Harry Potter and swimming.

Despite heckling and all the rest of it, I did go to bed positively early last night. I then laid there for hours listening to a computer rebooting itself with monotonous regularity and eventually got disturbed by Tim coming to bed and shutting it down.

I then got up at 7 o’clock this morning. I’ll repeat this, 7 o’clock. Not that it made all that much difference to our eventual departure time, which somehow slipped from 9.30 to 10.30 with a need for petrol and to drop off the merc at school. This did mean that we had to stop in at school for the first time since we’ve left – I got hit and run hugs from lots of children and some staff, a lovely smile from one of the children who I didn’t realise I’d connected with, and a coincidental hug from a parent I’ve been worrying about. There appeared to be two new members of staff, and I missed a couple of others, but I’ve to pick up the car next week, so I’ll hope to see them then.

So eventually we were all in the car and we set off, with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Unabridged 8 Audio CD Set) for company. I have to say, I don’t particularly rate Harry Potter as literature, but read aloud by Stephen Fry it is excellent long journey material. I’m quite looking forward to seeing it all transferred to the small screen.

We stopped off at a services on the way, and then abortively at a Tesco looking for swimming stuff (our local one had them cheap so I assumed they all had) and eventually ended up at CP at 14.55. I don’t know how we do this. We do this pretty much every time. Nevertheless, we got in and found the hut, and were just setting off swimming when Michelle and C arrived, so we paused briefly (this caused extreme anguish for Small who thought the promised swimming had been cancelled) and ended up taking C with us. They had a fab time – Small realised that with a ring on he could swim and Big enjoyed showing C all around, although she also got a bit upset when she realised that both of the younger children could deal with the water better than she could.

Came back to the hut and ended up with all the families round to do cake for Big. That went well, though only briefly, as many of the children were quite hyper. Parents managed some wine so that was quite good too.

Quite quiet evening once we managed to insert the children into bed, but someone appears to have stolen a couple of hours, so given we’re swimming early-ish I think I’d better go to bed.