Sunlight on strawberry leaves

A beautiful warm and sunny start to the day. The colours of the leaves in the light caught my eye in the garden and reminded me that there are lots of great things to look forward to as August quickly, shiftily, sneakily moves us on to a new season.

Other reminders of the start of the end of the summer (sorry) include:

Tom and Sally pinning up their 2014-15 season Match of the Day football wall-chart on the kitchen door and painstakingly punching out football shirts or scarves for all the teams and plugging them into the gaps. These will rise or fall depending on the team's skillage or epic failure over the season.

Grace reminding us daily of the things she MUST do before she starts school, ie. buy new stationery, get a Middle School skirt, read the third book in her trilogy, see her friends .. The truth is she's already looking forward to going back and getting on with it. She's not a good waiter.

Seeing friends again. I revel in non-contact for the first couple of weeks after school ends. I delight in shutting the world out temporarily and hiding in our family bubble. The children play more with each other, we all go a bit feral, we rediscover our best sides. But of course, we eventually have to resurface and reach out into the world again. We have Tash and Jess here today, Tom's seeing Josh tomorrow, Hermione is coming over to hang out with Grace .. this all reminds me that I can't pretend school (work) and real life doesn't exist anymore. And it's good to reconnect - of course it is.

I better go and do it.