1.  Christmas Play

2.  Play Date

3.  Cold Play

Our First School Play.  We Are So Proud.  Son 1 aged 4y 2m was a robin.  Brown tights, brown long-sleeved tee-shirt, red belly tied round his tummy.  Painted brown nose.  He had to flap a lot with the other robins, and looked very worried throughout.  But all the best robins look worried.  How the other parents must have wished their children weren’t on stage with ours.  Eclipsed, outshone, overshadowed by the best robin ever.  We of course was robbed, and he should have been Joseph.    Only that was Lifestyle Guru Hairdresser’s son.  A non-speaking part.  And he had a tea-towel on his head so no-one could see how well his hair was cut by his Mummy.

We only just made it back home before some of our Wednesday Friends arrived for tea.  They are mid extension-building, and are now down to just a microwave to cook with.  I’d made stew.  Farmshop meat, organic everything, mash, broccoli/cauli and cheese sauce.  The Man, the Mother and I wolfed ours.  The children - Son 1, Son 2 aged 14m, and the guests, boys aged 4 and 2 - ate nothing.  The Man begrudgingly agreed that the leftovers could go home with the Mother to her partner, who was putting an extra coat on the kitchen.  Son 1 and his friends ate iced buns.  The icing off the iced buns that is.

The children went down to sleep relatively easily, but it was very late.  At 10 past 8 I went downstairs.  The lounge looked like a plane wreck.  The dressing up box had been looted and spread out over the carpet.  Various bits of various outfits were hanging up on the stairgate.  The kitchen had dirty pans, plates and plastic pots on every surface.  And The Man had gone to bed.  I went for a run.  And I started thinking positively.  The lounge wouldn’t take long to do.  The kitchen would be easy.  It rained.  This is ok, I thought.  I’m a runner.  I’m getting wet, but I don’t care.  The rain got heavier and heavier.  Being positive, I thought, at least it’s not too cold, and at least it’s not windy.  It pelted down.  So hard that yard-wide puddles appeared before me… so hard my hair was plastered to my head, so hard my feet were squelching in my socks.   Then I reached half way.  When I finally arrived home I was drenched through and freezing. And The Man had tidied the lounge, and was making a start on the kitchen.