First thing this morning Ady, Stuart and the kids went off to take photographs of the steam train going over the bridge near the cottage.
Lynda made me cry by insisting we still take the petrol money for Willow she’d said was a condition of their coming up to Fort William (it’s been a very minor detour for us to come this far south, very minor mind you) and shoved £100 at me. We had a big hug and I told her how very grateful we are for everything they have done. She countered that was saying she so admired what we are doing and wants to support us and worries about us and in doing these little bits of looking after us like this she worries less. Ady and I are so unbelievable touched by Lynda and Stuart’s kindness and thought and anticipation of needs, as infact we are with all our friends really. With Ady not having parents around and mine being not that way inclined it still comes as a bit of a shock when people are just so unconditionately lovely. 🙂 Hoping to repay them with some serious hospitality one day…
When the others got back Stuart gave us a lift to collect Willow – we all went in the end. The bill for labour had been settled by the breakdown cover so we just had the parts bill to pay – £30! The guy who supplied the parts was there too – a retired AA man who had noted over the years all the most commonly replaced parts and has a personal collection of vintage parts for older vehicles, bought as and when they become discontinued. He’d seen Willow as a real personal challenge and showed us the original packaging both of the part actually used and the couple of alternatives he’d brought along – from the early 90s he told us :). It was the coil which had apparently been the wrong one anyway so had done well to last which had needed replacing.
Willow started first time and we came back to the cottage and swiftly unloaded dirty washing, sleeping bags, pillows etc in to air and be washed and dried and got the washing machine going. Five loads so far 🙂
We had lunch and then parted – Lynda and Stuart to do some more Glen walking, us to walk into Fort William again. On the way we checked out why it is called Fort William at Davies’ question as to whether there had been a William and did he have a fort. We googled as my Scottish history is even more patchy than my English history and that is shockingly poor. It just doesn’t interest me, despite being one of the subjects I did at GCSE, I know loads of my friends love it and I really am just not interested, I guess it’s never come alive for me as it does for so many other people. I really must get a decent book and read it with the kids to try and educate myself and fill gaps for us all. (See, a few days in a house and I’ve come over all Home Ed again!)
We had a quick look at Inverlochy castle first and then walked along to FW. On the way there is a small playpark and Scarlett had gone across the monkey bars yesterday. Today she started to do it and then slipped and landed in a heap at the bottom with a cry and a whimper. I swore and dashed in to her fearing she must certainly have broken something. She had been leaning across so fallen the full height rather than dropping from a dangle and managed to graze her cheek and chin (reckon it will be bruised tomorrow) and hurt her tummy / ribs. After ascertaining she was just winded and shocked rather than internally damaged we carried on. I felt sick for about an hour afterwards though and had to keep cuddling her which she put up with with very good grace.
We checked all our reciepts from yesterday at Morrisons (they are running a lottery thing where 3 receipts each day from every store win £100. Very clever as of course you keep going back to the store the following day to check and end up purchasing something else. We had our reciept and L&S’s two from yesterday too but won nothing.) and picked up a few bits including a DVD for the kids – Despicable Me which we missed when it first came out and have been waiting for it to go to a cheap price. £5 seemed cheap enough so the plan for tomorrow is popcorn and film on the sofa as L&S are going home tomorrow leaving us the cottage all to ourselves for the last 2 days so we’re planning plenty of making the most of it. Sprawling on sofas with popcorn and dvds is definitely something we have missed.
The walk back was uneventful, we called in Lidl and got some tablet which was on special offer and some lebuchan from their Christmas products, which felt very festive :).
Back at the cottage I did some more laundry processing, Ady got dinner on (mish mash of leftovers, quiches, sausages, various types of potatoes, salad – a real feast) and the kids had a bath. At wine o’clock a crisis was discovered of only a third of a bottle left so the kids and I dashed back out to the CoOp to get another bottle, which nicely added another 2 miles to our walking total for the day :). There was competition for holding my hand as the path was only wide enough for walking two abreast so they took it in turns of 3 lampposts worth each. Davies is at a real point of swinging between feeling like a very grown up big boy and still being my baby. This was a ‘still my baby’ moment. I’d only been wandering earlier today when he’d shrug away from holding my hand while we’re out walking, I’m sure I was far younger than 11 when I stopped wanting to walk anywhere near my Mum!
After dinner Ady and I had baths and then we all watched Frozen Planet. D&S have been really bad at getting to sleep this week and were both looking tired today so I went and sat in their room with them until they were asleep by which point everyone else had already gone to bed!
I think I’d suggest you approach history from a different angle. You seem to be a people person to me so maybe social history approach? Morpurgo books I often classify as history and have learnt much from his books.
But if you don’t like history that’s fine (clearly!). I just think you’re missing out by having preconceived ideas of what history is. Morpurgo’s The Last Wolf is good introduction to some Scottish history.
Xx
Comment by Michelle — 27 October 2011 @ 7:16 am