Where Did You Get That Hat?

It was very hot today.

This was most unexpected.

The weather has been rainy, cold and blowy all week except for the odd dry hour here and there.

We were not prepared.  I had taken raincoats but no suncream.

Granddad, who is follicly challenged in certain areas of his pate, was catching the sun.

Matilda observed this:

and rectified things by making him a very fetching sun hat:

He tried his best, but it really wasn’t working for him.

We have decided that it will not catch on.

Hidcote Part 3 – Autumn

And here are some images of Autumn creeping in amongst the dahlias.

Exciting for me because Autumn is my favourite time of year:

Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness and all that.

 

Hidcote – Part 2

People have been moaning about our summer so far, and in many ways I sympathise with them, but at Hidcote today I really think we got the best of both worlds in terms of seasons and planting. We had the last of the summer flowers:

and the beginning of the glories of Autumn with its fantastic varicoloured leaves and architectural seed heads.

Which I will put in my next post.

Hidcote Part 1

The plan today was to go out with Granny and Grandad to another of the National Trust properties on our wish list. We have spent the day at Hidcote Manor.

 

 

Unlike our day at Upton House, which is only six miles away from it geographically, but a million miles away from it in every other respect, we had a blast.

The weather was glorious.  The staff were friendly. The property was a delight.  To be fair, if the weather hadn’t been glorious the day would not have been half as delightful.

The joy of Hidcote you see, is in the gardens.  There are only three rooms of the house open and they are fairly humdrum, despite the glorious exterior:

Hidcote’s gardens were created by an American called Lawrence Johnstone. He spent forty years creating the gardens into what he called a series of ‘rooms’, each of which has a different character and planting structure.

It is an amazing garden, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.  If you are in any way interested in planting or flowers, or just want to stand at the edge of the Cotswolds and marvel, I urge you to go.

It is fun for children, as there are tonnes of places to hide and explore, as each of the ‘rooms’ is divided by pathways:

Doorways:

and lime avenues:

There is a croquet lawn where you can practice:

Awesome pigs called George and Ernest:

a very tame cat:

and some not so tame bees:

which are so raucous they have to be kept in their hives with bricks:

I will post on the plants and flowers shortly.  In the meantime I will leave you with my favourite shot of the day:

My family: bums aloft.

Good News: Not the Jehovah’s Witness kind

We are going on holiday next Friday.

We are going to the Cotswold Water Park which is where we were originally going.

We have a different house, which has no pool, but it has a washing machine. Yay!

All my friends can still come and play with me.

We can still go to Giffords’ Circus.

We are all delighted.

We have used our deposit with the other horrible company to book ourselves a holiday in a cottage in Herefordshire in the half term break.  It looks very nice.  We have paid in full.  If they mess this one up we will take them to the cleaners.

The sun shone today.

My children did not murder each other all day.

How to holiday on a knife edge

You may recall some weeks ago, our search for the perfect Boo holiday home for this year, and how I predicted that disaster would follow because that is just the way we like to roll in this household.

At that time it turned out to be surprisingly easy to find what we were looking for. I should have known that it was too easy.

We opted for a fairly splendid pad on the banks of a lake at the Cotswold Water Park just outside Cirencester. It had all mod cons (my brief – a holiday is not a holiday with three children if you are valiantly beating their clothes on a rock down by the river every five minutes), and a swimming pool (Jason is obsessed with the idea of swimming pools). The deposit was put down and we got on with our lives.

I had booked us tickets to see Gifford’s Circus in the week we were away.  This was highly recommended by Liberty London Girl over at her blog, and several people of my acquaintance on Face Book.  They are doing War & Peace this year. You might think I had had enough of it, already having waded through it earlier in the year, but the one I read didn’t have performing geese, so it’s all good.

I had invited two of my oldest friends and their kids to spend a day with us hanging around the pool and making lots of noise.

We were all really looking forward to it.

