New car

On Thursday we took delivery of a new car - a Skoda Roomster with 5 seats, 5 doors, a glass roof and a zippy 1.9 litre diesel engine. With the rear seats folded forward the carrying space is enormous (see photo) and can be made even bigger by removing these seats altogether, an operation which takes just a minute or so. Already we have carried 8 staging pieces and 8 boxes of stage lights in it for the Youth Theatre. In many ways we were sorry to part with our old Volvo car which has served us faithfully for the last 12 years. Its taken us 132,000 miles through England, Wales, Scotland and France, many of them towing a caravan or trailer. But the time had come for it to go - before the Government Scrappage Scheme ends on 31 March.

Cycling by the sea

This summer we are visiting the Netherlands where we hope to do some cycling on their many cycle lanes (the land is fairly flat so it shouldn't be too difficult!). In preparation Jenny recently bought an ancient Raleigh Compact folding bike for £20 and today we took our bikes to Bournemouth on the Dorset Coast for a trial run. We cycled along the sandy promenade west for a few miles to the Pool boundary then back again and then a few miles east to Boscombe and back again, a total of about 12 miles. The weather was glorious, bright sunshine but with a cool wind and there were lots of people about, walking, running, cycling, some even sunbathing in the shelter of their beach huts. King Harry Rocks off the tip of the Isle of Purbeck stood out clearly in the bright light and the ancient Raleigh Compact behaved itself, apart from a tendency for the adjustable saddle to self-adjust as Jenny rode it, so that she ended up with her knees almost touching her chin. We soon solved that with a spanner - altogether a good £20's worth and a good day out.

World War 2

Thomas's year at school (all 7 and 8 year olds) have been studying World War 2 in depth for some weeks and on Monday all the children and their teachers went to school wearing clothing and hairstyles of the 1940s (see Thomas in photo). In the morning they built Anderson shelters out of corrugated cardboard and at 1.30 I was invited to talk for half an hour to the assembled children on my family's experiences during World War 2. I was not quite five years old when the war ended so can't remember much but fortunately I have my parent's letters to each other and my Dad's prisoner of war diaries to remind me of the hard times that our family and millions more went through. The children were very knowledgeable, enthusiastic and well behaved and I really enjoyed sharing my knowledge with them. What's more they presented me with a box of delicious chocolates. Lovely kids!

Grandchildren

This last few days we've been staying with our younger son, Ben, and his family at their home in Bedfordshire. On Saturday we joined Ben in a team at the PTA quiz (didn't do very well!), on Sunday we all had a delicious lunch out to celebrate Jenny's birthday, and from Monday onwards we walked Thomas (aged 8) and Sophie (aged nearly 4) to school and their various after school meetings whilst Claire, their Mum, did jury service. One evening Thomas earned his chef's badge at Cubs (see photo) whilst Sophie entertained us with games, Sean the Sheep videos and general good fun (also see photo). We really enjoyed it.