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Our backyard in the snow
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January 31, 2003
Britain was hit by a snowstorm yesterday and things have pretty much ground to a halt — airports closed, Tube in chaos, London in total gridlock. I heard on the radio this morning that there are still commuters trying to get home who left work yesterday evening. I was worried about Adam travelling home on his scooter, and he did have a terrible journey, arriving home half frozen. The Northern Line stopped running at Archway, and according to Tracey, who lives on Highgate Hill, the sidewalks and the road were still thick with commuters trudging home at midnight when she went to bed. And you can bet most of them had a lot further to go than Highgate Village. Not having to travel, the snowfall was lovely for those of us at home. Nova and I went for a crunchy walk in the snow, baked rock cakes, made snowballs…
We decided to leave the heating on all night since it was so cold. When I woke up this morning the tip of my nose (about all that was exposed) was like an ice cube, and I thought, “My god, it’s so cold in here, imagine what it would have been like if the heating wasn’t on!” The minute I got out of bed I realised the heating had gone off at some point in the night. I checked the boiler and discovered that the pilot light had blown out. It happens occasionally — generally in stormy weather — and although I’ve developed some proficiency at it, it’s a bugger to get lit.
Adam and I had booked tickets to go see the latest Lord of the Rings movie, and Freddy and Beulah had agreed to babysit, but what with the treacherous roads and more snow predicted, they thought it best to postpone. Fortunately Chris, who’s staying in the flat at the moment, was in for the evening, and she was happy to sit for us. So for the third time since Nova was born we went to the cinema together. What a great film! The three hours flew by. I’ve heard a lot of opinions as to whether the first part was better than the second or vice versa — I think they are both terrific, and can’t wait to see the third one.
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January 29, 2003
Quite a productive day at work for a change. I’m completely swamped by work, to the point where I just want to throw my hands up. I doesn’t help that my job share hasn’t been around for the last month and a half. But even when she’s there the job is just too much.
In nearly all the places I’ve worked some staff seem to have half a job while the rest have a job and a half to fit into their working week. For some reason, I’ve always been on the overworked side, and have wondered at times how you make the crossover. In honesty I’d probably rather be busy than otherwise, but this situation is completely out of hand. I had a one-to-one with my manager last week and we discussed it, but I really don’t see how things are going to change…
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January 28, 2003
Had a delicious day all to myself. I accumulated annual leave the whole time I was on maternity leave, even those months when I wasn’t being paid. I waited with Nova until Pascale arrived. We had a coffee and a bit of a gossip, then I set off for the West End.
I had been planning to go see an exhibition of Arthur Rackham’s paintings and illustrations and the Dulwich picture gallery, but drew a complete blank trying to find a train to Dulwich from Charing Cross, so I abandoned that idea. Instead I walked to Trafalgar Square and visited the National Portrait Gallery.
There was an exhibition on Byron, and a number of recent acquisitions that I hadn’t seen. By the time I left it was lunchtime, so I stopped at Wagamama in Leicester Square for a bowl of noodle soup. I’ve always enjoyed eating out by myself, and Wagamama is ideal, with its bench seating and informal atmosphere.
I had my book with me — I’m reading a Tom Robbins novel I bought from a remainder bin a few years ago because I felt sorry for it. He was such a big name at one time… It’s taken my a while to get into this novel, but as always, I love the vividness of his language, the pleasure he takes in playing with words. There was a passage describing Pacific Northwest weather that I particularly enjoyed:
“There, in a grayish November glow that might have been filtered through frozen squid bladders, a kind of sunlight substitute invented by Norwegian chemists, Switters sat wondering how to broach the subject of his next move… Like chip dip with a short shelf life, the imported Scandinavian sunshine had commenced to degenerate, reverting to the cod paste from which it was synthesized… The men could almost taste mildew in the air. The atmosphere was leaden and thin simultaneously, as if composed of some new element that defied known laws of atomic weight and could be properly breathed only by lifelong residents of the Pacific Northwest. Feathery and innocuous on one hand, sodden and ill-willed on the other, it was the meteorological equivalent of Pat Boone singing heavy metal.”
