Birthday lunch

First thing W and I walked over to Traprain but didn't go up as it would have taken too long. It was dad's birthday and we needed to leave enough time to stop by at Smeaton's before descending on him for birthday celebrations. Stuck for 79 year old present inspiration I'd eventually had the idea that we'd pick up some seedlings for him to put in the vegetable beds he's been obsessively rescuing from a couple of years of neglect. And while we were there decided to get L a Hippeastrum to cheer her up. The doctor's visit yesterday resulted in antibiotics but she was still feeling pretty under the weather. Still she insisted on making us coffee and opening up another packet of the latest fave biscuit discovery - Digestive Thins. Whoever had the genius idea for these definitely deserves this year's Nobel Biscuit Prize.

Dad's house is always an Aladdin's cave of interesting stuff - especially for the kids whose eyes lit up when they explored inside the big shed and found that dad had added a vintage moped to his collection. Seeing an opportunity to impress dad fired it up and there followed a prolonged session of the kids taking it in turns to zoom up and down the drive. Then, once someone realised that we were already 15 minutes late for our lunch booking we put the moped to bed and headed off for food.

Afterwards the teens rushed down to the beach and as usual found endless entertainment in doing various (increasingly competitive) things with pebbles and stones. Not sure when they're going to grow up but I'm sure they were playing the exact same games when they were 5.

Once we'd had enough of being blustered to pieces we finished off a brilliant day with an inevitably somewhat mundane visit to Tesco to stock up.