The mouse ran up the clock 🙂
The kids and I spent ages yesterday rhyming versions of that – we got all the way up to the clock struck twelve 🙂 I also sang in a French accent for some random unexplained reason. These are the things they will remember me for one day 🙂
When I was a child I often used to set the table for dinner with cutlery. My parents had a selection of bone handled knives and several of them were butter knives so round ended rather than with an actual blade. These used to offend me and I hated to end up with one. My Dad used to find it hilarious to swap my knife for a butter knife, having realised I didn’t like them (presumably we had less than four proper knives at the time so one of us had to have one). It was a regular dinnertime thing which used to really wind me up. Fast forward about 20 years and Ady and I had a tradition with my parents pre-kids of going out for dinner on Christmas Eve. One year we were settled in the tinsel filled restaurant and had ordered our meals and Dad and Ady were acting really strangely. The meal arrived and I picked up my cutlery only to realise I had one of the bone handled knives in place of my steak knife with Dad having sneakily replaced it. He laughed til he cried and was probably the most pleased with himself I have ever seen him :). He said to me later ‘you’ll remember that long after I am gone’ and he’s right, I will. It is things like that I will remember my Dad for and why I miss him not being in my life all the time. Tonight the kids and I had a long chat about standing up for what you believe in and I told them if I leave them with two mottos ‘ be the change you want to see in the world’ and ‘you can do anything if you try hard enough’ then I have done my job. I hope they remember me for the fun and crazy bits along with the half a bottle of wine philosophizing too 🙂
So, today. Morning is rather a blur. The kids and I did Popmaster – Ady had gone to the shop tp buy vanilla essence and milk for custard making. He returned and did some stuff outside while Davies made custard with our egg yolks and Scarlett made meringues with our egg whites. I meanwhile stuck a sponge I had made earlier in the week for the teashop but had not been required in the oven covered with syrup. We had it for lunch with Davies’ very gorgeous custard – a triumph 🙂
Then it was ferry o’clock. We headed down with rubbish and recycling. It was super late and I got a voicemail to say the doctor was over and would like the nebulizer back so the kids and I went back to the croft to collect it and gave it to Eric (the late doctor Rachel’s widower who brings over the new doctor on his boat). Ady chatted to Eric for ages. We didn’t have anything on the ferry in the end – well we did but it had all come in the post rather than as parcels.
Back to the croft where Ady did some strimming for the new community polytunnel while I sawed up and measured wood for a bookcase in the static made from our old bookcase. It’s a real bodge-job created in a very made to measure manner but will hopefully take most of the books we have inside just now (we have a whole heap more in the horsebox)
Then it was time to head down. I dropped Ady, the kids and Bonnie off in the village along with eggs for Jinty – we’re selling duck eggs as a trial in the shop. well see how they go. I went along to meet the school boat and picked up Sorcha and Nell who are home for the weekend but Fliss and Sandy are away settling Keava (Sandy’s eldest) into uni in Edinburgh. I dropped them home having arranged to ring them later and call in tomorrow to check on them and take them back to the boat on Sunday. They are really nice girls and it feels like a real privilege to be asked to nominally keep an eye on them – I know I’d only ask someone I really trusted to do the same for Davies and Scarlett.
Back to the shop to meet the others for a while before heading to Vikki’s where we’d been invited for dinner. After a bit of a blip with Vikki we are back on track after I went round for a pep talk with her on Tuesday. I’m really glad I did and all is well now 🙂 We had a nice few hours round there and an earlier ending to the evening that if she’d come to us as we had to get children home. We parked at the crossroads so had a lovely in the dark evening walk home to the croft with a couple of turning off torches moments to fully appreciate the dark. It is shearwater chick fledging time just now and we really must get up to the hillside where they are doing it and experience it – maybe next week with The Barts 🙂 Then it’s deer rutting season. Oh the treasures of nature ahead of us.
As mentioned we had a chat about being the change in the world etc and then everyone went to bed but me. And I am now about to follow.