just another morning here

I have spent far too much time in a car today. Going to blog backwards here … 3hr towing lesson this afternoon. Manically hoping that if I were that awful and doomed to fail, the instructor wouldn’t be letting me sit the test on Wednesday but I’m not really that sure. Still, apparently these photos are going to end up on his website (towing page apparently under reconstruction at the moment). And I can highly recommend Taylor Made Driving, although if, after Wednesday, I never have to sit next to Mr Taylor in a car again, I will be very happy!

Before that I was driving home from Birmingham, where I spent a happy night escaping from reality with one of my best and oldest friends, we saw Nanci Griffith in concert (loads of nostalgia there as we used to spend hours listening to her earlier stuff in our teenage angst years together), and chatted until the early hours in the basic but perfectly adequate Etap hotel. It was a great night, and we will have to do something similar again next year. Perhaps a whole weekend rather than just a fleeting night!

Going back even further then. Over the weekend we had Caitlin and Riona with us, their company was pleasant as always even if it did make things somewhat messier and noisier than average (but only a little ). On Friday night we watched Superman Returns, which Steve and I really enjoyed. Nods to the original films in all the right places!

We did not very much on Saturday other than a picnic lunch in the park; then in the evening went down to a campsite near Plymouth where our friends Stuart and Liz were camping. The children had a swim in the pool, we all had a delicious Cadac (still want one of those) meal, lots of chatting/playing, etc.

Sunday had a slow start; Anna went off to look after Robyn for the day – I hope Aunty Emma found it as useful as we did! Then in the afternoon I set off for Birmingham. On the way I had a sub-mission to pick up the 3/4 size cello that I bought on ebay last week, found the house easily enough, was very worried that it might not be a 3/4 size (it is though – only a couple of inches different to the 1/2 size). It sounds much much nicer than Anna’s 1/2 size one – it’s old and a bit battered but that has obviously added to the tone of the instrument. Now if she can just learn the newly spaced fingering she’ll be well away.

Back to today then, oh and some random home ed from Friday, too. When I got home I found Josiah had been doing lots of map stuff with Steve; discussing directions and making compasses, and drawing maps to find ‘treasure’ on ‘Downstairs Island’. He’d obviously had lots of fun doing it. Friday’s education was helping the plumber install a new tap in the kitchen, the old one had been dripping since February, and I finally got annoyed enough to do something about it!

There, up to date. Tomorrow has another towing lesson in it, the last before my test. I am incredibly stressed out by the whole thing, the injustice of it all still annoys me immensely. However, as an aside but on the same subject, Steve and I have a small bet on. He thinks that he can pass the towing test without any tuition, because he’s such a great (and humble ) driver. So we are paying the aforementioned Mr Taylor of Taylor Made Driving an extra hour or so, to give Steve a mock test. This will cost us approximately the same as a good night out on the town, but give us far more entertainment value which will last a long time to come, whatever the outcome! Watch this space for results of both in due course

Oh, and just for a laugh, here is Josiah’s giant Balance (Sainsbury’s own Special K) flake. It was as big as his ear, which was hilarious, apparently!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 19:49 and is filed under away from home, general, geography, out and about. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.