More stuff that happened last week.

Continued….

Road Rage – 2 rather bizarre moments; one was the man who got out of his car at some lights and started pointing and yelling at the man behind him (who was in front of us) for no obvious reason at all and one was a man, in a left hand drive and extremely silly looking car, who followed me on the road to Northampton for about 10 miles with his bumper virtually touching mine. We were doing 60mph, on a 60mph road so i was hardly pissing him off with slow driving and there was plenty of traffic ahead of us too, so he wasn’t exactly being held up. He did a variety of odd things, including trying to over take me on a roundabout, waving his fist wildly at me, trying to over take me with a lorry bearing down on us in the other direction and most stupidly of all, trying to over take me while *I* was overtaking a motorcyclist. Eventually we got on to dual carriage way, and i let him get ahead (i assume his penis size required this) and then he slowed down so that i had to over take him. *bewildered.*

More maths – Max and the girls have been planning out lounges for sofas and planning out bedrooms for new furniture. Lots of measuring and planning and thinking there.

Rabbits – Fiver and Clover love each other, which is fortunate and have now moved in together. They are, in Sims talk, a little more than “roomies” – but Fiver doesn’t have too much inclination and Clover has learned the knack of sitting in a corner fairly early on for one so young! The girls are giving all 4 rabbits a huge amount of attention and they come in most days, or they sit and play with them in the run. Clover shows signs of being a feisty thing but Fiver has perked up lots and lots, which is great.

Fashion – gave Amelie one of the sets from this range of Fashion Angels Design Sets and they’ve all had a lot of fun with them. There is lots of info in the packs for drawing clothing and they’ve all tried really hard to improve. Colouring and looking and copying has improved lots and lots.

Watercolours – Maddy was given a set of water colour pens for her birthday and she has been experimenting with them. DWN is something she likes but her patience for colouring in is quite low. Discovering she could cover paper quicker with the watercolour pens has really inspired her and she has done far more.

London and Exeter – Exeter FC made it to the playoffs again and Max and Maddy went down for the game. They also did rather a remarkable amount of sightseeing in 5 hours or so…

I think this is my favourite; she has been wanting to see Buckingham Palace all year!

The entire set made me laugh, somehow it is reminiscent of one of those Flat Stanley projects… “Here is Maddy in front of *insert tourist attraction of choice*….”

Fortunately Exeter won this time; Fran read out minute by minute updates from my Blackberry while the rest of us drove home from our day out at…

Rockingham Castle – Determined to break the “stay at home” cycle, i took the rest for a trip out. Rockingham isn’t too far away and it turned out to be a great place; it is lived in by the family who have owned it for 450 years and is almost remarkable for its lack of disastrous historical events. In fact, its time line seems to be, more or less:- “Ordered to be built by William the Conqueror, stays happily undisturbed for 450 years, changes hands during Tudor times and becomes family home, stays same aside from the keep being pulled down after Civil War until now. The End.”

All that, or rather all little of that, made it very unspoiled. it had plenty to look at, a nicely fitted out kitchen, friendly guides (we’ll gloss over Frances snorting with derision when the guide said “hot pastry like your mum makes…”) and very enjoyable grounds. They had 2 good trails to do for kids and hadn’t made the mistake of dumbing down either. We did one at Killerton once which was just “hunt the teddy in each room” and consequently all the kids did was look for a teddy, whereas this one was a page of items for each room, many of which they had to hunt for quite hard, or ask the guide. It was excellent.