Big gig

In Weston village hall last Saturday was the big gig and big gig for kids.  The kids were on in the afternoon.  As with any good village event there were tea and cakes on sale, some of which were homemade.  Only 2 acts turned up in the end, a group of girls who dance and one girl who sang a solo.  Brian Dawson did a couple of Beatles songs on the piano then everyone went home.  Apparently there were 4 more acts who didn't turn up, and if they had that would have made a good show.  I don't know why there wasn't a better turnout.  I would have thought a talent show for kids would have been more popular  but maybe it got overshadowed by the adults big gig later on.  Hopefully it won't put the organisers off putting on events like this in the future. Some people say that it wasn't well advertised but I disagree.  There must be people going round the village with their eyes shut.  I just hope they weren't driving.

The big gig itself in the evening was a success.  There was a good turnout for the audience, mainly adults and older children.  They had a group of older guys who played blues type music and they were very accomplished musicians.  Then they had 3 duos of a bloke playing a guitar and a woman singing.  That was the only similarity between the 3 duos, musically they were very different. In the evening the tea and cakes were gone and replaced with a bar and there were little pots of peanuts on the table.  A good time was had by all.

The Pod

Well the pod has finally arrived in Aston.  It seems very popular with the youth in the village and I've seen hardly any of them hanging around at the Lych gate, which was the reason it was built in the first place.  So far, it's achieved it's purpose.

This shelter has speakers and you can blue tooth music from your i-pod to it, and it plays the music.  It is powered by a handle which you wind.  It has lights that work when it gets dark and has lots of entrance/ exits to prevent bullying.  One lad, when his friends told him that there was this shelter which plays music from your i-pod, thought it sounded so good that he didn't believe it was real until he saw it.  Apparently it got covered in graffiti within a week of it being put up, but someone from the parish council went and cleaned it up, and when I went there today there wasn't any.

I have heard a lot less noise from the race track recently.  Maybe they've finally listened to the protests from the residents of Aston and the nearby villages.  Instead I seem to hear a lot of cows mooing, which gives the village a more rural feel.  I wonder if anyone will start up a protest against cow noises?

Ladies Night (and chip van)

As I was on my way to the ladies night at Weston school, I made an amazing discovery.  Aston has a chip van.  It comes to Yates Ave on a Friday night between 7.30 and 8.15.  I had already eaten before I saw it so I didn't buy any, but I will be sure to let you know if they are any good when I do try some.  That's definately a 'when' and not an 'if' as I will be trying them.  Mmm chips.

The Ladies Night was a fundraising event for Weston school and it had lots of stalls selling cards, accessories, jewellery and some foody things.  These was also a bar and various treatments on offer for a fiver such as hot stone massage, facials, nails and eyebrow shaping.  I don't think there were quite as many people  at the ladies night as in previous years, but there were just as many stalls.  Lots of handmade stuff.  There was a stall which did handmade jams, pickles and chocolate and they had loads out at the front to try. I think I must be that kind of stalls worst nightmare as I like to try all the samples but don't very often buy anything.  The chocolate was really good, well most of it anyway.  The rose and bergamot white chocolate was good as was the lemongrass flavour white chocolate, the caramel milk chocolate and the Christmas spice chocolate.  The Christmas tree chocolate was not so good tasted as though it was made with real Christmas trees.  I spent ages talking to the people on the herbalife stall.  It must be hard to sell a weight loss product because it would be quite tactless to go up to someone and say "You look like you need to lose a bit of weight.  Fancy trying our new weight loss product?".  I think they get round this by dropping leaflets through doors and having stalls at events such as this one.  There were a few things I could have bought but I settled on buying a nice handmade headband for my daughter.  As at most events of this sort there was a raffle at the end.  I didn't win though.  Maybe next time eh.

