Fun times

My game plan for this weekend had involved being out in the garden with the Boy Wonder for as much of it as possible, but (somehow almost inevitably) the weather let us down. When the overnight heavy rain reduced to mere drizzle towards the end of the morning, B asked if we could walk to the local playground. This entails going past the farm animal sanctuary, which has alpacas and turkeys that were mildly inchrestin', but the playground didn't hold his attention for long and we soon set off to walk back home.

But then - "Why are those there?" he enquired, pointing at the faded letters set in the tarmac. I explained about hopscotch, and thought that would be the end of it - personally I never saw the point of hopscotch, and still don't. But, not for the first time, it turned out I was wrong. Having completed the course successfully at the first attempt he ran round and did it again, and then again, and again, till he was so tired he could barely get both feet off the floor at once. One time he lost his balance and fell on hands and knees, but he just brushed himself off and went back to his game.

This afternoon, while R rested, the Boy and I made banana bread, leaving out the hazelnuts because he thinks nuts of any kind are the invention of the Devil, and mixing plain, milk, and white chocolate chips. Without R riding shotgun this was a slightly stressful experience for me - I had to clean quite a lot of cake mixture off myself and various bits of the kitchen after B accidentally ran the blades of the hand mixer too far up the side of the mixing bowl, and then, after the basic mix was prepared, every time I took my eye off him for more than half a second he'd start digging lumps of it out of the bowl with the nearest handy implement and eating them - but the result was a triumph. The Boy and I agreed that it was the best cake we'd ever made, and when Granddad finally got to try some he thirded the vote.

Thank you, Nigel Slater - you (and an ancient hopscotch course) rescued what could otherwise have been a rather trying day.