Afterwards, I noticed that there was a showing of the movie “Chicago” about to start, and as it was starting to rain, made an impulse decision. I enjoyed it, although musicals really aren’t my thing (I have yet to watch The Sound of Music, and only sat through The Wizard of Oz in the last year). Catherine Zeta-Jones gave a terrific performance, upgrading my assessment of her talents considerably, and Richard Gere pulled off a creditable tap dance as well. I’ve always had a lot of time for Richard Gere…
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January 26, 2003
Nova is completely obsessed with cake at the moment. “Cakey” is often the first word out of her mouth when I get her up in the morning, supplanting even her beloved Po. Pascale gives her little fairy cakes when they go to Tescos on Monday morning, and apparently as soon as she gets into Pascale’s car, she cries “Cakey! Cakey!” all the way to Staples Corner. I have a Nigella Lawson cookbook called “How To Be a Domestic Goddess”, which is all about baking, and one of Nova’s favourite things these days is to flip through it. At each picture I say, “What’s that?” and she shouts “Cakey!”
There was a train accident on the tube yesterday at Chancery Lane, which is the station I use for work. Apparently the last three cars of a train derailed and crashed into the platform. Thirty-two people were injured, but no fatalities. It’s probably fortunate it happened on a Saturday — Chancery Lane is such a station during the week. The whole Central Line is closed while the accident is being investigated, which will play havoc with my commute tomorrow…
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January 25, 2003
Happy birthday, Beulah!
Unsurprisingly, Adam was feeling pretty fragile this morning. I got up with Nova, and did her breakfast to give him a little extra time in bed. I haven’t needed to call on it for a long time, but my favourite hangover breakfast is a bowl of fried rice topped with a fried egg, slivers of garlic and a blob of miso-chilli paste, with a side of pickled chillies. Kind of a down and dirty bibimbap.
Adam leans more toward a fry-up, so once we were all up and dressed, we headed off to a greasy spoon cafe on the Holloway Road, where we had eggs, toast, mushrooms, veggie sausage, and chips. Nova tucked in even though she’d already had her ‘bix, and was still munching away long after Adam and I had laid down our forks.
We stopped in at the city farm in Kentish Town afterward. It’s an honest to god working farm right in the heart of north London, stuck between a council estate and the train tracks. It’s free to get in, and there are pigs, horses, cows, ducks, roosters, goats, sheep, rabbits — all the barnyard favourites. Nova had a whale of a time, and was especially taken with the cow. The cow was a bit standoffish at first, ignoring Nova’s moos, then suddenly swung round towards her, and looked as if she was going to give her a big lick. The look on Nova’s face was priceless…
Got together with Beulah, Doron, Antonia, and Oliver for Beulah’s birthday dinner. (Freddy’s away on business until next week.) We went to a Turkish restaurant in Finchley. The kids were very good — I couldn’t really see what Oliver was getting up to, but Nova ate piles of bread, hummus, olives, taramasalata, beans, and fish, and played happily with her teletubbies until it was time to go home. We got Beulah the Phillip Pullman trilogy and a bottle of lavender bath oil.
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January 24, 2003
Had a Pete and Pascale, and Doron and Antonia around for a Burn’s night supper this evening. Nova was in quite a difficult mood for most of the day, which made preparations difficult. She got her finger stuck in the video machine again, and never really regained her equilibrium for the rest of the day.
I managed to get her down for a nap in time for my doctor’s appointment, and left her sleeping with Chris downstairs listening out for her. I’ve discovered a peppercorn-sized lump on the tendon of my left wrist, and wanted confirmation that it wasn’t anything to worry about. (I expect it’s probably related to the tendonitis I had when pregnant with Nova.)
We discussed my pregnancy track record, and the doctor has arranged for me to go for a blood test at the Whittington next Friday to test my hormone levels. It’s meant to determine whether or not you are ovulating. I’m not convinced that’s the problem in my case, but will be interested to see the results.
Pete and Pascale arrived about five minutes after we put Nova down, before I finished getting everything together. I made a smoked mackerel pate (Nova ate quite a bit of it) with oatcakes and smoked salmon-ciabatta fingers to start. The main course was haggis, neeps and tatties, and a cranberry tarte tatin for pudding.
It’s always interesting when friends from different parts of your life meet each other, and once Eytan joined the mix it became very interesting indeed… D&A left about 11pm, Pascale went home at 12, and when I packed it in at 12:30 the three guys were well stuck in to a second bottle of whiskey…
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January 23, 2003
Nova has added the word “bugger” to her repetoire. A couple of weeks ago at Oliver’s birthday party, she said it quite clearly. Grandpa Fred said to me, “Did Nova just say ‘bugger’?” and I said, “It sure sounded like it, but she’s probably just trying out some new sounds.” Not the case… When something’s not going to plan, she now says, “Bugger, bugger, bugger”. Pascale has taken full responsibility…
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January 22, 2003
I bought Nova a little chair to sit in while she watches her videos. It’s a miniature wicker armchair and very cute. I rearranged the livingroom furniture to accommodate it and put on her Maisy video. So what did she do? Use it as a stepping stool to climb onto the coffee table of course, where she sat/stood and watched her entire video.