Weston Produce Show

The produce show is one of the most villagy things you can get.  I've lived in towns and visited many towns and cities too but never have I seen a competition for growing fruit and veg anywhere but in a village hall.  The Weston produce show had entries from people in Aston as well as the people from the 2 villages pretty much join in everything the other one does.  As well as classes for fruit and vegetables there were also a few craft and photography classes and also classes for children to enter.  As far as I can tell the competition is friendly; I have heard of some villages where people sneak over the neighbours fence and sabotage the crops in the garden to give themselves a better chance of winning, but I think the competition is friendly in Weston. They don't take it any less seriously though.  Winning the most points in the produce show is a big deal for the folks in Weston, well at least for families in Weston anyway as most of the entries seem to come from them and then a few other people will enter one thing here and there.  I'd love to tell you all who actually won, but I can't remember.  That's what comes of writing about something a month after it happened.

After all the trophies have been handed out they auction off the produce in aid of a good cause.  ( I think this time it was part the air ambulance and the rest to the village hall funds).  Mr Hackett from Shardlow was the auctioneer and he's been doing auctions for as long as I can remember.  I heard quite a few years ago on the grapevine that he wanted to retire, but it seems he hasn't managed to yet.  I can't believe no-one else wants to do it though.  I think it would be fun.  Maybe it's because he is good at it and he'd be a hard act to follow.  Anyway the produce auction is brilliant.  Lots of lovely home grown veg at bargain prices.  The auction was very friendly as well. We just lost out in the bidding on a plate of cakes and the person who won gave us one of them. Others who won something they were bidding on did a similar thing.

Summer activities

The South Derbyshire District Council have put on some free activities on the rec this summer.  What it doesn't say on the leaflet is that the Parish council also pay a donation to have them come to the village. 

The different mobiles come at various times according to a timetable, but they came to Aston every Tuesday,  often 2 a day.  This seems to be a lot more than other places get so it very generous of the Parish Council to fund these.  These are a really great way of amusing kids for zero money, and during the summer holidays amusing children can get rather expensive, so these are really helpful.  Some kids did enjoy putting on sumo suits to wrestle, play laser shooting games or go up the climbing wall, but I was quite surprised at the amount of parents I heard trying to persuade children to have a go on these things when all they wanted to do was throw and catch a ball or run around with their friends.  They had these special nets which the child throws the ball at and it bounces back.  When I was a kid we just chucked a ball at the wall.  It had the same effect.  Anyway the nets were really popular.  But whatever the children did they seemed to enjoy themselves and that's what's important.  It also gets them away from the telly or computer.  So big thanks to the organisers/ staff for these events.

More about the speed detecters...

Well it seems they have moved the speed detecter thing to the road where you come into the village from Shardlow.  I wonder if it is getting any different results there.  I read in the Acorn (a free magazine about the village that come through the letter box) that the thing also collects stats about peoples speeds as they pass and apparently there are an awful lot of people breaking the speed limit.  I'd like details about this like what percentage of people are breaking the speed limit and by how much.  For instance, it's hardly a scandal if several people are going through the village at 31 mph.

I read the acorn from front to back and I have to admit it gives a much more thorough coverage of village like than I do.  I particularly enjoyed the neighbourhood watch page which gives crime stats for the area (we seem to get on average 1 burgulary a month) and the info about the speed detecter.

Speed signs

Not so long ago one of those signs appeared at the side of Weston Road that tells you how fast you're going.  Originally they put it up in the middle of some trees so it was really hard to see your speed let alone feel prompted to slow down if you were going too fast.  Recently tho, someone has turned it around so that it faces the other way and is not obscured by the trees.  I find it very useful; when I went past on my bike the other day it told me I was going 10mph, and when I walked past it, it told me I was going 3 miles an hour.  

It is much better than the one they have in Shardlow.  I drive past that one, speedometer dead on 30, and it flashes 30 at me like I'm going too fast.  Considering that most car speedometers are set 3mph too fast to help avoid speeding, I think this sign must be set wrongly.  The fact that when I go through Aston at dead on 30, the sign says I'm doing 27 seems to back this up.  So in other words they want people to drive at 25mph through Shardlow despite it having a 30mph limit.

Well dressing

I walked around the village with the children and we looked at the well dressings and pointed out the bits we had done on each one. I wish I'd got a photo of the Charles Dickens one too, as that was really good.

