Thursday evening

It's been another lovely day today. For a start the sun has shone. More or less all day too, with a blushing pink evening sky that promises more delights to come! Secondly. DG was gorgeous when I went to look after him and we had a very productive visit to Hobbycraft together.

I got my buttons and DG was promised 'something' as a holiday treat (no, it wasn't bribery, I didn't say anything until we were there). To my great amusement, he bypassed all the flashy, sparkly, foamy stuff, looking carefully but rejecting firmly. What really pushed all his creative buttons was the card. Card in every shade of the rainbow and more. Card whose colours sang to him as compulsively and melodically as those knitting yarns sang to me the other day. How I understood his emotions as he stood, transfixed, utterly focused, selecting carefully as he declared his intent to use some of the card to make a large Monopoly board of his own design. So like me and so like his mother too.

It's nice to see some of those creative genes blossoming anew in another generation.

Then it was off to Stock for lunch in the Hoop with two good friends. We talked and talked and ate and talked and talked and . . . well, you get the idea, I am sure. These were the two friends I went to see '49 Steps' with last October. Two former colleagues (they have both now retired) with whom I have always got on extremely well.

We had a great time and the pub itself was a delight. Old beams (genuinely old beams) and uneven floors. Plenty of good, attentive service and very tasty food. Not cheap, but 'value for money' as OFSTED always says. We had a super time, chatted for ever, and I was shocked when I discovered the time as L and I drove back to Chelmsford. Half past four!!!! What a great way to spend a day, eh?

Photo: A snap of the interior of the upstairs of the Hoop, taken on my mobile (so not great quality)

And tomorrow is the last holiday day!