A weekend in Kent

We went to Kent this weekend for a change of scenery, I'd booked us into a premier inn and on a ferry to Calais for a booze cruise. We set off nice and early on Saturday morning, to make the most of the very pleasant weather. It was a nice surprise to find that Dover is only an hour and forty minutes from High Wycombe, so we might make it a day trip sometime this summer.
Our first stop was Samphire Hoe, a spit of land created from the spoil from the Channel Tunnel construction. It was a good place to spend an hour or so while Lara tried out her new scooter. She's not big enough yet to ride her bike properly, and it's hardly portable, so we've got her this scooter to keep her busy in the meantime. It also means that on simple walks, she can cover more distance without us carrying her. It'll take some time for her to master the technique, but she's practising around the house, and loves wearing her helmet - she wore it all day on Monday.
From there we went into Dover, to take a boat tour of the harbour. On such a lovely day, and a Saturday lunchtime as well, I felt quite sorry for the owner of the tour boat, who only had us as customers.  It was a really good way to see Dover, and learn about some of its history, such as the buoy that marks where a pleasure cruiser was sunk in the First World War to prevent German submarines from entering the harbour. The tour guide let Lara take the wheel at a suitably safe point, and this turned out to be one of the big highlights for Lara.. "I drove the boat! I was Captain" was how she reported it back to Baba once we got home.
We were booked on the 14.30 ferry to Calais, and for once we weren't late, in fact it turned out that we were early enough to be bumped forward to the 13.45 ferry, although no-one told us this until there was a tannoy announcement asking for the owners of our car to urgently return to it as our ferry was about to leave! We were enjoying a Burger King at the time, and had to scoop it all up and dash back to the car. As it turned out, we were the last people onto the ferry, which meant that once I'd turned the car around on the car-deck in Calais, we were in pole position to be first off once we were back in Dover.  The purpose of our trip was only for shopping on board, we didn't even get off in Calais, instead I went and ordered our beer and wine from the shop on the ferry before we arrived in Calais, and a helpful chap wheeled it down to our car and helped me load it into the boot. Lara really enjoyed being on a "big boat", and as we put her reins on when we were on the outside deck, and kept a tight hold on them, we were happy for her to look over the side. She told us with complete certainty that she saw a fish while we were in Calais port, but it must have gone when Olga looked...
Once back in Dover we headed straight to our hotel, which had a beefeater next to it, which was very busy, for good reason. The food and service was excellent, and Lara was really happy to stay up with us, tucking into both our main courses with us, and helping me with my giant ice-cream dessert. I had to cuddle up with her on her bed to get her off to sleep, but once she was asleep, other than one brief paddy at 1.30am, everything was quiet until she appeared next to me at 7.30. We had a giant breakfast, saving some of it for Lara's snacks during the day (she does like a Full English!) then headed into Deal to pick up our rental bikes. Given our experience of cycling (my last time was in the gym more than 18 months ago, and Olga was longer than that) it was perhaps a little ambitious to think that we could cycle the 10 miles along the cliff-top path back to Dover, then bring the bikes back on the train. We were out of breath and getting stiff legs by the time we'd cycled the flat, half-mile to the coast from the hire shop. We just tootled back and forth along the traffic-free promenade, stopping off regularly to look at the boats or to chase the (very calm) English Channel surf up and down the shingle beach.  Lara came out with some classic quotes.. "That's not the sea, that's water" was one, I think, and "I don't want a sandwich, I want a picnic".
We returned the bikes just before 4pm, and set off for home. Lara was asleep all the way home, as was Olga, come to think of it, but it was a really lovely way to spend a weekend, and we'll definitely go down there again. The ladies who ran the bike hire shop told us about a few hidden gems that we'll need to explore next time, we just hope we can arrange similar weather!

Lara and the train

Sunday's party in Portishead went very well. The omens were good - we left the house on time, which is probably a first since Lara was born. The journey there from Reading was fine, Lara spent the first 20 minutes looking out of the window and telling me everytime she saw cows, horses, sheep and diggers - a result of her Bob the Builder fascination, we think.
As soon as she got bored of this, and restless, I broke out the food bag. From the amount of food I'd packed, you'd think I was going to be feeding everyone on the train. There was enough variety there to keep Lara occupied though, and without any great hassle we arrived at Nailsea & Backwell station.
The party passed without Lara performing any great hysterics, and Elizabeth was kind enough to let Lara blow out her candles (after Elizabeth had blown them out several times, I hasten to add), as well as play with all her toys, including her new trampoline, without any fights at all, which was a pleasant surprise!

My nephew William won the prize for pulling the cutest face on a photo though..

Lara slept in Auntie Cath's car on the way from the party to the station, but woke up before the train had left the platform, and stayed awake until Olga put her to bed at 10pm. Lucky for me Grandma gave us a Peppa Pig sticker book to play with, and that passed much of the journey home.

Second for Olga, and a day out tomorrow for Lara & I.

Olga's choice in the Grand National - Black Apalachi - came second, and was the only finisher out of the six horses we backed! Luckily, none of us had King Johns Castle, the one that didn't even make it to the first fence, although I will admit that I was looking at that one before I chose Arbor Supreme. Jackson got the booby prize for picking Eric's Charm, the only faller at the first. If you're wondering how he and Mishka (Beat the Boys) picked their horses, in turn I gave them a pen, they held it in their mouth, then dropped it on the centre-page pull out from the Mirror, and where the nib of the pen pointed, that was their horse. It worked first time for each of them. Mad? Me? Noooooooo. Lara picked her horse (Flintoff) by pointing to it on the pull out when I asked her which colours she liked. For the record, Luda had Mon Mome, without knowing it won last year at 100-1.