The post office were giving away free ice tea, which was very kind of them.





We saw the black pig morris dancers outside the white hart.  They are morris dancers who do the traditional dances in non-traditional clothes.  The costumes were fantastic.  The photo doesn't really do it justice.  It was the attention to detail with the costumes that I was particularly impressed with, things like the flowers and feathers in the hats, the pig in the baby carrier and the bag with the vote monster raving loony party rosette sewn to it.  I overheard a young woman saying she wanted to be a morris dancer after watching a performance and that's not something you hear very often from anyone under 50.

Some youth workers had been working on a well dressing with the youth in the area and at the same time working out what the youth in the are need.  They heard a lot of complaints from locals about them hanging around in the lych gate so they have plans in place for this amazing pod thing that they can sit in.  Apparently it has a handle they can wind up and it generates power for some lights.  Also it's blue tooth compatible so they can play music from their phone in there.  It sounds great but the only problem I can foresee its that it will be on the rec which is right on the edge of Aston and maybe some people won't be bothered to walk there and still hang around the lych gate.  I guess time will tell.


The weather managed to stay mostly dry apart from a few quick downpours towards the afternoon.  We sheltered in a phone box and it's a credit to Aston that it didn't smell of wee, as most phone boxes do.

There were loads of other things happening, but that's enough writing for one day.

Build up to the well dressing

The well dressing is probably the biggest event on Aston's calendar and it starts tomorrow.  People come from all over Derbyshire to see it.  It seems a bit bizarre that Aston would have a well dressing when it doesn't even have a well and more bizarre that it isn't something that has been happening for years and years which started when there was a well, but was revived in the late 1990s (I think).  Anyway not that I'm complaining, as it's a great event and fun for all the family.  There are several stalls and also shows from magicians, pinxton puppets, black pig border morris dancers as well as well dressings made by several local organisations.  There are many local organisations and in fact it's a standing joke in the village that if you see 2 people talking in the street, they're probably talking about forming a committee.

The bunting went up a couple of weeks ago and the all the groups in the area have been working on them this week.  They have to be made completely from natural materials, so there's no leisurely making them over a long period of time, they're worked on intensively the week before or else stuff will go off.  Any flower petals used are put in a day or 2 before the event.  It never ceases to amaze me the variety of things people use to make a well dressing, anything from leaves to coconut to curry powder to berries, wool and stones.  The church has also been decorated by various groups doing little displays all around it.  The whole village has been a buzz with preparation and I'm sure many people will be up early in the morning to set things up.

Lets just hope the weather is ok and there's no rain left in the clouds after we had a whole months worth of rain in one day today.

The Scarecrow Trail

I love the scarecrow trail.  Unfortunately I only found out when it was on a month before the actual weekend and by then I had already booked the weekend away, which was a real shame and I would have loved to have made a scarecrow and everything.  As it was, all I saw of it was when we drove through the village as we went away and returned.  I noticed they had the usual policeman scarecrow with speed camera at one end of the village, which they have every year, but they didn't have the other policeman at the other end of the village.  I wonder what happened to him.  I have noticed that scarecrow trails have been popping up all over the country and I wonder if they got the idea from Weston or vice versa?  I don't see so many scarecrows in farmers fields tho, and when I do it's usually earlier on in the year when seeds have just been planted and they are usually a bin bag on a stick and if they've really made the effort there might be a tin can on top.  Quite a contrast to this, for example:-

Here someone has obviously but a lot of time and effort into making the scarecrow into a deep sea diver.  And just from what I've seen from the main road through Weston, other people have made a similar effort.  In my opinion, farmers should follow the example set by scarecrow trails and make more interesting scarecrows.  If the don't have time, they could perhaps borrow them from the scarecrow trail.  After all, what do people do with these things after the scarecrow trail is finished?

Beacon

Across the country, beacons have been lit in honour of the Queen's diamond jubilee.  Here's the one on Aston church:-

Not the best photo I know, what with it being a bit dark.  Quite a lot of people turned out to see it.  They had some music accompanying it.  Very atmospheric it was too.

