Hottest April on record

The weather has been glorious this past week so we've been outside most of the time trying to keep up with our tomatoes & co and clear out the back garden. We've managed a paddle in the sea, though Gregor was more resilient than me and didn't seem to mind his toes getting numb as mine did after 30 seconds.

Yesterday we had a barbeque and Gregor was happy to baste the chicken with a ginger, garlic, lime and honey marinade. The lumps in foil are potatoes and corn. The Cumberland sausage is somewhere there, charring at the back.

As usual, it was Misha's job to do the salad which had plenty of chunky cucumber and celery for Gregor to pick out (and off our plates when he'd exhausted his and the bowl).

As I wrote to my friend Natalia today, who was raving about her father Pedro's huge pan of delicious jambalaya, the best food is always that that's left over and tastier the following day. This morning, after our porridge, we tucked into cold sausage sandwiches with ketchup. Yum!

We were quickly brought down to earth by the discovery of more pimples on Alastair's face. We are putting this down to one of three things: 1) heat spots, 2) allergy to sun-cream (I've already thrown out one bottle which Gregor reacted to), 3) chickpox. We reckon it's most likely to be the sun-cream, and besides, chickpox would be extremely bad timing - we are off to Prague in a couple of weeks. Also, today we begin Alastair's "multi-disciplinary assessment". Every afternoon until 10th April we will go to the child development centre near the hospital, 20 minutes away. There, Alastair will attend the nursery and be visited and observed by the various professionals involved in his development. At the end of this process we will all meet to discuss the observations, current plans and future outlook.