Elf 'n' safety

Have tools, will travel (not least, so as to avoid having to share them with anyone else). I think we might have to do some health and safety training before too long.

The weather in the Principality today swinging back and forth between poor and dire (though at least it wasn't snowing, which it had been when we'd left the Shire), we made an afternoon booking for ourselves and the Boy at a soft play place near the further park. Ten minutes in, he turned to me and said, "I don' like it. I want to go home now," but luckily I managed to steer him out of the ball pool and towards the role play areas before this idea could solidify, and once he'd done some lawn mowing and demolished a wall of bricks, he brightened up and started to enjoy himself.

B's favourite thing was the toy vacuum cleaner ("Crums everywhere! " he said, enthusiastically wielding the nozzle), but my best bit was watching him empty an entire toy supermarket into a trolley, and then check out each item and pay for it individually before bringing it and presenting it to me. In short order I had to find a trolley of my own to put all his purchases in.

In the end we only managed to persuade him out of the building by promising to take him to a café for a babyccino and a treat, which might have been a rash commitment if we hadn't known that we were just a few hundred yards from the Chapter arts centre. Chapter produced not only a very fine babyccino and a large cookie, but also a surprising (to the Boy, at any rate) rendezvous with B's mother, who was there for a meeting about the upcoming Cardiff Animation Festival. Having finished work for the day, L offered to drive some or all of us back to the house, but R and I elected to walk, and B decided to stick with us. He charmed us by singing - beautifully - all the way home, which we wouldn't have missed for worlds.