Weekend

We seemed to have worked out weekends a bit. The arrival of 3 new bikes has certainly helped; Fran and Max have a routine that involves pegging it at great speed down to a lock then climbing trees and scrambling down banks (Famous Five anyone?) and Maddy and i do more sedate trips round the lake that involve a certain amount of ego massage for Maddy 😆 Either way, everyone is happier and i have a smaller bum. As the only possessor of a bum in the entire house, a smaller one would be something to be greatful for 😆 Still, i’m firmly in the 12 stone somethings now, so although i haven’t quite kept to my 3lb a month target, i’m not that far off it either. And all things considered, that isn’t too bad.

Saturday involved a voucher spending trip to Ikea for me and Fran. I set off confidently to Milton Keynes, assuming i’d hit the bizarre grid of roads and pick up a yellow Ikea sign like last time. But no, they’d removed them all and the MK Ikea is far from obvious. We circled the town for a while (I wasn’t lost, Ikea was, before you start) and eventually found it, lurking in the backwaters of Bletchley. Obligatory 2nd World War car Ed followed before we hastened inside to find the cafe and prepare ourselves for the onslaught *smacks lips*

Fran really was a pleasure to have with me (and essential too as we needed 2 trolleys!) but i was remarkably restrained, given i didn’t have Max with me. I think i bought less random things than ever before, even less than the time i went with Alison when Ikea-ing was somewhat hampered by the 8 children in tow! However, they didn’t have the office racking i wanted, or the little table, so sadly we will have to return 🙂 Did get 2 bookcases for downstairs (all now stocked with kids books and HE stuff and looking very resource roomy) a little shelf for under the stairs (early readers and ladybird books), a standard lamp (got an awful feeling there is one the same in at least one friends house already!) and a variety of other things. (Oh and a bag of biscuits and cakes, those green things are SOOOO yummy!)

On the way home Fran and i circled through a lot of subjects, reminding me again of how much i miss her now she doesn’t sit near me in the car. We dissected the concept of great Britain and the United Kingdom, talked about devolved government, talked about the impact of “the troubles” on my Irish family and my growing up years, discussed capital cities and where we’d been and eventually ended up singing Molly Malone which my nana always used to sing me when i was little and which brings out the Irish accent in me! If you follow the link, look at the photo and absorb the fact that Dubliners refer to her as “the tart with the cart”, you’ll figure that she may well have had a less than delicate fever at her unhappy end (EDIT: rofl, what a double entendre!!!! Ooops!) but for the sake of argument, we rambled on about typhoid and cholera a bit, cholera having come up during our Darwin studies last week 😉

Reminded me of my trip to Dublin about 10 years ago, with my mum and sister where i saw the statue in the flesh and also the (now moved) one of a mermaid in a bath, known by locals as “the floozie in the jacuzzi” – you gotta love that 😆 That was a strange trip; we went with my mums university choir and orchestra, G and i sung and mum played the cello. I wasn’t far enough out of not being a student to quite carry off being in a gang of students and mum wasn’t quite used to having adult daughters either; she kept trying to hold our hands across roads and take us to Macdonalds instead of pubs! However, i remember it fondly, even the youth hostel room choral snoring 😆

Once home from Ikea, we lolled in the garden, ate biscuits and Max did DIY. We have mirrors, toilet roll holders, bookcases and more now 🙂 The rabbits hoped around the garden and Josie learned to say “rabbit” and “Smartie” – she has been Max’s big chum this weekend and has also made us laugh by conglomerating us into “daddymummy” 🙄

Yesterday was lots of bike riding, lots of tidying, i emptied 6 big boxes from the garage and fiddled about with business stuff. feel kind of ready to start the week, but it is going to be a busy one! 😯