Could this be Summer?

Old friends

A week of hellos and goodbyes.  On Friday we once more headed to Helen and George's for the night. They are probably sick of us by now, but are either too polite or too drunk to say. The purpose of this trip was to spend another 24 hours with Rob's dad before he flies back to NZ on Tuesday. It's fair to say the weather has not been kind to him. Even once he headed north to Scotland, the bad weather followed him, while we basked in the sun in the south. On his return, the rain joined him. After a smashing dinner, hearing tales of his trips in the north, on Saturday I made a trip of my own into London to meet an old friend. Nic Whalley is famous in our house for his repeated hospitality at some of Sydney's finest restaurants where he was the boss - Otto, Tetsuya, Lotus etc. One involved a new year's eve, where he was in charge of Cruise restaurant, one of a few in the Overseas Passenger Terminal. While its position offered stand out views of the opera house, it excluded any view of the harbour bridge, which really has the money shot when it comes to the midnight fireworks. At 11.45pm, Nic tapped me on the shoulder and led my sister, my Dad and Alexandra onto the roof. A waiter appeared with 4 Champagne flutes and on the stroke of midnight the 4 of us stood alone to watch the bridge explode with colour and light, while also eyeing the opera house, a view no one else in the building enjoyed. Anyway, over the years we met again and again at functions and events, we were lucky enough to be invited to, and Nic became a friend. The girls know him as the man who taught them how to point, roll their eyes and stare at crazy people, whilst chanting "knock, knock, curly whirly, err, errrghhh". Anyway here he is, across the table from me at the Tate Modern restaurant yesterday, where we shared a carafe of English wine, with his lovely partner Yoko (no, not the one who broke up The Beatles) and this is the lovely sea bream who gave its life for my lunch. Nic is a wonderful human being and makes me laugh almost as much as Rob , Paul Chinnery and Richard Hand do.

 On Sunday, we drove to Dad's for lunch with the delicious Aunty Joyce. Although not actually a blood relative, growing up she was as good as a real aunty to me, we called her children our cousins and our two families went on many adventures together. She hadn't changed a bit, despite claiming to be in her 70s, and we had a brilliant time catching up.

The sun it doth shineth

It's true, so far spring has been a total washout. but a feint glimmer of sunlight meant a much-postponed wood walk for Flo's class could go ahead on Wednesday. I love helping out with the Woodpeckers class, they are all still so young and cute and I get lots of cuddles and drawings as gifts. (Not too many cuddles, of course, in case an innocent exchange of affection is misconstrued as something inappropriate, even though I'm in a class full of other kids and two teaching staff. At least that's what it says here in this 498 page manifesto on how to listen to children read or help them paint a toilet roll in class, appendix A, subsection 43c/17.) I digress. On Wednesday I helped my group of 4 into their wellies and coats and off we all splodged through the mud to the school's own wood. Our purpose, to look for minibeasts of the variety the kids have been learning about in class - ladybirds, beetles, earwigs, centipedes, ants etc. It's funny that in England this is as exciting as the wildlife gets on this level, but of course a walk like this wouldn't be possible in an Australia woodland for risk of the children being killed by the minibeasts they found. There was something absolutely gorgeous about the thrilled look on their collective faces everytime someone found a tiny spider or a woodlice. They didn't care that they were uncovering everyday insects they could find easily in their own back gardens - it was the thrill of the discovery.

I organised a Mum's night out on Friday night at the local pizza place. 10 of us assembled for a really fun night, but got a bit messy at the end. After leaving the restaurant, an unwise breakway group went on to a bar for another drink, and an even smaller group ended up back at our house, opening another bottle. Before I crawled into ed in the small hours, Rob had been woken by my friend Lucy who strolled into our bedroom while Rob was sleeping. Needless to say, the result on Saturday morning, afternoon and evening come to that, is in my top 3 hangovers of all time. Maria took me out for lunch for my birthday on Saturday and I could barely string a senetnce together what with the spinning room and the moving staircase down to the loo. I will spare you the photos of the night here. 

On Sunday we woke to gorgeous sunshine and I took the girls down to the seafront to ride their bikes while I ran. Afterwards we had a christening of the new gas Weber, with marinated chicken, salad and Hugh Fairly-Longname's cherry tomato, new potato and haloumi kebabs.

 

Finally, my very own boxing gloves arrived today. Aren't they brilliant?!

My birthday explained in pictures

The magnum

The poster( boy)

Jack in the Green garlands

The parade

The fireeater

The lunch

The cake

Thanks to Lucy for having her 40th on Friday night, allowing me to hook up with fabulous old friends, to Helen and George for the (inadvertent) Champagne lunch,  to Rob for doing all the cooking and clearing up at my birthday lunch (and for the Ryan Gosling poster), to Ruth for coming to Hastings for the night and totally making my birthday, and to Hastings for holding the brilliant Jack in the Green festival the same weekend as my birthday.