Group Chips Hop Dream

Saturday

I felt absolutely awful with cough and aches and shivers, so I rested all day, with a bit of reading and watching things. We lit a candle for Freddie at 12:30 and that was probably the most active thing I did. J was really lovely and did things that needed doing. I drank lots of tea, which seemed to be good for my throat. In the evening I watched a couple of things with J and coughed a lot.

Sunday

J's mum 'popped by' on her way somewhere and we looked at some photos of distant family on her side. A picture of his grandfather made J emotional, as these things sometimes do - the shock of how that person was once so different to how remembered, so full of vigour and life.

After J's mum had gone, we had a bout of game playing - Chinese Checkers and Mah Jong. I was feeling a lot better for having had a good 36 hours of proper rest and sleep. We watched some Smallville (not sure if F is getting into it - it isn't a great successor to DS9 tbh, being so static and limited, but we'll see how we all feel when we get to the end of Season 1) and I did sausages, potato wedges (home made), garlic bread (not) and salad for tea, which is a meal I really love and associate with Spring somehow.

I had to work after that, and stayed up all night, so good job I'd had such a restful weekend really.

Monday

Finished work about 9:30 am and woke F up. We had some breakfast and then headed off to group. F took her Pixel Chix thing and we joked on the way about what would happen if it suddenly came on whilst we were at the theatre (A Midsummer Night's Dream) later, and imagined one of the actors responding to it, with Pixel Chix saying, in her highly American cartoony accent: 'What shall we do?' over and over again and the actor responding 'Wherefore speakest thou my love' and other cod-Shakespearean responses - F and I both love to play with language and out-of-context stuff, so that joke lasted us all the way to the bus stop and she made me laugh a lot with 'wouldst thou liketh a pizza' and such.

Nice sunny bus journey, making plans for our next theme (fire). Arrived late, but still before 12. MMs feels pretty good for us right now, it's a nice mix of people. And tea.

Had some good parenting chat about different approaches and other more random stuff and F was off playing most of the time as usual. L was doing particularly lovely parenting and making the rest of us all look bad :P I blame Sandra Dodds.

After group we got the bus back (had a 'no meltdown' bus journey, hooray!) with 3 other families and got off in Brighton to go to the cinema. We saw 'Hop', which I wouldn't recommend and I don't think should have had a 'U' cert for a couple of things. It wasn't that bad, we giggled quite a bit and sat right at the front and were happy enough with our ice-creams and popcorn, but a few people were there with 5s and unders, who I don't think would have been really engaged and I wouldn't fancy having to explain terms like 'sexy' and 'serial killer' to a toddler. But I am particularly stern about certs like that. Think there is a bit of a tendency to go 'well nobody died or said 'fuck' so it must be a U'.

After that we went on the pier and off again (very windy) - I am getting too old for piers, I do too much looking down through the gaps and imagining a freak accident whereby the maintenance crew missed a plank that needed repairing and F trips and goes through, or I do. 

LOL so now I am sounding ancient and uptight with my media age-appropriate certificational concerns and my badly-maintained wooden structure high over deep water issues. Okaaay.

We went and had chips and tempura (me)/halibut (F) and then went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed by local 6th form college students at the Pavilion Theatre. They did really well with it once they got going, started a bit nervously as one might expect, then got into it. An energetic and boisterous performance. F had done a workshop on the play last year, and remembered enough to give her a bit of help with understanding what was going on and she is quite good with unusual language anyway, so followed most of it OK. Lots of good comedic moments that she liked and she was engaged by it all the way through.

Had a long long wait for bus afterwards, with the real-time indicator thingy going from 19 minutes to 18 minutes, then back up to 19 minutes and repeating that pattern for about 10 minutes. Got home very late, but had had a really lovely day out together.