Last night, as he got in from work, Jason remarked that it was odd we hadn’t heard from the company wanting the remainder of the money as it was now about ten days before we were due to go. Most companies like the balance a week to ten days beforehand, when they sort out with you the issue of keys etc.

He called them.

He was on the phone for a long time.

The short, and bloody version is that in their small print it says we should have paid the balance ten weeks before and we didn’t, so they have retained our deposit (which was not insubstantial), and have given the house to someone else.

You can imagine the scene.

They claim to have e-mailed us about the balance on three separate occasions.  We do not have the e-mails. They tell us that they do not have to prove they sent them, and we cannot prove we didn’t receive them.  Not only that but they declare that as e-mail is, and I quote: ’100% reliable’, there was no need for them to try and contact us any other way despite the fact that they had our address and our telephone number.

They say they are not obligated to do anything for us because we failed to read the terms and conditions.  The best they are prepared to do is allow us to transfer the deposit to another holiday, but if we don’t do it by close of play today we lose the deposit entirely.

We spent all yesterday evening searching for holidays.

There are problems:

• It is very short notice to be booking a holiday. There isn’t a lot left.
• We now have pre-existing commitments that tie us to one area of the country. This narrows our search considerably.
• Jason is away for half the week anyway, and one of the reasons we picked somewhere so near to home was that he could easily reach us and spend more time with us instead of having to fling himself the length and breadth of the country.
• We cannot be flexible on dates because we have already pinched two days of the beginning of term, and the children’s Nana arrives from Canada to see us for the weekend on the weekend we are due back. And as she will be travelling over 2000 miles to see her grandchildren after an absence of over a year, we feel it is important to be there for her.

Searching the whole of this company’s website to find something suitable we came up with one property, in Oxfordshire. It was over a grand more than we had originally wanted to pay for what was a fairly average house, and the pool, which was a large part of the reason for the exorbitant price was only available between 1 and 2 in the afternoon or after 5 in the evening and on weekends by private arrangement.

Excuse my French but, Fuck That.

Size, location and availability shafted everything else.

After several hours of searching and the children going to bed looking like they had found out that Father Christmas is really a nasty man called Billy with no buttons on his raincoat, we have had a small brainwave.

It might just work.

There are other properties available at the Cotswold Water Park. They do not have pools, but at this stage even Jason doesn’t care. I never cared, so that is fine.  The houses are on the lake. The lake has beaches and canoes, and a swimming platform. There are also children’s parks and nature trails and a shared indoor pool complex.  The children will be happy.

More importantly there is a washing machine. I will be happy.

It is where we want to be, and it means we can still see our friends, husbands and acrobatic geese.

The big snag was that these properties are not with the company we used.

So what we have decided to do is to take one of these properties for the week we want in the location we want.

And because we do not wish to lose our deposit, even though I would rather eat cold sick than deal with this company again, we have looked at available holidays for our half term break, and are going to book a week away then using our deposit, and of course, paying the balance in full straightaway.

As Leicestershire refuses to pull into line with most of the rest of the country in terms of school holidays, our half term week is one week before almost everyone else’s.  This is, for once, very good as it means prices are less vertiginous and availability is high.

Jason is going to sort it all out today while we are off on another adventure, and by the time we get home this evening we will have two holidays booked and paid for and the children can start believing in the tooth fairy and Easter bunny again.

Right?

 

 

Oscar wisdom

Oscar was talking to Jason in the garden last night as he and Derek frisked about and Jason slumped over his forty third gallon of tea:

‘You see this whip dada?’

He points at one of Derek’s toys which is a stick with a string dangling from the end.

Jason nods: ‘mmmmm’.

‘If I was a cowboy, I would use this whip to kill demons.’

Jason nods again: ‘aaahhh.’

‘Because that’s what they do you know. Cowboys kill demons dada.’

Judging by the lassooing method he was demonstrating earlier in the day at granny’s house, I think the demons can rest easy in their beds, or nests, or whatever form of abode weary demons live in.

Potty

The morning has gotten off to a flying start.