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January 21, 2003
A propos of nothing…
Adam and I were talking the other day about how families have their own shared culture, values, humour etc. and it reminded me of an incident that occurred the last time we were back in Canada for Christmas, about three years ago. It was Drew’s 21st birthday supper, and he’d asked for what my family calls a bourgignon — a pot of boiling oil is placed in the centre of the table and everyone has a fondue fork with which to spear and cook pieces of meat, mushroom, potato etc. to eat along with crudites and dips and bread. It’s been a popular family dinner since I was a kid. The concept has been refined over the years, and Drew’s birthday bourgignon included a cheese fondue with bread for dipping, as well as prawns and scallops with a tempura batter. He’d invited a few of his friends to join us, and I’m pretty sure it was the first time these guys had ever seen a meal like it. Anyway, we were all gathered around the table, drinking wine and dipping and cooking and eating, when Drew’s friend Bryce took a piece of red pepper, dipped it in the tempura batter and raised it to his mouth. We all saw him do it, and my brothers and nephews and I were holding our breath, trying not to stare, waiting to see whether he’d spit it out or play it cool, thinking it was some nasty weird dip or something (Greg would have probably asked him how he liked it, said it was an old family recipe, and encouraged him to try it with the broccoli) when Adam cried, “Don’t eat that! It’s tempura batter!” and a potential classic family story never was (“Remember the time Bryce ate the raw tempura batter?)… And it struck me how different — and decent, I guess — Adam’s instincts were compared to ours…
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January 20, 2003
I’m afraid the little bed experiment has been a bit of a failure. Last night when I checked on her at 11pm, she was sprawled on the landing mattress with her head lolling backward off the edge at an alarming angle. At 5am I woke to cries from her room and rushed in to find her jammed underneath her little bed with only her fat diapered bum and little legs — kicking uselessly — visible. I had to remove the landing mattress first before I could extricate her. I brought her in with us, where she slept about 20 more minutes before demanding “porge” and generally making a pest of herself. Adam went off to do her breakfast while I got ready for work. We assembled the cot bed before I left this morning. It’s a little bit bigger than her cot, and the mattress is lower as well, so let’s hope it can contain her…
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January 19, 2003
Hooray! We’ve finally managed to move the office out of Nova’s bedroom (it’s only taken 19 months…) We’ve been hoping to consolidate all the computer stuff on the upstairs desk, but it’s a big job, not made any easier by the fact that if the computer’s in Nova’s room you can’t work on it when she’s asleep, (and god knows it’s not the kind of job you can get done when she’s awake either). While Adam and Nova were at Waitrose, I: disassembled her cot, put together her little bed, moved the desk, computer, scanner, printer, and filing cabinet from her room to our bedroom, and moved the futon couch from our room to her room. Anne Stillman gave us a beautiful little eiderdown that is just the right size for a child’s bed, and amazingly is a perfect match for the uncoventional wall colours in her room.
I was a bit concerned about moving her out of the cot, but ever since she staged the great cot escape, I’ve been worried that she’d try it again and fall. Needless to say, her afternoon nap was out of the question. The door was scarcely closed before she was out of bed and yelling for it to be opened again. We gave her a dose of cough medicine before she went down last night, which I hoped would help her sleep (she’s been coughing herself awake the last few days). At 11pm I went in to check on her, and and found her sleeping on the floor, next to the landing mattress I’d placed to break any falls. When I checked again at 5:30am, she was sleeping on her knees with her bum in the air up where a pillow would be. I’m hoping these falls won’t be a nightly occurrence, and that not falling out of bed is a skill that we’ve all managed to master at some stage in our lives.
