Half-Term. Mrs Hedges has left for Australia to see her parents. I am in (total) charge. Last time I was in command of the troops, I managed to put two mobiles in the washing machine, lose the terriers for the night and run out of petrol. This time, with an extensive list of dos and don’ts pinned to the fridge, my duties have been more as a taxi driver, although the smoke alarm has been busy at meal times.
I have, it feels, also being doing retakes of my O Levels, as I plough through some of the GCSE revision with Harry, who has exams this summer. It’s amazing what you can still remember, although history is particularly different from how I was taught it.
As the children are a bit older, I was able to nip to work for one day and leave them behind. Harry and Anna came across the local beagles when they were walking the dogs, and spent a joyous day tumbling around the countryside. It seemed reminiscent of a previous age, when children went out, made camps, whittled sticks and got enormously dirty. I was thrilled, and I feel sure that it had nothing to do with the fact that I had somehow managed to crash the computer.
-
About time: The fastest and slowest moving housing markets revealedNew research by Zoopla has shown where it's easy to sell and where it will take quite a while to find a buyer.
-
Betty is the first dog to scale all of Scotland’s hundreds of mountains and hillsFewer than 100 people have ever completed Betty's ‘full house’ of Scottish summits — and she was fuelled by more than 800 hard boiled eggs.
