Malawi & More

  I submitted the final assessment for my NPQH. And now 12 to 14 weeks until I find out if I passed. I'm going to do my best not to think about it.  We had a really lovely passover meal on Monday with our little family and Edgar. BigA made a great meal and we talked through the prayers and the meaning of them. Despite the hard times it was good to be reminded how lucky we are and the joy that we can have together. That joy continued the next day with our evening at the Royal Academy of Art where one of A's pieces was on show. She and a lot of others had won out of thousands. Her art being one of the highly commended ones too. We then went for a really delicious Lebanese meal.  The girls continued to study and do exams. It's been good to see them cope so well. That's it for then and next week they are back in school properly.  The work week has flown by, my lessons went quite well, they getting used to me and me to them. Various meeting and plans and no sign of a new ...

 This week started like a very normal week but to my great sadness it changed on Wednesday evening when mum let me know about uncle Michael. I know I was very lucky to have a long lasting connection based on a love of words and theatre with him. Over the years I learned a lot from him and we spent a good number of hours talking about his life, my life, eating good food and watching mostly great theatre. It is with a dragging grief that I didn't add his name onto the email list this morning. And a gutting realisation that the list has once again gotten smaller. It is a small comfort to me that he was on the list though and that, even though he changed his email address an inexplicable number of times, I think he would have been in the loop about my life and I hope very much he was proud of me living it.  I wonder about the telling of the rest of the week. Perhaps just to say that the girls were good at revising around their work commitments,...

Last Saturday the girls and I set off for a day trip to Brighton, me to meet up with Sharon and Chaz and them to have a bit of a wander around - to see a place that they had both been to when younger but not for a long time. It was a truly lovely day and I was so full of the happiness of it all, that I almost didn't mind the excruciating delays on the train home.  Sunday was all about getting digging in the garden, I was determined to make a start on the area near the door to dig out as much as possible and redistribute the earth to the back of the garden and around. Some of the plants A and I bought have been dug up and some plants rather beaten up, we assume by the foxes. I did more on Monday and was pleased it hadn't rained so I could very on - as it would just be a mud hole. I also said bye to A that morning as she headed off to Kent for some filming for someone's school project. I was super excited for her but also a bit nervous about her heading off without me. She ha...

  Just before if realised - or was told it was Saturday I'd had a lovely shower, following on from a day with Margaret in the garden. Finishing off one of the beds. Then we had takeaway. And headed off to bed satisfied with the day.  Easter Sunday was a treat, I'd been so excited to get eggs and the girls were keen to have the Easter bunny visit. I woke up and then waited, and waited and then woke them up. BigA was the first to open an egg and start eating chocolate egg for breakfast. The excitement was real, having had very few eggs over the last 6 years for A and 8 for M. Their favourite of all were the kinder eggs and not the chocolate bit but opening up the yellow case to reveal the toy to assemble inside. They both were so cute, comparing them and playing with them as they munched away at chocolate. I then made a roast dinner, using the clocks in the kitchen to guide me but something was off, so I looked at my phone, I had no idea the clocks had changed and was total...

  I didn't realise that it was Saturday until mum just told me she'd missed the email.  I woke up and took my pal to the train station, went to Tesco back to tidy up, started making a trifle and getting ready for Margaret and Dick to arrive and just didn't really know that it was Saturday. I think in thought it was Sunday.  So last Saturday the girls, and I had our first visit to Tottenham Hotspurs home ground as we went to watch a rugby match between harlequins and scarcens with the Robinson family. We were up in the nose bleeds. My mate Phil was there too, although over the other side but we caught up after and enjoyed a lovely warming cup of tea at ours after.  I've been enjoying simply spending a little time looking at my garden and, despite the foxes digging up a few plants, getting to see it take shape. The sun has been doing it's best to shine too and that's meant me drinking my cup of tea looking out of the back window of a morning.  The four of us went ...