Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Tuesday 25 June

Tuesday comes around so quickly! I start off my 'week of happy' full of good thoughts and then forget about it after a few days. And then wonder if I'll manage to remember ten happy things! But it's not a bad thing, because it makes me stop and think and appreciate the small things.


1. 11yo ran up to me after I'd dropped them off at J's house last week with this bunch in his hands. They'd picked it earlier in the week and had forgotten to give it to me. They're my favourite flowers, I just love their colour and the whispiness as the petals fall. They're past their best now but they have cheered me up all week.

2. I taught a couple of crochet classes on Saturday - beginners in the morning, improvers in the afternoon. The two ladies attending the improvers class, had previously come to one of my beginners class. It was so nice to see how they'd carried on and used the skills I'd taught them. One of them was even teaching her daughter to crochet. That's what it's all about!

3. Yesterday we had to spend quite a bit of time in the car through my own fault - I'd left my camera in Ipswich and wanted to go and pick it up. The kids didn't complain at all, in fact, we had a really good time together. Not for the first time I thought that they're both really good company.

4. The Mini game. 11yo and I have played this game for a few years now. The rules are simple: you spot a Mini, you punch the person sitting next to you and say Mini and you get a point. You get an extra punch for a cabriolet Mini, a yellow one, a learner and a few other unusual versions (actually, yellow Minis are quite common). We only play it in the car and the winner is the one with the most Minis at the end of the journey. The thing about this game is that it is utterly pointless but can get very silly - sometimes if traffic is heavy and I have to concentrate, 11yo can leap ahead and spot one Mini after the other. But neither of us ever mind about losing, we sometimes give points away if we're feeling sorry for each other. I've played it with 14yo as well but it's not the same. It cheers me up so much that when 11yo is not in the car with me, I'm a little sad when I spot a Mini and can't score a point.

(We recently added a new rule. The person to spot J's old Mini, which was a limited edition but was sold years ago, wins for life. I don't think it's likely to happen ;-)

5. I've finally found a book again that's really gripping me. I haven't finished the last few books I was reading because they just weren't, well, gripping enough! I wanted something fairly light but sometimes it was so light it was rubbish at the same time. So I went back to Thomas Hardy, who never fails to disappoint. I'm reading Jude the Obscure and o, how you can tell it's going to end badly, but still I can't stop reading!

6. Finding I have yet something else in common with a friend at WeightWatchers. She's 20 years older than me but we share an uncanny similar taste in literature. Last week we found we enjoy the same music, this week we discovered we both like Radio 4...

7. Having a haircut and liking my hair again.

8. That moment when the radio alarm clock goes on 30 minutes sleep and you switch off the light and crawl under the duvet, knowing you'll be asleep in the next few minutes or so (I rarely suffer from insomnia).

9. One of B's cats who's normally a bit shy, jumping up into the bed to come and have a cuddle and a very loud purr.

10. Last week my 'little old lady' celebrated her 84th birthday. I popped in on the day itself but as I had suspected, she was out with her children. I left behind a present and a card, saying I'd come and see her the following Tuesday. When I turned up, she had already left two mugs and a plate of biscuits in the kitchen for us to have later. It just warms my heart that she looks forward to my visits.
('my little old lady' and 'my captain' will have a blog post of their own soon).

11. Standing on the balcony at B's house around 10pm on the longest day, watching the moon occasionally come through the clouds and marvelling at how light it still was.

And there you have it, 10 happy things and a bonus one!

Pop back tomorrow for the first guest blog post I've ever written, about cycling in Norfolk.

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