Stumpery

Got Jim on the saturday morning this weekend as he had been to his school disco the night before and I didn't much fancy getting him sweaty and excited at 8pm. I think he had a nice time apart from the fact that Rachel Whitaker wasn't there...

Simon and JoJo came with Natalie and the still-tiny Abigail to remind us what it is like to have a baby, and to bring a whole bunch of useful stuff as well. They seem to be quite settled now with the little one at four months. We took them to the park on Arbury Road, which turns out to be quite fun despite the questionable location and graffiti.

Caroline at 8 1/2 months...

Sunday was sunny but with a light yet bitter wind straight from the Urals. Jim and Minnie declined to take their coats to Ickworth, which was a mistake, but once they had run around doing the quiz trail in the stumpery gardens all was ok. We went for a fairly short walk down to the walled garden (which has come on somewhat since the last time I was there - which I suspect was with Gabrielle when Jim was a tiny boy) and the lake, where we had an extremely cold picnic. Back up at the house we found it was too posh for a cafe so we got al fresco refreshments at the kiosk behind the porters' lodge. Caroline was appalled by our noisy and scruffy children's behaviour compared with the quiet, groomed and Bodenised pair in front of us, whose tall and amiably vacant father undoubtedly ran a department at Addenbrooke's and whisked them to their Sunday recreation in leather-upholstered style. I thought ours were fine, but slightly lively perhaps. Wasn't so keen when they started to play with the bins, and then the two little ones displayed their complete lack of social awareness by going and parking themselves with another family because their table was in the sun and none of the others were. I suppose it seemed obvious to them...

A footnote - when Jim was getting ready go home to Exning on Tuesday morning (it was half term) he was being rather silly in a harmless way, but suddenly stopped. He announced that as he was going to go back to mummy's he would have to take his crazy brain out, and them solemnly proceed to explain that the words "butt" and "willy" we're banned there. This was obviously of some concern to him as those words are such an endless source of amusement to our lot...