Buggy

As soon as we met up with G and B in Monmouth this morning, it was clear that the Boy Wonder was distinctly sub-par. He was hot, pale, and streaming thick green snot, and even a trip to the dog café, a chocolate brownie and some juice, and the insertion of all R's 50p pieces into the Guide Dogs collection box, didn't raise more than the faintest hint of enthusiasm. Asked at this point if he'd like to go to Croome, he said no, he wouldn't - even on the promise of a sausage lunch. He wanted, he said, to go straight home. The next few hours involved multiple rounds of us offering him choices of food/drink/activity, only to have him refuse all of them and demand something he couldn't have, then throw a huge strop when we said no. 

By mid-afternoon I was at my wits' end, but at this point, unexpectedly, things picked up. Firstly R persuaded him to eat a piece of cheese - the first thing he'd eaten in several hours - and then the two of them retired to R's study and sang 753 rounds of The Wheels on the Bus, by the end of which (and with the cheese, presumably, now hitting his system) the Boy's mood had begun to pick up. Several riotous rounds of hide and seek followed: "So. Now. You and me [indicated by the imperious finger] will hide. And you will find us. We are going to hide here, under this rug." 

By dinner time order was fully restored to the universe, and an industrial quantity of pesto pasta was consumed. "Have you put pine nuts in it? Because I don' like pine nuts. I don' like olives eiver. Are you having olives in yours? Why? What are those? Are they pine nuts? I want one. Please. Yuk... Oh. I like them now.... Please can I have anover one?" He even found a corner afterwards for some fromage frais: "I's yogurt." "Fromage frais." "Yogurt." "OK - yogurt's fine." "I's fomarge fay." "OK." Yogurt fomarge fay." "That's right - well done." Bath time and bed time were both so straightforward that it felt like dealing with a completely different child to the one we'd inherited nine hours earlier, but I fear the gluey catarrh may make it hard for the poor little chap to sleep tonight, so I'm away to get a head start on what will probably be a broken night.

I took a few bug shots around the garden this afternoon while R and the Boy were doing swinging, and was very pleased that this was one of them. This is the first year I've ever found Cinnamon Bugs here, but until today they've been highly skittish and flighty, and I've only managed to grab record shots. Historically this bug was rare in the UK, and was regarded as a southern coastal species, but it's now expanding its range northwards and can turn up in almost any dry environment. The new season adults, which are about 1cm long, appear in late summer and early autumn, and overwinter to breed in the spring.