Jubilee

I have not been to any of the Aston jubilee events so far, not because there aren't any; there are events running over all four days.  More than we have had visitors or been doing other things.  Nice to see lots of bunting up all around the village.  My daughter made bunting by drawing on paper and threading string through it.  Unfortunately it absolutely chucked it down with rain...

We did go to church on Sunday morning.  The vicar was a real royalist, the Queen was very much in the prayers and at the end we had the national anthem.  In the press I have heard a lot about street parties and how there's loads of them happening all over the country.  I haven't seen any tho.  I want to go to a street party.  Still, there's two days left so you never know.

Rainbow over Aston

Been very changeable weather over the last couple of days but I managed to get a picture of yesterday's rainbow.

If you look really closely you can see that it was a double rainbow.

Weston walk

Sometimes I wonder if my posts are a bit critical, but maybe I think too much and over-analyse things sometimes.  This is not always good as it can lead to depression as A (an intelligent person, who writes a deep and meaningful, well-thought out blog, which I would definitely encourage anyone to read),  points out in his blog.  One thing that can help against depression is a good walk on a sunny day.

The Weston walk was a 4 and half mile walk along the footpaths of Weston.  It's purpose was to promote awareness of them, increase the use of them, check that all was well with them and of course to have fun.  It was also a practice, as they are hoping that next year the walk will be part of the Charnwood Forest festival of walking week.  It was a guided walk led by a bloke called Alan who told us a bit of the history or the area as we went round.  For instance the Coopers Arms was used in the civil war to look after the horses.  Apparently, it was never finished and it was meant to be E shaped, as was very fashionable at the time it was built.

When we got to the first footpath off the road, one of the walkers got pulled over by a dog and knocked over the footpath sign.  It was an accident waiting to happen tho as the bottom of the post was rotten and it was held onto the fence with a plastic tie.

We walked in between the new houses and down more footpaths, then across a field of long grass ( which was apparently a footpath although you couldn't see where the actual path went).  This was quite hard going.  We got to the old ferry point where people used to ring the bell for the ferry.  History tells us that the woman running the ferry was a bit grumpy and that if she was having a cup of tea or didn't feel like it, she wouldn't bother to answer the bell and leave the passengers waiting for sometimes a couple of hours before taking them across the river.

On the way back up to the canal we saw the noise monitor for the race track in the field.  Weston is a lovely village, but the one thing that stops it from being absolutely idyllic is the noise from the race track in Castle Donnington, which is on the other side of the river.  The residents really hate it and there is a lot of organised protests in the village.  The noise can be heard in Aston too, but not so loudly.  Anyway, this noise monitor wasn't very well placed as to start with it was slightly outside the village, and also it was tucked away in a field where the noise wasn't so loud.  When we walked up the slope to Weston Lock, the noise was a lot louder.  They should have put it there, it would give a better representation of the level of noise the residents hear.

The walk continued along the canal then past the church back to the village hall for a well earned cup of tea and slice of homemade cake.  All in all it was an enjoyable walk and there is another one next week.  This one will be around Aston.

Writers Block

I've been having a bit of writers block lately and, although there have been things to write about I haven't been motivated or able to think of an interesting slant on it.  But as living things die if you don't feed them, blogs die if you don't write in them, so I'm going to write something and hope it flows.

Today was the May Fayre in the Memorial Hall.  It was run by the church.  They had several stalls, the usual village fair type things, plants, bric a brac, homemade cakes, tombola etc.  I picked up a few bits which I was pleased about and a carrot cake which was very tasty.  They did a ploughmans lunch, which consisted of some salad, but the diet went out of the window when you saw what went with it.  There was a choice of some large wedges of pork pie, huge hunks of cheese or massive slices of pizza, (and from what I could tell you could have more than one of those choices too) followed by a choice of puddings with cream.  No-one could say the folks at the church aren't generous.  The hall was full of people and there was a good atmosphere.  Hopefully they made lots of money.

