Poppy Day

Having neither real poppies in my garden, nor (for the first time since my white poppy teenage phase) a proper commemorative poppy, here is a flower Katherine's art teacher made for me when we gave her some present or other. I don't remember the present (though I can be fairly sure it was food related) but the poppy is still on our kitchen mantelpiece. Nothing much seems to happen around here on 11 November, though if it's a weekday everyone gets the day off. I hope I do enough with my kids that they understand the day's importance. Certainly Conor's pledge to 'make all the people stop having all the wars' gives me hope...

Anyway. Mr B arrived back late last night and I dragged myself from my (warm) sickbed to greet him, though I'm not sure he welcomed my germy presence overmuch! But still, nice to have a chat so he had a pause to wind down from the journey home. This morning was a lie-in for everyone, with Mr B delighted to discover he had slept as late as 10 (though I was a bit alarmed at getting up so early after these last two lazy weeks of holiday). A drizzly day kept us indoors with the only scheduled activities being a family game (Careers which, on only his second time of playing Mr B won - after I was cruelly robbed of all my money on the Moon), dinner (roast venison - searing plus 20 mins in 200C oven in case I need to remember that next time - plus dauphinoise AND mashed potatoes, roast honeyed pumpkin, savoy cabbage, buttered carrots and peas), and watching Merlin.

With the kids packed off early in a 'back to school' bedtime, Mr B and I were able to stay up super-late catching up on telly. And he was able to catch me up on all I had wrong in the plot of Hunted. Boy, that took a while. I seem to have this terrible difficulty in telling the difference between characters: so the evil odd-looking blond haired chap to me is the same as the slightly dopey brown haired chap who hasn't figured anything out. No wonder I find these shows so confusing. I blame the St Emilion Grand Cru...