Summer? Maybe..

Well, it has to be nice weather in Marlow today, I've got my shorts on at work.
I was a bit stiff yesterday, I'd played cricket on Saturday and Sunday - a League game first, in which we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory against Great Kingshill, then the Littlewick Green Cricket Club President's Day on Sunday. This is a 6-a-side tournament starting at 10am, with six teams playing in two groups of three with a play-off between the first, second and third teams in each group to determine final positions. It was my second year as a team captain, and our boys did well and finished third. The weather was very nice, apart from a brief rain shower during the lunch interval, where players and partners (and children!) enjoyed a buffet lunch in a large marquee, washed down with a glass of wine or three (for the players - I think wives and girlfriends were doing the driving!). I certainly needed the batting practise, having hit a brief 6 on Saturday (I still can't make it to double figures for the Firsts!), and I opened the batting for our team, and scored 28*, 27* and 28* in my three innings - the rules state a batsman must retire when he's scored 25, although he can return later if needed.
Lara was fine all day, Olga did a stirling job of feeding her at just the right moments, and was unlucky to have to take her for a stroll to get her off to sleep just as the lunchtime rain arrived.
We even took Mishka along, and although he spent half the day in the car (with the windows open and some water in a bowl!) he did also get some time to play about on the grass.
We got home in time to watch the second half of the football, and I must admit I was happy to see those bossy Germans beaten by Spain. Poor old Ballack - serves him right for always being the first person to give the ref a Teutonic mouthful anytime any of the Germans players felt the need to sniff the turf.
What else? We bought a new kettle! How exciting is that?! The old one blew up, tripping the master switch on the fusebox and burning a hole in the extension lead it was plugged into. We decided that, seeing as Lara is drinking cold, boiled water now, we should perhaps buy a half-decent kettle (oh, and we do enjoy our morning cups of tea), so we splashed out on one from John Lewis, which has a built-in water filter, fortunately using the same filter cartridges as the water jug in our fridge. Best of all though, it lights up different colours as the water is heating, from blue to purple to red! Gimmicky, I know, but it'll amuse Lara for 10 minutes when she's a little older.
Writing of Lara, she's been swimming again this morning, and went underwater three times, apparently, although it seems like she doesn't enjoy that bit so much yet. It must have tired her out, as she had a long sleep this afternoon in the park in Marlow. She's eating more yoghurts, brocolli, courgette, carrot & banana now, after a breakfast of baby rice, and to try and encourage her to chew we're giving her slightly-mashed pieces of strawberry (well, it is Wimbledon fortnight after all).
I finally finished mowing the lawn last night, after a week off. We've decided we're going to leave an area of it "fallow" for the benefit of creepy-crawlies and the fact Olga likes the "meadow" look. It's an area of lawn we don't use for anything, and if it reduces the time it takes to mow, I'm in favour of it! All this just in time for me to mow it again on Sunday, most likely... Although the priority now moves on to restarting work on the vegetable patch - I need to put a fence around it to keep Mishka off our plums or whatever else will be growing. We'll need to be thoughtful about where we sit Lara in the garden, as the crop of apples on the apple tree looks to be much more than last summer, and they're starting to fall now.