Spring into Jazz

On Saturday evening it was Spring into Jazz at the Memorial Hall.  This was a jazz band who played music and talked about the history of jazz in between.  They were a 5 piece band which consisted of a banjo player who did most of the talking, a trumpet/cornet player, a clarinet /saxophone player, a keyboard player and a guy who appeared to have a thing about playing really huge musical instruments.  The first thing I noticed as I walked in the hall was the massive white sousaphone which was apparently made with 3 miles of pipes.  He also played a double bass.  I don't really know a lot about jazz and didn't recognise many of the tunes but I still really enjoyed it. Jazz has a seedy background.  In the early days jazz was played in brothels.  They man telling the stories was very considerate of the fact I'd brought my 11 year old son with me.  At the beginning he called them brothels and then changed to saying house of pleasure or unmentionable places.  It's roots were in the recently freed black slaves in New Orleans starting roughly around 1890 and getting really big in the 1920s. They told colourful tales of the jazz musicians. Louis Armstrong was born to a 14 year old mother and never knew his father.  His life changed when he got put into an orphanage at 13 where he learn to play the cornet in their band.  There was a guy called Sydney (I forget his last name, but bear in mind I had never even heard of most of these people before Saturday night) who discovered the alto sax when visiting London, then he got deported for brawling.  King Oliver (he wasn't really a king, he just called himself that) had a band with lots of the big names in jazz, but they all left his band when they realised he was ripping them off.  There were lots of tales of musicians being ripped off by record companies, and many more stories of musicians turning to alcoholism.  There was a big blues singer called Bessie Smith who, when the Klu Klux Klan came along with torches to burn down their blues tent, she went out to challenge then to a fist fight and they all backed away quietly.  My personal favourite was the tale of Mr Moore whose act was to dress as a frog and was shut in a box which he had to escape from and the tune that went with it.  Anyway I'm not doing these tales justice.  The guy from the band told them a lot better.

As well as telling good stores they were very good musicians.  We heard many good sax, clarinet and cornet solos as well as maple leaf rag on the keyboard.  The whole evening inspired an interest in jazz I never knew I had and left me wanting to know more about the musicians and what was happening in the world of jazz in that era, and most importantly I wanted to hear more of the music.

Weston School Hi 5 celebration

Saturday was also the day Weston School had it's celebration of the new school being open for 5 years.  I remember 5 years ago walking from the old school to the new one on the first day of the new school.  It was chucking it down with rain when we walked from the old school to the new one whilst singing.  5 years later we went to the new school for the celebration and it was raining again.  They had a stage set up in the main hall where children could perform and lots of displays of things the children had done and photos all around the school.  It was a fairly informal affair, people could wander between the performances and the displays as they wish.  The performances were children playing musical instruments, dancing, telling jokes, singing, a puppet show amongst others.  They were all good, and as the head teacher said in her speech, every child is precious.  A group of the year 5 and 6 girls did a dance and that really stood out for me, and of course my daughter and her friends playing guitar was brilliant in my completely biased opinion.  The school governers put on some free refreshments.  They did drinks and tonnes of tasty homemade cakes.  The kids were all having about 3 each and there was still plenty left over.  It was really hard to limit myself from eating loads but I found sitting at the opposite end of the hall worked quite well as I didn't feel like getting up after spending more or less 4 hours on my feet doing the yard sale.  The event was newsworthy enough for the Derby Evening Telegraph to be there taking photos so I'll be sure to be looking out for that.

Yard Sale

Events to write about here have been like buses lately.  There hasn't been much for a while, then on Saturday we had 3 in one day.  First was the yard sale.  It's like a day where lots of people have yard sales all around the village and recreation in Aston sell maps of the village to show people where they all are.  When I booked the pitch the organiser warned me that traders come round before the sale starts to cream off the good stuff before it opens.  We were told not to set up too early so that it gives people from the village a fair chance at the bargains.  I started setting up at about 9.30 (sale started at 10) and sure enough a flurry of traders appeared before 10am.  One of them told me I'd left it a bit late to set up and started looking in my garage.  He was only interested in one thing, my son's drum kit, which wasn't for sale.  None of the traders wanted anything from my stall and I was quite worried that I wasn't going to sell anything.  We had a steady stream of customers throughout the duration of the sale and in the end we managed to get rid of a reasonable amount of stuff.  People were friendly and quite a few people chatted on their way through.  Quite a lot of people didn't understand the map.  It was a bad map through.  It showed all the wiggly streets as straight lines and didn't look anything like how they really are.  They should just print out a map of the village from google maps and copy it. Towards the end the people began to tail off, not many people were around after 1.30pm.  The best thing about it was the weather.  God must have been smiling down on us.  It was predicted to rain all day but it held off until it chucked it down at 2pm when the sale due to finish.

