Martha's Marvellous Munchies

This month we have survived #thehottestdayoftheyear (July 19th), the first week of the summer holidays, and a rain of dried grass.  (Seriously - clumps of hay drifting down out of a clear sky!)  There has been much fun with the hosepipe and paddling pool, several barbeques, and many hours at the playground.  Pretty standard summer stuff. Toby  - finished his first year of school!  He got a glowing report from his teacher, and we've been so proud of him. - camped out with Graham in the back garden. - was very nervous about getting into the swimming pool.  Once he finally summoned up courage to let go of me and take two steps to the side, he turned round with a big grin and said, "Just kidding!" - decided to dabble in watercolours and painted a very creditable landscape. Rolling hills in watercolours... ...and the Seattle Space Needle in Megabloks - completed his tennis course and got a racquet as a reward. Theo   - can scoot a decent

Margins. The word, dropped in at the tail end of a sermon, made my ears prick up.  Margins. At first I thought the speaker must mean setting boundaries, creating carefully neat frames around those areas of life so likely to spread into puddles of time.  The quick check of social media that becomes an hour.  The late night reading junk food words.  I envisaged lines of colourful patterns surrounding these things, corralling them into shape. Designed by Freepik As he continued speaking, the image shifted.  He talked about arriving at appointments 15 minutes early, leaving time to be available, gaps for the unknown.  I saw the page of a book, dense black letters in the centre, and white margins around the edge.  That space that we don't really see, and yet it helps to define the story.  If it wasn't there, how cluttered would we find the page?  How difficult to concentrate on the words? Of course, the margins don't always stay clear.  I still have a copy of my

This was going to be one of those thoughtful posts.  But it's just not been that kind of week.  Between boys just plain going to bed late to boys being violently sick (that was Toby.  He was absolutely fine the next day), I don't seem to have had enough space to think about much, let alone write it down.  So I thought I'd skim through the photos on the camera to see what inspiration I could gather for a quick post.  Turns out the camera this month contains 382 photos of cars.  Do you want to see 382 photos of cars?  I think not.  Or if you do, feel free to visit.  Graham and Toby will happily talk you through the make, model and specifications of every single one, and I can sneak off and do some writing. Very old car  What else?  There's some very blurry / underexposed / differently angled photos taken by Theo.  A collection of photos of playdough, taken by Toby.  Ummm... oh, here's some pretty food.  Want to see some pretty food? These are those Jamie

The rain... oh, the rain!  We've had far too much to be reasonable, especially in a month purporting to be summer.  Looking back through my diary, I discovered that we did have some hot days too, but they seem a long time ago.  We started the month with a visit to Bristol, where we were generously fed and entertained by friends and family.  Graham got breakfast cooked for him on Father's Day, and counted votes for the EU referendum.  I wrote a guest post for Derbyi website, and attended a Derby Parents Social Group meetup. Monster truck at Motor Madness Toby Trying out a motorbike for size - has been doing a free 6-week tennis course, and (slightly to our surprise) really enjoying it. - loved watching monster trucks pull a car apart at the Motor Madness event - danced in the rain at our local village fete - was Robin to his friend's Batman for a superhero day at school - can do a forward roll and attempt a cartwheel.  Gymnastics suddenly seem