Child's play

Up until this summer, my brother and his family have been living in Spain. That combined with the fact that their visits to the UK have been based around my folks' place in south London, means that it's not been easy to get the cousins together. In fact, despite the fact that my niece is four, Dan and Abi have only met her twice before, when she was much smaller.

However, this weekend, my brother and his daughter have come to visit. As they'll be back in Spain with his wife's family for Christmas, we're having a little Faux Christmas, this weekend. All my big girls will be here tomorrow but this evening, having collected the travellers from the station, we started our festive celebrations with a trip to the curry house in Kirkby Lonsdale. (I took this photo of Abi playing with her cousin later on.)

Earlier in the day, I'd driven over to York to collect Izzy from university. I had a good run across there from the Minx's house so Iz and I had time for a coffee before we set off home at a cracking little coffee house called Gatehouse Coffee. It's tucked away in the wall itself and there's virtually nothing to let you know it's there. It was empty when we arrived but did fill up a little bit while we had our coffees. 

I hope they're getting enough business to keep going but on the other hand I hope they don't get too busy. I want to bring the Minx here sometime soon.