Aston and Weston Bowls Club

Bowls season started at the beginning of April.  They advertise for newcomers to come on a Sunday afternoon sometime after 2, so this afternoon we went to try it out.  Bowls has an image of being for older people and I hope if any of the members stumble across this blog by accident, they won't be too offended to read that most of the people there were in the older half of the population.  Despite this, they were friendly and made me and the children welcome.  They lent us their equipment and showed us how to play.  I enjoyed it and would like to go again.  My youngest was a bit small for it, she struggled with the balls.  I'd recommend that kids were 10 or over before playing.

Good Friday workshop

Every Good Friday Aston church do a workshop for the children.  First they do an Easter egg hunt.  Some of the bigger kids hide eggs around the church for the younger ones to find.  As there were slightly less kids there this year than usual the kids got more than the usual 5 egg limit.  There were some crafts and some colouring and a favourite amongst the kids was the Easter garden which was made by the children going to look for flowers and plants in the church yard and putting them in the big tray of soil in the church.  They had water sprays for the plants which the kids really loved.  During the whole event they gave out tea and hot cross buns and at the end Tony the vicar got his guitar out and we all sang some songs.

Palm Sunday

On Palm Sunday Aston church had a joint service with the Methodist church, where they start off at the Methodist church and walk to Aston C of E church behind one of the children dressed as Jesus would have done and riding a REAL donkey.  I was pretty impressed by this and apparently they do it every year.  This year they had a girl Jesus which was only fair, why should only boys get the fun of a donkey ride?  As we don't have very many real palm trees growing in Aston, they gave us some greenery from an evergreen tree to wave.  We all sang songs on the way to the church and when we got to the lych gate, everyone put their leaves on the ground for the donkey to walk on.  I didn't have a leaf.  In Jesus time people who didn't have leaves put their coats down for the donkey to walk on.  I had my good coat on so I wasn't about to chuck it on the ground for the donkey to walk over, especially as I've seen that donkey before and it doesn't really care where it does a poo.  It came in for a nativity service once and pooed on the church floor.  I guess the chances of it pooing at the precise moment it walked over my coat are quite low and if I was wearing an old coat I may have risked it. I like to think that if it was the real Jesus riding on a donkey and I was actually there at the time, that I would have put my coat down no matter how good I thought my coat was.  Anyway, I digress.  In church Tony did a family friendly interactive talk through what happened through the week coming up to Easter, which was very informative if you didn't know the Easter story.

Easter Scramble

Yesterday it was the great Easter scramble.  The weather wasn't great but at least it wasn't raining, and weather is important for the Easter scramble as it involves walking around the village looking for clues, each which give a letter which then can be unscrambled to make a word.  Then the children pick out a stick with a number on and then they come back to Weston Village Hall and pick the Easter egg with that number on it. At the village Hall they then do some Easter crafts, making Easter bunnies and chicks, a bit of colouring, that sort of thing.  And of course no event like this would be complete without there being tea and coffee and assorted tasty cakes.  Despite the weather not being that great people turned up in the masses.  It was a great success.  The hall was heaving with people and the little park opposite was full of kids and parents who'd come outside to escape the noise and crowds.  Before the end they ran out of Easter eggs and were turning people away.  Next year it will probably cost 2 Easter eggs on non-uniform day. Or something.  Will be interesting to see what solution the PSFA come up with to prevent an Easter Egg shortage next year.

