Friday played out much the same way as Thursday: swimming for the girls while the boys stayed with Gina’s J and played MarioKart (or something similar – I’m no expert! I’m told we need to get it though…)
In the afternoon we tried again for a teens swimming meet and managed to get together with the Beans with enough time to get to the pool (no thanks to the standing traffic on the A14) for a floats session. A had had enough of swimming in the morning so opted to stay out and watch, which meant I did too – there’s a handy balcony and a cafe so we were happy enough 😉
We had a bit of drama on the way home, as J decided he wanted to walk – he and L had been arguing on and off for long enough that I stopped the car and asked them to get out and sort it out; he opted to walk his bad temper off while she got back in the car again. I took the others home and left them there with Bob and a suggestion of helpful activities they could do (music practice for the girls and English for H) while I nipped back to see if the rain had cooled J off enough. I caught up with him just before the part of road I’d been worrying about given weather and traffic conditions, where there’s no pavement and only a narrow verge, and we went to the garden centre for a chat and some cat food. The assistant in the pet shop area threw me a little when she looked up and said “I’m not left-handed, but I think yesterday was Left-handers’ day, wasn’t it?” and it took me long enough to realise she was referring to my tee shirt that it was by then too late to correct her error: Amazing Lefty Women are not necessarily left-handed!
I asked for advice and ideas on facebook the other day about making Shakespeare accessible for H and a friend suggested (and lent us) a couple of modern adaptations. She also suggested an order in which to watch them, so last night we sat down intending to start with the John Cleese version of The Taming of the Shrew, which had a U rating according to my research, so the girls were keen to join us. Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that Bob had put the wrong version on, and he seemed unable to sort it out, so we abandoned that and watched An Extra Slice instead, then once the girls were in bed restarted with the BBC version of The Taming of the Shrew which was all Bob could find to play. It was excellent, but not as easy an introduction as I think the other would have been, so we’ll try again with that soon. We’ll move on to 10 Things I Hate About You after that, I think, then read the original to see where it all started.
