Lovely day today. Pottering morning, me online, F watching Dr Who, we both had a serious bath, very nice. Used my new Body Shop stuff and F had bath fizzy. We discussed the difference between Lush bath bombs (fast, powerfully fizzy, high-colour) and Body Shop bath fizzies (slower, less fizz, less colour), also talked about 'value for money' again, as a very cheap water pistol got busted!

The weather was predicted to be rainy and grey and it certainly started out looking like that. In the early afternoon we went up the hill and caught the bus into Brighton, went on top deck and enjoyed the views. Had quite a lot of conversation on the bus but I can't even remember half of it now, dammit. Oh I know, a lot of it was on the lines of inventing things that would be different in F's world. I was invited to contribute and suggested all houses and buildings would be painted pretty colours. She confided that instead of ponies or horses, people would ride unicorns in her world too. Also she used the word 'assmilated' correctly, which made the person in the seat in front look round in amusement. Can't remember the context though now.

Got off in the centre of Brighton and went straight for lunch! I had garlic bread and salad, F had a small salad and pizza. Then she had ice cream with all sorts of stuff on it.
In the restaurant she asked me, very seriously, if I could promise that J and I would never split up because she wouldn't like to live apart from her daddy. This was because some neighbours have just split up and it was a big shock to everyone around. I promised that, as far as possible, I would do my best never to let that happen and talked about why some people do split up and how J and I feel about that kind of thing - we both come from parents who divorced and we have seen people we know go for greener grass and end up regretting it big time, so we are both very aware that what we have is worth a hell of a lot and not something we would ever just drop easily. We are not married, so our commitment has to go a lot deeper than a piece of paper and a set of photos of a barely-remembered 'special day'. I talked with her about it at some length as we walked down to the seafront and made various analogies about how new toys can seem very exciting but, if you're sensible, it doesn't mean you'd want to chuck your favourite old toy away and stuff like that. She didn't seem upset or scared at all but she'd clearly been thinking about it - it comes up in Enchanted too, so we'd talked about the divorce and divorce lawyers then, also in the context of Tracy Beaker, with kids living away from one or more of their parents. So we had a good long chat about that.
We went on the pier and had a ride on the Merry-go-Round together. We had intended to go on the Ghost Train again, but it was closed for maintenance. By this time the sun was out, so it was beautiful to be riding round in the sunshine, looking out at sparkling turquoise sea.
Then we went to the Sea Life centre and had a lovely couple of hours there.

I had wondered if F would be bored there, but she really enjoyed it. As well as talking about different fish, seahorses, anemones, rays, sharks, the extraordinary chambered nautilus and the turtles, what they ate and their various distinguishing features, we talked about the thickness of the glass in the underwater tunnel area, the concept of pressure, the weight and volume of water. We looked at a photo of the centre and the surrounding area, taken in 1867, and briefly discussed the differences too - horses and carriages, ladies in long skirts with hats.
All in all, a lovely afternoon. There were many other interesting conversations we had - reading shop signs, trying to think of descriptive words for how the sea looked, or how salad tasted, discussing the concept of 'tips' and 'good service' in restaurants, among other things.

Other than that, Animal Crossing continues...