Our journey to school!

This is how Daddy gets to work in the morning. A 5 minute ride to the train station. A 50 minute train to London. And a 25 minute cycle through London's parks (mainly) to the office.
Guy helps with the folding bike - note the footwear!


And this is how we get to school

We cycle across the field;

Through the woodAnd we get to school in about 10 minutes. So even when it's raining, it's not too bad! Of course, I need to remind myself of this in the winter when it's cold and dark in the morning and the car is looking warm and dry!

My big schoolgirl! (At the end of the day - so she's looking scruffier than usual!)

After school; back over the bridge and into the wood,
Back through the wood,
Stopping only to feed left-over carrot sticks and apple chunks from lunch boxes to the horses.

The best bit about this is that we live 15 minutes walk from the centre of Oxford.

All the fun of the fair!

Yesterday we went to St Giles Fair. A strange Oxford tradition which is equally attractive and repellant!Since the nineteenth century, St Giles' Fair has been held on the Monday and Tuesday following the first Sunday after St Giles' Day (1 September).This year the Fair is being held on 7 & 8 September.
It's a strange phenomenon. I don't know how many other fairs start with a service of blessing!


I think the person who best described it, is the wonderful Jan Morris.

It is the most boisterous of Oxford traditions, the profits of which go partly to the city and partly to the college of St John's, the local landowner; and it brings together in an atmosphere of unnatural intensity every type and kind of Oxford citizen. The academics go with their burbling children, eating iced lollipops and arguing the toss with indulgent showmen in piping cultured accents. The factory families go, trailing balloons and sweet papers, and hugging flowery vases they have won at shooting galleries. The farmers go, stumping stoically through the hubbub with kind wives in blue hats. The aldermen go — in 1950 Alderman Smewin officially complained to the City Council that there had been only one set of Galloping Horses to ride on. The parish clergy go, from a sense of boyish duty, and the weedy louts go, to stand around in bow-legged moronic cliques, licking candy floss, and the shop-girls go, to let their skirts fly on the Big Dipper. Every degree is represented there, from the exquisite patrician to the grubbiest slut in carpet slippers: and flushed from their normal habitats like this, thrown together between the Bingo stalls and the Man-Eating Rat, they always seem to me larger, finer or more awful than life. George's Café feels genially blended: but St Giles's Fair is like a city with its masks torn off, seen with a flushed clarity, and it makes you wonder how such contrasts can ever be reconciled. It is sure to end, you feel, like all the worst dreams, in a scream, a cold sweat or a blackout.

Oxford, however, is old, and experienced at the game. By Wednesday morning all those stalls and roundabouts have miraculously disappeared, and the scholars, the charge-hands, the oafs and the parsons are restored to their blurred and unalarming selves.




Of course, with the general tackiness of the rides and the extortionate prices, it seems appropriate that St Giles is the patron Saint of beggars and thieves!

The Many (painted) faces of Phoebe!

It's the end of the summer, and there are final opportunities for face painting, before the autumn starts.




Phoebe likes having her face painted!

EuroDisney - the good, the bad, and the princesses!

Okay, first the good parts:
EuroDisney is REALLY big. Much bigger than I had anticipated!

A really good thing that we brought with us is the Mothercare Urban Detour. It can be a backpack-style childcarrier,

or a pushchair.

Either way, it's a really good thing to have.

The weather was good!

If you stay in a hotel affiliated to the park, you get to go in two hours early at 8:00am, so you can go on the busier rides when there's no queue.

Our cabin had two bedrooms, so we could keep normal bedtime routines.
And it had a fridge, kettle, and hob, so we could eat in the cabin when we wanted - tired children in restaurants are NO fun!

There was a lovely swimming pool with whirlpool, spa, slide, etc. just next to our cabin.

Okay, the bad bits:
EuroDisney is REALLY big. Much bigger than I had anticipated!

The food on the park is AWFUL! The food in the rest of France is superb, but not in Disneyland Paris. It's as though the French feel that seeing as fast food is going to be pretty horrible anyway, there's just no point making an effort!

The queues for a lot of things were REALLY long! You learn a whole new level of patience queueing with a four year old for almost an hour to meet a princess, only to find as you get near the front of the queue, there's a shift change and a princess whose picture and autograph you got yesterday, steps on to the stage!

There are still A LOT of people who smoke around children. Because it's outside there's no reason why they shouldn't (y'know, except the usual) but because there are so many people so closely packed together you can't get away from it. I don't like coming home with my clothes (and my children's clothes) smelling of smoke when we've been walking around outside all day!

The 8:00am pass was great, but it did mean no lie-ins for anyone!

Anyway, here are some pix;

A short trip back to my own childhood!

I've just found this on YouTube. Isn't it great?

A trip to the Zoo!

On Friday we went to the zoo!
We watched the Meercats,
And the otters,

And some very strange birds!
Then we went to the playground!
We did lots of climbing!
And tractor driving,
And sliding!

Then we went to the nicest (and most expensive!) garden centre on the way back home.
How can you not love a garden centre that has a children's cinema?
And lets you swing on the garden furniture!
It looks comfy, doesn't it?

Then, we picked Daddy up and went for sushi!
Phoebe likes to dissect her sushi. I don't know why. We've offered her sashimi, which she turns down. She likes her sushi, she just likes it separated!
Guy and Daddy drinking miso soup!

It's Phoebe's job to get the dishes we request off the conveyor belt for us.
She takes it very seriously!

Loving this song!

This says a lot about growing up!