Messy Church

On Sunday we went to messy church, which they have in Weston village hall every now and again.  It was quite relaxed and informal.  They gave us coffee and croissants and the parents chatted while the kids did bible themed crafts, all related to a particular story, Moses today.  They wrote their name in heiroglyphics, did paper weaving, made mud bricks and made these origami frogs.  I need a picture really to describe the frogs, but I bought a memory card for the camera from Tesco and when I put it into the card reader in the computer, it kept crashing.  So unfortunately no picture of the wonderful legless frogs.  I was quite inspired by the whole origami thing and I wanted to make the frogs with legs like they did at the art room (in Long Eaton) but I guess these frogs were just the right difficulty level for kids to make.  They did jump too.  After that there was a story which they got the kids to act bits out of and some singing.  All in all I'd recommend messy church to families with young children as it is fun, friendly and informative, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting an origami master class.

How to sell a house

I've noticed that there are a couple of houses locally that have been on the market for quite a while with Haart.  So what have they done to help get that sale?  They have changed the old 'for sale' signs for posher 'for sale' signs.  I'm no marketing expect but I don't see the point of that.  I mean, its not like you get to keep the for sale sign when you move in.  Mind you when we were trying to sell our house, I was in the process of making a scarecrow for the scarecrow trail and the conservatory was full of straw and papier-mache heads, and maybe that was part of the reason it didn't sell.  I always thought that when people look around a house they ignore what's in it at the moment, because that's not what its going to be like when they buy it, and imagine how the house would be if they lived in it, but maybe I'm wrong.  Perhaps superficial things like a posher for sale sign really do make the difference.  It has been a little while since they started using the posher signs and neither house has sold, although I have noticed that another estate agent has started using the same type of sign.

Yesterday it was non-uniform day at school.  The children had to bring in a Easter egg for to donate to the great Easter scramble in exchange for coming to school not in uniform.  This went off without a hitch partly because of the carefully chosen Easter eggs (ones that they weren't so keen on so they wouldn't be too upset about giving them away) and also despite my husband saying that if he was at school he would have worn his school uniform and eaten the Easter egg.  It was a relief to get to school and find that it was actually the right day and that they hadn't come not in uniform when all the other children had.

 

Mothers Day

It was a family service at church ton Sunday morning, so the vicar Tony made his sermon family friendly.  He asked for a child volunteer out to the front.  There was a shortage of willing children, so he got his daughter to come out.  He demonstrated the reading from the Gospel by giving her clothes to wear (over the ones she was already wearing) with a word on them.  Eg the first one was a t-shirt with the word compassion stuck to it.  A couple of items of clothing later, (which shamefully I can't remember what words they had on them), and out came a pair of boxer shorts with the word humility pinned onto them.  At this point Charlotte refused to wear them, so Tony opened it up to the whole church and asks if anyone, of any age would like to come forward and wear them.  No one volunteers.  So a couple more items then he finishes up saying that they all come under the umbrella of love.  Then he picked up the boxer shorts again and asked again if anyone will wear the boxer shorts of humility.  At this point I started to feel a bit sorry for him, so looked again at the boxer shorts and did a quick mental size calculation and thought I was probably a bit fat for them and I'd be stood at the front trying to squeeze into the things or even worse, they'd split or something, so I figured it wouldn't really be a good idea.  After all they are the boxer shorts or humility, not humiliation.  Very similar word but quite a different meaning.  They gave all the women a nicely wrapped polyanthus, but I was near the back so by the time it got to me there weren't any left so I got a leftover one with less flowers on that they didn't wrap.  It may be a leftover plant with little flowers but I shall love and nurture it anyway.  We said this really lovely prayer thanking God for our mothers and for the many things that our mothers have done for us which we may not even realise, which really struck a chord with me.  As we left Tony asked again if we were all sure we didn't want to wear the boxer shorts of humility.  


I didn't go out for dinner or anything like that as my mum lives miles away and the kids were away too.  Someone sympathised.  Someone else said having break from the kids was a great mothers day present. I bet all the pubs or restaurants were busy and crowded anyway, so I don't feel like I was missing much.