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January 17, 2003
I generally clean up after Nova twice a day — once during her nap and then again after she is down for the night. Otherwise I’d spend my entire day pointlessly putting the same things away over and over again, and my life feels enough like that already… Also, this may sound strange, but I think it would be a bit undermining to Nova to have me trailing along behind her undoing everything that she does. She can be quite purposeful in her mess making, and while I may not understand the rationale behind her rearrangement of the livingroom, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Anyway, she went down for a nap straight after lunch. After a fifteen minute lie down/battery recharge, I went upstair to restore a semblance of order by:
- replacing her videos on the shelf
- piling her toys in the toybox
- restacking the stacky cups
- removing the potatoes from her little trolley
- clearing the cheerios from under the coffee table
- replacing the cushions on the couch
- gathering the pieces of her teaset together
- rebuilding her puzzles and tracking down any missing pieces
- gathering up her tubby magazines
- peeling tubby stickers off the kitchen floor
- fishing the bottle of lime cordial out from under the diningroom table
- picking up the scraps of dropped food around her highchair
- piling up her books
- straightening the CDs
- returning the Penguin 60s to the bookshelf
- doing the lunch dishes
- wiping down the table and highchair
- rearranging the magnetic letters on the fridge
- putting the cutlery back on its holder
- and probably a dozen other things I can’t recall…
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January 14, 2003
I thought I might be well enough to go in today, but my throat was still really sore. It didn’t help that we’d had a truly awful night with Nova… I can often tell when there’s a bad night on the cards. Nova never really settled properly when I put her down, and I could hear her moaning and groaning all evening. At bedtime, Adam went in to see if she was covered up (she never is). She also has a tendency to migrate up to the top of her cot and jam her head against the bars. He made the rash decision to move her down the bed, and from that point the grizzling was pretty constant. We took turns going in to rub her back, or take her out and try to rock her into a deeper sleep. On his third visit — at about 3am — Adam lost his temper and raised his voice at her. This upset her so much I had to take over and try to calm her, as she howled “Dada! Dada!” over and over. Eventually, my lower back started seizing up and I brought her into bed with us, where I endured a good hour of kicks in the kidneys and hair pulling before dumping her back in her cot again. (I also knocked a full glass of water onto my head, but according to Adam, Nova was in no way responsible for this…) I can’t remember how and when she actually fell asleep, but it happened…
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January 13, 2003
Felt terrible when I woke up, and decided to call in sick. This is the first sick day I’ve taken since returning to work in July. I don’t get sick all that often, but now that I work a three day week, it seems more important not to miss a day’s work. The reality is that my job (even as a job share) doesn’t actually fit into three days. Pascale came by to pick up Nova, and once they’d left I spent the entire day in bed, emerging only once to make tea and toast, until it was time to pick the girl up again.
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January 12, 2003
My friend Lorraine from work came up for lunch today. I always feel a bit awkward inviting English people for Sunday lunch, as there’s a tradition over here of of having a big roast meal on a Sunday afternoon. (If someone invited you for Sunday lunch in Canada, you’d be more likely to get eggs benedict than a roast.) In the event, we made a leek and mustard quiche with a green salad, and apple crumble for dessert.
After lunch Lorraine and I walked down to Highgate Cemetery to do their tour. I’ve done it a few times, as it is a standard part of our visitor itinerary, but I haven’t been in a while. There was an officious little woman guarding the entrance, warning people not to stub their cigarettes out on the sidewalk, and even lecturing a child for touching the chain that marks off the official parking spaces. Fortunately, she wasn’t actually leading the tour, and after unsuccessfully asking people to hand in their mobile phones for her to keep for the duration of the tour (imagine, not one person with a mobile phone in a group of twenty plus people!) we were shot of her. Interesting fact from this tour: the cemetery is wildly overgrown with holly and ivy, and apparently it all comes from the funeral wreaths left on graves.
Started feeling ill in the evening, and by bedtime my throat was so sore I could scarcely swallow and my voice was a gravelly whisper.
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January 11, 2003
Happy 1st birthday, Oliver!
Joined Freddy and Beulah round at Doron and Antonia’s flat in the afternoon for a little tea party to celebrate Oliver’s birthday: sandwiches, olives, crisps, and a birthday cake. As usual, Nova hoovered up a fair share of the food. We got Ollie a teeshirt, pair of jeans, and My First Word Book, which is one that Nova loves. Although he’s still smaller than Nova, he’s noticably heavier. (As far as I can tell using the home scales, Nova hasn’t gained any weight in months.)
