Odds.....

It feels like it has been a funny kind of seven days, an odd week.  In reality it probably hasn't, I may just have remembered more odd moments from this week than normal.  We came home from being away on a Saturday afternoon, I usually shop for food on a Thursday but decided we would eat from the cupboards for the rest of the week.  We have limped along with our meals with no planning, it has made me glad I do bother.  Trying to make coleslaw without carrots and pizza without cheese is, well, interesting.

I spent an hour, at home, on Sunday afternoon on the phone trying to get my husband, three adults and six Explorer Scouts through a four foot stream of water that was blocking the road.  They had been out on an over night expedition and this was the only route out of the valley they were in.  To add to the mix one of the vehicles they were in was refusing to start.  Three hours later they were through with the help of a local farmer and a long tow rope.....

We gave our eldest a Meccano set for Christmas which he opened and set to with immediately.  There are lots of little pieces in a Meccano set, all of which are vital for construction.  He did this in a ideal location the way into our living room, the rest of the floor was taken up with other presents.  Our house is open plan downstairs we have little wall between our dining and living rooms just a large opening half of which is taken up by a chair, ours is not green and is in need of a little attention, the rest of the opening is the way into the room.  So to get into the living room you had to step over or through Meccano in action, is my child the only one who does this, plays in less than ideal places!  This is his first set so when he couldn't find a piece we had no box of spare bits, like we do with Lego, which we could ratch through to find a replacement.  So after the initial excitement it was cast to one side as it could not be completed.  In January I contacted Meccano to ask them if we could have a replacement piece, we searched high and low for it the day it went missing and concluded it may not have been in the box in the first place, a quick trawl on tinterweb revealed others had had the same problem.  This week an envelope arrived with a Calais postmark, at first I thought it might be a random object my husband had ordered on eBay, the account is in my name, but no it was the missing part from Meccano!  So eight weeks later the set is being worked on this time on the children's worktable rather than the floor!

It is definitely moving towards Spring in these parts.  The temperatures are still on the cool side but the sky has changed.   After months of heavy, gloomy grey skies they are now white and fluffy with patches of blue.  It makes me want to spend afternoons outside even if we are still having the odd shower.  So I planned to go out on Tuesday afternoon regardless of the weather.  The children really wanted to go to a local National Trust place to visit the bird hide there.  I had not banked on the closed signs being up when we got there, we live in a tourist area, in the Winter the area closes, sod the locals.  This is an unusual site tho' as you pay an entrance fee to visit the gardens and some of the grounds but there is a public footpath running through parts of it, so it is not closed completely.  Despite this, as we wandered around, I still felt like we were interlopers we did see several members of staff doing winter maintenance who didn't seem too perturbed to see us.  We had a lovely hour in the bird hide drinking hot chocolate, eating biscuits and watching our feathered friends.

...and ends on a sadder note.  Every Monday we go to a friends house to a singing group she runs, it was cancelled this week as her youngest was unwell.  The next day the little one was in hospital having tests.  Last night a gangrenous appendix was removed.  I am deeply shocked at how quickly it all happened.  So, so grateful that the GP she went to see on Tuesday referred them immediately to the hospital.  So, so grateful that it was picked up in time.  My thoughts are with this lovely family as they come to terms with their week.