and the summerless summer continues....

Today dawned bright and cloudy as per, so I took Oliver off to A La Ronde, a National Trust place nearby, which we have never visited, and which was laying on craft activities today. He enjoyed the craft and then we had a poke around the house, which I found quirkily charming and pretty darned amazing, actually. Oliver enjoyed it enough for a second whirl around, and I think I would like to go back alone for a serious 'look' at stuff myself, rather than the whistle-stop glances I have had to restrict myself to since the advent of motherhood.

I like to stand in rooms at these places, preferably (not often) alone and feel it all soaking in - like I really lived there. If you know what I mean. I recall a chateau in Brittany a few years back, Trevarez I think it was called, where I kept walking backwards and forwards across the wooden-floored ballroom and glancing out of the gi-normous windows across the gi-normous gardens and imagining myself as some 19th century countess in a gi-normous bejewelled gown.... of course this reverie was continually broken by the (step)kids moaning about something or other so I never fully captured the experience.

Took this pic of Oliver in one of the rooms - naughty me, photography is a treasonable offence at the NT props - I heard one of the 'volunteers' (aka former SS officers) coming down the passageway as I was snapping away and nearly threw myself into the nearest cupboard in terror. They had dressing up clothes there today, and Oliver, donning a top hat turned instantly into the Artful Dodger and started walking around like a pearly king, now what's all that about??

This week's SLYMI was actually completed on the afternoon it was set, (last Thurs) which is almost unheard of, but it is so not my style, ('scrap a square within a square), and I so feel I have ruined a lovely photo that I haven't felt in the mood to blog it all week. Still, here it is, and think I may just doodle around some of it in black to satisfy my need to scruff this pastel neatness up a bit....

Anyway, that's all for now. Oliver is badgering me to play Monopoly for the fourth time this week. He seems to have mastered the art of quickly advancing from the purchase of top-priced properties to bankrupting me within a few circuits of the board. He is so like his father. And when did the shift happen between letting your kids think they have beaten you fair and square - and your kids beating you fair and square despite your best and meanest efforts to win?

It surely is the beginning of the end.