The things of Christmas

I have been SO busy arranging the carol concert - but it all went well. We made £6000+ for our funds - well, minus quite a lot for expenses - and £1000+ for charity, so that was good. We probably won't sell as many tickets for our next concert in May, so a little cushion of profit will help to fund that one. Then we do an all-for-charity Come and Sing in June and after that my 3-year stint as chair will be over nearly two-thirds done. Hurray. 

Meanwhile, other people have done other things. Littlest Granddaughter made a robot (above) for her best friend - designed by her and partly made by her, though her mum helped. 

She and her mum and the other grandparents also went to see the show her dad is in, in Birmingham, and she sat on a throne after the show. You can see how she's posing. I hope she's not going to be an actor. I mean, we need actors. But corporate law probably pays better. 

And Biggest Granddaughter played the part of a charger in a panto at church. I didn't see this show so don't know the context. 

I'm off down to London again tomorrow to visit Daughter 2 and do some dishes. When I get back, I'll start concentrating on things such as decorating the house, currently a bit bare. 

 

Guests

It's mid-term in England so we've got visitors - Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter. 

She has been very busy. 

Playing with the dolls' house, 

making apple jigsaws and then eating them,

playing with slime. (We went to the corner shop to get the newspaper. I handed over the coupon and LG saw a bottle of slime with an alien in it. "Sorry," I said, "I didn't bring any money with me." "Oh," said the helpful chap behind the counter. "you can pay me tomorrow." Oh, great... So what could a granny do?)

The Edinburgh grandchildren came over as usual on a Friday, so Littlest Granddaughter wanted to make Biggest Granddaughter a birthday cake (her birthday is in a couple of weeks, but LG won't be here). It had to be in the shape of a heart because LG loves BG SO MUCH!

 

Essex

We've been away again - do these people never stay at home? - this time down to Daughter 2's in London. We visited Forty House, a Jacobean (early 1600s) house in Enfield. The grounds haven't been built on, so there's a 273 acre estate with a pond, parklands, a big walled garden and so on. Amazingly, it's now owned by Enfield Borough Council and is open free to the public. The house itself is large by most people's standards but not uncomfortably huge - a lovely family home. Its most recent owners were the Parker Bowles family - Queen Camilla's former husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, grew up here. Lucky chap!

It's partly furnished, not with the original furniture, and this room has clothes for dressing up.

A very realistic elephant. 

The queen surveys her policies. (I've just looked up "policies", meaning the managed estate round a house, and discovered that this is a Scottish rather than a standard English use of the word. So I suppose it's wrong here, since the house is in England. But I like the grandeur that the word implies.)

The gardens are stunning, even at this time of year. 

Later, I drew a picture of Smallest Granddaughter and she drew one of me drawing her. I look encouragingly young and much smarter than in reality - though somewhat naked. (I was not.)

The next day we visited the little medieval town of Waltham Abbey. You can easily imagine what it was like 500, 600 years ago or more.

Small Granddaughter helpfully holds up this somewhat crooked house. She was dressed as a rabbit only temporarily; she became rather hot.

The town has a very pretty setting on a river

and a beautiful church, the remains of the abbey which was (inevitably) demolished by Henry VIII. I wish he hadn't.

Then we went to a children's farm, with lovely views over the Essex countryside. (Why do we live in a town?)

There were rabbits, guinea pigs, goats, meerkats etc. 

And many many pumpkins, and really good playparks. 

It was a lovely weekend. But now we're home again. 

We have (mainly) had fun

We have been quite busy. Summer has at last arrived, so we've been in the garden a bit. 

And played with Lego and other stuff. 

We have trampolined with the cousins (well, I just spectated),

played in playparks, 

visited Jupiter Artland with family members, 

where there is art in the woods

and there are huge "landforms" to run around

and a weird sort of statue thing, which the kids always like (surprisingly).

We have visited the beach

- and Vogrie Country Park, also with the cousins. 

