Half-term

Gone are the days when a Monday could have been a Friday and a Sunday a Thursday, for all it mattered. Now we are firmly rooted to the school calendar, but I still don't know what day it is. We have school days, days when Misha's working, days when he's not, Alastair's Portage day and Gregor's gymnastics day. And then it's holidays. This half-term Allie (my niece) happened to be playing a hockey tournament in at the local high school in Lowestoft, so we went along to watch her then she came back to ours to stay for a few days.

She's the orange goalie with a hook on her arm hiding behind her teammates while a short corner is being taken. But then she comes out to face this rather tall opponent and made a few grand saves, it has to be said. Rather her than me. Though with all that clobber on I suppose she's a bit better protected than the goalies when I used to play - in the days before health and safety became a career.

Gregor, who in this blog transfers his obsession from bees to knights, was very interested in Allie's helmet at the end of the match.

A day or two later we headed to Ipswich to do a number of things. We stayed a couple of nights at Sue's house (Allie's mum, my eldest sister) to ease the schedule. First off, I'd got tickets for the theatre. We watched a refreshing dance/physical theatre piece for littluns called "Muttnik the first dog in space", which the boys enjoyed and followed without much help. Here we are outside the theatre. I used to work here as an usherette 20 years ago and where I spent every Sunday afternoon for 2 years doing all sorts of shows from Thornton Wilder to Lorca in the Wolsey Youth Theatre.

We picnicked in Christchurch park before our next rendezvous. Alastair discovered a new-found zest for the playthings and was quite upset when we had to leave.

The reason being a bee exhibition, of all things. You see Gregor has an ongoing reward chart and (during the peak of his bee obsession in February) the reward he chose (for 15 ticks) was to meet a beekeeper. Well, it just so happened that one was visiting Ipswich for two days.....

....so he put on the beekeepers protective clothing, looked at the bees, listened to how they get smoked out to eat more honey and then fall asleep, rolled a candle from the beeswax,

and that was that. In the museum shop he spotted a sword and shield, so I bought him that since his next reward (which was already due) was a knight's costume, and the transition was seamless.

Outside Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich - a 16th century house, much altered in later years, and today housing some nice permanent exhibitions, including art by Gainsborough and Constable and Lowestoft porcelain.

That afternoon we went to Lavenham, a quaint Suffolk town with beautifully preserved Tudor buildings, to pick up some vintage Ladybird books I'd bought off Ebay - my new hobby.