Skip to main content

Summer holidays: Half way through

Six weeks sounds like a long time when you're at the beginning, doesn't it?  But it's a lot less long when you're halfway through, wondering where the time went.  Here's what we did with some of it.

The males of the family (including my dad) went to see the truck racing at Donington, the first Saturday.  They came back full of truck excitement - and with bigger hands than usual!  Meanwhile, my mum and I went for a nice peaceful walk.



Next day, Theo was a little tired.


Later that week, we drove to Dove Dale and climbed Thorpe Cloud in the rain, which helpfully and unexpectedly ceased just as we got to the top.  We were able to have lunch with a view and without getting soaked.  A kestrel came and hovered nearby, looking as if it were hung from the sky by an invisible string.



Coming down, the boys decided that running was the way to go.  This is my new favourite picture of me with them.

We also went to a tractor festival (oh yes, we know how to have fun!) where Toby had his first go on a quad bike.  He was cautious while driving but fizzing with excitement afterwards.



The second week, both boys went to a holiday club run by a couple of local churches.  Toby loved it; Theo endured it rather; they both came home with an enormous bag of craft activities, and entertained us for days afterwards by dressing up as knights and acting out scenes from a play.

I took advantage of my free time by picking blackberries for my yearly batch of jam (the hedges were overflowing with berries!) and getting myself a new haircut.  Now I just need a better photo of my new haircut.

Last week, Toby went to a tennis course, and Theo and I went shopping, entertained friends, bounced on the trampoline and watered the garden - endlessly and repeatedly, owing to Theo's current obsession with the hose.  Still, it seems to be doing some good, judging by the size of the carrots!



And finally, Toby has been getting rather good at Mariokart Wii.  He was so pleased with his first place trophy that he and Theo had to celebrate like Formula 1 drivers do - by tipping champagne over their heads.  Or rather, firmly-closed bottles of squash.  The champagne will have to wait for another day.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

A mini-pilgrimage to Derby Cathedral

On a sunny day near the end of June, I set out to walk from my village of Findern to Derby Cathedral. If this had been 1826 or even 1926, this would have been a perfectly normal activity. In 2026, no one spends two hours walking to the nearest city. They drive, or catch a bus. It feels faintly subversive to ignore the more obvious modes of transport and to set off on foot. Priory Way, the footpath north out of Findern, is on the Six-Inch series of OS maps from the late 1800s. It has probably not changed much, give or take a few electrical pylons. The fields and farms are still there. Butterflies flew over bright yellow flowers of lady's bedstraw; a hare paused to look at me; a squirrel panicked and almost ran over my toes. After a few miles I came out at Heatherton Pond, greeting its more manicured path with relief. This is now the edge of Derby city; the boundary runs just south of the lake. However, I was surprised at how much more green space I encountered. A cycle path took me ...

Sheffield Cathedral: dogs and lions welcome

Earlier in the day I had caught the train up from Derby and visited Rotherham Minster . The Supertram from Rotherham brought me to Sheffield Cathedral just as the clock struck two. I realised as I left the tram that I had totally forgotten my cathedral passport until now. Rotherham may not have had a stamp anyway, though I probably could have got the vicar's signature or something, but I dug the passport out of my bag to be sure to remember it. The shop had a stamp, I was told, and so it did. Formalities completed, I went to explore Sheffield Cathedral. It's a strange jumble of a building; "one of those forever unfinished places" as an architectural journal  describes it. This view along the church towards the east end makes it look pretty standard - a medieval chancel and a Victorian-renovated nave. But if you turn ninety degrees to the north, there is another long axis - a regimental chapel that leads through to the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. At one point in the 193...