We went over to Cranbury Park on Sunday for the National Garden Scheme open day. Most of Duncan’s friends from school also seemed to be there so we bumped in to someone every five minutes or so as we toured the grounds. Christine had been telling everyone about the tiny frogs from a previous visit so we were glad to find that they were once again out in force. Favourite activity of the afternoon had to be rolling down the steep hill though!
Cranbury frogs
June 16th, 2015Double the fun
June 10th, 2015
The wait was finally over and at the weekend Emma could finally enjoy her joint birthday party with her friend Rhianna. After lots of initial debate about venue it ended up being at our house and, with a few drop-outs, it wasn’t too much of a squeeze. There was a craft theme and the combination of party bag decorating, decopatch (yes – now I know what decopatch is!) and bracelet making more than filled the time available to the extent that we had to text parents to tell them they could pick-up late. The party food pretty much all disappeared (perhaps because it was chosen by the girls themselves during one of their party planning sessions at school) and thankfully didn’t cause any allergic reactions (EpiPen was at the ready). The only downside of all this is that Duncan is still keen on having his birthday at home and 5/6 year old boys are a different proposition!
Egg Dropping
June 6th, 2015
The sun was shining for Emma’s sports day this year even if not on Emma! I only stayed for an hour although that was at least twice as long as Christine. It was long enough to watch Emma perform in the two team competitions and then come last at picking up balls and the Egg and Spoon! Her hat was obviously troubling her in the first (taking it off obviously hadn’t occurred to her) but it was something far more fundamental that was the problem with the latter: an inability to keep the egg on the spoon!
Sculptures at Hilliers
June 4th, 2015It’s that time of year again – Hillier Gardens have their new sculptures out. The only difference this year is that they’ve put the prices on the signs so you have to make sure you don’t read them first before guessing at the jaw-dropping numbers! The sculptures seemed a little less exotic than in some years (if you discount the pile of skull-like objects) and there were even a few that I’d be happy to have in our own garden (were it not for the price!).
Emma at Eight
June 3rd, 2015
I’ve been more than a little remiss in my blogging recently (nearly 5 months since the last post) but I couldn’t let Emma’s birthday pass without a mention and perhaps that will be the trigger for me to start posting again. Emma’s birthday fell in half term this year and both Christine and I took the day off with the intention of making a day of it but, having been away camping in Dorset for the weekend, both children seemed to keen to make the most of a day at home.
Emma was expecting to spend the day playing with all her new toys and, I suspect, was slightly disappointed that she didn’t actually get lots of new toys to play with! Her main present was an iPod Nano which, I shall be the first to admit, I won in a raffle at a recent conference. I did have to buy her some speakers later in the day though for fear of never being heard by my daughter again (although she’s quite capable of not hearing you even without headphones in!). Her party (joint with a friend) is still to come and I’m sure that will even the score.
And what is momentous about being 8? According to Emma, the fact that she can no longer go in men’s toilets! This fact is based on a sign in the local swimming pool but Emma has applied it more generally. I suspect more significant is the fact that Emma can be let loose in the pool on her own.
I can no longer remember life without children but somehow it also seems that Emma has grown up very quickly. Still hard to believe though that in another eight years she’ll be able to leave home and get married!
Map Management
January 18th, 2015
SOC had an event at Busketts Lawn (near Ashurst) today. We’d offered to help and a very thoughtful organiser had suggested that we should assist on the start which would save us the 1.8km walk there and back. Christine went out for her run first and I and the children were left in charge of the all important task of putting a map under each box so that competitors don’t have to faff around with trying to take just one map from the pile. The children seemed to love this job and, other than the odd complaint about cold toes, they kept going until Christine got back from her run.
They then went out on the White course and I was relieved from my post shortly to go out on the Brown. I dawdled around the first half until Rob Patterson caught me up. We raced around the next six or seven controls together before I finally got away. I probably clawed back a minute by the end but he still beat me by four overall. Looking at the download from my Garmin I ran a full min/km faster in the second half and my average heart rate went up from 144 to 160!
The area didn’t offer much variety with the strategy for most legs being to run straight trying to check off features on the way and not worry too much about missing the feature as a bit of running in circles in the right vicinty would usually pay off. It was still a nice place to run through despite all the mud.
Wassailing at The Vyne
January 18th, 2015
We went over to The Vyne yesterday to meet up with friends. Unfortunately it turned out that the playground there is closed until 13 February but there wasn’t too much complaining from the children. Whilst everyone else had lunch, Duncan and I joined one of the gardeners for a spot of wassailing to assure a good crop from the orchard. This involved drinking cider (at least for me) in a toast to the tree, placing toast soaked in cider around the tree (to encourage the birds to come and eat any pests), making lots of noise (to ward away the evil spirits), and party poppers (which left the tree suitably decorated). After lunch we wandered around the lake and up in to the woods. Remarkably 20 month old Alice insisted on walking the whole way until she finally fell asleep within sight of the car park.
Wessex comes to Romsey
January 16th, 2015Due to a change in venue, the Wessex Night League came to Romsey this week for an hour’s street-O. I didn’t have the best run. My first mistake was only taking a small Petzl. I should know better from previous events that Romsey has its fair share of dark alleyways, open areas and even some small patches of woodland. Starting out around the city centre I was also quite embarrased how poorly I know Romsey. I don’t think I’ve ever been in Memorial Park before for example.
I then wound my way out in to surrounding residential areas and managed to get myself hopelessly lost in an area where it’s impossible to tell which road is the main thoroughfare and which is yet another dead end. At this point I concluded that I wasn’t going to get all of the controls which was a mistake as, with about 15 mins to go, I realised that actually it probably was still possible. I then promptly ran in to a stream (not literally thankfully) and had to detour significantly to get across. I was doing something like 3.5 min/km by the end and managed to scrape in with just 16 seconds to spare.
The official results aren’t out yet due to a failed control but it looks like Tim Morgan made it round in a mere 10 mins less than me! Still, it got me out of the house and despite my cough/cold, I didn’t feel too bad afterwards.
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