Bought Nova a potty this morning. I’m not planning to start toilet training yet, but I thought if it was around she could get used to it. All day, she’s been trotting around with it, putting it on her head, storing her toys in it…
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January 10, 2003
It is so cold here at the moment. Nova and I went out this morning to meet Tracey and Sam for a coffee at Cafe Rouge. Before we set off I bundled her up in teeshirt, sweater, her new snowsuit, boots, fleecy hat, mitts, etc. until she could barely walk, and by the time we got to the cafe her face was as red as a tomato from the icy wind. Ended up going back to Tracey’s for lunch. Unfortunately, Sam spent the whole time trying to grab Nova, pull her hair, twist her head and so on, which made her pretty nervous. In the end, she had to sit up in an armchair and play with toys while he roamed the floor below. At lot of it was just overexuberance on Sam’s part — Tracey thought he was trying to hug her — but he managed to give her two good scratches on the face all the same. It seems like I’m always worrying about how she interacts with other kids and I know she has to learn to look after herself… But honestly, I’ve yet to see her shove someone over, scratch, bite, or pull hair. It doesn’t seem to be in her nature.
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January 9, 2003
We’re doing this competition in the Daily Mail. I can’t remember how we found out about it, but each day for thirteen days they are printing a coupon with a destination on it. You have to collect at least nine different destinations, then when you send them in you get an airline ticket on a reputable airline to one of those nine places. So far we’ve collected Barbados, Las Vegas, Paris, Amsterdam, UK Domestic, New York, and Hong Kong. The only problem is I actually feel embarrassed buying the Daily Mail. When I go up to the newspaper kiosk in the station and say “Daily Mail, please” I have to restrain myself from explaining to the guy that I don’t actually read the Daily Mail, I’m just buying it for the coupons, that actually I’m a Guardian reader. Your choice of paper says a lot about you — and the Daily Mail is such a heap of reactionary, small-minded, mean-spirited crap. Happily, we’ve just realised that Adam can clip the coupon from his work papers — as a PR agency, his company takes all the main papers each day.
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January 7, 2003
Nova’s eye is much better this morning — and she didn’t stage another escape from her cot last night either… So I was reasonably well rested for my first day back in the office. I hate that first day back after a holiday, dragging through stacks of email, shuffling your in-tray, trying to remember what it was you do, willing the clock to tick faster so you can get back home to your real life. Work just seems so irrelevant after a holiday. “Do I really devote 24 hours a week to doing this? Within a couple of days you are sucked back in, and it all seems vitally important again. Until the next holiday… |
January 6, 2003
A bit of excitement around here in the night… I was woken up at 3:15am by Nova’s frantic yelling. It sounded like she was crying “Doll! Doll!” I jumped out of bed and ran to her room. I opened her door to find her standing in her dark bedroom. She’d been crying “Door! Door!” The little beggar had managed to climb out of her cot, but hasn’t mastered the art of doorknobs yet. I don’t know how long she’d been standing there, but she was sure glad to see me… She clung to me like a baby opossum, panting for breath. I brought her in with us to warm up and calm down, and for the next fifteen minutes I couldn’t have peeled her off me. Even when I got her settled next to me on the mattress, she insisted on having one of her little arms around me. An hour and a half later she still hadn’t gone back to sleep, so I explained to her that I was going to take her back to her room now, and she was going to have another sleep. She settled reasonably well, although she didn’t fall asleep right away. It’s such an enormous advantage to be able to explain things to her. I was a little worried she’d try to climb out of the cot again and fall (my brother David broke his collarbone falling out of his cot when he was a baby) but we made it through to morning. Time to move her to a little bed I guess…
It was supposed to be my first day back in the office, but Nova woke up with her right eye glued shut by conjunctivitis, so there was no way she could go to Pascale’s. Managed to get her a doctor’s appointment for 9:30am, and picked up a prescription for eyedrops on the way back home. She’s been very sweet about letting me apply them, but so far the eye is still getting worse…
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January 5, 2003
Met Doron, Antonia and Oliver at the Bull and Last for a Sunday pub lunch. It cut a big chunk out of our “doing list stuff” time, but it was good to catch up. Antonia’s year of maternity leave has come to an end, and she starts back in the classroom tomorrow, lucky girl! Had a nice lunch, sharing the smoked fish plate and veggie bruschetta with Nova. (She ate most of the veggies on Doron’s roast turkey dinner as well…) Walked on Hampstead Heath afterward. It was a bitterly cold day, and I was feeling like the worst parent in North London because I hadn’t brought a blanket to tuck Nova up in, until I saw a couple pushing a little girl about Nova’s age along, who was wearing a denim jacket and no hat or gloves, and looking pretty miserable about it too. But the winner was definitely the couple who allowed their 8-year-old daughter to fall into the pond. The girl was walking a little terrier, and when the dog slipped into the water, she tried to grab it and fell in as well. Adam saw it happen and rushed to help, arriving just as her father did. She was hysterical when he pulled her out…Every winter in England when the weather hits freezing, there are guaranteed to be a rash of stories in the news about people who die rescuing dogs who have fallen through the ice. More often than not, the dog is perfectly fine. I don’t remember ever hearing stories like this in Canada…
