The kids both had special activities at school on Friday to kick off the long weekend. Sage and her classmates sold cakes for a cancer charity at the coffee morning. There was perhaps a surfeit of cakes; I managed to pick up a whole plate full at the end of the morning for the discounted price of £1.  They seemed to be having a great time and I know Sage was very proud of her own baking effort.

River played in a football tournament.  It was a fine day and everyone was most pleased to be outside in the sunshine.

I thought River played very well, especially considering that she doesn’t normally have the opportunity to play soccer.  I have to say that it irritates me that the girls don’t play soccer in England.  I can’t quite see why the school would choose to organize a tournament in a sport that half of the kids don’t play regularly.  In fact, 10 of the girls choose not to play because they didn’t feel comfortable enough.  The boys didn’t have this choice.  I would have preferred to see the tournament in field hockey, a sport played by both genders, if it isn’t possible to have girls playing soccer during P.E.

Anyway, enough ranting for now.  I am planning to speak to the head of the Lower School about my concerns at some point, though.  River was awesome.  She was very active and was in the right places at the right times and put an enormous amount of energy into the game.  Nonetheless, her team didn’t do particularly well, but they did manage to come away with a bronze medal.  She was very proud of herself!

On the way home, I was inspired to stop and take some pictures of the wheat fields where the hay has recently been baled.

I love these fields.  The golden color seems to glow in the sunshine and the regular cylindrical shape of the bales contrasts beautifully with the apparent randomness of the bales scattered around the fields.

This reminds me of another interesting linguistic tidbit.  Sage brought home a worksheet last spring about homophones.  Interestingly, it included “fort” and “fought” and “court” and “caught”.  I had to think about this one for a while.

There’s a bit of a blue patch in the sky this morning and the water in the fields next to the Swarkestone causeway seems to have receded somewhat.  We’re hoping things dry out a bit.  The two resident amateur meteorologists have been recording daily rainfall for a couple of weeks now, so I expect you might see some kind of weather summary appearing soon.

Her flight went well; she got an entire row of seats to herself and was able to stretch out and get some sleep. We are all very happy to see her!

This morning the sun was shining and we went for a walk along the canal.

I first saw this car on my morning run when it was still in the canal. Apparently, they didn’t think the sign I posted about previously was clear enough. The men recovering the car claimed it was a rental. I hope they got the extra insurance!

We found this sign on the way home from the sunken vehicle. I love it!

I think spring is officially here. After lunch, we went to Pickford’s House, a Georgian period house. In the garden we found the first blooms of the season. Spring flowers always make me happy!

River had a nice time acting the part of a fine young lady.

I’m all for expanding my vocabulary, but I’m not sure a dangerous corner is the best place for  developing lexicon.

scrumping (verb)

• Harvesting something from someone else’s property, e.g. picking apples from a tree next to the road.

We’ve been scrumping a number of times now, mostly for blackberries which grow wild along the hedgerows. But we were also introduced to conkers, which must be a close relative of chestnuts because they look basically the same to my naive eye.

Anyway, apparently there’s a game that you can play with conkers where you poke a hole in the nut and tie a string to the nut. Then someone else takes their nut and tries to bash your nut into litle pieces and the nut the lasts the longest is the winner. I’m sure its a bit more subtle than that, but I think that’s the gist of it.

I feel really native when I say “We’re just come round from scrumping some conkers.”