storbarnsförälder

I left the house yesterday morning at 07:50 because there's an 07:57 train from Reading West to Reading, which is where the bus goes from. So I got to Reading West Station and checked the platform electronic display: Next train the 07:57 due at 08:00. So I bought my ticket from the machine and waited for the train.

The train vanished from the display without having arrived at about 08:10. So I walked to the main train station and got there about 08:30, found the bus stop, checked the timetable, and asked the driver (getting off the bus, turning off his lights, etc) "Is this the eight-fifty?"

"No. They're cancelled today."

So I got a taxi, and made him let me out when it became obvious that we'd spent twenty minutes doing a ten-minute journey in no traffic at all. I paid him and fled to phone Rob, because the taxi driver said "You can't get out here, it's a three to five mile walk!"

Rob checked Google Maps and, as I had expected, I was very close indeed - about five hundred feet. Also, the buses were running, because I saw one.

So I arrived ready for my class. Seething, upset, and feeling like a total idiot, but ready.

And then I had coffee and a banana and settled down to wait for everyone else to arrive. After all that, I was early.

We had dinner out with friends last night and lunch with neighbours whom we hope to get to know better today. Tuesday is grocery day and I hope to buy tons of food - or maybe tonnes, which is larger? - and in particular lots of things for baking with, like sugar and self-raising flour and so on. Honey, too, I expect.

I also have some John Lewis vouchers so I might take the children to Waitrose and buy things like meatballs and out-of-season fruit and other things.

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Linnea has been experimenting with symmetry. And Emer's language is leaping ahead of her.

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I spoke to my mother and two of my sisters today. I might try to call the other two next weekend. We need to sort out who is visiting whom this summer, and when. And to do that, Rob and I need to firm up when we're going camping! Three of our camping trips are pre-planned by other people, so the dates are fixed but unknown, and one we're hoping to have as a nuclear family holiday, just the four of us, which will be lovely if we manage it. We tend to need all Rob's annual leave for family and friends stuff, most years, but this year we're having a private Christmas, so... Here's hoping, anyway.