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More sunny party times. We had the choice between a birthday party in a park in South London or a barbecue about a mile up the hill. Can you guess where we went?
Our old London friends are dead to us now. Luckily the people who live in our village are pretty cool. I love it here. Once you’re out, you can’t come back.
We’ve got to the point now, though very reluctantly on my part, where Phoebe can go off and play and not be in our field of vision all the time. I could sometimes last five minutes without seeing her, before I edged out of my deck chair in the shade and went to check she hadn’t been snatched by a passing child murderer or run out unnoticed into the road (which to be fair had basically no traffic on it anyway). She in turn has no fear at all about being away from us. Quite the opposite if anything. I did intervene when I saw a boy throwing a ball at her head, but aside from that you have to let them be their own person.
It’s utterly unbearable of course and my stupid brain conjures up every possible disastrous scenario. But I think she had fun.
She was the first to get her clothes off when the paddling pool came out, and others followed her lead. No fear, no self-consciousness, just looking for fun and mischief.
Right at the end she rushed ahead of us into the house and the front door was open and she got as far as the front gate as we were giving our goodbyes. She got into trouble for that, of course, but it proved those fears aren’t unfounded. My mum told me that being a parent meant however blue the sky was, there was always a cloud on the horizon. That was figuratively and literally true today.
Village life is sweet though and aside from the odd ball lobbed at your child’s head (and I understand worse things happen in London) everyone is very friendly. Even if they were all pricks this beat 3 hours in the car and having my 3 year old running around in a park, where we might not find her if she ran too far.
I’d like it to rain now. The nights are tough again as the baby wakes up every 45 minutes. He gets back to sleep as soon as he’s had some water. But I don’t. Thank God I told my boss to stick his job up his arse. He liked it going up there I reckon. You should have seen the look on his face.
Don't worry. I'm definitely going to have to stop the blog unless things get funnier very quickly! I am sure everything will fuck up again soon. Stay tooned.
