Busy 8-day catch-up and let's treat ourselves to some random bolding shall we

OK Last Friday

- didn't do much, can't remember much except answering an American friend's questions about the monarchy as she was watching the wedding! I got drawn into watching a bit with her questions, and with people on my forum who were watching - though the discussion on my forum was fun, with a great range of attitudes to the whole thing and a lot of flippantness - can tell we're missing BB! F and J were both wisely completely disinterested and neither of them got up until it was mostly over anyway. F spent a good few hours playing Animal Crossing in bed I think.

I had a long bath at some point and I can't remember anything else

Saturday I went to my mum's to see how she's doing. She definitely has signs of dementia (vascular not Alzheimer's), which makes me feel very sad and rather dread the next few years for all of us. On the positive side, she is mostly happy and not distressed and still able to live at home at the moment and I will do everything I can to keep that possibility for as long as it's doable. Her memory is just shot. And it's surprising how memory plays a huge part in so much. So, for instance, one day she suddenly doesn't know how to operate her telly, but the next day she might. Overall though the number of forgotten things increases and very few new memories can be made, and ones that are are corrupted and misremembered.

And that's enough about that here.

My time at mum's was fine, we watched some soaps and ate a lot of nice food and I got very grumpy about being offered a cup of tea 8 times in 45 minutes - I am not tolerant of repetition, which is a great issue to have when spending time with someone with a memory problem, of course! However it was mostly fine.

Managed to fit in a coffee and chat with old friend J before catching the train, which was lovely, really lovely! Think we covered pretty much everything, although now of course I'm immediately thinking of other things that would have been great to talk about with her.

Train journeys were good both ways, did reading and looking at lovely sunny scenery out of window and thinking and not thinking, both of which are good.

Was lovely to get home to J and F, as it always is, I must love them or something!

We watched the new Doctor Who and then I had to work but they watched Voyage of the Dawn Treader and I half watched. Did loads of work Sunday night and Monday night, in order to have a few days off at same time as J (he has first two weeks of May off but I won't be there for the second one).

Monday J's dad came and we all went to Blackberry Farm, where the best bits were the jumping pillow, zip wire and biggish slides for F and lemon sorbet cones for me. I think my daughter might well end up thinking that jumping pillows are standard features of farm life.

Biting cold wind, despite beautiful sunshininess there. I prefer Spring Barn I think, the food was really a bit rubbish and didn't like the atmosphere of it somehow, something shoddy about some of it, but it would be quite different on a schoolday I think. They do do gentle pony rides there, which I think F might fancy another time.

Grandpa C was in a bit of a feisty mood with combative conversational gambits, unfortunately, so that coloured the afternoon a bit too.

Tuesday our cross trainer was delivered and J and I put it together, which was quite a job! Have used it at least twice most days since, it's great! This is it. I am starting gently with plenty of scope for making it harder. It's a Totally Awesome Beast!

Other Tuesday things were all homey and cosy and I had a long bath and enjoyed not working.

Wednesday F had Forest School in the morning and Chatterbooks in the afternoon and some time at home in between, playing Jet Set Go (time management Travel Agency game). J and I did a bit of shopping and had a quick coffee while she was at Chatterbooks. Didn't feel I'd had proper time with her. Bought some white material to make a Victorian apron for her workshop the next day. Stayed up till silly o'clock finishing it!

Thursday F was booked on a Victorian role-play workshop, organized by C on behalf of E and L. The premise was that the children (a dozen or so of them I think) were young servants applying for jobs in service at Preston Manor

It was splendid, the children all entered right into the spirit of it and concentrated massively. They did loads of different activities, can't remember all of them but there was: making ginger biscuits, squeezing oranges for marmalade, preparing apples for baking, churning milk (though didn't seem to be about butter, some controversy there); blacking a grate, making firelighters, polishing silver I think; beating rugs and other laundry tasks I can't remember. Sometimes there wasn't room for all the adults in the room where they were working, so there was opportunity for a bit of whispered chat among grown-ups now and then!

Afterwards we all spent some time in the grounds and then said our goodbyes. J and F and I went on to Terre a Terre and had a lovely earlyish dinner there. Came out and caught a bus with no waiting.

Today F had E over to play and they had a lovely few hours happily doing stuff with pocket pets and planning out their fictional world with a bit of mapping and discussion. F and I went into town, did a bit of shopping and then went to the fair. Unfortunately F was a bit tricky during the shopping part, and I suddenly felt exhausted by it all, so didn't have much energy left by the time we got to the fair. Did enjoy the bumper cars though as there was a bit of space to really whizz around. Got bruises from the bumps though. Ghost train was predictably rubbish. F also went on various non-ridey things like slides and bouncy things and also went on a couple of smaller rides. It was OK, but I wasn't in the best mood for it, you know?

Returned home very knackered but enjoyed a 10-minute session on the Totally Awesome Beast before curry, mmm.