End of term

 

Spanishgirl has been and gone. She was easy to have but I felt the absence of Spanish in the family: perhaps our lack was her gain as she spoke much more English than our earlier French visitors. Youngest was put under strain: Spanishgirl lives in Madrid and Youngest found it difficult to explain our country slow lane life! But our trip to London went down well with everybody - yes, even  the art heathens among us loved the trip to see the Hockney exhibition! - and a hanging out and paddling in the river evening with a little gang of girls was deemed the 'most fun'. They had to make more flapjack and she took home the recipe.

I have made a cushion for the Church Fete raffle (I was instructed to make red white and blue but in a Kath Kidson style).

And I have made progress with the new chair (but not with the old ones). 

It's the end of term and we are off to Dorset tomorrow for an even quieter bit of country life.

No need to translate flapjack!

When little French girls came to stay I developed an e-mailing habit with Maman, based on my O level French, long before they arrived. If the girls didn’t understand I fished out ancient vocab and we managed. At midnight yesterday we greeted Youngest’s Spanish exchange girl. My Spanish is minimal, of the hola/gracia variety. I am hoping her English will be good enough for us to manage the week. I have had no contact with Madre…

We do know she was very pleased to discover flapjack which you may remember Youngest took as a gift to her hosts. Spanishgirl had hot chocolate and flapjack on arrival and has had the same for breakfast – and taken some to school for snack. She left with Eldest to catch the bus; some careful organization has resulted in a clash of the Spanish exchange with the Work Experience week so Youngest is not at school to be followed today.

This week has been all about my taxi. Youngest has had to be in Chippenham for work from 9 to 4.30. She is loving working in the Swindon and Wiltshire History Centre where she’s been tasked with writing a timeline for our village for their website. I did look at the bus, but it takes an hour and she'd be leaving at 7.30... so that means two round trips a day for me. And then I do the ballet run three nights a week for Eldest.

We will go again tomorrow to catch the train to London to show off the capital and visit the Hockney exhibition. I’m hoping Husband might drive.

Being a Happy Mother

I may not be doing well at keeping an interesting and informative commentary on the life of this hausfrau, but I have had a busy week:

I have turned 10 sad, pilled cushion covers into 5 revamped ones for  Friendwithmatchinggirls for a small fee.

I have cleaned and tidied the bits of the house that show for a fete meeting on Friday and a supper party last night; making apple and walnut muffins for one and liver parfait, beetroot and orange soup, chocolate, chilli and walnut braised beef and an iced raspberry soufflé in a chocolate case for the other.

I have bought fabric for my new upholstery project, finished stripping back the chair so I could mend the springs and started the refurbishing task.


Oh, and I’ve promised the chair to Oldschoolfriend for the cost of the components. She has just embarked on a major upgrade of her house and is feeling down at the enormity of the disturbance to her home which is such that it makes relaxing at the end of the day impossible.

Today I have received cards from my girls and rather different rewards for being their mother: Youngest gave me two bars of chocolate that she’s rather hoping I’ll share and deigned to provide quality time by helping me to clean and tidy (her mess from) the room in which her Spanish Exchange student will be sleeping come Thursday. Eldest, on the other hand, has taken over the kitchen today. We were given eggy bread with fried apples followed by ginger and pear muffins for brunch; are shortly to be called to treacle soda bread and honey for tea and are to be treated this evening to a three course supper that she has been planning all week!

Not quite Christmas

I went to Manchester on Wednesday for reasons explained further down the page. Despite decorations and signs to the contrary it turned out they weren't quite ready for Christmas!

Youngest, as predicted, had a ball in Spain last week.

She’s been taken all over Madrid, but also to Toledo and Segovia and indulged with a variety of gifts – from a calendar of teenage fairies through a variety of sweet treats to a copy of Don Quixote (in English) and a Peanuts sweatshirt. She was exhausted when collected on Friday at midnight but also too excited to go to bed until we’d been told more news than we could be expected to absorb. We didn’t see her ‘til lunchtime on Saturday. The gifts we sent went down well. The flapjack was a particular success: they want the recipe! We'll teach Spanishgirl to make it when she visits in March.


Eldest received a conditional offer from Nottingham and an invitation to Manchester for an interview last week. I was requested to accompany her (joy!) and Wednesday was the day we went up. We left the house at 7.25am and parked at the station in time for the train to Cheltenham Spa. There we waited for 40 minutes before getting on a train to Manchester arriving at midday. A hasty 20 minute walk across town took us to the Alan Turing Building for a buffet lunch (pastries with a variety of fillings, rather dry) where we were invited to listen to a lecture on the delights of studying Maths at said university plus a taster lecture. This was to be followed by a tour where parents would be taken off separately. We agreed I didn’t need to hear the lecture and had pretty much had a tour marching through from the station so I decanted at that point for a little retail therapy. Eldest, meanwhile, got on with the programme.
She and Husband had visited earlier in the year. The lecture was the same as the one she’d heard, though the taster was interesting (but perhaps not useful?). The tour was also the same and, as last time, failed to show them any accommodation: apparently you have to come on a different day for that… Her interview lasted little more than ten minutes and, apart from a Maths problem, consisted of a chap asking questions whose answers could have been found on her UCAS form. I hope she made a better impression on her interviewer than he did on her!
We met up again at 3.30 and pottered around the town centre before heading for the station and some supper. I reduced the cost of the day by booking a 7pm train home so we had a certain amount of hanging about to do. The same route back brought us to our front door just after 11pm. I had good company for my outing, we enjoyed the occasion, but I’m not at all convinced it was worth the cost or the time! When I described the day to Husband he declared me 'Mrs. Grumpy', I dispute this: the day was a novelty and the only other time I went to Manchester I saw no more than the station the inside of a taxi and a meeting room, so I enjoyed my exploration… but I do think the university got the plan wrong, and I am cross about the £130.

Relief not panic

Youngest will go to Madrid, Spain this afternoon. It’s an exchange through school: we will have a Spanish girl to stay in March. There ought to be worry and perhaps panic; instead there is only relief!


We had an active half-term and did nothing you could call useful: a blustery walk to Old Harry’s Rocks, a trip to see a ridiculous film (The Three Musketeers, at which Youngest cheered and the rest of us laughed derisively), trawled the charity shops for items to be turned into three costumes for the school play, read the newspaper, fought over the puzzles, tidied the garden after the builders and before the greenhouse turns up…
And this week has been busy: school, tidying for Swedish visitors, altering aforementioned garments to make a day dress, beachwear and an evening gown that look vaguely 1920s, a coffee morning spent filling Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, upholstery (still taking out staples!), and finding suitably British presents to send to Spain. Not to mention that ballet is back of course and Youngest has been out babysitting two nights, had two after school rehearsals for said school play (The Boyfriend) and been to Rangers – a bonfire party last night.


Let’s face it: the family has been through two French Exchanges, went to Madrid earlier this year and Youngest went to Switzerland in the summer. Sending Youngest to Spain to an unknown family in somewhat of a rush is just a relief all round that she’s off! Except that this is Youngest: when we got in the car to go to school this morning she burst into tears, and again when I left her there. She managed some watery laughter in between, and she will be fine, she will love the experience and get on with the Spanish family regardless. She is good at making friends.


When she went to France Husband had to actually go to put her on the bus (as opposed to them leaving from school). Stood waiting to wave her off the mummies around him were discussing the poor girl in bits on the coach and how they wouldn’t be sending her, they’d be whisking her home at once, it was just too cruel… I told her this story on the way this morning, it made her laugh because she’d had a wonderful time. She’ll be fine, and she’s back in a week, hardly worth tidying her room!