mm – might leave off this for some dull data sifting as I’m not quite sure where to go this morning.

Planting: we were planting yesterday when got home from work. Initially there were piles of schoolwork all over the place; they having brought work home accumulated over the year. Jude’s maths book is full of encouraging comments & lots of ticks (doesn’t seem to get much wrong, but did note he occasionally omitted bits). Esme was keen to be plying footballer (passing the football back & forth on the back street). Jack had a hankering to be doing something & Debra gave us some coriander that she’s been growing & could no longer keep, so Louse decided it was planting time; & lo, it was. Could have been more messy, could have gone more wrong, but all in all it was quite a success if you discount the fact that we used too much compost & it’s liable to dry out quickly rather than retaining water & consequently the plants are under risk of dehydrating…. but aside from that it worked fine. Jack even managed to go swimming! Not at home, obviously, but Eve was persuaded to go with him to the pool. They both like swimming & they are old enough to go on their own, so we do encourage them, but Jack has played too rough with Eve previously & she was not keen to go & be dunked & dragged into deep water, so she needed some cajoling & promises of better behavior before she was happy to agree.

Jude has a party day at school today so is allowed to wear party clothes or fancy dress… Louise was worried because she didn’t think he would be happy with the selection of clobber available, but we remembered that Vicky down the road has loads of dressing up clothes, so we checked with her & she was happy to let Jude borrow something for today. Batman is going to school – but not one I really recognise: he has quite tall ears,, mainly black, with a red logo & sort of wing things from the arms rather than a cape. Still Batman, but which one?