Solo summer surviving: Day One

Young Photographers of the Day

So, yesterday was Day One of the Summer Holidays, but I'm only patting myself on the back for the days when it's solo mum, due to PC keeping this thankfully-not-as-yet-leaking-in-the-rain roof over our heads.

We all went volunteering as is my wont on a Friday morning, then dumped a large thing at the Dump, then went to the Library to return non-overdue books (another pat on the back there, Mags), and then drove home through the rain for lunch.

Then a small friend came to play, so I took not two but three boys to the pool for a swim. If you can't beat the wet, join it. After an obligatory cafe stop we didn't visit a friend as planned and we didn't go to buy the balloons for Uncle William's fortieth birthday dinner that evening. Instead boys were delivered back home/to their father who was helping set up technical music things at the local community festival night, and I went to buy birthday balloons for Uncle William's fortieth birthday dinner that evening.

Did you know that there is a world helium shortage? There is, apparently, a world helium shortage. This is not good when both your mother and your newly forty year old brother's wife are expecting you to provide the fortieth birthday dinner balloons that evening. Oh well.

Then we went to Uncle William's forthieth birthday dinner, via the local community festival night. Then we came home late and went to bed. Where Mattman proudly read me bedtime tales from his P5 Writing Book. "Try not to start every sentence with Then". Maybe they'll make better photographers...

Greatitudes 571 and 572: Healing and a shared future

Ingrafted branches- from Romans 11- were one of the images that got me through the Troubles.

"Where's your crown?" he asked, apparently!

One woman in the crowd had travelled from Sligo, determined to see Queen Elizabeth II. It's a novelty to see the British flag so free from the usual tight sectarian affiliations. It's a joy beyond words.

The leaving your gift at the altar thing from Matthew 5 was the other. First go and be reconciled... then come...

Beyond words today, folks; beyond words!

What to do on a rainy Saturday in June

Get up early and go here!

Hookery in the Chookery

I was hooking here tonight, and very nice it was too- thanks, Heather Boss!

Une petite aventure au Pays Basque

Welcome to Maison Marchand et le Pays Basque. A quick dash away from le train train quotidien.
Where even the roses are red.
Why la Basitde-Clairence is a bastide.
Miam miam- au Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, Cambo-les-Bains. Where we ate au lieu d'un pique-nique sur l'herbe!
The view from Edmond Rostand's window. On a Thursday too!
My balcony. Well, everyone's balcony. Mine for a while!
About to be shouted at for the second time in and around the Guggenheim, Bilbao.


About to be shouted at for the third time in and around the Guggenheim, Bilbao. Great Spanish learning curve!
Team Rowan. Visitation of young gap year man.
School choir practice, St Jean de Luz. Grumpy teacher. Maybe she was too hot?
Birarritz, finally!

Greatitudes 542 - 570

It generally all boils down to boys and buns here! Admittedly for most of the last week it has been about nothing much more than boys and bugs (of the tummy variety) but we are now all most well. And that is an extremely good thing. But otherwise there is nothing, still as yet nothing, quite as calming to a houseload of sun-filled, sun-stoked suns and other people's suns than a batch of buns and a table load of icing and things. This is another extremely good thing while it lasts. Friends of suns are also an extremely good thing. That's fabulous when going well. So well done to Troubled Sun for being nearly at the end of a trying year on the suns of other people front. I may have been a little bit blank to one of these people at the level crossing hiatus today. This is not an extremely good thing.

When do buns become cupcakes anyway? Is it when they are properly iced and enormous and you could look at them for a long time before daring to eat- with a small fork, obviously. We had lots of those, not made by me, at last week's Mums in May. Now this is a huge source of gratitude on my part. I managed to organise a Mothers' Union event. Phew. Slightly absolved after a year of inept muddling! More gratitudes- people came and brought friends, they all brought more food, they must each have donated double the suggested amount for the work of Irish MU, the sun shone and shone and shone! The sun has in fact just stopped shining, which is nearly a tiny relief given that we are people of a frozen clime and a fortnight of South of France temperatures is definitely more than Calvinists deserve!

Are YWAM folk Calvinists? I didn't get much of a grasp of the work they were doing out and about this week. We were hosting a little family, so Strawberry Land was wholly concerned with falling in love with Layna! Layna discovered Charlie and Lola, which was a fine excuse for me to sit down and revel in Lauren Child. Not that I ever need much of an excuse... Such a novelty to have a house full of something other than boys and buns.

Now the above illustrates what happens when actual cakes become cup cakes! We have decadently celebrated two Bean Birthdays in the last fortnight. We don't physically go to the Bean Coffee Shop for birthdays anymore- we take the birthday to crafting person's home and invade it and put up the personalised banners and eat the personalised cakes by Lorna, and eat all the other food we've brought as well. Sometimes we hook. Usually we just eat. It's like having your eighth birthday all over again, except that your brother doesn't pull your hair, or your best friend run off with your new Sindy. And you get to blow out the candle without having to light it again for your children. I love it! Happy Birthdays, Niqi and Cathy!

Hooray- the Willows have not only arrived safely at Carolyn's glorious place of Mess, Muddle and Fun, but they are exploring the Lake District too. Do visit and comment!

Now finally, Thrifty Thursday has a confession for the group. She has been most careful during this Year of Living Small, and it has indeed been a time of living very large in the wonderful provision of He who provides, and in the kindness of friends. She has shopped locally and cannily and kept within budgets. She has made do and tried to mend! She has used everything to hand, and has moved in an environmentally responsible manner. However. Due to the very wonderful amount of substitute teaching that she was given at just the right times, and having helped pay some big bills and taken the strawberries away at Easter for PC's birthday, Thrifty made a spontaneous decision. Do you remember those? You used to do them before you had children. Maybe you don't recall. It certainly took Thrifty by surprise, but believe me, given the right opportunity, you would be amazed at how fast you could text back simply, "Yes." No thought required!

Tune in next week. I'll be there before you, Willows!

Heatstroke

One small boy looks up in the middle of his sickness in the middle of the night and says, with big blue eyes, "There's something you don't see every day."

Other less small boy looks up having just been dosed with pink medicine for a sore stomach and asks, with big blue eyes, "If you take medicine when actually you're faking it, can it do damage?"

I needn't have worried. He got it too. Then I did. This and the rest means we're reading you, but you'll not be reading much of us- enjoy the sun!