Paper-folded shopfront

Brixton Market was full of light and colour and folk scoffing and quaffing. Fred and I walked through to soak up some of the atmosphere then took the Tube to Vauxhall and walked to London Bridge (via a fox by the MI6 Building and an explore of the National Theatre balconies). We'd just seen Crimson Peak at The Ritzy cinema and needed a bit of a walk to chat about it. Our consensus is that it's a gorgeous film – the outfits are extravagant, the sets are full of intrigue and just glorious to look at (all those butterflies!), but did it really need to be that violent? If there had been a sofa in Screen 5, I would have hid behind it on several occasions. We're not sure why the mother ghost had to be scary, too. Surely, she should have been a nice ghost. 

I woke up with a nasty, drippy cold, but it got progressively better, thank goodness. My Skype chat with an elementary school in North Carolina wouldn't have been well received if spoken through wet hankies. The chat was really fun. There were six or so kindergarten classes packed into the library, all enthusiastically shouting out about foxes and bears and owls. I found one of my first diaries that had some entries I could show, to demonstrate writing every day and coming up with ideas. After the chat, I read the diary the whole way through. I'm so pleased I have it. This is my entry about my Granda's birthday – great memories (I've kept in all the bad spelling and punctuation):

24/1/83 On saturday  it was my granda's birthday, I gave him new slippers. Before I had tea I went a walk with my granda and four dogs. The names of the dogs were Candy, Corry, Ricky and Hamish. Hamish and Corry were a mixture, Candy is a springer spaniel and Ricky is a mixture aswell. Ricky kept on getting sticks and dropping them at my feet and I had to throw them. Hamish is a big dog and he pushes you over, and Corry is an old dog and is the same as Hamish. Candy is in heat, and she wasn't allowed to be taken off the lead but granda took her off the lead. After the walk we went home to get tea but I didn't want it so my granda kept on taking things off my plate until it was finished. After tea we had the birthday cake with 24 candles but he's 64. We lit the candles on the cake and sang Happy Birthday to you and my granda cut the cake in hald and had a little piece and he gave the rest to me.