We have been waiting a long time for the pottery we decorated at the Bridgewater Factory in Stoke on Trent to arrive.  Granny and the children have been asking me every day for a week now when their things would come.

This morning, just as I had plunged the cafetiere, the postman arrived with the box.

Hoorah!

I am currently drinking my coffee out of the mug I decorated myself:

I am very, very pleased with it.

Oscar and Tallulah have had toast for breakfast just so that they can use their plates:

Oscar said: ‘I wonder how that big smudge got on there.’  I said: ‘You made it’.  To which he replied: ‘Ah! It is an excellent smudge. I am very happy with it.’

Tallulah is planning a return visit to make herself a matching mug.

Tilly is very pleased with Derek’s bowl:

Derek will be more impressed when there is something in the bowl.  Steak and kidney pie, or black forest gateau knowing her exalted tastes.

Granny has not got her plate yet:

But when we have done all our errands this morning we are taking it over to her.  She will be so excited.  It is a most excellent plate.

We are celebrating.  I am having another cup of coffee, and I have promised the children a roast chicken dinner so they can christen their plates properly.

Derek is having one too.

Grace’s Fund

Grace is a little girl who has cerebral palsy.

She is five years old, and she has never taken a step unaided.

She has been selected for surgery which will change her life and allow her to walk.

This is great news.

Unfortunately the surgery will cost £50,000 as the only place she can have this done is in the U.S.A.

Grace’s family are fundraising like mad, and are doing very well, but £50,000 is a big ask, particularly in the current economic climate.

I do not know Grace personally, but she is a friend of my friend Diane, and Diane asked me if I would tell you about Grace, and give you some details and links in case you would like to donate some money to the fund set up to send Grace for her surgery.

It is the least I can do.

You do not have to feel obligated to donate. If you do donate, you do not have to give much.  Every little helps.

If you can, you would be helping change the life of Grace, and the lives of her family and the friends that love her forever.

Which is not bad for a few minutes work is it?

I’ll shut up now and let Grace do the talking:

If you don’t want to donate by text, you can visit the website here, and access Grace’s Just Giving Page.

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

Tallulah: ‘Oscar and me are havin’ a fight.’

Oscar: ‘Yeah! We’re gonna have a big fight aren’t we Tallulah?’

Tallulah: ‘Yeah! That’s right. We are.’

Oscar: ‘Ummm. When are we having our fight Tallulah?’

Tallulah: ‘At six o’clock yeah? Be there or be square.’

Oscar: ‘Ummmm. When is it six o’clock Tallulah?’

Tallulah looks at the kitchen clock and confidently pronounces:

‘Now. It’s six o’clock now.’

Tilly, who has been listening with weary patience, interrupts:

‘Actually Tallulah, it’s half past twelve.  Which means you’ve got a really long time to wait before your fight.  You’ve read the clock backwards.’

Tallulah is slightly wrong footed by this.

Only slightly:

‘Oh well! Let’s fight now. Let’s fight!’

Oscar: ‘Yeah! Fight! Fight! Fight!’

They proceed to set about each other.

I should intervene, but we are well into the holidays, even I am bored of the sound of my own voice and I am curious as to how this will play out.

Two minutes in, with lots of ‘Ha!’ and ‘Hai Ya!’ and ‘EEEEEE’ and ‘Cha!’ noises Oscar starts wailing:

‘You hurt me! You just hurt me! Ow! Stop that! Just stop that! It really hurts.’

Tallulah says: ‘Sorry Oscar!’

But blithely keeps on chopping away at him.

Oscar shouts: ‘Maaaa maaaaaaaaaa! Tallulah is hitting me and it reaaaaaallllllly hurts.’

I walk up to them.  I survey them.  I stare penetratingly at them and say in a brisk voice:

‘What do you expect if you have a fight with each other?’

They look slightly amazed.

I say: ‘Go away and play something else which doesn’t involve karate chopping each other in the windpipe.’

and end with: ‘Fools!’

Then, as they stagger off, I lock myself in the toilet and laugh like a drain.