Harvest

It's the time of year for wandering hedgerows with tupperware... This lunchtime CarbBoy helped me with the sloes (mainly his job was to keep his eyes on the huge wasp spiders as I picked around them) and over the next week or so I'll be gathering rosehips.

An oddly busy day: curriculum meeting after school with CarbBoy, that ran on and on until I was nearly late for taking TallGirl to basketball. The meeting was useful though and his new teacher sounds great. Only problem was right at the end when a few parents were asking if the wonderful English conversation classes would be running again this year (for a minute I didn't know what she was on about, until I realised she meant my lunchtime sessions where the kids did breakdancing and generally ignored me...) One of the mum's sons, it turns out is the otherwise-disruptive kid who was really engaged in my sessions - I guess music is his thing. So somehow I feel talked into doing them again.

Between dropping TallGirl off at basketball and picking her up, CarbBoy managed to fall over and rip large holes in his knee and shin, and fill them with gravel. Grim. But he was unusually brave when it came to me picking the bits out and smothering him in savlon. We managed despite the injury to see the last few minutes of TallGirl's practice, where their (new) coach had given them each two goes to shoot a penalty. TallGirl is not good at this. Or perhaps I should say wasn't good at this - since today she was the only girl who scored twice. This is her first training session this year - she hadn't decided to continue until at CarbBoy's practice at the weekend a coach came over and asked if she would come back as they were shorthanded. I guess it's a good way to mark your return to the team (though I hope it doesn't fool the coach into giving her a first team place!)

Home then for dinner and homework chat. TallGirl has been given a copy of the New Testament in her RE class and asked quite innocently "what's it about?" And "Who wrote it?" I told her to read it. (Should keep her busy for a while. Though from my brief description of Old and New Testaments, she said the Old one sounded more like her kind of thing.)

Meanwhile I have been visited by a plague of mosquitos, who have spent the last two nights biting me. I am at the peak of elephant lady-ness with my swollen face, but no - I'm not blipping it for you.