Tear down those curtains...

...and make me a dress.

Ok, not quite curtains, but "Take that dress of yours that you rarely wear and take it in a bit so it fits me" doesn't sound nearly so dramatic. Tomorrow the kids are going to a "fancy restaurant" to round off their year learning about food. Of course for us this has meant much toing and froing over allergy issues, but today we discovered that the kids are expected to dress up smart for the occasion: that means shirts and ties (preferably suits but we have some leeway on that) for the boys and skirts/dresses for the girls (preferably evening wear). Aside from issues of girls not being allowed to wear trousers (which is an issue for TallGirl who has not worn a skirt/dress more than twice in the past two years), this is not a lot of notice to get smart wear together for kids who don't, let's face it, go to a lot of evening functions.

I thought TallGirl would wear her nice dress with ponies on. But that is "too babyish" all of a sudden. So at 9.30 tonight she tried on all my clothes, and has chosen my newest most favourite dress to wear. It has been reduced from a size [ahem....number obliterated by background noise] to a size 2.

Other than this curious tomboy to teenage girl transformation, the day was one of teaching small kids about weather and planting everything in sight in the garden. This evening, after a lovely hot sunny day that saw me stripped down to my vest while digging the root bed, a sudden storm blew in faster than I've ever seen. The lettuce cloche was blown half-way across the garden before I could even think about it. And for any folk in N.I. wondering about the courgettes: they are safely under a non-blown-away cloche.

Still very grumpy about the changes round these parts. But we'll see how things pan out.