The Aussies have left the building

As rare as baby pigeons

Well, another beautiful sunny English day. In my imagination anyway. What is wrong with this country that it was warmer on Christmas Day in Belfast than it was there the day before yesterday. I get that Belfast is technically a different country (no doubt someone will correct me) but it's still part of the great Great Britain that we live in, they speak our language (apparently) and that was the only weather stat I know off the top of my head. The weather here is monumentally shit and I spend around 98% of my time wishing I was in the Maldives but when the sun does make a rare appearance, there is nowhere on earth like England (no doubt someone else will correct me). As proven by this photo which was taken on my run yesterday. I have to own up that the photo wasn't the reason for stopping. I stopped to have a rest and taking a photo seemed a reasonable excuse to stand around for a few seconds. It does, however, prove that the sun does come out here very occasionally.

And so, with a grey sky, a howling gale whipping around the house and destroying my delphiniums and not much hope of a summer in sight, the weather reflects my mood. The Aussies have left, the house seems empty with only three children in it and I find myself having to talk to The Boy (his words a few minutes ago were "Good strimming Girl, wine's in the freezer, get me that gin & tonic"). The Monkey will be bereft now that his bad-influence cousin has left. They properly bonded on a day out to Legoland on Wednesday when they spent the entire car journey home discussing the various qualities any self-respecting 5 or 6 year old knight should require of his sword:

Monkey:  A sword should be thick but long
Freddie:   No! A proper knight would have a shorter thinner one.
Monkey   I don't agree - it's all about power
Sister-in-law    I second that - it's all about how you use it
Freddie    No! It needs to be long and thin (note how small boys contradict themselves)

I may be a year younger but you
will show me respect when you stay
under my roof

Me           Not too thin
Monkey    No! Freddie No!
Freddie     Fraser you're being so negative
Monkey    No I'm not!
Freddie     Yes, you are and your negativity is bringing you down!
Monkey     Shut up Freddie - I'm trying to talk.

S.I.L and I promptly piss ourselves laughing and Monkey bursts into tears. All fun.

The long and painful summer holidays are looming, the weather's crap and we have nothing planned. Partly because taking three small children on holiday is a complete pain in the arse and partly because we're wondering whether we really want to spend a week or two in an extortionately priced house in Devon or Cornwall if it's going to piss it down every day and there aren't any toys or Peppa Pig DVDs. We can be miserable in our own house. The ideal situation would of course be to go away with another family so that the kids can play / fight / beat eachother up while the grown ups make their first gin & tonic at 10am but weirdly everyone is busy the week we want to go away. It's either genuinely the most popular and cheapest week of the entire year (not the case for 1st week of August) or all our friends are scared of our kids. Or us.  I am deafened by the sound of tumbleweed whenever I mention it.

The long and painful summer holidays may start early for us. The Monkey is having gromets fitted in his ears on Monday after a 2 year campaign against some hearing loss caused by repeated ear infections when he was smaller. I've told him he's having his ears mended. "Great, does that mean I won't have to keep saying pardon?" I bloody hope so. The only time he doesn't say pardon is when his supersonic senses hear the word "icecream" from 6 miles away. The consultant wants to remove his adenoids at the same time. As this involves a 10 day recovery time which would effectively mean the long and painful summer holidays starting 2 weeks earlier than they should, I have begged the consultant only to remove them if absolutely necessary. Or to at least remove his vocal cords aswell while he's there.

And so we plod on through our wet and miserable English summer. Wimbledon's started so it was never going to be nice these two weeks anyway.

Wish us luck for Monday. It could be the longest ten days of my life afterwards. "What the heck" as Freddie would say.