Chasing my tail

Nothing new there then!

Why is a half-term "holiday" busier than a normal week?

Maybe it's something to do with the presence of a Small Child who actually isn't that small any more...

I started the week with all sorts of good intentions, including finishing my pencil bundle:

But that's as far as I've got.

I read a book about pencil sketching while waiting to donate a pint of blood last Tuesday.  I got all inspired and even called in at the shops on the way home to buy some more pencils (ahem, like I didn't already have any...). 

So much for that then.

We did make it out to our favourite Sunday morning place though, and stopped a while to smell the Daphne:

and admire some magnificent fungi

And the past two days I have cleared away all the dead things from the garden.  (By dead things I do just mean stalks and twigs and lacy old courgette stems and six-foot dried fennel stems, nothing more gruesome than that...)

It's still cold, but there is hope - little buds and green bits poking their noses out of the ground despite the frost lingering in the shady bits i.e. all of my back garden - I found a wonderful disc of ice on the top of the Girl's green bucket...

Tomorrow we are off to see this exhibition minus the Small Person.  I'm sure the Small Person would very much enjoy a trip to London and a museum, but I'm also sure the Small Person's attention span would be shorter than mine and Trouble would ensue and it would end in tears and grumpiness (from both of us).

Finally, this evening I've been particularly busy with some heroic kitchen action:  I looked in the fridge earlier and discovered eight pints of milk that was all about to go out of date.

So far I've made a toad-in-the-hole, custard, cheese sauce, a mammoth rice pudding, 30 drop scones, a pint of yoghurt and a ginger cake...was there anything else I could have done?!

Maybe it's time for a cocoa...