#WBOYC in August

 

What's been on my calendar this month?  Not very much!  It's school summer holidays here and so with four grandchildren we've been kept busy with helping with childcare.  How do families with both parents working manage if they don't have family nearby to help out?  

Watching and reading

Destination X sometimes had me wondering why some people apply to go on shows involving different places in the world when they admit 'I'm hopeless at geography'.  They all start out as a group 'of course we will share any information or clues we find, we're in this together'. Seriously?  Only one of you can win the £10,000, it's going to be each man for himself!

We enjoyed The Hostage on Netflix.  Suranne Jones was very good as a prime minister having to make some huge decisions.  

The Sewing Bee has been good to watch and it is interesting to see how creative all the contestants are, especially under a tight timescale.

My reading list is here - as you will see, it is somewhat monopolised by one author!

Eating

We went to dinner at our friends' house and they had cooked Sicilian sausage ragu with the meat coming from a nearby Italian deli.  Oh boy, it was absolutely delicious.

Leo and Rosie helped with the design and decoration of their mum’s birthday cake 

We took our son's children out for a McDonald's lunch as a birthday treat.  This was I think the second time they have been there as their mum and dad try hard to avoid processed foods.  The last time I had a McDonalds was in 2008!  I remember it as we were on our way up to Sheffield to collect our daughter from university.  I have to say, it tasted better than I remembered but boy are those french fries salty!

Self care

A whole month with no normal pilates or zumba classes!  The hall we use for zumba is having air conditioning installed (and about time too!) and the pilates teacher decided that she would not hold classes for August as so many people had holiday commitments.  I signed up for a month of online classes via my zumba teacher but am ashamed to say that I have only logged on three times.

I'm not sure if it really qualifies as self care, but I went to my 'knit and natter' group on Friday for the first time in a few weeks and it was so nice to just sit, do some crafting and chat.  My blanket is finally finished!

Days Out

Any days out seem to have been related to child friendly places, crazy golf, cinema trips and a birthday trip to McDonalds.  But last weekend we went to the Gibberd Gardens which is a six acre site in the grounds of Sir Frederick Gibberd's home.  It was a gloriously warm day and it was lovely to wander around the gardens and woodland with Coco.  I think I am right in saying that Harlow was the second 'new town' to be built in England back in the late 40s, and Gibberd was the architect and designer of the town.  It holds an interest to me as I grew up in that area and the secondary school that I went to was on the outskirts of Harlow New Town.

So, here is my 1 Second Everyday for the month