Clinker built

Slow day. Late start - 10.30 again - the joy of a early-rising reasonably responsible adult who'll give the kids breakfast. After breakfast (leftover sausage, flat egg, rubbish bread) Mandy took her mum home and, the best bit, took Ellen with her. Now, don't get me wrong, Ellen's lovely but her and Ewan together fighting over toys is a pain that can be avoided by separating them.

Ewan and I played some his new games and then I dragged him out for a walk. Him and a chocolate reindeer. We only walked along to Saltpans about a mile away but he's a boy who needs to climb every snow mound, kick every lump, make a new snowball every few steps, stamp on any bit of unbroken snow. Slow progress.

Saltpans is home to a few broken down boats. One I've posted already, the skeleton of one that is almost covered when the tide is in and this one. Upturned and stripped of paint, it looks like someone started refurbishing it and lost interest. At the moment, repeated thawing and refreezing has given it a textured coating of ice crystals. A miniature of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The thinning of the snow shows where it has gathered on lands between the planks, exaggerating the lines and overlaps in the wood.

We popped into the lime kilns and had a wee nose around the bits that aren't fenced off. Found some enormous icicles and some stumpy stalagmiticles (or whatever an icicle forming from the ground up is called). Ewan tried to carry one home that was almost as tall as him but he smacked it on a lampost and it sort of lost its appeal.

Home to hot chocolate and another round of his Ben 10 game. Then it was curry-making with the leftover lamb and a nice mushroom and chick pea accompaniment before Mandy and Ellen got home, the grandson (and his parents) arrived and the evening of chat kicked off.