NotSheep

Thursday was the day that Nicholas flew back to France – it feels like he had hardly arrived before he was leaving again. It didn’t help that I spent a fair bit of his time here struggling to fight off a bug, and finally succumbed to it (along with a series of cluster headaches) a couple of days before he left – I’d have liked to do more with him, take him more places, but there just wasn’t the time or the energy.

I left George and Freddy at home while I took him to the airport, stopping en route to pick up R and G, children of a friend who’d been called into work unexpectedly. Jack was the only person who wanted to come all the way into the airport with Nicholas and me – I’d expected Toby to want to come in, but he sat in the car and told me he’d already said goodbye at home, so he was staying in the car with Barney and Louie and R and G. I think it might have been R’s hat that held the attraction for him because when I came back out of the airport, he’d already stolen it.

Back home and the kids bounced about the house and garden while I lay down for a while and tried without much success to fight off my headache before taking people to their music lessons. Barney had his lesson first, and the others played on the green:

Then George and Jack went in for their lesson and Barney joined the others. He and Freddy had a big fight over a stupid little magnifying glass that I think came out of a Christmas Cracker a couple of years ago, and Barney descended into a serious bout of teenage-hormone-ridden-grumpies – he was lucky he was already in the car when it was time to leave, or I might just have driven off and left him there. Bless

On Friday morning I waited for the insurance assessor to arrive to look at the kitchen ceiling, but although the appointment was for 10, there was no sign of him by 11 when I had to leave to go and collect my friend A off the train. The insurance guy arrived while we were out, and apparently told Barney that the appointment had been for “between 10 and 2″ – erm, nope. I wouldn’t have agreed to that, as I just don’t have half a day to wait around right now, never mind a half a day that’s bang in the middle of the day and therefore pretty much eats up a whole day. A and I had lunch out, then came back here and spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and catching up. Some of Jack’s friends arrived asking if I could teach them how to make playdough, and I told them I’d try to do it with them over the weekend. As if I don’t have enough children of my own, now I’m entertaining the neighbours’ too…