SWAN LAKE

One of the joys of not having to return James to Crewe every Sunday evening (and there are many joys, not least that every night I get to put my son to bed and read to him!) is that on a whim, we can decide to go somewhere at 4pm and not worry about having to get back or cut the trip short.

So after feeling desperately lousy all morning and early afternoon and having to take Buscopan to stop the twisting pain in my abdomen from a bout of IBS like symptoms, I suggested to Jimbo that we make the most of the weather and go to Pennington Flash which is about 8 miles away.

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After washing my car, we packed a stale loaf of bread and the camera and toddled off. we had a lovely hour, throwing bread at the ducks and swans (or in James case, throwing it at their heads, inadvertently!), ice creams and then a play on the park. A lovely surprise to bump into two of James friends, Lucy and Ella, who go to his school and to his childminder as well - so they played for it bit - it was interesting to see how chatty and relaxed he was with them both.

After being glared at by a group of surly teenagers because James was playing on the bucket swing that they wanted, we wandered off - James told me that the reason he doesn't want to ever be a teenager is because they do stuff like that and make people feel uncomfortable! Bless him - I told him that he wouldn't be like that, because he knows better and has good manners (better in fact than some adults I know)

We came home to find Corin STILL cleaning his work van - he started around 4pm - he just came in about 20 minutes ago - so all in all, over 4 hours of cleaning - under the wheel arches, the exterior of the van, chamois-ed down, windows cleaned properly - its sparkling - he even washed the inside of the van - footwells and the steps - and then had to clean the driveway because there was so much filth!

Somehow I have managed to bake a really lovely Dark Jamaican gingerbread as well ...its very moist - going to have some with a cup of tea now.

The rest of the shots will be on the other place in a bit - will post a link for anyone who is interested when they are done. Decided to tinker with the HDR processing and change the settings a bit to some some extreme HDR.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the archived blip links from yesterday - muchos gracias!