The latest part of H's birthday celebrations - don't birthdays last for ever when you are 6 - was ear piercing. We went by bus to Bitterne, and walked down the noisy dual carriageway to a friend's house, who did the deed. H did not even flinch. And now has pierced ears, and is very proud of them. We walked back up the road to get the bus home. Both ways it was the same bus driver - I find that happens quite often - he had been to Millbrook and back - and both trips he only charged me and not H. Find it fascinating that he has been on a journey - but to nowhere, while I have been doing my errands in Bitterne. I was very tempted to use the car - although not 'our day' Hat was not using it - but resisted and remembered the greater reason to use public transport and thus save Planet Earth, or something. All the way back up the hill to Bitterne I explained to H how speed cameras work and what was the point of them and gave detailed explanations of how they send the images to a computer in an office, and how someone checks the numberplates and sends out letters telling the drivers off and telling them to pay some money. You know, I sometimes get in too deep with those kind of conversations, but this one did not go beyond my technical know how. I even gave an example of how the cameras measure speed with her running, and then walking, between 2 lamp posts and me counting the seconds to do the journey. Do your remember doing that ticker tape thing in Physics lessons at secondary school - think it was the same kind of thing. Sure Matthew will fill us in!

It was the school family barbecue tonight. Always makes me think of Bill Bryson's ' family butcher' comment that he wants to make when he sees that written over a butchers shop - 'How much to do mine?'. R was on bbq duties, and sweated over hundreds of burgers, his earlier experiences working in Burger King clearly worthwhile, as he flipped specials and squirted mustard - ok, maybe I am getting carried away. He got fed up when the head teacher turned up and said it was all a bit slow - to which he retorted: ' Well we could serve them raw', in a tone which I imagine only R can do. Soon after he was offered a break from duties. A was in a bit of a grump, still not totally recovered from her wipe out virus from the last couple of weeks, so it was not the evening it could have been...

But thats the beauty of blog life! take the rough with the smooth, the charred with the raw, you get the full experience here. No make up for the telly in this world. WYSIWYG is the acronym I am looking for. Life. Nits. Rain. An odd vegetable based smell in the kitchen that I can't track down.