Tomorrow Lara and I are going on a railway adventure, to a station close to Bristol, which is close to where Auntie Catherine and Uncle Nick live, because we're going to Cousin Elizabeth's 3rd birthday party. It's 90 minutes on a direct train from Reading, so I'm making sure I have enough toys and food to keep Lara going for that time. Hopefully she'll sleep for the return journey in the evening!

We had a lovely afternoon in the garden today, the weather was perfect. Lara learnt how to roll down our steep garden, Luda continued turning the veg patch into somewhere that vegetables might choose to grow, and Olga and |I continued to reduce the untidy pile of cut branches into either logs for the fire or twigs for the tip. I even powered up the mower (a friend had serviced it for me) and cut the front lawn, along with almost everyone else on our street.

Finally time now for a beer and Match of the Day, hurray.

A week - already?!

Luda's arrival has meant Olga and I have had more time to get other things done at home, but we've been so successful at that that I've not had time to update the blog! I'll try to put that right tonight, whilst I listen to the Barcelona v Arsenal Champions League game (why can't you pick and choose to pay to watch games on Sky?).

So, what's happened?
Luda had a couple of quiet days on Wednesday and Thursday to settle in, then on Good Friday we met Sergei and Lucy at The Bird in Hand, where we had our wedding reception in 2006. This was the first time Luda had met Sergei, although she has spoken to him briefly on the telephone before. We stayed all afternoon, then returned to High Wycombe, but just went straight to the local pub to carry on the fun. I took Lara home at 8.15, but it was after 10pm before Olga brought her mum home!
Here are some photos from the Bird in Hand, Lara really does play the supermodel role whenever a camera appears!



The rest of the weekend focussed on clearing up the back garden. I hired a shredder / chipper to get rid of the huge pile of leaves and branches that we've accumulated over the past few weeks, and it took the best part of three days to get rid of most of it, although there is still some left! There were 16 binbags full of shredded laurel and holly leaves and branches that I took to the tip (surprisingly quiet considering it was a Bank Holiday weekend). I was very glad to be able to adjourn to the pub last night with Chris and Cara for a drink! I don't want to pick up a pair of secateurs for a long time yet.



Luda and Lara are getting on very well, the language barrier doesn't seem to be causing many problems, in fact they might be helping each other! I was victim of Lara's first new Russian word on Saturday, when she came up to me, pulling my trouser leg and saying "Galat, Papa, galat". It means "Walk", and she was excited because Olga was taking Lara to the park to play on the swings, and to show Luda where it was. Lara is still struggling with a cold, she's had it for a month now, but it seems to be getting better slowly. She's just come down with a high temperature in the past few days, maybe it's something related to this cold, but a couple of squirts of nurofen at the right moment seems to help her back to sleep. Potty training is also progressing well, with fewer accidents, and this should only get better and better whilst she has Luda on-hand for three days a week to make sure Lara goes to the potty when she needs to.
 It is making a real difference to have an extra pair of hands around the place. Two of us can be working on chores whilst the other looks after Lara, and as soon as Lara's evening temperature wobbles stop, Olga and I will be off out for a drink or even a meal  (maybe, if Olga's nice to me :-) )
Today was Luda's first day as our "child minder", and she has reported that everything went well. There was 5 minutes of crying just after we'd left for work, when Lara realised we weren't hiding, but after that Lara was very proactive, suggesting the games that she wanted to play, and the activities she wanted to do, and luckily the weather was nice, so they could play up on the decking for a long time. The summerhouse is full of toys, and we have the sandpit and trampoline up there, so that should make life easier for Luda and more fun for Lara as long as the weather is OK. We have given Luda one of my old phones with a free pay-as-you-go Tesco Mobile SIM card in it (just request one from their website, they post it to you free of charge - you don't even have to go to a Tesco store!), so Olga phoned up at lunchtime to make sure everything was going OK!

Olga's cooked enough food tonight for Lara's meals tomorrow, so that Luda doesn't need to worry about that, so everything is "so far, so good". It's early days, but if Lara didn't kick up a huge fuss today about being at home with Baba without us being there, then I think that's the hardest part over with.

UK Ketchup Lake

Luda arrived safely this morning, and was waiting for us in the Arrivals Hall at Heathrow. It seems that these days visitors are made to jump through many more hoops (and incur more costs!) before their visa is issued, but the silver lining is that the immigration process at the UK airport is much quicker, as many of the checks tha used to be made then have already been made before the visa was issued. We deposited Luda at home at lunchtime so she could have a well-earned nap, given that she'd been awake all night at Ekaterinburg airport waiting for her 7am flight to Moscow. We've a large delivery coming from Tesco tonight, including six - yes, six - large bottles of Heinz ketchup. Russians love it on most things, and are not shy in squirting enough for a family of four onto their plate, half of which usually ends up down the plughole later. Luckily Tesco were doing a very good deal, a pound a bottle, so I have stocked up. We'll see how long it lasts. As a nod to a healthy lifestyle, I did opt for the Reduced Salt and Sugar variety, though...
It's time to go and get Lara now and spring the surprise on her. We've been telling her for days that Baba is coming to visit, but I don't think the penny has quite dropped yet.