at a snail's pace

we're back! after three weeks away i'm planning to stay put for a while (mainly in order to avoid having to listen to owen's much loved sing-a-long CD in the car). first we spent a lovely quiet week spent in carmarthenshire racing snails, shelling peas, visiting dylan thomas' boat house, digging on the beach and inspecting castles (took me back to happy childhood hours spent perusing my well thumbed copy of 'the usborne book of castles'). 


then me and o-o stayed in manchester while papa m and grand papa b cracked on with some serious home improvements. grand papa b fought valiantly against the walls of cheese and erected some splendid floating shelves in the alcoves in the front room. m completed a decorating task of epic proportions painting the hallway, o-o's room, the window frames and the floor. 


while the patriarchs 'got a bead on' doing the DIY me and o-o had a jolly time catching up with my 'up north' friends, quaffing tea / rum and ginger / frothy milk, visiting grampy m's allotment, blackberrying (so early this year!), deer stalking, reading the millennium trilogy (several years after everyone else) and weighing up the viability of exiting a petting farm with a stolen piglet stowed in the pushchair without being detected (alas in this modern age even petting farms have CCTV). 

seriously though; stealing is wrong, as is throwing things, setting fire to bins, smashing the windows of local shops and generally scaring the beejesus out of people. as idris put it; 

london come on!! this ain't it!! fallback from this shit!!