So we have not been idle. We have had fun, and some of us have had ice cream. 
 

Simple pleasures

It was a nice day on Thursday so I took Smallest Granddaughter to Lauriston Castle, which has pleasant grounds to walk in, including a Japanese garden with a little island reached by stepping stones, which children always love. 

We were there for quite a long time,

which was fine, because the aims were 1) for her to have fun and fresh air and 2) to give her mum, who was working upstairs at home, peace to concentrate. Also, I don't like to spend the whole day in the house. I like fresh air too. It was my mantra when our own children were small - "Come on - fresh air and exercise." I was also somewhat notorious for taking them for wet walks, if that was the only possibility. I still like wet walks as long as I have an umbrella. Which is just as well, considering the weather we've been having lately. 

She swooshed branches in the water and spread the droplets around. 

She climbed trees. 

And when we got home, we sat in the garden for a bit. It's been so wet that even this was a treat. 

And then yesterday we went to the beach and ploutered around. Here she is scooping up dogs' footprints and scattering them. There were lots; dog owners like to walk their pooches on the beach. I quite like dogs individually, but there are so many of them since lockdown, often in slightly alarming packs overseen (sort of) by professional dog walkers. Fortunately Smallest Granddaughter doesn't seem to be frightened of them. 

She soon took off her boots and socks to paddle, and to throw stones and handfuls of wet sand into the sea. 

Simple pleasures.

But now they've gone back to London, alas. Which is more restful, but sadder. 
 

Bubbles

And just like that, they're gone. August passed pleasantly but busily, with child-minding and visiting family and cooking and so on. 

I took Littlest Granddaughter to a bubble show at the Festival Fringe - which was very good - and we bought some of the chap's excellent bubbles. 

On the way home, she found one of her dad's company's posters, and kissed the little picture of her dad. I'm sure this was totally hygienic.

One day we went to the Botanics. 

On Sunday the Edinburgh family came and played with the bubbles. 

And now Daughter 2 and family have gone back to London and we have our time to ourselves and can't think what to do because we're too sad. However, the garden has been neglected so I'll get back to that. 

Ah well. We'll recover a bit in due course. Countyourblessingscountyourblessingscountyourblessings. 

 

Here be dragons

On Saturday, Son, Daughter-in-Law and their two arrive for about a week, and on Sunday, Daughter 2 and her little one arrive for three weeks. In the middle of August, my brother, sister-in-law and nephew and his fiancée will be here for about a week also. This is obviously all very nice, but will be busy, so I've been getting Big Granddaughter's dragon quilt to the stage of being pinned together, ready for hand-quilting, so that the fabrics and sewing machine could be tidied away. I was about to go up town to buy wadding the other day but thought I should just check that the odd bits I had wouldn't be enough to cobble together. And the first photo shows an arrangement of every last bit I had!

So, with saving the planet - not to say our bank account - in mind, I crawled around the floor for some considerable time and sewed it all together. I hope the planet appreciates this. My knees weren't so sure. 

I'd already done the front, but I had the back to make, patching it together the back because surely no one else I know will want dragon fabric. (Obviously it needed a bit of a trim. And an iron.) Apart from dragons, the back mainly features books because she's a total bookworm. 

It's all embarrassingly simple but she's only ten and now it's done. And it was fun to do. 

And then I packed all the fabrics away. Mine are arranged in categories: plain, stripes, spots, checks, animals and birds, flowers and leaves, Christmas, and then whatever doesn't fit any of these descriptions. I did once try arranging them by colour but too many of them had multiple colours. And anyway, I always seem to end up riffling through them all to find just the right thing. I need a bigger cupboard but - no - that way would madness lie. I will never use up all that I have. 

It's been very wet in Britain generally, but the rain cleared yesterday and we went out for a walk along the river. 

It was very full. 

Today the sun shone so I hope that's us back to normal summer weather. Not sure that it is, though... .