But when I suggest that the money would better be spent on a new pair of biking shorts for me, all I get is a snort of derision. I won't bore you with a full account of my suffering, but suffice it to say that moments of Gallic perversity aside, I live in a house filled with laughter and love. That I owe mostly to Syl.

   

Dramatis Personae (5)

The fifth girl in the Allen-Mills family has three legs, not that you'd notice from the way she gaily scampers around - especially when there's water to jump in. One of the pools we visit has a special dog day the weekend before they empty it for the winter. Unlike some of the other girls in my family, Lulu posed nicely without sticking her tongue out. Oh, wait a minute....

Dramatis Personae (4)

Here's the birthday girl, enjoying one of her presents. Just scroll down the blog a bit to see what she looks like without the exotic headgear; suffice it to say that daughter number four, aka Zélie, has already acquired, at the age of three, a fashion flair all her own.....

Dramatis Personae (3)

The oldest of my four daughters is a few weeks short of her 17th birthday, a senior in high school, an accomplished photographer, and not very far from that inevitable moment when she heads off into the world to do her own thing, leaving her doting Dad behind. She knows I adore her and will always be there for her (especially when she starts making large sums of money as a world-reknowned artist), but until then, dear Delaney, put that horrible kitten* down and go and fetch me a beer.....

*No, I haven't changed my views about cats, aka vomiting hairballs. The kitten in question was dumped on us by friends for a long weekend. I was not consulted....

 

Dramatis Personae (2)

Next up in my state-of-the-family series is daughter number three, who was too busy eating cake to pose. She's six years old, has just started first grade, gets her brains from her father and her beauty from her father, and is adored by all who meet her......

Dramatis Personae (1)

At the start of Zélie's fourth year it's worth re-introducing the inmates at the Allen-Mills asylum, so we can see how much they change over the course of the coming 12 months. First up for the next instalment of family photoblogging torture is Cleo, aka daughter number two, and previously the most elusive of my camera subjects (not counting the cat, Ron, which I don't photograph on principle).

Cleo is the tallest, loudest and most bloodthirsty member of the crew, and currently wants to be a Broadway star when she grows up. Also a vampire. When she's not fighting with her sisters or being chastised by her father for breaking the most fundamental of family rules (no singing in the car), she's a kid with a golden heart......

Was it too much to ask that they just say cheese ?

And so, for the final entry in my third volume of family snaps - each covering a year of our youngest daughter's life - I thought I would answer the question that many of you have doubtless been asking yourselves. How on earth does he do it? How does he maintain such a consistently high level of photography with such notoriously uncooperative subjects as a pack of disgracefully disobedient daughters ?

The answer, of course, is that I make hideous threats of appalling violence if they don't smile nicely for the camera.

As you can see from the shot below, this strategy works very well. On to the fourth volume !