I’ve been enjoying settling in and having some space for my things.  The cabasa for my berimbau and Herbie the Mousebot seem to get along nicely on this shelf.

I spent quite a bit of time here, both working and relaxing while the kids were in school.

Here they are doing their reading homework and catching some afternoon rays.  There hasn’t been so much homework done recently and I haven’t been in the office much since half-term break began last weekend.

We have been busy doing some other things, like painting pottery.

But we’ve also had a lot of down time.  They work very hard at school in an enormous range of activities and it’s nice for them to have some time that is more relaxed.

Today, they managed to rearrange their bedrooms so that they are now sharing once again.  Their combined room is very cosy and I think they’ll enjoy it for a while at least.  Sage suggested that it would be like having a sleepover every night?

Unfortunately, the service was very slow and we were starving.  It did leave some time to take pictures, though.

And Molly managed to get some knitting done, so it wasn’t time entirely wasted.

The coast at Botany Bay is just amazing.  The chalk cliffs at the back of the beach are stunning.

We discovered that there were lots of little hand and foot holds that enable easy climbing.  The kids decided the sand made a nice, soft place to land and spent quite a bit of time climbing up so they could leap down again and again.

The chalk did prove to be quite soft, not quite what you’d like for real climbing, but it was fun to scramble around a bit.  I’ve been going fairly regularly to the indoor climbing centre in Nottingham, which is fun but not quite the same as being outside on real rock.

We’d heard quite a bit about the geology of chalk in Terry Pratchett’s novels for kids about Tiffany Aiken.  If you haven’t read The Wee Free Men (Discworld) and enjoy smart, incisive fantasies, I highly recommend it. The others in the series are excellent as well. Apparently, the witches in Terry Pratchett’s world cannot perform magic on the chalk since it is not true rock, but Tiffany gets her power from the flints embedded in the chalk matrix. Seeing the flint in Botany Bay and Ramsgate and on houses and walls all through Kent, I really got an understanding of this sort of geology.

It does make an attractive wall finish.  We brought a few pieces of flint and chalk home to add to the growing rock and fossil collection.

These folks also enjoyed the beautiful weather. Here are their summer term outfits for school. It’s starting to stay light until fairly late and tonight they brought their dolls out to enjoy the last rays before sunset.

Chocolate, by the way, was a popular write-in candidate and thus added to the survey. She made the graphs at the National Center for Education Statistics’ Create-A-Graph website. If you’d like to be added to her email list for any future surveys, please drop her a note.

The current Iraq policy isn’t particularly popular here in Britain. Almost everyone I’ve spoken with has disapproved of the invasion, though there is no consensus on the best strategy at this point. There is a sense of a potential threat of terrorism, however. And there is quite a bit of debate about the relationship between the relatively large Muslim community and the rest of Britain.

I’ve been reading a biography of Gertrude Bell, an Englishwoman who was instrumental in the creation of the modern nation of Iraq after World War I. She is a fascinating woman and her role in the political milieu of the time is quite remarkable.

I highly recommend this book, not only to learn about the life of an exceptional woman, but as a source of insight and context for the current situation in the Middle East. Interestingly, Churchill and others were quite explicit about the need to maintain the British access to the recently discovered oil reserves in the area since the Navy had just converted their ships from coal to oil power. Gertrude Bell was a strong advocate for spreading the best of British culture, especially beneficent government and self-determination, while respecting local traditions and culture.  I imagine we could use someone like her now.