End of Fame!
Pretty varied day today! Started by taking Anna to Stage by Stage, and from there went on to help some friends move some furniture with the van. That didn’t take too long, so then I had to go and return one pack of t-shirt transfer paper (I’d bought plenty as I didn’t want to run out but then didn’t actually need all of it.). That took us up to PC World, and usually while we’re there I let the children look in the pet shop which is next door.
Today that was a big mistake, as I forgot that Joe had some birthday money left over. He was absolutely desperate to buy something but about the only thing he had enough money for was a goldfish! So we came home with a bowl to set up, and one of us will be taking him back tomorrow to pick up a fish (which he thinks he is going to call Goldie, how imaginative) 
I guess I could have said no, but it seemed a bit mean! My track record with fish is Not Good though so I hope the poor thing will survive longer than a week!
Got home, set up the wretched bowl, then made some more banana cakes, with the added improvement of chocolate chips 
A while later the Beans arrived for lunch, on the way home from a week’s camping nearby. It was lovely to see them, SB went off and played with Abbie and Josiah, while BB pottered around … just nice to have ‘real’ time together, internet friends are great but even better in person as well!
They left (hope the journey home was okay!) and minutes later so did we; we went to see Anna’s end of summer school week presentation, which was an hour long performance of ‘Fame!’ I thought it was pretty good considering it was a wide age range of kids there and they’d only had a week to prepare it in. Anna had a tiny moment of glory as the maths teacher – so the other children in the photo are actually *meant* to be looking bored, as it’s a maths lesson!
Then after that we had to wait around for her to do a second performance, so we headed over to the Picture House Cinema just over the road, where there is a rather nice bar, had a drink, and taught Abbie & Joe to play Othello. Which ended up as Steve and I playing Othello 
Finally came home and I turned round and went out again for a meal with friends, which was a nice ending to the day for me, while Steve and the kids ended theirs with dinner and then back to back Simpsons
August 5th, 2006 at 20:52
thanks for a lovely lunch.
SB thought we should have gone and seen the performance!!
we got in rather late…
August 5th, 2006 at 23:15
Yes, lovely to pop in and see you . Cakes were good
Did worry a little as we left and I looked at the clock to see the time and hoped we hadn’t made you late. Journey home was ok, M5 was tedious at times, moslty heavy traffic/slow, rather than standstill jams, but by the time we had had a longish dinner stop on the M42 it was easy driving the rest of the way. However, tired parenst and 2 children who slept for too long in the car is never a good combination.