It’s Saturday evening and I am surrounded by small children jumping on and off the sofa and my stool as we run through my repertoire of counting songs, from monkeys jumping on the bed to frogs sitting on a log. We’ve exhausted Alexa’s store of jokes (turns out she doesn’t know any jokes about Transformers, much to Grandthing 1’s disgust) and all her fart noises. She’s now ‘having a rest’ (aka ‘Granny turned off the microphone’) and the kids are being kittens. The garden’s full of the Things and the Timeshare Teenagers – or Timeshare Twentysomethings now – and their partners, and various of their friends have been drifting in and out over the day as we do ‘open door’ parenting. If they know there’s a welcome for them and all their friends in easy times, they know the door will always be open when things get tough.
Our little blended family is expanding at the moment, and it brings me much joy: TT1’s partner has a little girl the same age as GT1 (they’re the ones being cats) and the pair of them are very much looking forward to being big brother and sister to the twins when they arrive in a few weeks’ time. This little girl loves Lilo and Stitch, collects snails and has an endless imagination. She’s a water baby and spent all afternoon in the pool splashing about. Turns out Grannies always have enough love to go around, although I think we’re going to need a minibus for the next family day out.
Other things making me happy this week
- Airconditioning on the Elizabeth Line. Especially when the Central Line is up to its old tricks again
- Running – I’m up to week five on the couch to 5k plan and while the 8 minute blocks came as a shock to the system today I still enjoyed it!
- A day at the Royal College of Art with a colleague talking to the MA Visual Communications students -one of them told me that my talk had helped him decide what he wanted to do next. It’s nice to be a good influence instead of a terrible warning sometimes.
- Also, they have a nice fernery in the middle of the college, with huge tree ferns, and the roof terrace has a view of the Albert Hall
- Some gorgeous and much needed evening swims with Sue and a lot of ducks
- Slow stitching on a felt hoop – a Corinne Lapierre kit of toadstools and ferns – at home, and on the sari silk patchwork bag on the tube.
- The film of Paul Gallico’s book Flowers for Mrs Harris – they didn’t ruin it, hurray!
- Sourdough crumpets – thanks to London sister Tan for the recipe, which is a winner
Now I’d better go and sort out tomorrow’s batch of bread….
Same time next week then,
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Stones of Green Knowe – Lucy M.Boston
London Rules/Nobody Walks/Down Cemetery Road/Joe Country – Mick Herron
The Moonlight Market – Joanne Harris (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 