That was the week that was....

Well, its been a mixed week, as most are. There have been some good memories and some difficult situations to negotiate. Here’s a summary of the good points.

1 My current favourite game is called Carcassonne.(http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/822). In essence this is a tile-laying game where you create landscape features and place your followers on them to score points. It’s fairly straight forward and uncomplicated. At the weekend Lisa (my wife) and I decided to introduce our nearly two and a half year old daughter, Eleanor, to the game. She quickly got to grips with randomly drawing tiles out of the bag. She also learnt to place followers on the landscape features. However she wanted to place one on every tile…which simply doesn’t work! She did learn, eventually, about matching up some tiles. She was particularly good at linking stretches of road. She also enjoyed moving the score marker around the scoring track. Above all of course she appeared to enjoy joining in a ‘grown up’ activity with Mummy and Daddy. We took some great photos and it kept us all occupied for half an hour on a wet Sunday afternoon. Now if we can just train her to think tactically….

2 The day before our board game fun the three of us went to visit my mum near Lincoln. We had a really nice time. Since my father died in 2003 my mother has had a tough time. She is currently trying to sell her house to move to York to be nearer to us (well, mainly Ellie I suspect!). At the moment she appears very positive about life and is genuinely good fun to be with. The nicest thing for me is watching her interact with Ellie. Not only is she fabulous at entertaining and occupying her (and teaching her things along the way) but it also brings back happy memories of she and I spending time together when I was little. As a police officer my father often worked shifts and I have very few memories of him from before when I was 5 or 6. But my mum was always there. I used to love snuggling up to her and reading a book. She was always warm and smelt nice. I sense watching them that Ellie is having the same wonderful experience I had. This has made me feel much closer to mum. As a parent I also now realise what a good job she did raising me, particularly at the time and in the social context.

As if the day couldn’t get any better…we all went to the park with Ellie who proceeded to have a fabulous time going up a climbing frame and down a slide unassisted (at her insistence). It was funny standing back and realising how nervous the three adults were about the risks she faced, and yet she managed admirably. She also loved the swings and is starting to understand ‘self-propulsion’!

Mum had also made fabulous coconut ice cream for us all. It was the best ice-cream I’ve ever tasted. This is particularly high praise as it did not contain any pistachios (my favourite ice cream flavour).

3 Whilst on holiday in Brittany earlier in the year Lisa and I managed to miss several episodes of Dr Who. Two of them were shown on BBC3 whilst we were out at the weekend! However, Lisa explained how to tape from the digibox and hey presto…we can now watch them! We watched one last night and it was a very enjoyable experience. For those who are interested…it was Part 2 of the episodes featuring the Ood. The Doctor is trapped in a cave leading down into a pit in which is imprisoned a beast thought to be the original Satan. Meanwhile Rose is trapped in a fairly crap research station where possessed Ood are closing in. It was all quite ridiculous but in a “I’m ten and its teatime on Saturday and school and homework are still more than a day away” type way. So little modern telly makes me feel like that. I had hoped the recent Star Wars trilogy would come close but they fell woefully short of my expectations. Or maybe I’ve changed (or grown up…debatably). The absolute best thing is that Dr Who is something Lisa and I enjoy in equal measure. The simple act of snuggling up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate…what can I say...to me that is marital bliss! (is it just me or do I sound really middle-aged? In my defence I did take my slippers off before snuggling commenced).