There may be trouble ahead

More dull weather today. Mr B is convinced that his iPhone weather forecast is infallible, even using it to warn me when to get the washing in. Today it slightly let us down. Despite being forecast rain at home from 10am, it was fine (we had lunch outside) but the beaches at Collioure had a good forecast, so we headed there for an afternoon walk.

When we were about 10 minutes along the cliff path, Mr B looked behind us and remarked on the scary looking weather back there. I was looking through the viewfinder at this scene and muttering darkly about the weather ahead. About 2 minutes later the skies opened. The only member of the 'family' properly clad was my camera, snug and warm in its camera bag with rain cape. Me and the kids at least had two layers so we could at least shed the outer wet layer when we (finally) made it back to the car. Mr B was in a t-shirt. I was smug about this until I realised he had spare clothes in the car (I guess he doesn't trust the magic phone as much as he would have us believe).

What you would normally see in this shot is the beautiful sweep of sand of Argeles-Plage. It is said that you can walk on sand from here to Marseilles (that's a long way - I've not tried).

After the walk failure, we went for some indoor 'entertainment' at St Martin de Fenollar, a small and extremely old (founded in the 900s I think) chapel near the delightfully named Le Boulou. It is famed for its ancient frescos, dating back to the early 1100s which are remarkably vivid for all their age. They, amazingly to me, show the use of perspective, which I thought had to wait until Giotto, but have discovered from Google tonight actually was being experimented with way earlier. Anyway, beautiful stuff with amazing colours.

Back home I continued my quest to iron the house (renting the place out means we have lots of sets of bed linen, and none of it had been washed or ironed since the end of the season: so 8 beds x 2 set of linen and towels = more washing and ironing than I ever want to see again.) The kids were forced into the bath tonight, as we are off to see friends tomorrow and couldn't possibly all turn up as filthy and scruffy as we have been for the whole week. I swear there was enough dirt in the bottom of the bath to grow potatoes when I took them out. (I should add, at this point in my slummy mummy defence, that both of the kids have eczema so shouldn't be bathed often anyway....)

A weird thing happened today that I almost don't believe, but have to share:

Katherine (8) was cross with her brother (4) over some toy infringement or other. When we asked her to stop hitting him she screamed so loud that she blew a fuse. Actually blew the fuse that works all the sockets on the ground floor. Terrifying.

Kids have powers that we don't quite understand, and we mess with them at our peril.

EDIT: Thank you all for your concern about my poor finger yesterday. Who knew there were so many claustrophics in the blip closet (my, that's a bad place to keep claustrophobics). Anyway, just managed to get the ring off - so after a very bad night, where I thought amputation might be on the cards, I'm please to say all might be well.