Bright and early

I'm back-blipping for Saturday, as it all got a bit hectic (in a good way).
Having had Luca with us on Friday (daytime), we did a swop at teatime that day: dropping Luca off at home, and bringing Eben back for his "sleepover" at ours.  I still take it as a compliment that we are in the interesting sleepover category, not some other and duller option.

We had tea together, watched a bit of TV, did bathtime and then some extended bedtime story-reading. Eventually Eben dropped off to sleep. The days of 5 a.m. awakenings, with him, seem to have passed; we were up again at 7 a.m. - a normal time for Richard and me.  Here is is, on Saturday morning, caught between the morning sunshine and my flash. I am still experimenting with a bit of fill-in flash for some kinds of shots, and he seemed happy enough to help me out. We spent a bit of time looking at the shots on the back of the camera; he found the "red bits" entertaining when we flipped through and looked at patches of over-exposure. His curiosity, and intense desire to know how everything works, are endless sources of pleasure for us.

Ruth had arranged to come over with Luca to pick Eben up; Josh is away for the weekend on a training course. She came over as planned, but by then she'd had some messages about a possible animal emergency up at the farm. Unwisely - as she commented herself - she and Josh had introduced a visiting billy goat to their resident nannies on Friday.  The hope is that the nannies will get pregnant. But staffing over the weekend, at the farm, is minimal; doing this on a Friday was not a good choice. The resident ram, in an adjacent field, was predictably unhappy to see "his" nannies apparently in the care of another male.  Escapes and encounters were taking place, despite Josh's previous reinforcement of the relevant fences earlier in the week.

Cutting a long story short, we looked after Luca and Eben while Ruth went up to the farm to check on things. All turned out to be OK, no disasters.  By the time they left after lunch, however, we were running a bit short of time to cook the dinner we had planned for a couple of friends on Sat evening. I think as we get older, we are slowing down, of course... it all got done, but perhaps less smoothly than it might have done when we were a bit younger.

Sat evening was good; we had the planned dinner with Marilyn and Paul. I think we are running out of epithets for describing the Tory omnishambles, so very little time was spent on that... Like everyone else, we await Sue Gray's forthcoming report with interest.