Fishy farewells and watery walks

Yesterday the boys both had first aid training with Badgers (for a competition which we’ve just realised falls while we’re at Melrose so they’ll miss it 🙁 ) while Bob collected a parcel from the depot (1kg of assorted buttons!) and bought a radiator key and the girls and I pottered.
The afternoon was spent baking (see previous post), bleeding radiators, sorting buttons and eating 😆
Not a huge amount achieved, in the grand scheme of things, but a pleasant day really, except that we also had to hold a little funeral service for Sparkle, our fancy goldfish 🙁
We’re not sure what he died of, but he’s been unhappy for a while and clearly had a swim bladder problem, among other things, but none of the things suggested seemed to help and his tank-mate Bubbles seemed unaffected (so presumably it was something wrong with Sparkle rather than e.g. a water issue) so we ended up putting him in an isolation hospital tank (large jug with oxygenation tablets and medicated water) where he languished for a while, swimming sideways, and then expired 🙁 Children very upset (far more so than warranted, really, given that we’ve not had the fish that long and they go unnoticed most of the time) and J wanted to give him “a proper Christian burial” so Bob helped them to make a little cardboard coffin, which K and J decorated, L dictated a letter for Bob to write and J made a little notice and chose some (long-treasured) seaside stones to mark his grave, then we (J – unprompted) said a little prayer thanking God for the time Sparkle had spent with us and hoping that he will be happy in heaven and Bob went out into pouring rain to dig a little hole by the summerhouse for the pathetic little coffin with its newspaper wrapped (trying to keep everything bio-degradable but also moderately cat-proof) inhabitant. Very touching, but perhaps also a trifle over-played; I think J is overreacting a bit 😕

Today we walked to church, which involved going past the playground, bridge and fields we walked to last week, and we noticed that the fairly impressive water levels we had noticed (and photographed) then were now even higher. After lunch we therefore decided (as we usually do, if I’m honest) that housework could wait, grabbed wellies and a camera and went back to redo the walk we did last Sunday. This involved some serious wading – the water was over the top of L’s boots most of the time (not helped by the fact that she had worn odd ones, so one was rather shorter than the other) and both K and J ended up tipping impressive amounts of water onto the path 😀 Lots of photos will be on flickr soon 😉
Came home and chucked the children into the bath before tea.

Now weathering a rather tiresome tantrum from J over finishing the work he should have done on Friday but which is still hanging over the weekend… Deep joy! Still, I guess if he was at school we’d have the same issues over getting homework finished and handed in 😕