One word? When seven would do…

I had that lovely feeling this morning of not needing to get up when I first woke, so I turned over and went back to sleep. For someone so rubbish at going to bed I do still enjoy sleeping :).

Scarlett cut her toe somehow in the kitchen while racing to go and let the chickens out. That girl runs everywhere, I’ve no idea how she’ll cope in the van next year! It’s quite nasty, she’s sliced a huge chunk of her little toe but it’s still there like a sort of little toe hat made of skin. Eww. It bled loads so having washed it off in the bath to check it wasn’t anything too serious (she was very calm and unfussed about it so I knew it wasn’t an ambulance case) I carried her back into the lounge and put her on a chair with her foot up and a wet flannel wrapped around it. It did stop bleeding and a quick inspection decided it wasn’t serious and just needs to be kept clean.

We watched some TV, had breakfast, kept monitoring Scarlett’s toe and I wrapped a couple of ebay parcels then we left the house. Miraculously the car (which appears to have been cured) started and we drove into town. I wasn’t sure how long the Shakespeare 4 Kids went on so made sure we parked in the 4 hour zone and paid for the maximum (just as well, we got back with seconds to spare) and then we walked into town. I needed to go to the post office to send parcels so we went there first and bumped into my Granny for a brief chat. One of those weird incidences where you think of someone and minutes later they are there infront of you – how does that happen?

We called in a couple of charity shops (I’m looking out for waterproofs for all of us) and picked up a couple of Usborne Spotter books which can come with us in the van. Next to the bank where we used the automated paying in cheques machine which was very cool as it scanned the cheque and brought up an image of it which we all thought was very clever.

Next we went down to an olde fashioned sweet shoppe which I knew had opened recently. I think it’s a chain actually which rather removes some of it’s charm but it was very lovely, all long and narrow, walls lined with jars and boxes and packets of sweets. Behind the counter were jars of sweeties, down each side were things like sugar mice, candy canes and pretty much every shape and size of licqorice you can think of. Under the glass topped counter was pick n mix so having told the kids they could choose whatever they wanted within reason they both went for that and selected ‘one of those, two of those’ from the woman behind the counter. They had walked down the shop eyes wide with wonder, exclaiming at everything and Scarlett was literally bouncing up and down with excitement when we got to the counter prompting me to comment ‘you are both like, erm, children in a, err sweet shop!’ 😆 which had everyone laughing.

I was really proud of them, with no guidance from me they both chose a sensible amount and both came in under £2 each (sold by weight) :). We called in the bakery but they had already run out of savoury stuff so went to M&S as we were starting to run out of time before the theatre and were all hungry. In M&S I bumped into a friend and had a very brief catch up next to the sandwiches – hopefully we’ll get respective families together in the next couple of weeks for a proper chat. I *never* go to M&S and I felt like a right grown up cluttering up the aisle chatting to a friend while the kids stifled yawns 😆 We grabbed some bits from their in store bakery and left by the back door which leads straight onto the beach where the theatre is.

The sea was high and all brown and angry looking so we watched it for a while, marvelling in it’s power and beauty (I do so love the sea) before going in to the theatre. We were seeing Shakespeare 4 Kids do A Midsummer Nights Dream which I’d happened upon while looking to book HP cinema tickets and thought looked good, was pricey but we happen to have a bit of cash this month and it’s not like we’ll be doing anything theatre-y next year…

I’d booked balcony seats so although we were at the back we were elevated above heads which were a sea of school children. Looking at uniforms they were all senior school I would say and pretty much entirely school groups with the odd adult here and there so Davies and Scarlett would have been the youngest there.

They really enjoyed it, got slightly fidgety in the middle, although there was an interval it was a full 2 hours long with an hour for each act and 20 min break in the middle. It was a really good production, actors were excellent, plenty of singing and dancing, good costumes, great effects, catchy songs – in all a really good few hours :). The kids both said they’d go and see more of their productions, that having read the story the night before helped to familiarise them with the plot and allow them to concentrate on the play rather than keeping track.

We walked back to the car and drove home. The kids put the chickens away and I chopped some wood and we got the lounge all cosy with a lit fire, tea for the kids, a cup of tea for me and the curtains drawn against the wind and rain.

I really struggled to drag myself to swimming when Ady got home but I did go. My right knee started to protest around 45 lengths and then the pool started to fill up with people who clearly come for the social aspect and want to hang around at either end chatting and clogging up the lanes. That really irritates me as there is a section clearly marked off for swimming lengths with the rest of the pool free to just hang out in. I appreciate some length swimmers need to pause every so often to catch their breath / stretch etc but when you can’t actually get to the side for people I start to get fed up. I had in my head I had 379 lengths to go so when I got to 80 and was starting to want to strangle people with those swimming noodles for being in my way and my knee was hurting enough to be uncomfortable I decided I was under the 300 mark sk could stop. As it turned out when I got home I realised I had 389 lengths to go actually so still have 309 but never mind.

I came gome, had a long bath, persuaded children to bed and had dinner with Ady. Am now very tired after all that culture, swimming and of course a hefty dose of wine and have work in the morning…