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January 4, 2003
I’ve made a list as long as my arm of things we want to get done this weekend. I’m a confirmed list maker — there’s nothing I like better than a good long list. Adam, on the other hand, seems to find them intimidating. Once something’s written down it preys on his mind until it’s been crossed off. Hmmm, I think I could work with that…
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January 3, 2003
We’d planned to set off after breakfast, but by the time I’d done most of the packing it made more sense to stay for lunch. Adam went for a swim first thing while I fed Nova her breakfast. Then he took her off to the games room while I had a little workout, swim and sauna. Spent most of my time on the cross-training machine, which is meant to reproduce the experience of cross-country skiing. My experience of cross-country skiing has always been an exhausting, sweat-soaked slog, but if it is supposed to feel like that machine I can see why people do it. It’s like running without the impact, or like swimming in air…
It was 2pm by the time we said our goodbyes. We’d estimated another 6 hour journey with stops, but the roads were good, and Nova cooperated by having a decent nap, and it was a reasonably stress-free journey. We stopped for petrol east of Bristol. I took Nova into the shop to give her a break from the carseat. She dashed straight to the magazine racks, and before I’d even finished telling her they didn’t have any Teletubbies magazines she’d managed to locate one in the far bottom corner right at the back. It’s incredible how early the commercial world attaches its tentacles…
Home by 7pm, which was pretty good going. Did the unpacking, fed Nova and put her down, put on laundry, then settled down with a simple pasta supper. Good to be home…
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Martha on Dinas Head
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January 2, 2003
Felt a lot better when I woke up this morning, but avoided breakfast just to be on the safe side… There was another walk planned today, this time round Dinas Head. Nick, Jane and Pete set off to do the whole route, while Liana, Adam and I walked part way out and back with the girls. It was a bright, warm day and the views of the Pembrokeshire coastline from the cliff top path was stunning. We stopped for a snack and a break at a point called The Needle, then headed back again. The path was narrow and quite close to the cliff edge at points, and we carried Nova much of the way.
We’d planned to go for lunch at a terrific fish and chips place that we’d discovered on our first trip to this part of Wales, (and revisited on our family honeymoon five years ago), but when we got there it was closed for the holidays. Settled for dubious fish and chips in a local Fishguard cafe instead, where Nova once again distinguished herself by eating, a third of my piece of fish, a mountain of chips, half a slice of bread and butter, some baked beans, fried egg, and anything else in reach… We’d forgotten to bring her beaker, so she drank her drink from a straw for the first time. Stopped at a cake shop before heading back home. Nova was very excited by the display of cakes behind the glass counter, and pressed herself against it crying “Cakey! Cakey!” to the amusement of the other customers.
After another family swim, Adam and I cooked the evening meal: fajitas, refried beans, and salsa, which went down well. There was some Hagen Daz ice cream for dessert. Learned a new trick (which everybody probably knows already) — you can soften a carton of rock-hard ice cream by giving it a twenty second blast in the microwave. I don’t know how we ever managed without one… 😉
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January 1, 2003
Happy New Year!
Some of us were feeling a bit worse for wear, and it took a few hours to get everyone mobilised for an afternoon walk. Liana organised everything — it’s great going away on group holidays with an organiser. It’s when you have two organisers that there can be problems… She planned a circular walk that started at a village fifteen minutes’ drive from our cottage. The little girls did us proud, both trudging cheerfully along in their little rubber boots, squelching along the muddy paths, splashing in all the puddles. We’d brought one of those sticky Dutch syrup biscuits, and whenever Nova yelled, “Cakey!” I’d pop a bit in her mouth. Eventually her legs started to buckle, and I ended up carrying her for a good stretch of the trail. We must have walked about two miles through the forest before rejoining the road. A few of the group struck off to pick up the cars and drove back to pick the rest of us up. By this point, Nova was so thoroughly mucky that we stripped her off before putting her in her carseat. Unfortunately, she managed to spill half a bottle of water over herself, soaking the carseat.
Nick and Jane cooked again tonight — mushroom risotto followed by bananas and custard. (Those two really have a thing for nursery-style desserts.) I’m not sure what brought it on, but I started feeling really poorly during dinner, and spent the rest of the alternating between the couch and the loo…
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