Invitation

My brother says he won’t come to our cousin’s wedding because his children aren’t invited: isn’t part of the marriage service about the procreation of children, so why would you exclude them? (He was in full grumpy old man mode.)

Of course, they’re not excluded. Cousin’s nephew and niece are certainly attending, and there may well be others, but can he really be expected to include his six first cousins their 5 spouses and their 10 children? By not inviting the children, but inviting his uncles and aunts he has also removed the obvious child carers, Granny, and reduced at a stroke the number of guests needing entertaining. I am torn between the waste of an occasion when we can’t get the next generation together and my understanding of the need to keep the numbers down.
When we got married there were few children around (and some of them were my first cousins!) so they came, or didn’t, according to their parents. But I’m as guilty as the next woman of thinking hard who to invite to occasions… 'though I tend to include the children and restrict the invitations accordingly. More children mean fewer adults! I’d have been disappointed not to be asked at all, but when your parent is one of 4, and their mother was one of 5 you will understand that there is a large extended family out there!
So no outfits needed for my girls, and I’ve remodelled the dress I wore to the last wedding we went to (a very intimate affair that included the children of the people who attended), don’t know what to do about a hat. Now I like a hat but haven’t one to go with this outfit. Do I shop or go without? If it’s going to rain I’m better off without, and the high heels in a marquee may be a mistake.

Catching up

The birthdays were both deemed successful; the camping, fun.

Eurostar and the TGV to Lyon were brilliant. We had a busy trip, eating too well and all managing to speak a little French: it’s amazing what you can manage if everyone has to order their own food or go without.

Eldest got nine A* and an A.
My trainee teacher has started work.
My girls have gone back to school.


I AM ALONE IN THE HOUSE.


I may take the day off; eat chocolate with a good book; think in the sewing room; play in the garden… or perhaps just take delivery from Sainsbury, do the washing, tidy the sitting-room and catch up on what’s been going on on the blogosphere, all while listening to Radio 4 with no chance of anyone turning it off.

Busy bee

I’ve been doing quite a bit of sewing lately. Last seen delivering prom dresses, more recently I've been measuring up for some outdoor seat cushions and being asked whether I’d consider making cushions for someone to sell on E-Bay, or perhaps sell something for myself. (I still don’t think I could command the money needed to make it interesting to be making the same thing over and over.) As Likeminded friend-from-round-the-corner discovered when she came to play with me: I’m not always capable of finishing projects I’ve got bored with. She and I talked about our collection of sewing machines and compared presser feet, we considered patterns, fabric and embroidery. It was all very pleasurable!

I’m getting very little time to myself. I’m still not used to having Husband round the house, and now I have Eldest as well. I love them both of course, but my routine is shot! I’m keeping on top of the washing but the cleaning and gardening are never really planned as such: I tend to do the thing that shows most in the hope that it will demonstrate that I have done some useful work rather than idle about in a novel or the Blogosphere. In fact I’ve barely been here of late, and probably won’t make it again until after Eldest’s birthday, family visits, Youngest’s Guide camp, Husband’s birthday and a holiday travelling along the Rhone.
If I don't make it back, have a great summer!

The Prom

     It was the Year 11 prom on Friday evening.

Eldest had her first visit to a beauty salon to have her nails painted and her eyelashes dyed. She spent the morning wearing a pair of paper flip-flops provided by the salon as neither of us had thought about wet toe nails. (I took Youngest to Town for a guitar exam so couldn’t whisk her home.) I was allowed to wield a set of heated rollers leant to me by a friend to get an evening look for her hair, but not to help with make-up since she rarely sees me in any and didn’t think much of my suggestions. (I mostly can’t be bothered and Husband doesn’t like it.) She went to the hotel with her friends in a 1947 fire-engine (they loved ringing the bell and the journey seems to have been a bit of a highlight) and was picked up again at midnight by her Dad. She’d had a lovely time. (And we were much relieved that she had abandoned a ‘plan’ to set up tents in an unknown field to continue partying…) We are very proud.

The other prom dress was also a success, pictures will follow on receipt.
No, I don't know when an end of year dance became a prom: it just seems to be so.

Football!

In between other things Youngest’s room has been redecorated, refurnished and cleaned several times. She arrived home on Saturday in time for supper with Doctor Who. On Sunday we treated the man of the house to breakfast in bed, some bottles of posh beer and some boy’s DVDs. He then, of course, watched the football…

If you have missed Lynne Truss on the Today programme on Radio 4 you have missed a treat whether you care for the football or not. I’d give you a link to listen but they don’t seem to think anyone would wish to hear it again! However you can read her thoughts here.
In other news: the GCSEs are over and the planning of the prom ensemble begins in earnest.

Packing

This week we’ve been madly planning the church fete and panicking about the appalling weather forecast. By Thursday lunchtime it seemed obvious we must put up tents, if only so we could set up during the day: no good the sun coming out for the evening if we weren’t ready to go. The clouds looked billowy and grey periodically on Friday, but in fact I now have a ridiculous T-shirt tan that will take weeks of sunshine to loose. I’m not complaining you understand: the glorious weather brought out the village and its surrounds en masse and we had a great evening (well, I expect we did. I don’t know how much we made yet, was busy running my allotted stall and hoping the llama had turned up, but you know what I mean.) The llama was much admired ‘though I never met the kind owner with whom I now have an e-mail relationship. Must thank him! Packing up this morning everyone was congratulating one another on a great evening.



Also this morning I have packed Youngest off on her French Exchange. She suddenly got tearful and has been worriting. I suspect she isn’t sure she can keep up good or even merely tidy behaviour for a whole week. But I’m looking forward to hearing she’s having a lovely time and managed not to be sick on the journey. The photos are the two sides of a tea cosy which I have sent to the French mummy. (Her daughter bought her a teapot when she visited us.) I am very pleased with the ‘ensemble unique’ of it all!

A Good Read

Have just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: I couldn’t put it down. And yes, there was lots of revolting violence. 

I always have a book on the go. I love a well plotted thriller. I’ve read everything I could find by P .D. James and have to wait for her next. I’m now onto the other things Henning Mankell has written because I’ve read all the Kurt Wallanders. There was a time when I read everything by James Clavell, Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Alistair MacLean, Wilbur Smith, Len Deighton…. They’re not all strictly crime writers, more adventure storytellers, but they have their share of graphic description of appalling human behaviour.
What I’m getting at, perhaps too heavy handedly, is that crime fiction is full of nasty crime. The first in the Millennium Trilogy is brilliantly plotted, full of interesting characters and largely well translated (I had issues with some odd sentences that didn’t sound quite right).
I love a mystery to solve, but I prefer to read about them: I don’t want to see the bloodbaths and brutality. My imagination is sufficient illustration. So I haven’t watched Luther, or Waking the Dead, Trial and Retribution, Silent Witness and Wire in the Blood which have exercised other people so much, and I doubt I'll go to see the Dragon Tattoo film. It’s not that I’m not prepared to see any violence, or a horrific crime scene, but I like something with an engaging narrative, the possibility that I could solve the clues and that isn’t relentlessly grim. I watched early Waking and Witness episodes and found them unlikely frankly. And I loved Bond and Bourne at the cinema! They were exciting films, although in these more graphic days some of the scenes were very hard to look at – I’d have been behind the sofa at home.
Will need to find out what next is in store for Lisbeth Salander, ‘though I suspect it won’t be any less horrible.