This morning J and I got up at a nice leisurely half nine to ten-ish kind of time. As I went past F's room I saw she was awake but snuggling back down in bed with her DS - currently she is getting to grips with SimCity, designing her city and trying to understand the basics of economics and development - providing the right proportions of residential/commercial/industrial zones, setting levels of taxes, funding to police, firemen, providing park land, water spaces, roads, etc. I used to love that game but it does appear very fiddly and a bit unsatisfying on DS to me - still F seems to be interested at the moment, suddenly. It's actually my game, bought as a birthday prezzie for me last year - J had remembered how much I loved the PC version once. She picked it up on her way to bed on Friday night and has played it for much of today.

C from over the road came at elevenish I think, and asked to play - J shouted up to relay the request to F and she said 'yes' so she received a visitor before even getting up! They played DS in her room for a while, then came down, F had breakfast (it was probably half eleven by then) and watched a 'Hole in the Wall' from a couple of weeks ago. Then they decided to play with the MLPs and got some of the pony buildings down plus more ponies, played briefly with all that, then had to be persuaded to take it back up before being allowed to play on the Wii. Although F was only half playing with ponies, being very Sim City engaged off and on, and didn't want to play Wii, but C did, so eventually we persuaded both of them to help taking ponies and pony stuff back up.

All in all, F didn't actually 'play with' C for more than 30 minutes out of the 3 hours or so that C was here, but I'm not sure that matters really, if both were happy and amicable and none of us minded. It was companionable on some level. I guess I'm not big on the 'playing together' thing, inclusion and togetherness and all. C was fine with it and so was F, so...

We eventually chucked C out at half 2. Not sure what we did then. A bit later I had a bath while F played Peggle, but she was back on Sim City by the time I got out. I made a quick tea of sandwiches and fruit for her, as we were heading out early evening, up to local HE friends K, C, E and M.

We walked up the hill quite briskly - although it was chilly, we were soon really warm - and arrived at C and K's. A couple of weeks beforehand, E, their daughter aged 6, had invited us up for this evening to share watching tonight's bonfire procession with them. I had done a lot of 'are you sure it's OK?' e-mail exchanging with C, as I know what it's like to be in the position where your child invites someone over and you really would rather they hadn't. On the other hand, I thought it was just lovely to be invited by E - she had looked all glowy when she invited us too.

F was very excited on the way up (and for much of the evening), rushing ahead, running back, talking non-stop about the evening ahead. We had a lovely evening - with all bonfire processions and firework events there is a lot of waiting and wondering when/where it will appear, which is very tricky for kids, but they all did very well, with odd moments of it being a bit much for them. F went mad and wobbly at one point but that turned out to be down to hunger I think - her tea had been adequate for a normal going to bed evening but not for all this excitement. Once she had been topped up with some snackage from K and C, she was a lot better and started doing anagrams of people's names with some magnetic letters on the radiator as a kind of party trick - 'tell me how to spell your name and I'll turn it into a new one' kind of thing.

We saw the bonfire procession go past the end of their road, after a bit of route/time speculation, complete with giant Lego Batman effigy, flaming tar barrels, usual range of costumes, samba drumming (my favourite). The participants looked a bit grim, think it was a hard night for them, very hilly up there. After the procession, we went back to C and K's, where we all had snacks and I discovered that C and K's friend J turned out to have lived in our house 8 or 9 years ago! Tis a small town indeed.

Finally the fireworks started and C, M, F and I went to the corner of the road, where we were just one street width away from the fire site! Had a fantastic view of the fireworks, which was thrilling, especially for F as she never gets to get that close to the main night fireworks as they happen much later usually. It was a great display, good variety of colour and different types of firework. F was very excited! Afterwards, C very kindly gave us a lift back down, avoiding the various road closures, which was very welcome at that late and chilly hour. F proclaimed that K, C, E, M and us are a 'firework family' because there's been a couple of times that we've all shared local firework events together now. Got F straight into bed (with Sim City of course) and think she will sleep very well.